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Virtually every family in Halabja lost a relative to a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein`s government on March 16, 1988. About 5,000 people died
washingtonpost.com
Cloud Over Halabja Begins to Dissipate
Relief Sweeps Town Gassed by Hussein

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A10


HALABJA, Iraq -- Fifteen years ago, this remote Kurdish town near the Iranian border entered the world`s lexicon of modern-day horrors. First, Iraqi warplanes bombarded the rebellious enclave for several hours, shattering doors and windows. Then, at about 2 p.m., they swooped lower.

"We smelled something rotten, and when we breathed in, we couldn`t breathe out," said Wais Abdel Qadr, a gaunt man of 30 with a deep and chronic cough. "The sky was full of smoke, and someone said it was chemicals. People started crying and running toward the mountains. I was burning and I became blind, but someone led me out. After walking for two days, we reached Iran."

Qadr was the only member of his family to survive the gassing of Halabja by the Iraqi military on March 16, 1988. About 5,000 people perished in an attack that stunned the world and revealed the ruthlessness of Iraq`s president, Saddam Hussein.

Now that Hussein has been driven from power, Halabja`s 50,000-odd residents can finally breathe freely again. Though dozens of blocks still lie in ruin and hundreds of residents still suffer from effects of the gassing, there is an atmosphere of relief in the streets and an unabashed pro-Americanism that has lingered long after people in many other parts of Iraq have soured on the U.S. military presence.

In the busy central bazaar this week, there was no hint of tension or danger. Shopkeepers in turbans and billowing trousers invited an American journalist for endless tiny glass cups of tea. Teenage boys proudly displayed collections of soccer cards (David Beckham and Ronaldo were the most popular), and cheered when a U.S. military helicopter passed overhead. White geese waddled proprietarily down the street. There was not soldier or gun in sight.

"Saddam wanted to kill us all, but now he`s gone and the Americans have come to bring us law and democracy," said Jamil Azad, 35, who has fashioned a tea shop out of cinder blocks covered with sacks. His brother`s family escaped to Iran and then Sweden after the 1988 attack, and he was eager to send them a message. "Please tell them Halabja is safe now," he said. "It`s all right to come home."

Halabja is firmly under the sway of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two major Kurdish parties that divided administrative power in this semiautonomous region of northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and continue to exercise control here. The PUK contributed several thousand guerrilla fighters to the military campaign that toppled Hussein in April.

But the town is also home to several militant Islamic groups that once violently battled the PUK and that still make many residents uneasy. In recent weeks, the groups have fallen under the scrutiny of U.S. military forces, who suspect they may have links to al Qaeda or other armed Islamic movements.

On Saturday at dusk, a convoy of about 35 U.S. military vehicles roared into Halabja as attack helicopters hovered overhead. They went straight to the house of Ali Abdul Aziz, an Islamic leader in his eighties. The heavily armed troops burst in, handcuffed Abdul Aziz and took him and about 15 other men into custody, witnesses said. Then the convoy roared off again, with the choppers still circling.

When a journalist located the house on Sunday, it was full of women in black veils, wailing and shrieking in grief. In the parlor, Abdul Aziz`s daughters and aides insisted repeatedly that he had done nothing wrong, that his group was nonviolent and wanted only to spread Islamic values in society.

"We expected the Americans to come and help Halabja rebuild. Instead they came to occupy us and make chaos," said Kamel Hajj Ali, a political aide to Aziz. He said his movement had split in 2001 from Ansar al-Islam -- a militia based in northeastern Iraq that is considered a terrorist group by U.S. officials -- and that it was now involved in mainstream politics. "We can think of no reason for this arrest," he said.

American military spokesmen in Baghdad would not comment on the raid, but Kurdish regional officials in the nearby city of Sulaymaniyah said they fully supported the U.S. actions. So did many Halabja residents, who said they were afraid of the Islamic group because it had a history of violence and intimidation.

Despite the revitalizing effect that the fall of Hussein has had on Halabja, the town is still very much a place in mourning.

Virtually every family here lost a relative in the gassing, and the main cemetery is full of large, grassy plots where entire clans are buried. A sign at the entrance says "Baathists Keep Out," a reference to the Baath Party that was headed by Hussein and controlled the country for 35 years.

The town`s major landmark is a stark white monument to the dead. Inside is a plaster tableau of lifelike victims frozen as they fell, covered with chemical ash and cradling their children for protection. The center is a rotunda in which some 5,000 victims` names are carved in black stone.

The 1988 attack, in which Hussein`s bombers dropped a mixture of nerve and mustard gases, occurred near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, in which some Kurdish guerrilla groups fought on the Iranian side. The incident spurred an outpouring of aid from around the world that rebuilt schools, clinics, houses and orphanages.

Yet officials and residents complained this week that the help fell far short of what was needed to rebuild their devastated town or bring back thousands of inhabitants who fled abroad. They acknowledged that their joyful reaction to Hussein`s ouster has been partly linked to the hope that it will bring more foreign aid.

"Halabja was once a beautiful and historic place. We had famous poets, and we took many heroic stands," said Jamil Abdulrahman Mohammed, the mayor. "When Saddam fell, everyone here fired shots in the air" in celebration. "But over the years we have had so many martyrs, so many missing, so many who ran away. You cannot rebuild the spirit of a place with bricks."

If Abdel Qadr is any example, however, the determination to revive Halabja is strong.

Despite his medical problems, Abdel Qadr, who teaches Arabic in a local school, helped establish the Halabja Society Against Chemical Weapons and spends all of his spare time keeping the organization alive. Standing in the ruined courtyard of his childhood house, where his mother, father, sisters and brothers all died in the gassing, Abdel Qadr said he could visualize the horror as if it had happened yesterday.

"Sometimes I think the only reason I survived was to tell people what happened," he mused. "It has been a long time, but I think now I can be happy. Saddam is in the dustbin of history, and the black cloud has gone from the Iraqi sky."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Saving The Saudi Connection


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A21


The United States and Saudi Arabia have arrived at a familiar moment in a love-hate relationship based on oil and cultural incompatibility. The two governments normally take a deep breath and decide that the benefits their strategic entanglement brings outweigh the problems it creates. But that stock-taking is not happening this time.

Problems are proliferating instead of being quietly disarmed by adroit diplomacy. Washington and Riyadh are slipping toward new confrontations over the future of Iraq, democracy in the Middle East and U.S. objections to Saudi financing and support for Arab terrorist groups.

These explosive issues already spin beyond the control of the diplomats and encourage the political leaders on each side to contemplate a silent but deadly thought of last resort: We can get along without you.

Containing the damage to this still useful relationship -- while prodding Saudi Arabia to change its most egregiously intolerant and incendiary ways -- tops the list of urgent and difficult challenges that Colin Powell`s State Department confronts. Yet the Saudi challenge arrives as U.S. diplomacy seems destined to play a rapidly diminishing role in world affairs.

The current guessing game of how long Powell will remain as secretary of state is much less important than the question of whether he and his successors can adapt and be effective in the world shaped by 9/11 and the strategy of military preemption it provoked.

A Post story reporting that Powell`s deputy and closest friend, Richard Armitage, recently told the White House that the two would not be around for a second Bush term smoked out strong official denials this week that hint at the true state of affairs: The only people Powell and Armitage have not told about their intentions seem to be those who work at the White House.

They have told co-workers in Washington and relatives, bankers and foreign policy sages in New York. Powell had made indirect but clear public references to his plan to leave, and astute diplomats based here concluded a month or two ago that they were working with a lame-duck chief diplomat 18 months before the end of George W. Bush`s electoral mandate.

This burbling about his tenure handicaps Powell in achieving a meaningful legacy in whatever time he has left. That legacy should include the vital task of updating the U.S.-Saudi relationship to reflect the changes brought about by 9/11, the American military victory in Iraq and what one Bush aide calls a "generational commitment" by Americans to transform the Middle East into a more democratic and pacified region that does not directly threaten American lives or interests.

The agenda of meaningful U.S. diplomacy was not advanced by the spectacle of Saudi Arabia`s foreign minister, Saud Faisal, coming to Washington on July 29 to upbraid both Congress and the president for spreading "misguided speculation" about Saudi Arabia`s role in financing global terrorism. Such an appearance is the very definition of diplomatic failure, and a sign of an incipient crisis in relations between two capitals that no longer feel they can rely on each other.

U.S. commitments to protect the Saudi royal family and oil fields from revolution or other disaster stretch back to 1945. But the involvement of Saudi citizens in 9/11, the kingdom`s relative decline as the swing factor in world oil markets and the Bush agenda for regional change mean that Washington is no longer willing to overlook Saudi behavior that was left alone in the past.

"The old assumption was that the cost of terrorism was sustainable," says one senior administration official. "The horror of 9/11 showed that it is not. You have to deal with the threat now, before it strikes you."

Prince Saud did not mount his soapbox here believing he could force Bush to declassify 28 pages in a congressional report that finger Saudi financing for charities that support terrorist groups. A public release that would provoke official arguments over the report was the last thing the Saudi diplomat wanted. He was here as a politician, to show Saudi opinion that he was standing up in the belly of the monster.

"I understand the dangers," a senior Saudi official said to an American friend a few years ago. "But people in the kingdom think these contributions buy them paradise in the hereafter and protection here on Earth. It will not be easy to get them to change."

Guiding other nations to make difficult but needed changes is the heart and soul of diplomacy. How well Powell and his diplomats can do this in Saudi Arabia is now a crucial test to his still-unformed legacy.

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© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Transforming the Middle East


By Condoleezza Rice

Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A21


Soon after the conclusion of World War II, America committed itself to the long-term transformation of Europe. Surveying the war`s death and destruction -- including the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives -- our policymakers set out to work for a Europe where another war was unthinkable. We and the people of Europe committed to the vision of democracy and prosperity, and together we succeeded.

Today America and our friends and allies must commit ourselves to a long-term transformation in another part of the world: the Middle East. A region of 22 countries with a combined population of 300 million, the Middle East has a combined GDP less than that of Spain, population 40 million. It is held back by what leading Arab intellectuals call a political and economic "freedom deficit." In many quarters a sense of hopelessness provides a fertile ground for ideologies of hatred that persuade people to forsake university educations, careers and families and aspire instead to blow themselves up -- taking as many innocent lives with them as possible.

These ingredients are a recipe for regional instability -- and pose a continuing threat to America`s security.

Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom.

As President Bush said in February, "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life."

Let us be clear: America and the coalition went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein`s regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and to the world. This was a regime that pursued, had used and possessed weapons of mass destruction; had links to terror; twice invaded other nations; defied the international community and 17 U.N. resolutions for 12 years -- and gave every indication that it would never disarm and never comply with the just demands of the world.

Today that threat is gone. And with the liberation of Iraq, there is a special opportunity to advance a positive agenda for the Middle East that will strengthen security in the region and throughout the world. We are already seeing evidence of a new commitment to forging ahead with peace among Israelis and Palestinians.

At the Red Sea Summits in June, Israelis, Palestinians and neighboring Arab states united behind the vision the president has set forth -- a vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Israeli leaders increasingly understand that it is in Israel`s own interest for Palestinians to govern themselves in a viable state that is peaceful, democratic and committed to fighting terror. Palestinian leaders increasingly understand that terror is not a means to Palestinian statehood but instead the greatest obstacle to statehood.

The end of Saddam Hussein`s regime also reinforces the progress already underway across the region. Arab intellectuals have called for Arab governments to address the freedom deficit. Regional leaders have spoken of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater political participation, economic openness and free trade. From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, nations are taking genuine steps toward political and economic openness. The United States supports these steps, and we will work with our friends and allies in the region for more.

Even greater opportunities will come once Hussein`s criminal regime is replaced by an Iraqi government that is just, humane and built upon democratic principles. Much as a democratic Germany became a linchpin of a new Europe that is today whole, free and at peace, so a transformed Iraq can become a key element of a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish. And in the nearly 100 days since major combat operations ended in Iraq, the Iraqi people have reclaimed their country and begun to forge a more hopeful future. As this transition to freedom continues, America will work with other nations to help Iraqis achieve greater security and greater opportunity.

The transformation of the Middle East will not be easy, and it will take time. It will require the broad engagement of America, Europe and all free nations, working in full partnership with those in the region who share our belief in the power of human freedom. This is not primarily a military commitment but one that will require us to engage all aspects of our national power -- diplomatic, economic and cultural. For instance, President Bush has launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative to bind us together in building a better future through concrete projects. He further has proposed establishing a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade, to bring the people of the region into an expanding circle of opportunity.

For all its problems, the Middle East is a region of tremendous potential. It is the birthplace and spiritual home of three of the world`s great faiths, and an ancient center of learning and tolerance and progress. It is filled with talented, resourceful people who -- when blessed with greater political and economic freedom and better, more modern education -- can fully join in the progress of our times.

America is determined to help the people of the Middle East achieve their full potential. We will act because we want greater freedom and opportunity for the people of the region, as well as greater security for people in America and throughout the world.

The writer is national security adviser to the president.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Empire`s don`t last, no matter what the neo-cons think.

"As it happens, unfortunate wanderers often put to the test the halls of safety, bringing to light by their mere presence the values that have been cultivated in these, and revealing whether those who are prosperous have learned that the outcasts` misfortune commands their care. For he who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth should be the first to know its value..." --Homer

By Clifton Webb

08/06/03: Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, recently wrote an intriguing piece titled "Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario--it’s their plan." He argues that the neo-conservatives have a vision for what they want to do in the Middle East and deception has always been part of their ideological make-up. In one telling paragraph he captures the argument when he wrote that the current crop of neo-conservative hawks have a vision for the world, a vision not "unlike," but "exactly like" a religious epiphany. Regarding the present plan for the entire Middle East, not just Iraq, he stated it this way:

"The hawks` [other] response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. ‘We need to be more assertive,’ argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia.’ Hopefully, in Boot`s view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States ‘occupying the Saudi`s oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region.’...What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there`s a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn`t leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that`s largely responsible for the region`s current dysfunctional politics." (emphasis added, The Washington Monthly, 2003.)

If the term Empire bothers some change the definition, fine, words and their terms of usage change all the time as knowledge and reality sinks in and the truth can only be understood by the new terms and phrases of the day. But Empire, an American-led empire, a corporate empire, "is" what the current administration is all about. Not only in the Middle East do we make war, but the world over if necessary. As the tenacious John Pilger recently wrote while sitting in on a meeting of journalists and aid workers in Iraq,... "It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the ‘test case’, says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini’s definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing ‘incredible’ levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is ‘debated’ on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue." (Independent.com, 2003)

Corporazione was what Mussolini’s regime was called...Corporatism is its English phrase, fascism is the economic foundation (not Nazism as the progressive left has claimed for 50 years). President Bush seems to value this form of government over a free Republic based upon democratic principles; his actions and those of the men he has surrounded himself with are its proof not their rhetoric. But "the empire they build will not last" I am told by cynics and skeptics alike. And they are certainly correct. But I am afraid that it is the trying, trying to build this empire that we all shall suffer the loss. Loss of liberty, our prosperity, some our sons and daughters. For President Bush to continue trying he must institute the draft of all, or nearly all, the youth of America. Not just to fight empire`s wars. But in the vain attempt to eliminate unemployment, find more tax revenues from these working legions to pay for the increasing number of older retired masses, the aging demographic that seems to live forever, and not the least to get the youth "off the streets." After all, thousands if not millions are illiterate as well. Selective Service has always been used for just such measures throughout history. I am, of course, much too old to be drafted, so I shouldn`t care much at all, don`t you agree?

Clifton Webb is a research assistant at The Artful Nuance

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War Is A Racket

Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

Smedley Butler on Interventionism

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we`ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn`t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn`t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country`s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

http://www.anti-sheep.com/articles/smedley_butler.php

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Der Bericht von gestern war verspätet

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 9:49 p.m. EDT August 6, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR

The military says U.S. forces captured a suspected leader of Saddam Hussein`s loyalist militia and three other suspects during pre-dawn raids early Thursday. The suspected leader allegedly organized cells and paid and armed guerrilla fighters for attacks on U.S. forces in Saddam`s hometown Tikrit.
Military officials say U.S. forces earlier arrested 18 suspected members of the anti-U.S. resistance in a series of raids.
The military says Iraqi police have captured an alleged organizer of attacks on American troops. The man suspected of organizing guerrilla attacks, nabbed Sunday by Iraqi police officers, was the brother of a Saddam Hussein bodyguard captured by U.S. forces on July 29.
Military officials say an Iraqi informant led soldiers to a large weapons cache 25 miles northeast of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown, on Sunday. It included two 20-foot missiles, 3,000 mortar rounds, 250 anti-tank rockets and almost 2,000 artillery rounds.
For the fifth straight day, no U.S. military personnel were reported killed in attacks. Military combat deaths had been coming almost daily, with 52 U.S. soldiers killed in combat since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over.
Iraq`s postwar efforts at recovery continued: In Baghdad, the U.S.-installed Governing Council asked for U.S. help in creating desperately needed jobs, while to the south in Diwaniyah, Spanish soldiers began setting up a base for troops from Spain and four Latin American countries to replace U.S. forces heading home.
In Baghdad, about five-thousand members of Iraq`s Turkmen minority demonstrated in front of the main U.S. base to demand more representation in the Governing Council. Only one of the council`s 25 members is Turkmen. Iraq has a tense mix of religions and ethnicities, and many minorities are worried about their treatment and influence in postwar Iraq.
Soldiers in Iraq say visits to the gravesites of Saddam Hussein`s sons are rare. The U.S. had worried the gravesite would become a rallying point for anti-American forces.
The Army is urging soldiers in Iraq to take new precautions while officials try to find the cause of a pneumonia outbreak. The Army surgeon general`s office is advising troops to avoid dehydration, to be careful when dealing with dust, and to stop smoking.
An American civilian contractor has been killed in a bomb attack in northern Iraq. The military says the victim was part of a convoy traveling from Baghdad to the north when a bomb was detonated under his truck. The bomb was apparently set off by remote control.
The grandson of the late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Baghdad to set up a Shiite Muslim seminary movement, praised the U.S. war and said he hoped Iraq`s newfound freedoms could spread to neighboring Iran. The grandson (Seyed Hussein Khomeini) has been critical of the Islamic revolution his grandfather led in 1979.

IRAQ-SOLDIER ILLNESS
U.S. forces in Iraq say they`re more concerned about guerrilla attacks and the heat than about a pneumonia outbreak that has killed two soldiers and sent more than a dozen to Europe for medical care. In Washington, military health care experts say they have issued new guidelines to fight the illness, but more than a dozen soldiers interviewed Wednesday by The Associated Press in Baghdad and Tikrit said they haven`t seen them.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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U.S. army soldiers guard the scene of the bomb attack in front of Jordanian embassy in the suburbs of Iraqi capital Baghdad, August 7, 2003. At least nine people died in an explosion outside the Jordanian embassy building in Baghdad on Thursday morning in what a U.S. officer on the scene said was a truck bomb attack. Photo by Oleg Popov/Reuters REUTERS/Oleg Popov

Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Baghdad Shootout
Thu August 7, 2003 06:31 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and one was wounded, along with an Iraqi interpreter, in a gunbattle in Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
It said the soldiers of the 1st Armored Division had been involved in a small-arms firefight in the capital`s al-Rashid district at about 11 p.m. local time (3 p.m. EDT) on Wednesday.
There was no word on any casualties among the attackers.

It was the latest of a series of ambushes and bomb attacks on occupying forces that has killed 55 American troops since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.


Blast at Jordanian Embassy in Iraq Kills Nine
Thu August 7, 2003 05:51 AM ET


Iraqi policemen and U.S. soldiers stand next to a destroyed car at the scene of the bomb attack in front of the Jordanian embassy in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, August 7, 2003. At least eight people died in an explosion outside the Jordanian embassy building in Baghdad on Thursday morning in what a U.S. officer on the scene said was a suspected truck bomb attack.

REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A truck bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy compound in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least nine people and strewing gutted cars, body parts and a severed head across the street outside.

The blast came a week after Jordan announced it had granted asylum to Saddam Hussein`s elder daughters Raghd and Rana and their children. Many Iraqis who supported Saddam are also angry at Amman, regarding Jordan as an ally of Washington.

No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

Iraqi police Captain Ahmad Suleiman said four civilians were killed in a car caught in the blast and five policemen outside the complex also died. Dozens of people were wounded, including seven from inside the embassy.

Jordan condemned the attack and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they were.

"This is a cowardly terrorist attack that we condemn in the strongest terms. It will not divert us from our path of support and aid to the Iraqi people or the process of stabilization," Information Minister Nabil al-Sharif told Reuters in Amman.

He said there were no reports that any embassy staff members had been killed, but some might have been wounded. The charge d`affaires, Damay Haddad, was not at the compound at the time.

Captain Robert Ramsey of the U.S. 1st Armored Division said a truck had exploded outside the building at around 11 a.m. local time (3 a.m. EDT). One of the outer walls of the compound collapsed.

The blast came amid a series of attacks in Iraq that have mostly targeted occupying U.S. troops and have killed 53 soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.

In Saddam`s home town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division said raids over the past day had captured four targeted high-level suspects including a leader of Saddam`s Fedayeen militia, captured in Tikrit, and two associates of Saddam`s son Uday seized in Kirkuk.

Uday was killed along with his younger brother Qusay last month in a U.S. raid on
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A U.S. army military policeman stands guard as Iraqi firemen extinguish a blazing shop after an explosion in the central part of Baghdad, August 6, 2003. A truck parked outside a Baghdad shop selling chemicals exploded, killing at least one Iraqi and setting the shop ablaze. Photo by Oleg Popov/Reuters

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Schwarzenegger steals recall scene
ACTOR`S ANNOUNCEMENT DRAWS IN DEMOCRAT BUSTAMANTE
ANALYSIS: `Mr. Universe` rattles cages in Sacramento
Robert Salladay, Chronicle Political Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/…


Arnold Schwarzenegger just sucked all the air out of California`s political establishment.

Just when the recall election against Gov. Gray Davis appeared to be another rehash, without any serious candidates to challenge the Democratic governor beyond the usual suspects, the Austrian-born actor pulled up in a hummer and fired a sniper shot.

The entrance of Schwarzenegger, a charismatic millionaire with a genius for PR, denies Democrats their most important political weapon against the recall. Davis can lump Schwarzenegger with all the other crazy candidates, like he did in a statement late Wednesday, but it`s harder to make the case that this is about sour grapes and old-timers.

With Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California`s premier establishment heavyweight, out of the race and denouncing the recall, Schwarzenegger stepped into his role as the anti-establishment insider with a private jet vowing to clean house in Sacramento.

Schwarzenegger adds a measure of stability to the recall election and the clown posse of potential candidates lining up to challenge Davis. He instantly clears the field, even if prominent Democrats like Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante enter the race to protect their own party.

There`s still an aura of the bizarre. Larry Flynt is running on a platform of distributing Hustler magazine to the troops. Junior Leaguers in Orange County want to impress their grandchildren by running for governor. Gary Coleman, the actor/security guard, likes his chances.

But Schwarzenegger, freed from the bonds of conservative Republicans who control their party`s primaries, can now use all available media to fashion a campaign that appeals to the disaffected, who don`t vote and don`t care about politics. Oddly, it could take a Republican married to a Kennedy cousin to give the recall election the look of a populist revolt.


A FRESH FACE IN THE RACE
Without Schwarzenegger, only familiar faces were emerging in the recall race: Richard Riordan, Darrell Issa, Bill Simon and Tom McClintock among Republicans. Bustamante, insurance czar John Garamendi and the retired March Fong Eu among Democrats. All from the establishment.

Even Arianna Huffington, an independent who announced she was running Wednesday, inhabits the insular world of West Los Angeles salons and so far doesn`t carry tremendous popular appeal beyond news junkies and a few fans of opera singer Maria Callas, the subject of her well-received biography.

It remains to be seen whether Schwarzenegger can capture those Californians who clearly hate politics and are disgusted with both parties and politicians.

But Schwarzenegger -- unlike other candidates -- is expected to bring his unique mastery of media manipulation to the world of politics, effectively using the same powerful forces of entertainment television and PR to prod the disaffected into voting.

Only 36 percent of eligible voters showed up for the last statewide election and only about 50 percent of registered voters bothered, a record low for turnout in California. The last general election that had voter participation at those levels was in 1918.

Looking toward those voters, Huffington and Schwarzenegger had similar messages Wednesday, offering to clear the Capitol of the special-interest supplicants who inhabit its halls.

"I am not, to say the least, a conventional candidate," Huffington said. "But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of this mess if we keep electing the same politicians backed by the same special interests that got us into it."


`I WILL PUMP UP SACRAMENTO`
In what is likely to be a never-ending series of catch-phrases, Schwarzenegger said: "The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing. I can promise you that when I go to Sacramento I will pump up Sacramento."

Huffington clearly has the attention of Brentwood and Berkeley intellectuals, but they don`t represent the majority of Californians turned off by politics. Those people are listening to Howard Stern, not Tucker Carlson.

Despite speculation that the tabloids will unleash fury on Schwarzenegger, dissecting his past, he nevertheless can command full attention from all segments of the media.

A few hours before Schwarzenegger announced, Jerry Springer, the master of absurdist American culture, added a note of rationality to the subject of getting the attention of the silent nonvoters of the world.

He declined Wednesday to run for U.S. Senate from Ohio -- mainly because the people he needed to reach were not reachable in the establishment arena he would have to inhabit as a candidate.

Springer was speaking about Ohio politics but his message applies to California. He said he wanted to represent people "who right now don`t relate to either political party, who think it`s all a bunch of bull, who see government as not responsive to their needs."

"Those people are not the people coming to the Democratic county dinners," Springer said. "They are not the people who are coming to the union meetings. The only way I can reach them is through the media"-- his television show.

He decided to remain on entertainment TV. It was an admission that the real power in America doesn`t reside with politicians or CNN, but with media figures with huge audiences like radio jock Howard Stern, who now has a candidate in California he can support.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New candidates for California governor
-- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican

-- Arianna Huffington, columnist and commentator, Independent

-- State Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks (Ventura County).

-- Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Democrat

-- Former TV star Gary Coleman

E-mail Robert Salladay at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Thursday, August 7, 2003

Sanctions in Iraq hurt the innocent

By BERT SACKS
GUEST COLUMNIST

"Were Sanctions Right?" is the title of a remarkable article on July 27 in The New York Times Magazine. The subtitle is: "They saved the world from Saddam Hussein. Or they killed 500,000 innocent children. Or they did both. A postwar inquiry."

"American officials may quarrel with the numbers," the article stated, "but there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthdays."

Richard Garfield, a health specialist at Columbia University, is cited as an expert on these statistics. A year ago, he told us his low estimate of children`s deaths was 400,000. If one extrapolates the excess death rate for Iraqi children from a 1992 New England Journal of Medicine report, there would now be more than 800,000 dead Iraqi children.

The author of the Times` article, David Rieff, expresses my own feelings very well: "The damage, according to those who fought against sanctions, was terrible, medieval. It was, in the literal sense, unconscionable, since those who died had not themselves developed weapons of mass destruction or invaded Kuwait."

There was one glaring omission -- the United States` deliberate destruction of Iraq`s civilian infrastructure during the first Gulf War.

As the New England Journal of Medicine put it, "The destruction of the country`s power plants had brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children.... Although the allied bombing had caused few civilian casualties, the destruction of the infrastructure resulted in devastating long-term effects on health."

Also missing were statements by Pentagon strategists of their intention to cause just these results. In a 1991 interview with The Washington Post, one of the planners candidly admitted: "People say, `You didn`t recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage.` What were we trying to do with [United Nations-approved economic] sanctions -- help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions."

Why did we want to accelerate the effect of the sanctions?

Three weeks after the end of the Gulf War, The New York Times -- echoing statements of the first President Bush -- gave us a candid answer: "By making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] would eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power." This appeared in a front-page story covering a major United Nations report on Iraq that predicted epidemic and famine if massive life-supporting needs were not rapidly met.

Simply put, sanctions -- with epidemic and famine -- were there to force "regime change."

There`s little doubt Saddam Hussein could have done more to help Iraqis. There`s also little doubt that the primary causes of deaths since 1991 were unsafe water and sanctions.

The recent New York Times article also asked the question: Did sanctions save the world from Saddam Hussein?

That question is really remarkable. It is as if the 1991 Gulf War hadn`t taken place. At the height of Iraq`s military power, when Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but was deterred from using them, coalition forces demolished Iraq`s military and massacred Iraqi soldiers at a kill rate of 1,000 to 1. If the United States warned Iraq it would be at war with us if it invaded a neighbor -- something we emphatically did not do before Iraq invaded Kuwait (or Iran) -- what real threat could Iraq pose to its neighbors or the world?

Our fears lie not in military facts but in the demonization of Saddam Hussein.

Demonization involves a deliberate exaggeration of dangers. It entails a "selective and manipulative use of human-rights violations" (Amnesty International). Demonization could cause us to hesitate answering the article`s key question: "Whether any policy, no matter how strategically sound, is worth the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children."

Let`s ask a parallel question. In an informal European poll, 80 percent of the respondents said the United States was a greater threat to world peace than Iraq or North Korea. Would the idea of 500,000 American children`s deaths to "contain the United States" not be utterly appalling to us? Why can`t we imagine that Iraqis feel the same way about their children?

As if to spotlight the reality of U.S. sanctions policy, the Treasury Department has just brought a civil suit against a group (to which I belong) to collect $20,000 for the "crime" of taking medicines to Iraq without a U.S. license -- in short, for breaking U.S. sanctions. This is where our government is spending its energies today.

Perhaps you`re ready to join us to say to our government: Enough is enough!

Bert Sacks, who lives in Seattle, has made several trips to Iraq to deliver medicines; visit www.vitw.org for an update on Voices in the Wilderness.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/133937_sanctions07.htm…

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fi-order7aug…


Immunity for Iraqi Oil Dealings Raises Alarm
Some contend Bush’s order grants U.S. firms a broad exemption, a view the government rejects.
By Lisa Girion
Times Staff Writer

August 7, 2003

An executive order signed by President Bush more than two months ago is raising concerns that U.S. oil companies may have been handed blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in connection with the sale of Iraqi oil.

The Bush administration said Wednesday that the immunity wouldn`t be nearly so broad.

But lawyers for various advocacy organizations said the two-page executive order seemed to completely shield oil companies from liability — even if it could be proved that they had committed human rights violations, bribed officials or caused great environmental damage in the course of their Iraqi-related business.

"As written, the executive order appears to cancel the rule of law for the oil industry or anyone else who gets possession or control of Iraqi oil or anything of value related to Iraqi oil," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that defends whistle-blowers.

Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman, dismissed that interpretation, saying the president issued Executive Order 13303 to protect proceeds from the sale of Iraqi crude oil, which are supposed to go into a special fund that the United Nations set up in May to help rebuild the war-torn country.

"This does not protect the companies` money," Griffin said. "It protects the Iraqi people`s money."

For instance, administration officials said, if an American energy company received a shipment of Iraqi crude, the money to pay for the oil would be off limits in any litigation. That way, they explained, the proceeds would be sure to find their way to where they belonged: the Development Fund for Iraq.

Administration officials said the intent of the executive order would become clear once regulations, now being drafted by the Treasury Department, were issued. "Rules are forthcoming ... that will deal with some of these issues in greater specificity," Griffin said.

But Devine and others said the administration`s stated intentions were not borne out by the sweeping language in the executive order.

"Unless they offer a different, credible translation for plain English, it`s no solace that the administration meant something different," Devine said.

According to the order, "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following:

"(a) the Development Fund for Iraq and

"(b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons."

The order defines "persons" to include corporations, and covers "any petroleum, petroleum products or natural gas originating in Iraq, including any Iraqi-origin oil inventories, wherever located."

Betsy Apple, an attorney for Earthrights International, which brings lawsuits on behalf of alleged victims of human rights abuses abroad, said the scope of the order goes far beyond the way the Treasury Department has billed it.

"It`s very disingenuous to suggest that the only thing that`s being protected here are development funds for Iraq," she said. "That`s trying to hide the fact that it`s the oil companies who are doing that work and generating those proceeds."

Devine of the Government Accountability Project suggested that the wording of the order was so broad that it could apply to anything from exploration and production of Iraqi oil to advertising and sales at U.S. gas pumps.

"Let`s say I work at a Madison Avenue firm that engages in false advertising" as part of a campaign to market gasoline that was made from Iraqi crude, Devine said. The way the executive order is drawn, it appears that the ad agency "can lie to consumers as much as they want ... without any recourse by the Federal Trade Commission."

Devine added that if an oil company employee working in Iraq was fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing allegedly committed by his employer, the executive order could make it impossible for him to collect damages from the company.

Similarly, an operator of an oil tanker that suffered a major spill while hauling Iraqi crude could be immune from liability, thanks to the executive order, lawyers said.

"That oil was shipped out of Iraq and it`s protected," Apple said. "The company that failed to ensure it was using up-to-date tankers is not going to be held accountable.... There is nothing that anybody can do for any recourse."

Treasury Department officials said the order would not protect an oil company under such a scenario.

But Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, an assistant professor of international and administrative law at Stanford University, wasn`t so sure.

The executive order is "extremely broad," Cuellar said. "If they were really trying to narrowly tailor this" to protect the Development Fund for Iraq, he said, it would have made more sense to spell out that a company is shielded from liability "inasmuch as that entity still owes money" to the fund.

Bush signed Executive Order 13303 on May 22. It then was published in the Federal Register, where it went largely unnoticed before being unearthed a few weeks later by Jim Vallette, a researcher with the nonprofit Sustainable Energy and Economy Network.

A lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry`s main trade group, said he wasn`t familiar with the executive order.

Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University, said the order appeared to improperly negate occupational safety laws aimed at protecting workers in the oil industry and to strip U.S. citizens of their right to sue.

He cited in particular the part of the order that says "judicial processes" are "null and void."

That language "seems to destroy the prospect of any enforcement of civil or criminal liability," Raskin said. "People are saying of Iraq, `It`s a jungle out there,` and this order kind of makes that the law."

Raskin said Wednesday he was heartened to hear that the administration was disavowing an expansive reading of the order. "This does remind me of the extremely broad language of the executive order with respect to military tribunals that the administration later sharply refined by regulation after public protest," he said. "One can only hope that is what happens here."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-…
THE WORLD

Kidnap Gangs Add to Iraqis` Insecurity
Christian families are often the targets. U.S. priorities lie elsewhere, victims` relatives say.
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer

August 6, 2003

BAGHDAD — Stolen from his Baghdad street two weeks ago while playing with friends, Peter Yakob, a mute child of 6, couldn`t tell the gang of Iraqi kidnappers his phone number.

For two days, the kidnappers tried to get it from him while the boy`s family waited frantically for a message from the criminals.

On the third day, Peter`s parents chalked their phone number on an exterior wall of their home. Within 30 minutes, a call came demanding what to them was an unimaginable amount: $50,000.

"When we said we couldn`t pay, they said: `That`s your problem. Either pay the money or we`ll send him home to you in a sack,` " said Peter`s mother, Makdonya Yusuf, 47. After desperate bargaining, the family paid a $15,000 ransom.

In the security vacuum that followed the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, looting came first, followed by carjackings. Now the appearance of highly organized kidnapping gangs sends a worrying message to U.S.-led occupation authorities, suggesting a level of criminal planning and commitment well beyond the spasm of thievery that followed the regime`s fall.

The kidnappings have a dark, ruthless quality, often targeting children and teenagers, usually from Iraq`s tiny Christian community where no tribal networks exist to fight back against the gangs.

In many cases, the only sons of large middle-income or wealthy families are seized. The abductions, which are often committed in broad daylight, add to Iraqis` sense that nowhere is safe, day or night.

Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is overseeing Iraq`s police force, held a briefing Tuesday to announce that a gang of nine kidnappers had been caught Monday in central Baghdad and that several hostages were freed.

He did not mention that the kidnappers killed a female hostage during the operation, carried out by Iraqi police. That fact emerged during questioning of Iraqi officers near the end of the briefing. Kerik said the police conducted the operation without U.S. help, attacking a house at dawn and triggering a gun battle. One suspect was wounded.

Because the Iraqi police force doesn`t keep crime statistics, it`s difficult to establish exactly how many kidnappings are occurring, but members of the Christian community listed many cases and Kerik said three other gangs had been arrested in recent weeks. Police uniforms were found at the home of those arrested Monday, Kerik said, suggesting that the kidnappers posed as police. He urged Iraqis to report abductions.

But several families of kidnapping victims, interviewed by The Times in Baghdad, said they had approached police or the U.S. military for help but got little or no assistance. Instead, they paid ransoms ranging from $15,000 to $75,000 for the release of loved ones.

"There are so many of these cases in Baghdad," said Adib Yunan, Peter`s uncle, a businessman and liquor store owner who bargained the ransom price down. "It`s a matter of money, simple money."

Yunan`s brother, the boy`s father, works in his store and lives in a rental house.

The gangs carefully track their targets, watching the victim`s routine and gleaning details of the family`s situation and activities.

Yunan and his brother went to a police station in the Hay Mikhaniq neighborhood seeking help. U.S. military police are stationed in all Iraqi police stations.

"We went to the police and saw the Americans. An American told us, `What can we do?` " he said, a complaint echoed by other families of victims.

He said that after he provided information and pictures of the boy to American MPs and Iraqi police, the Americans promised to keep in touch. But his family heard nothing more and resolved the case itself by paying the ransom.

During his ordeal, Peter, who can communicate with his family but not with strangers, often cried. Ali, one of the kidnappers, would hold a gun to his head, screaming that if the boy didn`t quiet down he would kill him.

Makdonya Yusuf got her son back four days after he was taken. But the formerly happy boy had changed. He was confused and seemed drugged. At night he lay awake, frightened.

"My son used to be carefree, but now he`s nervous and terrified," she said. "He can`t sleep. He shouts: `Ali is coming! Ali is coming to take me!` " She has pinned a medallion of Christ to his pillow so that he can kiss it to help him sleep.

Emanuel Lirato is a patriarch with a motorcycle business he started 55 years ago. His son Maher, 50, an epileptic, was kidnapped July 20 when a car with heavily armed bandits cut him off as he reached the family business by car.

Lirato went to the police and stopped a military convoy for assistance, but he said neither gave him real help.

The U.S. soldiers in the convoy asked him what they could do. "I said: `You have to decide. You`re in charge.` " They searched the streets and shops in the neighborhood, but then gave up, he said.

His son was chained to a wall in a room for five days. Lirato paid a $25,000 ransom, but the gang still did not hand over his son. Instead they increased their price to $300,000.

"We kept negotiating. We agreed on $50,000 in addition to the $25,000," Lirato said. Now he wants armed guards to escort him to work, but ordinary Iraqi citizens cannot carry guns.

"Ninety percent of cases are Christians, because they know Christian people are calm and won`t make trouble," Lirato said. "They just want their beloved ones to come back home, so they create no difficulties. But Muslim families might resist."

Lirato blamed coalition authorities for the frequent kidnappings, saying they had dismantled the old security structures without putting something in their place.

"They abolished the army, the security forces and the police," he said. "So they gave the bad guys a chance to make the best of this chaos and lack of security. They made it easy for them to commit their crimes.

"I think the gang will come again and maybe this time they`ll take me, not my son," he said. "If things get worse, I`ll have to leave Iraq."

Adib Yunan, Peter`s uncle, said Hussein`s release of prisoners before the war planted the seeds of the crime spree. "This is the aftermath of two or three wars," he said. "There are so many men who have no job, so they resort to the simplest way to get money."

Adnan Issa, a restaurant owner, paid $15,000 for the release of his only son, Rani, 17, kidnapped by gunmen who jumped into his taxi one recent morning. The gang initially demanded $120,000 and only relented after the family produced documents to prove that their house is rented.

"My husband was completely shocked. He couldn`t do anything. Mary the Virgin gave me the strength to carry on and negotiate the matter," said Rani`s mother, Suaad Jibro, who tearfully begged and bargained with the gang on the phone.

She said she and her husband were too frightened to contact police even after they recovered their son for fear of retaliation by the gang. Now they are desperate to sell the family restaurant and flee Iraq.

"These robberies and kidnappings are happening at daytime," Adnan Issa said. "The Americans` priority is to capture Saddam Hussein and guarantee their own safety."

The day Rani went missing, his parents approached U.S. soldiers who were searching the neighborhood to ask for help. "They told me: `It`s not our business.` " Issa said. " `We`re here to search for Saddam Hussein.` "


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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The Massacre of Rashdiya

Testimony of an Iraqi Doctor
by E.A.Khammas, Occupation Watch Center
July 28th, 2003
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=345

Dr. Mahmood Al-Mishhadani, an Iraqi surgeon, recalls the horror of the day when he had to attend to 250 injured children and women in a village bombed by American airplanes.

“I will never forget that night. I have seen how people were savagely slaughtered. I have seen three wars, but nothing like this,” said Dr.Mahmood Khdeir Yasin Al-Mishhadani, an Iraqi surgeon. He was on duty at the military hospital of Hammad Shihab, a few kilometers to the north of Baghdad, near a village called Rashdiya, on the night of Sunday, April 6 to Monday, April 7, 2003, during the final days of the war.

“The American bombing of the district of Rashdiya began at 3 p.m. They used cluster bombs. It continued until 9 p.m. During these hours casualties began to be carried to the hospital in civilian cars and pickups because there were no ambulances in this district. We received a great number of casualties, all of them women and children. I did not see one single injured man in this incident. The injuries were very severe, like all four limbs cut off or fatalities or very severe injuries in the chest or the abdomen. After 9 o’clock, when the bombing was lighter, we were able to send our ambulances to bring the casualties.

“The ambulances kept on bringing the casualties until 3 p.m. the next day. The ambulances were also bombed while they were leaving the hospital, on the highway that leads to the district. The ambulances’ special signal lights were on, but this did not prevent the Americans from shooting at them from airplanes. One of our drivers was injured; I do not recall his name now.

“I was responsible for receiving and attending to the casualties. I saw as many as 250 of them or more. 85 of them died. All of them were women and children. I saw more than one family whose members were all exterminated. I recall a family of seven women: a mother and six daughters. The father was not nearby during the bombing. When he came to the hospital later, looking for his family, searching among the bodies, he was uncovering them one after the other saying this is so and so, mentioning his daughters’ names.

“I will never forget a young mother who was embracing two of her children. One of them was already dead. His head was completely torn, and his brains were covering her chest. The other was injured in his leg. We tried to take the children from her hands, to treat the injured one, but she refused to let them go. She was hysterical, not responding to anybody or anything.

“The whole situation was very bad, I will never forget. I have been a doctor for a long time; I have seen thousands of injury cases, very difficult ones indeed. But what happened that night was some thing completely different. It was genocide against civilians, unarmed people who were unable to defend themselves. Innocent people in their houses and wearing their pajamas. Most of them were refugees from Baghdad, who’d run away from the heavy bombing in the city. They came to this village to hide from death, which they met here.

“The hospital refrigerators, with a capacity of 100 bodies, were filled that night. I ordered that the parts of bodies, or bodies without heads be buried in the garden of the hospital. We could not keep all the injured too. We have the capacity to handle 50 emergencies at a time, so we transferred many people to the other surgery hall or to ordinary halls, not to the emergency section.

“The surgery halls began to receive emergency cases directly; we supplied them with medicine that night. The next day we sent them to the civilian medical center in Baghdad.”

Q: Is this the most distinct incident in your professional life?

“Yes, I will never forget it, because in this incident I have seen how people are savagely killed, without any mercy or any humane feeling, guiltless children and women exterminated.”

Q: How many wars have you seen?

“Three. Gulf I (the Iraq-Iran war), Gulf II in 1991, and this one. But in the first two, I saw soldiers. Soldiers go to war, they kill and they get killed or injured. We treated them on that basis. I did not treat civilians then. But to see all these wounded women and children in one night. Only in the Iraqi-Iranian war did I see such numbers of casualties at a time, during the heavy battles. But again they were not civilians; they were men, soldiers, young and old, not infants, children, and old women. The impact of these scenes was different - children without limbs. I have seen a child of 6 without legs and arms.”

Q: How do you see the American forces now?

“Armies wage wars, this only natural. But the impression I’ve got about the American army in the image I’ve seen, is that these people do not know the meaning of mercy or humane feelings. They came with a gall; they wanted to take out this gall even on the bodies of all the Iraqis. When they crushed the bodies of 250 children and women just for a suspicion that there might be Iraqi forces in the area, that gave me the impression of how inhuman they are.”

E.A. Khammas is the co-director of the Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad.
http://www.occupationwatch.org/index.php

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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-arnold7aug07,1,62…
THE RECALL CAMPAIGN

Role Reversal: `Predator`s` Prey Stalks Statehouse
Schwarzenegger`s dreams of fame and power go back at least to 1970. But the candidate`s personal liabilities may extend even further.
By Joe Mathews and Doug Smith
Times Staff Writers

August 7, 2003

In 1987, celluloid brought them together.

The future governor of Minnesota played a bit part as one of a team of U.S. Army commandos that heads into the South American jungle on a political mission and ends up doing battle with a murderous extraterrestrial.

The future candidate for governor of California portrayed the commando leader.

Sixteen years after "Predator" opened in theaters, Arnold Schwarzenegger debuted as an aspiring politician Wednesday, attempting to follow a trail blazed by his onetime co-star, Jesse "The Body" Ventura. His prey will be Gov. Gray Davis, as well as the hearts and minds of Californians voting in the Oct. 7 recall election.

While he is a novice as a candidate, the prospect of a political career for Schwarzenegger is at least as old as "Predator." His dreams of fame and power extend back long before his arrival in California as a champion bodybuilder in 1970 — and his personal liabilities could stretch back even further.

"As you know, I`m an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant. What gave me the opportunities was the open arms of Americans," he said Wednesday outside the NBC Studios in Burbank, where he had told Jay Leno and a "Tonight Show" audience of his intention to run. "I have been adopted by America."

In what could prove to be an early sign of political skill, Schwarzenegger managed to keep his decision a secret until the moment he announced it. In fact, his staff had encouraged speculation that he would bow out of the race in favor of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

The result: His announcement landed with the force of an explosion from a Schwarzenegger movie.

Whether Schwarzenegger`s political career is ultimately measured in weeks or years will likely turn on whether the star can translate the hallmarks of his life story — fierce ambition, an exhibitionist streak and uncommon marketing savvy — into political success.

Schwarzenegger, who turned 56 last week, was born in a small town in Austria, the son of a policeman. He took up weightlifting in Graz, Austria, at age 15, moved to Munich, Germany, at 19 and landed in the United States two years later. By the age of 23, Schwarzenegger had established himself as the world`s top bodybuilder. Between 1970 and his 1975 retirement, he won the Mr. Olympia contest six consecutive times.

In his 1977 autobiography, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder," he wrote: "I knew I was a winner. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way."

His first big movie, "Conan the Barbarian," made $100 million in 1981. One reviewer called his English so stilted that he appeared to be "pronouncing his lines phonetically." It didn`t matter. Schwarzenegger had a knack for marketing and self-promotion.

Soon he ran off a string of movie hits: his defining role as the "Terminator," "Commando," "Running Man," "Red Heat," "Predator," the comedy "Twins," "Total Recall," "Kindergarten Cop" and "Terminator 2." While he is responsible by one count for nearly 300 on-screen murders, he also was pregnant and gave birth in one picture.

His political life began to take shape in earnest shortly after he married TV journalist Maria Shriver, niece of President Kennedy, in 1986. They have four children. In 1988, he campaigned in the Midwest with then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, who later named him chairman of the President`s Council on Physical Fitness.

He also burnished his business resume, earning a University of Wisconsin correspondence degree in business. He has owned restaurants and buildings, many of them along Santa Monica`s Main Street. And he has embraced education as a cause.

While frequently commenting on the state`s problems with poor facilities and low test scores, he took on projects that posed little political downside, such as the Inner-City Games, a national network of after-school programs.

Last year, Schwarzenegger was the lead sponsor of Proposition 49, a successful California ballot measure that could steer up to $455 million a year to after-school programs.

Riding on the popularity of organized after-school activities, the measure easily passed, even though many education officials worried that directing limited education funds away from the classroom would tie their hands during budget decisions.

Throughout, Schwarzenegger has remained coy about many of his views, and has declined to discuss policy specifics. He describes himself as a fiscal conservative with moderate views on social issues. He supports legal abortion and adoption rights for gay couples. Schwarzenegger has been described as moderate on gun control. But on offshore oil drilling, the fiscal crisis, smog, immigration, the state`s electricity mess and other big California issues, Schwarzenegger`s ideas are mostly a mystery.

His moderate views may have made the recall election attractive for him. He won`t have to run in a Republican primary, where conservatives could challenge him. In 1999, he alienated Republicans by telling a reporter he was "ashamed to call myself a Republican" when Congress impeached and tried former President Clinton — and said he would never forgive the party.

Democratic strategists have said that if he gets in the race, the actor`s personal life will likely be attacked on three fronts, all of them outlined in an unauthorized 1990 biography "Arnold" by the journalist Wendy Leigh. Schwarzenegger calls the book trash.

The book claimed that Schwarzenegger`s father joined the Nazi Party in 1938, and points out that Schwarzenegger invited Kurt Waldheim to his and Shriver`s wedding despite Waldheim`s wartime persecution of Yugoslavs, Greeks and Jews.

Schwarzenegger also has acknowledged using steroids as a bodybuilder.

When Schwarzenegger contemplated a bid for governor two years ago, Garry South — a key Davis strategist — circulated an entertainment magazine story claiming that Schwarzenegger groped and was abusive toward women. He has denied the charges.

"I know they`re going to throw everything at me and say I have no experience, that I`m a womanizer, that I`m a terrible guy," Schwarzenegger said Wednesday. "All these things are going to come my way."

For his part, Schwarzenegger`s first public statements suggest he will run as an outsider.

"The biggest problem we have is that California is being run now by special interests," he said Wednesday. "We have to stop that." His personal fortune means he may not raise money. "I have enough money myself," he said.

Democrats will likely try to belittle him. Art Torres, the Democratic Party chairman, lumped in Schwarzenegger with the commentator Arianna Huffington in his comments Wednesday, saying: "I think it`s important that we have people like Arnold and Arianna debating each other. One has a book to sell and one has a movie to sell."

Many of his potential opponents were either silent or solicitous on the new entrant. State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) immediately identified himself as big fan of Schwarzenegger`s movies and welcomed him to the race. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) issued a statement saying he was "pleased" to have Schwarzenegger in the recall election.

In all the political talk, Schwarzenegger`s declaration that he was ending his movie career nearly went unnoticed, though his body of work could prove to be a factor in the race.

"Dope!" shouted 22-year-old George Perez when he first heard of the movie star`s entry into the race, as he stood outside a Pasadena movie theater that was showing Schwarzenegger`s latest release, "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."

Perez said his favorite movie was "Predator," noted Ventura`s participation in the same film and then allowed he was looking forward to tax cuts courtesy of Gov. Schwarzenegger.

"Not only will he increase his fan base, he`ll clean up the mess Gray Davis made," Perez said. "He had a good upbringing. He`s a really smart guy. He`s not all brawn."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Who`s The Biggest Rogue Of All?

by Richard Du Boff; August 07, 2003


1. Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty, 1996. Signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89 including France, Great Britain, and Russia; signed by President Clinton in 1996 but rejected by the Senate in 1999. The US is one of 13 nonratifiers among countries that have nuclear weapons or nuclear power programs. In November 2001, the US forced a vote in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Treaty, and announced plans to resume nuclear testing for development of new short-range tactical nuclear weapons.


2. Antiballistic Missile Treaty, 1972. In December 2001, the US officially withdrew from the landmark agreement--the first time in the nuclear era that the US renounced a major arms control accord.

3. Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 1972, ratified by 144 nations including the US. In July 2001 the US walked out of a London conference to discuss a 1994 protocol designed to strengthen the Convention by providing for on-site inspections. At Geneva in November 2001, Undersecretary of State for arms control John Bolton stated that "the protocol is dead," at the same time accusing Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan, and Syria of violating the Convention but offering no specific allegations or supporting evidence to substantiate the charges. In May 2002 Bolton accused Cuba of carrying out germ-warfare research, again producing no evidence. The same month, three Pentagon documents revealed proposals, dating from 1994, to develop US offensive bioweapons that destroy materials ("biofouling and biocorrosion"}, in violation of the Convention and a 1989 US law that implements the Convention.

4. UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, 2001: the US was the only nation in opposition. Undersecretary Bolton said the agreement was an "important initiative" for the international community, but one that the US "cannot and will not" support, since it could impinge on the Constitutional right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

5. International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, 1998. Set up in The Hague to try political leaders and military personnel charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Concluded in Rome in July 1998, the Treaty was signed by 120 countries. Although President Clinton signed the Treaty in December 2000, he announced that the US would oppose it, along with 6 others (including China, Russia, and Israel). In May 2002 the Bush administration announced that it was "unsigning"--renouncing--the Treaty, something the US had never before done, and that it will neither recognize the Court`s jurisdiction nor furnish any information to help the Court bring cases against any individuals. In July 2002 the ICC went into force after being ratified by more than the required number of 60 nations, including Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain (Russia now having signed but not ratified).

Throughout 2002 and 2003, the US worked to scuttle the treaty by signing bilateral agreements not to send each other`s citizens before the ICC. By mid-2003 the US had signed 37 mutual immunity pacts, mostly with poor, small countries in Africa, Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Threatened with the loss of $73 million in US aid, for example, Bosnia signed such a deal. In July 2003 the Bush administration suspended all military assistance to 35 countries which refused to pledge to give US citizens immunity before the ICC.

6. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, which the US signed but did not ratify. In May 2002, as the US was unsigning the ICC Treaty, it simultaneously announced that it will not be bound by the Vienna Convention, which outlines the obligations of nations to obey other treaties. Article 18 requires signatory nations not to take steps to undermine treaties they sign even if they do not ratify them.

7. The American Servicemen`s Protection Act, 2002. The Bush administration has been working overtime to nullify the ICC. In November 2002 the President signed this Act, which not only bars cooperation with the ICC and threatens sanctions for countries that ratify it, but authorizes the use of "all means necessary" to free any US national who might be held in The Hague for trial before the ICC.

8. Land Mine Treaty, 1997. Banning the use, production or shipment of anti-personnel bombs and mines, the treaty was signed in Ottawa in December 1997 by 123 nations. President Clinton refused to submit it for ratification, claiming that mines were needed to protect South Korea against North Korea`s "overwhelming military advantage," a proposition denied by the heads of North and South Korea in June 2000. In August 2001 President Bush rejected the treaty.

9. Kyoto Protocol of 1997, for controlling greenhouse gas emissions and reducing global warming: declared "dead" by President Bush in March 2001. No other country has chosen to abandon the treaty completely. In November 2001 the Bush administration shunned negotiations in Marrakech (Morocco) to revise the accord, mainly by watering it down in an attempt to gain US approval. In February 2002 Mr. Bush announced a new plan to limit emissions--by measures that are to be strictly voluntary. The US is the largest single producer of emissions, generating 20 percent of the world`s total.

10. International Plan for Cleaner Energy, 2001. The US was the only nation to oppose this Plan, put forth by the G-8 group of industrial nations (US, Canada, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, UK) in Genoa in July 2001. It would phase out fossil fuel subsidies and increase financing for nonpolluting energy sources worldwide.

11. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, and the 1994 Agreement relating to Implementation of Part IX (Deep Seabed Mining), establishing a legal framework for management of marine resources and preservation of the marine environment for future generations (including fish stocks, minerals, international navigation, marine scientific research and marine technologies). President Clinton submitted these treaties to the Senate in 1994, but they have not been ratified, as they have been by 135 and 100 countries respectively. The primary obstacle to applying them remains the absence of US ratification.

12. Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, 2000: an international treaty sponsored by 130 nations, seeking to protect biological diversity from risks posed by genetically modified organisms resulting from biotechnology. To date, it has been ratified by 13 countries and signed by 95 more, including United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, both Koreas, China, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico. The US has long argued that there is no reason for such a protocol, has not ratified it, and is not expected to do so.

13. European Union (EU) Talks on economic espionage and electronic surveillance of phone calls, e-mail, and faxes, May 2001. The US refused to meet with EU nations to discuss, even at lower levels of government, these activities carried out under its Echelon program. Meanwhile, the US escalated its opposition to the EU`s Galileo project, a global satellite navigation system that would rival the US Global Positioning System (GPS), funded and controlled by the Department of Defense and serving thousands of corporate and individual users worldwide, all monitored and recorded by the US. In December 2001 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the EU that Galileo would have "negative consequences for future NATO operations" and would interfere with GPS (in fact it is planned to be compatible). In March 2002 the EU announced that it would proceed with Galileo, slated to be operational in 2008.

14. Multilateral talks sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, May 2001, on ways to end "Harmful Tax Competition"-- tax evasion and money-laundering operations carried out through off-shore tax havens. The US refused to participate. The US, Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill stated, "will not participate in any initiative to harmonize world tax systems."

In negotiations in Vienna under the auspices of the UN, the US and the EU are also battling over a proposed global Convention Against Corruption. Europe wants the pact to cover businesses and governments; the US wants it restricted to governments.

15. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, September 2001, convened by UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the UN High Commission for Human Rights and bringing together 163 countries. The US withdrew from the conference, alleging anti-Israel and anti-semitic politics on the part of many delegations. The final declaration of the Conference expressed "concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation" and "recognized the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State and . . . the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel."

16. The illegal embargo against Cuba by the US, now 39 years old: under Bush II, it has been tightened. In November 2002, the UN General Assembly passed, for the eleventh consecutive year, a resolution calling for an end to the boycott by a vote of 173 to 3, the largest majority since the General Assembly first debated the issue in 1992. As usual, the US, Israel, and the Marshall Islands voted against the resolution.

17. The US quit UNESCO and ceased its payments for UNESCO`s budget, 1984. The pretext was the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), which was not a UNESCO project but a proposal, backed by several groups including UNESCO, for change in global communications designed to lessen dependence of developing countries on Western media, news agencies, and advertising firms. The NWICO proposal was dropped in 1989; the US nonetheless refused to rejoin UNESCO. In 1995 the Clinton administration proposed rejoining; the move was blocked in Congress. In February 2000 the US finally paid some of its arrears to the UN but excluded UNESCO. President Bush stated that the US would rejoin UNESCO in September 2002, when he appeared before the UN to ask for a resolution authorizing him to attack Iraq.

18. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague held the US in violation of international law for "unlawful use of force" in Nicaragua, 1986, through its own actions and those of its Contra proxy army. The US refused to recognize the Court`s jurisdiction. A 1988 UN resolution that "urgently calls for full and immediate compliance with the Judgment of the International Court of Justice of 27 June 1986 in the case of `Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua` in conformity with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations" was approved 94-2 (US and Israel voting no).

19. Optional Protocol, 1989, to the UN`s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), aimed at abolition of the death penalty and containing a provision banning the execution of those under 18. The US has neither signed nor ratified and exempts itself from the latter provision, making it one of five countries that still execute juveniles (with Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria). China abolished the practice in 1997, Pakistan in 2000.

20. UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979, ratified by 169 nations. President Carter signed CEDAW in 1980, but the Senate blocked it. The only countries that have signed but not ratified are the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe.

21. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, which protects the economic and social rights of children. The US has signed but not ratified. The only other country not to ratify is Somalia.

22. Cairo Action Plan, adopted by 179 nations at the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, for establishing "reproductive health services and health care" as a means for curbing population growth in developing countries. In July 2002 the US cut off its $34 million annual contribution to the UN family-planning program, and in November withdrew its support of the Cairo Action Plan. The State Department`s population office stated that the Plan implied a right to abortion and undermined the US international campaign for sexual abstinence to avoid pregnancy. "This hit like a bombshell. People were stunned," the senior UN official stated.

23. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948. The US finally ratified in 1988, adding several "reservations" to the effect that the US Constitution and the "advice and consent" of the Senate are required to judge whether any "acts in the course of armed conflict" constitute genocide. The reservations are rejected by Britain, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Mexico, Estonia, and others.

24. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1987, ratified by the US in 1994. In the UN Economic and Social Council in July 2002, the US tried to stop a vote on a protocol to reinforce the Convention. The protocol would establish a system of inspections of prisons and detention centers worldwide to check for abuses. The US claimed that the new plan would allow monitors to gain access to American prisoners and detainees--including, presumably, those held in US detention camps in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and now Iraq.

25. Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and Optional Protocols, 1963. The US is a long-time violator, by detaining foreign nationals and failing to notify their governments. In 1999 two German citizens, Walter LeGrand and his brother Karl, were put to death in an Arizona gas chamber. When arrested in 1984 for the murder of a bank teller, the LeGrands were not informed of their right to contact the German embassy, and German officials were unable to provide legal aid. In 1998 the World Court (the ICJ) ruled that the US had violated international law in the case and asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution; the Supreme Court dismissed the request. In 2002 Mexico petitioned the ICJ to grant stays of execution for 54 Mexicans held on death row in the US, arguing that US municipal and state officials are violating the Vienna Convention. In August 2002 Mexican President Vicente Fox cancelled a meeting with President Bush at his Texas ranch to protest Alabama`s execution of Mexican citizen Javier Suarez Medina, who was denied the right to seek help from his government when arrested in 1988.

After September 11, 2001 US violations of the Convention multiplied, with more than 600 "unlawful combatants" detained in Guantanamo and elsewhere without charges, denied all legal rights, and held for possible trial before closed military tribunals.

26. Agreement among all other 143 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to help poor nations buy medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases, by relaxing patent laws which keep prices of drugs beyond their reach, concluded at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. In December 2002, the US single-handedly destroyed the agreement. Sources at the WTO in Geneva said that the US decision came directly from the White House, following intense lobbying from US pharmaceutical companies.

27. Is the status of "we`re number one!" Rogue overcome by generous foreign aid given to less fortunate countries? The three best foreign aid providers in 2002, measured by the aid percentage of their gross domestic products, were Denmark (1.01%), Norway (0.91%), and the Netherlands (0.79). The worst was the US (0.10%) followed by the UK (0.23%). A 2003 index, put together by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine and ranking the contribution made by 21 developed nations to growth in the developing world, placed the US 20th; only Japan ranked lower.



The foregoing record of the biggest Rogue of all excludes . . . the use of armed force against other nations. According to the Congressional Research Service (Report 96-119F, "Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad"}, from 1798 through 1995 there were 251 instances, of which only five were declared wars, when the US used its armed forces abroad, in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. For an account of US intervention abroad since the Second World War, see William Blum, Rogue State (Common Courage Press, 2000). Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the level of US military activism abroad has been "unprecedented." "Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has embarked on nearly four dozen military interventions [during 1989-1999] as opposed to only 16 during the entire period of the Cold War. Many of these interventions, such as those in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, were launched into areas traditionally considered marginal to US interests" (United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming. American Security in the 21st Century, September 1999).

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[Joerver]

Weltmacht USA, Ein Nachruf von Emmanuel Todd

Das eingebildete Imperium Von Martin A. Senn und Felix Lautenschlager
NZZ am Sonntag, Ressort Hintergrund, 2. Februar 2003, Nr.5, Seite 24
Macht und Einfluss der USA werden kolossal überschätzt, sagt der französische Historiker und Demograph Emmanuel Todd. Ein amerikanisches Imperium werde es nicht geben. Die Welt sei zu gross und zu dynamisch, um sich von einer einzigen Macht beherrschen zu lassen. Für Todd, der 1976 in einem Buch den Zerfall der Sowjetunion vorausgesagt hat, steht ausser Frage: Der Niedergang Amerikas als Supermacht hat schon begonnen.
NZZ am Sonntag: Herr Todd, Amerika sei wirtschaftlich, militärisch und ideologisch zu schwach, um die Welt wirklich zu beherrschen, schreiben Sie. Das werden viele Antiamerikaner gerne lesen. Aber wieso soll das mehr sein als Wunschdenken eines Intellektuellen aus dem traditionell sehr USA-kritischen Frankreich?
Emmanuel Todd: Das hat weder mit Wunschdenken noch mit Antiamerikanismus zu tun. Wieso würde ich sonst vor allem von links kritisiert? Die Zeitung der französischen Berufs- Antiamerikaner, «Le Monde diplomatique», hat als einziges grosses Blatt mein Buch totgeschwiegen. Die Überschätzung Amerikas ist für diese Leute eine Lebensgrundlage. In diesem Punkt treffen sie sich mit den amerikanischen Ultrakonservativen. Die einen machen Amerika mächtiger, als es ist, um es zu verteufeln, die andern, um es zu verherrlichen.
Sie hingegen müssen sich vorwerfen lassen, Amerika zu unterschätzen.
Das tue ich nicht. Die USA sind immer noch die stärkste Macht der Welt, aber es gibt viele Anzeichen dafür, dass sie daran sind, ihre Position als alleinige Supermacht einzubüssen. 1976 habe ich in meinem Buch «La chute finale» («Vor dem Sturz. Das Ende der Sowjetherrschaft») aufgrund der damaligen Indikatoren den Fall der Sowjetunion vorausgesagt. Jetzt komme ich aufgrund demographischer, kultureller, militärischer, monetärer und ideologischer Analysen zum Schluss, dass der zweite Pol der damaligen bipolaren Weltordnung nicht die einzige Supermacht bleiben wird. Die Welt ist zu gross und zu vielschichtig, um die Vorherrschaft einer einzigen Macht zu akzeptieren. Das amerikanische Imperium wird es nicht geben.
Wenn man anderen glaubt, gibt es dieses amerikanische Imperium längst. «Gewöhnt euch dran!», schrieb unlängst die «New York Times» auf dem Titelbild ihres Wochenendmagazins.
Das ist interessant. Jetzt, wo der Begriff nicht mehr der Realität entspricht, wird er überall verwendet. Als er noch eine reale Grundlage hatte, brauchte ihn kaum jemand.
Dann sind Sie also doch der Meinung, es habe ein amerikanisches Imperium einmal gegeben?
Die amerikanische Hegemonie ab Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges bis in die späten achtziger Jahre hatte in den entscheidenden Bereichen - Militär, Wirtschaft, Ideologie - eindeutig imperiale Qualität. 1945 wurde die Hälfte aller Güter der Welt in den USA hergestellt. Es gab zwar einen kommunistischen Block in Eurasien, Ostdeutschland und Nordkorea. Aber die starken amerikanischen Streitkräfte, die Marine und die Luftwaffe, übten die strategische Kontrolle über den Rest des Planeten aus - mit der Unterstützung oder zumindest dem Einverständnis vieler Alliierter, deren Hauptziel der Kampf gegen den Kommunismus war. Dieser Kommunismus hatte zwar hier und dort Zulauf unter Intellektuellen, Arbeitern und Bauern. Aber insgesamt installierten die USA ihre Hegemonie mit dem Einverständnis eines grossen Teils der Welt. Es war ein heilvolles Imperium. Der Marshall-Plan war ein vorbildlicher politischer und wirtschaftlicher Akt. Amerika war über Jahrzehnte eine «gute» Supermacht.
Jetzt ist es eine schlechte?
Sie ist vor allem viel schwächer geworden. Amerika hat nicht mehr die Stärke, um die grossen strategischen Akteure - allen voran Deutschland und Japan - kontrollieren zu können. Die industrielle Basis ist deutlich kleiner als jene Europas und etwa gleich gross wie jene Japans. Bei doppelt so vielen Einwohnern ist das kein besonderer Leistungsausweis. Das Handelsdefizit beträgt inzwischen 500 Milliarden Dollar - pro Jahr. Das militärische Potenzial ist zwar immer noch das weitaus grösste der Welt, aber es ist rückläufig und wird überschätzt. Bei der Benützung von Militärbasen sind die USA auf den guten Willen der Alliierten angewiesen, und diese sind nicht mehr so wohlwollend wie auch schon. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist der theatralische militärische Aktivismus gegen unbedeutende Schurkenstaaten zu sehen. Er ist ein Zeichen der Schwäche, nicht der Stärke. Schwäche aber macht unberechenbar. Die USA sind daran, für die Welt zu einem Problem zu werden, wo wir uns daran gewöhnt hatten, in ihnen eine Lösung zu sehen.
Angenommen, Sie hätten Recht: Wie soll das blühende Imperium so rasch in den Untergang schlittern?
Zwischen den USA und ihren geopolitischen Interessensphären hat sich - zunächst langsam und kaum merklich, dann immer rascher - eine Schere aufgetan. Ab Beginn der siebziger Jahre öffnete sich ein Handelsdefizit. In diesem zunehmend asymmetrischen globalen Prozess spielten die USA die Rolle der Konsumenten und die übrige Welt jene der Produzenten. Von 1990 bis heute ist das Handelsdefizit von 100 auf 500 Milliarden Dollar geschnellt. Finanziert wurde dies mit Geldern und Kapitalien, die in die USA flossen. Allmählich ging es den Amerikanern wie den Spaniern im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, als sie vom Gold aus der Neuen Welt überschwemmt und in die Unproduktivität getrieben wurden. Man schlemmte und prasste und geriet wirtschaftlich und technologisch immer mehr in Rückstand.
Amerika ist doch immer noch der Inbegriff für wirtschaftliche und technologische Kompetenz.
Wenn ich von Wirtschaft spreche, dann meine ich nicht die inzwischen verblasste Neue Ökonomie, sondern den industriellen Kern mit seinen Spitzentechnologien. Da fallen die USA dramatisch zurück. Europäische Anleger haben in den neunziger Jahren zwar in den USA viele Milliarden verloren, die amerikanische Wirtschaft aber ein ganzes Jahrzehnt. Das Handelsdefizit resultiert inzwischen nicht mehr aus dem Import von Gütern niedriger und mittlerer Technologie. 1990 noch hatten die USA für 35 Milliarden mehr Spitzentechnologie exportiert als importiert. Inzwischen ist ihre Handelsbilanz sogar bei diesen Topgütern negativ. Bei der Mobilkommunikation hinken die Amerikaner weit hinterher. Die finnische Nokia ist viermal so gross wie die amerikanische Motorola. Mehr als die Hälfte der Satelliten werden inzwischen mit europäischen Ariane-Raketen ins All geschossen. Airbus ist daran, Boeing zu überholen: Das wichtigste Transportmittel für den Personenverkehr in der globalisierten Welt wird also künftig in Europa hergestellt. Das sind die Dinge, auf die es wirklich ankommt. Das ist weit entscheidender als ein Krieg gegen den Irak.
Sie wollen sagen: Die USA führen die falsche Schlacht am falschen Ort?
Die Führung der USA weiss nicht mehr, wohin sie will. Sie weiss, dass sie auf das Geld der übrigen Welt angewiesen ist, und verspürt Angst, zu nichts mehr zu taugen. Es gibt keine Nazis und Kommunisten mehr. Während eine sich demographisch, demokratisch und bildungspolitisch stabilisierende Welt begreift, dass sie immer weniger auf Amerika angewiesen ist, entdeckt Amerika, wie sehr es auf die Welt angewiesen ist. Deshalb stürzt es sich in militärische Aktionen und Abenteuer. Das ist klassisch.
Klassisch?
Ja. Die letzte Überlegenheit, wel- che den USA noch bleibt, ist ihr Militär. Das ist klassisch für ein System, welches zerfällt. Den krönenden Abschluss bildet jeweils der Militarismus. Beim Zerfall des sowjetischen Imperiums war der Kontext genau derselbe. Mit der Wirtschaft ging es bachab, und in der Führung kam Angst auf. Der militärische Apparat gewann massiv an Gewicht, und die Russen zogen ins Abenteuer, um ihre wirtschaftlichen Defizite zu vergessen. Die Parallelen zur aktuellen Situation der USA sind offenkundig. Der Prozess hat sich in den letzten Monaten rasant beschleunigt.
Wo sehen Sie Indikatoren für diese Entwicklung?
In der europäischen Politik und der Dollarschwäche. In meinem Buch suggeriere ich, dass eine Annäherung zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland wahrscheinlich sei. Inzwischen haben der deutsche Kanzler Schröder und Frankreichs Präsident Chirac meine «Historiker-These» mit ihrer gemeinsamen Haltung gegen Bush bekräftigt. Die über Erwarten prompte und heftige Reaktion von US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld richtet sich nach seinen Worten zwar gegen das «alte Europa». In Tat und Wahrheit hat er Angst vor dem neuen Europa, und zwar sehr grosse Angst.
Inzwischen haben sich allerdings acht andere europäische Staaten verlauten lassen, nicht im Sinne der deutsch-französischen Achse.
Das wirklich Entscheidende ist in Deutschland passiert. Amerika kann sich als alleinige Supermacht nur halten, solange es die Kontrolle über Deutschland und Japan behält, beides sind riesige Kreditoren der USA. Deshalb kann man die historische Bedeutung dessen gar nicht überschätzen, dass ein deutscher Kanzler die Wahlen mit einem Nein zum Irak-Krieg, also mit einem Nein gegen die USA, gewonnen hat.
Und die Dollarschwäche?
Für mich als Historiker ist der Dollarkurs ein Mentalitätsindikator. Er reflektiert das Bewusstsein der internationalen Wirtschaftsführer über die Wirklichkeit der US-Wirtschaft. Dass der Dollar derart schwach ist, lässt darauf schliessen, dass sie die Lage als weit schlimmer einstufen, als sie öffentlich dargestellt wird. Fakt ist ja: Die Truppen für den Irak-Krieg, der als so einfach dargestellt worden ist, sind immer noch nicht bereit. Nach einem Jahr Hin und Her versuchen die diplomatisch schwergewichtigen Deutschland und Frankreich, diesen Krieg zu verhindern, und die meisten andern Alliierten beteiligen sich daran nur verbal, nicht finanziell. Sich auf einen Krieg am andern Ende der Welt einzulassen, mit einem Handelsdefizit von 500 Milliarden Dollar pro Jahr, mit Freunden, die nicht bezahlen wollen, und einem derart schwachen Dollar, das ist ein ganz schönes Risiko.
In Zukunft, schreiben Sie, werde es drei oder vier starke Pole geben, wovon der einflussreichste Europa sein werde. Rechnen Sie mit einer künftigen Supermacht Europa?
Eine Arbeitsthese meines Buches «Après l`empire» ist, dass der Begriff der militärischen Kontrolle der Welt keinen Sinn mehr machen wird. Was das Militärische angeht, kann künftig von einem Gleichgewicht auf der Welt ausgegangen werden. Ein nukleares Gleichgewicht gibt es ja nach wie vor zwischen den USA und Russland. Die Idee, man könne Teile der Welt durch militärische Operationen kontrollieren, ist passé, weil unrealistisch. Man kann Regime zerstören und ihre Anlagen bombardieren, wie es die Amerikaner in Afghanistan getan haben. Die Bevölkerungen, einschliesslich jener in der Dritten Welt, sind heute so weit alphabetisiert und gebildet, dass man sie nie wird rekolonialisieren können. Die einzige Macht, die heute noch wirklich entscheidend ist, liegt in der Wirtschaft.
Und wirtschaftlich trauen Sie Europa das Zeug zur Weltmacht zu?
Warum nicht? Man sagt zwar oft und gerne, die Europäer seien etwas naiv und passiv. Man wirft ihnen vor, die militärische Rüstung vernachlässigt zu haben. Wenn man aber sieht, dass militärische Macht nicht mehr die wahre Macht ist, und wenn man sieht, dass die Amerikaner mittelfristig nicht mehr die wirtschaftlichen Mittel haben werden, um ihren Militärapparat zu bezahlen, dann kommt man zum Schluss: Die Europäer haben das Richtige gemacht. Sie haben auf die Wirtschaft gesetzt. Sie haben den Euro eingeführt. Ihre Industriepolitik ist insgesamt recht kohärent und beständig. Der Airbus ist nur ein Beispiel. Europa ist gut gerüstet.
Wofür ist Europa «gerüstet»?
Für den Konflikt, der eben beginnt: zwischen den Amerikanern, die den Krieg gegen den Irak wollen, und den Europäern, die ihn letztlich nicht wollen. Der Irak, der nahe bei Europa liegt, ist auch für die Europäer und Japaner der Lieferant von Öl. Aber sie können sich dieses kaufen, mit dem Geld, das sie bei ihren industriellen Exporten verdienen. Sie sind wirtschaftlich stark genug, sie müssen den Irak nicht militärisch zu beherrschen suchen. Die Amerikaner hingegen haben mit ihrem gigantischen Handelsdefizit kaum mehr die Mittel, um für ihren Ölverbrauch zu bezahlen. Deshalb ist für sie die militärische Kontrolle dieser Region auf der andern Seite der Welt vital. Vordergründig geht es um Krieg oder nicht Krieg. In Wahrheit geht es wahrscheinlich schon um die Frage, ob der Irak in die Interessenzone Europas oder Amerikas gehört.
Wer wird in diesem Kampf um Einflusssphären gewinnen?
Auffällig ist, wie ungeschickt die USA vorgehen und wie weit sie vom Universalismus abgerückt sind. Sie sehen die Welt nicht mehr, wie sie wirklich ist. Es gelingt ihnen nicht mehr, ihre Alliierten fair und ausgewogen zu behandeln. All das erinnert mich an das Deutschland Wilhelms II. Die USA verlieren laufend Alliierte. Man hat den Eindruck, es gebe in einem Washingtoner Büro einen Beamten, der den Auftrag habe, jeden Tag eine Idee auszubrüten, um den USA einen neuen Feind zu schaffen.
Wäre es denkbar, dass Europa eines Tages die Stelle von Amerika einnimmt?
Es wird nie mehr eine alleinige Weltmacht geben. Neben den USA, Europa und Japan wird auch Russland wieder aufkommen. China, mit seiner heute noch schwachen Technologie, wird bald dazustossen. Insgesamt aber stagnieren die traditionellen Grossmächte alle. Dafür holt die Dritte Welt auf. Und das gibt doch eigentlich Anlass zu Hoffnung.
«Après l`empire»
Emmanuel Todd, 52-jährig, ist Historiker und Politologe am nationalen Institut für Demographie in Paris. In seinen Forschungen untersucht er den Aufstieg und den Niedergang von Völkern und Kulturen über Tausende Jahre.
In seiner neuesten Publikation prognostiziert Todd den Niedergang der USA als alleinige Supermacht: «Après l`empire. Essai sur la décomposition du système américain» (Editions Gallimard 2002). Mit einer ähnlichen Arbeit hatte Todd bereits 1976 Aufsehen erregt. Damals kündigte er aufgrund von Indikatoren wie der zunehmenden Kindersterblichkeit den bevorstehenden Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion an. («La chute finale. Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère soviétique», Edition Robert Laffont; Deutsch: «Vor dem Sturz. Das Ende der Sowjetherrschaft», Ullstein 1982.)
1995 fand der Gaullist Jacques Chirac in den Schriften Todds die Inspiration für seine Wahlkampagne zum Thema der sozialen Ungleichheit. Er gewann die Wahl und wurde Präsident.

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August 7, 2003
Gore, While Denying Plans for `04, Assails Bush Integrity
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD


Wading back into presidential politics with his first major speech since announcing in December that he would not run in 2004, former Vice President Al Gore today accused the Bush administration of fomenting "false impressions" about the need to go to war in Iraq and to cut taxes.

Mr. Gore, speaking at New York University before more than 500 members of a liberal policy group, said Mr. Bush had endangered the economy and the lives of American soldiers.

"Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm`s way," Mr. Gore said, his remarks punctuated several times by applause.

Mr. Gore said Mr. Bush had engaged in a pattern of distortion in his foreign, economic and environmental policies.

"The president`s mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America`s economy by his tax and budget proposals," Mr. Gore said.

But Mr. Gore spent much of his 40-minute speech on Iraq.

The former vice president credited Mr. Bush with removing Saddam Hussein from power, but he also lamented a lack of "honesty and integrity" in the public debate leading up to the war. As examples, he pointed out that despite Mr. Bush`s warnings, no nuclear weapons had been found in Iraq and no direct link between Hussein and Al Qaeda had been established. Mr. Gore suggested a hidden motivation for invading Iraq was securing access to Mideast oil.

"I`ve just about concluded that the real problem may be the president himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one," Mr. Gore said.

But Mr. Gore, 55, sought to staunch any speculation that he would do the firing himself. He said he would not enter the race and offered praise to the nine Democratic candidates who thus far have, though he did not single out any by name.

"I am not going to join them," Mr. Gore said. "But later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them."

Mr. Gore`s advisers said he chose to speak out now to fulfill his vow when he bowed out in December to continue expressing concern about the direction of the country. He asked Moveon.org, an Internet-based policy group born to rebut the Clinton impeachment, to sponsor the speech several weeks ago, his assistants said.

But Mr. Gore`s appearance had all the trappings of a campaign appearance. Nearly 100 members of the national and international news media registered to cover it. Mr. Gore spoke on a stage before 12 American flags, and several Democratic Party operatives circulated in the crowd, some giving advance notice that they would be available to comment on the speech.

Mr. Gore did not answer questions from reporters afterward and, through a spokesman, declined a request for an interview.

Mr. Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election to Mr. Bush after a disputed vote count in Florida that he and many other Democrats said distorted the outcome.

In announcing in December that he would not seek to run in 2004, Mr. Gore said such a race would have been rematch that would focus too much on the past and not the future "that I think all campaigns have to be about."

A White House spokeswoman, addressing reporters near Mr. Bush`s ranch in Crawford, Tex., dismissed Mr. Gore`s complaints. Americans, said the spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, know "the president`s commitment to security of the United States and to winning the war on terror and to securing our economic security — and I think the American people well know the president`s commitment to them."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 12:00 p.m. EDT August 7, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR

The U.S. military says Saddam Hussein has been forced to move at least three times a day because of mounting raids by U.S. forces on sites where soldiers have found evidence that someone important has been hiding. And, in a sign that Saddam`s support network may be eroding, Army intelligence reports the reward for an attack on U.S. troops has gone up to $5,000, from $1,000.
Morgue officials now say at least eleven people, including two children, died in a car bomb attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.
Jordan`s information minister is calling the Baghdad embassy bombing a "cowardly terrorist attack." He says it will only boost Jordan`s support for what he calls "the brotherly Iraqi people."
U.S. officials report a fierce gun battle in central Baghdad. They say soldiers fired into a two-story building after their Humvee came under rocket-propelled grenade attack. No word on casualties, but one soldier was seen being evacuated.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a gun battle Wednesday night in Baghdad. They were members of the 1st Armored Division and were the first American soldiers killed in combat since Friday. Fifty-four U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat since May first when President Bush declared major combat over. Altogether, 253 American troops have died since the beginning of the war, including 115 since May 1.
An Iraqi boy who lost his parents -- and his arms -- in the Iraq war is headed for Britain to get prosthetic limbs. The Kuwaiti government has pledged to pay for medical care for 13-year-old Ali Abbas until he`s an adult.
U.S. forces have captured four more suspected leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq. One of those caught in pre-dawn raids is known as the "Rock." He is believed to have organized guerrilla fighters and paid them for attacks on U.S. forces in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit. The military says two others are former generals suspected of organizing guerrilla attacks nationwide and the other is a suspected anti-U.S. ringleader.
Iraq`s postwar efforts for recovery are continuing, with the U.S.-installed Governing Council asking for U.S. help in creating desperately needed jobs. In a city to the south, soldiers from Spain are setting up a base for troops from Spain and four Latin American countries who are to replace U.S. forces who`ll be leaving there for home.
More U.S. troops are preparing to deploy to Iraq. The 10th Mountain Division at New York`s Fort Drum is sending 600 more troops. The Army says the entire First Battalion of the 32nd Infantry Regiment is preparing for "future contingencies as may be directed."
The first group of Ukrainian peacekeepers has left for the Persian Gulf to ultimately join the U.S.-led stabilization force in Iraq. Soldiers from the Ukrainian army`s 5th Mechanized Division received a warm sendoff in Kiev. They`re part of a 1,600-member Ukrainian contingent that will be joining the 9,000-member Polish force in south-central Iraq next month.
Soldiers in Iraq say visits to the gravesite of Saddam Hussein`s sons are rare. The U.S. had worried the gravesite would become a rallying point for anti-American forces.
The grandson of the late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Baghdad to set up a Shiite Muslim seminary movement, praised the U.S. war and said he hoped Iraq`s newfound freedoms could spread to neighboring Iran. The grandson, Seyed Hussein Khomeini, has been critical of the Islamic revolution his grandfather led in 1979.
Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has denounced the war in his strongest language yet. He says the U.S. had better options than war and questions the logic that war was needed to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. As Blix puts it, "I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could -- with 100 percent certainty -- know that the weapons existed, and at the same time turn out to have 0 percent knowledge of where they were."
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[/url]
Summary
+++++++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days
Total+++++256++++44++++300++++140

Latest Fatality Date: 8/6/2003

08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD REVEALS 4TH DEATH ON AUG. 6TH: SOLDIER HOSPITALIZED IN GERMANY
08/07/03 MSNBC
U.S. soldier wounded in a gunbattle in Baghdad.
08/07/03 CENTCOM
TWO SOLDIERS KILLED IN FIREFIGHT
08/07/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES AFTER SEIZURE
08/07/03 CNN
Baghdad blast kills 10 at Jordanian Embassy
08/06/03 CENTCOM
US SOLDIER KILLED IN ACCIDENTAL FALL ON AUG. 5TH IN MOSUL
08/05/03 CENTCOM
US SOLDIER IN KUWAIT DIES FROM APPARENT HEART ATTACK

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

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Saddam`s Evil Didn`t Warrant War


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By: Dennis Rahkonen - 08/04/03



It`s very evident the Bush administration fabricated sensationally ominous claims of Iraq`s supposed weapons of mass destruction to manipulatively garner public support for an unprovoked war few would have otherwise accepted.

As the WMD fraud has come apart, it`s been accompanied by a mawkish rationale shift suggesting Saddam`s well-documented "evil" was -- in itself -- reason enough to invade.

That`s utter nonsense.

If bad or even unequivocally wicked national leadership were adequate basis for some countries to aggress others, the world would be beset by a flurry of ostensibly high-minded invasions sharing the common characteristic of blatantly violating international law and global behavioral norms.

Moreover, like Bush`s action, the justifications for those attacks would inevitably be greatly distorted, serving hidden agendas requiring demonizing foreigners to obfuscate real reasons behind objectively unwarranted preemptions.

Republicans are saying the discovery of mass graves in Iraq shows Bush was right in deposing Saddam.

Such graves come as no surprise. Saddam has been consistently brutal since the early `60s when he was plucked from obscurity by our own CIA to injure and kill Iraqi leaders too leftist for Washington`s Cold War liking (www.villagevoice.com/issues/0316/mondo1.php).

However, from his bloody beginnings on up to his violent usefulness as our cat`s paw against mutual enemy Iran, Saddam`s cruel heavy handedness didn`t elicit even one peep of moral indignation from those who are suddenly, opportunistically expressing ethical outrage.

3,000 bodies are said to said to be in the most prominently mentioned grave. Most, undoubtedly, are Shiite rebels who launched an armed insurrection against the Baghdad regime at the Gulf War`s end in 1991.

The first Bush administration shares heavy responsibility for this slaughter because it encouraged that uprising, then reneged on supporting it.

Wisconsin Public Radio recently discussed the mass graves question, with one listener calling in to make a pair of thought-provoking points.


1) There are mass graves in our own country, at the Gettysburg and Shiloh battlefields, where Confederate soldiers who died in rebellion against our federal government were collectively buried.

2) Should a foreign-abetted insurrection break out in the United States, George Bush would not hesitate to employ a blood bath to decisively put it down.


Further hypocrisy clouds our condemnation of Iraq:

Our country has engaged in many covert and overt interventions in other nations` internal affairs that have resulted in horrific death tolls. For example, some 200,000 Guatemalans perished in the aftermath of the CIA`s meddling in that Central American state, something for which president Clinton belatedly apologized on behalf of the entire American people.

In Indonesia, nearly half a million souls were killed in a ruthless purge of "communists" in 1965. Our intelligence agency helped dictator Suharto identify those to be liquidated, many thousands of whom were simply social- justice activists, labor leaders, even religious figures.

Throughout the Third World, over a period of several decades, the ostensibly freedom-loving and democratic United States has sponsored some of the worst, most brutally repressive thugs history has ever known.

Certainly since WWII, our own foreign policy excesses -- always motivated by a multinational-corporate lust to profit from other people`s cheap labor and ripped-off natural resources -- have murdered innocents by a toll reaching into the millions.

The Vietnam war alone took as many as three million Southeast Asian lives. Innocents continue to die there as our unexploded landmines and cluster bombs are accidentally detonated, often by children.

We need to stop selfishly interfering in other nations` business. Iran provides a classic example of why doing so ultimately unleashes disastrous folly.

In 1953, rather than allow the conscientious reformer Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh to govern Iran and keep Iranian oil nationalized (which U.S. corporations greedily coveted), the CIA orchestrated a coup that returned Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power.

So brutally repressive was the Shah of Iran, through his infamous Savak secret police, that the Iranian people found in Islamic fundamentalism the mechanism to get out from under Yankee-sanctioned tyranny`s thumb.

It was Ayatollah Khomeini`s triumph over the Shah that sent radical Islamist shockwaves throughout the Muslim world, eventually giving rise to hateful anti-American extremism that now assumes a terroristic dimension.

Unless and until America adheres to a single moral standard and helps provide true sovereignty and self-determination to the Third World (including graciously accepting defeat when mass will results in things going against Wall Street`s wishes), our soot-encrusted kettle can`t validly call anyone else`s pot black.

And we`ll perpetually remain what world opinion will ever more sharply perceive as the ultimate international rogue.

Our love of America, and decency, force us to unite and use our popular will to put this country back on a correct, sustainable course.

Ending our neo-colonial occupation and getting out of Iraq is the crucial first step.



Dennis Rahkonen, from Superior, WI, has written for Liberal Slant, www.yellowtimes.org and other various progressive outlets for more than thirty years. He was long associated with the Finnish-American Tyomies (Workingman) progressive publishing house. He can be reached at [e-mail]

http://fp.enter.net/~haney/dr080403.htm

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Incubator Babies Bite Back: The Ballad of Uday and Qusay
August 5, 2003
By Leilla Matsui

The Bush administration may be crowing publicly over their spectacularly botched raid on the lair of Saddam`s lion cubs Uday and Qusay Hussein during Operation Kill`em, Shoot`em and then Shoot `em up Real Good all over again. But the recent release of gruesome footage displaying the bloated and stitched-up remains of the deposed Iraqi leader`s unpopular sons has made it obvious that the Pentagon`s victory yodels still ring as hollow as the collective cranial voids that hatched this plan in the first place.

Uday and Qusay`s bullet-riddled corpses - the crown jewels of the carnage - were meant to serve as powerful symbols of the US`s humanitarian aims in bringing about democracy to Iraq. Instead, the images seem to be reflecting the Dorian Grey truth behind the group portrait of team George W.

In typical Marvel comic fashion, the neo-con hawks went for the big kaboom overkill - laying waste not only to Uday and Qusay Hussein but the administration`s unravelling-by-the-second justification for the latest invasion of Iraq. In case you don`t remember, this was all about weapons of mass-you-know-what; the very things that were meant to bring about Armageddon in the time that it takes Tony to satisfy, or at least, impregnate Cheri Blair. If anyone knew anything about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein`s cavernous sanctum, it would have been the fanged and whiskery offspring of the Baghdad Lion King himself. After all, who else would have had the master keys to the Hussein clan`s liquor cabinet, not to mention the invisible-ink-drawn maps leading to all those bio-weapons labs?

The dwindling number of Americans who actually believe that these deadly programs really do exist must be scratching their heads by now over the Bush administration`s latest act of self-immolation. It would seem that the appointed president has cut off his proverbial penis to spite his proverbial testicles (a shame, really when you think about how buff they looked bulging out of his flight suit.) Still, it doesn`t take a dickless wonder to connect the dots and reveal the tortured logic behind the administration`s latest bungling.

The neo-con hawks who perch on the shoulders of puppet generals have splattered their poop all over the war plans in a desperate bid to conceal their part in financing and generally supporting the regime of their former head prefect, Saddam Hussein. What else could explain 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division blasting their way into the house where Uday and Qusay H. were holed up (with presumably only a bottle of scotch and a Penthouse centerfold for company) and the orders that were given to silence the pair with bullets? Surely, there must have been a more cost effective and less collaterally damaging way of making these two cough up the missing yellowcake.

The Bushies, contrary to the village idiot visage of their leader, are extremely well-versed in the tactics of promoting illiteracy to educate the public. Since the start of his reign, George the Second has relied on the power of visual language to convey his agenda in the stark terms of black and white, good vs. evil as if his policies were divined from Power Rangers reruns on the Cartoon Network.

First it was the statue - the bronzed look-a-like of Saddam Hussein pledging his allegiance to his former bosses, and the endlessly looped footage of the 24-hour topple-ganza that followed, as the ousted leader`s likeness was given the heave-ho off its pedestal. After doing their own number crunching, Rupert Murdoch`s rivals came to this conclusion: Americans prefer the Tom and Jerry-esque hijinks of clear cut villains and heroes to the more sedate format of word driven analysis. They also seem to have an undiminished appetite for the sight of rented Kurdish dancers waving their shoes around. The simplistic narratives laid out by this administration continue to be whittled down to porno-flick standards of plotline by the media outlets who are undoubtedly delighted by soundbites they can package to look like the trailers for a Daredevil sequel.

Saving Private Jessica the Vampire Slayer from the humanitarian aid of her Iraqi doctors was the next phase of Operation Create a Hollywood Blockbuster from a Botched and Bungled Military Exercise of Monumental Inconsequence. The visuals to back up the military`s claims that they had performed a feat of unrivalled heroism by storming a hospital ward where the friendly staff were waiting to hand over their patient were, unfortunately, sorely lacking.

Surprisingly few people have raised an eyebrow over the latest administration claims to have the dirty Polaroid proof of the Hussein brother`s bacchanels, which according to the latest reports, had them feeding their enemies, Gladiator-style, to caged and snack-deprived lions. Notice how the debauchery mercury always shoots up into the stratosphere whenever public support of the US`s kill-`em-first-and-ask-questions-later policies show signs of flagging. This is not to say that the dim-bulb duo were undeserving of their fate as fertilizer. One look at their art collection was enough to know that their crimes against interior decorating were legendary.

A surplus of cynicism is perhaps justified here; especially if you consider the fictitiously tiny victims of Saddam Hussein`s rampaging armies in Kuwait 12 years ago. While Uday and Qusay`s impaled heads are making the rounds of Baghdad via closed circuit television, those tube-feeding Kuwaiti babies-in-a-bubble keep rearing their non-existent and ugly little heads.

In 1991, Incubator Babies (IB`s) were like WMD`s - a reductive term used to describe things that don`t even exist. It might be necessary to go back and dust the cobwebs off Bush One`s lexicon of lies: Flagrantly Filthy Fibbing Factoids - Volume One to refresh one`s memory of the most blood-chilling chapter of the first Gulf War. I`m talking, of course about the one that never even took place.

Public outrage over Incubator Babies went into full throttle in the months leading up to the first Gulf War after a Kuwaiti nurse identified only as "Nayirah" appeared before a congressional committee on October 10th, 1990 claiming to have seen the helpless creatures torn from their tubings and tossed out of their incubators during a looting rampage by Iraqi soldiers. Fewer still seem to remember the disclaimer imbedded in the fine print some years later when it was revealed that the `nurse` was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States who had agreed to take on the weepy role of the heroine. Needless to say, the budding star had never even set foot inside the hospital where this was all meant to have taken place.

The Kuwaiti government-in-exile, in cahoots with the US administration, had enlisted the well-connected and funded PR firm Hill & Knowlton to launch a $10.7 million PR blitz aimed at rousing something more than the tepid response Americans were giving to the Kuwait crisis before Congress finally authorized the use of force on January 29th. Of course, it was merely a coincidence that the President of Hill & Knowlton was none other the senior Bush`s chief of staff when he was Ronald Reagan`s vice-president.

No one could argue against infants, the Masterminds reasoned correctly, and thus the plot to hatch Incubator Babies went into motion, triggering the predictable outbursts of rage and indignation against Iraq`s latest breach of human decency. Up until then, the sufferings of Kuwaitis had failed to stir much public sympathy. American taxpayers were justifiably skeptical about a country founded on the opulently non-Democratic principles of a dynasty suddenly needing their money to bail them out of a crisis. It seemed an awful lot to fork over just so a few indolent tyrants could maintain their Gulfstreams and golf courses.

Incubator Babies seized the headlines and airwaves, thanks to Hill & Knowlton`s skillful manipulations which included the coached testimony of false witnesses before the UN. The US went on to make their case for war before the Security Council with the visual aid of an H&K produced video featuring more damning evidence of Iraqi atrocites. Then, as now, journalists, anxious to seize upon something they could `sex up` into a front-page feature, ran with it, not even bothering to substantiate any of these claims on their own. Now, as then, the media is only too willing to dispense with the grunt work of raising an eyebrow, opting instead for the less-labor intensive option of taking dictation.

For Gulf War Two - The Sequel, the junior-league Bushies have Viagra-tized yet another flagging Imperial campaign with even cruder voodoo props than the previous George-led administration. The shrunken-to-fit heads of Uday and Qusay on closed circuit television is just the latest installment in a series of hack and paste story boards embellished with blood and chicken feathers; by-products of the violently puritanical impulses of America`s ruling elite.

This time the Bushies have pulled out all the stops to construct a narrative that plays on the naive yearnings of the soft and dimply bums that settle themselves into Cineplex seats waiting for the celluloid-based steroids to kick in. It`s become clear that this is what the present administration is doing by featuring bit players like Uday and Qusay in this latest snuff flick shot on location in Iraq. In the post 9/11 landscape, incubator babies draw less box office. They`ve become relics of a `kinder and gentler` Imperialism - one that sought to starve the Iraqi people slowly through sanctions rather than waste them wholesale.

As the latest narrative unravels, it`s become come clear that the Bushi`ites have again cannibalized their own inner demons for what could be best described at this stage of the game as Gladiator-meets-Boogie Nights: The Final Showdown. This is where the moustachioed villain, sire of the sinister siblings, takes refuge in a cave and unleashes his weapons of mass destruction - hypnotic gamma rays that turn the population into guerilla fighters resisting their liberator`s noble mission to transform their camels into cigarettes and their mosques into shopping malls.

Most Americans may not even object to the White House`s version of The Bachelor(s) hogging primetime, either but it begs the question of how dead American soldiers have become somehow irrelevant to this conflict. After all, they too live fast, die young, and don`t leave particularly pretty corpses behind. Would the war supporters continue cheering on the slaughter if the atrocity exhibits on display included some kid from North Carolina?

It`s probably safe to assume that many US military personnel would rather watch Donald Rumsfeld`s head on a stick making the rounds of Baghdad over anything FOX or CNN are offering up at the moment. I wonder if anyone has told them yet that all those weapons-of-mass-whatever they were risking their lives defending us from were manufactured in Santa`s Washington Workshop. Or that the "intelligence" linking Iraq to al-Qaeda was yet another urban legend. And knowing now how they`ve been hoodwinked into serving an indefinite term of hard labour, you imagine they`d be savoring the phantom flavor of a Rummy Raisin popsicle right about now. That would certainly go down quite nicely after the blood soaked banquet of Uday and Qusay`s carved up remains.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/08/05_balla…

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The governator
He is a barely articulate, pumped-up bodybuilder with a cupboard full of skeletons. But could it be that Arnold Schwarzenegger was always destined for a career in politics? And if he becomes governor of California next month, is the White House next? By Julian Borger and Duncan Campbell

Julian Borger and Duncan Campbell
Friday August 8, 2003
The Guardian

He is the son of a Nazi police chief who once declared his love for the noted UN secretary general and war criminal, Kurt Waldheim, and who still talks as if he has just arrived on Austrian Airlines. His rise to fame owes more to steroids than charm, and he is best known for impersonating a robot. Meanwhile, his crude remarks about women have not helped him counter persistent allegations of groping.

It is not the most promising record on which to build your first campaign for American public office, but the fact is that Arnold Schwarzenegger has every chance of being elected governor of California on October 7.

That says something about the pervasive mood of desperation in the Golden State these days, as it faces rapidly deteriorating public services, national ridicule and a $38bn deficit. Californians are so angry they are about to vote on whether to fire the governor they elected last year, the hapless, lacklustre and aptly named Gray Davis.

But the prospect of "The Governator" taking power in Sacramento says more about the extraordinary willpower of Schwarzenegger himself. Willpower that has propelled him along the winding road from the remote village of Thal amid the poverty and humiliation of a defeated country just two years after the second world war to the brink of political office in the US.

Wendy Leigh, Schwarzenegger`s unauthorised biographer, went to Austria to research his roots, and came away convinced he plotted his political rise from an early age, using body-building and films as stepping stones to escape from a depressing home. There was certainly a lot to escape from. His father, Gustav, a frequently drunk local police chief who had signed up for the Nazi party after the 1938 Anschluss, apparently made no secret of his preference for the elder, more strapping of his two sons, Meinhardt.

Leigh portrays Schwarzenegger as obsessed with the pursuit of power and at one point quotes him as saying: "I wanted to be part of the small percentage of people who were leaders, not the large mass of followers. I think it is because I saw leaders use 100% of their potential... I was always fascinated by people in control of other people."

It would, of course, not be the first time the son of an unpleasant minor official from provincial Austria rose to high office through sheer force of will. But Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is no Adolf Hitler, whatever you might have thought of Conan the Barbarian.

For one thing, he is quite liberal as far as Republicans go. He supports abortion rights and gun controls, and said the impeachment of President Clinton made him "ashamed to be a Republican".

Furthermore, Schwarzenegger could never rise to the top office in the land, as the constitution precludes those born outside the US from becoming president. Then again, all it would take is a constitutional amendment, and if Arnie did a good job in California...

But first Schwarzenegger has to win the governorship, and that will not be easy. Ronald Reagan did it, of course, but only after spending years working his way up the Republican party ranks. And Reagan was not carrying all Schwarzenegger`s foreign baggage.

Possibly with a political future in mind, Schwarzenegger has done all he can to cauterise the wound left by his father. He commissioned the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to research his wartime record, and it came up with no evidence of atrocities.

Nevertheless, the star made amends for Gustav Schwarzenegger`s political judgment by making generous and regular contributions to the Wiesenthal Centre, which presented him with a national leadership award for his humanitarian work.

"Every time he does a movie, he writes a cheque," Rabbi Marvin Hier, the centre`s founder, said recently, pointing out that "Arnold is not his father." However, although his father may not have been a war criminal, Schwarzenegger sought out a fellow countryman who was. He invited Kurt Waldheim to be guest of honour at his 1986 wedding, at a time when the former UN secretary general`s SS past was coming to the surface.

Schwarzenegger even made a point of mentioning him in his wedding speech, telling his guests: "My friends don`t want me to mention Kurt`s name because of the recent Nazi stuff - but I love him."

However, Rabbi Hier has also absolved him of that surprising declaration of affection, arguing that the actor probably did not know the extent of Waldheim`s responsibility for atrocities in the Balkans.

As if SS links were not enough, there are the twinned issues of drugs and sex. Schwarzenegger has admitted using steroids to boost his muscle bulk while he was building himself up for his Mr Universe titles and his breakthrough film Pumping Iron. In that film he also appears to be smoking a spliff.

In fact, neither of those transgressions are likely to be too much of a barrier in California. But the sex issue might be tougher. This is not necessarily because of the allegations of groping, which were never proven, but of the offensive remarks to issue from his own mouth.

Back in 1988, he told Playboy he would never allow his wife or mother to wear trousers when they were seen with him on the grounds that dresses are more feminine. That was back in 1988, of course, but he does not seem to have mellowed. This is from an interview in last month`s Esquire magazine on the subject of blondes and brains:

"As much as when you see a blonde with great tits and a great ass, you say to yourself, `Hey, she must be stupid or must have nothing else to offer`, which maybe is the case many times. But then again there is the one that is as smart as her breasts look, great as her face looks, beautiful as her whole body looks gorgeous, you know, so people are shocked." Not as shocked, perhaps, as California`s women voters will be when they hear that particular quote, as surely they will. Davis`s political rottweiler and California`s answer to Alastair Campbell, Garry South, is already hard at work making sure that all the dirt on Schwarzenegger gets into the public domain early and often.

Two years ago, the last time Schwarzenegger was considering a run for the governor`s mansion, South gave him a taste of what a real fight might look like when there are no stunt doubles to take the fall. He faxed political reporters a copy of a highly unflattering magazine piece on the Terminator star which referred to allegations of womanising, touching women inappropriately and his past behaviour as a body-builder. He attached a helpful covering note: "Here is the long-awaited Premiere magazine exposé on might-be gubernatorial wannabe AH-nuhld Schwarzenegger... the piece lays out a real `touching` story - if you get what I mean."

People did. Although friends of Schwarzenegger in the film world went public in his defence and attested to his moral decency, the faxes were seen as a warning shot of what might happen if he decided he wanted to mix it with the big boys. Davis, who is unpopular and uncharismatic, is nonetheless respected for two things: his ability to raise money for his races and his dirty-tricks campaigns. Schwarzenegger, already committed to promoting Terminator 3, backed off from running against him last November, and pundits wondered if that was the last that would be heard of him on the political stage.

But, as the Schwarzenegger-as-android figure has so often promised us, he`s back. And this time, he is much better positioned for the final assault on the governor`s house in Sacramento. California is angrier and ready for an outsider to run against politics-as-usual. The rules of the recall vote mean that he does not have to compete in a primary, and so does not have to convince Republican activists, who might not appreciate his liberal position on social issues and his marriage to John F Kennedy`s niece Maria Shriver.

Instead, that record will help sell him as a centrist and bring over floating voters. The last Republican to be elected governor in California, Pete Wilson, took the same liberal stance on abortion and guns. A 30-strong team of political fixers who used to work for Wilson are now running the Schwarzenegger campaign.

They ran what many saw as a dry-run campaign in 2002, promoting an initiative called proposition 49, which designated money for after-school programmes aimed at keeping young people out of trouble. It was not a very controversial measure - California has a major gang problem, with children as young as 13 involved - and it passed easily.

Schwarzenegger presented the case eloquently, however, and celebrated its victory at a project in the Latino area of east Los Angeles. He clearly relished the adulation of the crowds gathered there for the results, who encouraged him to seek higher office. He has already started wooing the Latino vote in the state, although it may require more than a few "hasta la vistas" to pluck them from their traditional Democratic party allegiance.

As well as starting out with name recognition that most politicians spend a lifetime trying to accrue, Schwarzenegger has another attribute essential to political success: money. He made $30m for his role in Terminator 3, just about what a high-octane governorship campaign costs. And that is just the proceeds from one film. Schwarzenegger has a business empire, including shopping malls a Boeing 747 and large chunks of Santa Monica.

Declaring his candidacy on the Jay Leno show on Wednesday night, he managed to present his personal fortune as a guarantee that he would take the side of the man in the street. He had so much money that he would not have to go cap in hand to the "special interests".

"The biggest problem we have is that California is being run now by special interests," Schwarzenegger declared. "We have to stop that."

In the wake of his Jay Leno appearance, he is ahead in the polls in a crowded field that includes the self-styled "smut peddler who cares", the Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, half a dozen minor celebrities and more than 400 other aspiring Californians.

But Schwarzenegger, like his metallic alter-ego, has been known to self-destruct, and anyone who has seen The Last Action Hero or visited a Planet Hollywood (which he started with Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis) knows that he is not invincible. But Stallone and Willis are yesterday`s action heroes. Schwarzenegger is still going strong, fulfilling his plan.

It is a plan that he once chillingly spelled out to Playboy: "You have to create a need for yourself, build yourself up. While their empire goes on, slowly, without realising it, build your own little fortress. And all of a sudden it`s too late for them to do anything about it."

The Arnie file

Arnold on his political ambitions
"I would rather be governor of California than own Austria."

On what makes Arnie run
"My political ambitions have nothing to do with vanity or the desire for power. I want to help people. I owe them something after all they`ve done for me."

On his physical credentials, in a recent Vanity Fair questionnaire
"Let`s just say that Milton Berle had the same problem. What can I say? It`s a curse."

On what type of boss he is
"I don`t take any shit. I have to be a bit of a five-star general. I have no time for slacking off or failure. If you want to be part of the team, then you have to go and kick butt. If you don`t like that kind of pressure then get the hell out."

On why he loves the holidays
"I love Thanksgiving. It`s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts."

On the root of all evil
"Money doesn`t make you happy. I now have $50m, but I was just as happy when I had $48m."

On his exercise regime, in 1979
"Having a pump is like having great sex. I train two, sometimes three times a day. Each time I get a pump, it`s great. I feel like I`m coming all day."

Arnold in the movies
"I`ll be back" (his catchphrase, from Terminator 2: Judgement Day)

"Hasta la vista, baby" (again, from T2)

"You`re not sendink me to the cooler" (as Mr Freeze, in Batman and Robin)

"Please God, gimme strength" (appealing to the Almighty, in his flop thriller End of Days)

What others say about Arnold
"Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts" - Clive James

"Arnold Schwarzenegger`s acted in plenty of movies but spoken less dialogue than any actor, except maybe Lassie" - Robin Williams

"I`ve known Arnold for a long time and hold him in the highest esteem. Arnold is a perfect gentleman and a devoted family man" - True Lies star Jamie Lee Curtis, defending him against a Premiere magazine article which depicted him as a rapacious womaniser with a habit of harassing female crew members

"I think he`s a leader. I think he has the ability to distil the essence of complicated issues and is very sort of solution-oriented" - Kindergarten Cop director Ivan Reitman, responding to Arnie`s announcement

"This is the greatest thing to happen to comedy writers since Gerald Ford tripped on something" - US film critic Leonard Maltin

Xan Brooks




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Terminator 4: Voting Day
Arnold Schwarzenegger is about to discover that electors have longer memories than filmgoers

Peter Bradshaw
Friday August 8, 2003
The Guardian

What a difference a couple of years make. In March 2001, Hollywood was agog at a sensational article about Arnold Schwarzenegger in Premiere magazine. It was entitled "Arnold The Barbarian", and Arnie was accused of harassing, groping and fondling female reporters in his trailer - one came in to find the great man engaged in a certain sex act with another woman which he later reportedly laughed off with the deathless phrase: "Eating isn`t cheating." And Arnie`s ticker, as well as his pecker, was supposed to be leading him into trouble: his heart was weak, following surgery in 1997, said the magazine, and he is hardly in tip-top physical condition.

Yet two years on, and Arnie is still with us; he`s back with a third Terminator movie and he`s finally decided to run for governor of California - as a Republican, despite the Democrat sympathies of his wife, Maria Shriver, niece of John F Kennedy. Schwarzenegger, of course, follows in the footsteps of that other eminent movie-star-turned-politician Ronald Reagan, although Austrian-born Schwarzenegger is not eligible for the White House.

Should Arnie run? Should any actor run? When Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson became a Labour MP in the 90s, it was assumed she was going to bring some prototypical New Labour glitz to Westminster. Yet she became one of the most disappointing non-events in the party - not a careerist, not a policy wonk, not a parliamentary performer, not a luvvie. It was as if she was resting. The late Andrew Faulds, actor-turned-MP, also found that a theatrical larger-than-life personality doesn`t necessarily work on a political stage. Clint Eastwood got bored of being mayor of Carmel pretty quickly.

If Schwarzenegger already was a politician, or in the midst of a campaign, then those 2001 allegations in Premiere would have been quite a blow. But strangely, this might be a way of drawing a line under them: a second act in Arnie`s quasi-American life. For obvious reasons, becoming a politician is an attractive new career move for an actor of a certain age. In this televisual era, politics is even more about showbiz than ever, and successful actors are accustomed to canvassing for votes, overtly and covertly, in the months before the Oscars - although Arnie himself has not been within shouting distance of a statuette.

So if politics is showbiz for ugly people, aren`t pretty people in a position to clean up? The example of Reagan could be an inspiring one for Arnie. Reagan was no intellectual; he turned to politics when his B-movie career was on the wane and he was starting to get offered bad-guy roles. (Gore Vidal, however, refused to consider him for the role of the president in his 1959 play The Best Man, because "he would hardly be convincing".)

Doesn`t Arnie need only to be an attractive, plausible figurehead for ideas developed by his political producers and scriptwriters? Possibly. Yet Reagan was a shrewd political operator: a two-term president who won the cold war.

It`s not easy to see if Schwarzenegger, or any modern movie star, has the aptitude for political candidature: an existence that is less protected than the life of the Hollywood A-lister. And politics is different from showbiz in one important respect: the past matters. In Hollywood, if you do a terrible movie that bombs at the box office, it needn`t matter - if you follow it up with a smash, then all is forgiven. But in politics, you can make a mistake that comes back to haunt you even after your poll numbers have come back up.

One of the strangest sights in Reagan`s career was his testimony at the Iran-Contra hearings that he "couldn`t remember" the details put to him. A political denial, yes, or maybe even the tragic beginnings of Alzheimer`s. But I think it was also the stunned, plaintive bafflement of an actor and showbiz king, who was saying: "But I`ve been popular since then; you`ve liked me since then."

Even if the voters of the sunshine state ignore the racy rumours about Arnie, there is still his family past to consider. His policeman father was a member of the Nazi party in Austria in 1938; Schwarzenegger will find that this will be publicised and investigated as it has never been before. Will he have to apologise? Repudiate his father`s past? Visit the Holocaust exhibition? None of this is particularly good political PR.

Above all else, Schwarzenegger will have to have a pretty clear idea what he wants to do in office, should that ever become a reality. Or he might become like Grace Kelly, who at the very height of her Hollywood fame became Princess Grace of Monaco - a sort of political position - and walled herself up in a Ruritanian mausoleum: what many suspected was a living death of boredom.

Arnie might find the political frustrations and compromises of a scrutinised life in the governor`s mansion very similar. And if he gets sick of it after his term is up and wants once again to hop aboard the glittering carousal of Hollywood - well, he could find all the good scripts are going out to Vin Diesel. Movies, like politics, are a cruel business.

· Peter Bradshaw is the Guardian`s film critic. His latest novel is Dr Sweet and His Daughter

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Today is Ahnold Day!

Total recall in California
Arnie aims to terminate the governor

Leader
Friday August 8, 2003
The Guardian

It is possible that a robot could do a better job as governor of California than the present Democrat incumbent, Gray Davis. But even if this were the case, it is not the choice facing the state`s voters in a special election due in October. The actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has launched a bid to unseat Mr Davis, made his name playing a humanoid killer machine in a series of hugely violent, hugely successful films. Before that, the Austrian-born immigrant achieved a sort of fame as a body-builder of painful proportions clad in a tight pair of briefs. Arnie, as he is known to his fans, now possesses one of the most potent Hollywood images, instantly recognisable all around the world.

But Californians will not be voting for an image or a fantasy figure, for Conan the Barbarian, the Kindergarten Cop or indeed the Terminator. They will be trying to find a politician who has the skill and ideas to rescue their state from a $38bn budget deficit, an energy crisis and myriad intractable woes for which Mr Davis, unfairly or not, is blamed. It is important that they can see the difference. It is unclear at this early stage whether they do.

At the same time, it is important not to be too pompous about Mr Schwarzenegger`s ambition for public office, as Democrats like senator Dianne Feinstein (who has decided not to run) and Mr Davis`s campaign aides are in danger of being. The movie star`s candidacy brings with it the sort of excitement and glamour - and sex appeal - that is routinely lacking in US (and British) politics.

If Mr Schwarzenegger encourages voters actually to get out and vote, in a country where less than 50% normally do, then his efforts will not have been in vain. As the political base of Ronald Reagan, another actor turned governor, of Sonny Bono, the late congressman-cum-crooner, and of Clint Eastwood, spaghetti westerner and Carmel mayor, California has often aimed for the stars. If Mr Davis`s last-gasp legal appeals fail and the so-called recall election to terminate his term goes ahead, the challenge posed by the hero of the aptly named Total Recall and Running Man will make for an action-packed contest. There could be a movie in it.

Dabbling in politics by millionaire celebrities for reasons of self-promotion and personal vanity should obviously not be encouraged. American democracy has long been overly vulnerable to the big name with the big money and the big mouth. While Mr Schwarzenegger insists he is a serious candidate, he admits to weakness by other, present-day measures of political viability. Past allegations of sexual abuse, dope-smoking and anti-semitism are certain to be recycled. Opponents also point out that detailed Schwarzenegger policies on race relations, water supply, traffic congestion, smog and taxes have yet to be elucidated. It can be assumed that his attitude to terrorism is fairly straightforward.

Yet the idea of Mr Schwarzenegger as total political novice is also wrong. The actor has been closely involved with community and state educational projects. His moderate Republican positions on abortion and gay rights will appeal to the centrist voters who are now deserting Mr Davis. His self-portrayal as an American immigrant success story will play well with California`s Latinos. He has handy personal connections with the Bush and Kennedy clans; and unbeatable name recognition. The dramatic way he exploded on to political centre-stage this week, after weeks of masking his intentions, suggests not a little guile. Mr Schwarzenegger is ambitious, determined and tough. As the bad guys will testify, it is unwise to underestimate him.


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Iraqi boy maimed by bombing arrives in Britain for treatment
By Terri Judd
08 August 2003


An Iraqi orphan whose injuries came to symbolise the horror of the Iraq war arrived in Britain yesterday to be fitted with artificial limbs and to undergo extensive physiotherapy.

Ali Abbas, aged 13, who lost both arms in a US bombing raid early in the war, landed at RAF Northolt in a private jet shortly after 3pm. He was accompanied on the flight by his uncle and 14-year-old Ahmed Mohammed Hamza, who lost his left leg below the knee and his right hand in a US bombardment.

The boys will meet experts from the Limbless Association and are expected to be fitted with prosthetic limbs at Queen Mary`s Hospital Rehabilitation Centre in Roehampton, south-west London.

"We are honoured that the rehabilitation centre has been chosen by the Kuwaiti government," said Mark Purcell, a spokesman at the hospital. "We have had a relationship with Kuwait for some time and people have come to our centre from there before. One of our technicians is Arab-speaking, which is helpful. We are looking forward to welcoming them and as soon as they arrive with us a team of doctors, prosthetists, therapists and technicians will assess their needs."

Mohammed al-Jarallah, the Kuwaiti Health Minister, who was at Kuwait City airport yesterday morning to see off the boys and their relatives , said that he expected them to be in Britain for about three months initially. "As far as we are concerned, we are committed to treating them until they are fully grown," he said.

Welcoming the arrival of Ali and his uncle to the UK, Caroline Spelman, the shadow International Development Secretary, said: "It is a real honour for our country to have been chosen by the Kuwaiti authorities and the families of Ali and Ahmed for Ali and his friend to receive world-class treatment for their injuries.

"Ali has always said that he wanted to come to the UK and the press attention he has received has enabled him to do this ... He acknowledges that this is not normal and knows his compatriots will not receive the same. He hopes that through him, others may also be able to receive the same high-quality treatment."

Ms Spelman visited Ali twice while he was in hospital in Kuwait, and helped to launch the Limbless Association`s Ali Fund in April. Ali lost his father, his pregnant mother, his brother and 13 other family members when an American missile hit their home near Baghdad. The orphan may emigrate to Canada once this stage of his treatment is complete.
8 August 2003 09:02

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Competitors contend that the process for awarding oil industry rebuilding contracts in Iraq favors Halliburton. Richard Leslie, left, and Simon Hunt, Halliburton employees, repair a pump near Basra, Iraq

August 8, 2003
Rivals Say Halliburton Dominates Iraq Oil Work
By NEELA BANERJEE


he Bechtel Group, one of the world`s biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton.

After the United States Army Corps of Engineers quietly selected Halliburton in the spring to perform early repairs of the Iraqi oil business in the aftermath of the war, other companies and members of Congress protested that the work should have been awarded through competitive bidding.

Halliburton`s role in the rebuilding has been under political scrutiny because the company was formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. But the Bush administration and the Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the Iraqi oil reconstruction effort, have repeatedly said that Halliburton has no inside track.

Preliminary plans for a new contract, which industry executives had thought might total $1 billion, were announced late in June by the Corps of Engineers. The bidding was meant, in part, to introduce competition and a sense of fairness into the lucrative Iraqi reconstruction market, an executive with a major engineering concern said. Like many industry executives, he would speak only on condition of anonymity because his company does not want to jeopardize its chances for future government contracts.

But in the last month, the corps, which is overseeing the reconstruction efforts, has specified a timetable for the work that effectively means that the value of any contract companies other than Halliburton could win would be worth only about $176 million, according to Corps of Engineers documents and executives in the engineering and construction business.

Earlier this week, Bechtel cited the timetable as its reason for dropping out of the bidding. The company now plans to deal directly with the Iraqi oil ministry for future reconstruction work, a spokesman, Howard N. Menaker, said.

Although the oil ministry and the Army Corps of Engineers nominally cooperate, industry analysts say the Americans have the upper hand.

Officials of the Corps of Engineers did not return numerous phone calls yesterday seeking comment on the contract. But last month, in response to questions from other companies about Halliburton`s role, the corps said on its Web site that all potential bidders had received the same information to "eliminate any competitive advantage" Halliburton might have from its involvement in the Iraqi reconstruction work so far.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, would not discuss whether its engineering unit, Kellogg Brown & Root, would bid, saying only that "we will evaluate the opportunity."

After indicating in June that it planned to solicit bids, the Corps of Engineers held a conference of prospective bidders in Dallas on July 14. Records of the meeting show that it was attended by some of the most experienced engineering and construction companies in the world — including, besides Halliburton and Bechtel, Fluor, the Parsons Group, Schlumberger and Foster Wheeler.

Among those companies, only Fluor and Parsons have indicated so far that they plan to make bids by the Aug. 14 deadline. A winner will be announced by Oct. 15, according to the Corps of Engineers.

At the meeting and in the initial request for proposals, the Corps of Engineers put forth what the industry calls "an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery" contract. Industry executives said they were told there could in fact be two principal contracts, one for the oil industry in northern Iraq and the other for the south. The value of each contract could range from $500,000 to $500 million over several years, according to the Corps of Engineers, which cited the continued instability in Iraq as a reason for keeping the terms so vague.

A transcript of the July meeting shows that bidders were concerned even then that Halliburton would have a competitive advantage over other companies because it was already working with the Corps of Engineers in Iraq and helping to assess the repairs needed at oil production sites and pipelines after the war and years of an economic embargo.

The corps denied that such a conflict of interest existed, according to the transcript.

Over the last three weeks, however, the Corps of Engineers has provided additional information to bidders indicating that by the July meeting, it and Halliburton already had a fairly clear understanding of the scope and financial value of the work to be done and the timetable for completing it.

The newly released information indicates that a week before the Dallas meeting, the Corps of Engineers and Halliburton participated in a large workshop in Baghdad that also included representatives of the Iraqi oil ministry and the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority to draw up a detailed plan for rebuilding much of the Iraqi oil industry by the end of March 2004.

A week ago, the Corps of Engineers Web site carried an amendment to the contract proposal, saying that 220 projects, mostly at installations above the ground, must be completed for Iraq`s oil production to reach prewar levels. The projects are divided into three phases, with a total estimated cost of $1.14 billion.

But the corps notes in the plan that the first two phases, which together would require about $967 million in investments, would have to be completed by Dec. 31.

Halliburton`s competitors worry that if the winner of the new contracts is not announced until Oct. 15, that company could not even begin the work before year`s end. The only company that could do the work based on that timetable is Halliburton, its competitors say.

Only the third and final phase, worth about $176 million and requiring the work to be completed by March 31, could realistically be performed by a Halliburton competitor, its rivals say.

"The feeling at our company was `Yes, Halliburton is the incumbent, but we had an opportunity there,` " a representative of another engineering concern said. "But if we had believed that from the beginning we had no chance of winning this, we wouldn`t have bid."

Responding to pointed questions about the timetable by potential bidders, the Corps of Engineers` Web site said the proposed schedule was "not intended to change anything" about the bidding process.

For its part, the Kellogg Brown & Root unit of Halliburton will do whatever work the corps gives it, Ms. Hall, the spokeswoman, said.

"It is not known at this time how or if the future award of another Corps of Engineers contract will affect current K.B.R. operations or the terms and conditions of its contract," she said.

The first wave of Halliburton employees arrived in Iraq in March, to oversee the extinguishing of several oil well fires near Basra. Since then, its responsibilities, under the direction of the Corps of Engineers, have expanded from its initial job of making emergency repairs.

Working in Iraq has helped turn around Halliburton`s financial performance, its second-quarter results showed. The company made a profit of $26 million, in contrast to a loss of $498 million in the period a year earlier. The company stated that 9 percent, or $324 million, of its second-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion came from its work in Iraq.



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August 8, 2003
Younger Blacks Tell Democrats to Take Notice
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The debate had become a familiar one for LaShannon Spencer. As director of political affairs for the Democratic Party of Arkansas, Ms. Spencer, 30, is charged with taking the pulse of voters and keeping them connected to the party.

But at Cajun`s Wharf, a restaurant and bar on the banks of the Arkansas River that is popular with young professionals, Ms. Spencer`s political pitch was met with skepticism.

"Democrats just assume my political affiliation, based on my ZIP code or voting precinct," said Khayyam Eddings, a 31-year-old labor lawyer, referring to his predominantly black neighborhood. He was one of three African-American men engaged with Ms. Spencer in an animated discussion. "I don`t cast my ballot based on learned behavior."

Mr. Eddings`s comments were emblematic of what some Democratic strategists fear may be a growing problem: The party is perilously out of touch with a large swath of black voters — those 18 to 35 years old who grew up after the groundbreaking years of the civil rights movement. It is a group too important and complex to ignore, many strategists caution, when analysts are predicting another close election.

Democrats have traditionally counted on more than 90 percent of the black vote. Blacks 18 to 35 make up about 40 percent of the black voting-age population, but turnout among young blacks was so low in the 2000 elections that they made up only 2 percent of the entire vote.

Democratic leaders are expressing concern about the disengagement. Young blacks are responding by warning the party not to take their votes for granted.

"Not only do I not see myself as part of the base," Nnamdi Thompson, a 30-year-old investment banker, told Ms. Spencer at the restaurant, "I wish the Democratic Party would stop seeing me as part of its base. We have more power as voters if they have to come and court us."

A 32-year-old lawyer, a friend of the other two who did not want his name used because he is in state politics, said: "I question whether the party sees us at all. First they calculate who they do not want" to alienate. "Then they decide on acceptable losses. We seem to fall into the acceptable losses."

Ms. Spencer, who is also African-American, said their frustrations were not unusual. "These are the concerns I hear over and over," she said. "These are people who care, people the party needs. If we could only convince them of that."

Over the years, African-Americans have proved a reliable source of support for Democrats, whom they viewed as more responsive than Republicans to their issues and concerns. But members of Generations X and Y, reared on hip-hop and the Internet, in a niche-market culture, are proving to be a tougher sell.

While still more closely aligned with Democrats than Republicans on issues like affirmative action and health care, younger blacks are more open to at least exploring initiatives shunned by the Democratic Party, like school vouchers and partial privatization of Social Security, polls show.

Polls also indicate that younger blacks place a higher priority than older African-Americans on issues like racial profiling and protecting civil liberties.

In 2000, 74 percent of African-Americans identified themselves as Democrats. By last year, that number had dropped to 63 percent, according to a recent survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group devoted to African-American issues.

Those shifting away from the Democratic Party are not necessarily becoming Republicans. An overwhelming majority of blacks still vote Democratic. But an increasing number, especially those 18 to 35, are identifying themselves as independents. Some 24 percent of black adults now characterize themselves that way. Among those 35 and under, said David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Joint Center who conducted the survey, the figures are 30 percent to 35 percent, with men leaning more heavily independent than women.

For Democrats, the downside of weaker partisan ties is twofold. Unlike older blacks, many of whom vote consistently because they remember a time when they could not, younger blacks are more prone to sit out an election if no candidate grabs their interest. And even if they are not registered Republicans, younger blacks are more open to supporting Republican candidates and issues than older blacks. Sylvester Smith, 27, whose mother was a Democratic state legislator in Arkansas, is a policy adviser for minority affairs for Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican.

"I have a Frederick Douglass philosophy," said Mr. Smith, who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race and remains a registered Democrat. "I believe African-Americans have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests."

For Democratic leaders the trends are a worrying sign that their base, as it has traditionally been defined, is not as stable as it used to be. "This is very disconcerting for us going forward," said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "It is critical that we do a better job of connecting."

If state party campaign plans do not include "integral, aggressive outreach strategies" aimed at young nonwhite voters," Mr. McAuliffe said, "they will not be approved and funded" by the national committee.

The move by younger African-Americans away from strong partisan affiliation mirrors that of younger whites. But Mr. Bositis and others studying the issue argue that the shift in African-American behavior is more damaging for the Democratic Party because of its heavy dependence on black voters.

Cornell Belcher, a pollster who specializes in minority and youth constituencies, contends the message in the trends is clear. "This group really should be considered swing voters to be targeted specifically," he said. "But if you look at or listen to the typical political ads aimed at black voters, there is a huge disconnect with younger blacks."

When Michael L. Steele, a black Republican, ran for lieutenant governor of Maryland with Robert L. Erlich Jr. in 2002, he hired a consultant to design radio advertisements specifically for the state`s major hip-hop radio stations. Tapping into frustration among black voters over the fact that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Democratic candidate for governor, had chosen a white running mate, the radio spots used tag lines like, "Why must African-Americans always wait?"

Mr. Erlich and Mr. Steele won the election, ending a 36-year Democratic hold on the Statehouse. The team not only swung traditionally Democratic white voters, it also received 14 percent of the black vote, the largest percentage of African-American votes ever for a Republican ticket in Maryland. In Baltimore, one of the areas deluged with the hip-hop radio spots, the ticket won 30 percent of the black vote.

"Republicans took a pass on the civil rights agenda in the late 50`s and early 60`s, and it cost us," Mr. Steele, 44, said. "This is a door that has opened, and we can`t let this pass." The Republican Party is pushing a series of political training seminars to groom nonwhite candidates.

In January, Democrats announced the formation of an African-American Leadership Council, aimed at black voters 18 to 35. Among its objectives is getting one million young African-Americans to register as Democrats and to vote in the next presidential election.

Some younger blacks around the country have taken strategic outreach into their own hands. In the 2002 campaign season, James Gee, 31, deputy chief of staff for Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, a Democrat, developed a test program aimed at younger voters called the Six Degrees Project. The program, which focused on Trenton, the majority black state capital, took a group of 140 voters and asked each of them to get 20 friends to the polls on Election Day. Using a computer program to cross reference and track the voters down to their voting station, team leaders were able to call their charges on Election Day if they failed to vote by the time they said they would.

While overall voter turnout in Trenton was a rather dismal 14 percent, it was 78 percent among the roughly 2,800 people in the Six Degrees Project. Mr. Gee said he would like for the state party to expand on the program.

"Rather than having candidates showing up in black churches preaching and waving a week before elections," Mr. Gee said, "I`d rather see us use a real quantitative approach to targeting black voters."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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A wounded Iraqi, who was a guard at Jordan`s Embassy in Baghdad, walked in front of the bombed building Thursday after he was treated. The American commander called the attack "the worst on a soft target
New, Soft Targets in Iraq: Bombing Shifts the Focus
By MICHAEL R. GORDON


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 7 — The car bomb that ripped apart the Jordanian Embassy today has brought terrorism to the heart of Iraq`s capital and presented the American-led occupation with a new and unpredictable threat.

American forces have repeatedly come under attack from small teams armed with rocket-propelled grenades and by an array of homemade mines and explosive devices.

This attack was different. The blast was not directed against well-armed American forces but against what the military calls a soft target, a highly vulnerable and undefended structure. The goal was not to alter the military equation but to punish a foreign government and produce a large number of civilian casualties.

Nobody claimed responsibility for today`s blast, and it was unclear who was responsible. But in recent weeks, it has become clear that the enemy the Americans are fighting is multifaceted and diverse.

Not only are American forces fighting remnants of Saddam Hussein`s government, fedayeen paramilitary fighters and disgruntled Iraqis upset by American military tactics, but they are also contending with foreign fighters and terrorist groups.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently that militants from the Ansar al-Islam group were in Iraq. Some, in fact, have been captured and are in the process of being interrogated.

L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American-led provisional government, said recently, "We believe there are now quite a number of these Ansar al-Islam professional killers on the loose in the country." Ansar al-Islam is a terrorist group that was believed to have been broken up by American bombing in northeastern Iraq.

The presence of foreign militants who appear to see Iraq as a new arena for pursuing their jihad against America is a significant development. It indicates that American forces and the new Iraqi government they support will probably face some form of organized opposition even if supporters of Mr. Hussein are dealt a decisive setback and he himself is captured or killed.

The American authorities appear to be unsure whether Al Qaeda has established a presence here. But American military officials say Qaeda-like fighters — militants from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other countries — have infiltrated Iraq from Syria.

Taking the fight to this enemy, the United States bombed a military camp in June near the Syrian border and killed an estimated 70 fighters. A Saudi and a Syrian fighter were captured.

A senior American military official said today that the operatives of Mr. Hussein`s Baath Party and foreign fighters appeared to be operating independently and not coordinating their actions.

The embassy bombing comes at a time when the American authorities here are hoping that the Iraqis` newly established police force and embryonic security forces can take on greater responsibility for maintaining order at home, including the protection of infrastructure and other important sites.

It was the Iraqi police, in fact, who were charged with safeguarding the Jordanian Embassy, according to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of allied forces in Iraq.

The hope is that by shifting more of the security burden to the Iraqis, American forces can focus more on capturing and killing Baath Party operatives and others opposed to the American presence and, ultimately, reduce the number of American forces kept in Iraq.

There are now about 5,500 Iraqi police officers in Baghdad, about a third of the force`s planned strength, and 33,000 nationwide, about half the planned strength. In addition, thousands of Iraqi army and internal security forces are being trained. American and allied troops in Iraq number about 160,000.

The bombing today caught the Iraqis off guard, caused many in the city to wonder if this is just the first of a wave of terror attacks, and raised the question whether the planned transfer of more authority to Iraqi security forces would prove feasible in the short term.

General Sanchez described the bombing as "the worst on a soft target" since American forces took the city in April.

Ghassan Salame, a senior United Nations official here, said: "This is a new form of violence. That`s exactly what a terrorist attack is, an indiscriminate attack on civilians, on people who have the bad luck of being there at the moment it exploded."

Whoever may be behind today`s blast, the threat of bombings and other attacks has turned the provisional American-led government into a fortified island inside Baghdad.

The alliance has been forced to postpone the official opening of Baghdad International Airport. At least three surface-to-air missiles have been fired at planes approaching the airfield, a development that has kept it off limits to major commercial carriers.

The Jordanians discovered to their apparent surprise today that they were targets as well, possibly because of their quiet support for the United States. Jordan supported the American military campaign to topple Mr. Hussein`s government.

American Special Operations forces, including aircraft, used Jordan as a base to conduct operations in western Iraq. The Jordanian authorities, however, have been concerned that Iranian and extremist Shiite factions were beginning to operate inside neighboring Iraq.

Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is charged with building Iraq`s police force, went to Amman, Jordan`s capital, several days ago to establish a working relationship with the Jordanian police. He was in his office at the allied headquarters today when he was notified of the embassy bombing. Before he went to the scene, he offered a quick assessment of the expanding dangers that the allied forces face.

"I have serious concerns about factions that may be coming into this country and may participate in an act like this," Mr. Kerik said.

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August 8, 2003
Muscle Beach Politics

Most Hollywood celebrities seem to lean Democratic, but whenever one of them decides to run for office, it`s almost always on the Republican ticket. Perhaps they feel more room to shine there. If the current California recall imbroglio involved ousting a Republican governor, it is hard to imagine the Democrats parting the sea and allowing someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger to dominate the field of candidates.

Mr. Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy to Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," but despite plenty of encouragement from Mr. Leno and the audience, he seemed rather flat. Even in the thought-free environment of late night television, his vague ramblings about pumping up Sacramento and telling the politicians "Hasta la vista, baby" sounded surprisingly mindless.

Given his enormous celebrity, Mr. Schwarzenegger immediately becomes a favorite in the struggle for control of California`s executive office. Candidates like this offer a particular challenge for the voters, who have to get past the screen persona and decide how much substance there is to the candidate himself. Unfortunately, this particular election seems custom-built to make that as difficult as possible. It frequently takes several months for a colorful newcomer to wilt under public scrutiny — remember how good Ross Perot looked at first? But the California recall vote is scheduled to take place in two months. The easy access to the ballot is an invitation to hordes of candidates, making it unlikely that there will be a way to hold debates. Given the fecklessness of the news coverage at most California television stations, the number of candidates and the crazy rules for the election, the person with the best name recognition begins with an enormous advantage.

Of course, Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has been dancing around the edges of politics for some time, may turn out to be a more thoughtful candidate than he appeared in his initial outings. And while California voters do not seem to focus on elections until the last minute, they generally turn serious once it is time to make a decision. Mr. Davis, after all, was elected the first time over far more glamorous opponents. Look back over the state`s modern governors, except for Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, and you will find a whole host of middle-aged men in suits who look as if they would be more comfortable at a Rotarian dinner than the Academy Awards show.

So far, the recall campaign has been a vehicle for the expression of public dissatisfaction with Mr. Davis, who seems to be bitterly disliked everywhere outside his immediate family. We have always thought that the idea of tossing Mr. Davis out of office on the grounds of general irritation was a terrible idea. But now that the recall is under way, it seems counterproductive for other California Democrats to stay out of the race. It is possible to oppose the recall but still make sure that if Mr. Davis goes, there is a good alternative on the ballot, stuck in there amid the pornographers and exhibitionists and Terminators.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 8, 2003
Salt of the Earth
By PAUL KRUGMAN


Since we`re stuck in Iraq indefinitely, we may as well try to learn something. But I suspect that our current leaders won`t be receptive to the most important lesson of the land where cities and writing were invented: that manmade environmental damage can destroy a civilization.

When archaeologists excavated the cities of ancient Mesopotamia, they were amazed not just by what they found but by where they found it: in the middle of an unpopulated desert. In "Ur of the Chaldees," Leonard Woolley asked: "Why, if Ur was an empire`s capital, if Sumer was once a vast granary, has the population dwindled to nothing, the very soil lost its virtue?"

The answer — the reason "the very soil lost its virtue" — is that heavy irrigation in a hot, dry climate leads to a gradual accumulation of salt in the soil. Rising salinity first forced the Sumerians to switch from wheat to barley, which can tolerate more salt; by about 1800 B.C. even barley could no longer be grown in southern Iraq, and Sumerian civilization collapsed. Later "salinity crises" took place further north. In the 19th century, when Europeans began to visit Iraq, it probably had a population less than a tenth the size of the one in the age of Gilgamesh.

Modern civilization`s impact on the environment is, of course, far greater than anything the ancients could manage. We can do more damage in a decade than our ancestors could inflict in centuries. Salinization remains a big problem in today`s world, but it is overshadowed by even more serious environmental threats. Moreover, in the past environmental crises were local: agriculture might collapse in Sumer, but in Egypt, where the annual flooding of the Nile replenished the soil, civilization went on. Today, problems like the thinning of the ozone layer and the accumulation of greenhouse gases affect the planet as a whole.

On the other hand, today we have the ability to understand environmental threats, and act to contain them. The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1989, shows how science and policy can work hand in hand. Research showed that certain chemicals were destroying the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet radiation, so governments agreed to ban the use of those chemicals, and the ban appears to be succeeding.

But would the people now running America have agreed to that protocol? Probably not. In fact, the Bush administration is trying to reinterpret the agreement to avoid phasing out the pesticide methyl bromide. And on other environmental issues — above all, global warming — America`s ruling party is pursuing a strategy of denial and deception.

Before last year`s elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here`s what it said about global warming: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." And it advised Republicans to play up the appearance of scientific uncertainty.

But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is "manufactured." Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. And before you accuse me of a conspiracy theory, listen to what the other side says. Here`s Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: "Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."

The point is that when it comes to evidence of danger from emissions — as opposed to, say, Iraqi nukes — the people now running our country won`t take yes for an answer.

Meanwhile, news reports say, President Bush will spend much of this month buffing his environmental image. No doubt he`ll repeatedly be photographed amid scenes of great natural beauty, uttering stirring words about his commitment to conservation. His handlers hope that the images will protect him from awkward questions about his actual polluter-friendly policies and, most important, his refusal to face up to politically inconvenient environmental dangers.

So here`s the question: will we avoid the fate of past civilizations that destroyed their environments, and hence themselves? And the answer is: not if Mr. Bush can help it.







Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Gov`t: Hijacker Crashed Flight 93 on 9/11



The Associated Press
Friday, August 8, 2003; 3:20 AM


WASHINGTON -- A Sept. 11 hijacker in the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 instructed terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah to crash the jetliner moments before it slammed into a Pennsylvania field because of a fierce passenger uprising in the cabin, recently disclosed testimony by the FBI director shows.

The theory described by FBI Director Robert Mueller, based on the government`s analysis of cockpit recordings, discounts the popular perception of insurgent passengers grappling with terrorists inside the cockpit, trying to seize the plane`s controls, immediately before the crash.

The government`s findings -- laid out deep within the July 24 congressional report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- aim to resolve one of the enduring mysteries of the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history: What happened in the final minutes aboard Flight 93? The newly published excerpts from Mueller`s testimony appear at odds with what families of some passengers have come to believe happened.

The FBI strenuously maintains that its analysis does not diminish the heroism of passengers who, with the words "Let`s roll," apparently rushed down the airliner`s narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers. In phone calls from the plane, four passengers said they and others decided to fight the hijackers after learning of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York that morning.

"In the cockpit! In the cockpit!" the passengers are heard yelling, according to Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos, Calif., who was among family members permitted to listen to the cockpit recording. Her son, Mark Bingham, died in the crash. She said the recording and a transcript the FBI provided to her and other families "doesn`t leave very much doubt at all that passengers were able to get that cockpit door open."

President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have regularly praised the courage of those aboard Flight 93.

"While no one will ever know exactly what transpired in the final minutes of Flight 93, every shred of evidence indicates this plane crashed because of the heroic actions of the passengers," FBI spokeswoman Susan Whitson said Thursday.

Thirty-three passengers, seven crew members and the four hijackers died when Flight 93 crashed, one of four hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11.

Citing transcripts of the still-secret cockpit recordings, Mueller told congressional investigators in a closed briefing last year that, minutes before Flight 93 hit the ground, one of the hijackers "advised Jarrah to crash the plane and end the passengers` attempt to retake the airplane."

Hoglan said the FBI`s transcript quotes one hijacker after fighting breaks out in the cabin asking another hijacker in the cockpit in Arabic, "Finish her/it now?", and she believed they were discussing whether to crash the plane. The response from the second hijacker, she remembered, was either "wait" or "not now."

Jarrah is thought to have been the terrorist-pilot because he was the only one of the four hijackers aboard known to have a pilot`s license. The congressional report also describes the hijackers wearing bandanas and carrying knives, and passengers reported seeing the captain and co-pilot lying on the floor of the first-class section, presumably dead.

Mueller`s depiction of the events was disclosed in a brief passage far into the 858-page report to Congress. Previous statements by FBI and other government officials have been ambiguous about what occurred in the cockpit.

The same cockpit recording was played privately in April 2002 for family members of victims aboard Flight 93, and the FBI also provided them with its best effort at producing an understandable transcript. Some family members believe passengers used a food cart as a shield and successfully broke into the cockpit.

"It is totally obvious listening to that flight recorder that they made it into the cockpit," said Deena Burnett, who lost her husband, Thomas E. Burnett Jr., on Flight 93. "You cannot listen to the tape and understand it any other way."

She declined to discuss specifics of the tape because federal prosecutors have asked families not to describe the recording. She remembered hearing a hijacker telling Jarrah in Arabic to crash the plane deliberately, as Mueller described, and Jarrah refusing.

Burnett also said U.S. authorities, including Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novak, told families in April 2002 that the recording indicates passengers made their way into the cockpit.

Hoglan said the hijackers inside the cockpit are heard yelling "No!" at the sound of breaking glass -- presumably from the food cart -- and that the final spoken words on the recorder seemed to be an inexplicably calm voice in English instructing, "Pull it up."

She said the English voice toward the end of the recording was so distinct that she believes it`s evident the speaker was inside the cockpit.

The FBI has been loath to publicly put forward a contradictory theory out of sensitivity to the families and because of uncertainty about what happened.

People who have heard the recording describe it as nearly indecipherable, containing static noises, cockpit alarms and wind interspersed with cries in English and Arabic. Near the end of the tape, sounds can be heard of breaking glass and crashing dishes, lending credence to the theory that passengers used the food cart to rush the cockpit.

Separately, the data recorder showed the plane`s wings rocking violently as the jet flew too low and too fast for safe flight.

Intelligence officials believe the likely target for Flight 93 was the White House, based on information from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaida terrorist leader in U.S. custody who is believed to have played a key role in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors have sought a judge`s permission to play recordings from Flight 93 during the terrorism trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant in a U.S. case prosecutors have directly tied to the attacks. Moussaoui is accused of conspiring with the hijackers. Novak, the prosecutor quoted by Burnett and other family members, is one of the lead attorneys in the Moussaoui case.

The government has said it can link Moussaoui to Jarrah, using a telephone number found on a business card recovered at the Shanksville, Pa., crash site.

Moussaoui has acknowledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida but says he was not involved in the attacks.


© 2003 The Associated Press

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Promises Democracy in Middle East
Rice Calls for `Generational Commitment`

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A01


The Bush administration made a broad pledge yesterday to spread democracy and free markets to the Middle East, promising to move beyond the recent focus on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an ambitious but vaguely defined project to transform a troubled region.

Calling the development of freedom in the Middle East the "security challenge and the moral mission of our time," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States and its allies must make a "generational commitment" to Middle Easterners who live under oppressive and often corrupt governments.

In a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas, Rice disputed "condescending voices" who say Arab cultures are not ready for freedom. Invoking her girlhood in racially segregated Birmingham, she said: "We`ve heard that argument before. And we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it.

"The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham," Rice said, "and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."

She offered few details of a project whose prospects have been greeted with widespread skepticism, particularly in the Middle East itself, where the depth of the administration`s spoken commitment to Arab democracy remains unproved. Historically, U.S. presidents have accepted the stability of autocratic rule.

The White House says that pattern must be broken. Beyond Baghdad, where the administration is spending $4 billion a month to establish security and a new government, officials are designing a mixture of approaches that range from grants and private arm-twisting to public criticism in troublesome cases, such as Syria and Iran.

The goal years from now is a region of increasingly open societies, economic prosperity and representative government. But undemocratic rule remains the norm in a tense area where the United States has extensive oil interests and political relationships that it considers critical to the anti-terror war and Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

"It is a region," Rice said, "where hopelessness provides a fertile ground for ideologies that convince promising youths to aspire not to a university education, a career or family, but to blowing themselves up, taking as many innocent lives with them as possible. We need to address the source of the problem."

A central difficulty will be spurring change among allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that have long been criticized for their human rights records. To make significant progress, the United States must also establish credibility from a low starting point, said independent analysts who predict Arabs will watch carefully to see how much money and political capital the administration invests in such ambitions.

"How much are we going to lean on Egypt to introduce democratic reforms?" said David R. Smock, a U.S. Institute for Peace director. "So much of the Arab world is looking to see whether we really believe in democracy, or whether we`re making strategic partnerships."

Unlike its dealings with the Palestinian Authority -- in which the White House is intervening deeply in management issues -- and other nations from Burma to Venezuela, the administration has not yet called for elections or set specific democracy-minded targets in much of the Middle East. Nor has it often established terms for improved relations.

"The difficulty they face is, since their strategy is incremental change, the initial changes are not going to be very impressive," said Patrick L. Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They`re going to have to find ways of convincing Middle Eastern governments that they`re serious about this."

Rice, in her Dallas remarks and an op-ed article in yesterday`s Washington Post, said the administration intends to work intently with Middle Eastern figures who "seek progress" on tolerance and prosperity. She said "patience and perseverance" will be required, and the long-range U.S. commitment would not be primarily military, but diplomatic, economic and cultural.

In Iraq, the Bush administration used force to overthrow Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party government and is undertaking the United States` most ambitious nation-building exercise since the 1940s. To entice and cajole others, Bush in May proposed creating a Middle East free-trade area in the coming decade. The State Department is reviewing $1 billion in annual aid to Egypt, and U.S. officials are telling their Arab counterparts that change will weaken radical Islamic movements.

The administration secured $145 million this year for democracy, education and economic initiatives in the Middle East. Many of the proposed projects are small. Plans include campaign seminars in Qatar and Jordan for women throughout the region. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O`Connor and a group of U.S. judges plan to attend a workshop in Bahrain next month.

Officials have begun briefing Congress on a proposal to spend $20 million this year and $30 million next year on a Middle East financial corporation. The State Department is supporting a proposal by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) to spend $15 million on a foundation to support civil society initiatives, such as strengthening an independent press.

A separate micro-enterprise project for women is on the drawing board and publishers are being sought to produce children`s books in Arabic. The administration is talking quietly with allies in Europe and elsewhere, hoping for significant support.

"We will work with our partners to ensure that small and mid-sized businesses have access to capital and support efforts in the region to develop essential laws on property rights and good business practices," Bush said May 9. "By replacing corruption and self-dealing with free markets and fair laws, the people of the Middle East will grow in prosperity and freedom."

Winning support in the Arab world poses a significant challenge, particularly given growing levels of anger toward a Bush administration widely seen in the region as arrogant and culturally tone-deaf. U.S. forces mounted invasions to overthrow Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Arabs are closing watching assertive new American efforts and questioning whether Bush will exert sufficient pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Smock described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "the touchstone" for Arabs and Muslims who will "look to see if we really are on the same side or not, and whether we stand for justice and liberation or not."

A U.S. official who supports the president`s emerging policy singled out the stakes in Iraq. "If you don`t get Iraq right," the official said, "nothing else matters much."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Behind Fame, Actor`s Policies Are a Mystery
Schwarzenegger Has 60 Days to Define Self

By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A01


LOS ANGELES, Aug. 7 -- The famed bodybuilder whom film director George Butler became friends with more than two decades ago never would have had a prayer as a political figure in today`s California.

"When I first got to know him, his politics were to the right of Genghis Khan," said Butler, whose 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron" launched Arnold Schwarzenegger`s long, lucrative celebrity career.

That was before Schwarzenegger joined Hollywood`s elite. Or married journalist Maria Shriver, a member of America`s Democratic royal family, the Kennedys. Or saw Los Angeles engulfed in rioting. Or knew that his father belonged to the Nazi party during World War II.

"His thinking has definitely evolved over the years," Butler said. "I would call him a kind of Shriver Republican now. His views on many issues have been tempered by Maria and her family."

Schwarzenegger instantly became a dominant figure in California`s historic recall election when he declared his candidacy on national television Wednesday night. But for all his global fame as a screen action hero, his positions on almost every issue that he would confront if elected governor of the nation`s most populous state this fall are still a mystery.

Until now, Schwarzenegger`s political profile has been all shorthand: Moderate Republican. Fiscal conservative. Supports public education and abortion rights.

Even some of the film star`s friends say they are not sure where he stands on the kind of divisive political issues that regularly rock California -- not just taxes and spending, but school vouchers and gay marriage, smog and sprawl, drug laws and water rights.

Many California voters, fed up with the crises that have swamped the state in the past few years, may not care. "What Arnold offers most is that he could come in as a political outsider of the purest sort," said Bill Whalen, a fellow at Stanford University`s Hoover Institution who was a senior aide to then-California Gov. Pete Wilson (R).

If they do, Schwarzenegger has just two months to define himself politically and to show, in Whalen`s words, that "a thick accent and thick muscles do not equal a thick head."

Schwarzenegger remained cheerfully vague today when he picked up papers for his candidacy in the Oct. 7 recall election that will decide the fate of Gov. Gray Davis (D) and allow voters to choose Davis`s successor if a majority decides to remove him from office.

The film star told a crowd of reporters and supporters that he had entered the race because he wanted to make sure every Californian had a "fantastic" job, and he responded to a question about environmental regulation in the state by saying, "I will fight for the environment. Nothing to worry about."

But as Schwarzenegger`s ambition to run for governor has become ever more apparent in recent years, he has offered subtle and at times contradictory clues about his political views.

He is a Republican who loathed the GOP`s campaign to impeach then-President Bill Clinton, telling George magazine in 1999 that he would "never forgive" his party for that. "We spent one year wasting time because there was a human failure," he told the magazine. "I was ashamed to call myself a Republican during that period."

Last year, he led the campaign in California for Proposition 49, which calls for about a half-billion dollars in state spending on after-school programs. The state`s leading newspapers editorialized against the measure, warning that it could rob the treasury of funds badly needed for health care and public safety, but Schwarzenegger fought vigorously for it. The measure won with 57 percent of the vote.

When he announced his candidacy Wednesday, Schwarzenegger said that one of the first steps he would take if elected governor would be to repeal the tripling of state car taxes that Davis recently ordered and that has stoked the movement to throw him out. But political aides to Schwarzenegger said earlier this summer that, unlike many Republican leaders in California, he believes some form of tax increase may be needed to help restore the state`s financial health.

Around Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger has come to be known almost as much for his philanthropy as his film roles -- and some associates say his charitable projects offer insight into his political priorities.

After riots here a decade ago, Schwarzenegger began pumping millions of dollars into a nonprofit organization called Inner-City Games, which offers recreational opportunities to disadvantaged youth. With his financial backing, the program has spread to 15 cities across the country.

Danny Fernandez, who founded the Los Angeles chapter, said that Schwarzenegger`s work for the group has in some ways changed his views on the poor.

"When Arnold first got involved, it was mostly just about him writing checks or stopping by for a few handshakes," Fernandez said. "It took him a while to understand that people also need hope, not just money, that when TV cameras leave with him, the kids go back to misery, and that he had to get more into the action. It`s helped that he has a strong Democratic wife pushing him in that direction."

Schwarzenegger also has been a major financial contributor to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a prominent Jewish institution in Los Angeles. Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the center, which promotes human rights, said that his relationship with the film star began with an unusual phone call more than a decade ago.

"It came from out of the blue," Hier said. "He wanted to know if we could research his father`s background. We did, and we showed him that his father had been a member of the Nazi party. Since then, Arnold has taken great interest in what we do. And it has definitely had an impact on him."

Last year, Schwarzenegger strongly backed the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican deeply disliked by many GOP conservatives. Riordan`s campaign fizzled in the party`s primary.

Schwarzenegger could face similar struggles as a candidate. Some conservative activists say they do not like his views on social issues and have questioned his family values ever since allegations were raised in the entertainment press a few years ago that he is womanizer. And many other voters know him only as the Terminator robot of the big screen.

But Schwarzenegger has spent the summer assembling an experienced campaign team. It consists mostly of the brain trust that guided Wilson through two terms as governor. Aides have conducted polls, listened to voter focus groups about Schwarzenegger`s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate, and prepared policy stands on many issues.

"All he has to do now is turn the key," one of his advisers said.

Butler, the filmmaker, said he believes Schwarzenegger`s politics soon will captivate many voters. "In the old days, I guess you could say that he was not a big civil rights fan, and he was against things like any kind of Democratic legislation for inner cities," Butler said. "But he has really evolved from that thinking.

"I think he will dazzle people. He`s a lot smarter than Ronald Reagan, and he`s going to be very determined to win."

Special correspondent Kimberly Edds contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Gore Says Bush Has Misled Americans
President Is Criticized Over Iraq, Economy

By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A03


Former vice president Al Gore issued a broad indictment of President Bush yesterday, accusing the man who narrowly defeated him in 2000 of leading a "systematic effort" to mislead the American people about the war in Iraq, the state of the economy and the future of the global environment.

In a speech at New York University, Gore said Bush threatened to undermine the fundamental workings of American democracy by ignoring "the mandates of basic honesty" in the pursuit of a "totalistic ideology" that will benefit only his wealthy friends and supporters.

"The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth," Gore said, "and a shared respect for the rule of reason is the best way to establish the truth. The Bush administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole process, and I think it`s partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren`t very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other`s agenda."

Bush`s aides shrugged off the criticism. "I just dismiss it," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

Christine Iverson, press secretary at the Republican National Committee, said: "It is almost like he wasn`t vice president when terrorists attacked the USS Cole, attacked U.S. military barracks overseas and the World Trade Center the first time. . . .Maybe he`s running for president, maybe he`s bored. It`s hard to tell."

Gore spoke to an enthusiastic audience of mostly young people who were invited by MoveOn.org, which advertises itself as an "online grassroots democracy group." He reiterated that he will not seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination but will eventually endorse one of the nine Democrats in the race.

Elaine C. Kamarck, a former Gore aide who now teaches at Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, said the speech`s purpose was to provide a "road map" to the party`s presidential contenders on how to assail Bush. "I think what he hoped to accomplish was simply to help the Democrats break through the noise and make their indictment of Bush in a comprehensive way," she said.

Gore stitched together his criticism of Bush on several issues with a common thread: That in each case, deeply flawed policies were based on "false impressions" that Bush deliberately fostered in public opinion to get what he wanted.

"Here is the pattern that I see," Gore said. "The president`s mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America`s economy by his tax and budget proposals.

"In each case," he said, "the president seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances."

Gore said he once thought Bush`s advisers were responsible for what he called the "curious mismatch between myth and reality" in the administration`s policies. But now, he said, "I`ve just about concluded that the real problem may be the president himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one."

He also chided Congress and the news media for being "less vigilant and exacting" in holding the administration accountable for its actions.

Gore called on Bush to order administration officials to "cooperate fully" with the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to "rein in [Attorney General] John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights" by the Justice Department.

But his speech`s overall theme was a philosophical assault on Bush`s approach to governing. He said the president`s policies spring from "the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which, in its purest form, is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle."

Recalling the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore said that Bush promised to restore "honor and integrity" to the White House. "We know what that was all about," he said, a reference to the personal scandals that almost brought down President Bill Clinton.

But, Gore added, "for eight years, the Clinton-Gore administration gave this nation honest budget numbers, an economic plan with integrity . . . honest advocacy for the environment, real compassion for the poor, a strengthening of our military and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Liberals Form Fund To Defeat President
Aim Is to Spend $75 Million for 2004

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A03


Labor, environmental and women`s organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75 million to mobilize voters to defeat President Bush in 2004.

The organization, Americans Coming Together (ACT), will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY`s List, who will become ACT`s president.

ACT already has commitments for more than $30 million, Malcolm and others said, including $10 million from Soros, $12 million from six other philanthropists, and about $8 million from unions, including the Service Employees International Union.

The formation of ACT reflects growing fears in liberal and Democratic circles that with Republicans likely to retain control of Congress, a second Bush term could mean passage of legislation, adoption of regulations and the appointment of judges that together could devastate left-supported policies and institutions.

Other groups joining the fight against Bush include the American Majority Institute, which was put together by John Podesta, a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. The institute will function as a liberal counter to conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. A network of liberal groups has formed America Votes to coordinate the political activities of civil rights, environmental and abortion rights groups among others, and former Clinton aide Harold Ickes is trying to set up a pro-Democratic group to finance 2004 campaign television ads.

Another factor behind the surge of political activity is the fear that the ban on "soft money" will leave the Democratic National Committee without adequate funds to pay for state and federal "coordinated campaign" activities, which are voter mobilization efforts eight weeks before the election. In the past, the DNC paid for much of the costs with large "soft money" contributions from unions, corporations and rich people.

Republicans sent a warning shot across ACT`s bow. "We are going to be watching very closely to make sure they adhere to their claim that they will not be coordinating with the Democratic Party," said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. Such coordination would violate campaign finance laws.

Iverson contended that ACT`s financing indicates that "the Democrats are addicted to special-interest soft money and this allows them to feed that addiction by skirting the spirit of the new campaign finance law."

The shifting focus of Soros, who is worth $5 billion and is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, from the international sphere to the domestic political arena is considered significant.

In a statement describing his reasons for giving $10 million, Soros said, "I believe deeply in the values of an open society. For the past 15 years I have focused my energies on fighting for these values abroad. Now I am doing it in the United States. The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction."

Steve Rosenthal, whose mobilization of union members from 1996 through 2002 has been widely praised, will be ACT`s chief executive officer. He said that ACT will hire hundreds of organizers, state political directors and others as the 2004 election approaches.

ACT plans to concentrate its activities in 17 states, all of which are likely to be presidential battlegrounds: Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and West Virginia.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Soldiers of the Army`s 4th Infantry Divison photograph a detainee after a predawn raid in Tikrit, where U.S. troops have been particularly aggressive
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Raids in Iraq Net `Dolphins` Among `Sharks`
Civilians Get Swept Up With Targets

By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A10


TIKRIT, Iraq, Aug. 7 -- Khalid Ali Kamel pointed to the red lines on his arms and crossed his wrists today to indicate how U.S. soldiers had tied them together during a raid on Wednesday night.

"I could not go to work today; my hands hurt too much," said Kamel, 24, who is from Kut, about 105 miles southeast of Baghdad. He comes to Tikrit, nearly 200 miles northwest of his home town, to work as a day laborer.

On Wednesday night, units from the 4th Infantry Division and Special Operations forces conducted raids over a 750-mile swath of territory in search of more people plotting against U.S. forces. In Tikrit, a battalion went after a former member of Saddam`s Fedayeen militia believed to have organized and financed attacks against the U.S. military.

After an Iraqi informant told the U.S. Army the suspected militiaman was hiding out in a cement warehouse, soldiers raided a crumbling building in the northeastern industrial sector of the city. They brought tanks and helicopters and marched out 39 men, single file.

A military interpreter shouted questions, demanding names and home towns. Each man was photographed. When one older Iraqi complained about the cuffs being too tight, a soldier motioned him to be quiet. One detainee vomited on himself.

After three hours, the informant`s tip finally matched up, and U.S. soldiers arrested a man known as "The Rock." The soldiers released the other 38 men, Shiite Muslims who worked as day laborers, and gave them a parting warning.

"If you fight against your government, we will hunt you down and we will kill you," said Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division, whose battalion led the raid.

U.S. military raids have been especially aggressive in Tikrit, the home town of former president Saddam Hussein; based on recent attacks, officials say it is full of Hussein loyalists. Two improvised explosive devices went off within the past week, a military unit was fired upon several days ago and three rocket-propelled grenades landed inside the 4th Infantry Division compound.

Street graffiti extols the former ruler, and some residents speak well of him.

"We pray that Saddam Hussein will be back again," said Mohamed Faris, 13, as he walked along Highway 1, the main north-south route. He wore a blue Reebok hat.

In a news conference today at 4th Infantry Division headquarters here, the commander, Maj. Gen. Ray T. Odierno, said he is planning to carry on with offensive operations because the town remains restive.

"If we keep getting intelligence telling us that we have Fedayeen or any type of new organization that are forming that are anti-occupation, we are going to continue to conduct our raids," Odierno said. "I want to stay offensive in nature and preemptively deter attacks on our forces."

At the Pentagon, defense officials said that U.S. troops have begun to adjust their tactics, exercising less of a brute, scattershot approach in chasing down remnants of Hussein`s government.

"I think the notion is that we`re actually becoming more sophisticated," Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of operations on the Pentagon`s Joint Staff, said at a news conference. "The notion is that in those cases where we have to conduct a more traditional raid, we will do so. In those cases where it is possible to act in a more sophisticated fashion, we will do that as well, either because we have better intelligence or because we understand the environment better."

The 4th Infantry Division is assigned to a West Virginia-size zone north of Baghdad to the Iranian border and west to Lake Tharthar.

Odierno said his soldiers remain poised to capture Hussein if the opportunity presents itself. The former president moves every three to four hours and has many places to hide because of his extended family and tribal ties, he said.

Several high-profile individuals have been captured in raids in Tikrit, most notably Hussein`s trusted aide Abid Hamid Mahmud, in June. But less discussed are the hundreds of Iraqis swept up in the initial wave of a raid as the military tries to separate the guilty from the innocent.

"Sometimes when you are hunting sharks you pick up some dolphins," said Russell after the late-night raid. "You throw the dolphins back."

Fadhil Rahm, 30, of Kut, was one of those. He woke up from a nap today to recall the events. "I was terrified when I heard the sound of the helicopters, the tanks, the sounds of them breaking the locks," he said.

Rahm said he travels see his family in Kut about every two weeks. He would rather stay in his home town and work, but jobs are uncertain. "We want solutions, jobs and work in our city," he said. "To come all the way to work here, it`s not stable."

Kamel, meanwhile, pointed again to his arms, with the thin red lines on his wrists. "When they cuffed us with the nylon thread, it was very painful; some hands were swelling," he said. "They kept us for three hours."

At a cement business down the block, Sajad Kadhim, 24, sat on a flowered couch under slate walls adorned with prayer beads and verses from the Koran. Kadhim said he saw the tanks arriving and it reminded him of when his room was searched about three weeks ago. In that raid, he said soldiers stormed his room and, after they left, he noticed he was missing 14,000 dinars [about $9].

"We figured it would be like last time," he said of Wednesday`s raid, "so we unlocked our doors, took our money and put it in the closet."

Kadhim and his roommates went up on the roof to watch the raid. When they saw soldiers leading men outside of the building in single file, he was afraid they would come for him, he said.

"We kept awake until 2:30 in the morning," he said. "Each of us went into our room and closed the door."

Rasheed Abdullah Hentawi, the landlord of the building where Kadhim works, said soldiers damaged his property when they searched the building several weeks ago.

He clutched the bottom of his long white dishdasha robe as he climbed the stairs to the damaged second floor. Two doors were ripped from their hinges; U.S. soldiers took them away, Hentawi said. Other doors had shards of jagged wood in neat patterns, as if to suggest the use of a sledgehammer.

Hentawi said he made two complaints to the military civilian affairs office in town, without success. He went to city hall in Tikrit and an engineer inspected his property and estimated the damage was about $10,500, he said.

"What can we do?" he said. "We cannot complain against the Americans."

Staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Conan the Contender




Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A16


IF CALIFORNIA were a separate country -- and right now that doesn`t seem such a bad idea -- its economy would rank fifth in the world, just below Britain`s and above France`s. It accounts for more than 13 percent of U.S. economic output. Nearly one in eight Americans, some 35 million people, live there, most of them by choice.

We don`t cite these statistics out of a perverse desire to spoil the fun of the California gubernatorial recall. We are following the California melodrama as eagerly as anyone. Yesterday alone, we were treated to the sight of Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican car-alarm mogul who had invested $1.7 million in the campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis, tearfully withdrawing his own candidacy so that -- he piously announced -- he could continue his work toward Mideast peace. His campaign had never been about ambition, he said. "It was about higher obligation." We had Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante betraying his former running mate and breaking ranks with his party to announce his own candidacy -- never mind his rock-solid pledge in June: "I will not participate in any way other than to urge voters to reject this expensive perversion of the recall process. I will not attempt to advance my career at the expense of the people I was elected to serve. I do not intend to put my name on that ballot." And, of course, we had the newborn candidacies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington, who, to judge by their statements, seemed to have hired the same consultants. "The biggest problem we have is that California has been run now by special interests," the actor said. "I will go to Sacramento, and I will clean house." Said Ms. Huffington: "What we need is somebody who can come and clean house and not be dependent on the special interests."

And then there were the pornographer-candidates, the Hollywood candidates, the punk rock candidates -- great fun, yes, and made all the more satisfying by the righteous sense that in his second term Gov. Davis is reaping a harvest of his own sowing. After all, if this preposterous recall election, coming less than a year after his reelection, represents another low in America`s descent into politics-as-continuous-warfare, then Mr. Davis has to accept some responsibility for it. Probably the greatest achievement of his first term was the enormous reelection fund he began accumulating almost from the start; and a key to his reelection was his intervention in the Republican primary to trash the better qualified of his potential opponents. Having mismanaged California`s energy crisis and spent the state into an unimaginably large budget deficit, Mr. Davis has few supporters in the state beyond his immediate family.

But -- to spoil the fun a bit, and seeing as California is not a separate country -- no one who cares about American democracy can welcome this spectacle. Pending court challenges may delay the vote, but it now seems likely that Californians will soon be asked to consider Mr. Davis`s ouster and, if they say yes, to choose from a long list a new governor who may have few qualifications and who may enter office with a small plurality of the vote.

It will be easy during a short, Leno-driven campaign to pretend that the state`s problems can be easily solved, by closing tax "loopholes" or cutting "waste." "People are sick and tired of politicians," Mr. Schwarzenegger said Wednesday. No doubt many are. But the skillful conduct of politics -- the art of compromise and negotiation among competing interests -- ultimately will be needed to solve California`s problems. American voters rightly have tended to be wary of wealthy would-be saviors who claim to be above the fray, who disdain party but represent "all the people," who tout their independence because they can pay for their own campaigns. But it can take time and exposure for the appeal of such candidates to wane. In a campaign this short and unusual, no one can predict what Californians may saddle themselves with.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Posted on Fri, Aug. 08, 2003

HELEN THOMAS
Rice: The hawk in Washington

The most powerful woman in Washington`s official life is Condoleezza Rice, the White House national-security advisor. She has President Bush`s ear on issues of war and peace and is the link between Bush and his hawkish advisors.

Despite some recent obvious failings in foreign policy, Rice appears to be destined for even bigger things. She is being mentioned as a possible successor to Secretary of State Colin Powell if Bush wins a second term. Her appointment would please the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party.

There also has been speculation that Rice, 46, might run for governor of California in 2006 or beyond. She previously served as provost of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

For now, she has the spotlight at the White House. Bush sings her praises and relies heavily on her advice. He went slightly ballistic at his news conference last week when asked if Rice should share some of the blame for the 16-word flub in his State of the Union Message on Jan. 28 -- when he said that the British government had evidence that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa.

A testy Bush replied that Rice was ``an honest person, fabulous, and America is lucky to have her service.``

Finally, dogged by reporters at his news conference, Bush said that he took the responsibility ``absolutely.``

Rice, who should have come forward earlier, became the fourth person to do a mea culpa for that flap. When interviewed on PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer that evening, a few hours after Bush had rushed to her defense, she declared: ``I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode.``

But, get this -- she went on to say: ``What I feel most responsible for is that this is detracting from the very strong case the president has been making`` for war against Iraq. There was not a word there about any responsibility for misleading the American people and the world.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Rice went on TV talk shows to justify an attack, saying, ``You can`t afford to stand by . . . looking for a smoking gun, which could become a mushroom cloud.``

Rice is reported to be the first person to brief the president on foreign affairs every morning. She also shows up often to spend weekends at Camp David with the Bush family and is the key intelligence briefer for the president at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Her aides say that she meets with Bush five or six times a day. Proximity to the president is the key to power in the White House, and her West Wing office isn`t far from the Oval Office.

Aides say that Bush is often heard to ask: ``What does Condi think?``

She also confers by phone every morning with Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and has contact with 10 Downing St., the British prime minister`s headquarters, to coordinate U.S.-British policy statements on Iraq.

While Rice and Powell seem to have amicable relations, the State Department takes a softer line in international affairs than does Rice`s team of hard-liners.

When she first took over the foreign-policy post, she promptly distanced the United States from the United Nations and began to tear up many U.S. treaty commitments and arms-control accords. The result? The United Nations has certainly been weakened, the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union has been junked and the global warming treaty has been shelved.

Dr. Rice, as she likes to be called, readily defends the administration`s ``go-it-alone`` strategy. In an interview with The St. Paul Pioneer Press, she declared, ``The president wasn`t elected to sign bad treaties.``

Rice obviously bought the right-wing thesis that, because the United States is the sole superpower in the world, it has a mission to use its muscle to impose its will on other nations and forcefully depose ruthless dictators.

If she eventually succeeds Powell at the State Department, any remaining doves had better fly away.

©2003 Hearst Newspapers

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6483697.ht…

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A threat to one is a threat to all in a nation of laws

By DOUG BANDOW

08/07/03 (Japan Times) WASHINGTON -- There is a "very real potential" that al-Qaeda will strike again on U.S. soil, warns Attorney General John Ashcroft. Which makes it even more difficult to criticize the Bush administration`s efforts to combat terrorism. But while the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact, it also means nothing unless it applies in difficult, unpopular circumstances -- like the case of Jose Padilla.

Several groups, ranging from the conservative Rutherford Institute to the leftwing People for the American Way and the libertarian Cato Institute, have filed a joint "friend of the court" brief in federal appeals court to defend Padilla`s right to an attorney. The Defense Department is holding Padilla in isolation, after President George W. Bush designated him an "enemy combatant."

Fighting a decentralized terrorist organization with cells in scores of nations isn`t easy. And one can`t rely on Queensberry rules in fighting people willing to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. Thus, whatever the criticism of the imprisonment of nearly 700 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, they are "enemy combatants" and are not entitled to U.S. constitutional protections.

But Padilla, accused of plotting an attack with a "dirty" (nuclear) bomb, is a U.S. citizen arrested in the United States. The Constitution applies to him.

Obviously, to defend Padilla`s constitutional rights is not to defend Padilla. If he is guilty as charged, he should never leave prison -- if he isn`t executed.

Potential mass murderers deserve swift, sure and severe punishment. Genuine justice demands no less. However, justice must done. Which means the truth must be determined. And through a procedure consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

Padilla was arrested more than a year ago. He has not been charged with any crime. While his case was pending in federal court, the Defense Department placed him in a navy brig, where he is being held in communicado, unable to see or talk with family members or attorneys.

The reason, explains the administration, is that Bush has designated Padilla an enemy combatant. Yet the constitution gives the president no such power.

Yes, being commander in chief carries implicit powers. But they are not absolute. For instance, seizing enemies overseas in a war zone, notes the amicus brief, "is a far cry from claiming an unfettered power to detain without charge any unarmed person seized outside a zone of active combat, particularly those on U.S. soil who are already subject to criminal process."

In short, had Padilla been a Saudi citizen and a member of al-Qaeda seized in a raid on an Afghan terrorist camp, he should expect, and would deserve, such treatment. If he was an American citizen detained under the same circumstances, he would have little cause for complaint. But Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in America.

The president`s case would be stronger had Congress authorized him to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. It has not.

In 1971 Congress passed 18 U.S.C., section 4001 (a), to prevent the detention of Americans without a statutory basis. The congressional authorization for a military response after 9/11 made no mention of arresting U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. The Patriot Act provided for the detention of aliens, not citizens, in America suspected of terrorist ties, and only for a temporary period of time, after which they must be charged, deported, or released.

Congress has voted to pay the expense of enemy combatants. But as the amicus brief notes, "Appropriations bills do not authorize government actions; they fund them."

If Congress wanted to depart so dramatically from settled law, it would have to do so explicitly. To agree to pay for the imprisonment of foreign terrorists seized abroad is not the same as authorizing the arrest of Americans in America.

Of course, this doesn`t mean that Padilla should be freed. It doesn`t mean that the exact conditions of his detention and trial should not reflect the unique security requirements of his case. But it does mean that he must be charged, allowed to defend himself and tried.

Hard cases make bad law, it is often said, and so it is with Jose Padilla. If any American citizen deserves to be treated as an enemy combatant, he would seem to be the one. But if he can be designated an enemy combatant, so can any American citizen. That is not a power a president has or should have.

Padilla appears to be a moral monster. Nevertheless, it is important to defend his right to an attorney and a trial. Not out of sympathy for him. But to protect the constitutional liberties of every American.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World."

The Japan Times: Aug. 6, 2003

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Battle Brews Over Detainee`s Rights
By Tom Brune
WASHINGTON BUREAU

August 6, 2003 (Newsday) Washington - Accused "dirty bomb" terrorist suspect Jose Padilla has been isolated in a naval brig for more than a year, ever since President George W. Bush classified him as an "enemy combatant" and called him a "threat to the nation."

But last week, nine thick friend-of-the-court briefs were filed in Padilla`s appellate case, arguing against what they see as just as serious a threat to the nation: Bush`s assertion that he can, as commander-in-chief, order the military to detain an American citizen picked up on U.S. soil indefinitely without charges, a trial or access to a lawyer.

"The precedent the executive [Bush] asks this court to set, represents one of the gravest threats to the rule of law, and to the liberty our Constitution enshrines, that the nation has ever faced," said one brief by 14 retired federal appellate judges and former government officials, including Abner Mikva, Harold Tyler and Philip Allen Lacovara.

Other briefs argued that Bush`s assertion is "unprecedented and shocks the conscience," is "startling" in its implications, runs "brazenly afoul" of constitutional principles, and poses "a grave threat to the constitutional rights of all Americans."

The strong language of the briefs - filed by dozens of law professors, libertarian and rights groups, lawyers` associations, international law experts and others - sets the tone for the constitutional battle being fought in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan over Padilla`s right to challenge his detention.

Federal authorities quietly arrested Padilla as he arrived on a flight to Chicago from Europe on May 8, 2002, accusing him of meeting with al-Qaida terrorists in a plan to set off a radiological bomb here. For a month, he was jailed as a material witness in New York. On June 9, 2002, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant," a vaguely defined status, saying he was a danger and possible source of intelligence about terrorism, and abruptly placed him under military control.

The court is hearing an appeal by the government of the Dec. 4 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey that Padilla has the right to meet with an attorney to help him challenge his detention.

The court will hear arguments in the case some time after mid-October by Donna Newman and Andrew Patel, Padilla`s court-appointed lawyers, and Justice Department attorneys. The case very likely will rise to the Supreme Court.

Justice Department attorneys argue the president`s power to detain Padilla is based on "settled historical practice," sanctioned by the laws and customs of war, and a well-established exercise of the president`s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief.

But Joseph Onek, a former State Department official and consultant on three of the briefs, said the government is seeking to extrapolate the powers of the president in a way that is not only without congressional authorization but in defiance of a law enacted by Congress to prohibit citizens from being detained without hearings or lawyers.

"Under our constitution, we don`t allow those extrapolations," said Onek, who works with the Constitution Project and The Open Society Policy Center, nonprofit policy and research groups.

The amicus briefs challenge the president`s assertion of his powers from a constitutional point of view, as argued in the brief filed by the American Bar Association, and under international law, as in a brief by experts including Stephen Saltzburg, general counsel for the National Institute of Military Justice.

Among those filing briefs is a collaboration of libertarian groups, including the Cato Institute and Rutherford Institute on the right, the Constitution Project in the middle and People for the American Way and Center for National Security Studies on the left.

Another brief was filed by several groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Lawyers Guild and 130 law professors.

Other briefs were filed by a group of about three dozen law professors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even the leftist Sparticist League, according to the Padilla docket. No groups filed briefs in support of Bush, according to the docket.

Although the Bush administration has won most of the legal challenges to its war on terrorism so far, Onek spoke with optimism about this case, saying authors of the briefs hope to create a "Michigan effect."

By including a broad sampling of legal thought on Padilla, Onek said, the attorneys are attempting to recreate the successful influence of the dozens of briefs filed in favor of college diversity in the Supreme Court`s split decision in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases.

The nine briefs filed in Padilla`s case fall short of the more than 60 filed in the Michigan cases, but the support is welcomed by Newman.

"I think it is significant," she said. "It shows not only how the parties feel about the issue, but how the rest of the community feels about it."

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usjust0634…

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Pew Research Center hat über 2500 Personen befragt, die anderen Institute befragen gerade einmal 1000 Leute oder weniger. Pew Research wird als unabhängig bezeichnet. Die Untersuchung umfasst den Zeitraum von Mitte Juli bis Anfang August. Die überalles Zustimmung für Bush fällt auf 53 % nach 74 % nach dem Krieg. Die allgemeine Zufriedenheit wie die Dinge in den USA ablaufen fällt auf 40 % von 50 % im April.

Bush Approval Slips - Fix Economy, Say Voters
Democrats Frustrated with Party Even as Candidates Gain Visibility

Released: August 7, 2003


Introduction and Summary

As President Bush shows increasing political vulnerability, the Democratic presidential field is beginning to come into focus. Bush`s overall approval rating has declined to pre-Iraq war levels and his lead in a match-up with a hypothetical Democrat has narrowed to five points (43%-38%). Nearly six-in-ten Americans (57%) now say the economy - not terrorism - is the more important presidential priority. At the same time, Democratic candidates have made modest gains in visibility, and potential support, since early-July.

Yet most Democrats are unhappy with their party`s performance in standing up for core principles and this frustration has increased over the past year. Six-in-ten Democrats say the party is doing only a fair or poor job of standing up for traditional positions such as helping the poor and representing working people, while just 38% say the party is doing an excellent or good job in this area. Since May 2002, the number who say the party is doing at most only a fair job of standing up for core principles has risen seven points, from 53% to 60%.

The Democrats` unhappiness is even more evident when contrasted with the positive feelings Republicans have for their party. Fully 57% of Republicans believe the GOP is doing an excellent or good job of advocating traditional party positions like cutting taxes and promoting conservative social values. In May 2002, 55% of Republicans gave the party high marks for standing up for core principles.

Among Democrats, liberals have become especially unhappy with the party`s performance in standing up for traditional principles, and this has led to a large ideological gap within the party over this issue. In May 2001, near the beginning of Bush`s term, roughly the same numbers of liberal and conservative Democrats expressed satisfaction with how well the party was doing in this area (48% of liberals, 45% of conservatives). But today, just 31% of liberal Democrats say the party has done an excellent or good job of advocating traditional positions, while conservative Democrats are, if anything, slightly more satisfied with the party`s performance than they were two years ago (52% good/excellent).

The latest Pew Research Center national poll of 2,528 adults, conducted July 14-Aug. 5, shows that the rising dissatisfaction among Democrats with their party is not shaping the presidential race. None of the party`s candidates has a major advantage in terms of potential support among disaffected Democratic voters. Overall, there has been a gradual increase since July in the proportion of Americans who are familiar with the Democratic candidates and in the percentage who say there is at least some chance that they would vote for them.

Since July, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has made somewhat larger gains than the other candidates. His name recognition is up nine points (from 37% to 46%), and among those who have heard of Dean, 41% say there is a "good" or "some" chance they would vote for him, up from 32% in July. But Dean continues to trail Sen. Joe Lieberman (50%), Sen. John Kerry (47%) and Rep. Dick Gephardt (45%) in terms of potential support. Most voters (54%), including 55% of Democrats and Democratic leaners, have still not heard of Dean. Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry have much greater name recognition, among all voters and among Democrats. Candidate visibility and support - as well as other opinions measured in this survey - did not change significantly over the course of the polling period.

As President Bush`s approval rating has inched downward - from 58% last month to 53% in the current survey - there has been a sharp rise in the number of Americans who believe Bush should devote more attention to the economy than to the war on terrorism. More than twice as many Americans say it is more important for the president to focus on the economy as say that about the war on terrorism (57% vs. 27%).

That represents a dramatic shift since January when a 43% plurality felt Bush should devote more attention to the war on terrorism. Those who believe the president should focus more on the economy (a group largely comprised of Democrats and independents) disapprove of his job performance by 50%-42%. The smaller proportion of the public who say it is more important for Bush to focus on the war on terrorism (mostly Republicans and independents) overwhelmingly approve of his job performance (75%-18%).

Public perceptions of the U.S. military operation in Iraq have become more negative, though a 63% majority continues to endorse the decision to go to war. On domestic issues, Americans continue to voice willingness to roll back or delay tax cuts - rather than cut domestic programs or add to the deficit - to finance increased spending on defense and homeland security. Moreover, solid majorities favor providing universal health insurance even if it means repealing tax cuts or raising taxes.



http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=190

http://people-press.org/reports/print.php3?PageID=731

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As ordered, it`s about oil
Ruth Rosen
Friday, August 8, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/08/ED16…


AN EXECUTIVE ORDER can be a surreptitious way of making policy. It often makes an end-run around Congress and frequently escapes the media`s attention as well. It is, in short, a way of making policy by fiat.

President Bush has signed a slew of executive orders that have gone unreported for weeks or months -- most notably, changes to environmental regulations and restricted access to former presidential papers and Freedom of Information Act information.

Now, a potentially explosive executive order has just been discovered by SEEN, the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Signed on May 22, it appears to give U.S. oil companies in Iraq blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Here`s what happened: On May 22, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1438, which provided gas and oil companies in Iraq with limited immunity until Dec. 21, 2007. Their reason? To protect the flow of oil revenues into the development fund that will be used to reconstruct Iraq. The U.N. resolution, however, did not provide immunity from human rights violations or environmental damage. Nor did it protect any employee or any company after the oil was produced and extracted in Iraq.

Notice what President Bush changed when, on the same day, he issued Executive Order 13303 -- called "Protecting the Development Fund and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest." Unlike the U.N. resolution, the president`s order appears to place U.S. corporations above the law for any activities related to Iraq oil, either in that country or in the United States.

It also declared a national emergency as the justification for sweeping aside all federal statues, including the Alien Tort Claims Act, and appears to provide immunity against contractual disputes, discrimination suits, violations of labor practices, international treaties, environmental disasters and human rights violations. Even more, it doesn`t limit immunity to the production of oil, but also protects individuals, companies and corporations involved in selling and marketing the oil as well.

Unlike the U.N. resolution, therefore, the order provides immunity for more of the industry`s activities, as well as for a broader swath of individuals, companies and corporations.

These are the kind of legal protections that most corporations could only dream of enjoying. If, for example, a U.S. oil company engages in criminal behavior in California, and its assets can be traced back to Iraqi oil, it could be immune from any kind of prosecution.

Tellingly, the president`s order provides no such legal immunity for companies who are helping to reconstruct Iraqi communications, computer or electrical infrastructure.

"In terms of legal liability," said Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington nonprofit group that defends whistle blowers, "the executive order cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law. It is a blank check for corporate anarchy, potentially robbing Iraqis of both their rights and their resources."

Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, told me that this is a "tortured and incorrect reading of the executive order and what it hopes to achieve: protecting the revenue that belongs to the Iraqi people." When asked why the order did not exempt human rights or environmental damage, he responded, "When the regulations are written, they will address these."

But Betsy Apple, managing director and an attorney with EarthRights International, a Washington, D.C., human rights organization, thinks this is disingenuous and described the executive order as "an outrage" in a telephone interview. "It is a green light for oil companies to do business in Iraq, without worrying about legal liability," she said.

For some critics, the executive order supports the suspicion that the invasion of Iraq was always about gaining control of that country`s oil. Jim Vallette, senior researcher at the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, said, "This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for U.S. corporate interest over Iraqi oil."

The Institute and the Government Accountability Project have now asked Congress to investigate -- and repeal -- this order. The president`s order is an outrage and Congress should act immediately. In our democracy, no one is above the law.

E-mail Ruth Rosen at [e-mail]

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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waffen sind das, was die Irakis am nötingsten brauchen.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraqarm…

Arms Plan for Iraqi Forces Is Questioned
By Mark Fineman
Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2003

WASHINGTON — In a nation awash with hundreds of thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, the U.S.-led occupation authority is planning to buy and import 34,000 more of the ubiquitous weapons to equip a new Iraqi army.

The plan has baffled some observers, not only because U.S. forces in Iraq have already seized and stockpiled thousands of the rifles since April, but because defense analysts have strongly recommended that the new Iraqi army be equipped with more modern, U.S.-made weapons.

The AK-47, designed by Russians shortly after World War II, is manufactured almost exclusively in former Soviet Bloc countries and China. Among the possible beneficiaries of such an unlikely U.S. order: Poland, where the assault rifles are made and support for the war in Iraq has been strong.

With a bidding deadline today, the Coalition Provisional Authority now running Iraq is quietly seeking the best deal on the arsenal from U.S.-licensed arms dealers, asking that they deliver the assault weapons to the Taji military base north of Baghdad by Sept. 3. The plans were spelled out on its official Web site this week.

A spokesman for the Coalition Joint Task Force, which commands the military occupation in Iraq, was unaware of the request for bids and questioned it.

"That`s surprising," said Army Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, a task force spokesman in Baghdad. "It would seem to me odd that we`re out there looking to buy more weapons for a place where we`ve already captured and set aside so many of them. It would raise a red flag for me, that`s for sure."

But an official with the occupation authority in Baghdad, who asked not to be named, confirmed the plans and said the AK-47s would be used to equip a new Iraqi army being formed to replace the 400,000-strong military that was formally disbanded in May.

The U.S. Army and private American defense contractors, led by Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, have begun to train the first Iraqi army recruits in Kirkuk under a $48-million Pentagon contract, and the Taji base is the supply point for that northern Iraqi city. The new force is expected to number 12,000 at the end of this year and 40,000 in three years.

In its Internet solicitation for the 34,000 weapons and accessories, technically called a request for proposals, the occupation authority specified that it wanted to buy "brand-new, never-fired, fixed-stock AK-47 assault rifles with certified manufacture dates not earlier than 1987."

The authority wants a new shipment of the weapons from a single source "so that they`re all of the same standard, and they`re all new and ready to use," the official said. He declined to speculate on the cost of the weapons or the source of the funds that will be used to buy them, adding, "We`re looking for a product that works, and we`re looking for value."

Individual AK-47s are advertised on the Internet for several hundred dollars apiece. Although it was unclear what the per-rifle cost would be under such a large purchase, the total order would presumably exceed $1 million.

But the U.S. forces who seized control of Iraq in April have since discovered vast stockpiles of new, never-fired AK-47s, which U.S. military officials said have been deliberately warehoused for a future Iraqi army.

At one compound of eight concrete warehouses that a company of the 10th Engineer Battalion found in central Baghdad in mid-April, Times reporters watched soldiers form a human chain to fill a truck bed with AK-47s so new the soldiers` hands turned orange from the packing grease.

One officer on the scene at the time called the arms cache a "mother lode." Another said there were so many weapons he`d lost count. First Lt. Matt Miletich, who was in charge of the company, said then that the weapons would be held and guarded until a new Iraqi government and army were ready to receive them.

The following day, U.S. Marines who were securing the city of Tikrit north of Baghdad announced that they had found 100,000 AK-47s there, 80,000 of them in a hospital. And in the months that have followed, there have been almost daily reports of U.S. military units seizing quantities of AK-47s both large and small, new and used.

"We`ve been designating a lot of these captured weapons specifically for the new Iraqi army and police organizations we`re setting up," Fitzgibbons said, although he acknowledged that many of the weapons were old.

The civil authority official, however, asserted that the makes and models of the new weapons seized have "slight differences" depending on the nation where they were made, and that the goal of the agency`s AK-47 purchase is to standardize the arms.

He added that the agency decided to order AK-47s rather than another weapon made in the U.S. or another Western country not only because the Iraqi recruits are familiar with it but because "the AK-47 is the easiest weapon to teach, and it`s the easiest to use."

Designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947, the AK-47 is manufactured largely in former Soviet Bloc nations. It was standard issue for the Iraqi army and security services under the Saddam Hussein regime, which handed out well over a million of them to soldiers and civilians and warehoused tens of thousands more.

To some U.S. defense analysts, that is scant justification.

"Basically, they would be equipping the new and improved Iraqi military with un-American weapons. If you`ve decided to start all over again from the beginning, it would make sense to equip the new Iraqi military with American equipment," said John Pike, who heads the Virginia-based, nonprofit GlobalSecurity.org defense policy group.

"It raises a lot of interesting questions that will continue to be raised as they rebuild the Iraqi military If played right, this could be a real bonanza for American armament companies."

Pike and his group say that the purchase, presumably the first of many for the new Iraqi army, potentially has multibillion-dollar implications.

"What about tanks? How many tanks does Iraq need?" Pike asked. "Does Iraq need fighter planes? Are they going to buy Swedish fighter planes?"

A recent study by Global- Security.org on rebuilding the Iraqi military said: "It is important for the United States to monitor and supervise Iraq`s military reconstruction, as the U.S. has an interest in reequipping Iraq with U.S. military equipment. The use of U.S. systems would require significant training and allow the U.S. to have continued military influence in the country long after significant U.S. units had departed.

"Likewise, if left to its own accord, Iraq would likely turn to other available systems on the open arms sales market, most likely Russian or Russian- derivative arms that the Iraqi military already has experience in using."

The coalition authority`s request for the rifles does specify that its supplier have "required licenses and credentials" that include an official registration with the State Department as a "broker" of defense products and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Class III "license for U.S. companies," which permits the manufacture or sale of fully automatic assault weapons.

Such a license permits a U.S. company to sell the weapons only to U.S. law enforcement agencies. But if the company also is registered with the State Department`s Defense Trade Controls Office, it can broker the sale of those weapons from a foreign manufacturer to another foreign buyer.

Independent analysts added that, given those specifications, the coalition`s winning bidder probably would be a licensed U.S. arms broker or dealer who arranges the shipment to Iraq from a former Soviet Bloc country that makes AK-47s.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-secu…

Views Differ Over Responsibility for Embassies in Iraq
U.S. defense officials say it is up to local police to protect the missions. But U.N. and legal experts contend that it is the job of the occupying forces.
By John Hendren and Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writers

August 8, 2003



WASHINGTON — Although the Pentagon insisted Thursday that it is not responsible for securing foreign embassies in Baghdad, U.N. officials and several legal experts said that under international law, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is responsible for the safety of diplomatic missions in Iraq.

"Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupying power has responsibility for law and order and security," said Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, after an attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday that left at least 12 people dead.

U.S. defense officials said the job of protecting the embassies has been left to the newly reconstituted Iraqi police force. "The way to address the problem [is] internal security provided in Iraq by Iraqis," Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon. "It is far more likely that Iraqis will guard embassies of other nations in Baghdad."

Pentagon officials said that they did not yet know who bombed the embassy or whether the attack marked a shift in tactics by guerrillas who have carried out hundreds of assaults with rifles, grenades and small explosives since President Bush declared major combat over May 1. What is clear, analysts say, is that the gap between the security that Iraqi police are capable of providing and the security that coalition forces are willing to provide leaves attackers wide berth to operate.

In Baghdad, U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer III did not comment on the bombing.

Several analysts say that as the leader of the occupying force, the United States bears ultimate responsibility.

Laurence E. Rothenberg, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a specialist in international law, said that under the Hague Regulations of 1907, the United States, as an occupying power, was responsible for "taking all measures in its power to ensure public order and safety."

At some point, he said, the occupier can transfer that responsibility to the new Iraqi Governing Council and local police, but until an independent Iraqi government is established, "I`d say the United States is still responsible for public order and safety."

Wherever the legal responsibility lies, many Iraqis insist that the moral onus rests firmly with the Americans.

Although five Iraqi police officers were in the Jordanian Embassy when the deadly attack occurred, Iraqi police have only recently begun to have a presence on the streets and are just beginning to learn Western approaches to investigating crime and arresting suspects. They have had some successes when working in joint patrols with American military police, but security in Baghdad remains extremely volatile.

Schwartz insisted that the U.S. military`s best course was to leave the Iraqi police force to guard diplomatic buildings, freeing American soldiers to track anti-coalition guerrillas.

"I would say you really don`t defend against it," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita added. "You stay on offense."

By targeting Jordan, one of the United States` most consistent allies in the Arab world, the attack appeared to send a signal that to be a friend of the Americans was to be a potential target.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell expressed regret over the attack in a call to the Jordanian foreign minister and said the Coalition Provisional Authority would "do what it can to secure the site" of the bombed-out embassy, according to a senior State Department official.

The initial U.S. reading was that the attack was aimed at undercutting support for the Iraqi Governing Council, the official said.

Theories of potential suspects included loyalists of deposed President Saddam Hussein who were angered by Jordan`s role in helping Americans in the war, Hussein opponents angry that Jordan gave asylum to the ex-dictator`s daughters last week, and Al Qaeda-style militants who harbor strong anti-American feelings but find easier targets among U.S. allies.




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Hendren reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and Bob Drogin, Paul Richter and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Habe ich in Geschichte nicht aufgepasst? Nach dem Waffenstillstand Mai 45?
Ricesaid that Americans looked back only on the U.S. successes in postwar Germany, but American forces there faced the so-called werewolves, Nazi remnants who attacked Allied troops and engaged in sabotage

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-usmi…


Rice Likens Iraq to Postwar Germany
She and Powell lead an administration initiative to recast the U.S.-led occupation forces` problems as bumps on a long road to success.
By Robin Wright
Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2003

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration warned Thursday that the reconstruction of Iraq and the wider Middle East will require the same "generational commitment" that went into rebuilding Germany and Europe after World War II.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice, invoking the historic parallel, said postwar Germany had been as messy as postwar Iraq, and yet Germany eventually became the "linchpin" of a fully democratic Europe.

"The historical analogy is important," Rice said in a Dallas speech. "If that different future is to be realized, we and our allies must make a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region."

As the United States today marks 100 days since declaring the end of major combat, the Bush administration`s top national security team is fanning out in public appearances and editorial comment to recast its mounting problems in Iraq as mere glitches on the road to success.

Rice, speaking at the annual convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists, said that Americans looked back only on the U.S. successes in postwar Germany, but American forces there faced the so-called werewolves, Nazi remnants who attacked Allied troops and engaged in sabotage "much like today`s Baathist and Fedayeen remnants" in Iraq.

The Marshall Plan, at the time the largest U.S. foreign aid package devised, came in response to failed efforts to rebuild Germany in late 1945 and 1946, she added.

U.S. troops will not need to be in Iraq as long as they have been in Germany, now almost 60 years, but the United States will need to engage "broadly" throughout the region economically, diplomatically and culturally, Rice said. "We must have the patience and perseverance to see it through."

Rice`s comments came as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, told reporters in the country Thursday that U.S. troops would have to stay in Iraq for two years at an "absolute minimum" — and probably longer — to give Iraqis time to develop a new army of at least three motorized divisions capable of defending the country.

In his briefing of foreign reporters in Washington, with a video linkup to correspondents in New York and Los Angeles, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the current period "a time of hope and promise" and stressed the U.S.-led coalition`s achievements in Iraq.

"In Iraq, a dictator is gone. A people are free. They are returning to schools. They are opening their universities. The power is being restored. The infrastructure is being rebuilt. The economy is starting to function," he said.

But Powell also acknowledged that neither the death of Saddam Hussein`s two sons last month nor the capture or killing of the former Iraqi leader would solve current security problems.

Groups both inside and outside Iraq are still determined to defy the U.S.-led coalition and deny Iraqis "a better life and a new country," he told reporters.

As a result, the U.S. is now shifting tactics, showing more flexibility as the threat changes, he said. Coalition troops may increasingly hand over local security to Iraqi forces to lower the U.S. military profile, he said.

"It may not always be the best technique [for U.S. forces] to flood an area. Maybe what you want to do is stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis, local officials — we`ve started to create security forces — that will protect installations so that you don`t need a coalition military organization protecting that installation," Powell said.

Comparing the decisions to a quarterback`s last-second adjustments in a football game, the secretary said U.S. commanders would from now on have to "call audibles" and alter tactics as the situation on the ground changes.

But the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq on Thursday and the JW Marriott Hotel in Indonesia on Tuesday served as reminders that the "civilized world must come together to defeat this scourge of terrorism" however and wherever it strikes, Powell added.

Despite the Arab League`s decision not to recognize the new U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Powell heralded the panel of 25 Iraqis from diverse religious, tribal and ethnic groups as the important first step in the return to full sovereignty.

Washington will work with the Arab League to try to persuade the 22-member bloc to change its position before the league`s September meeting, Powell said.

On another front in the volatile Middle East, Powell said the United States was engaged in talks with Israel over a controversial barrier that separates the West Bank from Israel. The issue is not the fence but its route, which occasionally intrudes on Palestinian areas and divides farmlands and cuts off villages, and the potential for Israel to someday say it marks the borders of a Palestinian state, he said.

Through media leaks and diplomatic reminders, the United States has let Israel know this week that it may deduct Israel`s expenditures on the fence from the $9 billion in loan guarantees passed this year by Congress.

In the toughest public language to date, Powell said the United States had identified some problems with current and future stages of the fence. "We have to be faithful to the congressional direction that we had with respect to how to use these loan guarantee moneys," he said.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gamble8…
COMMENTARY


Attention, Arnold: This Is Real Life
By Doug Gamble
Doug Gamble has written speech material for Republicans, including presidents Reagan and Bush.

August 8, 2003

Leave it to a movie star to come up with a stunning plot twist. Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be credited with pulling off one of the biggest surprises in state political history by throwing his headband into the ring.

It appears he deliberately misled some of his own political advisors, who had been saying that the actor was unlikely to run. The question is, can he mislead enough Californians into believing that he is the one to rescue the state from an unprecedented financial crisis and set it on a path back to its former glory? At the moment, most Californians apparently don`t think so; a recent Los Angeles Times poll found that 53% of registered voters were not inclined to vote for him.

Making his announcement on Jay Leno`s "The Tonight Show" rather than a legitimate news venue was an insult to everyone who takes politics and California`s problems seriously, indicating a candidacy more about self-promotion than public service. Likewise his flip remark that the decision to run was his most difficult since deciding to get a bikini wax in 1978, something that millions of Californians who are in real pain and looking for proven leadership must have found hilarious.

Schwarzenegger will undoubtedly pump up his performance on the stump as the campaign progresses, but his press conference outside the NBC studios in Burbank was pedestrian.

Of course Schwarzenegger is an amateur politician, one who may have many voters asking where`s the beef, as opposed to the beefcake. In a celebrity-obsessed society, the candidacy of a movie star with little political and no government experience may not seem so absurd in more tranquil times, but when the state is hanging by its fingertips over a pit of fiscal calamity?

Comparisons between Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan are both ludicrous and an affront to those who revere the former governor and president. Not only did Reagan pilot the Screen Actors Guild during one of the most tumultuous eras in its history, he also immersed himself in politics and public policy long before running to be chief executive of California.

Reagan also had something else that Schwarzenegger may not have: a thick hide for the indignities of the campaign trail. In the weeks leading up to the recall election, Schwarzenegger will learn that the inquisitors of the political press corps bear no resemblance to the fawning posterior-kissers who populate the celebrity beat. Then there will be the inevitable tabloids.

He doesn`t even compare with his "Predator" co-star Jesse Ventura, who was a real-life action hero as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and served four years as mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minn., before running for governor of that state. If Ventura is known for the line, "I ain`t got time to bleed," from "Predator," Schwarzenegger seems to be saying, "I ain`t got time to pay my political dues."

Schwarzenegger`s candidacy will not be embraced by California`s conservatives. Like former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (who had been leading Schwarzenegger in the polls), the actor — who is pro-choice, supports adoption rights for gay couples and is pro-gun control — is actually a Democrat in a Republican loincloth. He once said he was ashamed of Republicans who voted for the impeachment of President Clinton.

Republicans also have to ponder the possibility of Schwarzenegger winning and being a disastrous governor. That would put a Democrat back in the top job in 2006, returning state Republicans to the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.

If Davis is recalled and the choice of an alternative is determined by name recognition alone, Schwarzenegger would win. But if Californians recognize the need for deft leadership by an experienced politician who can navigate the mazes of government, there are enough viable alternatives to prevent the actor who debuted in "Hercules in New York" from appearing in a new production called "Neophyte in Sacramento."


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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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The cancellation of democracy

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By Bob Guldin
Originally published August 8, 2003



THE RIGHT to vote is absolutely basic to the American system of free and democratic government. That`s why it`s strange, and more than a little disturbing, that in several states, U.S. citizens are being deprived of their opportunity to vote in a 2004 presidential primary.
Because of a combination of tight budgets and partisan political maneuvering, at least three states, and probably more, will not hold presidential primaries next year. Legislators in recent months have canceled their states` primaries in Colorado, Kansas and Utah. Budget crunches were a big factor in all three states.

Colorado started the trend. On March 5, Republican Gov. Bill Owens signed a bill eliminating the 2004 primary, for a one-time savings of $2.2 million. The move was part of a major budget-cutting package that slashed $800 million from Colorado`s 2002-2003 budget.

But in Colorado and elsewhere, there`s also a partisan side to the drop-the-primary movement.

That`s because President Bush is a shoo-in for renomination, while the Democrats have a vigorous contest with many viable candidates - nine, at the latest count. So Republican strategists figure that holding a 2004 primary will give lots of free publicity to the Democrats while their own nominating process generates close to zero excitement. Canceling the primary, especially in a year of budget austerity, begins to look like a fine idea.

About 38 states and the District of Columbia plan to hold presidential primaries in 2004. Most states without primaries will hold party caucuses. But some states, including Alaska, Nevada and Wyoming, have not yet planned to hold primaries or caucuses, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Until the 1970s, most states chose delegates to the national party conventions through combinations of caucuses - local meetings of the party faithful - and statewide conventions. But primaries are clearly the most democratic and broad-based way of nominating presidential candidates. In a hotly contested primary, 20 percent of eligible voters may turn out - far more than ever show up at caucus meetings.

In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed Republican-backed legislation to cancel the state`s primary, which would have saved the state an estimated $3 million. "Arizona can well afford the price of democracy," Ms. Napolitano wrote in her veto message.

In Utah, the Republican-controlled legislature voted not to fund the 2004 primary, and GOP Gov. Michael O. Leavitt signed that measure. Democrats in Utah are attempting to raise money to pay for a party-funded primary while reducing its cost by using fewer polling places.

Similarly, in South Carolina, where the state does not fund presidential primaries, the Democratic Party is struggling to raise money to pay for its 2004 primary, and it`s not certain whether that election will be held.

But not all decisions to eliminate primaries have been made on partisan grounds. In Kansas, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a bill setting the state`s next presidential primary for 2008, saving the state an estimated $1.75 million next year. And in Michigan, the legislature voted to scrap the Republican primary with no argument from either Democratic legislators or Democratic Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm. Both parties will hold caucuses in 2004.

Cancellation of the Michigan primary will be a loss both to the state`s voters - who turned out in record numbers for the 2002 midterm primary - and the country generally. That`s because Michigan has sometimes provided political surprises of national importance: Sen. John McCain of Arizona beat candidate George W. Bush in 2000, and on the Democratic side, both George Wallace and the Rev. Jesse Jackson won Michigan primaries.

In Missouri, the future of the primary is in doubt. The legislature adjourned in May without appropriating any money for the 2004 primary.

Besides fiscal austerity, an argument many lawmakers make in favor of abolishing primaries is the "front-loaded" primary schedule. That is, in the race to make their influence felt in the nominating process, more and more states have moved their primaries to the front of the line. A delegate selection process that once ran from February to June is now effectively over in early March. So if your state`s primary isn`t early, it`s irrelevant.

That`s why Arizona`s Governor Napolitano, who vetoed the bill to cancel her state`s primary, also decided to move the date of the primary up to Feb. 3. That way, the Arizona vote is early enough to make a practical difference.

No matter how you rationalize it - budget shortfalls, election schedules or partisan politics - the prospect of multiple states calling off elections is deeply disturbing. The result is that in 2004, fewer Americans will get to participate in one of their country`s most important political choices.


Bob Guldin, a writer, edited the book Choosing the President 2004, to be published this fall by Lyons Press. He lives in Takoma Park.

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.primaries08a…

Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery

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``Bush`s moral message losing legitimacy``
Printed on Friday, August 08, 2003 @ 00:00:19 CDT ( )

By Matthew Riemer
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) -- On December 19th, 2002, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a report entitled "Wealthy nations ... U.S. stands alone in its embrace of religion." The report begins, "Religion is much more important to Americans than to people living in other wealthy nations. Six-in-ten (59%) people in the U.S. say religion plays a very important role in their lives. This is roughly twice the percentage of self-avowed religious people in Canada (30%), and an even higher proportion when compared with Japan and Western Europe. Americans` views are closer to people in developing nations than to the publics of developed nations." Countries with a similar percentage to the United States were Venezuela, Mexico, and Turkey.

Such data can perhaps shed light on the public`s view of things like politics and war and the criteria used when analyzing information and events. President Bush is a self-proclaimed religious man and this forwardness (as well as its subject) reverberates throughout much of his constituency. This is potentially one of the reasons why he is so revered by a great many people: he doubles as a spiritual everyman. Played out in rhetoric, this tends to lead to the "moralization" of one`s activities so the United States` principles, goals, actions, and intentions are placed in a moral context, presented and explained in a we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident manner. The concepts of "good" and "evil" figure predominantly in the exercise of logic.

Essentially, the argument for war in Iraq was -- as is almost everything else -- a moral one. As time goes on, and as other means and methods of logic fail moderate scrutiny, the moral argument that the world is better off without the evil Saddam Hussein is inevitably fallen back upon, revealing its fundamental place within the ideology advanced by pro-militarism advocates.

It is this ideological and moral stratum that unwaveringly supports the Bush administration. To these individuals, the issue of forged documents pertaining to uranium sales, over-hyped stories about aluminum tubes, and the absence of quantities of chemical and biological weapons consistent with Washington`s "irrefutable" claims is a moot point. For many Americans, the simple destruction of "evil" is a solid enough pretext for large-scale military intervention, while innocents killed and all the other inevitable crimes and wrongs perpetuated during wars of "liberation" are chalked up to maxims such as "freedom isn`t free" and the "price of freedom."

This, however, is not the mindset throughout much of the world, and it is here where the distinction between America and the rest of the first world on religion and moral explanations is useful to look at. The majority of Europe, not to mention the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and South America all opposed Washington`s preemptive war and are far less convinced by political theories articulated through moral logic and imperative. It is this large swath of the planet`s people and governments for which the Bush administration must satisfactorily explain its actions, even when they may be overlooked domestically.

These two political relationships -- the domestic and the international -- while separate, do interact very subtly, forcing the Bush administration to strike a fine balance in its rhetoric and propaganda. The international community and intelligent opposition in the U.S. will demand a more internationalized approach and level of accountability from the Bush administration than the traditional domestic bastion of support found most predominantly in rural America.

But now President Bush is beginning to receive criticism from an increasing number of quarters, whether about how to handle the Niger flap, or how to proceed in Liberia or in Iraq, or how secretive his administration is. This has led to a decline in the believability and legitimacy of a moral explanation for one`s every move, as a growing number of people are no longer willing to just accept the Bush administration`s statements at face value.

A year ago -- when much of the complex network of lies now being revealed was being laid -- moral politics had a greater currency with the American people who were repeatedly told by government officials and the corporate media about the incomprehensibly evil Saddam Hussein. One event -- Saddam`s use of chemical weapons during an attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja -- was emphasized throughout the build-up to war to highlight Saddam`s ruthlessness and efficiency as a killer.

The 20th anniversary of this massacre happened to be this past March 15th. In his weekly radio address to the nation, Bush invoked the memories of that day: "This weekend marks a bitter anniversary for the people of Iraq. Fifteen years ago, Saddam Hussein`s regime ordered a chemical weapons attack on a village in Iraq called Halabja."

It must be remembered that this was an event that took place under the watchful eye of the Reagan administration, which, at the time, had nothing much to say about the incident, let alone ironically using it as a conduit for propaganda.

The emphasis on Halabja was not only an example of how the Bush administration`s main message was the evilness of Saddam Hussein, but also, more importantly, the implicit conclusion drawn from such emphasis: that it is morally obligatory to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In other words, there is no debate in this matter; there is only one way to think.

But now the Bush administration is being forced to act in a more candid manner, and it`s having troubling doing it. No one in the administration seems to be terribly frank. Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice don`t even appear capable of acting civil. And there`s a merry-go-round of blame revolving around who`s responsible for the purchase-of-uranium-from-Niger line in the State of the Union address. However, the stepping-down of Ari Fleischer is a positive change. His replacement, Scott McClellan, is far less cynical and is actually willing to engage reporters in dialogue, occasionally saying too much.

Until this point in his tenure, George W. Bush has been able to rely on morality and the American public`s response to that as the foundation for his rhetorical platform. The recent approach now being taken by critics on all sides, though, lessens the legitimacy of the traditional methods of justifying his and his administration`s actions. The Bush administration`s supposed professionalism and prowess are really propped up by a vast network of lies, deception, and complicity on behalf of influential organizations. For example, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) recently said that critics of the Bush administration may be fueling resistance to American forces in Iraq and that to criticize Bush is petty and partisan. So, in a sense, CSP is calling for a moratorium on debate regarding incredibly contentious issues, while invoking the specter of national security and the "safety of our troops" as its compelling reasons.

As the situations facing the Bush administration grow more complex and the presidential election and the campaigning filth it inherently brings draws nearer each week , it`s unlikely that the CSP`s wishes will be met. The idea that President Bush is literally beyond criticism is likely to offend more than it is to persuade -- especially if one is in disagreement.

[Matthew Riemer has written for years about a myriad of topics, such as: philosophy, religion, psychology, culture, and politics. He studied Russian language and culture for five years and traveled in the former Soviet Union in 1990. In the midst of a larger autobiographical/cultural work, Matthew is the Director of Operations at YellowTimes.org. He lives in the United States.]

Matthew Riemer encourages your comments: [e-mail]

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1518
Ein erstaunliches Dokument für eine Demokratie des 20.Jahrhunderts
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Occupying Iraq
Is the price, in blood and money, too high?
Aug 7th 2003 | BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

America`s Paul Bremer (pictured) now talks of getting out, and holding Iraqi elections, within a year. There`s a lot to be done first

Get article background

FLAMES belch out of the desert in northern Iraq where, on July 31st, an unidentified saboteur placed an explosive device under a buried fuel pipeline leading to a local distribution station. Five days later, an American civilian contractor working at the local refinery was killed when his truck drove over an anti-tank mine. The blasts, coming shortly before crude oil is to begin flowing from the Bayji terminus to Turkey, suggest that the 150,000 American troops in the country cannot fully protect either themselves or Iraq`s infrastructure from low-level insurgency—and that oil exports are unlikely to cover the costs of getting Iraq back on its feet.

The day before the pipeline attack, Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) running Iraq, announced that he hoped to be going home within a year. It was not “unreasonable”, he said, that elections for a sovereign Iraqi government could be held by mid-2004. The occupation is a drain on American blood and treasure, and the occupiers may be looking for an exit strategy, perhaps before George Bush must stand for re-election.


Members of the Governing Council, a group of Iraqis appointed by the CPA, say they are anxious to take over Mr Bremer`s job. But the council got off to a rocky start, taking more than two weeks to decide who was to be its president. In the end, it chose a nine-member rotating presidency, bringing in just about every member with an independent constituency who had a reasonable claim to the job.

The council will have difficulty coming up with an equally Solomonic solution to the thornier question of how to organise a constitutional convention. A constitution has to be drafted before elections can be held. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a senior cleric, has issued a fatwa stating that delegates to a constitutional convention must be elected. Organising an election without electoral lists or even a recognised census would be virtually impossible. But, without one, it will be very difficult to convince all Iraq`s political parties, ethnic and confessional groups, and tribes that they are fairly represented in the convention.

In the meantime, the council has a legitimacy problem. Its seeming ineffectualness has been mocked in newspapers, in Friday sermons and by ordinary Iraqis. Council sources reply that they could boost their standing by taking over the very job that the Americans find it hardest to do: providing security.

The two main Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, have revived a proposal, originally made in May, to deploy an Iraqi security force in Baghdad and in the Sunni heartland, the main centres of attacks on American troops. The force would be composed of the Kurdish peshmerga and the Badr Brigade, controlled by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, plus the smaller militias of Ahmed Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress and Iyad Allawi`s Iraqi National Accord, and units from local Sunni tribes.

“The best man for the [security] job is an Iraqi,” says Adel Murad, a spokesman for Mr Talabani`s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Local counter-insurgency teams can tell a Baathist by his body language, he claims, and would know the places where their compatriots hide their weapons (under a slab of meat in the refrigerator, say). They might also be less likely to break down doors with shotguns, or use the other tactics that Iraqis complain of.

Among other grievances, Iraqi civilians frequently claim that raiding American troops steal the stacks of currency stashed in their cupboards. American military officials acknowledge that such seizures take place, but suggest that they are just another facet of the culture gap: the soldiers don`t realise that Iraqis normally store cash in their houses, and assume that it is there as the result of criminal activity.

Sometimes raids have deadlier results. On the night of July 27th, forces from the elite Saddam-hunting Task Force 20 opened fire on at least two civilian vehicles which witnesses say blundered via side streets through their security cordon during a raid on a villa in the smart district of al-Mansour. Five people were killed. “Apologies are not something we have within military processes,” said Lieut-General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior army commander, when asked about offering compensation. But implied apologies in the form of “blood money” are very much part of Iraq`s traditional processes.

The resistance continues, without sign of ending. The insurgents appear to be abandoning ambush tactics (it is hard to hit a moving vehicle with an RPG rocket) in favour of improvised explosive devices, such as an artillery shell planted in a pile of roadside rubbish. On August 7th, a truck bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy, killing at least eight people.

Apart from the cost in American lives, there is the money. The price of occupation has been estimated at $1 billion a week, contributing to what is already the largest federal deficit in American history. America had hoped that oil exports would cover the cost of reconstruction, but the attacks have destroyed pipelines and discouraged private investment. Coalition and Iraqi oil ministry officials are cagey about revenues, but there is little doubt that income is far off target.

James Wolfensohn, the World Bank`s president, expressed doubts during a recent visit, as to whether the short-term costs of rebuilding Iraq could be pushed on to the international community. Bank finance would flow, he said at a press conference on July 30th, but “there is a need first to have a constitution, to have a government, to re-establish Iraq as the Iraqi people would like to have it.”

With its mind on withdrawal, America may be having second thoughts about one of its pre-war aims: to reshape the Iraqi economy—privatising the oil industry, for instance—while it still has considerable leverage over an Iraqi government. Council members are said to be split on whether to maintain a state-owned oil company, but agree that all such decisions should be postponed until after elections.
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?story…

Copyright © 2003 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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Heavy reproaches against US Pentagon: Napalm bombs in the Iraq war

Translation of the original PDF-file from MONITOR-TV , ARD , Germany Click here to view the program.http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml


Report : Heavy accusations against US-Pentagon : Napalm-Bombs in Iraq-War
Reported by : John Goetz, Georg Restle / MONITOR 507
Date : 07.08.2003

Volker Happe (MONITOR-Moderator) : "Napalm. The Horror-weapon from the Vietnam-war . It is internationally banned and outlawed , it`s use is forbidden by the Geneva-Conventions . But nevertheless , it was used in the Iraq-war by the US army .

Good evening , welcome at MONITOR .

Until now, the Pentagon denied strictly any use of Napalm in the Iraq-war and repelled all suspicions made by US-journalists who were in Iraq with the US troops as embedded journalists . But this was a lie . As John Goetz and Georg Restle have found out now ."

Pictures from a war from more than 35 years ago . US combat-jets drop Napalm-bombs over Vietnamese villages , devastate an whole country and spread fear and dismay among the population .

Pictures from a war some months ago . The War-victims in Iraq do not know through which kind of weapons they were mutilated . But already since the beginning of this war there was a mean and heavy suspicion .

US-troops on their way to Baghdad . Journalists , who were at this time on the road with the US military, wrote then from really heartbraking scenes after US airraids at the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border:
" It loooked more like a massacre than like after a combat-fight . Dead bodys lying around everywhere . They dropped some kind of explosives and Napalm. "

Napalm ? The same firebombs they used in the Vietnam-War ?

The US journalist James Crawley was on the ground with US troops as an embedded journalist .
He too wanted to know , which kind of bombs exactly were dropped at this time .

James Crawley , US Military Journalist :

" I asked , what kind of bombs they`ve used , and they said laserbombs , satellite-guided bombs and Napalm." Napalm in the Iraq-War . The US Ministry of Defence rejected this announcements immediately : "We did not used Napalm in Iraq and we won`t use it neither ."

Cockpit-pictures from an US combat-jet in Iraq . What exactly was dropped from the US-jets over Iraq ? Firebombs ? Napalm ?

We drive to San Diego , to the base of the US Marine Corps who were at service in Iraq . To us , the speaker confirmed the use of Napalm-firebombs .

Joseph Boehm , Colonel US Marine Corps :

" In the 30 wardays we used only 30 canisters . The marines used it on their way to Baghdad . Where it was exactly , I don`t know . It is a lethal weapon and also a psychological weapon ."

These are the firebombs we`re talking about : they are labeled MK 77 , an advanced and perfected version of the Napalm-bomb used in Vietnam . The US Military and armament-industry still uses the same name for it : MK 77(Napalm)

James Snyder , Physicians for Social Responsibility :

" There is absolutely no difference in the impact and use of MK 77 and Napalm . They`re both made for the same purpose . The only difference lies in their fuel . But both are designed to kill as much humans as possible , attack bunkers and spread fire." We wanted to know from the Pentagon , if these MK 77 bombs were used in the Iraq-war .

A Pentagon-speaker told MONITOR :

" I can confirm , that MK 77 bombs were dropped at the Kuwaiti-Iraqi-border." And on the question , if the MK 77 bombs are indeed Napalm-firebombs , the speaker said : " MK 77 is called
Napalm due to the fact , that their impact on targets resembles remarkable to the use of Napalm."

Therfore it is a fact : The US used in the Iraq-War the same weapons as they did in Vietnam :
Napalm-bombs , one of the most horrible war-weapons of all times , with real heavy damages done especially to all surviving victims .

James Snyder , Physicians for Social Responsibility :

"I can`t imagine myself a worse way of death . We all know nightmares from dying in fire . That`s the way hell must look . I can`t hardly imagine myself to witness an attack with such a weapon . Completely wrapped by a burning liquid and to burn to death."

Pictures from Vietnam . They lead finally to the international ban of such firebombs :

"It is under all circumstances prohibited and forbidden , to target and attack the civilian population , single civilians or any civil objects with incendiary firebombs."

Prof. Hans-Joachim Heintze , University Bochum :

"Napalm-Bombs are against the international law , they are banned by the Geneva-Conventions.
They are banned because they work indiscriminately and without any distinction , they harm in the same way civilians and military targets , and they cause unnecessary sufferings and harm to the victims of these bombs."

But for the US Marines at San Diego , Napalm is just a weapon like all the others too .

Joseph Boehm , Colonel US marine Corps :

"This isn`t that important to us . We don`t think it`s dangerous . To the effects I can`t say much , because I haven`t been attacked myself by such a weapon until now . I guess it`s lethal , that`s why we use it , but it`s not more lethal than other weapons."

3 month ago , the Iraq-War was declared officially terminated . But to some of its truth we will have ourselves probably still to accustom."

Volker Happe : " The lies around the Iraq-war won`t obviously take no end."

End of transcript and translation

Please note !
This transcript is copyright protected by the authors and the WDR/ARD-TV channel.

http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/beitragsuebersicht.phtml
(here is the PDF-file-transcript from this MONITOR-Report in German language)
http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml
( RealVideo of the MONITOR-Report in German language)

US rejects German napalm bombing report

08/08/03: COLOGNE - US forces used dozens of napalm-like MK-77 fire bombs during the Iraq war, according to a German television news report.

Later Thursday, US defence officials in Washington disputed the German report. The US destroyed its entire napalm stockpile in 2001, and the MK-77 has a completely different chemical composition than napalm, the Pentagon said.

The report on ARD public television`s "Monitor" current-affairs magazine show said the bombs are an outgrowth of incendiary bombs used in Korea and Vietnam by American forces.

Fire bombs rupture on impact and spread burning fuel gel onto surrounding objects. The 500-pound MK-77 device is the only fire bomb now in service with the U.S. military.

In the 1991 Gulf War, about 500 MK-77 fire bombs were dropped by Marine Corps planes to ignite oil-filled Iraqi fire trenches, which were part of barriers constructed in southern Kuwait.

ARD had reported that confirmation of their use in this year`s Iraq war came from US Marine Corps Colonel Joseph Boehm in San Diego.

He was quoted as saying that 30 MK-77 canisters were dropped during a 30-day period in the invasion of Iraq, primarily by AV-8 Harriers from relatively low altitudes.

DPA

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ZU #561
Der Link zu Monitor(RealVideo of the MONITOR-Report in German language)ist falsch. Hier der richtige Link:


http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml?bid=513&sid=100

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 11:23 a.m. EDT August 8, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR

The four-day lull in anti-U.S. violence in Iraq this week proved to be only temporary. The U.S. military says a soldier died in a gun battle in western Baghdad Thursday night -- the third death reported in the past two days.
U.S. snipers have killed two men in a raid on a weapons market in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit. The military says it had stationed snipers around the market after hearing that it was being used as a weapons and ammunition bizarre every Friday. One man killed was unloading AK-47s from the trunk of a car.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Coalition forces, says U.S. troops will have to stay in Iraq for two years at an "absolute minimum." And he says it will probably take longer than that to give Iraqis time to develop a new army of at least three motorized divisions capable of defending the country.
Defense officials say genetic material found in a prison cell in Iraq did not match that of a pilot missing since the 1991 Gulf War, but investigators continue to search for other evidence of his fate. Invading U.S. forces in April said they had found the initials of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher scratched into a cell. Further testing may be done on the evidence, as well as on the initials.
U.S. officials are trying to find out if Thursday`s deadly car bomb attack on Jordan`s embassy in Baghdad was the work of a radical Islamic group with links to al-Qaida. Ansar al-Islam`s main headquarters near the Iranian border was wiped out in American bombing early in the war, but officials say the group has been putting itself back together.
The death toll from Thursday`s car bombing in Baghdad has climbed to 19. Dozens more were hurt. The attack is raising concern that violence in Iraq could be changing from a campaign of resistance into a terrorist insurgency.
Secretary of State Powell says the embassy attack strengthens U.S. resolve to "unite the world in this campaign against terrorism." He says terrorists need to know that the U.S. "will not be deterred."

SAILOR CITIZENS
More than 200 Navy sailors now are new American citizens. A special swearing-in ceremony was held aboard the USS "Theodore Roosevelt," docked at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. The new citizens hail from 51 countries, from Albania to Ukraine. Many of them served in the Iraq war.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Summary
+++++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days
++++++258++++44+++++302++++++141
Latest Fatality Date: 8/8/2003

08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES IN SLEEP
08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES OF GUNSHOT WOUND
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD IDENTIFIES ONE OF HOSTILE FIRE DEATHS FROM AUG. 6TH
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD IDENTIFIES AMERICAN SAMOAN, DEAD FROM FALL ON AUG. 5TH
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD REVEALS 4TH DEATH ON AUG. 6TH: SOLDIER HOSPITALIZED IN GERMANY
08/07/03 MSNBC
U.S. soldier wounded in a gunbattle in Baghdad.
08/07/03 CENTCOM
TWO SOLDIERS KILLED IN FIREFIGHT
08/07/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES AFTER SEIZURE
08/07/03 CNN
Baghdad blast kills 10 at Jordanian Embassy

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Britain to seek UN resolution on Iraq
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian

Britain is considering using its chairmanship of the UN security council next month to bring about a new resolution to provide a political basis for more troops to join the security operation in Iraq and ease the transition to democracy.

It is convinced that the US will back the resolution as long as the price demanded by countries such as Germany and France is not so high that it would be seen as a humiliating reversal for America.

So far only Poland has been willing to make a substantial commitment of troops.

The US had hoped that India, Pakistan and Scandinavian countries would provide troops, so in part reducing the mounting burden on its forces.

It is unlikely that the US will allow the UN blue helmets full command of the coalition`s operations. But there are ways in which the UN could be given a greater role.

The mandate given to the UN in May in resolution 1483 gave sole responsibility for law and order and the administration of Iraq to Britain and the US through the coalition provisional authority (CPA).

The UN was left with a largely advisory role through its highly regarded special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, covering areas such as the constitutional process, judicial reform and police training.

Since then the UN has proposed transforming the office of the special representative in Baghdad into a full UN mission in Iraq, known as the United Nations assistance mission in Iraq (Unami).

The proposal was put to the security council in July, together with the suggestion that the security council should set out a timetable for the transfer of power from the CPA to a democratically elected body.

The UN had hoped the security council could make swift progress by means of a presidential statement, the lowest level of decision-making on the security council. But it now seems likely that progress will be delayed until Britain takes over the chair from Syria next month.

In Whitehall this week British officials were looking at ways in which the UN mandate could be strengthened in respect of issues such as preparation for the elections next year, advice on the structure of Iraqi security forces, and closer liaison with the Iraqi governing council established by the British and Americans.

British officials in New York acknowledge the difficulty of gaining consensus for a major security council resolution and are seeking to increase the authority of the proposed mission Unami.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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The US is starting a nuclear fight that will be hard to stop
The hawks are gunning for a showdown with North Korea and Iran

Simon Tisdall
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian

John Bolton might be termed an old hand. The US under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, a Yale-educated lawyer, has held a string of senior posts in the state and justice departments. By any yardstick, he is an experienced if conservative-minded diplomat of some gravitas who, it must be assumed, knows what he is doing. But according to an official North Korean statement this week, Bolton is "human scum".

Even by Pyongyang`s astringent rhetorical standards, this is strong stuff. It constituted a reply in kind to a stunningly splenetic tirade delivered by Bolton in Seoul three days earlier that amounted to a fierce, personal attack on Kim Jong-il.

North Korea`s leader was a tyrannical despot and extortionist who "lives like royalty", Bolton said, while hundreds of thousands of his people were locked up and millions more endured a life of "hellish nightmare... scrounging the ground for food in abject poverty". For good measure, Bolton also attacked the UN for not facing up to its responsibilities - a familiar theme for students of the Iraq crisis.

The curious thing about this exchange is not so much its intensity as its timing. Bolton went nuclear, verbally speaking, only hours before North Korea finally acceded to longstanding US demands for multilateral talks on its nuclear arms ambitions. South Korean officials were relieved that the North had not used Bolton`s broadside as an excuse for further prevarication. But like the rest of us, they were left wondering whether Bolton had launched a deliberate pre-emptive strike against the nascent diplomatic process.

This raises a key question, as America`s twin confrontations with North Korea and Iran over nuclear arms accelerate towards a crunch in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, peaceful, internationally supportable, diplomatic solutions to both disputes are available. Their outlines may be clearly discerned; the mechanisms by which they can be achieved are more or less in place. But does the US actually want to cut a deal?

The ambiguities clouding US policy towards North Korea date back to the early days of the administration, when George Bush put a damper on former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung`s "sunshine policy" of detente with the North. Since 9/11 and Bush`s "axis of evil" speech, matters have just gone from bad to worse.

The planned talks in China, also involving South Korea, Japan and Russia, are viewed in the region and beyond as a crucial opportunity to arrest this apparently inexorable downward spiral. The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, and others have suggested that North Korea might initially freeze its nuclear arms programmes in return for a sort of US non-aggression pact.

But such compromises may not suit the likes of Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, and other hardliners, including perhaps Bush himself - who has professed personal loathing for Pyongyang`s communist leader. For them, it seems, nothing less than Kim`s overthrow will ultimately suffice, although it may have to wait until a second Bush term.

A former US envoy, James Goodby, warns that Washington must beware of over-reaching itself. "Many in the Bush administration want regime change in North Korea and think that slow strangulation might do it," Goodby wrote in the New York Times. But security assurances and economic incentives were what was really needed. "Improving the lot of the North Korean people should be a fundamental aim."

Such common-sense advice risks being drowned out by the beat of Washington`s ideological war drums. That discord will strain ties with US regional allies, encourage North Korean paranoia and miscalculation, and could yet shipwreck any talks on a reef of mutual distrust, bad faith and hidden agendas.

As usual, secretary of state Colin Powell takes a softer line, insisting for now at least that the US is not intent on regime change and rejecting Wolfowitz`s claim that the North is teetering on the edge of economic collapse.

Such assurances may again strike students of the Iraq crisis as unhappily familiar. Powell is not yet a lame duck but he is definitely limping after the latest spate of speculation that he will quit at the 2004 election. Powell may be getting tired of trying to restrain neo-con knee-jerkers. He surely does not relish four more years of being stabbed in the back.

The strange, treacherous ways of American diplomacy are also complicating that other nuclear stand-off, with Iran. A September deadline now looms, by which time Tehran is told it must accept "challenge" inspections of its nuclear facilities. If not, the US may seek UN sanctions and step up unilateral pressure; military options are not entirely ruled out. Following Washington`s line, and egged on by Israel, Tony Blair is turning the screw, too, threatening to block an EU trade deal and highlighting human rights issues.

Like North Korea, the Iranian government is fully aware that US tactics do not stem from worries about WMD proliferation alone. But nor does it totally dismiss western concerns. In fact, Tehran has developed a series of not inflexible negotiating positions. The question, once again, is whether the US is really interested in finding solutions.

On the nuclear issue, Iran might swallow the International Atomic Energy Agency`s "additional protocol" if article four of the non-proliferation treaty, entitling it to acquire "equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy", were honoured. On the issue of al-Qaida, Iran is ready to surrender suspected members if the US will exchange the Mujahedeen terrorists it is harbouring in Iraq. Even on Palestine, there is just a hint of a future accommodation. Iran says it supports Iraq`s new governing council and is not involved in attacks on US troops there (for which the US has indeed produced no evidence). As an earnest of its intentions, it has offered to supply much-needed electricity to Iraq - an offer made three weeks ago and to which it has had no response.

Although, like the Bush administration, Iran speaks with many voices, it knows it must improve relations with the west if it is to succeed in building its economy and if the aspirations of its younger generations are to be met without more trouble on the streets.

But this, of course, is exactly why some in Washington think that by hanging tough and raising the stakes, they can eventually have it all. By continuing and possibly escalating disputes, US hawks hope not merely to tame the mullahs but to topple them.

This is a potentially disastrous miscalculation, a recipe for intensifying internal and external strife. It has little to do with arms control or encouraging civil reform from within, and a lot to do with imposing the US world view from without. This is why Iran`s heated debate over UN inspections has acquired a symbolic quality. This is why, as in North Korea, some in Iran oppose anything that smacks of concessions.

They call it a trap. But we should call it Bolton`s first law of international power politics: keep the other guy guessing; wear him down. When he gives a little, demand a whole lot more. Then zap him anyway.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Tourist drought hits Disneyland Paris
Iraq fallout, strikes and forest fires have kept Americans and Europeans away

Amelia Gentleman, Paris
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian

Midday on the hottest August day recorded in Paris and Dominique has no customers for his ice-cold bottles of water. Nearby, in the chilled interior of the Rendez-Vous with the Stars restaurant, most of the tables are empty.

A number of refreshment stalls scattered throughout France`s newest theme park appear to be closed. Even the queues for the rides at Walt Disney Studios are disconcertingly short.

Staff in their themed costumes are paid to remain upbeat, US-style. "Not many guests? There`ll be more this afternoon," one shop assistant manning an empty gift store says with a concrete smile. Most have been primed to fend off difficult questions. "We aren`t allowed to talk about visitor numbers," says Nadine at the guest relations window. "But the president has great confidence in the product."

The relentless piped music echoing across the complex`s tarmac expanses can hardly be soothing to the frazzled heads of management officials engrossed in crisis talks in the on-site head office

Disneyland Paris is struggling to fend off bankruptcy, once again. Visitors have not flocked to the expensive new park, dedicated to the art of Hollywood film-making, which was completed last March at a cost of $600m (£370m). The chief executive was forced last week to announce that the shortfall in ticket sales meant that the company risked soon defaulting on some of its €2.3bn (£1.6bn) debt.

This is the latest of numerous plummets experienced by Eurodisney during its short history. In 1994, two years after it opened, it had to be saved from bankruptcy with a 16bn franc (£1.6bn) rescue package, and worries only really faded with the fairytale arrival of a billionaire prince from Saudi Arabia who became the company`s biggest investor. The park`s rebranding as Disneyland Paris helped to improve its "Euro-dismal" image.

Loathed by France`s anti-American lobby when it opened, Eurodisney was dismissed by one influential critic as a "cultural Chernobyl". Eleven years later, France is desperate to do everything it can to preserve the business, which employs 12,500 people.

But this summer the French government has greater problems to contend with. The disaster that threatens the future of Europe`s most popular tourist attraction reflects a much wider phenomenon being noted with alarm by the tourism ministry: the acute deficit of tourists throughout the country.

The trouble threatened by the diplomatic hostility between America and France in the spring has materialised as a striking absence of US visitors. More than 2 million Americans stayed in French hotels in the first five months of this year - nearly 30% down on 2002 - a drop that coincides neatly with the US fury at France`s refusal to back war in Iraq and the American campaign to boycott French products.

Freedom kissing

Attempts by US francophiles, including Woody Allen, to reawaken America`s affection for France have done nothing to improve things. Despite his "Let`s Fall in Love Again" video appeal for an end to the silly notion of "freedom fries" and "freedom kissing", in May there were still 40% fewer US visitors in French hotels.

When they die, all good Americans go to Paris, Oscar Wilde wrote; but at the moment most are endeavouring to spend their mortal holidays elsewhere. Staff at the Jules Verne restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower say that this summer the Americans have been replaced by Italian and Spanish diners. American tourists usually spend more money in France than any other nationality and Paris`s most expensive establishments are suffering. The astronomically expensive Georges V hotel has noted a 20% drop in American guests since last year.

And the problem is more widespread than a lack of Americans. On Thursday the tourism ministry released statistics that showed even the Germans` fondness for French holidays had waned this year. Tourist officials point the finger of blame in every direction. Apart from Iraq, the year began badly with reports that millions of gallons of black sludge from the Prestige tanker`s oil spill were to blacken Brittany`s beaches. Fury over government reforms triggered train strikes and transport chaos, and dozens of France`s most popular music and arts festivals were called off by striking performers.

The fear of Sars and unspecified terrorist threats has kept non-European visitors away, while British tourists are discouraged by the strength of the euro. Forest fires in the south prompted more cancellations. Even the good weather is cited as a problem; northern Europeans won`t pay to sunbathe in France when they can do it in their own back gardens.

France has historically been the world`s favourite tourist destination and last year 77 million foreign visitors generated €100bn - 7% of France`s GDP. This year the profits are going to be scant.

It`s hard to spot a single American in the Disneyland Paris complex - in Casey`s diner, there is no one to explain the mysteries of US cuisine to the French. "It`s a bit tasteless. I guess that`s how they prefer it," says Veronique Le Leu, a school teacher from Brittany, chewing through a hot dog.

But the real disaster for the company has been the shrivelling of European visitors and the failure of the new park to attract guests. Numbers are dropping at precisely the time officials need them to boom; if debts were to be repaid, the 13.1 million visitors to the park last year needed to grow to 16m to 17m by 2004, which seems highly unlikely.

Those staff members too new to know about the strict sanctions for careless talkers admit that the mood behind the scenes is bleak. "There`s been no mention of the financial problems, but everyone has read about them in the papers," says Philippe, a student earning holiday money by selling candyfloss. "You worry about your job when it`s like this. Everyone who comes here loves it, and most people who work here love it - even if the pay is bad.

"Ten years ago, the town where I live was surrounded by fields and it was hard to find work. Now it`s flourishing. Without Eurodisney the whole region would die."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Who exposed whistleblower`s wife?
Julian Borger, Washington
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian

The FBI may launch an inquiry into whether the White House revealed the identity of a covert CIA official to punish her husband for blowing the whistle on President Bush for making misleading claims about the Iraqi nuclear programme, officials in Washington said yesterday.

Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador and the last American official to meet Saddam Hussein, triggered a scandal on July 6 when he published an article saying that the White House knew in advance that the president`s public statements about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa were not credible.

Mr Wilson had been sent to Niger in 2002 by the CIA to investigate claims of attempted uranium purchases there, and reported back that they were "highly doubtful". Despite his report, President Bush said in his State of the Union address in January: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Mr Wilson said: "We spend billions of dollars on intelligence. But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence."

After Mr Wilson blew the whistle, the White House admitted the mistake but alleged that his report had never reached senior administration officials - a claim Mr Wilson said was false.

A week after Mr Wilson went public, a conservative journalist, Bob Novak, published an article in which he wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson`s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate."

The report was controversial because it is against the law to reveal the identities of covert officials. If Ms Plame was investigating WMD deals, her cover would have been blown and her career ruined. Mr Wilson will not confirm or deny whether his wife is a CIA operative, but said yesterday: "Assuming it was true, the real victim in all this is American national security. Novak asserted that not only is my wife in the CIA but active in the WMD section. So senior administration officials have decided to take that particular asset out of the search for WMD in order to punish me."

The administration has denied giving Novak any names, but Mr Wilson said he had been contacted by other reporters who had both been told about his wife by White House officials.

The FBI said it would not comment on an ongoing investigation.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/

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Iraq: 100 days of `peace`
On 1 May, President Bush declared war over after six weeks. Mission accomplished?
09 August 2003


The US Administrator: Paul Bremer, head of US-led civilian administration

"We believe that the attacks against the coalition forces are coming from a number of areas, some of which will be, I think, reduced if we can kill or capture Saddam. Those are attacks that are coming to us from desperados, from the Baathist party, the trained killers of the Fedayeen Saddam and the trained killers of many of the intelligence services which Saddam had.

"We believe that the death of his sons and eventual capture or death of Saddam will have a beneficial effect on reducing these attacks. I said at the time of the killing of the two sons that I expected attacks in the short run to increase ... People are coming in to police stations with evidence of where Baathists are, and providing tips that allow us to arrest these people."

The Café Owner: Burhan Gharib, Baghdad

Many bad things have happened, such as the looting. There is no electricity, the security situation is unstable. If you compare them with Saddam Hussein, the Americans have done nothing for us. They came to Iraq and said, `We came to protect you` but the only place they protected from the looters was the Ministry of Oil.

They can move tanks all over the world but they can`t bring a small generator to the city. We feel angry because they do things against our principles. They search our houses and our women.

This is a good country, a developed country. The resistance are not Fedayeen Saddam, they are mujahedin, Islamic resistance. They are heroes and we pray to God to save them. We can kick the Americans out.

The British Politician: Robin Cook MP

I`m astonished that the coalition have put little thought into what to do after the capture of Iraq. The military preparation was meticulous, but the preparations for how to reconstruct the country are being made up as we go along.

We were told that it was essential to displace Saddam Hussein because of a "clear and present" danger to the UK, but 100 days later we have still not found one single weapon of mass destruction. It would have been better to let weapons inspectors stay ...

The invasion and occupation was a neo-conservative show. They promised it would be easy to win ... the co-operation of the Iraqis. Now that is proving much more difficult and the neo-conservatives are on a retreat in the United States.

The US Politician: Al Gore, former Democratic vice-president

"Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn`t happen. As a result, many of our soldiers are paying the highest price. I`m convinced one of the reasons we didn`t have a better public debate before the Iraq war started is because so many of the impressions the majority of the country had back then turn out to have beenwrong.

"Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology felt to be more important than basic honesty.

"Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush presidency is the latter."

The Journalist: Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent of `The Independent`

It wasn`t Mr Bush`s remark about the end of major military operations that spelt out the lie. It was the banner hanging from the aircraft carrier upon which he made his notorious remarks. Placed there by the White House publicity men, it said simply: "Mission Accomplished`` ­ the ultimate illusionary end to an invasion that was driven by fantasy and right-wing ideology. True, the mass graves have been opened, many of them containing young people whom we betrayed ­ by urging them to fight Saddam in 1991 and then allowing them to be massacred. True, the regime no longer governs ­ it attacks the US army instead, along with Saddam`s old enemies. True, Uday and Qusay are dead ­ but their father still speaks from the underground. A new resistance movement is now cutting down US soldiers every day. Anarchy is widespread. Changing the map of the Middle East is what this illegal invasion was supposed to have achieved, according to the right-wing and pro-Israeli advisers around Donald Rumsfeld. They may be right, but the new map is unlikely to be the one they had planned for. Amid the wilderness of occupation, America may contemplate that its young men are dying for an illusion that will prove as dangerous to Israel as it will to America and the Arab world. Mission accomplished indeed! Leading article, page 18

The Shopkeeper: Sa`id abu Ali, Sadr City

The Shia accepted the Americans at first because we were the ones suffering a tragedy under Saddam. This is the second country in the world for oil reserves but Iraqi families are suffering just to get one gas cylinder. Of course people are against [the Americans]. We think they encouraged the looters, because it suits their aims to keep the chaos here so they can stay. I don`t believe America cannot solve these problems like gas and electricity. So there is no difference: Saddam was yesterday, America is today. Is this liberation? Most of the injustices still exist. Can you go out in your car after 10pm? If you manage to escape the looters, the Americans will shoot you. If there is occupation, there will be resistance. All Iraqi citizens want the situation stable and safe and an end to the occupation.

The Aid Worker: Dominic Nutt, Emergencies Officer for Christian Aid

I think the most obvious issue is a lack of security across the country. It is clearly deteriorating. Under the old regime people were too terrified, and law and order was not an issue. Now women and girls are being attacked. Soldiers have two options: shout or shoot, nothing in between. They need an effective police force.

The issue of whether we should have gone to war is a very difficult one. It is an ongoing dilemma ... The Iraqis I have dealt with and spoken to welcomed this invasion and the end of Saddam Hussein [but] one questions the principle that right goes with might. The Iraqis are getting frustrated and no one is benefiting.

The Iraqi Politician: Dr Adnan Pachachi, acting head of Iraqi Governing Council

There are sporadic acts of violence against the Americans. They think that by continuing they are going to force the Americans to get out of Iraq, but they are mistaken. They are delaying the recovery of Iraq. I would like to ask these people: "What do you hope to achieve?"

Right from the very beginning, I wanted the UN to have a central role. I said immediately after the collapse of the regime that the secretary general should appoint a special representative to oversee the whole process. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and we have to deal with a situation where a huge US army is in Iraq.

One way to deal with this would be not to co-operate, but the Iraqi people are tired after three wars, and don`t want to start another one.

Casualties

57 US troops, 11 British troops killed since 1 May
35 allied troops died in accidents,
3 possible suicides, 3 drowned
1,000 children injured by unexploded ordnance
15 to 25 civilians shot dead daily in Baghdad
1 UK journalist shot dead
Armed forces

150,000 still deployed
6 countries providing forces (US, Britain, Spain, Poland, Denmark, and the Czech republic)
Economics

$680m rebuilding contracts handed out by Bechtel ($400m to local companies)
$3.9bn per month spent by US on occupation
£44m to provide new `Baath-free` textbooks to school pupils
£60m spent by International Red Cross on humanitarian aid
1.6m barrels per day of oil being pumped (compared to 2.8m before the war)
1 Arab mobile phone network launched (but shut down by US)<
75 per cent electricity delivery, according to the US
Security

1,000 military patrols daily in Baghdad
150 out of 400 courts in operation
18 aid trucks hijacked
Health

1 in 12 children suffer malnutrition
Culture

150 newspapers started; 1 shut down
3 plays performed
9 August 2003 10:35


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Faith & Reason: Forget Osama bin Laden, the real brains behind al-Qa`ida is back
Islamic terrorism has a serious intellectual underpinning - and it is the mirror image of the Manichean world view of President George W. Bush
Ian Linden
09 August 2003



In the Boy`s Own paper prose reserved for such matters we were told that the "Number Two to Bin Laden at the top of the al-Qa`ida terror network" resurfaced last week. At least a recent tape of his did. "We tell America one thing: what you have seen so far is nothing but the first skirmishes," said Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a chilling warning for the United States if any of the al- Qa`ida prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are harmed. Given international concern over the legality of their detention, it was not a naïve statement.

Everyone needs a name to flag up a news story and nobody likes things complicated. The point is not to understand but condemn and demonise or idolise. And the one and only name that instantly denotes "Islamic" international terrorism today is Osama bin Laden. But it`s the wrong name. Or, at least, the spotlight is misdirected. For the privileged, rich young Saudi Osama brought mainly money and an eager activism to the formation of al-Qa`ida, while the Egyptian al-Zawahiri brought the ideas, the intellectual weight and behind-the-scenes leadership. Money talks of course. Ideas grab hold of people. You can freeze assets. But not ideas.

Dr al-Zawahiri comes from a wealthy and distinguished Cairo family; one grandfather was a rector of the celebrated Islamic University of Al-Azhar. He was politicised at an early age by the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when, in six humiliating days, Egypt was crushed on the battlefield. The assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1983 found him active within Egypt`s Islamic Jihad, a violent radical movement to create an Islamic state. This cost him torture and a year in jail - though nothing was proved against him. During the Afghan war against the Soviets he took his skills as a surgeon to the guerrilla encampments where he met the "Islamic international brigade" and Osama bin Laden, then funded and supported by the Pakistani Intelligence and the CIA. This was to be the core of al-Qa`ida.

Al-Zawahiri`s ideas are no less rooted than his scholarly family pedigree - his thinking was shaped by Egypt`s radical Muslim Brotherhoods and the prolific writer Sayyid Qutb, who defined the revolutionary Islamic response to "un-Islamic government", was tried and executed by Gamel Abdul Nasser in 1966. This tradition was tailor-made to fit the Wahabi background of bin Laden whose radical ultraconservative religion - "back to the Koran" and "back to the first Muslim community at Medina" - dominates Saudi Arabia. Both streams of thought can be traced back to the father of Islamic radicalism, Ibn Taymiyya, in the Middle Ages whose Puritan literalism, a stripping of the altars, Christians ought to understand. In the form of Islamic Jihad, Qutb`s Manichean creed produced a series of assassination attempts and - probably - the bloody massacre of 57 tourists at Luxor in 1997.

In this tradition the emphasis shifted from what Muslims calls "the greater jihad" - spiritual purification - to the "lesser jihad" of armed struggle. This meant confronting the power of the US, the "Great Satan", in the Arabian peninsula. In February 1998 al-Quds al-Arabi, a London-based Arabic newspaper, printed an emergency appeal from the "World Islamic Front". The Muslim world was being stormed by "the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches": in other words the American presence in the Gulf, the Saudi bases and Iraq war, and US support for the Israeli government. It was the religious duty of every individual Muslim to repel the invaders by whatever means possible. Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden led the signatories.

In traditional mainstream Islamic thought - and of course there are different strands - Muslims need the political authority of a Caliph, head of the Muslim community, to wage war. But, in an extreme emergency, a threat to Muslim identity and territorial integrity, no such authority is needed. Groups of individuals may take up arms and fight outside the Islamic heartland. But what under no circumstances is permitted is terrorism. Christians and Muslims hold common views about jus in bello, conduct in war, stemming from shared medieval sources.

Al-Zawahiri, his cohorts and pupils such as bin Laden abandon the great body of contemporary Muslim thought not, as is often said, in their politicisation of Islam, or desire for Muslim principles to prevail in all spheres of life, but in their terrorism. Christians and Jews become targets instead of protected "People of the Book". A Manichean vision of the world dictates that everything outside their perverse interpretation of the Holy Koran is lumped together as evil. The important battle is with the crusaders of the evil empire. As Edward Said says of this Manichean Islamism: "Critical thinking and individual wrestling with the problems of the modern world have simply dropped out of sight."

Thanks to George W. Bush`s own brand of Manichean ideas we cannot pretend to be complete strangers to this mindset. There is something in his almost imperial vision that echoes what it opposes. These are ideas, a pathology, we share with Islam. God forbid they are leading to a comparable intellectual and moral catastrophe for Christianity.
9 August 2003 10:39


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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August 9, 2003
Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms
By DOUGLAS JEHL


ASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.

The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.

That report had dismissed as a "cover story" claims by senior Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice.

A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to "pursue additional information" to determine whether those Iraqi claims were indeed accurate.

Officials at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department said today that the two intelligence agencies still stood by the May 28 finding, which President Bush has cited as evidence that Iraq had a biological weapons program. The engineering teams` findings, which officials from the Defense Department and other agencies would discuss only on the condition of anonymity, add a new layer to disputes within the intelligence community about the trailers found by allied forces in Iraq in April and May.

The State Department`s intelligence branch, which was not invited to take part in the initial review, disputed the findings in a memorandum on June 2. The fact that American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence were disputing the claims included in the C.I.A. white paper was first reported in June, along with the analysts` concern that the evaluation of the mobile units had been marred by a rush to judgment.

But it had not previously been known that a majority of the Defense Intelligence Agency`s engineering team had come to disagree with the central finding of the white paper: that the trailers were used for making biological weapons.

"The team has decided that in their minds, there could be another use, for inefficient hydrogen production, most likely for balloons," a Defense Department official said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency`s engineering teams had not concluded their work in Iraq at the time the white paper was drafted, and so their views were not taken into account at that time, the government officials said. They said the engineering teams had discussed their findings in meetings in Washington in June and again last month.

"We stand by the white paper," the Defense Department official said. "But based on the assessment of the engineering team, it has caused us to pursue additional information about possible alternative uses for the trailers."

A C.I.A. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the agency was "continuing to gather more information about the labs, but we stand behind the white paper."

Since the white paper was made public in May, new information suggesting that the trailers might have been used for making hydrogen has come from Iraqi officials interrogated by American military officers in Iraq, a military officer said today. Those Iraqi officials have repeated the claims of Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to fill weather balloons, said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Another government official from a different agency said the issue of the trailers had prompted deep divisions within the Defense Intelligence Agency. The official said members of the engineering team had been angry that the agency issued the joint white paper with the C.I.A. before their own work was completed.

The official said the question of how that had happened was being examined by the defense agency`s inspector general as part of a broader inquiry that began in June.

A spokesman for the intelligence agency, Don Black, said he could not comment on the work of the inspector general.

The Bush administration has said the two trailers are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In the white paper made public in May, it detailed its case even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof.

Senior administration officials have acknowledged that the United States has found neither biological agents nor undisputed evidence that the trailers were used to make such arms. They have said that intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting, alternative theories of how they could have been used.

That view, described as a consensus of opinion with the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, was presented to the White House before it was made public.

At that time, a senior official who examined the evidence in detail and concluded that the trailers were used for biological weapons said, "The experts who have crawled over this again and again can come up with no other plausible legitimate use."

That official said the agencies had rejected the theory put forward by Iraqi scientists who said one of the units was used to produce hydrogen.

Today, a Defense Department official said of Iraq, "There is not doubt in our minds that they had mobile biological weapons trailers." But the official said there was disagreement within the Defense Intelligence Agency about whether those found so far were used to produce biological weapons or hydrogen.

The engineering team that has come to believe the trailers were used to produce hydrogen includes experts whose task was to assess the trailers from a purely technical standpoint, as opposed to one based on other sources of intelligence. Skeptical experts had previously cited a lack of equipment in the trailers for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production.

Bush administration officials have said the most compelling information that the trailers were used for making biological weapons has come from a human source, an Iraqi scientist who described the trailers and what he said was their weapon-making role to American experts months before the trailers were discovered.

The six-page report that was made public in May, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," called discovery of the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

Senior administration officials have said repeatedly that the White House has not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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A U.S. soldier stands guard at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad as investigations continue into the attack
August 8, 2003
DISPATCHES
One Hundred and Twenty Degrees in the Shade
By MICHAEL R. GORDON


AGHDAD, Aug. 8 — Bernard Kerik had just begun to tell me how he was building a new police force for Iraq when his cellphone rang.

"Are we sure it was a car?" he asked. "How close in to the building did they get? What about casualties?"

Moments later, Mr. Kerik bolted from his office at the Republican Palace, the massive headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority that administers Iraq. He was headed for the Jordanian Embassy, where a car bomb had just exploded, killing at least 17 people and wounding scores more in the deadliest attack since American forces took over Iraq`s capital in April.

The Iraqi police who report to Mr. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and the policy adviser to Iraq`s Interior Ministry, had been given responsibility for protecting the Jordanian Embassy. Just days earlier, Mr. Kerik traveled to Amman to meet with Jordanian officials and establish a working relationship with the Jordanian police.

The Jordanians have been worried about the presence of foreign operatives and terrorist factions in Iraq. But like the Iraqi police, they had not anticipated that their embassy was at risk. The embassy`s security cameras were not even working at the time of the attack on Thursday morning.

Coalition officials assert that they are beginning to get traction in their effort to build a new Iraq. The next few months, a coalition official said, are critical to the push to develop momentum and garner Iraqi support. But this is a nation-building effort that is distinctly different from the one the United States and its allies pursued in the Balkans.

In Kosovo, for example, nation-building began after the war. In Iraq, the nation-building effort is being carried out in the middle of a guerrilla war. The effort to build a new Iraq has been actively opposed by paramilitary forces loyal to the Saddam Hussein regime, by foreign fighters, saboteurs, terrorists and to a lesser extent by ordinary Iraqis who have been offended by some of the hard-nosed American military tactics.

The blast at the Jordanian Embassy was a vivid instance in which the painstaking effort to remake Iraq was abruptly and violently challenged. The blast was so powerful that a nearby car was thrown 60 feet in the air, landing on top of a three-story building.

Even on a good day, the threat of violence lurks just below the surface. The C-130 that took me to the Baghdad airport did a stomach-churning spiral maneuver as it approach the airfield, a precaution against possible surface-to-air missiles. There have been three confirmed missile firings and the airport is still not open to civilian traffic, a considerable obstacle for an administration trying to rebuild the economy.

American soldiers, for their part, have become expert on a variety of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D`s. A common technique is to put a blasting cap on an old artillery shell and wire it so that it can be detonated when American vehicles pass by. A less discriminating approach is to pull the pin from a grenade, wrap a rubber band around it to hold the activating handle, or spoon, in place and then put it in a pan of gasoline that gradually eats through the rubber band, causing the grenade to explode at a time and target uncertain.

During this long, hot summer, each side has been studying and trying to outthink the other. The insurgents, who had concentrated their attacks at night, now often attack during the heat of the day, when it can reach 120 degrees in the shade, apparently calculating that the searing summer temperatures will make American troops less alert and keep many passer-bys off the street, thus giving the attackers a clearer shot.

American forces are also adapting their tactics. The new commander of the First Armored Division, Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, has changed the approach in Baghdad.

The emphasis is no longer on conducting regular three-hour patrols. That had been intended to maintain a persistent presence in the Iraqi capital and demonstrate to Iraqis that the Americans were attending to their security. But that also made American forces predictable and thus more vulnerable without yielding sufficient intelligence to eradicate future threats. So General Dempsey has decided to vary the duration and composition of his patrols.

American military officers, however, emphasize that the solution is not only military but also political. The key, they say, is to restore electricity to show Iraqis that the United States can take care of their basic needs and to generate jobs and jump-start the economy. Facilitating the transition to a new Iraqi government and establishing an Iraqi police and internal defense force are also important elements of the plan.

The Americans would like to create a new division of labor on security, with the Iraqi police and internal security forces assuming more responsibility for keeping order at home. The Americans, in turn, plan to be more selective about their raids, which have netted some senior Baathist but also many ordinary citizens. The goal is to "put an Iraqi face on security," as one senior American officer put it, and avoid heavy-handed tactics that have alienated some Iraqi citizens.

That is another reason why the attack on the Jordanian Embassy was significant. While the physical target may have been the embassy, the strike also cast a spotlight on and illustrated the shortcomings of the new Iraqi security apparatus that along with the Jordanians was supposed to have defended the embassy. Even the staunchest advocates of the nation-building effort now under way acknowledge that much more work needs to be done to develop an effective, sizable and multifaceted Iraqi police and security force.

According to the most recent casualty reports from the embassy attack, none of the people killed were Jordanian. They were all Iraqi, including five policemen.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 9, 2003
Belated Help for Afghanistan

Twenty-one months after American-backed forces drove the Taliban from Kabul, Afghanistan remains a long way from recovery and stability. The Bush administration, distracted by Iraq and dismissive of nation-building, initially failed to provide Afghanistan`s president, Hamid Karzai, with the help he desperately needed to rebuild his country`s economy and institutions, undermining one of America`s first and most important accomplishments in the war on terrorism. Fortunately, the White House is now considering a more generous approach.

Mr. Karzai`s power barely extends beyond Kabul, the only part of Afghanistan patrolled by international peacekeepers. Elsewhere, warlords maintain their own security forces, collect their own taxes and otherwise undermine the government`s authority. The rebuilding of vital roads, including the main road between Kabul and Kandahar, has still not been completed. Thousands of students are still studying outdoors in tents.

The Pentagon spends $10 billion a year on the 9,000 American troops fighting Taliban remnants, mainly in the east and south of the country. The administration has spent less than $1 billion on reconstruction so far, although Congress has authorized much more.

Ambassador William Taylor Jr., the State Department`s coordinator for Afghan reconstruction, has been developing plans to provide greater support for government ministries. The White House is soon expected to announce a much needed acceleration of reconstruction aid that some reports say could double current spending levels. More money from Washington should prompt additional contributions from Europe and Japan as well. Europe can also make an important contribution to security by agreeing to extend international peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul when NATO takes over command of the mission next week. That will take several thousand additional troops and a new mandate from the Security Council.

On Sept. 11, America paid a terrible price for not doing more to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in the late 1980`s. It cannot afford to repeat that mistake.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Disheartened Iraqis Feel Assaulted From All Sides
Attack on Arab Embassy Increases Uncertainty

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 9, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Aug. 8 -- To Mohammed Salah, a burned and broken victim of this week`s devastating car bombing at the Jordanian Embassy, the future looks nearly as bleak as his recent past.

"Since Saddam Hussein has gone, we`ve come to realize anything can happen. This was not a surprise, actually. The world is upside down, and no one seems able to step in and make things all right," he said as he lay in a bed at Yarmouk Hospital, a dank and dusty house of despair. He was awaiting the first of four operations to repair nerves and circulation in one arm and remove shrapnel from his chest. He hadn`t been visited by a doctor in 18 hours.

On Thursday, Salah was a passenger in the back seat of a car that was blasted and set afire by a sudden explosion as it passed the embassy. He escaped the burning wreck by pounding through a window and staggering across a median strip. The car`s Jordanian driver and Salah`s two Iraqi friends died in the flames.

In all, at least 13, and perhaps as many as 19 bystanders and security guards were killed in the attack. At least 50 people were wounded.

The attack has given Iraqis in the capital a feeling of being under assault from all sides. Violence and uncertainty have persisted nonstop since the war to depose the former Iraqi president ended. Major combat was declared over on May 1, yet numerous civilians have been killed by U.S. forces -- some protesting U.S. occupation policies, some caught in the crossfire between American troops and guerrillas, some shot down during U.S. raids on suspected resistance hide-outs. Other civilians have been killed by Iraqi fire directed at Americans.

Now Iraqis, including at least one infant, have been killed in the unexplained bombing of an Arab embassy, for which no group has claimed responsibility. "There are many ways to die in Baghdad," said Salah, 22, an unemployed former soldier.

Car bombs are not new to Baghdad, though it had been a long time since they struck the city. During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Hussein`s opponents set off bombs in the city. Despite numerous crackdowns, it was rare for the assailants to be caught, Iraqis recall. "You can imagine, if Saddam couldn`t get his enemies, imagine how it will be for the Americans," said Ali Abdul-Hadi Ahmed, an airport worker whose house was shaken by Thursday`s explosion.

"Back then, it was resistance to Saddam that caused the bomb problem. Now, maybe it is Saddam`s people," said Abu Haidar Jafari, who was repairing broken windows in his house a block from the embassy. "We are caught in a circle."

The bomb ripped open the front of the embassy, hurled a parked car atop the three-story building and shattered windows a half-mile away. As the latest in an escalation of attacks aimed one way or another at the American occupation -- Jordan was a silent partner in the war and let U.S. Special Operations troops operate from its territory -- the car bombing was worrisome for U.S. military officials. Today, American investigators picked over wreckage at the embassy while soldiers stood guard.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, described the bombing as a "new phenomenon." He speculated that if supporters of Hussein were behind the attack, "it does raise the question as to whether they have had technology transfer from foreign terrorists."

Some military officials have accused Ansar al-Islam -- a militant group that includes fugitive combatants from the war in Afghanistan -- as the chief suspect. Before the war, Ansar operated in mountainous northeastern Iraq. An assault by Kurdish military forces under U.S. command crippled their operations. Nonetheless, Ansar remains a threat, U.S. officials said. "We know that group is in the country," said Col. Guy Shields, a military spokesman in Baghdad. "It`s too early to say they are responsible."

Today, Salah lay faceup on a dingy bed at the hospital, being comforted by friends. His right arm was in a cast, his left was bandaged. Burns covered part of his face and body. Pieces of metal pockmarked his skin, and his chest was bandaged.

Though public health in Baghdad has recovered from the critical situation that prevailed during wartime, when injured people were strewn about hospital hallways for lack of space and medical supplies were scarce, care is far from assured and seems rudimentary. A young resident physician who guided a reporter to Salah said that it was not certain the patient could be operated on soon, because oxygen and anesthetics were in short supply. A car wreck victim next to Salah had been waiting for four days for some broken bones to be reset.

Several survivors of Thursday`s bombing were taken to private hospitals in Baghdad where, for money, care is more forthcoming, hospital officials said. Some victims were ferried to Jordan. "I need to get out of Iraq. I am without money to pay for anything," Salah said.

Salah`s misfortune is only the latest to strike him and his family. Their house was partially destroyed by U.S. bombs early in the war. A few days after U.S. troops occupied the city, a thief pointed a gun at the head of one of Salah`s uncles, told him to get out of his car and stole the vehicle. "This was right in our driveway," Salah said. Carjacking is still common in the city.

An aunt of Salah`s entered the ward. She had forced her way past a security guard who was trying to tell visitors that it was too late to enter. Many were carrying food for their kin and friends; the hospital does not feed its patients.

Salah began to weep. "I`m glad to see you. My arm is going to fall off and I`m going to die," he said. The resident doctor slipped out of the room.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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America`s Glossy Envoy
State Funds Pop Magazine for Young Arabs

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 9, 2003; Page A01


The U.S. government has a message for young Arabs:

Hi.

Hi is a new magazine funded by the State Department, published in Arabic, targeted at Arabs ages 18 to 35 and sold on newsstands in more than a dozen countries. It costs consumers about $2 a copy. It will cost American taxpayers about $4 million a year -- minus whatever advertising revenues it can generate.

"This is a long-term way to build a relationship with people who will be the future leaders of the Arab world," says Christopher W.S. Ross, special coordinator for public diplomacy at the State Department. "It`s good to get them in a dialogue while their opinions are not fully formed on matters large and small."

The premiere issue of the glossy, full-color 72-page monthly appeared in July with a cover story on the experiences of Arab students in American colleges and shorter articles on yoga, sandboarding, singer Norah Jones, Arab American actor Tony Shalhoub and marriage counseling -- the latter story illustrated with a photo of Dr. Phil McGraw, the Oprah-spawned TV tough-love guru.

It doesn`t contain a word about the American invasion of Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan or al Qaeda. Nor will future issues. The magazine`s editors and its State Department funders plan a resolutely apolitical magazine.

"This is a lifestyle magazine," says Fadel Lamen, Hi`s Libyan American managing editor. "It`s a new phenomenon in the Arab world to do a lifestyle magazine that doesn`t touch on the political."

"Arab Music Invades the West," proclaims the cover of the second issue, now arriving on Middle Eastern newsstands. That headline touts an article on Sting, Lenny Kravitz and other Western pop stars who have collaborated with Arab musicians. The issue also features stories on Internet matchmaking, digital art and Hispanic life in the United States, plus a short item on Adam Sandler`s revelation of what a lousy student he was in high school.

"There are plenty of political magazines," says Ross. "This is, in a very subtle way, a vehicle for American values. There have been people in Congress who have said, `Why can`t we explain our American values?` Well, here is one way to do that."

"It`s like a Reader`s Digest of America -- a Cliffs Notes of what`s going on in America from the American point of view," says Samir Husni, a Lebanese American professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, who was hired as a consulting editor for Hi. "It`s not going to have in-depth investigative pieces on the problems of America. We`re emphasizing the positive things."

The magazine is part of a series of initiatives by the Bush administration to create a more positive view of the United States in the Arab world, particularly among young people. For instance, the administration created Radio Sawa, which broadcasts a mix of Western and Arab pop music along with news reports aimed at 18-to-35-year olds. And earlier this week national security adviser Condoleezza Rice outlined a broad commitment to encourage democracy and free markets throughout the region.

Hi is funded by the State Department but produced by the Magazine Group, a Washington-based company that publishes magazines for scores of companies and associations -- including Concrete Masonry, the magazine of the National Concrete Masonry Association, and Jewish Woman, the magazine of a group called Jewish Women International.

The magazine is edited in Washington, printed in a State Department publishing plant in the Philippines and flown to the Middle East. Thus far, it is distributed in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Sudan, Israel, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, among others. Hi`s publishers are still seeking permission to sell the magazine in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Now, circulation is only 50,000 but the State Department hopes to expand that to 250,000.

Hi`s advertising agency is the Beirut-based Saatchi&Saatchi/Adline. The first two issues have each contained about a half-dozen pages of advertising -- most for hotels, airlines and snack foods.

The State Department conceived of the magazine after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ross says, "as part of a broad effort to create a dialogue with the Arab world." The State Department has created many publications before, but all of them were given away. This time, State decided to sell the magazine in an attempt to boost its credibility.

"If it`s going to survive as a magazine, it should sell on the newsstand with other magazines," Ross says. "And it`s useful to have the barometer that sales provide."

Hi does not hide its connection to the U.S. government. Each issue contains the statement that it is published "on behalf of the foreign media office of the United States State Department."

The magazine`s debut inspired a fair amount of comment in the Arab press, says Ross, a former ambassador to Syria and Algeria who is fluent in Arabic.

"Some people have said it`s just another tool of American propaganda, brainwashing Arab youth," he says. "But there was also a lot of serious analysis of the content, and that`s heartening, because we usually just get blasted."

Arabic-speaking Middle East experts who have read Hi express mixed reactions.

"I think it`s a great magazine. I would like to subscribe to it myself," says Mohammed Nawawy, an Egyptian-born journalism professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts and co-author of a book on the al-Jazeera TV network.

But, Nawawy suggests, the magazine is addressing the wrong problem. "The problem with young Arabs is not how they perceive U.S. culture or the American way of life," he says. "They`re watching American movies and wearing American jeans and lining up to get visas to come to the United States. The problem is how they perceive United States foreign policy, and that can only be changed by actions on the ground in Iraq and Israel."

Samer Shehata, who teaches at Georgetown University`s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, agrees. Hi is "clearly well done" and "visually beautiful," Shehata wrote in an e-mail while traveling to Egypt. But, like Nawawy, he believes that Arabs do not hate America or American culture, but loathe its foreign policy toward the Middle East.

"A magazine directed at Arab youth, regardless of how well done," he wrote, "will not convince people otherwise."

Ross disagrees. "We are reaching out to the mainstream," he says. "Osama bin Laden would not be convinced by reading that magazine. But a lot of mainstream people have questions about the United States that we can answer."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Meetings With Iran-Contra Arms Dealer Confirmed


By Bradley Graham and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 9, 2003; Page A01


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that Pentagon officials met secretly with a discredited expatriate Iranian arms merchant who figured prominently in the Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s, characterizing the contact as an unexceptional effort to gain possibly useful information.

While Rumsfeld said that the contact occurred more than a year ago and that nothing came of it, his aides scrambled during the day to piece together more details amid other reports that Rumsfeld`s account may have been incomplete.

Last night, a senior defense official disclosed that another meeting with the Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, occurred in June in Paris. The official said that, while the first contact, in late 2001, had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism, the second one resulted from "an unplanned, unscheduled encounter."

A senior administration official said, however, that Pentagon staff members held one or two other meetings with Ghorbanifar last year in Italy. The sessions so troubled Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the official said, that he complained to Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush`s national security adviser.

Powell maintained that the Pentagon activities were unauthorized and undermined U.S. policy toward Iran by taking place outside the terms defined by Bush and his top advisers. The White House instructed the Pentagon to halt meetings that do not conform to policy decisions, said the official, who requested anonymity.

The Defense Department personnel who met with Ghorbanifar came from the policy directorate. Sources identified them as Harold Rhode, a specialist on Iran and Iraq who recently served in Baghdad as the Pentagon liaison to Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.

State Department officials were surprised by news of the latest meeting with Ghorbanifar. Tension runs deep in the Bush administration between State and the Pentagon, which under Rumsfeld has aspired to a powerful role in foreign policy. The two agencies have sparred repeatedly over strategy toward Iran and Iraq.

The United States does not have formal relations with Iran, although a small number of sanctioned meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials have taken place, most notably to address U.S. war plans in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush administration has struggled to develop a coherent and consistent approach to Iran. In his State of the Union address last year, Bush characterized Iran as being part of an axis of evil, along with Iraq and North Korea, and administration officials have repeatedly accused Iran of supporting terrorist groups and of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. While broad agreement exists within the administration favoring changes in Iran`s Islamic government, officials differ on how to accomplish them.

More than two years after the administration began drafting a national security presidential directive on Iran, the policy document remains unfinished. While the State Department favors increased dialogue and engagement with potential reformers inside Iran, prominent Pentagon civilians believe the policy should be more aggressive, including measures to destabilize the existing government in Tehran.

The Iran-contra scandal erupted over a decision by the Reagan administration to sell weapons to Iran in an effort to win the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. The proceeds of the arms sales were illegally funneled to contra fighters opposing Nicaragua`s leftist Sandinista government.

Ghorbanifar was enlisted in the effort, helping to arrange the delivery by Israel of 508 TOW antitank missiles to Iran. The White House had drafted him as an intermediary despite warnings from the CIA that he was a cheat and had failed lie-detector tests.

The intelligence agency had instructed its operatives not to do business with him.

News of the Pentagon`s contact with Ghorbanifar was first reported yesterday by Newsday, and Rumsfeld was asked about the story when he emerged with Bush from a meeting at the president`s ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Saying he had just been told of the Newsday article by a senior aide and by Rice, Rumsfeld acknowledged that "one or two" Pentagon officials "were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government."

He said that a meeting took place "more than a year ago" and that the information received was circulated to various federal departments and agencies but did not lead to anything.

"That is to say, as I understand it, there wasn`t anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further," he said.

Asked if the Pentagon contact was intended to circumvent official U.S. exchanges with Iran, Rumsfeld replied: "Oh, absolutely not. I mean, everyone in the interagency process, I`m told, was apprised of it, and it went nowhere. It was just -- this happens, of course, frequently, that in -- people come in, offering suggestions or information or possible contacts, and sometimes they`re pursued. Obviously, if it looks as though something might be interesting, it`s pursued. If it isn`t, it isn`t."

Standing by Rumsfeld`s side, Bush was asked if the meeting was a good idea and if his administration wants a change in government. "We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran," the president said, then took a question on a different subject.

According to the account given later by the senior Pentagon official, the contact in 2001 occurred after Iranian officials passed word to the administration that they had information that might be useful in the global war on terrorism. Two Pentagon officials met with the Iranians in several sessions over a three-day period in Italy. Ghorbanifar attended these meetings, "but he was not the individual who had approached the United States or the one with the information," the official said.

What his role was, however, the official did not know.

The official said the June meeting involved one of the two Pentagon representatives who had been present at the 2001 meeting, but he declined to say which one.

Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.



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Amerika du hast es besser, hier Boston.

Wet now, wet later

Days at the beach were ruined. Ballgames were soaked. Picnics were held on porches. And pedestrians skirted puddles on Congress Street. Yesterday marked the 14th day of rain since July 10. Ready for a break? Sorry. Forecasts say the wet weather will continue through Tuesday. (Globe Staff Photo / David Kamerman)

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Kids, lies, and President Bush


By Katrina Vanden Heuvel, 8/9/2003

N THE EVE of the Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998, the Sexuality Information and Education Council sent out ``Ten Tips for Talking about the Starr Report with your Children.``


``The upcoming impeachment hearing,`` council president Debra Haffner advised, ``provides parents with a special opportunity to talk to their children about sexuality issues ... The question parents need to ask is ``Who do I want to tell my children about this sad situation?`` Another child on the playground? An acquaintance on the school bus? They are unlikely to tell your children the facts in a clear way. And only YOU can give YOUR children YOUR values.``

It`s now 2003, and if the events of these last weeks don`t provide parents with that special opportunity to talk to their children about the president and values such as truth, lies, and consequences, then I don`t know what does.

So, with all due credit to the Sexuality Information and Education Council, here are ``Tips for Talking about President Bush with Your Children``:

Think about your values as they relate to this situation. What are your family`s values about telling the truth? What would you do if your child lied to you and when you scolded him or her, he or she replied: ``I am not a fact-checker.`` Or added, ``Isn`t it time to move on?``

Ask your children to tell you what words mean to them. Explain that words have consequences and lies can come in two, six or 16 words.

Clarify facts. Give short, age-appropriate answers. Explain that shifting strategies at damage control only lead to more unanswered questions. Make clear that even if facts are malleable for President Bush, they`re not malleable in your home. Explain that even though the White House strategy may be to say whatever is necessary, even if they have to admit later that what they said the first time wasn`t exactly true, you don`t do it that way yourself.

Use these talks with your child to encourage good decision-making. Let them know that if they grow up to become president and lead a nation into war, the right thing to do is take responsibility for their words and acts. (This is a good opportunity to explain what the saying ``the buck stops here`` means.)

Use television news as a springboard for discussion. However, do not let children younger than 13 watch this coverage alone. It can be ugly and disturbing for children to watch the president and his aides scapegoat their subordinates with so little compunction.

Help your children understand the larger issues. Let them know that it`s not just about 16 words. You could explain that there appears to be a pattern of dishonesty well beyond the uranium scandal that is extremely worrisome. Explain that the American people are entitled to the truth and they have a right to know if Bush, Vice President Cheney or any White House officials misrepresented the facts to justify war.

Keep the lines of communication open. Talk. Remember that this is not a one-time or a one-way discussion. Your children need your ongoing support in dealing with their president`s tenuous relationship to the truth. Unfortunately, this sad situation is currently a fixed element of the political landscape they are growing up in.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation magazine.

This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 8/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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THE RECALL CAMPAIGN


On the Spot, a Leading Man Sticks to His Lines
By Joe Mathews and Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writers

August 9, 2003

Arnold Schwarzenegger`s transition from movie star to gubernatorial candidate hit its first rough patch Friday as he ducked questions about the state`s fiscal crisis, gay marriage and workplace benefits.

At the same time, Schwarzenegger picked up the support of President Bush, who said the bodybuilder-turned-actor would make a good governor.

But on the third day of his campaign, the novice Republican candidate drew his first sustained attack from Democrats, who pounced on his refusal to answer some questions during a round of morning interviews on national television news shows.

Asked on ABC`s "Good Morning America" about gay marriage, he replied: "I don`t want to get into that right now."

Asked about a news report quoting aides saying he was open to tax increases, Schwarzenegger said: "I can`t imagine anyone on my team said that." He said that his solution was not raising taxes or cutting programs, but to "bring businesses back to California." But Schwarzenegger offered no strategy for attracting business. In fact, he has argued for reversing an increase in the car tax — which would cost the state treasury billions — even as he has advocated for more spending on school buildings and teacher hiring.

Financial experts who rate the state bonds have said that cuts in services or higher taxes or both are necessary to close the state`s budget gap.

Schwarzenegger declined requests to explain how he would manage all of this.

On NBC`s "Today Show," interviewer Matt Lauer pressed him. "You talk about the budget deficit. You talk about the energy crisis, the slumping economy, people leaving California. Give me some specifics, Arnold. How are you going to turn it around?"

Schwarzenegger offered no details, focusing his answer on the governor:

"Well, I think the first and most important thing is to know that it takes leadership, because Gray Davis is saying he has the experience and all of those things. We have seen now what happens. He has sold himself as the man that has experience you cannot buy. What happened with all his experience? Look at the situation we`re in right now."

Asked later in the same interview whether he would disclose his tax returns, as candidates for high office typically do, Schwarzenegger fiddled with his earpiece and said he could not hear the question. (In an appearance in Bellflower later Friday, Schwarzenegger said he would make disclosure but did not say when. "Absolutely. I have nothing to hide," he said.)

Democrats quickly seized on the TV appearances. The state Democratic Party put out a statement saying: "Pretending they can`t hear the questions might work in Hollywood, but it doesn`t cut it for the voters of California."

Garry South, who led Davis` two successful campaigns for governor, went further. "Clearly what he has decided to do is to try to shelter himself from the mainstream political press and hide under the skirts of the entertainment press," South said. He added that he thinks Schwarzenegger is gambling that the recall election season is so short and "there will be so many candidates, there will be so much hysteria, that he slides through this entire process without ever having to stand and deliver."

South said that media outlets needed to apply more scrutiny to Schwarzenegger and mentioned in particular the actor`s record of voting. (A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder said Friday that Schwarzenegger had voted in only two of the last eight statewide elections).

Even some Republicans questioned the TV appearances. "Does anyone ever get a direct answer from him?" asked Republican strategist Arnold Steinberg. "They asked him specific, direct easy questions. He`s just now answering."

Pressed about his lack of detailed positions in Bellflower, Schwarzenegger said: "With the campaign, everything is under control. I`m having a great time in this campaign. I have so much energy. I have so much fire. I will be going from home to home to talk to the people of California."

On Friday, his campaign said: "As the campaign moves forward, Mr. Schwarzenegger will make it clear the direction he wants to take this state. The details of progress on major issues will be released as the campaign moves on."

Even with Democrats on the attack, Schwarzenegger and his aides could take comfort from increasing signs that Republicans are clearing a path. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) dropped out of the race Friday, saying that he couldn`t have competed with Schwarzenegger.

Last year`s failed Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon Jr. announced that he would file candidacy papers today. But other Republicans have fallen away.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), the recall election`s main financial backer, and onetime Republican U.S. Senate nominee Michael Huffington dropped out this week, both endorsing Schwarzenegger.

And though the White House has said that the recall issue is a matter for the people of California to decide, President Bush offered praise while speaking to reporters in Crawford, Texas.

"Yes, I think he`d be a good governor," Bush said. The president did not say if he would campaign for Schwarzenegger.

A lighthearted Bush added: "I will never arm wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger No matter how hard I try, I`ll never lift as much weight as he does."

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writers Vicki Kemper in Texas, Tim Reiterman in Sacramento, and Ronald Brownstein and Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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THE WORLD


Bush Points to Progress in Iraq Amid Criticism and Casualties
By Vicki Kemper
Times Staff Writer

August 9, 2003

CRAWFORD, Texas — The White House on Friday mounted a spirited defense of U.S. operations in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat there, saying that the defeat of Saddam Hussein`s government has benefited Iraqis and Americans alike.

"We`ve made a lot of progress in 100 days, and I`m pleased with the progress we`ve made but fully recognize we`ve got a lot more work to do," Bush said after meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The White House, stung by criticism as American casualties have mounted since May 1, also released a 24-page report titled "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom." The report focuses on nine areas, including democratic reforms and women`s rights. In it, the administration says that "the liberation of Iraq has improved the lives of Iraqis and the safety and security of the world."

This morning, the president will use his weekly radio address to discuss how the U.S.-led war against Hussein has improved Iraqis` lives.

Although Bush`s decision to conduct a preemptive war received near-unanimous support in Congress, in recent weeks some Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates as well as some Republican politicians have publicly criticized the administration`s efforts.

Critics have pointed to the failure of U.S. forces to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they have accused the administration of overstating its justification for going to war. They focus specifically on Bush`s State of the Union address in January, in which he asserted that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium in Africa to restart its nuclear weapons program.

Last week, in his first news conference since the start of the war, Bush said he took responsibility for the controversial claim. But in his remarks Friday, Bush dismissed criticism of the administration`s Iraq policy as "just pure politics."

"The American people know that we laid out the facts, we based the decision on sound intelligence, and they also know we`ve only been there for 100 days," Bush said. "A free Iraq is necessary for a — is an integral part of the war on terror."

Bush declined to predict how much longer U.S. forces would be in Iraq or how much the United States` continued occupation and reconstruction of the country would cost. He said his administration would do whatever it takes for "however long it takes to win the war on terror."

"The best way to secure America is to get the enemy before they get us," he told reporters outside his ranch house here. "And that`s what`s happening in Iraq. And we`re grateful for the sacrifices of our soldiers."

The administration`s aggressive defense of its Iraq policy comes as a new poll indicates that Americans are losing patience with Bush`s focus on national security issues.

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that 57% of those surveyed believed that Bush should be devoting more of his attention to the economy, up sharply from 38% in January. Only 27%, down from 43%, said that the U.S.-declared war on terrorism should be Bush`s primary focus.

According to the poll, Bush`s approval rating has declined to 53%, the lowest level since shortly before the United States initiated the war against Iraq in March. It found that 37% of respondents disapproved of Bush`s job performance, the highest figure since the start of his presidency.

Bush had told reporters here Wednesday that he believed his tax cuts would eventually stimulate the economy but that more needed to be done. He called on Congress to pass an energy plan and lawsuit reform.

But Bush made clear Friday that national security remains his top priority — and the poll indicated that a solid majority still supports his decision to go to war against Iraq — 63%, down from 74% in late April.

"You know, the American people should suspect that this administration will do what is necessary to win the war on terror," Bush said, with Rumsfeld at his side.

"That`s my pledge to the American people. They have got to understand that I will not forget the lessons of Sept. 11. And those lessons are loud and clear: that there are people who want to inflict harm on the American people."

During a week in which the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad was bombed and U.S. forces` post-May 1 death toll from hostile fire in Iraq climbed to 55, Bush`s statements and the new White House report were meant to highlight positive results.

The report presented developments — virtually all previously cited by the administration or newspaper articles — that the White House said were prompted or made possible by the overthrow of Hussein.

Among the report`s lists are "10 ways the liberation of Iraq supports the war on terror," "10 signs of better security," "10 signs of better infrastructure and basic services" and "10 signs of democracy." The report also cites evidence of improvements in the lives of Iraqi children and "steps to improve the lives of Iraqi women."

Signs of progress cited include the ongoing effort to restore services — electricity, water, education, police and health care among them — that were disrupted by the war.

Other signs reflect genuine change in the Iraqi way of life: the creation of a national Governing Council that includes three women; efforts to locate missing persons, exhume mass graves and catalog past human-rights abuses; the creation of more than 150 newspapers; a more equitable distribution of food and medicine; the reorganization of Iraq`s Olympic committee, and the widespread availability of satellite dishes for sale.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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THE NATION


In Defending Liberty, They Secure Freedom
More than 200 immigrant sailors from 51 countries become American citizens. Their courage expedited ceremony.
By David Lamb
Times Staff Writer

August 9, 2003

NORFOLK, Va. — It took a war and a stint in the Navy to do it, but Vern Rodriguez`s long journey from Belize ended Friday when he and 221 sailors from 51 countries were sworn in as U.S. citizens on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.

"This is like starting my life from scratch," said Rodriguez, 23, the first member of his Los Angeles family to become an American. "Words can`t explain the happiness I feel. I`ll thank God every day for this."

Some of the sailors were assigned to the Roosevelt, the only carrier that took part in both recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others have served on a variety of naval vessels and had been chosen to join the ceremony on the Roosevelt as part of an expedited naturalization process.

The 222 sailors were beneficiaries of President Bush`s executive order in July 2002 that waived the waiting period for citizenship applications for service personnel. Upward of 10,000 members of the military are expected to become citizens as a result. Other presidents have issued similar decrees in past wars.

"If you`d told me 10 years ago this would be happening today, never in my wildest dreams would I have believed it," said Jian Di Liu, 23, of China. "I woke up this morning Chinese and now I am American. Why did I want U.S. citizenship? More freedom is No. 1. There is so much more freedom in the United States."

Around Liu, in a hangar bay cleared of its 70 combat aircraft, was the face of America, one of many colors, religions and ethnic backgrounds. To her left was a sailor from Hungary, to her right one from Ecuador. There were others from Russia, Vietnam, Nigeria, Romania, Britain, Ukraine. In all, more than a quarter of the world`s countries were represented at the hourlong ceremony.

"I think everyone will tell you we came to the United States for the same thing — the American dream: freedom and opportunity," said Francois Ba, 31, who left Senegal in 1998. "But what people back home don`t realize is that just coming here doesn`t make you rich or successful. This is no free ride. You have to work hard. You have to contribute, especially as a newcomer."

Immigrants have served in the U.S. military since before the Civil War, and today, together with naturalized citizens, make up about 5% of the armed forces. Two of the first Marines killed in Iraq were immigrants, one from Mexico, the other from Guatemala. Since 1907, nearly 700,000 immigrants have used the military as a path to citizenship.

As the sailors milled about in the cavernous hangar bay, filling out the last of their paperwork before the ceremony and receiving small American flags, some said they were struck by the paradox that, at a time when America seems to have so many enemies, the U.S. remains the destination of choice for so much of the world. More than 1.4 million people have become naturalized U.S. citizens since 2001.

"If my friends at home had the same opportunity to come to America I did, I think 80% would take it," said Ann Mwai, 22, of Kenya.

"America`s not perfect," said Henry Villanueva, 23, of the Philippines, "but there is the freedom to choose. The people who don`t like America, I don`t want to call them fools, but they are naive. If they understood America, they would not hate it."

Their paperwork done, the immigrant sailors filed into 13 rows of folding chairs placed in front of a towering American flag.

An honor guard presented the colors. A Navy band played "America, the Beautiful." About 80 family members looked on proudly.

"Do you believe this is happening?" Nilkalys Moilna, 21, of the Dominican Republic whispered to a friend.

Bush told the sailors in a video address that the gifts and values each brought to the country, and their courage in defending the United States in war, made them "as American as the most direct descendants of our Founding Fathers."

And Capt. Johnny Green, commander of the Theodore Roosevelt, which returned in May from five months of combat support off Iraq, reminded them of words spoken by the president for whom the carrier is named:

"We are all of us Americans and nothing else A wrong to any of us is a wrong to all of us."

The oath of allegiance, in which the sailors renounced allegiance to all foreign states and pledged to defend the U.S. Constitution against any domestic or foreign enemy, was administered by Eduardo Aguirre, director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Aguirre arrived in the United States 33 years ago as a penniless teenage refugee from Cuba.

He asked each sailor to stand when the name of his or her native country was called. One stood from Albania, three from Barbados, two from Ethiopia, six from Guyana, one each from Iran, Israel and Grenada, 12 from Peru, four from Liberia, two from Cuba, until finally there was a sea of shoulder-to-shoulder white dress uniforms, and Aguirre said, to cheers, applause and hugs:

"Congratulations! You are new Americans."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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John Chuckman: `The painful horrors of political autism`
Posted on Saturday, August 09 @ 09:23:54 EDT
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By John Chuckman

I`ve read that severe autism involves receiving a storm of sensory perceptions, literally assaulting a mind unable to properly sort them out. It is a terrifying experience, driving sufferers to avoid human contact.

That description of autism resembles what I briefly sometimes experience from the passing parade of political events.

A Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, a man with a family and career in Canada, was arrested and deported last fall on his way to Europe while simply changing planes in New York. In an act of aggressive stupidity, despite his travelling on a Canadian passport, he was deported by American authorities to Syria. His family has not heard from him since. Now, we have received reports that the man has been severely tortured. After all, Syria is a closed society, and he would be wanted for avoiding military service if nothing else, the very thing that motivated millions of people to migrate to America from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.



The American Secretary of State announced in his dignified baritone that the U.S. will indeed pay its promised blood-money of $15 million dollars each for the lives of Hussein`s sons. I thought this a fitting cap to Mr. Powell`s career in the State Department. Apparently, he thought so, too, for not long after, he let it be known he would retire after Bush`s next inauguration. I guess he felt he had to get this out before it became clear to the whole world that Bush`s crowd was as likely to re-appoint him as give up root-beer socials over smoldering cows down at the ranch.

There will almost certainly be a second inauguration, despite all those desperately silly count-down clocks on the Internet telling us how long Bush has left. This most inarticulate President in American history, a man who has set in motion policies we will all live to regret, remains fairly popular. I don`t know which is the more appropriate analogy, the vast ship that takes a very great time to swing into a turn or the lab critter that learns only by banging its head into the walls of a maze, to best describe America`s capacity for political advance, but it is painfully slow.

General Ricardo Sanchez, America`s Boss of Bosses in Iraq, has ordered occupying troops to lighten up a bit, recognizing what the whole world understands, that spraying a crowd of civilians with automatic fire does not win hearts and minds. I think he does need, however, to speak with the troops who ripped Iraqi flags from the graves of Hussein`s sons and stomped the rough graves with their boots. If Iraqis themselves did this, it would be a fair expression of past hatred, but American soldiers doing it is nothing short of stupid.

Bush`s distinguished Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who believes both in speaking in tongues and in stepping on them when they don`t agree with him, has directed federal prosecutors to report judges giving light sentences. So much for the idea of respecting judicial independence, but judges have always been targets for America`s crypto-Nazis. The only good high-court judge is one who interprets the Constitution as though it were still 1789, rather than 2003, and the only good lower-court judge is one who packs the prisons.

Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he will run for governor of California. This would not be notable since California`s list of past governors includes Ronald Reagan, former pitchman for Chesterfield cigarettes and Boraxo soap powder, Jerry Brown, fast-talking mystic, and Richard Nixon, the Republican gift that just kept giving. What is notable is that Hollywood`s aging, dyed-hair, action-figure hero started his campaign with words resembling those of now-forgotten whiner-billionaire, Ross Perot. Remember, how Perot was going to clean out the stables in Washington? Arnold is going to "clean house in Sacramento," California. He`ll squeeze it in between three-hour sessions in the gym and appointments with his hair dresser, manicurist, and body-waxing team. What a fresh and inspiring theme, cleaning house, offered to the people of the nation`s largest, wealthiest state. He`ll probably be elected.

Al Gore is making a much-promoted speech, a clear hint that interest in running still flickers in the breast of this ineffectual politician whose annoying campaign helped give the world Bush. It is not even a slight exaggeration to say that something is very, very wrong with America`s political system when Bush and Gore are the best candidates 280 million people can field.

A small disturbance quivered through the press over the proposal for a futures market in terror attacks advanced by John Poindexter, convicted felon given new life by Bush as one of those Republican government-haters who never in his life has done anything but work for government, a public-service lifer. While I find his futures-market idea repulsive, I cannot quite grasp the wide disapproval. The truth is that America is coming almost to be defined by lotteries. Apart from state lotteries everywhere and whole communities living off the avails of casinos, many companies selling almost anything you care to name have shifted their advertising spending to running lotteries in the mail. You would think from their promotional material that they weren`t selling anything but were just in the business of making strangers happy by winning big. It`s the same for much of the telephone soliciting that plagues America: they`re only calling to give you something. And it is a crap shoot in America whether your employer even continues to offer a decent health insurance policy.

Bush`s efforts in the Middle East certainly are paying big dividends. Israel released 340 carefully-selected Palestinian prisoners, and the act was front-page news as though something important had happened. Never mind that Israel holds about 6,000 such prisoners, and never mind that all of them were improperly arrested and imprisoned by the Middle East`s "only democracy." The release of less than 6 percent of them is advertised as a step towards peace by the contemporary Prince of Peace, Ariel Sharon. Meanwhile, the world`s biggest slab of reinforced concrete, complete with machine-gun towers and razor wire, Sharon`s mere "fence" (ah, what`s in a name!), continues to rise on the West Bank, severing the natural relationships of centuries and demonstrating Sharon`s conception of a Palestinian state resembling a zoo exhibit of dangerous animals secure in their natural habitant.

I received my 437th e-mail accusing me of anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism? You might think that is the name for some dreadful heresy, opposing the sacred official religion. Perhaps, it is the political equivalent of following anti-Christ? Religion and nationalism do get very confused in America. That`s certainly the attitude such writers display.

The simple truth is that if being critical of the arrogant, thoughtless, and abusive aspects of American society sometimes earns you this epithet, it may come to be regarded it as an honorable distinction. This kind of unimaginative labeling show no awareness of a critical tradition embracing Swift, Voltaire, and Johnson, and extending back to Isaiah and Jeremiah. A critical tradition that included those like Tom Paine who worked to stoke the embers of revolution in America more than two centuries ago, but then, missing, too, is any awareness that America`s armies now resemble the nasty Redcoats and Hessians excoriated in every grade-school history text.

The e-mail came from an American - they always do - undoubtedly someone deeply affected by his high-school experiences of watching cheer leaders flipping to reveal what`s under their skirts to the sounds of out-of-tune brass bands and intermittent prayers for home-school victory. These early cultural experiences regrettably often permanently fix future understanding and behavior.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=12570&mode=nest…

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Lincoln, Nebraska ist ganz bestimmt kein Ort für liberales Denken. Deshalb erstaunt mich der Kommentar für eine Wochenzeitung aus Nebraska.

Impeachable offenses

By Belva Ann Prycel August 07, 2003

This week as President Bush and his closest advisors altered stories in an ongoing effort to deflect blame about "intelligence failures," I am reminded of a quote by Oliver North from his Iran-Contra testimony, "I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version."

One cannot help but ask if these false and terrifying depictions of Iraq`s destructive capabilities were really the products of intelligence failures, or if they were part of an ongoing and systematic policy on the part of those at the very head of government.


Thirty years ago during the Watergate hearings, investigators asked the simple question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" A more appropriate question to ask today might be "Why didn`t the president know before going to war what common people marching in streets all over the world knew?"


For those with Internet, BBC, and world news access, the information about forged Niger uranium documents, UN inspector`s assessments on Iraq`s unlikely chemical and biological capabilities, the CIA pronouncements that Iraq did not constitute a significant threat, the International Atomic Energy Agency position that no evidence existed of an Iraqi nuclear program, the absence of our CIA finding any credible links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, were all known among many citizens before Bush single-mindedly took the country to war.


Despite this, the president and his advisors repeatedly proffered in speeches and public appearances discredited information and hyped rhetoric linking Iraq to terrorism and 9/11. "Weapons of mass destruction" figured most prominently in arguing to the American people that there was an absolute necessity for ending UN inspections and waging a preemptive attack upon Iraq. This unsubstantiated argument was so persuasive that by the time the invasion began, fully 72 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, without a shred of credible evidence to support such a claim.


Now we are engaged in counting the dead, assessing blame, looking at huge financial burdens, and considering the ongoing loss of young American lives in an unwelcome occupation of Iraq. What is becoming increasingly clear is that if the president and his closest advisors knowingly lied in making the case for a preemptive war based on Iraq constituting an imminent threat to the security of the United States, this is assuredly an impeachable offense of the highest order of magnitude, manifestly greater than the constitutional abuses of Dick Nixon or the sexual lying of Bill Clinton.


We can unfortunately be assured that the Republican-controlled House and Senate will never allow an investigation of this president or his advisors, despite a truckload of incriminating evidence leading straight to the front door of the Oval Office. This leaves us, as citizens, to make assessments on our own without benefit of Congressional hearings or testimony on those who mislead us. In this effort, we can note however, that among those with something to hide, the administration`s actions speak louder than words.


Most revealing and scarcely reported, is the crucial change that the Bush Administration initiated in the intelligence community, one which has had severe implications for our constitutional processes and national credibility. Always seeking to demonize Saddam, it appears that sometime in 2002 the tight cabal surrounding the president became increasingly dissatisfied with the CIA and other intelligence data which did not support their hawkish view on Iraq.


To address this, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Special Plans (OSP) within the Pentagon. As Seymour Hersch and other investigative journalists have reported, this small group of OSP analysts was charged with finding evidence of what Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld postulated, and what our intelligence agencies did not endorse; namely that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda and that Iraq had enormous arsenals of chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear weapons that threatened the United States.


The OSP group relied heavily on data gathered by the exiled Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a character whose veracity and integrity were strongly doubted by the CIA and who had little respect from the Iraqi people, but who was nevertheless hand-picked by the Bush Administration to head any new Iraqi regime. (Chalabi had been, among other shady business deals and improprieties, convicted of a $7 million bank fraud in Jordan.)


Unfortunately it appears that Chalabi and the OSP office of the Pentagon became the primary source of the questionable "intelligence" accepted by the Bush White House. The CIA and the State Department were virtually eliminated from the loop.


According to W. Patrick Lang, former chief of Middle East Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the OSP and the president`s advisors manipulated and "cherry-picked the intelligence information to build a case for war."


The OSP provided largely unverified information, but it was the only information the administration wanted to hear. Further, it requires a rather enormous suspension of judgment to believe that George Bush knew nothing of these activities by the Vice President and his closest advisors.


Now Americans and the rest of the world know the truth: that the president took this country to war based on "faulty intelligence." But what does this really mean? It means the country was likely intentionally misled, and this is a prosecutable offense. It is a prosecutable offense because when a president takes the oath of office, he swears to "uphold the Constitution of the United States."


Manipulation or deliberate abuse of national security intelligence data is "a high crime" under the Constitution`s impeachment clause. It is also a violation of federal criminal law and the anti-conspiracy statute which considers it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose. "


Richard Nixon faced impeachment for misusing the CIA and the FBI, a serious abuse of presidential power. George Bush and his administration apparently manipulated and misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, a preemptive war to take control of Iraq.


For those who would give George Bush some largely undeserved latitude, let`s be clear that this was not a benign act with no victims and no ongoing consequences. This was not a personal impropriety, a sexual tryst or a stain on a blue dress. This was a stain upon American democracy.


Thousands of innocent Iraqis died and many continue to suffer in a lawless war-ravaged country. Millions of civilians, including American servicemen and women are exposed to the health hazards of depleted uranium from U.S. missiles. Every day, more young soldiers die as Iraqis make sitting ducks out of American troops. The cost of war and a long occupation rises into the hundreds of billions of dollars, while our country faces a depleted treasury and deficits as far as the eye can see.


This is demonstrably a misdeed of monstrous proportions. A huge, costly, and deadly lie was foisted on the American public and the Congress. The credibility of the United States was severely damaged and the constitutional powers of the presidency abused.


George Walker Bush deserves impeachment. He deserves impeachment and removal from the office he was never elected to hold. Those who have paid the ultimate price with their lives demand no less. Our democracy demands no less. As citizens, we must clamor for the justice and accountability which our leaders would like to avoid. We must not forget.

Belva Ann Prycel is a resident of Alna.

©Lincoln County Weekly 2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=9971310&BRD=1467&P…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=9971310&BRD=1467&P…

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Krieg gegen die Wahrheit
von John Pilger
ZNet 31.07.2003


Aufstieg und Torheit habgieriger imperialer Macht gedenkt man in Bagdad in einem vergessenen Friedhof mit namens Nordtor. Hunde sind seine Besucher; an den verrosteten Toren hängt ein Vorhängeschloss und Schwaden von Autoabgasen hängen über den langen Reihen zerfallender Grabsteine und unveränderter geschichtlicher Wahrheit.

Generalleutnant Sir Stanley Maude liegt hier begraben, in einem Mausoleum, seinem Rang, wenn auch nicht der Cholera, der er zum Opfer fiel, entsprechend. 1917 sagte er: „Unsere Armeen kommen nicht...als Eroberer oder Feind, sondern als Befreier.“ Innerhalb von drei Jahren starben 10,000 Menschen in einem Aufstand gegen die Briten, von denen sie „Schurken“ genannt wurden und die sie mit Giftgas und Bomben bekämpften. Das war ein Abenteuer, vom dem sich der britische Imperialismus im Mittleren Osten nie erholte.

In den Vereinigten Staaten erzählen die allgegenwärtigen Medien den Amerikanern, dass sie zur Ader gelassen werden, auch wenn das wirkliche Ausmaß der Angriffe mit ziemlicher Wahrscheinlichkeit verheimlicht wird. Bald werden mehr Soldaten getötet worden sein seit der „Befreiung“ als während der Invasion. Wie in Vietnam wird es schwierig, den Mythos einer „Mission“ aufrecht zu halten. Die wirkliche Leistung der Propaganda der Invasoren ist zweifelsohne die Unterdrückung der Wahrheit, nämlich dass die meisten Iraker sowohl das Regime Saddam Husseins als auch den angloamerikanischen Angriff auf ihr Heimatland ablehnen. Die Berichterstattung Andrew Gilligans von BBC, dass für viele Iraker die blutige Invasion und Besetzung mindestens so schlimm seien wie zuvor die Diktatur, war ein Grund für die Verärgerung von Downing Street.

Das ist hier in Amerika tabu. Die Zehntausende toter und verstümmelter Iraker existieren nicht. Während eines Interviews mit Douglas Feith, Nummer drei in Donald Rumsfelds Pentagon, schüttelte dieser den Kopf und klärte mich über die „Präzision” amerikanischer Waffen auf. Seine Botschaft war, dass Krieg eine Wissenschaft ohne Blutvergießen geworden sei, ganz im Dienst von Amerikas einzigartiger Göttlichkeit. Es war, als ob man einen Priester interviewe. Einzig amerikanische „Jungs“ und „Mädels“ leiden, und zwar in den Händen von „Überbleibseln von Ba´athisten”, ein irreführender Ausdruck ganz im Geist von General Maudes „Schurken”. Und die Medienspiegeln spiegeln dies wider. Während sie kaum auf den Widerstand in der Bevölkerung hinweisen, veröffentlichen sie reihenweise Bilder amputierter GIs, beschreiben diese in einem rührseligen, ganz gewöhnlichen Chauvinismus, der die Opfer der Invasoren feiert und gleichzeitig den brutalen Imperialismus, dem sie dienten, als wohl bringend darstellt. Der Staatssekretär für Internationale Sicherheit im Außenministerium, John Bolton, suggerierte mir, dass ich aufgrund meines Infragestellens des Fundamentalismus der amerikanischen Politik sicherlich ein Ketzer sei, „ein Mitglied der kommunistischen Partei”, wie er sich ausdrückte.

Was die große menschliche Katastrophe im Irak anbetrifft, die mittellosen Krankenhäuser, die Kinder, die verdursten und an Magen-Darm-Entzündungen sterben, und zwar in größerer Zahl als vor der Invasion und die laut Unicef ca. acht Prozent der Kinder, die an extremer Unterernährung leiden, die Krise in der Landwirtschaft, die laut FAO kurz vor dem Zusammenbrechen ist: das existiert alles nicht. Wie von der über zwölf Jahre dauernden, von Amerika gesteuerten, mittelalterlichen Belagerung, die hunderttausende irakischer Leben zerstörte, weiß man davon in Amerika nichts: deshalb ist es nicht passiert. Die Iraker sind, bestenfalls, nicht vorhanden, schlechtestenfalls Dreck, da, um gejagt zu werden. „Für jeden getöteten GI müssen zwanzig Iraker hingerichtet werden”, stand in einem Lesebrief zu lesen, der Ende letzten Monats an prominenter Stelle in der New York Daily News veröffentlicht wurde. In der vergangenen Woche ermordete die Task Force 20, eine amerikanische „Elite”einheit mit dem Auftrag, Bösewichte zu jagen, auf ihrer Fahrt durch die Straßen Bagdads mindestens fünf Menschen, und das war nichts Außergewöhnliches.

Die erhabenen New York Times und Washington Post sind selbstverständlich nicht so plump wie die News und Murdoch. Aber beide Zeitungen berichteten am 23. Juli 2003 auf der Titelseite, an prominenter Stelle, über die von der Regierung sorgfältig inszenierte „Rückkehr” der 20-jährigen Soldatin Jessica Lynch, die während der Invasion bei einem Verkehrsunfall verletzt und gefangen genommen wurde. Sie wurde von irakischen Ärzten versorgt, die ihr wahrscheinlich das Leben retteten und bei dem Versuch, sie wieder der amerikanischen Armee zu übergeben, ihr eigenes Leben riskierten. Die offizielle Version, dass sie tapfer ihre irakischen Angreifer abwehrte, ist ein Sack voll Lügen, wie ihre „Rettung” (aus einem praktisch leeren Krankenhaus), die von einem Hollywoodregisseur mit Nachtsichtkameras gefilmt wurde. Das alles ist in Washington bekannt und ein Großteil davon wurde berichtet.

Das hat den besten und schlechtesten amerikanischen Journalismus nicht davon abgehalten, gemeinsam ihre himmlische Rückkehr nach Elizabeth, West Virginia, inszenieren zu helfen, wobei die Times berichtete, das Pentagon verneine jegliche „Beschönigung” und dass „sich anscheinend wenige Leute für die Kontroverse interessierten“. Gemäß der Post war die ganze Sache durch „widersprüchliche Berichte in den Medien” verzerrt worden. Orwell beschrieb dies als „Worte, die wie weicher Schnee auf die Tatsachen fallen, ihre Umrisse verschwimmen lassen und alle Einzelheiten zudecken“. Dank der freiesten Presse der Welt glauben laut einer landesweiten Umfrage die meisten Amerikaner, dass Irak hinter den Anschlägen vom 11. September stand. „Wir waren Opfer eines der größten Vertuschungsmanöver aller Zeiten“, sagt Jane Harman, eine einsame Stimme im Kongress. Aber auch das ist eine Illusion.

Die verbotene Wahrheit ist nämlich, dass der grundlose Angriff auf Irak und die Plünderungen seiner Ressourcen die 73. koloniale Intervention Amerikas ist. Diese, zusammen mit Hunderten von blutigen geheimen Operationen, wurden von einem System und der reinsten Tradition von staatlich unterstützten Lügen vertuscht, die bis zu den völkermordähnlichen Feldzügen gegen die Ureinwohner Amerikas und den sie begleitenden Pioniersmythen zurückreichen, zum spanisch-amerikanischen Krieg, der aufgrund der falschen Beschuldigung, Spanien habe die Maine, ein amerikanisches Kriegsschiff versenkt und nachdem das Kriegsfieber von den Hearstzeitungen geschürt wurde, ausbrach, dem nicht vorhandenen „missile gap“ („Raketenlücke“) zwischen den US und der Sowjetunion, was auf gefälschten Dokumenten beruhte, die 1960 Journalisten zugespielt wurden und dazu dienten, den Rüstungswettlauf bei den Atomwaffen zu beschleunigen, und vier Jahre später dem erfundenen vietnamesischen Angriff auf zwei amerikanische Zerstörer im Golf von Tonkin, für den in den Medien Vergeltungsmaßnahmen gefordert wurden und so Präsident Johnson den Vorwand lieferte, den er wollte, um Vietnam zu bombardieren.

In den späten 1970ern erlaubten die schweigenden Medien Präsident Carter, Indonesien zu bewaffnen, als es die Bevölkerung Osttimors abschlachtete, und heimlich mit der Unterstützung der Mujaheddin zu beginnen, aus denen dann die Taliban und al-Qaeda hervorgingen. In den 1980ern ermöglichte die Fabrizierung einer Absurdität, die „Bedrohung“ Amerikas durch die Volksbewegungen in Mittelamerika, speziell durch die Sandinisten im winzigen Nicaragua, Präsident Reagan die Bewaffnung und Unterstützung von Terroristengruppen wie der Contras, der schätzungsweise 70.000 Menschen zum Opfer fielen. Dass George W. Bushs Amerika Hunderten von lateinamerikanischen Folterern Zuflucht gibt, mörderische Diktatoren und Castro-feindliche Entführer, allen Definitionen gemäß Terroristen, bevorzugte: das wird praktisch nie berichtet. Und auch nichts über die Arbeit eines „Trainingszentrums” in Fort Benning, Georgia, auf dessen Absolventen Osama bin Laden stolz wäre.

Amerikaner, schreibt das Time Magazin, leben in „einer ewigen Gegenwart“. Der Punkt ist, sie haben keine Wahl. Die „Mainstream”medien werden von Rupert Murdochs Fox Television Network beherrscht, das einen guten Krieg hatte. Die Federal Communications Commission, geleitet von Colin Powells Sohn Michael, hat die Aufgabe, endgültig das Fernsehen zu deregulieren, so dass Fox und vier andere Konglomerate 90 Prozent der irdischen Leserschaft und Kabelanschlüsse kontrollieren. Zudem sind nun die zwanzig führenden Internetseiten in den Händen von Unternehmen wie Fox, Disney, AOL Time Warner und einer Anzahl anderer Giganten. Nur 14 Firmen teilen sich 60 Prozent der Zeit, die amerikanische Webnutzer online sind.

Der Chef der Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, hat dies gut auf den Punkt gebracht: „Um einen Präventivkrieg zu rechtfertigen, den die Vereinten Nationen und die Weltöffentlichkeit nicht wollten, produzierte, organisiert von der doktrinären Sekte um George Bush, eine Propaganda- und Mystifikationsmaschinerie mit einer Entschlossenheit, charakteristisch für die schlimmsten Regime des 20. Jahrhunderts, staatlich finanzierte Lügen.“

Die meisten der Lügen wurden von dem rund um die Uhr besetzen Office for Global Communications (Büro für globale Kommunikation) im Weißen Haus direkt an Downing Street weitergeleitet. Viele waren von einer streng geheimen Einheit im Pentagon, Office of Special Plans (Büro für besondere Pläne) genannt, fabriziert, das die ursprünglichen Informationen des Geheimdienstes „aufpeppte“, von denen dann viele von Tony Blair wiedergegeben wurden. Hier wurden viele der berühmtesten Lügen über Massenvernichtungswaffen „zusammengebastelt“. Am 9. Juli sagte Donald Rumsfeld mit einem Lächeln, dass Amerika nie „dramatische neue Beweise“ hatte und sein Stellvertreter Paul Wolfowitz enthüllte zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt, dass das „Problem der Massenvernichtungswaffen” nur „aus bürokratischen Gründen“ bestand, „da es der einzige Grund [für das Einmarschieren in Irak] war, dem alle zustimmen konnten.“

In diesem Kontext ergeben die Angriffe der Regierung Blair gegen den BBC einen Sinn. Sie lenken von Blairs kriminellen Umgang mit der Bush-Gang ab, wenn auch aus einem weniger offensichtlichen Grund. Wie der scharfsinnige amerikanische Medienkommentator Danny Schechter aufzeigt, sind die Einnahmen des BBC auf 5,6 Mill US-Dollar angestiegen, mehr Amerikaner schauen BBC in Amerika als BBC1 in Britannien. Was Murdoch und die anderen wachsenden TV-Konglomerate schon lange haben wollten, ist ein „kontrollierter, aufgeteilter, ja privatisierter BBC…Das ganze Geld und die ganze Macht werden wohl die Regulierungsbeamten der Blair-Regierung und die lustigen Männer von Ofcom (Office of Communications, Fusion der Telekommunikations- und der Rundfunkaufsicht; d. Ü.) ins Visier nehmen, die öffentliche Unternehmen kontrollieren und jenen habgierigen Privatunternehmen dienen wollen, die gerne eine Scheibe von Marktanteils des BBC hätten.“ Wie auf ein Einsatzzeichen hin stellte Tessa Jowell, die britische Kulturministerin, die Erneuerung der BBC-Charta in Frage.

Das Ironische daran ist, laut Schechter, dass der BBC immer geschlossen für den Krieg war. Er zitiert eine umfassende Studie von Media Tenor, des von ihm gegründeten, parteiunabhängigen Instituts, über die Kriegsberichterstattung einiger der weltweit führenden Sendeanstalten und fand heraus, dass der BBC weniger abweichende Stimmen zuließ als alle anderen, einschließlich der US-Anstalten. Eine Studie der Universität von Cardiff kam praktisch zum gleichen Ergebnis. Meistens übertrieb der BBC die Erfindungen der Lügenmaschine in Washington, wie zum Beispiel den nicht existierenden irakischen Angriff auf Kuwait mit Scud-Raketen. Und dann gab es da Andrew Marrs denkwürdige Siegesrede vor 10 Downing Street: „[Tony Blair] sagte, sie würden Bagdad ohne Blutvergießen einnehmen können und dass am Ende die Iraker feiern würden. Und in beiden Punkten hat er eindeutig recht behalten.“

Praktisch jedes Wort davon war irreführend oder Unsinn. Untersuchungen kommen nun zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Zahl der zivilen Todesopfer bei 10.000 und die der irakischen Truppen bei 20.000 liegt. Wenn das kein „Blutbad“ ist, was war dann das Massaker der 3000 Menschen in den Zwillingstürmen?

Im Gegensatz dazu war ich bewegt und fast erleichtert von der Beschreibung des heroischen Dr. David Kelly durch seine Familie: „Davids Berufsleben,“ schreiben sie, „war geprägt von seiner Integrität, Ehre und Hingabe bei der Auffindung der Wahrheit, oft unter schwierigsten Umständen. Es fällt schwer, die Tragweite dieser Tragödie zu ermessen.“ Zweifelsohne versteht die Mehrheit der britischen Bevölkerung, dass David Kelly das genaue Gegenteil derer war, die sich als Handlanger einer gefährlichen, zügellosen ausländischen Macht herausgestellt haben. Diese Bedrohung zu stoppen ist dringender denn je, für die Iraker wie für uns.





[ Übersetzt von: Eva-Maria Bach | Orginalartikel: "The War On Truth" ]
http://www.zmag.de/article/article.php?id=770

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&Ite…

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"Well, we`re all excited because President Bush has started his 35-day vacation. He`s down there in Crawford, Texas and on the first day of his vacation he went fishing. He didn`t find any fish but he believes they`re there and that his intelligence is accurate." —David Letterman

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`Bring us home`: GIs flood US with war-weary emails
An unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the US is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq. Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin report on rising fears that the conflict is now a desert Vietnam

Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer

Susan Schuman is angry. Her GI son is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, at the heart of the `Sunni triangle`, where American troops are killed with grim regularity.

Breaking the traditional silence of military families during time of war, Schuman knows what she wants - and who she blames for the danger to her son, Justin. `I want them to bring our troops home. I am appalled at Bush`s policies. He has got us into a terrible mess,` she said.

Schuman may just be the tip of an iceberg. She lives in Shelburne Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, and says all her neighbours support her view. `I don`t know anyone around here who disagrees with me,` she said.

Schuman`s views are part of a growing unease back home at the rising casualty rate in Iraq, a concern coupled with deep anger at President George W. Bush`s plans to cut army benefits for many soldiers. Criticism is also coming directly from soldiers risking their lives under the guns of Saddam Hussein`s fighters, and they are using a weapon not available to troops in previous wars: the internet.

Through emails and chatrooms a picture is emerging of day-to-day gripes, coupled with ferocious criticism of the way the war has been handled. They paint a vivid picture of US army life that is a world away from the sanitised official version.

In a message posted on a website last week, one soldier was brutally frank. `Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in [Iraqi] eyes. We don`t feel like heroes any more,` said Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company.

Kindblade said morale was poor, and he attacked the leadership back home. `The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, "Bring `em on." The generals say we don`t need more troops. Well, they`re not over here,` he wrote.

One of the main outlets for the soldiers` complaints has been a website run by outspoken former soldier David Hackworth, who was the army`s youngest colonel in the Vietnam war and one of its most decorated warriors. He receives almost 500 emails a day, many of them from soldiers serving in Iraq. They have sounded off about everything from bad treatment at the hands of their officers to fears that their equipment is faulty.

The army-issue gas mask `leaks under the chin. This same mask was used during Desert Storm, which accounts for part of the health problems of the vets who fought there. My unit has again deployed to the Gulf with this loser,` ranted one army doctor.

Some veterans have begun to form organisations to campaign to bring the soldiers home and highlight their difficult conditions. Erik Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, has founded Veterans For Common Sense. `There is an anger boiling under the surface now, and I, as a veteran, have a duty to speak because I am no longer subject to military discipline,` he said.

A recent email from Iraq passed to Gustafson, signed by `the Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division`, said simply: `Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to come home. Thank you for your attention.`

Another source of anger is government plans to reverse recent increases in `imminent danger` pay and a family separation allowance. These moves have provoked several furious editorials in the Army Times, the normally conservative military newspaper. The paper said the planned cuts made `the Bush administration seem mean-spirited and hypocritical`.

Tobias Naegele, its editor-in-chief, said his senior staff agonised over the decision to attack the government, but the response to the editorials from ordinary soldiers was overwhelmingly positive.

A further critical editorial is planned for this week. `We don`t think lightly of criticising our Commander-in-Chief,` Naegele said `The army has had a rough couple of years with this administration.`

Mainstream veterans` groups too are angry about cuts being proposed at a time when politicians have heaped praise on the army`s performance in Afghanistan and Iraq and want to launch a recruitment drive.

Veterans plan protests to highlight the issue. `We are going to show them that veterans are people who know how to vote,` said Steven Robinson, a veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Centre, one of the websites where veterans` issues are raised.

Susan Schuman too is planning a protest. This week she plans to join members of a new group, Military Families Speak Out, who will travel to Washington to make their case for their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, to be brought home from Iraq.

With soldiers dying there almost daily, comparisons have already been drawn with the Vietnam war and the birth of the protest movements there that divided America in the Sixties and Seventies.

Political scientists, however, think the war will have to get much worse before anything similar happens over Iraq. `To put it crudely, I think the country can accept this current level of casualties,` said Professor Richard Stoll, of Rice University in Houston, Texas.

That is little comfort to Schuman, who says she just wants to see her son, Justin, return alive from a war she believes is unjust. `It is a quagmire and it is not going to be easy to get out,` she said. `That`s where the parallel with Vietnam is.`


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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One Ali saved, but thousands more are suffering
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer

For one child at least, it is a happy ending: Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the Iraqi boy mutilated in a coalition missile attack, begins essential treatment in Britain tomorrow. But there are hundreds more Alis whose plight is in danger of being forgotten.

Charities are calling urgently for a specialist rehabilitation centre to be set up in Iraq to treat such child amputees close to their families, warning that doctors in Iraq are operating under almost impossibly primitive conditions.

The Kuwaiti doctors who provided Ali`s initial treatment say he is one of up to 1,000 children in the same situation - most of whom face a far more uncertain future.

Caroline Spelman, the Tory international development spokesman, has been closely involved with the charity the Limbless Association in bringing Ali and his friend Ahmed Hamza - who has also lost an arm and a leg - to Britain. She said the case of the 13-year-old, who was orphaned and lost both arms when a missile struck his Baghdad home, was the tip of an iceberg.

`Ali himself is probably more aware than the rest of us that all the attention he is getting has resulted in help for him, but he has said he wants to ensure that his compatriots get at least the same level of care,` she said.

Spelman wrote to Valerie Amos, the International Development Secretary, last month pleading for Government funds for an `Ali Centre` in Baghdad which could treat amputees, fit prosthetic limbs and offer rehabilitation. So far she has had no reply: yesterday, Amos`s department could say only that it had made significant awards to the International Red Cross and other agencies to support healthcare and further needs would be assessed in October.

Doctors say that where possible, injured children are best treated at home. But Iraq`s main centre of excellence for amputees - the National Spinal Cord Injuries Centre in Baghdad - was badly looted and now lacks such basics as sheets, pillows and sterilisation equipment: doctors have no anaesthetic for amputations and wounds are being dressed with unsterilised cotton.

`They haven`t even got the chemicals to make a cast [for prosthetic limbs]. It`s all been looted,` said Zafar Khan, chair of the Limbless Association. `They were only left with large machines which the looters could not take away. I understand £210 million has been allocated for rebuilding Iraq - well we are talking about human rebuilding here, rebuilding people.`

Khan worked with Spelman in establishing a centre for treating amputees, many of them landmine victims, in Afghanistan and estimates a similar Baghdad project could cost £5m.

Ali`s case prompts wider questions about the morality of plunging one child, however deserving, into a media circus. With at least three newspapers launching rival appeals to rescue him, there were accounts of unseemly scrabbling by reporters over the boy`s bedside.

Ali and Ahmed - who Spelman says joined the mercy flight to Britain after his doctor `literally tugged at my sleeve` when she was visiting Ali in Kuwait - will meet doctors at Queen Mary`s hospital, in south-west London, tomorrow to discuss treatment.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Venezuela`s slum army takes over
In the crowded barrios, the poor who helped Chávez back to power are seizing control of their own lives

Reed Lindsay in Caracas
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer

The economy is in a shambles, the country is torn by social strife. The government is paralysed by factional conflicts, and the virulent media denounce a new public scandal nearly every day.

But in the sprawling hillside slums of Caracas, there is optimism. A startling buzz of activity from the very bottom of society`s ladder is beginning to affect an embattled Venezuela. Since weathering a coup in April 2002 and a debilitating strike early this year, President Hugo Chávez has pushed through measures aimed at promoting civic participation among the poor.

And the result may well prove to be the turning point of Venezuela`s fortunes.

In the teeming barrios of the capital, a quiet revolution is under way. Meeting in dilapidated school houses and potholed alleyways, Venezuelans have formed neighbourhood groups to fix deficient water supply systems, to organise volunteer efforts at local schools and to launch recycling campaigns.

Committees are conducting censuses and writing neighbourhood histories as part of a government plan to grant land titles to hundreds of thousands of slum-dwelling families who squatted decades ago but were long ignored by the authorities.

Others are attending self-convoked `citizen assemblies` to talk about everything from neighbourhood problems to national politics, and to create local planning councils where municipal authorities will be required to share decision-making with community representatives.

Community radio and television stations, banned by previous governments, are thriving. `What is new is not so much what the government is doing, but what is happening outside it,` said Arlene Espinal, 49, a social worker and resident of the 23 de Enero barrio, which looms above downtown Caracas. `There`s been a powerful awakening in the barrios.`

For Elka Oropeza, everything changed with last year`s coup. A 30-year-old single mother and lifelong resident of 23 de Enero, Oropeza was one of tens of thousands who descended from Caracas`s poor neighbourhoods in protest after Chávez was forced from office and a fleeting dictatorship was installed under business leader Pedro Carmona. The largely spontaneous demonstrations were a crucial factor in Chávez`s unexpected return to power in less than 48 hours.

Oropeza had not voted for Chávez, and before the coup merely observed the nation`s political turmoil. Since then, she has become an assiduous community leader and a fierce defender of the government. `Before Chávez, the only thing I had ever done was vote,` said Oropeza, who attends weekly `citizen assemblies` in her barrio and is helping with a government-sponsored literacy campaign. `Now, we feel that he`s giving us the power to choose what we want in our communities.`

The grassroots initiatives provide the first examples of Chávez`s pledge to promote sweeping social change through the active participation of the citizenry.

The new community activism, however, has gone largely unnoticed in middle and upper-class neighbourhoods of Caracas, where Chávez is hugely unpopular.

Media coverage, meanwhile, has been largely limited to the controversies surrounding the so-called Bolívarian Circles, government-promoted neighbour hood organisations that mainly serve as political action groups in support of the President, and a government programme that has brought several hundred Cuban doctors to provide free healthcare in the barrios.

But analysts say that the local initiatives, and especially the efforts to grant land titles to long-time squatters, could reap untold political dividends in the barrios, traditionally a bastion of support for Chávez.

`Chávez is consolidating his strength among the poor,` said Eleazar Díaz Rangel, director and columnist of Ultimas Noticias, the only major newspaper in Caracas that is not stridently anti-Chávez.

Many barrio residents are taking action with little heed for official directives or government sanctions. When teachers at the Juan Bautista Alberdi elementary school in the suburb of Manicomio walked out on classes during the opposition-led strike in January, the students, along with their parents, took the school back by force. They have since changed the locks, painted the walls and started classes under the tutelage of six strike-breaking teachers and 14 volunteers, including some parents.

`We don`t want a government, we want to govern,` said Carlos Carles, co-founder of Radio Perola, a community station that has become an axis of local activism in the barrio of Caricuao. `We want to decide what is done, when it`s done and how it`s done in our communities.`


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Tongue-tied Arnie takes hits from left and right
Taxing times for The Terminator

Lawrence Donegan in San Francisco
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer

Hasta la vista to the political honeymoon. Four days after after his gubernatorial campaign in California opened to better reviews than any of his films ever did, Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday came face to face with political reality when he was attacked from the left for being too naive and from the right for being too liberal.

The 56-year-old actor embarked on a quick-fire round of TV interviews aimed at capitalising on his already stratospheric ratings in the campaign to take the most powerful office in the nation`s biggest state - Governor of California.

But instead of momentum the appearances produced a succession of awkward moments as he was asked to explain his political views.

Pressed on a range of issue that are certain to feature prominently in the run-up to the vote on 7 October - gay marriage, health services, the fiscal crisis facing California - Schwarzenegger was forced to deny a policy statement attributed to his staff or revert to the time-honoured formula of the candidate under pressure: `I don`t want to go into that right now.`

Asked by one interviewer if he would publish his tax returns - as is expected of any candidate for public office - Schwarzenegger suddenly discovered his earpiece was not working and said he did not hear the question.

`Pretending he can`t hear the questions might work in Hollywood, but it doesn`t cut it for the voters of California,` said a spokesman for the Democratic Party, who urged the media to scrutinise Schwarzenegger`s political record more closely.

The media took his advice and within a couple of hours turned up the embarrassing allegation that the actor had voted in only two of the last eight statewide elections.

Attacks from the opposite side of the political divide are to be expected but more surprising, and more damaging to his hopes of becoming, in the words of his supporters, `the new Ronald Reagan`, is the lukewarm reception his entrance into the race has received in some Republican circles.

`All these Republican orgasms over Arnold Schwarzenegger are fake,` declared Rush Limbaugh, the popular political radio talk-show host and the spiritual leader of America`s right-wing. `In his own words he [Schwarzenegger] has proved he is not a conservative. To the extent that he said anything, he has sounded not like a fiscal conservative but a moderate Democrat.

`He has told the press he is "very liberal" about social programmes, supports abortion and homosexual adoption, and advocates gun controls. And he expressed disgust with the Republicans who impeached Clinton. Does this sound like the next Reagan, as some people are calling Arnold? Hardly. This guy may be the next actor elected Governor of California, but that`s where the similarity between him and Ronald Reagan ends.`

Schwarzenegger`s hope of a smooth passage to the governor`s chair received a further blow with the news that another prominent party figure, Bill Simon, who narrowly failed to unseat the incumbent Democrat Gray Davis last November, will also contest October`s election.

Davis faces being voted out of office under an obscure clause in California`s electoral law that allows officials to be `recalled` if enough voters sign a petition accusing them of an `egregious` act. With California facing a $38 billion (£23.5bn) deficit, more than 1.3 million voters signed such a petition - thus triggering an election. So far more than 500 candidates, most of them frivolous, have declared they will run.

With vast amounts of money at their disposal, political campaigns in California are notoriously dirty, with the private lives of candidates being trawled through for embarrassing revelations. It is thought that Schwarzenegger could be vulnerable to such attacks. Indeed, he admitted as much during one interview, conceding that his opponents would try to label him as a `womaniser`. He is married to Maria Schriver, a member of the Kennedy clan and a high-profile TV journalist who this weekend announced she would take leave from her presenting post on the NBC network to back her husband`s campaign.

The polls suggest the actor`s name recognition will carry him to victory but most observers believe the gap will narrow as voters begin to focus on policy .

One bright spot was the news that President Bush - until now noticeably silent on Arnie`s candidacy - had expressed confidence that he would make a `good governor` if elected, although the President`s confidence did not extend to committing to campaign on Schwarzenegger`s behalf.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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The Niger timebomb
We have spoken to the Iraqi diplomat Britain accuses of trying to buy uranium for Saddam. If what he has told us is true, his evidence will blow apart one of Mr Blair`s main justifications for war
By Raymond Whitaker
10 August 2003


The man accused by Britain of trying to buy uranium in Africa for Saddam Hussein`s nuclear programme - one of the Government`s main justifications for waging war on Iraq - has denied the allegation, saying he is the victim of a forgery.

Britain has remained undaunted by proof that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with the West African state of Niger turned out to be fakes. While the US admits it should never have made allegations based on the documents, Britain insists it has "independent intelligence" about Iraq`s quest for uranium, pointing out that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger in 1999.

One Foreign Office official said: "Niger has two main exports - uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens."

But the man who made the trip, Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq`s former ambassador to the Vatican, told The Independent on Sunday: "My only mission was to meet the President of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq. The invitation and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal UN sanctions were all we talked about. I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium."

Mr Zahawie, 73, speaking to the British press for the first time, said in London: "I have been cleared by everyone else, including the US and the United Nations. I am surprised to hear there are still question marks over me in Britain. I am willing to co-operate with anyone who wants to see me and find out more."

The Government`s September dossier on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction said the regime "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it". The allegation found its way into President George Bush`s State of the Union address in January. But as one element after another of this claim has been disproved, the Government has increasingly focused attention on Mr Zahawie`s visit to Niger.

As The IoS first disclosed on 29 June, a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger last year to investigate. He reported that there was nothing in the claims of a uranium deal, but the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said last month: "Ambassador Wilson`s report also noted that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation sought the expansion of trade links with Niger. Uranium is Niger`s main export ... this element of Ambassador Wilson`s report supports the statement in the Government`s dossier."

Mr Zahawie, who went to Niger in February 1999, said he knew of no other visit to the country that year by an Iraqi representative, and believed none had been there since.

The former ambassador believes suspicion fell on him because his name appeared in forged documents given to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Last week the IAEA confirmed that two interviews took place with Mr Zahawie in Baghdad this year.

Mr Zahawie said he was summoned to Baghdad in February from Jordan to meet a team of inspectors from the IAEA. He was asked whether he had signed a letter on 6 July 2000 to Niger concerning uranium. "I said absolutely not; if they had seen such a letter it must be a forgery."

Later he was asked for a facsimile of his signature. He provided copies of letters he had written in Rome, and "those letters must have convinced the IAEA team that the document they had was a forgery". In early March, on the eve of war in Iraq, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council that the Niger documents were "not authentic".

The ex-ambassador`s account is the first indication the forgeries, thought to have been sold to Italian intelligence by an African diplomat, included a document purporting to come from the Iraqi side.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "In the 1980s Iraq purchased 270 tons of uranium from Niger. The reference in the dossier was based on intelligence drawn from more than one source, and was not based on the so-called documents put to the IAEA."

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook said: "It is long overdue for the Government to come clean about what is this corroboration on which they build such an extravagant castle. At least let them hand it over to the IAEA."
10 August 2003 08:48

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003


The abd al-Kerim family didn`t have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.

"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them `Stop, stop, we are a family`, but they kept on shooting."

The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."

But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.

Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital.

It happened at 9.30 at night, an hour after sunset, but long before the start of the curfew at 11pm. The Americans had set up roadblocks in the Tunisia quarter of Baghdad, where the abd al-Kerims live. The family pulled up to the roadblock sensibly, slowly and carefully, so as not to alarm the Americans.

But then pandemonium broke out. American soldiers were shooting in every direction. They just turned on the abd al-Kerims` car and sprayed it with bullets. You can see the holes in the front passenger window and in the rear window. You can see the blood of the dead all over the grey, imitation velvet seat covers.

A terrible misunderstanding took place. The Americans thought they were under attack from Iraqi resistance forces, according to several Iraqi witnesses. These are the circumstances of most killings of Iraqi civilians: a US patrol comes under rocket-propelled grenade attack and the soldiers panic and fire randomly.

This time there was no attack. Another car, driven by an Iraqi youth, Sa`ad al-Azawi, drove too fast up to another checkpoint further up the street. Al-Azawi and his two passengers did not hear an order to stop, as their stereo was turned up too loud. The US soldiers, thinking they were under attack, panicked and opened fire.

In the darkness of one of Baghdad`s frequent power cuts, other US soldiers on the street heard gunfire and thought they were under attack. They, too, reacted by opening fire, though they could not see what was going on. Soldiers manning look-out posts on a nearby building joined in, firing down the street in the dark.

It was then that the abd al-Kerims drew up to the checkpoint. The panicking US soldiers turned on their car and shot the family to pieces.

"It was anarchy," said Ali al-Issawi, who lives on the street and witnessed the whole thing. "The Americans were firing at each other."

There was plenty of evidence lying in the street under the hot sun. Empty bullet casings lay everywhere. Bullet holes marked the walls and gates of nearby houses. Several parked cars were riddled with bullet-holes, their windows smashed and tyres shredded. From the spread of the bullet holes all over the street, it was clear the soldiers had fired in every direction.

Sa`ad al-Azawi, the driver of the other car, was killed. The Americans dragged his two passengers out and beat them, still thinking they were resistance, Mr al-Issawi said. Watching from his house nearby, Mr al-Issawi did not know that al-Azawi was dead, and when the car burst into flames, he tried to rush over to help the young man.

"The Americans did not let me," he said. "A soldier came over and told me `Inside`. He pushed me, even though my eight-year-old daughter was with me. They didn`t let us get the young guy`s body out of the car until he looked like he had been cooked."

Further down the street, Anwar abd al-Kerim, who was heavily pregnant and had somehow managed to escape injury in the car as bullets rained all around her, got out of the car, holding her wounded eight-year-old daughter Mervet, and sought help from her brother, who lived down the road.

She had to leave in the car her injured daughters, 16-year-old Ia and 13-year-old Haded, along with her husband, Adel, who was bleeding badly and groaning. Her 18-year-old son, Haider, was already dead. A bullet went between his eyes.

"I saw my sister running towards me with her daughter in her arms and blood pouring from her," said Ms abd al-Kerim`s brother, Tha`er Jawad. "She was crying out to me `Help, help, go and help Adel`." I put them in my car and tried to drive to the car but the American soldiers pointed their guns at me and the people shouted out to me `Stop! Stop! They will shoot!`

"We could see the other girls and their brother lying on the back seat of the car. They would not let us go to the hospital." Ia was not as badly injured as the others. "After a while they released her and let her come to us," Mr Jawad said. "But when they finally let us go to the hospital, Mervet died. The doctors checked her injuries and told us she would have lived if we had brought her sooner.

"At 10.45 we heard the Americans had taken Adel and his other girl to another hospital. We went there at six the next morning, when the curfew was lifted, and they told us they both died in the hospital.

"The doctors said they might have lived if they got there sooner: the main cause of death was bleeding. The Americans left them to bleed in the street for hours."
10 August 2003 08:51



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
10 August 2003


American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.

The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. It was employed notoriously against both civilian and military targets in the Vietnam war.

The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad.

"We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It`s no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald who witnessed another napalm attack on 21 March on an Iraqi observation post at Safwan Hill, close to the Kuwaiti border, wrote the following day: "Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the observation post was obliterated. `I pity anyone who is in there,` a Marine sergeant said. `We told them to surrender.`"

At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. "We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on 4 April, 2001," it said.

The revelation that napalm was used in the war against Iraq, while the Pentagon denied it, has outraged opponents of the war.

"Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon," said Robert Musil, director of the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility. "It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds." Mr Musil said denial of its use "fits a pattern of deception [by the US administration]".

The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.

Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were "remarkably similar" to napalm but said they caused less environmental damage.

But John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of any other country that uses it." Marines returning from Iraq chose to call the firebombs "napalm".

Mr Musil said the Pentagon`s effort to draw a distinction between the weapons was outrageous. He said: "It`s Orwellian. They do not want the public to know. It`s a lie."

In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Marine Corps Maj-Gen Jim Amos confirmed that napalm was used on several occasions in the war.
10 August 2003 08:53

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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3 million extra pints of beer as temperatures soar
By Severin Carrell and Sandrine Leveque
10 August 2003


The British are celebrating the heatwave the way they know best: drinking.

Pubs expect to sell an extra three million pints of bitter and lager this weekend.

"The more the sun shines, the bigger the smile on the faces of the nation`s landlords," said the British Beer and Pub Association.

Beach resorts were jammed with sunbathers and motorway traffic was reduced to a crawl yesterday. Motoring organisations said millions more people headed to the coast than was normal for August as temperatures again hit 36C (96.8F) in south-east England, approaching the record of 37.1C set in 1990.

At Channel resorts such as Brighton, Bournemouth and Poole, where temperatures were in the low 20s, officials reported beaches filling up at breakfast time. In the North, Blackpool beach, which hit 32C, was said to be "packed". Tourism officials expected figures to exceed last weekend`s, when 30,000 people were on the beach.

Brian Cummings, who hires out deckchairs on Bournemouth beach, said: "People were queuing to get on the beach by 8am this morning. By nine, all 3,500 deckchairs had been taken ... It`s definitely been the busiest day of the year for us so far."

Fifteen million motorists are predicted to be travelling this weekend. The AA said the worst-affected motorways were the M5 heading towards the West Country, and the M40 and M3 taking sunbathers to the south and south-west coasts. But an early morning crash on the M40 near Banbury took until 12.30pm to clear, leaving a 51/2-mile tailback, and two accidents on the M3 reduced traffic to a standstill.

Network Rail again imposed speed limits on journeys because of the risk of buckled rails. Health experts predicted high levels of air pollution in big cities.

On the beach, the congestion continued. Kate Daubney, a tourism official at Croyde Bay, north Devon, said: "I`m looking out on to the sea but I can`t actually see any water because there are so many people in it."

Today`s weather is expected to be slightly cooler and, in western and northern areas cloudier, than yesterday. Temperatures are likely to range from 19C in northern Scotland to 35C in the South-east.
10 August 2003 08:56


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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August 10, 2003
U.S. Moved to Undermine Iraqi Military Before War
By DOUGLAS JEHL with DEXTER FILKINS


WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — The United States military, the Central Intelligence Agency and Iraqi exiles began a broad covert effort inside Iraq at least three months before the war to forge alliances with Iraqi military leaders and persuade commanders not to fight, say people involved in the effort.

Even after the war began, the Bush administration received word that top officials of the Iraqi government, most prominently the defense minister, Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Tai, might be willing to cooperate to bring the war to a quick end and to ensure a postwar peace, current and former American officials say.

General Hashem`s ministry was never bombed by the United States during the war, and the Pentagon`s decision not to knock Iraqi broadcasting off the air permitted him to appear on television with what some Iraqi exiles have called a veiled signal to troops that they should not fight the invading allies.

But Washington`s war planners elected not to try to keep him or other Iraqi leaders around after the war to help them keep the peace, a decision some now see as a missed opportunity.

General Hashem`s fate is not known. Some Iraqi exiles say he was shot, and perhaps killed, by Saddam Hussein`s supporters during the war. Other exiles and American officials say he survived the war. Two Iraqi leaders said his family had staged a mock funeral to give the impression that he was dead.

Much more than that is uncertain about the murky operation — not least, the degree of its success.

People behind the effort, including Iraqis who were involved inside the country, said in interviews that they had succeeded in persuading hundreds of Iraqi officers to quit the war and to send their subordinates away. Iraqi military officers confirmed that after Americans and Iraqis made contact with them, they carried out acts of sabotage and helped disband their units as the war began.

American officials and two Iraqi exiles who played central roles said the American military spirited out of the country several high-level Iraqi military and intelligence officers who had cooperated with the United States and its allies.

But in interviews in Washington, Europe and the Middle East, more than half a dozen people with direct knowledge of the events said the United States might have missed an opportunity that might have stabilized Iraq as the government crumbled.

American and Arab officials said that as the war approached, the Bush administration was skeptical of the idea of cutting a lasting deal with high-level Iraqi officials like General Hashem. Washington, in the end, was reluctant to leave any high-ranking officials from the Hussein government in power after the war.

Such an agreement, they said, might have required that some officials with ties to Mr. Hussein stay in power for a time, but might have eased the entry of American troops into Baghdad and helped keep Iraq`s infrastructure intact.

"A lot of people in Baghdad saw their interest in not fighting, in adapting, in getting rid of Saddam and moving forward," said Whitley Bruner, a former C.I.A. station chief in Baghdad who is now a private consultant. He is said by people involved in the operation to have helped relay messages from people inside Iraq to the United States government.

Senior Arab officials and several United States officials said General Hashem was identified as a potential ally as early as 1995, when he became defense minister. The officials described him as a capable, well-liked infantry officer who had no close connections to Mr. Hussein and his family.

"From the time he was appointed defense minister, he was always someone who was looked at as being someone you could deal with," said a senior Saudi official, whose government had long urged the United States to promote a coup in Iraq rather than a military invasion as a way of toppling Mr. Hussein`s government. "Sultan Hashem was seen as someone who was more sensible, who could reach rational conclusions, and was not a Baathist ideologue or Baathist fanatic."

A senior Defense Department official refused to comment on any messages passed between the United States and General Hashem. But he said there might have been other reasons that the United States left his ministry intact.

"In any centralized, controlled society, soldiers will fight to the last order," the official said. "If you cut off the head, the arms and legs will keep going, so you want to keep in place the structure that could allow a surrender."

Today, General Hashem remains No. 27 on the 55-member American list of most-wanted Iraqis, the eight of hearts in a deck of cards circulated by the United States. But Defense Department officials say they do not know of any active effort to find him. He is wanted only as a "material witness" rather than as a possible defendant in any war crimes trial, two senior officials said.

Iraqis and officials from other Arab countries who were involved in the operation said American contacts with Iraqi officers were arranged beginning in late 2002 by Jordanian intelligence officers who were working with American Special Forces and C.I.A. agents. They said that the operation had been led by the military`s super-secret Task Force 20 and that the contacts had included phone calls, e-mail messages, visits and in some cases the payment of substantial sums of money.

The intensive efforts to court Iraqi commanders, and the subsequent dissolution of the Iraqi Army, offer a partial explanation — along with the sheer brutality of the bombardment that the Iraqi Army suffered — for the light resistance that the advancing Americans faced.

"Many officers in the Iraqi Army sold out," Iyad Alawi, an important participant in the operation and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said in an interview in Baghdad. "There were hundreds of them. Our effort was quite widespread. We sent in hundreds of messages."

Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said publicly at the outset of the war that the United States was working to win surrenders from Iraqi commanders. But the duration, extent and other details of that effort have never previously been disclosed.

Mr. Rumsfeld publicly denied on April 2 that the administration was negotiating with members of Mr. Hussein`s government. But other American officials said high-ranking members of the Bush administration had given serious consideration to striking a deal that would have included General Hashem as late as March 29, 10 days into the war.

Administration officials would not disclose what such an accord might have included. They said they had regarded the signals as credible, but also said they had been wary that they might have been a ploy. In any event, an accommodation with one of Mr. Hussein`s lieutenants was ultimately rejected as politically untenable.

Still, a deal that offered the Bush administration something less than the complete dismantling of the Baghdad government in exchange for a more stable postwar environment has some appeal in hindsight, now that the guerrilla war against occupation forces has taken hold.

"A lot of offers were popping up from a lot of quarters, along the lines of would you agree to a, b or c?" said a United States official with knowledge of the effort that continued into the war. "At some point, the war cabinet got together and said, `No go.` But some of these offers had meat on the bones, and in retrospect, they are beginning to look more and more attractive."

Some administration officials consider it unlikely that any kind of accord would have worked. They said they had viewed all overtures with skepticism.

In describing what the program to undermine the Iraqi government achieved and failed to achieve, some of those involved spoke on the record, but others did not, either because the operation was classified, because their own roles were sensitive, or, as some of the Iraqis said, because they feared for their own lives as long as the fate of Mr. Hussein remained an open question.

The Plotters

Among the central players, people involved said, were Mr. Bruner, the former C.I.A. officer working on behalf of an influential Iraqi-American businessman named Saad al-Janabi; Mr. Alawi, now a member of Iraq`s nine-member provisional leadership council; and Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, a former Iraqi general and a principal player in an unsuccessful C.I.A.-backed coup against Mr. Hussein in 1996.

Two others, working inside Iraq, were Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, a Shiite Muslim guerrilla leader from the south who traveled to Kuwait to coordinate efforts with American intelligence officers, and Mishan al-Jubouri, a Sunni Muslim who worked with American support from the Kurdish region in north Iraq to transmit televised propaganda into the heartland.

Mr. Bruner retired from the C.I.A. in 1997. He said he had been working for Mr. Janabi, not the agency, in the period before and during the war. Mr. Bruner said he had not wanted to play any "operational role."

But several current and former American officials said they believed that Mr. Bruner had served as one link between the American government and Mr. Janabi, whose underground organization, known as the Iraqi Republican Group, claimed the allegiance of hundreds of Iraqis inside the country.

An Iraqi exile involved in the effort said Mr. Janabi sent dozens of messages in and out of Iraq in the months before the war, some of them to senior members of Mr. Hussein`s government, and sometimes relayed replies back to the United States government.

Mr. Bruner and Mr. Janabi both dealt with American officials in Kuwait, including Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who headed the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

In a telephone interview, General Garner said he had believed that Mr. Janabi had been "under the employment of the U.S. government."

A spokesman for the C.I.A., Bill Harlow, said the agency would not comment.

A senior Arab official said in an interview that his government learned of Mr. Janabi`s work about two months before the war began and regarded as credible Mr. Janabi`s assertion that its supporters included other members of Mr. Hussein`s cabinet in addition to the defense minister.

Hussein`s Foes Strike

In an interview in Iraq, Mr. Muhammadawi, a longtime opponent of Mr. Hussein from the south and the leader of a Shiite organization called Iraqi Hezbollah, said he met in February in Kuwait City with three C.I.A. officers to plan operations against the Hussein government. He said he also met there with General Shahwani, the Iraqi defector.

After returning to his home in Amara, a provincial capital, Mr. Muhammadawi said, he made contact with as many as 100 Iraqi officers, telling them that once the invasion began, they should send their troops home. In the meantime, he said, they should begin to sabotage the Iraqi defenses.

"I told them, `If you decide to fight, then I will not be able to guarantee your safety,` " he said.

Among them was Lt. Col. Muslim Suwadi, the commander of an engineering battalion in Amara, he said. In an interview, Colonel Suwadi said that a month before the war began, he started neglecting the pontoon bridges for which he was responsible. He also began telling his 150 men that they could go home. By early April, Colonel Suwadi said, most of his men had gone home.

"There was no one left in my unit — just me and my driver," said the colonel, who said his brother had been killed during the 1991 Shiite uprising. When orders came during the American-led invasion to blow up bridges in their path, he did nothing, he said. On April 6, Mr. Muhammadawi said, he led a force of about 400 men into Amara and captured the city with little fighting.

Mr. Jubouri, the Sunni who was based in the Kurdish north, said in a separate interview in Baghdad that he had worked closely with American Special Forces operatives to make contact with Iraqi military commanders in areas controlled by Mr. Hussein`s government.

Mr. Jubouri said he made daily broadcasts on a local Kurdish television station urging those commanders to lay down their arms.

By the time the war began, Mr. Jubouri said, he had secured a cease-fire agreement from a garrison at Mosul. On April 9, leading a group of about 150 fighters, he said he took the town without firing a shot.

"We didn`t call it a surrender, because we took no prisoners and we let them keep their guns," he said. "They all went home."

The Problem

In Baghdad, Mr. Alawi was among Iraqi exiles who said they believed that the American decision to dismantle the Iraqi government, including the army, rather than seek an accommodation, had been a mistake. That view was echoed by senior Arab officials in other capitals.

"Our idea was to take off the upper crust and leave the rest of the regime intact," said Mr. Alawi, whose group, the Iraqi National Accord, played the leading role in a 1996 effort to oust Mr. Hussein that collapsed when coup plotters were infiltrated by the Iraqi authorities. "We could change it gradually. Now it`s all gone."

Even today, it is unclear how far some members of Mr. Hussein`s government were willing to go to keep part of their administration intact.

General Hashem, in a televised news conference on March 28, abandoned the official Iraqi line, then still being put forth by other Iraqi officials, that the United States Army was nowhere near the capital. In the news conference, he announced that American forces were on their way and would probably reach the capital in five days.

Mudhar Shahkawt, a leading Iraqi exile who opposed any compromise with the Hussein government, said he believed that the American failure to destroy Iraqi television was proof that the Bush administration was trying to reach out to figures in Mr. Hussein`s government.

"Our sources in Iraq were sending messages to us, saying, kill the TV station, kill the TV station," Mr. Shahkawt said in an interview in Baghdad. "When we relayed those messages to the Pentagon, nothing happened, the station kept on broadcasting. That`s when I knew that it was part of a larger plan."

The Planning

The covert operation, as well as the efforts to reach some sort of deal, had its origins long before the war began.

Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert on Iraq who has worked for the C.I.A. and the National Security Council, said in a telephone interview that the question of whether to deal with Iraqi government officials had been explored during war games both inside and outside of government.

Mr. Pollack, who is now director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, described one session conducted by Brookings in November 2002, involving former government and military officials.

When the players representing the Iraqis offered a deal in a script in which an American advance halted on the outskirts of Baghdad, the response from participants who were playing American leaders was "no dice," Mr. Pollack said. But he said the decision had been criticized by other participants.

"There were folks around the table who said you should have taken him up on the offer, then reneged," Mr. Pollack said. "The other thing that really leapt out as a lesson was that you`ve got to make as much contact as you can with anyone who has the capability to lead Iraqis, so that once you did take power, you had people that you could reach out to help you administer the country."

General Shahwani, the leader of the failed 1996 coup, said one of the early notions during the preparations for the latest war called for an uprising, at least partly within the army, prompted by Iraqi exiles and supported by American bombing.

The plan was abandoned, General Shahwani said, when the Bush administration decided it would send American troops.

But as late as January, administration officials were apparently divided over whether they should try to cultivate members of Mr. Hussein`s government, and President Bush himself was undecided on the issue, administration officials said. The Iraqi exiles were split as well.

In a January meeting, Mr. Bush discussed the subject with three leading Iraqi exiles — Kanan Makiya, an author; Hatem Mukhlis, a New York doctor; and Rand Rahim, head of the Iraqi Foundation.

At the meeting, Mr. Makiya said, there was talk of a negotiated settlement that would keep the army in place. Mr. Makiya, who opposed any such settlement, said he had a similar discussion with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. "She was intrigued by the idea that the Iraqi Army could be a force for change after the war," he said.

By that time, Mr. Janabi was already trying to reach out to members of Mr. Hussein`s government. He was calling in contacts he had cultivated years before when, as a close associate of Mr. Hussein`s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, he got rich holding a monopoly on the country`s cigarette business. He fled the country in 1995 after he was imprisoned briefly by Mr. Hussein`s son Uday, who apparently grew jealous of his growing wealth.

Hussein Kamel, who fled to Jordan in August 1995, was executed when he decided to return to Iraq. Mr. Janabi moved to California, where he became well connected in the Republican Party.

Mr. Janabi`s connections to the United States government were cemented in September 2002, according to Mr. Bruner, who said he had been asked that month by Tom Krgjeski, an official in the State Department`s bureau of Near East affairs, to assess Mr. Janabi`s credibility and character. Mr. Bruner and Mr. Janabi soon formed a business relationship aimed at exploring business opportunities in a postwar Iraq, according to a business associate.

Mr. Janabi returned to Iraq with American officers in April, and is now living in Baghdad.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 10, 2003
Terror Group Seen as Back Inside Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 9 — The American-led administration in Iraq has received intelligence reports that hundreds of Islamic militants who fled Iraq during the war have returned and are planning to conduct major terrorist attacks.

L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday night that fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that the United States tried to destroy during the war, had escaped to Iran and then slipped back across the border into Iraq. He said hundreds of the militants were now in Iraq, where they were preparing to attack the occupation forces or administration.

"The intelligence suggests that Ansar al-Islam is planning large-scale terrorist attacks here," Mr. Bremer said. "So as long as we have, as I think we do, substantial numbers of Ansar terrorists around here I think we have to be pretty alert to the fact that we may see more of this."

The Bush administration has asserted that Ansar has ties to Al Qaeda. Officials of the occupying authority, including Mr. Bremer, said it was possible that Al Qaeda was in Iraq, but they said there was no conclusive proof of that.

Mr. Bremer spoke a day after a car bomb attack ripped through the Jordanian Embassy in central Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding scores more. It was the deadliest attack against civilians since the American military took control of Baghdad, and it represented a new type of security problem for the American-led occupation. The perpetrators of the attack are still unknown and investigators from the F.B.I. have been sent to investigate the blast.

"We have seen here a new technique for Iraq that we have never seen before," Mr. Bremer said, referring to the car bomb used in the attack.

Mr. Bremer, who served as the chief counterterrorism official at the State Department during the Reagan administration, said his first thought was that the attack had been carried out by a foreign militant organization and not former members of Saddam Hussein`s government. That initial assessment was based on the fact that car bombings were a standard technique of such organizations in the Middle East but have been virtually unknown in Iraq during the American-led occupation.

But Mr. Bremer said intelligence experts had since told him that some elements of Mr. Hussein`s security apparatus were capable of making car bombs.

"My initial instinct was to believe that this had to be done from somebody from outside," he said. "But I have been told we captured and spoke to some ex-regime people and that there was part of the Mukhabarat that specialized in sophisticated bombing and it is possible that this kind of technique did exist."

The Mukhabarat was the Iraqi intelligence service.

Mr. Bremer said it was also possible that Ansar al-Islam or another militant organization had provided technical expertise on making car bombs to former Baathists who then carried out the attack.

He said the motivations of the attackers were unclear. The Jordanian Embassy, he said, might have been attacked because of Jordan`s cooperation with the United States during and after the war to topple Mr. Hussein`s government. He said it was unlikely that opponents of the government carried out the attack to punish Jordan for having granted asylum to Mr. Hussein`s daughters.

The central question for the American-led administration here, however, is whether the car bombing is an isolated act or the beginning of a new series of bombings. Officials are worried that they may be facing a new wave of attacks by Ansar al-Islam even if the group had no role in the attack on the embassy.

The onset of major bombings of this type would present a new danger to American and allied forces, who so far have been attacked primarily by insurgents and foreign fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and small arms.

The prospect of such attacks is a worry for another reason. The Bush administration has calculated that attacks by Baathist operatives will substantially decrease if Mr. Hussein is captured or killed and former officials of his government are deprived of a rallying cry. But there is no reason to think that attacks will necessarily cease because they seem to be motivated by a desire to lash out at the Americans over their support for Israel and their presence in the Middle East.

Ansar al-Islam had set up camp near the eastern Kurdish territory in northern Iraq, and the United States had mounted air attacks on the group during the war.

Kurdish forces who supported the American campaign to overthrow Mr. Hussein moved into the group`s former stronghold, but many of the group`s fighters fled to Iran and then infiltrated back into Iraq, according to American intelligence.

Mr. Bremer said the group had a history of carrying out major terrorist attacks, including car bombings. "The history is they do big stuff," he said. "They don`t do chicken-feed-type stuff."

He said more precise information about the group and its makeup would probably not be available until American and allied troops captured or killed many of its members.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that some suspected members of the group have been captured and are being interrogated. But Mr. Bremer seemed to suggest that there was still considerable uncertainty about the identity and nationality of many of the group`s operatives.

In addition to terrorist threats, Mr. Bremer has been concerned about the role of foreign fighters, who have been conducting ambushes and guerrilla attacks against American forces.

He said the new Governing Council in Iraq had asked the administration here to contact nations like Syria to find out how many of their citizens had come to Iraq to fight against the allies and the Council. But he said officials here had not obtained any precise information on such a count.

The Third Armored Cavalry Regiment recently apprehended about 40 suspected fighters near the Syrian border, officials said. They are being interrogated to determine how many are foreign fighters from nations like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Mr. Bremer said the basic strategy to fend off terrorist attacks was to press for new intelligence and mount raids to pre-empt them. "In the broadest sense, of course, though it is hard on us here, I would rather be fighting them here than fighting them in New York," he said.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 10, 2003
Blacklisting Judges

he founding fathers, whose brilliant design for the federal government was based on three coequal branches, would be horrified to learn of Attorney General John Ashcroft`s latest idea for improving the American justice system. Mr. Ashcroft has ordered federal prosecutors to start collecting information on federal judges who give sentences that are lighter than those suggested by federal guidelines. Critics are right when they say this has the potential to create a "blacklist" of judges who could then be subjected to intimidation.

Congress established the United States Sentencing Commission in the mid-1980`s, and charged it with developing guidelines to bring greater uniformity to sentences handed down by federal courts. The guidelines provide a range of sentences a judge can hand down for particular crimes. But they also permit judges discretion to impose a more lenient sentence, known as a "downward departure," if they can justify the decision. Judges frequently depart downward at the urging of the government, to reward defendants who cooperate with prosecutors.

But the administration and its allies in Congress have made no secret of their unhappiness with judges who impose more lenient sentences than guidelines call for. They have tried a variety of methods of pressuring judges to see things their way, including starting a Congressional investigation into the sentencing practices of James Rosenbaum, a United States District Court judge in Minnesota.

Mr. Ashcroft`s latest initiative raises these pressures to a new level. Under the new policy, federal prosecutors will be required in many cases to report when a judge departs downward from the sentence recommended by the federal guidelines. The Justice Department has said it intends to use the data to identify how often particular judges depart downward. Obviously, judges are going to be worried about coming in high on the list, and those who do will wonder if they will be subject to intimidation, as Judge Rosenbaum was.

At the very least, the Ashcroft plan would subject federal prosecutors to an unusual, and undesirable, degree of top-down management. Right now, individual prosecutors decide when to appeal a judge`s sentence. Mr. Ashcroft seems to want that decision to be made after a review from Washington. A prosecutor who feels a given judge is consistently handing down sentences that are too mild can certainly let his or her feelings be known to superiors. But this new, rigorous and rigid reporting system seems to treat prosecutors as lackeys, and judges as some kind of minor civil servants who can be ordered around by the president and his appointees.

By trying to make federal judges yield to political pressure from Washington, the Bush administration is engaging in a radical attack on our constitutional system. Even Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose conservative credentials are unassailable, has warned that collecting data on judges` sentencing practices "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges." Mr. Ashcroft should heed these words, and abandon his dangerous war on the judicial branch.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 10, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dinner With the Sayyids
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


BAGHDAD, Iraq

The best thing about being in Baghdad these days is that you just never know who`s going to show up for dinner.

Take last Wednesday night. I was invited to interview a rising progressive Iraqi Shiite cleric, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, at his home on the banks of the Tigris. It was the most exciting conversation I`ve had on three trips to postwar Iraq. I listened to Mr. Jamaleddine eloquently advocate separation of mosque and state and lay out a broad, liberal agenda for Iraq`s majority Shiites. As we sat down for a meal of Iraqi fish and flat bread, he introduced me to a small, black-turbaned cleric who was staying as his houseguest.

"Mr. Friedman, this is Sayyid Hussein Khomeini" — the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran`s Islamic revolution.

Mr. Khomeini told me he had left the Iranian spiritual center of Qum to meet with scholars in the Iraqi Shiite spiritual centers of Karbala and Najaf. He, too, is a progressive, he explained, and he intends to use the freedom that the U.S. invasion has created in Iraq to press for real democratic reform in Iran. Now I understand why his grandfather once threw him in jail for a week. He has Ayatollah Khomeini`s fiery eyes and steely determination, but the soul of a Muslim liberal.

The 46-year-old Mr. Khomeini said he`s currently advocating a national referendum in Iran to revoke the absolute religious and political powers that have been grabbed by Iran`s clergy. But in other interviews here, he was quoted as saying that Iran`s hard-line clerical rulers were "the world`s worst dictatorship," who have been exploiting his grandfather`s name and the name of Islam "to continue their tyrannical rule." He and Mr. Jamaleddine told me their first objective was to open Shiite seminaries and schools in Iraq to teach their ideas to the young generation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have no idea whether these are the only two liberal Shiite clerics in Iraq. People tell me they definitely are not. Either way, their willingness to express their ideas publicly is hugely important. It is, for my money, the most important reason we fought this war: If the West is going to avoid a war of armies with Islam, there has to be a war of ideas within Islam. The progressives have to take on both the religious totalitarians, like Osama bin Laden, and the secular totalitarians who exploit Islam as a cover, like Saddam Hussein. We cannot defeat their extremists, only they can. This war of ideas needs two things: a secure space for people to tell the truth and people with the courage to tell it. That`s what these two young clerics represent, at least in potential.

Mr. Jamaleddine, age 42, grew up in Iraq, sought exile in Iran after one of Saddam`s anti-Shiite crackdowns, tasted the harshness of the Iranian Islamic revolution firsthand, moved to Dubai, and then returned to Iraq as soon as Saddam fell. Here is a brief sampler of what he has been advocating:

On religion and state: "We want a secular constitution. That is the most important point. If we write a secular constitution and separate religion from state, that would be the end of despotism and it would liberate religion as well as the human being. . . . The Islamic religion has been hijacked for 14 centuries by the hands of the state. The state dominated religion, not the other way around. It used religion for its own ends. Tyrants ruled this nation for 14 centuries and they covered their tyranny with the cloak of religion. . . . When I called for secularism in Nasiriya (in the first postwar gathering of Iraqi leaders), they started saying things against me. But last week I had some calls from Qum, thanking me for presenting this thesis and saying, `We understand what you are calling for, but we cannot say so publicly.`

"Secularism is not blasphemy. I am a Muslim. I am devoted to my religion. I want to get it back from the state and that is why I want a secular state. . . . When young people come to religion, not because the state orders them to but because they feel it themselves in their hearts, it actually increases religious devotion. . . . The problem of the Middle East cannot be solved unless all the states in the area become secular. . . . I call for opening the door for Ijtihad [reinterpretation of the Koran in light of changing circumstances]. The Koran is a book to be interpreted [by] each age. Each epoch should not be tied to interpretations from 1,000 years ago. We should be open to interpretations based on new and changing times."

How will he deal with opposition to such ideas from Iraq`s neighbors?

"The neighboring countries are all tyrannical countries and they are wary of a modern, liberal Iraq. . . . That is why they work to foil the U.S. presence. . . . If the U.S. wants to help Iraqis, it must help them the way it helped Germany and Japan, because to help Iraq is really to help 1.3 billion Muslims. Iraq will teach these values to the entire Islamic world. Because Iraq has both Sunnis and Shiites, and it has Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. . . . If it succeeds here it can succeed elsewhere. But to succeed you also need to satisfy people`s basic needs: jobs and electricity. If people are hungry, they will be easily recruited by the extremists. If they are well fed and employed, they will be receptive to good ideas. . . . The failure of this experiment in Iraq would mean success for all despots in the Arab and Islamic world. [That is why] this is a challenge that America must accept and take all the way."

Mr. Jamaleddine, Mr. Khomeini; these are real spiritual leaders here. But if the U.S. does not create a secure environment and stable economy in Iraq, their voices will never get through. If we do, though — wow. To the rest of the Arab world, I would simply say: Guess who`s coming to dinner.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

August 10, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Brawny or Scrawny?
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Arnold Schwarzenegger is hoping his campaign will be a Charles Atlas moment in reverse.

"It`s like the famous Muscle Beach scene where the scrawny guy is getting sand kicked in his face by a bodybuilder," said an Arnold adviser. "But in this case, everyone`s cheering on the bodybuilder, because the scrawny guy is the mean, nasty, reprehensible one."

The Scrawny Guy, a k a the governor of California, is ready and eager to tattle on Arnold or sue his abs off. Gray Davis is Al Gore without the spontaneity.

The race will be between a governor who became unpopular acting like a robot and an actor who became popular playing one.

After his wife, Maria — who may consider a lot of Sacramento no Camelot — told him Wednesday morning to go for it if he really wanted to, the movie star told his strategists not to put out a prepared statement saying he wouldn`t run. On Leno, the advisers, who had done all the spadework for a race but thought it was a no-go, watched agog as the boss began attacking Gray Davis.

"We just looked at each other backstage and said, `Huh?` " recalled one.

The former Mr. Universe and Junior Mr. Europe pulled a fast one and outsmarted the smarties. With one quip on Leno, he bikini-waxed the entire tedious field of yakking Democratic presidential candidates and sent the political world into a whirl.

When was the last time a big-time candidate gave a speech in a Teutonic accent, sporting hip shades?

California Republicans had nowhere to go but up. In the last election, they were unable to topple one of the most unpopular governors in the state`s history. Many were not even interested in challenging Mr. Davis in the recall, figuring it would be better to let him stew in his own $38 billion budget deficit.

They reckoned the recall created a unique opportunity for the 56-year-old Mr. Schwarzenegger. "This is a beauty contest, and Arnold is the best looking guy," one Republican said.

The race is so wacky, there`s less emphasis on the fact that the actor is running on pecs and running away from peccadilloes.

Sure, he`s smoked marijuana and his father was a Nazi, but look at the field: a porn star who wants to tax breast implants; a self-styled "smut peddler who cares"; a billboard Barbie in a pink Corvette; a former child actor; an ex-cop who wants to legalize ferrets; a comedian who wants to ban low-low-riding pants; a glam Greek columnist whose rich ex-husband endorsed Arnold.

But even swaddled by high-priced political advisers, the Terminator could easily terminate, tripping on his own ego or inexperience or past.

"It depends on how much discipline he has," said one well-connected Republican. "The first stupid thing he says and it could be downhill from there."

Another G.O.P. operative working for Peter Ueberroth said the Olympics impresario will run as "Arnold for adults."

"This will be a real test of how shallow Californians are," he said.

Commentators on the left and right were mocking Mr. Schwarzenegger. Rush Limbaugh said the actor was no "Ronaldus Magnus."

True, Ronald Reagan didn`t announce on Johnny Carson. But a lot of pols have gone showbiz since then, from Bill Clinton playing the sax on Arsenio Hall and talking about his choice of underwear on MTV, to Ross Perot announcing his presidential candidacy on Larry King, to Al Gore in the hot tub on "Saturday Night Live," to Hillary Clinton bantering with David Letterman.

When President Bush does a Top Gun landing on an aircraft carrier, he`s trying to imitate an action hero. When John Kerry carts his Harley to various campaign stops, he`s trying to show he`s a tough guy.

Mr. Schwarzenegger already has what consultants struggle to superimpose on candidates: an aura of a strong protector who will get voters out of messes.

As one of his advisers says, "Whether it`s really Arnold or his movie image, he`s seen as a man of few words and lots of action. Other candidates spend $50 million on ads to get a sliver of that persona."

Besides, the star isn`t the first one with connections to a political dynasty but no elective experience to try to be governor of a big state. And unlike W., Arnold actually is a successful self-made businessman.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence


By Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page A01


His name was Joe, from the U.S. government. He carried 40 classified slides and a message from the Bush administration.

An engineer-turned-CIA analyst, Joe had helped build the U.S. government case that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. He landed in Vienna on Jan. 22 and drove to the U.S. diplomatic mission downtown. In a conference room 32 floors above the Danube River, he told United Nations nuclear inspectors they were making a serious mistake.

At issue was Iraq`s efforts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The U.S. government said those tubes were for centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. But the IAEA, the world`s nuclear watchdog, had uncovered strong evidence that Iraq was using them for conventional rockets.

Joe described the rocket story as a transparent Iraqi lie. According to people familiar with his presentation, which circulated before and afterward among government and outside specialists, Joe said the specialized aluminum in the tubes was "overspecified," "inappropriate" and "excessively strong." No one, he told the inspectors, would waste the costly alloy on a rocket.

In fact, there was just such a rocket. According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the Italian-made Medusa 81. Not only the Medusa`s alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes.

A CIA spokesman asked that Joe`s last name be withheld for his safety, and said he would not be made available for an interview. The spokesman said the tubes in question "are not the same as the Medusa 81" but would not identify what distinguishes them. In an interview, CIA Director George J. Tenet said several different U.S. intelligence agencies believed the tubes could be used to build gas centrifuges for a uranium enrichment program.

The Vienna briefing was one among many private and public forums in which the Bush administration portrayed a menacing Iraqi nuclear threat, even as important features of its evidence were being undermined. There were other White House assertions about forbidden weapons programs, including biological and chemical arms, for which there was consensus among analysts. But the danger of a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein, more potent as an argument for war, began with weaker evidence and grew weaker still in the three months before war.

This article is based on interviews with analysts and policymakers inside and outside the U.S. government, and access to internal documents and technical evidence not previously made public.

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq`s nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied:

• Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign. Iraq`s three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center at Rashidiya.

• The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 cited new construction at facilities once associated with Iraq`s nuclear program, but analysts had no reliable information at the time about what was happening under the roofs. By February, a month before the war, U.S. government specialists on the ground in Iraq had seen for themselves that there were no forbidden activities at the sites.

• Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment. By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government`s assertion. The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible.

• In the weeks and months following Joe`s Vienna briefing, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others continued to describe the use of such tubes for rockets as an implausible hypothesis, even after U.S. analysts collected and photographed in Iraq a virtually identical tube marked with the logo of the Medusa`s Italian manufacturer and the words, in English, "81mm rocket."

• The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

Two senior policymakers, who supported the war, said in unauthorized interviews that the administration greatly overstated Iraq`s near-term nuclear potential.

"I never cared about the `imminent threat,` " said one of the policymakers, with directly relevant responsibilities. "The threat was there in [Hussein`s] presence in office. To me, just knowing what it takes to have a nuclear weapons program, he needed a lot of equipment. You can stare at the yellowcake [uranium ore] all you want. You need to convert it to gas and enrich it. That does not constitute an imminent threat, and the people who were saying that, I think, did not fully appreciate the difficulties and effort involved in producing the nuclear material and the physics package."

No White House, Pentagon or State Department policymaker agreed to speak on the record for this report about the administration`s nuclear case. Answering questions Thursday before the National Association of Black Journalists, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said she is "certain to this day that this regime was a threat, that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon, that it had biological and chemical weapons, that it had used them." White House officials referred all questions of detail to Tenet.

In an interview and a four-page written statement, Tenet defended the NIE prepared under his supervision in October. In that estimate, U.S. intelligence analysts judged that Hussein was intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon and was trying to rebuild the capability to make one.

"We stand behind the judgments of the NIE" based on the evidence available at the time, Tenet said, and "the soundness and integrity of our process." The estimate was "the product of years of reporting and intelligence collection, analyzed by numerous experts in several different agencies."

Tenet said the time to "decide who was right and who was wrong" about prewar intelligence will not come until the Iraqi Survey Group, the CIA-directed, U.S. military postwar study in Iraq of Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction programs is completed. The Bush administration has said this will require months or years.

Facts and Doubts


The possibility of a nuclear-armed Iraq loomed large in the Bush administration`s efforts to convince the American public of the need for a preemptive strike. Beginning last August, Cheney portrayed Hussein`s nuclear ambitions as a "mortal threat" to the United States. In the fall and winter, Rice, then Bush, marshaled the dreaded image of a "mushroom cloud."

By many accounts, including those of career officials who did not support the war, there were good reasons for concern that the Iraqi president might revive a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade and fabricate a working bomb. He had a well-demonstrated aspiration for nuclear weapons, a proficient scientific and engineering cadre, a history of covert development and a domestic supply of unrefined uranium ore. Iraq was generally believed to have kept the technical documentation for two advanced German centrifuge designs and the assembly diagrams for at least one type of "implosion device," which detonates a nuclear core.

What Hussein did not have was the principal requirement for a nuclear weapon, a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium. And the U.S. government, authoritative intelligence officials said, had only circumstantial evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain those materials.

But the Bush administration had reasons to imagine the worst. The CIA had faced searing criticism for its failures to foresee India`s resumption of nuclear testing in 1998 and to "connect the dots" pointing to al Qaeda`s attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Cheney, the administration`s most influential advocate of a worst-case analysis, had been powerfully influenced by his experience as defense secretary just after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Former National Security Council official Richard A. Clarke recalled how information from freshly seized Iraqi documents disclosed the existence of a "crash program" to build a bomb in 1991. The CIA had known nothing of it.

"I can understand why that was a seminal experience for Cheney," Clarke said. "And when the CIA says [in 2002], `We don`t have any evidence,` his reaction is . . . `We didn`t have any evidence in 1991, either. Why should I believe you now?` "

Some strategists, in and out of government, argued that the uncertainty itself -- in the face of circumstantial evidence -- was sufficient to justify "regime change." But that was not what the Bush administration usually said to the American people.

To gird a nation for the extraordinary step of preemptive war -- and to obtain the minimum necessary support from allies, Congress and the U.N. Security Council -- the administration described a growing, even imminent, nuclear threat from Iraq.

`Nuclear Blackmail`


The unveiling of that message began a year ago this week.

Cheney raised the alarm about Iraq`s nuclear menace three times in August. He was far ahead of the president`s public line. Only Bush and Cheney know, one senior policy official said, "whether Cheney was trying to push the president or they had decided to play good cop, bad cop."

On Aug. 7, Cheney volunteered in a question-and-answer session at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, speaking of Hussein, that "left to his own devices, it`s the judgment of many of us that in the not-too-distant future, he will acquire nuclear weapons." On Aug. 26, he described Hussein as a "sworn enemy of our country" who constituted a "mortal threat" to the United States. He foresaw a time in which Hussein could "subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said. "Among other sources, we`ve gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam`s own son-in-law."

That was a reference to Hussein Kamel, who had managed Iraq`s special weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan. But Saddam Hussein lured Kamel back to Iraq, and he was killed in February 1996, so Kamel could not have sourced what U.S. officials "now know."

And Kamel`s testimony, after defecting, was the reverse of Cheney`s description. In one of many debriefings by U.S., Jordanian and U.N. officials, Kamel said on Aug. 22, 1995, that Iraq`s uranium enrichment programs had not resumed after halting at the start of the Gulf War in 1991. According to notes typed for the record by U.N. arms inspector Nikita Smidovich, Kamel acknowledged efforts to design three different warheads, "but not now, before the Gulf War."

`Educating the Public`


Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don`t introduce new products in August," he said.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president`s senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney`s chief of staff.

The first days of September would bring some of the most important decisions of the prewar period: what to demand of the United Nations in the president`s Sept. 12 address to the General Assembly, when to take the issue to Congress, and how to frame the conflict with Iraq in the midterm election campaign that began in earnest after Labor Day.

A "strategic communications" task force under the WHIG began to plan speeches and white papers. There were many themes in the coming weeks, but Iraq`s nuclear menace was among the most prominent.

`A Mushroom Cloud`


The day after publication of Card`s marketing remark, Bush and nearly all his top advisers began to talk about the dangers of an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair conferred at Camp David that Saturday, Sept. 7, and they each described alarming new evidence. Blair said proof that the threat is real came in "the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites." Bush said "a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they [Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don`t know what more evidence we need."

There was no new IAEA report. Blair appeared to be referring to news reports describing curiosity at the nuclear agency about repairs at sites of Iraq`s former nuclear program. Bush cast as present evidence the contents of a report from 1996, updated in 1998 and 1999. In those accounts, the IAEA described the history of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that arms inspectors had systematically destroyed.

A White House spokesman later acknowledged that Bush "was imprecise" on his source but stood by the crux of his charge. The spokesman said U.S. intelligence, not the IAEA, had given Bush his information.

That, too, was garbled at best. U.S. intelligence reports had only one scenario for an Iraqi bomb in six months to a year, premised on Iraq`s immediate acquisition of enough plutonium or enriched uranium from a foreign source.

"That is just about the same thing as saying that if Iraq gets a bomb, it will have a bomb," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who covers the subject. "We had no evidence for it."

Two debuts took place on Sept. 8: the aluminum tubes and the image of "a mushroom cloud." A Sunday New York Times story quoted anonymous officials as saying the "diameter, thickness and other technical specifications" of the tubes -- precisely the grounds for skepticism among nuclear enrichment experts -- showed that they were "intended as components of centrifuges."

No one knows when Iraq will have its weapon, the story said, but "the first sign of a `smoking gun,` they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Top officials made the rounds of Sunday talk shows that morning. Rice`s remarks echoed the newspaper story. She said on CNN`s "Late Edition" that Hussein was "actively pursuing a nuclear weapon" and that the tubes -- described repeatedly in U.S. intelligence reports as "dual-use" items -- were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."

"There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons," Rice added, "but we don`t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Anna Perez, a communications adviser to Rice, said Rice did not come looking for an opportunity to say that. "There was nothing in her mind that said, `I have to push the nuclear issue,` " Perez said, "but Wolf [Blitzer] asked the question."

Powell, a confidant said, found it "disquieting when people say things like mushroom clouds." But he contributed in other ways to the message. When asked about biological and chemical arms on Fox News, he brought up nuclear weapons and cited the "specialized aluminum tubing" that "we saw in reporting just this morning."

Cheney, on NBC`s "Meet the Press," also mentioned the tubes and said "increasingly, we believe the United States will become the target" of an Iraqi nuclear weapon. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on CBS`s "Face the Nation," asked listeners to "imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction," which would kill "tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children."

Bush evoked the mushroom cloud on Oct. 7, and on Nov. 12 Gen. Tommy R. Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command, said inaction might bring "the sight of the first mushroom cloud on one of the major population centers on this planet."

`Literary License`


In its initial meetings, Card`s Iraq task force ordered a series of white papers. After a general survey of Iraqi arms violations, the first of the single-subject papers -- never published -- was "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein`s Quest for Nuclear Weapons."

Wilkinson, at the time White House deputy director of communications for planning, gathered a yard-high stack of intelligence reports and press clippings.

Wilkinson said he conferred with experts from the National Security Council and Cheney`s office. Other officials said Will Tobey and Susan Cook, working under senior director for counterproliferation Robert Joseph, made revisions and circulated some of the drafts. Under the standard NSC review process, they checked the facts.

In its later stages, the draft white paper coincided with production of a National Intelligence Estimate and its unclassified summary. But the WHIG, according to three officials who followed the white paper`s progress, wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence.

The fifth draft of the paper was obtained by The Washington Post. White House spokesmen dismissed the draft as irrelevant because Rice decided not to publish it. Wilkinson said Rice and Joseph felt the paper "was not strong enough."

The document offers insight into the Bush administration`s priorities and methods in shaping a nuclear message. The white paper was assembled by some of the same team, and at the same time, as the speeches and talking points prepared for the president and top officials. A senior intelligence official said last October that the president`s speechwriters took "literary license" with intelligence, a phrase applicable to language used by administration officials in some of the white paper`s most emotive and misleading assertions elsewhere.

The draft white paper precedes other known instances in which the Bush administration considered the now-discredited claim that Iraq "sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa." For a speechwriter, uranium was valuable as an image because anyone could see its connection to an atomic bomb. Despite warnings from intelligence analysts, the uranium would return again and again, including the Jan. 28 State of the Union address and three other Bush administration statements that month.

Other errors and exaggerations in public White House claims were repeated, or had their first mention, in the white paper.

Much as Blair did at Camp David, the paper attributed to U.N. arms inspectors a statement that satellite photographs show "many signs of the reconstruction and acceleration of the Iraqi nuclear program." Inspectors did not say that. The paper also quoted the first half of a sentence from a Time magazine interview with U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix: "You can see hundreds of new roofs in these photos." The second half of the sentence, not quoted, was: "but you don`t know what`s under them."

As Bush did, the white paper cited the IAEA`s description of Iraq`s defunct nuclear program in language that appeared to be current. The draft said, for example, that "since the beginning of the nineties, Saddam has launched a crash program to divert nuclear reactor fuel for . . . nuclear weapons." The crash program began in late 1990 and ended with the war in January 1991. The reactor fuel, save for waste products, is gone.

`Footnotes and Disclaimers`


A senior intelligence official said the White House preferred to avoid a National Intelligence Estimate, a formal review of competing evidence and judgments, because it knew "there were disagreements over details in almost every aspect of the administration`s case against Iraq." The president`s advisers, the official said, did not want "a lot of footnotes and disclaimers."

But Bush needed bipartisan support for war-making authority in Congress. In early September, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence began asking why there had been no authoritative estimate of the danger posed by Iraq. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote Sept. 9 of his "concern that the views of the U.S. intelligence community are not receiving adequate attention by policymakers in both Congress and the executive branch." When Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then committee chairman, insisted on an NIE in a classified letter two days later, Tenet agreed.

Explicitly intended to assist Congress in deciding whether to authorize war, the estimate was produced in two weeks, an extraordinary deadline for a document that usually takes months. Tenet said in an interview that "we had covered parts of all those programs over 10 years through NIEs and other reports, and we had a ton of community product on all these issues."

Even so, the intelligence community was now in a position of giving its first coordinated answer to a question that every top national security official had already answered. "No one outside the intelligence community told us what to say or not to say," Tenet wrote in reply to questions for this article.

The U.S. government possessed no specific information on Iraqi efforts to acquire enriched uranium, according to six people who participated in preparing for the estimate. It knew only that Iraq sought to buy equipment of the sort that years of intelligence reports had said "may be" intended for or "could be" used in uranium enrichment.

Richard J. Kerr, a former CIA deputy director now leading a review of the agency`s intelligence analysis about Iraq, said in an interview that the CIA collected almost no hard information about Iraq`s weapons programs after the departure of IAEA and U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, arms inspectors during the Clinton administration. He said that was because of a lack of spies inside Iraq.

Tenet took issue with that view, saying in an interview, "When inspectors were pushed out in 1998, we did not sit back. . . . The fact is we made significant professional progress." In his written statement, he cited new evidence on biological and missile programs, but did not mention Hussein`s nuclear pursuits.

The estimate`s "Key Judgment" said: "Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed -- December 1998."

According to Kerr, the analysts had good reasons to say that, but the reasons were largely "inferential."

Hussein was known to have met with some weapons physicists, and praised them as "nuclear mujaheddin." But the CIA had "reasonably good intelligence in terms of the general activities and whereabouts" of those scientists, said another analyst with the relevant clearances, and knew they had generally not reassembled into working groups. In a report to Congress in 2001, the agency could conclude only that some of the scientists "probably" had "continued at least low-level theoretical R&D [research and development] associated with its nuclear program."

Analysts knew Iraq had tried recently to buy magnets, high-speed balancing machines, machine tools and other equipment that had some potential for use in uranium enrichment, though no less for conventional industry. Even assuming the intention, the parts could not all be made to fit a coherent centrifuge model. The estimate acknowledged that "we lack specific information on many key aspects" of the program, and analysts presumed they were seeing only the tip of the iceberg.

`He Made a Name`


According to outside scientists and intelligence officials, the most important factor in the CIA`s nuclear judgment was Iraq`s attempt to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The tubes were the core evidence for a centrifuge program tied to building a nuclear bomb. Even circumstantially, the CIA reported no indication of uranium enrichment using anything but centrifuges.

That interpretation of the tubes was a victory for the man named Joe, who made the issue his personal crusade. He worked in the gas centrifuge program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the early 1980s. He is not, associates said, a nuclear physicist, but an engineer whose work involved the platform upon which centrifuges were mounted.

At some point he joined the CIA. By the end of the 1990s, according to people who know him casually, he worked in export controls.

Joe played an important role in discovering Iraq`s plans to buy aluminum tubes from China in 2000, with an Australian intermediary. U.N. sanctions forbade Iraq to buy anything with potential military applications, and members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a voluntary alliance, include some forms of aluminum tubing on their list of equipment that could be used for uranium enrichment.

Joe saw the tubes as centrifuge rotors that could be used to process uranium into weapons-grade material. In a gas centrifuge, the rotor is a thin-walled cylinder, open at both ends, that spins at high speed under a magnet. The device extracts the material used in a weapon from a gaseous form of uranium.

In July 2001, about 3,000 tubes were intercepted in Jordan on their way to Iraq, a big step forward in the agency`s efforts to understand what Iraq was trying to do. The CIA gave Joe an award for exceptional performance, throwing its early support to an analysis that helped change the agency`s mind about Iraq`s pursuit of nuclear ambitions.

"He grabbed that information early on, and he made a name for himself," a career U.S. government nuclear expert said.

`Stretches the Imagination`


Doubts about Joe`s theory emerged quickly among the government`s centrifuge physicists. The intercepted tubes were too narrow, long and thick-walled to fit a known centrifuge design. Aluminum had not been used for rotors since the 1950s. Iraq had two centrifuge blueprints, stolen in Europe, that were far more efficient and already known to work. One used maraging steel, a hard steel alloy, for the rotors, the other carbon fiber.

Joe and his supporters said the apparent drawbacks were part of Iraq`s concealment plan. Hussein`s history of covert weapons development, Tenet said in his written statement, included "built-in cover stories."

"This is a case where different people had honorable and different interpretations of intentions," said an Energy Department analyst who has reviewed the raw data. "If you go to a nuclear [counterproliferation official] and say I`ve got these aluminum tubes, and it`s about Iraq, his first inclination is to say it`s for nuclear use."

But the government`s centrifuge scientists -- at the Energy Department`s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its sister institutions -- unanimously regarded this possibility as implausible.

In late 2001, experts at Oak Ridge asked an alumnus, Houston G. Wood III, to review the controversy. Wood, founder of the Oak Ridge centrifuge physics department, is widely acknowledged to be among the most eminent living experts.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Wood said in an interview that "it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts that feel differently."

As an academic, Wood said, he would not describe "anything that you absolutely could not do." But he said he would "like to see, if they`re going to make that claim, that they have some explanation of how you do that. Because I don`t see how you do it."

A CIA spokesman said the agency does have support for its view from centrifuge experts. He declined to elaborate.

In the last week of September, the development of the NIE required a resolution of the running disagreement over the significance of the tubes. The Energy Department had one vote. Four agencies -- with specialties including eavesdropping, maps and foreign military forces -- judged that the tubes were part of a centrifuge program that could be used for nuclear weapons. Only the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research joined the judgment of the Energy Department. The estimate, as published, said that "most analysts" believed the tubes were suitable and intended for a centrifuge cascade.

Majority votes make poor science, said Peter D. Zimmerman, a former chief scientist at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

"In this case, the experts were at Z Division at Livermore [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] and in DOE intelligence here in town, and they were convinced that no way in hell were these likely to be centrifuge tubes," he said.

Tenet said the Department of Energy was not the only agency with experts on the issue; the CIA consulted military battlefield rocket experts, as well as its own centrifuge experts.

Unravelings


On Feb. 5, two weeks after Joe`s Vienna briefing, Powell gave what remains the government`s most extensive account of the aluminum tubes, in an address to the U.N. Security Council. He did not mention the existence of the Medusa rocket or its Iraqi equivalent, though he acknowledged disagreement among U.S. intelligence analysts about the use of the tubes.

Powell`s CIA briefers, using data originating with Joe, told him that Iraq had "overspecified" requirements for the tubes, increasing expense without making them more useful to rockets. That helped persuade Powell, a confidant said, that Iraq had some other purpose for the tubes.

"Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don`t think so," Powell said in his speech. He said different batches "seized clandestinely before they reached Iraq" showed a "progression to higher and higher levels of specification, including in the latest batch an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. . . . Why would they continue refining the specification, go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?"

An anodized coating is actually a strong argument for use in rockets, according to several scientists in and out of government. It resists corrosion of the sort that ruined Iraq`s previous rocket supply. To use the tubes in a centrifuge, experts told the government, Iraq would have to remove the anodized coating.

Iraq did change some specifications from order to order, the procurement records show, but there is not a clear progression to higher precision. One tube sample was rejected because its interior was unfinished, too uneven to be used in a rocket body. After one of Iraq`s old tubes got stuck in a launcher and exploded, Baghdad`s subsequent orders asked for more precision in roundness.

U.S. and European analysts said they had obtained records showing that Italy`s Medusa rocket has had its specifications improved 10 times since 1978. Centrifuge experts said in interviews that the variations had little or no significance for uranium enrichment, especially because the CIA`s theory supposes Iraq would do extensive machining to adapt the tubes as rotors.

For rockets, however, the tubes fit perfectly. Experts from U.S. national labs, working temporarily with U.N. inspectors in Iraq, observed production lines for the rockets at the Nasser factory north of Baghdad. Iraq had run out of body casings at about the time it ordered the aluminum tubes, according to officials familiar with the experts` reports. Thousands of warheads, motors and fins were crated at the assembly lines, awaiting the arrival of tubes.

"Most U.S. experts," Powell asserted, "think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium." He said "other experts, and the Iraqis themselves," said the tubes were really for rockets.

Wood, the centrifuge physicist, said "that was a personal slam at everybody in DOE," the Energy Department. "I`ve been grouped with the Iraqis, is what it amounts to. I just felt that the wording of that was probably intentional, but it was also not very kind. It did not recognize that dissent can exist."

Staff writers Glenn Kessler, Dana Priest and Richard Morin and staff researchers Lucy Shackelford, Madonna Lebling and Robert Thomason contributed to this report.



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A Debate Over U.S. `Empire` Builds in Unexpected Circles


By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page A03


At forums sponsored by policy think tanks, on radio talk shows and around Cleveland Park dinner tables, one topic has been hotter than the weather in Washington this summer: Has the United States become the very "empire" that the republic`s founders heartily rejected?

Liberal scholars have been raising the question but, more strikingly, so have some Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials.

For example, C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to President George H.W. Bush, has joined a small group that is considering ways to "educate Americans about the dangers of empire and the need to return to our founding traditions and values," according to an early draft of a proposed mission statement.

"Rogue Nation," a new book by former Reagan administration official Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute, contains a chapter that dubs the United States "The Unacknowledged Empire." And at the Nixon Center in Washington, established in 1994 by former president Richard M. Nixon, President Dimitri K. Simes is preparing a magazine-length essay that will examine the "American imperial predicament."

The stirrings among Republicans are still muted. Most in the GOP -- as well as a large number of Democrats -- support bigger military budgets and see no alternative to a forceful U.S. role abroad. But those leading the debate say it is, at the very least, bringing in voices across the ideological spectrum for a long overdue appraisal of what the nation`s role should be.

After World War II, the United States was instrumental in setting up a web of international economic, military and political organizations founded on American principles of democracy and free markets. To combat communist influence, real or imagined, the United States also used covert operations to undermine or topple governments in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Chile and other countries.

While U.S. influence was vast, many scholars deny that it constituted an "empire," which the dictionary defines as a group of countries or territories under a single sovereign power.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq with few allies may be the immediate cause of heightened interest in the topic of empire. But there is broad agreement that the United States` drift toward empire -- if it has occurred -- long predates the Bush administration.

According to Christopher A. Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, which espouses libertarian views, the United States should have faced this issue when the Soviet Union collapsed.

"That`s when we should have had a discussion," he said. "Instead, we maintained all our Cold War commitments and added new ones, without much of a debate at all."

The United States retained its worldwide network of spy satellites, ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers, and stationed several hundred thousand troops in dozens of countries. After dipping sharply in the early 1990s, the military budget began rising after Bill Clinton was reelected president in 1996.

Between the end of the Cold War and the start of the current presidency, the U.S. military intervened in Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In Panama and Haiti, the United States ousted dictators and installed its handpicked successors. In Somalia, a humanitarian mission to protect relief supplies for famine victims became a hunt for a warlord that led to U.S. deaths and withdrawal. In the former Yugoslavia, the United States intervened on humanitarian grounds but has remained to keep order and provide civic stability.

Preble considers the U.S. ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan a legitimate response to the terrorist threat after Sept. 11, 2001. But the longer the United States remains in Afghanistan and Iraq, he says, the more it looks like an "occupier" -- a term associated with imperial powers.

For ideological conservatives, the United States` vast global commitments should pose a difficult philosophical dilemma, Preble said. "You cannot be for a system of limited government at home and for maintaining military garrisons all over the world," he said.

Not so, say many "neoconservatives," members of an amorphous political group that has its origins in the defection of left-wing Democrats to the GOP during the Cold War. Neoconservatives tend to favor the use of U.S. power to spread American political values, preempt hostile nations` ability to threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild nations in America`s image.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has put forward the idea of a U.S. "empire of liberty" to spread democracy around the world. On National Public Radio`s "Diane Rehm Show" last month, Boot called for a doubling of U.S. military spending to carry out America`s global commitments.

The label of empire does not bother William Kristol, a neoconservative leader and editor of the Weekly Standard magazine. "If people want to say we`re an imperial power, fine," he has stated.

There are echoes of President John F. Kennedy -- and of the more zealous elements of President Woodrow Wilson`s foreign policy -- in the neoconservative vision, said Ivo H. Daalder, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kennedy pledged in his 1961 inaugural address to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Wilson believed World War I could "make the world safe for democracy."

But Daalder said there is a key difference. Kennedy and Wilson believed in the benefits of working through international organizations, while neoconservatives want the United States to act alone. "They`re democratic imperialists," Daalder said of the neoconservatives.

Oxford University historian Niall Ferguson, author of "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power," says the United States should stop denying its imperial role and study the good the British Empire did in spreading prosperity and progressive thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ferguson recently took the pro-empire case before a packed auditorium at the American Enterprise Institute, where he debated scholar Robert Kagan on the proposition, "The United States is and should be an empire." At the conclusion, the audience was polled and rejected the proposition.

Broadening this debate is the goal of the infant Committee for the Republic, whose members include Gray; former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman Jr.; Stephen P. Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development in New York; William A. Nitze, son of Paul Nitze, the Reagan administration`s top arms control negotiator; and John B. Henry, a Washington businessman and descendant of Revolutionary War patriot Patrick Henry. Members have met over lunch and are drafting a manifesto. A draft of the mission statement says, "America has begun to stray far from its founding tradition of leading the world by example rather than by force."

Henry said the group may set up a nonprofit organization and could sponsor seminars examining how imperial behavior weakened earlier republics, such as the Roman Empire. "We want to have a great national debate about what our role in the world is," Henry said.

James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says the United States veered away from the founders` notion of avoiding foreign entanglements more than a century ago, when it went to war with Spain in 1898. "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy," a book by Lindsay and Daalder, finds parallels with the past in the foreign policy disputes taking place inside the Bush administration.

After World War I, Wilson fought for U.S. membership in the League of Nations but was outmaneuvered by Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge (Mass.). Wilson and Lodge wanted the United States to exercise power overseas, but Lodge feared the league would limit the United States` freedom of action.

Lindsay sees some of the same conflicts in the dispute between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and "aggressive nationalists" in the Bush administration led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. The nationalists, Lindsay contends, "believe that killing bad guys is the way to create democracy, not building institutions."




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A Baghdad police officer, supported by a U.S. military patrol stationed discreetly nearby, checks the registration of a luxury car. Police in the Iraqi capital are trying to crack down on an epidemic of carjackings and car theft.
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In Postwar Baghdad, a Benz Is Easy to Get, Easy to Lose
Theft of New and Luxury Cars Becomes Rampant in Capital

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page A18


BAGHDAD -- They are flooding into the capital from Jordan and the Persian Gulf states: nearly new Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Opel sedans, available for a song in the commercial chaos of postwar Iraq, cruising in air-conditioned splendor past the rusting jalopies that for years were all most Iraqis could afford.

And they are being stolen, at gunpoint, at a rate of 70 a day.

• Janan, a teacher, was taking a maiden drive with two young daughters in her husband`s newly imported Mercedes several weeks ago when another car cut her off at an intersection. She asked that her last name not be published.

"There were five men inside. One jumped out and pointed a pistol at my mother`s head," said 12-year-old Shams. "We thought they were going to kidnap us all, but they took the car and left us standing in the road. We kept screaming, but no one stopped."

• Khalid Rashid, an elderly diplomat, had just taken his Mercedes out of the garage on July 21 when a group of armed men pulled up in a car. One of them called out his name, and another beat his head with a pistol. He said he never saw the car again.

• One week ago, Ghassan Gharib, a merchant, heard gunshots and ran out of his house to see his next-door neighbor speeding away in the Peugeot the neighbor had just bought, its front window shattered by bullets. Four gunmen were chasing him in another car, but they then fled.

"They were after his car, but he escaped. When I saw his face afterward, all the color was gone from it," said Gharib, who recently bought a late-model BMW. "Now I don`t drive at night, and I never take my family out in the car. It`s just not safe."

Carjacking has become Baghdad`s number one crime problem in the last two months. Police say hundreds of late-model or luxury vehicles are being stolen each week by gunmen who surprise drivers at busy traffic stops, on lonely stretches of road, or just outside homes and garages.

The carjackings are less spectacular and less deadly than the recurring terrorist attacks on U.S. troops and other foreign targets in the metropolitan area, but are far more frequent and unnerving to residents of a capital whose sprawling size and modern freeway system make it an ideal city for cars.

Police attribute the epidemic of armed car theft to a combination of causes: the high urban unemployment rate that has soared since Baghdad fell in April, the wide availability of guns, the large number of used luxury cars that have poured into Iraq, and the relative ease of committing quick, opportunistic crimes in a huge city with a newly trained and overstretched police force.

"It`s a disease that is spreading fast, and we don`t have the means to stop it," said Maj. Ehsam Salman, a veteran police officer in central Baghdad. "There are too many idle men with nothing to do, and too many cars coming with no controls. It`s happening every day, all over the city, and we don`t even have a working emergency number people can call."

Since mid-June, city police backed by U.S. troops have been conducting random roadside vehicle checks, in which they pull over new or expensive-looking cars, ask to see the driver`s documents and search the trunk and interior for weapons.

One morning this week, Lt. Ali Hussain, a thin, serious-looking man of 23, waved down dozens of luxury sedans on a busy commuter bridge, many with no license plates and new import stickers on their windshields. In most cases, the owners were middle-class Iraqis who said they had recently purchased the vehicles here for between $3,000 and $7,000.

"This is the first time in a month I`ve gone out in my car," said Salman Daoud, 55, a businessman in a large gray BMW who was pulled over; his teenage son was in the passenger seat. "We`re very afraid of the hijackers," Daoud said. "It`s okay if they take my car, but what if they kill me and my son?"

Most of the drivers who were stopped complied readily with Hussain`s polite request for ID papers and permission to search. But Hassan Hajji, 36, an engineer and political party activist who was driving a just-purchased 1992 BMW, blustered indignantly.

"Do I look like a thief?" he challenged Hussain.

"Sir, we are doing this for your safety, to save your life," the young lieutenant replied gravely.

After Hajji calmed down, he said his previous car had been stolen at gunpoint six weeks earlier, while he was driving with his wife. Unfazed, he promptly purchased the sleek fir-green BMW for $6,700. "It`s too hot here. I just can`t drive without air conditioning," he said.

Hussain said later that even with an armed squad of U.S. troops standing by, conducting car checks has been nerve-racking duty. If a car is stolen, he said, the men inside may start shooting. Recently, the lieutenant said, he was in a squad car following a suspected stolen car, and the occupants shot out his tires.

It is also difficult for police to trace cars that are stolen or used in carjackings because many vehicles have no license tags. Police and car dealers said that before the war, thorough customs checks were conducted and duty fees were collected at Iraqi border-crossing points; now, they said, vehicles cross with almost no scrutiny, including stolen cars being imported for cheap resale.

Officials said carjackings are becoming organized operations, with gangs following potential victims and learning their driving routes, and even offering to find and return stolen cars to their owners for a hefty fee.

"No one can go out with a fancy car any more," said Qais Akram Hassan, who co-owns one of the largest car dealerships in Baghdad. He employs 12 armed guards and keeps his office locked at all times.

Salman, the police officer, said the best way to curb car theft would be to place permanent checkpoints at all roads leading into and out of the city. But with the police force in the process of being revamped and retrained by U.S. authorities, only 5,000 officers are in place to cover a city of 5.5 million people, making such an operation impossible.

"Saddam let all the criminals out of jail just before the war, and now we`ve had three months with no government, so the criminals can do anything," Salman said in frustration. "The best thing to do is just surrender your car, because your life is more important."



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Theories Of Right Thinking


By George F. Will

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page B07


This just in: Conservatism often is symptomatic of a psychological syndrome. It can involve fear, aggression, uncertainty avoidance, intolerance of ambiguity, dogmatic dislike of equality, irrational nostalgia and need for "cognitive closure," all aspects of the authoritarian personality.

Actually, this theory has been floating around academic psychology for half a century. It is reprised in "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," written by four professors for Psychological Bulletin.

"Motivated social cognition" refers to the "motivational underpinnings" of ideas, the "situational as well as dispositional variables" that foster particular beliefs. Notice: situations and dispositions -- not reasons. Professors have reasons for their beliefs. Other people, particularly conservatives, have social and psychological explanations for their beliefs. "Motivated cognition" involves ways of seeing and reasoning about the world that are unreasonable because they arise from emotional, psychological needs.

The professors note, "The practice of singling out political conservatives for special study began . . . [with a 1950] study of authoritarianism and the fascist potential in personality." The industry of studying the sad psychology of conservatism is booming. It began with a European mixture of Marxism and Freudianism. It often involves a hash of unhistorical judgments, including the supposedly scientific, value-free judgment that conservatives are authoritarians, and that fascists -- e.g., the socialist Mussolini and Hitler, the National Socialist who wanted to conserve nothing -- were conservatives.

The four professors now contribute "theories of epistemic and existential needs, and sociopolitical theories of ideology as individual and collective rationalizations" and "defensive motivations" -- defenses against fear of uncertainty and resentment of equality. The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses.

"In the post-Freudian world, the ancient dichotomy between reason and passion is blurred," say the professors, who do not say that their judgments arise from social situations or emotional needs rather than reason. The professors usefully survey the vast literature churned out by the legions of academics who have searched for the unsavory or patlogical origins of conservatism (fear of death? harsh parenting? the "authoritarian personality"?).

But it is difficult to take the professors` seriousness seriously when they say, in an essay responding to a critique of their paper, that Ronald Reagan`s "chief accomplishment, in effect, was to roll back both the New Deal and the 1960s." His "accomplishment"? So that is why Social Security and Medicare disappeared.

The professors write, "One is justified in referring to Hitler, Mussolini, Reagan, and Limbaugh as right-wing conservatives . . . because they all preached a return to an idealized past and favored or condoned inequality in some form."

Until the professors give examples of political people who do not favor or condone equality in any form, it is fair to conclude that, for all their pretensions to scientific rigor, they are remarkably imprecise. And they are very political people, who would be unlikely ever to begin a sentence: "One is justified in referring to Stalin, Mao, Franklin Roosevelt and the editors of the New York Times as left-wing liberals because . . . . "

The professors acknowledge that "the same motives may underlie different beliefs." And "different motives may underlie the same beliefs." And "motivational and informational influences on belief formation are not incompatible." And no reasoning occurs in a "motivational vacuum." And "virtually all belief systems" are embraced because they "satisfy some psychological needs." And all this "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false."

Not necessarily. What a relief. But there is no comparable academic industry devoted to studying the psychological underpinnings of liberalism.

Liberals, you see, embrace liberalism for an obvious and uncomplicated reason -- liberalism is self-evidently true. But conservatives embrace conservatism for reasons that must be excavated from their inner turmoils, many of them pitiable or disreputable.

The professors` paper is adorned with this epigraph:

"Conservatism is a demanding mistress and is giving me a migraine."

-- George F. Will

A "mistress" who is "demanding"? Freud, call your office. The epigraph is from "Bunts," a book of baseball essays, from an essay concerning what conservatives should think about the designated hitter.

Will probably thought he was being lighthearted. Silly him. Actually, he was struggling with fear of ambiguity and the need for cognitive closure.

Conservatives, in the crippling grip of motivated social cognition, think they oppose the DH because it makes the game less interesting by reducing managers` strategic choices. But they really oppose that innovation because mental rigidity makes them phobic about change and intolerant of the ambiguous status of the DH. And because Mussolini would have opposed the DH.

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To Win Over Iraqis


By Thomas Melia and Brian Katulis

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page B07


L. Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy to Iraq, said last month`s controversial release of photographs of Saddam Hussein`s dead sons was intended to convince a skeptical Iraqi public that it no longer need fear the return of Uday and Qusay Hussein. Bremer outlined ways the coalition authorities are seeking to assure Iraqis that their country is on the mend: a television channel that reaches more than half the country, a 24-hour radio station, an Arabic newspaper published five times a week.

This information strategy represents an important start at getting the Iraqi public to join in the reconstruction. The bigger challenge will be to persuade Iraqis to believe the word of any authority figures -- whether American, British or those Iraqis in the new 25-member Governing Council. We recently conducted focus groups with a diverse, nationwide cross section of Iraqis -- men and women, young and old, Shiite, Sunni and Christian, in seven locations. Sponsored by the National Democratic Institute, this research sought to convey the hopes and aspirations of ordinary Iraqis to decision makers working on Iraq`s reconstruction.

One key finding is the deep skepticism Iraqis have regarding all sources of information. Though scores of publications and broadcasters are appearing, many Iraqis told us with pride that they rely on "friends and neighbors" for their news. The rumor mill is very powerful indeed.

Iraqis tend to be unenthusiastic about political leaders -- whether newly emerging insiders or those recently returned from exile. Cynicism is especially acute regarding those who were the objects of vilification campaigns by the previous regime.

Moreover, Iraqis` frame of reference for interpreting current events is grounded in a past where facts and critical analysis were seldom available through the media. Though we found nearly universal satisfaction that Saddam Hussein is gone, a quarter-century of his propaganda lives on in the minds of Iraqis.

Anti-American and anti-Jewish vitriol is thoroughly embedded, shaping the ways Iraqis interpret events. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are doing the bidding of "Zionist" interests, some believe, and Israelis are buying houses and land in Iraq. One woman in Najaf says that a majority of the foreign soldiers are Jewish -- further evidence of a plot to keep Iraq down while the coalition, in cahoots with Israel, steals Iraq`s natural resources.

Even more troubling is a broadly shared belief that the postwar chaos is actually part of the U.S. plan. What critics in the West see as poor planning for the postwar situation is interpreted by Iraqis as deliberate. They presume a country as obviously powerful as the United States does what it wants, in precisely the way it wants. A middle-aged Shiite woman in one focus group in Karbala said, "We think that they absolutely know and understand the total situation. They know about everything. They enjoy watching this. We don`t know why they do this."

Few participants in our groups believe the United States is motivated by a desire to do what is best for Iraq. Rather, they think the United States invaded "for its own interests." By this, they do not mean the United States acted for reasons of national security but to boost the American economy and steal Iraq`s oil. The United States has thus made a rapid transition from enemy in war to liberator to occupier, all in the span of five short months.

The new media outlets Bremer announced constitute a step toward overcoming deep skepticism. Based on our research, which involved weeks of travel in Iraq outside the security umbrella of the U.S.-led occupation forces, we recommend three more steps for coalition authorities and the new Iraqi Governing Council:

• Set up better feedback mechanisms so that average Iraqis can make their concerns and complaints known. Most coalition officials currently operate behind the high walls and barbed wire surrounding the palaces and offices they seized from Hussein`s regime, and they travel only in heavily armored convoys. Average Iraqis fervently want their voices to be heard, and they have no clear idea where to turn with their problems. To underscore the intention to be responsive to legitimate public concerns, the interim authorities need to organize forums with the Iraqi public and continuing mechanisms for receiving input. This will help build trust between the public and the interim governing authorities.

• Frame all initiatives as responses to Iraqi desires. This step is vital in overcoming the skepticism and conspiracy theories about the coalition`s objectives in Iraq, and it requires listening carefully to the complaints being raised. Not everyone critical of the American-led administration of Iraq is a Baath Party member, and few Iraqis long for the return of Hussein. They do want a government that responds to their concerns and works for their interests.

• Educate Iraqis about how to engage in democratic politics. Massive civic education campaigns could provide information about how Iraqis themselves can assume responsibility for participating in their own governance -- a new and necessary skill.

In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein, it will take some effort to clear away the fog of disinformation that obscures the way forward in liberated Iraq.

Thomas Melia is director of research at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Brian Katulis is a consultant for the National Democratic Institute. Their full report on Iraqi public opinion is available online at www.ndi.org.




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The Devil You Know


By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page B07


Dealing with the devil is an old and at times necessary diplomatic tactic. But dealing with the devil`s public relations advisers and international lawyers to help him protect his image? That has to go beyond the pale.

To get information and help against al Qaeda, the Bush administration may soon participate in the political rehabilitation of Libya`s Moammar Gaddafi, overseer of terror plots that killed hundreds of Americans and Europeans and butcher of political dissidents at home. Time and the escalation of Middle Eastern terror tactics have made Gaddafi yesterday`s devil.

Without knowing what Gaddafi claims he will provide against Osama bin Laden, it is difficult to judge the convoluted plea bargain that U.S. diplomats have helped broker to close the books on Libya`s now nearly acknowledged bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988.

But if Gaddafi`s regime does not accept in clear and binding terms its responsibility for the murder of 259 people over Lockerbie, Scotland -- and name the operatives who carried it out -- this will be a flawed deal that will not justify the lifting of U.S. and U.N. sanctions against Libya. Morally, that price is too high.

The normally reclusive Gaddafi has given recent interviews to print journalists and on American television that walked to the edge of acknowledging his crime, but then stopped short of that Perry Mason moment. His lawyers will no doubt want to sell Washington an evasively worded "confession" that will leave Gaddafi room to tell future interviewers that he confessed to nothing.

Unlike interviews I had with him in the years before Pan Am 103, in the recent sessions the Libyan leader appeared to have been coached to keep his on-screen answers short and noncommunicative. His ramblings and tirades about the evils of Ronald Reagan, alcohol and Egypt`s leaders were under control this time. Physically, he did not appear to be nearly as haggard and disjointed as he did in my last encounter with him, in 1987.

But coincidence can complicate the rollout of any PR offensive. As Gaddafi was trying to change his spots on camera, hundreds of pages of documents that give stomach-churning insight into his past terror operations were being filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. The American lawyers and diplomats who have been working with the Libyans on the Pan Am 103 deal should be required before they sign anything to read the entire file of this case, which will receive its first court hearing before U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Sept. 9.

The most important of these documents come from France`s top antiterror magistrate, the redoubtable Jean-Louis Bruguiere, whose investigation led to the conviction in absentia of six Libyan intelligence officials in 1999 for the Sept. 21, 1989, bombing of a French UTA airliner over Niger. All 170 persons aboard UTA flight 772, including seven Americans, were killed in circumstances that mirrored Pan Am 103.

These legal briefs, filed by attorney Stuart H. Newberger in a civil lawsuit against Libya on behalf of the families of the seven American UTA victims, read more like a novel than a pleading.

Shadowy Congolese agents trained in explosives by the Libyans, who seek vengeance for France`s role in Chad, move through these complaints and motions like characters out of John le Carre. More important, the ways in which the region`s different terror networks -- Libyan, Palestinian, Syrian, et al. -- cooperate to thwart investigations and retaliation come into sharp focus.

So do Libya`s clumsy efforts to lie to Bruguiere and cover up the UTA plot, which was directed by Gaddafi`s brother-in-law, Abdullah Senoussi. But Bruguiere`s tenacity finally produces the in-absentia convictions through a legal process that Gaddafi formally accepts in a letter to President Jacques Chirac reproduced in this file.

"We believe these documents help establish that there can be true accountability based on forensic proof and testimony in court about Libya`s legal responsibility for this act of murder," says Newberger.

That should be a minimal standard as well for the Pan Am 103 case, which Libya has always sought to handle as a public relations problem rather than the crime it is. Gaddafi hired American publicists and encouraged British businessmen to blame Pan Am 103 on Palestinians, Syrians, et al. -- to no avail.

Sanctions have worked, and are working, in this case. Gaddafi is jumping through hoops to get them lifted. President Bush should not bless any deal to end the sanctions that does not include a clear admission by this particular devil that a Libyan plot carried out by his agents destroyed Pan Am 103.

History and justice demand nothing less.

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The right wing of the Democratic Party is once again threatening to secede. Our fervent wish is that nobody tries to stop them.

Historically speaking, Charleston, South Carolina would have been a better locale for the Democratic Leadership Council’s secessionist-minded “National Conversation,” this week. Instead, the party’s corporate extortionists chose Philadelphia to make a stand for the American White Man, whose every idiocy must be accommodated lest the party fall into the hands of…you know who: them!

White men are terrified of them – which explains why the poor fellows get all confused and vote against their own interests every time it is imagined that they – “special interests,” Blacks, unions, and the dangerous people who call for health care, jobs, peace and justice – are about to intrude on the “national conversation.”

White men are insecure, especially the young ones. “"If Democrats can`t close the security gap, then they can`t be competitive in the next election," said Mark Penn, the snake oil pollster for the world’s most boringly repellant white man, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the DLC’s standard bearer in the Democratic primaries.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

According to Penn’s poll numbers, white men feel more secure with George Bush in charge. This is quite curious, since Penn also finds that, overall, “Fewer than half of those surveyed (48 percent) think [Bush] deserves to be reelected and 53 percent said the economy is heading in the wrong direction.” Nevertheless, white men are increasingly Republican, indicating that their fears and insecurities get the better of their brains, every time.

Fearful white men and confused white women, says the DLC, must be retained at all costs within the ranks of the Democratic Party. Just in case these “swing voters” are not fearful enough, DLC chairman Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) warned: “The Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over from the far left.`` Since this is clearly an outcome unacceptable to the DLC and its corporate funders, it must be assumed that the DLC is preparing to bolt from the Party if rich white men don’t get their way.

The rich rump of the Party

We have seen and heard it all before, starting with the slaveholder Democrats’ secession from the Union in Charleston, December 20, 1860; to Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat desertion from the national party in 1948; to the wholesale southern white defection to the GOP that began with the Goldwater campaign of 1964 and continues without letup to this day.

At each of these historical junctures, the “progressives” of the time were urged to appease the ranting, rich white men of the Party and the stupid, racist poor white men and women who follow them. Lincoln tried, but (fortunately) the slaveholders insisted on war. In the following century, national Democrats resisted a civil rights platform as long as they could, but it took one speech from Hubert Humphrey to cause the Dixiecrats to bolt in 1948, anyway. Substantive civil rights legislation drove southern whites decisively to the GOP after 1964, firmly establishing the Republicans as the White Man’s Party of the South.

As Associate Editor Bruce Dixon recounted in a June 12 commentary (“Muzzling The African American Agenda – with Black help”), a “rump faction” of white Democrats founded the DLC in the mid-Eighties as a reaction to “the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, in which the black candidate received a percentage of the vote considerably higher than the proportion of black votes in several states, and sparked a significant expansion of the party`s base constituencies among minorities, labor, and even some white rural voters. The Democratic Party was actually growing - but in the wrong direction to suit the ‘rump faction’ centered in the white South.” The corporate-bankrolled DLC gained national power with the election of Bill Clinton, and now threatens to desert the party if it cannot control the campaign of 2004.

That’s what the “national conversation” in Philadelphia was all about – what the despicable Evan Bayh (whose late Senator father, Birch Bayh, was a leading party liberal) means when he raises the specter of a takeover from the “far left.” The DLC is panicked over the candidacy of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, now the top fundraiser in the primary race. But the forces they fear in the party are minorities, organized labor, women’s organizations, environmentalists and the peace movement.

The white voters that the DLC invokes have already left the Party, especially in the South. Thus, even if Blacks and progressives were willing to once again sacrifice their own agendas to appease the insecure (actually, just plain racist) whites of both sexes, the electoral rewards would be minimal. The U.S. already has one White Man’s Party. The DLC cannot build another one with a white rump of “swing” voters – and this year, Blacks and progressives are determined to stop them in the attempt.

The DLC’s shrill rhetoric indicates that their defection from the Party has already begun. In this context, we ask readers to consider the following passages from Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr’s 2001 book, “A More Perfect Union,” an excellent examination of the DLC’s role in Democratic Party politics. Rep. Jackson (D-IL) begins with a critique of his father, the Rainbow/Push leader:

“The shortcoming of his two presidential campaigns was the failure to build a sustained grassroots political organization that specifically helped find, train, and elect genuinely progressive candidates; something highly politically organized within the Democratic Party just short of a third party. Had he created a lasting progressive wing of Democrats, conservative Democratic presidential candidates – and conservative Democrats generally – could not say to progressives that they need to get on board because `they have no place else to go.` Under such circumstances, progressives just might be able to go someplace else.

“Am I suggesting that that means progressives should, at some point, consider bolting the Democratic Party en masse for a third party? Not necessarily. Perhaps we should try something never tried before, seriously organizing political progressives within the party so we will be respected for what we bring to the table and treated as full participants in the existing Democratic Party. Conservative Democrats have much more of a destructive history of leaving the party (and the Union) than progressives. Ralph Nader is the rare modern-day exception.

“The independent Democratic experience in Chicago is that when progressive Democrats won fair and square, conservative Democrats abandoned the party. When Harold Washington won the primary for mayor of Chicago, the current Mayor Richard M. Daley and other Democratic conservatives organized a third and fourth party rather than support the Democratic nominee. And most of the Democratic leaders who came back did so only after a white regained the mayor’s office. Progressive Democrats, but especially the African American community, have invested much more in local Democratic parties, Congress, and the president than they have received from the current Democratic Party. Yet they have remained more loyal than the conservative, Blue Dog, and DLC-type New Democrats who have this inside track and have received the most lucrative terms on their investment.

Jackson points out that Bill Clinton’s “conservative and southern Democratic supporters” were “the first to dump the president and jump overboard” during the Monica Lewinsky-related impeachment attempt, while Blacks and progressives remained loyal. The right wing of the Party is the most unreliable faction, as well as the least effective among its claimed base: “Democrats haven’t won in the white South since the civil rights movement,” Rep. Jackson reminds us.

Let them go where they belong

The DLC makes even more of a public fetish of white males than do the Republicans, who have a secure lock on the core, racist vote. It is difficult to imagine where the DLC would harvest all of these white male voters, particularly in the South – or the political lengths it is prepared to go in appealing to them. As BC wrote in our December 26 commentary (“Lott, Thurmond and Duke: Three Kings Bearing Gifts”), in 1990 “David Duke…won 60% of the white vote in his race for U.S. Senator from Louisiana. Astoundingly, the youngish ex-Nazi and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan won seven out of every ten white male votes…. This is the base vote of the White Man`s Party. The relative liberalism of Dixie`s suburban "swing voters" is over-rated - Duke won his state legislature seat from a New Orleans suburb.”

The DLC’s appeal is empty, but its leadership’s threat to undermine or desert the Party is real. Blacks and progressives must seize the opportunity to politically isolate and marginalize the DLC, whose role as distributors of corporate contributions has enabled them to subvert and co-opt otherwise honest Democrats. Blacks and progressives need more than just, in Jackson’s words, “someplace else to go.” They need “something highly politically organized within the Democratic Party just short of a third party” – a place worth staying in.

African Americans, especially, have made an investment in Democratic structures at every level of organization. Let the Right retreat to where they belong: the Republican Party.

We have no idea where that will leave Blue Dog, DLC Black Democrats such as Rep. Harold Ford (see “Harold Ford: Mess of the Blue Dog,” October 17, and "The Harold Ford Show,” November 14, 2002.) Ford was the centerpiece African American at the Philadelphia “National Conversation,” making as much sense as one would expect from a man chosen by People Magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World." Ford’s standout strategy is simple: he hangs with a very ugly crowd.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_dlc.html

http://www.blackcommentator.com/index.html

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Posted on Tue, Aug. 05, 2003



Iraqis increasingly view U.S. troops as foreign occupiers

By DREW BROWN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly four months after the defeat of Saddam Hussein`s regime, the euphoria most Iraqis expressed over their leader`s ouster largely has evaporated, replaced by growing resentment of the American presence.

The discontent suggests that, even as U.S. officials claim they are closing in on the deposed dictator with a $25 million bounty on his head, capturing or killing Saddam won`t help restore order in the country the way some U.S. leaders have suggested.

Many Iraqis increasingly view American troops as foreign occupiers. And as attacks against U.S. troops continue, the low-level guerrilla war that American military officials say is being waged by former regime loyalists, foreign terrorists and criminals threatens to escalate into a wider nationalist struggle.

"The killing or capture of Saddam Hussein will do nothing," said Mungith M. Daghir, the vice president of the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, an analysis group that Baghdad University professors founded after Saddam was ousted from power.

Omar Abid al Mugeeth doesn`t care whether Saddam is still alive or gone for good. Since U.S. troops liberated the Iraqi capital in April and forced the former dictator into hiding, the 31-year-old moneychanger has been robbed at gunpoint twice, losing thousands of dollars on both occasions.

"When the Americans first came, trust in them was 100 percent," Mugeeth said as he sat with his friends in his cramped, sweltering shop in downtown Baghdad. "But now there is none. There is no security. There is no electricity. There is no water. At least we had these things under Saddam. Before, I hated Saddam. But right now, he is better than the Americans. I swear if I get hurt by the Americans again, I will take up a gun against them myself."

Daghir said a recent poll by his research center found that 32 percent of 1,000 Iraqis surveyed believe that former regime loyalists are behind the attacks, but a sizable 22 percent blame the attacks on American "provocations," including nighttime raids on people`s homes, U.S. soldiers searching women and violating other Muslim taboos and the killing of innocent civilians in the ongoing military operations. Nearly 25 percent think the struggle has become one of "national liberation."

Only 10 percent say foreign terrorists and other outsiders are responsible for the attacks. Another 10 percent say people who have "personal reasons" for fighting the Americans are waging the guerrilla war.

"We think the American forces . . . want to believe . . . that Saddam Hussein is responsible for everything," Daghir said. "But they don`t want to admit that they are responsible for some things because of their hasty decisions or the bad advice they`ve been given."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, estimated the strength of the guerrilla resistance at 5,000 fighters. "We`re fighting a low-intensity conflict that is multifaceted," he said, listing disparate groups including "criminals," Saddam loyalists and "radicals" who oppose the American presence.

Sanchez said the use of timed, rocket-propelled grenades, trip wires and packed explosives bore the marks of al Qaida. He added that Iraq is a magnet for foreign terrorists. U.S. intelligence officials say Syrians, Saudi Arabians, Algerians and even a few Albanians have turned up to battle American troops in Iraq.

"This is the place to come," Sanchez said.

A number of groups with no apparent links to Saddam have claimed responsibility for attacking American troops. One extremist Muslim group said on Arab satellite networks that it was planning attacks on U.S troops and American officials. Other anti-U.S. groups have sprung up, including the Return Party and the Iraqi Liberation Army, which claim to have no allegiance to the former regime.

Several radical Islamic groups, claiming ties to al Qaida, have taken responsibility for attacks in the restive towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

Extremist clerics of Saddam`s Sunni branch of Islam from those towns have visited Najaf, a center of the Shiite branch of Islam, attempting to enlist Shiite clerics in the fight against the Americans, said Lt. Col. Chris Conlin, the commander of a small contingent of Marines stationed in the city. Shiites are a majority of the Iraqi population.

"So far, the clerics have rejected them," said Zaid Mohammed, 34, an unemployed mechanical engineer. "They told them that we Shiites were suppressed for too long by Saddam, so we don`t want any trouble now. The clerics say they are willing to give the coalition forces one year to see if things improve, and after that they will issue a fatwa (religious declaration), but no one knows what it will be."

Even so, the U.S. honeymoon with the Shiites could be ending as radical clerics clamor for power. Moqtada al Sadr, a fiery young cleric and the son of a respected religious leader whom Saddam`s forces assassinated following the Shiite uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, has called for creating an Islamic army to oppose the American presence and the U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council.

"The people are just waiting for any word from the clerics to fight the Americans," said Amar Ali, 28, an unemployed former police officer.

The creation of Iraq`s Governing Council in July was an attempt by the U.S.-led interim authority to give Iraqis more ownership of their country`s future. The council is charged with writing a new constitution and holding free elections, something that L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator for Iraq, predicted could happen by mid-2004.

But the unelected council - whose members Bremer picked and who are subject to his veto - is widely distrusted.

"The people are watching and waiting now," said Sadiq al Monssawi, a political adviser to Sheik Sharif Ali Bin al Hussein, a 56-year-old cousin of King Faisal II, who was overthrown and murdered along with most of the royal family in 1958. "But if they don`t see improvements within the next couple of months, you will see opposition in the streets."

A team of outside experts that the Pentagon sent to Iraq in early July concluded that unless Iraqis see quick improvement in the next three months in security, delivery of basic services, new jobs and more Iraqi involvement in the political process, the situation probably will deteriorate. Its report recommended dramatically expanding Bremer`s Coalition Provisional Authority, including more international personnel, and a massive infusion of cash from Congress.

"We are sparing no effort to improve security in Iraq," coalition spokesman Charles Heatley said. "We understand it underlies everything else."

At least 32,000 new police officers have been hired and more joint patrols are taking place with U.S. troops. Officials plan to hire and train 60,000 to 70,000 more police officers over the next year and a half.

More than 5,000 applicants signed up the day after recruiting centers for the new Iraqi army opened July 19. Officials hope to train and field 12,000 Iraqi soldiers this year, with a target of 40,000 over the next two years, Heatley said. Officials expect to field the first battalion of about 450 men by the end of September.

With automatic-weapons fire ringing out every night in the capital and banditry widespread, many Iraqis say they`ve seen little improvement so far. Nearly four months after liberation, drivers spend hours waiting for gasoline in lines that can stretch up to a half-mile. Electric power runs for two hours at a time, then goes out for four hours of sweltering heat before returning. Water still hasn`t been restored in some areas. Unemployment is still soaring, with millions out of work.

There`s anger every time U.S. soldiers kick in a door in the middle of the night or search a woman. And outrage when innocent civilians die because an American soldier at a checkpoint gets jumpy and fires a volley from his automatic weapon.

On July 27, U.S. commandos stormed the wealthy al Mansour district home of Prince Rabia Mohammed al Habib, 72, the leader of 140 Iraqi tribes and chief of the Iraqi Social Party.

The troops acted on a false tip that Saddam was in the house. Eyewitnesses said seven people were shot and killed by American troops when they approached a nearby security checkpoint in their cars.

The U.S. military still hasn`t apologized for the incident or offered to pay for damages. Rabia has been forgiving about it and has urged restraint among his followers, but adds that what happened at his home illustrates how American troops risk losing Iraqi good will every time they raid the wrong home or arrest the wrong person. Later, a crowd of 1,500 to 2,000 demonstrators protested in front of his house, awaiting a call to action. Some were armed, Rabia said.

Qaism Hadi, an organizer with the Union of Unemployed in Iraq, estimated that 6 million to 8 million Iraqi adults are unemployed. Iraq`s total population is 24 million. The group wants the coalition to give each of those who are unemployed $100 a month until they can find jobs, and it wants something done to kick-start the economy.

"There are people here who are ready to kill themselves because they`ve had no job, no money, nothing for the last three months," Hadi said. "They`ve had to sell everything they own."

Underground militant organizations are willing to pay 75,000 Iraqi dinars a month ($50) for anyone who joins them and 1 million dinars ($670) for every attack in which they participate, Hadi said. "If the Americans can`t provide us with jobs or money, it is possible that many people will soon join these terrorist organizations," he said.

"If the situation is still like this in a few months, then the death or capture of Saddam will not affect the attacks on the Americans in any way," said Ali Rahia, 40, an unemployed laborer. "We will fight them forever because of what they have done to us."

(Hannah Allam of the St. Paul Pioneer Press contributed to this article from Baghdad.)



http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/6463815.htm


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© 2003 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.bayarea.com

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August 6, 2003



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Lieberman on the Loose


Joe Lieberman is getting desperate.


Trailing Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire, Lieberman let loose with both barrels. Speaking at the National Press Club, he said Dean`s opposition "to the war against Saddam" and Dean`s call "for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts" make him unfit to lead the nation.


As if that wasn`t harsh enough, Lieberman went on to excoriate Dean as someone who would be a "a ticket to nowhere," leading the Democrats "into the wilderness for a long time to come."


To top it off, Lieberman said the answer to Bush`s "outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in the outdated extremes of our own."


That noise you hear is Karl Rove laughing.


Imagine what he would do with Lieberman`s comments if Dean wins.


"Howard Dean: `Outdated, Extreme,` says leading Democrat."


Lieberman, who represents the most rightward spot on the Democratic spectrum (as evidenced again by his endorsement of school vouchers at the AFL-CIO meeting), is obviously angling for personal advantage.


That`s what politicians do.


But his views are reprehensible, and they badly misconstrue the chances of a Democrat running and winning from the liberal side.


Do Democrats really want to lie to the American people and break international law just like the Republicans did on Iraq?


Do Democrats really want to praise Bush`s tax cuts, which are giving the top1 percent of Americans $104,000 over the next four years but the bottom 20 percent all of $45?


Is Howard Dean really as extreme as George Bush is?


The conventional wisdom is that only a conservative Democrat can win the Presidency. But with the economy in the tank and Iraq an open sore for Bush, that theory is highly questionable.


The conventional wisdom also says that for Democrats to win, they have to appeal to independent, conservative white voters--either blue collar males or soccer moms. But that neglects the people in that 50 percent slice of the population--predominantly poor and minority--who have been so disenchanted that they haven`t even voted.


And finally, the conventional wisdom says that for Democrats to win, they have to attract those big $2,000 contributions from wealthy individuals. But Howard Dean is defying this. He has raised 46 percent of his funds from individuals who give less than $200 each, whereas Lieberman has raised 47 percent from individuals who give $2,000 each. (All the other candidates except Dennis Kucinich are also relying on $2,000 contributions. Kucinich gets 58 percent of his contributions in checks under $200 each.)


Dean is the first Democrat in almost three decades to ignite the grassroots. For any Democrat to win, they will need the kind of passion and commitment that the Dean supporters are exhibiting today.


Their excitement proves an important point: People want someone who will take Bush on, not roll over for him.

-- Matthew Rothschild

http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx080603.html

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August 6, 2003
Bush vs. Alien Torts

Unocal is trying its best to get Doe v. Unocal tossed out of California courts. Burmese villagers are suing two of the oil company`s subsidiaries, which are located in Bermuda. Unocal is accused of using the Burmese military as security guards for its operations, knowing full well that the Burmese soldiers were raping, pillaging, and enslaving local villagers during the construction of a $1.2 billion Unocal pipeline.

Unocal argues that California courts do not have the jurisdiction to hear the case, and that the laws of Burma (an oppressive dictatorship) or Bermuda (a lovely tax haven) law should apply to the case. Superior Court Judge Victoria Gerrard Chaney, however, rejected the idea of applying Myanmar`s law, pointing out that "there is no effective rule of law" under a military dictatorship. Chaney also ruled out Unocal`s idea of using Bermuda law:

"She ruled that California law should apply because the state would be harmed more than Bermuda if its laws were not applied."
The case was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which allows federal courts to hear "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations," -- which has been interpreted to mean that aliens can sue in US courts for gross abuses of human rights. The law is unsettling multinationals that do business with unscrupulous regimes around the world. Other companies such as Chevron, Shell, and Talisman Energy have cases pending against them for complicity with human rights abuses in developing countries.
The alarmed companies seek a reinterpretation of the law, even though to date not a single dollar has been awarded in any ATCA claim against a multinational. The corporations worry that scores of lawsuits will put a drain on profits. Katrin Dauenhauer of IPS News reports that the International Institute of Economics (IIE) is predicting that the sky will fall if the ATCA is not tamed. The IIE foresees :

"`...the disruption of over 300,000 jobs in the United States and two million jobs elsewhere, the loss of more than 300 billion dollars in global trade and investment, and a 70-billion-dollar drop in world economic output if Congress does not pass new legislation to clarify and limit the scope of the centuries-old law.`"
These numbers are based on a "nightmare scenario" that posits that almost every major company that has done business with China would be taken to court under ATCA for complicity in Beijing`s human rights abuses. The nightmare ignores the reality that most ATCA claims are dismissed.
Big business wants ATCA changed. Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale, says, "The corporate hysteria about the ATCA is really something to see. We`re talking about a litigation trend that has led to zero cents in damages, and based on this they want the statute repealed?" Human rights activists see the corporate angst as part and parcel of Bush`s attack on the ATCA, as Dauenhauer writes:

"The administration of President George W. Bush recently has come to the defense of some of the companies sued under the statute, arguing that the lawsuits interfere with foreign policy and that the law has been `commandeered` to allow cases being heard that had `no connection whatsoever with the United States.`
In what human rights groups see as a frontal assault on the law, the State Department wrote a submission on behalf of Unocal to dismiss a suit against the California-based oil giant, saying the action stretches the law beyond anything its authors would have recognized and undermines the `war on terrorism.`"

The logic gets convoluted: a California-based company shouldn`t address allegations that it knowingly aided and abetted a military junta`s brutality -- because it undermines the war on terror? (Is Burma an ally in the war on terror? Does terror exclude forced relocation, forced labor, rape, and torture?) But the primary problem, as Professor Koh explains in an essay, is that in the tricky arena of international human rights, the administration is going after an important legal tool and missing the bigger picture. Koh recommends an international treaty establishing what conduct constitutes "aiding and abetting" human rights violations. But in the Unocal case, the Bush administration hasn`t demonstrated that kind of commitment to the cause:
"Like the Clinton Administration, [the Bush administration] could have supported the plaintiffs; it could have supported the defendants on case-specific grounds; or it could have declared neutrality (as it did in the Supreme Court`s recent Texas sodomy case).
Instead the Administration chose a fourth, radical option, urging a position that would wipe out nearly twenty-five years of appellate precedent. The Department dramatically changed its interpretation of the two-hundred year-old statute, now insisting that victims of gross abuse cannot sue under the ATCA, even if they could prove that defendants shared responsibility for the abuses, because the claimed abuses occur outside of the United States and a ruling against the corporation would endanger American interests in the war on terror.

...

The United States and British Governments are already developing common standards to clarify when a corporation illegally aids and abets official human rights abuse and work is proceeding on an international convention under OECD auspices. [...] If this Administration cares as much about advancing human rights as it professes, it should put its efforts into developing such standards and encouraging responsible companies to meet them, not attacking a venerable law that has been used to call terrorists and genuine corporate abusers to account. "

Incidentally, Koh points out, the administration`s position would preclude suits against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Human rights advocates are hoping the ATCA survives the assault by corporations and the Bush administration. In the long run, the IIE laments that "the influx of lawsuits will ultimately affect the way corporations are doing business." For those in favor of human rights, in the long run, that could be a good thing.

© 2003 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/32/we_522_03a…

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-oppo…
THE WORLD


U.S. Shadow Haunts Arab Reformers
Democracy advocates get a boost from Hussein`s ouster, but they fear being lumped with a country that is widely mistrusted.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

August 10, 2003



DAMASCUS, Syria — Riad Turk knows something about freedom.

The grandfather of this country`s opposition, Turk spent more than two decades as a political prisoner, most of it in solitary confinement. He was tortured and beaten repeatedly, once slipping into a coma that lasted 25 days.

Released late last year, Turk, who is in his early 70s, immediately renewed his efforts to win more freedom from Syria`s repressive dictatorship. But now there is a new, if unwelcome, participant in his long struggle: the United States.

"The specter of the U.S. is now roaming the Arab region, and the Arab leaders are frightened of it," said Turk, who limps and needs a cane to navigate the broken sidewalks of this ancient capital. "Even foreigners now understand that they can`t continue to support these regimes."

In more than two dozen interviews in five Arab nations, leading dissidents, analysts and diplomats said opposition movements were taking advantage of the political uncertainty that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has caused to demand basic reforms from the autocratic regimes that dominate the region.

"Every dictator was watching [the fall of Saddam Hussein] carefully. It was a very important moment for all dictatorships," said Mohsen Awajy, a Saudi lawyer who was once jailed for his criticism of moral corruption among the Saudi princes. "The climate is now completely different."

At the same time, most opposition leaders said the push for democracy in Iraq had also complicated their efforts. In a region where the U.S. is deeply distrusted, dissidents must now struggle for democratic changes without appearing to be allies of an enemy.

They expressed strong doubts about U.S. motives in the region, noting that the U.S. has long backed repressive regimes in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even tacitly Syria, which the State Department designates a state sponsor of terrorism.

"We are going our own way. We are not against the American agenda, but nobody here trusts American policy," said Essam Erian, a member of Egypt`s Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamic fundamentalist movements. "We are struggling for our democracy, not American democracy."

Although some skeptics questioned the depth of the reform possible, there was general agreement that the invasion had created the biggest political opening in the Arab world in decades. Among the changes underway:

• Syrian opposition figures are publishing two newspapers that criticize the regime of President Bashar Assad. Similar attempts in the past have resulted in jail terms.

• Lebanese are forming a Christian-Muslim political alliance whose goal is to expel Syrian military and political influence. Syria controls political activity in Lebanon, thanks to the 15,000 troops that it maintains as part of a deal to ensure stability in its next-door neighbor. Past opposition efforts have been punished with mass arrests.

• Some Egyptian groups recently came together to protest the succession of President Hosni Mubarak`s son as the country`s next president — long a forbidden topic.

• Saudi Arabian reformers are criticizing the royal family in newspapers and on Arab-language television channels such as Al Jazeera. Past attempts have resulted in arrests, the suspension of travel privileges and jail sentences.

Despite the burst of activity, nobody is predicting any immediate political shift in the Arab world where opposition movements have flourished periodically, only to be crushed.

Rather, there is hope of small, gradual changes to allow such basic rights as freedom of speech or assembly.

"This is a historical moment. Nobody knows how it is going to go. You have to be prudent," said Mohammed Mattar, a lawyer in Lebanon who is part of the effort to form a Christian-Muslim political alliance.

Much depends on Iraq. Many opposition leaders predict that, if the U.S. becomes bogged down in prolonged occupation, the region`s authoritarian regimes will have a free hand to crack down again.

But if the U.S. manages to install a stable democracy, it may spark a series of democratic changes, the so-called domino effect that the Bush administration cited as one of the justifications for the war.

"We dream about the domino effect," said Fares Souhaid, a Christian legislator working on the Muslim-Christian alliance.

It is difficult to talk of opposition movements in the Arab world. Where organized political parties exist, as in Jordan and Lebanon, election laws, gerrymandering and outright repression make it difficult to win elections or advance a political agenda.

In other countries, like Syria, opposition movements are simply outlawed. Harsh repression — in the form of arrest, torture and expulsion — has ravaged the ranks of dissidents. The late Syrian President Hafez Assad ordered an attack against the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people.

Turk, for instance, is the head of the Communist Party Politburo in Syria — the branch of the party that does not back the government. But even he acknowledges that neither his party nor any other in Syria is strong enough to present a political threat.

"The opposition is not coherent," Turk said.

How exactly to benefit from the U.S. effort is one of the hardest questions facing opposition leaders, considering that anyone cooperating with the West has long been suspect in the Arab world.

"Nobody can be on America`s side. We will be accused of being traitors," said Mahmoud Abdul Karim, a Syrian filmmaker and journalist. "They are supporting the guys in Israel who are occupying our land. It`s not acceptable."

Still, there is an undeniable enthusiasm about the possibility of change.

Journalist Nabil Molhem sat in a lawyer`s office in Damascus one morning recently, poring over the final proofs of a weekly satirical newspaper called Al Domari — the Illuminator.

The paper had been shuttered by the Syrian government, but Molhem had in his hands the latest edition, which featured an open letter to Assad, calling on him to allow political reform to proceed.

Molhem, who proudly identifies himself as part of the "press militia" that is against Assad, said he was not sure whether the paper would actually be distributed on the streets.

He leafed through the pages slowly and with care, like a man examining his newborn child. The ceiling fan clattered overhead, and the sounds of cars honking on the street outside filled the room.

The risk of being shut down again — or even being arrested—was worth it, he said.

"We must say who we are. When we call for political freedom in this country, that has nothing to do with the U.S.," he said. "It`s impossible to be frightened."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-tige…


Afghan `Tiger Cat` Claws at U.S. Image
Villagers say GIs loosed the beast, which others call a hoax. But what of the children`s scars?
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer

August 10, 2003

QOOCHI, Afghanistan — To hunt the ferocious tiger cat on the Shomali plains north of Kabul, you must move through a maze of walled dirt alleys and dip into the icy fear that chills entire villages.

Along the way, you`ll have to interrogate bombastic heroes who claim to have wrestled and killed these beasts single-handedly, and sift conflicting descriptions of something like a big dog, or a fox, or a cat.

And just when you are convinced the story is a crazy legend, you will meet children scarred by cat attacks, and mourn with a man who lost his grown son to illness after a cat bite.

Whatever it is that is terrifying the villagers on this verdant plain studded with fruit trees and land mines, people here agree on who is responsible: the American military.

Until a few months ago, no one had heard the name pisho palang, or tiger cat, but since then, it has kept villagers indoors at night, terrified of attack.

A Kabul magazine conveyed the terror with its headline, "In Shomali, Dangerous Animals Are Eating People."

There are some theories that the cats might have crossed the mountains from China, or perhaps are domestic cats gone so feral in the country`s long wars that they acquired a taste for human flesh. But few people give those much credence.

These beasts, the popular view goes, did not just arrive; they were brought here. In the blinkered certainty of village logic, the arrival of two unwelcome groups of newcomers, American soldiers and pisho palang, can only be related.

"Before this new Army came here, we didn`t have these cats," said Mohammed Yakob, 45, from Saidkhail village, near Charikar, north of Kabul.

Even in anti-Taliban areas, the jubilation over America`s role in toppling the hard-core religious government has long faded and resentment against foreigners is growing. Many Afghans see the American forces as interlopers, even occupiers, and gossip about their bad deeds and ill intent is rife.

In some parts of the country, angry farmers blame Americans for their poor opium poppy crops this season, charging that U.S. planes sprayed them with herbicides — an assertion denied by U.S. officials. In Charikar, they accuse American servicemen of selling pornographic magazines in the market square.

Near the U.S. base at Bagram airport, just outside Charikar, rumors about the pisho palang convey the scale of the P.R. problem that the American military has in Afghanistan.

In an e-mail response to the questions about the rumors, Col. Roger Davis, of the base press office, rejected the villagers` assertions that American forces had released the tiger cats, but did not say whether the Americans thought it important to correct the misconceptions.

"No, we don`t use cats, killer cats, Al Qaeda cats, mountain cats, tiger cats, pussy cats or any other cats to execute combat operations," he wrote.

In the dusty main streets of the villages around here, there`s always a young, brash fellow on the edge of the crowd whose claim to familiarity with the pisho palang trumps everyone else`s. He saw one just last night. He killed one recently. Or he can sell you one.

"How much do you want for it?" asked Fazel, 25, in Saidkhail village, who goes by one name. Pursued, he retreats, then admits, giggling, "OK, I`m lying."

Another local named Faiz Agha says he killed one in mid-June: "It ran at us, and we killed it. It was like a puppy, the same color as a camel or dust. We threw it in the river, and it floated away."

But a scornful voice pipes up from the crowd in contradiction: "That wasn`t a pisho palang. It was a baby fox."

At times, the alleged American motives for releasing the pisho palang and supposed delivery methods strain common sense.

"We heard that foreigners are releasing them at night from planes to eat people. We heard that usually the tiger cats attack the throat and drink all the blood," said Mohammed Saber, also from Saidkhail.

Air delivery? But wouldn`t the fall kill the cats?

"They fly really low," said Koko Gul, 20, of nearby Monara village, holding his hands a foot from the ground, "and they just drop the cats onto the ground."

Fazul Rahim, 28, of Said- khail, said he knew a man who caught a pisho palang in a net. It had some kind of foreign stamp on its rump, he claimed.

"And some American came and he wanted to buy it for $5,000, but my friend wouldn`t sell it," Rahim said.

He refused $5,000 for a cat?

"Yes. He said, `Right now, they`re paying $5,000, but maybe later they`ll pay more,` " Rahim recounted.

Villagers say four or five people have been killed in cat attacks, cases that could not be traced. There are tales that dozens of people left villages in recent months to escape the creature.

In Qoochi village, Gul Afraz, 50, tells a rollicking tale, waving his arms, leaping up at times, to illustrate his heroism in bare-handedly wrestling and killing a pisho palang that had attacked a boy three or four months ago.

The tiger cat "attacked like an alcoholic man," he began. "He went for my throat. I grabbed his throat with my left hand and beat him to the ground and put my left knee on his belly.

"I had a pocketknife in my pocket; I opened it with my teeth and I stabbed him in the head again and again. And then he died." Gul Afraz says he buried the body.

He mentions an Afghan magazine with his name in it and a picture of the pisho palang. But it was a crudely drawn artist`s impression, a Dracula-feline cross with big fangs, terrifying expression and arched back.

In neighboring Dogh Abad village, the boy who was said to have been attacked, Rahim Dinn, 8, pulls back a ragged shirt to display scars on his chest and leg. He describes how the cat attacked before his sister, Mina, and Gul Afraz intervened.

In Qoochi village, Afsar Kahn, 11, has scars on his torso from an attack in February.

His cousin Abdul Hadi, 28, killed that cat but was bitten and died a month later, his body racked by trembling, said Hadi`s father, Mirza Mohammed, 58. He too blames the Americans at Bagram air base.

"Why did they bring these kind of animals?" he asked despairingly. "Some people think they brought them for security, the way other people have dogs. Or maybe they just like to keep them."

Others grumble darkly that the American military could have imposed a curfew in the area but found the pisho palang a much more effective tool.

In Charikar, the main town in the area, Police Maj. Turyalai, 34, said two dead specimens each had foreign-style white nylon collars around their necks, which proved that they had been kept by humans.

Fellow policeman Ghulam Sarwar said local people were angry and blamed Americans. But he chortled dismissively when asked if police had investigated the matter with American military authorities.

"If we went to the Americans, they`d say, `No, we didn`t release them.` And who can tell them, `Yes, you did do it`?"

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THE NATION


Idaho`s Grass-Roots Resist the Patriot Act
Diverse foes include gun collectors and gun- control advocates, liberals and conservatives, all vowing to protect civil liberties.
By Rebecca Boone
Associated Press Writer

August 10, 2003



BOISE, Idaho — Put pacifists, gun-rights advocates, abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion activists in a room and try to find a political viewpoint they all agree on.

It could take awhile.

But bring up the USA Patriot Act — a national law designed to fight terrorism that critics contend erodes basic civil liberties — and they may start nodding in agreement.

Such is the case with the Boise Patriots, a group whose diverse members hope to keep the Patriot Act from being implemented in Idaho.

"It may only be when our core civil liberties are under attack that we`ll see such a groundswell of activism come out of the woodwork," said Jack Van Valkenburgh, executive director of ACLU-Idaho. "I don`t think we`ve ever had an issue that`s brought such a broad cross-section of groups together."

The Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, greatly expanded the government`s surveillance and detention powers.

The founder of the Boise Patriots contends that the law also diminishes the protections Americans hold under the Bill of Rights, allowing the government to search homes without notifying those who live there, track reading selections people make at libraries or bookstores, and detain immigrants indefinitely for visa violations.

Gwen Sanchirico said she started the Boise Patriots in an effort to get the City Council to pass a resolution affirming the city`s dedication to civil liberties and prohibiting the Boise Police Department from using the expanded powers granted under the law. The effort has grown to include state government as well.

Sanchirico and Van Valkenburgh began contacting anyone they thought would be interested in the cause and asked friends to do the same.

Soon, pagans were mingling with Mormons, semiautomatic-weapons collectors with gun-control advocates, Green Party members and Libertarians with Republicans and Democrats.

"It`s a very grass-roots approach," Sanchirico said. "We`re collecting signatures for two petitions — one at the state and one at the local level — and we hear from one or two new people a day saying, `How can I help, what can I do?` "

One of them was Phyllis Schatz, a Boise Libertarian.

"I like the idea of cooperating with different types of people to achieve one goal," said Schatz, 74. She fears that her descendants could someday be targeted under the Patriot Act.

"Freedom is what I live for and if we can`t have freedom, nothing else matters. I`ve pretty well lived my life in some respects, but I don`t want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to grow in a world where the government is hanging over their heads," she said.

The threats that Americans face under the Patriot Act are bigger than any political ideology, said Elton Nesselrodt, a driver for Panhandle Animal Lab who`s worried that he could be persecuted under the law because he is a pagan.

"Just by my affiliation, that puts me at greater chance of having background checks because I`m not traditional. If I go to the library and read something about the occult or metaphysics, that could put up a red flag in a government record somewhere," he said.

Members of the Boise Patriots say they know of few civil rights violations in Idaho under the law, but they want to keep any from happening in the future.

Deanna Lokker, spokeswoman for the Boise Police Department, said that as far as she knows, the department has not used any of the investigative techniques allowed under the new law.

That`s true for the Ada County Sheriff`s office as well, Sheriff Vaughn Killeen said.

But Killeen, who is running for Boise mayor, does not think that the law should be rescinded.

"It gives law enforcement the ability to investigate terrorism more effectively," he said. "But it should be reviewed. When it comes to issues such as the police or the feds searching your library records without a warrant, I don`t agree with that. [But] I think we need to be careful we don`t throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Still, Killeen said, he welcomes the attention that groups like the Boise Patriots are bringing to the issue.

"We often pass laws in the wake of tragedies that we later amend when reasonable behavior prevails. A review of the Patriot Act right now is healthy," he said.

Even the legislation`s name offends Larry Eastland, a Republican Party activist and former staff assistant to President Ford.

"By implication, they`re saying that anyone who disagrees with it is not a patriot, and I strongly disagree with that," Eastland said.

Although he is a supporter of the Bush administration, Eastland said, the law is dangerous.

"If you don`t want this power to be put in the hands of scurrilous people, then you don`t have the right to ask for it yourself," he said.

"We cannot afford to put our liberty in the hands of the government — even in the hands of hard-working, right-thinking people — because once we give it away or allow it to be taken, it is never returned."

The Boise Patriots are optimistic that state and city leaders will be open to the resolutions.

Rep. C. L. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho) has been a staunch opponent of the Patriot Act, and two City Council members have agreed to meet with the Boise Patriots to review the proposed resolution.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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The Anti-Bush
Dean probably won`t win, but by hammering away he could damage the president
By Kevin Phillips
Kevin Phillips is the author, most recently, of "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich."

August 10, 2003

WASHINGTON — With 50 art galleries for each of its three electoral votes, Vermont is more a vacation destination than a presidential launching pad. So, Howard Dean, despite being the cover story on two weekly news magazines, is unlikely to be the first Vermont officeholder to ascend to the White House. Still, even failure could give him a major place in U.S. political history.

The gutsy Dean seems to be emerging as the "anti-Bush" of 2003-04 U.S. politics. He`s pumping candor into a presidential race otherwise mired in Washington establishment-speak. This could be the key litmus test — for George W. Bush as well as Dean — because failing presidencies frequently attract such a nemesis, and the wounded incumbent often fails to survive.

Three examples stand out. Independent Ross Perot became the "anti-Bush" who helped defeat the current president`s father in 1992. Newt Gingrich, who became House speaker in 1995, was the "anti-Clinton" who temporarily wounded the incumbent in 1994. The most relevant example may be Eugene McCarthy, the tweedy, intellectual U.S. senator from Minnesota who became the "anti-LBJ" of 1968, forcing an earlier deceitful, cowboy- hatted Texas war president, Lyndon B. Johnson, into retirement.

None of the three ever became president, but two of the three, Perot and McCarthy, raised issues and criticisms that helped defeat a president. Dean could follow suit.

To be sure, a case can be made for Dean getting the Democratic nomination and even winning. Four of the last five presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and the current President Bush — had been state governors or ex-governors. No sitting U.S. senator has won since John F. Kennedy in 1960 — hardly good news for presidential aspirants John F. Kerry, John Edwards, Bob Graham and Joe Lieberman — and you have to go back to 1880 to find a sitting member of the House who won the presidency, a discouraging indicator for 2004 hopefuls Richard A. Gephardt and Dennis J. Kucinich. Being able to kick Washington works better than being part of it.

As for his tactical shrewdness, Dean has only begun to prove himself. Logically enough, he has moved to the front of the Democratic pack by playing to the rising anti-Bush sentiment among party regulars. But both of his key themes — Bush`s Iraqi war policies and misstatements and his upper-bracket-tilted tax cuts — will have to be polished as cutting issues to gain centrist swing voters.

If the November 2004 election were speeded up and held in a couple of weeks, with Dean as the Democrats` nominee, my guess is that even though Bush has been sinking in the polls, he would still beat Dean by something like 57% to 43%. The former Vermont governor might only carry three or four states.

But courage and a willingness to buck conventional wisdom count for a lot, and if Dean can "centrify" his message while maintaining its bold, steel-toed emphasis on Bush`s war policy and rhetoric and the GOP`s fat-cat tax pandering, he can broaden his appeal. Moreover, he can reduce Bush`s attractiveness in the process.

At some point, Dean will have to consider slowly zeroing in on one issue he has so far left out. This is the extent to which Bush has reshaped the Republican Party from a party of mainstream churches into a 2000 electoral coalition unprecedentedly grouped around and influenced by Southern evangelical and fundamentalist voters and their wackier leaders.

Part of the Bush weakness is dynastic. The 43rd president is reenacting a lot of the biases, favoritisms and mismanagements displayed by his father, and they`re too innate to be easily shed. Here are the big three, if Democrats can figure out how to play them:

Dean is correct about the administration`s 9/11 and war-related vulnerabilities. After four decades of Bush ties to the Persian Gulf, the family is so interlocked with the local royal families, banks and big-money crowd that duplicity and conflicts of interest abound. The result is White House secrecy and deceit. Key Saudis seem to have had dealings with some of the 9/11 hijackers, but the White House, pulled both ways, can`t push. One reason for invading Iraq, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, was to be able to base U.S. forces there to get them out of a shaky Saudi Arabia. Obviously, that wouldn`t have flown with U.S. public opinion, so the weapons-of-mass-destruction line was emphasized instead.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that when Bush`s father was president, his policies in the Middle East were so two-faced that, by 1992, his military success in the 1991 Gulf War didn`t do him much good. It was no longer convincing. Evidence and discussion of three separate GOP Middle East scandals in which the elder Bush was believed involved — the "October [Iranian hostages] Surprise" that the Reagan campaign, including Bush, had made a deal with Iran not to return U.S. hostages until the 1980 election was over; the 1984-86 Iran-Contra scandal; and the 1984-90 "Iraqgate" scandal about how Bush had armed Saddam Hussein before he fought Iraq — converged in 1991-92. After the military success of 1991 was submerged, the elder Bush was defeated.

The younger Bush, in turn, may find that by 2004, the 2003 advance on Baghdad has been superseded by two emerging scandals — the cover-up of Saudi participation in 9/11 and the false representations made about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. Florida Sen. Graham, with experience chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee, will play at least as important a role as Dean (and if Dean catches hold, Graham would be a prime running mate).

The Bush tax cuts of 2001-03, flagrant in their tilt toward investors and the top 1% of income earners, echo, albeit far more dangerously and at far greater cost, the elder Bush`s insistence on cutting capital gains taxes for investors. Four generations of Bushes have been heavily in the securities, banking and investment business. They think that investment, however redundant or gimmicky, is the be-all and end-all of economics.

The result of this favoritism, in 1991-92 and again today, is a jobless recovery. Investors get some gains, but ordinary folk lose their jobs. Any member of the party of Andrew Jackson, FDR and Harry S. Truman who can`t explain that over the next 15 months has no business being in politics. And this isn`t lefty stuff; it`s capital-C "Centrism" that would cut like a scythe from Long Island to La Mirada.

The younger Bush`s vulnerability for pandering to the religious right is a lot different — bigger, but tougher to nail — than his father`s. In 1992, as the elder Bush`s job approval and election prospects plummeted, he had to openly flatter the party`s preachers, paying a price with suburban swing voters. President Bush hasn`t had to do that since early 2000, when he needed Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the Bob Jones University crowd to save his bacon against John McCain in the South Carolina GOP primary. What the younger Bush has done instead is to give the religious right so much patronage and critical policy influence — to say nothing of coded biblical references in key speeches — as to have built them into the system.

The degree is little less than stunning. In late 2001, religious right leaders sampled by the press said Bush had replaced Robertson as the leader of the religious right, becoming the first president to hold both positions simultaneously. Next year`s Democratic nominee could win if he or she is shrewd enough to force the president to spend the autumn of 2004 in the Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago suburbs defending his stance on creationism, his ties to flaky preachers and the faith healer he`s appointed to an advisory board for the Food and Drug Administration.

Will Dean or any other Democrat knock off Bush? It`s too early to say. A second-stage national economic decline and Al Qaeda attacks on two or three U.S. cities could make it happen. A Bush resurgence could make any Democratic challenge a joke.

But in the meantime, the chance for Dean to educate a lie-weary electorate and doctor its spirit with candor is clearly at hand. And he can do worse than heed the 1968 achievement of another man from a small Northern state who is still remembered for crystallizing national disenchantment with the first Texas president to fib America into a bungled war.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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REPUBLICANS


Stepping Off the Platform
By Clyde Prestowitz
Clyde Prestowitz is author of "Rogue Nation" and president of the Economic Strategy Institute. He was a trade negotiator in the Reagan administration.

August 10, 2003

President Reagan once explained his political switch during the 1950s from the Democrats to the Republicans by saying, "I didn`t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me." In these days of neoconservative ascendancy among Republicans, traditional conservative Republicans like me increasingly understand how Reagan felt. But this time it`s the Republicans who are leaving us.

We conservatives have historically been skeptical of ambitious campaigns abroad aimed at remaking the world. It was the great British conservative philosopher Edmund Burke who cautioned against imperialism by saying: "I dread our being too much dreaded." It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who argued that "we must not destroy what we are attempting to defend" and who further noted that "an empire on which the sun would never set is one in which the rulers never sleep." And it was John Quincy Adams who warned that if America became "dictatress of the world" then "she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."

Traditional conservatives were pleased during the election campaign of 2000 when candidate George W. Bush spoke of the need for a more humble approach to U.S. foreign policy and for reducing excessive U.S. deployments abroad. It therefore came as a shock when the Bush administration seemed to go out of its way to insult and irritate longtime friends and allies.

Take, for instance, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, a pact beloved by many of America`s allies, including Britain. Traditional conservatives generally opposed it because they thought it unfair to U.S. interests. But it had not been submitted for approval to the U.S. Senate in the summer of 2001 and was not going to be because there was no way the Senate would ratify it. Since it was effectively in limbo, many conservatives wondered why the new administration felt a need to take the treaty out of hibernation and loudly reject it, thereby needlessly alienating our allies.

More surprising and of greater concern was the reversal by a small group of self-styled neoconservatives, in the wake of Sept. 11, of Reagan`s winning Cold War strategy. The U.S. commitment to "no first strike" and deterrence that brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union was tossed over the side in favor of a doctrine of preventive and preemptive wars. Out, too, were long-term alliances like NATO, and in their place came temporary and shifting "coalitions of the willing."

We were told that Saddam Hussein with his weapons of mass destruction and close ties to Al Qaeda was an imminent threat to the United States in response to which we had to strike before being struck. Subsequently, in the absence of any trace of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, we have been told the real reason for the invasion was to change the whole nature of the Middle East by recasting it in an American democratic capitalist mold.

So now America has a "mission" that neoconservatives have openly called one of imperialism. This is not what conservatives voted for, nor is it consistent with America`s historical anti-imperialism.

Even more important than foreign policy is what`s happening on the home front. Traditional conservative Republicans have always been for small government and fiscal responsibility with budgets balanced over time. They have also always emphasized protection of individual rights and supported strong state and local governments. These core conservative values have now been all but rejected.

Take the issue of big government. Although it is often associated with social programs, big government is more often the result of expansion of military programs than of anything else. The Pentagon is by far the biggest part of the U.S. government, and it is growing so fast that its spending will soon top that of all the world`s other military establishments combined. Conservatives have always been opposed to rampant bureaucracy, but the new Department of Homeland Security represents a huge bureaucratic conglomerate only slightly behind the Pentagon.

As for balanced budgets, even the Congressional Budget Office`s projections show that the surpluses of the 1990s have turned into endless oceans of red ink. The Patriot Act along with new visa regulations and guidelines for investigative agencies has imposed the greatest constraints on individual American freedoms since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Then there is the plight of the states and local governments, of which California is only the most dramatic example. After the federal interventionism of the Clinton administration, traditional conservatives expected a Republican administration to reemphasize, at least to some extent, the rightful powers and authority of state and local governments. Instead, there has been a plethora of federal mandates to the already cash-strapped states, all without any federal funding. Moreover, in areas like educational testing and drug policy, the overriding of state and local government policies through the imposition of federal standards and rules has continued and even accelerated.

The irony here is that it is the supposedly liberal Democrats who are talking about fiscal responsibility, limited government, individual rights and caution on grand missions abroad. So more and more traditional conservatives have been asking the question: Who are really the liberals, and who are the conservatives? Indeed, it was Maine Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a Republican and member of the traditionally conservative Main Street Coalition, who played a key role in capping Bush`s tax cuts at $350 billion; and a large number of Republicans revolted against the neoconservative leadership to vote down new Federal Communications Commission rules allowing further mergers of large media companies. Perhaps this indicates that traditional Republicans are making an important discovery about who they are and where they belong.

There is nothing neo about imperialism. It is just as un-American today as it was in 1776. And there is nothing conservative about the giant military-industrial establishment, budget deficits or failing local and state governments. Far from conservatism, this is radicalism of the right, and it is unsustainable because it is at odds with fundamental — and truly conservative — American values.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Es ist möglich in Kalifornien die meisten Ziele mit Zug und Bus zu erreichen. Jedenfalls im centralen und südlichen Kalifornien. Es ist zwar langsam, aber man kommt an. Besonders wenn man San Francisco ist und dort keinen Wagen hat, weil SF
sehr gut mit öffentlichem Nahverkehr versorgt ist.(Seit 22.Juni gibt es auch eine S-Bahn (BART) Verbindung vom Flughafen ins Centrum nach San Jose und nach Oakland) kann man gut das eine oder andere Ziel mit dem Zug erreichen z.B. Sacramento.

Amtrak finds California golden
Passenger line may be ailing elsewhere, but it`s on track here
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 10, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/10/…


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Carrie Garcia and Keri Wells from Tulare wanted to leave the kids behind and spend the weekend in the Bay Area -- clubbing in San Francisco, visiting friends in Santa Rosa, wine-tasting in Sonoma -- but they didn`t want to drive.

So the two friends decided to take the train. They hopped on the northbound San Joaquin in Hanford and left the driving to Amtrak. "I`ll take it again and again and again," Garcia said.

Thanks to weekend warriors like Garcia and Wells, briefcase-toting executives, commuters and tourists, the three Amtrak California trains -- a cooperative effort between Caltrans and Amtrak -- are enjoying a surge in ridership this year.

Even as Congress debates the future of Amtrak, and California ponders whether it should pour tens of billions into high-speed rail, the Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin and Pacific Surfliner have become among the national passenger railroad`s best-ridden trains.

And they`ve become models for the future of financially and politically struggling Amtrak, which is eyeing shorter-distance corridor routes and state cost-sharing as keys to preserving and expanding passenger rail service.

"It`s one of the best-kept secrets in the country, how California has supported passenger rail," Amtrak President David Gunn said in a visit to Oakland last fall. "You`re doing it right. It`s an example that should be followed by the rest of the country."

And it may be, if President Bush has his way. He recently proposed sweeping changes to the national passenger rail system that would take California`s model of subsidizing in-state Amtrak service to other states and eventually withdraw federal funding.

Rail still plays a relatively minor role in California; it hasn`t noticeably reduced the number of cars on Interstates 5 or 80 or cut into Southwest Airlines` business. But growth in Amtrak California`s ridership has made the trains among the nation`s most popular outside the Northeast corridor.


MOST POPULAR LINE
The Pacific Surfliner, which runs between San Luis Obispo and San Diego, was the most-ridden train in the nation outside the Northeast in the 2002 budget year, with the San Jose-to-Auburn Capitol Corridor second. In fourth were the San Joaquin trains that run from Bakersfield to Sacramento and Bakersfield to Oakland.

And each of the three trains keeps setting ridership records.

"California is rockin`," said Gene Skoropowski, managing director of the Capitol Corridor trains. "Record after record is being achieved."
++++++++++++++++
In June, 188,120 passengers rode the Surfliner, an increase of 30 percent over the same month last year. On the Capitol Corridor, 94,702 passengers -- a 6.1 percent increase -- climbed aboard. And the San Joaquin carried 71,210 riders -- 2.3 percent more than a year earlier.

Transportation officials and rail advocates credit a variety of factors with driving more Californians to ride the rails -- fear of flying, worsening traffic congestion, more frequent trains, improved marketing and word-of-mouth.

"Each train has its own reasons (for rising ridership), and then there are common reasons," said Richard Silver, executive director of the Rail Passenger Association of California. "Gas prices have had an effect; so has the decline in air travel."

Jeff Morales, head of the state Department of Transportation, credits the success to additional trips on the routes, coupled with capital improvements. Since 1998, the state has spent $600 million on everything from railcars to additional tracks and sidings.

Under California`s deal with Amtrak, the state covers the full cost of operating the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin service, and two-thirds of the Pacific Surfliner`s cost. Last year, the state spent $73 million to support the three Amtrak lines, the same amount budgeted for this year.

"There`s a very strong relationship between investment and ridership increases," Morales said. "When the governor chose to put a large amount of money into rail, it was a good investment. It`s working."


DISTINCT ROUTES
While the Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin and Pacific Surfliner trains are all state-subsidized, they traverse distinctly different terrain and have their own character.

The Capitol Corridor trains have more of an urban feel, with much of their journey passing through industrial tracts and the edges of subdivisions of the East Bay. Most of the trains end in Sacramento within walking distance of Old Town, downtown and the Capitol.

With 12 round-trip trains each weekday and the relatively short run, Amtrak engineers refer to the Capitol Corridor as "the commuter." But it`s also popular with families on day trips and travelers to the Sierra, a destination that can be reached by connecting buses.

"I took it just for the experience of it," said first-time rider Michael Plimmer, an executive assistant from Los Angeles, who was in Sacramento visiting a friend and took the train to see another buddy in San Francisco. "I`ve been all over Europe on trains, and this ranks right up there."

Would he take the train again?

"Absolutely."

The San Joaquin, as the name implies, spends most of its run speeding along through the fields and farm towns of the San Joaquin Valley, with stops in towns whose names appear on produce labels: Turlock, Madera, Hanford, Wasco.

Many passengers are residents of valley towns, where catching an airplane means a long drive or a steep price and a bumpy connecting flight on a puddle- jumper. For them, the train is an affordable alternative.

"It`s a good way to travel," said Jarone Torrence, a computer technician who rides the San Joaquin often from his Bakersfield home to visit family in Antioch. "It`s pretty reliable, and you don`t have to worry about it falling out of the sky."

California`s biggest success on the rails is, surprisingly, in Southern California, where the car is still king but traffic congestion is driving more people to try the train. Each weekday, the Surfliner makes 10 round-trips between Los Angeles and San Diego with three extending north to Santa Barbara and one to San Luis Obispo. The train`s riders are a mix of commuters, business travelers, sightseers and tourists.

Robert Flores, a philosophy professor at Santa Monica College, commutes twice a week on the train from his home in San Luis Obispo -- a long ride but one he enjoys.

"For me, it`s a five-hour block to read and relax," he said. "I don`t have any problem with driving or with cars. I like to drive. But the train is really a better way to go. It`s just more healthy all the way around."


SLOW GOING
But riding the state-supported trains is not without its problems. For many travelers, the trains are simply too slow, especially compared with driving.

The biggest problem is delays. Like other Amtrak lines, the state trains are often late. For the third quarter of the last fiscal year -- the most recent quarterly report available -- the Pacific Surfliner was on time 85 percent of the time, the Capitol Corridor 83 percent and the San Joaquin 76 percent.

The delays are such a persistent problem that even fans of the train caution the impatient.

"It`s an adventure," said San Joaquin passenger Lorine Snively, "and if you`re not willing to go with the flow, you probably shouldn`t take the train."

Critics, including many Amtrak employees, blame the chronic delays on the private railroads that own and control almost all of the tracks. Too often, they say, the railroads give preference to their freight trains, though federal law and deals with the state say passenger trains should get priority.

"Amtrak is seen as something that gets in the way," said Mark Jones, an Amtrak locomotive engineer, on a day when a dispute with Burlington-Santa Fe Railroad delayed one San Joaquin train more than two hours. "We`re moving the most precious cargo there is -- people -- and we`re treated like a second- class railroad."

Officials with Amtrak, the state and the railroads say they`re working together to reduce delays and improve on-time performance. The state is also helping pay for improvements -- such as an extra track across the Yolo Causeway between Davis and Sacramento -- that will increase capacity and speed trains.

They`re hopeful the work will keep the state-supported trains on a growth track.

"Public support for rail is very good, as the ridership numbers show," Skoropowski said. "If on-time performance can be improved, we can knock the socks off of it."
+++++++++++++++++++++
E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.amtrak.com/destinations/california.html

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Sunday, August 10, 2003

Sex, drugs and rock `n` roll? Blame Canada

By LES LEYNE
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

In the 20th century, good old boring, gray Canada was ... well, who knows what it was? Not many Americans ever noticed or cared.

But the 21st century Canada is a fast-breaking new story, going recently in a direction that has startled Canadians as much as it has everyone else.

In May, Canadians still shaking off the effects of winter awoke one day to find the federal government had introduced a bill that will decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana, making it a trivial violation on par with getting a $150 traffic ticket.

Then in June, an Ontario court ruling that will go unchallenged across most of Canada declared that same-sex marriages are legal. Gay couples started flocking into Toronto City Hall and other municipal offices to get marriage licenses. More than 300 of them have obtained legal licenses at Toronto City Hall alone at last count, including 49 from the United States, even though their ceremonies are not recognized back home.

Running concurrently was the news that the government retained the services of the Rolling Stones for a massive outdoor concert late last month to banish the lingering economic effect of SARS in Toronto. That`s another first; who would have thought a government would ever enlist Keith Richards in a public health campaign?

In short order, Canada touched all three bases on the fabled road to ruin: sex, drugs and rock `n` roll.

The gay marriage and marijuana stories continue to develop. The British Columbia court recently reversed itself and followed Ontario`s lead. Within an hour, a gay couple on the courthouse steps got legally married for the first time in British Columbia (after changing bride and groom on the bureaucratic form to spouse). They sealed it with a passionate kiss carried on provincewide television.

Then the federal government announced the marijuana it has been growing in a remote northern mine shaft for a pilot medical-use project will be couriered to doctors and made available to people with medical certificates for $5 (Canadian) a gram.

Gays getting legally married, pot decriminalized, Ottawa dealing dope -- what`s the deal?

If you compare catchphrases -- the United States` "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" from the Declaration of Independence versus Canada`s "peace, order and good government" from the Constitution Act of 1867 -- you wouldn`t think Canada would be breaking new ground on social-policy fronts. This is the country that brought the world televised curling.

But it is now looking positively European in some aspects. The old, faintly perceived image of being cold, cordial and cloistered is fading. Canada has gone from cold to cool. From cordial to beyond friendly (look for magazine cover teasers such as "When Mounties Marry -- Each Other"). And from cloistered to wide, wide open.

Mild-mannered Canadians, innately polite and orderly, seem to be taking it in stride so far. Religious leaders from various denominations have expressed serious reservations about legalized same-sex marriages. National organizations representing Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox Jews want the historic Biblical definition of a union of a man and a woman retained. More liberal faiths are going along, and some denominations are split right down the middle.

But religion holds far less sway in Canada than in the United States. A recent (Toronto) Globe and Mail headline about Canada`s churchgoing rate (a laggard 20 percent, half the U.S. rate) read: "God is Dead: Whatever."

It`s ironic, says the minister who performed British Columbia`s first legal same-sex marriage. Tim Stevenson is the first openly gay ordained Canadian minister, the first openly gay Cabinet minister in Canada (in a previous government) and is now a Vancouver city councilman. Partnered for 21 years and co-father of three children, he laughs at the new image Americans may have of Canada: "The pot-smoking queers have taken power!"

Oddly enough, for an ordained minister, Stevenson said the lessened religious influence is a positive in Canada. Despite the U.S. history of welcoming people fleeing oppression, some of it religion-based, he says the irony is the United States now sometimes resembles a theocratic, religious republic.

But Canada is prepared to ignore its religious leaders, put aside Biblical injunctions and redefine marriage for the 21st century. The federal government will soon rewrite the law to recognize the court decision, and Canada will be only the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages, after Belgium and the Netherlands.

"There are very significant U.S.-Canadian differences, and these moves will accentuate those," Stevenson said. "I don`t think it`s any accident that the liberal European countries are much more aligned with us than the United States."

Some Canadians are worried about the clout the United States can bring to bear if it is moved to make its views about Canada felt. U.S. drug policy director John Walters already has warned Canada against the new pot laws, which could make for delays at already clogged border crossings.

And in the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning sodomy laws, Justice Antonin Scalia issued a dark, dissenting warning that the country is "heading down the road for judicially imposed homosexual marriages, as has recently occurred in Canada."

But not everyone is making much of this recent liberal lurch, or any emerging U.S.-Canada social gulf.

Keith Martin, an Opposition Member of Parliament from Vancouver Island, said: "There`s a huge mythology that Canada is a more liberal, socialistic place. There is an erroneous perception that the U.S. is a monolithic, hard-right, intolerant Republican place.

"But large parts of the United States would fit comfortably into the Canadian approach. The picture is a lot more nuanced than that."

A dozen U.S. states have relaxed pot-possession laws, and large segments of the population don`t support the administration`s continued "war" on drugs, he said. By one estimate, 30 percent of the U.S. population lives under pot laws as or more lenient than the one introduced in Canada.

Marijuana activist Philippe Lucas, who openly sells marijuana to people in Victoria with doctor`s certificates saying they need it, agrees.

"The U.S. is actually far ahead of Canada in allowing the medical use of marijuana at the state level," he said. Eight states, including Washington, already recognize that special use.

Lucas dismisses the new pot law as not going nearly far enough. "The original intent of the law was probably good, but it`s a step backward. We had a chance to do something progressive, and we took a step backward."

The decriminalization of small amounts (under a half-ounce) simply reflects the reality; street cops using discretion opted out of arresting people for that offense years ago. There are two cafes in Vancouver where people smoke it openly -- no sales are allowed -- with minimal police interest. Ticketing is actually being touted as a way to increase enforcement; cops will issue fines, rather than lay charges.

"No one has `gone Dutch` yet,` " said Lucas, meaning buying and selling openly, as well. "It`s not something we`ll see on the West Coast for a while yet.

"Even if the bill passes, which is very questionable, it still puts us far behind Europe in terms of progressive reform. They are miles ahead of us."

The Liberal government`s pot law could die in Parliament. Its passage depends on whether outgoing Prime Minister Jean Chretien is serious about establishing that as a legacy, or just introduced it to make mischief for his likely successor, former Finance Minister Paul Martin, with whom he had a bitter falling-out last year.

It`s widely presumed that Martin will win the current leadership race and be prime minister by early next year, when Chretien retires. In a recent interview in Victoria, Martin said even if the pot law doesn`t make it through Parliament, he would continue with decriminalization, coupled with a crackdown on the biker gangs who deal in it.

"Society evolves," he said. "It`s the responsibility of government to reflect that evolution. There`s a book ("Fire and Ice: The U.S., Canada and the Myth of Converging Values" by Michael Adams) talking about the different perspectives that occur between Canadians and Americans over the past decade.

"The argument was, contrary to what people might normally think, the greater integration of the two economies has not led to an integration of perspectives or insights. In fact, Canadians are clearly going the other way. I think that`s right.

"Whether this is because there`s always been a greater collective sense of responsibility in Canada than in the U.S. -- there`s a different history in the two countries -- I don`t really know. But there`s no doubt that that is a fact."

One theme common to the decriminalization and the same-sex marriage issues is that both were spurred by court rulings over the years flowing from the 21-year-old Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The country relied for its charter on British law up until 1982, so the constitution is still in its infancy. And gays and marijuana activists made determined and ingenious use of it and other legal arguments over the years in pushing their respective causes.

Americans looking northward will notice other recent developments. Canada opted to sit out the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and the government enjoyed considerable support in making that decision. The government is also pursuing a stringent national gun-control regime, even though it has been established to be scandalously inefficient and monstrously over budget.

Inside Canada, it`s startling to note both the recent swerves originated in Ontario, although the flaky Left Coast (the California of Canada) is supposed to be in the vanguard of social change. Wherever it`s coming from, central Canada, the charter of rights or newly discovered fundamental social differences with the United States, it`s been a remarkable few months on the social-policy front.

If some of these attitudes start creeping over the 49th parallel, Americans are advised to start singing the Oscar-nominated song from the "South Park" movie of a few years ago: "Blame Canada."

Les Leyne is a writer for the Victoria Times Colonist`s Legislature Bureau.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/133765_focus10.html

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THE INTELLIGENCE
CIA warned administration of postwar guerrilla peril
Officials defend rebuilding plan

By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/10/2003

WASHINGTON - In February, the CIA gave a formal briefing to the National Security Council, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President Bush himself: ``A quick military victory in Iraq will likely be followed by armed resistance from remnants of the Ba`ath Party and Fedayeen Saddam irregulars.``

The administration seemed unmoved. In the weeks leading up to the Iraq war, top Bush administration officials made glowing predictions that Iraqis would welcome US troops with open arms, while behind the scenes they did little to prepare for a guerrilla war.

``My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,`` Cheney said on NBC`s ``Meet the Press`` on March 16. ``I`ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House.``

``I imagine they will be welcomed,`` Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the White House`s Iraq strategy, said in an interview April 3, two weeks into the war, with CBS`s ``60 Minutes II.``

``I think there`s every reason to think that huge numbers of the Iraqi population are going to welcome these people ... provided we don`t overstay our welcome, provided we mean what we say about handing things back over to the Iraqis,`` Wolfowitz said.

The February report was not the only warning Bush received that a guerrilla war was in the offing. According to US intelligence officials who compiled or contributed to the reports, and provided excerpts to the Globe, on multiple occasions in the months before the war the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that fighting would probably continue after the formal war. The assessments went so far as to suggest that guerrilla tactics could frustrate reconstruction efforts.

But intelligence officials, former military officers, and national security specialists say the administration instead clung to the optimistic predictions of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1958. Chalabi, who is now a member of Iraq`s US-backed Governing Council, is a close Rumsfeld and Cheney ally who had the ears of top administration officials in the months before the war.

``I think there was a general sense of how the postconflict phase would go, and it didn`t work out that way,`` said a former deputy defense secretary, John J. Hamre, who recently returned from a Pentagon fact-finding mission to Iraq. ``That general sense probably caused them to pass over intelligence assessments that differed from expectations.``

``The obvious critique is that they ignored this beforehand because it didn`t fit their expectations,`` Hamre said. But he cautioned against definitive conclusions about the warnings. ``The great problem I see these days is a tendency to take a single report or document and use it as proof to make a point,`` he said. ``When it comes to the world of intelligence, you have to take a much wider sampling of many inputs and make a reasoned judgment.``

The National Security Council did not respond to a request for a comment.

Last month, Wolfowitz defended the administration`s planning for the aftermath of the war. ``There`s been a lot of talk that there was no plan,`` he said. ``There was a plan, but as any military officer can tell you, no plan survives first contact with reality. Inevitably, some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong.``

Wolfowitz acknowledged that the administration had expected Iraqi military units to defect. ``No army units, at least none of any significant size, came over to our side so that we could use them as Iraqi forces with us today,`` he said. ``Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul. Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting.``

Yet the CIA in particular forewarned policymakers of some of the problems likely to arise, according to one intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The reports, for example, predicted that armed insurgents would attack coalition forces. One prewar report, he said, forecast that after the war ``things would get worse before they get better`` and that there would be a high likelihood of ``backsliding`` - progress followed by setbacks.

In the early days of the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon`s internal spy agency, warned that Ba`ath Party loyalists - many of whom escaped the major invasion - were showing signs of regrouping, said an intelligence official who asked not to be identified. ``We wrote in early April that we were picking up hints of guerrilla forces gearing up,`` the official said.

Since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1, at least 118 US soldiers have been killed, nearly half of them in ambushes, sniper and rocket attacks, and by improvised explosives. Nearly half of the 256 US soldiers who have died since the war began on March 20 have been killed since major hostilities ended.

Still, many Iraqis have expressed relief to see the brutal dictatorship of Hussein recede into history. News dispatches from Iraq focus on US troop casualties, and therefore do not always reflect the progress and milestones reached, according to a government consultant who returned recently from Iraq. The consultant pointed to the local city councils that are up and running in many parts of the country and the relative stability in the Shi`ite Muslim regions of southern Iraq.

But the precarious security situation in the so-called Sunni Triangle - which has been a drag on efforts to restore water, electricity, and other basic services - raises questions about whether the Bush administration could have been better prepared to address what its own spies said American forces might have to contend with, according to specialists.

``I think that what you might have done differently would have been to put more civil affairs units, more military police, and the training of the Iraqi police forces in place much faster,`` said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank based in Alexandria, Va. He said US officials had a model: the NATO war against Serbia in 1999, which placed early emphasis on deploying civil affairs and police units into the province of Kosovo to fill the void.

``I would have thought that they would have had every military police unit in the Guard and Reserve just sitting and waiting to go in`` to Iraq, Pike said.

Hamre, who as president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies last month completed a report for the Pentagon on postwar challenges, said that his assessment was that the troops in Iraq feel they were not sufficiently prepared to tackle the postwar problems. ``The reaction over there from folks closer to the ground was that they were not given very good preparation for what they encountered,`` he said.

A senior Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified, bristled at the suggestion that Bush administration leaders had ignored the intelligence about postwar challenges, noting that they had bigger things on their minds. ``We worried about the catastrophic stuff,`` he said, including the fear of massive oil fires, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraqi forces, and a widespread humanitarian disaster. ``None of those things happened.``

Four months after the US invaded Iraq, the guerrilla attacks, amid growing concerns that terrorists are going on the offensive, have tempered the views of administration officials, who are now describing the US commitment to Iraq as requiring many years of work.

The national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, on Thursday likened the rebuilding of Iraq and the Middle East region to the postwar efforts in Europe after World War II.

``The historical analogy is important,`` she said in a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas. ``We must have the patience and perseverance to see it through.``


This story ran on page A25 of the Boston Globe on 8/10/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Oil, the Dollar, and US Prosperity

Richard Benson, SFGroup

August 8, 2003

Like many Americans, I greatly enjoy air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter, and gas for my sport utility vehicle. I also happen to enjoy traveling to those civilized lands that take modern conveniences for granted - such prosperity takes a lot of energy.

In the United States, we stopped being energy independent many years ago. The rest of the world, including Europe and Asia, also come up empty in the energy department. Russia has enough oil to export for a few years until their economy develops; Japan has zilch, and China and India can never, on their own, meet the need for oil to accommodate over 2 billion drivers.

If you take the time to examine a simple map of where the Oil Reserves are in the world, you`ll notice that two-thirds of the reserves sit in the Middle East, with a massive concentration in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

The Dollar has grown to be the world currency for settling debts, and, with around 75% of foreign central banks holding their currency in reserves, the Dollar is still the World Reserve Currency. Only recently has the Euro come into existence as a possible viable alternative as a financial asset, that can be used to settle accounts, and store value.

The level of prosperity in the United States has, in no small measure, been helped by the fact that we have run massive deficits with the rest of the world. The US has been able to run up over $3 Trillion in debts to purchase goods and services from abroad that have yet to be paid for really. The world has been willing to accept dollar assets as investments and Asia remains delighted to have their Central banks buy Treasury and Agency securities because the United States is sending Asia our manufacturing jobs. However, at some point, the day will come when foreign dollar asset holders will want to spend their dollar reserves on something of value. There is only one thing that has universal value to all modern economies - OIL!

In the real world (which is a long way from Hollywood and the Liberal Media), the one factor underpinning American prosperity is keeping the dollar the World Reserve Currency. This can only be done if the oil producing states keep oil priced in dollars, and all their currency reserves in dollar assets. If anything put the final nail in Saddam Hussein`s coffin, it was his move to start selling oil for Euros.

The US is the sole super power and we control and dictate to the Middle East oil producers. America has the power to change rulers if they can`t follow the "straight line" the US dictates. America`s prosperity depends on this. Moreover, Europe wants to be warm in the winter and we don`t want to go down a road that leads to conflict with Asia over oil. It remains in our interest, as well as the rest of the world`s, that the US insures that oil is available to all, at a reasonable price.

Removing a bloody tyrant in Iraq is certainly better for the world than seeing what might happen in Japan and China if they started freezing in the winter. Real wars are fought over oil. Germany invaded Russia for the oil in the Caucasus.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because the US cut off their oil. Those were real wars because the national interest, and the right to survive, were at stake (the Vietnam War was a disaster because there was no real national interest served by slaughtering peasants and American troops). The war in Iraq is a sideshow by comparison but it offers huge national interest.

At present, we notice that many US citizens are exercising their "freedom of screech" to politicize the fact that the current President miss-stated the case for immediate war with Iraq. Perhaps the President should be praised for "doing what was right" for America`s interests, even though the Administration could be faulted for the "way it was done". I, for one, would not want to bring back an Arab oil embargo and long lines at the gas pump.

Governments have secrets. If politicians always told the truth, there wouldn`t be any secrets. So, if governments are to keep secrets, how can you fault a politician for not telling the whole truth? We would assert that the President failed to present the real case for Iraq, which is: 1) prosperity for America based on controlling Middle East oil, and on maintaining the Dollar as the World Reserve Currency, and 2) peace and stability, which the guaranteed access to oil brings to the world.

We believe that the US Treasury deficit, and the US Trade deficits, are massive stock and credit bubbles, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. These deficits will cause significant disruption to the value of the Dollar and to US prosperity, all on their own. We do not need to give up de facto control over Middle East Oil, which in turn underpins the Dollar as the World Reserve Currency. Such action, which may be welcomed by the Liberal Media, would quickly end America`s role as an economic super power and lead to the sudden and permanent demise of our prosperity.

If foreign central banks could no longer believe that holding Dollars guarantees access to oil, there would be no real reason to hold Dollars. With the US running deficits of 5% for budget and trade, in the real world the Dollar would collapse, along with our bond market, stock market, real estate market, and economic way of life.

We believe, like George Soros believes, that the dollar will weaken on fundamental grounds. Unlike Mr. Soros, we do not wish to see a catastrophic "dollar crash" (his motives should be questioned after having made $1 Billion after having helped crash the Pound). If the dollar cratered, even a "limousine liberal" could only afford a Kia

Richard Benson
President
Specialty Finance Group LLC
Member NASD/SIPC
800-860-2907
www.sfgroup.org
Richard Benson, SFGroup, is a widely published author on securitization and specialty finance, and a sought after speaker at financing conferences on raising equity for mid-market companies.

Prior to founding the Specialty Finance Group in 1989, Mr. Benson acted as a trading desk economist for Chase Manhattan Bank in the early 1980`s and started in the securitization business in 1983 at Bear Stearns, and helped build the early securitization businesses at Citibank and E.F. Hutton.

Mr. Benson graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1970 in the Honors Program in Math, and did his doctoral work in Economics at Harvard University. Mr. Benson is a member of the Harvard Club of New York and Palm Beach.

The Specialty Finance Group, LLC is a Florida Limited Liability Company and is registered with the NASD/SIPC as a Broker/Dealer.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4404.htm



http://www.sfgroup.org/

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Enemy of the State




Colin Powell profile: He toed the line over Iraq, but the US secretary of state still has hawks ranged against him. Is he ready to quit? Trevor Royle reports



Silly season nonsense or bold statement of intent? Washington is divided over the story about Secretary of State Colin Powell riding into the sunset if President Bush wins a second term of office in next year’s presidential elections. First came the gospel truth that Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage had informed their colleague national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that they would quit the State Department once Bush begins his expected second administration in January 2005. Then came the insistence that it was all hokum, or as one White House aide put it: “Welcome to Washington in August, where some of these goofy stories tend to hit the front page. There is no basis to that story.”
Perhaps not – Powell has denied having any discussions with Rice about his future – but the denials have only fuelled rumours that Bush is casting around for a new head of the State Department, one who would be more amenable to his administration’s foreign policy doctrine. As the story gained strength in a late- summer Washington avid for gossip, the White House gave Powell the doomed football manager’s vote of support: “The President thinks he is doing an outstanding job and appreciates the job that he is doing”.

A few days later, down at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, the back-slapping continued when Powell and Armitage arrived to brief Bush on the Middle East, but despite the bonhomie it is clear Powell has itchy feet. He would have preferred to make the announcement in his own way , but, instead, the genie was let out of the bottle prematurely by sources close to Rice – who will be a prime candidate to fill Powell’s not insubstantial shoes.




Speaking at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas, Rice echoed Powell’s words that they were both content “to serve at the pleasure of the President,” but she also let slip the thought that the term in office seemed longer because of the demands of the job.

For those close to Powell, that is the main reason why he wants to quit before he is sucked into another four years pursuing policies which are becoming increasingly hardline and inimical to his own beliefs. It is an open secret that Powell is hostile to the neo-conservative thinking which dominates the Pentagon’s view of the world and that he is unhappy with his own part in framing US foreign policy. It is also clear that he knows the limitations and weaknesses of his position.

Not for nothing is Powell one of the least-travelled Secretaries of State in recent times. During the manoeuvring before the war against Iraq he hardly dared leave Washington in case his rivals – notably vice-president Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz – stole a march on him.




And even when he was dispatched abroad it was often on a fool’s errand, such as his disastrous peace-broking trip to Israel earlier this year. A glimpse of those tensions can be found in Bob Woodward’s book Bush At War, which documented the tensions in the White House in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. When Rumsfeld demanded an attack on Iraq, it seems, Powell responded with the argument that before anything happened the US would have to build up a coalition of the willing. The suggestion caused offence, as it was bound to do, leaving an exasperated Powell to complain to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: “What the hell are these guys thinking about? Can’t you get these guys back in the box?”

It was to no avail. Powell remained deeply suspicious about prosecuting a war against Iraq but his soldier’s training meant that he had no option but to obey the President’s wishes. More than anything else he wanted to keep the support of the UN and was opposed to idea of mounting a unilateral attack, even with UK support.

In his heart he had reservations about the legality of war, but when it came to it he put on a brave performance in the Security Council to justify his country’s position. He played his part manfully, but for a former soldier who believes there can never be compromises with the truth it came as a bitter blow when much of the evidence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction turned out to be flawed.

Other concerns intrude on his conscience. Powell was as annoyed as anyone else in Bush’s administration with what was seen as France’s duplicity over Iraq, but he would prefer to rebuild the alliance . This chimes in with his preference to pursue diplomacy through the UN and a system of alliances, but with benevolent hegemony dictating US foreign policy that is anathema to the right.

Much has been made of the influence of Powell’s wife Alma in forcing the issue. She is known to have dissuaded him from running for President in 1996, and it would only be natural if her concern extended to the rough ride her husband has experienced at the State Department. For his part Powell has been anxious to keep his wife free of unnecessary and unwelcome media exposure.

Being an intelligent man, Powell will also take heed of recent history, which teaches that the job has its natural time limits. Two-term presidents are given to freshening up their teams, and the only Secretary of State to serve twice was Dean Rusk under John F Kennedy and his successor Lyndon Johnson.

10 August 2003

http://www.sundayherald.com/35903

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Three Killed in Second Day of Violence in Basra
Sun August 10, 2003 02:36 PM ET




By Joseph Logan
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - A foreign security guard and two Iraqis were killed in a second day of violence in Basra on Sunday in which British troops fired warning shots as crowds attacked vehicles and blocked streets with burning tires.

The British troops in Iraq`s second city patrolled streets in tanks as hundreds of Iraqis went on the rampage to protest against fuel and power shortages, but a tense calm later settled over the city. Iraqi frustrations over basic services have been exacerbated by temperatures above 120 degrees.

The violence was some of the worst in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled by U.S.-led forces on April 9 and occurred in a city at the heart of the mostly Shi`ite Muslim south, which has been relatively peaceful in the wake of Saddam`s fall. Iraq`s Shi`ite majority was repressed under Saddam.

Southern Iraq`s British-run administration said the security guard, a Nepalese Gurkha working for Global Security, was killed by gunmen while in a vehicle delivering mail for the United Nations. Retired Gurkha soldiers from the British army are widely employed by security firms in Iraq.

Reporters in Basra said one Iraqi was killed by gunfire. It was not immediately clear who had fired the shots in a city, which like the rest of Iraq, is awash with weapons. Two other Iraqis were wounded by gunfire.

Czech troops operating alongside British forces said they also had to resort to warning shots and that another Iraqi was killed when he fell while trying to climb onto a truck.

The Czech Defense Ministry in Prague said in a statement the troops fired the shots after Iraqis threw stones at a convoy carrying drinking water to a Czech field hospital. It said a military vehicle was damaged.

In a separate incident, British forces said they returned fire from gunmen.

Young Iraqi men hurled chunks of concrete at vehicles during the unrest, while British armored vehicles guarded petrol stations where frustrated drivers queued for hours in the sweltering summer heat.

The British have blamed oil smugglers, looters and saboteurs for power cuts and a shortage of diesel that has meant little electricity even for those with household generators.

"(The British) did not give us what they promised, and we have had enough of waiting," said student Hassan Jasim, 19.

Influential clerics, some of whom want an Iranian-style Shi`ite theocracy, have warned they are impatient for the running of the country to be returned to Iraqi hands.

In a repeat of some of the violence Saturday, cars from nearby Kuwait were targeted. Basra residents accuse Kuwaitis of involvement in smuggling cheap Iraqi oil out of the country.

TWO U.S. SOLDIERS WOUNDED IN BAGHDAD

Most of the violence in the four months since Saddam was ousted has been concentrated in the former Iraqi president`s Sunni Muslim heartlands in the Baghdad area and other parts of central Iraq where U.S. forces are stationed.

Two U.S. soldiers and a journalist were wounded in a grenade attack in Baghdad Sunday, a U.S. military spokesman said. Al Jazeera television said one of its cameramen was hurt along with U.S. soldiers when a grenade was thrown at a U.S. patrol from an upper story window at Baghdad University.

Further north, the U.S. spokesman said, two soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack. On a road near Tikrit, Saddam`s home town some 110 miles north of the capital, a Reuters correspondent saw a wrecked U.S. truck beside a crater which a soldier at the scene said was caused by a mine.

In the western town of Hit, relatives of two men buried on Sunday said the pair were shot by U.S. troops Saturday.

The U.S. military said a soldier died of apparent heat stress while traveling in a convoy.

Fifty-five U.S. and six British troops have been killed since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1. Several foreign civilians have been killed as well.

U.S. commanders mainly blame Saddam`s die-hard loyalists for attacks on their troops, but say there is evidence of foreign terrorists coming to Iraq to target Americans.

They believe they are closing in on Saddam himself and are stamping out the raids by killing and rounding up fighters.

FBI investigators are helping to track down the perpetrators of a truck bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad last week in which 17 people were killed.

Paul Bremer, top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda-linked group once based in the Kurdish-controlled north during Saddam`s reign, now planned major attacks in Iraq.

Bremer, an anti-terrorism expert, told the New York Times the Jordanian embassy bombing could have been the work either of Saddam loyalists or a mainly foreign group like Ansar.



Summary
++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days++++Avg
+++260++++44+++++304++++++143++++2.13

Latest Fatality Date: 8/9/2003

08/10/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES FROM APPARENT HEAT STRESS
08/10/03 CENTCOM
1ST ARMORED DIVISION SOLDIER FOUND DEAD
08/09/03 ABC News
At Least Four U.S. Soldiers Wounded in Iraq
08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES IN SLEEP
08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES OF GUNSHOT WOUND
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD IDENTIFIES ONE OF HOSTILE FIRE DEATHS FROM AUG. 6TH
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD IDENTIFIES AMERICAN SAMOAN, DEAD FROM FALL ON AUG. 5TH
08/07/03 Department of Defense
DOD REVEALS 4TH DEATH ON AUG. 6TH: SOLDIER HOSPITALIZED IN GERMANY

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Careers on the line as hearings get under way
The `sexed up` dossier scandal threatens to damage Blair, the defence secretary and the BBC

David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday August 11, 2003
The Guardian

Lord Hutton opens his public hearings today into what threatens to become one of the most explosive scandals to detonate in British political life since the 1960s Profumo affair.

That too featured a suicide, an inquiry by a top judge, a defence minister in danger of losing his job, the intelligence agencies, inflammatory allegations by journalists, and the ultimate destruction of the government.

Although the particular cold war hysteria of that period, in which a defence minister was accused of sharing a lover with a Soviet military attache, is absent, the political backdrop is equally ominous.

The issues surrounding the invasion of Iraq has proved so contentious that no fewer than seven individual reputations are on the line as Lord Hutton hears the first witnesses to the circumstances of scientist David Kelly`s apparent suicide.

Starting at the top, with the prime minister himself, they include Tony Blair`s defence secretary, Geoff Hoon; his chief spin doctor, Alastair Campbell; the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, John Scarlett; the chairman of the BBC, Gavyn Davies; the BBC defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan; and the late Dr Kelly.

All have been accused of spreading lies. Below, we give a guide to the accusations and the possible outcomes.

Tony Blair


The charges

He published exaggerated claims to promote the invasion of Iraq
He asked for a dossier to be "sexed up"
He was personally involved in the hounding and naming of Dr Kelly
Evidence so far

Blair claimed Saddam Hussein "beyond doubt has continued to produce" chemical and biological weapons which could be "ready" in 45 minutes. His dossier also said Saddam had missiles capable of reaching British bases in Cyprus, and was trying to acquire uranium for nuclear bombs. None of these claims has been substantiated.
The prime minister ordered the original dossier to be transferred from the Foreign Office to Scarlett with instructions to add fresh intelligence claims and have it published as justification for war. He tried to change its structure. He put his name to an inflammatory foreword. According to the BBC World Service diplomatic correspondent, Barnaby Mason, No 10 sent the draft back "six or eight times" to be strengthened.

The moves against Kelly, stoking up a row with the BBC and arranging a media strategy to name him, would be matters usually carried out only on the prime minister`s authority.

Implications

If Hutton points the finger at Blair, it could be terminal for his premiership.




Geoff Hoon

The charge

He lied about the outing of Kelly.
Evidence so far

He said: "We made great efforts to ensure Dr Kelly`s anonymity." Yet there was a concerted Ministry of Defence briefing operation to drop hints and then confirm Kelly`s name.
Implications

Hoon may have to resign.




Alastair Campbell


The charges

He "sexed up" the September intelligence dossier

He encouraged Kelly`s outing in a vendetta against Gilligan and the BBC
Evidence so far

Campbell did try to "harden up" key claims in the dossier, over uranium and aluminium tubes. He had the dossier`s presumably cautious draft conclusion removed. He probably drafted Blair`s foreword which overemphasised the claim that chemical and biological weapons were deployable in 45 minutes. But there is no evidence he persuaded the dossier compilers to insert the 45-minute claim against their wishes.
He whipped up the row which put pressure on Kelly, and he may have helped to organise the outing strategy.

He put repeated pressure on the BBC about Iraq coverage and Gilligan.

Implications

Campbell is not expected to return to Downing Street, whatever the outcome.




John Scarlett


The charge

He inserted unreliable intelligence into the September dossier, under political pressure, and against the wishes of MI6.
Evidence so far

Scarlett took over and transformed an original Foreign Office draft by adding intelligence material which was exaggerated. This was against the wishes of the CIA, which said the uranium claims were not credible and refused to endorse the 45-minute claim. Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, is believed to have privately expressed the view that the fresh contents of the dossier did not justify the invasion of Iraq.
Implications

Scarlett has to escape blame if he is to remain the prime minister`s chief intelligence adviser.




David Kelly


The charges

He exaggerated to Gilligan, saying Campbell had personally inserted the 45-minute claim into the dossier
He lied to the MoD, his employer, and did not tell the truth to MPs on the foreign affairs and intelligence committees
He was too junior to know what he was talking about
Evidence so far

Kelly`s other alleged criticisms have turned out to be accurate, such as that the 45-minute claim was uncorroborated, and that the dossier was transformed at a late stage. He may have gone too far in talking to Gilligan, or some of his words may have been misinterpreted.
He tried to conceal that he had also briefed Susan Watts of Newsnight and Gavin Hewitt of BBC News. MPs on the intelligence committee, who grilled him in private before his death, are believed to have thought he was "dissembling".

He was the government`s senior adviser on Iraq`s chemical and biological weapons.

Implications

Kelly was apparently driven to kill himself by pressure from the MoD, the Commons foreign affairs committee, and the intelligence and security committee.




Andrew Gilligan


The charges:

He embellished what Kelly told him
He exaggerated the standing of his source
Evidence so far

He allegedly had contemporaneous notes, and much of what he broadcast - apart from the claim that the "45 minutes" was inserted by Downing Street against the wishes of the intelligence agencies - is said to chime with Susan Watts` Newsnight tapes. He at one point called Kelly "my source in the intelligence service" which was incorrect.
Implications

Gilligan`s career is on the line.




Gavyn Davies


Charges

The BBC never should have broadcast Gilligan`s story
It should have retracted at least the unproven part of it;
It inflamed the row by sensationalist journalism
Evidence so far

Gilligan did have a genuine senior source, and his story did reflect the criticisms of government behaviour by an expert. The "45 minute" insertion remains hotly denied and not supported by other evidence.
BBC sources admit loose language; an inappropriate Mail on Sunday article by Gilligan attacking Campbell; and attempts at aggressive journalism which have boomeranged.

Implications

Ministers have threatened the BBC with reprisals. Its charter is up for renewal.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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The US, race and war
Most African-Americans didn`t support the war on Iraq - with good reason. But they ended up fighting it

Gary Younge
Monday August 11, 2003
The Guardian

As America`s most eloquent minister for war, Tony Blair has often taken it upon himself to placate criticism of United States military aggression abroad by pointing to its social achievements at home. And there can be few greater American accomplishments, in his mind, than race.

Quite how he came to this ill-informed conclusion, and why he would choose to share it, is not entirely clear. He rarely mentions race domestically - the last time there were riots in the north he didn`t even venture up there to see what had sparked them. So when he raises it about America, it exposes both his weakness on the subject in Britain and his ignorance of its dynamic in America.

In the Labour party conference speech in 2001 where he made the case for the bombing of Afghanistan, he hailed a meritocracy that could produce a black foreign secretary. "I think of a black man, born in poverty, who became chief of their armed forces and is now secretary of state, Colin Powell, and I wonder frankly whether such a thing could have happened here," he said.

Leave aside for the moment that Powell was not born into poverty; the truth is that as prime minister Blair could appoint a black person to the post of foreign secretary any time he wants. The fact that it took him five years to put Paul Boateng in a far lowlier position in his own cabinet is down to nobody but himself.

A few weeks ago, addressing Congress to justify the war on Iraq, he was at it again. "Tell the world why you are proud of America," he implored. "Tell them when the Star-Spangled Banner starts Americans get to their feet, not because some state official told them to but because, whatever race, colour, class or creed they are, being American means being free."

He might have asked himself how far his policies on asylum seekers, ID cards and immigration (not to mention the reckless language and bigoted logic of his home secretary, David Blunkett) have put back the day when black, Asian and Muslim Britons might feel similarly comfortable with their own national identity.

But what is most staggering about his use of race in his tributes to Uncle Sam is not that the accomplishments he supports in America are the very ones he is so busy stifling at home. It is that the very cause in which he raises them - war - has the least backing among those whose experience he uses to marvel at America`s greatness: black people.

It is not difficult to see why. If America`s achievements in race relations are exemplary then someone forgot to tell African-Americans - that section of the population most likely to be unemployed, poor, without health care, imprisoned, executed and arrested. And if war is the best way to remedy these ills, nobody told them that either.

Even at the height of the popularity of the war against Iraq in April, a Pew Research Centre poll found only 44% of African-Americans supported it, the lowest level of any group surveyed. Overall, 66% of Americans favoured military action, with support at 77% among whites and 67% among Hispanics.

Black Americans obviously shared the shock and loss of September 11. But most did not share the righteous indignation because the notion that they could be the victims of a mindless act of deadly violence in their own country was not entirely new. "Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America," said writer Maya Angelou. "But black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years."

Indeed, the very man who claims to be fighting the war to make the world safe for democracy - President George Bush - came to power because black Americans in Florida were systematically denied the right to vote.

Such hypocrisy may be news to Blair. But it is no revelation for African-Americans. It is not just this war that irks them. They have been more sceptical than whites about every war during the past century because it has long been a staple truth of American foreign policy that the US would claim to be fighting for rights abroad that it refused to extend to black people and others at home.

N or is it news to the American government. After the second world war, tackling domestic racism was as much a foreign policy decision as anything else. A civil rights committee, appointed by President Harry Truman, reached the following conclusion: "We cannot escape the fact that our civil rights record has been an issue in world politics... They have tried to prove our democracy an empty fraud and our nation a consistent oppressor of underprivileged people."

It would be almost another 20 years before black Americans would be assured of the right to vote. Tied to a country by geography and nationality, yet denied full allegiance to it by politics and history, African-Americans have developed a habit of looking askance when their leaders reach for their gun in the name of the greater good.

But while they were the least likely to support these wars, since Korea they have been the most likely to end up fighting them. In fact, the American military is more reliant on the poor, and therefore non-whites, than ever before - pushed by poverty and pulled by the promise of learning a trade. In 1973 23% of the military was from racial minorities; in 2000 it was 37%. The demographic group most overrepresented in the military is the same one that polls show have least enthusiasm for the conflict - black women.

But if black Americans` resistance to US foreign policy is understandable, is not uncomplicated or unqualified. If their opposition to the war has been greater than white Americans, their support for it has also been greater than the predominantly white populations of Europe. Two of the principle people responsible for the prosecution of the war - Powell and Condoleezza Rice - are black.

Herein lie the contradictions in what the late black intellectual WEB Dubois referred to as black America`s "double consciousness". Bar the native Americans and a handful of pilgrims, they are the most longstanding racial group in the country. There are few who can lay a greater claim to being American than African-Americans. Yet there are few who can point to as much systematic prejudice at the hands of America.

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness," wrote Du Bois. "One ever feels his twoness - an American, a negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

It is a nuance that Blair clearly does not see and, given his backward racial policies in Britain, would not understand even if he did. For when they stand for the Star-Spangled Banner, they salute what they believe to be the nation`s promise, not what they know to be its practice. And they are the least likely to believe that declaring war on foreign nations is the best way to fulfil that promise, because they have first-hand experience of how selective the ideals can be of those who fight them.

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Reformist social democracy is no longer on the agenda
The anti-globalisation movement is the basis of a left alternative

Fausto Bertinotti
Monday August 11, 2003
The Guardian

The terrible events in Iraq marked the end of the post-war period - a period marked by the memory of the horrors of the Nazi-fascist war, when the world saw two opposing economic and social blocs pitted against each other and social struggles led to a growth of welfare benefits and the bargaining power of trade unions.

The liberal constitutions were born out of the victory over Nazism and fascism. Now we are living in a new phase, in which the space for reform has been closed. As Giorgio Ruffolo (a minister in Italy`s former centre-left government) wrote recently: "Through globalisation, capitalism has won a historical battle: it has defeated the reform-minded left, both in Europe and America." The consequences are there for everyone to see: reckless flexibility, extreme inequalities and the end of safety nets.

The demise of reformism has changed both analyses and prospects, bringing with it the difficulty of even achieving partial results that can be woven into the social fabric and provide cohesion. This is a problem even when there are major social and public-opinion movements.

In the past few months large numbers have taken to the streets, part of a worldwide movement against the war. But the war was waged anyway, without any price yet paid by the forces that wanted it. In Italy there has been a major movement around employment issues, including industry-wide strikes and general strikes, but the government still managed to pass dangerous laws such as the Maroni decree (restricting pension rights).

There has been a mass mobilisation over unfair dismissal rights. And yet we lost it. In France, after major struggles, the Raffarin government is carrying on its attack on the pension system. In Germany, for the first time in 50 years, IG Metall ended a strike to extend the 35-hour working week to the eastern regions without achieving any result whatsoever.

Capitalist globalisation contains deeply regressive elements that are leading to a real crisis of civilisation. The only possible response is not reformism, but rather a radical refoundation of politics as a worldwide process and thus a reconstruction of the agency of change: a redefinition of the working class.

The right has won all over the world because it has strategic hegemony. In the US the Bush administration is based on military interventionism, extreme neo-liberalism and religious fundamentalism. War is no longer a one-off or exceptional event, it has become structural and "never-ending".

The only possibility in the face of rightwing extremism is to provide an alternative: of peace against war and of a new model of society against neo-liberalism. This does not mean either a detailed programme or unity among existing political forces. Nor does it mean defending democracy as it currently exists. Rather, it means starting from the main resource available, which is the movement against capitalist globalisation.

The anti-globalisation movement is the first movement that represents a break with the 20th century and its truths and myths. At present it is the main source of politics for an alternative to the global right. When, on February 15, 100 million people took to the streets, the New York Times referred to it as a second "world power", a power that in the name of peace opposed those who wanted war.

It is no exaggeration to say that everything that has happened in the past few years has had something to do with this movement. It started from observation of the impact of neo-liberalism, going on to trace its origins and create an anti-capitalist culture. It has resisted the progressive destruction of democracy that has led one liberal, Ralf Dahrendorf, to refer to this as an " ademocratic century", holding to account those bodies - from the International Monetary Fund to the World Bank - that have deprived people of democracy and sovereignty.

It has countered the crisis of democracy with embryonic new democratic institutions. It has challenged the division of political labour among trade unions, parties and cooperatives and shifted the focus of political debate from institutions to social relations, bringing feelings and everyday life back into the realm of politics.

It has also tackled the theme of power, in terms not of achieving and keeping it, but of transforming, dissolving and reconstructing power through self-government. And it has challenged the model of a party leading the movement, proposing instead the notion of networks and links among groups, associations, parties and newspapers.

The problem now is how to build out of the anti-globalisation movement a real democratic power able to achieve its objectives. Its greatest limitation seems to be the lack of a connection between the great issues of globalisation, war and peace and the intermediate dimension of employment and production relations. The inability to build a concrete link between the fight against globalisation and the fight against insecurity and exploitation is a shortcoming.

An alternative European left can find its strategy only within the anti-globalisation movement. The key issue both for the movement and for us is the clash between peace and war. The movement has identified the global dimension of war and the fact that it is inbuilt in a system which cannot do without it. It was this conviction that turned the anti-globalisation movement into the backbone of the peace movement.

Despite its remarkable strength, however, the movement did not stop the war. So now the question is: how can we build a force for peace and democracy capable of having an impact on US policy? The same kind of problems arise over social issues. Building the social roots of the movement and the reform of left politics are two sides of the same coin.

In Italy, the Refounded Communists, together with others, tried to do this through the referendum on extending employment protection to all workers. We were defeated, but the referendum took its inspiration from the movement, the idea of the struggle for equal rights against job insecurity. This battle, however, has not taken on a European dimension. The European trade unions decided not to call a general strike against the war, which would have also been a boost to the fight against neo-liberalism.

Now there is the chance of re-opening a Europe-wide battle over the welfare state. In the face of converging government policies, only an organisation fighting at European level can make its case.

Unless they move in this direction, the European anti-capitalist leftwing parties risk disappearing in terms of political representation; and within the anti-globalisation movement there could develop a temptation to flee from politics. The forces of the European left cannot depend on social democracy. They must break away with a radical, united initiative. Not only the prospects of the left and the anti-globalisation movement, but even the existence of Europe as an autonomous entity, is at stake.

· Fausto Bertinotti is national secretary of Italy`s Refounded Communist party (Rifondazione Comunista) and a member of the Italian and European parliaments.

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ER, Baghdad-style, where caring yields to the daily struggle of coping with adversity
Jamie Wilson
Monday August 11, 2003
The Guardian

On the front desk of the emergency room, the American soldiers keep a light green hardback book where they record all the gunshot, stabbing and shrapnel injuries that arrive at Yarmuk hospital in central Baghdad.

In the three weeks since they started the book, more than 170 gunshot victims have staggered, been wheeled or carried through the front gate.

The soldiers` diagnosis are typically blunt. "Shot in nuts" read one entry. Next to 50 are the letters "DOA" (dead on arrival).

It is not surprising that Dr Mohammed al-Fahad is weary of treating the wounded. And it is not surprising that he is angry, too.

It has been more than three months since the Americans arrived in Baghdad, but still the electricity cuts out in the hospital. Staff have seen pictures on television of how the local prison has been refurbished, but all the Americans have done here is stick up no smoking signs and try and limit the visiting hours.

The night shift at the hospital is just beginning and already Dr Fahad is treating his second patient. Entry wounds, exit wounds, bullets lodged in the subcutaneous knee joint, like the one he is trying to remove now, he`s seen them hundreds of times in the past few months.

"We consider this a silly case," he says, making an incision with a scalpel across the knee injury. Not that Haijhen Fahd, 30, lying back on the gurney in the emergency room and by the look on his face trying desperately not to scream, is finding anything about his case frivolous.

Pain


A guard at one of Baghdad`s water plants, he had been standing outside minding his own business when he had felt an excruciating pain in his leg.

He had been hit by the what the doctors call an "indirect" bullet, fired off by somebody in some distant part of the city, zinging through the hot and humid air, before choosing, by some cruel twist of fate, to barrel its way into his leg. His friend Kanaan Tofeeh had bundled him into a car and driven him to the emergency room of Yarmuk hospital in the centre of the city.

He had arrived just before 9pm, as the night shift was beginning, but the register on the counter in the trauma room already listed six others admitted for "bulleting" [sic] injuries that day.

And this, according to the surgeon, now was digging around deep inside the hole with a pair of small forceps, is a quiet one.

"Before the war, people with this sort of injury we would put them to sleep, but now we do not bother - there are too many," he says before finally, with a flourish, holding up a small copper pistol bullet and dropping it with a clunk into a kidney shaped metal bowl.

He sews up Mr Fahd`s wound, and the guard limps out of the hospital clutching a little glass vial filled with antiseptic and the bullet wrapped in a cotton swab.

The trauma ward at Yarmuk is a brutal place in every sense of the word.

There are no sheets on the trolleys, or pillows on which patients can rest their heads. There is no room for sentiment here, no caring bedside manner from the doctors, no kindly nurses to mop a brow in the suffocating heat.

It had risen to 52C (126F) during the day and by 10pm is still in the high 40s; the electric fans mounted on the ceiling do little to take the edge off the temperature.

The doctors who are not tending to patients huddle around a single, small air conditioning unit, the only one that is working in the entire room.

As the evening draws on, an old man, bleeding from a wound to his ear, stumbles into the room. "Alibaba! Alibaba!" he shouts, indicating he has been attacked by a thief.

According to the doctors, he is a regular at the hospital, and is a touch deranged. Nobody pays him any attention until he vomits what looks like blood all over the floor.

Raed Jassem, 24, is one of the men who tries to keep the hospital clean. In Yarmuk, there is a lot of blood and there is a lot of vomit, most of it deposited on the brown concrete tiles. But Mr Jassem, who has been trailing his mop around the hospital for almost two years, says he has got used to it.

Not that the doctors have.

"Watch this, you won`t believe it," one of them says as the cleaner begins washing down one of the gurneys with the same rag he has just been using to clean the floor. "It is not his fault, he does what he can, but he is not provided with anything else to clean with. What can he do?"

Mayassa Khanas, 20, is the latest arrival in the ward.

Earlier in the day she had been sitting in the garden of her family`s home in the Saydiyea district of Baghdad when another indirect bullet fell out of the sky and struck her on the head.

Now she is lying, still conscious, on a brown plastic mattress on a trolley, while the doctors treating her try to work out exactly what to do.

The image of her skull on the acetate plate of the x-ray looks normal except for the unmistakable shape of the bullet wedged into the bone, its sharp tip protruding just far enough into the cavity below that they dare not try to remove it themselves.

They would like to send Ms Khansas to a hospital down the road where there are specialist neurosurgeons. But it has been closed for two days because of problems with power, and there are rumours that it could be closed for a further two weeks.

"For an operation you need machines, but if the power goes the machines die. If the machines die the patient dies," says Dr Emil Sabah, 25.

The hospital is guarded by members of the 1st Armoured Division from Fort Riley in Kansas. Nicknamed the Ironstones, they used to sleep in quarters at the back of the hospital but have recently moved to the presidential palace compound because of fears over their security at Yarmuk.

Only Captain John Margolis and a couple of their other commanding officers are still living in a small office next to the emergency room.

There seems to be an uneasy truce between the doctors and the Americans. The doctors don`t like the way the soldiers sometimes try to interfere, especially stopping them smoking in the wards.

"Like it makes any difference," says Dr Sabah, pointing at the bloodstained floor and walls.

But CaptMargolis, who seems a good, well-meaning man, is unrepentant.

"This is freedom and freedom can mean different things, and in this case freedom means we are going to have to enforce our values on them," he remarks without irony.

"The Iraqi doctors who have been to the west want their hospitals to be like ours and we have to change their values to do it."

Vendettas


The captain and his soldiers seem to be having a hard time coming to terms with what they see and what goes on at the hospital - the family vendettas that have seen armed men trying to get to an injured enemy in a ward to revenge a dead relative, the horrific injuries, and the blood.

Just after midnight the power goes out and the hospital is plunged into darkness. The generators are broken so there is nothing to do but wait for it to come back on. A doctor is sent to ask the Americans if they have any fluorescent sticks to help light the ward.

"You know we used to have some of them, but they`re all on back order right now," says one of the privates.

Dr Sabah says: "I think after you have seen this, if you got sick you would rather wait until you get home before you are treated. Am I right?"

Twenty minutes later the power comes back on. By now the hospital is quiet. There is a curfew across Baghdad, and only the most ill dare make the journey through the American roadblocks to the hospital.

Most have no way of calling an ambulance; the only vehicles that are allowed to race through the city`s eerily deserted streets with impunity. The doctors bed down on empty gurneys, waiting for the early morning rush when the curfew is lifted.

It is the one chance they get to rest before the start of another day in the Baghdad emergency room.


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An Iraqi on Sunday carried away a man who had been shot during rioting over fuel shortages in Basra. It was unclear who had shot the man.

August 11, 2003
ENERGY
Riots Continue Over Fuel Crisis in Iraq`s South
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROBERT F. WORTH


AGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 — Riots over severe fuel shortages continued today in Basra, Iraq`s second-largest city, as some officials who have studied the matter warned that fuel shortages could recur in other parts of the country.

United Nations officials said there was a "near certainty" that Iraq would face winter shortages of kerosene, a vital fuel for heating homes in northern Iraq, because of the same refinery problems that have led to the gasoline shortages.

Officials of the civilian administration here have begun to shift the refinery mix to increase production of kerosene, but tonight officials said they did not know whether the process of stockpiling the kerosene needed for winter use had begun.

A private security guard in Basra employed by the civilian authority was shot and killed by unidentified assailants today, the second day of rioting over gasoline shortages.

Motorists in Basra have faced fuel lines several miles long and waits of more than 24 hours. Black-market prices for gasoline there have soared as high as 1,000 dinars, about 60 cents a liter, or 50 times the official price. That is also 10 times the black-market price in Baghdad, where fuel lines have gotten much longer in recent days, United Nations officials monitoring the fuel situation said.

The Basra fuel shortages have caused power failures at hospitals and harmed aid efforts, American officials have said.

In addition, the United Nations Joint Logistics Center said the current shortage of liquefied petroleum gas, an important cooking fuel, was a nationwide "crisis" that was "almost certain to continue," even as officials hope that new imports and production from a plant in southern Iraq will increase supply. Gas canisters that normally cost 250 dinars have been fetching up to 4,000 dinars, or about $2.40.

Tonight, a spokesman for the civilian administration in Basra declined to say whether the killing of the security guard, a Nepalese citizen, was connected to the fuel riots.

British officials said that four separate riots broke out at gasoline stations today in northern Basra, and that shots were fired at British soldiers. No soldiers were wounded by the gunfire, but three soldiers were hurt by stones thrown at them, said Squadron Leader Lynda Sawers, a spokeswoman for the British military. Iraqi civilians were also reported to have been shot during the riots.

Oil production is not the problem behind the shortages, as Iraq`s oil fields, even in their current poor condition, produce far more oil daily than is needed for domestic consumption. Instead, the shortages have been caused by factors mostly related to problems with the electricity grid and the woeful state of the refinery in Basra, United Nations and occupation officials said.

Those factors, they said, include looting and sabotage, a shortage of the fuels that power generators that supply electricity to refineries and the dilapidated and obsolete condition of the refineries. Compared with modern refineries, they produce proportionately far more heavy fuel oil than the gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene that are in such demand.

In Basra, all four primary electricity transmission lines supplying the refinery have been cut by saboteurs, said occupation officials, who noted that all of those factors have been worsened by increased demand caused by the hot weather.

According to United Nations estimates, Iraq`s three major refineries — at Basra, Bayji and Baghdad — have been producing an estimated 18 million to 22 million liters a day of gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel combined. But to meet demand, they need to produce between 37 million and 40 million liters. There are about four liters to a gallon.

Occupation officials said smuggling had worsened the problem. They are cracking down on tanker trucks and barges secretly taking fuel out of the country, including the seizure this weekend of a ship that officials said was carrying at least 1,100 metric tons of diesel fuel.

United Nations officials said the problem in Basra was also caused by "inequitable" distribution plans that had sent large quantities of diesel produced in Basra north to Baghdad and other locations. Similarly, the United States Agency for International Development placed some blame on what it described as "the majority of fuel going to Baghdad." Occupation officials said they have been trying to spread the available fuels and electricity evenly throughout the country.

The fuel shortages in southern Iraq have led to problems far more dire than gasoline lines. According to a report issued Wednesday by the Agency for International Development, the shortages "are threatening security and some humanitarian operations." They "are endangering hospital patients" in hospitals that depend on generators, the agency said, adding that "cold storage for medicines and vaccination programs are also affected."

Occupation officials said that in addition to the smuggling crackdown and the increase in kerosene production, they were working to install new generators for the Basra refinery and to repair damage to power lines and pylons caused by looting and sabotage. An official said tonight that if shortages persisted, officials would consider increasing gasoline imports and beginning significant imports of kerosene and diesel.

Officials said they were transferring to the Basra area some gasoline from military forces as well as at least 25 million liters seized from smugglers. They added that refinery production levels and other fuel data were discussed each morning in meetings with the top civilian official, L. Paul Bremer III. They also emphasized that much of the problem stemmed from poor maintenance and underinvestment during Saddam Hussein`s rule.

"I`m not saying there will be no shortages in the future," said Charles Heatly, the allied occupation spokesman. "But I`m saying we are taking significant steps for the short term, the medium term and the long term." He also took issue with the United Nations projection on kerosene, saying it was "a little much" to say now that shortages would occur in the winter.

Tonight, another occupation official said the kerosene supply depended on whether the refineries had adequate electricity.

Summer demand for kerosene is about six million liters a day, according to the United Nations. But that demand will grow to more than 30 million liters a day during the coldest parts of the winter. To meet that demand, Iraq needs to have 500 million liters of kerosene in storage in about three months, United Nations officials said.

But they said that kerosene stockpiling is behind schedule and that the "current high level of demand for diesel may prevent kerosene production needed for future consumption in winter."

An occupation official said tonight that to increase kerosene stocks, officials might consider increasing production relative to diesel, and then possibly importing some diesel.

Some United Nations officials are also concerned that the occupation powers intend to shift responsibility for buying imported gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas to the marketing arm of the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Currently, gasoline production is about eight million liters a day at Iraq`s three major refineries, and an additional six million liters are imported daily. But some United Nations officials question whether the oil-marketing organization would be given enough cash by the civilian administration to acquire gasoline, or whether it would be forced to barter with its surplus heavy fuel oil.

John Levins, the head of fuel planning for the United Nations Joint Logistics Center, which monitors the fuel situation and advises the United Nations` various arms, said: "There is no doubt the coalition has the best interests of the Iraqi people at heart, but if they cut off coalition imports of gasoline and don`t alleviate the diesel situation before Iraqi refineries are able to provide for the needs of their own people, there will be a fuel-induced humanitarian crisis in the coming months."

In an interview tonight, Mr. Heatly said that the civilian administration would like to see the state oil-marketing organization take over some responsibility for gasoline imports, but that nothing would be done to adversely affect supply. Later tonight, another official said that work had begun in conjunction with the state organization to secure imports, but that no change was planned in that relationship anytime soon.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 11, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Art of the False Impression
By BOB HERBERT


Al Gore slipped into Manhattan last week and gave a rousing speech downtown before a very young audience at New York University. He got some coverage, but Mr. Gore has never been mistaken for an entertainer. In the superamplified media din created by the likes of Arnold and Kobe and Ben and Jen, it`s very difficult for the former vice president, a certified square, to break into the national conversation.

That says a lot about us and the direction we`re headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore`s politics or not, but some of the points he`s raising, especially with regard to President Bush`s credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention.

"Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country, and that some important American values are being placed at risk," said Mr. Gore.

Keeping his language polite, the former vice president asserted that the Bush administration had allowed "false impressions" to somehow make their way into the public`s mind. Enormous numbers of Americans thus came to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and was actively supporting Al Qaeda; that Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat, and Iraq was on the verge of building nuclear weapons; that U.S. troops would be welcomed with open arms, and there was little danger of continued casualties in a prolonged guerrilla war.

The essence of Mr. Gore`s speech was that these corrosive false impressions were part of a strategic pattern of distortion that the Bush administration used to create support not just for the war, but for an entire ideologically driven agenda that overwhelmingly favors the president`s wealthy supporters and is driving the federal government toward a long-term fiscal catastrophe.

What if Mr. Gore is right? There`s something at least a little crazy about an environment in which people are literally stumbling over one another to hear what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about the budget crisis in California (short answer: nothing), while ignoring what a thoughtful former vice president has to say about the budget and the economy of the U.S.

Voters with children and grandchildren who may someday have to shoulder the backbreaking debt that is being piled up by the Bush crowd might want to carefully examine some of the points Mr. Gore is raising. The Bush administration would have you believe he is talking nonsense. But what if he`s not?

"Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs — net losses for three years in a row," said Mr. Gore. "That hasn`t happened since the Great Depression." He then looked at the audience and deadpanned, to tremendous laughter: "As I`ve noted before, I was the first one laid off."

Credibility is the Bush administration`s Achilles` heel. If the public comes to believe that it cannot trust the administration about its reasons for going to war, about the real costs of the war in human lives and American dollars, about the actual state of the nation`s defenses against terror and about the real beneficiaries of its economic policies, the Bush II presidency will be crippled, if not doomed.

This is an administration that is particularly sensitive to light. It prefers to do business behind closed doors, with the curtains and shades drawn. Enormous taxpayer-financed contracts are handed out to a favored few without competitive bidding. We still don`t know what went on at the secret meetings between Dick Cheney and top energy industry executives at the very beginning of the Bush reign.

"It seems obvious," said Mr. Gore, "that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first pre-emptive war in U.S. history should have been covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people, before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn`t happen, and in both cases reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes — and the die — were cast."

The Bush administration has managed to dodge the hard questions and benefit from an atmosphere in which the media and much of the public would rather contemplate Jennifer`s navel and Arnold`s fading pecs than pursue a possible pattern of deceit at the highest levels of government.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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A Villager Attacks U.S. Troops, but Why?
Iraqi`s Life and Death Provide Cautionary Tale

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 11, 2003; Page A01


ALBU ALWAN, Iraq -- On a sun-drenched plain along a bluff of barren cliffs, a cheap headstone made of cement marks the grave of Omar Ibrahim Khalaf. His name was hastily scrawled in white chalk. Underneath is a religious invocation that begins, "In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate." It is followed simply by the date of his death, Friday, Aug. 1.

But one word on the marker distinguishes Khalaf`s resting place. His epitaph declares him a shahid, a martyr.

In a 15-minute battle so intense that villagers called it a glimpse of hell, U.S. forces killed Khalaf as he tried to fire rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy. A .50-caliber round tore off his skull. Machine-gun fire almost detached his left arm and ankle, which were left dangling from a corpse riddled with bullets and smeared with blood and the powdery dirt of the Euphrates River valley.

Beyond Khalaf`s home of Albu Alwan, his death has been little more than a footnote in a simmering guerrilla war that has claimed the lives of 56 U.S. soldiers since major combat operations were declared over May 1. But in the mystery that still shrouds the dozen or so attacks carried out daily against U.S. troops occupying the country, Khalaf`s life provides a cautionary tale about today`s Iraq -- and where the combustible mix of poverty, anger and resentment can lead.

American officials contend that the vast majority of the attacks are driven by remnants of former president Saddam Hussein`s government and the Baath Party he used for 35 years to hold power. Men like Khalaf, they say, are the foot soldiers lured by bounties that run as high as $5,000, perhaps motivated by loyalty to the fallen government, or by fear from threats to their family if they refuse to fight.

But the portrait of Khalaf that emerged from interviews last week suggests a more complicated figure.

A 32-year-old father of six, he was an army deserter who, villagers say, had nothing to do with the Baath Party. He prayed at the mosque on Fridays, although he was not a fervently religious man. His hardscrabble life was shaped by the grinding poverty of his village, whose burdens have mounted since the government`s fall on April 9. In the end, many here speculated he was changed irrevocably by the perceived day-to-day humiliations of occupation.

To some of his friends and family, he represents an Iraqi everyman, a recruit whose very commonality does not bode well for U.S. troops battling a four-month guerrilla campaign in northern and western Iraq that few in Albu Alwan seem to believe will end soon.

Hiding in the Canal


A nine-vehicle convoy of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company was just a few miles outside of Fallujah when the attack began. It was 7:15 a.m., and the assailants were hidden about 50 yards from the well-traveled road.

It was already a chaotic day for soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which patrols most of western Iraq, an arid swath intersected by the Euphrates River. Three attacks had been reported overnight. Four more would follow later that day. For a region that had previously witnessed just three or four attacks a week, the ambushes and raids marked one of the most violent 24-hour periods in recent times.

Khalaf and at least 10 others seemed to have chosen their spot for the canals that provided cover. They lay waiting in one, and another canal snaked behind it. Both were filled with stagnant water and overgrown with reeds as high as 10 feet. The village of Falahat was less than a mile away, but the spot itself was interspersed only with fields of clover and orchards of apricot trees and palms laden with ripening dates.

The first volley sent three rocket-propelled grenades at the convoy, soldiers said. Two missed their mark; a third hit the road underneath a Humvee, damaging the oil pan and transmission and disabling the vehicle.

The soldiers returned fire with .50-caliber machine guns, lighter weapons and grenade launchers, the burst so intense that even villagers in Falahat said they sought cover. The U.S. troops immediately called in reinforcements, and Lt. Noah Hanners, the platoon leader of Heavy Company, arrived soon after in a tank from a base about six miles away.

The Iraqi assailants fired their Kalashnikov rifles wildly and lobbed badly aimed grenades every couple of minutes, Hanners said. But outgunned and outtrained, it was a losing battle almost from the start. The U.S. soldiers were on higher ground. Khalaf and the others, all in civilian clothes, were concealed by the canal`s vegetation but, Hanners said, they had no way to flee.

"You could see the cattails move as they tried to run, so we just put a large volume of fire down on the canals," Hanners said.

Hanners said he believes Khalaf was one of the first to die, when he raised his head above the canal`s reeds and was struck by a .50-caliber round. "His head was pretty much missing," he said. One or two others were killed at about the same time. As the assailants tried to escape through the canals, two or three more were killed, Hanners said. No U.S. soldiers were hurt.

By the time a second tank arrived at about 7:30 a.m., the fight was over, and the soldiers took the body of Khalaf and two others to the base. At least one other corpse -- too badly mangled to move -- was left behind.

Days later, Hanners speculated that Khalaf was at the end of a chain that began with a paymaster, who was in turn linked to a former military officer or someone else who could find weapons and plan the ambush. He was confident that Khalaf was paid.

But as for motives other than money, Hanners said, it was only guesswork. "Pretty much anything you can come up with, any motive you can come up with, is a possibility," he said. "They could be anybody."

A Hatred for Americans


Khalaf was the second-youngest in a family of six brothers and six sisters who belong to a Sunni Muslim tribe that gave its name to the village. He was known as hot-tempered, but with a sense of humor. He had curly black hair and a patchy beard more the product of oversight than grooming. As a 12-year-old, he lost one front tooth and chipped the other while roughhousing.

Like many in the village of a few thousand, his education ended with elementary school, and he soon went to farming hay, barley, wheat and sunflowers on an eight-acre plot he inherited from his father. He was drafted during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but deserted his post after serving six months in the Euphrates town of Hit. He married young and struggled to make money.

A few years ago, he landed a $600 contract hauling construction material to the resort of Sadamiya on Tharthar Lake, friends said. But most of the time was spent surviving, driving a truck back and forth to Jordan and herding his 15 sheep and one cow.

His brother, Abdel-Latif, said that before the war Khalaf managed to make about $90 a month, enough to get by. In its chaotic aftermath, he said, he was making no more than $6 a month. His house, started four years ago, remains an empty shell of concrete floors and unfinished tan brick walls. His wife gave birth to their sixth child last month, a boy named Radwan.

"He had no money," said Khaled Mawash, a neighbor who knew Khalaf`s family.

In a village where everybody knows everybody`s business, neighbors said he was devastated by the quick fall of Baghdad. One shopkeeper said Khalaf told him that he wept all day at his home after the American forces arrived in the capital. Others recalled the anger that he loudly voiced as the U.S. patrols barreled down the highway perched just over his house and fields. The sight, they said, was so repugnant to him that he quit playing soccer in a dusty field adjacent to the bridge that the convoys used.

A month ago, a boy from the village threw a grenade at a nearby convoy, and soldiers responded by entering the village and surrounding Khalaf`s house.

"If I had a grenade, I would kill myself and take them with me," a childhood friend, Mawlud Khaled, recalled him saying.

Neighbors said his behavior grew increasingly erratic as the weeks passed. In vain, he once fired a Kalashnikov rifle at a U.S. helicopter passing overhead. One morning a week before his death, the summer heat already hanging like a haze over the village, he ran at a passing convoy dressed only in shorts, neighbors recalled. His family had to restrain him.

"He hated the Americans," Khaled said. "He didn`t care whether he died or not."

Two weeks ago, neighbors said, he wrote the names of three people on a piece of paper. He owed each money -- between $10 and $30. A few days later, on Aug. 1, he woke up early and dressed in gray pants and a plaid shirt. A little before 7 a.m., he was seen taking his sheep to graze in a nearby pasture. He left without saying a word to his wife, his family or anyone else in the village.

"Nobody knew where he went," Nawar Bidawi, a 41-year-old cousin, said.

Honored as a Hero


At a U.S. base near Habaniya, Khalaf`s body was stored in a black body bag in a small cement room for three days. The stench from the bodies was so overpowering that soldiers at the front gate, about 100 yards away, burned paper to fend off the smell.

Khalaf`s oldest brother, Abdel-Latif, and his brother-in-law were escorted by Iraqi police to the base. Soldiers suggested they take all three bodies, but Abdel-Latif said he claimed only his brother, whom he identified by his bloodied clothes and his chipped front tooth. The rest of his face, he said, was unrecognizable.

Along the gulf that divides occupier and occupied, the slights often seem unintended, perhaps unavoidable. Khalaf`s family was outraged that he had been left lying on his stomach, rather than his back. His head faced the ground, rather than the Muslim holy city of Mecca. His body was left in a hot, windowless room, rather than refrigerated. And they insisted it was already riddled with maggots.

"The treatment was inhuman," said Mohammed Ajami, Khalaf`s brother-in-law.

In a blue Volvo, they returned at 3:30 p.m. and, before dusk, buried Khalaf in a wooden coffin at the Kiffa cemetery. As a martyr, he was interred as he died, in his clothes and unwashed. The wounds, according to custom, bore testimony to his martyrdom.

His family said a convoy of 100 cars carrying 250 people accompanied Khalaf`s body. And in the mourning that ensued, Khalaf went from spectacle to hero. The three men he owed money forgave his loans, said Omar Aani, the sheik at the village mosque. Neighbors collected money for his children, now considered by Islamic tradition to be orphans. A family that had battled with Khalaf for a year over the rights to water from an irrigation canal apologized to his family and declared they were ashamed by their enmity.

"They recognized that he was a true hero," said Khaled, the childhood friend. "They regretted not talking to him."

In private, a few in Albu Alwan voiced rumors that Khalaf may have been motivated in part by money. Others vigorously and sometimes angrily shook their heads at the suggestion, a denial motivated perhaps more by respect than reality.

"The most important thing is that he was so upset" by the soldiers, said Muwaffaq Khaled, a 21-year-old neighbor. "Money wasn`t important because he knew he would be killed. If I`m Muslim and I respect God, I can`t die for money. It`s haram, forbidden."

"I know him well," his brother, Mawlud, interjected. "It wasn`t a matter of money."

In villages like Albu Alwan, bound by tradition and populated by Sunni Muslims who have bristled most at the occupation, many insist they are confused by the source of attacks on U.S. troops. Are they loyalists of Hussein, or driven by Islam?

At one house, a neighbor of Khalaf, Saad Kamil, 22, expressed puzzlement at graffiti he saw recently in nearby Fallujah. One slogan saluted Hussein as "the hero of heroes." But another intoned in religious terms, "God bless the holy fighters of the city of mosques." Nearby was graffiti that read, "Fallujah will remain a symbol of jihad and resistance."

"People are confused. Is it for Saddam or is it for Islam?" he asked. "I tell you I don`t know."

But a week following his death, Khalaf`s decision to fight the Americans had become a larger symbol of objections to the occupation. A 23-year-old shopkeeper across the street from Kamil`s house, Abdel-Salam Ahmed, called Khalaf a hero motivated by hatred of the American presence that many in the village have found humiliating. What will follow, he said, is clear. "Revenge is part of our tradition," he said.

Khalaf`s brother talked of the promises he said were broken by the Americans -- a share of Iraq`s oil they were supposed to receive, $100 payments that would come with better rations, jobs and prosperity that were supposed to follow more than 12 years of sanctions. His brother-in-law complained of the daily degradations -- U.S. soldiers making men bow their heads to the ground, an act he said should only be done before God. He recalled soldiers pointing guns at men in front of their children and wives.

"He has become a model for everyone to follow," said Aani, the village sheik, who acknowledged that he had to ask friends who Khalaf was after he died. "The person who resists this situation becomes an example."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Spanish-Language Media Expand
Broadcasters, Newspapers Pursue Fast-Growing Market

By Frank Ahrens and Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 11, 2003; Page A01


Only a generation ago, the national Hispanic media landscape was a spare one, populated by a handful of old-line community newspapers, low-wattage AM radio stations and one struggling television network. Before 1990, there was no local Spanish-language television programming broadcast in Washington.

In the coming months, Spanish-language newspapers will debut or expand in Dallas, Orlando and Chicago. Spanish-language radio companies have been buying FM stations that cost $250 million each. Spanish-language television stations are top-rated in major cities. And a merger between the dominant Spanish-language television network and largest radio chain appears about to win federal approval this month, creating the first Hispanic media giant, an entity with enough firepower to reach nearly every member of the nation`s largest minority group.

The Hispanic population spike in the United States and an attendant surge in disposable income over the past decade have driven the media growth. Hispanics passed blacks for the first time as the nation`s largest minority in the most recent U.S. Census, comprising 13 percent of the population, and accounted for half of the nation`s population growth between 2000 and 2002. The Hispanic influence can be felt nationally and locally in a variety of arenas, such as politics and big league baseball and even on the side of Washington`s Metrobuses, where Giant Food supermarket ads appear in Spanish.

Spanish speakers in Washington -- considered a mid-level Hispanic market compared with New York and Los Angeles -- are served by two broadcast television stations, eight AM and FM radio stations, a cable network, about two dozen daily and weekly Spanish-language newspapers, and various Web sites.

"We liken it to when the baby boomer generation was coming out of World War II," said McHenry T. Tichenor Jr., president of Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., the nation`s largest Spanish-language radio chain. "It`s a young population just forming households in numbers similar to the baby boomers. They`re at a stage in their lifecycle where their earning power is about to take off. [They] are a very desirable consumer for a lot of categories and a lot of advertisers."

Perhaps the most promising news for Spanish-language media companies: Research shows there is an increasing appetite among Hispanics for Spanish-language media, even as second- and third-generation immigrant offspring assimilate to English.

The leader in the Hispanic market is Los Angeles-based Univision Communications Inc. Relative to its audience, Univision wields a clout unequaled by any of its much-larger English-language media counterparts, such as News Corp., which owns Fox broadcast and cable networks and several television stations.

Univision -- with 50 stations and 43 affiliates -- routinely gets more than 80 percent of the Spanish-speaking television audience in cities where it broadcasts, distancing rival Telemundo, which has 15 stations and 32 affiliates and is owned by NBC parent General Electric Co. Univision`s KMEX in Los Angeles is the city`s top-rated television station among 18-to-49-year-old viewers.

Now, the Federal Communications Commission appears likely to approve Univision`s $3 billion bid to buy Tichenor`s Hispanic Broadcasting. The merger is endorsed by several Latino leaders and public interest groups, but it has been strenuously opposed by some -- most notably, rival radio chain Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., whose own bid for Hispanic Broadcasting was spurned last year for Univision`s.

Those who favor the merger say it will improve media choices for Hispanic consumers by giving the combined companies the muscle to compete for advertising dollars with English-language media conglomerates, such as Viacom Inc., which owns the CBS television network, several cable channels and 39 television stations.

"When you go to see advertisers and you walk in to sell something and you`ve got a TV station and he`s Viacom, he can make a better sales pitch," said Ray Rodriguez, Univision president. "We believe putting our two companies together gets us one step closer to being able to compete better with English-language giants, and that only makes sense."

Opponents of the merger argue that the Hispanic media audience is essentially a closed market that does not compete with English-language media, a notion Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting dispute. Critics say the merger will give the combined companies a virtual monopoly over the Spanish-speaking audience that the FCC and Justice Department would never allow among bigger media companies.

"Univision already has such a dominant position . . . by adding the No. 1 radio chain to all these other business lines, they are going to be a very anti-competitive, monopolistic behemoth," said Raul Alarcon, president of Spanish Broadcasting. "This will be the death of Hispanic media from a competitive view."

The Hispanic media industry is still tiny compared with the English-language giants: Viacom is worth about $74 billion while Univision is valued at $7 billion. Compared with Clear Channel Communications Inc.`s 1,200 radio stations, Hispanic Broadcasting`s 69 stations barely register.

Yet among some Hispanic consumers and smaller media outlets, the prospect of creating a Spanish-language media gigante is worrisome, paralleling concerns about the English-language media industry. Many fear that more consolidation will lead to less localism. Unlike, say, Rupert Murdoch`s News Corp., whose revenue accounts for 2.8 percent of the U.S. media pie, a combined Univision/Hispanic Broadcasting conglomerate could be a big fish in a small pond.

"The consolidation is crazy. It is not good for minorities," said Alejandro Carrasco, longtime host of local talk radio show "Calentando la Mañana" ("Heating up the Morning") and owner of Spanish-language WACA-AM in Wheaton. "We will end up losing that touch with reality that is important to the community."

In many ways, the rising arc of Spanish-language media is following that of black radio and television in past generations. The success of Catherine L. Hughes`s Radio One empire and Robert L. Johnson`s Black Entertainment Television network are examples.

Now, Hispanic buying power is growing more rapidly than black buying power, according to a 2002 report by the University of Georgia`s Selig Center for Economic Growth that calculated disposable income. The study estimates that in 2005, black buying power will hit $760 billion; the figure will be $764 billion for Hispanics.

The `90s may be recalled as the Hispanic Decade, as the group`s economic clout rose from $223 billion in 1990 to $580.5 billion last year, according to the University of Georgia report. The growth is fueled not only by immigration but also by a birth rate that far exceeds the death rate.

Hispanic media -- like most minority media -- have struggled to overcome what is often known as the "ethnic discount," meaning that advertisers have spent less money targeting minority consumers, believing them to be less valuable.

Some progress has been made, said Wendy Thompson, who manages Washington`s Telemundo affiliate and a local AM station. When she started making sales calls for the television station six years ago, one advertising representative told her: "No thank you. We don`t want those people shopping here," Thompson said.

Although Spanish-language television gets 5 percent of the total audience, it gets only 2 percent of the advertising budget spent on television, said Univision`s Rodriguez. Further, he said, 60 percent of advertisers don`t buy time on Spanish-language television. "Those ad dollars belong to us," Rodriguez said.

Univision began as Spanish International Network in 1961, funded by Mexican television mogul Emilio Azcarraga. Now, in addition to its station group and network, the company owns Galavision, a Spanish-language cable network with 6 million subscribers, operates TeleFutura, a 16-station Spanish-language network, and owns Latino record labels and a popular Internet site.

The merger with Hispanic Broadcasting is backed by prominent Latino individuals and organizations, such as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), former Univision president and Clinton cabinet member Henry Cisneros and the National Council of La Raza, perhaps the most prominent nonprofit, non-partisan Hispanic advocacy group.

The merger is opposed by rival Hispanic broadcasters, groups such as the National Association of Hispanic Publications and Telemundo. A subplot to the opposition is the race factor: Spanish Broadcasting`s Alarcon noted that Univision chief executive A. Jerrold Perenchio is not Hispanic. Univision counters that half of Univision`s board of directors is Hispanic, along with 80 percent of its employees.

Allowing Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting to merge "would be like the four major networks [ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox] merging and then buying Clear Channel," said one Hispanic media executive who did want to be identified criticizing Univision.

Not so, say Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting executives, whose research shows that more than half of the nation`s Hispanics do not watch Spanish-language television.

"Hispanics in this country watch everything," said Univision`s Rodriguez. "They don`t just watch one channel. They do like us a lot better than Telemundo, they like our programming better, but they also like ABC and CNN."

Television and radio get about 88 percent of Hispanic media advertising dollars, with newspapers scraping for the rest, Hispanic media executives say. "Univision has done a great job of convincing advertisers that Latinos don`t read," said Rosanna Rosado, publisher of El Diario/La Prensa, the nation`s oldest Hispanic newspaper, based in New York. Also, she points out, more than one-third of U.S. Hispanics are under 18 years old, a group that typically prefers television to newspapers.

Nevertheless, the Hispanic print is a growing industry, as national newspaper wars attest.

Last month, El Diario was bought from Spanish-language broadcaster Entravision Communications Corp. by an investor group led by California-based Clarity Partners for $19.9 million. "There is a very, very strong and growing audience for Spanish-language papers, and that`s the market we`re going after," said Douglas Knight, of Toronto`s Knight Paton Media, one of the buyers of El Diario, which has recently lost readers to Hoy, a Spanish-language daily launched in 1999 by the Tribune Co.`s Newsday.

In Chicago, the Tribune Co. hopes to capitalize on the success of Newsday`s Hoy by launching a 25-cent version in September, replacing the free weekly Spanish-language Exito.

In Dallas, Belo Corp.`s Morning News will launch the six-day-a-week Al Dia in October, aimed at the region`s 1 million Hispanics, 90 percent of whom are Mexican. The nearby Fort Worth Star-Telegram, owned by Knight Ridder, has countered by taking its free and profitable La Estrella, which appears twice a week, to five days a week to go head-to-head with Al Dia.

El Nuevo Dia, the largest paper in Puerto Rico, begins a daily tabloid this month in Orlando, home to more than 140,000 Puerto Ricans. The Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel has published the weekly Spanish-language El Sentinel since 2001.

El Diario`s Rosado said that all Spanish-language media have ridden on the coattails, to an extent, on the rise of Hispanic celebrities.

"We`ve gotten a lot of help from J-Lo and Ricky Martin," she said. "We`re no longer walking into sales meetings having to convince people that the market exists. Now, we`re fighting for a bigger share of the pie."



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Posted on Mon, Aug. 11, 2003

RESPONSE TO GLOBAL WARMING

Frustrated with the Bush administration`s backpedaling and the lack of action by Congress on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, the governors of 10 Northeastern states are forging their own regional program to respond to global warming. Their commitment should motivate our national leaders, and those in our own region, to display an equal measure of concern.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and seven neighboring states have agreed to craft a strategy to reduce the emissions that cause global warming. These emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, are building up in the Earth`s atmosphere, creating what`s called the greenhouse effect by trapping heat. According to much credible scientific research, this phenomenon could raise average global temperatures and alter our climate. Areas that tend toward aridity could become deserts. Water could become scarcer in America`s ``bread basket,`` the Midwest, and, contrarily, storms and hurricanes could become more frequent and powerful. Coastal regions such as Florida would see beaches erode further as the sea level rises and threatens to invade fresh-water supplies in shallow inlands.

Of course, natural long-range trends in climate change also will play a role. But where humans can`t do much about nature`s actions, they can do a great deal about the consequences of their own. Why gamble that this serious man-made threat could be offset by natural phenomena?

The trouble is, President Bush and his advisors don`t accept the abundant research on global warming. Mr. Bush has rejected the Kyoto Accord to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions to below 1990 levels. Recently, the president again called for yet ``more study`` on global warming instead of mandating meaningful remedies. A recent assessment of the state of the environment by the Environmental Protection Agency was watered down by the White House to minimize possible effects of uncurbed greenhouse-gas emissions.

But if the White House is beating a retreat on global warming, that doesn`t mean that Congress has to follow its lead. Yet the House essentially adopted the Bush administration`s pro-energy stance. And the Senate couldn`t muster anything better than to revive its 2002 version of energy legislation, which is only slightly more progressive than the House bill.

Given the relationship between our governor and the president, there`s little chance that Gov. Bush will follow the example of his Northeastern counterparts and launch a regional movement here to reduce greenhouse gases. That could result in a painful loss for Florida that will linger long after Gov. Bush has moved on.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6504226.ht…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6504226.ht…

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Published on Wednesday, August 6, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Nuclear Weapons Are No Cure For American Epidemic Of Fear
by Ira Chernus

I had never seen a nuclear missile silo. For years, I had known about the 49 Minuteman missiles not far from my home, beneath the prairie grasslands of northeast Colorado. Each is armed with a bomb many times more powerful than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had heard of these silos. But I was not prepared for the impact of seeing them.

First, you notice the distances. To drive across the whole Colorado field takes two or three hours. That`s just the smallest piece of the field, which stretches across southeast Wyoming and western Nebraska. And that`s just the smallest of the three Minuteman fields (the bigger ones are in South Dakota and Montana). The whole upper Great Plains has been turned into a huge arsenal, with enough firepower to effectively destroy civilization in the northern hemisphere in a single day.

Then you see the eerie contrast between the beautifully soft, golden, grass-covered prairie and the stark white, cold, hard, concrete slab that covers the silo, surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain fence. "Deadly Force Authorized," the sign on the gate warns. Translation: If someone paid by the U.S. government (with our tax dollars) does not like what you are doing out there, he can shoot you, no questions asked.

Of course, that is now official U.S. policy around the world. If our leaders don`t like what`s going on in some nation or other, they claim the right to overthrow its government-by any means necessary. Even Minuteman missiles? if it comes to that, "Deadly Force Authorized." No questions asked.

At least, not enough questions asked by the U.S. media and public to stop this American arrogance, which is undermining respect for our nation throughout the world. When pollsters ask, "What nation with weapons of mass destruction poses the greatest the greatest threat to peace?", growing majorities in many nations quickly respond: the USA.

Why does the U.S. adopt this aggressive attitude toward the international community? Don`t blame it on 9/11. The Minuteman missiles have been there for 35 years. But U.S. bombs, guns, and policies have been threatening people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds for much longer than that.

When I saw the startling contrast between grassy wilderness and concrete silo, the whole picture came clear. The first Europeans who came to America were afraid of the wilderness and the people who lived in the wilderness. So they couldn`t leave the wilderness alone. They had to try to tame it. They decided that the only way to cope with their fear was to have weapons powerful enough to wipe out any enemy.

For centuries, we have suffered a national epidemic of fear-fear not only of the wilderness, but of "wild" people, people different from us, people we don`t yet understand. We have built our nation on the belief that the only way to cure the epidemic of fear is more power, more weapons, more efforts to control those who are different. The deadly combination of fear, power, and threat has poisoned the pristine wilderness and the soul of America.

The sickness in our national soul led us to fill the wilderness with nuclear missiles, the ultimate symbol of our fear and power, our hope of overpowering every wilderness, everything thing we can`t control. It led us to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now it has led three nuns to jail. I went to a missile silo, along with hundreds of others, the day after a federal judge sent the nuns to prison for the "crime" of pouring their own blood on a missile silo. On July 26, those hundreds spent the whole day driving, standing, singing, praying, and demonstrating in the blistering heat.

They knew that America`s weapons of mass destruction only make the world more frightening for all of us. At the same time, though, nuclear weapons tempt us with a fantasy of infinite power as the antidote to fear. Of course, that fantasy never can work. You can`t cure a disease with the very thing that feeds the disease. You can`t get beyond fear by creating more fear. You only build up more fear, which leads to more violence in the vain hope of protecting yourself.

The anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a good time to reflect on our national epidemic of fearing the unknown and trying to conquer it with threats of destruction-threats that were carried out all too often, bringing violence and death the American way.

It is also a good time to reflect on the antinuclear movement, which brought those hundreds to the missile silos in the wilderness. The movement has seemed to disappear several times, only to be reborn again and again. Antinuclear activists won`t go away until the weapons of mass destruction have gone away. The weapons won`t go away until we find constructive remedies to cure our fear and create a healthy national life.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. [e-mail]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0806-05.htm

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RALL`S RULE OF IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE
Wed Aug 6, 8:03 PM ET Add Op/Ed - Ted Rall to My Yahoo!


By Ted Rall

NEW YORK--Leftist or centrist? That`s the big question facing Democrats in the run-up to next year`s primaries. "The way to beat George Bush is not to be like him," declares former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose feisty antiwar rhetoric has caught fire among liberals and made him the current frontrunner for the nomination. Seizing the centrist standard of the Clintonites, Senator Joe Lieberman warns that a liberal standard-bearer like Dean "could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come. It could be, really, a ticket to nowhere."

"[Democrats`] major goal is to beat George W. Bush," says Dick Bennett of the American Research Group, whose latest poll shows a third of Democrats undecided in evaluating the nine declared hopefuls. Among the other two-thirds, Dean leads, followed by liberal Sen. John Kerry, Lieberman and Rep. Dick Gephardt (news - web sites).


Turning left means disaster, argues the centrist Democratic Leadership Council: they say Dean, who opposes the Iraq (news - web sites) war, would be 2004`s George McGovern. When DLC poster boy Bill Clinton (news - web sites) co-opted GOP platform planks like welfare reform and deficit reduction in 1992, he defeated the first President Bush (news - web sites). "The Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" asks DLC chairman Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. "The [Bush] administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is being taken over by the far left."


History suggests that that may be a good thing.


Try to imagine an ideological 50-yard line, a perfect middle-of-the-road position that represents the median of American political thinking at any given time. George W. Bush falls as far to the right of that line as any president in memory. Bill Clinton sat a little to the left of that line; FDR was about as far to the left as Bush is to the right. In modern history, challengers have been most likely to beat incumbent presidents or vice presidents when they seemed to reside the same distance from that 50-yard line as their opponent. If you`re trying to unseat a moderate, swing voters are key. Your best bet is to run as one yourself. But moderates don`t beat extremists--extremists do, by motivating their base.


Call it Rall`s Rule of Ideological Counterbalance.


In 1992, Bill Clinton faced an incumbent president who had run as a "kinder and gentler" Republican, a spacey New Age dude who urged Americans to become "a thousand points of light." A values, fiscal and foreign policy moderate, George Bush I raised taxes. He refused his Gulf War (news - web sites) generals` entreaties to ignore the U.N. and push on to Baghdad. Though the recession hurt him, Bush hadn`t scared or angered independent voters enough to make them turn to a left-wing Democrat. Clinton ran as a moderate--even his health-care plan, his platform`s sole concession to liberalism, fell far short of socialized medicine--and won over an electorate eager for a change, but not a drastic one.


The DLC formula also applies to 1976, when a moderate Southern Democrat beat incumbent president Gerry Ford, a moderate Republican. Revisionist GOP pundits like to cast Jimmy Carter as a charter member of the "lunatic left" (they love their alliteration) but his budget launched the Reagan defense build-up of the `80s. Carter enacted the current draft registration system. And, to punish the Soviets for invading Afghanistan (news - web sites), he boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Carter, like Clinton, ran and governed as a centrist Proto-New Democrat.


When going up against right-wing Republican incumbents, however, Democrats do better with left-wing challengers. John F. Kennedy, an unabashed "Eastern establishment" liberal, won against an incumbent vice president--Richard Nixon--famous as a right-wing McCarthyite. The unabashedly liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned against the militantly pro-business Herbert Hoover with the mondo-leftie New Deal. In both cases, voters felt that the political pendulum had swung too far right over the previous eight years; only a liberal Democrat president could correct that imbalance.


Reagan`s 1980 defeat of Carter (right-winger beats moderate) is the only modern presidential election that doesn`t validate the ideological-balance rule. In 1996, however, challenger Bob Dole failed to distance himself from Newt Gingrich`s extremist "Republican Revolution" of 1994, came off as a right-winger, and lost to moderate Democrat Clinton. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis was far more left than the moderate Bush I of `88; Mondale`s milquetoast moderation failed to attract sufficient angry liberal voters to counter Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)`s energized supporters in 1984.


Rall`s Rule cuts both ways. Right-wing conservative Barry Goldwater might have given FDR a run for his money in 1936 but his hardcore "extremism is no vice" rhetoric spooked voters weighing him against Lyndon Johnson--who was, by 1964 standards, a centrist Southern Democrat. Four years later, Richard Nixon had learned from Goldwater`s landslide defeat. During his `60s wilderness years, he recast himself as a moderate Republican, implied that he would end the Vietnam War, and defeated Vice President Humphrey, a moderate Democrat who implied that he wouldn`t.


What about DLC bogeyman George McGovern? Before his 1972 reelection campaign, Richard Nixon had created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act. He negotiated the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War. He went to China, leading to the first U.S. diplomatic recognition of Communist China. He imposed anti-inflationary wage and price controls that enraged corporate America. Nixon`s first term was one of moderate Republicanism. McGovern ran as a hard-left Democrat. Rall`s Rule successfully explains the outcome.


As Democrats decide which approach to take against George W. Bush, a right-wing extremist whose agenda makes Barry Goldwater look tame by comparison, they should carefully consider recent history. A moderate nominee like Lieberman might have been a safe bet against Bush`s father, but he`s extremely unlikely to beat his radical son.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&u=/030807/7/4…

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Top 11 reasons Bush redacted 28 pages of the 9-11 report:
11. Wanted to try out the new, black "highlighter" Dick Cheney gave him.

10. Sabotage: photocopier damaged by departing Clinton staffers.

9. Ritualistic homage to Richard Nixon.

8. Eliminates questions about tens of thousands of pages entirely withheld by the White House.

7. Accident: Sometimes if he`s not following along with his "Sharpie" he can`t hear himself read.

6. Concerned about profanity in the report, Bush censored every word he did not know.

5. Saudi Arabia`s new PR guy is a genius!

4. George Tenet didn`t tell him exactly what not to do at that particular moment.

3. Hubris.

2. Love means never having to say you`re Saudi.

And the number one reason Bush redacted 28 pages of the 9-11 report

1. He`d like a second term.

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/

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Am Samstag hat Blair den Rekord gebrochen für einen Labour-MP. Er ist nun der MP mit der längste Dienstzeit von allen, die Labour jemals gestellt hat. Die Frage bleibt, wie lange noch. Als erstes wird der Rücktritt von Hoon erwartet.

A call to arms, a troubled scientist and the unravelling of a mysterious death
By Paul Vallely
11 August 2003


Almost a year has passed since Tony Blair`s Government issued its first fateful dossier on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. This was not what became known as the "dodgy dossier". That came later. But, as it happened, the controversy surrounding the first dossier on the threat from Saddam Hussein was far more grave.

Dr David Kelly, a former Porton Down scientist and UN weapons inspector in Iraq, was among those involved in compiling it. He had worked for the Ministry of Defence as an expert on biological warfare for the past four years. The dossier was published on 24 September 2002. It contained the portentous warning that Saddam Hussein had chemical or biological weapons ready to use within 45 minutes of the order being given.

We now know, that David Kelly was expressing reservations about this core claim. We know this - even before the Hutton Inquiry takes its first evidence today - because since Dr Kelly`s body was found near his Oxfordshire home on 18 July a stream of intriguing new details have emerged.

In October 2002, Dr Kelly gave a slide show and lecture about his experiences as a weapons inspector in Iraq to a small almost private gathering of the Baha`i faith, which aims to unite the teachings of all the prophets. Dr Kelly had converted to the religion three years earlier, while in New York on attachment to the UN. When he returned to England he became treasurer of the small but influential Baha`i branch in Abingdon near his home.

Roger Kingdon, a member, recalls: "He had no doubt that [the Iraqis] had biological and chemical weapons. It was clear that David Kelly was largely happy with the material in the dossier, but he was not so happy with how the material had been interpreted."

Several months later - the date is unclear - Dr Kelly bumped into Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State and confronted him, a meeting which the politician later claimed to forget. Exactly what was said will probably never be known. But conversations between Dr Kelly and his friend, Tom Mangold, the television journalist, suggest that while he was broadly supportive of the document`s content he was sceptical of the "45-minutes" claim.

"We laughed about that," Mr Mangold said later. "He reminded me it would take the most efficient handlers at least 45 minutes just to pour the chemicals or load the biological agents into the warheads." A precise man, Dr Kelly was irritated by inaccuracy; he believed the dossier exaggerated intelligence for effect.

He said as much on 7 May when he spoke by telephone to Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC2`s Newsnight - a conversation which, though he did not know it, she wasrecording. And Dr Kelly voiced the same reservations, it is claimed, when the pivotal meeting in the whole sorry affair occurred - with Andrew Gilligan, the defence correspondent of the Today programme, two weeks later on 22 May.

Seven days after that, on 29 May, Mr Gilligan told the Radio 4 audience, "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the September dossier said the Government probably knew the 45-minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in". He quoted him as saying: "Downing Street, a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed-up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be discovered". The intelligence services were unhappy because the end product did not reflect their considered view.

Later that day another reporter became involved. Gavin Hewitt, working for BBC1`s News at Ten O`Clock, rang Dr Kelly in an attempt to substantiate Mr Gilligan`s story. He did not realise he was speaking to Mr Gilligan`s source.

Mr Hewitt that night broadcast: "In the final week before publication some material was taken out and some put in. Some spin from No 10 did come into play." But he also added: "Even so the intelligence community remains convinced weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq."

Two days later Susan Watts phoned Dr Kelly again and discussed the "45-minutes" claim. That Sunday, 1 June, Mr Gilligan wrote a piece in The Mail on Sunday in which he went further than on radio. He said the man responsible for the exaggeration was Alastair Campbell, the Government`s director of communications and strategy.

The next night Susan Watts was on Newsnight again. She told viewers she had spoken to a senior official intimately involved with the process of pulling together the dossier. She said: "Our source made clear that in the run-up to publishing the dossier the Government was obsessed with finding intelligence on immediate Iraq threats, and the Government`s insistence that the Iraqi threat was `imminent` was a Downing Street interpretation of intelligence conclusions."

She quoted the source as saying: "While we were agreed on the potential Iraqi threat in the future there was less agreement about the threat the Iraqis posed at the moment. That was the real concern, not so much what they had now but what they would have in the future, but that unfortunately was not expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes the case away for war to a certain extent."

Of the "45-minute" claim, the source added: "It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion. They were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information that could be released. That was one that popped up and it was seized on, and it is unfortunate that it was. That is why there is the argument between the Intelligence Services and No 10, because they picked up on it, and once they had picked up on it you cannot pull it back from them."

Looking back there is an interesting additional element. Though the Government issued a rebuttal to Mr Gilligan`s original report, that was all. About a week later Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell had dinner with BBC executives, including the editor of Today. They discussed various things, but not the Gilligan affair. The Government, it appeared, became angry in retrospect - on the day of Alastair Campbell`s appearance before the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

A fortnight later, on 19 June, Andrew Gilligan gave evidence to the foreign affairs committee. He maintained his line and refused to name his source. The next week, on 25 June, Mr Campbell appeared before the same MPs. He admitted he had been intimately involved in the dossier`s presentation, suggesting amendments to the Joint Intelligence Committee - he had even chaired some meetings. But he denied adding material to the dossier. He upped the stakes by demanding an apology from the BBC.

It was now that Dr Kelly began to feel uncomfortable. Back in the office the following Monday, 30 June, Dr Kelly`s colleagues were talking about the foreign affairs committee hearings. The turning point came when a colleague pointed to Mr Gilligan`s claim that his source had said it was "30 per cent likely" that Iraq had a chemical weapons programme in the six months before the war, and that though it was "more likely" there were biological weapons, it would have been reduced "because you could not conceal a larger programme. The sanctions were actually quite effective; they did limit the programme." These were, the colleague noted, the precise phrases used by Dr Kelly in discussions with colleagues.

David Kelly realised the game was up. He confessed to his bosses that he might be the source for some of the information - but not all of it. And not the damaging detail on the "45-minute" claim. It was a high risk strategy, but being accused by someone else would have been worse. He might have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. His career was at risk. And so, possibly, a year from retirement, was his pension. They might prevent him from going to Iraq that weekend to join the Iraq Survey Group which was hunting for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Kelly wrote that day, 30 June, to his immediate boss, and said he thought he might have been the source of some, but crucially not all, of the Gilligan story. His letter said he had met the BBC reporter whose description of his meeting with his source "in small part matches my interaction with him, especially my personal evaluation of Iraq`s capability". But that was all.

He wrote: "I can only conclude one of three things. Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who truly were intimately associated with the dossier; or he has assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles."

Almost as soon as the letter was received government ministers were briefed. Detailed discussions took place. On 4 July Dr Kelly was interviewed by his line manager and by Richard Hatfield, the personnel director of the MoD. According to the MoD, Dr Kelly was told to go away for the weekend and "think over his options". He returned to work on 7 July, to more questioning. That day, the foreign affairs committee pronounced that Alastair Campbell was not guilty of "sexing-up" the dossier.

Dr Kelly was told he would have to appear before the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee to discuss his meeting with Mr Gilligan. The meeting would be in camera and Dr Kelly was promised anonymity. But the MoD broke that understanding. Exactly who did is unclear. Lord Hutton will be quizzing, on that subject, Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon, Sir Kevin Tebbit, the MoD`s most senior civil servant, Richard Hatfield, its personnel chief, and Pam Teare, its head of news. But whoever made the decision, what is clear is that the MoD fixed on a highly unusual strategy of agreeing to "confirm or deny" any guesses put to it by journalists.

On 8 July, Geoff Hoon wrote to Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC, enclosing a statement which the MoD were going to issue that day saying that Mr Gilligan`s mole had come forward. He was not to be named, but he was not a senior intelligence source nor was he involved in the preparation of the dossier, as the BBC had claimed. Mr Hoon offered to tell Mr Davies the name "in confidence, on the basis that you would then immediately confirm or deny that this is indeed Mr Gilligan`s source". The BBC refused. The MoD issued the statement citing an anonymous official who believed he was Mr Gilligan`s source for some of his report. The inference was that the rest was made up.

The emotional temperature rose higher. Tony Blair justified Downing Street`s ferocious pursuit of the BBC on the grounds that Andrew Gilligan`s allegations were just about "the most serious charge" anyone could level against a Prime Minister. On 9 July, Guto Harri, the BBC political correspondent, spoke of Tony Blair doing "some BBC-bashing."

That day the MoD personnel director wrote to Dr Kelly stating that his "behaviour had fallen well short of the standard he expected from a civil servant of his standing and experience", but that "it would not be appropriate to initiate formal disciplinary proceedings".

His punishment was to be different. The same day Downing Street and MoD officials began leaking details of Dr Kelly`s career, designed to assist journalists to identify him. Twowere told Dr Kelly`s name.

The pressure on Dr Kelly was growing. He was asked if he wanted to take his wife to Jersey, where a Foreign Office house would be made available. Dr Kelly declined.

On 10 July a number of newspapers named Dr David Kelly as the official behind the Gilligan story. They quoted government sources triumphantly insisting Dr Kelly was a middle-ranking official, not a "senior and credible source", and that he had no access to intelligence briefings - both claims are untrue. They said he had only provided some input for a background section on UN weapons inspections for the dossier, that he was not a member of the intelligence services, had not seen the key material relating to the "45-minute" claim, and was not in a position to know if Downing Street had wanted to "sex-up" the document.

The BBC countered that Dr Kelly was an "intelligence source" in the broadest sense because he knew a lot about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction and would have seen secret material. But the BBC still refused to confirm Dr Kelly as its source. That day Dr Kelly, who was holidaying in Cornwall, received a summons to appear before the foreign affairs and the intelligence and security select committees on 15 July.

His appearance at the foreign affairs committee was televised. There, he was read a transcript of the Susan Watts Newsnight interview and said: "I do not recognise those comments." Asked if he had had any conversations with Gavin Hewitt, he replied: "Not that I am aware of, no. I am pretty sure I have not." Questioned on whether he had been critical of Mr Campbell to Mr Gilligan he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and closed his eyes before saying: "I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that context, it does not sound like a thing that I would say."

At the end of the 176-question grilling the Labour-dominated committee concluded that Dr Kelly could not have been the BBC`s main source. To many commentators Dr Kelly came across as uneasy and evasive; and we now know at least one of his answers was untrue.

The next day, 16 July, Dr Kelly gave evidence in private to the intelligence and security committee and then, friends and family have since revealed, went home to Oxfordshire, deeply upset and unhappy. Some reports said he felt he had been humiliated by the committee, others that he felt his MoD bosses had put him in an impossible position, others that he was uncomfortable at discrepancies in his testimony.

Something now seems to have snapped for David Kelly. Had he felt - or been told - his performance hadn`t been good enough? Did he fear losing his job, or calculate that his family would do better financially if he died in service? Did he fear what Mr Gilligan might say when he reappeared before the foreign affairs committee that day? Might he have learned that the BBC had a tape of his conversation with Susan Watts?

Or might he have felt he had compromised his integrity? The Baha`i faith is strong on veracity; one of its scriptures says: "The individual must be educated to such a high degree that he would rather have his throat cut than tell a lie, or think it easier to be slashed with a sword or pierced with a spear than to utter calumny."

On the face of it everything seemed normal the next morning, 17 July. Dr Kelly, finished a report for the Foreign Office. And though he e-mailed a journalist on The New York Times and wrote of "dark actors" at work around him he sent up-beat e-mails to Alistair Hay, a fellow scientist, and Roger Kingdon. "Hopefully it will soon pass and I can get to Baghdad and get on with the real job," he wrote to Mr Hay. To Mr Kingdon, his co-religionist, he wrote: "I`m hopeful things will be calming down in a week or so and I`ll be going back to Baghdad."

He never did. That afternoon at 3pm - almost the exact time Mr Gilligan was again before the foreign affairs committee - David Kelly left home, telling his wife he was going for a walk. He did not return.

Just before midnight his wife alerted the police, and the next morning, 18 July, at 9.20, police found his body at Harrowdown Hill, a few miles away from his home. A post-mortem found the cause of death was bleeding from wounds to his left wrist. The fact that several incisions had been made - and that his watch appeared to have been removed whilst blood was already flowing, together with the removal of his spectacles - suggested suicide, experts said.

Not everyone agreed. Some doctors pointed out that slashing one wrist was an unreliable method of suicide. The fact that four electrocardiogram electrode pads were found on his chest aroused some people to suggestions of murder, though cardiologists said, most likely, Dr Kelly had earlier been wearing a portable monitor to diagnose a possible heart problem.

Two days later, on 20 July, the story took a new twist. The BBC acknowledged that Dr Kelly had been the primary source of its reportr. Andrew Gilligan came under renewed fire. Even if it was true, as seemed clear from the supporting evidence of Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt that Dr Kelly had strong views about the "45-minute" claim, Mr Gilligan had gone further. He had quoted his source as asserting that "the Government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in". Critics pronounced that "sexed-up" was a phrase more to the taste of Andrew Gilligan than David Kelly.

Mr Gilligan was further damned a week later by a leak of the unpublished transcript of evidence he had given to the foreign affairs committee on his second appearance, after which he had been publicly criticised by Donald Anderson, the chairman. It purported to show that Mr Gilligan had admitted that Dr Kelly had not actually said Mr Campbell had inserted the "45-minutes" claim, but that Mr Gilligan had "inferred" it from their conversation. Mr Gilligan denied this was what he had meant, but it seemed the pressure had now shifted primarily onto the BBC.

Yet the twists were not over. News then broke that Susan Watts` conversation with Dr Kelly had been recorded. Richard Sambrook, the corporation`s director of news, was said to have smiled broadly after listening to it. Some insiders said Dr Kelly mentioned Mr Campbell there too. The BBC has refused to say, but has passed the tape to Lord Hutton. Then came an admission from the Ministry of Defence that documents relating to the Government`s media strategy on Dr Kelly had almost been incinerated. Unofficial reports suggested the MoD police had been called by a security guard after a senior official was discovered hurriedly shredding material. To cap it all, on the eve of David Kelly`s funeral, came the tasteless and preposterous attempt by a senior No 10 official, to suggest that Dr Kelly, the Government`s foremost expert on chemical and biological weapons, was a "Walter Mitty" style fantasist.

Yesterday there was yet another turn. It was reported that a two weeks ago, before Dr Kelly`s apparent suicide - Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, described the man as "eccentric and unreliable."

He even went so far as to circle the side of his head, a gesture suggesting madness. And he did so at a private dinner with James Robbins, the BBC`s diplomatic editor.

The Hutton inquiry takes its first evidence today. Though the story of Dr David Kelly`s final days is already a lot clearer there are still plenty of questions for Lord Hutton to ask.
11 August 2003 12:40


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-recall11aug11,1,5…

Officials Warn of Turmoil on Election Night
The list of candidates gets longer and still has not been set. Worries arise about whether balloting equipment will be up to the test.
By Allison Hoffman, Monte Morin and Megan Garvey
Times Staff Writers

August 11, 2003

As the list of candidates seeking to replace Gov. Gray Davis grew to nearly 200 names, officials warned Sunday of election night gridlock, with the outcome likely to be unclear days after the Oct. 7 vote.

Although the filing deadline passed Saturday at 5 p.m., the final number of candidates was not set on Sunday. Election officers throughout the state confirmed that 89 Californians had fulfilled all requirements and would appear on the ballot; the applications of at least 104 more were still being reviewed.

After Saturday`s furious pace, Sunday seemed quieter, with few of the best-known candidates making campaign appearances. Among the day`s developments:

• Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger released tax returns for 2000 and 2001, showing income of more than $57 million during the period.

• Another Republican candidate, state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), won the endorsement of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative group.

• Officials in Secretary of State Kevin Shelley`s office said they were still trying to determine what the recall will cost. Last week, Shelley had estimated the price at $53 million to $66 million, a figure that may now rise in light of the large number of candidates on the ballot.

In some counties with paper-based voting systems, such as Contra Costa and Sonoma, the large number of candidates will require three or more cards, making it necessary for the ballots to be read by hand to ensure each voter did not choose more than one alternative to Davis, election officials said.

Unlike newer electronic systems, paper ballots must be marked by pen or punched out and then read by election officials or tabulated by machines ill equipped to handle dozens of candidates in a single race.

Though it is not clear how many counties will face this problem in October, 27 counties used multi-card ballots in the last statewide election. Since then, some have switched to different voting systems and others still plan to do so in the next 57 days.

Steve Weir, Contra Costa County`s registrar of voters, said results in his county would not be ready until "maybe ... about 5 p.m. Thursday [Oct. 9]," two days after the polls close.

In Orange County, where voters will use a new oversized paper ballot — designed for absentee voting — officials said it may take close to 40 hours to count votes.

Although the new ballot was not intended to be used at the polling place, Registrar Steve Rodermund decided it was preferable to substantial problems posed by having so many names on the punch-card voting system the county is replacing.

"The only issue with using this [new absentee] ballot is that it`s not designed to count a few hundred thousand ballots in eight hours," Rodermund said. "So it`ll take a little bit longer, but we`ll know the numbers will be right."

On the ballot, voters first will be asked for a straight yes or no answer on whether Davis should retain his office. They then will be asked to vote for a successor in the event Davis receives less than 50% of the vote on the first question. If Davis loses the recall, whoever gets the most votes on the second question becomes the governor of California, a state with 36 million people and a $99-billion budget.

On Sunday morning, Schwarzenegger`s campaign staff wheeled in copies of two years of the actor-turned-politician`s tax returns on a brass luggage cart at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica.

Releasing only 2000 and 2001 tax returns, aides told reporters they were welcome to spend as long as they liked looking at the documents but could not remove them from the basement conference room.

The returns showed Schwarzenegger earning$31 million in 2000 and $26.1 million in 2001, paying more than $20 million in state and federal taxes, with the bulk of his income coming from his acting roles.

Campaign spokesmen said they did not release a 2002 return because it had not been filed yet.

Rivals had called on Schwarzenegger to release 10 years of tax returns. A similar issue caused problems for multimillionaire businessman Bill Simon Jr. during his 2002 run for governor against Davis. After pressure, he eventually released a decade`s worth of tax filings.

Gov. Davis` wife, Sharon, said at an afternoon anti-recall rally that she expects her husband`s fight against the recall to get the support of former President Clinton and his wife, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

"We look forward to having Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in California because they have been through this Republican attack," she said in an interview after speaking in West Los Angeles at an event organized by Women Against the Recall, a statewide coalition of women`s groups. "They have experienced it firsthand."

Sharon Davis touted her husband`s signing of the nation`s first paid family leave bill, his raising of the minimum wage and his efforts to provide affordable day care as among his accomplishments for the state.

"I could go on and on, but it is too hot," she told the crowd of about 70, many fanning themselves in the 90-plus-degree heat at Pan Pacific Park in Park La Brea.

The governor`s wife also criticized Schwarzenegger, obliquely in her comments to the crowd and more overtly in an interview.

She told her audience: "This election is not going to be won by someone who makes vague promises. This election is going to be about delivering big-time for California."

In an interview, she said: "All Arnold has promised is to make sure that everyone in California has a fantastic job. OK. The devil is in the details. What are the details? What is he promising to do and how is he going to get it done? You can promise people anything. It`s whether you can deliver on those promises that is important."

In Burbank, the California Republican Assembly, a group representing conservative voters, endorsed McClintock. None of the 110 delegates voted for Schwarzenegger.

"We do not have to moderate our views," McClintock told the crowd. "We can do as [Ronald] Reagan taught us to do, to paint our position in bold colors. And if we are true to the people, they will rally to us."

The East Coast-based Sunday morning talk shows were stocked full of California politicians, including McClintock, Simon, former Gov. Pete Wilson and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who bankrolled the recall effort only to withdraw his own candidacy last week.

Appearing for the Democrats were U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the most prominent Democrat on the ballot.

Several politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, took shots at Schwarzenegger for his silence so far on the major issues facing the state.

Davis also drew criticism from Republicans for what they said has been his mismanagement of the state`s finances, as well as from members of his own party for his past harsh political campaigning style.

He has been cautioned by some top Democrats not to revisit the strategy in his current fight to keep his job.

On CNN`s "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," Brown said it "would be very stupid" for Davis to sling mud at Schwarzenegger.

Both Brown and Feinstein said they strongly opposed the recall and would work for its failure.

Election officials throughout the state, meanwhile, grappled with the logistics of providing and counting such long ballots.

At least one company with a contract to print ballots for the state is going to a round-the-clock operation to be ready in time for the election.

"We can get it done, but the more ballots and the more cards needed means more proofreading and printing," said Alfie Charles, public affairs director for Sequoia Voting Systems of Exeter.

Complicating the task, Charles said, each company is required to have the ballot in the right order in the multiple languages required by law.

Inside the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder`s office Sunday, nearly 75 workers were busily verifying signatures, photocopying checks and registering new voters.

"We are really short on time to process the rest of the election paperwork," said Michael Petrucello, assistant registrar-recorder.

The normal working hours at the office are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. But on Friday and Saturday, workers stayed from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

They were back at 7 a.m. Sunday, walking past a lawn littered with the remains of the day before: crumpled "Bill Simon for Governor" signs, torn police tape and discarded cigarette butts.

In Sonoma County, Assistant Registrar of Voters Janice Atkinson said the recall is one of four elections that must be administered between now and November in a county of about 250,000 registered voters.

Legislative bills aimed at splitting the presidential and state primary dates will complicate matters further, she said.

"The complexity of elections in California is going to break the system," she said. "We can`t keep going at this rate, this pace and this level of complexity. The whole thing is a house of cards, and this is another card."

The large slate also poses other problems. Estimates for the recall`s cost have grown as the number of candidates has risen. Last week, the secretary of state estimated it would cost $53 million to $66 million. On Sunday, Shelley`s office was working on a revised, higher, estimate.

Today, Shelley is required by law to conduct a drawing to determine which letter of the alphabet will top the ballot in the 1st Assembly District, in Del Norte County. The first name on that ballot will drop to the end of the list in the 2nd Assembly District and rotate through the rest of the state, 80 districts in all.

In a typical election, with far fewer than 80 candidates for a single office, every person in the running would be at the top of the list at least once.

"Normally, everyone would get a few shots at being at the top of the ballot," said Fred Woocher, a Santa Monica attorney who specializes in election law. "But here, some people are never going to get up there."

Woocher said the random order was instituted to avoid giving any one candidate an unfair advantage because of people`s tendency to vote for the first name on the ballot.

Now, with so many names, the random order may create a new problem, he said.

"Voters are going to be handed stacks of cards, with the names in a random order," Woocher said.

"It`s going to be very difficult to find a name in that card. It`s not like people can say before the election, `Vote for me on Card 3!` "

Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Michael Cieply, Sue Fox, Erika Hayasaki, Hugo Martin and Esther Schrader contributed to this report.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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THE WORLD


Iraq`s Swift Defeat Blamed on Leaders
Missteps and erratic orders by Hussein and his son Qusai hastened the collapse of an already fractured military, ex-officers say.
By David Zucchino
Times Staff Writer

August 11, 2003

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein and his son Qusai crippled the Iraqi military through a multitude of erratic orders and strategic miscalculations, while its fighting units barely communicated with one another and were paralyzed from lack of direction, according to detailed interviews with more than a dozen former Iraqi commanders and servicemen.

These woes — compounded by incompetence, poor preparation, craven leadership and wholesale desertions of thousands of soldiers unwilling to die for Saddam Hussein — contributed to the Iraqi military`s quick and stunning collapse against invading U.S. forces in early April, the former fighters said.

Typical of the erratic orders were those imposed by Qusai upon a Republican Guard unit outside Baghdad. As American forces approached the city in late March, the unit received a new order every morning to reposition its tanks. Each order contradicted the one before, infuriating local commanders, Col. Raaed Faik recalled.

But the orders had to be obeyed. They arrived by courier on slips of paper signed by Qusai, Saddam`s younger son and commander of the Republican Guard.

Every time the tanks were moved from their bunkers, Faik said, a few more were exposed and destroyed by coalition air power. Meanwhile, he said, another commander was ordered to disable all three dozen of his tanks for fear they would be captured and used by Kurdish militias hundreds of miles north.

"These were the orders of an imbecile. Qusai was like a teenager playing a video war game," Faik, 33, said in the cool reception room of his Baghdad home, gesturing to his teenage son banging away on a computer combat game.

In the end, Saddam and Qusai were reduced to issuing commands from a convoy of civilian vehicles that retreated as U.S. tanks rolled into the capital, the former fighters said. Iraqi troops were largely without radios and maps. Field commanders dropped their weapons and fled. And soldiers waited in bunkers for orders that never arrived — in many cases, unaware even that Baghdad had been invaded, the fighters said.

Before the invasion, Saddam Hussein`s forces had been expected to put up a fierce defense of Baghdad, and U.S. officials warned that the Iraqis might even use chemical or biological weapons. Instead, the former Iraqi fighters said, orders to use chemical or biological weapons were never given because no such weapons existed.

Iraqi forces, who did not anticipate Americans would use tanks in urban combat inside the capital city, were largely unprepared for the ensuing armored onslaught. An eventual guerrilla war — now being waged by remnants of Iraqi forces and other Arab fighters — wasn`t planned for because Hussein didn`t think it would be necessary, the former Iraqi servicemen said.

And tactics that could have slowed U.S. forces, such as the mining of roads leading into Baghdad, were not employed because Hussein was confident his forces would repel the Americans.

"We should have mined the roads and bridges. We should have planned a guerrilla war," said retired Gen. Ahmed Rahal, 51. "We were crippled by a lack of imagination."

The command structure was confused from the start. Hussein was wary of concentrating power in one military force in case it might launch a coup, so he had created a number of jealous rival fighting groups — including the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and the Fedayeen Saddam militia — that never spoke to one another.

While the elite units were well armed and well paid, many regular army infantrymen were poorly paid and given just a single magazine of ammunition, former soldiers said. Regular army commanders schemed to undermine elite units, hoarding information and avoiding confrontations with U.S. forces. And many units were segregated by tribe or ethnic group, inhibiting coordination.

"We were like 10 different armies fighting their own private wars," said Nabil Qaisy, 31, a Baath Party militiaman who said he spent the battle cowering in a north Baghdad bunker, unaware that combat was raging in the city center a few miles away.

The military`s limited communications — only special units received reliable phones or radios — fell apart early on, the soldiers said. Cut off and confused, commanders resorted to sending out soldiers in vehicles to scavenge scraps of information — usually from other hopelessly uninformed units. One officer`s car was crushed by an American tank on such a mission, one commander said.

The entire military was plunged into chaos. Just before the U.S. assault, soldiers said, some officers ordered military vehicles spray-painted in civilian colors, intending to drive them home for personal use after deserting. A Republican Guard unit fleeing the city descended on a regular army camp and stole its vehicles, they said. And a Republican Guard unit armed only with automatic rifles was sent to confront U.S. tanks and "was absolutely slaughtered," Col. Faik said.

Desertions soared. As U.S. forces sped toward the capital, soldiers requested — and were granted — leaves to visit their families. Units listed on paper as full strength actually were less than half that, soldiers said, and many ceased to exist overnight.

"I woke up on the morning of April 5 and an entire battalion was gone. They had become vapors," said Maj. Jaffer Sadiq, 38, a special forces commander who said desertions depleted his company from 131 men to 10 between April 2 and April 5.

After being ordered April 2 to rush to Baghdad from the northern city of Kirkuk, Sadiq said, he was told that he would be joining 4,000 Republican Guard troops defending a site in central Baghdad. But when he arrived, he counted fewer than 1,000, he said, and most had deserted by the time the first U.S. tanks cut through southwest Baghdad three days later.

In several cases, soldiers said, they were ordered to desert. On April 4, they said, a Republican Guard tank brigade commander was told to abandon his tanks south of Baghdad and have his men change into civilian clothes. Minibuses took them to the northern city of Mosul, their home base, where the soldiers simply quit and went home.

The only forces that stood and fought, soldiers said, were Fedayeen Saddam militiamen and 4,000 to 5,000 guerrillas recruited from other Arab countries, who were armed chiefly with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Some of these fighters detained — and threatened to shoot — deserting Republican Guards, soldiers said.

These fighters, along with former Baath Party militiamen, are behind most of the ongoing attacks against U.S. forces, according to the former soldiers. They said the current guerrilla campaign was not planned but emerged as these fighters regrouped after Baghdad fell.

At times in early April, these elite units went to great lengths to project a facade of invincibility — even as they were going down in defeat.

After U.S. tanks smashed through southwest Baghdad on April 5, killing nearly 1,000 Iraqi soldiers according to U.S. commanders, Fedayeen militiamen claimed victory and celebrated downtown. They displayed charred corpses they claimed were bodies of U.S. soldiers, Faik said.

"I looked closer and saw they were Republican Guards, still in their uniforms with insignia," Faik said. "I spent 12 years in the Republican Guards. I know the difference between a Republican Guard soldier and an American soldier. I was appalled."

When he returned to headquarters an hour northeast of the capital and told fellow commanders that American tanks had penetrated Baghdad, Faik said, they called him a liar. Rumors swept through Iraqi units that the Fedayeen were hoisting American corpses on bayonets and that Qusai had been presented with severed heads of U.S. soldiers, commanders said.

But the truth was becoming inescapable. By April 7, according to two former soldiers, Saddam and Qusai Hussein had been reduced to commanding the military from a roving convoy of vehicles trying to stay one step ahead of American tanks pouring into the city center that morning.

A former Republican Guard general and division commander said he met with Saddam and Qusai at the 14th of July Bridge in central Baghdad early on April 7. The two leaders were in separate gold, four-wheel-drive Toyotas, said the general, who answered questions relayed by an aide on the condition that he not be identified, saying he feared arrest by U.S. occupation forces.

At that moment, the general said, the two leaders realized that most Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard soldiers assigned to defend the main palace complex had deserted.

Told that U.S. tanks were advancing on the strategic Jumhuriya Bridge, the general said, Saddam Hussein ordered 12 pickup trucks of Fedayeen to the bridge to hold off the column. "Imagine — a few pickup trucks against two battalions" of American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the general said.

Later that morning, the general said, Hussein changed cars, getting into an orange-and-white Nissan taxicab.

Harith Ahmed Uraibi, 24, an archivist at the Republican presidential palace who was also a Baath Party militiaman, said he fled on foot when U.S. tanks overran the palace early April 7. He stumbled upon Hussein`s convoy in front of a falafel restaurant near Jumhuriya Bridge. He said the president shouted at him: "What`s going on at the palaces?"

"I told him, `Mr. President, everything is finished,` " Uraibi said. "He didn`t say anything. His convoy just took off across the bridge, away from the palaces and all the tanks."

Most top officers knew nothing of Hussein`s whereabouts, commanders said. And those who remained at their posts rarely received orders of any kind.

"The only order I got was to dismantle my airplanes — the most idiotic order I ever received," said Brig. Gen. Baha Ali Nasr, 42, an air force commander who said Iraq`s entire fleet of MIG-23s, MIG-25s and Mirage fighters was ordered taken apart and buried. Dirt and grime in the pits and berms where the planes were buried ensured that they would never be airworthy again, he said.

The few commanders who realized how desperate the situation had become were afraid to relay honest battlefield assessments up the chain of command. "It was well known that President Hussein did not care to receive bad news," one former general said.

Others were deluded by the regime`s own propaganda. Many commanders said they actually believed Hussein`s hapless minister of information, Mohammed Said Sahaf, who brazenly denied that U.S. forces had entered Baghdad on April 7 and described the slaughter of Americans.

Talal Ahmed Doori, 32, a burly Baath Party militia commander and former bodyguard for Hussein`s older son, Uday, recalled turning a corner in his car early April 7 and coming face to face with an American M1A1 Abrams tank posted next to a tunnel in central Baghdad.

"I was absolutely astonished," Doori recalled. "I had no idea there were American tanks anywhere near the city."

When he slammed on his brakes, a vehicle behind him smashed into his car, Doori said. Both he and the other driver sped away as the tank swung its main gun toward them.

After the information minister claimed that Iraqi forces had retaken the Baghdad airport from U.S. troops, two former commanders said, Republican Guard Gen. Mohammed Daash was dispatched to check out a rumor that four or five American tanks had survived the Iraqi counterattack.

Daash returned to his headquarters in a panic. "Four or five tanks!" the commanders quoted Daash as telling his fellow generals. "Are you out of your minds? The whole damn American Army is at the airport!"

Nasr, the air force general, said that many commanders refused to believe the situation was dire until April 7, two days before Baghdad fell. When a terrified courier arrived at his Baghdad headquarters that day and described U.S. tanks overrunning Saddam Hussein`s palace complex, he said, "the looks on the faces of the officers were like each one had just discovered his parents had died."

Because each rival fighting force responded only to orders from the regime leadership, commanders were paralyzed with indecision.

"Initiative was discouraged," the former Republican Guard general said. "No one dared make a decision."

In retrospect, commanders said, it is easy to see how overconfidence and erroneous assumptions about the U.S. battle plan left the Iraqis unprepared for the assault on the capital.

Hussein, convinced that Republican Guard units posted south of Baghdad would repel American tanks, had decided not to mine highways or blow up bridges leading into the capital, commanders said. The infrastructure was left intact so that it could be used by Iraqi forces mounting counterattacks. But entire Republican Guard divisions were ravaged, first by coalition warplanes and then by tanks approaching the capital.

Hussein also was counting on high American casualties and captured U.S. soldiers to turn the American public against the war, commanders said. Video crews and interpreters were standing by to interview any captured Americans, said retired Gen. Juwad Dayni.

Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons.

Iraqi military planners assumed that Americans would dare not send tanks into an urban area and did not anticipate a direct tank assault on the capital, retired Gen. Rahal said.

Several commanders said that American casualties inflicted by Somali fighters in 1993 convinced the Iraqi leadership that U.S. forces had no stomach for a prolonged urban fight — apparently overlooking the fact that the U.S. had no armor in Somalia. The Iraqi leadership prepared instead for an airborne assault on selected regime targets, building a network of defensive bunkers and trenches.

"We weren`t prepared, but it didn`t matter because the tank assault was so fast and sudden," said Gen. Omar Abdul Karim, 50, a regular army commander. "The Americans were able to divide and isolate our forces. Nobody had any idea what was going on until it was too late."

In fact, Karim said, he did not realize the regime had collapsed until looters attempted to break into his headquarters April 9.

The former Republican Guard general who spoke on condition of anonymity was told by Qusai Hussein at the 14th of July Bridge on April 7 to retreat with other senior commanders to a secret, prearranged site in Baghdad to await instructions. Some generals waited there until the 9th, he said, then decided to go home.

The general said that he and a few others remained. At 4 a.m. April 10, the day after Baghdad fell, Qusai arrived. He told them to await orders for a counterattack, then sped away in a convoy.

"I never heard from Qusai again," the general said.

Today, the former soldiers say they are humiliated and ashamed. They spend their days brooding at home, adrift and unemployed. Those with the rank of colonel and above are ineligible to join the new Iraqi army now being trained by the U.S.

Col. Faik, wearing jeans and sandals, said he passes most days playing with his two sons and daughter in the capital`s middle-class Yarmouk district. He said he is proud of his 12-year Republican Guard career but feels betrayed by his leaders.

"Professional soldiers can`t fight without orders and inspiration from their leaders," he said. "But we had clowns for leaders. This is our tragedy."

Faik said soldiers used to hear Hussein say in speeches: "Saddam is Iraq and Iraq is Saddam." So in the end, he said, "when the time came to fight for this guy who sends us unprepared to fight a superior American military, no one was willing to die for Saddam."

Karim, the regular army commander, fears the 30 years that he served have been negated by the way the military capitulated. Yet still on display in his comfortable home in central Baghdad is a framed photo showing him as a young lieutenant receiving an award from then-Vice President Saddam Hussein.

When the end came April 9, Karim recalled, he simply got into his car and drove home, still in his uniform and still carrying his rifle. Along the way, soldiers who had stripped off their uniforms shouted at him: "Take off your uniform! It`s over!" He refused, he said, clinging to his professional pride.

Now, sitting on a sofa, an air conditioner rattling behind him, Karim said he cannot stop thinking about how the army he loved had been so humiliated.

"It happened so fast," he said, his head in his hands. "I think I`m still in a state of shock."

*

Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this report.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY


Under Ashcroft, Justice Is Blind and Handcuffed
His `blacklist` aims at judges and prosecutors who exercise discretion on sentences.
By Jonathan Turley

August 11, 2003

In matters of faith and law, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft generally distrusts the role of discretion — it is uniformity, if not rigidity, that defines his vision. Over the last two years, Ashcroft has radically reshaped the Justice Department, pushing aside suspected moderates and promoting young extremists who will not hesitate in carrying out his orders. He now has turned to the federal courts to compel uniformity, ordering prosecutors, in a July 28 memo, to report any judge who imposes a criminal sentence lighter than what is called for by federal guidelines.

Ashcroft is seeking to prevent judges from tailoring sentences to fit individual crimes. If successful, sentences in the United States would be meted out with all the speed and care involved in calculating a mortgage rate on the Internet. Judges are resisting this robotic approach to sentencing and are fighting to preserve a tradition of judicial discretion that runs to the early days of our country. In a system without such discretion, pleas for mercy or extenuating circumstances would be considered immaterial to justice.

At issue are 1984 guidelines that established a set of mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes. Both conservative and liberal judges have long denounced these guidelines as imposing unduly long sentences and reducing the ability of courts to fashion punishments that fit particular cases. The sentences are so severe that some judges have resigned rather than impose a 10-year mandatory minimum prison term for first-time drug offenders. Most judges have struggled to work within the guidelines to fashion more just sentences.

For instance, a federal judge may use a "downward departure" from the rules to reduce a sentence if there are mitigating factors, such as cooperation with the government. Such reductions in sentences, which are used in 35% of cases annually, are often supported by prosecutors. According to the American Bar Assn., prosecutors have appealed only 19 of more than 11,000 such sentence reductions. Likewise, some of the nation`s most conservative jurists have opposed restrictions on the authority of judges to "depart." Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for example, warned Congress that restrictions "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."

It is not only judicial discretion but prosecutorial discretion that Ashcroft is seeking to curtail. He has effectively removed the question of sentencing from the local decisions of prosecutors to his centralized control. The message to both judges and prosecutors is obvious. If a prosecutor favors a reduction in sentencing, he or she will now be identified (with the offending judge) to Ashcroft. Few prosecutors will risk Ashcroft`s ire. Instead, they will refuse to deal with the obvious inequities in sentencing and stick to the guidelines. Denounced as a kind of blacklisting, the new policy is particularly troubling because of Ashcroft`s history of attacking judges who don`t fit his vision of justice. One of the most notorious incidents was addressed in his close confirmation fight.

As a senator from Missouri, Ashcroft blocked the elevation of Missouri state Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White to the federal Court of Appeals. A widely respected African American jurist (he recently was made chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court), White was considered a natural for the federal court. Ashcroft, however, led a vicious campaign against White`s confirmation and labeled the judge as "pro-criminal." In particular, Ashcroft insisted that White was hostile to the death penalty, even though White had voted to uphold 41 out of 59 death sentences that came before him.

Now, Ashcroft believes that federal judges who lower sentences are violating the intent of the federal law. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that such decisions are the very essence of independent judicial review and has held that the sentencing guidelines anticipate such departures. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative on criminal matters, held that this country had a long "tradition for the sentencing judge to consider every convicted person as an individual and every case as a unique study in human failings that sometimes mitigated, sometimes magnify, the crime and punishment."

Ashcroft would replace this tradition with a system that imposed sentences without variation and without understanding. Indeed, in his memo to U.S. attorneys, Ashcroft quotes Rehnquist as establishing that it is Congress, not the courts, that set sentencing policy. However, Ashcroft misrepresented Rehnquist`s comments by omitting Rehnquist`s further statement that efforts to gather sentencing records "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties."

The country now faces a choice between two visions of justice. Ashcroft wants judges to share his view of defendants as statistics rather than individuals. However, justice is found in the very details that Ashcroft wants to ignore in sentencing. In this system of forced ignorance, justice would be blind not to prejudice but to principle.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington Law School.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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GI Killed, Two Hurt in Iraq Bomb Attack
By RA`AD KADUM ABBAS
Associated Press Writer

1:05 AM PDT, August 11, 2003

BASRA, Iraq -- British troops restored badly needed electricity to parts of Basra and supervised distribution of gasoline Monday after two days of protests over fuel and power shortages. In northern Iraq, a U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded in a bomb attack.

The soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division came under attack with a homemade bomb in front of the police station they were guarding in Baqouba, 45 miles north of Baghdad, late Sunday, Maj. Mark Solomons said.

The death brought to 57 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over.

In Basra, a British patrol returned fire after it came under attack late Sunday, wounding two assailants, British military spokesman Capt. Hisham Halawi told The Associated Press. Two others escaped and were being pursued, he said. There were no British casualties.

Basra had been one of the quietest cities in the country. But on the second day of protests Sunday, an Iraqi protester and a Nepalese security guard were shot dead.

The protester was killed after an angry crowd tried to block four four-wheel drive vehicles crossing the main bridge leading to the airport and the British military headquarters. It was not clear who shot the demonstrator.

The dead guard worked for Global Security, a private company hired to provide security and other services for coalition bases throughout the country. The guard was bringing mail from Kuwait to United Nations staff in Basra. He was shot by an unknown assailant as a two-car convoy neared an intersection in the center of the city, coalition spokesman Iain Pickard said.

British troops patrolling the area gave away their own fuel to calm the demonstrators, coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said from Baghdad.

Over the weekend, about 1,000 protesters blocked roads with rows of burning tires and threw rocks at vehicles and British troops, who suffered only minor injuries, Halawi said.

"The town is calm this morning. People have had power since last night, and petrol is getting at petrol stations," he said.

In Baghdad, Heatly said coalition forces were taking steps to alleviate the power and fuel crisis in Basra. The coalition also brought in two new gas turbine generators to try to patch up the antiquated electricity system, and British soldiers were supervising distribution at gas stations to make sure people were not charged exorbitant black-market prices.

Late Sunday, two bombs exploded about 60-70 yards from the British office in central Baghdad, witnesses said. There was no visible damage to the office, but a Syrian national who was part of a convoy of trucks taking supplies to the office was injured, according to the witnesses.

There was no indication whether the British office was the target. U.S. troops removed the truck in which the Syrian was injured within the hour of the explosion.

A team of FBI investigators, meanwhile, searched the bombed Jordanian Embassy, where a car bomb on Aug. 7 killed 19 people.

The attack rattled Baghdad residents who feared it signaled a rise of terror tactics in the already violent Iraqi capital. L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, said the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Islam group was at the top of his list of suspected terrorist organizations operating in the country.

U.S. military officials have blamed almost daily attacks on Saddam loyalists and Iraqis angered by a foreign occupation. There is growing concern that foreign fighters in Iraq may join the conflict, conducting terrorist attacks like the one on the Jordanian Embassy.

Elsewhere Sunday, the U.S. military reported that four American soldiers were wounded in guerrilla attacks, including two at the Baghdad University complex and two others in Saddam`s hometown of Tikrit.

One U.S. soldier died of heat stroke and another was found dead in his living quarters on Sunday, the military said.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Losing without class
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, August 11, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/



Today I want to write about conservatives, Republicans, sore losers and dirty low-down skunks. Or am I repeating myself?

Anyone who monitors my e-mail knows for a fact that the second most intense preoccupation with Republicans these days is Bill Clinton. (First, of course, is sex -- denying interest in it, trying to stop others from partaking in it.)

Whenever I criticize our current president, which I am inclined to do from time to time, I get a flood of e-mails from conservatives saying, "Yeah, but how about Bill Clinton?"

Huh? It doesn`t matter what the subject matter is -- starting wars all over the planet, strutting across the deck of an aircraft carrier in full flight regalia, stifling scientific research designed to ease human misery and save lives -- the response is always the same: "Yeah, but how about Bill Clinton?"

I`ll give those cats credit for one thing: They`re consistent. No matter how much George W. Bush screws up, in their minds Bill Clinton was worse. After all, didn`t he lie about having sex?

How evil can one man get?

Now, I`m not exactly what one would call a quick study. It takes me a while to catch onto things, so it was months, perhaps years, before it dawned on me: These guys are sore losers.

Think of it. The day Clinton was sworn in for his first term, the conservatives were sporting bumper stickers calling for his impeachment. It`s a fact.

And for eight years thereafter, getting rid of Clinton was their mission in life. They tried everything: Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Juanita Broderick, Troopergate, Kenneth Starr and his army of investigators, Paula, Monica and finally even impeachment.

In the end, after all the smoke had cleared, the conservatives had lost. Losers is what they were. Clinton had bobbed and weaved and ducked and backpedaled and slipped punches, and, after eight years, he was still there, still on his feet, still smiling, still spending 10 minutes to answer a 10-word question, still "working hard for the American people."

The conservatives just can`t get over it. Clinton is history, yet they revive him at every opportunity. "How about Bill Clinton?" they ask, ignoring the fact that he`s no longer president, no longer a fit target for their invective.

This unfortunate trait of conservatives, their inability to admit defeat gracefully, is what brought us now to the recall spectacle in California.

When it comes to feeding poor children, or improving schools, or helping old folks buy life-saving drugs, the Republicans are always hamstrung by money problems. There`s never enough money for acts of goodwill. Besides, why should Republicans give up money they earned by exploiting others? The buyers who didn`t beware should just fall on their swords and make way for the greedy.

But when it comes to political skulduggery, the conservatives have an endless font of money. That`s why Darrell Issa, a very common man with an uncommon fortune, was able to throw California into a tizzy by buying himself a recall election.

Nobody in his right mind (excepting sycophantic Democrats, who don`t count) believes Gray Davis has been a good governor for California. When the bogus energy "crisis" approached -- with plenty of warning -- Davis fiddled. When it got here, Davis awoke from his stupor long enough to give in to the conniving energy providers, handing them the state`s dollar surplus and agreeing to pay more in the future.

Davis has been less than brilliant. The federal government had, at the time, an obligation to step in and control the runaway energy providers, but Davis didn`t ask for help, and the Bush administration, eager to punish California for voting Democrat in 2000, stood by and did nothing.

But we don`t need to rehash all this. Everybody knows Davis has been a lousy governor, and California voters knew it when they reelected him in 2002. They would have preferred almost anyone else, but the Republicans put up such a lackluster, regressive candidate that the voters held their noses and gave Davis a second term.

That should have been the end of it, but nobody counted on what a sore loser Darrell Issa and his minions were. Davis was no sooner sworn into office when Issa started hiring people to collect signatures demanding a recall election.

Estimates vary, but the consensus seems to be that Issa spent around $1.7 million to gather enough signatures. Hey, it`s only money.

The Republican Issa, who appears to have a weak grip on reality, envisioned himself as the new governor after Davis got the boot. Fortunately for humankind, Arnold Schwarzenegger terminated that pipe dream. The announcement of his candidacy, on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," sent Congressman Issa back to Washington in tears, proving once again that money might buy elections, but it can`t buy happiness.

Unless he figures out a way to screw it up, Arnold should win easily. And, whatever you think of the man, he`s not a loser, so chances are he won`t screw up.

Even his opponents are voting for him. Or one opponent, anyway. In the crazy rush to be on the ballot, one of the candidates is Gary Coleman, of "Diff`rent Strokes" fame. In an interview last week on KGO Radio here, Coleman was asked what he thought of Schwarzenegger. Coleman lavished praise on his opponent, and finally added that he liked Arnold so much that even he would vote for him.

What a guy!

But I`m deviating from my point, which is that conservatives are incredibly sore losers. Look at history. They`ve never accepted Roe v. Wade (which made abortion legal), and they`re determined to get it overturned some day, by hook or by crook.

They`ve never accepted Brown v. Board of Education (ending public school segregation), and they`ve established a broad network of "Christian" schools which, combined with white flight to the suburbs, effectively do an end run around Brown.

They are tenacious, those people. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that private homosexual conduct between adults is legal, watch the conservatives gird for battle and vow to fight to the last heterosexual man. Why should anyone, anywhere, be allowed to engage in activity that reactionary conservatives don`t understand? If it`s not for them, it must be wrong. Right?

Vince Lombardi was a great football coach but a second-rate philosopher. He was wrong when he said, "Winning isn`t everything; it`s the only thing."

Granted, it`s better to win than to lose. But there is such a thing as grace in defeat. Whenever there`s a winner, there has to be at least one loser. In a competitive society such as ours, learning to lose well is as important as learning to win well.

To be serious about it, liberal Democrats are no more graceful in defeat than conservative Republicans are. (Look how they blame Ralph Nader, or Florida, or the Supreme Court for the debacle that was Al Gore.)

But conservative Republicans really do seem to provide us with the best examples of how not to lose.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

©2003 SF Gate

[Joerver]

The Death Of American Politics

Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
Bush Watch, www.bushwatch.com

Thomas Jefferson was a dialectician in thought and a Deist in belief and, from this theological ground, he provided the intellectual foundations of American Democracy. Jefferson`s theology was bottomlined in the concept that Deity was located on the human inside, in the "head and heart" of every person, that the highest authority is the "will of the people, substantially declared." From this concept of Deity and from nascent (dialectic) Christian values comes the concept of universal human rights (G. Lower, BushWatch, July, 2003).

It is something more than telling that a past curator of the National Museum, Daniel J. Boorstin, wrote a wonderful book entitled, "The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson" in 1948. It is similarly telling that this effort, at the dawn of "political correctness," avoided serious discussion of Jefferson`s theology, which is so entirely at odds with traditional religion (and so entirely based upon and consistent with nascent Christianity).

Historically, of course, the dialectic values beneath Jefferson`s Democracy were compromised right from the start by religious Tory capitalism. The Constitution was penned in Jefferson`s absence and it vered sharply right in departing the spirit of Jefferson`s Declaration, religiously denying rights to women, blacks and non-landowners. Franklin even prophesized that this "fault" would ultimately lead to a nation under despotic rule and occupied by people who would not even know the difference. Welcome to America in the 3rd millennium. Welcome to Bush World.

>From these awkward beginnings, the traditional dialectic in American politics has been between socialism and capitalism, left and right, secular and religious, liberal and conservative. In 1816, Jefferson warned the people of the dangers of an aristocracy of the rich that would usurp their power. But, the Industrial Revolution was on, the era of "robber barons" was on and the socialist-capitalist dialectic emerged fully into public life. Grover Cleveland established Labor Day in 1894 to acknowledge the contributions of the beleagured American worker, struggling to make ends meet without a fair say in or a fair share of the deal.

The 1920s brought this dialectic to the political forefront with the emergence of labor unions and farm and ranch organizations hoping to achieve a semblance of fairness in American socio-economics by empowering those who must work and produce for a living. Robert Tawney wrote a marvelous book in 1926, ("Religion and the Rise of Capitalism," The New American Library, 1954) that provided serious insight into the role of JudeoRoman religious attitudes in driving imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. By FDR`s administration, the President`s wife was a card-carrying socialist. Evenso, both political parties during the first half of the 20th century managed to revolve around political center with minimal polarization (Krugman, "America the Polarized," NY Times, Jan. 4, 2002).

The dialectic provided by our Fathers (between those choosing to share without restriction and those choosing to compete without limit) has had a profound downside for American socioeconomics. As complementary opposites, the extreme socialist (we are all the same) and the extreme capitalist ($ome of u$ are cho$en) positions left virtually no room for Jefferson`s meritocracy (the dialectic synthesis), with individual reward as a function of individual time and talent, experience and contribution. The result in America is a socioeconomic order in which the skilled and talented are nearer the bottom of the heap, while business administrators rule the day in a world quite upside down by Jeffersonian standards.

Following World War II and the postwar success of capitalism in producing wealth, both political parties were obliged to operate on the same side of the traditional dialectic, to create an entirely new dialectic between liberal secular capitalism and conservative religious capitalism. Capitalism was no longer seen as one of several socioeconomic options worthy of consideration within the frameworks of Democracy, but as the sole chosen way of a war victorious and chosen people, a people whose wealth and power provided evidence of the favoritism shown them by their god, the reward for having faith, all of which served to justify self-righteous claims to worldly dominion and control. With capitalism thusly empowered, there was a need to solidify that power, and the stage was set for complete polarization of the American politic.

The rightward shift to political polarization emerged in public in 1980 with the Reagan administration`s overt pandering to the religious right for fiscal support and votes, and the movement went exponential in 1994 with the Southern Baptist takeover of the Texas Republican party. This evolutionary strand reached completion with the emergence of Old Testament JudeoRoman fundamentalism ("compassionate" conservatism) directly in the Oval Office, compliments of an unelected, court-appointed Bush administration.

As a result, the religious right wing, mostly Republican, like the JudeoRoman church-states before it, has pursued a complete tyranny over the minds of the people via control over their government`s institutions and policies and control over their press, employing secretiveness and propaganda laced with fabrications and lies. The secular left wing, mostly Democrat, has been reduced to dumbness and impotence, lost entirely from its liberal roots on the side opposite capitalism. Unaware that empowering capitalism signaled the death of the traditional American politic, America proceeded to make a god of mammon. The left wing is unable to envision an alternative to the post WW II chosen "American Way" because it is now integral to that program and to the resulting problems. Within the "intellectual" confines of crony capitalism, there simply are no solutions to the problems created by capitalism itself.

In other words, the radical shift in the American political dialectic since World War II has left both liberals and conservatives on the capitalistic side of the traditional dialectic. Moreover, this self-evident shift has taken place without much public or academic notice, an indication of the rampant sociocultural blindness emergent in America under capitalistic dominion.

Nevermind family values. The creation of a socio-economic system requiring both parents to work is seen as "progress." Nevermind community values. The creation of a vertical national economy with large corporations eating up the horizontal local economies which held our communities together is seen as "progress." Nevermind national values. The creation of a capitalistic ("one ill, one pill, one bill" ) medicine and a root-level crisis in medical ethics is seen as "progress." Exemplifying too much of "good" thing, this capitalistic "progress" has demeaned everything that really counted in America, everything meaningful, from parent-child relationships to quality of education to the celebration of Christ`s birth to the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy.

The America people have been gradually but surely hijacked by the rich, religious Republican right wing, those who believe that money, no matter how acquired, is the primary measure of human worth, that it bestows the right to power, and that there is never enough of the stuff. Employing this approach to socioeconomic problem-solving, America has solved not one single social problem since World War II, but rather has made most social problems even worse, with capitalism`s penchant for dealing with symptoms instead of causes, it`s employment of social bandaids to palliate systemic disease, all in the name of preserving capitalism and enhancing the ruthless pursuit of riches and the rule of the rich.

Coming to worship mammon as a nation was, obviously, a "mistake" that had to be made and was made within the larger embrace of human cultural evolution. Jefferson and Franklin both knew well that the dialectic human values beneath Democracy would have global human appeal, that the "ball of liberty" would "roll round the world." They were also aware that if everyone does not have Democracy, then no one really has it. The larger evolutionary program simply called for further human unification, and JudeoRoman religion and crony capitalism would ultimately supply the greed-driven motivations and the rationalizations for economic globalization.

The American people, over the span of 200 years (Hamilton), 20 years(Reagan), and 2 years (Bush), have been (exponentially) coerced into abiding an ancient religious script which they had no hand in authoring. This coercion was a "mistake" that will have to be corrected as soon as adequate numbers of people can see it, not so much as a mistake but as an evolutionary necessity in the interest of continued human socioeconomic unification (from tribal to national to global organization via imperialism, colonialism and capitalism).

Capitalism has, since World War II, produced a global human economic arena not yet worthy of being called a global economy. Accordingly, it`s evolutionary purpose fulfilled, capitalism must now stand aside in the interest of political unification under the auspices of Democracy, the genuine article. Religious capitalism will, of course, never stand aside, and it will never listen to reason. The people are left to watch it die of its own self-righteous hand.

In the historical sense, it is critically important for American citizens to recognize that American Democracy has de-evolved to occupy a position beneath and opposed to the philosophical position which gave it birth. We have come full circle only to see ourselves from beneath and behind ... and it is not a very pretty sight for a nation ostensibly birthed from the concepts of fairness and equality. Until the people recognize the historical significance of current reality, their problems will elude comprehension and control, and they will continue to be led astray by capitalists who fear and despise Democracy.

In the evolutionary sense, it is critically important for Americans to recognize that America is integrally involved in a larger, implicit cultural program that transcends "compassionate" conservatism and the pax Americana it envisions. The outcome of this delusion has already been determined by the JudeoRoman mythology which drives the program, all branches of western religion being apocalyptic and self-terminating. Until the people recognize the evolutionary significance of current reality, their problems will elude comprehension and control, and they will continue to be led astray by religious fundamentalists who fear and despise nascent Christianity.

Thoughtful and caring people will be largely unable do anything to alter the necessary evolutionary outcome, as vengeance-based religion and crony capitalism continue to discredit themselves from the global political arena. If the people choose to fight the good fight for Democracy and freedom or if they choose to fight for JudeoRoman Bushism, the outcome will be quite the same. While waiting for that outcome (as religious prophecy blindly fulfills itself), the people will need to rethink Jefferson`s Democracy in contemporary Information Age terms, and the people will need to re-establish Jefferson`s God, the "will of the people," as the direct decision-making apparatus of their nation. It is time to return to common human sense and the dialectic wisdom of our Fathers. It is time to grow up as a nation, socially and spiritually.

"Surely this is not an exorbitant demand" of the citizens of the world`s first Democracy. Jefferson and Franklin and most good Americans nearly pulled it off 200 years ago. --08.10.03

[Joerver]

Newer computerized voting machines were used in four Maryland counties in elections last year. All states are required to update equipment by 2006
washingtonpost.com
Jolted Over Electronic Voting
Report`s Security Warning Shakes Some States` Trust

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 11, 2003; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42085-2003Aug…
The Virginia State Board of Elections had a seemingly simple task before it: Certify an upgrade to the state`s electronic voting machines. But with a recent report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists warning that the system`s software could easily be hacked into and election results tampered with, the once perfunctory vote now seemed to carry the weight of democracy and the people`s trust along with it.

An outside consultant assured the three-member panel recently that the report was nonsense.

"I hope you`re right," Chairman Michael G. Brown said, taking a leap of faith and approving Diebold Election System`s upgrades. "Because when they get ready to hang the three of us in effigy, you won`t be here."

Since being released two weeks ago, the Hopkins report has sent shock waves across the country. Some states have backed away from purchasing any kind of electronic voting machine, despite a new federal law that has created a gold rush by allocating billions to buy the machines and requiring all states, as well as the District of Columbia, to replace antiquated voting equipment by 2006.

"The rush to buy equipment this year or next year just doesn`t make sense to us anymore," said Cory Fong, North Dakota`s deputy secretary of state.

Maryland officials, who signed a $55.6 million agreement with Diebold for 11,000 touch-screen voting machines just days before the Hopkins report came out, have asked an international computer security firm to review the system`s security. If they don`t like what they find, officials have said, the sale will be off.

The report has brought square into the mainstream an obscure but increasingly nasty debate between about 900 computer scientists, who warn that these machines are untrustworthy, and state and local election officials and machine manufacturers, who insist that they are reliable.

"The computer scientists are saying, `The machinery you vote on is inaccurate and could be threatened; therefore, don`t go. Your vote doesn`t mean anything,` " said Penelope Bonsall, director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission. "That negative perception takes years to turn around."

Still, even some advocates of the new system are thinking twice. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which pushed for electronic machines to help visually impaired and disabled voters, says the Hopkins report has given them pause. They`re calling on President Bush and members of Congress to convene a forum of experts to hash it out. "We have become concerned about these questions of ballot security," said Deputy Director Nancy Zirkin.

Her group and others supported passage of the $3.9 billion Help America Vote Act in November. Of the $1.5 billion appropriated so far to replace old machines, rewrite outdated equipment standards, encourage research to improve technology, train poll workers and update registration lists, about half has been released. And that has all gone toward buying electronic machines, which cost as much as $4,000 a piece.

"These vendors are everywhere," said David Blount, spokesman for Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark. "They`re besieging everyone."

The remaining money is to be released once an Election Assistance Commission is appointed. By law, the board was to have begun work in February. But the names of the four commissioners, two from each major party, have yet to go to the Senate for confirmation.

The stakes are high. The 2000 Florida presidential election showed the shortcomings of the current system.

A subsequent Cal Tech/MIT report found that of more than 100 million votes cast nationwide, as many as 6 million weren`t counted because of registration errors or problems with punch-card and lever machines. One study found that of 800 lever machines tested, 200 had broken meters that stopped counting once they hit 999.

Frustrations with the old machines -- levers were invented in the 1930s and punch cards in 1904 -- have turned many local election officials into staunch supporters of the new electronic models. Advocates for the disabled say that the machines will enable the visually impaired, for the first time, to put on headphones and vote a secret ballot.

Mischelle Townsend, registrar of voters in Riverside County, Calif., said the electronic machines have saved as much as $600,000 in paper every election and, from 1996 to 2000, helped increase voter turnout to 72 percent, up 10 percent.

Any tampering would be caught, she said, in the extensive pre- and post-election testing. The best defense of the machines, she said, is that there has been no documented case of voter fraud. "If the computer scientists had one valid point, one, then why hasn`t one incident of what they`re saying occurred in all of these elections?"

But past is not prologue, historians and political scientists warn.

"Some of these hacking scenarios are highly improbable. But it`s not completely out of the question," said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who has written about political corruption. "When the stakes are high enough in an election, partisans and others will do just about anything. So this is a worry."

Bugs, Glitches Can Abound


Computer scientists note that computers are unreliable, subject to bugs, glitches and hiccups as well as the more remote possibility of outright hacking and code tampering.

They warn of a hostile programmer inserting what they call Trojan horses, Easter eggs or back doors to predetermine the outcome. They point to a number of errors in the 2002 elections, from poll workers -- like some in Montgomery County -- unfamiliar with how long it takes to warm up the machines to mysterious vote tallies.

In Georgia, where Diebold machines are used, a handful of voters found that when they pressed the screen to vote for one candidate, the machine registered a vote for the opponent. Technicians were called in and the problem was fixed, state officials have said.

In Alabama, a computer glitch caused a 7,000-vote error and clouded the outcome of the gubernatorial race for two weeks. But more critically, computer scientists charge that the software that runs the machines is riddled with security flaws.

"Whoever certified that code as secure should be fired," said Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins and co-author of the report.

Rubin analyzed portions of Diebold software source code that was mistakenly left on a public Internet site and concluded that a teenager could manufacture "smart" cards and vote several times. Further, he said, insiders could program the machine to alter election results without detection. All machines had the same password hard-wired into the code. And in some instances, it was set at 1111, a number laughably easy to hack, Rubin said.

Because there is no paper or electronic auditing system in the machine, there would be no way to reconstruct an actual vote, he said.

In a 27-page rebuttal, Diebold dismissed the findings. Officials said that the software Rubin analyzed was old and that only a portion may have been used in an actual election. "Right now, we`re very, very confident about the security of our system," said Mark Radke, a Diebold executive. "If there is a way to make it more secure, we`re open to that from good, reliable, knowledgeable sources who don`t have a previous agenda."

That doesn`t satisfy some critics. "The most important thing about the Hopkins report is not the security holes they found, but irrefutable proof that all this stuff that the machines are secure is hot air," said David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University who has turned the debate over electronic machines into a national crusade.

State and local election officials, however, say the checks and balances -- the poll workers and judges, the thick manuals of procedures -- ensure the sanctity of elections.

"It`s not fair to do an evaluation that doesn`t talk about context," said Mary Kiffmeyer, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. "Our voting process has all kinds of security. It`s not just the box of technology."

Few Players in Game


Although free and fair elections are a central tenet of America`s democracy, no one paid much attention to how they were executed for years. Not until 1990 did federal elections officials decide to write voluntary standards to certify voting machines.

Still, the atmosphere remained fairly clubby, with one lab doing the testing and a revolving door between voting machine companies and the state officials who later went to work for them. Although nearly 20 companies have had equipment certified by the FEC, only three are major players: Diebold, with 55,000 touch screens throughout the country; ES&S of Omaha; and Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems.

All machines go through the FEC`s testing and certification process, which can cost companies anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000. Yet a 2001 report by the General Accounting Office found that the FEC standards do not thoroughly test for security or user friendliness and that only 37 states follow them.

Doug Jones, a computer scientist in Iowa, said the testing is so secret that even he, as an insider who serves on the state board that certifies voting equipment, can`t get information. Five years ago, he found the identical security flaws cited in the Hopkins report.

"They promised it would be fixed," Jones said. "The Hopkins group found clear evidence that it wasn`t. Yet for five years, I had been under the impression that it was fixed."

Diebold`s Radke said the code has been fixed.

Even the most vocal critics say there are workable solutions. Computer scientists say the companies should release their secret source codes for expert review, as two start-ups, VoteHere and Populex, have agreed to do. Or that states should require automatic upgrade clauses, as Santa Clara County has.

Dill, the Stanford computer scientist, and others are pushing for what are called voter-verified audit trails. By attaching a printer to every machine, voters can review the electronic ballot before it drops into a locked box.

Many solutions are already spelled out in the Help America Vote Act, which mandates tougher security, usability and accuracy standards.

In the end, however, with experts still at loggerheads and the 2004 election looming, voters are left wondering which side to trust. Howard A. Denis (R-Potomac-Bethesda), a Montgomery County Council member, was so shaken by the Hopkins report that he is considering asking for a waiver to stop using electronic machines.

"The more I look into this, the more serious I think it is," he said.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

The Local Count

THE DISTRICT

The District replaced its antiquated punch-card machines with an optical scan voting system in 2002. D.C. officials plan to spend $8.5 million in federal and local funds to purchase Sequoia Direct Edge electronic voting machines. The District plans to put one such machine in each of its 142 precincts before the 2004 election to comply with the Help America Vote Act. The law requires that by 2006, each precinct have a handicapped-accessible machine.

MARYLAND

In 2001, the state split the $13 million cost with Montgomery, Prince George`s, Allegany and Dorchester counties to buy 4,678 Diebold AccuVote-TS electronic machines. State officials recently signed an agreement worth up to $55.6 million with Diebold to buy 11,000 more of the machines, which would go in every precinct in the state. After the 2000 presidential election, a state task force, convened by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), recommended that the state use one unified voting system with electronic machines.

VIRGINIA

Cities and counties determine which machines to buy. They are then tested and certified by the State Board of Elections. Four cities and counties in Virginia, including Charlottesville and New Kent County, have modern touch-screen electronic voting machines. Alexandria uses an optical scanning machine. Arlington and Fairfax counties use older electronic equipment but are negotiating to buy Advanced Voting Solutions` latest wireless touch-screen machines. Norfolk is the only place in Virginia using Diebold electronic machines.

[Joerver]

A new Iraqi army takes aim at U.S.-led coalition


By ORLY HALPERN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Monday, August 11, 2003 - Page A1

SADR CITY, IRAQ -- T he lines begin to form at 6 p.m. every evening at the Ahrar religious community centre in the poor Shia district of Baghdad once known as Saddam City. Under the setting sun, men of all ages line up patiently to scrawl their signatures on a neatly printed form, prepared to die in the name of Iraq`s new holy army.

This is not the new force formed and paid for by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority -- it is the Mahdi Army, and it is being created to undermine coalition forces, not help them.

"They [the coalition] are breaking laws, destroying property and killing people and they don`t care -- they just say, `Fill out a compensation form,` " said Sheik Hassan al-Zurgani, a Baghdad representative of the Shia religious council in Iraq. "This will have very bad results."

Iraq`s Shia community, long oppressed under former president Saddam Hussein`s rule, initially welcomed coalition forces, but many are now calling for the occupiers to leave -- or face the consequences.

"The Americans came saying they are liberators, but they are invaders. There is no friendship with invaders," Mr. al-Zurgani said. "They did help us get rid of the former regime and now we would like them to set a timetable for leaving Iraq."

In a Friday prayer sermon three weeks ago, Muqtada al-Sadr, an increasingly popular 30-year-old cleric based in the Shia holy city of Najaf, dismissed Iraq`s coalition-appointed Governing Council as "Zionist" and called for his followers to form an army.

Mr. al-Sadr, a relative of two revered ayatollahs murdered by Mr. Hussein`s government, is now getting his wish with the Mahdi force, which is named after a long-lost imam whose return is supposed to herald a new age. In Sadr City, where a billboard that used to feature Mr. Hussein greeting newcomers to the dilapidated area has been painted over with a Renaissance-like portrait of one of Mr. al-Sadr`s famous relatives, devout Shiites who hang on his every word are signing up to form divisions.

The men are coming in droves to volunteer.

MAHDI A10

MAHDI A1

They listen to the reports of their neighbours who travelled to hear Mr. al-Sadr`s sermon in person.

"I heard about the Mahdi Army when I attended the Friday sermon delivered by Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf," said Abbas Jabar, who had just signed up. "The Iraqi army of the coalition doesn`t represent me and cannot protect my people. The mission of this army is to protect and defend Iraq."

One cleric drumming up recruits, Sheik Qais al-Khazraji, said this week that more than 10,000 have already signed up in Sadr City alone. Many residents of the district consider Mr. al-Sadr`s word a religious order that must be acted upon.

"I am obeying an order given by a saint," said Salah Hassan, who heard about the army from a friend. "I signed up two weeks ago and all my friends have done the same."

Women have not been called to join yet but they are ready and willing at the drop of a hat.

"If they ask for women, we would be very happy to volunteer," said Nithal Hamze, a housewife and mother of five, sitting on the community centre lawn, surrounded by other women.

Nor is age an issue.

"A man came with his five-year-old son to put the boy`s name down on the list," Mr. al-Khazraji said, sitting behind his desk. "We told him he`s too young, but he insisted he was ready to sacrifice him."

Outside, one young recruit waited nervously for his turn to sign up.

"I don`t think that I`m too young," 13-year-old Ali Hadi said, proudly proclaiming his willingness to die for his faith and his country. "Iraq belongs to us and we have to fight to protect it and our religion. We`re not scared of the Americans."

The Mahdi soldiers may be unlikely to face the might of the U.S. military in the immediate future -- in Sadr City, at least, no guns have yet been distributed.

"We don`t have the ability, like a state, to import weapons, but everyone has his own gun at home anyway," Mr. al-Khazraji said. "We also have our faith in God, which is much more powerful than any American weapon."

But Mr. al-Zurgani of the Shia religious council warned that the volunteers are willing and able.

"If the Americans have foul intentions, then they have reason to fear us," he said. "We will all become martyrs for the sake of Iraq."

http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/2…

[Joerver]

Published on Sunday, August 10, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

In Thursday`s Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice, the President`s National Security Advisor, writes the following:

"Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom. As President Bush said in February, ‘The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.`"

Now, if we only had a nickel for every time Bush, or Rice, or Colin Powell, or Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney or Richard Perle or Donald Rumsfeld talked about bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Talk, talk, talk.

Here`s something you can bet on: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz will not hold a press conference this month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-led coup of the democratically elected leader of Iran -- Mohammed Mossadegh.

Rice and Powell won`t hold a press conference to celebrate Operation Ajax, the CIA plot that overthrew the Mossadegh.

That was 50 years ago this month, in August 1953.

That`s when Mossadegh was fed up with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company -- now BP -- pumping Iran`s oil and shipping the profits back home to the United Kingdom.

And Mossadegh said -- hey, this is our oil, I think we`ll keep it.

And Winston Churchill said -- no you won`t.

Mossadegh nationalized the company -- the way the British were nationalizing their own vital industries at the time.

But what`s good for the UK ain`t good for Iran.

If you fly out of Dulles Airport in Virginia, ever wonder what the word Dulles means?

It stands for the Dulles family -- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, the CIA director, Allen Dulles.

They were responsible for the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran.

As was President Theodore Roosevelt`s grandson, Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who traveled to Iran to pull off the coup.

Now why should we be concerned about a coup that happened so far away almost 50 years ago this month?

New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer puts it this way:

"It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah`s repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."

Kinzer has written a remarkable new book, All the Shah`s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2003).

In it, he documents step by step, how Roosevelt, the Dulles boys and Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., among a host of others, took down a democratically elected regime in Iran.

They had freedom of the press. We shut it down.

They had democracy. And we crushed it.

Mossadegh was the beacon of hope for the Middle East.

If democracy were allowed to take hold in Iran, it probably would have spread throughout the Middle East.

We asked Kinzer – what does the overthrow of Mossadegh say about the United States respect for democracy abroad?

"Imagine today what it must sound like to Iranians to hear American leaders tell them -- ‘We want you to have a democracy in Iran, we disapprove of your present government, we wish to help you bring democracy to your country.` Naturally, they roll their eyes and say -- "We had a democracy once, but you crushed it,`" he said. "This shows how differently other people perceive us from the way we perceive ourselves. We think of ourselves as paladins of democracy. But actually, in Iran, we destroyed the last democratic regime the country ever had and set them on a road to what has been half a century of dictatorship."

After ousting Mossadegh, the United States put in place a brutal Shah who destroyed dissent and tortured the dissenters.

And the Shah begat the Islamic revolution.

During that Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranians held up Mossadegh`s picture, telling the world – we want a democratic regime that resists foreign influence and respects the will of the Iranian people as expressed through democratic institutions.

"They were never able to achieve that. And this has led many Iranians to react very poignantly to my book," Kaizer told us. "One woman sent me an e-mail that said – ‘I was in tears when I finished your book because it made me think of all we lost and all we could have had.`"

Of course, the overthrow of Mossadegh was only one of the first U.S. coups of democratically elected regime. (To see one in movie form, pick up a copy of Raoul Peck`s Lumumba, now on DVD.)

Kinzer`s previous books include Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.

He`s thinking of putting together a boxed set of his books on American coups.

Get copies of Bitter Fruit and All The Shah`s Men.

Read them.

And the next time a politician talks about spreading democracy around the globe, ask them about Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman


http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0810-06.htm

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Preventive War `The Supreme Crime`
Iraq: invasion that will live in infamy

by NOAM CHOMSKY

08/11/03: SEPTEMBER 2002 was marked by three events of considerable importance, closely related. The United States , the most powerful state in history, announced a new national security strategy asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently. Any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilise the population for an invasion of Iraq . And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.



The new "imperial grand strategy", as it was termed at once by John Ikenberry writing in the leading establishment journal, presents the US as "a revisionist state seeking to parlay its moment ary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show", a unipolar world in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector, and enforcer" (1). These policies are fraught with danger even for the US itself, Ikenberry warned, joining many others in the foreign policy elite.



What is to be protected is US power and the interests it represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the concept. Within a few months studies revealed that fear of the US had reached remarkable heights, along with distrust of the political leadership. An international Gallup poll in December, which was barely noticed in the US, found almost no support for Washington`s announced plans for a war in Iraq carried out unilaterally by America and its allies - in effect, the US-United Kingdom coalition.



Washington told the United Nations that it could be relevant by endorsing US plans, or it could be a debating society. The US had the "sovereign right to take military action", the administration`s moderate Colin Powell told the World Economic Forum, which also vigorously opposed the war plans: "When we feel strongly about something we will lead, even if no one is following us" (2).



President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair underscored their contempt for international law and institutions at their Azores summit meeting on the eve of the invasion. They issued an ultimatum, not to Iraq , but to the Security Council: capitulate, or we will invade without your meaningless seal of approval. And we will do so whether or not Saddam Hussein and his family leave the country (3). The crucial principle is that the US must effectively rule Iraq .



President Bush declared that the US "has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security", threatened by Iraq with or without Saddam, according to the Bush doctrine. The US will be happy to establish an Arab facade, to borrow the term of the British during their days in the sun, while US power is firmly implanted at the heart of the world`s major energy-producing region. Formal democracy will be fine, but only if it is of a submissive kind accepted in the US `s backyard, at least if history and current practice are any guide.



The grand strategy authorises the US to carry out preventive war: preventive, not pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might be, they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term "preventive" is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply, the supreme crime that was condemned at Nuremberg .



That was understood by those with some concern for their country. As the US invaded Iraq , the historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that Bush`s grand strategy was "alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at the time of Pearl Harbor , on a date which, as an earlier American president [Franklin D Roosevelt] said it would, lives in infamy". It was no surprise, added Schlesinger, that "the global wave of sympathy that engulfed the US after 9/11 has given way to a global wave of hatred of American arrogance and militarism" and the belief that Bush was "a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein" (4).



For the political leadership, mostly recycled from the more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush Senior administrations, the global wave of hatred is not a particular problem. They want to be feared, not loved. It is natural for the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to quote the words of Chicago gangster Al Capone: "You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." They understand just as well as their establishment critics that their actions increase the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terror. But that too is not a major problem. Far higher in the scale of their priorities are the goals of establishing global hegemony and implementing their domestic agenda, which is to dismantle the progressive achievements that have been won by popular struggle over the past century, and to institutionalise their radical changes so that recovering the achievements will be no easy task.



It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an official policy. It must establish it as a new norm of international law by exemplary action. Distinguished commentators may then explain that the law is a flexible living instrument, so that the new norm is now available as a guide to action. It is understood that only those with the guns can establish norms and modify international law.



The selected target must meet several conditions. It must be defenceless, important enough to be worth the trouble, an imminent threat to our survival and an ultimate evil. Iraq qualified on all counts. The first two conditions are obvious. For the third, it suffices to repeat the orations of Bush, Blair, and their colleagues: the dictator "is assembling the world`s most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate or attack"; and he "has already used them on whole villages leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or transfigured. If this is not evil then evil has no meaning." Bush`s eloquent denunciation surely rings true. And those who contributed to enhancing evil should certainly not enjoy impunity: among them, the speaker of these lofty words and his current associates, and all those who joined them in the years when they were supporting that man of ultimate evil, Saddam Hussein, long after he had committed these terrible crimes, and after the first war with Iraq. Supported him because of our duty to help US exporters, the Bush Senior administration explained.



It is impressive to see how easy it is for polit ical leaders, while recounting Saddam the monster`s worst crimes, to suppress the crucial words "with our help, because we don`t care about such matters". Support shifted to denunciation as soon as their friend Saddam committed his first authentic crime, which was disobeying (or perhaps misunderstanding) orders, by invading Kuwait . Punishment was severe - for his subjects. The tyrant escaped unscathed, and was further strengthened by the sanctions regime then imposed by his former allies.



Also easy to suppress are the reasons why the US returned to support Saddam immediately after the Gulf war, as he crushed rebellions that might have overthrown him. The chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, explained that the best of all worlds for the US would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein", but since that goal seemed unattainable, we would have to be satisfied with second best (5). The rebels failed because the US and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view [that] whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country`s stability than did those who have suffered his repression" (6).



All of this was suppressed in the commentary on the mass graves of the victims of the US- authorised paroxysm of terror of Saddam Hussein, which commentary was offered as a justification for the war on "moral grounds". It was all known in 1991, but ignored for reasons of state.



A reluctant US population had to be whipped to a proper mood of war fever. From September grim warnings were issued about the dire threat that Saddam posed to the US and his links to al-Qaida, with broad hints that he had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Many of the charges that had been "dangled in front of [the media] failed the laugh test," commented the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "but the more ridiculous [they were,] the more the media strove to make whole-hearted swallowing of them a test of patriotism" (7). The propaganda assault had its effects. Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the US . Soon almost half believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war correlated with these beliefs. The propaganda campaign was just enough to give the administration a bare majority in the mid-term elections, as voters put aside their immediate concerns and huddled under the umbrella of power in fear of a demonic enemy.



The brilliant success of public diplomacy was revealed when Bush, in the words of one commentator, "provided a powerful Reaganesque finale to a six-week war on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on 1 May". This reference is presumably to President Ronald Reagan`s proud declaration that America was "standing tall" after conquering Grenada , the nutmeg cap ital of the world, in 1983, preventing the Russians from using it to bomb the US . Bush, as Reagan`s mimic, was free to declare - without concern for sceptical comment at home - that he had won a "victory in a war on terror [by having] removed an ally of al-Qaida" (8). It has been immaterial that no credible evidence was provided for the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden and that the charge was dismissed by competent observers. Also immaterial was the only known connection between the victory and terror: the invasion appears to have been "a huge setback in the war on terror" by sharply increasing al-Qaida recruitment, as US officials concede (9).



The Wall Street Journal recognised that Bush`s carefully staged aircraft carrier extravaganza "marks the beginning of his 2004 re-election campaign" which the White House hopes "will be built as much as possible around national-security themes". The electoral campaign will focus on "the battle of Iraq , not the war", chief Republican political strategist Karl Rove explained : the war must continue, if only to control the population at home (10).



Before the 2002 elections Rove had instructed party activists to stress security issues, diverting attention from unpopular Republican domestic policies. All of this is second-nature to the re cycled Reaganites now in office. That is how they held on to political power during their first tenure in office. They regularly pushed the panic button to avoid public opposition to the policies that had left Reagan as the most disliked living president by 1992, by which time he may have ranked even lower than Richard Nixon.



Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda campaign left the public unswayed in fundamental respects. Most continue to prefer UN rather than US leadership in international crises, and by two to one prefer that the UN, rather than the US , should direct reconstruction in Iraq (11).



When the occupying coalition army failed to discover WMD, the US administration`s stance shifted from absolute certainty that Iraq possessed WMD to the position that the accusations were "justified by the discovery of equipment that potentially could be used to produce weapons" (12). Senior officials then suggested a refinement in the concept of preventive war, to entitle the US to attack a country that has "deadly weapons in mass quantities". The revision "suggests that the administration will act against a hostile regime that has nothing more than the intent and ability to develop WMD" (13). Lowering the criteria for a resort to force is the most significant consequence of the collapse of the proclaimed argument for the invasion.



Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the praising of Bush`s vision to bring democracy to the Middle East in the midst of an extraordinary display of hatred and contempt for democracy. This was illustrated by the distinction that was made by Washington between Old and New Europe, the former being reviled and the latter hailed for its courage. The criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of governments that took the same position over the war on Iraq as most of their populations; while the heroes of New Europe followed orders from Crawford , Texas , disregarding, in most cases, an even larger majority of citizens who were against the war. Political commentators ranted about disobedient Old Europe and its psychic maladies, while Congress descended to low comedy.



At the liberal end of the spectrum, the former US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, stressed the "very important point" that the population of the eight original members of New Europe is larger than that of Old Europe, which proves that France and Germany are "isolated". So it does, unless we succumb to the radical-left heresy that the public might have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman then urged that France be removed from the permanent members of the Security Council, because it is "in kindergarten, and does not play well with others". It follows that the population of New Europe must still be in nursery school, at least judging by the polls (14).



Turkey was a particularly instructive case. Its government resisted the heavy pressure from the US to prove its democratic credentials by following US orders and overruling 95% of its population. Turkey did not cooperate. US commentators were infuriated by this lesson in democracy, so much so that some even reported Turkey`s crimes against the Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because of the crucial US role in what happened, although that was still carefully concealed in the lamentations.



The crucial point was expressed by the deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who condemned the Turkish military because they "did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected" - that is they did not intervene to prevent the Turkish government from honouring near-unanimous public opinion. Turkey had therefore to step up and say, "We made a mistake - let`s figure out how we can be as helpful as possible to the Americans" (15). Wolfowitz`s stand was particularly informative because he had been portrayed as the leading figure in the administration`s crusade to democratise the Middle East .



Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than just contempt for democracy. The US has always regarded European unification with some ambivalence. In his Year of Europe address 30 years ago, Henry Kissinger advised Europeans to keep to their regional responsibilities within the "overall framework of order managed by the US ". Europe must not pursue its own independent course, based on its Franco-German industrial and financial heartland.



The US administration`s concerns now extend as well to Northeast Asia, the world`s most dynamic economic region, with ample resources and advanced industrial economies, a potentially integrated region that might also flirt with challenging the overall framework of world order, which is to be maintained permanently, by force if necessary, Washington has declared. ________________________________________________________



* Noam Chomsky is professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology



(1) John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, Sept.-Oct. 2002.



(2) Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2003.



(3) Michael Gordon, The New York Times, 18 March 2003.



(4) Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2003.



(5) The New York Times, 7 June 1991. Alan Cowell, The New York Times, 11 April 1991.



(6) The New York Times, 4 June 2003.



(7) Linda Rothstein, editor, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July 2003.



(8) Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, 2 May 2003; transcript, 2 May 2003.



(9) Jason Burke, The Observer, London 18 May 2003.



(10) Jeanne Cummings and Greg Hite, Wall Street Journal, 2 May 2003. Francis Clines, The New York Times, 10 May 2003.



(11) Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland , April 18-22.



(12) Dana Milbank , Washington Post, 1 June 2003



(13) Guy Dinmore and James Harding, Financial Times, 3/4 May 2003.



(14) Lee Michael Katz, National Journal, 8 February 2003; Friedman, The New York Times, 9 February 2003.



(15) Marc Lacey, The New York Times, 7/8 May 2003.

(Le Monde diplomatique)

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4416.htm

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13-year-old Iraqi Ali Ismaeel Abbas listens to journalists during a news conference after arriving at Queen Mary`s Hospital in London, August 11, 2003. Abbas, whose armless torso, horrific burns and haunted eyes symbolized civilian suffering in the Iraq war smiled for the cameras Monday and said he bore no grudges against U.S. forces for his injuries. Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Reuters

Armless Iraqi Boy Bears No Grudges for U.S. Bombing
Mon August 11, 2003 02:25 PM ET




By Gideon Long
LONDON (Reuters) - A boy whose armless torso, horrific burns and haunted eyes symbolized civilian suffering in the Iraq war smiled for the cameras Monday and said he bore no grudges against U.S. forces for his injuries.

Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 13, victim of a U.S. bombing raid on Baghdad that killed his parents and other family members, spoke to reporters at Queen Mary`s Hospital in London where he and another Iraqi boy are due to be fitted with artificial limbs.

In a sign of his affection for Britain`s biggest soccer club, Ali said he wanted a Manchester United logo on one of the artificial arms he will be given.

"I`m looking forward to getting the ... limbs as soon as possible," said Ali, speaking through a translator.

"He`s very grateful to the British people and he assures us he has no bitter feelings," said Zafar Khan, chairman of the Limbless Association, which is affiliated to the rehabilitation center where the boys will be treated.

"Even for the Americans he has no grudges."

Ali, whose photograph was splashed across the world`s newspapers in April as he lay in a Baghdad hospital after the bombing raid, had both his arms blown off during the attack.

His father, pregnant mother, brother, aunt, three cousins and three other relatives were all killed.

Ahmed Mohammed Hamza, 14, who appeared before the cameras with Ali, lost part of his left leg and his right arm in a similar incident.

MEDIA GLARE

The Kuwaiti medical team accompanying the boys seemed eager to parade them as envoys for global peace, but Ali and Ahmed looked relaxed and unassuming as they sat before dozens of photographers and TV cameramen at the hospital.

Ali, making his first public appearance in Britain since arriving for treatment, wore a denim shirt over the stumps of his arms. Ahmed, in a wheelchair, wore a blue and white T-shirt adorned with a picture of England soccer captain David Beckham.

Nick Hillsdon, a limb specialist at the hospital, said both boys would sport Manchester United logos on their new arms.

"We asked Ali if he wanted a laminated Manchester United badge on the socket and he said he was keen on that," Hillsdon said.

"We were hoping we could get one of them to support a London club, but we asked the other guy and he said he wanted Manchester United as well."

Ali`s injuries are particularly severe because his arms were blown off very high above the elbow. Doctors hope to fit him with rotating wrists and electrical hands that will allow him to do things like hold a book and turn the pages.

"We should be able to provide him with a high level of independence," said Dr Sellaiah Sooriakumaran, leader of the medical team treating the boys.

The limbs, each costing about $30,000-$40,000, will have to be changed regularly as the boys grow. The Kuwaiti government has said it will foot the bill for all medical care until the boys reach adolescence.

An Anglo-American research group, Iraq Body Count, estimated last week between 16,000 and 20,000 civilians were wounded in the war based on media reports and the findings of independent investigators. Britain and the United States say it is impossible to give any accurate figures.

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Watched by British soldiers, Iraqi protesters demanded electricity, fuel and unpaid wages outside the headquarters of Iraq`s occupation administrators in Basra.
August 11, 2003
British Bring In Gas Supplies to Basra; G.I. Killed in North
By TERENCE NEILAN
Calm returned to Basra today as forces under British command delivered millions of gallons of fuel to gasoline stations and as electricity was restored to most parts of the city, Iraq`s second largest, British military officials said.
A United States soldier with the Fourth Infantry Division was killed and two were wounded late Sunday by a homemade bomb in Baquba, northern Iraq, the United States Central Command said today. No other details were released.
In Baghdad today, American soldiers said three Iraqis had been killed after an American convoy was attacked with a grenade, Reuters reported.
A soldier said the Iraqis had been chased down and shot, the news agency said, but local residents said the dead were innocent bystanders and accused the Americans of firing wildly.
In Basra, drivers were lining up at gasoline stations today after coalition forces brought in enough fuel to fill 550,000 cars, a supply that should last five days, the officials said.
Power cuts that officials said were brought on by looting of gasoline and sabotage of electricity lines prompted two days of riots in the city. Other factors behind the shortages include the dilapidated and obsolete condition of the refineries, officials said.
In the past two days residents lined up for several miles at gasoline stations and tried to cope with 122-degree temperatures and high humidity, a British official said today. Power stations had been running on standby generators.
The effort to keep the power stations going was continuing, a British spokeswoman in Basra, Squadron Leader Lynda Sawers of the Royal Air Force, said in a telephone interview.
The fuel shortages caused power failures at hospitals and harmed aid efforts, American officials have said.
The fuel arrived today by ship at the port of Az Zubayhr and road tankers that made their way to Basra were escorted by a convoy of British soldiers, Squadron Leader Sawers said.
In addition, a convoy of 25 road tankers was escorted by American soldiers from Kuwait, British officials said, and these are destined for towns and provinces throughout southeast Iraq.
Maj. Charlie Mayo, a British spokesman, said: "Coalition forces are determined to to everything we can to ensure oil reaches the power stations and that petrol reaches cars. We are also sending soldiers out to petrol stations to ensure that distribution takes place.
Major Mayo also said that coalition forces are stepping up efforts to provide security to power lines and to support local Iraqi contractors rebuilding the broken infrastructure.
The United Nations Joint Logistics Center said the shortage of liquefied petroleum gas, an important cooking fuel, was a "crisis" that was "almost certain to continue," even as officials hope that new imports and production from a plant in southern Iraq will increase supply. Gas canisters that normally cost 250 dinars have been fetching up to 4,000 dinars, or about $2.40.
Squadron Leader Sawers said that in an incident late Sunday not connected to the fuel protests, three empty road tankers escorted by military vehicles were fired on by assailants with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
A number of local people "put some obstacles in the road and set fire to the petrol on the road to stop or slow down the convoy," Squadron Leader Sawers said.
The fire was returned and two Iraqis were wounded, but she said it was not clear if they had been hurt by coalition forces or "by some other means."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

Summary
++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days
++++261+++44+++++305++++++144

Latest Fatality Date: 8/10/2003

08/11/03 CENTCOM
ONE KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN IED ATTACK
08/10/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES FROM APPARENT HEAT STRESS
08/10/03 CENTCOM
1ST ARMORED DIVISION SOLDIER FOUND DEAD
08/09/03 ABC News
At Least Four U.S. Soldiers Wounded in Iraq
08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES IN SLEEP
08/08/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES OF GUNSHOT WOUND

CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/inde…
There have been 307 confirmed coalition deaths in the war as of August 11, 2003. The casualty list below reflects the names of the U.S. and British soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors whose families have been notified. This list is updated daily.

http://www.pigstye.net/iraq/wd.php
The War Dead -- Long May We Remember Them
Coalition War Dead


At least 306 Coalition forces have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
264 from the US and 42 from the UK.

129 have died since the war Officially ended
May 1.
118 from the US and 11 from the UK.

See list here.

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Saddam ordered chemical attack, inspector to claim
Saddam `ordered chemical attack`

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday August 12, 2003
The Guardian

The former UN inspector hired by the Bush administration to find evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction will claim in a report next month that Iraqi forces were ordered to fire chemical shells at invading coalition troops, according to US reports.

But David Kay, who heads the 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group, has admitted he has found no trace of the weapons themselves, and cannot explain why they were never used.

One possibility is that the orders were part of an elaborate bluff, in the hope that they would be intercepted by the US and deter an attack.

According to US officials, all the Iraqi scientists now in custody have insisted that Saddam`s arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons was destroyed years before the Iraqi invasion.

The Boston Globe reported that Mr Kay, who was hired by the CIA in June to direct the search, had made the claim in a classified briefing to two Senate committees.

The newspaper quoted officials who had seen a summary of his report as saying that Republican Guard commanders had been ordered to launch chemical-filled shells at troops.

"They have found evidence that an order was given," a senior intelligence official said, adding there was no explanation of why the weapons were not used.

After his congressional briefing, Mr Kay told journalists he was making "solid progress", but said he would not make it public until he completed his work and found "conclusive proof". He is under pressure from the White House to go public as soon as possible and administration officials say he is expected to publish a report within weeks.

Prewar claims by the Blair government that Iraqi forces were ready to fire chemical weapons at 45 minutes` notice, and US reports in March that chemical artillery shells had been sent to Republican Guard units ringing Baghdad, were ridiculed when no such ordnance was fired or found.

It is not clear what evidence Mr Kay will present to support his claims.

At the time he was hired by the CIA to direct the hunt for weapons, Mr Kay was working for a hi-tech engineering firm and appearing regularly on television to argue that the Iraqi dictator had a significant arsenal.

Some of his former UN colleagues have said he has a powerful personal incentive to show he was not entirely wrong.

After the war he suggested that the weapons had been dumped in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers but no evidence of this was found to back up the allegation.

Mr Kay believes that the Baghdad regime destroyed or hid its weapons, telling reporters: "The active deception programme is truly amazing once you get inside it."

The Bush administration is hoping that the Kay report will bolster its defences against an expected onslaught of Democratic party criticism over the Iraq war once as the 2004 presidential election campaign gathers pace next month.

The White House weathered two weeks of intense media scrutiny last month after it admitted including an unsubstantiated claim about the Iraqi nuclear programme in the president`s state of the union address in January.

The intensity of the coverage has let up considerably while Congress is on holiday this month.

But the Washington Post on Sunday published a three-page investigation on how the administration exaggerated available intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear programme.

"On occasion, administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views," the investigation found.

"The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied."

The report focused on administration claims that Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to build a gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment, despite persuasive evidence that the specification of the tubes made it much more likely they were intended for the construction of rockets, as the Baghdad regime had claimed.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Iraq has wrecked our case for humanitarian wars
The US neo-cons have broken the Kosovo liberal intervention consensus

David Clark
Tuesday August 12, 2003
The Guardian

At a superficial level, the split in the British left over Iraq reflects a long-standing divide between those who, in certain circumstances, are prepared to regard war as a legitimate instrument of policy and those who have often come close to opposing it in principle. With rare exceptions, the latter group has always formed the minority, and on this reading the current row will peter out, leaving the Labour party largely unaffected.

In fact, something altogether more serious has occurred. For the first time, a significant section of the mainstream left has been forced into open defiance of its leadership over a decision to go to war. Many of these, typified by the resigning ministers Robin Cook and John Denham, were committed humanitarian interventionists who had supported the war in Kosovo. Pitted against them were many of their former allies, using many of the arguments they had developed together. It is the split within this camp that threatens to have the most enduring consequences.

Before September 11, there was substantial agreement between them about the principles that ought to underpin a progressive foreign policy. There was consensus on the need to move beyond narrow realism by accepting wider humanitarian obligations as part of a responsible global citizenship. There was a belief that it was time to act on the promises contained in the universal declaration of human rights. And there was a willingness to use military force, in extremis, to achieve these objectives.

Moving from rhetoric to reality would have radical implications for the state system as it had been historically conceived. If individuals as well as states had rights in international law there could be no place for the absolute inviolability of state sovereignty as a bar to the enforcement of those rights. What had been invented as a means of protecting weak states from the predatory interventions of stronger rivals had instead become a licence for despotic governments to brutalise and oppress their citizens with impunity.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia into state-sponsored ethnic violence during the 1990s acted as a spur to this debate and convinced most of the mainstream left of the need for a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention to prevent the large-scale abuse of human rights. But the machinery of the international community proved unequal to the task. By the time the "ethnic cleansing" had spread to Kosovo, the call for action in the security council had run up against an immovable Russian veto. The intervention that followed therefore took place without formal authorisation.

The rights and wrongs of this have been hotly debated, but the interventionists were at one in maintaining that the values of the UN charter should be upheld even if it meant bypassing its institutions, and they were right to do so. Those who opposed them indulged in a form of procedural fetishism by which a discredited veto system was considered more important than the prevention of crimes against humanity. They also relied on a static interpretation of international law that ignored its tendency to evolve in accordance with custom and practice.

The international system must be capable of adapting in situations where those seeking to act against the worst human rights violators find themselves unreasonably constrained by the existing rules of diplomacy. That does not mean that humanitarianism should be allowed to degenerate into a free-for-all of subjective judgements backed by the principle of raison d`état . There is a need for what the Canadian-sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty (ICISS) has called "threshold and precautionary criteria" to impose limits on the right to intervene.

It is here that the humanitarian interventionists divided over Iraq. Those who supported the war often cited the ICISS report, The Responsibility to Protect, in their defence, but their case failed even to approximate the criteria it sets out. The requirements of "just cause" and "last resort" demand large-scale human suffering that cannot be averted by other means. The Iraqi regime was certainly vile, and had the case for intervention been made when Saddam Hussein was gassing his own people it would have been a strong one indeed. But there was no immediate crisis to be averted in 2003.

The criterion of "right authority" requires, in the absence of a UN mandate, an overwhelming degree of international support. The coalition that invaded Iraq didn`t even amount to the "quasi-totality" of Nato.

But it is, perhaps, the stipulation of "right intention" that the pro-war interventionists have been most reckless in discarding, not because their own motives were questionable, but because of their alliance with US neo-conservatism. The neo-conservative approach to military intervention was set out with admirable clarity by Paul Wolfowitz in his infamous 1992 defence policy guidance paper: "While the US cannot become the world`s `policeman`, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends..."

The gap here could scarcely be wider. Humanitarian interventionists aspire to a world order based on the universal and disinterested pursuit of justice. Neo-conservatives are motivated by the selective and self-interested pursuit of their own geopolitical goals. This rapaciously ideological project starts from the proposition that the American social and economic mode represents the ideal form to which all other forms must ultimately comply. In what the neo-cons call this "distinctly American internationalism", US national interests and the interests of humanity are indivisible. It remains to be seen what happens when this assumption collides with the reality of an Iraq determined to make choices that conflict with the White House.

As long as US power remains in the hands of the Republican right, it will be impossible to build a consensus on the left behind the idea that it can be a power for good. Those who continue to insist that it can, risk discrediting the concept of humanitarian intervention and thereby render impossible the task of mobilising the international community to act in the future. Indeed, the backlash has already started. At last month`s conference on progressive governance, the assembled leaders rejected the section of Blair`s draft communique supporting the principle that the responsibility to protect trumps state sovereignty.

The problem is this: the interventionists who supported the Iraq war want those of us who didn`t to believe that George Bush is a "useful idiot" in the realisation of Blair`s humanitarian global vision. We can only see truth in the opposite conclusion.

· David Clark is a former Foreign Office special adviser.


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With eyes wide shut
Climate change threatens the future of humanity, but we refuse to respond rationally

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 12, 2003
The Guardian

We live in a dream world. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognise that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness that absorbs the moment in which we live, then generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that they recognise this and we do not.

Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already, destroy the conditions necessary for human life on Earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs` retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler. Instead, we whinge about the heat and thumb through the brochures for holidays in Iceland. The future has been laid out before us, but the deep eye with which we place ourselves on Earth will not see it.

Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of global warming. What we can say is that they correspond to the predictions made by climate scientists. As the met office reported on Sunday, "all our models have suggested that this type of event will happen more frequently." In December it predicted that, as a result of climate change, 2003 would be the warmest year on record. Two weeks ago its research centre reported that the temperature rises on every continent matched the predicted effects of climate change caused by human activities, and showed that natural impacts, such as sunspots or volcanic activity, could not account for them. Last month the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years", while "the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period". Climate change, the WMO suggests, provides an explanation not only for record temperatures in Europe and India but also for the frequency of tornadoes in the United States and the severity of the recent floods in Sri Lanka.

There are, of course, still those who deny that any warming is taking place, or who maintain that it can be explained by natural phenomena. But few of them are climatologists, fewer still are climatologists who do not receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Their credibility among professionals is now little higher than that of the people who claim that there is no link between smoking and cancer. Yet the prominence the media give them reflects not only the demands of the car advertisers. We want to believe them, because we wish to reconcile our reason with our dreaming.

The extreme events to which climate change appears to have contributed reflect an average rise in global temperatures of 0.6C over the past century. The consensus among climatologists is that temperatures will rise in the 21st century by between 1.4 and 5.8C: by up to 10 times, in other words, the increase we have suffered so far. Some climate scientists, recognising that global warming has been retarded by industrial soot, whose levels are now declining, suggest that the maximum should instead be placed between 7 and 10C. We are not contemplating the end of holidays in Seville. We are contemplating the end of the circumstances which permit most human beings to remain on Earth.

Climate change of this magnitude will devastate the Earth`s productivity. New research in Australia suggests that the amount of water reaching the rivers will decline up to four times as fast as the percentage reduction of rainfall in dry areas. This, alongside the disappearance of the glaciers, spells the end of irrigated agriculture. Winter flooding and the evaporation of soil moisture in the summer will exert similar effects on rainfed farming. Like crops, humans will simply wilt in some of the hotter parts of the world: the 1,500 deaths in India through heat exhaustion this summer may prefigure the necessary evacuation, as temperatures rise, of many of the places currently considered habitable. There is no chance of continuity here; somehow we must persuade our dreamselves to confront the end of life as we know it.

Paradoxically, the approach of this crisis corresponds with the approach of another. The global demand for oil is likely to outstrip supply within the next 10 or 20 years. Some geologists believe it may have started already. It is tempting to knock the two impending crises together, and to conclude that the second will solve the first. But this is wishful thinking. There is enough oil under the surface of the Earth to cook the planet and, as the price rises, the incentive to extract it will increase. Business will turn to even more polluting means of obtaining energy, such as the use of tar sand and oil shale, or "underground coal gasification" (setting fire to coal seams). But because oil in the early stages of extraction is the cheapest and most efficient fuel, the costs of energy will soar, ensuring that we can no longer buy our way out of trouble with air conditioning, water pumping and fuel-intensive farming.

So instead we place our faith in technology. In an age in which science is as authoritative but, to most, as inscrutable as God once was, we look to its products much as the people of the middle ages looked to divine providence. Somehow "they" will produce and install the devices - the wind turbines or solar panels or tidal barrages - that will solve both problems while ensuring that we need make no change to the way we live.

But the widespread deployment of these technologies will not happen until rising prices ensure that it becomes a commercial imperative, and by then it is too late. Even so, we could not meet our current levels of consumption without covering almost every yard of land and shallow sea with generating devices. In other words, if we leave the market to govern our politics, we are finished. Only if we take control of our economic lives, and demand and create the means by which we may cut our energy use to 10% or 20% of current levels will we prevent the catastrophe that our rational selves can comprehend. This requires draconian regulation, rationing and prohibition: all the measures which our existing politics, informed by our dreaming, forbid.

So we slumber through the crisis. Waking up demands that we upset the seat of our consciousness, that we dethrone our deep unreason and usurp it with our rational and predictive minds. Are we capable of this, or are we destined to sleepwalk to extinction?

www.monbiot.com


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Cuba Britons `admit war crimes`
Two of nine UK detainees at Guantanamo Bay reported to be ready to swap confessions for leniency

Julian Borger in Washington and Vikram Dodd
Tuesday August 12, 2003
The Guardian

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, will hold talks today with US officials on the fate of the nine British inmates in Guantanamo Bay, amid reports that two of them are ready to plead guilty to war crimes and renounce terrorism in return for a reduced prison term.

However, a US military lawyer denied that there had been any deal or any negotiations with the prisoners about striking such a deal.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, says that the two British inmates, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi, together with an Australian prisoner, David Hicks, have been providing information to US intelligence, and that US officials want to reward them "with a clear resolution of their futures".

"You renounce terrorism, you renounce Osama bin Laden, and, by the way, you say, `The Americans treated me very well in Guantanamo` - that would be a phenomenal public relations coup for the United States," the newspaper quoted "a person familiar with the cases" as saying.

"And by the same token, a defendant who was willing to say something like that would probably be favourably viewed by the government."

Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who has applied to the Pentagon to represent the British inmates, said the report confirmed what he had learnt - that the Mr Begg and Mr Abassi, were being put under pressure to strike a plea deal before they were allowed to see a civilian lawyer.

"This doesn`t come as a surprise. This is what we`ve been expecting," Mr Stafford Smith said. "What does surprise us is that the Americans had assured us that any proceedings against these two have been suspended while talks were going on with the British. They`re obviously not suspending the efforts to cajole them. The last thing they`re going to do is tell these guys that the British are negotiating on their behalf."

Major John Smith, a US military lawyer involved in the cases said yesterday that while the procedures laid down for the operation of military commissions allow for plea deals, there had been no negotiations with the inmates so far on such a deal.

"There are no discussions right now," Maj Smith told the Guardian last night. "That needs to be done with a defence counsel but no defence counsel has been assigned. A defence counsel will tell them about the charges, about the procedures, that there will be no adverse influence of not agreeing to a plea bargain, and ask whether the inmates wants a civilian counsel. Or he may say that the families have arranged for a civilian defence counsel and ask whether he wants to be represented by that counsel. He will go through all that with them before they get on to plea bargaining. The prosecutors have had no discussions with individuals."

The lawyers and family of Mr Begg and Mr Abassi have repeatedly said they fear for the mental health of the two Britons after their long periods of detention.

Mr Begg, from Birmingham, wrote in letters home that he had been held at first in the Bagrama air base in Afghanistan for a year, during which he had not seen natural light. In other letters home, his family had seen signs his mental health was deteriorating.

When last seen by British officials during a "welfare" visit, Mr Abassi said nothing to them during an hour they spent with him.

At a recent news conference, Mr Abbasi`s mother, Zumrati Juma said her fears for her son`s mental health were being stoked by the fact she was no longer receiving any letters from him. She said once she had received the letters regularly. Ms Juma said: "I did ask them [British officials] to find out why the letters had stopped and if he had some mental and physical problems. They just passed the questions to the United States and that was in April."

After the attorney general`s first visit to the US to lobby the Americans, the Pentagon agreed a psychiatrist should carry out an assessment of Mr Abassi`s mental health.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon`s top lawyer, William Haynes, flew to Britain yesterday for his third round of negotiations with Lord Goldsmith on the procedures under which the inmates will be tried under specially established military tribunals. In previous rounds, the US agreed to lift the threat of the death penalty and to put off proceedings until the matter had been resolved.

Officials familiar with the talks say that they are principally about details agreed in the first round last month, such as the inmates` access to civilian lawyers.


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The dossier is damned again
By Kim Sengupta and Paul Vallely
12 August 2003


Downing Street`s Iraq weapons dossier caused such deep concern among senior intelligence officers that they formally complained to their superiors, the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly heard yesterday.

Hitherto undisclosed official documents produced at the hearing revealed disquiet within the intelligence community on a number of claims made by No 10, including Saddam Hussein`s alleged capacity to launch chemical and biological attacks within 45 minutes.

Among those who wrote a letter of protest was one of the most senior and experienced officers in the field of Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction.

The opening day of the inquiry also heard that Dr Kelly, described by a No 10 spokesman as a "Walter Mitty" fantasist, was one of the country`s foremost experts on biological warfare, and someone who had access to intelligence at the highest level.

The inquiry, set up to investigate the apparent suicide of Dr Kelly after he was named as the main source of a report by the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that No 10 had interfered with the Iraq dossier, heard evidence from five witnesses, and trawled through dozens of pieces of documentation yesterday.

Senior Ministry of Defence officials admitted under questioning that Dr Kelly was regularly used by the Government to put forward its position on weapons of mass destruction to the media, and had been praised for his previous efforts.

The first witness to appear before Lord Hutton at the High Court totally contradicted the Government`s assertion that Dr Kelly was nothing more than a middle-ranking technical official. Terence Taylor, a former Army colonel, described the late scientist as someone with a "very high quality reputation" who had played a key role in uncovering Iraq`s chemical and biological weapons programme.

Mr Taylor, now president of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the United States, also pointed out the highly important work Dr Kelly had done in investigations into banned weapons programmes in the former Soviet Union.

There was, however, some relief for the Government over the damaging claim that Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister`s chief of communications, had the "45 minutes" threat inserted into the September dossier, and that this had been done despite Downing Street knowing the claim to be false.

Senior Whitehall officials, including Martin Howard, the deputy director of Defence Intelligence, and Julian Miller, chief of the assessment staff in the Cabinet Office, insisted that these allegations were untrue.

However, as James Dingemans, counsel for the inquiry, produced internal documents showing disquiet within the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), Mr Howard also had to concede that his staff had contacted their line managers about the dossier published in September last year.

One letter said: "As possibly the most senior and experienced officer on the field of Iraqi WMD, I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessment for which I had some responsibility was being presented in the dossier of 24 September 2002 that I was moved to write formally to Tony Cragg recording and expressing my reservations". Mr Cragg was Mr Howard`s predecessor at Defence Intelligence.

Mr Dingemans read from another official document noting that intelligence officers had expressed concerns about the way language had been hardened up over the 45 minutes claim. The concern had related to the "level of certainty" about the claim expressed in the dossier`s foreword and the executive summary. "The executive summary expressed the point differently as a judgement. The personnel concerned did not share its judgement but it was agreed by the Joint Intelligence Committee," the document noted.

The document said some Defence Intelligence officers had disagreed with the claim in the dossier that intelligence "shows" that Saddam attached great importance to possessing weapons of mass destruction. "They judged that it only `indicated` this," the document said. "Several reports contributed to the strong judgement, however. Again it was agreed by the Joint Intelligence Committee." Mr Dingemans also read from an e-mail written by a DIS member who consulted Dr Kelly over an assertion that UN weapons inspectors had been unable to account for 20 tons of biological growth agents.

The DIS officer wrote that he had been told by Dr Kelly: "The existing wording is not wrong but it has lost [sic] of spin on it". Mr Howard said the individual intended to type: "It has a lot of spin on it". He said the phrase had been the officer`s, not Dr Kelly`s. Mr Howard said the intelligence staff`s worries related to the dossier`s use of language - whether it should say intelligence suggests, indicates or shows.
12 August 2003 07:54


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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August 12, 2003
Iraqis Name Team to Devise Way to Draft Constitution
By DEXTER FILKINS


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 11 — In one of its first major decisions, Iraq`s interim government appointed a 25-member team today to draw up a procedure to produce a new constitution. Ibrahim Jafari, president of the Iraqi Governing Council, said at a news conference that the committee would not write the constitution itself, but rather devise the mechanism by which it would be drafted.

"The task of the constitutional committee is to move with all segments of society to decide on the best mechanism for writing the draft of the constitution," Mr. Jafari said.

A new constitution is seen as a cornerstone of the democratic Iraq that American leaders overseeing the occupation here are trying to bring about. The process, ultimately expected to lead to democratic elections, is part of the effort under way here to erase a history of dictatorship and misrule and begin a tradition of representative government.

In Basra today, rioting eased as British soldiers ferried in millions of gallons of fuel and restored electricity to large parts of the city. The power outages and fuel shortages, coupled with daytime temperatures of 120 degrees and higher, set off two days of demonstrations that left at least one person dead.

British troops distributed some 25 million liters of gasoline — enough to last five days and to fill more than 500,000 car tanks — to gas stations throughout the region, officials said. American soldiers assisted in the effort, escorting 25 gasoline trucks across the Kuwaiti border.

On Basra`s streets, the lines of cars that had stretched for miles from gas stations in recent days virtually disappeared. Crowds cheered as convoys carrying fuel arrived, and there were none of the riots or demonstrations that unfolded over the weekend.

Officials say the shortages of fuel and electricity in Basra have been brought about by a number of factors, including power cuts caused by sabotage, crumbling infrastructure and widespread looting of gasoline.

The shortages have fed off one another. The power cuts have shut down many gas stations, and the lack of fuel has prevented many people from running the gasoline- and diesel-powered generators that take over when the power system fails.

To fend off the saboteurs, the British military said it was building up its forces to protect power lines and electricity contractors. Military officials met with local tribal and religious leaders in an effort to forestall more unrest, said Lynda Sawers, a spokeswoman for the British military in Basra.

In Baghdad, Mr. Jafari said the committee empowered to draw up the constitutional mechanism might choose from any number of possibilities. But as an example, he said it could call a constitutional convention, bringing together anywhere from 100 to 200 people elected from around the country.

His example is an important one, in part because one of the country`s most important religious leaders, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has issued a religious edict, or fatwa, demanding that Iraq hold elections to select representatives to draft a constitution.

There were few details released on the 25 committee members appointed today, although council members say that many of them are judges and lawyers and that all are men.

Despite the tentative nature of the day`s events, the decision was a significant one for the council, appointed by America`s civilian administrators last month. Among its remaining tasks is the selection of a cabinet to take over the day-to-day administration of the national government.

Since its inauguration, the council has been regarded with skepticism by many Iraqis, who view it as a largely powerless American creation intended to defuse Iraqi desires for self-government. In fact, it has taken few substantive actions so far.

The decision today, if carried out, could ultimately transform the Iraqi nation, which drew up constitutions three times in the last century, in 1924, 1958 and 1964. The possibilities inherent in today`s events were not lost on some council members, who see the task at hand not as just the drafting of a political document but also as the creation of Iraq`s first citizens schooled in self-government.

"We have no experience in this, governing a democracy," said Naseer K. Chadirji, a member of the Governing Council. At 70, Mr. Chadirji said, he had voted in an election only once, in 1954.

"It`s a little like raising a child," he said. "But we can do it."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 12, 2003
Justice Kennedy Speaks Out

We hope that both the members of Congress and the Bush administration were paying attention last weekend when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a tough-on-crime Reagan appointee, decried harsh and inflexible sentencing policies. Justice Kennedy was speaking for legal experts from across the political spectrum when he said the current rules misspent America`s criminal justice resources by locking up people for irrationally long amounts of time.

The nation`s inmate population reached 2.1 million, a record, last year. One major factor behind the increase has been the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentences contained in many federal laws, especially drug laws. A second reason for the rise is the effect of federal sentencing guidelines, which were adopted in the mid-1980`s to make criminal sentences in federal cases more uniform. These two measures have both pressured judges to give longer sentences than they otherwise would.

Justice Kennedy, speaking to the American Bar Association`s annual convention, said he supported sentencing guidelines in principle, but that they must be "revised downward" to less draconian levels. As for the mandatory minimums, the inflexible minimum sentences written into some laws, Justice Kennedy said he could accept neither their "necessity" nor their "wisdom." He is hardly alone, even among conservatives, in raising these objections. Chief Justice William Rehnquist has complained that inflexible sentencing rules may threaten judicial independence. And Judge John Martin Jr., appointed by the first President George Bush, has announced that he is leaving the federal bench rather than remain part of "a sentencing system that is unnecessarily cruel and rigid."

Even as these objections are being raised, the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans are making the situation worse. They have enacted a new law, called the Feeney Amendment, that reduces judges` discretion to impose sentences less severe than those called for by the guidelines. And Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced plans to track individual judges` sentencing records, an intimidating move that critics are calling a judicial blacklist.

Justice Kennedy cast the deciding vote this year in upholding lengthy sentences for minor crimes under California`s "three strikes" law. But as he told the association, a court can call something permissible that is not necessarily "wise or just." Mandatory minimums and overly harsh federal sentencing guidelines are not wise or just. If the Bush administration does not believe the liberal critics, it should take the word of the growing number of conservatives who are calling for reform.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 12, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Thanks for the M.R.E.`s
By PAUL KRUGMAN


A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He`d been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.`s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" — and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.

Other stories are far worse. Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization — which makes our soldiers` discomfort a symptom of something more general.

Colonel Hackworth blames "dilettantes in the Pentagon" who "thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap." But the cheapness isn`t restricted to Iraq. In general, the "support our troops" crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something.

The usually conservative Army Times has run blistering editorials on this subject. Its June 30 blast, titled "Nothing but Lip Service," begins: "In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." The article goes on to detail a series of promises broken and benefits cut.

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it`s providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation`s ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills — reversed when the public heard about it — was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)

There`s also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat — and the system failed.

According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors — and their insurance companies — get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea.

Military privatization, like military penny-pinching, is part of a pattern. Both for ideological reasons and, one suspects, because of the patronage involved, the people now running the country seem determined to have public services provided by private corporations, no matter what the circumstances. For example, you may recall that in the weeks after 9/11 the Bush administration and its Congressional allies fought tooth and nail to leave airport screening in the hands of private security companies, giving in only in the face of overwhelming public pressure. In Iraq, reports The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush administration continues to use American corporations to perform work that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more cheaply."

In short, the logistical mess in Iraq isn`t an isolated case of poor planning and mismanagement: it`s telling us what`s wrong with our current philosophy of government.








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washingtonpost.com
In Basra, Worst May Be Ahead
As Southern Iraq Bakes, British Also Frustrated by Shortages

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 12, 2003; Page A01


BASRA, Iraq, Aug. 11 -- Sabah Khairallah drove his rickety white Toyota Crown to a gas station in downtown Basra at 8 a.m. The line, two cars wide, already stretched a mile. Ten hours later, as dusk broke the summer heat, he was still waiting.

He had left shuttered his shop, which sold nets to fishermen plying the Shatt al Arab that flows through Basra. The night before, he recounted, he had spent another sleepless night in a sweltering apartment without electricity, buffeted by a humid wind blowing off the Persian Gulf. At one point, in desperation, he started his car, turned on its air conditioner and put his son inside to sleep.

One month, said the gaunt, unshaven and angry Khairallah. That`s how long he gave the British forces occupying Basra to bring electricity, water and fuel. After that, more riots would ensue. "But not with rocks," he said, nodding his head. "With guns."

An uneasy calm returned to Basra today after two days of unrest -- some of the worst in Iraq since U.S.-led forces overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein on April 9. But no one in this weary southern city -- neither the British officials blamed for its plight, nor residents whose mounting frustration mirrors the spiraling temperatures -- seemed to think that the worst was behind them.

In interviews, residents of Iraq`s second-largest city almost uniformly expressed anger and incredulity at the shortages of gasoline and electricity and the skyrocketing black-market prices that have accompanied them. British officials in Basra, openly frustrated themselves, questioned the priorities of the U.S.-led reconstruction. And many feared that remnants of Hussein`s government or militant Shiite Muslim groups were prepared to capitalize on the disenchantment.

"There`s no question in my mind that people`s expectations were raised very high and they felt we had led them to expect dramatic improvements when Saddam was toppled," said Iain Pickard, a spokesman for the British-led occupation in Basra. "We`ve not managed to meet those expectations. Until we got here, we didn`t appreciate the scale of the task."

Over the weekend, hundreds of people flooded into Basra`s streets, taking British soldiers by surprise. Gangs of youths, some shirtless, barricaded roads with burning tires and threw rocks and chunks of concrete at the troops and vehicles thought to be owned by aid organizations and foreigners, in particular Kuwaitis, who are resented for their wealth and widely believed on the streets here to be smuggling oil out of the country.

British troops wearing riot gear fired shots into the air to disperse crowds. Two people were killed Sunday, witnesses and officials said, but some residents said the toll was higher.

British forces began releasing their own fuel reserves to alleviate the shortages, said Maj. Garry Pinchen, a spokesman. Troops today escorted fuel shipments to the city`s 10 gas stations, where soldiers rationed gasoline at 25 liters (about 6 1/2 gallons) per car. After long droughts of electricity, power was restored to three hours on, three hours off.

"We have to solve one problem at a time," Pinchen said.

In a country devastated by war, more than a decade of sanctions and years of often willful neglect, Basra`s problems are especially acute. British officials blame the loss of electricity -- at one point it was available 20 hours a day -- on looting, an increase in demand because of the hot weather and a breakdown in one of two major power stations. That, in turn, has slowed oil refining and delivery of fuel to gas stations. Backup generators are old and inefficient. Smuggling of fuel has made matters worse, they said.

The oil pipeline from Basra to Nasriyah was recently sabotaged, and silt has blocked half the main canal that brings drinking water to Basra. That has intensified residents` complaints that water, when available, is salty.

Pickard acknowledged that there was "an understandable degree of frustration" and complained that British officials` priorities in Basra -- power, water and fuel -- are not shared to the same degree by U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

"It seems so bureaucratic. It`s so difficult to get things going," he said from a building that had been looted of everything but its windows before the British moved in. "We have not had a great deal of say. We don`t feel we`ve been able to influence the reconstruction program."

He pointed to a U.S.-funded project to renovate 200 schools in the region. While admirable, Pickard said, "painting schools isn`t going to stop people from rioting."

But U.S. officials in Baghdad say that restoring basic public services -- particularly electricity, water and fuel -- remains a top priority of the reconstruction effort. They said they have been importing large quantities of fuel from neighboring countries to compensate for reduced output at Iraqi refineries and are bringing in generators for hospitals, water treatment plants and oil facilities.

But like the British in Basra, the officials said their efforts have been plagued by continued sabotage and looting of Iraq`s power and oil infrastructure.

At the Canary Restaurant, where customers lunched on chicken and the dates for which Basra is famous, owner Ali Fahd expressed sentiments heard often in the Shiite Muslim city. Residents welcomed the end of Hussein`s repression, which was especially fierce in the south after the 1991 uprising that he crushed. For weeks after his overthrow, the city remained peaceful and patient, he said. But now conditions are, if anything, worse. The only thing plentiful, he said, are imported cans of Pepsi-Cola stacked in pyramids along the streets.

"People have waited all this time and they`ve found nothing. Nothing has gotten better," he said. Asked whether it wuld, Fahd paused, wiped his sweaty brow and said, finally: "I swear to God, I don`t think it will improve."

Along Basra`s Kuwait Street, the main commercial thoroughfare, Yassin Faris sat at a desk whose metal trim was almost too hot to touch. When the bombs fell and British troops besieged the city in March, he said, his was a voice of patience.

"I was always defending the Americans and the British. `You should wait, you should be patient.` But it`s slow, it`s very slow," he said. When his two sons and three daughters complain now, he said, he has little to say.

In the middle-class neighborhood of Jamaiat, electricity had returned to the house of Alaa Qassem this afternoon. It had been a difficult week, she said. Her neighbor next door, Aseel, had told her how she had taken her sick mother to the roof every time the electricity went out, along with bedding and pillows. The night before, she made three trips.

Her neighbor across the street, Maysun, was eight months pregnant and had a small son. In a fit of desperation, she had tried to sell her jewelry and television set, hoping to move to a $20-a-night hotel until she gave birth. She was unable to raise the money, Qassem said, and instead put her son in a water-filled bathtub to cool off and spent the day crying.

"I said to her, `God help you,` " Qassem recalled. "I cannot do anything for you."

Qassem said she had no nostalgia for Hussein`s government. Her 18-year-old brother, Qusay, was executed in 1980 on suspicion of subversion, she said. Word of his demise came in a death certificate delivered to the family in 1983. Her father had fled to Iran.

With her $250-a-month salary from a Norwegian aid group, she now supports a brother, his wife and their two children. But prices have spiraled. A cylinder of butane that once cost 30 cents now goes for $4. The cost of a block of ice -- often the only means of refrigeration -- has jumped 16-fold to about $5.

"It`s a filthy life. We cannot do anything. We can only complain to God," she said. "When the war happened, we dreamed of a different life. Today, I don`t have any more dreams. Just dreams of electricity and water."

A few minutes later, the electricity went out again in their house. The air conditioner went silent. The ceiling fan swung slowly to a halt. And the room was left lit only by the glow of a setting sun.

Her sister-in-law Wasen smiled wryly. "The generosity has ended," she said.

Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.



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Kurds Adapt to a New Order in Iraq
Leaders Give Up Dream of Statehood, Urge Federalist Rule to Protect Status

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 12, 2003; Page A08


SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq -- The highway to this prosperous Kurdish city is lined with rolling, well-irrigated wheat fields. The first gas station is a designer fantasy of glittering blue glass. The main boulevard is a parade of Internet cafes, half-built mansions and a familiar-looking "Madonal" restaurant that features "Big Macks."

For the past 12 years, while the rest of Iraq struggled under dictatorship and foreign sanctions, the isolated north and its ethnic Kurdish population enjoyed a privileged period of political autonomy, international aid and rapid economic development under skies patrolled by Western warplanes enforcing a "no-fly" zone.

But with the toppling of President Saddam Hussein, that special status is no longer assured, and Kurdish leaders are scrambling to preserve benefits they fear will be lost in the ethnic, religious and political free-for-all of post-Hussein Iraq.

"Thirteen years ago, we had nothing. By the time Saddam was overthrown, we were far ahead of the rest of Iraq," said Adel Murad, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two major Kurdish parties. "We had satellite TV and cell phones. We had security and human rights. Now we`re scared, and we need something to protect everything we`ve built."

Despite a reputation as tough guerrilla fighters, shrewd politicians and clever smugglers, Iraq`s 3.5 million Kurds are at a distinct numerical disadvantage. They account for only 15 percent of the country`s 23.3 million people, while Arabs, with whom they have often clashed, constitute 80 percent and would inevitably dominate any future government.

But having helped U.S. forces bring down Hussein, Kurdish leaders are adjusting rapidly to the realities of post-Hussein politics. First, to maximize their national influence, the PUK and the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have renounced the differences that led to civil war in their 17,000-square-mile enclave in the 1990s.

The two groups now speak with one voice, and they say they are preparing to merge the dual administrations that rule separate sections of the Kurdish region in northeastern Iraq. Their top leaders, Jalal Talabani of the PUK and Massoud Barzani of the KDP, are among five Kurds holding seats on Iraq`s Governing Council in Baghdad, where the two men behave more like lifelong allies than onetime armed adversaries.

"We have learned our lessons," said Hoshyar Zubari, a spokesman for the KDP, which controls Irbil, 100 miles northwest of here. "The power struggle did a lot of damage, but all that is over now. We must be unified so we will be in a stronger position for the battle ahead."

More importantly, Kurdish leaders say they have jettisoned their long-standing dream of an independent ethnic homeland -- a goal that inspired generations of Iraqi Kurds through numerous cycles of rebellion and repression, including two uprisings against Hussein`s rule.

The main reason for the radical retreat is to placate nervous foreign neighbors. Since 1920, the Kurds have populated a mountainous region divided among Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. The latter three -- especially Turkey -- have always feared that their Kurdish minorities would rise up and unite under Iraqi Kurdish leadership, and they have quashed periodic separatist movements.

Last spring, after Turkey refused to allow the United States to use its territory as a staging area for an invasion of northern Iraq, scaled-back U.S. forces in the north worked closely with Iraqi Kurdish militias. As a result, the Kurds consolidated their hold on the north, and tensions with Turkey rose sharply. Since then, however, with a strong push from Washington, Iraqi Kurdish leaders have reassured their foreign neighbors that they have no plans to seek independence or foment unrest among Kurds in other countries.

What Kurdish leaders propose instead is a political formula they believe will safeguard their status without threatening other groups. They want Iraq to adopt a federal system of government, perhaps modeled on the system in Canada or the United Arab Emirates, with basic powers such as defense reserved for central authorities but individual states given considerable control over their economic resources and social policies.

"We have no choice," said Fadhil Merani, a senior KDP leader in Irbil. With the collapse of Hussein`s government, he said, "we have caught a big fish, but we don`t know what kind of fish it is yet. There is no chance for independence, so every educated Kurd, from every group in the region, is demanding federalism."

Indeed, the once unfamiliar word is now a staple of conversations across the region, from flour stalls to college campuses. While some Kurds remain convinced this is the perfect moment to push for independence, many have come around to their leaders` pragmatic stance. Little Kurdish and Iraqi flags are displayed side by side on market counters throughout the region.

"No matter what the politicians say, independence is the dream of all Kurdish people," said Karwan Tayeb, 22, a commerce major at the University of Sulaymaniyah. "For centuries we have been divided among four countries. There are almost 4 million of us, and now we have the support of the Americans and the British. This is our chance to become like Bosnia and East Timor."

But Sunur Ali, 18, who was sitting beside Tayeb in an English class, disagreed. The fall of Hussein, she said, has finally given the Kurds "a chance to become part of Iraq. We are not fanatics.

"We are Iraqis just like everyone else," Ali said, as many of her classmates nodded. "Shouldn`t we all be able to live together in peace?"

Yet the Kurdish enclave is far from homogeneous, with sizable ethnic minorities of Assyrians and Turkmens who frequently complain of discrimination by the Kurdish-run system. In the major oil-producing districts around the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, Kurdish and Arab groups are currently struggling for control of land, economic resources and political power.

Another problem is the growing aggressiveness of Islamic militant groups. Some have clashed violently with the secular Kurdish parties in the past, and some are believed by U.S. military officials to have links to terrorist groups. In the past two weeks, U.S. troops have arrested two well-known Kurdish Islamic clerics, provoking angry demonstrations here.

"We are all Muslims, but we are afraid of these fanatical groups," said one PUK official here, adding that most mainstream Kurdish leaders approve of the American actions but prefer to keep a prudent distance from them. "There is a great danger in politicizing Islam and forcing it on people. This could be a big threat to developing our society and integrating it into the modern world."

But far greater challenges come from outside, which is why senior Kurdish leaders now spend practically all their time in Baghdad, wooing other minority groups and honing the political skills they will need to make their case for federalism as a new Iraqi constitution is written in the coming months. After 35 years of repressive single-party rule, mistrust is high, the art of compromise is new, the strength of leaders is untested and the degree to which partisan groups will press or sacrifice their own agendas is not yet clear.

"We want to be full partners in the country`s future, but we are realistic, too," said Zubari, the KDP spokesman. "We are willing to give up some privileges, but we need a safety valve, and federalism comes closest. Our history is littered with broken promises and missed opportunities. We don`t want to squander this one."



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washingtonpost.com
Having Dished It Out . . .


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003; Page A13


Isn`t the hatred shown our president just awful, especially when we face such serious challenges to our national security?

One major politician called the administration`s policies an "abject national embarrassment."

A former national security official said the president "has squandered American credibility and undermined our preeminence around the world." Another highly respected foreign policy expert said the administration "has not been able to distinguish between professorial concepts and foreign policy."

A key House leader insisted that "the president does not have the divine right of a king." He accused the administration of providing the public with "the spin, the whole spin, and nothing but the spin."

An important senator called the president "a jerk," and a House member said: "He still looks like a small man in a big office and an illegitimate president."

Terrible, terrible stuff. These politicians clearly don`t know what the thoughtful conservative writer David Brooks knows: that politics should not take on a "lurid and emotional tone," and that it`s self-defeating to indulge "the hypercharged tendency to believe the absolute worst about one`s political opponents."

Brooks, writing in the Weekly Standard in June, was trashing Democrats for their intense dislike of President Bush. But every one of the comments I cited above was an attack by a Republican on Bill Clinton when he was president.

The first quotation about the administration being a "national embarrassment" came from Dick Cheney -- he was referring to Clinton`s policy toward Haiti. You presume our vice president will now defend the right of all Democrats to dissent from the current administration`s foreign policy.

It was James A. Baker III, the first President Bush`s secretary of state, who said Clinton had squandered American credibility. The guy who trashed professors was former professor Henry Kissinger. The comments about the king of spin came from the inimitable Tom DeLay, now the House Republican majority leader.

It was Sen. Orrin Hatch who called Clinton a "jerk," and Republican Bob Dornan, then a congressman, who described Clinton as both "small" and "illegitimate." Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) actually called Clinton a "scumbag" -- surely, in Brooks`s terms, a "lurid and emotional" way to refer to the commander in chief.

It is thus hilarious that Republicans have been so self-righteous against Democrats who have had the nerve to behave as an opposition and challenge President Bush`s credibility. Republicans are telling Democrats: "Don`t you dare do what we did." It`s equally amusing, but also depressing, that hypocrisy isn`t being called by its real name.

This moment`s fashionable subject, the California recall, was born out the very sort of political hatred that Republicans condemn when it`s directed at Bush. But it certainly doesn`t bother Arnold Schwarzenegger that his chance to start a political career has come courtesy of the partisan animosity against California Gov. Gray Davis that forced the recall election.

Nor does the hatred of Davis bother Bush, who has spoken kindly of the Terminator. That`s because Bush understands that one force that pushed him into the White House was the partisan loathing created by Cheney, Baker, DeLay and the rest during the Clinton years. The president can`t begrudge Arnold his opportunity. But Bush also hopes his apologists will intimidate Democrats from attacking him. That`s why the Bush camp keeps pretending that raising questions about the president`s stewardship is counterproductive and even unpatriotic.

"I am dismayed that so many feel free to engage in partisan attacks on the commander in chief in the midst of war," Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) wrote in The Post [op-ed, Aug. 3].

This view did not stop the same John Ensign from challenging Clinton in February 1998 over the prospect of airstrikes against Iraq. Clinton, Ensign said then, "has not made the case to Congress to get our support and we are not in a crisis situation." Don`t Ensign`s comments sound awfully close to what Howard Dean has said about the war against Iraq in 2003?

In fairness, when Clinton`s airstrikes against Iraq eventually came in the midst of the impeachment fight in December 1998, Ensign called them "a necessary action," not something every Republican said at the time. But Ensign could not resist adding: "You certainly have to question the timing." Democrats who asked why the buildup to the war in Iraq was so widely advertised before the 2002 elections were, one presumes, equally justified in questioning "the timing."

It is not at all astonishing that partisans would claim that their own political attacks are morally justified while the opposition`s assaults are wretched exercises in partisanship. What is astonishing is that anyone would take such claims seriously.

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THE WORLD


U.S. Soldiers Fire on Iraqi Family; 4 Die
There was no warning, a survivor says. Military states that the incident is under investigation.
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writer

August 12, 2003

BAGHDAD — The Kawaz family had just dropped off Grandmother and were heading home in their small white car, well in advance of the city`s 11 p.m. curfew. No one saw that U.S. soldiers had set up a checkpoint at the intersection ahead.

As their car rolled toward the checkpoint, a hail of bullets from U.S. soldiers ripped through their vehicle, killing Adel Kawaz, 44, and three of his children, ages 18, 16 and 8. His wife, Anwaar, survived, as did the couple`s 13-year-old daughter.

Although major combat operations may be over in Iraq, the Kawaz family`s experience illustrates anew the danger civilians face under the U.S.-led military occupation. With resistance forces attacking troops daily — another U.S. soldier died Sunday in a blast in Baqubah — soldiers are on high alert. In this tense and broiling-hot capital patrolled by some 36,000 U.S. troops, trigger fingers are at the ready.

The shooting of the Kawaz family happened about 9:15 p.m. Friday. The Army has not released details. Acknowledging that a family had been hit by U.S. gunfire, as first reported by Associated Press, a military spokesman said Monday that the incident was under investigation.

U.S. officials also said they were looking into the apparent shooting of two Iraqi policemen by U.S. soldiers Saturday. The plainclothes officers were in a speeding car pursuing crime suspects when they were fired on.

In an interview Monday, the surviving Kawaz daughter, Hadeel, said the soldiers who fired on her family car gave no warning. There had been an explosion in the neighborhood that night, possibly from a faulty electricity transformer or generator. The family, concerned that the blast would attract U.S. soldiers, decided to return home early. But unknown to them, U.S. soldiers had set up a checkpoint about half a mile from the grandmother`s house in the Slaykh section of the capital.

After the firing on their car stopped, Hadeel said, her father and 8-year-old sister, Marvet, lay in the car for an hour without receiving medical attention. Soldiers eventually removed them from the vehicle, and they died at a hospital. Her brother Haider, 18, and older sister, Oulah, 16, died at the scene.

Hadeel calmly explained how before the tragedy, she had taken a liking to the Americans. She and her siblings would interrupt their video games to give the GIs water when they patrolled in the heat near their house.

"And now this happens to us," said Hadeel, who escaped with scalp and arm wounds from flying glass.

Her father, a former member of the Iraqi air force, had just received a $60 check, which the U.S. government issued to ex-Iraqi servicemen. He planned to put it toward opening a satellite TV dish shop; until then, he was driving a taxi.

After the firing began, Hadeel`s mother, who is eight months pregnant, screamed for the soldiers to stop, apparently to no avail.

Hadeel`s uncle, Jamal Khathem, said that the killings were God`s will and that his sister-in-law has no intention of seeking restitution from the Americans. Still, it has surprised him that no one from the U.S. government has come to their house to investigate, check on Hadeel`s condition or offer an apology.

A coalition spokesman said Monday that it was up to victims to apply for restitution after alleged wrongful-death incidents, as well as to provide proof, including photos of the scene and victims.

But Khathem said nothing could make up for what occurred.

"What has happened, happened. What could they offer us that would bring our family back to life?" he asked.

Although she expressed similar fatalism about losing her three siblings and father, Hadeel said she could not understand how an army from a nation with so much sophisticated military equipment could not have seen "there were girls and a family in the car that night."

"It is tragic," she said, "that their famous technology failed them."



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THE NATION


Bush Pushes `Healthy Forests` Plan
At site of Arizona fire, he sees his initiative to thin underbrush as a way to protect homes. Critics call it a `timber industry giveaway.`
By Edwin Chen
Times Staff Writer

August 12, 2003

TUCSON — President Bush visited a fire-ravaged Arizona community Monday as he urged Congress to enact his controversial "healthy forests" initiative, which he said would protect homes from wildfires by thinning dense undergrowth and brush but critics said would make it easier for the logging industry to cut down trees.

And mindful that his stewardship of the economy will be judged by voters next year, Bush added that a more vigorous program to thin "millions" of acres of forests would create many jobs and stimulate the economy throughout the western United States.

The issue "is not a political issue," Bush said. It`s not a partisan issue. It`s an American issue that requires a consensus to do what is smart and right."

But environmental groups and some Democrats vehemently disagreed with Bush`s description of his initiative as "good, sound policy" that is "urgently needed." They said Bush was doing the bidding of the logging industry — a contention that a senior administration official strongly rejected.

In his remarks, Bush cast the debate primarily as a matter of public safety and the preservation of a natural resource.

"Our forests are treasures that must be preserved for future generations," he said, adding that only by expediting the process of thinning forests can they be saved. "We want the process to work quickly so we can get on about the business of saving our forests but we want to expedite the process to avoid the legal wrangling and the delays that take place in our courts."

He said his forest initiative would create jobs because much of the work would be done by local contractors, who in turn could sell the wood as kindling.

Currently, however, "laws on books make it very difficult for us to set priorities," Bush said. All too often, he added, litigation needlessly delays forest projects.

"For the sake of our forests, the Congress must act," the president said.

Bush`s comments came as he visited the site of the 84,750-acre Aspen Fire, named after the trail near where it was first spotted. The blaze, which began June 17 and took about a month to control, destroyed 333 structures, primarily in the resort of Summerhaven.

He proposed his initiative last August during an Oregon visit to another fire-ravaged forest. Last year, according to the White House, wildfires consumed about 7 million acres and destroyed 842 homes.

The House has passed its version of forest legislation, and the Senate is scheduled to take it up in the fall. The measure would more than triple federal funding for thinning — from $117 million in 2000 to $417 million in Bush`s fiscal year 2004 budget request, the White House said.

The debate over how to thin the forest and prevent wildfires has spawned angry debate throughout the West, with environmental groups claiming that Bush`s plan would allow timber companies not only to remove kindling but also to cut down healthy older trees — and avoid lengthy delays posed by current logging requirements.

Traveling with the president aboard Air Force One as he flew from Waco, Texas, to Arizona, a senior administration official rejected the description of Bush`s plan as a boon to the logging industry.

"By definition, the vast majority of these projects are not profitable. It`s the taxpayer who pays for the work that`s done. And those taxpayer dollars are basically paying for timber contractors — to take the smaller-density trees out of these forests, which currently have limited-to-no-commercial value," the official said.

"So when you ask about environmental groups claiming that this is about logging, they`re just dead wrong," added the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the face of opposition from environmental groups and their congressional allies, Bush has implemented portions of his initiative through executive action — meaning that no congressional action was required.

In addition, environmental studies are no longer needed before trees are logged or burned to prevent forest fires. The rules also limit appeals of such projects. The previous rules required environmental studies for nearly every logging project.

Now, logging projects affecting 1,000 acres or less will not need such studies if the land is deemed at risk for fire. Controlled burns, where fire is used to burn excess trees under certain circumstances, could be done without environmental studies for projects of up to 4,500 acres.

Critics of the president`s plan reiterated their opposition on Monday.

The Wilderness Society said Bush`s initiative "falls far short" of his stated goal of protecting communities from wildfires — in part by focusing solely on federal lands. Studies show that 85% of the land surrounding communities most at risk from wildfire is private, state, or tribal, the society contends.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, also joined the attack Monday.

"Unlike our first president, George Bush just can`t come clean about his plan to cut down trees. He`s using the real need to clear brush and small trees from our forests as an excuse for a timber industry giveaway," he said, adding: "Arizonans should make no mistake: This is logging industry greed masquerading as environmental need."

Bush ended the day in Denver, where he attended a campaign fund-raiser that was expected to raise $1 million.


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COMMENTARY


Make the Recall Count
Republicans are running it as a shell game to distract from their misdeeds -- don`t play along
Robert Scheer

August 12, 2003

"Take him, he`s yours."

That was my initial response to the California recall, aimed at a conservative Democratic governor who often has betrayed the state`s large progressive base of voters — the same folks who held their noses to elect and then reelect him.

But now I don`t buy it. However you feel about Gray Davis, the fact is, this recall has become a shell game, led and paid for by Republicans, that conveniently distracts from the alarming failures and frauds of the White House. That includes the Bush administration`s blind eye to the energy sting that robbed the California government of a good chunk of its past budget surplus.

The giddy media spectacle of porn stars and action heroes seeking to lead the world`s sixth-largest economy should not divert us from the fact that the key black marks on Davis` resume — the energy crisis and the budget shortfall — were both messes created by deregulating, tax-cutting Republicans. In dealing with both, Davis has not pulled any rabbits out of his hat, but he has been a competent leader who minimized the damage. The red ink in California is a mere needle prick compared with the hemorrhaging of trillions in future debt thanks to President Bush`s tax cuts for the rich, the invasion of Iraq and other disasters.

In fact, despite the hysteria, California`s current problems are no more serious than that of many states, including New York and Texas, both run by Republican governors. The underlying problem for all states is a national economy brought to its knees by the epic fall of a panoply of corrupt companies, firms like Enron that used the Republican mantra of deregulation as a convenient cover for looting consumers, stockholders and employees. It is true that California has paid a particularly heavy price for the machinations of Enron and other energy companies.

How dare Arnold Schwarzenegger or any Republican now ignore the well-documented gaming of the California energy market by Bush`s Texas cronies, many of whom landed high posts in his administration? Was Davis responsible for manufacturing spikes in energy prices that nearly bankrupted the state? Of course not — but he took the political hit when the lights went out. It`s a safe bet that Schwarzenegger and the other Republicans running will offer not a word of criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney`s infamous meetings with top energy executives that excluded consumer representatives. The minutes of those meetings are still secret, yet we know that the policy that emerged benefited the con artists who caused California`s energy crisis in the first place.

Nor will the Republicans who bought this recall delve into the role of the Bush-dominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That`s the agency that failed in its obligation to bring the energy pirates to heel and force them to properly compensate California for creating artificial shortages.

Davis failed in paying too much to get the lights back on, but I dare any of the Republican candidates for his job to step forward and tell us that they would not have bailed out PG&E and Southern California Edison. They will not because they have no real solutions to the energy problems or any other problems the state faces. Certainly they will not curtail the heavy influences of the prison guards and other law enforcement unions that are milking the state budget and that form Davis` most reliable base of support. Clearly Davis` fundraising is obscenely obsessive, but it`s minor compared with Bush`s nonstop money machine.

Were the Republicans not hypocrites, they would applaud Davis for implementing so much of their pro-big-business and harsh law-and-order agenda. Like other conservative Democrats, Davis wanted to appear tough, but a party led by poll-watching chameleons will always make for an easy target.

Ironically, Schwarzenegger is as "liberal" as Davis on the hot-button issues of abortion, gun control and gay rights. And can anyone suggest that Hollywood bon vivant Schwarzenegger better typifies Christian values than squeaky-clean Davis — a decorated officer in Vietnam when his peers were demonstrating in the streets, a guy who has never been known to indulge a moment of decadent pleasure? Didn`t the puritans of the right squirm just a bit when their new candidate told Jay Leno that the toughest decision in his life prior to announcing his candidacy was whether or not to have a bikini wax?

Suddenly the Republicans care not a whit about those social values they have been prattling about, or anything else but defeating a prominent Democrat. They brook no opposition, even from a conservative Democrat; their goal is a one-party system.

If you think politics is all a joke anyway, then vote for whichever opportunist makes you laugh the most. But if you think that meaningful representative democracy requires the scrutiny of the serious primary and election process that Davis has twice weathered, then for a small "d" democrat, a "no" vote on the recall is an obligation.


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LETTER TO THE EDITOR


Iraq Is Not Post-WWII Germany

August 12, 2003

Re "Rice Likens Iraq to Postwar Germany," Aug. 8: While I have great respect for national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, she is completely out of sync when using post-World War II Germany to predict the outcome of our occupation of Iraq. According to your article, Rice said that "postwar Germany had been as messy as postwar Iraq, and yet Germany eventually became the `linchpin` of a fully democratic Europe." Rice went on to say that we faced so-called werewolves, Nazi remnants who attacked Allied troops and engaged in sabotage, "much like today`s Baathist and Fedayeen remnants" in Iraq.

I was a Counter Intelligence Corps officer during the occupation of Germany. Sender Werewolf (radio station Werewolf) did try to broadcast all kinds of exhortations to attack Americans, who they claimed were raping their women and children and killing civilians. But it wasn`t very long before we rounded up the Werewolf announcers and put the transmitter out of business. As to serious attacks on our troops, there were sporadic attempts to harm our men, but we caught the perpetrators in short order.

Yes, we used informants to help us catch war criminals and Nazis who qualified for incarceration. Much information was given to us voluntarily by the disillusioned Germans.

Albert G. Silverton

Upland

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No! Postwar Iraq is not analogous to postwar Germany.

Germany had a homogenous society that had a substantially democratic form of government (before Hitler). Iraq didn`t exist until the British drew arbitrary lines in the sand to create it, without regard for the disparate, distinct tribes whose history — and legacy — is tribal wars and, often, a nomadic, theocratic culture.

The absence of this fundamental understanding of the people and history of the region has led this administration on a path of destruction and self-destruction. President Bush and company need to read a few history books.

Stephany Yablow

North Hollywood



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Mystery illness hits more troops


Globe and Mail Update


POSTED AT 4:32 PM EDT Monday, Aug. 11, 2003

Washington — Two more soldiers overseas have come down with serious pneumonia, bringing the unexplained cases to 17, the U.S. Army said Monday.

Officials are investigating the cause of some 100 cases counted since March, focusing on a number of them so serious the patients had to be put on ventilators and flown to Europe.

The number of serious cases was 15 last week and now has risen to 17, said a statement Monday from the Army surgeon-general`s office.

The statement said officials have found "no infectious agent common to all of the cases," and no evidence the patients were exposed to biological or chemical weapons, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), or environmental toxins.

Officials said last week that cases were among troops serving in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, with 10 of the then-15 cases from Iraq and the others from Uzbekistan, Qatar and elsewhere. Monday`s statement didn`t say where the new cases happened, and no one was available to comment.

A two-person investigative team has gone to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most of the sick soldiers were treated after evacuation. A six-person team was went to Iraq, including infectious disease experts, laboratory workers and people to take samples of soil, water and air as well as medical samples from patients.

The two teams were to review patient records and laboratory results and interview health care workers and patients, if possible. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also is reviewing the cases.

Armywide, between 400 and 500 soldiers get pneumonia each year. It is the severity of these new cases that has caused special concern.
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Hussein bodyguard, Iraqi general held
14 arrested in sweep outside Tikrit targeting backers of ousted regime; U.S. soldier killed, 2 others wounded in bomb attack
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The Associated Press
Originally published August 12, 2003, 1:47 PM EDT



TIKRIT, Iraq -- U.S. soldiers today captured one of Saddam Hussein`s former bodyguards and an Iraqi general who was a senior Baath Party official, the U.S. military said.

The 14 suspects arrested in a sweep outside Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit belonged to a single family that had been a key backer of the deposed dictator`s regime -- and was believed to be supporting guerrilla resistance to U.S. occupying forces.

In the latest violence against American troops, a soldier was killed today when roadside bombs blasted a U.S. convoy west of the capital, Baghdad.

The series of raids lasted three hours, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 22nd Infantry Regiment`s 1st Battalion. He declined to identify the detainees or specify the location of the raid other than as a southern Tikrit suburb.

"We were targeting a specific family -- one of the four controlling families of the former regime," Russell said.

"They were trying to support the remnants of the former regime by organizing attacks, through funding and by trying to hide former regime members," he added.

About 250 soldiers surrounded and searched 20 homes, carrying away a safe, photographs and computers that may be of intelligence value, Russell said.

The Army had been watching the family for weeks, because of intelligence pointing to their involvement in recent attacks on soldiers in Tikrit. They staged the sweep today when they thought they could catch the maximum number of people, he said.

During his reign, Hussein relied on four families for support and rewarded them with cash, prestige and land seized from other people, Russell said.

Tikrit has been a center of the hunt for Hussein, who the military believes is on the run, moving every three to four hours.

The U.S. soldier killed this morning was riding in a Humvee in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. A military spokesman said his convoy was hit by three roadside bombs wired to exploded one after another. Two soldiers were wounded.

Another soldier died in his sleep at a U.S. base in Ramadi, his body discovered this morning. In Mosul, a main city in northern Iraq, the military reported a soldier died when his Humvee collided with a taxi.

Elsewhere, guerrillas wounded three American soldiers in northern Iraq on Monday.

Separately, a raid Monday in Ain Lalin, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, had sought a former member of Hussein`s regime on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mark Young said. He said 70 suspects were taken into custody -- but not the target of the raid.

North of Baghdad, flames shot 200 feet into the air from a burst oil pipeline today, and U.S. forces fired warning shots to keep people from the scene.

Two M-1 Abrams tanks and three soldiers crouched in firing positions ordered an Iraqi fire truck to stay back. "They were very hostile," said fire department Lt. Hasannein Mohammed.

The blaze near Taji, a region of date groves, military compounds and chemical plants, was burning about three miles north of a big refinery. It sent a huge black cloud drifting over the capital for several hours.

Military spokeswoman Nicole Thompson had no further details.

It could not immediately be determined if the fire was the work of saboteurs, but many pipelines throughout the oil-rich nation have been hit by guerrillas seeking to destabilize U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq.

On Monday, Iraq`s interim government announced plans to reopen Basra airport by the end of the month and has already authorized planned flights by at least six foreign carriers.

Commercial flights to and from Iraq have been suspended since the 1991 Gulf War. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, current president of the U.S.-picked Governing Council, said Monday the resumption of flights would be "a big step forward to opening Iraq to the world."

During the 12 years of United Nations sanctions, only Royal Jordanian had been flying to Baghdad with U.N. approval.

U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer had said he hoped to get Baghdad and Basra airports reopened by mid-September, and predicted last week that Basra would be secured and operational before Baghdad.

The Baghdad International Airport has seen at least three failed surface-to-air missile attacks on military flights since U.S. forces took control of the capital April 9.
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

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We Stand Our Ground
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times best-selling author of two books, War On Iraq (Context Books) and The Greatest Sedition is Silence (Pluto Press).

http://tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8588

The following comments were delivered August 10, 2003, as the keynote address at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in San Francisco.

I must begin by saying that standing here before you is, simply, one of the greatest honors of my life. I have never served in the armed forces in any capacity. My father, however, did. He volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1969. The changes that war wrought upon him have affected, for both good and ill, every single day of my life. Vietnam did not only affect the generation that served there. It affected the children of those who served there, and the families of those who served there. That war is an American heirloom, great and terrible simultaneously, handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter, from father to daughter and from mother to son. The lessons learned there speak to us today, almost 30 years hence.


If the people had but a taste of the horror and the lies, they would repudiate this administration and all it stands for.



Let me tell you a quick story about my father. His call to the freedom bird came while he was still out in the field. He arrived at Dulles Airport to meet my mother still dressed in his bush greens, still wearing the moustache, with the mud of Vietnam still under his fingernails and stuck inside the waffle of his boot sole.

A few days earlier, he had come across a beautiful old French rifle. It was given to him by a Vietnamese friend, a former teacher with three children who had been conscripted permanently into the military. My father managed to bring this rifle home with him, and sent it on the flight in the baggage hold along with his duffel.

My father and my mother stood waiting at the baggage claim for his things to come down. The people there -- and this was 1970, remember -- backed away from him as if he was radioactive. They knew where he had just come from. If the greens were not a giveaway, the standard issue muddy tan he and all the vets wore upon return from Vietnam was. When the rifle came down the belt, not in a package or a box, just laying there in all its reality, the crowd was appalled and horrified. My mother and father looked at each other and wondered what these people were thinking. What did they think was happening over there? What did they think it is that soldiers do? Did they even begin to understand this war, and what it meant, what it was doing to American soldiers, to the Vietnamese soldiers like my father`s friend, and to the civilians caught in the crossfire?

The looks on those people`s faces there said enough. The answer was no. They didn`t know, and apparently didn`t want to know. Now, 33 years later, we are back in that same place again, fighting a war few understand that is affecting soldiers and civilians in ways only those soldiers and civilians can truly know. Ignorance, it seems, is also an American heirloom to be passed down again and again and again.

Many of you know, far better than I do, what my father felt that day in Dulles. That is why I am honored to speak to you tonight. If the American people fully knew what this war in Iraq was really about, if they fully knew what it means today to be a soldier in that part of the world, they would tear the White House apart brick by brick. If the people had but a taste of the horror and the lies, they would repudiate this administration and all it stands for. They don`t know, because they have been fed a glutton`s diet of misinformation and fraud. Changing that is why we are here.

The first of August saw a very interesting article published in The Washington Post. The title was, "U.S. Shifts Rhetoric On its Goals in Iraq." The story quotes an unnamed administration source -- I will bet you all the money in my wallet that this "source" was a man named Richard Perle -- who outlined the newest reasons for our war over there. "That goal is to see the spread of our values," said this aide, "and to understand that our values and our security are inextricably linked."

Our values. That`s an interesting concept coming from a member of this administration. We make much of the greatness and high moral standing of the United States of America, and there is much to be proud of. The advertising, however, has lately failed completely to match up with the product.

Is it part of our value system to remain on a permanent war footing since World War II, shunting money desperately needed for human services and education into a military machine whose very size and expense demands the fighting of wars to justify its existence?

Is it part of our value system to lie to the American people, to lie deeply and broadly and with no shame at all, about why we fight in Iraq?

Is it part of our value system to sacrifice nearly 300 American soldiers on the altar of those lies, to sacrifice thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq on the altar of those lies?

Is it part of our value system to use the horror of 9/11 to terrify the American people into an unnecessary war, into the ruination of their civil rights, into the annihilation of the Constitution?

Is it part of our value system to use that terrible day against those American people who felt most personally the awful blow of that attack?

Is striking first part of our value system?

Is living in fear part of our value system?

It is not part of my value system. It never will be.

This new justification for our war in Iraq is yet another lie, an accent in a symphony of lies. The values this administration represents play no part in the common morality of the American people, play no part in the legal and constitutional system we adore and defend. One of the worst things ever to happen to this country was allowing the people within this administration to use words like "freedom" and "justice" and "democracy" and "patriotism," for those good and noble words become the foulest of lies when passing their lips.

For the record, the justification for war on Iraq was:

The procurement by Iraq of uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program, plus 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents -- 500 tons, for those without calculators, is one million pounds -- almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs, and connections between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of 9/11.

None of these weapons have been found. The mobile weapons labs -- termed "Winnebagoes of Death" by Colin Powell -- turned out to be weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s. The infamous Iraq-Al Qaeda connection has been shot to pieces by the recently released 9/11 report. And the Niger uranium claim was based upon forgeries so laughable that America stands embarrassed and ashamed before the judgment of the world. This is all featured on the White House`s Web site on a page called `Disarming Saddam.` The Niger claims, specifically, have yet to be removed.

Lies. Lies. All lies.

That Washington Post story, however, reveals a deeper truth here. Now that the original and terrifying claims to justify this war have been proven to be utterly and completely phony -- Niger recently asked for an apology, by the way -- the administration is falling back upon the justification for war that these men have been formulating for years and years and years.

They call it Pax Americana, a plan to invade Iraq, take it over, create a permanent military presence there, and use the oil revenues to fund further wars against virtually every nation in that region. This we call bringing our "values" over there. Norman Podhoretz, one of the ideological fathers of this group of neoconservatives who now control the foreign policy of this nation, described the process as "the reformation and modernization of Islam." That`s a pretty fancy phrase. I am a Catholic, and can therefore call it by its simpler name: Crusade. We know all about those.

This is the Project for a New American Century, the product of a right-wing think tank that, in 1997, was considered so far out there that no one ever thought its members would ever come within ten miles of setting American policy. One broken election, however, vaulted these men into positions of unspeakable power. Their white papers, their dreams of empire at the point of the sword, have become our national nightmare and the nightmare of the world. I speak of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Lewis Libby and the rest of these New American Century men who have taken our beloved country and all it stands for it and thrown it down into the mud.


This new justification for our war in Iraq is yet another lie, an accent in a symphony of lies.



You will note that I did not name George W. Bush, for blaming Bush for the gross misadministration of this government is like blaming Mickey Mouse when Disney screws up. He is not in charge. Truman said "The buck stops here," and so we point to Bush as a symbol of all that has gone wrong. But he is not in charge. These other men, these New American Century men, have delivered us to this wretched estate, and by God in Heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.

But is it all ideology for these men? Of course not. There is the payout. Have you ever heard of a company called United Defense, out of Arlington, Virginia? Let me introduce you. United Defense provides Combat Vehicle Systems, Fire Support, Combat Support Vehicle Systems, Weapons Delivery Systems, Amphibious Assault Vehicles and Combat Support Services. Some of United Defense`s current programs include:

The Bradley Family of Fighting Vehicles, the M113 Family of Fighting Vehicles, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Future Scout and Cavalry System, the Crusader, Electric Gun Technology/Pulse Power, Advanced Simulations and Training Systems, and Fleet Management. This list goes on and on, and includes virtually everything an eternal war might need.

Who owns United Defense? Why, the Carlyle Group, which bought United Defense in October of 1997. For those not in the know, the Carlyle Group is a private global investment firm. Carlyle is the 11th largest defense contractor in the United States because of its ownership of companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other equipment. Carlyle has ownership stakes in 164 companies which generated $16 billion in revenues in the year 2000 alone. The Carlyle Group does not provide investment or other services to the general public.

Who works for the Carlyle Group? George Herbert Walker Bush works for the Carlyle Group, has been a senior consultant for Carlyle for some years now and sits on the Board of Directors. This company is profiting wildly from this war in Iraq, a tidy gift from son to father.

And then, of course, there is Dick Cheney`s Halliburton, profiting in the millions from the oil in Iraq. Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root, is also in Iraq. Their stock in trade is the building of permanent military bases. Here is your permanent military presence in Iraq, and all for an incredible fee. Cheney still draws a one million dollar annual check from Halliburton, what they call a `deferred retirement benefit.` In Boston, we call that a paycheck.

Pax Americana. That which President Kennedy spoke so eloquently and specifically against when he said, "What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced upon the world by our weapons of war." This is now the rule of law for this nation. It must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it.

This is America. At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies -- you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work wonders.

That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies -- you can have all of that, but if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand 9/11s could never do. The men and women within this current administration are murdering the idea that is America with their Patriot Acts, their destruction of civil liberties, their lies, their daily undermining of even the most basic tenets of decency and freedom and justice that we have tried to live up to for 227 years.

That, and that alone, should be enough to get you on your feet with your fist in the air, whether or not you believe we have any chance of stopping all this. We may not win, but we damned well have to fight them. If we don`t, we are the traitors some would say we are.

When you stare into the obsidian darkness of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, it stares back at you. The stone of the monument is jet black, but polished so that you must face your own reflected eyes should you dare to read the names inscribed there. You are not alone in that place.


I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world.



You stand shoulder to shoulder with the dead, and when those names shine out around and above and below the person you see in that stone, you become their graveyard. Your responsibility to those names, simply, is to remember.

Remember what that dream, that idea that is America, is supposed to be. Never forget it. Never let your children forget. Hand it down, generation after generation, because it is the most valuable heirloom we all possess. If we lose it, we have lost everything.

When all else fails, I fall back on the words of the extraordinary anti-war activist, Daniel Berrigan. A friend of Berrigan`s, Mitchell Snyder, was for years an advocate and activist for the homeless in Washington DC. Snyder became despondent over the fact that his government could spend billions on bombs and planes and guns, but could not seem to find the money to help the homeless. Snyder became so despondent that he committed suicide. Daniel Berrigan penned these lines in memory of Snyder, and it is in these lines that I find my hope and strength when the darkness creeps too close.

Some stood up once, and sat down
Some walked a mile, and walked away
Some stood up twice, then sat down, "I`ve had it" they said,
Some walked two miles, then walked away. "It`s too much," they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
They were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth,
They walked the waters,
They walked the air.
"Why do you stand," they were asked, "and why do you walk?"
"Because of the children," they said,
"And because of the heart,
"And because of the bread,"
"Because the cause is the heart`s beat,
And the children born
And the risen bread."


The cause is the heart`s beat. This cause is my heart`s beat. It is yours. May it be there for all time, until that day comes when we can, once again, stand in awe and pride before our flag and our government and our nation, when we can once again revel in the rescued dream that is America.

Until then we are at the barricades, and on the streets, and in the faces of all those who would spend the precious blood of our men and women on lies and profit and greed. The obsidian darkness of that memorial demands this of us. The golden ideals of this nation demand this of us. The laws of our forefathers demand this of us. Most importantly, we demand this of ourselves.

They can take nothing from us that we are not willing to give, and we are not willing to give this great nation up. Let them be warned. We stand our ground.

Thank you.


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Published: Aug 11 2003

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Iraq adventure could cost U.S. $600-billion

Associated Press


Washington — The U.S. bill for rebuilding Iraq and maintaining security there is widely expected to far exceed the war`s price tag, and some private analysts estimate it could reach as high as $600-billion (U.S.).

The administration is offering only hazy details so far, and that is upsetting Republican as well as Democratic legislators.

The closest the administration has come to estimating America`s postwar burden was when L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of occupied Iraq, said last month that "getting the country up and running again" could cost $100-billion and take three years.

He estimated that repairing Iraq`s electrical grid alone will cost $13-billion and getting the water system in shape will require an additional $16-billion.

In a recent interview on CNBC`s Capital Report, Mr. Bremer said of rebuilding costs: "It`s probably well above $50-billion, $60-billion, maybe $100-billion. It`s a lot of money."

U.S. President George W. Bush and other officials have refused to provide projections, saying too much is unpredictable. That has angered legislators of both parties, who are writing the budget for the coming election year even as federal deficits approach $500-billion.

"I think they`re fearful of having Congress say, `Oh, My God, this thing is going to be very costly,`" said Representative Jim Kolbe (R, Ariz.), chairman of a subcommittee that controls foreign aid.

More than three months after Mr. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, even the cost of the on-going U.S. military campaign remains clouded in confusing numbers.

Defence Department officials have said U.S. operations are costing about $3.9-billion monthly. But that figure excludes indirect expenses like replacing damaged equipment and munitions expended in combat.

Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon`s top budget official, has said that when all the costs are combined, he expects U.S. military activities in Iraq to total $58-billion for the nine months from last January through September. That includes part of the buildup, the six weeks of heaviest combat that began March 20, and the aftermath.

That sum, however, is what Congress provided this year for Defence Department activities not only in Iraq but also against terrorism worldwide — including Afghanistan, where U.S. military costs are running about $1-billion a month, according to officials.

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Arnold twists Adam Smith
Norman Solomon
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/12/ED19…


Arnold Schwarzenegger recently went out of his way to tout the views of an 18th-century economist long revered as an icon by GOP politicians. "I am more comfortable with an Adam Smith philosophy than with Keynesian theory," the actor told the Financial Times of London. But now that he`s running for governor, we should ask whether "an Adam Smith philosophy" really squares with Schwarzenegger`s eagerness to make state government more deferential to the wishes of business owners.

Adam Smith may be a patron saint of present-day Republicans, but his writings actually contradict the "free market" rhetoric embraced by Schwarzenegger. The facile spin on Smith`s work presents unfettered investment as the key to prosperity. But Smith openly declared that labor creates all wealth. He wrote: "It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased."

Smith was no champion of workers. Yet, in the context of present-day politics, it`s a good guess that he would dissociate himself from Schwarzenegger and other free-marketeers who claim to be walking in his footsteps. While Schwarzenegger proclaims that policy-makers in Sacramento should become more friendly to the corporate sector, such ideology flies in the face of Smith`s actual words.

In "The Wealth of Nations," published 227 years ago, Adam Smith wrote with realism about manufacturers and merchants. He described them as "men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

The wealthy business leaders who have raced to support Schwarzenegger`s campaign are among those who have "an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public." And Schwarzenegger looks like a very useful tool.

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy based in San Francisco.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 11:14 a.m. EDT August 12, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR

More attacks are being reported involving U.S. soldiers. In northern Iraq, guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades and set off at least one homemade bomb, injuring three American soldiers. A U.S. military spokesman says they`re in stable condition. In central Baghdad, witnesses say two grenades were thrown from a car at a U.S. military checkpoint. They say soldiers fired back, killing one Iraqi.
The head of Iraq`s interim government says he`s ready to take a "big step" toward re-opening Iraq to the rest of the world. Ibrahim al-Jaafari says the government hopes to reopen the Basra airport in southern Iraq by the end of the month. Basra is Iraq`s second-largest city.
American troops swooped into a remote Iraqi village aboard Black Hawk helicopters Monday in search of a member of Saddam Hussein`s inner circle. They couldn`t find him, but rounded up about 70 suspects. The main target of the raid was a former regime member who is on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
North of Baghdad, three American soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack, a day after a U.S. military policeman was killed in a bombing in front of a police station in a northern Iraqi town. They`re said to be from the 4th Infantry Division.
Several Iraqi truck drivers are hurt after a grenade attack in Iraq. The U.S. military says attackers threw grenades under the men`s trucks. One man was seriously hurt and was taken to a coalition medical facility.
Calm returned to Basra on Monday after two days of riots, during which Iraqis hurled rocks and bricks at British troops to protest fuel, electricity and water shortages in the southern city. British troops restored electricity to parts of Basra the city and supervised the distribution of gasoline.
The president of the U.S.-picked Governing Council says the interim government has postponed appointing Cabinet ministers for three weeks. He says 25-member committee will be formed soon to choose the constitutional assembly. He gave no dates.
The Army says two more soldiers overseas have come down with serious pneumonia, bringing the unexplained cases to 17. Officials are investigating the cause of some 100 cases counted since March, focusing on a number of them so serious the patients had to be put on ventilators and flown to Europe.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



Summary
+++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days

+++++263++++44++++307++++++145
Latest Fatality Date: 8/12/2003

08/12/03 CENTCOM
THIRD US SOLDIER IN LESS THAN 1 WEEK DIES IN SLEEP IN IRAQ
08/12/03 CENTCOM
ONE KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN CONVOY AMBUSH
08/11/03 Department of Defense
DOD IDENTIFIES LAST FOUR ARMY NON-COMBAT RELATED DEATHS
08/11/03 CENTCOM
ONE KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN IED ATTACK
08/10/03 CENTCOM
SOLDIER DIES FROM APPARENT HEAT STRESS
08/10/03 CENTCOM
1ST ARMORED DIVISION SOLDIER FOUND DEAD
08/09/03 ABC News
At Least Four U.S. Soldiers Wounded in Iraq

CNN:
There have been 308 confirmed coalition deaths in the war as of August 12, 2003.

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Study of Bush`s psyche touches a nerve

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report`s four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

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Second BBC reporter says Kelly told her Campbell `sexed up` dossier
`Glib and speculative` remark surprised journalist

Ciar Byrne
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC`s Newsnight, was told by David Kelly that Alastair Campbell was responsible for "sexing up" the Iraq intelligence dossier but dismissed the comment as a "gossipy aside".

Watts, who had known Dr Kelly for more than a year, told the Hutton inquiry that she did not include the remark in her report about the Iraq dossier because she considered it "glib" and "speculative".

Her admission provides corroboration that Dr Kelly had pointed the finger at Alastair Campbell for inserting into the September dossier the key claim that Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

Watts confirmed that Dr Kelly had "extraordinary access" to government information - he had lunched with the defence secretary Geoff Hoon. But she added that she had no other information to back up the notion that the comments about Mr Campbell were anything other than throwaway gossip.

She had discussed the claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes with Dr Kelly on May 7.

"My shorthand notes show that Dr Kelly said to me that it was `a mistake to put in, Alastair Campbell seeing something in there, single source, but not corroborated, sounded good`," Watts said.

She told the inquiry that she felt the comments were not typical of the scientist and she had been surprised to hear him single out Mr Campbell by name.

Asked how Dr Kelly had imparted the information that Mr Campbell had exaggerated the contents of the dossier, she replied: "Not as a revelation. I would characterise it as a gossipy aside comment. I didn`t consider it particularly controversial. I felt it to be a glib statement.

"I was somewhat surprised he would use a name. It was unlike him to speculate in a glib way. He gave no particular detail. I had no reason to believe he had particular access that would make that a comment I would want to use with confidence in a Newsnight report."

Asked what her impression was of Dr Kelly`s opinion of the 45 minute claim, she said: "He wasn`t suggesting it was necessarily false, but I think he was suggesting to me that it might not necessarily have had only one interpretation."

Watts said that in their conversations over the course of more than a year, Dr Kelly "was passing information to me that was not sensitive in any way or operational, not whistleblowing in any sense".

She said Dr Kelly had "extraordinary access to government information across the board".

Dr Kelly had told Watts that the 45 minute claim was single-sourced and uncorroborated three weeks before the armed forces minister Adam Ingram conceded it on the Today programme on May 29, proving how well-informed he was, she said.

"With hindsight, he was passing on that information three weeks before it became public, which does indicate that he had extraordinary access to the information in that dossier."

Confirming that Dr Kelly was regularly used as a point of contact for journalists, Watts revealed that she was first given his name and telephone number by a Foreign Office official, John Walker, although he was also on the BBC`s database of contacts.

She said they had only met once, at a Foreign Office open day in November 2002 when they exchanged pleasantries. However, they spoke on the phone on numerous occasions between early 2002 and 2003 when he provided her with background information for her reports.

She said their conversations ranged from the American anthrax killings in 2002 to Robin Cook`s resignation in 2003.

In a telephone conversation in April 2003 Dr Kelly told her he had been for lunch with Mr Hoon.

Dr Kelly repeated to Watts a rather cryptic comment that the defence secretary had made to him: "One sees the mosaic of evidence built up".

Watts said Dr Kelly had then chuckled about the fact that it was "fairly meaningless".

She revealed that she had had three conversations with Dr Kelly in May; in the first two she took handwritten notes, but she taped their final discussion on May 30.

The recording is expected to be played in court tomorrow.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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A war fought under false pretences
The Hutton inquiry has already answered the crucial question

Roy Hattersley
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

No doubt, the fireworks come later. We can look forward to Alastair Campbell treating the Hutton inquiry in the same cavalier fashion that he addressed the House of Commons select committee; the BBC angrily refuting the allegation that the Today programme would rather make news than report it; and, top of the bill, the prime minister defending his integrity against the charge that he wilfully exaggerated the case for going to war.

There will be dramatic days ahead. But Monday`s opening session - intended as only the sighting shots in a battle which will last all summer - got very close to answering the crucial question that lies at the heart of the inquiry. However and why Dr Kelly died; whoever added a claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes; and whether or not Alastair Campbell "sexed up" the dossier that described Saddam`s capability, one thing is now clear. If we had known in March what we know today, neither the House of Commons nor the British people would have supported the decision to go to war - a rather more important issue than whether or not the BBC was critical of one of its reporters` literary style.

There can no longer be any doubt about the status of Dr Kelly. We may yet learn of minor eccentricities and we already know that he resented the way in which he had been treated by the Ministry of Defence. But he was a scientist who knew more about Saddam`s weapons programme than anyone else in Britain - perhaps anyone else in the world. He was neither a fantasist nor a fraud, but an acknowledged international expert. And he believed that the claims were exaggerated.

He was not alone. Martin Howard, deputy chief of intelligence at the MoD, told the inquiry that two intelligence officers had made formal complaints about the way in which the government dossier - constructed to justify the war - was written. Their objection was precise and covered three specific areas: "the recent production of weapons of mass destruction", the claim that those weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes and the "importance of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein". They believe that the dossier`s treatment of each suffered from the same fatal flaw. "The existing wording is not wrong but it has a lot of spin on it."

What intelligence sources judged to be possible came to be represented in the government`s dossier as a certainty. Might became will. And, in the case of the 45-minute warning only one source argued that the danger was definite. In the words of Martin Howard the critics challenged "the level of certainty" expressed in the foreword and executive summary of the document. And the impression that an attack was imminent was increased by the addition, a couple of weeks before it was published, of the 45-minute claim. Britain was asked to go to war because we and our allies faced a real and present danger. But only in the land of might have been.

The country and the Commons were doubtful enough about the war even when they were told that Saddam`s lethal capability was certain. If they had known that it was only the supposition of some intelligence officers, the opposition to military action would have been irresistible. And the doubts do more than undermine the dossier that changed the public mood. They make the decision to go to war itself indefensible. If young men and women are sent to die, the politicians who send them need to be sure that the sacrifice is justified. In Iraq, soldiers were sacrificed for a hypothesis which was rejected by some of the intelligence officers who were qualified to make a judgment.

Much of the evidence given on Monday confirms how imprecise a business intelligence gathering is. Conclusions are reached on the basis of probability. The dossier that justified war was the result of what amounted to a collegiate discussion, with some members supporting the eventual wording and some dissenting. It is impossible to justify war on a majority vote, a difference of opinion or a compromise over conflicting judgment about its necessity. Britain went to war under false pretences.

The inquiry will grind on. Alastair Campbell will, no doubt, be acquitted of personally and exclusively adding the 45-minute warning to the dossier, though there will be no doubt that Dr Kelly made that allegation and the BBC was justified in reporting it. That means that the BBC will almost certainly be vindicated. The prime minister will undoubtedly assert that he remains certain of the moral justification for the war. Civil servants may be censured and ministers may lose their jobs. We can look forward to weeks of lurid headlines. But nothing the inquiry reveals in future can be more important than the single fact that it demonstrated last Monday. The government exaggerated the threat from Iraq. If it had given the country an honest account of the danger the outcry against military action would have been too great for the government to resist or the prime minister to survive.

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We Brits are so wacky
AL Kennedy
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

I`m just back from a spot of work abroad - sorry, the Source of all UK Crime, Bad Driving and Childcare - and after days of European public speaking, cream-based sauces and nude swimming my fettle is fine. Not least because - although my nation`s leaders consistently behave like a troop of sub-standard baboons - in foreign parts, there still lingers a fondness for our wacky little island full of lies.

Despite our ever-closer links with the world`s most unconvincing Texan psychopath, many Europeans still want to see us as simply the generous purveyors of madcap humour and weirdly suppressed sex - we are Mrs Peel in The Avengers, we are Connery`s Bond and we are, above all, Mr Bean and Monty Python. Such is the goodwill generated by Monty Python alone that we would all have to spend every afternoon standing on a dying pensioner while eating raw Iraqi babies before anyone believed how fatally ugly our domestic and foreign policies can be.

We`re also acknowledged to be only slightly less terrifying than the Americans, but there`s a lingering suspicion that, safe in Barbados, Tony Blair will dress up as a woman and hit himself with fish while, at home, Gordon Brown dances in stockings and leather suspenders.

I`m beginning to see Europe`s point. For example, I left Britain expecting I`d return to find those lovable rogues Tony and Alastair had been hung upside down from lamp-posts and nibbled by dogs. Only a population with an immeasurably advanced sense of humour would continue to allow them free run of their national budget when 99 out of 99 toddlers wouldn`t trust them with a bag of crisps and they`re both blatantly pawning our future while converting us to a murder-based economy.

But we Brits get wackier than that. Take the transformation of cautious, informed reports from various spies and inspectors into what we in Scotland call utter shite, as spouted and still spouting from various government representatives. Rather than be tedious and declare those involved irretrievably corrupt before sacking them, we prefer weeks of music-hall banter about sod all.

I`m waiting for the edition of Newsnight when Paxman waddles in wearing baggy trousers to find a dead cow in his seat and must ask Jack Straw questions for 15 minutes without mentioning anything bovine or on mortality. We`ll laugh till we cry.

And then we`ll laugh more, because of that edgy, alternative humour for which we are famed. This presumably allows the hounding to death (or assassination by conspiracy) of David Kelly to be a laugh riot - not to mention the recent suicide of the future US navy secretary and multiple military suicides in Iraq. These are especially amusing because they prove that Bush and his cohorts are right up with us in the quest for delightful pranks.

America`s finest ongoing wheeze, apart from smothering news of uranium poisonings, is its casualty figure fiddle. Obviously, it`s deeply funny that anyone at all is dying in Iraq for no good reason, that US veterans` benefits have been slashed and that the loyalty of so many has been manipulated so magnificently by so few.

But this gets even funnier if you only tell the folks back home about soldiers who die as a result of enemy action. Anyone dying by accident, unknown cause or as a result of personal despair simply isn`t acknowledged. The total US death toll in Iraq is 258; compare this with the sanitised version and laugh yourself sick when you realise the final insult is the denial that so much grief even exists.

Add to this the liberation that wasn`t, the democracy that isn`t and the glee on the New York Stock Exchange when 200 or so imaginatively armed US troops take hours to kill four Iraqis (one of them a teenager) and you`ll realise that we`re living in a world of fun. On September 9 North Korea will declare itself a nuclear power, thus inviting slapstick, rubber chickens and possible rains of death, depending on how insane Rumsfeld really is and how long it takes the US army to lose its sense of humour.

Meanwhile in Liberia, the same people who`ve spent 60 years arranging arms sales, resource rape and drug testing throughout Africa are coming to the rescue. And in the Caspian, it turns out that an Enron-Taliban oil deal cover-up kept al-Qaida`s plans for September 11 secret, too. And in Colombia, the US threatens to withdraw support for the war on drugs unless its troops are granted exemption from the global court because the last thing the forces of Truth and Justice want is exposure to Truth and Justice. And everywhere, our only superpower is drawing its foreign intelligence from a lunatic clique of right-wing fantasists and using Tony Blair as a moral reference. I mean it really is all just so funny that it hurts.

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Baghdad Blogger
The temperature is rising. And Baghdad, Basra and Nasiriyah have all erupted on the same day

Salam Pax
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

As you go into Baghdad from the west there is graffiti on the walls that says "Welcome to the Republic of Darkness and Unemployment".

Baghdad had no electricity for a whole day. Call me the master of all whiners but do you have any idea what it feels like to sleep in 50C? I guess with the current heat wave you have a taste. Today`s office stories: Muhammad, one of the drivers, decided the best place for his family to sleep was in the car with the engine running and the air-conditioning on. Shihab was up every couple of hours getting water for his kids because he was afraid they would totally dehydrate. Everyone who got into the office today had bags under their eyes and a bad headache. Haifa, the nice lady who makes sure we have coffee in the morning, was ranting about having to watch "this Paul something" give us lies on TV everyday. She actually described Paul Bremer as another Saddam; we see him every day on TV, and the news is all about what he says and what he does. Next we`ll have statues of him in the streets. Somehow you feel like he lives in a bubble and has absolutely no idea what the people are saying.

Listen to Bremer talk about improvements in the electrical situation while Basra is rioting. I just didn`t believe my eyes when I saw the images from Basra. I am guessing that the reason we didn`t have electricity for a whole day in Baghdad is because they wanted to patch things up in Basra. Two days of riots and about eight Iraqis injured. At least the Coalition forces didn`t call the rioters "Saddam loyalists", at least there is some acknowledgment that these are people who are upset with the way the occupation forces are mismanaging the country. And it is getting out of hand. Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriyah all going up in one day and Baqubah being added to the list of cities not really under control.

I went to a press conference where our new one-month-president [the coalition provisional authority has a rotating chairman] was telling us about what they were up to. The press guy, at the request of the conference, was telling journalists that the instantaneous translation thingy has two channels; channel one for Arabic, channel two for English. I would like to add another channel: channel three for the truth. It keeps repeating one phrase: "We have no power, we have to get it approved by the Americans, we are puppets and the strings are too tight." I feel sorry for the guys on the council, some of them are actually very good and honest people and they have been put in a very difficult situation.

As usual, getting into these press bashes is an event in itself. You have to be there an hour early, you get searched a thousand times and, of course, as an Iraqi I get treated like shit. I have no idea why the American soldiers at the entrance to the convention centre [where the CPA press operation is] are so offensive towards Iraqis while they can be so nice to anyone with a foreign passport. I have to be the Zen master when the soldier at the gate gets condescending. The reporters of Iraq Today were not allowed to get to the press conference and they went ballistic. "This is my friggin` government, what do you mean I can`t get in?" My sentiments exactly. Keep this image in your head: an American officer stopping you, an Iraqi, from attending the press conference your government is holding.

Earlier in the day I got frisked and the car I was in searched because the colonel or something who has just passed by thought that he didn`t like the people who are standing by the car (me) and that I was giving him dirty looks. Habibi, you have no idea how dirty my looks can get, you didn`t get one. What you saw was the I-have-been-standing-for-a-whole-hour-in-the-sun. But because you have the power to decide what a look means I got searched. You really should have looked more carefully before you shot the nine-year-old kid in Ramadi only to find out later that it was a water gun he had in his hands. Dirty looks - yeah, totally justified frisking me.

Yes, I am annoyed because if the occupation forces fail, my country will fall apart. And for some reason the CPA does not look like it has a sense of how serious the situation is.

Spot what is wrong in this sentence: "I am sitting in a car going to Fallujah with the Pretenders blasting from the speakers and air-conditioning on super-freeze."

What is wrong with it is that it can`t last forever. I will get to Fallujah and will have to step out of the car and get smacked by Madam Reality for wanting to escape her grip on me.


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Two reporters, one story: Campbell sexed up the dossier
By Kim Sengupta
13 August 2003


Alastair Campbell`s alleged role in "sexing up" the September dossier to justify war in Iraq was disclosed to a second BBC journalist by David Kelly, the Hutton inquiry heard yesterday.

Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC2`s Newsnight, was told that Mr Campbell was central to inserting the 45-minute claim into the dossier two weeks before Dr Kelly made the same allegation to the reporter Andrew Gilligan.

The disclosure, which came at the end of the second day of the special inquiry into the death of the scientist, immediately swung the advantage to the corporation in its ongoing confrontation with No 10.

Ms Watts did not follow up Dr Kelly`s information because she considered it a "gossipy aside". But she realised the full extent of his knowledge when another aspect of what the scientist had told her - that the 45-minute claim was "single sourced" - was confirmed by the Government three weeks later.

The inquiry was told by Ms Watts that she was speaking to Dr Kelly about Iraq`s supposed weapons of mass destruction on 7 May when she asked about the claim, in the government dossier, that Saddam Hussein could carry out chemical and biological attacks within 45 minutes.

Reading from her shorthand notes, Ms Watts told the inquiry that Dr Kelly had said: "It was a mistake to put in. Alastair Campbell seeing something in there. Single source, not corroborated. Sounded good."

Ms Watts told the inquiry that she did not realise the significance of what she had been told. She said: "I did not consider it particularly controversial. I found it to be a glib statement."

She said that she only realised how good Dr Kelly`s information was when Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, confirmed that the intelligence had come from a single source following Mr Gilligan`s report on Radio 4`s Today programme on 29 May.

"With hindsight, he was passing on that information three weeks before it became public, which does indicate that he had extraordinary access to the information in that dossier," she said.

Ms Watts said that she had taped another conversation - expected to be played to the inquiry today - she had with Dr Kelly on 30 May, which, it is said, further corroborates Mr Gilligan`s account of what Dr Kelly told him about Mr Campbell`s role in the September dossier.

Earlier, Mr Gilligan, the defence and diplomatic correspondent for the Today programme, admitted to the inquiry that he was wrong in stating in a broadcast that Downing Street had knowingly inserted an allegation that it believed to be wrong - the 45-minutes claim - into the dossier.

Mr Gilligan acknowledged that Dr Kelly had told him that the single source for the claim was deemed to be "unreliable" by the intelligence services but this did not necessarily mean that the Government knew it was wrong.

He said: "It was a fair assessment to draw from what he said to me, but I think, on reflection, I didn`t use exactly the right language."

The inquiry was also read a memorandum from Kevin Marsh, the editor of Radio 4`s Today programme, to Stephen Mitchell, the head of radio news, in which he said of Mr Gilligan`s broadcast: "This story was a good piece of journalism marred by flawed reporting. Our biggest millstone had been his loose use of language and lack of judgement in some of his phraseology."

Mr Gilligan, facing prolonged and often hostile questioning from James Dingemans QC, counsel for the inquiry, stood by his claim that Dr Kelly had said that Mr Campbell had been responsible for the "transformation" of the dossier in the week before its publication last September.

He even went further by stating that this transformation included the 45-minutes claim - something that Mr Campbell had strenuously denied when he appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

Mr Gilligan also claimed, for the first time, that Dr Kelly had agreed upon quotes that could be used in his news report. And that certain matters had been left out at the scientist`s request.

However, the inquiry was told that Dr Kelly disputed Mr Gilligan`s account of the meeting during evidence to two parliamentary inquiries and in an interview with his line manager at the Ministry of Defence.

"I think that is not really an accurate reflection of the conversation we had," he told his MoD manager.

Mr Gilligan said that he had not mentioned Mr Campbell in his original story for the Today programme - simply referring to Downing Street - as Mr Campbell had already complained about a number of his previous reports from Iraq and he did not want another row.

The reporter said that following the broadcast on the Today programme, he had twice tried to contact Dr Kelly but had been worried that if he telephoned him his identity could be compromised.

"I was concerned - this might be paranoid or might be sensible - that either my calls or his might be being monitored," he said.
13 August 2003 10:15


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Britons` lawyer threatens to boycott terror tribunal
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
13 August 2003


Lawyers for two British prisoners due to be tried as terrorist suspects by a US military tribunal have threatened to boycott the proceedings unless they are guaranteed to befair. They said to do otherwise would legitimise the process.

The threat came as Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, held talks with William Haynes, the Pentagon`s most senior lawyer, in London yesterday to decide the fate of the prisoners. There were reports that the suspects had accepted a plea bargain, admitting to war crimes in exchange for a fixed release late.

A spokeswoman for the Attorney General indicated that Mr Haynes appeared willing to make concessions to British concerns about the judicial treatment of the prisoners. "The US is considering what further assurances can be given on the process, particularly in relation to the independence of the military commissions and the review panel, and the role of defence counsel," she said.

In quite what circumstances any deal has been reached is unclear.The Independent has established that the prisoners, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, who are being held at Guantanamo Bay, have not been told the British Government is trying to secure assurances about the tribunals they are expected to face.

Louise Christian, the men`s solicitor, said that if a fair trial could not be guaranteed, she and other lawyers were unlikely to take part. "To do so would be to legitimise it," she said.

Mr Abbasi, 23, and Mr Begg, 35, are accused with 650 other inmates of being members of the Taliban or al-Qa`ida. All were seized during the war in Afghanistan or its aftermath.

Earlier this year it was announced that the men - two of nine Britons held at the US naval base on Cuba - would be among the first six prisoners to be placed before US military tribunals. This week an American paper reported that the men had agreed to a plea bargain in exchange for a release date. A source told The Wall Street Journal: "You renounce terrorism, you renounce Osama bin Laden and, by the way, you say `the Americans treated me very well in Guantanamo`. That would be a phenomenal public relations coup."

Ms Christian and her colleagues in the US have not been allowed to communicate with the two men. The Foreign Office said its last visit to the prison was in April, and a spokesman for Mr Haynes said his office had not informed the men their fate was being discussed. The only other people who could have spoken to the men - observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - said they too had not visited since April.

Steven Watt, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, said: "[The prisoners] don`t know what is happening outside of Guantanamo Bay. This is not fair. We represent them in the federal process and we have not even been allowed to speak to them. It`s ridiculous." A Pentagon spokesman said that a plea bargain could not be reached until the men had been formally charged. This had not yet happened and proceedings had been suspended until the talks between Lord Goldsmith and Mr Haynes had been completed. He said, however, that a plea bargain was an option available to the prosecuting authorities.

One of the concessions secured by the British Government has been to ensure the prisoners will not face the death penalty if convicted. A British lawyer of their choice will be allowed to attend the proceedings, although it is unclear whether the lawyer will be permitted to communicate with the other members of the legal team.

A spokeswoman for the ICRC`s delegation in Washington, which is due to visit the detention centre next week, said that the team leader, Vincent Cassard, was assessing whether to inform the two prisoners of the discussions about their fate. "We want to do everything we can to ensure their judicial rights are met," she said.
13 August 2003 10:16


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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August 13, 2003
Rising Tide of Islamic Militants See Iraq as Ultimate Battlefield
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 11 — In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.

"Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together — Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture," said Barham Saleh, the prime minister of this Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq. "If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for."

Recent intelligence suggests the militants are well organized. One returning group of fighters from the militant Ansar al-Islam organization captured in the Kurdish region two weeks ago consisted of five Iraqis, a Palestinian and a Tunisian.

Among their possessions were five forged Italian passports for a different group of militants they were apparently supposed to join, said Dana Ahmed Majid, the director of general security for the region.

Long gone are the bearded men in the short robes believed worn by the Prophet Muhammad that the Arabs who went to Afghanistan favored. Instead, the same practices that allowed the Sept. 11 attackers to blend into American society are evident.

The fighters steal over Iraq`s largely unpoliced borders in small groups with instructions to go to a safe house where they can whisper a password to gain admittance and then lie low awaiting further instructions, say Iraqi security officials in northern Iraq and in Baghdad.

"They come across as civilians, they shave their beards and have clean-cut hair," said a senior security official in the Kurdish region.

Iraqi officials say they expect a broad spectrum of Muslim militants to flood Iraq. They believe that Ansar al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group believed to have links with Al Qaeda, forms the backbone of the underground network. The group was forced out of northern Iraq by a huge attack during the war.

Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the founding spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, said in an interview on Sunday with LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, that the fight in Iraq would be the culmination of all Muslim efforts since the Islamic caliphate collapsed in the early 20th century with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979," he said from Norway, where he has political asylum.

"The resistance is not only a reaction to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle since the collapse of the caliphate," he said. "All Islamic struggles since then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate."

Such appeals appear to be attracting a wide range of militants. The fight against Al Qaeda and its numerous offshoots worldwide during the last two years has severely disrupted their coordination, but details emerging from either suspects captured in the last few weeks or from recent surveillance indicates that Qaeda training methods in everything from forgery to establishing sleeper cells are being applied here.

Al Qaeda Web sites carry long treatises on the need for jihad, or holy war, and argue that the effort should not be dissipated in meaningless activities like peaceful demonstrations. Chat-room discussions occasionally focus on how to sneak across borders.

Once established in Baghdad or in the Sunni triangle north of the capital, where much of the armed resistance occurs, the Islamic militants often make common cause with members of the former Baathist government who are also determined to fight Americans.

At least one Saudi and one Egyptian formerly linked to Al Qaeda helped establish an initial training camp three weeks ago where new recruits are lectured on the theological underpinnings of jihad, a security official in Baghdad said.

"All previous experiences with the activities of the underground organizations proved that they flourish in countries with a chaotic security situation, unchecked borders and the lack of a central government — Iraq is all that," said Muhammad Salah, an expert on militant groups and the Cairo bureau chief of the newspaper Al Hayat. "It is the perfect environment for fundamentalist groups to operate and grow."

United States troops have arrested two clerics from Islamic Kurdish groups — once all part of one big organization — suspected of providing logistics help to Ansar fighters, Iraqi officials said. More than 150 members of Ansar al-Islam are believed to have slipped into the country in recent weeks, said a security official in the Kurdish region. Smugglers are believed to be bringing them over daily.

In addition, there are an estimated 100,000 former members of the Iraqi security services without gainful employment, all concentrated in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. Perhaps 2,000 of them, especially those with no source of income and no hopes of gaining any kind of amnesty, would be likely recruits for the fundamentalists, the official said.

Although attacks like the deadly car bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy that killed 17 people last Thursday are most likely the work of militants, security officials say, some attacks are carried out either for money or by Iraqis who just do not want Americans here. But the officials anticipate that militant organizations will carry out more attacks.

The training around Baghdad so far has been in three stages, a security official said. Some sort of initial contact is made — usually after prayers in a mosque — and then a second meeting is arranged. Some recruits are weeded out then, but the third round of likely candidates are the ones who make it to the training camp, the official said. They are told to move away from their families and not communicate with anyone.

Some candidates are believed to be the men who worked for Muhammad Khtair al-Dulaimi in the Special Operations Directorate, the branch of the Iraqi secret service that specialized in remote control bombings, poisoning and other operations. The former chief is still at large and is suspected of putting his employees to work against the Americans, the source said.

But the main group organizing an underground route of safe houses and coordinating the various efforts is believed to be Ansar al-Islam, or the Islamic Partisans in English, whose suspected ties to Al Qaeda were among the reasons the Bush administration used to justify the war against Iraq. Although initially a strictly Kurdish organization, its ranks swelled with Arab fighters after the United States attacked Afghanistan in October 2001.

Before the Iraqi war the group was believed to have some 850 members, but up to 200 were killed in the attack against them by Kurdish and United States Special Forces troops in March. Several hundred more were either captured or turned themselves in, leaving an estimated 300 to 350 who fled to Iran.

The extent of their activities remains cloudy. But Web sites believed linked to Al Qaeda are clear enough about the envisaged fight: "The struggle with America has to be carefully managed, the `electric shock method` must be applied, relentless shocks that haunt the Americans all the time everywhere, without giving them a break to regain balance or power."



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August 13, 2003
Bush Officials Weigh Offer to North Korea
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN


WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 — The Bush administration, which had barred concessions to North Korea before it dismantled its nuclear weapons program, is now considering some conciliatory steps. In return, North Korea would have to either fully disclose its weapons or allow international inspectors into the country, administration officials said today.

Possible concessions include some form of written assurance that the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea and some relaxation of curbs on activities by international institutions to help the North with its economic problems, the officials said.

An administration official said the United States might even be prepared to offer economic incentives, an idea it previously disparaged in connection with the Clinton administration`s 1994 deal to freeze North Korea`s nuclear program, which the North subsequently breached.

But, the official added, economic benefits would come only after the dismantling of the nuclear program. "There`s no such thing as you-do-this and suddenly Ed McMahon shows up with a check for $10 billion," the official said.

Asian and American officials said today that the next round of talks with North Korea would take place from Aug. 27 to 29 in Beijing. That session was made possible last month, when North Korea dropped its demand that the talks be limited to direct negotiations with the United States.

"There are a lot of ideas being discussed," said an Asian diplomat. "The question is how they will be packaged, and in what sequence. The United States clearly wants its concerns addressed at an early stage, while the North Koreans want their concerns addressed at an early stage."

The Beijing talks will involve six nations: North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The only other recent session was in Beijing in April, with only North Korea, China and the United States involved.

As the next Beijing meeting approaches, the Bush administration is reported once again to be divided over concessions to the North. There are also differences of view between Washington and its allies, Japan and South Korea.

An American official said Japan and the United States take a harder line, while South Korea is inclined to accept the idea of "front-loading" some concessions in return for preliminary steps by the North toward nuclear disarmament.

A senior administration official emphasized that no final decision had been made. The final goal, he said, remains what it was: "A complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea`s nuclear weapons program."

Japanese and South Korean envoys are to confer with American officials in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday.

An administration official said hard-liners at the Pentagon, who oppose preliminary concessions, were once again at odds with State Department officials, who favor moving the process along with step-by-step concessions.

One point under discussion, according to American and Asian diplomats, is exactly what concessions might be offered if North Korea were to agree, for example, to disclose the exact number of its nuclear weapons or give more details about its plutonium reprocessing program.

Though such steps would be far short of the dismantling of nuclear programs demanded by the United States as the price for any future economic aid, the Bush administration was said to be considering preliminary steps to encourage North Korea to keep cooperating.

"The question is what actions do you take if they freeze their program, versus dismantling it," said an administration official. "There is not now a fully coordinated U.S. position on that. There are some principles, but we have to decide the whole issue of sequencing."

For nearly a year, North Korea has insisted that in exchange for dropping its nuclear program, it must get a a nonaggression treaty with the United States and large infusions of economic aid.

The Bush administration has ruled out a nonaggression pact. But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said some form of written assurances might be acceptable as a means of underscoring President Bush`s declaration that the United States had no intention of attacking North Korea.

"We won`t do nonaggression pacts or treaties, things of that nature," Mr. Powell said last week, speaking to foreign journalists. He added that "there should be ways to capture assurances to the North Koreans from not only the United States, but we believe from other parties in the region."

Asian diplomats said today that the wording of a written assurance was already under discussion. The administration has already ruled out any language that would assure the North that there would never be a pre-emptive attack, they said, on the ground that an imminent attack by North Korea might require one.

Meanwhile, the administration said today that John R. Bolton, the Under Secretary of State for nonproliferation and a figure much reviled by North Korea, would not be a part of the delegation in the Beijing talks. But officials said President Bush reserved the right to decide who would make up the delegation.

The issue arose earlier this month after Mr. Bolton gave a speech in Seoul attacking the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, as a tyrant who could not be trusted. That was followed by a North Korean attack on Mr. Bolton as "human scum" who would not be welcome to any negotiations.

Mr. Bolton is regarded in the administration as a hard-liner close to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who advocates making as few concessions as possible. But he has been involved in nuclear proliferation issues and not in direct negotiations with North Korea.

After the White House issued a statement saying that Mr. Bush, and not North Korea, would decide who would attend any talks with North Korea, Mr. Bolton issued a statement saying, "I am happy to play whatever role the president and secretary want me to play."

Administration officials emphasized that President Bush had yet to make any final decisions on either what concessions to make or what timetable to adopt, if North Korea agrees to take steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Some administration officials acknowledge that North Korea has been one of the most internally contentious issues that has been faced by President Bush.

Mr. Rumsfeld and other hard-liners are said to support negotiating with North Korea, if only because they expect the talks to fail. They believe that would make it easier to rally support from other countries for more economic and political pressure and, eventually, military confrontation.

An administration official, echoing what Chinese diplomats have said publicly and privately, said there was little expectation that the talks this month would yield progress but that, over time, there was some hope for resolving the stalemate with North Korea peacefully.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 13, 2003
Power and Peril
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


BAGHDAD, Iraq

I tagged along the other day with Bernard Kerik, the dynamo former New York City police chief who is in Baghdad retraining the Iraqi cops. We sat in on a class where a U.S. police trainer and his translator were going through the basics of how to start an interrogation. The Iraqi policemen, who four months ago thought removing a suspect`s fingernails was how to start an interrogation, dutifully took notes in their U.S.-provided notebooks.

What struck me most, though, was the new "mission statement" for the Iraqi police, posted next to the blackboard in English and Arabic. It said: "We the Iraqi Police Force protect human rights and uphold our laws by serving our citizens and community for the unity and freedom of Iraq."

That statement exemplifies just how radical and revolutionary the U.S. nation-building project in Iraq is. Half the words in that statement were meaningless here four months ago. Human rights? Laws? Citizens? They still have no meaning, but the intent to endow them with some is what is radically new. For 50 years, Iraq, and the Arab world generally, has seen only the status quo side of U.S. power: American power used to buttress the old authoritarian order. Iraqis and other Arabs are now being treated to something radically new: our ideas, the revolutionary side of American power. They still don`t quite believe it.

Unfortunately, the same Bush Pentagon that had the audacity to undertake this revolutionary project in Iraq did not prepare either itself or the U.S. public for such a vast undertaking. I worry that we`re not going to have the time, money or people to finish this job right — for several reasons.

First, there`s a word I`ve heard here that I did not hear on two previous visits since the war: "humiliation." This is an occupation. It may have come with the best of intentions, but nobody likes to be occupied. I just watched a scene at the checkpoint at the July 14 Bridge, which leads to the huge U.S. compound in the heart of Baghdad. U.S. soldiers kept telling Iraqi women — who were coming to work for the U.S. forces! — that they could not enter because no female U.S. soldiers were available to search them. It is 120 degrees here. To wait in line for 30 minutes and then be told you have to go across the city to a different gate produces humiliation and rage, and eventually grenades tossed at Americans. I saw it in the eyes of those Iraqi women and their husbands as they drove away.

Second, America`s real enemies in Iraq are exacerbating the situation by cutting electricity lines, which the U.S. does not have enough troops to protect, so many Iraqis today have less electricity (read: air-conditioning) than they had a month ago. The electricity cuts are disrupting oil production and refining, which leads to gasoline lines, soaring prices, more unemployment and more looting.

I was in a five-car convoy that was robbed in broad daylight on Monday morning just outside Baghdad. We were on the only highway linking Iraq to Jordan — the country`s lifeline — when several BMW`s with masked men, armed with AK-47`s, ambushed us under a bridge. These "Ali Babas" blocked the road, pointed guns at our faces and demanded our cash (no credit cards!). They made off with thousands of dollars, which maybe they`ll just keep, or maybe they`ll use to pay people to kill U.S. soldiers. Who knows? I do know we drove for two more hours before we ran into the soldiers of a U.S. patrol and told them what had happened.

"Sorry," the sergeant said, "we just don`t have enough people."

It`s a travesty that four months after the fall of Saddam, the main road in and out of the country is still not safe. It underscores how much the Pentagon`s ideological reach exceeds its military grasp. All of America`s friends in Baghdad say the same thing: I love your ideas, but my daily life — salary, electricity, security — is worse since you came, not better.

"If you have an animal in the zoo who is fearful, angry and hungry, how can you train him?" Imad al-Tamimi, a college student who works for U.S. forces as a translator, asked me. "But if you secure him, caress him and give him some food, he will be obedient. The Iraqi people, if you secure their lives, give them a minimum level of good living, they will be your friends without your even asking them to be your friends. But that`s not what`s happening."

We have planted many good ideas and programs here, but the ideas will not be heard and the programs will not flower without more money to create jobs, more troops to protect the electricity and more time to train Iraqis so U.S. troops can get off the streets, and without a U.S. advisory team here dedicated to stay. There is no continuity. U.S. advisers come for a few months, then leave, and their replacements have to start all over.

It would be a tragic irony if the greatest technological power in the history of the world came to the cradle of civilization with its revolutionary ideas and found itself defeated because it couldn`t keep the electricity on.






Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 13, 2003
Blah Blah Blog
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Is the Internet over?

There are troubling signs. AOL Time Warner, a company that started out scorning its Old Media side, is now looking to jettison the letters AOL. Fast Company, a hot magazine that celebrated the successes of dot-com innovators, is now relegated to eulogizing them.

Don`t get me started on the Blaster virus sabotaging Microsoft systems, or the cram of spam reminding us that the average American is an impotent, insecure, overweight, tired, depressed loser desperately seeking to refinance.

The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.

In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean`s success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.

It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dr. Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck.

Instead, we have Travels with Tom, Tom Daschle`s new blog recounting his annual August pilgrimage around South Dakota. Trying to sound uninhibited, he says he has "no schedule and no staff" and promises readers "amazing experiences" with "fascinating people."

On Aug. 7, he revealed, "I visited the Orthopedic Institute in Sioux Falls today and was given an informative tour." The next day, "I continue to be impressed with small business people who struggle to offer their employees health insurance."

Bob Graham dubs himself "the original blogger" because he has filled more than 4,000 color-coded, laconic notebooks over the last 30 years with a running diary of his every move, from ingestion of morning cereal to debarkation from a plane. (A typical Graham entry: "3:20 p.m. — Take bus to hotel.")

His blog doesn`t pick up the tempo. He offers the rhyming motto: "Hate the war? Miss your job? Don`t just sit there, vote for Bob!" The Aug. 7 Des Moines posting, Another Day in the Heartland, reported, "We have had quite a full day, starting at the state fair where I saw the butter cow and butter hog (which is actually a Harley Davidson). At the pavilion I saw Holstein cows, a breed with which I have a very special relationship."

Dennis Kucinich tries to imbue his blog with a more literary bent, comparing himself to Harry Potter and the Pentagon to Lord Voldemort.

John Kerry has given more grist to critics who label him aloof and insincere by assigning staff members to write his cheesy blog. (It`s like trying to prove you`re a sportsman by making an aide go fishing for you.)

His spokesman, David Wade, offered this edgy report from Concord, N.H., on Aug. 8: "I`m sitting in the studio at New Hampshire NPR listening to The Exchange — they`re asking John Kerry about his life, his service in Vietnam and his fight for veterans when he came home — it`s something I forget about, working for him every day, taking for granted the quality of the person leading this campaign." In bold type, the blog breathlessly described a music store stop in Littleton, N.H., "where John Kerry treated press and customers to a couple of songs on the guitar!"

When the Kerry camp started the blog last week, rambunctious Dean supporters flooded the Kerry message boards with taunts. One Dean fan tallied all of Mr. Kerry`s missed Senate votes this year.

Dr. Dean doesn`t deign to write his blog, either, but at least it`s fun. Mathew Gross, the Dean campaign`s "head blogger" or "blogmaster" — who got his job by blogging and who now writes most of the Dean virtual entries — calls blogs the new town hall meetings. "They`ve revolutionized the way campaigns are run," he says. "It creates an equality among everybody. People are hungry for the old-fashioned discussion and debate."

Even former candidates are weighing in. Gary Hart, who began his blog in March, doesn`t bother to read other digital diarists. "If you`re James Joyce," he said slyly, "you don`t read other authors."

Now there`s a man with a future in blogging.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Public Opinion On Bush Stabilizes
War, Budget Fuel Partisan Division

By Dan Balz and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 13, 2003; Page A01


Support for President Bush on Iraq appears to have stabilized after a precipitous drop earlier this summer, but three months after the end of major combat in the Persian Gulf region, the public is again sharply divided along partisan lines over the war and other key aspects of Bush`s presidency, according to a new Washington Post Poll.

The return to a polarized political climate, coming so quickly after a period of relative unity during the height of the fighting in Iraq, foreshadows a contentious reelection campaign for the president. The public mood also carries risks for the president`s Democratic challengers, who are attempting to appeal to the strong anti-Bush sentiment within their party without jeopardizing the need to attract independent and swing voters in next year`s general election.

A solid majority (56 percent) of those surveyed approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, and six in 10 said the war was worth fighting. Those evaluations had been dropping earlier in the summer, but are not significantly different than in a poll taken a month ago and suggest the downward slide may have halted, at least for now.

Bush receives poorer marks on the domestic scene, with 45 percent approving of the way he is handling the economy and 41 percent saying they approve of the way he has dealt with the federal budget, despite a deficit that will hit an estimated $455 billion this fiscal year, a record.

Only a third of those surveyed said the state of the economy was good or excellent. About the same percentage said things were getting better as said things are getting worse (32 percent vs. 29 percent), which, while not impressive, was a more optimistic appraisal than at the beginning of the year.

Asked whether they were better off since Bush became president, 17 percent said they were doing better while 25 percent said they were worse off. Bush`s net negative rating on that question is the worst in any Post poll since President George H.W. Bush, whose poor ratings on the economy led to his defeat in 1992. Still, 14 percent of those surveyed said Bush bears primary responsibility for the state of the economy, with twice as many blaming the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Overall, 59 percent approve of the way Bush is handling his job. While his approval rating has dropped 18 percentage points since early April, his current level of support represents a good foundation as he begins the campaign year ahead.

Behind all these numbers is a country that views Bush and his policies through very different lenses, depending on party affiliation. Throughout much of Bush`s presidency, Democrats and Republicans have been at odds in evaluating him, particularly on the economic and domestic issues, but at times of crisis have rallied behind the president on issues of national security

On the day Baghdad fell in April, when Bush`s approval rating was at 77 percent, 95 percent of Republicans and 62 percent of Democrats said they approved of his handling of the presidency. In the new poll, GOP support is statistically unchanged, but Democrats have turned sharply negative in their assessments, with 64 percent saying they disapprove.

In other areas, the two parties are mirror opposites of one another, with 80 percent of Democrats disapproving of Bush`s handling of the economy and 77 percent of Republicans approving. On the federal budget, 76 percent of Democrats disapprove of Bush`s handling of the issue, while 71 percent of Republicans approve.

Independents give Bush positive ratings on his overall handling of the presidency and also on Iraq, but net negative ratings on the economy, taxes and the budget.

The Post poll was conducted among 1,003 randomly selected adults nationwide, who were interviewed by telephone Aug. 7-11. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll shows that Iraq has again become a polarizing issue, as it was in the months before the war began. Roughly two in three Democrats disapprove of Bush`s handling of Iraq, compared with 86 percent of Republicans who approve.

Other issues bring similarly disparate assessments of the war. A majority of Democrats say the war was not worth fighting, while majorities of Republicans and independents say it was. Roughly three in four Democrats say the level of casualties has been unacceptable, while a solid majority of Republicans say the casualties are acceptable.

On the issue that has roiled Washington this summer, whether Bush exaggerated the evidence of Iraq`s pursuit or possession of weapons of mass destruction, a strong majority of Democrats say they think he overstated the case, while just as strong a majority of Republicans say he did not.

The one area where the two parties come together is in their assessment of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who is judged by majorities of Americans to be a bad character and whose capture or death is seen as essential to declaring victory.

That view is shared by roughly three in five Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Democrats are divided over the U.S. presence in Iraq, with 56 percent supporting a continuation of troop strength there and 39 percent disapproving -- 29 percent strongly disapproving.

Iraq has touched off a growing debate among the Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) charging that former Vermont governor Howard Dean`s opposition to the war makes him an unacceptable nominee to challenge Bush. Lieberman also has criticized Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), claiming Kerry tried to have it both ways by supporting the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force but then criticizing Bush for rushing to war.

Lieberman has argued that Democrats need a candidate who strongly supported going to war in Iraq to attract swing voters. In the poll, independents solidly support the U.S. presence in Iraq and say the war was worth fighting, but a majority believe Bush exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction, and half said the level of casualties has been too high.

Asked whether they would vote for Bush or a Democratic nominee if the election were held today, 48 percent said Bush, 40 percent said the Democrat. On that question, eight in 10 Democrats said they would support their party`s nominee, and nine in 10 Republicans said Bush. Independents split 43 percent to 39 percent in Bush`s favor.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Die Zahlen im Einzelnen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/st…

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washingtonpost.com
Israel`s Red Flag on Iran


By Jim Hoagland

Wednesday, August 13, 2003; Page A27


A grim warning from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to President Bush that Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than U.S. intelligence believes has triggered concern here that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran`s Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Sharon dramatized his forecast by bringing Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, a three-star army officer who serves as his military secretary, to a meeting with Bush in the Oval Office two weeks ago, U.S. and Israeli sources tell me. Galant showered a worried-looking Bush with photographs and charts from a thick dossier on Iran`s covert program.

So much for the news. Now the analysis: Oy. And vey.

Sharon`s description of the unacceptable risks of Iran`s being able to launch "a nuclear holocaust" comes just as the Bush administration is making headway in constructing a diplomatic containment strategy for the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea. Unilateral Israeli action against Iran would destroy this strategy and gravely complicate Bush`s reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Bush`s frequently warring senior policymakers have reached a consensus (now there`s news) in recent weeks that the United States has no attractive military options in Iran or North Korea. Instead, Washington must work with its allies to impede these rogue efforts to create nuclear arsenals. Europe and Russia have responded by increasingly distancing themselves from Iran and by joining the Bush team in pressuring North Korea into multilateral talks.

Knee-jerk Bush critics will no doubt poke fun or scorn at these post-Iraq multilateralist efforts. As someone almost said once, let them eat yellowcake. An improving climate in transatlantic relations as the bitterness over Iraq recedes makes this strategy the best bet for the next six months, and probably beyond. U.S. officials believe they can use that time to put new obstacles in the way of the Iranian and North Korean programs.

But Sharon`s presentation to Bush challenges the assumptions and viability of the emerging U.S. nonproliferation strategy on Iran. U.S. intelligence estimates that put Iran`s covert nuclear weapons drive about four years short of being able to turn plutonium into a workable nuclear warhead overstate the time factor by at least 100 percent, Sharon argued. One to two years is his projected timeline.

To be sure, Sharon would face formidable logistical and political problems in trying to update Israel`s successful preemptive 1981 strike against Iraq`s Osirak reactor. His Oval Office briefing may have been designed to pressure Bush to move more forcefully on Iran rather than to advertise an impending Israeli action.

Israeli leaders have consistently warned Americans for two decades that Iran`s Islamic regime is a mortal enemy for the Jewish state and must not be underestimated. Sharon`s account, while apparently more urgent and dramatic than past presentations, fits a pattern of Israel "treating a nuclear-arming Iran as an immediate existential threat," says one U.S. official, while Washington does not.

But it is Israel`s experience with Osirak that makes Sharon`s alarming words impossible to ignore. The trigger for that strike was intelligence that the Iraqi reactor was about to be loaded with nuclear fuel. Hitting it after the loading would have risked spreading radioactive contamination across a wide area in the Middle East. And after the 1991 Gulf War it was discovered that outside assessments -- including Israel`s -- underestimated how close Saddam Hussein had been to getting the bomb.

Russian delivery of fuel to the Bushehr reactor that it will complete for Iran later this year could be taken by the Israelis as a similar point of no return. The Iranians also have a covert uranium mining and enrichment effort underway that could be tied into the Bushehr reactor, international inspectors have reported.

"The enrichment effort is the bigger unknown for us," says a U.S. official. "But our estimate is that Iran does not now have a completely indigenous nuclear capability. Efforts to prevent it from reaching that point of no return are worth pursuing. The longer you can keep Russia from delivering the fuel, the better off you are."

A year-long effort led by Undersecretary of State John Bolton to persuade Russia and other countries to be more wary of Iran seems to be making inch-by-inch progress. Moscow has joined in summit-level statements critical of Iran, and Germany and France recently blocked shipment of aluminum tubes useful to Iran`s enrichment program. Bolton will seek new action from the International Atomic Energy Agency at a Sept. 8 meeting.

Hope that he gets it. Whatever his purpose, Sharon has usefully sketched one awful alternative to the Bush administration`s making multilateralism work for it.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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EPA ist das amerik. `Umweltamt` und Leavitt der neue (umstrittene) Vorsitzende.

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August 11, 2003

Homeland Security for Whom?
Are Bush, Ashcroft, and Wolfowitz Protecting America or Their Own Regime?
By DOUGLAS VALENTINE

Adapted from the July 2003 issue of Penthouse Magazine

"The implication or latent threat of terror was sufficient to insure that the people would comply."

William Colby, creator of the CIA`s Phoenix Program, which targeted Vietnamese leaders for assassination during the Vietnam War

For those of you believe the war on terror and the violent occupation of Iraq will ensure world peace, you`ve got another thing coming; and that thing is the illegitimate Bush Regime`s homeland security infrastructure.

Let me state the point of this article up front: The war on terror, and its "homeland security" counterpart, are flip sides of the same coin. They are the same ideology applied to foreign and domestic policy. But like CIA agent Alden Pyle in The Quiet American, their evil intention is wrapped in a complex matrix of transparent lies. Pointedly, that evil intention is to provide the Bush Regime with political internal security at home, thus enabling it to plunder the world with impunity.

The foreign policy aspect of this synthesis was promulgated on September 20, 2002 in the "The National Security Strategy of the United States" (a.k.a. the Bush Manifesto) in which the Bush Regime confers upon itself the divine right to devastate any nation it dislikes, or has vast oil fields or other natural resources that it covets. This first-degree-murder strategy makes about 70 percent of Americans feel good about Bush. But Bush has an insidious ulterior motive, and if these feel-good Americans were to read the fine print of his Manifesto, they would realize that by generating more human misery around the world, the eternal war on terror will create more dissenters at home, and thus provide Bush with the mandate he needs to impose a de facto military dictatorship, as prescribed in his domestic policy statements: the Homeland Security, Patriot, and Domestic Security Enhancement Acts.

Just as waging war around the world is popular, so too will be suppressing domestic dissent. For example, Fox News Channel`s Bill O`Reilly recently had to defend himself when he said war protesters were "un-American." His producers made him do some fast backpedaling, but the Big Mouth was expressing the true feelings of most of his listeners. The airwaves and editorial columns bombard the public with the Bill Riley message, and that is how peace activists go from being bad Americans to being enemies of the state. And that is how the war on terror translates into a homeland security infrastructure that suppresses dissent.

The Shell Game

Homeland Security is a euphemism for internal security, but that phrase has the nasty ring of McCarthyism to it, and the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, led by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and racist Senator James Eastland`s Internal Security Subcommittee. Before the neo-cons got hooked on terror, America`s hawks were obsessed with Godless Communism. Hoover devoted his life to destroying every Communist in America, while the Dulles brothers (CIA Director Allen and Secretary of State John) harnessed the mania and used it as a convenient pretext for Cold War foreign intervention, and laid the foundation stones for the American empire after World War II. In the same way, Bush`s anal obsession with terror is the new contrived pretext for solidifying world domination. But as Hoover, Eastland, and the Dulles` knew, without political internal security, Bush cannot wage war abroad, with all the economic benefits that entails.

So Bush, with the help of Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Israel, created the Department Homeland Security to pacify (a euphemism for terrorize) the American people into submission through a number of ploys. This homeland security boondoggle is the biggest reorganization of the U.S. government in 50 years. It might even bankrupt the country and, perhaps intentionally, throw it into a Depression. That remains to be seen. What is certain is that at a cost of $50 billion in taxpayer`s money, the homeland security infrastructure will provide Bush with 170,000 political cadres, and the internal security he needs to assure the continuity of his political power indefinitely. Except for providing Bush with political internal security, there is no need for the Department of Homeland Security; it is a Trojan Horse through which Bush will unleash his ideological storm troopers and exploit his ill-gotten power to achieve permanent political dominance.

And he is creating this police state through terror. As the Homeland Security web site assures us, the threat of terrorism "is a permanent condition" that "requires our country to design a new homeland security structure."

Terror as an Organizing Principle of Society

The underlying principle of homeland security (and the war on terror) is that terror is an organizing principle of society. This includes every type of terror, from the shock and awe bombs that liberated Baghdad, to the collective punishments Israel used to crush the Palestinian soul. It`s armed propaganda in the form of National Guardsmen eye-balling us at airports, and it`s the greatest psywar campaign ever waged, in the form of red white and blue color-coded warnings of terror attacks that never occur, and unsubstantiated reports brought to you by government stenographers at network news.

Terror is the underlying concept. In "Metaphoric Entrapment In Time," researcher Anthony Judge tells how the new homeland security infrastructure is actually an act of "structural violence."

"Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance," Judge notes, quoting two-time Nobel Prize winner Johan Galtung, but "structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure. The legal criminality of the social system and its institutions, of government, and of individuals at the interpersonal level is tacit violence. Structural violence is a structure of exploitation and social injustice."

Now that the Department of Homeland Security has been voted into law, Bush has laid the groundwork for America`s new legally criminal social structure, which exploits on both personal and professional levels. This confluence blesses Bush with omnipotence. He is all-powerful. As he said before sacrificing the Iraqis on the altar of his apotheosis: "We have concluded that tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world."

Delusions of grandeur? A messiah syndrome? Penis envy? What gives?

Justice as Terror

Administrative detention is the extralegal nail upon which the forthcoming legally criminal homeland security structure hangs. It is a neat way of avoiding the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Conventions by creating "crimes of status." Administrative detention was first used by the CIA in the Vietnam War through the notorious Phoenix "assassination" Program, and was applied against Communists, Nationalists, and anyone else opposing the puppet US puppet regime, just as CIA death squads are operating now in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sympathizing with the Communists was a crime of status, as was advocating peace.

Administrative detention is structural violence for the professionals. At the personal level, the terror as an organizing principle of society relies on selective terror, which means destroying one`s political opposition through acts of terror directed at individuals. It derives from the Eye of God technique, which plays on primitive fears of an all-seeing cosmic Eye of God that sees into your mind. It was used in World War One by morale officers who sent pilots in small aircraft to fly over enemy camps to call out the names of individual soldiers. CIA psywar expert Ed Lansdale, Graham Greene`s model for Alden Pyle in The Quiet American, used this technique in the Philippines in the early 1950s. At night a psywar team would creep into town and paint an eye (like the one that appears atop the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States) on the wall of a house facing a suspected Communist or Communist sympathizer.

In South Vietnam the Eye of God trick took a ghastly twist. CIA officer Pat McGarvey recalled to Seymour Hersh that "some psychological warfare [psywar] guy in Washington thought of a way to scare the hell out of villagers. When we killed the VC there, they wanted us to spread eagle the guy, put out his eye, cut a hole in the back [of his head] and put his eye in there. The idea was that fear was a good weapon." Likewise, ears were cut off corpses and nail to houses to let the people know that big brother was listening as well. When Viet Cong leaders were found, Phoenix teams murdered and mutilated them along with their families and neighbors as a means of terrorizing the neighboring population into a state of submission. Such horrendous acts were, for propaganda purposes, often made to look as if they had been committed by the enemy. To spread the word that everyone was a potential victim, CIA psywar posters pictured a Phoenix with a blacklist trailing from its beak and a snake (i.e. a Communist) grasped in one of its talons. The message was that the omnipotent CIA selectively snatches its prey, in the most hideous way.

The Bush Regime is locked into this method of selective terror. They want you to think they know everything about you: if you`ve been bad or good, so to speak. Just remember what happened to Uday Hussein and his brother Qusay, and all the other Iraqis featured on the CIA`s popular death cards, which are advertised on the Internet.

The modern manifestation of selective terror is the computerized blacklist - the greatest blackmail scheme ever invented: if you don`t do what Bush and his clique want, your name pops up and you`re suppressed. Be forewarned, the Bush Regime`s blacklists include the INS/State Department`s TIPOFF; CAPPS II, which uses credit information and secret databases to assess a person`s security risk level each time he or she flies; the "No-Fly" blacklist of peace activists, distributed to airlines by the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration; and local blacklists like the one kept by the Denver police department. You know about these lists. You just don`t know about the secret ones, the Bush Regime`s enemies list of its most powerful domestic political opponents.

Administrative detention and selective terror work in tandem and depend on informant and surveillance programs that identify, in homeland jargon, "terrorist surrogates" at the grass roots level of society. (Attorney General John Ashcroft`s Terrorism Information and Prevention System, a.k.a TIPS, was the short-lived prototype.) This is how it happens: on the basis of a false accusation made by an anonymous homeland informant, counter terror teams will arrest a terrorist surrogate, detain the person indefinitely under administrative detention laws in an interrogation center until he or she dies or defects, or is sent to a military tribunal for disposition. Disposition means permanent detention in some perverse torture chambers like the ones in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ultimately, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act will allow Ashcroft to secretly incarcerate and deport U.S. citizens without any thought of ensuring them due process of law. Check out what happened to Jose Padilla.

To summarize so far: Blanket surveillance, blacklists, arrests on the word of anonymous informants, the absence of due process through extralegal administrative detention procedures, military tribunals, incarceration, and deportation are the instruments of the homeland security infrastructure, which will coordinate all existing U.S. intelligence, police, and military units in the attack on terrorists and their surrogates.

Ensuring Political Security

Bush is about to devour his domestic enemies at both the tactical (personal) and strategic (professional) levels. Upper echelon enemies will be dealt with by the Homeland Security Council, which Bush chairs, and which does not appear on any organizational chart. It sets policy for a secret political warfare program. It is the greatest danger facing America today. Like the anthrax letters mailed to Democratic senators, it takes only a few "black propaganda" operations to suppress the leaders of the political opposition. Private contactors may carry out executive actions (what the Israelis fondly refer to as "targeted kills") issued by this all-powerful Board of Directors, as they are not accountable to Congress. Or Bush will employ political action squads from the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which consists of the FBI and CIA`s terror experts, and reports only to Bush.

Tactically Bush will neutralize opponents through the Department of Homeland Security, which consists of four directorates: Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection, Science and Technology, Border and Transportation Security, and Emergency Preparedness and Response. The all-important Office of Intelligence, consisting of about 1000 analysts from dozens of agencies, is cloistered within the Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. This Office, insofar as it will coordinate the other directorates in terror operations, is the nerve center of the DHS political internal security infrastructure.

The Office of Intelligence will manage the CIA`s domestic action squads, interrogation, and informant programs, and will wag the homeland security dog by coordinating all in-coming intelligence, and then sending out warnings to state, local and private sector officials. Employees from the CIA`s Counter-Terror Center will fill the most important positions within the Office of Intelligence, and will plan daily operations in conjunction with fellow CT Center officers posted within 93 Justice Department terrorism task forces run around the country. With the latest electronic surveillance gadgets available to them, they will reach into every corner of society, including our homes, workplaces, public facilities and computers, to sniff out terrorist surrogates and launch preemptive attacks to neutralize them before they activate.

If you don`t believe that the blossoming homeland security infrastructure is already providing political internal security, consider that hundreds of businesses and institutions across the country have already been placed on the CIA`s Watch List. According to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, one Bush official said that merely being on the list "could destroy the livelihood of all those organizations...without a bomb being thrown or a spore of anthrax being released."

Elizabeth Becker of the New York Times reported several months ago that "the leaders of many federal departments and agencies have been scrambling to figure out... how they can influence the outcome [of the impending Department of Homeland Security] without appearing disloyal."

And James Bamford noted that "pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda," and "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats ...charge that the administration squelches dissenting views."

This is the maximum danger of homeland security, and what it boils down to mandatory self-censorship. Already we passively permit hooded paramilitary policemen with automatic rifles to search our cars, without probable cause, for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. These policemen are helping us, right? They would never turn their guns on us, right?

As stated in a CIA terrorist training manual that came to light almost 20 years ago, "Implicit terror always accompanies weapons, since the people are internally "aware" that they can be used against them."

This is what William Colby was talking about when he was quoted in the prologue to this article as saying, "The implication or latent threat of terror was sufficient to insure that the people would comply."

Creating the Political Cadres

Neo-con Michael Ledeen, a certified homelander, rationalized the use of terror as an organizing principle of society when he said, "New times require new people with new standards." According to Ledeen, these new people have the will power to "stamp out" the "corrupt habits of mind" manifest in the thoughts or actions of anyone who opposes Bush Regime aggression. Says Ledeen, "The entire political world will understand it and applaud it. And it will give [Homeland Security] a chance to succeed, and us to prevail."

On the international scene, these "new people" illegally invaded Iraq, formed a puppet regime of supplitiefs, stole the nation`s oil and are putting the profits in their own pockets, and are now assassinating and otherwise terrorizing, through an updated Phoenix Program, any political opposition, in what amounts to mass murder.

Information management is key in creating the "new people" who will organize the new criminal homeland social structure, and make it appear legal, moral and most importantly, popular. The first step in manufacturing these robots is through motivational indoctrination, which is based on the principle that people will do a anything you ask of them if you make them feel special. In return for adopting the right attitude, a successful career is offered. Several alumni from the CIA`s Phoenix Program already enjoy important top homeland security posts, like Major General Bruce Lawlor, Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security, and Roger Mackin, the CIA officer in charge of the Department`s counter-narcotics center. From mid-1967 until mid-1968, Mackin ran the Phoenix Program in Da Nang City, and managed its Intelligence and Operations Coordination Center - the organizational model for the Department of Homeland Security. Mackin is also touted as the CIA officer who nailed Colombian drug smuggler Pablo Escobar in a typical Phoenix assassination operation in December 1993.

CIA psywar experts like Lawlor and Mackin will motivationally indoctrinate the 170,000 some odd homeland security personnel to wage political warfare. A training manual on the subject was reprinted in the early 1980s by a former Phoenix officer who got caught up in the Reagan Regime`s illegal Contra War. Titled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, it states that "the human being should be considered the priority objective in a political war. And conceived as the military target of guerrilla war, the human being has his most critical point in his mind. Once his mind has been reached, the `political animal` has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets."

Having been politically and motivationally indoctrinated, Critical Infrastructure and other homeland personnel will spy on colleagues who may inadvertently or maliciously serve as terrorist surrogates by publicly or privately revealing information about homeland infrastructure vulnerabilities, such as power grids or computer systems. These cadre will covertly identify and watch terrorist surrogates until it becomes necessary to expose the surrogates in the media. No one will want to be identified, even falsely, as an inadvertent or malicious terrorist surrogate, knowing that they are subject to being "stamped out," as Michael Ledeen suggests. In this way the Bush Regime is organizing its political cadre - Ledeen`s "new people" who have been psychologically defeated by the implicit terror around them and, having reverted to the same infantile state of mind occupied by President George W. Bush, have embraced the Fascist principles they`ve been subliminally indoctrinated with for years through the corporate propaganda machine.

These "new people" are fast joining front organizations like the Freedom Corps, the Citizen Corps, Community Emergency Response Teams (which will train kids at school to prepare for the disasters the Bush Regime will surely visit upon America); the Neighborhood Watch Program that will allow the Bush Regime to detain its drunk and disorderly political opponents as terrorist surrogates; and the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), through which enfranchised doctors will monitor patients within the faltering health care system.

Within these front groups are cadres trained "in techniques of persuasion over control of target groups" to support the Bush Regime. In the forthcoming national emergency, these cadres will be mobilized, will attend mass meetings, carry placards, shout slogans as part of a Popular Information Program, appeal to our cultural beliefs through Michael Savage-style radio shows, teach classes on correct thinking, organize subtle but massive screening operations designed to generate defectors, who will in turn to denounce former comrades who spoke ill of the Bush Regime. They will intervene with "problem individuals," and everywhere encourage their neighbors to report the activities of terrorist surrogates by dropping a note addressed to the police in local mailboxes. It`s not hard to imagine a few of the most highly motivated cadres getting carried away, grabbing ropes, and forming lynch mobs.

Only five percent of the people need to be organized in this fashion for Bush to wield control over the indifferent ninety percent, and defeat the five percent that form the political resistance. This is why psychological operations are the Bush Regime`s No. 1 priority. Case in point: when Bush publicly announced the Department of Homeland Security on 6 June 2002, he stated that the organization`s primary mission was to "mobilize and focus... the American people "to accomplish the mission of attacking the enemy where he hides and plans." By which he means his political opponents.

Psywar experts prize "compromise and discreditation" operations like the one the FBI used against Martin Luther King before he was assassinated. Information about his extramarital affairs was leaked, and he was sent a message with the suggestion that he should commit suicide. "There is only one way out for you," the forged document read. "You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation." Forged documents like the one used against King are an important facet of political blackmail, and are also used to justify false arrests or conceal illegal operations. We have already seen Network News broadcast "edited" videotapes of Osama bin Laden and, in the Afghanistan war, captured (perhaps forged) documents were routinely used as a form of black propaganda to justify military actions that resulted in "collateral" damage.

The greatest example, of course, is Bush`s criminal an impeachable use of forged documents to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. This was an act of treason by the President of the United States, and yet within the new legally criminal homeland security structure, it is business as usual.

We can expect a slew of false rumors from low-level homeland cadre, designed to ruin the reputations of politically incorrect families in their villages and towns, especially environmentalists who pose a threat to Critical Infrastructure corporations. The paranoia that currently infects the Arab-American community will spread until no one is sure who is a spy for the Thought Police. When the national emergency arrives, most likely the forthcoming depression, and the homeland security infrastructure goes on Red Alert, midnight arrests and disappearances into administrative detention centers will become commonplace. Amid the confusion, the CIA will form special units within the 93 terrorism task forces around the country, and other unilateral Phoenix Program-style hit teams will operate under cover of the security forces at their disposal.

The clincher is when the definition of a terrorist surrogate is expanded to include people deemed dangerous to the Public Order, at which point any person can be arrested on criminal charges for political offenses. No specific charge is required; a homelander like Ledeen or Bill O`Rilley will simply accuse someone of disturbing the peace or being un-American The definitions of sedition and treason will grow to include disseminating information about government corruption, or undermining the will of the State by challenging its authority. Calling for civil disobedience will be a really scary threat to the homeland. Cadre in the Office of Cyberspace Security will expose you as a terrorist surrogate for sending sarcastic or satirical emails. How can you prove you were only joking when you blamed Bush for the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, and said Cheney`s refusal to investigate proves that Bush did it?

Ultimately, every town will form a Homeland Committee, chaired by a Bush Regime operative who will process confidential reports from concerned citizens about the activities of peaceniks, or people they don`t like for personal reasons, such as business competitors. These reports will pass through an ideological filter as they work their way up to the Office of Intelligence and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, where motivated CIA officers will gleefully pull the plug on environmentalists, people espousing national health care, and anyone challenging to the Bush Regime and the internal security forces that are firmly in its grip.

Beware. Ashcroft has vowed to "employ new tools that ease administrative burdens." However benign he might think he means this, these new tools can allow the government to wage political warfare through implicit and explicit terror. And the government can do it! The Geneva Conventions guarantee protection to civilians in time of war, but do not prohibit a state from interning civilians or subjecting them to emergency detention when such measures are necessary for the security or safety of the state. In this way indefinite detention, torture and summary execution, all carried out without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, are perfectly legal, because they are the result of "administrative procedures" and do not involve a "criminal sentence."

This is what Israel is done to the Palestinians, and this is what the Bush Regime has in store for America through its eternal war on terror: that sad obsession with dominance, itself a sad projection of Bush`s feelings of inadequacy, most likely brought upon by his domineering mother Barbara.

Douglas Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix Program, and TDY. His new book The Strength of the Wolf: the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1968 will be published by Verso. Valentine was an investigator for Pepper on the King case in 1998-1999. For information about Valentine and his books and articles, please visit his website at www.douglasvalentine.com.

He can be reached at: [e-mail]

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine08112003.html[/url]

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What is a neo-conservative anyway?
By Jim Lobe

08/13/03: (Asia Times) WASHINGTON - With all the attention paid to neo-conservatives in the international media nowadays, one would think that there would be a standard definition of the term. Yet, despite their now being credited with a virtual takeover of US foreign policy under President George W Bush, a common understanding of the term remains elusive.

In this context, it may be useful to offer some description of their basic tenets and origin, if for no other reason than to distinguish them from other parts of the ideological coalition behind the administration`s neo-imperialist trajectory; namely, the traditional Republican machtpolitikers (might makes right), such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the Christian Rightists, such as Attorney-General John Ashcroft, Gary Bauer and Pat Robertson.

As neo-con godfather, Irving Kristol once remarked, a neo-conservative is a "liberal who was mugged by reality". True to that description, neo-conservatives generally originated on the left side of the political spectrum and some times from the far left. Many neo-cons, such as Kristol himself, have Trotskyite roots that are still reflected in their polemical and organizational skills and ideological zeal.

Although a number of prominent Catholics are neo-conservatives, the movement remains predominantly Jewish, and the monthly journal that really defined neo-conservatism over the past 35 years, Commentary, is published by the American Jewish Committee. At the same time, however, neo-conservative attitudes have reflected a minority position within the US Jewish community as most Jews remain distinctly liberal in their political and foreign policy views.

Neo-conservative foreign policy positions, which have their origin in opposition to the "new left" of the 1960s, fears over a return to US isolationism during the Vietnam War and the progressive international isolation of Israel in the wake of wars with its Arab neighbors in 1967 and 1973, have been tactically very flexible over the past 35 years, but their key principles have remained the same.
They begin with the basic foreign policy realism found in the pessimistic views of human nature and international diplomacy of the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, that neo-cons share with most US practitioners: that "the condition of man [in a state of nature] ... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone." Or, as Machiavelli, another favorite thinker of the neo-cons, wrote, "Men are more ready for evil than for good."

But neo-cons take "man`s" capacity for evil particularly seriously, and for understandable reasons. For neo-conservatives, the Nazi Holocaust that killed some 6 million Jews during World War II is the seminal experience of the 20th century. Not only was it a genocide unparalleled in its thoroughness, the Holocaust also wiped out family members of hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens in the United States, including, for example, close relatives of the parents of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

For neo-conservatives, as for most Jews, the Holocaust represents absolute evil, and the factors which contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the subsequent extermination of Jews must be fought at all costs.

"The defining moment in our history was certainly the Holocaust," Richard Perle, a key neo-con and leading advocate of war with Iraq, recently told BBC`s Panorama. "It was the destruction, the genocide of a whole people, and it was the failure to respond in a timely fashion to a threat that was clearly gathering. We don`t want that to happen again, and when we have the ability to stop totalitarian regimes we should do so, because when we fail to do so, the results are catastrophic," he said.

For neo-conservatives, the 1938 Munich agreement, under which Hitler was permitted by Britain and France to take over Czechoslovakia, is the epitome of appeasement that led directly to the Holocaust. As a result, Munich and appeasement are constantly invoked in their rhetoric as a way to summon up the will to resist and defeat the enemy of the day. Hence, almost every conflict in which the United States has been engaged since the late 1960s - from Vietnam to Central America to Yugoslavia to the "war on terror" in Iraq and against al-Qaeda - has been portrayed as a new Munich in which the enemy represents a threat virtually on a par with Hitler.

The resulting worldview tends to Manichaeism - the notion that the world consists of a permanent struggle between the forces of good and evil, light and dark (an idea which incidentally accords very well both with the thinking of the Christian Right, not to mention of Bush himself). As Michael Ledeen, a close collaborator of Perle`s at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) told the same BBC program, "I know the struggle against evil is going to go on forever."

Three major factors are seen as having contributed to the Holocaust: the failure of the liberal Weimar Republic in Germany to prevent the Nazis` rise; "appeasement"; and US isolationism that kept Washington from intervening in World War II earlier.

Although neo-cons profess devotion to liberal democracy, they have never hesitated to assail "liberalism", or what they sometimes call with their Christian Right allies "secular humanism", whose relativism, in their view, can lead to "a culture of appeasement", nihilism or worse. Thus, even while supposedly defending "liberal" and democratic ideals, their attitude is at best ambivalent.

Appeasement is prevented, in their view, by a powerful military capable of defeating any foe, the constant anticipation of new threats, and the willingness to preempt them. Thus, neo-cons have consistently favored big defense budgets, a stance shared by the right-wing machtpolitikers with whom they formed an alliance in the 1970s to end detente with Moscow. In their view, peace is to be distrusted, and peace processes are inherently suspect. "Peace doesn`t come from a `process`," wrote Wall Street Journal editorial writer Robert Pollock last year in a column that denounced the 1990s as a "decade of appeasement".

In this view, war is a natural state, and peace is a Utopian dream which induces softness, decadence and pacifism embodied by Bill Clinton whose "corruption of the national mission, combined with the myth that peace is normal, produces a solvent strong enough to dissolve the strength of our armed forces and the integrity of our political and military leaders", Ledeen wrote in 2000.

Similarly, enemies cannot be negotiated with. "Before the US can worry about rebuilding Iraq, it has to win militarily, and decisively so," the Journal wrote just before the war. "... Arab cultures despise weakness in an adversary above all," a refrain familiar to past neo-con descriptions of the Soviet Union, China, and other geo-political foes.

Finally, US engagement in world affairs is absolutely indispensable in preventing catastrophe, according to neo-con ideology which, in the words of another Perle intimate, Ken Adelman, sees "isolationism [as] the default option" in US foreign policy. Indeed, many neo-cons, fearing that the Cold War`s end would revive isolationism, spent most of the 1990s hawking policies designed to maintain Washington`s international engagement, even if that meant supporting Clinton when he deployed troops abroad.

Why? If evil is embodied by Hitler and similar threats, the United States comes as close to moral goodness as can be found in the world today, according to the neo-cons. "Since America`s emergence as a world power roughly a century ago," Elliott Abrams, another prominent neo-con who currently serves as the top Middle East policymaker on Bush`s National Security Council, wrote in a Commentary colloquium in 2000, "we have made many errors, but we have been the greatest force for good among the nations of the Earth. A diminution of American power or influence bodes ill for our country, our friends, and our principles``.

Thus, US intervention abroad, as in Iraq, is seen in the best possible light. Michael Kelly, a Washington Post columnist who died in an accident during the Iraq campaign, assured his readers last October that, "what President Bush aspires to now, is not exactly imperialism. It is something more like armed evangelism".

The moral goodness of the US is beyond question and justifies - indeed requires - a unilateralist policy lest, by subjecting its will to the wishes or agreements of other countries or international institutions, the US would actually prevent itself from fulfilling its moral mission.

This notion - that Washington would taint itself morally by working through multilateral institutions or tying itself to alliances with lesser countries - is certainly not unique to neo-conservatives. It has been around since George Washington warned the country in his Farewell Address against "entangling alliances" with European powers.

But the neo-conservatives have tried hard to reinforce this idea. Thus, in an attack on the UN Security Council this year, Perle argued, "This is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral and even existential politico-military decisions, to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China, and France." It echoes a refrain delivered by Post columnist Charles Krauthammer 15 years ago about the UN, "Let it sink," he wrote. "It is corrupting."

This sense of US moral superiority applies especially to what is now called "Old Europe", much as it was in US foreign policy until Washington`s entry into World War II. Thus, Kelly, again writing about US imperial altruism: "Unlike the European powers, the United States has never sought to own the world. In its peculiarly American fashion, it has sought to make the world behave better, indeed be better."

Similarly, during much of 2002, countless neo-con columns and editorials in the Post, the Wall Street Journal and the neo-con The Weekly Standard (edited by Irving Kristol`s son, William) cited a wave of attacks against Jewish targets across Europe, almost all of them carried out by Muslim immigrants or their children, as evidence of a resurgent anti-Semitism distinctly reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s. "The whole of Europe is sick," wrote Paul Johnson, an English neo-con, in the Journal, while, in one of his milder remarks, Perle accused Europe of losing its "moral compass" over Iraq. Robert Kagan`s much-celebrated depiction of Europeans being from Venus and Americans from Mars is an even milder version of the same basic worldview: compared to forthright, masculine Americans, Europeans are passive, decadent and unwilling to stand up for what is right.

Washington`s moral superiority, however, combined with the possibly "catastrophic" results of failing to confront Munich-type threats, also justifies a range of extraordinary responses which, under other circumstances, might be morally questionable, according to the neo-con view. In particular, temporary alliances with other countries or movements whose own ideologies or practices may be morally reprehensible can be defended if they are used to fight a greater evil.

"In World War II, we were allied for three years and eight months with history`s greatest murderer - Joseph Stalin - because we had a more immediate problem, Adolf Hitler," said former Central Intelligence Agency head James Woolsey, at an AEI briefing, in defending tactical flexibility. Similarly, neo-cons were unabashed about their support for "authoritarian" governments during the Cold War in the face of the greater "totalitarian" threat of Soviet communism, described by long-time Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz in 1976 as nothing less than "the most determined, ferocious and barbarous [enemy] ever to have appeared on the Earth".

The readiness to make tactical alliances has extended even to anti-Semitic governments and movements, such as the neo-Nazi military junta in Argentina. The regime was strongly defended by the elder Kristol, while neo-cons in the Ronald Reagan administration, such as Abrams and then-UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, worked to reverse the regime`s diplomatic isolation and restore US and multilateral aid that had been cut off by previous president Jimmy Carter. The embrace was motivated primarily by the desire for Argentine cooperation in Central America, as was the neo-cons` strong support for then-Nicaraguan Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo despite his public stated beliefs that the Jews were punished for killing Jesus Christ.

If anti-Semitism can be tolerated under some circumstances, however, the security of Israel remains a fundamental tenet of neo-conservatives who traditionally supported whatever Israeli government was in power but, since 1993 and the Oslo peace accords, became much more closely identified with the views of the right-wing Likud Party, which opposed the agreement. The neo-conservative identification with Israel can be explained in part by its predominantly Jewish membership, but Christian neo-conservatives very much share the sense that a strategic alliance with Israel constitutes a moral imperative in the post-Holocaust era. As Catholic neo-con William Bennett wrote in a recent book, "America`s fate and Israel`s fate are one and the same."

This commitment to Israel also explains the willingness of Jewish neo-cons to overlook the anti-Semitism of their Christian Right allies, whose own identification with Israel is based on a "Christian Zionist" reading of Biblical scripture that recognizes a God-given right of the Jews to what both religions consider the "Holy Land", at least until the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ. Kristol and other leading neo-cons have long argued that other Jews should not be offended by this alliance. "Why would it be a problem for us?" he wrote some years ago. "It is their theology; but it is our Israel."

Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EH13Aa01.html

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Kristol hat einmal geschrieben: `ein Neocon ist ein Linker, den die Wirklichkeit überfallen hat.`
Es gibt bessere Übersichten, als diese von Heise. z.B.Spiegel von letzter Woche siehe ~150 Postings vorher.

Die Machtergreifung der Neocons in Washington

Herbert Hasenbein 13.08.2003
Das politische Handeln der US-Regierung gewinnt dank der Neocons historische Dimensionen und wird zunehmend kalkulierbar

"Die Neocons haben mit wachsamer Aufmerksamkeit begonnen, die Diplomatie zu besetzen", schreibt Maureen Dowd in ihrem Editorial Neocon Coup at the Department d`État in der New York Times. Vorangegangen war ein Artikel in der Washington Post, in dem kolportiert wurde, Außenminister Colin Powell und sein Staatssekretär würden in der zweiten Amtsperiode des US-Präsidenten Georges W. Bush nicht mehr zur Verfügung stehen. Trotz des Dementi und einer Einladung der Eheleute Powell auf die Ranch des Präsidenten meint Maureen Dowd, "die Neocons wollen etwas erreichen, und sie werden es erreichen, unabhängig davon, was Georges W.Bush denkt."


Neocons, die Neokonservativen, werden auf unterschiedliche Ursprünge zurückgeführt. In der US-Regierung gehören dazu Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz und Newt Gingrich, ebenso wie Donald Rumsfeld und Vizepräsident Dick Cheney. Ferner gibt es mächtige Think Tanks wie das "Projekt for the New American Century" ( PNAC) und das Council of Foreign Relations. Und schließlich bekennen sich zahlreiche Wissenschaftler an renommierten Universitäten zu den Neocons. Sie rücken gerne in Führungspositionen auf, damit sie ihre politische Überzeugung in die wissenschaftliche Forschung und in die Jurisdiktion einbringen ( Die US-Regierung und das Power Game).


Neokonservative befürworten eine machtvolle Regierung, die sich der traditionellen Moralität und der staatlichen Förderung der US-Wirtschaft verpflichtet fühlt und beides zu den Zielen der Außenpolitik macht.

Schon zuvor gab es den Versuch, Colin Powell aus dem Amt zu drängen. Der scheiterte im vergangenen August, führte allerdings zur Kehrtwende Powells und zu seiner eindrucksvollen Präsentation vor dem UN-Sicherheitsrat. Mittlerweile dürfte sich der Außenminister düpiert vorkommen, weil man ihm zu seiner Rede bekanntermaßen falsche Beweise zuschob.

Für die Ansicht von Maureen Dowd spricht, dass der im Verteidigungsministerium beheimatete Paul Wolfowitz nach seiner Irakreise statt der militärischen, seine politischen Vorstellungen über die Zukunft des Mittleren Ostens kundtat, um seinen Titel "Wolfowitz of Arabia" zu rechtfertigen. Auch Condoleezza Rice, die Sicherheitsberaterin des amerikanischen Präsidenten, entwickelte in ihrer Rede am Wochenende eine politische Perspektive zum Irak, die eher dem US-Außenminister zugestanden hätte.

Bemerkenswert ist, dass die Neocons unisono die Verhältnisse im Irak mit dem Nachkriegsdeutschland vergleichen. "Auch nach Kriegsende haben SS-Angehörige Anschläge gegen US Soldaten verübt," erklärt Frau Condoleezza Rice als Grund für die täglichen Verluste amerikanischer Soldaten. "Auch damals sind unsere Soldaten nicht mit Freude empfangen worden. Und es hat lange gedauert, bis sich die von uns installierte demokratische Ordnung stabilisierte."


Die Ikonen der Neocons


Die Ursprünge der Neocons sind leicht auszumachen. Richard S. Dunham bezeichnete im Mai in seinem Artikel in der Business Week Ronald Reagan als erste "neokonservative Ikone". Gail Russell Chaddock vom Christian Science Monitor wies zuvor auf die übereinstimmende neue und alte Terminologie hin: In den 80er Jahren nannte Ronald die UdSSR ein "evil empire" und sprach sich für die "global campaign for democracy" aus. "Damals," so Gail Russell Chaddock, "saßen die heutigen Angehörigen der US Regierung als junge Mitarbeiter im oder in der Nachbarschaft des Pentagon, und für sie waren die Worte Gold." Sie kamen weder unter Carter noch unter Bush senior und Clinton zur Macht. "Aber jetzt unter George W. Bush haben sie dazu beigetragen, die nationale Sicherheitspolitik seit den 40er Jahren neu zu überdenken - und das ist die Politik, welche die US-Truppen nach Bagdad führt und wahrscheinlich noch darüber hinaus."

Andere sehen in Irvin Kristol, dem Herausgeber von Neoconservatism), den Vater der Bewegung. Er ist Jahrgang 1920, bringt Kriegserfahrung aus Europa mit und ist seit 1940 für mehrere Zeitschriften zum Teil als Editor tätig und in mehreren Think Tanks aktiv. Der New Yorker Professor macht aus seiner Einstellung keinen Hehl: "Seitdem ich mich erinnern kann, war ich ein Neo-Etwas: ein Neo-Marxist, ein Neo-Trotzkist, ein Neo-Liberaler; religiös ein Neo-Orthodoxer - auch wenn ich zugleich Neo-Trotzkist oder Neo-Marxist war." Hinzu kommt die 35jährige Freundschaft mit Norman Podhoretz, Editor des Commentary Magazins und Mitglied des Hudson Institutes: "America`s premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges."

Norman Podhoretz sieht sich ebenfalls als Neocon. Er zeichnete im vergangenen Jahr in einer Publikation des American Jewish Committee unter der Überschrift How to win World War IV den Weg für die Generalsanierung des Mittleren Ostens auf (Weltkrieg III ist nach dieser Sicht der Kalte Krieg). Norman Podhoretz sieht sich offenbar durch die Studie A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm von 1996 bestätigt. Die Analyse wurde vom "Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies" für den damaligen israelischen Premierminister Benjamin Netanyahu erstellt und empfiehlt:


Israel kann seine strategische Umgebung in Kooperation mit der Türkei und Jordanien verbessern, indem es Syrien schwächt, einkreist oder schlägt. Diese Bemühungen sind darauf gerichtet, Saddam Hussein im Irak zu entmachten. Darin liegt für Israel ein berechtigtes und wichtiges strategisches Interesse, um weitere regionale Ambitionen Syriens zu unterbinden. Jordanien kann die Einflusssphäre Syriens durch die Errichtung eines haschemitischen Staates im Irak zusätzlich zunichte machen.

Einigkeit nur gegen einen äußeren Feind


Nun sind also die Vereinigten Staaten in die Bresche gesprungen. Auch wenn Robert J. Lieber von der Georgetown University im Frontpage Magazine unter dem Titel The neoconservative-conspiracy theory die israelisch-amerikanische Kooperation zurückweist, betitelt Jim Lobe seinen Beitrag in Asia Times mit den Worten Die Neocons tanzen Strauss-Walzer und fragt:


Wird die Außenpolitik der Vereinigten Staaten von Anhängern eines obskuren deutsch-jüdischen politischen Philosophen betrieben, dessen Sicht elitär, amoralisch und feindlich für eine demokratische Regierung ist?"


Jim Lobe findet bemerkenswert, dass Irving Kristol ebenso wie der frühere einflussreiche Berater Richard Perle, sowie Donald Rumsfeld und sein engster Mitarbeiter Stephen Cambone sich öffentlich zur Gruppe der Straussianer bekennen.

Leo Strauss, der politische Philosoph, wurde 1899 im hessischen Kirchhain geboren und ging 1934 erst nach London und vier Jahre später in die USA. Shadia B. Drury, berühmt geworden mit dem 1999 erschienenen Buch "Leo Strauss and the American Right", gibt eine Erklärung für die Einstellung des Philosophen:



Leo Strauss meint, dass in einer Gesellschaft Menschen leben, die führen können, und andere, die geführt werden müssen. Und ferner, dass diejenigen, die führen, wissen, dass es keine Moralität gibt, sondern nur das "natürliche Recht der Stärkeren über den Schwächeren zu herrschen". Die Religion verbindet nach Leo Strauss die gesellschaftlichen Kräfte, weswegen säkulare Gesellschaften das Übel schlechthin sind. Daraus nämlich erwachsen Individualismus, Liberalismus und Relativismus, jene Kräfte also, die unterschiedliche Meinungen hervorbringen und die Gesellschaft von innen schwächen, so dass sie mit den Angriffen von außen nicht mehr fertig werden. Im Sinne von Thomas Hobbes betrachtet Leo Strauss die Menschen als grundsätzlich aggressiv, weswegen sie durch eine staatliche Macht in Zaum gehalten werden müssen. "Weil die Menschheit von Natur aus böse ist, muss sie regiert werden. Die Führung kann allerdings nur wirksam werden, wenn die Menschen geeint sind, und einig sind sie nur gegen andere", so Leo Strauss. Ganz im Sinne von Machiavelli glaubt er, dass für die Staatsräson ein äußerer Anlass fabriziert werden muss, sollte keine äußere Bedrohung bestehen.


Ed Crane und William Niskanen vom kanadischen Cato Institute sehen darin eine höchst gefährliche Entwicklung für die US-Politik. In ihrem Beitrag "Upholding Liberty in America" sprechen sie zwar von einem berechtigten äußeren Feind sowie von einem inneren Feind Amerikas: "



Den Neokonservativen reicht es offenbar nicht aus, in einer freiheitlichen Gesellschaft zu leben. ... Und sie lehnen die Vorstellung ab, dass eine Regierung nicht mehr tun soll, als die Rechte des Einzelnen auf Leben, Freiheit und Glück zu sichern.


Aus deutscher Sicht lässt sich der weitere Ablauf, den Imperialismus und Hegemonie erzeugen, mit Schrecken prognostizieren. Die Nestoren der Neocons, die 1945 dabei waren, vermitteln allerdings nicht nur für Nachkriegsdeutschland eine schiefe Bewertung. Sie vergessen, dass die US-Regierung unter Theodore Roosevelt die Chance verspielte, Europa zu einigen, und in Verkennung der europäischen Verhältnisse selbst die Spirale zum Kalten Krieg legte.

http://www.heise.de/tpDie Machtergreifung der Neocons in Was…

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Der gläserne Fluggast

Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti 13.08.2003
Die Europäische Union toleriert US-Datenpull - noch

Die Geschichte ist symptomatisch für den Kampf gegen den Terror nach dem 11. September: Die USA führen ihre Maßnahmen durch - andere Länder folgen oder müssen sich beugen. Doch in diesem Fall scheint sich langsam Widerstand zu regen.


Seit dem 5. März geben europäische Luftfahrtgesellschaften den US-Zollbehörden Auskunft über ihre Passagierdaten. Betroffen sind Deutsche Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, Iberia und die niederländische KLM, neuerdings auch Alitalia und Scandinavian Airlines. Beamte der EU-Kommission hatten dies mit den US-Behörden Mitte Februar ausgehandelt, da anderenfalls ein US-Gesetz den Entzug der Landrechte vorsieht.

Das europäische Parlament kritisierte die Kommission dafür ungewöhnlich scharf. Es gäbe "Zweifel an der Rechtsgrundlage". Auch seien die Daten kaum "wirklich angemessen geschützt", sobald sie in amerikanische Datenbanken übertragen werden. Die US-Zollbehörden verhandeln derzeit mit der EU-Kommission über die Weitergabe von Flugpassagierdaten, den sogenannten "Passenger Name Records" (PNR). Sie verlangen in dem von der Kommission veröffentlichten Dokument "Undertakings of The United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and The United States Transport Security Administration" den Abruf von 40 Datenfeldern. Bis September soll eine Einigung erzielt werden.

Falls das Abkommen dann die Privatsphäre der EU-Bürger nicht angemessen schützt, erwägt das europäische Parlament die Kommission im September verklagen. Bis Ende August wolle der Ausschuss für die Freiheiten und Rechte der Bürger, Justiz und innere Angelegenheiten des Europäischen Parlaments aber die laufenden Verhandlungen noch abwarten, sagte die niederländische Europaparlamentsabgeordnete Johanna Boogerd-Quaak in einem Interview mit Radio Netherlands.

11 Millionen Betroffene


Zu den Daten gehören unter anderem das Buchungsdatum, das Reisebüro, auf dem Ticket enthaltene Informationen, finanzielle Angaben wie Nummer und Ablaufdatum der Kreditkarte und Rechnungsanschrift, die Reisestrecke sowie die Buchungshistorie. Das Buchungssystem speichert auch persönliche Daten wie Essenswünsche. Bis zu 11 Millionen Fluggäste sind jährlich auf transatlantischen Flügen von der Datenübermittlung an die USA betroffen.

Zu den 40 Datensätzen gehören neben dem Namen, Geburtsdatum, Anschrift und Telefonnummer des Reisenden auch die Namen seiner Mitreisenden und seines Reisebüros sowie des Reisebüro-Sachbearbeiters. Ebenfalls gewünscht ist die Rechnungsanschrift, die Email-Adresse und der Reisestatus. Die US-Behörde behält sich vor, die Liste unter Risikoaspekten zu erweitern. Die Daten sollen mindestens sieben Jahre gespeichert werden. Nach Ablauf der sieben Jahre sollen die Daten weitere acht Jahre in einem so genannten "Deleted Record File" aufbewahrt werden. Verwendet werden die Daten in einem Flugpassagier-Kontrollsystem.


CAPPS


Das Flugpassagier-Kontrollsystem soll das Passagiere in verschiedene Risikokategorien einstufen: "Grün" für "minimales Risiko", "Gelb" für "erhöhte Sicherheitsmaßnahmen" und "Rot" für "Sicherheitskräfte alarmieren für etwaige Festnahme" ( Zuerst die ganz Bösen, dann die weniger Bösen). Das CAPPS II genannte System soll "innerhalb von fünf Sekunden eine Analyse und Risikoabschätzung erstellen und Terroristen identifizieren" können, so Steve McHale von der US- Transportsicherheitsbehörde. Dafür werde Passagierdaten mit dem "besten geheimdienstlichen US-Aufklärungsmaterial über Terroristen" abgleichen.

Unschuldige Reisende in den USA wurden aufgrund fehlerhafter Flugverbotslisten bereits verhört. So etwa im August 2002 die zwei Friedensaktivisten Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, die am Flughafen von San Francisco festgehalten wurden, da sie auf eine "No-Fly"-Liste gerieten. Nun führt die US-Bürgerrechtsorganisation "American Civil Liberties Union" Klage gegen das FBI, das Justizministerium und die Tranportation Security Administration, um herauszufinden, wie die beiden auf die Terroristenliste geraten konnten ( Kriegsgegner auf CAPPS-Überwachungsliste).

Proteste wie Boycott Delta führten inzwischen dazu, dass Testläufe für CAPPS II gestoppt wurden, um Datenschutzregeln zu implementieren. Diese gelten jedoch nur für US-Amerikaner - nicht für Ausländer.

Die Flugverbotsliste ist zudem nicht die einzige Überwachungsliste von US-Behörden. Das General Accounting Office, der Rechnungshof des US-Kongresses, berichtete kürzlich, dass zwölf verschiedene Datenbanken "gefährliche Personen" speichern. Neun Regierungsstellen pflegen die Datenbanken, die unter drei verschiedenen Betriebssystemen laufen und Daten in inkompatiblen Formaten speichern. Acht Datenbanken verwenden firmenspezifische Standards, sieben sind nicht vernetzt. Der Rechnungshof empfiehlt nun, alle Datenbanken zu einer einzigen zu verbinden.

In eine solche Super-Datenbank werden dann auch Daten kommerzieller Firmen verwendet. Der US-Datenkonzern ChoicePoint etwa liefert regelmäßig Daten an das US-Justizministerium. In Mexiko ist die Firma höchst umstritten, da sie über Mittelsmänner das komplette mexikanische Wählerregister für 250.000 US-Dollar erworben hatte, um sie US-Behörden gegen Entgelt zur Verfügung zu stellen (zu ChoicePoint s.a.: Matrix ist in Florida).


Wirtschaftsspionage?


Carsten Bange, Geschäftsführer des Würzburger "Business Application Research Center" (BARC) , meint, dass eine gezielte Abfrage bezüglich bestimmter Hypothesen und Fragestellungen jedenfalls nicht nur für die Terrorbekämpfung, sondern auch für Wirtschaftsspionage relevante Daten herausfiltern könnte. Bucht etwa eine Firma über ein eigenes Reisebüro, können Personen dieser Firma zugeordnet werden. Konkurrieren mehrere Unternehmen um eine lukrative Regierungsausschreibung in einem bestimmten Land, können Flüge in dieses Land als Indikator für Vorverhandlungen gewertet werden. Bange: "Dann wird es spannend." Ebenfalls denkbar wäre es, Flüge von Firmenvertretern in ein Embargoland als Indikator für Verhandlungen zu werten. Kritisch wird es auch, wenn die Flugpassagierdaten mittels der angegebenen Kreditkartennummer mit den Daten von Kreditkartenunternehmen verknüpft werden.

Carsten Bange hält eine maschinelle Datenmustererkennung für solche Massendaten grundsätzlich für geeignet. Als "problematisch" sieht er jedoch "die wenigen relevanten Datensätze in diesen Massendaten":




Sie können über Data Mining versuchen, ein typisches Muster innerhalb der 40 Datenfelder für Terroristen zu filtern.

Allerdings sieht er das Hauptproblem darin, dass man dafür bereits "eine ausreichende Menge von bekannten Flügen von Terroristen" hat. Sind diese verfügbar, kann man anhand der Profile der bekannten Terroristen-Flüge ähnlich wie bei der Bonitätsprüfung in einer Bank die relevanten Felder und ihre Kombination untereinander herausfinden und eine Wahrscheinlichkeit ausrechnen, das jemand ein Terrorist sein könnte.


Kritik


Der Vize-Präsident des Europäischen Parlaments, Gerhard Schmid, bezeichnete das Vorgehen unverblümt als "ökonomische Erpressung unserer Fluglinien". Europäische Datenschützer der Artikel-29-Gruppe formulierten nach anfänglich harscher Kritik Mitte Juni in einem Schreiben an die Kommission mehrere Bedingungen für den Datentransfer: So soll die im Februar zwischen den USA und der EU getroffene Vereinbarung nur vorübergehend gültig sein. Ob ein internationales Abkommen oder nur eine Vereinbarung zwischen den zuständigen Behörden abgeschlossen wird, ist noch offen. Jedenfalls bestehen die Datenschützer darauf, dass nur ein genau definiertes Datenpaket maximal 48 Stunden vor Abflug übermittelt werden dar. Auch dürfen die US-Behörden diese Daten nur wenige Wochen, und nicht wie gewünscht sieben bis acht Jahre gespeichert werden.

Die Datenschützer wollen den Zugriff der US-Behörden im Pull-Verfahren abschaffen und nur noch ein Push-Verfahren zulassen. Auch bestehen sie darauf, dass der Verwendungszweck auf Terrorismusbekämpfung beschränkt werden muss und nicht, wie die derzeitige Vereinbarung vorsieht, auch "schwere Straftaten" umfasst. Außerdem verlangen sie eine Datenschutz-Kontrolle seitens unabhängiger Dritter.


EU-Kommissar Bolkestein warnt vor transatlantischer Konfrontation


Nachdem der für auswärtige Angelegenheiten zuständige Kommissar Chris Patten angesichts der drohenden Landeverbote die rechtswidrige Vereinbarung im Februar getroffen hatte, wurde ihm die Zuständigkeit entzogen. EU-Kommissar Frits Bolkestein schaltete sich nach der Kritik des EU-Parlaments und der Datenschützer ein und scheint jetzt auch neuer Verhandlungsführer zu sein. In einem Schreiben an Tom Ridge, dem Minister für das US-Ministerium für Homeland Security, unterstrich er die Forderungen der Datenschützer. Die bisherigen Erläuterungen der US-Behörde seien nicht überzeugend. Falls die USA wesentliche Kritikpunkte wie die Zweckbindung, die Beschränkung auf Kerndaten und die Kontrolle durch unabhängige Dritte nicht berücksichtigten, "riskieren wir eine sehr belastende transatlantische Konfrontation ohne offensichtlichen Ausweg", warnte Bolkestein.

Dem immanenten Vorwurf der USA, angesichts von Terrorgefahren Paragrafenreiterei zu betreiben, trat Bolkestein entschieden entgegen: Es gehe nicht nur darum, die Datenschutzrichtlinie anzuwenden, sondern um die Wahrung "fundamentaler Rechte und Freiheiten". An diesen Freiheiten würde man in der Europäischen Union "grimmig festhalten", schrieb Bolkestein wörtlich.


Widerstand?


Widerstand gegen den gesetzwidrigen Zustand gibt es nicht wirklich. Allein der italienische Datenschutzbeauftragte hat der Fluggesellschaft Alitalia die Übermittlung der Daten untersagt. Alitalia folgte - und die US-Behörden entzogen die Landeerlaubnis wider Erwarten nicht.

Bei der für die Deutsche Lufthansa zuständigen nordrhein-westfälischen Datenschutzbeauftragten haben sich bisher sieben Personen über die Datenübermittlung beschwert. Alle waren Fluggäste, die sich dagegen gewendet haben, dass der Zugriff der US-Behörden technisch auch für Flüge außerhalb der USA möglich ist. Die Datenschutzbeauftragte führte inzwischen bei der Lufthansa Stichprobenkontrollen durch, inwieweit der US-Zoll auch auf Flüge zugreift, die nicht in die USA gehen. "Ein Zugriff auf Nicht-US-Flüge konnte in keinem einzigen Fall festgestellt werden", sagte die zuständige Referentin Bettina Gayk.

Aus den übrigen europäischen Staaten sind auch nur vereinzelte Beschwerden bekannt geworden. Die griechische Datenschutzbehörde prüft derzeit einen Fall, in dem ein Passagier erhebliche Schwierigkeiten bei der Einreise hatte. Dies ging aber wohl nicht auf eine Flugpassagierdaten-Übermittlung zurück, sondern hatte seine Ursache in anderen Informationen, die den US-Behörden über die Person vorlagen.

Immerhin hat die europäische Cyberrights-Gruppe EDRI Beschwerdebriefe an die Luftfahrtgesellschaften und Datenschutzbeauftragten vorformuliert. Reger Gebrauch wurde jedoch, wenn die sieben deutschen Beschwerden betrachtet, davon noch nicht gemacht.

Die Europäer zeigen sich jedoch nicht nur skeptisch. Für manche ist das Vorgehen der Amerikaner sogar Inspiration. Spanien unterbreitete im März den Vorschlag, dass europäische Strafverfolger EU-weit ebenfalls auf Flugpassagierdaten zugreifen dürfen, um illegale Einwanderung und Terrorismus zu bekämpfen ( Flugpassagierdaten auch in der EU begehrt). Der europäische Luftverkehrsverband AEA und der internationale Flugverkehrsverband IATA warnten jedoch davor, dass diese Forderungen eine "verheerende Wirkung" auf die zivile Luftfahrt haben könnten. Der Datenzugriff nütze den Staaten nur eingeschränkt, werde jedoch die Kosten der Luftfahrtgesellschaften ins "Unermessliche" steigern.

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/15424/1.html

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#5690 Artikel des Guardian

Die politisch Konservativen neigen zum Schwarz-Weiß-Denken

Florian Rötzer 13.08.2003
Eine mit Forschungsgeldern finanzierte Studie amerikanischer Wissenschaftler über die konservative Persönlichkeit kommt im Weißen Haus nicht gut an

Selten kommt es vor, dass ein Artikel von Sozialwissenschaftlern größere Aufmerksamkeit in politischen Kreisen erweckt. Vier amerikanischen Psychologen haben dies nun aber geschafft, weil sie, finanziert durch Forschungszuschüsse, ein wenig einschmeichelndes, wenn auch nicht gerade unbekanntes Profil der politisch Konservativen gezeichnet haben. Die Konservativen sind an der Macht - und natürlich dient den Wissenschaftlern auch Präsident George W. Bush als Paradefall eines Konservativen.






Veröffentlicht wurde der Artikel "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" bereits in der Maiausgabe der Zeitschrift Psychological Bulletin (2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 339-375) der American Psychological Association (APA). In einer Fußnote merkten die Autoren Jack Glaser (University of California), Frank Sulloway (University of Berkeley), John Jost (Stanford University) und Aric Kluglanski (University of Maryland) an, dass ihre Arbeit durch Forschungsgelder von der National Science Foundation (NSF) und dem National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institute of Health (NIH) unterstützt wurde. Das brachte schließlich erzürnte Konservative auf die Spur. Selbst im Weißen Haus wurde akribisch nachgeforscht und herausgefunden, dass drei der vier Wissenschaftler für die Erforschung des politischen Konservatismus insgesamt 1,2 Millionen Dollar erhalten haben.


Für ihre Studie, die umfassend alle entsprechenden Theorieansätze durchgeht, haben die Wissenschaftler in über 20.000 Fällen aus Artikeln, Büchern und Konferenzberichten nach gemeinsamen Mustern gesucht. Das Material stammte aus 12 Ländern und umfasste auch Reden oder Interviews von Richtern, Urteile von Richtern sowie Ergebnisse von Befragungen und Experimenten. Das Ergebnis ist eine Schilderung der bekannten Persönlichkeitseigenschaften des autoritären Charakters.


Hitler, Mussolini und Reagan


Der politisch Konservative werde durch seinen Umgang mit "Unsicherheit und Angst" charakterisiert, die er durch Flucht in Ordnung abzuwehren sucht. Im Kern stehe die Abwehr von Veränderungen und die Toleranz für Ungleichheiten in der Gesellschaft. Der Konservative neigt zu Dogmatismus, mag keine Ambivalenzen, vermeidet Unsicherheiten, benötigt "kognitive Schließung" und betreibt ein "Terror Management". Letzteres könne man im Nach-11/9-Amerika gut sehen, in dem viele Menschen Außenseiter und diejenigen Menschen ächten oder sogar bestrafen würden, die "den Status ihrer geliebten Weltansichten bedrohen". Zur Prävention neigen die Konservativen aus Angst vor dem Tod.

Der Umgang mit Angst hänge mit der Aufrechterhaltung von Ungleichheit zusammen. Das könne man am indischen Kastensystem, am ehemaligen Apartheidsystem in Südafrika oder an der Rassentrennungspolitik von amerikanischen Politiker wie Strom Thurmond sehen. Die Ablehnung von Veränderung und die Akzeptanz von Ungleichheit sei unterschiedlichen Konservativen zu eigen. Hier nennen sie, was erheblich zur Kritik beigetragen hat, neben Hitler und Mussolini auch Ronald Reagan, den Heros der Neokonservativen, die gegenwärtig an der Regierung sind und ihre politische Ausrichtung aus der Reagan-Zeit beziehen. Die Konservativen würden die Rückkehr zu einer idealisierten Vergangenheit predigen. Die Verbindung zwischen Abwehr von Veränderung und Akzeptanz von Ungleichheit sei historisch bedingt, weil soziale Veränderung in aller Regel bedeutet habe, Hierarchien zu stürzen.


Konservative neigen zu einer vereinfachten Weltsicht


Zwar würden alle Menschen zur Abwehr von Veränderungen neigen, aber Liberale hätten eine höhere Akzeptanz für den Wandel als Konservative, auch wenn es Linke wie Stalin oder Castro gebe, die genauso jede Veränderung bekämpfen, wenn sie einmal an der Macht sind. Konservative Ideologien würden aufgrund von psychologischen Bedürfnissen entstehen. Um nicht ganz ins Fettnäpfchen zu treten, schrieben die Autoren aber gleich, dass dies nicht bedeute, "dass Konservatismus pathologisch ist oder dass konservative Vorstellungen notwendig falsch, irrational oder ungerechtfertigt sind." Gleichwohl könne die Abwehr von Ambivalenzen die Menschen dazu führen, an der Familie zu kleben, zu voreiligen Schlussfolgerungen zu kommen oder zu Stereotypen und Klischees zu neigen. Dass die Bush-Regierung trotz bekannter Zweifel weiterhin an der Existenz von Massenvernichtungsmitteln im Irak festgehalten hat, wird von Jack Glaser, einem der Autoren, der "kognitiven Schließung" zugeschrieben.

Die konservative Weltanschauung komme bei den Menschen besser an, sind die Autoren überzeugt, besonders in Zeiten der Krise und Instabilität. Während die Menschen aus den unteren Schicht vom Konservatismus eher angezogen sind, um so mit Angst und Unsicherheit zurecht zu können, spiele bei den gesellschaftlichen höheren Schichten eher Selbstinteresse und Machterhaltung eine Rolle. Das rühre eben auch daher, dass Konservative kognitiv weniger "integrativ komplex" als andere Menschen seien, was aber nicht bedeuten soll, dass sie geistig einfach gestrickt seien. Allerdings läuft es eben darauf hinaus, wenn die Autoren sagen, das die Konservativen nicht das Bedürfnis haben, komplexe intellektuelle Gedankengänge durchzugehen, um ihre Positionen zu rechtfertigen: "Ihnen genügt es eher, Dinge so in Schwarz und Weiß zu sehen und darzustellen, dass die Liberalen sich vor Entsetzen schütteln müssen."

Und von diesem Punkt her ist der Weg zum US-Präsidenten natürlich nicht weit, dessen Bush-Doktrin eben in dem Schema besteht, dass man entweder für oder gegen die USA ist, aber dass es nichts dazwischen gibt. Zitiert wird von Glaser eine Äußerung von Bush aus dem Jahr 2001: "Ich weiß, was ich glaube, und ich glaube an das, was ich für richtig halte." Glaser versuchte bereits in der Pressemitteilung der Universität zur Veröffentlichung der Studie den Verdacht abzuweisen, dass diese einseitig sei. Das aber geschah ein wenig halbherzig. Es gebe einfach mehr Informationen über den Konservatismus als über den Liberalismus. Das ist nach den Beschreibungen auch nicht ganz unverständlich, denn Wissenschaft setzt Offenheit und Falsifizierbarkeit voraus, was keine konservativen Tugenden wären, weswegen es auch nahe läge, dass die Zahl der konservativen (Sozial)Wissenschaftler geringer sein könnte. Die Konservativen brauchen eben keine komplizierten Erklärungen, sondern wissen bereits, wo es lang geht.

Dass die Studie den Konservativen nicht passt, war zu erwarten. So wird in der konservativen National Review das Verschwenden von Steuergeldern gegeißelt: The "Conservatives Are Crazy" Study: Paid For by Taxpayers. Der republikanische Abgeodnete Tom Feeney aus Florida ist erzürnt und fordert, dass Steuerzahler die "Untersuchung solcher lächerlichen Hypothesen zu politischen Zwecken" nicht bezahlen dürften.

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/15432/1.html

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraq13a…
THE WORLD

Iraqis on Council to Get Guards
Citing threats, U.S.-led occupation authority boosts its own security and reveals plan to train protectors for members of new governing panel.
By Alissa J. Rubin, Mark Fineman and Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writers

August 13, 2003

BAGHDAD — Concerned about imminent terrorist attacks and other violence, the U.S.-led occupation authority moved Tuesday to hire scores of security guards for the new Iraqi Governing Council and bolster the authority`s already extensive security network to protect its own top staff.

Both actions are part of the stepped-up security after last week`s car bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad that killed 17, a development that suggested a new phase in the months-long resistance campaign that has killed dozens of U.S. soldiers and claimed the lives of Iraqis working with the occupation forces.

Another U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday, and two more were wounded.

"We believe we have a significant terrorist threat in the country, which is new," said L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator. "We take this very seriously."

The safety of the 25 council members, who personify the U.S. pledge to eventually install an Iraqi government, is of particular concern.

"Given the Iraqi security environment, these individuals are under great personal risk and require protection," declared the authority in a solicitation for instructors to train 120 Iraqis for what it called the council`s Personal Security Detail.

The occupation leadership also expanded its own security. Hundreds of yards of razor-sharp concertina wire and concrete blockades were set up to barricade the already heavily fortified conference center complex where many of the authority`s meetings and news conferences are held.

Reporters, required to arrive 90 minutes ahead of a briefing by Bremer, underwent two body searches before a third check by heavily armed soldiers, equipped with bomb-sniffing dogs — a more intensive procedure than the White House demanded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It was the second day of such high security. On Monday, the same measures were taken for the first news conference by Ibrahim Jafari, the Governing Council president.

For its own protection, the council has been all but invisible since it was appointed last month — a victory in itself for the anti-American forces.

The council works cloistered in a building set back more than half a mile from the road. Visitors can enter only if they are met by a council member and after they have been checked by U.S. soldiers.

Once inside the complex, they must drive past a second American checkpoint, stop their cars and wait while a soldier removes a set of road spikes.

In calling for bodyguard trainers, the coalition outlined an array of threats facing the council members.

The request for 120 bodyguards to protect 25 people suggests either around-the-clock coverage or multiple guards for certain members.

The instructors` program, according to the authority`s Web site, will cover reaction to "attack, terrorism threat assessment, hostage situations, general security to include residence, office, vehicle and travel escort, reconnaissance and map reading weapons training, anti-ambush drills, unarmed conflict, explosive awareness" and other information.

Despite the presence of nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and the half a dozen U.S. companies here training a new Iraqi army and police force, the document added: "There is no established pool of quality trained bodyguards currently available in Iraq." The training is to be completed by October.

The heightened threat appears to be coming from several quarters.

Since U.S. officials declared the major fighting over May 1, guerrillas have escalated their attacks, targeting Iraqis as well as Americans.

The violence has been centered in the "Sunni triangle" where Saddam Hussein`s support was based and where anti-Americanism has been most open. At least 58 American soldiers have been killed, and the authority said some of the insurgents could include elite forces from the former Baathist regime.

Furthermore, Bremer estimated that as many as 200 operatives from the extremist group Ansar al Islam have slipped back into the country since May 1. In other recent interviews, Bremer said that Al Qaeda network operatives as well as Iranian radicals are thought to be operating in Iraq.

An official with one of the two Kurdish political parties that control northern Iraq reported that their forces had captured 50 suspected Ansar al Islam members in the northern city of Halabja on Tuesday morning in a joint operation with U.S. forces.

Mohammed Tawfik, an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the detainees were of "different nationalities" and were not permanent residents of Halabja, a town about 40 miles southeast of Sulaymaniyah and 15 miles west of the Iranian border.

Tawfik indicated that the detainees remained under control of the Kurdish authorities. It was unclear whether they would be tried or turned over to the U.S.

Before invading Iraq, the Bush administration alleged that Ansar al Islam, which had a few camps in northern Iraq near the Iranian border, was a link between Al Qaeda and Hussein. However, the group`s main aim seems to have been battling the secular Kurdish government in northern Iraq. In March, the group was swept from its camps in a U.S.-Kurdish campaign involving warplanes and special forces. An estimated 250 Ansar members were killed, and others are believed to have fled to Iran.

In addition to Ansar, Bremer said, U.S. officials are tracking foreign terrorist groups that may have entered Iraq in recent weeks. He made a distinction between the increased risk of terrorism in Iraq and attacks on U.S. forces here, which he blamed on "bitter-enders" loyal to Hussein.

On Tuesday, one U.S. soldier was killed and two injured in an attack on a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment convoy west of Baghdad. According to a U.S. military spokeswoman, the convoy was traveling near Ramadi about 10:30 a.m. when it hit three "improvised explosive devices" that had been strung together on the road.

Resistance forces appear to be increasingly making use of makeshift bombs in their attacks on U.S. forces. Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald in Tikrit said Tuesday that in raids this week, soldiers detained 14 people, including two suspected of organizing resistance and deploying improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs in military parlance.

Those detained included a Republican Guard officer and one of the deposed dictator`s bodyguards. Soldiers also confiscated 180 artillery shells, 50 tank rounds and three mortar rounds at five different sites.

"We think these seizures are important because they are using these artillery and mortar rounds in the IEDs," said MacDonald, who added that the devices are sometimes equipped with fuses and other times with radio controls, enabling them to be triggered from up to 300 yards away.

The raids, part of an action dubbed Operation Ivy Lightning, were focused around the remote towns of Ain Lalin and Quara Tapa. According to the U.S. military, intelligence reports suggest that former regime leaders may have fled to the area after aggressive operations in the Tikrit, Baqubah and Balad regions.

Meanwhile, Bremer said the investigation into Thursday`s embassy bombing was moving "very quickly over the last 48 hours," but he said that officials still did not know who was responsible.

FBI agents on Monday wrapped up the tedious on-site search for clues, removing the charred remains of some of the nine damaged cars with a crane, including one vehicle that was thrown onto the roof of a nearby house. A piece of a guardrail fence landed on a house roof 100 yards away.

Under the protection of the 1st Armored Division and Iraqi police, FBI agents cataloged the debris and moved it to another location, where it will be analyzed for explosives residue.

"That will help tell us where the [bombers] were trained and who taught them," FBI agent Thomas Fuentes said at the embassy. "Different groups have different techniques."

The FBI, which arrived on the scene the day of the blast, has been joined by investigators from U.S. Customs, the CIA and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Fuentes said.

The FBI does not believe that the attack was a suicide mission because witnesses say they saw two men exit the vehicle that contained the bomb — a minivan — before it exploded, Fuentes said.

A Jordanian Embassy guard has told investigators that a letter was left at the embassy gate a day before the explosion, warning of an impending attack, according to Iraqi Col. Raad Abbas Jasim, head of the Khudra police station, which is assisting in the investigation.

The note`s contents have not been disclosed.

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Chris Kraul in Tikrit and special correspondent Salar Jaff contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-smal…
THE WORLD


Shopkeepers Learn to Love Free Market in Iraq
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

August 13, 2003

BAGHDAD — These are bittersweet times for shopkeeper Mohammed Kassim.

The owner of Hazan CD Center, a movie and music shop in Baghdad`s Karada shopping district, knows that Iraq`s overall economy is reeling from unemployment, rampant crime and the collapse of many government-owned companies.

But down here on the lower rungs of Iraq`s economic ladder, business is booming.

Sales of CDs and DVDs at Kassim`s small shop are up 75% compared with last year. Asked if his profits were improving, Kassim just grinned broadly and clapped his hands in satisfaction.

Temporarily free from taxes, import tariffs and government regulations on what and how they sell, small-business owners like Kassim report that they are enjoying the fruits of a free-market economy. Although overall reform of Iraq`s previous centrally planned system will be difficult, economists and bankers say the postwar surge in small merchants` sales bodes well for Iraq`s long-term prospects.

Under the old regime, Kassim said, he paid a $5,000 annual business license tax plus a monthly government "street sanitation" fee (though he said he never saw any cleaning). He was forced to take down the marquee outside his store because he couldn`t afford the signage tax. Worst of all, Kassim endured daily visits from Ministry of Information officials who perused his selections to ensure that they didn`t include racy Western movies or Shiite-themed music, which were illegal.

"I was quite afraid," said Kassim, whose current video offerings include "Miss Congeniality," "Wild, Wild West" and "Intersection." "Now we can offer much more, and so people buy more."

The crowds come in the relative cool of early evening, as cars and pedestrians clog the street outside Kassim`s shop. With electricity supplies still erratic, many merchants move their wares out of their stuffy shops, filling sidewalks with displays of shoes, sunglasses, radios, jewelry and clothing.

The sidewalk bazaar along Karada Street would have been impossible under Saddam Hussein, who disapproved of such retail clutter.

Some shopkeepers don`t even bother bringing their goods inside anymore. Noel Jonan, manager of the Yamama appliance store, stacks his inventory on the sidewalk so customers can easily load the air conditioners, televisions and microwave ovens into their cars.

A year ago, Jonan barely sold enough to cover the rent and pay his employees. These days, he may sell 100 air-conditioning units a day. "Before the war people were nervous," he said. "They didn`t know the future. Now they feel it`s time to buy."

Since he no longer has to pay import taxes — which ran as high as 75% of an item`s value under the former government — prices for air conditioners have plummeted from 1 million Iraqi dinars, or about $600, to about $300. Although his profit margin has been cut in half because of increased competition, Jonan said he didn`t mind, because volume was robust.

Analysts find such developments heartening. "Even with the bad situation right now, some economic activity is very good," said Sami Thami, acting director of Islam Bank in Baghdad. "Iraq used to be a developed country, and it will be again. It`s a very rich country."

Whether the boom lasts remains to be seen. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority has said the tax-free environment will end in December, suggesting the free ride for merchants and customers may be short, according to Humam Shamaa, a Baghdad University economics professor who is advising the Iraqi Governing Council.

But even then, Shamaa predicts that the new government will be far more moderate in levying taxes and imposing rules, staying in accord with principles set by the World Trade Organization. "I`m satisfied that Iraq will change into a free economic market," he said.

Shamaa attributed the small-business boom to another trend: higher pay. Salaries for many government workers have soared under the U.S.-led coalition. "The only thing Americans are good for is paying," goes a common refrain in Baghdad these days. Teachers and police, for example, who previously earned less than $10 a month, now collect about $180.

"The standard of living for some Iraqis has improved," Shamaa said, noting that about half the Iraqis who are employed work for the state.

Rising real estate prices are also putting more money in the pockets of consumers. The influx of expatriates, foreign investors and reconstruction officials has led home prices in some areas to quadruple, a boom some experts believe won`t last.

With a satellite phone affixed to one ear, real estate agent Caesar Majid, based in the upscale Mansour area, reported a surge of new buyers.

"A lot of people had money but were afraid to spend it or let people know they had it," he said. In addition, a previous law restricted home buying in Baghdad to individuals listed in the 1957 census. "They didn`t want outsiders buying property," Majid said of the old regime. Now people are simply ignoring that and making offers.

Still, Iraq`s economy faces plenty of challenges. Countless workers are unemployed, and although some government workers have received raises, others have had their pay cut. Cement laborers, Shamaa noted, have seen their monthly pay drop to $60 from $150.

Shamaa expects a return of some of the old restrictions, such as a ban on selling films containing nudity. Liquor sales are another activity that may be controlled. Some Shiite Muslim fundamentalist groups would like to impose restrictions that are tougher than those under Hussein, or perhaps ban the sale of alcohol entirely.

Assad Aziz, the owner of Gaza Liquor, said he has been threatened twice by groups warning him to shut down. "I told them it`s not their job to tell me what to do," Aziz said.

The old government, he said, levied a 150% tax on alcohol. With that gone, prices for a can of beer have dropped from about 60 cents to 45 cents, and sales have doubled.

Of course, not everyone is enjoying the consumer surge. Art dealers, carpet vendors and the owner of a specialty food shop — which offers American products such as Fruit Loops and Lay`s potato chips — all reported slower sales, suggesting that Iraqis are not yet ready to spend on luxury items.

And the unbridled free market does have its drawbacks. Hussain Khazari, owner of the Manama appliance shop, complained about losing his biggest customer: the former regime.

He also worries that prices are being cut too far. "These guys are lowering their prices to be competitive, but I cannot accept less," he said. "How can I survive on a 3% profit?"

Others, however, are learning to quickly adapt. After the war, Saady Kazaz converted his musical instrument store to a meat shop, trading saxophones for lamb chops.

"I thought food would be a much better trade," he said. "Everyone needs this. I was right. It`s very easy to sell."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-hote…
THE WORLD

U.S. Forces Who Attacked Baghdad Hotel Exonerated
From Times Wire Services

August 13, 2003

WASHINGTON — American forces who fired a tank shell into an upper floor of Baghdad`s Palestine Hotel in April, accidentally killing two journalists, have been cleared of wrongdoing, U.S. military investigators said Tuesday.

"They had a scene of very intense fighting. They acted absolutely in accordance with the rules of engagement and in an appropriate manner," said a defense official, who asked not to be identified.

The investigation found that U.S. forces had confiscated an Iraqi military radio and heard transmissions indicating that troops were being watched and that intense fire was being directed at them by a spotter in a building.

The tank round hit a 15th-floor balcony being used by Reuters news agency on April 8. Taras Protsyuk, the agency`s Ukrainian-born cameraman, was wounded and died on arrival at a Baghdad hospital. Debris damaged the floor below, where Spanish cameraman Jose Couso of Telecinco television was fatally injured.

The U.S. military has said it was fired on from the hotel, but journalists there have questioned that version of events.

A Central Command statement said the investigation "concludes that a tank from A Company, 4-64 Armor properly fired upon a suspected enemy hunter/killer team in a proportionate and justifiably measured response."

The statement also said: "The activities on the balcony of the Palestine Hotel were consistent with that of an enemy combatant The enemy had repeatedly chosen to conduct its combat activities from throughout the civilian areas of Baghdad.

"These actions included utilizing the Palestine Hotel and the areas immediately around it as a platform for military operations The journalists` death at the Palestine Hotel was a tragedy and the United States has the deepest sympathies for the families of those who were killed."

Meanwhile, four months after the battle for Baghdad, a group of about 600 U.S. military families, upset about soldiers` living conditions, are launching a campaign to urge Congress and President Bush to bring the troops home.

"We`re growing more and more disturbed about the conditions that are developing," said Nancy Lessin, a founder of Families Speak Out, formed last fall to oppose the war.

Susan Schuman, whose son Justin is in the Massachusetts National Guard deployed to Samarra, Iraq, said he shared a small room in a former police barracks with five other men. "They are rationed to 2 liters of water a day and it`s 125 degrees. They haven`t had anything but MREs," or meals ready to eat, she said, adding that uncertainty about the troops` return was "most disheartening."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/ats-ap_in…
U.S. Arrests Iraqi Officer; GI Killed
By D`ARCY DORAN
Associated Press Writer

3:40 AM PDT, August 13, 2003

TIKRIT, Iraq -- U.S. troops identified Saddam Hussein loyalists in custody Wednesday as two key members of the ousted dictator`s Republican Guard and a paymaster for his Fedayeen Saddam militia.

A U.S. soldier was killed and another was wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb 15 miles south of Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit on Wednesday, the military reported.

The victims were riding in an armored personnel carrier, second in a four-vehicle convoy, Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, said.

The death brought to 59 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over.

The military also reported killing two Iraqis in separate incidents in the Baqouba region, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. Aberle said the two were killed after opening fire on U.S. troops. She gave no other details.

Officials with the 4th Infantry said they released 10 other men taken in a sweep through the outskirts of Tikrit Tuesday, keeping four in custody.

The military still had not released names but said the four included a Republican Guard corps-level chief of staff, a guard division commander and a paymaster for the militia. A fourth man kept in custody was not identified at all.

None of the identified detainees is among the 55 most-wanted Iraqis featured on the Army`s deck of playing cards.

All those detained in the sweep were members of a family described as a pillar of support for the ousted regime, said U.S. Lt. Col. Steve Russell.

"They were trying to support the remnants of the former regime by organizing attacks, through funding and by trying to hide former regime members," Russell said.

On Tuesday, Iraq`s U.S. administrator urged Iraqis and the world to look beyond the daily shootouts and power cuts to newly found freedoms in Iraq.

"I don`t accept the definition of a country in chaos. Most of this country is at peace," L. Paul Bremer told reporters.

"We have a problem with attacks against coalition forces in a small area of the country by a small group of bitter-end people who are resisting the new Iraq. We will deal with them and we will dominate them. They will either be killed or they will be captured."

Bremer said that while Iraqis complain of unsafe streets and shortages of power, they must also realize that Saddam`s fall has improved their lives.

"I think it`s important to ... look beyond the shootouts and blackouts and remind ourselves of a range of rights that Iraqis enjoy today because of the coalition`s military victory," he said.

Meanwhile, about 12 miles north of the capital, in an area called al-Taji, a burst pipeline shot flames 200 feet into the air.

U.S. military spokeswoman Nicole Thompson confirmed there was a pipeline fire but had no further details.

The fire sent a massive black cloud drifting over Baghdad for several hours Tuesday. Iraqi firefighters eventually put out the blaze with flame-retardant chemicals.

It was unclear whether the fire was an accident or the work of saboteurs, but many pipelines across Iraq have been hit by guerrillas seeking to destabilize U.S. reconstruction efforts.

Another pipeline fire was spotted northwest of Baghdad, near the town of Haditha.

A U.S. soldier was killed while riding in a Humvee in Ramadi Tuesday, a site of frequent attacks on American troops 60 miles west of Baghdad. A U.S. military spokesman said the convoy was hit by three roadside bombs wired to explode in succession. Two other soldiers were wounded.

Another American soldier was found dead in his bunk Tuesday morning at a base in Ramadi. In Mosul, in the far north of the country, the U.S. military reported a soldier died when his Humvee collided with a taxi.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Iraq costs keep rising

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

"We`ve got to get on with it here and start acknowledging what some of these costs are going to be."

– Rep. Jim Kolbe, R- Ariz., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls foreign aid

Early in the invasion of Iraq, a steely-eyed President Bush said that the battle to liberate Iraq would go on "however long it takes." He should have said, "and however much it costs."

How much will it cost to secure and rebuild Iraq? It`s a question the administration is uncomfortable answering, but members of both parties in Congress have grown insistent in asking.

The closest thing to an updated administration estimate came from the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in a recent CNBC interview in which he said that "getting the country up and running again" could cost "maybe $100 billion" over three years.

The Pentagon says U.S. military activities in Iraq will have cost $58 billion from January through September. But that`s how much Congress provided for all anti-terror Defense Department activities this year -- including Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Brookings Institution sets the cost as high as $400 billion, while the American Academy of Arts and Sciences estimate goes as high as $615 billion over a decade.

On Friday Bush said that accurate cost projections would come "next year at the appropriate time."

The appropriate time for accurate cost projections is now. With a federal budget nearly $500 million in the red, the mission in Afghanistan far from complete and a new mission on the horizon in Liberia, the administration owes Americans a sound estimate of the costs -- no matter how unavoidable -- of the Iraq war and reconstruction.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/134699_iraq.html

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The Cartoon Graveyard
für alle die nicht genug kriegen können. Neue Seite, ob sie ein Archiv aufbauen, ist unbekannt.


http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030812toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030811toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030810toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030809toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030808toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030807toons.htm

http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030806toons.htm

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Western vice - Iraq`s new tyrant

August 13, 2003

It is 10am and the crowd is pouring into the seedy Al Najah cinema on Baghdad`s Al Rasheed Street. They come, at 70 cents a ticket, for sex on a loop - fleshy scenes from a dozen B-grade movies spliced into a single program, for which there is standing room only.

In Sadoun Street the midday temperature is 50 degrees and the prostitutes tout for business from the shade of a beach umbrella. Further along, in Fidros Square - where US troops stage-managed the demolition of a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9 - as many as 30 teenagers are sniffing glue and paint thinner.

Drug dealers in the treacherous Bab al Sharqi markets, just off central Tahrir Square, are doing a brisk trade in looted prescription drugs.

The biggest demand is for mind-altering, and addictive, medications. Each trader has a special, half-hidden box for what he calls feel good capsules and tablets - the Herald came away with a multi-coloured cocktail of 200 pills for less than $10.

At the other end of the day hundreds of street drinkers converge on the banks of the Tigris River, openly selling and drinking gin, arak and beer in a raucous celebration of the ending of Saddam`s rigid control of vice.

Under Saddam, alcohol, drugs, pornography and prostitution were state-controlled for the pleasure of a few. But in the post-war vacuum vice has exploded and the likes of Majid Al Sa`adi`s tea house, just back from the bustle of Sadoun Street, has become a one-stop shop.

The TV on which patrons were obliged to watch endless speeches by Saddam and oily reports of his daily activities is now home to hardcore German pornography. Among the 25 adults sitting in the shop glued to the screen is a 12-year-old boy.

Al Sa`adi`s jeans pocket is stuffed with tablets. He sells between 60 and 80 a day for 80 cents each to customers who, he says, take them with their tea.

This morning he shows all the woozy signs of having consumed his own product. But he has another line of business - offering the services of two black-shrouded prostitutes who sit on the pavement across the way. They, too, have obviously been drinking or taking drugs.

Al Sa`adi dealt drugs, albeit secretly, when Saddam was in power - for which he spent two years in jail. But he says, all the while playing with a long-bladed Japanese knife: "Business is much, much easier now that Saddam is gone. Now, there are no police.

"The prostitutes used to operate from hairdressing salons, but now they have come onto the streets and nobody stops them. Those girls," - and he pauses to wave the knife at the two sitting on the pavement - "would not have sat there when Saddam was in power. Even without the paint thinners they`d have been arrested. And I couldn`t have carried even a single tablet in my pocket. It would have been too dangerous."

There are no sensible crime statistics in the new Iraq. What is clear is that crime has risen in a way that has left much of the population more fearful of the present than of the past.

Thousands suffered appall-ingly under Saddam, but the vast majority knew the rigid rules imposed by the regime and, by the perverse double standards of the Iraqi dictatorship, they were able to live a deprived but peaceable enough existence.

Suddenly, starting with the looting when Baghdad fell, they have been burdened with the excesses of a whole new criminal class. Add to that the prewar release of thousands of criminals by Saddam from his jails and it is easy to understand the fear in the streets.

Many Iraqis go to sleep listening to gunfire. Gangs trade shots in the streets in broad daylight and rampant car-hijacking frequently ends in death. There is a spate of kidnappings - most of which are followed by ransom demands as much as $60,000, with some of the victims undergoing torture as well.

Businesses are robbed so frequently they close at 2pm and most homes at night are bolted and shuttered against thieves.

There are frequent revenge killings of those accused of helping the old regime - like Dr Mohammed Alrawi, who had treated Saddam and was gunned down in his Baghdad consulting rooms last week

But there is a further complication.

In the past the worst crimes were carried out in the name of the state and executed by the police, which commanded none of the community`s respect or confidence.

Now non-state crime is taking hold, and because Iraqis lived for decades in fear of the police, they believe there is no point in reporting crime and so remain at the mercy of the gangs.

The US Administration in Iraq has been so slow in dealing with security issues that mosque communities, particularly those of the majority Shiites, have set up their own vigilante squads and Islamic courts, which hand out instant decisions on criminal and civil matters. There has even been a retreat to tribal justice in some parts of the country. Last week the Herald reported that a father had been ordered to kill his son or have his family executed after the young man was accused of collaborating with the US military.

The coalition is busy setting up a new police force, but hard-line Islamic clerics, and the movements that support them, are already running their own clampdown on vice - liquor merchants, cinema and tea house operators and video shops have been warned they will be bombed out of business if they do not stop selling alcohol or put an end to even the mildest pornography.

Scores of liquor shops have been torched in the country`s south, and in Basra three Christian liquor sellers have been murdered. Basra used to have almost 150 liquor outlets - now all are said to have closed down. Several of Baghdad`s distilleries and breweries have been torched or bombed and many of the capital`s liquor shops have been gutted by fire or sprayed with gunfire. One in Baghdad was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Baghdad`s cinemas have also been warned - from the pulpit and in flyers and graffiti. Some have taken to blacking out the offending body parts in promotional posters, others have hired armed guards and a few have simply closed down.

Senior Islamic clerics have condemned the campaign of direct action - but at the same time they speak well of its impact, claiming that all vice offends the deeply held principles of Islam.

There were some limitations in Saddam`s Iraq - alcohol could only be sold warm and by Christians, and be drunk at home; cinemas could not show pornography. But for all that it remained a broadly secular society.

Now the clerics are endorsing the setting up of mosque committees, the brief of which appears to have been directly lifted from Saudi Arabia`s and the Taliban`s ministries for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice.

Women have also been told to return to wearing the traditional hejab head dress.

The Pentagon has given the bullet-headed, blunt-talking former police commissioner of New York Bernie Kerik the task of reconstructing Iraq`s police force.

Mr Kerik claims that busier streets and markets are a sign of Iraqis` growing confidence.

He told said he had sacked about two-thirds of Saddam`s police and that all existing and newly recruited officers would be put through a training course in the most basic concepts of community policing.

Acknowledging that state-sanctioned crime represented about 80 per cent of all crime under Saddam, he said: "We have to build the people`s confidence . . . and the police have to understand why they are not liked. They have to shift from being a force to being a service.

"We have to teach them the principles of policing in a free and democratic society. Teach them how to patrol - this is a concept they don`t know.

"We actually have to get them to understand that torture, abuse and killing are not a part of investigation; and that they have to treat women who come in with complaints with dignity and not as criminals.

"It`s very basic stuff. But to them it`s something they have never heard before."

The immunity from prosecution the police enjoyed under Saddam would end.

Mr Kerik said he was ready to deal with vice when it became a problem, and he suspected that, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, many of those who turned to it would be former security forces now looking for easy money.

But for now he is not sure it is a problem. "I have heard that we are making some arrests in prostitution and pornography, but these are not violent crimes, and there is evidence that it was happening before the war."

And he is across the clerics` drive to impose Islamic discipline. He said several clerics had volunteered dozens of men for the police force, but he directed them to the police recruiting office to apply for jobs and to submit themselves to the new vetting process.

But at the Sunni Al Khudriri mosque, on the north side of central Baghdad, Sheik Thalib Ahmed was a measure of the challenge facing Mr Kerik and his new force.

Outlining in great detail how vice offended Islam, Sheik Ahmed declared that its explosion in Iraq was a Jewish plot.

"After the fall of Baghdad the people who use these services found a gate to get into this dirty war and there was no one to watch or punish them.

"What was the name of the philosopher who asked how many crimes would be committed in the name of liberty and freedom? This is one of those crimes.

"Saddam held a stick over the people. For a time he executed prostitutes and their male pimps. But now nobody threatens or punishes the people who are into vice. There is no authority."

Asked if he supported the threats against alcohol dealers and cinema operators, he hedged his bets: "Sometimes this good medicine must be administered without offending our Islamic principles.

"At first we order the people to abstain from these bad things, but if they do not follow the wisdom we offer, then we have to use our hand against them."

For now, Majid Al Sa`adi is unmoved. The tea house proprietor said: "The people from the mosque are chasing me. A few days ago they dropped a grenade in the Sinbad Cinema, around the corner. And they came here and warned me that they will do the same if we keep operating like this. For now, we`re still in business."

And, it seems, so too are the bad habits of Saddam`s police. In the last week more than a dozen motorists have complained about being pulled over by members of the new force on a trumped up charge, only to be let go after paying a bribe.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/12/1060588394681.html

[Joerver]

The white people’s party

by Jack Lessenberry
8/13/2003

It was the shrewdest political bargain in history

Here’s a safe political prediction. Even if Democrats’ wildest dreams come true, even if they win next year’s presidential election, President George W. Bush will win a solid majority of white people’s votes.

How do I know that? Because Republicans always win the white vote for president. The last time Democrats carried a majority of the white vote was in 1964, when this was a vastly different world. Most black people in the South then still weren’t allowed to vote, and most people living today hadn’t yet been born.

Though their leaders would deny this publicly, that’s when the deal went down and the Republican Party became the white people’s party, and has been so ever since. Republicans won’t say this, of course, because overt racism is no longer socially acceptable, at least among voters who bathe regularly.

But if you want to really understand how politics works in this country, you have to understand this. That doesn’t mean all Republican voters are racist or fully aware of what is happening. They aren’t. But the naked truth is that theirs is, again, partly by accident, mostly by design, the white people’s party.

How did this all happen? Republicans always have been mostly the party of the "haves" as opposed to the "have-nots," at least since Abraham Lincoln was shot. But for a long time, because of Lincoln and the virulent racism of Southern Democrats, Republicans competed for what black votes there were.

That all changed for good in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson committed his party to the support of civil rights for African-Americans. Barry Goldwater, that year’s Republican presidential candidate, opposed a major civil rights bill. Immediately, blacks deserted his party forever. And the Deep South became Republican.

Long-term, that was the shrewdest political bargain in history. Republicans now command a huge bloc of electoral votes almost automatically. Virulent racism is out. Subtle understanding is in. In terms of domestic policy the GOP’s main purpose, never publicly stated, is to make white, middle-class citizens feel comfortable and secure.

And many, probably most of American whites feel most comfortable when they are away from blacks. Want proof? The higher the black population of a state, the more likely its white residents are to vote Republican. In states like Vermont and Washington, where there are few African-Americans, more whites voted for Gore than Bush. But in Mississippi and Alabama, which have the nation’s highest black percentages, Gore got less than one out of every four white votes. This pattern has persisted for many years.

Yes, the last Republican convention had blacks and Hispanics prominently on display as window dressing. But that is all that they were, other than a way to make socially aware voters feel better about the Republicans. When Election Day came, Al Gore won the virtually unanimous support of African-American voters everywhere in the country. He also won something like three-quarters of the Hispanic vote, except for Florida’s Cubans, and high percentages of other minorities.

Bush won white voters by a closer margin, something like 52 percent to 45 percent. Whites, however, make up such an overwhelming majority of voters that Bush ran almost even in the popular vote, getting him close enough to "win" the election.

Incidentally, all this had very little to do with Bush and Gore themselves. The same thing happens every election, with variations only in how large a minority of whites vote Democratic — and whether minorities care enough to vote. Gore also lost the white vote in Michigan, by the way. But it was close enough that minorities made the difference. Eventually, however, the population experts tell us that whites will be in a minority. Does this mean that, long-term, the white people’s party is doomed to failure?

Maybe — and maybe not. Everything depends on how we define "white people." Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of the Birmingham Temple, likes to observe that "before World War II, I wasn’t sure I was ‘white.’ Now, I am." There are even a few blacks who qualify as token white people, like Colin and Condoleeza; highly educated ones, who have higher-status jobs and behave in a middle-class way.

Even now, a small number of these are opting to become Republican, mainly as a career move; Jeffrey Collins, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, is an example. But these are at best curiosities, with little or no measurable political clout.

The real future battleground will be the rapidly swelling Hispanic population. Within a few decades, they are likely to be key to political power in this nation. Getting fluent in Spanish, therefore, wouldn’t be a bad idea. Incidentally, Bush already is.

California earthquake: Politically, the only thing anyone is paying attention to these days is the recall mess in California, which is to democracy what a train wreck is to transportation. Most people clearly believe Gov. Gray Davis, re-elected only a few months ago, is an appalling failure. If so, he should resign, or the Legislature should toss him, and the lieutenant governor replace him.

Instead, the state has opted for something like anarchy. They’re having an Oct. 7 referendum where voters will be asked if they want to kick him out, and at the same time choose one of more than 100 candidates to replace him.

This will be highly expensive, but the result is already clear. Davis, of course, will lose his job. Given the chance, voters will usually say "no" to any politician. When they have to decide whether Brand X or Brand Y can do a better job, that’s something different. That’s called democracy.

But this is about frustration and entertainment. So Davis will be dispatched, and Californians will almost certainly elect Arnold Schwarzenegger. Acting is a major industry, and he has enormous name recognition. They elected Ronald Reagan, after all. Will any of the coverage focus on whether he has any ability to do the job? Let’s see.

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=5284

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. E-mail [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
U.S. Companies Advancing on Iraq
The Profit Foretold It
August 13 - 19, 2003
As just about everyone knows by now, Dick Cheney`s old firm Halliburton, through its Kellogg Brown and Root subsidiary, is the major mover and shaker in Iraq by dint of sole-source, open-ended contracts not just to rebuild the oil field infrastructure there but to sell oil inside Iraq. Remember that Bush, through an executive order, has claimed ownership of Iraqi oil for the U.S., which makes it legal for Bush to hand it to Cheney`s former company to sell for Halliburton`s own profit. Bechtel, the big construction outfit allied with former Reagan officials, said last week that it would not bid on rebuilding the oil infrastructure, leaving the business to Halliburton. But that doesn`t mean that Bechtel or one of its international subsidiaries won`t reappear as a contractor for the Iraqi oil ministry, which is run by the Americans. That leaves a handful of other American companies to skim the rest of the cream off Iraq. Here is a rundown on a few, thanks to an excellent article in the July-August issue of Dollars and Sense magazine:

• Stevedoring Services of America. The Seattle-based firm has an initial contract of $4.8 million for seaport administration at Umm Qasr, Iraq`s main oil port. SSA is the world`s largest terminal operator, a mover and shaker in the Pacific Maritime Administration, which runs the docks on the West Coast; it`s best known for union busting. After it gave the contract to SSA, the U.S. Agency for International Development discovered that the company didn`t have security clearances. Rather than revoke the deal, the government waived the requirement.

• International Resources Group. Pretty much as expected, the D.C.-based company got an initial $7.1 million deal for technical expertise in reconstructing Iraq. USAID had been talking to IRG even before the war began—which was natural enough since USAID works cheek by jowl with this company, having given it more than 200 contracts, worth millions, since 1978. The contract was sole-sourced, meaning there were no other bidders.

• ABT Associates Inc. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm was given a contract worth anywhere from $10 million to $43.8 million for public health work in Iraq. ABT claims to offer "technical assistance to facilitate policy reforms in countries moving from command economies to market-oriented economies." Like in Kazakhstan, where it helped the government take the state-run pharmaceutical business and hand it over to private interests.

• Creative Associates International Inc. This D.C.-based company got a deal running anywhere from $1 million to $62.6 million for primary and secondary education. Since the `70s, CAII has helped in what it calls "the stabilization of post-conflict environments" in many countries—including Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. "In March, CAII snagged an agency grant of $6 million to produce textbooks for students in Afghanistan," Dollars and Sense reports.

• Research Triangle Institute. The North Carolina firm won a contract that can run from $7.9 million to $167.9 million for local governance, whatever that means. In the past it has done things like trying to harness NASA technologies for civilian uses, or as the institute itself says, "bringing them to markets." The company`s new project is called the "Iraq Sub-National Governance and Civic Institution Support Program."

Additional reporting: Phoebe St John
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0333/mondo3.php

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-…
REPUBLICANS


Stepping Off the Platform
By Clyde Prestowitz
Clyde Prestowitz is author of "Rogue Nation" and president of the Economic Strategy Institute. He was a trade negotiator in the Reagan administration.

August 10, 2003

President Reagan once explained his political switch during the 1950s from the Democrats to the Republicans by saying, "I didn`t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me." In these days of neoconservative ascendancy among Republicans, traditional conservative Republicans like me increasingly understand how Reagan felt. But this time it`s the Republicans who are leaving us.

We conservatives have historically been skeptical of ambitious campaigns abroad aimed at remaking the world. It was the great British conservative philosopher Edmund Burke who cautioned against imperialism by saying: "I dread our being too much dreaded." It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who argued that "we must not destroy what we are attempting to defend" and who further noted that "an empire on which the sun would never set is one in which the rulers never sleep." And it was John Quincy Adams who warned that if America became "dictatress of the world" then "she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."

Traditional conservatives were pleased during the election campaign of 2000 when candidate George W. Bush spoke of the need for a more humble approach to U.S. foreign policy and for reducing excessive U.S. deployments abroad. It therefore came as a shock when the Bush administration seemed to go out of its way to insult and irritate longtime friends and allies.

Take, for instance, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, a pact beloved by many of America`s allies, including Britain. Traditional conservatives generally opposed it because they thought it unfair to U.S. interests. But it had not been submitted for approval to the U.S. Senate in the summer of 2001 and was not going to be because there was no way the Senate would ratify it. Since it was effectively in limbo, many conservatives wondered why the new administration felt a need to take the treaty out of hibernation and loudly reject it, thereby needlessly alienating our allies.

More surprising and of greater concern was the reversal by a small group of self-styled neoconservatives, in the wake of Sept. 11, of Reagan`s winning Cold War strategy. The U.S. commitment to "no first strike" and deterrence that brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union was tossed over the side in favor of a doctrine of preventive and preemptive wars. Out, too, were long-term alliances like NATO, and in their place came temporary and shifting "coalitions of the willing."

We were told that Saddam Hussein with his weapons of mass destruction and close ties to Al Qaeda was an imminent threat to the United States in response to which we had to strike before being struck. Subsequently, in the absence of any trace of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, we have been told the real reason for the invasion was to change the whole nature of the Middle East by recasting it in an American democratic capitalist mold.

So now America has a "mission" that neoconservatives have openly called one of imperialism. This is not what conservatives voted for, nor is it consistent with America`s historical anti-imperialism.

Even more important than foreign policy is what`s happening on the home front. Traditional conservative Republicans have always been for small government and fiscal responsibility with budgets balanced over time. They have also always emphasized protection of individual rights and supported strong state and local governments. These core conservative values have now been all but rejected.

Take the issue of big government. Although it is often associated with social programs, big government is more often the result of expansion of military programs than of anything else. The Pentagon is by far the biggest part of the U.S. government, and it is growing so fast that its spending will soon top that of all the world`s other military establishments combined. Conservatives have always been opposed to rampant bureaucracy, but the new Department of Homeland Security represents a huge bureaucratic conglomerate only slightly behind the Pentagon.

As for balanced budgets, even the Congressional Budget Office`s projections show that the surpluses of the 1990s have turned into endless oceans of red ink. The Patriot Act along with new visa regulations and guidelines for investigative agencies has imposed the greatest constraints on individual American freedoms since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Then there is the plight of the states and local governments, of which California is only the most dramatic example. After the federal interventionism of the Clinton administration, traditional conservatives expected a Republican administration to reemphasize, at least to some extent, the rightful powers and authority of state and local governments. Instead, there has been a plethora of federal mandates to the already cash-strapped states, all without any federal funding. Moreover, in areas like educational testing and drug policy, the overriding of state and local government policies through the imposition of federal standards and rules has continued and even accelerated.

The irony here is that it is the supposedly liberal Democrats who are talking about fiscal responsibility, limited government, individual rights and caution on grand missions abroad. So more and more traditional conservatives have been asking the question: Who are really the liberals, and who are the conservatives? Indeed, it was Maine Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a Republican and member of the traditionally conservative Main Street Coalition, who played a key role in capping Bush`s tax cuts at $350 billion; and a large number of Republicans revolted against the neoconservative leadership to vote down new Federal Communications Commission rules allowing further mergers of large media companies. Perhaps this indicates that traditional Republicans are making an important discovery about who they are and where they belong.

There is nothing neo about imperialism. It is just as un-American today as it was in 1776. And there is nothing conservative about the giant military-industrial establishment, budget deficits or failing local and state governments. Far from conservatism, this is radicalism of the right, and it is unsustainable because it is at odds with fundamental — and truly conservative — American values.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Es ist wieder da. Das Bild des häßlichen Östereichers/Deutschen wird ausgegraben. Es gibt einige Artikel, die in die Richtung gehen. Seine Verbindung zu Waldheim und sein Vater werden bemüht.

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Bush
Neither a Christian nor a Republican?

by Ned Boudreau; August 11, 2003

Many of my friends are Progressives - nah; call `em Liberals, even Radicals. They accuse George Bush of many things: That he is a liar in regards to, among many other things, Iraq and WMD. That he is an arrogant unilateralist who internationally trashed both international diplomacy and courtesy in the U.S. Legislature. That he is a hypocrite in terms of free trade (most egregiously steel and agriculture). That his tax cuts favor primarily the rich - true; consult the hard numbers - and not only will beggar the federal government but cause unprecedented economic chaos in years to come. That, combined with a policy of preventive and pre-emptive war, his plans for missile defense and tactical nuclear weapons will cause an arms race in reaction, thus leading to radically reduced global security. In addition, my friends claim, George Bush is a Neanderthal when it comes to the environment. He even trashed the findings of his own environmental investigative team.

My friends use these facts and extrapolations to denigrate all Republicans, the GOP in general - a GOP, they insist, which has been taken over by overly patriotic, Bible-thumping right-wingers, amongst whom the President is the lead "born-again Christian." I disagree on all counts.

First and above all, George Bush II is not a Christian, born-again or otherwise. I was born a Roman Catholic. Today, I am a visceral agnostic and perhaps a Buddhist. I know for empirical fact there is a spiritual (not necessarily higher) reality: How else, to name a trite example, to explain love and empathy? Not to mention mysticism at the core of all religion. I am convinced, however, that monotheism is a sickness of mind homo homo sapiens will outgrow if - if! -- it survives as a species. Yet I appreciate and love true Christians - Mother Theresa is a personal hero -, true Muslims, true Hindus and so on. And the truly true Christians I know are doing humanitarian development work in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the United States. I met a number of them when I traveled in Africa, first as a tourist in 1993, then as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana over 27 months, 1995-1997. Compassion, charity, Christian love, agape - call it what you will, it involves an active engagement with those most in need. Nor do they wage war. Never in his life has George Bush II indicated interest for the neediest of the needy, the downtrodden. (His trip to Africa was a PR op in a neutral area of non-strategic importance to the current regime. It pandered to the African-American vote and to Europe; his handlers also very clearly wished to show the diplomat reaching out to other nations in fine words. Yet when it came to the tipping point in Liberia, when more than fine words were required, he failed to deliver.) He is also guilty of waging pre-emptive war - an act entirely incommensurate with the teachings of Christ. I Corinthians 13, you Bible-thumpers.

Secondly: George Bush II is neither a patriot nor an American icon. For it is a fact that he is guilty of treason. In Texas, he scored twenty-five out of one-hundred when he tested for the Air Guard; he was jumped over hundreds of applicants for the Guard slot (some of whom died in Viet Nam); he deserted his post in the Air Guard when he was transferred to Alabama. Damnit, people: Go research the real story. The man is a coward and a deserter. The term `AWOL` is bandied about; it is unequal to a situation in which a sworn defender abandoned his post and did not return. Veterans; serving members of the military: Please take note.

Next: George Bush II is, simply, an American anomaly, much as Ronald Reagan was. We know Bush is a liar guilty of treason, so it should not be a surprise that he is intent on sabotaging the United States in purely economic terms - in which he proves himself neither a Republican nor a Republican.

How else to explain the Bush II record? Jobless claims are amazing: up to 430,000 per week, and touching 450,000. Capital spending declines of 5.5 per year in this decade - the Bush II decade. A $5.6 trillion - again, trillion - federal budget surplus at his inauguration has now devolved to a $4 trillion deficit: Huge deficits as far as fiscal eyes can see. Two million seven-hundred thousand fewer jobs in the private sector compared to two years ago - Bush II years. This last denotes the longest decline in industrial employment since the Great Depression; specifically, a period of some 34 months. Further, there has been near a doubling of long-term unemployment, plus the stock market - for the first time sine the 1930s - has been off by double digits for the entire length of the Bush II regime. Let`s call this what it is: Financial sabotage; fiscal treason. Economic madness, in any terms.

Add to these the fact that the occupation of Iraq costs some 3.8 billion dollars per month, a number not included in the Bush II 2004 budget. Note that American soldiers are dying at an average rate of one to three per day ever since Bush declared major hostilities over months ago. The top commander for Iraq, General Tommy Franks, went on record some weeks ago with his claim that the U.S. might be in Iraq for anywhere from two to four years. Consider the body count of dead Americans and Iraqis; consider the economic and financial costs. Thinkers - and not just critics - already are looking askance at over half the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq and other countries even as the true, immediate threat, North Korea, grows more and more problematic. The Bush team`s fumbling on this issue has enabled the last bastion of fanatical Marxist-Leninists to get their nuclear weapons program back on-stream.

To that cheerful news add the outcry among even the most conservative members of his constituency against John Ashcroft, George Bush`s Attorney General. Tellingly, the May 3rd-9th 2003 edition of The Economist, page 36, reads "Steamroller Ashcroft: Conservatives beware: an out-of-control attorney general is trampling on your principles."

All this might be understandable if the Bush II administration were truly conservative, or even truly Republican, on ideological grounds. Data indicates that this is not the case and, as econometricians maintain, `The numbers do not lie.` Writing of the Bush II regime, The Economist, July 5th 2003 issue, reports of the Bushites that "…they are almost completely indifferent to the basic principles of economics." This year`s budget will be $455 billion - the largest ever in dollar terms, even though, at 4.2% of GDP, it is less than the 6% achieved under Ronald Reagan. Yet federal spending increased 13.5% during the first three years of the Bush II term, and federal spending has risen from 18.4% of national income to 19.9% at this writing. "Combine this profligacy with huge tax cuts, and you have a recipe for deficits as far ahead as the eye can see. Why has the self-proclaimed party of small government turned itself into the party of unlimited spending?" Bush II is unfavorably compared to Bill Clinton: "He was better at keeping spending under control, increasing total government spending by a mere 3.5% in his first three years in office and reducing discretionary spending by 8.8%."

Further: "The real reason for the profligacy are even more depressing. Mr. Bush seems to have no real problem with big government; it is just big Democratic government he can`t take. One-party rule, which was supposed to make structural reform easier, also looks ever more savoury. Without a Congress that will check their excesses, the Republicans, even under the saintly Dr Frist, have reverted to type: rewarding their business clients, doling out tax cuts and ignoring the fiscal consequences. The Economist, July 5th-11th 2003.

Dr. Frist, who reportedly expends his surgical skills gratis in the Sudan, may in fact be a truly good man. George Bush II -- neither a true Christian nor a true Republican - is demonstrably a liar and a deserter guilty of treason on military and economic fronts. The numbers and the hard facts do not lie.

(words: 1,366)

Ned Boudreau is a free-lance writer and journalist. He lives in Framingham, MA.
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=4032&se…

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 12:15 p.m. EDT August 13, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR
A U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Wednesday when their armored personnel carrier drove over an improvised mine, the third deadly bomb attack on U.S. forces in Iraq in 24 hours.(Reuters)
Bomb attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq have killed at least two soldiers in the past 24 hours. The latest attack took place this morning, about 15 miles south of Tikrit. The military reports a bomb went off near an armored personnel carrier. One soldier died and another was wounded. The military is now also reporting a soldier`s death in a bomb attack that occurred Tuesday near Taji. Two others were wounded.
A group representing some military families and veterans is demanding an end to the U.S. operation in Iraq. One of the co-founders of Military Families Speak Out argues there was no justification to send troops into Iraq. And Nancy Lessin adds that the occupation now suffers from a lack of planning, lack of support for the troops and inadequate protection for Americans.
The U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq says he simply doesn`t know how long American troops will have to stay there. L. Paul Bremer says it depends in part on how soon the Iraqis can assume responsibility for their own security. He told ABC`s "Good Morning America" progress is being made in turning over more responsibility for security to the Iraqi people.
For the first time since the war, Iraq has started pumping fresh crude oil through a pipeline leading to Turkey`s coast. A Turkish oil official says the pumping appears to be going smoothly. The Dow Jones news service has said the oil flow to Turkey is expected to be between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels a day -- about half the pre-war amount.
A top Bush administration official says U.S. troops won`t leave Iraq before weapons of mass destruction are found. Following security talks with Australia`s prime minister, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he has "absolute confidence" such weapons will be found.
The military reports killing two Iraqis in separate incidents in an area 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. A military spokeswoman says the two were killed after opening fire on U.S. troops. She didn`t give more details.
U.S. troops identified Saddam Hussein loyalists in custody Wednesday as two key members of the ousted dictator`s Republican Guard and a paymaster for his Fedayeen Saddam militia. Officials at the 4th Infantry Division said they released ten other men taken in a sweep through the outskirts of Saddam`s hometown, Tikrit, on Tuesday, keeping four in custody.
The commander of American forces in Iraq tells The Associated Press the stakes are too high to let casualties deter the mission of pacifying Iraq. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez says "Every American needs to believe this: that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America." He says it`s part of the global war on terrorism.
Some of the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq say nobody told them how long they`re expected to stay in the country, despite an announcement from their commander. Sanchez says troops should expect to serve for at least a year in Iraq, with brief rest trips around the region and maybe a few days at home. Sanchez says every soldier has been told that.
U.S. forces are keeping people away from a burst oil pipeline north of Baghdad. Flames are shooting 200 feet into the air from the burst line. American soldiers have fired warning shots to keep reporters and others from approaching.
The voice of the British weapons adviser who killed himself last month was played back during the official inquiry into his death. David Kelly complained on a tape that he was uneasy with the wording of a British intelligence report produced by Prime Minister Tony Blair`s staff on Iraq`s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But in the taped conversation with a BBC reporter, Kelly also said he didn`t think government officials were being "willfully dishonest."
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



Summary

++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days

++++266++++44++++310+++++146

Latest Fatality Date: 8/13/2003

08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and one wounded when the M-113 armored personnel carrier they were riding in struck an explosive device near the town of Ad Dwar at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 13.
08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and 2 were wounded when their convoy was attacked by an improvised explosive device in the vicinity of Al Taji on Aug. 12.
08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 US SOLDIER KILLED IN TRAFFIC ACCIDENT IN MOSUL ON 12TH
08/12/03 CENTCOM
THIRD US SOLDIER IN LESS THAN 1 WEEK DIES IN SLEEP IN IRAQ
08/12/03 CENTCOM
ONE KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN CONVOY AMBUSH

CNN:
There have been 312 confirmed coalition deaths in the war as of August 13, 2003

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Imperial wars, then & now
The neocons exploited America`s rage after 9-11 and steered the president into invading Iraq, in order to reshape its political system and redirect its foreign policy. Imperialism, pure and simple.

By Pat Buchanan

August 13, 2003 (WorldNet Daily) Having found neither weapons of mass destruction nor a link to 9-11, the White House has retreated into its fallback position. It now defends Operation Iraqi Freedom as a necessary war to rid the Middle East of a brutal dictatorship and replace it with a democracy.

That is, this was a war of democratic imperialism, as some of us said all along. The neocons exploited America`s rage after 9-11 and steered the president into invading Iraq, in order to reshape its political system and redirect its foreign policy. Imperialism, pure and simple.

Ahmed Chalabi was the puppet preselected to run the colony.

Now, we are mired in a guerrilla war, with daily dead and wounded, costing $1 billion a week, with no exit strategy and no end in sight.

Yet, it is not the first time a U.S. president, elected on an anti-interventionist platform, was steered into an imperial war, after absorbing a stunning, shocking blow to the nation.

On Feb. 15, 1898, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor, killing 268 sailors. This perceived Spanish atrocity, almost surely an accident, was seized upon by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt to bully President McKinley into calling for a war with Spain for which they had long planned.

In "First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power," ex-ambassador Warren Zimmerman tells the compelling story of how America first became an empire.

Anticipating war, T.R., on the navy secretary`s day off, wired Commodore Dewey, commander of the Pacific squadron, to prepare to attack the Spanish fleet. As soon as war was declared, Dewey sailed for Manila Bay, caught the Spanish ships in the harbor and sank or burned all seven, losing but a single man.

The U.S. North Atlantic Squadron did the same to the Spanish fleet sent to protect Cuba. The Spanish warships were bottled up in Santiago harbor by U.S. battleships with superior firepower. In a heroic but doomed breakout on July 3, 1898, every Spanish ship was scuttled or sunk. Madrid surrendered.

After our "splendid little war," a ferocious debate erupted. It was between T.R.-Lodge imperialists – who believed that for America to be secure in a world of empires, she must become an empire and annex the Philippines – and anti-imperialists, or "goo-goos," who wanted to give the Filipinos their independence.

Arguments for and against annexation were both strategic and racist. Said industrialist Andrew Carnegie, "As long as we remain free from distant possessions, we are impregnable against serious attack."

Added progressive Carl Schurz, "Show me a single instance of the successful establishment and peaceable maintenance for a respectable period of republican institutions, based upon popular self-government, under a tropical sun."

McKinley had promised Schurz, "You may be sure there will be no jingo nonsense in my administration." But he was won over by the imperialists. He ordered the Army to occupy Manila and crush Filipino rebels, who were stunned to discover their liberators had decided to replace their former colonial masters.

For three years, U.S. soldiers and Marines fought, with 4,000 dying in combat, several times as many as had been lost in Cuba. Filipino combat losses were 20,000 with 200,000 civilian dead, many of disease. Yet, a recent New York Times Almanac does not even list the Filipino insurrection as a major U.S. conflict.

Was it worth it – annexing the Philippines?

In the war to secure the islands, atrocities were committed on both sides, and as a result of that war, we became ensnared in the great power politics of Asia, out of which came Pearl Harbor, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. By annexing the islands, writes Zimmermann, America "took on a security commitment in Asia that it found difficult to defend. In the Philippine case, the founders of American imperialism may have made a costly mistake."

One year after the war to avenge the sinking of the Maine in Havana, we were in an imperial war 10,000 miles away. Now, two years after Sept. 11, we are fighting a guerrilla war in a nation 6,000 miles away, that had nothing to do with 9-11.

President Bush was misled about what to expect when Baghdad fell. And those who misled him now reassure him that our occupation is going well and we are mopping up the resistance.

Perhaps. But, like William McKinley, George Bush may prove to be a well-intentioned president who embroiled us in decades of wars in a part of the world that was never vital to America.

© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

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Hutton seeks certainty in a world of wobbly truths
What journalist would survive the harsh glare of the courtroom?

Polly Toynbee
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

A dead man from beyond the grave talks with terrible authority. No one can question him now, yet his recorded words hang there in the air. Lord Hutton`s investigation unfolds excruciatingly for the BBC, the government and Kelly`s memory alike. It will be an endless ferreting down holes of irrelevance as each side tries to pull out definitive rabbits in a warren of half-truths.

In the past couple of days, the BBC`s journalism has fallen under a courtroom scrutiny all journalists shudder to contemplate. Whatever Andrew Gilligan`s particular failings (not great), which of us would escape a walloping if asked to open our notebook scribbles to the searchlight of prosecution interrogation, every word examined for absolute clarity and veracity? The smug words in some of the BBC-hating newspapers defy even their usual standards of hypocrisy. The Sun (Gilligan: The big lie) and the Times pursue Murdoch`s commercial interest in sabotaging the BBC. Too many pots and kettles are flying about here to count.

Lord Hutton - dry, concise, forensic - may never quite grasp the various worlds of swirling greys and uncertainties he has tumbled into. British journalism is imprecise, often to the point of downright dishonesty. It is in the business of loud front pages, hot stories, finding something new every day, and overwhelmingly slanting it all towards the political predilections of its owner. Truth is a random sideline. This is not a profession, it is a low trade. Even the best journalism dreads the white-light scrutiny of a courtroom. We live under dark stones, yet we clamour for the bright light of ethical standards to be shone on everyone else.

In the same way the world of politics also comes off badly under the hard eye of a judge. Spin - putting the best shine on things - is an absolutely necessary part of political riposte to the poisoned sea of an enemy press that puts the worst interpretation on everything. Overemphasising good facts and tucking away the unhelpful ones is part of the political trade. Where exactly is the wobbly line of truth that politicians and journalists step over in sexing up dossiers or sexing up stories?

And then Lord Hutton has to penetrate the very grey world of intelligence, its acquisition, its interpretation and the rightful uses made of it. It has been a curious spectacle to watch the anti-war left suddenly find a touching new faith in every word and deed of the noble spying fraternity whom they usually accuse of conspiracy, sinister motives, empire-building and threatening liberty. Now the left acts outraged at anyone who might question any word they say. In that grey underworld, will we know if Kelly killed himself because he was bullied, or because he was ashamed at being caught lying, or even, ashamed at having overstated what he knew? Is Lord Hutton really expected to deliver clear judgment in all these worlds of inherent uncertainty?

After this, there will need to be strict BBC self-examination. The Six O`Clock News has slipped so far downmarket as to be no longer a recognisable BBC news brand, while task forces have sought ways to sex up political coverage. Sexing up politics in this climate has meant more attack. Who to attack? The dead-sheep Tories? Poor sport. It has to be the government, joining the general press assault. It asks a lot to expect the BBC to stand back, lag behind the pack, be responsible, fair and duller. But that is what public broadcasting is partly for.

One sign of slippage was when BBC presenters and correspondents began writing in ferociously politically partisan papers and magazines, mostly of the right. I left the BBC 10 years ago when I was forced to choose between writing and broadcasting in days when even an appearance of bias was lethal. Despite complaints about Downing Street pressure now, that rigour was a sign that the BBC lived in far greater fear of the Tories then than they do of Labour. The BBC needs defending to the death - but it also needs to be absolutely defensible in fairness and intellectual rigour.

However, in the dangerous drama now unfolding, the BBC is only a sideshow. The main thrust of Gilligan`s report stands. It is the government that stands indicted by that unanswerable recorded voice from the grave that will linger on in public imagination beyond Hutton`s actual verdict - whatever it may be.

Nothing new of real importance is likely to emerge. Those of us who opposed the war always knew the government over-egged the danger of WMD. That`s what the debate was about between the pro and anti warriors. There might be good reasons for removing a murderous dictator or even for supporting the US. But the only (possibly) legal excuse for invading a sovereign state was pre-emption of imminent attack and we didn`t believe it. Kelly told nothing we did not already know.

If Kelly was right and the government over-egged the WMD evidence, how bad is that? It happens all the time. Ministers every day make difficult decisions between A and B. Once they have chosen B, then they must advance every possible case for it and deny every good argument for A. They can`t get laws passed arguing a vague balance of probable benefits.

Going to war is the most serious decision of all. Probably the prime minister had decided, barring miracles, to go to war long before. He thought it the right thing to do in face of adverse opinion polls: few think he did it for political gain.The jury is still out on whether Iraq will be better or worse off, but the auguries are not too bad. Some of us will still think it has set us a catastrophic foreign policy with the US, Europe and the rest of the world.

But once he had decided to do it, of course he would make maximum use of every shred of evidence that came to hand. The Iraq war may mark the watershed in the Blair era - or it may just be a low water mark from which he will rise again. But as this great rigmarole unfolds, leading to the crescendo of his own evidence to Hutton next month, keep his crimes in reasonable perspective.

When Tony Blair gives evidence, he has to find the difficult language somewhere between mild admission and explanation, to describe how he considered the intelligence evidence he was given. What do you do with information that says it is "30% likely" that WMD is there and dangerous? Would you take your umbrella out on a 30% chance of rain? The use and abuse of intelligence is murky territory for forensic interrogation - as murky as journalism. The government would do well to go some way in admitting that. Straight denial would be disastrous.

[e-mail]


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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A pattern of aggression
Iraq was not the first illegal US-led attack on a sovereign state in recent times. The precedent was set in 1999 in Yugoslavia writes Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

The legality of the war against Iraq remains the focus of intense debate - as is the challenge it poses to the post-second-world-war order, based on the inviolability of sovereign states. That challenge, however, is not a new one. The precursor is without doubt Nato`s 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, also carried out without UN support. Look again at how the US and its allies behaved then, and the pattern is unmistakable.

Yugoslavia was a sovereign state with internationally recognised borders; an unsolicited intervention in its internal affairs was excluded by international law. The US-led onslaught was therefore justified as a humanitarian war - a concept that most international lawyers regarded as having no legal standing (the Commons foreign affairs select committee described it as of "dubious legality"). The attack was also outside Nato`s own remit as a defensive organisation - its mission statement was later rewritten to allow for such actions.

In Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, the ultimate goal of the aggressor nations was regime change. In Iraq, the justification for aggression was the possession of weapons of mass destruction; in Yugoslavia, it was the prevention of a humanitarian crisis and genocide in Kosovo. In both cases, the evidence for such accusations has been lacking: but while this is now widely accepted in relation to Iraq, the same is not true of Yugoslavia.

In retrospect, it has become ever clearer that the justification for war was the result of a calculated provocation - and manipulation of the legitimate grievances of the Kosovan Albanians - in an already tense situation within the Yugoslav republic of Serbia. The constitutional status of Kosovo had been long contested and the case for greater Kosovan Albanian self-government had been peacefully championed by the Kosovan politician, Ibrahim Rugova.

In 1996, however, the marginal secessionist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army, stepped up its violent campaign for Kosovan independence and launched a series of assassinations of policemen and civilians in Kosovo, targeting not only Serbs, but also Albanians who did not support the KLA. The Yugoslav government branded the KLA a terrorist organisation - a description also used by US officials. As late as the beginning of 1998, Robert Gelbard, US special envoy to Bosnia, declared: "The UCK (KLA) is without any question a terrorist group."

KLA attacks drew an increasingly heavy military response from Yugoslav government forces and in the summer of 1998 a concerted offensive against KLA strongholds began. In contrast to its earlier position, the US administration now threatened to bomb Yugoslavia unless the government withdrew its forces from the province, verified by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The US was now clearly determined to remove Milosevic, who was obstructing Yugoslavia`s integration into the western institutional and economic framework.

Agreement was reached in October 1998 and 1,000 OSCE observers went to Kosovo to oversee the withdrawal of government troops. But the KLA used the pullback to renew armed attacks. In January 1999 an alleged massacre of 45 Kosovan Albanians by Yugoslav government forces took place at Racak. Both at the time and subsequently, evidence has been contradictory and fiercely contested as to whether the Racak victims were civilians or KLA fighters and whether they died in a firefight or close-range shootings.

Nevertheless, Racak was seized on by the US to justify acceleration towards war. In early 1999, the OSCE reported that "the current security environment in Kosovo is characterised by the disproportionate use of force by the Yugoslav authorities in response to persistent attacks and provocations by the Kosovan Albanian paramilitaries." But when the Rambouillet talks convened in February 1999, the KLA was accorded the status of national leader. The Rambouillet text, proposed by the then US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, included a wide range of freedoms and immunities for Nato forces within Yugoslavia that amounted to an effective occupation. Even the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, described it as "a provocation, an excuse to start bombing". The Yugoslavs refused to sign, so bombing began on March 24 1999.

Despite claims by western leaders that Yugoslav forces were conducting "genocide" against the Kosovan Albanians, reports of mass killings and atrocities - such as the supposed concealment of 700 murdered Kosovan Albanians in the Trepca mines - were often later admitted to be wrong. Atrocities certainly were carried out by both Serb and KLA forces. But investigative teams did not find evidence of the scale of dead or missing claimed at the time, responsibility for which was attributed to the Yugoslavs. The damage inflicted by US and British bombing, meanwhile, was considerable, including civilian casualties estimated at between 1,000 and 5,000 deaths. Nato forces also used depleted uranium weapons - linked to cancers and birth defects - while Nato bombers destroyed swathes of Serbia`s economic and social infrastructure.

Far from solving a humanitarian crisis, the 79-day bombardment triggered the flight of hundreds of thousands of Kosovans. Half a million Kosovan Albanians who had supposedly been internally displaced turned out not to have been, and of the 800,000 who had sought refuge or been forced into neighbouring countries, the UNHCR estimated that 765,000 had already returned to Kosovo by August of the same year. A more long-lasting result, however, was that half the Kosovan Serb population - approximately 100,000 - left Kosovo or was driven out.

So was the war worth it? Notwithstanding the Nato-UN protectorate established in Kosovo, the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia was no longer under threat - the Kosovans did not achieve their independence. Nor has western support for the KLA been mirrored in Kosovan voting patterns: the party of Rugova, who never backed the violent path, received a convincing majority in the elections in 2001.

Meanwhile, violence dogs the surviving minority communities, and in spite of the presence of 40,000 K-For troops and a UN police force, the Serb and other minorities (such as Roma) have continued to be forced out. More than 200,000 are now estimated to have left. In the short term, support for Milosevic actually increased as a result of the war, and the regime was only changed through a combination of economic sanctions, elections and heavy western intervention. Such interference in a country`s internal politics does not generally lead to a stable and peaceful society, as evidenced by the recent assassination of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic, the most pro-western politician in the country.

As in Yugoslavia, so in Iraq: illegal aggression justified by spin and fabrication enables might to prevail and deals a terrible blow to the framework of international law. As in Yugoslavia, so in Iraq, people`s wellbeing comes a poor second-best to the interests of the world`s self-appointed moral and economic arbiters.

·Kate Hudson is principal lecturer in Russian and East European politics at South Bank University, London and author of Breaking the South Slav Dream: the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia



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God`s crucible
Europe should learn from the US and follow the example of Californication

Timothy Garton Ash in California
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

I have a dream that one day Arthur Rosenberg, the Nazi ideologist of racial purity, will be brought back from hell to sit by the path that runs along the foothills above Stanford University. Let him sit there for an hour and watch them all jogging past: the Japanese-American, six-foot tall and built like a Texan quarterback, the Hispanic-American, the Iranian-Italian-American, the Scandinavian-Chinese-American, the German-Irish-Indian-American, sporting every shade of skin colour and variation of physiognomy, often in quite beautiful combinations. Then let Herr Rosenberg die again, of shock at this irrevocable confounding of Nazi dreams.

Californication, to steal a phrase from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, is perhaps the ultimate answer to the problem of racial difference. If men and women were consistently to pay no regard at all to race or ethnicity when they chose whom they wanted to have children with, and those children and their children`s children were to continue in the same way, you would eventually reach the point where the premises not just of racial stereotyping but also of affirmative action and "ethnic" quotas would be undermined. Your census answer to the question "ethnic group?" would read simply "human".

This experiment in becoming simply human is currently most advanced in the relatively prosperous, liberal democratic immigrant societies of the Anglosphere: Australia, Canada, the United States and Britain. It looks so easy - just take one man and one woman, and mix - but the conditions, cultural, social, economic and political, that allow these young combo-Californians to emerge are actually complex, delicate and demanding. Even here, in one of the most privileged corners of one of the richest and most naturally blessed states of one of the most open and free countries on earth, the process is recent, tense and contested.

"America is God`s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming," wrote the Russian-Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill in 1908. But it was, precisely, the races of Europe that he saw melting together. As my Oxford colleague Desmond King shows in his splendid book Making Americans, the United States` 1924 Immigration Act imposed quotas which perpetuated the preponderance of white European immigrants. Only since that provision was finally revoked in 1965 have the millions of new Americans come in from Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 1960, just 16 million Americans did not trace their ancestry to Europe; now it`s 80 million. When Richard Nixon became president in 1969 there were only some 9 million people in America who had been born abroad; now there are at least 30 million. Roughly one in every four of today`s Californians was born outside the US. And they come from everywhere. If you look down the line of check-out assistants at Safeway or Fry`s Electronics, all the peoples of the earth seem to be represented - and they all say "Have a nice day".

Moreover, it was only in the 1960s that African-Americans ceased to be routinely discriminated against in law in many parts of the US. Attending a concert by the great jazz pianist Harold Maburn it suddenly hit me that this brilliant and hugely dignified musician must have spent his youth, in Memphis, Tennessee, being categorised as an inferior human being. Dr Condoleezza Rice, the United States` first ever African-American national security adviser, recently recalled before a gathering of black journalists how a childhood friend of hers, Denise McNair, was killed in the notorious racist bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

What one might call the great mixing is a product of the last 40 years. Race is still a source of the most electric tension in the United States. Until Arnold Schwarzenegger - himself a first-generation immigrant - filed his papers to run for governor of California, the lead story on the television here (vying occasionally with Iraq) was the suit for alleged rape filed by a white woman against the black basketball hero, Kobe Bryant. According to a CNN/Gallup poll, 68% of black Americans asked thought the charge was false, compared with only half the white Americans; 68% of black respondents said they were "sympathetic" to Bryant, against only 40% of white. On Tuesday racist flysheets were distributed by a white supremacist group in the town where he is due to go on trial. The flysheets were reportedly headlined: "Don`t have sex with blacks."

The great mixing is recent, tense - and contested. The rightwing American nationalist, Pat Buchanan, has recently out-spenglered Oswald Spengler (author of The Decline of the West) by publishing a book entitled The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization. Immigrant invasions! Adducing some of the statistics that I have just mentioned, Buchanan cries: "If Americans wish to preserve their civilization and culture, American women must have more children." So, all ye Daughters of the American Revolution, lie back and think of America.

Alternatively, one could hope that Californication works: that large numbers of people of immensely diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds really can mix and blend while yet retaining a sufficiently common civic culture for America to survive as a free, democratic and self-confident nation. No one has ever done it before: not in America, not in Australia, not in Canada, let alone anywhere in Europe. Zangwill`s Melting-Pot "melted and reformed", to the extent that it ever did, because there was a powerful and attractive Anglophone culture, to which the incoming, largely European minorities adapted. As an astute columnist once remarked, there were not just Wasps - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants - but also Casps (Catholic Anglo-Saxon Protestants), Jasps (Jewish Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and Basps (Black Anglo-Saxon Protestants). No longer. The incoming numbers are too large and diverse, the Wasp role-model too contested.

The other day, I walked into the Stanford students` union foyer as an Islamic prayer meeting was just dispersing. The young women all wore head-scarves, but if you had only heard a tape-recording of their conversations at parting you would not have been able to distinguish them, by accent, vocabulary or tone ("Ok guys-like-whatever") from any other American students. If there is a society on earth that can still perform the extraordinary feat of forging some sort of unity out of such diversity - e pluribus unum, as the coins say - it is America.

Who, besides the Americans themselves, has the greatest stake in their succeeding? We Europeans do. Look at the demographic map of the world, and you will see one continent above all that needs either a massive baby boom or large-scale immigration to sustain its ageing population. That continent is Europe. Much of our immigration is likely to come from the Muslim world. In theory, it should be easier for Turks, Moroccans, Algerians and Pakistanis to feel at home in Europe than in America, because Europe is just a loose, diverse continent rather than a single nation. In practice, it`s the other way round. So we should learn from the Americans. What Europe needs is more Californication.

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US soldiers shoot into Iraqi crowd
AP, Baghdad
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

US soldiers shot into a crowd of thousands of demonstrators in a Shia district of Baghdad yesterday, killing a civilian and wounding four others after a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at them, the US military said.

About 3,000 demonstrators gathered around a telecommunications tower in Sadr City where they said American forces in a helicopter had tried to tear down an Islamic banner. A US military spokesman said it appeared to have been blown down by rotor wash from a helicopter.

Amateur video footage obtained by Associated Press Television News showed a Black Hawk helicopter hovering a few feet from the top of the tower and apparently trying to tear down the banner.

US forces opened fire after stones, gunfire and one rocket-propelled grenade were directed at soldiers driving by the area. No soldiers were hit in the incident, a US military spokesman said.

Sadr City, formerly known as Saddam City, is a Shia stronghold in the otherwise Sunni-dominated capital.

Meanwhile in the Baquba region, 45 miles north-east of Baghdad, two Iraqis were killed in separate incidents after firing on US troops, a military spokeswoman said.

In another clash yesterday, a four-vehicle coalition convoy hit a roadside bomb 15 miles south of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown, leaving one US soldier dead and another wounded.

Another soldier was reported killed and two wounded in a bomb attack on Tuesday near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The attack was in the same region where an oil pipeline was set on fire on Tuesday.


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US military pioneers death ray bomb
Pentagon project brings fear of new arms race

David Adam and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

American military scientists are developing a weapon which kills by delivering an enormous burst of high-energy gamma rays, it is claimed today.

The bomb, which produces little fallout, blurs the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, and experts have already warned it could spark a new arms race. The science behind the gamma ray bomb is still in its infancy, and technical problems mean it could be decades before the devices are developed. But the Pentagon is taking the project seriously.

The plans are getting under way at a time when the Bush administration is seeking ways to expand its arsenal of unconventional weapons, and could well fuel charges that Washington risks triggering a new arms race.

In May, Congress approved further research on a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons: bunker busters, designed to drill into underground shelters, buried beneath hundreds of feet of con crete, and so-called mini-nukes with explosive yields of less than five kilotons.

Critics say such research projects, though tiny by the standards of the Pentagon, risk igniting a new arms race. They also charge the administration with seeking to put in place the conditions to end a ban on nuclear testing.

According to New Scientist magazine, the gamma ray bombs are already included in the US department of defence`s militarily critical technologies list - a wish list of possible weapons technology that America considers essential to maintaining its superior firepower.

They would not have the awesome destructive power of nuclear weapons, but the energy emitted from a gamma ray bomb would be thousands of times greater than from conventional chemical explosives.

"Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare," the magazine quotes the defence department list as saying.

The device would not produce energy by triggering a nuclear fission or fusion reaction, like current nuclear weapons. Instead it would rely on the gamma rays produced when the high-energy nuclei of some radioactive elements decay.

Four years ago, scientists at the University of Texas in Dallas showed that it was possible to trigger this effect artificially. The possibility that this decay process, which usually takes place very slowly, could be accelerated and used in a weapon grabbed the attention of the Pentagon. Scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico are studying whether this can be achieved.

Such weapons would allow military commanders to increase firepower without being forced to push the nuclear button. Experts have warned that if the US scientists succeed in building a gamma ray bomb, it could force other countries to start nuclear programmes, or worse, encourage those who already possess nuclear weapons to use them.

"Many countries which will not have access to these weapons will produce nuclear weapons as a deterrent," Andre Gsponer, director of the Independent Scientific Research Institute in Geneva, told New Scientist. Just one gram of the explosive would store more energy than 50kg of conventional TNT. It would be as expensive as enriched uranium, but less would be needed for a bomb. Unlike uranium, it does not need a critical mass of material to maintain the nuclear reaction.

It would produce little radioactive fallout compared with an atomic explosion, but could cause long-term health problems for anyone breathing the particles in.


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BBC reporter accuses bosses of `pressurising` her over Kelly
By Kim Sengupta and Nigel Morris
14 August 2003


The BBC journalist whose tape-recorded conversation with David Kelly revealed the scientist`s deep anxiety over the Government`s handling of the Iraq dossier claimed yesterday that BBC bosses put pressure on her to support the corporation in its fierce battle with Downing Street.

Susan Watts, science editor for Newsnight, initiated a fresh round of soul searching at the BBC when she claimed she was asked to reveal the identity of her source - Dr Kelly - to save Andrew Gilligan, the Today reporter who claimed the Government had "sexed up" the September dossier.

The Hutton inquiry into the weapons expert`s death was told yesterday that Ms Watts had sought independent legal advice after the dispute broke. She had her own solicitor with her in court rather than depending on BBC lawyers.

Ms Watts said: "I felt under some considerable pressure to reveal the identity of my source. I felt that the purpose of that was to help corroborate Andrew Gilligan allegation and not for any proper news purpose. I felt that my two broadcasts on Newsnight spoke and stood for themselves."

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Dr Kelly had made far wider-reaching claims to Ms Watts two weeks before the controversial report by Gilligan that Alastair Campbell had deliberately sexed up the document by including a claim that Iraq could activate weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. Ms Watts did not act on the conversation until after the Today programme went out. But, in a later conversation with Dr Kelly, she admitted she had "missed a trick" by not doing so, she said.

Yesterday, though, she insisted that there were important differences between what Dr Kelly had said to her later, which she included in her report, and what he allegedly said to Mr Gilligan. "I did not include the name of Alastair Campbell," she said. "I did not refer to my sources as being a member of the intelligence services and that the claim was not inserted either by Alastair Campbell himself or any member of the Government."

Richard Sambrook, the BBC`s head of news, who was also giving evidence to the inquiry, rejected her claim that he had tried to "mould`` her story. "That was not the case at all," he said. "It would have been irresponsible of me not to try and find out if this was the same source and if so, what had been said.`` He said he had asked her to identify her source, but had withdrawn the request when she refused.

The extent of Dr Kelly`s disquiet was revealed when a recording made of the scientist before his apparent suicide was played at the inquiry. Dr Kelly spoke of "spin" that led to omission from the dossier of material that "takes away from the case for war" and "arguments between the intelligence services, the Cabinet Office and Downing Street" in the days before the report`s publication.

The inquiry was also told about his unease over the actions of the Government, including the role of Mr Campbell, in the 21-minute tape.

Dr Kelly also told Gavin Hewitt, special correspondent on the BBC1`s Ten O`Clock News, who also gave evidence, that "No.10 spin came into play" in the run-up to the publication.

The inquiry was told that Dr Kelly had misled the Commons foreign affairs committee over his contacts with Ms Watts and Mr Hewitt. In the tape, Ms Watts asked Dr Kelly if Alastair Campbell had, in the scientist`s words, "seized" on intelligence that went into the September dossier. Dr Kelly replied: "All I can say is the No 10 press office. I`ve never met Alastair Campbell ... but I think Alastair Campbell is synonymous with that press office because he`s responsible for it."
14 August 2003 09:58



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August 14, 2003
U.S. Abandons Idea of Bigger U.N. Role in Iraq Occupation
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN with FELICITY BARRINGER


WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 — The Bush administration has abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by France, India and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there, administration officials said today.

Instead, the officials said, the United States would widen its effort to enlist other countries to assist the occupation forces in Iraq, which are dominated by the 139,000 United States troops there.

In addition to American forces in Iraq, there are 21,000 troops representing 18 countries. At present, 11,000 of that number are from Britain. The United States plans to seek larger numbers to help, especially with relief supplies that are coming from another dozen countries.

Administration officials said that in spite of the difficult security situation in Iraq, there was a consensus in the administration that it would be better to work with these countries than to involve the United Nations or countries that opposed the war and are now eager to exercise influence in a postwar Iraq.

"The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, `We really need to make Iraq an international operation,` " said an administration official. "You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but right now the situation in Iraq is not that dire."

The administration`s position could complicate its hopes of bringing a large number of American troops home in short order. The length of the American occupation depends on how quickly the country can be stabilized and the attacks and uprisings brought under control.

The thinking on broadening international forces was disclosed today as the United States moved on a separate front at the Security Council to get a resolution passed this week that would welcome the establishment of the 25-member Governing Council set up by the United States and Britain in Iraq.

Security Council diplomats said today that they expected the resolution to pass, but not without some qualms among some members.

In a measure of these misgivings, the diplomats said the wording of the resolution was changed at the last minute this morning from saying that the Security Council "endorses" the Iraqi group to saying that the Council "welcomes" it.

The resolution would also establish an "assistance mission" of the United Nations in Baghdad to support various United Nations activities there. Both steps were sought by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who had been under some pressure from Washington to make a gesture to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation.

The American-led occupation picked the Governing Council members in July, appointing people who represented a mix of ethnic and sectarian interests to oversee Iraqi ministries and begin the process of drafting an Iraqi constitution.

Several Governing Council members have visited the United Nations, and earlier this month Mr. Annan said he favored "some form of recognition" for the Governing Council through a Security Council resolution.

The resolution drafted by the United States and submitted today was perfunctory compared with previous Council resolutions on Iraq.

Administration officials said they expected to win the approval of the Council, although it was possible that Syria would abstain or vote against the resolution. Only a negative vote from the five permanent members of the Council — Russia, China, France, Britain and the United States — would constitute a veto.

Though the administration has decided against seeking a separate resolution to give the United Nations any authority over security, some officials say that consideration might be given to getting wider United Nations authority over the multibillion-dollar reconstruction of Iraq.

A meeting of potential donor countries has been scheduled for Oct. 24 in Madrid, and some of the big European countries that wanted a more significant United Nations role if they sent peacekeepers are also hinting that they wanted the United Nations to have more of a say over reconstruction if they have to put up huge sums of money for that effort.

In Iraq this week, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in the occupation, said that over the next four years, the amount of money needed from outside for Iraq would be "staggering." Many experts say it could amount to tens of billions of dollars.

The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the United Nations more than minimal authority in the reconstruction of Iraq. Many administration members say that France, Germany, Russia and other countries demanding such a role are actually doing so to try to get more contracts and economic benefits for themselves.

The desire for more United Nations involvement by many countries echoes the debate that preceded the war. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others were openly disdainful of getting United Nations authorization for the war, even after Mr. Bush had sided with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to pursue that route.

Mr. Rumsfeld, according to administration officials, vehemently opposes any dilution of military authority over Iraq by involving the United Nations, either through United Nations peacekeepers or indirectly in any United Nations authorization of forces from other countries.

American military officials say they fear that involving the United Nations, even indirectly, will hamper the latitude the United States must have in overseeing Iraqi security and pursuing anti-American guerrilla forces or terrorist actions.

The Pentagon said today that besides the United States and Britain, the other countries that have already sent troops to Iraq are Albania, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Ukraine. The troops in Iraq serve under American and British command, and so would the troops of any other countries that took part.

In addition, another dozen countries have been asked to help with forces to protect and carry out relief. They include Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Portugal and Thailand.

In all, a Pentagon official said, the United States hopes to round up 44 countries to participate in the occupation.

A setback in the drive to line up countries occurred in July, when India, in a reversal, said it would not participate without further United Nations authority over peacekeeping. France, Germany and some other countries agreed.

Some administration officials said they would now rethink their strategy of spurning the United Nations and see if there could be some language worked out in a Security Council resolution as sought by India and the other countries.

In effect, administration officials now say, such a resolution would be more trouble than it is worth. Soundings among members of the Security Council indicated that Russia, France and other countries might try for concessions favorable to them in the running of Iraq, and such demands would only deepen divisions between them and the United States.

"The last thing we need is a loss of momentum over the efforts to get things under control in Iraq," said a Western diplomat involved in these discussions. "Besides, the violence in Iraq is not as bad as everyone thinks it is."

Some experts say that sooner or later the United States may have to change its mind again, particularly if conditions in Iraq deteriorate drastically. United Nations officials involved in peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and the Balkans say that the total number of troops in Iraq may have to double before the security situation comes under control.



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August 14, 2003
Over 50 Die in Day of Afghan Violence
By AMY WALDMAN


KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 13 — In the most violent 24-hour period in Afghanistan in nearly a year, 15 people, including 6 children, were killed when a bomb exploded on their bus in southern Afghanistan. More than 40 others were killed today in fighting in the country`s east and south.

The bomb exploded in Helmand Province aboard a bus headed for the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, according to wire reports. It was the deadliest such attack since a bomb exploded in Kabul last September, killing 35 people.

The bombing in Helmand and a series of other attacks today, on top of other recent setbacks, all gave notice to the American-backed government of the growing threat to the nation`s stability.

In the east, suspected Taliban guerrillas attacked government soldiers in the province of Khost, about four miles from the border with Pakistan, late Tuesday night. Fifteen attackers were killed, as were five government soldiers, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor quoted by The Associated Press.

A local commander said that government troops had captured one Pakistani guerrilla and one Arab whose nationality was unknown.

Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of allowing Taliban insurgents to operate unimpeded and to make forays into Afghanistan.

In Oruzgan Province, a clash between the forces of rival warlords loyal to the government of Hamid Karzai left more than 20 fighters dead, one of the commanders, Haji Abdul Rahman, told The Associated Press.

In Kabul today, two university students were killed and one was seriously wounded when a bomb they were making went off by accident, the police said. In June, four German peacekeepers were killed by a suicide bomber in the capital.

The violence cast into gruesome relief the growing threats to the country`s stability from what are believed to be remnants of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, as well as Afghans opposed to the American-backed administration led by Mr. Karzai.

The attacks came two days after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a historic departure from its traditional European theater of operations, assumed control of the International Security and Assistance Force, the multinational peacekeeping force that patrols Kabul and the areas surrounding it.

And they came as the United States was preparing to invest another $1 billion in Afghanistan, possibly supplemented by another $600 million from other countries, in an attempt to accelerate the pace of reconstruction. A significant amount of the aid, according to Afghan officials, will be devoted to strengthening national institutions — particularly the national army and police — that could help provide security outside Kabul.

Warlords remain entrenched around the country, and Afghanistan is once again the world`s largest opium producer. Afghan officials say they fear the opium trade, which both profits from and feeds the insecurity around the country, could pull the country under.

Stepped-up attacks in the southeast, meanwhile, including some on aid workers, have prompted aid groups to restrict their movements and work in a region that is already very poor.

Last weekend, the United Nations suspended road travel for its workers in southern Afghanistan after several Afghan aid workers were tied up and beaten. Last week six Afghan soldiers and a driver for the aid group Mercy Corps were killed in an attack on an office in Helmand.

In the neighboring province of Kandahar, which was the wellspring for the Taliban movement, two pro-government clerics were killed and a third wounded after a clerics` council they served on urged Afghans to support Mr. Karzai`s government.

But while the attacks on aid workers, clerics and soldiers seemed intended to deter those supporting the government or rebuilding or securing the country, the attack on ordinary Afghans represented by today`s bus bombing may mark a new stage in the violence in the south.

"They are killing innocent people," the deputy governor of Helmand, Haji Pir Muhammad, said, attributing the attack to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to The Associated Press. Local officials said the bus, which was carrying 20 people, was totally destroyed. The surviving passengers and the driver were wounded.

The aim could be to make Afghans feel betrayed by a government unable to protect them, or to enhance the appeal of an alternative that promises stability and order — exactly what the Taliban represented in a country torn by civil war when they took power in the mid-1990`s.

The attack in the east came a day after the third meeting of a commission composed of representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States intended to reduce tension and resolve border disputes between the two neighbors and coordinate the campaign against terrorism.

The first item discussed by the commission, according to Omar Samad, a Foreign Ministry spokesman who was present, was the killing of two Pakistani border guards by American forces pursuing attackers on Monday. The incident is under investigation, Mr. Samad said, but in the meantime the three countries decided to set up a three-way hot line linking senior representatives.



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An Iraqi man selling gasoline flagged down cars Wednesday in Basra, Iraq. Fuel and power shortages were blamed for riots in the city last weekend.
August 14, 2003
THE ALLIES
Officials Say Shortages Could Cause More Riots in Basra
By ROBERT F. WORTH


BASRA, Iraq, Aug. 13 — British troops remained on edge today in the wake of riots that shook this city on Saturday and Sunday, and some police and some military and civil officials said there could be more unrest if fuel supplies and electric service did not improve quickly.

Farther north, two American soldiers were killed and three were wounded in two attacks on convoys Tuesday evening and this morning. The first incident took place north of Baghdad, where one soldier with the Fourth Infantry Division was killed and two were wounded by a homemade bomb at 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Sgt. Danny Martin, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said. Another soldier from the division was killed and one was wounded when their vehicle struck a homemade bomb 15 miles south of Tikrit at 6:30 a.m. today, Sergeant Martin said.

In an unrelated incident, one Iraqi was killed and four were wounded in Baghdad when American soldiers returned fire on demonstrators who attacked them with guns and a rocket-propelled grenade in Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood, shortly after noon today, Sergeant Martin said. The demonstration, which included about 3,000 people, took place after an American helicopter flew past a tower at a mosque, blowing down a banner, he said.

The riots in Basra, which had been largely free of violence since the war`s end, subsided on Monday. Gas lines that had stretched for miles a few days ago had shrunk as British soldiers continued to deliver fuel to gas stations around the city. But gasoline is still in short supply, and, with temperatures rising above 125 degrees, demand is soaring.

"You can see the frustration on the streets," Lt. Col. Jorge Mendonca, the commander of the Queen`s Lancashire Regiment, said. His soldiers have been forced to cut back on security patrols in order to deliver fuel. "I have the ability to sustain public order," he said, "but I`m not sure for how long."

Twenty-one British soldiers were either stabbed or wounded by thrown bricks or rocks during the riots, Colonel Mendonca said. At least one Iraqi was killed; and, on Sunday, a security guard working for the civil authority here was shot and killed by unknown gunmen. The border with Kuwait was briefly closed because of related demonstrations, Iain Pickard, a spokesman for the occupation authorities here, said.

An additional concern, occupation officials say, is that the riots appear to have been orchestrated to some extent. Although demonstrations broke out spontaneously among drivers who were most directly affected by the gas shortage, trucks were seen dropping off tires to be set aflame by rioters in several parts of the city, Mr. Pickard said.

Some officials here say they believe extremist Islamic groups could be taking advantage of the instability to increase their power.

On Sunday, a Shiite organization called the Fudhala Group distributed a leaflet in the city that blamed the occupying forces for the violence, saying the British and Americans deliberately withheld services in order to distract Iraqis from their lack of freedom and to defer the process of writing a national constitution.

The leaflet, titled "Letter Explaining What Happened on Saturday," also criticized the governor of the province, Wael Abdul Latif, who is also a member of the Governing Council and has been a supporter of the allied forces led by the United States.

Sheik Abu Salam Assadi, the political director of the Fudhala Group, said during an interview at his offices that the leaflet was intended to calm the riots, not incite them. But he also said that if the fuel supplies and electric service did not improve significantly, he would organize peaceful demonstrations, including a car blockade of the occupation authority`s headquarters.

The power crisis has several causes. Gasoline and other fuels are in short supply because smugglers have taken shipments out of the country and because the region`s major refinery failed last week after the four power lines supplying it were cut by saboteurs. All four of the refinery`s aging backup generators also failed. One of two major power stations in Basra failed as demand surged with the unusually high temperatures. The gasoline and power shortages are linked because most businesses in Iraq rely on generators to supplement the power grid.

Part of the problem is that the government of Saddam Hussein had allowed the power network to deteriorate, Mr. Pickard said. But he also expressed frustration with the American authorities for not moving faster to improve the situation. "All the repair work has been done by Iraqis, and none by the U.S.A.," he said. "They`re repairing schools. We need rapid action on this. We need to fly in generators to supplement the city power system."

One thing is clear: the residents of Basra expect improvements — and soon. In Saad Square, the sprawling outdoor bus station where the riots began on Saturday morning, dozens of taxi drivers said there were plans for more demonstrations in a few days if power and fuel do not become more widely available. The British soldiers who are distributing gasoline have been limiting purchases to 25 liters a day — about 6 1/2 gallons — not enough for drivers who transport people to distant cities like Baghdad.

"Why must we resort to such measures?" Salah Qasem, a taxi driver, asked as he sat in the offices of the Mecca Car Service, with portraits of a GMC truck and a bearded Islamic martyr on the wall behind him.

Mr. Latif, the provincial governor, may have added to the pressure by telling reporters that Basra will have 24-hour-a-day electricity within 10 days, Mr. Pickard said, a goal that could prove very difficult to attain. "Everyone here welcomes the British occupation," said a fisherman on Basra`s waterfront, who, like many others, has been smuggling his allotment of diesel fuel abroad because high prices have made it more profitable than fishing.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 14, 2003
White House Fantasies on Iraq

Someday, in the months ahead, there may be an Iraq where a smoothly run American occupation authority has dealt devastating setbacks to terrorism, brought security to most of the country, improved infrastructure and basic services, and elicited encouraging signs of democracy, economic renewal and cultural rebirth. Unfortunately, right now that Iraq exists only in the pages of the implausibly upbeat 100-day progress report recently issued by the White House.

In Iraq today, American soldiers die, electricity shortages lead to rioting, and the threat of terrorism against civilians must be taken increasingly seriously. The biggest problems have been airbrushed out of the White House report, making it read more like a Bush campaign flier than a realistic accounting to the American people. There have, of course, been positive accomplishments, but making a success of Iraq will require much time, many billions of dollars and real sacrifices. Pretending otherwise risks future public disillusionment.

In the face of news reports detailing continued insecurity, failing basic services and painstakingly slow political progress, the White House cites significant signs of better security, improved basic services and emerging democracy. Not mentioned in the Panglossian report, covering the 100 days after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, were the 56 American soldiers killed in attacks during that period.

Days after the report`s release, Basra was swept by rioting over electricity and fuel shortages. While the report boasts of broad international support, Washington still scrambles to line up countries willing to contribute peacekeeping troops without expanded United Nations authority.

Many of today`s problems in Iraq can be traced to the Bush administration`s tendency to credit what it wants to believe rather than more realistic accounts. It exaggerated the evidence on Iraqi unconventional weapons and links with Al Qaeda, underestimated the potential for chaos in a country that had endured years of war, sanctions and dictatorship, and misjudged the patience of the Iraqi people for putting up with postwar disruptions and an occupying army. All those delusions find uncanny echoes in the 100-day report.

In the real world there have recently been some hopeful signs that administration policies are beginning to reflect a more sophisticated understanding of Iraq. Future White House reports should describe that world, not wishful fantasies.


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 14, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
No Work, No Homes
By BOB HERBERT


Talk about preaching to the choir. President Bush and his clueless team of economic advisers held a summit at the president`s ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the rich.

Their voodoo fantasies were safe in Crawford. There was no one at the ranch to chastise them for bequeathing backbreaking budget deficits to generations yet unborn. And no one was there to confront them with evidence of the intense suffering that so many poor, working-class and middle-class families are experiencing right now because of job losses on Mr. Bush`s watch.

After the meeting, Mr. Bush said, "This administration is optimistic about job creation."

It`s too bad George Akerlof wasn`t at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that "the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years." Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, "Within 10 years, we`re going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility."

Also participating in the institute`s press conference was Robert Solow, an economist and professor emeritus at M.I.T. who is also a Nobel laureate. He assailed the Bush tax cuts as "redistributive in intent and redistributive in effect."

"There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad."

The president and his advisers could have learned something about the real world if, instead of hanging out at the ranch, they had visited a city like Los Angeles (or almost any other hard-hit American venue) and spent time talking to folks who have been thrown out of work and, in some cases, out of their homes in this treacherous Bush economy.

The job market in California worsened in July. More than a million people are out of work statewide, and there are few signs of the optimism that Mr. Bush is feeling.

Officials at homeless shelters in Los Angeles, as in other large American cities, are seeing big increases in the number of families seeking shelter because of extended periods of joblessness. The pattern is as depressing as it is familiar: the savings run out, the rent doesn`t get paid, the eviction notice arrives.

Tanya Tull, president of Beyond Shelter in downtown L.A., said the percentage of families in her facility had climbed from about one-third to more than half because of the employment crisis. The breadwinners can`t find jobs, she said, "so they`re losing their housing."

Ralph Plumb, president of the Union Rescue Mission on L.A.`s skid row, said his agency, traditionally a haven for homeless men with drug and alcohol problems, is providing shelter for more and more "intact" families. Their problems are not the result of drug or alcohol abuse, or mental impairment. They simply have no money. Forty percent of the people at the mission are there "purely due to economic issues," he said.

Ms. Tull and Mr. Plumb both said an important factor in the rise of homeless families had been the "reform" of the welfare system. Destitution is the next stop for people who can`t find jobs and can`t get welfare.

One of the families at the Union Rescue Mission was featured this week in a front-page article in USA Today. William Kamstra, who earned $40,000 a year before losing his job, looks for work each day while his wife, Sue, and their three children spend the day at a library. They sleep at the mission.

"Homelessness in major cities is escalating," the article said, "as more laid-off workers already living paycheck to paycheck wind up on the streets or in shelters."

That story ran one day after a front-page Wall Street Journal article that spelled out how sweet just one of the Bush tax cuts has been for those in the upper brackets: "The federal tax cut, which slashed the tax rate on dividends and prompted many companies to increase their payouts, is proving to be a boon for some corporate executives who are reaping millions in after-tax gains."

Some people have reason to be optimistic. It`s the best of times, or the worst of times. Depending on your perspective.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Schwarzenegger Outcome Could Affect Bush in 2004
Gubernatorial Win in California Would Bring Potential Risks as Well as Rewards, Strategists Say

By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A05


President Bush arrives in California today with his political fortunes increasingly tied to the powerful but unpredictable figure of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Bush has kept a distance from the Oct. 7 ballot drive to remove Gov. Gray Davis (D) from office, and he has declined to endorse the movie star and bodybuilder who has overnight become the leading Republican and most popular candidate on the ballot. "He would be a good governor, as would others running," is all Bush would say yesterday, tempering earlier remarks that appeared to favor Schwarzenegger.

For better or worse, however, a number of Bush aides, Republican strategists and pollsters believe the Terminator`s fortunes in the recall, if only because of his dominating presence in the race, will affect the president`s reelection prospects next year in the nation`s most populous state -- and possibly beyond.

One prominent adviser to Bush said the excitement behind the muscle man`s candidacy means "California`s not lost forever." On the other hand, said GOP strategist Scott Reed, "If Arnold flames out after this historic buildup, it`ll look like Republicans can`t get their act together.

"Like it or not, the Bush White House is a little pregnant on the Arnold candidacy," Reed said.

In the best scenario for Bush, Davis is ousted, Schwarzenegger triumphs with a united Republican vote and California`s bleak fiscal situation begins to improve. With the governorship in popular Republican hands, the state`s 54 electoral votes, once a lost cause for the GOP, could come within Bush`s grasp in 2004.

Alternatively, if Schwarzenegger`s candidacy implodes, it could leave the Republicans without an obvious candidate to face reinvigorated Democrats. And Schwarzenegger`s candidacy could turn the vote into a referendum on racial politics because he supported an immigration crackdown in 1994 that continues to infuriate Hispanics. Such a backlash could hurt Bush beyond California in 2004.

Bush`s aides and advisers are caught between the potential risks and rewards. Though rumors swirl about involvement in the Schwarzenegger campaign by Karl Rove, Bush`s top strategist, the White House is officially mum. "I haven`t asked anybody to get engaged, and I`m not aware of anybody that has been engaged," Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said yesterday.

The White House finds itself in the awkward position of playing spectator in a race that could alter Bush`s political future. Though Rove cares so much about California that an associate calls the state "Karl`s Ahab," the recall was driven by people at odds with the administration, such as Shawn Steel, who was pushed out by Bush allies as state Republican Party chairman. "It changes the fortune for the presidential campaign dramatically if we win," Steel said.

A Bush adviser acknowledged that "the recall was not something that we wanted to happen because it potentially gives the Democrats a chance to say what`s happening in California is all about the recall process and not about the governor and his Democratic leaders." The adviser said Bush`s 2004 prospects would be hurt if Davis, or Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (D), prevails and performs well in office, or if a Republican wins and does poorly.

"There is fear that, beloved this year, the [new Republican] governor could be unpopular next year," a Bush campaign official said. "Maybe it`s better to keep Gray Davis as a punching bag."

Still, Schwarzenegger`s decision to join the race, and early polls showing broad support, has buoyed the Bush campaign`s hopes of a lift in 2004. "Schwarzenegger is the only candidate who has a chance to achieve what we wanted," one adviser said, adding that the two leading conservatives in the race, businessman Bill Simon and state Sen. Tom McClintock, have too much of a "hard edge" to add to Bush`s appeal in the state.

Don`t expect Bush to say that publicly, however. Bush aides believe that appearing to meddle would backfire and boost Democrats` efforts to link the California recall to the 2000 Florida recount. Still, California Republicans say, lawmakers and others tied to the White House have been putting what one called "heavy pressure" on Simon and McClintock to drop out -- and one GOP strategist close to the White House expects one or both to quit.

The recall effort has already produced benefits for Bush. It has frozen the Democratic nominating contest in a desirable spot for him -- with no obvious challenger. The attention to California is also depriving the Democratic candidates of attention and is expected to cramp their fundraising.

Also, George "Duf" Sundheim, who became chairman of the state GOP earlier this year, said the recall has already boosted Republican voter registration, a potential benefit to Bush next year. "Whatever excitement there is will wear off, but the impact on registration will be lasting," he said.

Even if a Republican governor does not deliver California to Bush next year, Republicans believe it would make Democrats spend more time and effort to win the state.

"We can distract the opposition long enough to make them vulnerable elsewhere on the national political landscape," said Dan Schnur, a California GOP operative.

Before a Republican can get to Sacramento, however, Bush and Schwarzenegger must avoid a potentially damaging bout of racial politics. Bush has made outreach to Hispanics a top priority, and he let it be known that he opposed California`s Proposition 187 in 1994 that limited services for immigrants.

But Schwarzenegger`s campaign has announced that he favored Prop. 187, and the candidate has tied himself to former governor Pete Wilson and his aides, who championed the measure.

Further complicating the matter, another proposition, this one to prevent the state from requesting racial details used for affirmative action programs, will appear on the ballot Oct. 7 -- keeping the issue in focus.

"The racial initiative on the ballot will encourage unions to turn out their minorities," said a Bush adviser, concerned that Schwarzenegger`s position could become "Wilson revisited."

John Zogby, an independent pollster, said memories of Prop. 187 could hurt Schwarzenegger, and Bush, by bringing angry Hispanics to the polls, particularly because Bustamante, the leading Democratic candidate if Davis is recalled, is Latino. "Prop. 187 has legs beyond California," Zogby said. "It is the ghost of the ballot in October and could very well be the ghost in 2004."

Allen reported from Crawford, Tex.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Protests erupted in Baghdad`s Sadr City after residents claimed that U.S. troops tried to desecrate a religious flag. An Iraqi was killed in a subsequent clash.
washingtonpost.com
Flag Is Flash Point In a Baghdad Slum
Perceived Insult Ignites Anti-U.S. Unrest

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A11


BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- The U.S. military helicopter flew low over Baghdad`s largest slum today, about an hour before noon prayers. For a while, it hovered near a transmission tower. Then, Sheik Ahmed Zarjawi said, a U.S. soldier tried to kick the black flag that fluttered atop the tower, inscribed in white letters with the name of one of Shiite Islam`s most revered figures.

"How can we sleep at night when we see this?" he recalled asking.

There followed a day of anger and fervor in a Shiite neighborhood already on edge. Protesters incensed at what they saw as a religious insult poured out of houses and shops. In some of the worst unrest since Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces on April 9, clashes erupted with an American patrol, killing one Iraqi and wounding at least three others.

Into a sweltering evening, hundreds of demonstrators waving religious banners and rallied by neighborhood clergy moved across streets awash in sewage, calling for a day of reckoning with U.S. troops, who they said they no longer wanted to enter their neighborhood.

"When the Americans came, we welcomed them and received them," said Jabbar Qassem, 20. "But this is our faith. This flag, it represents our faith. Why would they do this? Now we will allow no American to wander through here."

The U.S. military said the flag was inadvertently knocked over by gusts from the low-flying helicopter. Suggestions of any intent are "totally bogus, totally untrue," said Staff Sgt. J.J. Johnson, a military spokesman.

But by nightfall, in a city where truth and falsehood often fall by the wayside of rumor, the damage was already done, underscoring the perilous divide of religion and culture that separates occupier and occupied.

The regions of Iraq populated by Shiite Muslims, who form the country`s majority and were relentlessly repressed by Saddam Hussein`s government, have remained largely quiet since the war`s end. Even the most militant clerics, such as Moqtada Sadr, a young firebrand whose faction enjoys broad popular support in poorer parts of Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, have stopped short of a call to arms.

But discontent over the pace of restoring basic services has echoed through much of Iraq, and shortages of gasoline and electricity unleashed two days of protests and violence over the weekend in and around Basra. In the Baghdad neighborhood renamed after Sadr`s revered father, an ayatollah believed killed by Hussein`s government in 1999, it took no more than a possible miscalculation by a helicopter.

When it ended, clergy had issued a manifesto demanding an apology and giving U.S. forces a day to withdraw from Sadr City.

"We are not responsible for the reaction of people if they enter the city again," said Sheik Hadi Darraji, a leading cleric.

Witnesses offered a series of accounts of the helicopter`s path near the red-and-white, six-story transmission tower. Some said it approached once, and a female soldier leaned out and tried to tear down the flag with a knife. Other accounts said it approached twice, with a soldier pointing a gun at a youth who climbed the tower and tried to fend off the helicopter with a metal bar.

Johnson dismissed the idea of a soldier leaning out of the helicopter. "There`s no way anybody could do that," he said.

Footage of the incident aired by the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya clearly showed a helicopter hovering for several seconds near the flag, which bore an inscription of a 9th century descendant of the prophet Muhammad known as the Mahdi.

Soon after, Johnson said, a crowd that began at 100 swelled to 3,000. When U.S. military vehicles later came down a main street, he said, some in the crowd attacked them with small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade. Residents dismissed that, saying that people in the crowd, many of them teenagers, were only throwing rocks and that U.S. soldiers opened fire randomly.

Residents said that the fatality was a boy between 10 and 11 years old. Johnson said four people were wounded. But doctors at the nearby Thawra Hospital put the figure at three. One of them was a 12-year-old boy shot in the face, said Wisam Jassim, a physician there.

Within hours, youths had climbed the transmission tower, bedecking it in red, green, white and black flags, colors symbolic of suffering and martyrdom and resonant in Shiite Islam. Most bore the inscription of the Mahdi, and youths waved the flags past sunset.

On a fire station below, others had scrawled "Down USA" in English, and "Down with America, Down with Israel" in Arabic. Some carried Iraqi flags or portraits of the elder Sadr, whose following was especially loyal in the neighborhood that now bears his name. Banners read, "No, no to arrogance, yes, yes to the Hawza," a centuries-old Shiite seminary.

At one point, gunshots fired into the air echoed across streets filled with hundreds of protesters.

The helicopter incident was carried out "to provoke the Shiites," said Ali Karim, 30, standing amid a group of mostly young protesters. "Until now we haven`t done anything to the Americans. We are warning them not to come inside here again."

Thumbing worry beads, Ali Naif interrupted. The warning, he said, wasn`t strong enough. "If we catch the Americans, we will slaughter them, okay? Why did they commit this aggression against us?"

Some U.S. officials have become increasingly worried about the influence of Sadr, a junior cleric who has little religious standing but heads an organization that enjoys support among the poorest and most disenfranchised in some Shiite cities.

Over the past month, he has railed against the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, calling it a tool of the occupation that should be dissolved. He has repeatedly urged the creation of a militia known as "The Army of the Mahdi," albeit unarmed.

After the clash, his clerical followers staged a rally atop a fire station near the transmission tower, with a crowd of hundreds waving banners below. The boy said to have fended off the helicopter was introduced.

Darraji, one of Sadr`s followers, then delivered their demands: The Americans must stage a "complete and comprehensive withdrawal" within a day, issue an apology, provide compensation to the families of the dead and wounded and deliver their written agreement in English and Arabic.

"We give them one night to implement these demands without any maneuvers or delays," Darraji said.

At times in the speech, the crowd broke into chants. "Today, today is peaceful, tomorrow, tomorrow is war," one went, as the sun set over the neighborhood. "We are preparing your army, Mahdi," another intoned.

"The Americans want to provoke the people. They have a plan," said Qassem Khusaf, 33, as he watched the protest, which dispersed by nightfall. "They are provoking us to see whether we will fight or not."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Iraq Resumes Pumping Oil From Its Northern Fields



Associated Press
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A12


ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 13 -- Iraq began pumping crude oil from its northern fields today for the first time since the war, a milestone in the restoration of the country`s oil production that augurs well for world markets.

Iraq sits atop the world`s second-largest proven crude reserves, and oil exports are vital to its postwar reconstruction and the success of U.S. efforts to install democracy in the country. Before the war halted Iraq`s oil production, the country pumped about 2.1 million barrels a day, most of it for export.

Analysts said it was unclear how reliable the flow of oil from fields near the northern city of Kirkuk might prove to be, but the reopening of the pipeline to Turkey`s Mediterranean coast is a key step in rebuilding Iraq`s oil industry.

Saboteurs and looters have dogged efforts to rehabilitate the 600-mile pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish city of Ceyhan. The lack of storage and export facilities forced the Iraqis to pump much of the northern crude left over after refining for domestic use back into natural underground reservoirs.

"The export program has been stymied by unfortunate but continuing acts of sabotage. This is still the issue," said Michael Rothman, chief energy strategist at Merrill Lynch in New York. He said Iraqi oil exports were a paltry 300,000 barrels a day in July.

Iraq began exporting from its giant southern oil fields last month, sending fresh crude to ships waiting offshore in the Persian Gulf at the export terminal of Mina al-Bakr. These southern exports have been intermittent, however, because of power outages at the terminal and other interruptions.

Although Iraq`s big northern fields also resumed production after the U.S.-British invasion, crude from the north was unavailable for export until now.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Texas Turnoff

Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A18

THE REPORT OF TEXAS Democratic legislators fleeing their state to New Mexico to boycott a Republican-sponsored congressional redistricting plan might be amusing were it not for the sheer arrogance and unfairness of the Republican power play. Texas Republicans are trying to redraw the state`s 32 congressional districts for the second time in three years. How did it come to this?

Because of a failure to redraw congressional boundaries after the 2000 Census when the Texas legislature -- under Democratic control at the time -- deadlocked, a federal judicial panel was forced to do the two parties` job. That should have settled matters. But after taking over the legislature, Republicans decided to capitalize on their advantage this year by undoing the work of the federal judges. Since this is a non-census year, Democratic legislators cried foul and stymied the GOP by fleeing in May to Oklahoma, beyond the reach of the legislature`s sergeant at arms.

Now, for the second time, Texas Democrats have sought refuge in another state to derail a renewed redistricting effort. The plan is being pushed by the Lone Star State`s Republican governor, Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the state Senate`s presiding officer, and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick -- all doing the bidding of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who wants congressional lines redrawn to give Republicans more seats in the House. As with the earlier exodus to Oklahoma, the Democrats` journey to New Mexico deprives the legislature of a quorum to conduct business. The tactic is hardly the stuff of valor, and it prevents the legislature from conducting other state business. But the highly partisan and irregular mid-cycle redistricting power play instigated by Mr. DeLay is an odious piece of political business that risks creating a dangerous new norm, and the 11 Democratic senators who fled the state are right to fight the redistricting plan with all the legal means at their disposal.

The whole sorry episode, which has paralyzed the legislature, is being carried out with a wink and a nod from the White House. The hands of presidential strategist Karl Rove are said to be all over the game being played down in Austin. The president can end this standoff, and he should. This bit of political ugliness could spread to other states, where Democratic governors and state legislatures might elect to redraw their already redistricted legislative maps during the same census cycle, just as the DeLay-and-Rove-led Texas Republicans are attempting to do. How much worse does the White House want to make the already unseemly business of partisan legislative line drawing?




© 2003 The Washington Post

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washingtonpost.com
The Bush Deceit
By Peter D. Zimmerman

Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A19

It was not just 16 words. It was every word concerning Iraq`s nuclear weapons program in George W. Bush`s 2003 State of the Union speech.

The president`s principal argument for going to war -- to prevent a "smoking gun that would appear as a mushroom cloud" -- was based on bad intelligence that was misused while good intelligence was ignored.

Available evidence demonstrates that Saddam Hussein, an evil man who should have been evicted in 1991, lacked a serious nuclear weapons program in 2003. And if Mr. Bush had not held out the threat of Iraqi nuclear weapons "within months," it is doubtful that Congress would have given him a blank check.

How can one conjure up a benign explanation for the president`s assertions?

The claim that Niger was selling uranium was based on disputed intelligence, since retracted by the White House and CIA. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction carried prominent warnings that knowledgeable agencies and analysts dissented from its conclusions. It is hard to believe that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, missed or forgot about the red flags.

If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts.

Political leaders must not tell intelligence analysts what to write; the intelligence services cannot tell the elected decision maker what to do. The president, of course, is free to disregard intelligence, but he is not free to lie about it -- either directly, indirectly or by innuendo -- when making the case for war.

President Bush said that in the early 1990s Iraq "had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb." Not exactly.

Nuclear weapons experts serving as inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called the bomb "design" more of a parts list than a description of a buildable device. The five ways to enrich uranium really boiled down to two -- electromagnetic separation and gas centrifuges, neither working well. Iraq`s crude experiments in the 1990s showed that it was a very long way from nuclear success.

President Bush said that Iraq had sought to buy "high-strength aluminum tubes" to be used in gas centrifuges to make bomb-grade uranium. The proliferation experts at the Department of Energy could not comment publicly, but they dissented privately. The inspectors of the IAEA produced clear evidence of the truth: rocket bodies, not nuclear weapons. The tubes could be used for centrifuges only after lengthy and complex reworking. The facts had been available to the White House for months, as declassified excerpts from an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate demonstrate.

The current President Bush was not the first leader to take the United States to war with Iraq using phony intelligence.

In September 1990 his father`s administration claimed that Iraq had hundreds of tanks and 300,000 troops in Kuwait massed on the Saudi border. But independent analysis by me and a colleague, using extremely sharp Soviet satellite photos, showed no evidence whatever of a significant Iraqi force in Kuwait. Nonetheless, in 1990 the American people were told that an attack on Saudi Arabia was imminent.

Postwar analysis showed that the independent analysis published in this country in the St. Petersburg Times was dead accurate: There were not 300,000 but fewer than 100,000 Iraqi troops and only a few Iraqi tanks in Kuwait.

George W. Bush`s backing and filling, his staff`s confused explanations, revised explanations and new explanations, plus the immutable fact that most of his arguments for war in Iraq were misleading, have seriously damaged his credibility abroad and are eroding it at home.

When an American president needs to take the nation to war, Americans must be able to trust him and must believe that the case for conflict is sound. The next time Bush wants to use armed force to preempt or prevent an attack on this country, he will have to prove his case far more completely than before. Two presidents of the United States have forfeited the benefit of the doubt.

The writer, a physicist, was chief scientist of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and science adviser for arms control at the State Department during the Clinton administration.

He will answer questions about this column during a Live Online discussion at 4 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Posted on Thu, Aug. 14, 2003

A CHIEF FOR THE EPA
LEAVITT FACES TOUGH CHALLENGE

The response to President Bush`s selection of Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, is an indicator of what Americans can expect from the nation`s new top environmental regulator: a mixed bag.

Industries that feel put upon by the EPA`s enforcement of laws approved by Congress praised the president`s choice. So did Republican critics of ``heavy-handed`` federal oversight. Environmental groups, scientists and many Democrats were less enthusiastic, pointing to Mr. Leavitt`s contradictory environmental record in Utah and President Bush`s own deeply compromised stance on such issues as air pollution and water-quality standards. After all, the president isn`t likely to choose an EPA administrator with an agenda that differs much from his own. Thus, Mr. Bush has selected someone who shares his vision. We hope that Mr. Leavitt proves to be enough of a moderate to faithfully carry out the EPA`s congressional mandate to protect the environment.

Mr. Leavitt`s record is indeed a mixed read. As Utah governor, he fought sprawl, a crusade that Floridians can well appreciate. Yet he also comes from a long tradition of Western state officials with overt antipathy toward federal control of use of publicly owned lands. Perhaps that is why he and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, another Westerner, had no compunctions about negotiating a secret deal to remove millions of federally owned acres in Utah from protections against road building, mining and gas exploration.

Mr. Leavitt touts himself as a middle-of-the-road leader on environmental issues. He cites -- deservedly -- his consensus-building role with federal agencies, neighboring states and Indian tribes to improve air quality in the region`s national parks.

If confirmed by the Senate this fall, Mr. Leavitt will need his consensus skills but in a different arena than land use. The EPA`s job is to safeguard the nation`s air, water and land through regulation of myriad industries, agriculture and local governments. Since its creation 30 years ago the agency has earned a reputation for enforcing the Clean Water and Clean Air acts -- landmark laws whose diligent implementation has improved the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink.

President Bush has sought to relax many rules governing air pollution and water quality and place more emphasis on voluntary compliance by regulated industries, thus diminishing the EPA`s role as tough regulator. During his confirmation hearings, senators should closely question Mr. Leavitt on how he plans to maintain the EPA`s strong regulatory role and still keep his new boss happy. We need tough environmental cops at the EPA. We hope that Mr. Leavitt, if confirmed, delivers on that commitment to the people.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6526723.ht…

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Posted on Thu, Aug. 14, 2003

MARIANNE MEANS
For secretary of state

Any Democrat who recaptures the White House in 2004 would do well to name former Vice President Al Gore as secretary of state.

Gore, who insists that he will not seek the presidency again, served the country well at Bill Clinton`s side and has not lost his understanding of how the world works.

Gore reentered politics last week with a tough, dignified speech exploring President Bush`s tattered credibility on national and global issues, from the economic mumbo-jumbo misrepresenting his tax cuts to the overhyped justification for a preemptive war in Iraq.

The timing was good. Gore`s speech coincided with a detailed House committee report accusing the administration of distorting facts on issues such as global warming, reproductive rights, embryo research and energy policy to bolster Bush`s conservative agenda and to benefit favorite industry groups. The report reinforces the mounting evidence that this is an administration that would not hesitate to use chicanery to make the case for war.

Gore appeared more comfortable wearing a dark business suit and tie than he previously did in earth tones and a beard. He was, well, statesmanlike.

This is a role that the polarizing Clinton cannot play, for all his verbal skills and lust for fame and fortune. And the Democratic candidates are too busy taunting one another to make much of a dent against Bush, despite his mounting vulnerabilities.

But Gore, who can still draw a crowd, is free to say what he thinks. And his thoughts are worth hearing. Predictably, he doesn`t think much of the Bush administration.

Gore isn`t just playing partisan politics. He makes a strong case against Bush`s systematic campaign to mislead Americans and ignore ``the mandates of basic honesty`` in the pursuit of a ``totalistic ideology`` that undermines the fundamental principles of democracy.

Gore pointed out that in both the Bush economic program and the war in Iraq ``reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast.``

Gore`s lament about Iraq was echoed by Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who complained that the administration`s poor planning is unnecessarily dragging out the war.

The report by the House Government Reform Committee, compiled by the Democratic minority, was not so kind. White House officials did not try to rebut the report and instead attacked its motivation as partisan. But the report is frightening and politically devastating.

It reflects growing concerns about ``misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered websites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists.``

The report accuses the administration of:

• Altering evaluations of federally funded school abstinence programs to make them seem more effective than the facts warrant.

• Omitting or misstating scientific findings that Arctic oil drilling could harm wildlife.

• Altering a National Cancer Institute website to incorrectly imply that evidence linked abortions to breast cancer.

• Exaggerating the number of available adult stem cells when Bush limited federally funded medical research to those cells that already existed.

• Eliminating scientific evidence about global warming from the administration`s official report on the subject.

Playing with the truth is nothing new for the Bush crew. Defense Department officials have stated that by the end of 2004 a new missile defense system will be 90 percent effective in intercepting missiles from the Korean peninsula. Independent experts, however, report that such a system is at least a decade away -- if viable at all.

Then there is, of course, the little matter of the missing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, originally touted as the major reason for war. Bush declared that such weapons had indeed been found after two empty trailers turned up containing traces of suspicious material.

Now we learn that engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency believe that the trucks were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, not biological weapons, just as Iraqi scientists had claimed. And the scary talk -- even in this year`s State of the Union Message -- of an Iraqi nuclear threat was equally groundless.

Bush`s pattern of playing fast and loose with the truth is only now dawning on Americans. No wonder the administration is steeped in secrecy.

Bush has a lot to hide. We can thank Gore for reminding the public of this.

[e-mail]

©2003 Hearst Newspapers

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6526727.ht…

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GEORGE W. BUSH ACTION FIGURE RECALLED; WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NOT INCLUDED

Contrite Manufacturer Apologizes for Missing WMD


A G.I. Joe-like action figure depicting President George W. Bush as an "Elite Force Aviator" was recalled today by its manufacturer after consumers discovered that the $39.95 toy did not include the weapons of mass destruction pictured on the toy`s packaging.

The Bush action figure was packaged in a box showing the President in his aviator flight suit made famous in his landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, uncovering weapons of mass destruction in a suspicious-looking Iraqi warehouse.

But once parents bought the toy and brought it home, they found that the box contained only the action figure of the President and no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever.

Janis Martino, 32, a mother of two in Lansing, Michigan, said her son Tyler was "really disappointed" when he opened the toy`s packaging and found no weapons of mass destruction inside.

"He felt tricked," Ms. Martino said. "You can`t tell someone that there are weapons of mass destruction and then have there not be any."

Ms. Martino also said she felt "gypped" by the high price tag, saying, "If there were no weapons of mass destruction, what were we spending all of this money for?"

As it announced the recall, the action figure`s manufacturer today apologized for the words on the packaging that read, "Make Elite Force Aviator George W. Bush Find and Destroy Saddam Hussein`s Weapons of Mass Destruction!"

"We apologize for that phrasing," the manufacturer said. "But even if it was a little misleading, it was only sixteen words."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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Alles was gestern an Cartoons gelaufen ist in einer täglichen Zusammenfassung.
http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030813_107_toons.htm

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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-father14aug14,1,1…

Austrian Archives Reveal Nazi Military Role of Actor`s Father
By Tracy Wilkinson and Matt Lait , Times Staff Writers

August 14, 2003

VIENNA — In July 1990, following news reports that his father was a Nazi, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger approached his friends at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and asked that they find the truth.

" `I don`t know much about my father`s past,` " Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Wiesenthal Center, recalled Schwarzenegger`s telling him. " `I don`t know if it`s good or bad and I`d like you to find out.` "

Asking the Wiesenthal Center to handle the investigation was a logical choice: The center, named after the famed Nazi hunter, had the resources to conduct such a probe. And it was an institution that Schwarzenegger had financially backed over the years.

After a two-month investigation, in which Simon Wiesenthal was involved, the verdict was in: Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Nazi party; he voluntarily applied for membership in 1938. But there was no evidence that he was a war criminal. Nor had the Wiesenthal Center found any evidence that the senior Schwarzenegger belonged to any of Germany`s notorious paramilitary units, such as the Sturmabteilungen (SA) or the Schutzstaffel (SS), which were populated by some of Adolf Hitler`s most ardent supporters.

But documents in the Austrian State Archives in Vienna, reviewed by The Times this week, show that Gustav Schwarzenegger had a deeper involvement in Hitler`s regime than the Wiesenthal Center had uncovered.

One document in particular shows that Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Sturmabteilungen, also known as the "storm troopers" or "brown shirts." He joined the SA on May 1, 1939, according to the entry in the archive file — about six months after the storm-troopers helped launch Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked across Germany and Austria and thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps.

The records contain no other information about his activities with the SA. And, with the exception of Kristallnacht, the force had lost its position of dominance to the SS as far back as 1934. Without further documentation, it is difficult to draw conclusions about what Gustav Schwarzenegger did with the SA, according to Ursula Schwarz, a researcher with the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance. At the same time, she noted, one had to apply to join the SA, unlike, say, the German army, which all Austrian males were required to join after their country was annexed.

The Austrian documents also show that Gustav Schwarzenegger served with German Army units that saw some of the most brutal bloodshed of World War II, including the invasions of Poland and France and the German rampage through Russia and the siege of Leningrad.

As a military policeman, he appears to have been in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed by his army. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role.

"He was in the thick of the battle during the most difficult times," said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar who has written 14 books on the subject. "Clearly, he was in proximity to some of the most horrific military and nonmilitary killings. He was in the heart of hell."

Gustav Schwarzenegger achieved the rank of master sergeant with the Feldgendarmerie, the military police known by the nickname Chained Dogs, apparently from the metal links they wore around their necks as part of the uniform. Although they were police units, many served as combat troops, always on the front line, and were used to sup press civilian populations for the advancing German army.

According to the records, Gustav Schwarzenegger received a great deal of medical attention, and may have been wounded. At some point he contracted malaria. He left the army in 1943.

The Austrian archives also include the papers, part of a so-called de-Nazification process, that in 1947 determined he could work for the post-war state because no specific war crimes had been attributed to him. He worked as a police officer in Austria until his death in 1972.

For years, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been dogged by his father`s past and unsubstantiated rumors that he is an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer. He sued a writer for libel over such allegations in a 1988 British newspaper article. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount of money and a public apology from the writer.

Critics also seized on Schwarzenegger`s public association with Kurt Waldheim, the former president of Austria and former secretary general of the United Nations. Waldheim was accused of having covered up his involvement in Nazi atrocities committed during World War II.

Schwarzenegger invited Waldheim to his 1986 wedding to Maria Shriver, then anchorwoman of the "CBS Morning News" and a niece of President John F. Kennedy.

The wedding was held in April, a month after Waldheim had been publicly accused of lying about his Nazi wartime past. Waldheim did not attend the wedding, but sent a gift, prompting an emotional toast by Schwarzenegger, who lauded Waldheim, according to a wedding guest.

"It was so gratuitous and insulting," said the guest, who asked not to be named. "It ... stunned the crowd into silence."

On Wednesday, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger`s campaign said the actor has changed his views on Waldheim.

"Arnold has said that if he knew then what he knows now [about Waldheim`s past], he would not have offered the toast," said spokesman Rob Stutzman. "Arnold has said it was a stupid thing to say."

Stutzman said Schwarzenegger wanted to consult with the Wiesenthal Center before commenting on the Austrian documents about his father`s war record.

But, Stutzman said, "it`s been well documented that Arnold is concerned about his father`s activities in the German army. He`s been asked about it for years and over those years it is abundantly clear that Arnold`s views are completely opposite of those of his father."

Hier agreed, saying Schwarzenegger is shamed and embarrassed by his father`s past. He said the actor has been a strong supporter of Jews and Jewish causes over the years. Arnold Schwarzenegger has contributed about $750,000 to the Wiesenthal Center and has helped to raise millions more by chairing fund-raisers and other events.

Hier said the Wiesenthal Center aggressively pursued information on Gustav Schwarzenegger`s war record, and was not influenced in any way because Arnold Schwarzenegger is a financial supporter of the institution. He said the Austrian records were not available at the time of the center`s investigation because of a "30-year" rule that prohibits the release of information on a soldier until he has been dead for 30 years.

Showed copies of some the Austrian documents reviewed by The Times, Hier on Wednesday immediately assigned researchers to dig deeper into Gustav Schwarzenegger`s past.

In southern Austria, friends of Arnold Schwarzenegger from his hometown of Thal, where he was born, and the adjacent town of Graz, where he attended school, said the son had a loving but difficult relationship with his father.

Gustav Schwarzenegger was tough and authoritarian, the friends said. He frequently pitted his two sons against each other in athletic matches and would then praise the winner, usually Arnold`s older brother Meinhard.

Himself an athlete, Gustav Schwarzenegger did not approve of his son`s pursuit of weight-lifting and body-building, long-time friend Alfred Gerstl recalled. He wanted his sons to follow in his footsteps as a champion in a traditional Austrian ice sport similar to curling.

"His father was a strong, domineering person who taught him discipline," said Werner Kopacka, the correspondent in Graz for the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung and a friend of the actor. "He taught Arnold to fight and to bear pain."

Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he never knew what his father did in the war. Kopacka, 53, said Austrians of his generation as a matter of course did not ask such questions.

"In those days you didn`t ask your father," he said. "None of us talked much about the war."

Kurt David Bruhl, for 22 years head of the Jewish community in Graz, did not know Gustav Schwarzenegger but has known the younger Schwarzenegger since the 1960s, when he was an aspiring body-builder. Bruhl said he was confident Gustav Schwarzenegger had not taught Nazi-inspired hatreds to his children.

"It would be unfair to bring any connection to the son from the father," Bruhl said.

Wilkinson reported from Vienna, Lait from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Scott Glover contributed to this report.

`It would be unfair to bring any connection to the son from the father.`

Kurt David Bruhl, Jewish friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger`s in Austria


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-darpa1…
COLUMN ONE


Army of Extreme Thinkers
The brilliant successes of DARPA, the Defense Department`s advanced research agency, are matched only by its long list of bizarre failures.
By Charles Piller
Times Staff Writer

August 14, 2003

Over the past half-century, an obscure Pentagon group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been behind some of the world`s most revolutionary inventions — the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology and the computer mouse, to name a few.

It`s an impressive record of success offset only by the fact that DARPA has also come up with some of the most boneheaded ideas ever to spring from the government.

Over the years, millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on a variety of projects, from telepathic spies and jungle-tromping robotic elephants to its most recent fiasco — FutureMAP, an online futures market designed to predict assassinations and bombings by encouraging investor speculation in such crimes.

"Morally repugnant," said Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

A "sick idea," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

"Unbelievably stupid," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.).

It`s the type of criticism that DARPA is not only used to, but also lavishes on itself. "When we fail, we fail big," said former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld, summing up the agency research disasters in an official 1975 history of DARPA.

Such is life on the absolute bleeding edge of technology.

DARPA has always shunned conventionality, using "radicalism" as its watchword. It sniffs out tantalizing, often fantastic, ideas, then casts off bureaucratic shackles to leap forward.

As the military agency charged with developing innovative, far-reaching research, it has asked brilliant minds to court failure for a chance at greatness.

Michael Dertouzos, the late director of the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, credited DARPA-supported work with half of the major innovations in computing, including breakthroughs in microcircuits and data-management systems.

"The mantra was `high risk, high payoff,` " said Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA computer scientist who was among an elite group of scientists recruited in the late 1960s to develop the nascent Internet. "A long leash, a lot of funding, a lot of support."

But the price of success has been an equally impressive record of scientific kookiness. And now, in a darker era of amorphous terrorist threats, even some of its staunchest supporters are feeling a twinge of anxiety over such projects as the FutureMAP terrorism market.

"These things seem truly ominous," said Gary Chapman, director of the 21st Century Project, a science policy research program at the University of Texas. "DARPA has become a scary sandbox for people whose objectives many Americans disagree with."

DARPA was founded in February 1958, four months after the Soviet Union`s Sputnik satellite stunned the U.S. with the menacing prospect of being left behind scientifically.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (renamed DARPA in 1972) was formed to make basic research a key element of national security. Roy W. Johnson, a handsome, blunt and hard-driving vice president at aerospace contractor General Electric Co., was picked as ARPA`s first director.

Johnson set up the agency to find experts in physics, information technology, materials science and other fields, then showered them with funds and freedom. ARPA initially focused on rocketry, space exploration, ballistic missile defense and nuclear test detection, then broadened its range.

Eschewing sluggish peer review of grant proposals, ARPA relied on enterprising program officers, many drawn from academia and industry, who selected projects based on hunches about the future.

"In the 1960s you could do really any damn thing you wanted, as long as it wasn`t against the law or immoral," said Herzfeld, who directed ARPA from 1965 to 1967.

The agency was so open to ideas that in 1958 Johnson recommended paying an 11-year-old boy who wrote in with suggestions on how to build a space station. The letter mirrored military plans so closely that a security investigation was also ordered, according to the DARPA history.

One legendary manager was the late J.C.R. Licklider, an acoustical engineer and early mainframe computer expert. In 1962, then-ARPA Director Jack Ruina recruited "Lick" after reading his pioneering article, "Man Computer Symbiosis," in an engineering journal — a prescient vision of real-time, interactive computing.

Licklider disdained red tape, meetings and paperwork. He freed scientists to move as rapidly as possible toward his dream, the "Intergalactic Network." His wild idea became the Internet after years of DARPA-funded research.

Early agency leaders would describe projects "in terms of what they would do for the country, not just for the military," said Robert Taylor, a former program manager and a creator of the Internet.

Two DARPA technologies — very large-scale integrated circuits, or VLSI, and graphic-design software — were originally developed, in part, to manage daunting controls faced by military pilots who made split-second decisions in advanced jets.

But the work also helped create the computer workstation industry, including such companies as Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems.

The agency has "paid back its investment by orders of magnitude," said Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park.

This year, the agency`s 160 program officers will dole out $2.7 billion on more than 200 projects in computing, space weapons, counter-terrorism, drone aircraft and biological defense, plus classified programs.

DARPA rotates program officers out after an average of four years to promote blue-sky thinking, said DARPA`s current director, Anthony J. Tether. "You can take inordinate risks that you typically wouldn`t take at a place where you think you`ll be for 30 years," said Tether, an electrical engineer and former top executive with Ford Aerospace Corp. and Science Applications International Corp.

One project, budgeted at $12 million this year, is to build a "brain-machine interface" that would allow soldiers` thoughts to be "turned into acts performed by a machine," according to a DARPA summary. So far, they`ve gotten a monkey to move a robotic arm just by thinking.

DARPA is also sponsoring a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas robot race next March to foster robotic research. The first land-based, driverless, fully autonomous vehicle to navigate the 300 miles of road and desert will earn a hefty prize of $1 million.

DARPA`s unlikely triumphs, however, have come at a high cost — 85% to 90% of its projects fail to accomplish their planned goals, although they sometimes spin off unanticipated technologies, according to Tether.

The list of failures is long and strange.

During the 1970s DARPA studied telepathy and psychokinesis, the psychic manipulation of objects. "The Soviets had a woman who was fantastic," Tether said. "She could feel colors."

DARPA probed such methods to see, for example, if anyone could psychically peek around the globe for military advantage. "DARPA spent, for those days, considerable amounts of money because the impact would be tremendous if you could do it" — and disastrous if the Soviets won the telepathy race, Tether said. Ultimately the agency concluded that parapsychology, if real, could not be used on demand, and killed the project.

Among the agency`s greatest fiascos was the decade-long program code-named "AGILE," which spent $264 million on a wide range of social, anthropological and technical research during the Vietnam War.

One project aimed to create a "mechanical elephant" ostensibly capable of traversing on "servo mechanism `legs` " through a jungle too dense for jeeps.

From the outset there were doubts. AGILE`s chief scientist likened the project to "sending a million dollars to chase dimes around a rice paddy," according to the DARPA history.

Nonetheless, the scientist justified it as consistent with Vietnam-era profligacy, according to DARPA`s history. "We knew it, but we did it," he said. "ARPA just behaved like the nation did [on Vietnam] and was as effective as what the nation did."

When then-DARPA Director Eberhardt Rechtin found out about the robotic pachyderm, he quashed the project, calling it a "damn fool" idea that would destroy DARPA`s credibility if Congress ever found out.

DARPA also threw a team of experts at the perplexing challenge of improving field rations for South Vietnamese soldiers.

"Vietnamese combat units were jumping out of aircraft into battle with live pigs and chickens under their arms because there was no supply system," according to agency history. DARPA worked for months to find a suitable container for Vietnamese nuoc mam — a popular fermented fish sauce "purported to eat through tin cans," agency history noted. It does not say whether the effort succeeded.

DARPA insiders saw AGILE as a failure. But as Herzfeld later explained in the DARPA history: It was "an abysmal failure; a glorious failure."

Today, DARPA is in the midst of yet another transformation, seeking new tools to fight terrorists, who are often indistinguishable from ordinary people. In this battle, the most powerful weapon is information — data that must be scooped up by the terabyte on innocents as well as terrorists.

One of its leading programs, called Total Information Awareness, was directed by retired Adm. John M. Poindexter, the former national security advisor under President Reagan who was convicted in 1990 of lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. The convictions were reversed on appeal.

Widely considered a brilliant iconoclast, Poindexter fit the DARPA culture of visionaries who could find provocative solutions to huge problems.

The Total Information Awareness system seeks to locate terrorists by "connecting the dots" in electronic data, such as driver`s licenses, purchases of airline tickets and chemicals, intelligence reports and public records. The system looks for patterns of terrorist activity in the records of foreign citizens and ordinary Americans.

Privacy advocates howled when they heard about the project, prompting Congress to restrict its scope. The system was recently renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness."

In an allied effort to track individuals, DARPA recently requested proposals for a $3.2-million project to catalog people by smell. The goal is to "determine whether genetically determined odortypes can be used to identify specific individuals" and develop methods "for detecting and identifying specific individuals by such odortypes."

The search for more and better information also led DARPA to create the ill-fated FutureMAP, which Poindexter also headed.

It entailed a trading system, similar to those used to speculate on the future value of commodities such as pork bellies or oil, to bet on the likelihood of terrorist bombings or assassinations. The king of Jordan was noted as a theoretical target on DARPA`s Web site.

While some financial experts said the system could have predictive value, FutureMAP`s problems outweighed that prospect. Terrorists could easily subvert the system by betting on hoaxes or planned actions, and enrich themselves in the process.

Poindexter resigned Tuesday and FutureMAP was terminated, but it spurred complaints that DARPA technocrats were politically tone-deaf.

Tether, who still supports the concepts behind Poindexter`s programs, acknowledged that the project was poorly communicated. He conceded the public might think "people are crazy over there."

Now he`s worried that Congress could push for more controls over the agency, a move that could wither its entrepreneurial spirit. "DARPA was created to get on the far side, to prevent technological surprise," he said. "You don`t want to get oversight where you have to ask, `Mother, may I?` "

Critics, however, say letting DARPA proceed without greater oversight is courting trouble. "Who are the Poindexters we don`t know about?" asked Saffo of the Institute for the Future.

The sense that DARPA`s managers give too little thought to the broad implications of their work was reinforced last year when DARPA-funded biologists said they had built an infectious polio virus from its chemical components, like a biological erector-set project. The virus wasn`t created as a weapon, but the work prompted fears that even more hazardous viruses might be similarly constructed.

"It set back discussions about how to properly defend against [biological weapons] by at least three years," said Steven Block, a Stanford University expert in biological warfare. New calls for regulation by Congress "had a chilling effect," he said.

Such episodes have alienated scientists who support unfettered research but view DARPA`s approach to military and national security problems as dangerously prone to errors in judgment.

"We have so few places in the United States that fund truly imaginative, `out-of-the-box` research," Block said. "I wish there were more agencies like this, but I wish they were less like the one they call DARPA."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Zu #5759

http://images.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2003-08/8982425.pdf

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq14a…
EDITORIAL


Share Iraq Burden, Quickly

August 14, 2003

The American occupiers of Iraq are telling a story of accomplishment: schools open, a dictator toppled and his sons killed, people speaking their minds, economic life reviving. But back home, Americans see brothers and sons in Baghdad being picked off by snipers and bombers. They hear Iraqis not saying thanks but complaining bitterly that their personal safety, daily comfort and job prospects are worse now than under Saddam Hussein. Iraqis trade in fantastic rumors — the U.S. troops wear refrigerated underwear! — that intensify their hostility.

The Bush administration has to move much more quickly to share the burden of pacifying and rebuilding Iraq, to at least diffuse the focus of Iraqi discontent. That means sharing authority and potential rewards as well.

Five civilian advisors the Pentagon sent to Iraq concluded there would be a short window of opportunity to establish security — the foundation for all accomplishments — before chaos took over. On Wednesday, a United Nations official in Iraq was quoted as saying "time is short" for occupation forces to improve life for Iraqis — that or face even more attacks. Last week`s bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad that killed 17 people ominously indicated a widening of the violence to "soft targets" and civilians.

The Pentagon`s advisors and two representatives of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who traveled separately concluded the obvious — that Washington needs more help. The Coalition Provisional Authority set up to run Iraq says 19 countries have supplied military personnel but rarely mentions that most sent just hundreds of them. Tens of thousands are needed. The authority says that as of mid-July other countries had pledged or contributed more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance. But the U.S. spends about $4 billion every month on Iraq, and authority head L. Paul Bremer III said this week that Iraq required "staggering" additional amounts to rebuild, including $16 billion to improve water systems and $13 billion for electric power.

The only reasonable next stop is the United Nations, no matter what anti-U.N. hard-liners in the administration argue. The Bush administration botched prewar diplomacy and U.N. Security Council members France and Russia opposed the U.S. invasion, but all nations have a stake in a stable Iraq free from terrorists. Sharing some power with the U.S.-led coalition would make it easier for nations that balked at sending troops, like India and Pakistan, to help. Sizable military forces from Muslim nations would diffuse Iraqis` focus on what they see as a unilateral occupation by anti-Muslim soldiers. The trade-off would be that other countries would demand a piece of the reconstruction pie.

Each day without electricity in 120-degree heat infuriates Iraqis who rejoiced at the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Each day another U.S. soldier is killed emboldens guerrillas and terrorists. Washington is not yet treating a deteriorating situation with the sheer urgency it demands.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Troops in Iraq face pay cut
Pentagon says tough duty bonuses are budget-buster
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, August 14, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08…


Washington -- The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, who are already contending with guerrilla-style attacks, homesickness and 120- degree-plus heat.

Unless Congress and President Bush take quick action when Congress returns after Labor Day, the uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved last April of $75 a month in "imminent danger pay" and $150 a month in "family separation allowances."

The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can`t sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities. But the proposed cuts have stirred anger among military families and veterans` groups and even prompted an editorial attack in the Army Times, a weekly newspaper for military personnel and their families that is seldom so outspoken.

Congress made the April pay increases retroactive to Oct. 1, 2002, but they are set to expire when the federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30 unless Congress votes to keep them as part of its annual defense appropriations legislation.

Imminent danger pay, given to Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force members in combat zones, was raised to $225 from $150 a month. The family separation allowance, which goes to help military families pay rent, child care or other expenses while soldiers are away, was raised from $100 a month to $250.

Last month, the Pentagon sent Congress an interim budget report saying the extra $225 monthly for the two pay categories was costing about $25 million more a month, or $300 million for a full year. In its "appeals package" laying out its requests for cuts in pending congressional spending legislation, Pentagon officials recommended returning to the old, lower rates of special pay and said military experts would study the question of combat pay in coming months.


WHITE HOUSE DUCKS ISSUE
A White House spokesman referred questions about the administration`s view on the pay cut to the Pentagon report.

Military families have started hearing about the looming pay reductions, and many aren`t happy.

They say duty in Iraq is dangerous -- 60 Americans have died in combat- related incidents since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1. Another 69 have been killed by disease, the heat or in accidents.

"Every person they see is a threat. They have no idea who is an enemy or who is a friend," said Larry Syverson, 54, of Richmond, Va., whose two sons, Brandon, 31, and Bryce, 25, are serving in Iraq. Syverson appeared with other military families at a Washington, D.C., news conference to publicize efforts to bring the troops home.

"You can get shot in the head when you go to buy a Coke," added Syverson, referring to an incident at a Baghdad University cafeteria on July 6 when an Army sergeant was shot and killed after buying a soda.


AFRAID FOR HER SON
Susan Schuman of Shelburne Falls, Mass., said her son, Army National Guard Sgt. Justin Schuman, had told her "it`s really scary" serving in Samarra, a town about 20 miles from Saddam Hussein`s ancestral hometown of Tikrit.

Schuman, who like Syverson has become active in a group of military families that want service personnel pulled out of Iraq, said the pay cut possibility didn`t surprise her.

"It`s all part of the lie of the Bush administration, that they say they support our troops," she said.

It`s rare for the independent Army Times, which is distributed widely among Army personnel, to blast the Pentagon, the White House and the Congress. But in this instance, the paper has said in recent editorials that Congress was wrong to make the pay raises temporary, and the Pentagon is wrong to call for a rollback.

"The bottom line: If the Bush administration felt in April that conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan warranted increases in danger pay and family separation allowances, it cannot plausibly argue that the higher rates are not still warranted today," the paper said in an editorial in its current edition.

On Capitol Hill, members say the issue will be taken up quickly after the summer recess when a conference committee meets to negotiate conflicting versions of the $369 billion defense appropriations bill.

"You can`t put a price tag on their service and sacrifice, but one of the priorities of this bill has got to be ensuring our servicemen and women in imminent danger are compensated for it," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Since President Bush declared `mission accomplished` on May 1, 126 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and we are losing more every day," Tauscher said. "If that`s not imminent danger, I don`t know what is."

The Senate bill calls for making permanent the increases in combat pay -- the first in more than a decade -- for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House wants to pay more for service in those two countries than for such duties as peacekeeping in the Balkans. With the money saved, the House wants to increase the size of the active military by 6,200 troops.

What won`t be clear until Congress returns is whether the Pentagon will lobby against keeping the increase.

The Pentagon reiterated Wednesday that its goal was for service personnel to rotate out of Iraq after a maximum of a year in that country. Units of the Army`s 3rd Infantry Division, which played a major role in last March`s invasion, have already come home.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the numbers
U.S. troops in Iraq: 148,000

U.S. troops in Afghanistan: 9,000

Imminent danger pay: $225 per month, but is scheduled to drop to $150 a month

Family separation allowances: $250 per month, but scheduled to drop to $100 per month

E-mail Edward Epstein at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Hearst ist bekannt worden durch Orson Welles und seinen Film `Citizien Kane` und den Ausspruch auf seinem Sterbebett `Rosebut`. Später gab es auch noch die `Entführung` seiner Enkelin`.

The Song of the River
William Randolph Hearst, 2003 Hearst Newspapers
Thursday, August 14, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/14/ED19…


New York -- Editor`s note: The Hearst Newspapers are commemorating the anniversary of the death of William Randolph Hearst. Along with numerous other writings, he penned this poem, and reprinting it is our traditional way of remembering our founder, who died Aug. 14, 1951.

The snow melts on the mountain

And the water runs down to the spring,

And the spring in a turbulent fountain,

With a song of youth to sing,

Runs down to the riotous river,

And the river flows to the sea,

And the water again

Goes back in rain

To the hills where it used to be.

And I wonder if life`s deep mystery

Isn`t much like the rain and the snow

Returning through all eternity

To the places it used to know.

For life was born on the lofty heights

And flows in a laughing stream,

To the river below

Whose onward flow

Ends in a peaceful dream.

And so at last,

When our life has passed

And the river has run its course,

It again goes back,

O`er the selfsame track,

To the mountain which was its source.

So why prize life

Or why fear death,

Or dread what is to be?

The river ran

Its allotted span

Till it reached the silent sea.

Then the water harked back

To the mountain-top

To begin its course once more.

So we shall run

The course begun

Till we reach the silent shore.

Then revisit earth

In a pure rebirth

From the heart of the virgin snow.

So don`t ask why

We live or die,

Or whither, or when we go,

Or wonder about the mysteries

That only God may know.

W. R. Hearst

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Thursday, August 14, 2003

DeLay poisons Mideast peace process

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Here`s a modest proposal offered today on behalf of world peace: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, should go back to his former job of pest exterminator.

The reason? DeLay is making a real pest of himself in the Middle East.

As majority leader, a reasonable person would expect DeLay to support President Bush`s "road map" to peace, which includes the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

But DeLay, a fundamentalist Christian who is by definition unreasonable, is not interested in any modern maps of the Mideast.

From behind his own peculiar version of the religious veil, DeLay believes that God gave Israel and the West Bank to the Jews, and that not one square inch of it can be relinquished.

When DeLay went to Israel and spoke to the Knesset, he criticized Bush`s proposal for a Palestinian homeland. In addition, he compared the Palestinians` current capital to Auschwitz, Pyongyang and the Gulag.

In a speech Monday at a synagogue in Houston, DeLay continued to spread his poison all over the peace process.

He opposed Bush`s efforts to persuade Israel not to build a fence in the West Bank and said, according to the Houston Chronicle, that the establishment of a Palestinian state is "unrealistic."

"In my opinion, you`ve got to change a generation before you can have a peaceful state that can live side by side with Israel," DeLay declared.

With sycophants like DeLay dabbling in the peace process, how many more generations of Israelis and Palestinians will be condemned to violence and death?

He and millions of other fundamentalist Christians have long supported the Israeli settlement-building activity on the West Bank.

He also supports what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank, a provocative move that many Arabs compare to ethnic cleansing.

DeLay`s motives are both theological and political.

His political motive is at best pragmatic and therefore at least easier to understand. The weaning of American Jews from the Democratic Party has long been a goal of the Republican Party, and DeLay is certainly trying to further that goal.

Perhaps, through some mysterious use of political trigonometry, DeLay`s grandstanding helps Bush maintain his ties to ardently pro-Israel Americans.

If so, DeLay is not only wrongheaded but Machiavellian in the extreme.

As for his religious motives, they are as suspect as any two-bit jihad that DeLay and his crowd are so quick to denounce.

Christian fundamentalists like DeLay will not be happy until Israel annexes the entire West Bank so that Jesus can come to Earth again.

According to the Book of Revelation, every smidgen of biblical Israel must be held by Jews before Jesus` second coming, an apocalyptic moment for the Jews, who will be presented with the ultimate raw deal. Either they can convert to Christianity or die.

The alliance between Christian fundamentalists and conservatives in Israel is the ultimate Faustian bargain.

As if Israel doesn`t have enough enemies around the world, now it finds itself in bed with a certain kind of American Christian -- DeLay, Jerry Falwell and about 15 million others -- who are praying non-stop for the coming of the apocalypse.

Presumably, Sharon and other Israeli leaders are willing to take their spiritual chances.

They`ll take DeLay`s support in Congress, hope he succeeds in derailing the Bush peace plan and deal with the Messiah when he gets here.

Still, DeLay`s continued rantings and ravings about the Middle East are unhelpful. Everyone is entitled to his or her own religious view, but to make foreign policy based on it is just to perpetuate the Middle East problem.

Jan Jarboe Russell is a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News. Copyright 2003 King Features Syndicate. E-mail: [e-mail]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/134877_russell14.html

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Blowing the N-whistle : Depleted uranium: How dangerous is it?

A former US military researcher tells Gay Alcorn of his crusade to expose the health risks of depleted-uranium weapons used in the Gulf wars.


Dr Rokke discusses the effects of depleted uranium
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4439.htm
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Doug Rokke sits on the edge of his chair in a beige, could-be-anywhere hotel room in Carlton. He stares at you with an almost embarrassing intensity and is close to tears.

"It`s lonely," he says slowly. "It`s very lonely. I made a decision. I was given a job. I did my job. I learned something. I gave them an answer they didn`t want. I became persona non grata. And the better parts of my life ended."

What remains is an obsession with proving he is right about the dangers of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. A waste produced from the uranium enrichment process, depleted uranium has become increasingly contentious since American and British militaries first used it in the 1991 Gulf War and, since then, in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rokke, a health physicist who became the Pentagon`s most senior DU expert during the first Gulf War, became convinced it had contaminated the battlefield and could be a factor in Gulf War Syndrome, the mysterious mix of illnesses that have afflicted returning soldiers. Rokke acknowledges DU`s brilliance as a weapon - because it is an extremely dense metal that sharpens and burns as it hits its target, it is used on the ends of tank shells and missiles to penetrate steel and concrete much more easily than conventional weapons. But he also believes that he and the research team became contaminated. "Everybody is sick," he says. "We`ve all got rashes, respiratory and kidney problems. It`s there; there are no two ways about it."

Rokke is a military veteran. He joined the US Air Force in 1967 and bombed Vietnam targets "before I could shave". Years later, with a master of science and expertise in environmental health, he was ordered to the Gulf to help protect American soldiers if chemical and biological weapons were used and, later, to oversee DU clean-up. He became convinced DU was causing illnesses such as cancer, and that the Pentagon was downplaying its dangers. When he went public with his views, he was sacked

He is still campaigning, and this week urged the Australian Government, which doesn`t allow weapons to be made with DU, to test returning troops for contamination and to campaign for it to be banned globally.

DU is only slightly radioactive - far less than uranium itself - but it is also chemically toxic, and scientists are divided about whether the combination poses a serious or remote health risk to soldiers and civilians who come in contact with it or inhale its dust. Little rigorous research has been done, and Rokke`s theories remain unproven.

The official American position is that it is safe. In March, US Army Colonel James Naughton dismissed Iraqi claims that DU weapons caused cancers and leukaemia in children who played around bombed-out tanks and buildings during the first Gulf War. He claimed the real reason Iraq complained about DU weapons was because they were so effective. "Why do they (the then Iraqi government) want it to go away?" Naughton asked. "They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them. There is no doubt DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks."

In the first Gulf War, most American deaths were from friendly-fire DU weapons. Rokke was ordered to decontaminate shot-up vehicles and tanks and to investigate health effects on troops. Dressed in protective gear and masks, he and his team crawled over tanks and other vehicles, sending some back to the US. Those considered too dangerous to move were buried in a giant hole in the ground.

In the mid-1990s, he was recalled from an academic job to head the Depleted Uranium Project in Nevada, which test-fired weapons into targets to analyse the health risks and to work out how to clean up safely.

Rokke, now 54, is convinced that he and other members of his team in Iraq were contaminated and that the tests he undertook showed that significant amounts of the DU vaporised on impact, making it extremely dangerous when inhaled. He pulls up his trouser leg to reveal the red rash he says appeared within hours of his contact with DU. He holds up his hand and moves fingers clumsily to show that his fine motor skills have gone. He has respiratory problems and cataracts and has medical reports showing that the amount of uranium in his urine is way above acceptable limits.

He has become a campaigner, not just for better clean-up and treatment, but for the weapons to be banned. "After everything I`ve seen, everything I`ve done, it became very clear to me that you just can`t take radioactive wastes from one nation and just throw it into another nation. It`s wrong. It`s simply wrong."

Depleted uranium is so cheap and effective - 350 tonnes was used in weapons in the first Gulf War and possibly 500 tonnes in this year`s Iraq conflict - that Rokke says the US is reluctant to do proper studies of veterans or Iraqi civilians. "It`s the arrogance. Once they acknowledge that there are actual health effects of depleted uranium munitions, then they can`t use them any more; the house of cards falls apart."

Rokke, brought to Melbourne by the Victorian Peace Network, has the single-mindedness of a whistleblower. He says he has lost friends, had his house ransacked, had his taxes audited and been publicly vilified for his outspokenness.

Concerns about DU have found some political acceptance - the British Government has announced it will test returning troops for DU contamination. But neither it, nor Washington, plan decontamination in Iraq. In the Australian Senate this week, Democrat Lynn Allison urged the Government to campaign internationally against DU in the same way it does against cluster bombs. Defence Minister Robert Hill said Australian troops in Iraq were not in areas where DU was used, and "there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that ammunition containing depleted uranium poses a significant adverse health risk to (Australian) personnel operating in Iraq".

The scientific evidence is cloudy because there has been so little research. It is broadly accepted that DU does little harm outside the body. But it may cause serious damage if it is inhaled. That means that people near where it is used could be contaminated, and it is possible it could seep into water tables.

Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the British Royal Society`s DU working group, this week told Radio National he welcomed the testing of British troops, because it meant the government "was at least taking the issue seriously, which is a very different attitude to the American military, who seem not to be interested in having any tests for their soldiers".

Spratt acknowledged that the issue was deeply political: the military have reasons for downplaying DU`s health effects, and the anti-nuclear lobby have an interest in inflating them.

Rokke has faith he is doing what is right, and he clings to the belief that he is still doing the job the Pentagon ordered him to do. "I didn`t ask for this job," he says. "I was given the job, and I`m going to finish the job."

Gay Alcorn is a senior writer and former Washington correspondent for The Age.

First published in The Age: June 28th, 2003

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Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003

WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein`s regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."


That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.

The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.

Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.

"The question isn`t whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.

The intelligence community`s doubts were fully aired to top Bush administration officials in the months before the war in multiple classified reports. The National Intelligence Council, which represents the consensus view of American spy agencies, reported to top policy makers at the start of the year that "what the administration was saying was a rosy picture," said a senior intelligence official who read the report and asked not to be named. "The report`s conclusions were totally opposite."

The vision the Bush administration has for the Middle East has been honed at least since 1996, with the writing of a paper entitled "A Clean Break." The paper was written by Douglas Feith, now the Pentagon`s policy director; Richard Perle, a senior Pentagon adviser; and others for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It provides an early window into some of the current administration`s thinking. For one, it predicted that toppling the Hussein regime could be the beginning of a larger rollback of autocratic, terrorist-supporting states such as Syria and Iran, blamed for supporting Hezbollah guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon and accused of terrorism against Israel and the United States.

It said a new Iraqi regime, coupled with pressure on the Syrian government, would also open up the opportunity for Lebanese Shi`ite Muslims to reconnect with Shi`ite religious leaders in the southern Iraqi holy city of Najaf, "to wean the south Lebanese [Shi`ites] away from Hezbollah, Iran and Syria." The document noted that the Lebanese Shi`ite community has historically identified with their Iraqi brethren, who during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s fought against the Iranians who share their faith.

A senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration`s view of a postwar Middle East begins by breaking current governments down into three categories. First are countries like Saudi Arabia, where the ruling class is relatively pro-Western but its people are increasingly anti-American; second are countries like Iran, whose governments are opposed to the United States but whose people are increasingly open to stronger ties with Washington; and third are those like Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, in which the government and the people are largely pro-American as a result of broader political freedom. He said a Middle East in which all Muslim countries fit the third category is the long-term goal.

But intelligence officials and specialists have long been uncertain whether reform-minded Arab intellectuals who embrace the US approach can overcome those who have shown little regard for it so far. Their suspicion has only grown in recent months as the postwar situation in Iraq raises serious questions about whether democracy can flourish there, let alone elsewhere in the region. Many leading clerics are calling for a religious-led government, frustrating the efforts of US allies to establish the foundations for democracy.

The intelligence community`s cautious view of the administration`s broader vision for the region was highlighted in a series of reports and briefings to top policy makers.

The CIA`s March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be "impossible," according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq`s history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I.

The State Department came to the same conclusion.

"Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq," said a March State Department report, first reported by the Los Angeles Times. "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."

A June risk assessment of the situation in Iraq by Kroll and Associates, an international consulting firm, raised anew doubts that representative democracy can take root there. It said a leading possibility would be that "Iraq experiences frequent lurches into serious disorder and instability, with changes of leadership, religious, and regional clashes and interventions by neighboring states. It seeks order in a military-led regime that provides a minimal level of stability in areas crucial to the economy and high levels of disorder elsewhere."

The report, "Iraq Risk Scenarios," described a pro-western, liberal, capitalist democracy as "very unlikely, although it appears to be the general goal of the US."

Critics of the administration`s approach have said that pushing too hard for democracy could spark an anti-American backlash, increasing the risk of terrorism against the United States.

"US efforts to impose a US vision on the area could lead to instability in countries like Jordan and Pakistan, and could result in further strengthening the hand of fundamentalism and terrorism," Edward Walker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the Clinton administration, warned in a prewar speech.

If the US presence is seen not as liberating, but rather as hostile to Islam and Arab culture, insensitive to the suffering of Iraqi people, and arrogant in its lack of consultation with other countries, "pressure will build on Arab governments to distance themselves from us; anti-Americanism will grow; new recruits will flow to fundamentalist causes and some will wind up in terrorist operations against us, against Israel and against moderate governments in the region; and the war on terrorism will suffer reversals," Walker said.

Top US officials have tempered their optimism, with the president saying last month that he never expected a Thomas Jefferson-type figure to emerge in Iraq overnight.

But the Bush administration remains committed to its vision. Last week, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that "much as a democratic Germany became a linchpin for a new Europe . . . so a transformed Iraq can become a key element of a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish."

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2003/08…

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Aug. 14, 2003. 01:00 AM

Terrorists sprouting under nose of American troops?
Americans don`t quite know what they are talking about when it comes to where the resistance is coming from


HAROON SIDDIQUI

Paul Bremer, the ruler of Iraq, is a former anti-terrorism expert from the State Department. That was one reason he got the job. We may, therefore, presume that he knows whereof he speaks about terrorism in post-war Iraq, especially since he has access to the latest intelligence.

Last Friday, a day after a bomb ripped apart the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, killing 17 people, this is what he said: "We have a substantial number of Ansar terrorists around here."

He was referring to Ansar al Islam, a small guerrilla group that once had a base in the mountains of the Kurdish region of northeastern Iraq.

In the weeks leading up to the war on Iraq, the Bush administration, desperate to link Saddam Hussein to terrorism, cited Ansar as his conduit to Al Qaeda.

Ansar, in fact, had been waging a brutal war since 2001 against the secular Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The group`s leader, Mullah Mustafa Kreker, awaiting refugee status in Norway, scoffed at the alleged links to Al Qaeda.

So did the International Crisis Group, a Belgian-based think tank. It dismissed Ansar as "nothing more than a minor irritant in local Kurdish politics," and added that "it is not surprising that the PUK has sought to emphasize the group`s putative terrorist connections."

Still, Colin Powell, in his Feb. 5 speech to the U.N., said that an Ansar camp was an Al Qaeda chemical weapons factory. He also alleged that, "Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization," i.e. Ansar, and that the agent had arranged safe haven there for Al Qaeda members from Afghanistan in 2000.

However, reporters rushing to the site found no factory. And Mullah Krekar said he had "never seen or met" the alleged agent.

When the war on Iraq began, it was natural that PUK and other Kurdish militias would join the Americans in destroying the Ansar force, which was said to number 650 or 700 or, maybe, even 800 — nobody seems to know, for sure.

A major assault involving missiles, bombers, helicopters and armoured vehicles resulted in the killing of dozens of Ansar members — 150 or 200 or 250, depending on who was talking. Dozens were reported arrested and an unknown number were said to have slipped away, perhaps across the Iranian border.

Ansar al Islam was pronounced dead.

Nothing more was heard of the group until last month when the occupying American forces started running into violent resistance.

Bremer and other officials identified the attackers as "dead-enders" and "bitter-enders" among Saddam`s "Baathist remnants," along with Shiites, Iran-backed militias, "Fedayeen," mysterious "foreigners" whose origins were left undefined as well as members of Ansar al Islam.

Which brings us back to Bremer`s words last week, and since. How did he know Ansar was behind the Jordanian embassy terrorism?

Because, he said, car bombings are standard for Middle East terrorist groups but virtually unknown in Iraq. "We believe there are now quite a number of these Ansar al Islam professional killers on the loose in the country." His officials estimated their number at "perhaps 150."

So: The Ansar obituary had proved premature.

Not surprising, given the post-war chaos.

But, Bremer also added, American intelligence has it that "there was part of Mukhabarat (Saddam`s secrect security force) that specialized in sophisticated bombings, and it is possible that this kind of technique did exist."

So: The Baghdad blast had the stamp of foreign terrorists but it could have been carried out by locals, even while the Ansar is back — this time not just in the mountains but in the capital itself.

In other words, Americans don`t quite know what they are talking about when it comes to where the resistance is coming from, just as they don`t have a clue about much else in Iraq.

Then came a gem yesterday in a front-page story about Ansar in the New York Times. Veteran correspondent Neil MacFarquhar reported:

"Although initially strictly a Kurdish organization, its ranks swelled with Arab fighters after the U.S. attack in Afghanistan in October, 2001" — not 2000, as Powell had said.

MacFarquhar also drew the spectre of Iraq as the new Afghanistan and cited a statement by Mullah Krekar last Sunday from Norway to a Lebanese satellite TV station.

Sounding like an Osama bin Laden wannabe, Krekar said that American-occupied Iraq is the new frontier of jihad against America, just as the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan was for the earlier generation of Mujahideen (who were supported by the CIA).

So: The two wars launched by the George W. Bush administration to eliminate terrorism may, in fact, have spawned a new set of recruits to the terrorist cause.

In a further irony, the jihadists are said to be congregating not in some failed state ruled by fundamentalists in cahoots with bin Laden but right under the noses of American troops in an American-run colony.


Additional articles by Haroon Siddiqui

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thes…

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WorkingForChange
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Marketing the invasion of Iraq
New book documents Bush Administration`s use of PR firms to sell war to the American people


Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber`s new book will not sell as many copies as Hillary Clinton`s memoir, the latest Harry Potter book or Ann Coulter`s most recent bestselling work of fiction, "Treason." There won`t be a major motion picture deal and there`s no made-for-tv flick in the works. Unlike Jessica Lynch, Stauber and Rampton haven`t received a massive multimedia financial proposal from CBS -- or any other network. And thus far, they haven`t been asked to co-host MTV`s Doggy Fizzle Televizzle with Snoop Dogg.
They haven`t even been invited to discuss their timely book on the Today Show, Good Morning America or any of the nightly cable news channel talk-fests. And most mainstream dailies haven`t seen fit to review it.

In a mid-August email, Stauber talked about a recent trip to New York City "where our very competent and hardworking publicist at Penguin was unable to interest a single ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/FOX/CNN/PBS program in having us on for a discussion." He noted that even "the war`s number one cheerleaders at FOX" refused to avail themselves of the opportunity "to pound and smear us in their typical WWF style. Amazingly," adds Stauber, "the common response from these networks when they turned down our publicist was `the book is not topical.`"

But despite this homeland blackout, the book has been well-received in Australia and Great Britain, and is managing to do very well in some major U.S. markets: On August 10, it was #4 on the paperback bestseller list of the San Francisco Chronicle -- one of the few daily papers to review the book. Amazon.com had it ranked #41 on August 8th. Given the media blackout, most Americans have probably not heard of the book.

If there is one work of non-fiction you read this summer, make it Stauber and Rampton`s "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush`s War on Iraq" (Tarcher/Putnam, $11.95).

Raising questions

As the Bush Administration`s rationales for going to war with Iraq continue to unravel questions are finally being asked about how we got into the mess in the first place. How could an invasion of Iraq -- based on administration-orchestrated misinformation, disinformation and outright lies -- have been sold to the American people? Who did the selling? And what are its ramifications for democratic discourse and/or future American overseas adventures? These are just some of the issues tackled in "Weapons of Mass Deception."

Rampton and Stauber are veteran PR industry watchers. Co-authoring such books as "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry" (1995); "Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" (1997); and "Trust Us, We`re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future" (2001), they`ve relentlessly focused on decoding the manipulative monkeyshines of the PR industry.

Rampton has been a newspaper reporter, activist and author and has contributed to The Nation, In These Times, Harper`s and a number of other publications. Stauber, a long-time investigative reporter, founded of the Center for Media & Democracy in 1993 and is its Executive Director. Both edit and write for the Center`s quarterly newsmagazine, "PR Watch" (http://www.prwatch.org).

You may be familiar with some of the issues discussed in "Weapons of Mass Deception," but unless you monitor the ins and outs of the pr industry the books drops the veil on a number of stories that have not been covered adequately -- or not reported at all -- by the mainstream media. Of particular interest is the book`s focus on the critical role of public relations companies hired by the government to sell the war.

The Rendon Group`s information war

"Weapons of Mass Deception" takes a close look at the Rendon Group, a relatively unknown yet powerful public relations outfit that has had its imprint all over U.S.-Iraqi affairs for more than a decade. Founded by John Rendon, a former consultant to the campaigns of Democratic Party politicians Michael Dukakis and Jimmy Carter, the company "has worked... during the past decade on behalf of clients including the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency." In 1996, Rendon boasted to an audience of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy that during the first Gulf War he had been responsible for providing the hand-held American flags and flags of other coalition countries to the people of Kuwait City so they could greet the U.S. Marines when they arrived.

"Saddam Hussein was the beloved ally of the senior Bush Administration right up until the point he decided he could go in and take over the oil fields in Kuwait," John Stauber told Amy Goodman, the host of Pacifica Radio`s Democracy Now, in a recent interview. "Part of the PR campaign against Saddam twelve years ago was [the relatively easy task of turning] him into an evil dictator." Before Desert Storm, Rendon received $100,000 per month "to work the media on behalf of the Kuwaiti royal family."

According to the book, after the war, "during the first year of Rendon`s post-war contract with the CIA... [it] spent more than $23 million, producing videos, comic books ridiculing Saddam, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and two separate radio programs that broadcast messages from Kuwait into Iraq, mocking the regime and calling on Iraqi army officers to defect."

The Rendon Group`s "most significant project" was helping to organize the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in 1992. The INC is described as a coalition of "Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites Arabs, secularists and Islamists, liberal democrats, old-style nationalists and ex-military officers." Ahmed Chalabi, the "colorful" Rendon protege was appointed to head the group in October 1992. ABC News` Peter Jennings reported in 1998 that the Rendon Group not only came up with the [group`s] name, but had passed along more than $12 million of CIA money to the organization. Chalabi will soon take the reigns (for a month) of the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council, the first national Iraqi political body since the fall Saddam Hussein`s regime in April.

In the fall of 2001, barely a month after 9/11, the Pentagon gave the Rendon Group "a four-month, $397.000 contract to handle PR aspects of the U.S. military strike in Afghanistan." Within a few months Rendon was assisting the Pentagon`s "new propaganda agency, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI)." Although the OSI was forced to disband over a spate of bad publicity, Rendon kept its Pentagon contract. Rendon Group staff refused to discuss its Pentagon work with the press, claiming it was operating under a "confidentiality/nondisclosure agreement."

One incident "during the war itself provided a rare breach in the wall of secrecy." The incident involved the murder of TV cameraman Paul Moran by a suicide bomber in northern Iraq in late March. His obituary, published in his hometown of Adelaide, Australia, noted that Moran`s activities "included working for an American public relations company contracted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to run propaganda campaigns against the dictatorship." John Rendon attended Moran`s funeral in Adelaide.

September surprise

"From a marketing point of view, you don`t introduce new products in August," White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. told the New York Times in September 2002. Rampton and Stauber write: "Card was explaining what the Times characterized as a `meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.`" From that point forward, the administration rolled out a heavy arsenal of misinformation, disinformation, and highly dubious intelligence to sell the war to the American people. The late-March invasion of Iraq was the culmination of this campaign of "perception management."

Post-war planning was obviously not nearly as attentive to details. After manufacturing pre-war consent, the administration has been confronted with a number of unexpected challenges including chaos and instability, a burgeoning guerilla resistance, and mounting U.S. casualties. At home, the Bush Administration continues to receive criticism about ginned up intelligence and the failure to find Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction.

Among the lessons gleaned from "Weapons of Mass Deception" is how this administration readily pulls together a dream team of spinmeisters and story tellers -- government agencies, highly paid public relations firms, political hacks, and a willing media -- to market its message.

In the coming months, expect the Bush Administration to launch a campaign to convince the American public that it has found Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction, or what it now prefers to call "weapons of mass destruction programs." In light of Andrew Card`s words, the campaign will likely not be unveiled until September. Conservative columnist Robert Novak has already provided a sneak preview: In a short item in an early-August column Novak wrote: "Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September." For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15447

[Joerver]

Power Cuts in Southern Iraq Halve Oil Exports
Thu August 14, 2003 06:25 AM ET




By Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Power cuts have halved oil exports from southern Iraq and copper theft from electricity lines threatens to shut down exports from the region completely, an oil ministry source said on Thursday.

The massive theft of power lines in the south is the latest setback to U.S. plans to rebuild the war-torn country, after a series of pipeline blasts and looting derailed reconstruction efforts in the north in June and July.

"Our big problem is the stealing of copper from power transmission lines. They are stealing from key lines and smuggling it to Iran. If this problem is not resolved it could bring exports in the south to a standstill," the senior ministry official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

"We were exporting about 500,000 barrels a day from the south. They have fallen to between 200,000 barrels a day and 300,000. Now Iraq is buying up many generators from the Gulf."

The collapse in exports from the south comes as oil begins flowing again through the country`s northern export pipeline to Turkey that had been plagued by explosions in June and July.

Turkish industry sources said the pipeline was pumping at more than 500,000 barrels per day on Thursday, although tanker loadings from Turkey`s Ceyhan port have yet to resume and pipeline volumes will probably subside to 200,000-300,000 bpd.

Oilfields, refineries and export terminals in the south, home to two-thirds of Iraq`s production capacity, have been crippled by power failures for the last few weeks.

Thieves brazenly load huge power transmission cables onto trucks for export in broad daylight. Frequent plumes of black smoke over Basra signal the looters burning off the cable`s rubber coating. The oil ministry official said the theft is highly organized and targets the Iranian market.

SABOTAGE AND LOOTING

Iraq`s ability to resume its role as a major oil exporter hinges on how it tackles sabotage and looting.

In the south, exports are vulnerable to what oil ministry officials call economic sabotage -- the theft of crude from pipelines and copper from power transmission lines.

"We have told the British troops for months about the copper problem. They are only now starting to deal with the economic sabotage of pipelines. If the copper problem continues it will be a big crisis," he said.

The British navy intercepted a ship smuggling stolen Iraqi oil on Saturday.

"Imagine Basra residents who have trouble getting petrol at the station watching smugglers move oil from road tankers to ships to be sold outside the country."

Residents of the southern city of Basra rioted on Sunday to protest the blackouts and shortages of motor fuel.

The U.S. hopes to lift Iraqi oil output to 2 million barrels per day by the end of the year, and is seeking to award $1 billion in contracts this month to repair oil infrastructure.

"We had reached a crude export capacity of 1.1 million barels per day, but the problem is it is not sustainable," said the official.

The ministry source said Iraq was buying new generators to revive power at the southern oilfields and to keep crude moving through the pipelines.

"Iraq is buying up all the generators in the Gulf. But this is costly and unreliable," said the official.

Baghdad recently signed long-term oil sales contracts for the first time since the war, but tankers sent to its Gulf port of Mina al-Bakr have incurred costly delays under loading because of the power failures.

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:38 p.m. EDT August 13, 2003

IRAQ-POSTWAR

The U.S. introduced a resolution at the United Nations Wednesday that would establish a U-N mission in Iraq and welcome the Iraqi Governing Council as "an important step" toward the formation of a true government. The U.S. is calling for a vote Thursday. The resolution faces strong opposition from Syria.
The U.S. military says soldiers who fired on an anti-American protest in Baghdad were shooting in self-defense. One Iraqi was killed when soldiers fired into a crowd of about three-thousand. They shouted anti-American slogans and claimed that U.S. forces tore down an Islamic banner on a telecommunications tower.
Bomb attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq have killed at least two soldiers in the past 24 hours. The latest attack took place this morning, about 15 miles south of Tikrit. The military reports a bomb went off near an armored personnel carrier. One soldier died and another was wounded. The military is now also reporting a soldier`s death in a bomb attack that occurred yesterday near Taji (tah-jee). Two others were wounded.
A group representing some military families and veterans is demanding an end to the U.S. operation in Iraq. One of the co-founders of Military Families Speak Out argues there was no justification to send troops into Iraq. And Nancy Lessin adds that the occupation now suffers from a lack of planning, lack of support for the troops and inadequate protection for Americans.
The U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq says he simply doesn`t know how long American troops will have to stay there. Paul Bremer says it depends in part on how soon the Iraqis can assume responsibility for their own security. He tells A-B-C`s "Good Morning America" progress is being made in turning over more responsibility for security to the Iraqi people.
For the first time since the war, Iraq has started pumping fresh crude oil through a pipeline leading to Turkey`s coast. A Turkish oil official says the pumping appears to be going smoothly. The Dow Jones news service has said the oil flow to Turkey is expected to be between 300-thousand and 400-thousand barrels a day -- about half the pre-war amount.
A top Bush administration official says U.S. troops won`t leave Iraq before weapons of mass destruction are found. Following security talks with Australia`s prime minister, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he has "absolute confidence" such weapons will be found.
The military reports killing two Iraqis in separate incidents in an area 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. A military spokeswoman says the two were killed after opening fire on U.S. troops. She didn`t give more details.
U.S. troops identified Saddam Hussein loyalists in custody Wednesday as two key members of the ousted dictator`s Republican Guard and a paymaster for his Fedayeen Saddam militia. Officials at the 4th Infantry Division said they released ten other men taken in a sweep through the outskirts of Saddam`s hometown, Tikrit, on Tuesday, keeping four in custody.
The commander of American forces in Iraq tells The Associated Press the stakes are too high to let casualties deter the mission of pacifying Iraq. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez says "Every American needs to believe this: that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America." He says it`s part of the global war on terrorism.
Some of the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq say nobody told them how long they`re expected to stay in the country, despite an announcement from their commander. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez says troops should expect to serve for at least a year in Iraq, with brief rest trips around the region and maybe a few days at home. Sanchez says every soldier has been told that.
U.S. forces are keeping people away from a burst oil pipeline north of Baghdad. Flames are shooting 200 feet into the air from the burst line. American soldiers have fired warning shots to keep reporters and others from approaching.
The voice of the British weapons adviser who killed himself last month was played back during the official inquiry into his death. David Kelly complained on a tape that he was uneasy with the wording of a British intelligence report produced by Prime Minister Tony Blair`s staff on Iraq`s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But in the taped conversation with a B-B-C reporter, Kelly also said he didn`t think government officials were being "willfully dishonest."

COALITION CASUALITIES


As of Wednesday, August 13th, 267 U.S. soldiers have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the military.
The British government has reported 43 deaths.
On or since May first, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 129 American soldiers have died in Iraq, according to the latest military figures.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
++++US+++++UK++++Total++++Days

++++266+++++46++++312+++++147

Latest Fatality Date: 8/14/2003

08/14/03 Ministry of Defense
A Territorial Army soldier died on 13 August in southern Iraq.
08/14/03 Yahoo (Reuters)
One British soldier was killed and two were wounded when a bomb blast hit a military ambulance in the southern city of Basra
08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and one wounded when the M-113 armored personnel carrier they were riding in struck an explosive device near the town of Ad Dwar at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 13.
08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and 2 were wounded when their convoy was attacked by an improvised explosive device in the vicinity of Al Taji on Aug. 12.
08/13/03 CENTCOM
1 US SOLDIER KILLED IN TRAFFIC ACCIDENT IN MOSUL ON 12TH
08/12/03 CENTCOM
THIRD US SOLDIER IN LESS THAN 1 WEEK DIES IN SLEEP IN IRAQ

[Joerver]

Calling Out Colin: What Powell got wrong in his U.N. briefing on Iraq

By Fred Kaplan

Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2003 (Slate) In the middle of a fascinating article in Monday`s Los Angeles Times, which quotes several former Iraqi officers on why they lost the war so badly, the following passage leaps out: "Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons."
The truth of this denial is, by now, close to inescapable. Too much time has passed, too many suspicious sites have been inspected, too many knowledgeable sources have been interrogated, for much doubt to remain on the matter. Maybe a ton of VX will be unearthed in Ahmed`s basement tomorrow, but this is unlikely—and, at this point, few would regard such a find as authentic.

Whatever officials and apologists may say about it in retrospect, the belief in Iraq`s "weapons of mass destruction" was the only compelling reason, really, to have fought this war. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and his toppling is welcome. But the same could be said of North Korea`s Kim Jong-il, with whom the Bush administration is now (properly) preparing to negotiate, or of Liberia`s Charles Taylor, whose exile didn`t strike Bush as worth the commitment of more than a handful of Marines. Even Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon`s intellectual architect of Gulf War II, admitted in his famous Vanity Fair interview that Iraqi human rights alone would not have justified the sacrifice of American soldiers.

So let us ask, one more time: Where are the Iraqi WMD? Or, more to the point now, since such weapons will probably never be found: Why did so many—including Bush officials, whose views on this issue, I think, were sincere, if hyped—believe Iraq had WMD in the first place?

The best case that the administration ever made on the issue was Secretary of State Colin Powell`s briefing before the U.N. Security Council last Feb. 5, shortly before the war. Powell introduced the briefing as "an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior" that "demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort to disarm" and, in fact, "are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction."

Months later, news articles reported that Powell had spent several days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., looking over the intelligence, and that he put only the strongest evidence in his briefing, tossing out many claims—for instance, the business about uranium-shopping in Niger—that he considered flimsy, if not fraudulent.

Yet in hindsight, his best stuff now looks pretty thin. The four "chemical bunkers," which he showed in overhead spy photos, have since been scoured to a fare-thee-well and come up dry. Powell also made much of aluminum tubes, which he said could be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium* and thus constituted proof that Saddam remained "determined to acquire nuclear weapons." Even back in February, Powell conceded that some intelligence analysts thought the tubes were meant for conventional artillery rockets, though he added, "It strikes me as quite odd that the tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets." Now, it doesn`t seem odd at all; indeed, the tolerances turn out to be exactly the same as those of conventional artillery tubes made in Italy.

As for the "mobile biological-weapons labs," one trailer of which was supposedly found in northern Iraq last May, the Defense Intelligence Agency has recently concluded that the trailer was in fact what Iraqi officials claimed it was: a producer of hydrogen for military weather balloons. (Even the rival Central Intelligence Agency`s report of May 28, which called the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological-warfare program," was, read closely, far more ambiguous than its sweeping summary paragraphs suggested.)

This leaves one piece of Powell`s briefing that remains, to this day, puzzling. It involved two intercepted phone conversations that Powell played and translated. One, recorded Nov. 26, the day before U.N. weapons inspections were to resume, was said to be between a colonel and a brigadier general in the Iraqi Republican Guard. The general says, "I`ll come see you in the morning. I`m worried you all have something left." The colonel replies, "We evacuated everything. We don`t have anything left." The implication is that the Iraqis have removed illegal materials from a site to be inspected to the next day.

The other conversation, which Powell said was recorded Jan. 30, was supposedly between two commanders of the 2nd Republican Guard Corps. One reads aloud an instruction, as the other writes it down, phrase by phrase: "Remove the expression `nerve agent` wherever it comes up in wireless communications."

This was by far the most persuasive part of Powell`s briefing. At the time, I called it a "smoking gun," writing, "Assuming the tape is genuine and the translation correct, here is the evidence … that a) the Iraqis possess illegal weapons; (b) they are deliberately hiding them from the inspectors; and c) they are not likely to give up the weapons on their own."

I still stand by the logic of that sentence, but I would like to italicize those first few words: "Assuming the tape is genuine…" Given all the shenanigans that have been revealed since the war ended—the forged letter about uranium from Niger, the fictitious claim in Britain`s intelligence dossier that Iraqi troops could fire chemical shells with 45 minutes` notice, and all the rest—it can no longer be assumed that the tape is real or that the people speaking on the tape are who Powell said (and no doubt thinks) they are.

It has been well known since last fall that the Bush administration was actively seeking intelligence that would show Iraq had two things: weapons of mass destruction and a connection with al-Qaida. When the CIA and DIA failed to come up with the goods, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a handful of his top aides formed their own intelligence network to search more carefully. If the word had gone out, to friends far and wide, that Rumsfeld was looking for this sort of evidence, is it not conceivable that someone with an interest in seeing Saddam overthrown—and there were many parties who had such an interest—might have "staged" a phone conversation that they knew the National Security Agency would intercept?

Maybe this is far-fetched. If so, the administration should finally tell us who these officers were. Surely there is no point keeping this information classified; revealing their identities would not put them in any danger. These tapes form the last shred of possible evidence that Iraq might have had chemical or biological weapons in the past nine months—that, in other words, the war had any legitimate cause. If the officers were real, name them.

There is another possibility, perhaps equally far-fetched: that the officers were real but they were making things up, on orders, on the assumption that U.S. agents were listening in. Consider this: If Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, why did he behave as if he did? Deterrence might be a reason. If the United States thought he had these weapons, maybe it wouldn`t invade. (CIA Director George Tenet had testified, after all, that Saddam would use these weapons only if his regime were threatened with destruction; this logic was the main reason many Americans opposed the war before it started.)

History is filled with precedents for similar disinformation campaigns. In the late 1950s, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed that his factories were churning out ICBMs "like sausages"—when, in fact, his ICBM program was dreadfully stalled. Khrushchev worried that the Americans were planning a nuclear first strike and thought a Potemkin missile program would give them second thoughts. This was a gross miscalculation; his thundering statements only spurred Eisenhower, then Kennedy, to accelerate and expand the construction of U.S. nuclear missiles.

Monday`s Los Angeles Times story reveals that Saddam was a stupid military commander in many ways. For instance, he thought a battle of Baghdad would be a repeat of Black Hawk Down, failing to consider that this time the United States might bring in armor. Maybe he was no less stupid as a diplomat, creating a perception that he thought would dissuade the Americans from invading when in fact it spurred them on.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2086924/

[Joerver]

`It was punishment without trial`
Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them. Jonathan Steele reveals the grim reality of coalition justice in Baghdad

Jonathan Steele
Friday August 15, 2003
The Guardian

It was a warm spring evening in a Baghdad suburb when American troops stopped the car in which 11-year-old Sufian Abd al-Ghani was riding close to his home with his uncle and a neighbour. They were ordered out and told to lie face down on the road. Sufian`s father heard the commotion and rushed out to find the soldiers pointing their rifles at his son and the others. Claiming the uncle had fired at them, they started beating the three captives with their rifle butts, according to the father.

A neighbour confirms that a shot had been fired, but it was part of a row between the Ghanis and another family. "In Iraq this is normal. Almost every household in Baghdad owns a weapon. One man was drunk. The Americans must have heard the shot as they were passing. It was not directed at them," says the neighbour, who prefers not to be named.

The American soldiers searched the Ghanis` house, but found nothing. For three hours Sufian was kept on the ground with the two adults. Then the Americans put hoods over their heads, tied their hands with tight plastic bracelets, and drove them away. "Why are you taking my son?" a desperate Abdullah Ghani pleaded. "Don`t worry. As he`s a child, we`ll send him back in a couple of days," a Sergeant Stark assured him.

The three were driven off to Baghdad airport, where US forces have set up a makeshift prison in large tents. Around 500 Iraqis are held in miserable conditions, sleeping on the ground, with inadequate water rations and not enough blankets to go round, according to former detainees.

Sufian spent eight days in a tent with around 20 adults. They were given yellow packets of ready-to-eat meals, the standard US army fare, but no change of clothes. Then the hood went back on and Sufian was taken to the Salhiyeh detention centre for women and juveniles - a holding facility in a police station just outside Saddam Hussein`s Republican Palace, which has become the headquarters of the coalition authority.

A woman prisoner spotted Sufian and realised he was much younger than the other inmates. On her release she went to see the Ghanis, who had been searching frantically for their son. It was now June 17, almost three weeks after his arrest on May 28.

They brought the boy food and clean clothes, and four days later obtained an order from Mohammed Latif al-Duleimi, a US-approved investigating judge, for Sufian`s immediate release. Sufian`s father took it to the US military police who run the detention centre. But they told him that orders by Iraqi judges had no legal authority.

Ghani turned for help to the new US-founded police academy. He met a Captain Crusoe, who took up the case and rang a US army lawyer at the airport. The lawyer ordered the boy`s release on June 21 - but still the military police refused to act.

Ghani went back to Crusoe, who made more phone calls, to no avail. Finally Crusoe went to the detention centre with Ghani, and brought Sufian out himself. "Take your son," he said.

After 24 days the boy`s ordeal was over, but he regularly has nightmares. However, his case is not the worst in the four months since the Americans occupied Iraq. Several children have been shot dead, some as passengers in cars which fell foul of American checkpoints, some mistaken at night for adults. But if those deaths were the result of accidents, how is it that an 11-year-old could be held for over three weeks without anyone in authority asking questions?

The answer is: easily. Sufian`s detention highlights the problems faced by hundreds of Iraqis: arrests followed by incompetent interrogation, or none at all; the lack of an efficient trial-or-release system; shocking prison conditions; constant buck-passing; and sloppy paperwork by the coalition authorities. The result is that in almost every case families take weeks or months to find out where their loved ones are being detained.

Ahmed Suhail, a final-year high-school student, was with his father, a well-known Baghdad vet, when they were stopped at a checkpoint on May 15. His father had a pistol (the coalition banned the carrying of weapons outside the home from June 14, but at the time it was not an offence). Both were hooded and taken to Baghdad airport. "We were in a tent for 150 people. We only got 25 litres of water a day for everyone, which means about a cupful per person, in temperatures of over 40C," Ahmed recalls. "There was a small ditch in the open for a toilet, which meant you were naked in front of everybody. There was no shower. We slept on the sand. My father could speak some English and two soldiers gave us overalls as a change of clothes."

After three weeks, for no apparent reason, Dr Suhail was taken to Abu Ghraib, Saddam`s notorious Baghdad prison, which has been pressed back into service by the Americans. A week later he was released, but Ahmed remained at the airport. "Then I was told I was being taken to a prison camp at Umm Qasr. No reason was given."

Umm Qasr is close to the Kuwaiti border, about 400 miles from Baghdad, and Ahmed said he was taken with 21 other men, lying on the floor of an American army lorry for 11 hours, with a stop for the night in Nassiriyah. Conditions in the camp in Umm Qasr were much better than at Baghdad airport, and the prisoners had regular access to showers.

After 33 days there, and 66 of detention in all, Ahmed was brought back to Baghdad and released. "At no time was I questioned or interrogated, or charged. It was just punishment without trial. When the Americans first came to Baghdad I was happy, but I don`t want to speak about my feelings towards them now," he says.

One reason for Iraqi suspects` lengthy stays in the tented camps at Baghdad airport and Abu Ghraib is the coalition authority`s decision to award itself 90 days before a detainee needs to be brought before a magistrate or judge. Amnesty International, which has produced a detailed memorandum of concern about the coalition`s handling of law and order, points out a bizarre double standard: suspects held by the Iraqi police have to have their case reviewed by a magistrate within 24 hours.

Amnesty also reported that the coalition`s rules require that suspects should be allowed to consult a lawyer within 72 hours of "induction" into a detention camp. In practice, there is no deadline for induction and "detainees appear to be invariably denied access to lawyers, sometimes for weeks," it said.

Another reason for the chaos is the coalition`s failure to keep an accurate central list of detainees, with names in Arabic, to which searching families can refer.

In her home in al-Mansour, a suburb of Baghdad, Eftekhar Medhat relates the arrest of her husband, Zakariya Zakher Sa`ad. He is a gardener and nightwatchman at the home of the Russian consul. The consul had left during the American bombing and the house remained an obvious target for looters and burglars long after the first turbulent days of the occupation.

Alerted one night by a neighbour, Sa`ad went out with a Kalashnikov. He ran into an American patrol and was thrown to the ground and arrested. The neighbour tried in vain to tell the soldiers he was not a thief. "At first we went to Abu Ghraib," says Medhatas, her 19-year-old daughter, Huda, sitting nervously beside her. "The Americans told us to go to the airport. At the airport they told us to go to the International Committee of the Red Cross. We went to the ICRC but got no help."

They then turned to the 101st Airborne`s civil military operations centre, located in a disused supermarket. Here they found two unusually sympathetic officers, Major Hector Flores and his sergeant, Paul Holding. Their work was in sharp contrast to the behaviour of most US troops, who patrol in vehicles in conditions of increasing tension as attacks on convoys show no let-up.

Flores and Holding present a different face: "I`m the happiest man in the US army. We are in contact with ordinary Iraqis and we can really help them. We call them customers," says Holding. Their job includes processing claims by Iraqis for damage when American troops shoot at vehicles or homes, or when Iraqis are wounded by unexploded bombs.

Trawling through lists of thousands of badly transliterated Arabic names, Flores finally found a reference to an "Ahmed Mahjoub Zakariya, born in 1948". "I think it is your husband," he told Medhat. "I`m going to fax a photo of him to Camp Bucca, and I hope they will then let him out."

A system which requires an individual act of kindness by an American officer to locate a detainee, or in Sufian`s case to insist on implementing a release order made by an Iraqi judge, is clearly inadequate.

The coalition authorities are aware of the problems. In addition to Amnesty, the coalition has also come under pressure from the UN and the ICRC. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the secretary-general`s special representative in Iraq, recently reported that he had told the US administrator, Paul Bremer, and his British counterpart, John Sawers, about his anxiety over "searches, arrests, the treatment of detainees, duration of preventive detention, access by family members and lawyers, and the establishment of a central prison database". He said he found them "receptive", and they had explained what was being done to address the problems.

The ICRC is also alarmed by the lack of a proper database. "The lists provided by the coalition are not comprehensive and far from complete. The process needs to be improved. They are willing to improve it and are really trying to help", says ICRC spokesperson Nada Doumani.

In their defence, coalition spokespeople point to the appalling legacy of the Saddam regime. "In his time people had to scrawl their names on cell walls to get remembered. There was no list of any kind," says Charles Heatly, a spokesperson seconded from the Foreign Office.

Work was almost complete on repairing cell-blocks at Abu Ghraib so that medium-security prisoners could move from tents into proper buildings "comparable to UK prisons," he adds. A large prefabricated building for several hundred other detainees should be ready at Abu Ghraib in a week`s time. The tents at Baghdad airport would then be emptied and its 500 prisoners transferred.

Mobile teams of magistrates were being trained to handle cases faster. He acknowledges that US military lawyers sometimes overruled Iraqi judges` release orders. "That`s probably true. It shows the difficulties in getting systems to match", he says.

The message is that things are getting better. But the occupation forces` shocking handling of civilian prisoners will not be forgotten quickly by the victims. They are one more example of how badly those who planned the war on Iraq failed to plan the peace.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

US voices deep regret for Baghdad flag incident
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Friday August 15, 2003
The Guardian

The US forces in Iraq expressed "deep regret" yesterday for an incident in which one Iraqi was killed and four were injured during a riot after the crew of a Black Hawk helicopter removed an Islamic banner, accidently or otherwise, from the top of an telecommunications tower.

A statement circulated in Sadr (formerly Saddam) City in Baghdad described Wednesday`s incident as a mistake. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Hoffman of the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment wrote that he was personally investigating and would punish those responsible.

Helicopter flights over the city and ground patrols would be reduced, he added. The statement failed to satisfy one Shia group, which demanded that US troops withdraw from the area within 24 hours, or face the consequences.

Lieutenant General Richard Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq, said: "Apparently the helicopter either blew the flag down, or somehow the flag was taken down, and we are taking steps to ensure that doesn`t happen again."

"There is no policy on our part to fly helicopters to communications towers to take down flags," he told a press conference.

Television footage showed a helicopter hovering just above a telecommunications tower in Sadr apparently rip down a black banner bearing the name of Imam al-Mehdi al-Muntdre, a cleric revered by Shia Muslims, who predominate in the suburb.

Thousands gathered below the tower, and US troops opened fire after stones, shots, and a rocket-propelled grenade were aimed at the soldiers. One man, allegedly the man who fired the grenade, was killed, and four were injured.

Al-Sadr, an influential religious group in the area, demanded that the US forces should halt all helicopter flights over the area, make an official apology, and pay compensation to the victims of the shooting.

Qais al-Khaz`ali, speaking for the group, said it was giving the US forces a day to meet the demands, "otherwise we are not responsible for whatever reactions the US soldiers might face if they entered the city".

"We urge [the people of the city] to resort to peace until our demands are met ... Nobody is allowed to carry weapons," the statement said, describing the the Americans as "tyrants" and "troublemakers".

The incident is the latest in which the US forces have provoked hostility by their perceived heavy-handedness and insensitivity to customs.

Gen Sanchez said that the shooting of five innocent passersby during a raid on a house in the Mansour district of Baghdad had been investigated. He refused to blame his forces, but said the inquiry had shown that troops could do more to avoid casualties and improve coordination with Iraqis.

"In the al-Mansour raid ... we had in fact learned that our traffic control point procedures needed some improvement and that we were going to improve the marking standards for these safety checkpoints," he said.

American sensitivity to the way the war is being reported was reflected yesterday in a extraordinary u-turn.

The US command first announced what appeared to be a significant shift in its relations with the news media by ruling that reporters, photographers and television crews would be forbidden from accompanying its forces on some operations.

But within hours of the directive being reported it was rescinded. Asked why, a military spokesman Major William Thurmond said: "I don`t know."

About 700 journalists were with troops during the combat phase in the Iraq war. Since then the number has dwindled considerably. A handful of news organisations are still embedded in military units, mostly the 4th Infantry Division at Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s home town 120 miles north of Baghdad.


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This inquiry is missing the point
What should matter is not the BBC but the question of WMDs

Henry Porter
Friday August 15, 2003
The Guardian

When the main counsel to the Hutton inquiry concludes his examination of a witness he asks: "Is there anything else that you know of the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly that you can assist his lordship with?"

It`s a useful reminder of Lord Hutton`s restricted terms of reference. Those in Court 73 this week may have been distracted by the bitter relations between the government and the BBC; diverted by the internal disagreement at the corporation; and absorbed by the performance of witnesses - but the subject under scrutiny remains, simply, those circumstances which led Dr Kelly to cut his wrist.

In one respect, it is a refreshingly uncluttered mission, and Lord Hutton and his counsel, James Dingemans QC, are doing an impressive job. But it is difficult to sit in court for very long without feeling that, as a nation, we are aiming off the main issue.

Dr Kelly`s professional expertise was the assessment of weapons of mass destruction and, in particular, Iraq`s capability. He was intricately involved in weighing some of the intelligence which was included in last year`s WMD dossier and which subsequently informed Tony Blair`s decision to go to war. As each day goes by without hard evidence of WMD being produced in Iraq, that decision looks increasingly reckless and bizarre. And yet instead of publicly examining the intelligence, we seem to have settled for the Hutton inquiry.

One can`t deny that Hutton is ventilating important issues about the standards and behaviour of the media and the bitterness between the government and the BBC, but these are beside the point. What we need is an undisputed account of the assessment that formed Blair`s decision, and an examination not simply of what Kelly said to the media - but why he said it. That is a very different question.

As things stand, one experiences a strange disconnect in Court 73. This has as much to do with the lack of consensus in British newspapers as to the purpose of the project. The Murdoch press, which includes the Times and the Sun, is unabashedly backing the government in its war against the BBC, partly because Murdoch loathes the obstruction that the corporation represents to his commercial plans, but mostly because he is a hawk on Iraq.

On the other side of the argument, the Mail group, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph line up to project any evidence that appears damaging to Alastair Campbell and the government.

There is never agreement about where to attach blame and credibility, or even what the evidence actually means. These two camps are cancelling themselves out and failing to give the public a balanced representation of the discoveries being made. You need an awful lot of concentration to distil the important advances each day, especially when so much of the evidence thus far has revolved around journalists and their sources.

The process which goes to make up a report on BBC radio or TV is hardly exact and it is not easy to explain why, when Andrew Gilligan was so certain about Dr Kelly`s information that he went on air without finding a back-up source, his colleague at Newsnight, Susan Watts, who was in possession of exactly the same material, decided to ignore it. If this seemed odd to journalists in court, it is mystifying to the public, which tends to lump such incongruities in a box named media self-obsession and switch off.

It is worth looking at the transcripts and documentary evidence (www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk) at the end of each day. The exchanges between Campbell and Richard Sambrook, one of the most important newsmen in the country, give a compelling view of the way the government conducts itself on the media frontline - the remorseless hostility of these letters is surprising.

Logging on each day also provides an insight into the way things work at the top - how Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC board of governors, has a word with No 10 to see if things can`t be calmed down a bit; how Geoff Hoon writes to Davies to seek confirmation that the BBC source was Dr Kelly (which he doesn`t get); and how Sambrook returns from a meeting with Hoon where Gilligan`s reporting was disparaged and sits down to write an account of what has passed, to be used in an eventuality he could never possibly guess.

What slyness and wariness inhabit the minds of people at the top. The revelation yesterday that Hoon overruled a senior civil servant to place Dr Kelly in front of the foreign affairs committee adds to the sense that a ruthless world is being laid bare.

In the proceedings of the Hutton inquiry, you find more laudable aspects of human nature on show - a straightforward pursuit of the truth about David Kelly`s death being one - but the trouble is that it is not the only truth we need to concern ourselves with.

· Henry Porter`s novel about counter-terrorist operations, Empire State, will be published next month by Orion


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Bush wins partial support from UN
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday August 15, 2003
The Guardian

The Bush administration, reluctant to yield any influence over postwar Iraq, but aware of the high cost of the occupation won limited endorsement yesterday for its mission from the UN security council.

A security council vote welcomed the US-appointed governing council for Iraq and the creation of a modest UN assistance mission. The resolution was passed by 14 votes with only Syria abstaining.

But it stopped far short of the broader mandate sought by countries such as France and India. Diplomats said the vote belied unease among member countries that it could be seen as sanctioning the occupation.

Analysts said yesterday that the Pentagon remained acutely conscious of the heavy human and financial toll of the US military occupation and the need to call on troops from India, France, Turkey and elsewhere.

They suggested yesterday`s vote could be a prelude to further UN involvement. One said: "There is a very good chance we are going to get a lot of troops and perhaps a new UN mechanism would facilitate that."

Hardliners in the Pentagon have been opposed to sharing authority over Iraq, particularly with states which opposed the war, but the Bush administration wants to avoid a high-stakes confrontation at the UN over Iraq`s future.

But a report in yesterday`s New York Times said that Washington had ruled out, for now, the idea of seeking UN authorisation for the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, as India has called for. The report said that although the Pentagon faced an unstable security situation in Iraq, it was reluctant to cede control of military operations.

It said officials feared that greater UN involvement, or the deployment of UN peacekeepers, might compromise its freedom of movement.

Such concerns outweighed growing pressures to bring American soldiers home early, the newspaper said. They also meant that the Bush administration was unlikely to entertain further the idea of recruiting peacekeepers from India and other countries which had sought UN sanction for an international force in Iraq.

Instead, the Pentagon was likely to continue its efforts to circumvent the UN by enlisting countries which did not object to fighting under sole US military command, the newspaper said.

But a state department official denied the Bush administration had taken a final decision to limit the UN`s role in Iraq. "I am not aware of an iron-clad decision on anything," the official said.

He also said the idea of a UN mandate for Iraq had not been strenuously promoted within the international community.

The official conceded that discussions with India over sending troops to Iraq had broken down.

"The Indians have said that they preferred a broader mandate," he said.

"Our position is that the [UN resolutions] provide sufficient cover for countries interested in contributing, and that has not changed."


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A huge power failure swept through parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Canada today, shutting down trains, subways and airports from New York City to Detroit, forcing people into the streets.

Pedestrians clogged the Brooklyn Bridge as the power outage brought life to a standstill

The whole of the city was dark and the setting sun painted one building
August 15, 2003
Midday Shutdowns Disrupt Millions
By JAMES BARRON


A surge of electricity to western New York and Canada touched off a series of power failures and enforced blackouts yesterday that left parts of at least eight states in the Northeast and the Midwest without electricity. The widespread failures provoked the evacuation of office buildings, stranded thousands of commuters and flooded some hospitals with patients suffering in the stifling heat.

In an instant that one utility official called "a blink-of-the-eye second" shortly after 4 p.m., the grid that distributes electricity to the eastern United States became overloaded. As circuit breakers tripped at generating stations from New York to Michigan and into Canada, millions of people were instantly caught up in the largest blackout in American history.

In New York City, power was shut off by officials struggling to head off a wider blackout. Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In some areas, the power problems were scattered. The lights remained on in Albany and in Buffalo, but not in nearby suburbs.

Officials worked into the night to put the grid back in operation and restore electric service. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that that the power was back on in parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens by 11 p.m. — but not Manhattan. "We`re certainly not out of the woods yet," the mayor said.

He said that New Yorkers should treat today "like a snow day" — listen to the radio and "exercise your common sense." Transit officials said there would be no subway service for the rush hour this morning. Mr. Bloomberg said that he expected the subways to be running eventually today, but that traffic lights might be out of sequence.

"It wouldn`t be the worst thing to do to take a day off," he said.

The blackout began just after the stock exchanges had closed for the day, a slow summer day of relatively light trading, as thousands of workers were about to head home. Office workers who were still at their desks watched their computer monitors blink off without warning on a hot and hazy afternoon. Soon hospitals and government buildings were switching on backup generators to keep essential equipment operating, and the police were evacuating people trapped in elevators.

Airports throughout the affected states suffered serious disruptions, including the three major airports in the New York metropolitan region, but did not close. Still, delays and cancellations rippled all the way to San Francisco. Federal Aviation Administration officials said the airports in the affected states had switched to emergency power. They said that airliners in the air had not been in danger, although many were rerouted to terminals beyond the blackout.

Thousands of subway passengers in New York City had to be evacuated from tunnels, and commuter trains also came to a halt. Gov. George E. Pataki said that 600 trains were stranded.

Officials said that the cause of the blackout was under investigation but that terrorism did not appear to have played a role. Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, met with his advisers in Washington. But Mayor Bloomberg said that there had been "no evidence of any terrorism whatsoever."

President Bush, who was in San Diego yesterday, said he planned to order a review of "why the cascade was so significant." He also said the electrical grid might need to be modernized.

"It`s a serious situation," he said.

"I have been working with federal officials to make sure the response to this situation was quick and thorough and I believe it has been," he told reporters.

The office of the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, initially said the power problems were caused by lightning in New York State but later retracted that. Canadian officials later expressed uncertainty about the exact cause but continued to insist the problem began on the United States side of the border. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the seven nuclear plants in New York and New Jersey and two in the Midwest had shut down automatically when the failure occurred.

Telephone service was disrupted, especially calls to and from cellular phones. Most of the problems, telephone company officials said, had to do with heavy use. Officials said the trouble was compounded by power failures at some cellular transmitters. Cash-dispensing teller machines were also knocked out, so people who did not have cash on hand could not buy flashlights, batteries or other supplies.

The power failure exacted a variety of tolls in Michigan and Ohio, tying up the freeways in Detroit, forcing the cancellation of minor league baseball in Toledo, Ohio, and sending Jennifer M. Granholm, the governor of Michigan, into emergency meetings without the use of lights or computers.

In Times Square in New York, billboards instantly went dark and the city was left without traffic lights and the usual sounds of rush hour. Volunteers directed traffic with mixed success. Some stores in Manhattan closed as cashiers fumbled with registers that no longer toted up purchases. The Metropolitan Museum of Art emptied out, but not before some art lovers had pulled flashlights from backpacks and purses and trained them on paintings.

In a city still jittery from the Sept. 11 terror attack, some people worried as they tried to find their way home. "All I could think was here we go again — it`s just like Sept. 11," said Catherine Donnelly, who works at the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr. Pataki said he had ordered the National Guard to assist state and local authorities, but New York City officials said the Guard`s aid was not necessary.

Police officials in the city said they first responded as if the power failure had been the work of terrorists, and with the concern that the city was suddenly vulnerable. Heavily armored officers were sent to likely targets and emergency command operations were begun in every borough.

The officials said that the city was mostly calm in the first hours of the blackout, and that every precinct in the city had moved to control traffic at critical intersections.

By midnight, though, the police reported several incidents of looting and bottle throwing in Lower Manhatan and Brooklyn.

So there was no air conditioning, no television, no computers. There was Times Square without its neon glow and Broadway marquees without their incandescence — all the shows were canceled. So was the Mets game against the San Francisco Giants at Shea Stadium. And there was a skyline that had never looked quite the way it did last night: the long, long taut strings of the bridges were dark, the red eyes that usually blink at the very top not red, not blinking.

As the lights came back on, officials estimated that 10 percent of the city`s households again had power by 10 p.m. About that time, power was also restored in Newark and Buffalo.

"This is a very, very slow deliberate process, and you have to be very careful how you do it, or you will have the whole system fail again," said acting superintendent of New York State police, Wayne E. Bennett.

Mr. Bloomberg said the subways had been evacuated safely and that he believed the rescues of people from stuck elevators had gone smoothly. But one woman, after having walked down 18 flights of stairs at a Midtown office building, collapsed and died as passers-by, rescue workers and paramedics tried to save her.

As the afternoon dragged on with no lights and no word on how soon subways and trains might resume service, some hiked home. Others filled bars. A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on East 14th Street near Avenue B gave away ice cream, one scoop to a customer. The Haagen-Dazs shop near Union Square had a "power outage sale," selling cups and cones for $1 apiece.

Drivers, benefiting from suddenly very essential radios, flashed news bulletins to people in the street. "It`s a major grid, and it`s out from Toronto to Ohio," Sharon Dennis told a throng that had gathered around her green Ford Taurus on West 34th Street shortly before 6 p.m. "They say they don`t know how long it will take to restore power."

Mr. Pataki declared a state of emergency, and went to the Office of Emergency Management at the state police headquarters in Albany, where he said he would remain until power was restored.

Mr. Pataki reluctantly recalled one of the two major blackouts of the last 40 years in the Northeast — the 1965 power failure, which left an 80,000-square-mile stretch of the United States and Canada without electricity for as much as 27 hours. "It wasn`t supposed to happen again," he said, "and it has happened again. And there have to be some tough questions asked as to why."

The Nov. 9, 1965 blackout began with an overloaded relay at a hydroelectric plant in Ontario. That plunged Toronto into darkness, then Syracuse, then four of the five boroughs of New York City, which had been drawing 300,000 kilowatts from the Niagara Mohawk utility in upstate New York. The lights stayed on in parts of Brooklyn and on Staten Island, because of a generating station that was not knocked out.

On July 14, 1977, lightning hit two Con Edison transmission lines north of New York City, tripping relays that soon shut down power plants in the New York metropolitan area. Parts of the city were dark for more than 25 hours, and there was widespread looting.

Yesterday, the North American Electric Reliability Council, which was set up by the utility industry after the blackouts of 1965 to reduce the likelihood of cascading failures, said that power problems were felt throughout the entire eastern interconnection, which covers most of the country east of the Mississippi River. The South was unaffected by the blackout, the council said.

The council had issued its annual summer reliability assessment of the supply of electricity earlier in the year, concluding that the nation should have adequate resources to meet the demand for power this summer. But it warned of possible problems, particularly around New York City, if extreme weather produced unusually heavy demand.

Phillip G. Harris, who is in charge of the consortium that oversees power distribution from New Jersey to the District of Columbia, said the exact cause of the blackout would not be known for some time. "We have to get into the forensics of it," he said. There was high demand for electricity yesterday, he said, "but it was not any hotter than we had last year."

He said that his system had recorded a "massive outflow" of power to northern New York or Canada shortly after 4 p.m. He said that the surge overloaded power lines that took themselves out of service.

For people with medical problems, the blackout added another layer of anxiety. Emergency rooms were flooded with patients with heat and heart ailments. At Harlem Hospital, a spokeswoman said that a number of pedestrians had been hit by cars because traffic lights were out.

At Jamaica Hospital in Queens, where even emergency power was lost for several hours, a spokeswoman said that officials there had been denied permission to divert patients to other hospitals.

In neighborhoods where memories of the 1977 blackout linger, yesterday did not bring the sounds of that long-ago evening. This time, there was little looting, officials said, and the grinding of iron store gates being forced up and the shattering of glass was absent.

In Bushwick, the Brooklyn neighborhood that was at the center of the vandalism in 1977, Mario Hernandez, a 44-year-old air-conditioner mechanic, remembered the looting well. "I got five couches, five TV`s, two stereo sets, gold chains, everything you could think of," he said yesterday, recalling that hot evening when he was 18. "Even the decent people, the churchgoing people, were taking stuff back then."

Police officers waited in the 83rd Precinct, on Knickerbocker Avenue. "So far so good," an officer said. "Nothing out of the ordinary. It`s actually quieter than normal."

There was at least one pocket of trouble: On the Lower East Side, an upscale sneaker store was broken into and one of the owners beaten and bloodied by a group of youths between 11 p.m. and midnight. "These animals are wrecking my store," the owner said.



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August 15, 2003
U.S. Apologizes for Baghdad Mosque Incident
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 14 — The United States military apologized today for an incident that deeply angered Iraqi religious leaders on Wednesday when soldiers in a helicopter forced down a flag near a mosque in an overwhelmingly Shiite district of Baghdad. A large protest followed, leading to the death of one Iraqi and the wounding of four others by American troops.

The flag episode outraged residents of Sadr City, a poor but fervent Shiite neighborhood in northeast Baghdad. They poured out in droves on Wednesday to demonstrate against what they considered the desecration of an important religious symbol.

At least 3,000 Iraqis joined the protest, said American officials, who added that the troops opened fire during the demonstration after being attacked by small-arms fire and a rocket-propelled grenade. The Iraqi who was killed had been operating the grenade-launcher, the officials said.

American officials also said today that they were changing the way they set up temporary checkpoints on roads and streets to make them more visible and apparent to Iraqi drivers, after the deaths of at least nine Iraqis in the past several weeks who were gunned down at checkpoints by American soldiers.

One such attack killed two Iraqi policemen who were responding to an emergency call but were killed when they approached what the top American commander described today as a "hasty traffic control point" — a temporary checkpoint typically set up in a matter of minutes.

Violence continued against occupation troops today as a British soldier was killed and two were wounded near Basra after the ambulance in which they were traveling was attacked by a command-detonated explosive.

"It was a marked ambulance," said Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, a military spokesman in Baghdad. "Someone saw the red cross and decided to pull the trigger anyway."

Basra, a large city in southern Iraq dominated by Shiites, had been relatively peaceful until the past week, when a dire shortage of gasoline and electricity led to riots. The unrest subsided after British troops, who oversee that part of Iraq, dispensed fuel from their own reserves.

After the protest on Wednesday in Sadr City, Shiites warned that violence could result if American troops did not adopt a less aggressive presence. Wednesday`s bloodshed is expected to be a major topic in Shiite mosques on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

"Any American soldier who comes to Sadr City, we will kill him," said Saleh Obeid, 50, a fireman who works at the fire station near the mosque.

Accounts differed about what happened to prompt the demonstration: Shiites in Sadr City said soldiers in the helicopter appeared to remove the flag intentionally from a tower near the mosque. But American officials said downward rotor wash from the hovering helicopter stripped the flag from the tower, something they described as apparently unintentional, but very regrettable.

"Apparently, the helicopter did either blow down the flag, or somehow, that flag was taken down," Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of ground troops in Iraq, said during a news conference today.

"We are taking steps to ensure that that doesn`t happen again," General Sanchez said. "There is no policy on our part to fly helicopters up to communications towers to take down flags. And my understanding at this point is that, in fact, there has been an apology issued by the commander on the ground because of this incident that blew down that flag."

News agencies reported that an American commander in the area had distributed a letter today vowing to punish the soldiers responsible as well as to reduce the presence of American troops in the area. However, a military spokesman said he could not confirm the authenticity of the letter.

General Sanchez also said today that military forces would improve the visibility of traffic checkpoints so that "we have enough standoff so that people that are getting close to it will know that it`s there and can slow down and comply with the hasty checkpoint."

The new procedures, he said, are an effort to ensure that "what you don`t have is a vehicle that`s coming up to the checkpoint has no idea that it`s there, and the first time it knows that the checkpoint is there is when it starts getting warning shots."




U.N. Welcomes Iraqi Council

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 14 — The Security Council passed a United States resolution today establishing a formal United Nations mission in Iraq and welcoming — but not formally recognizing — the recently established Governing Council.

The measure, which called the Governing Council "an important step toward the formation of an internationally recognized representative government that will exercise the sovereignty of Iraq" passed by a vote of 14 to 0, with Syria abstaining.

Eight Security Council members co-sponsored the resolution, a show of support that underlined the strong desire for consensus on the volatile questions surrounding the Iraq occupation. But some of the comments after the vote indicated that rifts remained.

After the vote, the American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, said "this helps pave the way toward the peace, stability and democracy that the long-afflicted Iraqi people so richly deserve."

Most of the ambassadors who followed also couched their remarks in terms of the goal of returning the government of Iraq to the Iraqi people, but some made it clear that their top priority was to bring an end to the foreign military presence.

After the vote, the Syrian ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, told the Council that his country`s abstention reflected how troubled the Arab world was by the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.



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August 15, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Believe It, or Not
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


Today marks the Roman Catholics` Feast of the Assumption, honoring the moment that they believe God brought the Virgin Mary into Heaven. So here`s a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).

So this day is an opportunity to look at perhaps the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith. Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)

The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.

My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way:

"God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God`s intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God`s choice."

The Virgin Mary is an interesting prism through which to examine America`s emphasis on faith because most Biblical scholars regard the evidence for the Virgin Birth, and for Mary`s assumption into Heaven (which was proclaimed as Catholic dogma only in 1950), as so shaky that it pretty much has to be a leap of faith. As the Catholic theologian Hans Küng puts it in "On Being a Christian," the Virgin Birth is a "collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary" narratives, an echo of virgin birth myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world.

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Yale historian and theologian, says in his book "Mary Through the Centuries" that the earliest references to Mary (like Mark`s gospel, the first to be written, or Paul`s letter to the Galatians) don`t mention anything unusual about the conception of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke do say Mary was a virgin, but internal evidence suggests that that part of Luke, in particular, may have been added later by someone else (it is written, for example, in a different kind of Greek than the rest of that gospel).

Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

I`m not denigrating anyone`s beliefs. And I don`t pretend to know why America is so much more infused with religious faith than the rest of the world. But I do think that we`re in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.

But mostly, I`m troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. I worry partly because of the time I`ve spent with self-satisfied and unquestioning mullahs and imams, for the Islamic world is in crisis today in large part because of a similar drift away from a rich intellectual tradition and toward the mystical. The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.




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August 15, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Twilight Zone Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN


For about 20 months the U.S. economy has been operating in a twilight zone: growing too fast to meet the classic definition of a recession, but too slowly to meet the usual criteria for economic recovery. There`s nothing particularly mysterious about our situation. But recent news coverage and commentary — in particular, the enthusiastic headlines that followed a modest increase in growth and a modest decline in jobless claims — suggest that some people still don`t get it. So here`s a brief refresher course on twilight zone Economics 101.

Since November 2001 — which the National Bureau of Economic Research, in a controversial decision, has declared the end of the recession — the U.S. economy has grown at an annual rate of about 2.6 percent. That may not sound so bad, but when it comes to jobs there has been no recovery at all. Nonfarm payrolls have fallen by, on average, 50,000 per month since the "recovery" began, accounting for 1 million of the 2.7 million jobs lost since March 2001.

Meanwhile, employment is chasing a moving target because the working-age population continues to grow. Just to keep up with population growth, the U.S. needs to add about 110,000 jobs per month. When it falls short of that, jobs become steadily harder to find. At this point conditions in the labor market are probably the worst they have been for almost 20 years. (The measured unemployment rate isn`t all that high, but that`s largely because many people have given up looking for work.)

All this leads to a great deal of suffering — not just lost income, but also the anxiety and humiliation that come with long-term unemployment. Is relief in sight?

Over the last few weeks two numbers have led to a spate of optimistic pronouncements. One is the preliminary estimate of second-quarter growth, which came in at a 2.4 percent annual rate — about one point higher than expected. The other is the rate of new applications for unemployment insurance, which has fallen slightly below 400,000 per week.

But while the growth and new claims numbers were good news, they didn`t tell us that the economy is improving. All they said is that things are getting worse more slowly.

This should be obvious when it comes to growth. I saw headlines saying that in the second quarter growth "soared," even "rocketed." Huh? That 2.4 percent growth rate was a bit less than the average during our job-loss recovery. Just to stabilize the labor market in its present dismal state would probably take growth of at least 3.5 percent; it would take much more than that to return the economy to anything resembling full employment.

Meanwhile, about those unemployment claims: somehow that 400,000-per-week benchmark has acquired a lot more significance in people`s minds than it deserves. For example, claims came in at 398,000 yesterday — and this was treated as good news because it was (barely) below the magic number.

Well, here`s some perspective: since November 2001 new claims have averaged 414,000 per week. A number a bit lower than that might mean stable or slightly rising payroll employment — but as we`ve just seen, that`s not nearly good enough. For comparison, in 2000 — a year of good but not great employment growth — weekly claims averaged 305,000. My conclusion is that the state of the unemployed won`t improve unless claims fall a lot further than they have.

So is a real, unambiguous recovery just around the corner? Recent economic reports have had a "good news"-"bad news" feel to them. Businesses are starting to buy some equipment; that`s good. But they seem to be engaging in replacement investment, not capacity expansion; that`s bad. Consumers are spending; that`s good. But rising interest rates seem to have ended the refinancing boom that put cash in consumers` pockets; that`s bad. And so on.

The best guess is that growth in the second half of the year will be faster than in the first half, possibly high enough to create some jobs, but not high enough to make jobs easier to find. In other words, in terms of what matters most, the economy will continue to deteriorate.

All this is, of course, an indictment of our economic policy — a policy that has managed the remarkable trick of generating immense budget deficits without giving the economy much stimulus. But that`s a subject for another day.

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U.S. Faces Challenges at German 9/11 Trial
Defense May Call Secretly Held Witnesses and Invoke Conspiracy Theories

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A21


HAMBURG, Aug. 14 -- Germany opened its second trial of an alleged member of the Hamburg terror cell that investigators say led the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a proceeding that promises to be more politicized and protracted than the country`s first, successful prosecution of an al Qaeda functionary.

Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 30-year-old Moroccan student, is charged with 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization for allegedly providing critical logistical support to cell members who carried out the suicide hijackings.

Defense attorneys signaled today that they have planned an aggressive defense that will demand that the United States turn over key witnesses who are in secret custody, and will force prosecutors to prove through physical or other explicit evidence what the state calls basic accepted facts, such as the presence of cell member Mohamed Atta on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center.

The defense said further that it might attempt to explore theories that the hijackings served the foreign policy goals of U.S. conservatives by creating a pretext to transform the U.S. military posture in the world. "It appears the U.S.A. was aware of the political advantages of the attack on the World Trade Center, as an idea, in advance," defense attorney Michael Rosenthal said.

In the first trial, another Moroccan, Mounir Motassadeq, was convicted in February of the same charges and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison after prosecutors built a circumstantial case based on his close contacts with the hijackers and his travel to Afghanistan to attend an al Qaeda training camp.

Legal experts predict that in the Mzoudi case prosecutors will follow a similar course that tracks the defendant`s radicalization, his intimacy with the hijackers and exposes suspicious actions that amount to complicity.

"From early summer 1999 until Sept. 11, 2001, he was a member of a terrorist organization and helped the suspected terrorists commit murder and other crimes," said prosecutor Matthias Krauss, reading sections of the indictment in this morning`s opening session.

The prosecution alleges that Mzoudi trained in Afghanistan, transferred money to the hijackers and provided other logistical support, including allowing them to use his address so their absence from Germany would not be noticed. The defense counters that he was merely acting as an unwitting friend and good Muslim by helping his fellow devotees.

A short man with a thick beard and a receding hairline, Mzoudi made a brief statement to the panel of five judges today about his upbringing and religious beliefs, but unlike Motassadeq he said nothing about spending time in Afghanistan in 2000 or his contacts with Atta and others.

Defense attorneys said after the hearing that they would push hard for access to witnesses such as Ramzi Binalshibh, a citizen of Yemen who investigators say was a key organizer of the attacks. He is now in secret CIA detention following his capture in Pakistan.

A U.S. federal judge overseeing the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in Alexandria said that Moussaoui should be allowed to call Binalshibh as a witness, rejecting U.S. government arguments that his appearance could endanger national security. If the Justice Department loses its appeal of the decision, many legal experts expect the government to move the case to a military tribunal.

Lawyers here, including those sympathetic to the German prosecutors` case, said shifting the Moussaoui case to a military court could affect the outcome of the trial in Hamburg.

"Americans expect a conviction here, so they should consider their position on Binalshibh carefully if they want one," said Ulrich von Jeinsen, who is representing American relatives of people killed in the attacks as a co-prosecutor, as allowed under German law. "When these guys don`t obey their own federal courts, the court here may say, `Why should we sentence Mzoudi to 15 years in prison?` "

Jeinsen said he was also worried about the prospect that the defense might air alternative theories of how the Sept. 11 plot unfolded, a strategy that he condemned as conspiratorial and potentially damaging to U.S.-German relations.

According to a recent survey by a German newsweekly, one in five Germans believes that the U.S. government had a role in the attacks.

Special correspondent Souad Mekhennet contributed to this report.



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A New Job for NATO




Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A26


ON MONDAY the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took control of the 5,000-member, 30-nation, U.N.-sanctioned international force that has been keeping the peace in Afghanistan`s capital, Kabul, since U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in December 2001. More than 60 people have died in Afghanistan this week as a bus bomb, violent clashes between warlords and attacks on government troops rocked the country in the deadliest wave of violence in more than a year. NATO, which has never before controlled an operation outside Europe, is now faced with one of the most difficult tasks it has ever been asked to carry out.

Despite the bad omens, NATO`s new role in Afghanistan is a positive development for the Afghans, as well as for NATO and the transatlantic alliance. Formed 54 years ago in response to the threat of Soviet expansion on the European continent, NATO has suffered from an identity crisis since the Soviet Union`s collapse. In recent months, as Americans and Europeans clashed over U.S. policy in Iraq, the organization began to seem almost irrelevant, and its potential was ignored. By taking up command of troops in Afghanistan, NATO proves that it is moving forward: The alliance is accepting the need to deal with the new threats that face its members, rather than those it faced in the past, and has the chance to show why it still merits a leading role in Western decision-making.

At the same time, the decision to shift the international force in Afghanistan from an ad hoc "coalition of the willing" to a full-fledged NATO command also reflects an important shift in American understanding. Recent tensions notwithstanding, over the past half-century the alliance has worked out methods to transfer commands smoothly and share responsibilities among countries. More professional than the United Nations and with potentially more soldiers to draw upon than the U.S. armed forces acting alone, NATO, not a rotating set of random commanders, provides the right structure to run multinational peacekeeping or military forces. In time, it might prove to be the right force for Iraq as well.

The transfer of power to NATO, however, does not absolve the United States of responsibility for Afghanistan; quite the contrary. With painful slowness, the administration is finally beginning to realize that making Afghanistan secure -- and defeating the remnants of al Qaeda -- will require a more extensive commitment than anyone has until now been prepared to concede is necessary.

Recently the administration announced plans to invest $1 billion in the country`s infrastructure and national army, which is a start. Realistically, it may not be enough. In the year and a half since the U.S.-backed government took nominal control of the country, few new roads, schools or hospitals have been built, and the national government`s writ in practice reaches only feebly beyond the capital.

Until Afghanistan is secure, until the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda are eliminated and until regional warlords are tamed, a greater American military investment is also required. NATO force commanders admit that their soldiers control very little of the country and that their role is confined almost exclusively to Kabul. While no one has yet called for more troops, it`s clear that more will be needed. The administration should start preparing the country, the armed forces and America`s allies now for that very real possibility.



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When Sentences Don`t Make Sense


By Frank O. Bowman III

Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A27


On July 28 Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered U.S. attorney`s offices around the country to report to Justice Department headquarters in Washington virtually every instance in which a federal judge imposes a criminal sentence below the range specified by federal guidelines against the wishes of the prosecution. His memorandum also tightens the department`s centralized control over the plea bargaining practices of U.S. attorney`s offices around the country. The national media have portrayed the Ashcroft memorandum as, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, "stepping up the Justice Department`s battle with federal judges over sentencing guidelines." In fact, it`s not quite that simple.

Since 1987 federal sentencing has been governed primarily by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The guidelines were written and are now annually amended by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a politically neutral body of experts accountable to Congress. They were in part a reaction to the perception that the previous system produced unjustifiable sentencing disparities by giving too much discretion to district judges. They constrained judicial discretion by use of a "grid" that set presumptive sentences according to the seriousness of the offense and the defendant`s criminal history.

But the architects of the guidelines recognized that no set of national rules could prescribe the "correct" sentence for every defendant. Therefore, each position on the grid covers a range of sentences, stated in months. The district judge finds the facts necessary to apply the guidelines but also has the legal power either to sentence the defendant anywhere within the range or to "depart" -- to sentence a defendant above or below the guideline range if he or she finds certain aggravating or mitigating factors. In addition, the guidelines allow the prosecution to request downward departures to reward cooperation against other defendants or to achieve a just sentence.

If this system were working as designed, departures would be relatively rare. But in 2001, almost 36 percent of federal defendants received downward departures, while less than 1 percent received upward departures. Does this mean federal judges are soft on crime and must be made to obey the law? Again, it`s not that simple.

First, roughly 80 percent of the more than 19,000 downward departures granted each year are requested by the government as a result of the defendant`s cooperation or for some other reason. Moreover, the government consents to many of the departures even though it has not affirmatively requested them. The real story on departures is not that judges sometimes depart against the wishes of prosecutors but that prosecutors and judges agree to reduce sentences by departure in more than 25 percent of all federal criminal cases.

Second, departures are only one piece of a pervasive national pattern of manipulating the guidelines. A departure below the guidelines range will certainly reduce a defendant`s sentence. But a sentence can be reduced equally effectively by manipulating the fact-finding process that decides where a case goes on the "grid." To give a crude example, if a defendant actually sold five kilograms of cocaine but is found for sentencing purposes to have sold only four, his sentencing range will be 8 to 10 years instead of 10 to 12. This reduction can be accomplished if the prosecutor stipulates, as part of a plea agreement, to less cocaine than he could prove, or if the judge finds that, despite evidence of five kilos, only four have been proven. As my colleague Michael Heise and I have shown in a pair of studies in the Iowa Law Review, the length of the average federal drug sentence has been declining since the early 1990s, largely as a result of choices made by both prosecutors and judges during plea bargaining and sentencing. And sentence manipulation is not confined to drug cases.

The Justice Department is well aware of its own people`s complicity in evading the guidelines.. The unreported part of the story on the Ashcroft memorandum is that half of it consists of directives dramatically limiting the discretion of U.S. attorney`s offices to strike guideline-evading sentence bargains. Thus, on the surface the Ashcroft memo appears to be an evenhanded effort to prevent government lawyers from manipulating sentencing law -- and to encourage them to appeal the decisions of judges who do so.

The flaw in both the Ashcroft memo and the PROTECT Act of 2003 -- which seeks to restrict departures and to which the Ashcroft memo was a response -- is that they dogmatically insist sentencing law be followed to the letter, without pausing to ask why hard-nosed federal prosecutors and crusty federal judges (at least half of whom were appointed by Republicans) are colluding to evade that law on a massive scale. The truth, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told the American Bar Association recently, is that federal sentences are harsher and the guidelines less flexible than they should be. For over a decade, the legal professionals who apply the guidelines to real people have been expressing this truth through their behavior. But efforts by the Sentencing Commission to amend the guidelines accordingly have been blocked by right-wing Republicans and Democrats determined never to be outflanked to the right on law- and-order issues.

The proper course is not to insist that flawed laws be rigidly enforced. Nor is it to assert, as the PROTECT Act and the Ashcroft memo implicitly do, that only members of Congress and functionaries at Justice Department headquarters in Washington are wise enough to set sentencing policy. Instead, both the Justice Department and Congress should listen to what the professionals are saying, and allow the Sentencing Commission to adjust the guidelines. Once that is done, it will be entirely proper to insist that the guidelines be strictly applied.

The writer is a law professor at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis. He was a federal and state prosecutor for 13 years and served as special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

He will answer questions about this column during a Live Online discussion at 11 a.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com.



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The Truth About Daniel Pipes


By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A27



The president has nominated Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace. This has resulted in a nasty eruption of McCarthyism. Pipes`s nomination has been greeted by charges of Islamophobia, bigotry and extremism. Three Democratic senators (Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd and Tom Harkin) have shamefully signed on to this campaign, with quasi-Democrat Jim Jeffords tagging along.

Who is Daniel Pipes? Pipes is a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He has taught history and Islamic studies at Harvard and the University of Chicago. He is a scholar and the author of 12 books, four of which are on Islam. Unlike most of the complacent and clueless Middle East academic establishment, which specializes in the brotherhood of man and the perfidy of the United States, Pipes has for years been warning that the radical element within Islam posed a serious and growing threat to the United States.

During the decades when America slept, Pipes was among the very first to understand the dangers of Islamic radicalism. In his many writings he identified it, explained its roots -- including, most notably, Wahhabism as practiced and promoted by Saudi Arabia -- and warned of its plans to infiltrate and make war on the United States itself.

Sept. 11, 2001, demonstrated his prescience. Like most prophets, he is now being punished for being right. The main charge is that he is anti-Muslim. This is false. Pipes is scrupulous in making the distinction between radical Islam and moderate Islam. Indeed, he says, "Militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution."

The dilemma for a free society is that radical Islam lives within the bosom of moderate Islam. The general Islamic community is the place radicals can best disguise themselves and hide. Mosques are institutions that they can exploit to advance the cause. These are obvious truths.

But when Pipes states them, he is accused of bigotry. For example, critics thunder against Pipes`s assertion that "mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches and temples."

This is bigoted? How is this even controversial? Wahhabists and other radical Islamists have established mosques and other religious institutions in dozens of countries. Some of these -- most notoriously in Pakistan -- had become the locus of not just radical but terrorist activity. Where do you think Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was radicalized and recruited? In a Buddhist monastery? He was hatched in the now notorious Finsbury Park mosque in London.

Does that mean that all mosques or a majority of mosques or even many mosques harbor such activity? No. But it does mean any given mosque is more likely to harbor such activity than any given synagogue or church.

The attack on Pipes for stating this obvious truth is just another symptom of the absurd political correctness surrounding Islamic radicalism. It is the same political correctness that prohibits ethnic profiling on airplanes. We are all supposed to pretend that we have equal suspicions of terrorist intent and thus must give equal scrutiny to a 70-year-old Irish nun, a 50-year-old Jewish seminarian, and a 30-year-old man from Saudi Arabia. Your daughter is on that plane: To whom do you want the security guards to give their attention?

President Bush is considering bypassing the Senate and giving Pipes a recess appointment while Congress is out of town. For Bush, this would be an act of characteristic principle and courage. The problem, however, is that such an act makes the appointment look furtive. Worse, it lets the McCarthyites off too easy.

Pipes`s appointment would be a great asset to the U.S. Institute of Peace. But it would be an even greater asset to the country to bring the Democrats` surrender to political correctness into the open. Let them declare themselves. Let the country see that for some of the most senior Democratic leaders, speaking the truth about Islamic radicalism is a disqualification for serious office.

Pipes`s nomination has been endorsed by, among others, Fouad Ajami, Walter Berns, Donald Kagan, Sir John Keegan, Paul Kennedy, Harvey Mansfield and James Q. Wilson.

Who are you going to believe? Such unimpeachable and independent scholars? Or a quartet of craven senators?




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MASSIVE BLACKOUT


Outdated Power Grid`s Failure Not a Surprise
By Nancy Rivera Brooks and Nancy Vogel
Times Staff Writers

August 15, 2003

The cascading power outages in the Northeast on Thursday underscore what energy experts have been warning about for years: The system can go down anywhere at any time.

Years of neglected investment in the vast and antiquated network that moves electricity around the country — combined with steadily growing power needs — have left the nation`s electricity grid vulnerable to disruptions, analysts say.

"If people think there is a bullet-proof electrical system, they are mistaken," said Carl R. Danner, a power expert and director at LECG, an economic and financial consulting firm.

Such blips can be so minor that only your microwave clock notices. But on occasion, many thousands of people find their lives disrupted for hours on end, as happened twice in 1996 in California and other Western states; in 1998 in the Midwest and Canada; and again on Thursday when blackouts rolled across major East Coast cities.

"We`re the world`s greatest superpower, but we have a Third World electricity grid," former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, now governor of New Mexico, said in an interview Thursday on CNN.

The cause of Thursday`s blackouts wasn`t immediately clear. But some warned that the episode could be a harbinger of problems in other areas, including California.

President Bush, for one, said that he believes "our grid needs to be modernized," adding that he viewed Thursday`s troubles as "an interesting lesson for our country."

A 2000 study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an international consulting firm, concluded that the North American grid system was overstressed by increasing demand and plagued by gridlock.

Companies, the report found, lacked incentives to invest in expansion and upgrades to equipment that in some cases dates to World War II because the transmission business is heavily regulated and financial returns historically have been lackluster.

The amount that companies can earn "is not necessarily very attractive," especially given "how difficult it is to develop" new transmission lines, said David Clement of Cambridge Energy Research.

In addition, vigorous community opposition — the not-in-my-backyard syndrome — has kept new transmission lines from being built. A transmission line proposed for the San Diego area, for example, was recently shot down by the California Public Utilities Commission after much public protest.

The transmission grid for North America is divided into three largely autonomous zones: the so-called Eastern interconnection, which covers states east of Colorado and part of Canada; the Western interconnection, covering California and 10 other states, as well as parts of Mexico and Canada; and Texas, whose system stands alone.

In each case, supply and demand are precariously balanced moment to moment.

Employees working for a web of quasi-public entities and municipalities direct electron traffic along miles and miles of inch-thick aluminum and steel cables, which hang from 150-foot-high towers a quarter-mile apart.

"The grid is a complex machine — one of the largest machines in the world," Clement said. "Given the number of different components, it`s almost surprising that we don`t have more" failures.

Jim Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group, defended how the grid has performed in recent years, pointing to the relative rarity of massive power failures.

"We still think this is the finest electrical power system in the world," Owen said. "Obviously, there are some challenges and it needs some investment But there`s no system that is completely impervious to failure, especially one that`s as broad and as complex and as interconnected as ours is."

Terry Winter, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, noted that the blackouts in the East were much different from California`s outages during the energy crisis in 2001. Those were planned, rotating blackouts designed to prevent the kind of uncontrolled outages seen Thursday.

California today is in much better shape than it was two years ago, having added 9000 megawatts of generation, Winter said. What`s more, a public-private consortium including Pacific Gas & Electric is about to expand a key power transmission corridor in the Central Valley, known as Path 15.

Still, Winter acknowledged, it`s crucial that more lines be added elsewhere throughout the state. Federal and state regulators and municipalities "all need to be concerned and work together to expand this grid," he said.

He noted that the California system has been strained a bit of late. "We`ve had to operate it a little closer" to the edge than in the past, he said.

California`s last big power outage came on Aug. 10, 1996, when some power lines in Oregon sagged into trees. The lines shut themselves off and triggered a chain reaction of automatic switch-offs and surges of electricity, sending outages sweeping across several Western states. More than 7.5 million people were left without power.

Los Angeles city officials called a news conference Thursday to proclaim the Department of Water and Power`s invulnerability to the kind of blackouts that swept the Northeast Thursday afternoon.

Officials said they have the ability to isolate Los Angeles` system to protect it from problems occurring elsewhere in the western part of the United States.


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THE WORLD


Shiite Firebrand Seeks to Sway Iraqi Masses Against U.S.
Muqtader Sadr, son of a famed ayatollah, may calm or roil reaction to a recent Army shooting. He views the Governing Council as a puppet.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writer

August 15, 2003

KUFA, Iraq — Muqtader Sadr, a plump-faced young sheik, often rouses more than 10,000 angry young men at Friday prayers with rounds of anti-American chants, exhortations to join his army and promises to end the U.S.-led occupation.

He has appeared on the Arabic satellite television channel Al Jazeera and recently gave his first interview to a popular Baghdad newspaper, accusing the recently formed Iraqi Governing Council of being a U.S. puppet.

"The Governing Council is the best agent for the Americans," said Sadr, who is believed to be in his mid-20s.

Sadr`s confrontational stands tap a vein of virulent opposition to the occupation that is prevalent in Baghdad`s Shiite Muslim ghettos and the sect`s other impoverished enclaves in southern and central Iraq.

He is a pivotal figure in the standoff this week between U.S. troops and Shiites in the poor Thawra neighborhood of northeast Baghdad, which since the war this spring has become popularly known as Sadr City in honor of his father, an eminent ayatollah who was murdered by Saddam Hussein`s forces in 1999.

On Wednesday, troops fired on Shiite protesters, killing one person and injuring four, after gunmen shot at a U.S. helicopter that the crowd believed was trying to tear down a religious banner perched on a defunct communications tower. Clerics who follow Sadr have warned that, unless the American military withdraws from the neighborhood, they will not restrain their followers who might want to attack soldiers.

Because he is almost a cult figure in the neighborhood, Sadr could calm the situation with a few words, or inflame it. Authorities will be watching Friday prayers today in Baghdad and Sadr`s base here in the central Iraq city of Kufa for signs of which tack he might take.

Some dismiss Sadr as a foolish upstart. Lt. Col. Christopher Conlin, the U.S. Marine commander in the city of Najaf, near Kufa, calls him "an immature kid" and "a bit player."

But Sadr has the advantage of a famous name among long-repressed Shiites, who make up 60% of the nation`s population.

Posters of his father, with his pure white beard and quiet expression, decorate shop walls and car windows throughout the Shiite south, where they are for sale in thousands of religious bookstands. His uncle, also a distinguished ayatollah, was ambushed and killed in 1980. Although Sadr is young and far less educated than the older generation of Shiite leaders, he can trade on the family legacy.

For more than a month, Sadr has used his pulpit in Kufa, about 10 miles from Najaf, to invite young Iraqis to join what he calls his Al Mahdi army and denounce the American-led coalition along with the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.

The name Al Mahdi refers to the so-called hidden imam, an apocalyptic figure who disappeared in 874 and whose return, it is believed, will herald the arrival of a just world.

Sadr recently insisted that his army will not be armed, although aides have said that its members will be prepared to take up weapons if necessary.

Sadr has ties to fundamentalist clergy in Iran, who wield some influence among Iraqi Shiites, and recently returned from a visit to the Islamic Republic.

Perhaps realizing that he would attract only a limited following among Iraq`s middle-class Shiites, many of whom are moderate, Sadr has used anti-American rhetoric to reach beyond the sect to other disenfranchised groups, including militias that the Americans have pledged to disarm and even former Baath Party members.

"I invite peshmerga [Kurdish fighters] and [Iranian-trained] Badr Brigade members to join our army and not the occupation army," he said recently to hundreds thronging his mosque courtyard.

He even invited "our brothers the Sunnis" to join him in setting up religious courts to mete out "justice according to Islamic laws." He also said he planned to form a new governing council made up of all the groups that "did not participate in the current council."

His call has not fallen on deaf ears. According to Conlin, many of the 10,000 to 15,000 supporters who were bused in to Kufa to hear Sadr speak a couple of weeks ago came from Fallouja and Mosul, two Sunni Muslim strongholds where there is still significant support for Hussein. Others, toting guns, arrived by car, Conlin said.

"If you want to foment an insurrection, you hook up with the guys who are the most disenfranchised, and those are the guys who were hooked up with Saddam," he said.

Sadr`s suggestion to raise an army has been rejected by the more mainstream clerics of Najaf, a center of Shiite learning.

"The Iraqi army is the national army, which Iraqis lead. Its mission is to defend Iraq`s territory, people and sanctuaries; there is no place for another army besides this army," said Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the foremost Shiite cleric in Iraq, in response to a written question from The Times.

But in keeping with a long tradition of quietude and a deep reluctance to argue publicly among themselves, neither Sistani nor any other moderate cleric has spoken out.

"For 1,000 years we haven`t discussed specific personalities and what they are saying," said the white-turbaned Ayatollah Saleh Tai, a senior cleric in Najaf, as he sat in his spare reception room surrounded by acolytes.

Even representatives of the most powerful Shiite group to join the American-backed Governing Council said they did not want to stir the pot.

"We don`t want confrontation, because then we will have blood and the chance for dialogue and discussion will end," said Adel Abdul Mehdi, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, formerly based in Iran.

Concerns about bloodshed are not mere talk. In the last few weeks, several clerics have been attacked at night by unknown assailants. In two cases, they were beaten so badly that they had to be hospitalized.

While no one has been caught in connection with the assaults, suspicions initially fell on Sadr supporters. Sadr was present when moderate cleric Abdel Majid Khoei and two aides were shot and stabbed to death by a mob in Najaf`s holiest mosque April 10.

Officials of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority have been pressing the moderate clerics in one-on-one discussions to take a public stand, but so far to no avail.

"We`ve said this is a leadership challenge for you, and if you cannot handle this turbulent young cleric, it will send a bad signal about your readiness for power," said a senior coalition official.

"If you let yourself be divided, look at what`s walking around the edge of the campfire. You cannot afford to break apart as a community."


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THE WORLD


Security Council Endorses Iraq`s New Governing Body
Envoys remain sharply divided over whether the U.N. should seek greater authority in the nation. The U.S. is reluctant to cede power.
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

August 15, 2003

WASHINGTON — The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution Thursday welcoming the recently formed Iraqi Governing Council, yet in private talks it remained stalemated on whether to expand the U.N. role in Iraq.

The U.S.-proposed resolution, approved 14 to 0, represented a mild endorsement of the Governing Council as a transitional body and created an office to oversee U.N. efforts in helping rebuild Iraq. U.S. officials hope the measure, by demonstrating U.N. approval of U.S.-led reconstruction efforts, will encourage ambivalent countries to provide more support.

But the Security Council remains divided between members who favor broader U.N. powers in Iraq, and the United States, which would welcome financial support and troops from other nations but is reluctant to cede authority.

Diplomats say there has been little movement during six weeks of informal talks.

Russia, for example, has repeatedly urged broad international involvement yet has made it clear that it would provide no troops even with a new resolution, one diplomat said.

India and Pakistan have said they would want a new resolution broadening U.N. powers before they would consider providing thousands of troops, as the United States has requested. But the two nations have also made it clear that such a deployment would not be automatic, even if such a resolution was adopted.

An agreement to share authority would be a momentous step for the Bush administration, which so far has retained almost all power in Iraq — as well as borne most of the financial cost and casualties.

One European diplomat said public opinion is key to what leaders decide about contributions. In many countries, the public is reluctant to provide troops or money but is eager to see Iraq recover.

From the perspective of the U.S.-led occupation authority, it is crucial to demonstrate that the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council is legitimate and that it has influence on how the country is being run, the diplomat said.

So far, most Middle Eastern nations have neither endorsed nor dismissed the council.

But if it can show results, the council can build support among Iraqis and neighboring countries and increase the willingness of other nations to contribute to the U.S.-led effort, according to the European diplomat.

"You`ve got to get that positive cycle going," the diplomat said.

Within the U.S. government, there remains strong opposition to a larger U.N. role.

Pentagon officials fear that divided authority could undermine their efforts to deal both with security threats and administration of the country. Some U.S. officials are loath to see the French and Germans, who worked hard to block U.N. endorsement of the war, take part in rebuilding efforts.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials insist that they are keeping an open mind. John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in New York that American officials had not endorsed the idea of a new resolution for increased U.N. involvement, but neither had they ruled it out.

According to one diplomat, British officials have expressed a desire to organize discussion of the issue next month, when they take over presidency of the Security Council.

The issue is likely to be discussed far more before an Oct. 24 meeting in Madrid of countries that are potential donors to the Iraq rebuilding effort.

As the Security Council voted, some U.N. representatives made clear their desire for broader U.N. powers in Iraq.

China`s new U.N. ambassador, Guangya Wang, said Thursday`s resolution was the first step toward a broader U.N. role.

Syria`s ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, said, "We are supporting the United Nations` vital role to be more vital."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week that he would support a new U.N. resolution, but added that U.N. members "are not ready to move on it yet."

A greater U.N. role would "help the U.S. become less of a target and help it transition out of Iraq faster," said Nancy Soderberg, who served as a deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. in the Clinton administration and now is vice president of the nonprofit International Crisis Group.

By declining to give the U.N. a larger role, the Bush administration is "simply keeping the burden on the United States and the U.S. forces for no good reason," she said. She said she believed that in time U.S. policymakers would decide they must take steps to share the burden.

The resolution adopted Thursday will create an office called the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq to improve oversight of the organization`s operations there.

Annan has proposed the mission include a staff of more than 300 people. Abstaining from the otherwise unanimous vote was Syria, which has opposed the Iraqi Governing Council.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-parks15…
EDITORIAL
a d v e r t i s e m e n t




Natural-Born Photo Ops

August 15, 2003

President Bush is hugging nature in the Western states this week, showing concern for the health of the nation`s public lands. Today he is scheduled to carry his message to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, visiting a plant restoration area, working on a trail and speaking to park employees. Beware the photo op.

Bush has focused on fixing up national parks after years of neglect. An Interior Department official claimed the administration had increased the parks` maintenance budget by 132%, to $2.9 billion for the years 2002-04, but a deputy chief of the National Park Service told a Senate hearing that only a small fraction of that was new money.

Consider the 19th century lighthouse at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. As The Times` Julie Cart reported this month, the National Park Service has identified restoration of the historic structure as evidence of the president`s determination to fix up the parks. But Point Reyes rangers were surprised at that, reporting in an internal memo that the "restoration" accomplished nothing more than "coat[ing] the lighthouse with paint." The light doesn`t work. The lens housing is shored up by chunks of cedar. And as Cart reported, the rickety iron structure may be in danger of blowing over in a high wind.

In Yosemite National Park, the Park Service is spending $12.5 million to restore the worn 56-acre approach to the base of Yosemite Falls. But in this time of starvation of the parks the federal government is putting up only $1.5 million. The rest is being raised by the private, nonprofit Yosemite Fund.

And the administration continues to insult the Park Service professional staff by trying to privatize thousands of jobs, including those of scientists and other experts. The House of Representatives, generally a strong supporter of Bush`s environmental policies, has seen some of the folly in this, voting 362 to 57 in July to keep the jobs of 100 archeologists within the Park Service.

Bush is correct that the national parks` infrastructure needs immediate attention. Time will tell whether he carries through on his promise. However, his real test comes in whether he protects the natural resource itself from oil, gas and mining companies, excessive auto (or snowmobile) traffic, water pollution and erosion. On those issues, the administration has little to brag about.

Bush`s Western trip comes in the same week as his nomination of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is to succeed Christie Whitman, whose moderate views were often at odds with the White House`s.

Leavitt`s balance and flexibility on tough pollution control issues are praised as his strengths. Unfortunately, the only way to "balance" tough federal environmental rules developed over the last 30 years is to weaken them. The incoming EPA chief faces an unenviable task and may soon learn that it`s impossible to disguise paint as structural repair.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Friday, August 15, 2003

Curb FBI`s excessive access

By ANITA RAMASASTRY
PROFESSOR

The USA Patriot Act was passed by Congress soon after Sept. 11, 2001, in a process many now view as hasty and void of meaningful deliberation.

While some sections of the Patriot Act are aimed at foreigners and immigrants, Section 215 applies to visitors, permanent residents and U.S. citizens.

Six Arab American groups have joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging the act. Their members believe they are the targets of government investigations because of their ethnicity, religion and political affiliations.

They are not the only ones upset about Section 215. Librarians, booksellers and others have called for the repeal of a law that allows the government to peruse a lot of private data without the targets ever knowing.

All the critics are right. Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is rifling through their personal belongings -- learning what clubs they belong to, what charities they give to and what books they read.

In fact, opposition to the Bush administration`s un-American license to snoop is popping up everywhere.

Municipalities and city councils throughout the United States have passed resolutions opposing the Patriot Act and Section 215.

The ACLU`s complaint alleges that Section 215 violates the Fourth Amendment by vastly expanding the FBI`s power to obtain sensitive records and belongings of people not suspected of criminal activity. These searches can occur not only without notice, but also without a warrant, without a criminal subpoena and without any showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed.

And the FBI need only certify that the records are sought "for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

There is only one limitation: If the investigation is of a permanent resident or U.S. citizen, it cannot be conducted solely upon the basis of First Amendment-protected activities. Put another way, citizens can`t be singled out for investigation simply because of speaking, writing or protesting, if such activity is protected as free speech.

But note that this limitation is not relevant when the investigation is of a foreign national. So the FBI presumably now feels free to ransack records relating to U.S. citizens in the course of such investigations.

Prior law allowed such broad search powers only when the FBI was investigating suspected spies. Now, literally anyone can be subjected to such searches.

It`s important to understand that the target need not be a suspected terrorist. All the FBI must certify is that the records are sought for an investigation related to spying or international terrorism.

There is obvious potential for profiling or targeting of specific religious, political or ethic groups. Today it may be Arab-Americans and Muslims. Tomorrow, it may be other groups.

Section 215 also may violate the First Amendment. It allows the FBI to easily obtain information about a person`s reading habits, religious affiliations, Internet surfing and other expressive activities. Predictably, the threat of investigation will chill these activities. That kind of free speech chill violates the Constitution.

The FBI can impose a lifelong gag order prohibiting anyone served with Section 215 from telling anyone else about the investigation. For example, librarians cannot tell you if the FBI has come to look at your Internet surfing habits or to review what books you recently checked out.

In the post-Sept. 11 chaos and trauma, Congress did not think carefully about the Patriot Act. Fortunately, it is beginning to think more carefully about it now.

In late July, the House voted overwhelmingly to prohibit the FBI from spending any money to conduct sneak-and-peek searches in criminal cases. That vote amended one section of the act that had authorized the FBI to search people`s homes and offices without telling them until weeks or months later.

And now, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., has offered his Liberty and Personal Privacy Act. It would not repeal Section 215 powers altogether, but, if enacted, it would at least make a positive contribution to preserving basic civil liberties.

The Feingold bill would require the government to show some individual suspicion to obtain and review personal records, or library and bookstore records.

In a free society, we can`t always trust the government to restrain its own powers.

Anita Ramasastry is an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Law and co-director of the school`s Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/135077_patriot15.html

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ROUTLEDGE: TAPE COULD SPELL END OF BLAIR Aug 14 2003




Paul Routledge


THE net is closing on the merchants of death in Downing Street as witness after witness gives damning testimony to the Hutton inquiry.

None was more damning yesterday than the voice of Dr David Kelly.

His taped conversation with Newsnight journalist Susan Watts establishes beyond doubt that Alastair Campbell is in the frame for exaggerating the Government`s case for war against Iraq.

It was an eerie moment at the Royal Courts of Justice when the expert hounded to his death was heard again.

The tape must have made Campbell`s blood run cold - and that of Tony Blair and his Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

They may be on holiday thousands of miles away, but their reputation is in the dock right here in the Strand.

On past form, they are getting minute by minute briefings on the progress of their trial. The No 10 communications machine is nothing if not efficient.

Too efficient, by half. Dr Kelly`s testimony shows the original intelligence case for invading Iraq WAS given top spin by New Labour media managers.

Intelligence experts have given evidence of their doubts about the final dossier published by the PM as his pretext to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Yesterday, Dr Kelly`s "unease" about the overstated claims was confirmed in his ghostly testimony.

People in Government saw what they wanted to see, he suggested. "They will see it from their own standpoint. They may not even appreciate quite what they were doing."

Even under fire, Dr Kelly was typically generous to his tormentors. As a scientist, wedded to facts, he was unwilling to believe politicians would be so reckless, self-serving and manipulative of intelligence for their own ends.

We know better, now. The September dossier drew heavily on intelligence material. It also drew on the unrivalled spin abilities of Alastair Campbell.

It had to. If the facts were not frightening enough, they had to be made so.

A FEW days of evidence have destroyed the myth of "clean hands in Downing Street." And the investigation is barely in its stride.

Tony Blair must be wondering what more there is to come. Of course, there is his testimony and that of Alastair Campbell. Geoff Hoon will also seek to justify his actions in allowing Dr Kelly`s name to be disclosed to the media.

But this quasi-judicial process is already beyond their control. Lord Hutton`s terms of reference may be as tight as a knot. But this inquiry is taking on its own life. Witnesses stray at will.

We are witnessing the slow motion death of this Government.

Who can now believe there was not something dodgy about the dossier that claimed Saddam could fire weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes` notice?

Dr Kelly insisted this just "popped up" during spooks` deliberations. But it was clearly music to No10. Music to which they could set a seductive theme.

Now the lyrics are exposed as phoney. It will take a miracle of spin to restore faith in Tony Blair`s case for war.

What else did we learn yesterday from the Dr Kelly tape? "They would not pick on me I don`t think," he hoped.

Oh yes they would. Oh yes they did. He was the perfect fall guy.

For the first time Blair knows what it is like for his actions and those of his cohorts to be examined independently, judiciously and without the covert help of media backers. It could prove fatal.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=132899…

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ZNet | Economy

Power Outage Traced To Dim Bulb In White House
--- The Tale Of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights

by Greg Palast; August 15, 2003

I can tell you all about the ne`re-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State`s electricity ratepayers.
To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.

And that`s why, if you`re in the Northeast, you`re reading this by candlelight tonight. Here`s what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."

It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal. But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias "Enron," talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain`s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere.

And so began an economic disease called "regulatory reform" that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher`s Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for `consulting` services and a seat on Enron`s board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron`s new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies.

The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn`t swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull creator of the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned "power markets" and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates.

Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers` money on parts and labor. If they didn`t, we`d whack`m over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen`s entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did.

Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no `soft` money, no `hard` money, no money PERIOD.

But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats.

But Poppy Bush`s gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation.

California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of legislators to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act`s preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when San Diegans in the first California city to go "lawless" looked at their bills, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges.

Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one life-time contributor to the George W. Bush campaign, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights." Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That`s like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble -- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron`s destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.

And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California state Independent System Operator which directed power movements, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or "economically" withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges.

It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market.

But the light-bulb buccaneers didn`t have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton`s executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California`s wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America.

Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.

And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

Is tonight`s black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who`ve watched Bush`s buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro`s electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, "Rio Dark."

So too the free-market cowboys of Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.

Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of "pirates" --and now he`ll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders.

So where`s the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there`s no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California.

Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I don`t know if the truth about deregulation will ever see the light --until we change the dim bulb in the White House.

-----
Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin USA 2003) and the worstseller, "Democracy and Regulation," a guide to electricity deregulation published by the United Nations (2003, written with T. MacGregor and J. Oppenheim). See Greg Palast`s award-winning reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers of Britain at www.GregPalast.com. Contact Palast at his New York office: [e-mail].

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=4051&s…

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DAS DILEMMA DER USA IM IRAK
Bush, der Bruchpilot
Der Krieg im Irak ist nicht zu Ende, und die Außenminister der Arabischen Liga haben beschlossen, den von den Amerikanern eingesetzten provisorischen Regierungsrat in Bagdad nicht anzuerkennen. Unterdessen gerät US-Präsident Bush zu Hause unter Druck, weil keine Hinweise auf Massenvernichtungswaffen auftauchen und immer deutlicher zutage tritt, wie die Öffentlichkeit vor dem Einmarsch manipuliert und hinters Licht geführt wurde. Das könnte die Strategie der Republikaner gefährden, die für die Wiederwahl von George W. Bush im November 2004 auf außenpolitische Erfolgsmeldungen setzen.
Von NOAM CHOMSKY *
* Sprachwissenschaftler und politischer Autor, seit 1961 Professor am Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. Auf Deutsch zuletzt erschienen: "Media control - wie Medien uns manipulieren, Hamburg (Europa Verlag) 2003.

DER September 2002 war für die Außenpolitik der Vereinigten Staaten ein entscheidender Monat. Er brachte drei Ereignisse von erheblicher Tragweite, die eng miteinander zusammenhängen. Erstens veröffentlichten die USA ihre neue "Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie". Zweitens begannen sie die Kriegstrommeln zu rühren. Und drittens entschied sich im Zwischenwahlkampf zum Kongress, dass die Bush-Regierung ihr radikales außen- und innenpolitisches Programm weiter durchziehen konnte.


Nach der neuen imperial grand strategy, wie sie in der führenden außenpolitischen Zeitschrift Foreign Affairs sogleich tituliert wurde, sind die USA "ein revisionistischer Staat, der seine gegenwärtigen Vorteile zu einer Weltordnung verfestigen will, in der allein er das Sagen hat". Angestrebt ist also eine "unipolare Weltordnung", in der "kein Staat und keine Koalition" den USA ihre Rolle "als globale Führungsmacht, als Schutzmacht und als Durchsetzungsorgan" streitig machen kann (so John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs vom September/Oktober 2002). Diese Strategie berge Gefahren für die USA selbst, warnte der Autor des Artikels allerdings - und viele außenpolitische Experten haben seither seine Warnung wiederholt.


Was nach dieser Konzeption "geschützt" werden muss, sind Macht und Interessen der USA - nicht die Interessen der Welt insgesamt. Meinungsumfragen zeigen, dass sich seit September 2002 die Angst vor den Vereinigten Staaten im gleichen Maße verstärkt hat wie das Misstrauen gegen ihre politische Führung. Eine internationale Erhebung vom Dezember 2002 ergab, dass ein "einseitig von US-Amerika und seinen Verbündeten" geführter Krieg gegen den Irak nur sehr wenige Befürworter fand.


Die Vereinten Nationen ließ Washington wissen, sie könnten nur dann weiter eine "relevante" Rolle spielen, wenn sie die Pläne der USA absegneten; andernfalls würden sie zu einem Debattierklub verkommen. Die USA hätten "das souveräne Recht, Militäraktionen zu unternehmen", eröffnete US-Außenminister Colin Powell dem Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos, wo die Kriegspläne Washingtons ebenfalls auf heftigen Widerstand stießen. Dabei führte er aus: "Wenn wir eine entschiedene Einschätzung von einer Angelegenheit haben, dann übernehmen wir die Führung, selbst wenn uns niemand folgen sollte" (Wall Street Journal, 27. Januar 2003).


Noch deutlicher gaben George W. Bush und Tony Blair ihre Missachtung des Völkerrechts und der internationalen Organisationen zu erkennen, als sie sich am Vorabend der Invasion auf den Azoren trafen. Hier verkündeten sie ein Ultimatum - nicht etwa an den Irak, sondern an die Mitglieder des UN-Sicherheitsrats: Wenn ihr nicht kapituliert, beginnen wir auch ohne eure unerhebliche Zustimmung mit der Invasion; und zwar auch wenn Saddam Hussein und seine Familie vorher das Land verlassen sollten.(1) Es ging also nur darum, dass die USA den Irak unter ihre Kontrolle bekommen.


Präsident Bush erklärte, die USA hätten "die souveräne Befugnis, zur Behauptung ihrer nationalen Sicherheit Gewalt anzuwenden". Im Irak solle ruhig eine "arabische Fassade" aufgebaut werden (so nannten es die Briten, als sie noch den "Platz an der Sonne" innehatten), vorausgesetzt, die USA können ihre Macht in dieser ölreichen Region fest verankern. Nach allem, was wir aus der historischen wie aus der gegenwärtigen Praxis schließen können, wird auch im Irak ein äußerlich demokratisches System willkommen sein - sofern die Iraker so willfährig sind, wie es sich für den "Hinterhof" Washingtons geziemt.


Nach der neuen grand strategy hat Washington die Generalvollmacht zu einem preventive war, dem vorbeugenden Krieg, nicht zu verwechseln mit dem preemptive war, was so viel heißt wie dem Gegner zuvorkommend. Wie immer die Rechtfertigung für einen preemptive war aussehen mag, sie deckt keineswegs einen preventive war ab, schon gar nicht in der Bedeutung, die seine Befürworter dem Präventivkrieg geben: als Einsatz von militärischer Gewalt, um eine fiktive Bedrohung auszuschalten, sodass selbst der Ausdruck "vorbeugend" eigentlich zu milde ist. Preventive war im Sinne der Bush-Doktrin ist schlicht und einfach das Verbrechen des Angriffskriegs, das nach 1945 den "Hauptkriegsverbrechern" im Nürnberger Prozess zur Last gelegt wurde.


Auch US-Amerikaner, denen ihr Land wirklich am Herzen liegt, sind sich über diesen Sachverhalt im Klaren. Als die US-Armee ihre Invasion im Irak begann, schrieb der Historiker Arthur Schlesinger, die grand strategy von Bush erinnere "auf alarmierende Weise an die Strategie des kaiserlichen Japan beim Angriff auf Pearl Harbor, der als ein Datum der Schande in die Geschichte eingegangen ist …" Schlesinger bezog sich damit auf den bekannten Satz von Präsident Franklin D. Roosevelt, fügte aber hinzu: "Heute sind es wir Amerikaner, die mit dieser Schande leben müssen." Deshalb sei es keine Überraschung, dass "die Welle der Sympathie, die den Vereinigten Staaten nach dem 11. September entgegenschlug, inzwischen verebbt ist und stattdessen weltweit der Hass auf die Arroganz und den Militarismus der USA wächst". Damals konstatierte Schlesinger, dass in den Augen vieler Menschen Präsident Bush "die größere Bedrohung für den Weltfrieden darstellt als Saddam Hussein".(2)


Für die Führung in Washington, die sich mehrheitlich aus den reaktionären Kreisen der Regierungen von Ronald Reagan und George Bush sen. rekrutiert, ist diese Woge des Hasses kein großes Problem. Diese Leute wollen gefürchtet, nicht geliebt werden. In aller Selbstverständlichkeit zitiert Donald Rumsfeld Al Capone, den Gangsterkönig von Chicago: "Mit freundlichen Worten und einer Knarre erreicht man mehr als nur mit freundlichen Worten."


Rumsfeld und die Leute in seiner Umgebung wissen genauso gut wie ihre Kritiker, dass ihre Aktionen das Risiko der Ausbreitung von Massenvernichtungswaffen und Terror eher vergrößern. Aber auch das ist für sie kein großes Problem. An der Spitze ihrer Prioritätenliste stehen zwei andere Ziele: Sie wollen erstens ihre globale Vorherrschaft durchsetzen und zweitens ihr innenpolitisches Programm durchziehen. Letzteres besteht darin, die im Lauf der letzten hundert Jahre hart erkämpften sozialen Errungenschaften wieder rückgängig zu machen, und zwar ein für alle Mal.


Eine Hegemonialmacht kann sich nicht damit begnügen, ihre Strategie kundzutun. Sie muss sie vielmehr mit exemplarischen Aktionen als "neue Norm des internationalen Rechts" durchsetzen. Man geht also davon aus, dass nur ein Staat "mit Knarre" in der Lage ist, "Normen" zu setzen und das Völkerrecht zu verändern.


Der Feind muss allerdings drei Bedingungen erfüllen: Er muss erstens wehrlos sein und zweitens so wichtig, dass ein Krieg sich lohnt; drittens muss er als unmittelbare Bedrohung für unsere Existenz, als das Böse schlechthin erscheinen. Der Irak erfüllte alle drei Kriterien: Er war erstens wehrlos und zweitens wichtig genug. Was die von ihm ausgehende Bedrohung angeht, so galt sie nach den Reden von Bush, Blair und Co. als erwiesen. Demnach hatte sich der Diktator "die gefährlichsten Waffen der Welt verschafft, um andere Länder zu beherrschen, einzuschüchtern oder anzugreifen"; außerdem habe er sie bereits eingesetzt und dabei tausende seiner Landsleute getötet oder verstümmelt: "Wenn das nicht böse ist", so Bush, "hat das Wort böse jede Bedeutung verloren."


Bushs Urteil über das Hussein-Regime hört sich berechtigt an. Und von den Leuten, die dieses üble Regime gestärkt haben, soll keiner ungestraft davonkommen. Nur gehört zu ihnen eben auch der Mann, der diese hehren Worte ausgesprochen hat, samt seiner gegenwärtigen Helfer und jener Leute, die vor Jahren im Auftrag der US-Regierung das Böse schlechthin unterstützt haben, lange nachdem Saddam seine schrecklichen Verbrechen begangen hatte. Diese Hilfe erfolgte nach Aussagen der Regierung von George Bush sen., um die Exportinteressen der USA zu unterstützen. Es ist schon eindrucksvoll, wie leicht es unseren politischen Führern fällt, sich bei der Aufzählung der schlimmsten Verbrechen dieses Ungeheuers um die entscheidenden Worte zu drücken: Hussein bekam, so heißt es dann, "unsere Unterstützung, weil wir uns um solche Nebensächlichkeiten nicht kümmern".


Die Verurteilung erfolgte erst, als der einstige Freund sein erstes echtes Verbrechen beging: als er nämlich den Befehl aus Washington missachtet (oder vielleicht auch nur missverstanden) hat und in Kuwait einmarschierte. Die Bestrafung fiel hart aus - jedenfalls für Saddams Untertanen.


Leicht zu verdrängen sind auch die Gründe für den Entschluss der USA, Saddam Hussein im Anschluss an den ersten Golfkrieg erneut zu unterstützen, als er die Aufstandsversuche erstickte, die sein Regime hätten stürzen können. Der außenpolitische Kolumnist der New York Times stellte damals klar, welche die "beste aller Welten" für Washington sei: " … eine brutale irakische Junta ohne Saddam Hussein". Aber da dieses Ziel nicht erreichbar sei, müsse man sich mit der zweitbesten Lösung begnügen. Die kurdischen und schiitischen Aufständischen durften keinen Erfolg haben, weil sich die USA und ihre Verbündeten in einem Punkt "erstaunlich einig" waren: "Egal wie groß das Sündenregister des irakischen Führers sein mochte, für den Westen und die Region bot er eine bessere Aussicht auf die Stabilität seines Landes als diejenigen, die unter seiner Repression gelitten hatten."(3) In den Kommentaren über die Massengräber, in denen man heute die Opfer von Saddams Terror findet, kommt das alles nicht mehr vor. Denn dieser Terror, der heute einen "moralisch gerechtfertigten" Krieg begründen soll, war damals aus Sicht der USA durchaus statthaft.(4)


Nur zum Lachen
ZWÖLF Jahre später galt es, bei den zögerlichen Amerikanern die notwendige Kriegsbegeisterung zu entfachen. Seit Anfang September 2002 ergingen finstere Warnungen über die tödliche Gefahr, die Saddam für die Vereinigten Staaten darstelle, und über seine Verbindungen zu den Al-Qaida-Terroristen. Dabei wurde immer wieder angedeutet, Saddam selbst sei in die Angriffe vom 11. September verwickelt. Zu dieser Propaganda meinte die Herausgeberin des Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: "Viele der Behauptungen, die man den Journalisten schmackhaft machen wollte, waren einfach zum Lachen, aber je lächerlicher sie waren, desto unkritischer wurden sie von den Medien aufgegriffen und zum Lackmustest für Patriotismus hochgeredet."(5)


Die propagandistische Offensive blieb nicht ohne Wirkung. Schon nach wenigen Wochen sah die Mehrheit der US-Bürger in Saddam Hussein eine unmittelbare Bedrohung für die USA. Und bald glaubte fast die Hälfte der Befragten, hinter den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September stecke das irakische Regime. Dementsprechend fiel dann auch der Grad der Zustimmung für den Krieg aus. Die Propaganda verhalf den Republikanern im November 2002 zu einer klaren Mehrheit bei den Zwischenwahlen zum Kongress, weil die Wähler ihre Alltagsprobleme vergaßen und sich aus Angst vor dem teuflischen Feind unter den großen Schirm der Macht flüchteten.


Der glänzende Erfolg dieser "Öffentlichkeitsdiplomatie" wurde vollends offenbar, als Bush am 1. Mai auf dem Deck des Flugzeugträgers "Abraham Lincoln" "ein starkes, Reagan-würdiges Finale für einen Sechswochenkrieg lieferte", wie es in der New York Times hieß. Der Vergleich bezieht sich auf die Erklärung, in der Präsident Reagan 1983 nach der Besetzung von Grenada verkündete, Amerika könne stolz darauf sein, die Muskatnuss-Metropole der Welt erobert und die Russen daran gehindert zu haben, die USA zu bombardieren. Zwanzig Jahre später erklärte George W. Bush ungeachtet aller skeptischen Kommentare im Lande, er habe "einen Sieg im Krieg gegen den Terror gewonnen" und "einen Verbündeten der al-Qaida aus dem Weg geräumt".(6) Dabei schert ihn überhaupt nicht, dass es keine Beweise für die angeblichen Verbindungen zwischen Saddam Hussein und seinem Erzfeind Ussama Bin Laden gibt. Gleichgültig ist ihm auch, dass die einzig erwiesene Beziehung zwischen dem Sieg im Irak und dem Terror eine ganz andere ist: Die Irakinvasion bedeutet für den Antiterrorkrieg viel eher einen "enormen Rückschlag", weil sie der al-Qaida verstärkt neue Kandidaten zugetrieben hat.(7)


Das Wall Street Journal befand denn auch, dass der sorgfältig inszenierte Operettenauftritt von Präsident Bush auf der "Abraham Lincoln" "den Auftakt zu seinem Wahlfeldzug des Jahres 2004" darstellte. Dieser soll sich, hofft man im Weißen Haus, "so weit wie möglich um Themen der Nationalen Sicherheit drehen".(8)


Vor den Kongresswahlen 2002 hatte Karl Rove, der politische Chefstratege der Republikaner, seine Wahlhelfer angewiesen, die Sicherheitsthemen in den Vordergrund zu stellen und von der unpopulären Innenpolitik der Republikaner möglichst abzulenken. Diese Strategie ist für die alten Reagan-Gefolgsleute, die sich heute wieder in Washington breit machen, zur zweiten Natur geworden. Mit derselben Methode hatten sie ihre erste Dienstzeit bestritten, als sie immer wieder auf den außenpolitischen Alarmknopf drückten, um zu verhindern, dass die öffentlichen Diskussionen sich auf den innenpolitischen Kurs konzentrieren, der Reagan am Ende seiner Amtszeit 1992 zum unbeliebtesten Präsidenten seit langem gemacht hatte.


Die aufwändige Propagandakampagne war zwar begrenzt erfolgreich, konnte aber die öffentliche Meinung in den grundsätzlicheren Fragen nicht wirklich kippen. Heute spricht sich eine Mehrheit der US-Amerikaner dafür aus, dass bei internationalen Krisen die Vereinten Nationen und nicht die USA die führende Rolle spielen müssen; fast zwei Drittel zögen es vor, wenn statt der USA die UN den Wiederaufbau im Irak beaufsichtigen würden.(9)


Als die Besatzungsarmee keine Massenvernichtungswaffen entdecken konnte, musste die Bush-Regierung einen Kurswechsel vornehmen. Jetzt sprach niemand mehr von der "absoluten Sicherheit", dass der Irak solche Waffen besitze, man argumentierte nur noch, die entsprechenden Vorwürfe seien "gerechtfertigt durch die Entdeckung von Geräten, die möglicherweise zur Herstellung von Waffen dienen könnten."(10) Und hohe Regierungsbeamte sprachen auf einmal von einer "Verfeinerung" der Präventivkriegsdoktrin vom September 2002, die den USA das Recht auf einen Angriff zuspricht, wenn das betreffende Land über "tödliche Waffen in großen Mengen" verfüge. Demgegenüber soll die revidierte Fassung nun vorsehen, "dass die Regierung gegen feindliche Regime vorgehen wird, die lediglich den Vorsatz und die Fähigkeit haben, Massenvernichtungswaffen zu entwickeln".(11) Die Argumente, mit denen die Invasion begründet worden war, haben sich als unhaltbar herausgestellt - woraus sich als Konsequenz ergibt, dass man die Schwelle für den Einsatz militärischer Gewalt noch niedriger ansetzt.


Bushs vielleicht spektakulärster propagandistischer Erfolg spiegelte sich in den Lobeshymnen wider, die seine "Vision" eines Friedens für den Nahen Osten priesen. Zeitgleich konnte man beobachten, wie die US-Regierung demokratische Prinzipien verleugnete. Am deutlichsten zeigte sich das in der Unterscheidung zwischen dem geschmähten "Old Europe" und dem begeistert gefeierten "New Europe". Die Abgrenzung erfolgte nach einem präzisen Kriterium: Zum "alten Europa" gehören die Länder, deren Regierungen sich in ihrer Haltung zum Irakkrieg an der überwiegenden Mehrheit ihrer Bevölkerung orientierten; die Helden des "neuen Europa" dagegen befolgten die Befehle aus Crawford, Texas. In den meisten Fällen setzten sie sich damit zu Hause sogar über noch größere Mehrheiten hinweg. Die meisten politischen Kommentatoren in den USA zeterten über das ungehorsame "Old Europe" und dessen psychische Macken.


Am progressiven Ende des politischen Spektrums verwies Richard Holbrooke, Vizeaußenminister und von 1999 an UN-Botschafter der Clinton-Regierung, auf "den äußerst wichtigen Punkt", dass die acht Länder, die Donald Rumsfeld als Kern eines "New Europe" bezeichnet hat,(12) zusammen mehr Einwohner zählen als das "Old Europe" - was belege, dass Frankreich und Deutschland "isoliert" seien. Da hat er schon Recht, es sei denn, man hält es mit dem linksradikalen Irrglauben, dass in einer Demokratie auch die öffentliche Meinung zählt. Im selben Geist hat Thomas Friedman in der New York Times dafür plädiert, Frankreich die ständige Mitgliedschaft im UN-Sicherheitsrat zu entziehen, weil es noch im "Kindergartenalter" und unfähig sei, "mit den anderen anständig zu spielen". Nimmt man neuere Meinungsumfragen zur Kenntnis, wäre dann allerdings die Mehrheit der "Neu-Europäer" im Kindergartenalter stecken geblieben.(13)


Die Türkei war im Hinblick auf das Demokratieverständnis ein besonders aufschlussreicher Fall. Die Regierung in Ankara weigerte sich trotz starken Drucks, ihre "demokratische Gesinnung" dadurch zu belegen, dass sie die Befehle aus Washington auch dann befolgt, wenn 95 Prozent ihrer eigenen Bevölkerung dagegen sind. Über diese Lektion in Demokratie waren einige US-Kolumnisten so erbost, dass sie in ihren Kommentaren nachträglich auf die Verbrechen der Türkei gegen die Kurden während der 1990er-Jahre verwiesen. Dieses Thema war zuvor tabu gewesen, weil die Vereinigten Staaten dabei eine wichtige Rolle gespielt hatten.


Auf den entscheidenden Punkt verwies Paul Wolfowitz, der dem türkischen Militär vorwarf, es habe "nicht die starke Führungsrolle gespielt, die wir von ihm erwartet hätten". Denn die Militärführung habe nichts unternommen, um die neue Regierung der AKP daran zu hindern, die nahezu einhellige öffentliche Meinung zu respektieren. Deshalb erwarte man von Ankara das Eingeständnis: "Wir haben einen Fehler gemacht. Jetzt müssen wir sehen, wie wir den Amerikanern eine möglichst große Hilfe sein können."(14)


Die Wut über das "alte Europa" ist sehr viel tiefer verwurzelt als die geringschätzige Relativierung der Demokratie. Für die USA war der europäische Einigungsprozess schon immer eine zwiespältige Angelegenheit. Vor 30 Jahren hat Henry Kissinger in seiner "Year of Europe"-Ansprache den Europäern geraten, sich auf ihre "regionalen Verantwortlichkeiten" zu beschränken, und zwar innerhalb eines "umfassenden Ordnungsrahmens", für den die Vereinigten Staaten verantwortlich sind. Europa solle keine unabhängige Politik betreiben, die sich auf sein französisch-deutsches Kerngebiet stützt.


Ähnliche Bedenken gelten heute für Nordwestasien - die Weltregion mit der größten ökonomischen Dynamik, mit riesigen Bodenschätzen und einer zunehmend industrialisierten Wirtschaft. Auch diese potenziell integrierte Großregion könnte einmal mit der Idee liebäugeln, den "umfassenden Ordnungsrahmen" in Frage zu stellen, der nach der erklärten Überzeugung Washingtons auf Dauer erhalten bleiben muss. Zur Not auch mit Gewalt.




deutsch von Niels Kadritzke

Fußnoten:
1 Michael Gordon in der New York Times, 18. März 2003.
2 Los Angeles Times, 23. März 2003.
3 So Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 7. Juni 1991 bzw. Alan Cowell, New York Times, 11. April 1991.
4 Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 4. Juni 2003.
5 Linda Rothstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Juli 2003.
6 Kommentar von Elisabeth Bumiller in der New York Times vom 2. Mai 2003; dort auch der Text der Bush-Erklärung.
7 So Jason Burke, Observer (London), 18. Mai 2003.
8 Wall Street Journal, 2. Mai 2003. In diesem Sinne erklärte auch Karl Rove, der politische Chefstratege der Republikaner, in der New York Times vom 10. Mai 2003, der Wahlkampf werde sich "auf die Schlacht um den Irak, nicht auf den Krieg" konzentrieren.
9 Siehe Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), University of Maryland, 18.-22. April 2003.
10 Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 1. Juni 2003.
11 Guy Dinmore und James Harding, Financial Times, 3./4. Mai 2003.
12 Gemeint sind die acht Staaten, die die Anzeige der Solidaritätsadresse an die USA unterschrieben haben, die Ende Januar im Wall Street Journal erschienen war.
13 Siehe Michael Katz, National Journal, 8. Februar 2003; das Friedman-Zitat in New York Times, 7./8. Mai 2003.
14 Siehe Marc Lacey, New York Times, 7./8. Mai 2003.

Le Monde diplomatique Nr. 7131 vom 15.8.2003, Seite 1,9, 72 Dokumentation, NOAM CHOMSKY

© Contrapress media GmbH
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung des taz-Verlags

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Views On Economy Worsen
NEW YORK, Aug. 13, 2003


Americans are getting more pessimistic about the economy – 60 percent say it`s bad, the highest number recorded in a CBS News poll in ten years – and a majority disapproves of the way President Bush is handling it.

With public confidence in the economy falling and the job market stagnant, the president called his economic team down to Texas on Wednesday to show the world he`s on the case.

But few Americans see signs of a recovery, and most think the Bush administration’s tax cuts – the centerpiece of his economic and jobs program -- will not do much to improve either the stock market or the job market.

THE ECONOMY

The economy remains in first place as the most important problem facing this country, as it has for the past few months. Nearly four in ten volunteer it.

The public is pessimistic about the economy, and has become more so recently. 60% think the economy is in bad shape – the most negative assessment seen in this poll in ten years. Just a few months ago, opinion was more evenly divided. And this represents a marked deterioration since January 2001, when Bush first took office; then, 84% thought the economy was in good shape.

RATING THE ECONOMY

Now

Good
38%
Bad
60%

7/2003

Good
45%
Bad
52%

5/2003

Good
48
Bad
51%

1/2001

Good
84%
Bad
15%

The last time ratings of the economy were more negative than they are now was in September 1993; then, 67% thought the economy was bad, and just 32% thought it was good.

In June 1991, at roughly the same point in the presidency of the current president’s father, negative evaluations of the economy were similar. Then, 42% thought the economy was good, and 57% thought it was bad. But views continued to decline over the next few months; by October, 65% thought the economy was in bad condition.

55% of Americans think the economy has deteriorated in just the past two years, and there is particular alarm over the job market. Two thirds think the job market has gotten worse since then.

In addition, 44% are concerned that they or someone in their household will lose their job in the next year.

At the same time, most Americans seem personally to be treading water financially; 65% say their finances are about the same or better than they were two years ago. But a third are worse off now.

Few see much prospect for improvement. Just under one in four Americans think an economic recovery is currently underway, but slightly more – 27% -- think the economy is getting worse. 49% think it is staying the same.

THE ECONOMY IS…

Getting Better
23%
Staying the same
49%
Gettting worse
27%

Republicans are more optimistic than Democrats about the economy, but only 37% of them think it is getting better. Those with higher incomes and men are more likely to think it is getting better as well.

Many think declines in the economy and the job market have occurred under the Bush Administration’s watch, and the President receives poor ratings in this area. In this poll, 36% approve and 52% disapprove of his handling of the economy -- his most negative evaluations in this area since he took office.

BUSH’S HANDLING OF THE ECONOMY

Now

Approve
36%
Disapprove
52%

7/2003

Approve
41%
Disapprove
46%

5/2003

Approve
44%
Disapprove
49%

Due in part to the positive assessments of his handling of Iraq, Bush’s overall job approval rating is more positive; 55% approve and 35% disapprove.

Overall, Bush receives only a modicum of blame for current economic conditions. Most think Bush’s policies have had an impact on the economy, but believe that impact has been small. 48% believe the Administration’s policies have had a little impact, and 37% think those policies have had a lot of impact. But perhaps as a result of the tax cuts that have been implemented, the Bush Administration’s policies are seen as having a greater effect on the economy now than the public thought in January 2002.

However, that obscures an important finding from this poll; Bush receives more blame than credit for the current economy when the questions are asked separately to people who hold different views about the direction of the economy. Among those who think the economy is on the upswing, 37% give him lot of credit for its recovery. But among those who think the economy is getting worse, 56% place a lot of blame on Bush and his policies.

Part of the problem may be that most of the public thinks Bush’s attention is not focused enough on the problem. 25% think the president is paying enough attention to the economy, while nearly three times as many -- 70% -- think he is not.

That complaint – that the president is not paying enough attention to the economy -- has become more widespread over the past few months. In May, 61% felt Bush was not paying enough attention to the economy.

About half of Republicans think the President needs to spend more time on the economy; 48% think he is paying enough attention to the economy, but 47% think he should be paying more attention. Among Democrats, 88% think he is not paying enough attention to the economy.

And most Americans think the president has made little progress creating new jobs. 55% think he has made not much or no progress in this area, and 39% think he has made at least some.

HAS BUSH MADE PROGRESS CREATING JOBS?

A lot/some
39%
Not much/none
55%

There is some skepticism about the president’s plan for economic recovery as well. The centerpiece of Bush’s economic and jobs program is tax cuts, but Americans think it is unlikely that the Bush tax cuts will lead to more jobs. Only 38% think it likely the new tax cuts will create more jobs, while most -- 55% -- think that is not likely to happen. Views on this have become more negative since last May.

The public expects tax cuts to do even less for the stock market –- only 22% expect the tax cuts will improve the stock market. 9% expect they will be detrimental to the markets, while 49% think they will have no effect.

Investors are slightly more optimistic about the impact of Bush’s tax cut program on the stock market; 26% think the tax reductions will be good for the market, but 54% think they will have no effect.

THE STOCK MARKET

The stock market is considered an important factor in the nation’s economic health; 62% think it has a major impact, and another 27% think it has a minor effect.

While few (6%) would say the stock market is very good right now, 43% think it is in fairly good shape. Americans are hesitantly optimistic about its short-term outlook; 32% think the market will not change in the next three months, and 41% think it will rise moderately. Only 1% expects big gains.

Investors’ views are somewhat more bullish; 51% expect a moderate rise in the market.


For detailed information on how CBS News conducts public opinion surveys, click here.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 798 adults interviewed by telephone August 11-12, 2003. The error due to sampling could be plus or minus four percentage points for results based on the entire sample.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/13/opinion/polls/prin…

© MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Joerver]

Und hier 108 Cartoons alles frische Ware, für die, die nicht genug kriegen können.
http://www.flu-ent.com/arch/20030814_108_toons.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Gesamtzahl nach der Berichtigung 329 tote Soldaten.

14 Aug 2003 16:57:26 GMT
FACTBOX-Table of casualties in Iraq

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Adds death of British soldier)

LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A British soldier was killed and two were wounded when a bomb blast hit a military ambulance in the southern city of Basra on Thursday, a British military spokesman said.

The U.S. military also increased the overall U.S. death toll in Iraq on Thursday, saying the adjustment was to take account of soldiers wounded in action who later died of their wounds.

Following is a table of U.S., British and Iraqi casualties in the Iraq war and its aftermath as announced by U.S., British and Iraqi authorities or independently confirmed by Reuters correspondents.

NOTE: The figures in brackets refer to casualties after May 1, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat over.

U.S. AND BRITISH TROOPS KILLED:

COMBAT/ATTACKS

United States 191 (60)

Britain 15 (7)

NON-COMBAT

United States 93 (71)

Britain 30 (5)

IRAQIS KILLED:

MILITARY 2,320#

CIVILIANS Between 6,087 and 7,798*

# = U.S. military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.

* = Figure compiled on Web site www.iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, based on incidents reported by at least two media sources.

NOTE: NON-COMBAT is defined as accidents, U.S. or British fire killing or wounding their own troops, and other incidents unrelated to fighting.

[Joerver]

DERRICK Z. JACKSON
America`s worst side in Iraq
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 8/15/2003

DALLAS

SPEAKING LAST week before the National Association of Black Journalists, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice talked about how security was hardened in the United States after Sept. 11. Her speech seemed patented until she said, "But if we in the United States are not going to change who we are, if we are going to preserve the nature of our open society, there is only so much hardening that we can do. We need to address the source of the problem. And to do that we must go on the offensive." Rice says we are not going to change who we are. It is hard to be more offensive than that.

America is nearly two years into invasions in which we have killed more civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan than the number who died in the United States on 9/11. Yet we have no Osama, no Saddam, no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons plants, no peace.

In the 2000 presidential debates, Bush said he would stop "extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions." Bush is now so obsessed with nation-building that he is blind to how killings of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers devalue Iraqis even as he claims to liberate them.

Witness the witless comments made last week by the American commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Sanchez told The New York Times that he decided to scale back his self-described "iron-fisted" raids in the search for loyalists to Saddam Hussein after the new Iraqi leaders told him that too many innocent families were brutalized by US soldiers.

"When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family," Sanchez said.

You mean Sanchez actually had to be told that you do not make friends behaving like the LAPD? That was not all. Sanchez bizarrely implied that unlike the victims of 9/11, whom we grant eternal innocence, Iraqis carry evil in their hearts. He said the US raids "created in this culture some Iraqis that then had to act because of their value systems against us in terms of revenge, possibly because there were casualties on their side and also because of the impact on their dignity and respect."

Your value system would be skewed too, if you saw one indiscriminate shooting too many. In the week since Sanchez said he was dropping the iron fist, American soldiers mistakenly killed two members of the American-installed police force. A third police officer who survived the attack said US soldiers shot one of the other officers between the eyes even though that officer had already been wounded and was shouting that he was a police officer. The surviving officer said he was kicked and beaten despite waving his badge and despite being wounded in the leg.

In another tragedy, panicked US soldiers, thinking a blown transformer was a bomb, fired on a car filled with a family who did not see the soldiers` checkpoint. The attack widowed a woman, killing her husband, two daughters, and a son. The youngest was 8. The family was coming home from dropping off a grandmother. The surviving daughter, 13-year-old Hadeel Kawaz, said the soldiers left her dying father and siblings bleeding for an hour without medical attention. During the occupation, the family had given water to patrolling US soldiers.

Rice is right. We have not changed. Hadeel Kawaz might as well have been a Cherokee in the 1830s, watching her family die in the Trail of Tears.

As Iraqi civilians duck and try to decide whether they are the recipients of freedom or friendly fire, one thing is certain. Bush`s friends are getting rich off Iraq a lot faster than Iraqis themselves.

Two weeks ago, Halliburton, the Houston oil company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, announced a profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year. In 2002 the company lost $498 million.

It helps that Halliburton got the majority of the work to rebuild Iraq`s oil fields. At home President Bush filed briefs to the Supreme Court against affirmative action for African-Americans. In Iraq, Halliburton got an old boy, no-bid contract. Outrage forced a reopening of the bidding, but not before Halliburton racked up $641 million in work. Halliburton is also the sole provider of troop support services in Iraq and Afghanistan. For those services the company has already received $529 million in a 10-year contract that has no ceiling.

"Iraq was a very nice boost," one analyst told The Wall Street Journal. Cheney`s friends get a boost. Civilians get brutality. Rice was absolutely right in the wrong way. She thought she was boasting about going on the offensive to protect an open society. When our freedom comes at the cost of killing police and gunning down a father, two daughters, and a son and leaving them for dead, nothing has changed. America remains an open society that relies far too much on a closed mind.

Derrick Z. Jackson`s e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 12:35 p.m. EDT August 15, 2003

The U.S. military reports two crew members of an Apache helicopter were injured outside Tikrit when their aircraft made an emergency landing during a maintenance test flight on Thursday. A spokesman says both were hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
The U.S. Army began training an Iraqi militia force on Friday to take on civil defense duties and pave the way for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Fifty young men hand-picked by tribal leaders started three weeks of intensive training at one of Saddam Hussein`s main palaces in the northern town of Tikrit, which is now headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division.
A council of hard-line Islamic clerics issued an edict Thursday that says Pakistan should not send troops to Iraq and that Pakistani soldiers who die there won`t be eligible for martyrdom or an Islamic funeral. The edict, or fatwa, increases pressure on the government, which has yet to agree to send troops to help the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
A senior Iraqi politician is insisting clear evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has been found and would be presented in due time. One of Iraq`s nine-member leadership committee elected last month by the country`s interim Governing Council says arms are hidden in different parts of Iraq.
Turkey`s lawmakers and public are increasingly questioning a U.S. request to send thousands of peace keepers to Iraq. It`s a request the government wants to meet to help mend ties with Washington. Turkey is sending a fact-finding delegation to Iraq next week to sound out the situation.
Apache helicopters circled above the Iraqi Public Service Academy Thursday as 145 Iraqi police officers graduated from a three-week training program for officers who served on the force when Saddam Hussein was in power. Security was boosted because of a deadly attack last month on a similar ceremony.
The U.N. Security Council has endorsed Iraq`s new Governing Council, which was established by the United States, by a vote of 14-to-nothing. Syria abstained -- because it opposes any endorsement of the 25-member governing council. The Security Council also voted to authorize a U.N. mission in Iraq, to oversee U.N. efforts to help rebuild the country and set up a democratic government.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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New York stories (and two from Baghdad)

Saturday August 16, 2003
The Guardian

April Kimble, 26, homeless
"I was on 42nd Street outside McDonald`s when the lights went out, and I turned around into Times Square and it was pitch black. People were starting to run and panicking, talking about 9/11. It was terrible. It took about an hour for things to calm down because people figured they would tell us if there had been another attack.
"I sleep on the street. It was packed. There were people all over the square. It was scary, I`ve never been around that many people and it was so dark."

Abdul Hamal Khanum, 50, outside his newsstand on 6th Avenue
"One hour after it happened I had to close my business and then the whole night my wife and I had to spend on the street.

"We just sat down on the sidewalk. We live in Jamaica, Queens, and there was no way to get home.

"My family was going to try to get me but the bridges and tunnels were closed.

"I lost maybe $1,000 from having to close the stand, and that`s a lot of money for me."

Hadji Gais, 51, Baghdad taxi driver
"Maybe they want us to send them some of our electricity. Or perhaps we can teach them how to live with no electricity. We`re quite good at that in Baghdad now. I don`t think many people here will feel much sympathy."

Hasan Ali, 17, Baghdad labourer
"What? They don`t have power cuts all the time?"

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Das sind andere Zahlen als obskure Artikel in der `Zeit`, die Bush Pressekonferenzen für wahr halten. Zu erwarten ist ein großer Knall, die Strukturen des Terrors sind noch nicht genügend organisiert.

Lacking water and power, Iraqis run out of patience in the searing summer heat
Millions of Iraqis are frustrated. They are deprived of fuel, electricity and water, the basics of life. These deprivations have sparked protests throughout the country, angry voices made louder by the searing summer heat. The chaos has sharpened demands for improvements in the crippled infrastructure. Coalition administrators say they recognise their failure to tell people what is being done to repair the economy. The World Bank and UN are completing a needs assessment which they will present to a conference on Iraq in October. It is hoped that the survey will establish a clearer timetable for the work to be done and build confidence in the future. Some aid workers in Britain believe reconstruction is proceeding at a faster pace than in Kosovo and Afghanistan. But their optimism is little comfort to exasperated Iraqis. Here Jamie Wilson in Baghdad and Owen Bowcott examine the problems and what is being done to solve them

Saturday August 16, 2003
The Guardian

Oil


Iraq may be a country floating on oil, but you would not know it just now, when severe shortages of petrol caused rioting last weekend in Basra. Things are so bad that the country is importing essential refined oil products, including petrol, diesel and cooking gas.

According to officials of the coalition provisional authority (CPA), production is rising, the oilfields now producing slightly more than 1m barrels a day. That is still a long way short of the 2.8m Iraq was producing before the war and the 3.5m it regularly achieved before the previous Gulf war. Its oil reserves are the second largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia.

The current shortages are due not to the low output but to corruption. Even before the war oil smuggling was endemic in Iraq, much of it authorised by the regime as a way of evading the US sanctions.

"The ministry of oil was designed for corruption, and you cannot change that culture and ethos overnight," Andy Bearpark, director of operations and infrastructure at the CPA, says.

Many of the smuggling routes are still in operation. On Thursday night 150 road tankers left Baghdad for Basra to alleviate the fuel crisis in the city. Only three arrived. The others were diverted and the petrol stolen for the black market or smuggled out of the country on dhows, barges or tankers.

There is an export target of 650,000 barrels of crude a day this month, increasing to 750,000 next month. The present figure, however, is around 500,000 barrels.

Electricity


It is a problem that literally keeps Iraqis awake all night. With August temperatures soaring above 50C (122F), no electricity means no fans and no air conditioning, which translates into no sleep. In April, after the war, the power stations were generating 1,275 megawatts, 29% of the pre-conflict level. Since then the output has doubled to between 3,100MW and 3,500MW.

But even before the conflict Iraq`s outdated and poorly maintained power stations and electricity grid were not capable of meeting the demand. Its full capacity was estimated at 4,500MW. Energy was diverted to Baghdad under Saddam Hussein`s regime to give the capital almost constant power, and other parts of the country had to cope with three hours on, three hours off. The CPA is currently running a similar system, but giving hospitals and other essential services priority.

The shortage has been exacerbated by the systematic theft of copper from power lines - indeed, so much copper has been smuggled out of Iraq that it has affected world prices. In Basra bribery of sub-station managers, either to divert the power to one area over another or to switch it off altogether, has also been a factor.

Of the $680m (£425m) the CPA has allocated for construction, $229m will be used for electric power rehabilitation. But according to Mr Bearpark, Iraq will need to build another five power stations to meet the peak summer demand of 7,000MW and keep the power on 24 hours a day. That could cost $10bn and take as long as three years.

Security


Talk to any Baghdadis and once they have finished complaining about the electricity the conversation always turns to security. It may have been brought about by repression and state-sponsored violence, but under Saddam the crime rate in Iraq was very low. When he went, so did the iron fist of the police state, and suddenly people have found themselves in the middle of an unprecedented crime wave. Murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape and carjackings are the talk of the city. Last month the Baghdad`s mortuary handled 47 times as many gunshot deaths as in the same period last year.

Officials blame a variety of factors for the crime spree: people getting a taste for looting, the settling of old scores from the Saddam era,. and the disappearance of the police force. Officials are also quick to point out that Saddam released thousands of criminals from the jails in October.

The former New York police chief Bernard Kerik has been given the job of overseeing the rebuilding of the Iraqi police. He says there are 5,000 officers back on the streets of the capital, and more are graduating from the newly formed police academy every day. Arrests are up, and he says people are more confident about taking to the streets. But many officers are badly equipped and there are not enough uniforms, guns or vehicles.

Paul Bremer, the American administrator, has set a target of 18 months to bring the force up to a strength of 65,000. But one official said it was "hellishly expensive" as it required 6,500 non-Iraqi trainers. The CPA has yet to decide how to find the money.

A 15,000-strong Iraqi civil defence force is expected to enter service by the end of August. It will support the coalition forces by protecting key installations from further looting and sabotage.

Hospitals


They are filthy, decrepit and the last place you would want to go if were ill. Nevertheless the CPA says Iraq`s hospitals are now back to or above pre-war levels.

Many of those in Baghdad were looted during the final days of the war, and essential equipment taken. But as in so many areas of Iraqi life, the electricity shortage remains one of the biggest problems: the hospitals are frequently forced to close for lack of power.

The CPA says there is a programme in place to upgrade them. Some will be knocked down, others refurbished, but officials estimate that it will take five years for healthcare in Iraq to reach the level of other countries in the Middle East.

Most of the work is being done through the Iraqi health ministry and the salaries of nurses and doctors are now being paid. The Red Cross has drawn back from providing emergency relief after one of its workers was killed on the road to Hilla in July.

Water


Despite much of the country being desert, the one thing there is no shortage of in Iraq is water. Two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, flow almost the length of the country. But the water supply relies on electricity, so when there is no electricity there is no water.

As the power has improved priority has been given to the water pumping stations, and according to the CPA in a lot of areas the supply is back to pre-war levels.

As for the quality, one official said he would not drink it but was quite happy to clean his teeth in it. Health problems associated with poor water quality did not materialise in the way officials had feared, and there were no big outbreaks of cholera.

In Baghdad about 80% of the capacity has already been restored. UN tankers are delivering water to less well supplied districts.

The CPA hopes to have the water system fully operational by the beginning of Ramadan in October, but the sewage system is a different matter: the main sewage treatment plants were stripped bare in the post-war looting.

At the moment most of the sewage is flowing back into the rivers in an almost raw state, and officials estimate that it will take up to a year to rectify the situation.

Transport


Most goods in Iraq travel by roads which are relatively undamaged by the war. The UN is sending fuel and water tankers across the country with few problems.

Food distribution is said to be up to 99% of the capacity achieved under the UN`s former oil for food aid programme. It, too, goes by road.

The container cranes and the customs and immigration departments at Umm Qasr are now working, allowing passenger ships to enter the port.

The CPA said it would open Baghdad and Basra airports only when they were satisfied that all their security, customs and immigration concerns had been met.

Basra is expected to open in September, sooner than Baghdad, because there have been several attempted missile attacks on military aircraft taking off from the capital.

Three main bridges, at Tikrit, Mat and Khazir, were destroyed during the war. Reconstruction contracts are due to be finalised at the end of the month, and the rebuilding of all three should be complete by March next year, at an estimated cost of $12m.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Faith & Reason: The trouble began when we failed to see David Kelly as a person
Religion has long warned us against the trap Lord Hutton must conclude we have fallen into - that we first depersonalise those we want to destroy
Shaunaka Rishi Das
16 August 2003


From the outset there has been something unsettling about the way we have been honed into thinking about Dr David Kelly. He first came into our consciousness with total anonymity. He was the "unnamed official" who confessed to his bosses that he had briefed Andrew Gilligan before the BBC reporter ran his story suggesting that the Government had exaggerated the case for war on Iraq. Even after his name was made public he was largely referred to only by his function as "the source" who had leaked information to the BBC.

Ironically it was when his life ended that he became, to most of us, a real person. All at once he was not an official, an expert or a source. He was someone who had feelings, integrity, a home life, children, he was a member of the Baha`i faith, he was respected by his friends, a man of character. Unfortunately he was also a person who became sucked into a political machine of whose workings, the Hutton inquiry heard this week, he could not have had the faintest understanding until it was all too late. As the Hutton inquiry has got under way, though those in the courtroom have now heard a tape recording of his voice, Dr Kelly has once again ceased to be a person and have once again been relegated to being a function: an expert, a mole, a source, a leak. This is because we tend to use such categorisation to justify how we treat people. But Dr Kelly is still a person. And, of course, Alastair Campbell and Andrew Gilligan are not just stories either.

Someone else who is not just a story is Krishna, the most popular form of God for Hindus. Krishna, is a person - his name meaning "he who is attractive to everyone". Tradition has it that Krishna was born in India over 5,000 years ago, so his birthday celebration next Wednesday - called Sri Krishna Janmastami - must rank as the oldest birthday celebration in the world. It`s certainly the biggest religious observance in the UK, where hundreds and thousands of Hindus and others will gather at temples throughout the country to make his appearance at midnight, 80,000 attending one temple alone, the Hare Krishna Temple at Bhaktivedanta Manor near Watford.

The fact that God is portrayed as a person is significant. It helps us focus our minds on the Divine. Krishna has friends, he has an address, he lives in a community and interacts with others, and if the quality of his relationships with others - heart to heart, full of love and an happiness that leaves nothing to be desired - surpasses anything we have experienced, it is something we all we aspire to.

But the Hindu tradition goes further than this. The sun, moon and stars, trees, animals, the oceans and rivers all have personality, which some cultures call spirits, and which are all inseparable from the unlimited omniscient Krishna. In Vedic and Hindu spirituality the understanding of the personal aspect of universal affairs allows us to enter a universe of feeling, a universe full of relationships, a universe where people are never stories, where animals are not simply meat, where every living being has a right to life and where we feel impelled to give not take. It`s all a matter of consciousness.

When we depersonalise the cosmos - and lose the consciousness of the link between the world and God himself - it is easier for us to assume ownership of land, treat it harshly, and if there are others involved, cruelly. We can rob it and steal without any pang of conscience or moral repugnance. It also makes it easier for us to extend that to humans and reduce them from being whole persons to mere functions. As someone becomes less of a person we can be cruel, violent or even kill. We can deprive others of their rights or steal from them. This ranges from the apparently trivial - which is why people feel it is easier to steal by downloading music from the internet than to pinch a CD from a local shop where we can see the face of the man we are depriving - to the self-evidently grave; once the Jews had been defined as Untermenschen it became possible to exterminate them.

Once, too, Dr Kelly was identified simply as a source, he became a victim of our depersonalised culture - a culture that we all participate in maintaining, that we must all accept responsibility for. Our current scientific world view may predispose us to see personality as a gene or see feelings and relationships as just an amalgam of chemicals in the brain but what spirituality and religion offer for those who want to develop a personal relationship with God, and real feelings of love, is something which can restore a wholeness to our vision of the cosmos and the people in it.

When I try to imagine Dr Kelly`s family now, and how they may be remembering him, I know that they think of him not by his function - not even by the complex interaction of functions of father, as husband, beloved and friend - but as the person who was David. Their feelings for him say more about who he is than any amount of fact. When I go to my local temple to celebrate Janmastami this Wednesday I will greet my friend Krishna with as much affection as my heart can muster and embrace a truth that our culture needs to relearn: from top to bottom people are more important than functions and facts.

Shaunaka Rishi Das is Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
16 August 2003 11:29



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Twilight fell on Manhattan, as electrical power was gradually restored on Friday night.

Les Goodson played his tenor sax after the lights of Times Square were restored on Friday night.
August 16, 2003
Cheers in New York City, but Parts of Midwest Are Lagging
By JAMES BARRON


Lights went on again yesterday for millions of people in the Northeast, the Midwest and Canada, as utilities struggled to recover from a power failure that cast its shadow over eight states and played havoc with everything from traffic lights and telephones to manufacturing schedules at automobile plants.

Power was restored to all of New York City and Westchester County, and most of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey by last evening, utility officials said. Service had also resumed for most people in northern Ohio and southern Michigan, two other hard-hit areas. New York`s subways, idle since the blackout hit on Thursday afternoon, slowly began to resume operations starting at midnight, transit officials said.

But as the sweltering new day began yesterday, millions of people were still in the dark, without air-conditioners or fans. Electricity was restored piecemeal, sometimes on one side of a street but not the other, as officials tried to avoid overloading the power-sharing system and triggering another collapse like the chain reaction set off on Thursday.

The effects of the failure, the largest in American history, remained worst yesterday in Detroit and Cleveland, where some customers still faced the possibility of a weekend without power. The two cities were also coping with a drinking-water crisis because the blackout hobbled stations that pump water from the Great Lakes to millions of homes and businesses. Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio ordered National Guard tanker trucks to distribute thousands of gallons of water in Cleveland.

In New York, Broadway lights, and shows, went on. The stock markets were open, and the Mets played their scheduled game against the Colorado Rockies.

But hospitals struggled to treat patients suffering from heat-related ailments and anxiety, and many telephones, automated teller machines and cable-television systems were still not functioning. Trash piled up on streets alongside stranded tourists who camped out in parks and outside hotels and train stations.

At least four deaths, two in New York City and two in Canada, were attributed to the power failure, and two others to fires, many of which were traced to the candles or generators pressed into service overnight. Many offices, stores and factories closed for the day, and hundreds of flights were canceled.

President Bush called the blackout "a wake-up call" to modernize the nation`s power-sharing system. "We will respond," he said during a trip to California. "We will figure out what went wrong and we will address it."

Elected officials from Washington to state capitals demanded investigations, and assurances that something would be done to prevent another power failure on so large a scale. Govs. George E. Pataki of New York, James E. McGreevey of New Jersey and John G. Rowland of Connecticut wrote to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, saying that similar promises had been made after blackouts in 1965 and 1977.

"There should never have been that instability in the grid that we saw across the Northeast," Mr. Pataki said during a briefing at the State Emergency Command Center at state police headquarters in Albany. "We have to have answers."

Power officials said yesterday that the blackout began shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday with a power failure somewhere in the Midwest — a surge of electricity that pushed into Ontario, Canada, then into New York State and New England, tripping circuit breakers designed to prevent an overload by knocking generators out of service.

But they had no explanation for the size and scope of the blackout. Nor could they explain why it did not spread south from North Jersey into the Middle Atlantic states, or why systems designed to confine problems to relatively small areas suddenly failed. In all, about 100 power plants shut down in about nine seconds, cutting off electricity to tens of millions of people.

Even as many generators were going back into service yesterday, officials urged consumers to go easy on appliances and to use only those that were necessary. And there were scattered new problems: In Connecticut, a transmission line to the southwestern corner of the state failed.

Officials who oversee the power-sharing system ordered rolling blackouts — cutting power for several hours in several places, including the Cleveland area, Westchester County and upstate New York — to allow more utilities to ease back into the grid without causing fresh disruptions.

Air traffic remained chaotic, with airlines canceling about 400 flights bound for cities from New York to Ottawa. And there were long lines at service stations in Detroit and in Manhattan, among other places, because the electric-powered pumps would not work. Supplies ran short and tempers boiled.

"There`ve been a few fights," said Mohammad Khan, who works at a station on West 96th Street near West End Avenue. "But it wasn`t too bad."

Buses and ferries were crammed as New Yorkers dealt with the unthinkable: life without the subway. But a New York City Transit spokesman, Paul Fleuranges, said there was a "firm belief" that the system would resume full operations this morning.

Among the officials who oversee the power network that failed on Thursday, there was some disagreement yesterday about exactly where the problem had started. New York State officials said they believed that the sudden voltage fluctuation that triggered the dominolike shutdown began at the Perry nuclear reactor near Cleveland.

But the plant operators said other transmission lines had shut down before theirs, suggesting that Perry was not the source of the problem. Other power industry officials said there were some signs that the trouble might have started in Michigan.

That state`s governor, Jennifer M. Granholm, declared a state of emergency in five counties yesterday. She also signed an executive order intended to speed the delivery of nearly a million gallons of gasoline from western Michigan to the Detroit area. Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit urged elderly people who live in public housing to seek temporary shelter in designated "cooling centers" around the city.

Mr. Pataki, who declared a state of emergency on Thursday, also asked the president to declare a federal emergency in New York State. He and New York`s two United States Senators asked for federal money to cover the costs of emergency services.

New York City mobilized 10,000 police officers on Thursday, Senator Charles E. Schumer said. "I think it`s safe to say that by the time we finish tallying the cost of responding to this crisis, its expense is going to make the record books," he said.

Economists warned that the blackout`s effects would reach far beyond municipal budgets once companies accounted for the time lost at everything from oil refineries to chemical plants. On the other hand, some said that the blackout, which interrupted production at automobile factories around Detroit, might trim excessive inventories that had been filling dealers` lots.

Complicating the estimates of lost productivity is uncertainty about how soon some factories can be restarted. That, in turn, reflects the time needed to get power plants going again. Governor Pataki noted that it takes 24 hours to restart nuclear plants like Indian Point, which provide a critical part of the electricity for southern New York State.

Although he urged people not to use too much power until the system had had time to stabilize, he said that he had requested and received federal approval to use the Long Island Cross-Sound Cable, which runs under the water between New York and Connecticut and has drawn local opposition. He described the step as temporary and said it would provide additional emergency power for New York City and Long Island.

In New York, a 17-year-old fell to his death from a roof after trying to loot a Brooklyn shoe store, the police said. A 72-year-old Manhattan man died of smoke inhalation from a fire caused by a candle, one of the 60 serious fires reported on Thursday, officials said. In Brooklyn, a 6-year-old boy died in a fire he accidentally set with a cigarette lighter. A firefighter and a police officer were also injured in fires.

The mayor said the 911 system had handled 90,000 calls, with 5,000 requiring emergency medical personnel. The police said they arrested 50 to 60 people on burglary charges related to looting.

But the 250 blackout-related arrests overnight were nowhere near the thousands that occurred during the 1977 blackout, Mr. Bloomberg pointed out. And even the total number of arrests overnight, 850 in all, was less than the average of 950 on most nights.

"New Yorkers showed that the city that burned in the 1970`s when facing similar circumstances is now a very different place," the mayor said.

For New York City, the slow restoration of electric service was a result of a basic fact: The city needs its local plants operating, as well as the tie lines from outside the region that deliver power generated hundreds of miles away.

Mr. Bloomberg said Con Edison had "done as good a job as could be hoped for."

Progress was slower in Michigan, where officials of the local utility, DTE Energy, said that service had been restored to 1,5 million of its 2.1 million customers in southeastern Michigan by 9 p.m.

In Cleveland, about 1.5 million customers lost power when the blackout hit. Utility officials in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, said that by last night, most of them had electricity again. But Cleveland`s water-pumping problems led Governor Taft to issue an order to boil drinking water. The water problems sparked a run on bottled water at supermarkets. The boil-water order covers Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, and will be in effect through Sunday.

Detroit residents were also warned to boil water before drinking.

Lynn Goswick used a flashlight Friday morning to pick out a can of soup at a Gristede`s market. Only those with flashlights could enter the store.
Efforts to restore power in the Canadian province of Ontario continued. Premier Ernie Eves declared a state of emergency and told nonemergency workers to stay home. The police in Ottawa arrested 23 people for looting and reported two deaths related to the blackout.

As power was restored in many cities yesterday, elevators started working again. For tourists who had slept on the sidewalks on Thursday, that meant they could go to their hotel rooms. For more than 100 miners at a nickel mine in Falconbridge, 200 miles north of Toronto, that meant they could go home. The Associated Press reported that they had been trapped below ground for more than 12 hours because the blackout halted the elevators they use to go to the surface.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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The Empire State building and the Hudson river seen from New Jersey on Thursday night during the East Coast blackout.

The blackout turned New York overnight into a huge, mandatory slumber party as people who had been stranded in the city spent the night on sidewalks and in the lobbies of office buildings



The sun rose over a city still without lights on Friday morning

Times Square on Friday was moving at a slower pace, more like a ballet than a Bob Fosse showstopper

Iraqi Kurds Golzar Salih and daughter, Soone, 10, slept in Kennedy Airport after their connecting flight to Virginia was cancelled.

The city opened up fire hydrants to residents Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan who were without water.

Fire and looters destroyed group of stores on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn

Commuters slept on the steps of the Post Office on 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York on Friday.

Midtown Manhattan was blanketed with newspapers that many people had used as improvised bedding during the long, dark night on the sidewalk.

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August 16, 2003
Shiite Group Plans Militia to Protect Holy Sites From G.I.`s
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 — The most combative group of Shiite Muslims announced during their main prayer sermon today that they would proceed with a proposal to form their own militia to safeguard holy sites from any transgressions by American troops.

More than 3,000 of the faithful flooded one of the dusty main thoroughfares in Sadr City, a predominately Shiite slum in Baghdad, to hear the prayer leader, Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, denounce the American forces, accusing them of defiling sacred places after an incident on Wednesday in which an American Black Hawk helicopter forced down a flag near a Sadr City mosque.

"Yesterday Saddam the infidel used to assault our sacred sites and especially the people of this holy city," Sheik Daraji said. "Now the Americans are doing the same thing. So what is the difference between Saddam and America?"

The sheik also belittled America`s ability to improve the lives of Iraqis, who get about 10 hours of electricity a day in Baghdad.

He hinted that the United States might be selling Iraq`s electricity elsewhere, perhaps to Israel, and led the crowd in special prayers to ask God to provide power 24 hours a day.

"To denounce the lack of services provided by the Americans, pray to Muhammad," he said as the crowd roared back their prayer. "To denounce the lack of electricity, pray to Muhammad."

The proposal for a Shiite religious militia initially received a tepid response from other, senior clergymen. Its revival could set the stage for renewed tension between the older, more respected scholars who control the influential seminary movement — known as the Hawza — and Mr. Sadr`s young clerics, who have a wide street following in Baghdad.

Also today, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, in a sermon in the holy city of Najaf, called on the Arab and Islamic world to support the Iraqi Governing Council, an interim government organized with American backing. But in what appeared to be a stab at mollifying growing anti-American sentiment, he also suggested that the United States had initially pushed the council away from Islamic principles.

The mood in Sadr City was subdued today after the incident on Wednesday.

The American military and local residents gave conflicting accounts of what had happened. Residents said someone on the American helicopter seemed to be trying to remove a holy banner intentionally. That led to a riot, and American gunfire ultimately left one Iraqi dead and four Iraqis wounded.

American officials said downward "rotor wash" generated by the hovering helicopter had stripped the flag from the tower.

The American forces issued an apology for the incident that seemed to largely mollify the public. But the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a militant young cleric descended from a long line of illustrious clergymen, seized on the response to the incident to revive a proposal he made last month to form a special clerical army, the Army of Muhammad.

Sheik Daraji said in his sermon that it would consist of eight units deployed in different Baghdad neighborhoods. Women would be among the fighters.

"It is only to tell the enemy that we have the ability to respond," Sheik Daraji told reporters. "That will prevent them from assaulting us."

At the same time, he said, American forces should welcome the militia because it will give the clergy a means to control the inevitable anger of the crowds after any incident like to the one involving the helicopter.

"We think the situation has deteriorated, and I think people will move against the Americans whether the army interferes or not," the sheik said of the new force. "One person could use a Kalashnikov to express his frustration, so how can we quell these masses?"

He told the worshipers to control their emotions, and they dispersed peacefully. Indeed, the powerful influence of the Hawza in telling the Shiites not to confront the Americans accounts for the minimal attacks against American and British troops in the predominately Shiite southern parts of Iraq. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq`s 25 million people.

But tempers are fraying given the heat, lack of electricity and rising prices needed for the fuel to power generators. No one interviewed in Sadr City today had ever heard one of the explanations by American officials, that a severely battered infrastructure suffering from years of neglect and recent sabotage would take time to revive.

Some thought it was time to put the Americans on notice that they should leave.

"Confrontation, confrontation, we don`t want them anymore," said Ghazak, a 23-year-old student who said he would join the Army of Muhammad because of the helicopter incident. "When they assault the name of Muhammad`s family, they assault all Muslims. This is the only response they could understand, confrontation."

Others, happy to be free of Saddam Hussein, said they were willing to give the Americans the benefit of the doubt.

The United States has been channeling its efforts for a security force into a civil defense force, discouraging or disarming previously formed private armed forces. There was no specific reaction to the proposal for a clerical-run militia.

"Our hope is that nothing is done to destabilize the country, because ultimately it is the Iraqi people who are the ones who suffer," said Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, a military spokesman.



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August 16, 2003
ON THE LIGHT SIGHT
Baghdad on the Blackout: A Path to Enlightenment?
By JOHN TIERNEY


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 — For people who woke up this morning, as usual, without electricity for their televisions, it took a while to hear the news of the lightning bolt or whatever gremlin turned out the lights in America. But by noon the word had spread, and Baghdad was a city awash in schadenfreude.

"Allah sent that thunderbolt," said Kahdum Hassan, smiling as he sat outside his clothing shop. "He wanted to show the Americans what we suffer through every day because of their incompetence."

But even as they smiled at divine justice, Iraqis showed their generous side. To Americans panicked by a few hours without air-conditioning in 90-degree weather, they offered survival strategies coolly developed on 125-degree days. To energy planners trying to avoid more breakdowns of the Northeast transmission system, they offered lessons from another antiquated, unreliable grid.

Some of their tips to Americans:

Do not try to repair the Northeast grid yourselves. Entrusting the job to Americans, Iraqis warned, would only result in more blackouts and endless excuses about "sabotage" and "neglected infrastructure." Thamir Mahmoud, a retired clerk, said he was especially worried by President Bush`s promise to fix the problem. "If the American government is involved," he said, "you must be prepared to be patient. They work very slowly."

Some Iraqis suggested inviting the United Nations to supervise the reconstruction, but others had a more radical idea. Put Saddam Hussein in charge of the grid. "Saddam had the electricity back two months after the last war," said Maythum Hatam, a computer-science student. "With his methods, you would have electricity right away, but you must expect to lose some workers."

Have a personal backup plan. The well-equipped Baghdad home has one diesel generator ready to kick in as soon as the power goes off, and another generator standing by in case the first one fails. Those without generators keep food from spoiling by using old-fashioned ice boxes (vendors sell large slabs of ice) or a technique using water and cloth, which Miad Khudair Abas explained.

"First you hang the food in a basket," Mrs. Abas said, pointing to the hook on her kitchen ceiling. "Then you cover it with a wet cloth. The water will keep it cool for two hours. Then you have to wet the cloth again." She smiled and added, "We are so happy the Americans are learning what our life is like."

Shoot looters. "Those thieves must be handled with an iron fist," said Ahmad Auda, whose restaurant was robbed during the postwar chaos, referring to the looters in New York on Thursday night.

Stop whining about the "heat." Baghdadis considered themselves lucky earlier this week when the temperature dropped below 100 — at midnight. "Let Americans come to Baghdad and try to sleep one night," said Ahmad Faris, a 12-year-old vendor of soft drinks. "They are like kings. One night without electricity, and they are complaining."

On hot afternoons, "get in the shower with your clothes on," said Jaber Hassan, a government employee. "When you finish, lie down in your wet clothes and take a small nap. The water will cool you." What if your clothes get wrinkled? "Always change your clothes after the nap," he said. "It is good to change your clothes two or three times a day."

On hot nights, adopt an Iraqi sleeping custom. Sleep outside — in a yard, in a courtyard, or, best of all, on the roof. But do not adopt an Iraqi wedding custom. The more people sleep outside, the less fond they are of the AK-47`s ritually firing into the night sky to celebrate weddings. The problem is not so much the noise as the law of gravity: what goes up, must come down.

Drink hot tea. Iced tea may seem logical on hot days, but Iraqis insist on taking theirs hot. "When we drink hot tea, we feel cooler because we don`t sweat as much," Mr. Auda said. "Maybe it`s psychological."

No matter how hot it gets, maintain your dignity. The temperature may be above 120, but you will not see any self-respecting Iraqi adult in public wearing shorts. "The foreigners wear shorts," said Mr. Hassan, the clothing vendor, "but to us they look childish."

Learn from the blackout. Faris Habib, a shoemaker using a hand crank to turn his stitching machine during a routine power failure, was as happy as everyone else with the Northeastern blackout, but not merely because it served the Americans right. He told a story he had heard on his grandfather`s knee:

A prince who wanted to take charge of his country did not know how the people lived. "He lived in a golden palace, slept late and ate whatever he wanted from a golden spoon," Mr. Habib said. "So his advisers made him get up early, eat a small piece of bread and work long hours in the fields. Only after he suffered as his people suffered did he learn how to rule them.""

As if on cue, the electricity came back on and Mr. Habib rested his arm as the stitching machine worked on its own. "Maybe after this experience," he said, "you American princes will learn how to rule Iraq."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 16, 2003
A Little Night Music

Half the people in the Eastern states must have a blackout story by now. The interesting thing is how varied they will be. One person`s spontaneous candlelight dinner is another`s nightmare commute. New Yorkers are perhaps best prepared for this phenomenon, since they know from experience that a giant parade or the Independence Day fireworks can mean the best day of your life (the people! the spectacle! the music!) while someone on the next block is going through hell on earth (the crowd! the noise! what happened to my purse?). It`s all a matter of luck and temperament.

The blackout on Thursday allowed New Yorkers to be whoever they are, except more so. Some of those stranded without their wiring began to fret in high gear, dashing from one inert pay phone to another. Others figured that since all the electric clocks had stopped at close to the cocktail hour, it was time to relieve nearby watering holes of beer that was gravely in danger of growing warm. When Mayor Michael Bloomberg congratulated the people and the police for acting reasonably, he was making allowances for a lot of activity that made sense only if you live in New York City.

The lack of any serious violence was perhaps a sign, as City Hall claimed, that the city was a different place than it was in 1977. Certainly a lot of people seemed determined to be in a good mood no matter what. "I can hear cicadas!" claimed an optimistic pedestrian on the Upper West Side. People kept vigils outside their apartment buildings to escort their neighbors through the dark, or offered rides to strangers. The mutual misery also brought out the whiners, of course, like a man who began bellowing out his apartment window and into the dark, "I miss my TV. I miss my television."

When people live as close together as New Yorkers do, there is no possible way to get through a blackout without rubbing up against someone else`s sensibilities. The spontaneous midnight barbecue parties to make use of defrosting meat were the nicest kind of communalism — unless you were in a bedroom next door, sweating behind closed windows or sleepless because of all the commotion.

But all in all, we are proud of the way New Yorkers made it through this particular crisis. We are sorry about the occasional gougers. We know some of our tourists and commuters had a pretty uncomfortable night, but we are glad it was a safe one. And it is going to be a story to tell the neighbors long after the memories of all the other seamless trips to New York have faded.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 16, 2003
Read His Lips

fter presiding over a two-year binge of tax cuts, a rocketing federal deficit and job losses that recall the Herbert Hoover era, President Bush appears ready to step away from the supply-side gaming table, at least for a while. Mr. Bush announced Wednesday that he sensed enough of an economic upturn to reject any immediate plans for yet another tax cut. He estimates that the effects of two years of giddy revenue-slashing — geared heavily toward the wealthiest Americans — are looking "robust enough" to hold off on more cuts.

We accept the respite as an act of fiscal mercy rather than a cause for economic celebration. The Republicans` chokehold on the nation`s revenue flow is doing far more to create debt and deficits than to create jobs, but it is a relief to know that Mr. Bush is not planning to do any more major damage in the immediate future.

Certainly things are bad enough as it is. Over nine million Americans are unemployed, and close to three million jobs have disappeared during Mr. Bush`s incumbency, leaving him in danger of facing the voters next year as the first president since Hoover to preside over a net job loss. The Democratic candidates in the current scrum are rubbing their hands at this prospect. But most of them have been unwilling to call candidly for the tax cuts` repeal, and so far none have been able to attract much attention above the din of California`s recall.

Strutting forth in the Texas heat this week, the president and his chief economic advisers looked like a "Magnificent Seven" tableau of economic optimists marching toward the looming campaign. "Hold the line" was Mr. Bush`s surreal spending advice for a Republican-controlled Congress that has been more co-conspirator than deficit hawk in Washington`s detax-and-spend mania.

As Mr. Bush`s "growth" program rolls out, the richest 1 percent of Americans can expect an estimated 17 percent cut in their taxes by 2010, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The other 99 percent get a 5 percent cut — along with accumulated deficits of $4 billion or more across the next 10 years and the lost chance that the now-vanished surplus might be used to protect their future Social Security benefits.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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16. August 2003, 02:12, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Philosophenkönige?
Ein Nachtrag zur Debatte um Leo Strauss
Allmählich ebben die Wortmeldungen ab, der Kasus «Leo Strauss, die Straussianer und die Politik der Bush-Administration» wird zu den Akten genommen. Ein handgreifliches Ergebnis lässt sich nicht vorweisen. Kürzlich hat der «Spiegel» unter der kalauernden Überschrift «Die Leo- Konservativen» noch einmal durch den medialen Wolf gedreht, was seit dem Irak-Krieg in der amerikanischen, französischen und der deutschsprachigen Presse sowie, selbstredend, im Internet die Runde macht: Mutmassungen über den politischen Einfluss eines Philosophen und seiner Schule (vgl. NZZ vom 12. 4. und vom 13. 6. 03). In den Vereinigten Staaten zieht der 1899 in Hessen geborene und 1973 in Annapolis, Maryland, gestorbene Philosoph nicht zum ersten Mal öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. In der «New York Times» ist er Anfang 1995 als «godfather of the Republican Party`s Contract with America» tituliert worden. Mittlerweile grassiert das Wort vom «Mastermind der Neokonservativen». Das «Time Magazine» vom 17. Juni 1996 nannte Strauss schlicht «one of the most influential men in American politics».

Doch worin bekundet sich politischer Einfluss - zumal dann, wenn der mutmasslich Einflussreiche tot ist und kein Politiker war, auch keine graue Eminenz? Richard Lacayo, der Autor des Artikels, der zwischen Einfluss und Macht unterscheidet, weiss es: Die eigentliche Münze («the real coin») des Einflusses seien Ideen. - Diese Währung zirkuliert nicht von Bankkonto zu Bankkonto, sie wird von Kopf zu Kopf transferiert: vom Meister zu den Schülern, von den Schülern zu den Schülern der Schüler, von Philosophen zu Politikern, von Einflussreichen zu Mächtigen. So lassen sich «ideelle» Genealogien nachzeichnen, an deren vorläufigem Ende Paul Wolfowitz steht, der stellvertretende Verteidigungsminister der USA. Er habe, so etwa das nachträglich von Kritikern geschriebene Drehbuch, die schreckliche Gunst der Stunde genutzt, um nach dem 11. September 2001 den Irak-Krieg einzufädeln - nicht, weil er Militarist sei, sondern weil er als «Straussian» wisse, was not tue: Amerika als Hort der Freiheit und der Bürgertugend zu verteidigen und den Globus im Sendungsbewusstsein dieser «amerikanischen Werte» zu ordnen.

Es bedürfte einlässlicher Recherchen und nüchterner Analysen, um zu ermitteln, was an solchen Thesen daran sei. Indizien, die einen Anfangsverdacht auslösen, sind - in Form von Strategiepapieren beispielsweise - schnell gefunden. Das genaue Parallelogramm der Kräfte, die um den Zugang zum Machthaber wetteifern, ist so leicht jedoch nicht zu skizzieren. Neben den Neokonservativen, den «Neo-Cons», wären die «Theo- Cons» zu berücksichtigen, die religiöse Rechte, aber auch die robusten Altkonservativen, nicht zu vergessen die wirtschaftlichen Lobbys sonder Zahl. Verschwörungstheorien sind demgegenüber zeitsparend und auch leichter demagogisch nutzbar; sie lichten den undurchdringlichen Wald der Interessen aus und befriedigen das Bedürfnis nach klaren Kausalitäten. Die «Straussianer» eignen sich gut als Objekt für eine solche fragwürdige Zuschreibungsstrategie. Denn zum einen gibt es diese Spezies wirklich, und zwar schon seit einem halben Jahrhundert, zunächst nur als akademische Schule eines genauen Lesens der «grossen Bücher» der Philosophiegeschichte und, allerdings, der Wiederbelebung fundamentaler Fragen auch in politicis: Lassen sich Ordnung und Freiheit versöhnen? Schliessen Glauben und Wissen, «Jerusalem» und «Athen», einander aus? Unterhöhlt der Liberalismus sich selbst, indem er Relativismus und Nihilismus den Weg ebnet, die in die Tyrannei führen? - Leo Strauss waren Fragen wichtiger als Antworten. Er lehrte, offenbar mit Charisma begabt, von 1938 bis 1949 in New York, danach überwiegend in Chicago; das Label «Straussians» ist seit Mitte der fünfziger Jahre in Gebrauch, als Fremd- wie als Selbstbezeichnung der Schule. Ihr Washingtoner Zweig veranstaltet, wie der «Economist» belustigt berichtet, am 4. Juli eines jeden Jahres - am Independence Day - ein Picknick.

Wie ein Blick ins Netz zeigt, erschöpft die öffentliche Selbstdarstellung des Zirkels sich nicht im Hauptstadt-Picknick (www.Straussian.net). Ihr korrespondiert freilich ein Flair des Geheimnistuerischen, des Esoterischen und Elitären: Wie in der Schule Platons (zumindest nach einer Lesart) bleiben gewisse Wahrheiten den Eingeweihten vorbehalten, die mit ihnen nicht hausieren gehen, ihnen gleichwohl aber auf exoterischen Umwegen Geltung verschaffen wollen. Das mag, zum anderen, den Eindruck einer verschworenen Gemeinschaft erzeugen. Die Paranoia einer Konspiration entzündet sich hieran umso leichter, als Leo Strauss ein jüdischer Emigrant war. (Das entschuldigt weder Antisemitismus noch Stuss.)

Könnte die Akte «Leo Strauss & Co.» also geschlossen werden, sobald eine Soziologie der Einflussnahme und eine Sozialpsychologie der Einflussangst ihren Beitrag zur Analyse geleistet hätten? Ist, anders gefragt, das Thema «Der Philosoph und die Politik» selbst gar kein philosophisches Thema? - Doch, es ist, und sogar ein klassisches. In der Debatte, wenn man die Abfolge von Verdächtigung und Zerstreuung des Verdachts so nennen will, ist dies nur beiläufig notiert worden - unter dem Skurrilität versprechenden Stichwort «Philosophenkönige». Die konträren Positionen hierzu sind kanonisch: «Wenn nicht», heisst es bei Platon, «entweder die Philosophen Könige werden (. . .) oder die jetzt so genannten Könige und Gewalthaber wahrhaft und gründlich philosophieren», sei keine «Erholung von dem Übel für die Staaten» abzusehen. Dem setzt Kant über zweitausend Jahre später das Wort der Aufklärung entgegen: «Dass Könige philosophieren oder Philosophen Könige würden, ist nicht zu erwarten, aber auch nicht zu wünschen, weil der Besitz der Gewalt das freie Urteil der Vernunft unvermeidlich verdirbt.»

Strauss, das wird gerne übersehen, ist in dieser Frage Kant näher als Platon oder ihm jedenfalls nicht fern. Philosophie galt Strauss als eine Lebensform, die mit der politischen Existenz sich in unauflösbarer Spannung befindet. Er hat dies gelegentlich in Gestalt eines knappen Schlusses formuliert: Philosophie sei der Versuch, Meinung durch Wissen zu ersetzen; die Meinung aber sei das Medium des politischen Gemeinwesens («the element of the city»); also sei Philosophie subversiv. Wer aber für den Staat gefährlich ist, dem kann der Staat - siehe das Todesurteil gegen Sokrates - seinerseits gefährlich werden. Darum ergänzt Strauss: Ergo müssen Philosophen sich zusammenschliessen und das Gemeinwesen, in dem sie leben, «verbessern» - so weit liberalisieren und sichern helfen, dass sie ihrer «an sich» subversiven Arbeit weiter nachgehen können. Ein solches Engagement für das Gemeinwohl ist nicht ganz uneigennützig. Mit dem Politischen befasst Philosophie sich in dieser durchaus radikalen Perspektive erstlich und letztlich aus Gründen der Selbsterhaltung. Diesen Gedanken zu Ende zu denken, hiesse, ihn ad absurdum zu führen. Freunde von einfachen, aber langen Kausalketten könnten dann beispielsweise zu behaupten versucht sein: Saddam Hussein sei gestürzt worden, damit im philosophischen Seminar der Chicagoer Universität weiterhin die Schriften von Leo Strauss studiert werden können . . .

Zu dem Wissen, das Strauss für Philosophen reklamiert, gehören auch Wahrheiten über das politische Gemeinwesen wie diese: Es halte nur zusammen, wenn es Bindungskräfte gebe, die nicht vernünftigen Ursprungs sind, Religion etwa. Deren Erosion bedeute, dass der Staat in der Luft stehe. Derlei Wahrheiten seien freilich nur einer Minderheit starker Geister zuzumuten und keineswegs, wie die Aufklärer glaubten, allen. - Das hört sich ein wenig nach Dostojewskis «Grossinquisitor» an und wird wohl nicht alle starken Geister überzeugen.

Was aber nun, wenn Weltweise Strauss`scher Provenienz Politiker nicht nur beeinflussen, sondern selbst werden wollen? (Einige sind es geworden.) Folgt man den Vorgaben des Meisters, dann wollen sie das Unmögliche - jedenfalls dann, wenn sie dabei noch Philosophen bleiben wollen. Sie müssten versuchen, eine Lebensform, die kein Ende des Fragens kennt, mit einem Habitus zu verknüpfen, der Fragen abschneidet: der im Raum politischer Entscheidungen unter Bedingungen der Zeitknappheit Antworten gibt. Verbärge sich unter der Bezeichnung «Straussian» stets einer, der das Unmögliche will, dann handelte es sich dabei um den Markennamen für eine Kippfigur. Es könnte sein, dass diese Figur lediglich die schlechten Eigenschaften eines Philosophen mit den schlechten Eigenschaften eines Politikers vereint: Vom Philosophen hätte sie den Glauben übernommen, die beste aller Ordnungen lasse sich ins Werk setzen (dass die Neokonservativen deutliche Züge eines «inversen», eines umgekehrten Marxismus tragen, ist nicht unbemerkt geblieben); vom Politiker die machiavellistische Machttechnik, die das Mittel durch den Zweck geheiligt sein lässt. Die guten Eigenschaften - radikales Fragen einerseits, besonnenes Moderieren andererseits - blieben dann auf der Strecke. - So könnte es sein. Aber das sind bloss philosophische Spekulationen.

Uwe Justus Wenzel

Diesen Artikel finden Sie auf NZZ Online unter: http://www.nzz.ch/2003/08/16/fe/page-article9142G.html


Copyright © Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG

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Sheik Hadi Darraji, a Shiite Muslim cleric critical of U.S. forces, leads thousands in Friday noon prayers in Baghdad`s Sadr City neighborhood
Cleric Warns U.S. to Leave Baghdad Slum


By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 16, 2003; Page A16


BAGHDAD, Aug. 15 -- In a sermon to thousands of worshipers in Baghdad`s largest slum, a militant Shiite Muslim cleric warned American forces today not to reenter the neighborhood and dismissed as insufficient an apology from U.S. officials for the toppling of a religious banner that set off a protest this week in which an Iraqi was killed.

The statement was the latest in a back-and-forth between U.S. officials and influential clerics in the Sadr City neighborhood, whose population of 3 million makes it pivotal in Baghdad politics. U.S. officials have said gusts from a low-flying helicopter accidentally knocked over the black flag, which fluttered atop a transmission tower. Residents, already disenchanted with the lack of electricity and basic services, said they saw a soldier either kick it or try to cut it down.

In the protest that ensued Wednesday, U.S. forces killed one Iraqi -- a boy of 10 or 11, residents said -- and wounded at least three. Both sides say the other fired first. U.S. officials have said they are investigating the incident, which marked some of the sharpest tension between U.S. forces and Iraq`s Shiite majority since the overthrow of president Saddam Hussein`s government on April 9.

"What happened clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war on Islam," said Sheik Hadi Darraji, a leading cleric in the neighborhood, who delivered the sermon to a crowd of as many as 10,000.

He warned that Iraqis would "retaliate twice as hard" against anyone who attacked "us or our sacred symbols" and said the events of the past week showed that "there are no differences between Saddam and America."

At a news conference Thursday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground troops here, said military commanders had apologized to the neighborhood`s clergy and promised that "we`re not going to let this happen again."

But Darraji insisted the apology come from a higher-ranking U.S. official, presumably L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq. He reiterated demands that U.S. forces stage a "complete and comprehensive withdrawal" from Sadr City, provide compensation to families of the dead and wounded and agree to the demands in a written statement in both English and Arabic.

Wearing a funeral shawl, meant to symbolize his willingness to sacrifice himself, Darraji gave them what he described as a short period to agree. "After that, we`re not responsible for the reactions of the people if the Americans enter again," he said.

In their statements since the unrest, the clergy have been careful not to issue a call for arms, given the U.S. crackdown that would likely invite. In today`s sermon, Darraji urged worshipers not to act except on the clergy`s orders.

A U.S. military spokesman said talks were continuing with the clergy and that officials took the incident "very seriously." But another spokesman, also speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested it was unlikely U.S. forces would actually withdraw.

"There is no policy of no-go areas anywhere in Iraq," he said.

The neighborhood, which bore the brunt of some of Hussein`s heaviest repression over the past decade and welcomed his fall, has remained quiet since Wednesday`s unrest. But today, thousands surged through the streets toward the site of the clash, where Friday prayers were held along a broad thoroughfare. The marches were organized by a faction loyal to Moqtada Sadr, the son of a slain ayatollah who has repeatedly denounced the occupation and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

Darraji`s sermon was repeatedly interrupted by chants. "No, no to America!" shouted members of the crowd, waving Iraqi flags and religious banners. Some carried portraits of the elder Sadr and his son. One banner read, "Yes, yes to Moqtada, no, no to the council."

In the street, a makeshift market sprang up, where pictures of the helicopter near the transmission tower sold for about 50 cents. Other vendors hawked newspapers published by Sadr`s faction, devotional CDs, pictures of the elder Sadr and portraits of descendants of the prophet Muhammad who Shiites believe inherited leadership of the Muslim community after Muhammad`s death in 632. Worshipers carried umbrellas and threw towels over their heads under a relentless sun, and young men sprayed water over the crowd.

"It will be massacres if the Americans enter again," said Rahim Mahmoud, a 47-year-old mechanic who sat amid the crowds, some kneeling on Persian-designed prayer carpets, others on straw mats and cheap rugs. "It will be a war in the streets."

Mustafa Saad, an 18-year-old cobbler, stood nearby. "Saddam could not defeat us, and neither can the Americans," he said.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Power failure
8/16/2003

THE MOST telling explanation for Thursday`s power failure, the worst in US history, came from Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor who was secretary of energy in the Clinton administration: "We`re the world`s greatest superpower," said Richardson, "but we have a Third World electricity grid." Trying to bring that grid into the 21st century is a battle that both the Clinton and Bush administrations have fought, with no success. Modernizing the grid requires a national set of ``rules of the road" governing the management of and, especially, better access to the transmission system. Beyond that, utilities will have to be given more financial incentive than now exists to build new transmission lines.

Then comes the not-in-my-backyard battle: getting communities and environmentalists to accept ugly new lines cutting through subdivisions and forests. The part of New England most affected by the blackout, southwestern Connecticut, is notorious for its inadequate transmission system and the eagerness of homeowners with 10,000-square-foot houses to fight new lines.

Without more lines and updated transformers, circuit breakers, and other controls, the grid will always be vulnerable to untoward events so marginal that officials were still struggling yesterday to find out exactly where the outage began. At first it was reassuring when officials said it was not terrorism that caused it. But as time went on the sheer mysteriousness of the cause made the blackout seem that much more unpredictable and likely to recur. After Thursday the grid seems more like a human body with internal thermostats and feedbacks so fragile that on a bad day a draft across the shoulder blades could, as Grandma believed, cause pneumonia.

There have been warnings about this for years from the likes of Richardson and experts from the North American Electric Reliability Council, the industry`s advisory organization set up after the 1965 blackout. Since 1977 the Northeast has been spared such outages, but the West and the Midwest have had several.

The first fight -- instituting federal mandates over management of the grid -- might be the toughest. Regions like the Northwest and the Southeast that have for decades benefited from cheap, federally subsidized hydropower or coal power fight fiercely against grid reforms that would equalize electricity costs.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has tried, so far to no avail, to strengthen grid management. On other issues the Bush administration has made blackouts more likely. The Clinton administration called for sharply increased efficiency for air-conditioners, a major demand factor on peak load days, but President Bush weakened the rule. A sound energy policy would curb demand growth, modernize transmission, and encourage new, nonpolluting power sources.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorial…

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"The first and simplest emotion of the human mind is curiosity," Edmond Burke

Uncurious George

Despite what is unfolding before us, the majority of this country`s honest, freedom-loving people seem ever less interested in knowing, and ever more inclined toward believing that what we`re being shown and what we`re being told and what is being carried out in our name, is truth.

By Dom Stasi [e-mail]

August, 14, 2003: I`d rather know than believe. Five words, penned by a paragon of thought, they have stayed in my memory and my own humble thoughts since I first encountered them several years ago. For me, the words leapt from the pages of Carl Sagan`s masterpiece of reason entitled, The Demon Haunted World.

Humanity lost Dr. Sagan to a prolonged illness in 1996. But in his short 62 years, the renowned scientist and philosopher left all of us far more than most. Among his gifts are those five haunting words: I`d rather know than believe. Ironically, what I`ve chosen to believe Carl Sagan was relating, but I`ll never know for certain is this: Seek truth though knowledge, not through faith.

His words haunt me still. They haunt me first because they provide me an insight to faith, and the wanting to believe that is somewhere inside us all. I want to believe that my interpretation is exactly what their author meant. I want to believe that my children will live long and happy lives. There are certain things I want very much to believe. The simple phrase thus tempers my cold, engineer`s logic with humanity. I`m aware now that there is something in all of us that sometimes would rather just believe than know.

But those five words haunt me for a far more disturbing reason as well. Because, today, even the non-scientific me, the personal, entirely human, fiercely American me who wants so desperately to believe his beloved country is a force for freedom and human dignity in a world never quite sane, is instead seeing our government engaging in behavior that is neither logical nor humane, and by no means, sane. We the people of the United States are being held hostage to our own government`s domestic economic policies, many of which border on the fraudulent. At the same time, our monetary treasure, our priceless young, and our military might are all being squandered further still by imposing dictatorship and indignity on entire regions of the world. They then expect us to believe, such actions are consistent with the promotion and spread of democracy.

My country appears guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of what I cannot help but consider at the very least irresponsible, at the very most criminal conduct both at home and abroad. Simply put, under the administration headed by George W. Bush, America`s actions as a member of the global society demand a more plausible explanation than that which we, her psychologically and financially exploited people, are being offered. The gangsters, oil barons, arms merchants, and theocrats who`ve usurped our ostensibly representative government, represent to be sure, but what they represent is the interests of themselves and their masters, not those of their constituents. Yet, despite what is unfolding before us, the majority of this country`s honest, freedom-loving people seem ever less interested in knowing, and ever more inclined toward believing that what we`re being shown and what we`re being told and what is being carried out in our name, is truth. Thus, as a governed society, we leave ourselves ever more vulnerable to deceit, and ever more willing to rationalize our own deception. We have a credulous, drinker-turned-abstemious teetotalist, faith-driven, unelected leader, of dubious intellect and questionable character, whose historical perspectives are derived from mythology more than from fact. Such a litany of shortcomings make this president an easy mark for deception and coercion by the gaggle of single-minded, Reagan-era ideologues, moralists, and fundamentalist zealots with whom he`s allowed himself to become surrounded. Further, his past, and doubtless future, eagerness to not only accept, but aggressively solicit inordinately large campaign "donations," fortunes numbering in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have made him a most willing slave to his "private-sector" corporate masters. And he, dubious Dubya, is in turn left to mislead, misuse, and bankrupt a trusting American populace.

There is nothing new here, not by any means. These are the inevitable, historically foreseeable products of faith… juvenile, irresponsible, blind faith on the part of both our current "leader" and those Americans who`ve acquiesced to being led. For those willing to consult history, the warnings are abundant. For those willing to confront the present, they need only look about. The evidence is everywhere. But we must first throw off the blinders of unwarranted faith, especially as it relates to our current American leadership. They have not only faith enough, but certainty enough, and righteousness enough for the rest of us combined.

But few of them have brains enough to realize or care that the public proclamation of faith, so characteristic of evangelicals like our president, has always been an open invitation to deceit. For every Elmer Gantry tent revival charlatan, stuffing his wallet with the money of faith-driven fools, there have been legions more of the willing credulous, screaming their blind faith and desperation from the rooftops, telling the world - and its con artists - that they will believe what they`re told without evidence. The single criterion for enlisting their belief, is that they be told what they want to hear. What predatory charlatan, what wild-eyed idealist could resist such a taunt? I`d rather know than believe? Well, so would any deceivers looking for a mark. They`d rather know than believe too. The proclamation of faith, lets them know - it lets them know exactly who can be deceived. Whether we`re describing a holy roller or a political ideologue, faith is the marker, the faithful the mark. Bush`s strident proclamations of faith as his driving inspiration, make him an easy mark for the righteous rogues who have flocked to his side. His well advertised credulity is an all-too-conspicuous key to the Homeland`s strongbox, and its gun locker, too. The contents of the former has already been stolen, the nuclear-capable, irresistibly powerful contents of the latter is being used almost without letup to steal foreign treasure. So far, it`s been like taking candy from a baby. In just his first three years in office, $600,000,000.00 of our taxes and savings have disappeared. $600-billion! That`s right, there was a $260 billion federal surplus when Dubya took office. That money was ours. He wrapped it in the flag, called it a tax cut, or the price of a war on terrorism, or just about everything but what it was - a con.

Where`s has that money gone? Consider this. The Bush Administration and their media stooges estimated that the war in Iraq would top out at an already staggering $79 billion. Estimates released to the Associated Press yesterday now project that the true costs of the war and subsequent rebuilding of Iraq (care to guess by whom?) will cost another $600 billion. One reason for the disparity, the Bush League experts who first calculated the war costs neglected to include the cost of, among other things, ammunition.

Words fail me.

But, nonethless, add that little 700% mistake to the note that will come due all too soon. Tack it onto the already burgeoning $340 billion yearly(!!!) federal deficit created under Bush and we- you and me - have a disaster for our children`s and the Republic`s future, and there`s virtually nothing else to show for it but the note. That is unless you`re among the absolute wealthiest 2% of Americans who need our commonly shared and individually earned tax money the least but get the most of it. Because an inordinately huge chunk of our money went to the wealthiest masters of war and masters of oil - and I do not mean their employees, or even most of their executives, but the absolute wealthiest. You might also have benefited by the tax cut if you`re one of the three million Americans who`ve lost their jobs under Bush and consider your extended leisure time a benefit. If so, we might all rejoice! There will be many more of you thanks to the Bush Administration`s policy of awarding another $79 billion in tax credits to companies willing to move their operations (and jobs) out of the country! He expects us to have faith in his policies. Why would we? God only knows, and He`s not talking. Not to me, that is.

Make no mistake, the tax-cut-as-jobs-creation program is a lie. This administration has about as much interest in creating American jobs as a scorpion has in sensitivity training. By eliminating jobs, by reducing the jobs pool, by encouraging the growth of slave shops offshore, this administration is doing exactly what its corporate owners expect in return for their $300 million campaign "contributions." The fewer jobs to spread around, the lower the American pay scale over time. Desperate skilled workers, fattened and indebted by their continued spending - the only economic policy this administration has promoted since 9-11 - will accept whatever they can get - and at whatever salary. Such control over America`s workers is precisely what Bush`s corporate owners want in return for buying him the presidency. These are the same people who will deny an employee a 5% pay raise. Did you think they would give away $300 million to a candidate from their sense of generosity, or was it patriotism?

Now this sort of shenanigans might come as a surprise to those who dutifully tune in to the nightly network newscasts in order to stay informed while meeting the demands of a busy life. The anchorperson probably just failed to mention it. Did the network "news" anchorperson also just fail to mention that Bush`s dividend tax cut saved the CEO of one of our three major television networks $40 million on his personal taxes this year. Did you hear a lot of objective analysis or fact-based criticism of the administration`s domestic economic policy from the anchorperson on the network "news?"

I digress.

As for America`s gun locker, well, as commander in chief, this president is using our duty-bound military as unwitting or unwilling armed robbers in his foreign adventures which appear ever more to be an overt grab for individual wealth and power unimagined by our counrty`s founders or our immigrant forbears. We find ourselves a hyper-power monster unchallenged in the only world we know, with a president who acts without knowledge or provocation. He`s comfortable in the belief that whatever America does, we are rightous, we face no danger of retaliation, and god is on our side. Bush`s advisors are secure in their own belief that we`re strong enough to experiment with the world. We can try our ideologies without fear of retribution. We can kick sand in anybody`s face. We can take their stuff too, if it`s stuff we want. What`re they gonna do?

Consider how this simplistic stupidity is playing out today. Bush was told of a New Domino Theory. It went something like this: once a tyrant or two falls through overwhelming American military force, democracy would spread through the Mid East country-by-country like tumbling dominoes. He liked what he heard. With no substantive frame of reference, he believed it. Perhaps uncurious George W. Bush should have read about the old Domino Theory before invoking the new one. But he acted on his faith, despite that there is no evidence in all of human history to support such lunacy. Thousands upon thousands died. Now he justifies the bloodshed with sophomoric claptrap. He`s already sacrificed our troops to Afghanistan only to let it fall back into chaos. Now, with the place in a worse shambles than it was when he found it, but with a powerless American-installed puppet government in place, Dubya`s cronies can step in and build the pipeline from the sea to the Urals that his own father tried and failed to do by creating the Taliban. Farther south, in the continuing saga of endless war, Dubya has today deployed apparently expendable American troops to Liberia to ensure that nothing interferes with the overthrow of their despot of the moment, Charles Taylor. Many of you may not know exactly why we`re deploying troops to Liberia. That`s understandable. After all, Liberia is a country known less for its nationhood, than it is renowned for its being the first word in the phrase: "Liberian Oil Tanker." The multinational oil kings in multinational Houston can thus continue to register their pricey machines outside the US and save all the more multi-billion dollar taxes Dubya has given back to them without some pesky, unstable, greedy local strongman to deal - and share - with. And finally, George W. Bush still has time to pull off this Iraq thing, and in doing so complete the oil ring, thus showing his old petrochemical cronies, that - despite his decades spent as the oil executive who never found a drop, and never turned a profit - Dubya can ultimately be remembered as the oil industry`s greatest benefactor since the inventor of gas gouging.

He offers us his "faith" and takes our young. He initiates the slaughter of thousands of civilians in the firm belief that Iraq will be a "democratic utopia," (his words) thus justifying his actions to himself. He believes this despite the humanitarian and economic disaster those very actions have wrought in the entire region. He asks no relevant questions that might challenge and detract from what little he knows. George is content to believe. I am not.

With that proclamation, let`s take a closer look at this issue of faith so central now to our once pragmatic government.

For the record, I have no faith. None. I have faith in nothing. Don`t want it. Don`t need it. It`s a choice I`ve made. It`s perhaps a radical choice, it`s certainly an unpopular one. It`s also a troubling one. It troubles me not because it`s an unpopular position, not exactly, but because the precepts of faith and faithlessness are not falsifiable. In the face of so much of what appears to be faith, exhibited by so many intelligent, so many thoughtful people, I still do not feel that there is something lacking in my world-view. Despite all that influence, all that implication that faith is good; keep the faith; have faith; faith will see you through, and so on, I simply do not accept faith as being altogether rational among adults. I think of faith - perhaps harshly - as little more than a pleasant manifestation of ignorance, a vestige of childhood innocence… presumption without evidence or knowledge. Thus I reject it. Soundly. I`d rather just admit that I don`t know something than to accept an answer that has no real basis in fact, but is acceptable simply because it is an answer someone in a position of control formulated for me. That sort of stimulus-response is acceptable in children, pets, and lab rats; reasonable adults, however, should have developed deductive skills that yield informed discrimination between fact and fancy.

When, as a child, you were told by daddy not to play in the street, or not to play with matches, you obeyed without question. Daddy could have been a sadistic lunatic with the judgment of a tree stump, but he was a controlling authority figure and you obeyed. Fortunately for humankind, in the vast majority of instances, fathers are protective, loving men, and figures of limitless benevolent power in a child`s small world. So blind obedience is statistically advantageous behavior essential to the survival of the vast majority of little kids. But the point is, children accept and believe what they`re told by those in charge. They do so indiscriminately. Kids will believe the lunatic and the loving father with equal conviction. It`s a foundation of natural selection. The sadist`s kids will have a higher probability of suffering self-immolation, or of being run down by speeding trucks, thus stemming the propagation of their possibly mean genes. The loving dad`s kids will probably grow to adulthood, thus maximizing the chances that they`ll pass on their forbears` nurturing qualities intact to their own children in turn.

But loving dad also had a much higher probability than might sadistic dad of telling us about the Stork, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus… to name but a few. Through the same tendency and proclivity toward credulity, our little faithful selves believed him. At so early a juncture in our development it`s all good. But eventually, just as our physical growth displaces our baby teeth when they`re no longer advantageous, so should our mental growth discard the naiveté of faith. Adults have a wider range of choices than do children. But to exercise them intelligently, we must accept the responsibility and all the mental work that goes along with critical discretion. Since credulity in adults has no hereditary preclusion, or negative survival implications, it endures generation to generation. In fact, magical, spiritual, and pseudoscientific beliefs, historically form the basis of cultures. Culture forms the basis of tribes. Tribes and groupings certainly do provide survival advantages. Thus, credulity, faith, belief, can be of significant evolutionary benefit. Armies are motivated to the axiom, "Ours is not the reason why. Ours is but to do and die." Can there be a more profound dedication to faith?

Fast forward to today.

Today - in fact every day - our self-appointed daddy in Washington tells us, not about Santa, or the Tooth Fairy, but about the Bogie Man. He tells us over and over again (maybe he`s sadistic dad). As of this morning, 59% of American adults still believe him. As predictable as rats in a Skinner box, the operant conditioning of our childhood plays on our ignorance, causes us to believe. Like frightened children, only all big now and no longer cute and harmless, we`re trembling beneath our metaphoric security blankets, terrified of shadows. The fear has us lashing out and killing what we can, indiscriminately, just like frightened beasts. Our "leaders" deliberately scare us. They do so because they think we`re simple-minded. The majority of us respond exactly as expected. Uncritical, faithful, Pavlovian dogs.

But to be sure, in about a year from today - absent any unsceduled activity from the Bogie Man - just around election time, daddy Dubya, and his flacks, will begin to flood us with the good news. Santa, the Tooth fairy, and all the rest will come skipping back into the broadcast "news" with a vengeance! The credulous majority of our countrymen will be so accustomed to cowering in abject and contiguous terror by then, that anything will sound better than what they`ve been hearing. Anchorpersons will no doubt start spewing phrases like, "Unemployment growth slowed this year!" Or, "The Pentagon today began development of a freedom bomb." Stuff like that. Happy stuff. Then off our fellow citizens will march to the voting booths.

In a democracy, that`s all it takes: Ignorance, faith, adamancy, and a plurality. Given the degree to which the former three exhibit in the general population, the latter is statistically probable.

To the extent that few would agree with me that faith is just a warm and fuzzy manifestation of ignorance, it must still be accepted that, by their very definitions, faith and knowledge can only coexist in inverse proportion. The more one knows about something - anything - the less faith he calls upon when endeavoring to draw rational conclusions about that something. In the adult rational mind, knowledge trumps faith every time.

For example, when geologists tell us the planet beneath our feet is billions of years old, and every one of us is standing right smack on top of the easily falsifiable physical evidence as it orbits the Sun, we might or might not choose to believe them. But you and I can pick up an old chunk of Mother Earth and go have it dated by an indisputable process, a process we are free to understand or not, as we choose. I happen to understand it because it interests me. I chose to spend the time and effort to gain knowledge about the process and the physics behind it. Anyone can do the same. The geologist`s claim is thus "falsifiable:" as scientists say. They don`t say provable, but falsifiable. Science encourages that its theories and hypotheses be disproved. But doing so requires evidence of fact and the freedom and will to inquire. Be it of poetry or planetry, learning is never discouraged in an open society.

On the other hand, when a "Creation Scientist" tells me he believes that same planet Earth is only four thousand years old, and believes so because he read it in a book whose contents are not falsifiable (neither provable nor disprovable by any mechanism other than faith), and further, he discourages my skepticism. I`m going with the geologist every time. The scientific method is the best way yet discovered for winnowing the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:

Observe some aspect of the universe. It can be anything from a distant star, to a blade of grass.



Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed. i.e. Grass grows.



Use the hypothesis to make predictions. i.e. A typical blade of grass will increase in size over time if nourished.



Test those predictions by experiments or further observations (on an entire field of grass, for instance), and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.



Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.

When consistency is obtained, the hypothesis becomes a theory and provides a coherent set of propositions which explain a class of phenomena. A theory is then a framework, within which framework observations are explained and predictions made. Anti-scientific interests will attempt to trivialize the concept scientific theory by deliberately transposing the concepts of theory and hypothesis: "It`s only a theory. It`s not proven." Thus persuading their sycophants that scientific theories are little more than guesswork. Suddenly they respect and require evidence (the other E word). Darwin`s Theory Of Evolution is the leading target of such deliberate deception by those who dispute it with irrational postulation.

But the reliance upon faith is nowhere to be found in the progression toward viable knowledge. Nor is faith a substitute when confronted with the unknowable. But a willingness to change ones belief is central to the gaining of wisdom. Science, as the basis for knowing, encourages challenges to its theories, and will question and even abandon them without exception when falsifying evidence is presented however dearly they may be held. Beware those who do not! Beware adamancy!

What I`m saying is simply this: we need not believe in evolution, but neither should we believe those whose powers of reasoning suggest that their forbears refused to participate in it (evolution, that is).

Speaking of descendancy, for a disturbing insight to the Bush administration`s exploitation of public credulity and ignorance as relates to the abuse of scientific facts, visit the website:

www.politicsandscience.org

There are also those who will be quick to point out that we all rely on faith to get us through our daily situations. Who, for example, would voluntarily climb aboard an airplane without having faith that it will fly? Just about everyone, that`s who. Because that`s not faith. That`s a conclusion based on knowledge derived from evidence. The thing has been designed by experienced credentialed engineers according to the laws of physics and practices of science and technology. It`s flown before, as have others identical to it in every scientific and mechanical detail. There`s little if any faith involved in such decisions, but plenty of empirical evidence and statistical probability. Conversely, and more to the point, the more faith one has in something, the less he actually knows about it. It`s incontrovertible logic. That`s also why the factory where the airplane was built, has a wind tunnel and a test pilot, quite a few test pilots in fact. Having only one would be an act of faith.

But, alas, it is faith, effectively blind faith or more simply stated - an absence of knowledge - which is the greatest single influence guiding the man who is guiding - or misguiding - his equally credulous countrymen. Were we not told by this president that Iraq was responsible for the September Eleventh attacks? The Iraq and al-Qaeda were working together? That Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. The list goes on. (For those seeking a detailed list of 20 "lies" about Iraq told to us by this administration, a detailed list has been compiled by the British Independent, complete with their detailed explanations, can be found at the URL:

http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=7588

The same criminals who`ve persuaded this ignorant credulous president to empty the public coffers, have used him in other ways as well. The Bush League knew full well that their pious pigeon`s credulity was by no means unique in an American society that has been raised on spirituality and therapy. Bush was and is ordinary. America would be as easily deceived as their "leader."

Persuaded by his god and his advisors, Bush has in turn been using the tragedy of September Eleventh to take this country to war for reasons neither he nor his advisors can or will demonstrate. He`s used the tragedy of September Eleventh to mislead 59% of this country into believing he is a great deal more than the abject incompetent that has characterized every single one of his prior endeavors. Now, while blowing up two foreign lands, imposing untold suffering on random innocents, depleting the US Treasury of a half-trillion dollars, and using the naiveté, grief and terror of our own citizens as carte blanche to advance the agenda of the warmongering lunatics comprising his cabinet, he is refusing to reveal what is probably the most important part of a tax-funded report on the events and motivations leading up to the whole horrific affair. The President of the United States is refusing to release us the very report we the people have funded and for which we`ve been waiting through two of the most divisive and critical years in our nation`s history. He is refusing to release to us, huge sections of the very report justifying or criticizing the greatest act of faith exhibited by any peoples toward any leader in our combined national history. He`s taken us to war. He`s bankrupted us. Our children are being murdered in foreign streets daily. He`s encouraging the loss of personal freedoms. But no matter how heinous the outrage, we`ve gone along with the apparent stupidity out of some sort of patriotic sense of country. Some might call it fear.

Why is the explanation being withheld from us? We`ve been good.

Twenty-eight pages, blacked out, hidden, horded by these tyrants in the used and abused name of security. Why are we allowing it? How do we know such control of information is not compromising our security? Where in the hell is the outrage? This is the congressional report on the events leading up to the September Eleventh attack on our country! It belongs to every American. What in God`s name has become of us?

It is no secret that the Bush family and the bin Laden family have been connected through business and banking. It is common knowledge that the Bush family and the Saudi Royal family have both business and personal ties. If there is nothing untoward here, why hide that very part of the report that speaks of Saudi Arabia from the American people who have suffered so much as a result of the actions of what has up until now been a handful of Saudis? Is it because this administration has benefited so much from the actions of a handful of Saudis as well? If they`re not the same handful, what`s the problem?

The Bush family and the banks they`ve run have been tied to our enemies before. Dubya`s own grandaddy was implicated for trading with the Nazis in 1942. The Roosevelt Administration froze the assets of the bank Prescott Bush directed, UBC, under the Trading With The Enemy act of 1941. There`s no secret here. It`s part of the public record.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/2398/vesting…
http://www.timnews.com/Bush-Nazis.htm

The Bush`s survived that one quite well. So I would presume those implicated were determined to be innocent of any wrongdoing. So, c`mon, we`re talking Nazis here! Why, then, worry about a few pages about a few Saudis? Pikers compared to the Nazis! Spill the beans, George. We can take it.

We faithful patriotic Americans, (59% of us) seem quite willing to believe anything this Dubya guy tells us as long as he says it with a twang. It matters but little that 41% of us remain unwilling to believe he`s hiding those 28 pages from us for security reasons. What security reasons might those be? How about some evidence? We`re talking` 9-11 here, George! Are you with us, or are you with the terrorists?

Mr. Bush, the 41% of the American public who would rather know than believe, are quite willing to take our chances with the security thing. Don`t shield us from information the way a parent would shield a child from pornography. After all, any nation than can conquer two - count `em, two - unarmed countries in less than two years has little to fear from anyone but itself.

But I guess we don`t count when the other 59% of us and nearly all of our representatives in the congress are snug in the camp of juvenile credulity. They`ll believe whatever they`re told to believe, and will continue to believe it until the right control figure tells them to believe something new. As for our congressmen, I`m afraid the security thing translates to job, not national, security.

Such adamant preconception, when coupled with a lack of knowledge is the common basis for emotional, rather than objective reaction. We see it every day. Just confront a "patriot" with your doubts… but be prepared for fight or flight.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge," …Charles Darwin

"He (George W. Bush) has the confidence to ask questions that show he doesn`t know very much," …Richard Perle

Do we laugh or cry? Perle`s words would be a damning assesment from anyone, but from an advisor it`s nothing less than an indictment. It means that those most attuned to his abilities, find our president to be ignorant. So serious a shortcoming in a man of 57 years, can only be the result of inferior intellect, a lifelong lack of curiosity, or amnesia. Are any of these the qualities one would seek in the leader of this world`s most advanced industrial society? Are these the characteristics a country of nearly 300 million literate people should accept in their president?

"It`s very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America." - George W. Bush, Dakar, Senegal July, 8, 2003.

No man (or woman) who aspires to leadership should reach his middle years not knowing very much. So implies the logic behind Article 2 of the US Constitution. The crafters realized that the acquisition of knowledge takes time. The Constitution says the President must be no less than 35 years of age. Unfortunately, Article 2 addresses only chronological age. It sets no minimum on mental age. Too bad, because there`s an amendment that even a strict constructionist like me would endorse!

Bright people ask questions all of their lives. They don`t begin at middle age when it`s too late to catch up with their contemporary counterparts and adversaries. Yet it is these very inadequacies that are being tested to the extreme - at our national expense - right now in the most important and complex game there is: world leadership. Uncurious George waited too long to begin asking the questions that seemed to so impress Richard Perle. Curious George surfaced too late to save his presidency from ideological advisors such as the highly opportunistic, so-called prince of darkness, just mentioned, or our country from the ravages already well wrought through Mr. Bush`s lifetime of ignorance unmitigated by intellectual curiosity.

Through some sort of mutated corruption of popular democracy, we find ourselves "led" by a man who has lived an unexamined life. We take direction from a man of limited ability who has reached middle age without seeking the knowledge that would get him beyond the simplistic mental myopia of "I see things in black and white," or, "I`m not about nuancing," and repeating my personal fave, replete with cowpoke patois, "Yer either with us or yer with the teriss (terrorists)." This is the man we`re allowing to deal with the incendiary Middle East. This man who says, "nuke-u-ler," we are allowing to control atomic energy, the environment of our planet, and our children`s` very futures. With little knowledge, he must rely on faith - a sort of ready-to-eat-TV-dinner substitute for hard-won knowledge. As a result, so must we. It`s a mandate I find impossible. Yet here it is. This man who does not like to read, has read one book over and again. Its message got him off the sauce, only to impose its own, more subtle, form of addiction: an addiction to faith.

"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president (George W. Bush) who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg, South Africa, January 30, 2003.

Based on faith, George W. Bush has initiated policies and actions that have violently taken the lives of thousands of civilians in Iraq. He`s done so because he believes he was told to by God. He (he, not He) has spoken of this often enough. Even if he`s lying or hallucinating about the God instructions, which he almost certainly is, is there anyone left with a measurable brain weight who still believes Bush acted from knowledge, or from evidence consistent with such drastic action? Does anyone believe that such an unbridled rush to slaughter was ordained?

Bush has justified everything he`s done, every mistake, every avoidable, cold-blooded, child mangling impulse upon which he`s acted, every act of economic and environmental squander, by invoking the same justification: Evildoers on September Eleventh; Evildoers on September Eleventh; Evildoers on September Eleventh. When God speaks, Dubya listens.

Now I ask you, if you were God, would George W. Bush be the person with whom you chose to speak? If you were God, would you let Albert Einstein, Henry Thoreau, Mother Jones, Oscar Wilde, Ben Franklin, Carl Sagan, Mae West - hell, John Denver, and billions of others, all go by without a word from you, not a simple, "well done," or even an admonition, yet take the time (or whatever He takes) to decide you should have a chat - several chats, apparently - with George W. Bush, then send him on a killing spree?

By the way, did God ever get back to George on that killing spree? Did He like what George did? After all, if God liked it, and George knows that, he could just show us some evidence and we`d stop all the damned badgering.

Did God like what George did? Does God approve? Does God know what`s contained in the twenty-eight missing pages of the September-eleventh report form congress that George is keeping from us. Does God know about Harken Energy, or the AWOL thing? Does God know what George and his cronies are doing to God`s little blue planet? I would submit that He does. So exactly what makes this guy God`s favorite confidant?

Oh, I`ll go along with the presumption that, as Lincoln invoked, "The Almightily has His own purposes," and I`ll accept that "…moves in mysterious ways" thing up to a point - but Dubya? Dubya? That just doesn`t play. Not even God would move in that mysterious a way. Let`s say God, following a really quite extended silence, did choose George W. Bush as his auditory vicar on Earth. Let`s just accept that Old Testament God (The choices are many. In the interest of brevity, I had to pick but one) told Eve about the apple, gave Noah the gloomy extended forecast, piped up again to tell Moses what not to do, and then for the most part went quiet (during which time some mortals actually postulated upon His demise) until Dubya came along, all ears and curiosity. Hmmm.

But before He spoke to George and told him what to do about the evildoers from September Eleventh, would God not have realized or taken into account that none of them evildoers was from Iraq? Would He not, in His infinite wisdom, care that 15 of them 19 evildoers as well as their Bogie Man leader came from Saudi Arabia? It`s the Holy Land for crying out loud! Mecca! God (pick one) would know that kind of stuff. Don`t ya think? After all, if there`s anybody or any entity with even more numerous and tenuous connections to Saudi Arabia than the Bush family, it`s got to be God. So He`d have known. I mean, c`mon, not even economists on the cable "news" shows give advice as stupid as that. God`s got to be smarter than Kudlow and Cramer! God would` a known. He would not have told George to incinerate the wrong place. I got to figure George W. Bush did that. He should not blame God. God is not George Tenet.

Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities. …Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Paris, France,1764

Anyway, while being told to kill people by God might prove more persuasive than being told to kill people by, say, the Beatles or by Sam the Dog, it hardly justifies the indiscriminate, and preemptive mass slaughter of relatively innocent civilians such as that we`ve just witnessed. At least it doesn`t justify it to those of us who are conventionally sane. Bush acted on faith. He heard voices in his head. He was wrong, and more than 3000 civilians - more than 3000 mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, children of God every one - died. They died in the streets, in their homes, in their beds, and in each others` arms: executed with neither convincing nor convicting evidence and solely by decree. That`s the same number of Iraqis killed in the first Gulf war. Afterwards, in the ensuing years, due to the partial destruction of Iraq`s health care and infrastructure systems through the real Daddy Bush`s policies and actions, and our continued refusal under the Clinton administration to allow their rebuilding by foreign aid agencies, a total of 158,000 Iraqis died. Most of them - the vast majority in fact - were children - little evildoers, no doubt, but children nonetheless.

Miss that story, did you? Don`t feel left out. The failed-actors-turned-network-stockholders who read the TV "news" their entertainment division bosses tell them to read in order to protect their stock-options, seem to have overlooked it as well. After all, we`ve got basketball players cheating on their spouses to report about. I mean, what with toppling statues, California`s Total Recall, and important stuff like that, plus all those speeding-SUV commercials and "commentary" about the War On Terror (replete with video of those seven al-Qaeda terrorist guys on the jungle gym, over and over again), there are only so many minutes in a 24 hour newscast. But don`t despair. You can still catch the sequel if you look and listen in the right places. To all indications it will be even worse this time around, too. The destruction in Iraq is far more complete this time.

How many more will die in this debacle is anyone`s guess. But I don`t need faith to tell me, that - absent a plausible justification - it will be too damned many!

Of course there are those who still believe Bush did not act on faith or divine advice alone in deciding to destroy the cradle of human civilization. He acted on principle. He killed over 3000 people outright because they lived in a country whose leader was (and as of this writing, apparently still is) a murderous lunatic who posed a threat to world piece. Bush did it all to make us safer.

That`s what we`ve been told. Is that what you believe? If so, then you`d better hope no one else is willing to act on their beliefs.

I say that because a growing body of world opinion asserts that you too have a leader who kills innocent people and is a threat to world peace. (Yes. Dubya has killed more civilians than Osama. Remember Osama?) In fact, according to Time`s recent Time-Europe poll of 750,000 people, 86% of those polled now believe that you and I live in a country whose leader poses the single most viable threat to world peace. We also have a whole load of weapons of mass destruction (Dubya Em Dee, for short) that actually exist. Does that mean you and your family deserve to die violent deaths? In the streets? In your homes? In your beds? In each others arms?

Since 96% of the world`s population (or at least the 6.8-billion of them we know about) are not Americans, and they believe overwhelmingly that America and its current leader pose by far the greatest of all threats to their future security, what makes you think that you won`t? Faith? Good luck with that one.

Now since it is evidence that separates knowledge from belief, what, then, comprises evidence?

In a legal context, Webster`s defines one type of evidence as, Documentary or oral statements by acknowledged experts, admissible as testimony.

To qualify as an acknowledged expert on the economy for example, a testifying witness might have won an award "acknowledging" his actual accomplishments. George A. Akerlof, the Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics for 2001 would certainly qualify in the extreme.

"I think this (Bush Administration) is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. …this is a form of looting." …George A. Akerlof, Berlin Germany, July 29, 2003.

Conversely, an expert on politics, and foreign policy might be an experienced journalist who`s covered those areas and been trained in objective assessment. A supreme example would be Helen Thomas, the Dean of the White House Press Corps. With 60 years of experience, 40 of them covering the White House, "Doubting" Thomas is the most senior reporter watching the president and every other president in memory. She has covered three wars and eight presidencies. Helen Thomas has been recipient of more accolades from her peers (and her presidents) for political reportage than any White House correspondent in history.

"This (George W. Bush) is the worst president ever. He is the worst president in all of American history." …Helen Thomas, Los Angeles, California, January 23, 2003.

That`s what Webster`s calls expert testimony.

In conclusion, then, faith seems a reckless and irresponsible foundation upon which to base mortal, world-changing action. The kind of actions our president plunges into with a zealot`s certainty require deliberation, evidence, reason, and knowledge. There`s no place here for faith. Yet, on the face of it, an absence of faith might seem a gloomy and pessimistic way to view the world. On this last point, I`ve learned to disagree. So have others whose opinion counts more than should mine.

For example, I opened this column with Carl Sagan`s quote: I`d rather know than believe.

Though I never will get the chance to meet Carl Sagan, whose words I used to begin this article, I did get to meet and speak with the late scientist`s widow at a Hollywood gathering a few weeks ago. For those who`ve not seen it in the credits of the PBS series Cosmos, which she produced, or on the jacket of one of her books, or in the dedication of any number of Sagan`s books, her name is Ann Druyan.

A woman of startling intellect, we met at a place appropriately called the Center For Inquiry where she was to deliver an important address. The occasion was a gathering of bookish types for a conference called The Assault On Reason. We all spoke of many things that day. We spoke of optimism, of pessimism, and of fact and fancy. But in a room full of skeptics, the topic inevitably came around to faith.

Ann Druyan seemed a realist, but an optimistic sort. So following her remarks to the packed room, I asked her about her faith.

"I have no faith," Ann Druyan said. Then, as if anticipating my next question, she added, "I have hope. I have a great deal of hope."

That`s what I call expert testimony!

Source: www.Bigeye.com

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Inside the resistance

August 16, 2003

There`s a knock on the door. Standing in the first-floor corridor of the Al Safeer Hotel are two men - Ahmed, a weapons dealer and group commander in the Iraqi resistance, and Haqi, one of his foot soldiers. They enter and take a seat on the sofa, edgy but full of bravado after what they claim was a successful strike against a US convoy in a rural area north of Baghdad.

They had agreed, after weeks of negotiation through a go-between, to talk about the resistance. Now they are here to recount the detail of their most recent offensive against the US occupation forces in Iraq.

Ahmed begins: "Yesterday we were told about the new movement of convoys, so we used a special car to take our RPG [rocket-propelled grenades] and guns up there. We struck at sunset, in an area surrounded by farms.

"We positioned ourselves as locals, just standing around. But as the convoy came into view we picked up the weapons which we had lying on the ground. There were 19 soldiers. I could see their faces. I fired three grenades - two at a truck and one at a Humvee. Then we escaped across the fields to a car that was waiting for us. It took just a few seconds because God makes it easy for us."

This is the third mission for Ahmed, a 32-year-old who has inherited family wealth, including a factory and a farm, and the fourth for Haqi, a 25-year-old Baghdad taxi-driver who defers to Ahmed as "my instructor".

Their claim to success is in keeping with exaggerated local accounts of the hundreds of hit-and-miss resistance attacks on the US.

I checked. At Al Meshahda, near Tarmiya, which is 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, the road is scorched and gouged. Two local farmers, brothers Muhammad and Ibrahim Al Mishadani, insist three US soldiers died when the tail-end vehicles in a convoy were hit.

But the Americans reported no deaths from Tarmiya on Tuesday.

The postwar US death toll in fighting in Iraq now stands at 60, with almost 500 wounded. The conflict is showing all the early signs of what could be a protracted guerilla war.

When he took up his commission in mid-July, the new US military chief in Iraq, General John Abizaid, acknowledged the rapid development of the resistance: "They`re better co-ordinated now. They`re less amateurish and their ability to use improvised explosive devices combined with tactical activity - say, for example, attacking [our] quick-reaction forces - is more sophisticated."

Washington has been reluctant to accept that what is happening in Iraq constitutes a guerilla war. It has repeatedly pinned the blame for instability on Saddam Hussein and Baath Party loyalists; and, particularly since last week`s bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, on foreigners associated with the terrorist network al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

So it fell to Abizaid to finally acknowledge the Americans face a "classic guerilla-type campaign". But he, too, stuck to the Washington script, insisting the critical threat to the Americans was from "mid-level Baathists" and from an organisational and financial structure that was, at best, localised.

The Pentagon, the US military and American analysts are reluctant to acknowledge popular support for the Iraqi resistance. But the chaos has tribal sheiks, Baghdad businessmen and many ordinary Iraqis speaking in such harsh anti-American terms that it is hard not to conclude there is a growing body of Palestinian or Belfast-style empathy with the resistance.

If the accounts of the resistance given to the Herald in interviews in the past 10 days are accurate, US intelligence is way behind understanding that what is emerging in Iraq is a centrally controlled movement, driven as much by nationalism as the mosque, a movement that has left Saddam and the Baath Party behind and already is getting foreign funds for its bid to drive out the US army.

The warm night air is so heavy that, when Ahmed exhales, his cigarette smoke hangs just where he parks it. It is a week before the attack, and we are in the garden at the comfortable home of one of his relatives in a west Baghdad suburb.

Ahmed denies having served in Saddam`s military or any of the security agencies. He offers a peculiar account of how he avoided military service: "I put lots of tea leaves in cold water and gulped it down so that it filled my lungs. The tea showed up as spots in my lungs and, after I paid the doctor some money, I was rejected on health grounds."

Asked why he has joined the resistance after going to such lengths to avoid doing time for Saddam, Ahmed declares: "Saddam was a loser. His wars were useless and he made enemies of our Muslim neighbours."

But this weapons dealer is uncomfortable talking war in a family environment, so he makes a call on a satellite phone, organising the use of a room in a nondescript hotel nearer to the city. Its ground-floor windows and all but one of its doors are still bricked up to fend off looters.

Slightly more at ease, Ahmed sits in a formal armchair at the hotel, the folds of his white dishdasha draped over the chair`s red brocade upholstery. Toying with his beard, he describes a Sunni resistance that is a disciplined, religiously focused force. Asked where authority rests, he says: "It`s with the sheiks in the mosques. Baath Party people and former members of the military are not allowed to be our leaders. Baathists are losers; they didn`t succeed when they worked for the party.

"We now have a single, jihadist leadership group that operates nationally. Everything is done on instructions carried by messengers. There are 35 men in my cell and I`m a leader of three other cells. The number of foreigners who are coming to help us is increasing - Syrian, Palestinian, Saudi and Qatari.

"US claims about al-Qaeda and Ansar al Islam are just propaganda." But then he goes on: "We don`t even ask the fighters if they belong to these groups or to political parties."

Speaking through an interpreter, he continues in guttural Arabic: "Our fighters are protecting our religion. We cannot allow foreigners to occupy our country."

Then he repeats the argument in much of the anti-American graffiti around Baghdad: "We suffered under Saddam and we hate him, but we would put him in our hearts ahead of a Christian or a Jew, because he is a Muslim."

This is a culture in which revenge is honourable, and Ahmed vents his opinion freely: "The Americans do not respect us, so we cannot respect them. They are a cancer of bad things: prostitution, gambling and drugs."

Haqi: "This struggle is not about Saddam. It`s about our country and our God. Our aim is not to have power or to rule the country. We just want the US out and for the word of Allah to be the power in Iraq."

THIS POCKET of the resistance calls itself the Army of Right. Like others, including the Army of Mohammed and the White Flags, it first came to notice in leaflets and graffiti around the fabled Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad`s Aadamiyah district.

Both Ahmed and Haqi refuse to give their real names or any information about where they live. "Iraq is my home," Ahmed says.

However, their chat is peppered with references to life on the land and a tribal background. Ahmed tells stories of dropping explosives into the Euphrates as a child to stun fish which he would then gather; and of learning how to conceal weapons in his clothing from the sheep smugglers who criss-cross the Jordan-Iraq border.

Estimates of how many resistance fighters are on call run as high as 7000, but these two will not discuss numbers.

And just as Iraqi children are being coached to lie when foreigners inquire about their parents or the whereabouts of their homes, the families of resistance fighters deny their involvement in the war.

In a far-flung Baghdad suburb, dentist Amar Abbass insists his "little brother" Ameer was armed only with his "student papers and a calculator" when he was arrested six weeks ago. But neighbours say the 20-year-old - now prisoner No. 10496 at the Baghdad Airport prison - was carrying an RPG launcher when the Americans grabbed him from the street.

Ahmed`s first mission was an attack on a small US convoy near Balad, in the Tikrit region, in June. Weeks later he was part of a failed attempt to down an American helicopter at Mahmoudiya, 25 kilometres south-east of the capital.

He adopts a worldly tone as he talks about the missions: "First we watch the Americans to understand their movements. We know from the way they shoot in every direction that they are afraid."

Usually the cells operate teams of four or five - two to manage the rocket-propelled grenade launcher and two or three to provide covering fire. In most cases the identity of each fighter is withheld from the others.

Because the roots of Iraqi offence at the American presence are to be found in their tribal culture as much as in the Koran, the resistance fighters confidently rely on tribal networks for information on the Americans and for help to get away in a hurry after an attack.

Ahmed says: "The people offer us hiding places when we are in danger. They support us with words and blessings and sometimes they hide our fighters in the boot of their cars to take them to safety."

Their approach is as effective as it is simple. Usually they explode a landmine to halt an US convoy and to disorient the soldiers. Then one group of resistance fighters opens fire from one side of the road, drawing the attention of the Americans, while the men with an RPG take aim from a position about 150 metres back from the other side of the road.

Many of the fighters draw on their experience in national service under Saddam and they have acquired bomb-making and other manuals from the disbanded Iraqi military. They have been having lethal success with remote-controlled devices, including one that was floated down a river on a palm log to explode under a bridge used by the US.

On the highway south of Tikrit later in the week, a US soldier explains to me how a series of four IEDs - improvised explosive devices - had been found on a track routinely used by his convoy. The explosives were spaced at precise 25-metre intervals, the distance that separates vehicles in the American convoys.

At one of our early meetings Ahmed is irritable. He has just spent the day meeting colleagues to nut out a new problem: the Americans have started jamming the radio frequencies the resistance uses to detonate its bombs. He laughs when I ask if his group found a solution, but makes it clear he is not going to answer.

The resistance missions are opportunity-driven. Local fighters are assigned to keep up low-level attacks in their areas, maybe three or four a week. Then new cells are dispatched to areas for ambushes at a rate of three and four a day.

Ahmed claims his cells are responsible for the death of at least a dozen Americans, but there is no way to confirm this.

He declares: "The Americans say they are still looking for weapons of mass destruction. But they have found them. We are their WMD!"

Resistance weapons are stashed around the country, hidden in homes, buried in graveyards and concealed in the fringes of tall, reedy grass that grows by rivers and irrigation canals.

The US makes regular announcements of success in its efforts to block the attacks, like Operation Soda Mountain, in which, it says, 128 raids in mid-July detained 971 Iraqis - 67 described as "former regime leaders" - with the confiscation of 665 small weapons, 1356 rocket-propelled grenades, 300 155-mm artillery rounds, 4297 mortar rounds, 4.3 tonnes of C4 explosive and 563 hand grenades.

The figures are impressive. But they pale against the reality that under Saddam there were estimated to be more than 5 million AK-47s alone in the country - in a recent US-run amnesty, fewer than 100 were surrendered - and against the suggestion implicit in the figures that much of the seized weapons are from unmanageable prewar stockpiles put in place by Saddam`s military which subsequently fell into the hands of the resistance.

Haggling in the country`s illegal arms bazaars, the resistance never pays more than $US100 ($154) for an RPG launcher while hand grenades sell for as little as $US2. In the days after the fall of Baghdad, AK-47s could be bought for as little as $US3; today they cost about $US40.

Ahmed, whose illegal weapons business grew out of his teenage hobby of restoring guns, says: "We thank God the gun stores of the Iraqi army and the Baath Party were opened for us. But we get donations. The other day a rich man gave us an expensive SUV which we will use for carrying weapons or for observing the Americans - or we can sell it to buy more weapons.

"But we also get weapons from outside Iraq. We allowed some of the fighters to appear on the Arab TV channels because we knew that would make wealthy Arabs send aid and encourage Arab mujahideen to join us. It was a very intelligent and effective operation.

"They didn`t just send money. They send fighters and ammunition; and they give us good intelligence and ideas for dealing with the Americans."

Ahmed and Haqi laugh as they describe the ease with which they are able to move weapons around Baghdad and beyond.

Ahmed: "Once I passed through three American checkpoints in a pick-up that was half-filled with explosives and weapons. They didn`t even look."

Haqi: "One night I was driving during the curfew hours with a box of grenades in the car. The Americans stopped me and I told them that my wife was in the hospital. `Go, go,` they yelled without searching the car. We thank God they are so stupid."

Despite thousands of Iraqi detentions, the Americans are still hit by a dozen or more attacks a day.

US commanders are buoyed by their history. With the glaring exception of Vietnam, they have always managed to best guerilla movements. However, the outcome of America`s 16 attempts at nation building is more sobering. Germany, Japan, Panama and Grenada succeeded. But the seeds planted in 11 others, including Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, were overgrown by dictatorship, corruption and autocracy. Afghanistan remains a cot case.

And, for now, the Americans` inability to deliver the security, political and economic miracle implicit in the promised liberation of Iraq is playing into the hands of the resistance. Public anger at the US is morphing into popular support for the guerillas, creating the likelihood of a descent into prolonged cycles of violence.

Few Iraqis are present when the Americans reopen a refurbished school or hospital. But all are deeply aware that their "liberators" live a world apart, in well-provisioned, little-America bunkers, and that every time they come among the Iraqis they do so behind armour plating and with guns at the ready.

Challenged about the chaos this week, US administrator Paul Bremer urged his questioners to consider the new freedoms that Iraqis have, before firing back: "The north is quiet and the south is quiet. There is a small group of bitter-end people resisting the new Iraq. We`ll deal with them.They will be killed or they`ll be captured."

Ahmed loves that kind of talk. Relishing the challenge as he sits in the evening cool, beneath a date palm heavy with fruit, he says: "Before the war I was a hunter; we`d shoot pigs. Now I can`t go hunting but the pigs are coming to me."

As a US surveillance helicopter flies high above us, he instantly adopts the pose of firing an RPG. "Our country has been occupied for only four months," he says, "this is just the beginning."

What seems clear is that the US has not begun to grasp the depth of Iraqi resentment and continues to feed the anger, as I note following my first meeting with Ahmed.

I have just returned to my Baghdad hotel, on Abu Nuwas Street which runs along the east bank of the Tigris, when a US Humvee roars past. Blaring from a block of six big speakers strapped to its rooftop is John Mellencamp`s 1980s American anthem Pink Houses: Ain`t that America? You and me! Ain`t that America? Something to seeeee!


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/15/1060936052309.html

[Joerver]

Wieder frische Ware, 96 Cartoons.
http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030815_096_toons.htm


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[Joerver]

[Joerver]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
All That`s Missing Is the Popcorn


Come one, come all, to the greatest political show of the fall as Arnold Schwarzenegger vies for a chance to run California. Inside his stunning decision—and why it would be a mistake to write off his chances.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,474507,00.…

[Joerver]

August 16, 2003

A Confidence Game on Iraq
War Pimps
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Iago: He thinks men honest
That do but seem to be so.

Othello

The war on Iraq won`t be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "rogue state," were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us.

To understand the Iraq war you don`t need to consult generals, but reformed spin doctors or, even better, two of the most seasoned investigators into the dark arts of political propaganda, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.

Stauber and Rampton run PR Watch, the Madison, Wisconsin-based group that keeps tabs on the nefarious schemes of the global PR industry to sugarcoat useless, costly and dangerous products. They have also written three of the most important non-fiction books of the last decade. In 1995, they published Toxic Sludge is Good For You, a detailed expose of how the PR industry plots and executes campaigns to greenwash corporate malfeasance. This was followed by the prescient and disturbing Mad Cow USA. Last year, they produced Trust Us We`re Experts, a grim and exacting account of the way scientists-for-hire are deployed to rationalize the risks of dangerous products and smear opponents as know-nothings and worrywarts.

Now comes their exquisitely timed Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush`s War on Iraq. Here Stauber and Rampton give us an immediate history, a real-time deconstruction of the mechanics of the Bush war machine. This lushly documented book is a chilling catalogue of lies and deceptions, which shows the press contretemps over the Niger yellowcake forgeries to be but a minor distraction given the outlandish frauds pullulating daily from the White House and the Pentagon. The history Rampton and Stauber recounts is every bit as groundbreaking as Chomsky and Herman`s Manufacturing Consent and War Without Mercy, John Dower`s riveting account of the vile uses of propaganda against Japan during World War II. Weapons of Mass Deceptions shreds the lies, and the motives behind them, as they were being told and describes the techniques of the cover-up as they were being spun.

Stauber and Rampton cut through the accumulated media fog to reveal how the war on Saddam was conceived and how the media battle plan developed and deployed. The identify the key players behind the scenes who stage-managed the countdown to war and follow their paper trails back through the murky corridors of Washington where politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.

Most of this book was written well before the invasion of Iraq. Yet, the story it relates is only now being nibbled at by the mainstream press, which had done so much to promote the vaporous deceptions of the Bush administration. Stauber and Rampton expose the gaping holes in the Bush administration`s war brief and shine an unforgiving light on the neo-con ministers, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, who concocted the war in the sebaceous quadrants of the White House and the Pentagon, over the objections of the senior analysts at the CIA and State Department.

The two journalists also trace in comic detail the picaresque journey of Tony Blair`s plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad student`s website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister`s bombastic speech to the House of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who looted whole passages from Blair`s speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely through the tempest. Why?

Stauber and Rampton offer the best explanation to date. Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.

Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were desposable nuggets that could be discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next. When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fallback postion became the mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war supported by the US) proving that Saddam was an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush pr machine was: Move on. Don`t explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back. Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion palatable not to justify it.

The Bush clague of neo-con hawks viewed the Iraq war a product and, just like a new pair of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. Stauber and Rampton demonstrate in convincing and step-by-step detail how the same techniques (and often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps were deployed to retail the Iraq war.

To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State Department. These spin meisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn`t fit the script, it was either shaded, retooled or junked.

Take Charlotte Beers who Powell tapped as Undersecretary of State in the post-9/11 world. Beers wasn`t a diplomat. She wasn`t even a politician. She was the grand diva of spin, known on the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben`s Rice and another for Head and Shoulder`s dandruff shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses Ogilvey and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.

At the state department, Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell`s words, "the branding of US foreign policy." She extracted more than $500 million from congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely focused on beaming US propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.

"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers. "All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves, but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of US policy.

Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange none-the-less. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It`s a one-way street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and international-a kind of informational carpetbombing.

The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the US war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."

Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of shock and awe were all afterplay.

Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Vitoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Prior to becoming Rumsfeld`s mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world`s great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and Knowlton`s DC office.

Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig Clarke convened regular meetings with a select group of Washington`s top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing plan for the Pentagon`s forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and was strikingly bi-partisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Galen, and Republican political consultant Rich Galen.

The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR`s Cokie Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Arkansas. At the very time Boggs was conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed all the well-placed help it could buy. The seem to have gotten their money`s worth. Boggs` felicitous influence peddling may help to explain why the damning references to Saudi funding of al-Qaeda were redacted from the recent congressional report on the investigation into intelligence failures and 9/11.

According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to buy into the war on terrorism they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld`s mind) of playing up the notion of so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which, of course, wasn`t an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq hated each other, and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.

Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many of these pr executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush inner sanctum. Indeed they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against Iraq, another engagement that was more spin that combat.

At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the DC firm the Rendon Group. Rendon is one of Washington`s heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for both Michael Dukakis and Jimmy Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he offered his servicesat a price. During Desert Storm Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.

As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.

Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public relations for the US bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon refuse to disclose the details of the group`s work there.

But it`s not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war`s signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by US troops and Chalabi associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."

The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi and his associated to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.

So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf psy-ops, the privatization of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager."

What exactly, pray tell, is perception management? Well, the Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning."

In other words, lying about the intentions of the US government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan (developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many missions was to plant false stories in the press.

Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official government memo bragging about how the media is manipulated for political objectives. So the New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic Influence, the Pentagon shut down the operation and the press gloated with satisfaction on its victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that will he was killing the office, the same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the name. But I`m going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."

At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was lost. It failed to convince even America`s most fervent allies and dependent client states that Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the UN and even NATO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even so the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the US overwhelmingly opposed the war.

Domestically, it was a different story.
A population traumatized by terror threats and shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on America with weapons of mass destruction.

Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies. Not about tactics or strategy or war plans. But about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam`s regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 percent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.

Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn`t have any weaponized chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn`t even possess any SCUD missiles, despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon pr flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into Kuwait.

This charade wouldn`t have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception."

During the Vietnam war, tv images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the US withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using tv as a force to propel the US into a war that no one really wanted.

What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions, Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter for a national network trembled on camera that the US army functioned as "our protectors." The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and everything they can ask of us."

When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war`s first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battled, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of self-less rescuers, knights in camo and nightvision googles. Of course, nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any made-for-tv-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.

The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present the Pentagon`s montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster bombs, dead children and US soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.

"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue, director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about about installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign tv news crews banished from Baghdad.

Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the Post`s pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3 to 1 margin.

Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war."

The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the US government not only didn`t object, it encouraged Saddam. Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself was sent as President Ronald Reagan`s personal envoy to Baghad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States." This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense snapped, "Where`d you get that? Iraqi television?"

The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times` Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

How times have changed. In 1987, Mylorie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She penned an article for the New Republic titled Back Iraq: Time for a US Tilt in the Mideast, arguing that the US should publicly embrace Saddam`s secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than the minor demon himself, Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation`s most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."

In the roll-out for the war, Mylorie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq. She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist whitepaper mill. Her clients include some of the nation`s most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot, Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador`s assignment was to embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows and op-ed pages.

Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the message and made sure they all stayed on the same theme. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a slightly different way," said Benador. "If not people get scared." Scared of intentions of their own government.

It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration`s gossamer case for war detailed by Stauber and Rampton (and other independent journalists) were right there for the mainstream press to unearth and expose. Instead, the US press, just like the oil companies, cravenly sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They didn`t want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.

Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC`s firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network`s executives blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue`s show attracted more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of warHe seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration`s motives."

The memo warned that Donahue`s show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot and hoisted the battle flag.

It`s war that sells.

There`s a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no returns.
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair08162003.html

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 9:52 a.m. EDT August 16, 2003

A U.S. soldier has been wounded in an attack 45 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. A spokesman says the soldier is hospitalized in stable condition.
A raging oil fire and pipeline trouble stopped all oil flow Saturday from Iraq to Turkey, just three days after the pipeline between the two countries was reopened. U.S. soldiers are helping Iraqi oil workers contain the fire burning since Friday on a section of the 600-mile pipeline from the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk to the Turkish city of Ceyhan.
The military says soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division conducted eleven raids across north-central Iraq and detained five people, including three suspected regime loyalists and a man who allegedly had threatened to kill a U.S. soldier.
A police officer once imprisoned for his opposition to Saddam Hussein has been appointed the top Iraqi in law enforcement. Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner tasked with establishing Iraq`s interior ministry, says Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim will be his senior deputy.
The commander of coalition forces in Iraq says there will be a "blanket of fear" hanging over the Iraqi people until Saddam Hussein is either captured or killed.
A religious leader in a Shiite Muslim slum has equated the U.S. occupation with Saddam Hussein`s brutal repression of the Shiite majority. But he stopped short of calling for an uprising against U.S. forces. An estimated 25-thousand people jammed the mosque and the surrounding area for Friday prayers.
The U.S. Army began training an Iraqi militia force on Friday to take on civil defense duties and pave the way for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Fifty young men hand-picked by tribal leaders started three weeks of intensive training at one of Saddam Hussein`s main palaces in the northern town of Tikrit, which is now headquarters for the Fourth Infantry Division.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Keine Opfer gemeldet

[Joerver]

What will war cost?
An editorial
August 16, 2003

Honest analysts of the costs of nation building - which is to say, analysts who are not constricted by the Bush administration`s spin machine - say that the price tag for America`s occupation of Iraq, and the fool`s mission of attempting to remake the country as a Middle Eastern Texas, will be at least $600 billion.

At a time when President Bush`s tax cuts for the wealthy have caused budget deficits that are approaching $500 billion, the prospect of spending an even greater amount to force people to conform to George W. Bush`s idea of proper political and economic behavior is a daunting one. And it is not something the American people should accept without serious data and debates.

But the Bush White House continues to stall the flow of information and stifle any debate. Just as the administration refuses to honestly discuss how many American soldiers are likely to die in a country where they were supposed to be greeted with cheers and open arms, so the president and his aides have failed repeatedly to offer the American people or their Congress anything more than hazy details about the economic cost of Bush`s Iraq misadventure:

The Pentagon claims that U.S. operations in Iraq are costing only about $3.9 billion a month, but those figures are extremely deceptive. They do not, for instance, include the costs of replacing damaged vehicles and equipment. Nor do they include the costs of replacing munitions expended in combat. Considering the fact that Iraq remains an active war zone - despite the president`s "mission accomplished" claim of early May - the best bet is that the price tag for the military is a lot closer to $5 billion a month. That adds up to $60 billion a year. And, considering the cozy relationship Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s Pentagon has developed with corporate contractors, the final accounting will probably prove to be dramatically more expensive for American taxpayers.

Iraq is a ruined country, and not just as a result of the latest round of attacks. Iraq has yet to repair damage from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, from the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or from the 12 years of harsh sanctions and low-scale bombing that followed it. Even the ridiculously optimistic American viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer, says that rebuilding the country will cost "a lot of money." But, typically for the administration`s sycophantic representatives, Bremer has avoided costing out what "a lot of money" means. On CNBC`s Capital Report recently, he said the cost for the basic rebuilding project could be $50 billion. Or $60 billion. Or $100 billion.

The U.S. "reconstruction" of Iraq is being run in a manner that guarantees it will cost American taxpayers the highest possible amount. By refusing to turn over control of the occupation and redevelopment of Iraq to the United Nations, the U.S.-led occupation force is excluding countries that are far more experienced when it comes to distributing aid and redeveloping basic infrastructure. Moves to limit the roles of France and Canada are particularly troubling, as both countries have long track records of working well in the most dangerous and difficult zones of the world.

All of these factors point to the need for Congress to step into the picture. The Bush administration needs to be called to account. When the House and Senate return from their August break, members of the Bush administration must be forced to address the enormous cost, and the enormous inefficiency, of their decision to have the United States occupy a country that has not invited or welcomed our presence. We hope the so-called "fiscal conservatives" of the president`s own party, including Wisconsin Republicans such as Reps. James Sensenbrenner, Paul Ryan, Mark Green and Tom Petri, will abandon petty partisanship and begin to ask: "Why, if the United States is the `liberator` of Iraq, is America still sacrificing her soldiers and her economic security there?"

Published: 1:56 PM 8/15/03
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/54847.php

[Joerver]

Lessons in how to lie about Iraq
The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about

Brian Eno
Sunday August 17, 2003
The Observer

When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev`s personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during `the period of stagnation` - the Brezhnev era. `It must have been strange being so completely immersed in propaganda,` I said.

`Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was propaganda,` replied Sacha.

That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They took it for granted that the government operated in its own interests and any message coming from it was probably slanted - and they discounted it.

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don`t notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice - and think that, because we have `free` media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.

It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq to make us look a bit more closely and ask: `How did we get here?` How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was important and had to be fixed right now - even though a few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had changed in the interim.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to engineer a state of emergency that would justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing - far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR companies - worked together to pull off a sensational piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of modern propaganda.

What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn`t just propaganda any more, it`s `prop-agenda `. It`s not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it`s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone`s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false `intelligence` and selected `leaks`. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)

With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then `use the democratic process` to agree or disagree - for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

An example of this process is one highlighted by Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other, consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were told.

The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah, a 15-year-old `nurse` who, it turned out later, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency (which in turn received $14 million from the American government for their work in promoting the war). Her story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then its purpose had been served: it had created an outraged and emotional mindset within America which overwhelmed rational discussion.

As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch weapons that didn`t exist, of nuclear programmes never embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these allegations were discredited as they were being made, not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were retold.

Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their marketing talents were particularly useful in the large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign entailed. The Bushites realised, as all ideologues do, that words create realities, and that the right words can over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New American Century (whose members now form the core of the American administration), the PR companies helped finesse the language to create an atmosphere of simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and even somehow kind.

Aside from the incessant `weapons of mass destruction`, there were `regime change` (military invasion), `pre-emptive defence` (attacking a country that is not attacking you), `critical regions` (countries we want to control), the `axis of evil` (countries we want to attack), `shock and awe` (massive obliteration) and `the war on terror` (a hold-all excuse for projecting American military force anywhere).

Meanwhile, US federal employees and military personnel were told to refer to the invasion as `a war of liberation` and to the Iraqi paramilitaries as `death squads`, while the reliably sycophantic American TV networks spoke of `Operation Iraqi Freedom` - just as the Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the supposition that Iraqi freedom was the point of the war. Anybody questioning the invasion was `soft on terror` (liberal) or, in the case of the UN, `in danger of losing its relevance`.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it`s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to. I hope writers such as Rampton and Stauber and others may have the same effect and help to emasculate the culture of spin and dissembling that is overtaking our political establishments.

· © Brian Eno 2003
A longer version of this article will appear in the new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is published by Robinson at £6.99


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Revealed: last-minute changes to Iraq dossier
By Jo Dillon, Deputy Political Editor
17 August 2003


The Government`s dossier on Iraq`s weapons capability was hardened up in the days before its publication in a number of key respects that did not tally with the views of some of its most senior experts, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Scrutiny of documents released by the Hutton inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly reveals that not only were key claims about the nature and extent of Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction strengthened in the two weeks before the dossier`s publication in September 2002 but that a crucial change was made to the title.

Right up until the publication of the final draft, and as late as 19 September, the document was entitled "Iraq`s programme for weapons of mass destruction". But on 24 September, when the Government published the finished version, it left out the words "programme for".

According to Dr Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge academic who exposed the Government`s February dossier as having been plagiarised from a student thesis on the internet, that change is important because the inclusion of the word "programme" does not assume that such weapons existed.

Dr Rangwala argues that some in the intelligence community believed that the most one could assert was that there were suspect weapons programmes in Iraq, rather than that there were existing weapons and more were being produced.

Other changes to the dossier go way beyond the disputed claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. In their final form, however, all support the Government`s insistence before the war that Iraq`s weapons presented a clear and immediate threat.

The evidence also shows that a draft of the dossier dated 10 September was strengthened to bolster claims that Iraq had an ongoing programme of weapons production.

In the same draft is an acknowledgement that "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons available, either from pre-Gulf war stocks or more recent production". In the final document, this has been changed to: "Iraq has chemical and biological agents and weapons available, both from pre-Gulf war stocks and more recent production."

The revelations give further support to Dr Kelly`s concerns, which formed the basis of BBC Radio 4`s defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan`s claim that the dossier had been "sexed up".

The inquiry has also prompted a new dispute over the evidence given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in June by Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister`s communications chief.

Mr Campbell insisted that he first saw the 45-minutes claim in the first draft of the dossier to be presented to the Government. He said it was discussed at a meeting of the Iraq communications group he chaired on 10 September.

But Hutton inquiry evidence suggests that the meeting was held five days earlier.

Richard Ottaway, a Tory member of the Foreign Affairs Committee which originally quizzed Mr Campbell on the issue, said: "He [Mr Campbell] gave the impression that the first he knew about the 45 minutes was when he saw the first draft. What has come out is that he was being economical with the truth. Worse, he was being plain misleading."

Mr Ottaway wants the matter to be investigated by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee.
17 August 2003 09:58


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

[Joerver]

August 17, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Telling the Truth in Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


BAGHDAD, Iraq

I got a tour the other day of Baghdad`s rebuilt airport, which is now quite beautiful, but still hasn`t opened out of security concerns. Our tour guides even took us through passport control to show off their new computers that will check for incoming terrorists. As they showed us around, a question occurred to me that I posed to them: "What happens if someone gets off a plane with an Israeli passport?" After all, Iraq under Saddam Hussein not only didn`t have diplomatic relations with Israel, it considered itself at war with Israel.

All of the officials present shrugged their shoulders and agreed that they hadn`t thought about it — and that`s one of the most interesting things about Iraq today. It is the only Arab country where the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the first topic of conversation with intellectuals and media elites. Make no mistake, the average Iraqi dislikes Israel and sympathizes with the Palestinian cause as much as any Saudi or Egyptian. This is an Arab country — never forget that.

But here`s what is new and will have a big impact on inter-Arab politics, if Iraq can be rebuilt: Many Iraqis today express real resentment for the other Arab regimes, and even toward the Palestinians, for how they let themselves be bought off by Saddam. They feel that Saddam used the Iraqi people`s oil wealth to buy popularity for himself in the Arab street — by giving Palestinians and other Arab students scholarships and nice apartments in Baghdad, and by paying off all sorts of Arab nationalist writers and newspapers. And then these same Arab intellectuals and media gave Saddam a free pass to torture, repress and starve his own people. In other words, "Arabism," in the minds of many Iraqis, is the cloak that Saddam hid behind to imprison them for 35 years, and now that they can say that out loud, they are saying it.

You`d never know this from watching Arab satellite television like Al Jazeera. Because although these stations have 21st-century graphics, they`re still dominated by 1950`s Nasserite political correctness — which insists that dignity comes from how you resist the foreigner, even if he`s come as a liberator, not by what you build yourself.

But the truth will come out. "Iraq is going to be the Arab libido," a Lebanese aid worker in Baghdad said to me. "You know, when you have those naughty dreams that you can`t tell anyone about and then suddenly you`re on the couch talking about them — that`s going to be Iraq." It`s going to be where all the taboos that are not supposed to be spoken, get spoken. Indeed, they already are.

Hassan Fattah is a young Iraqi-American journalist who has returned to Baghdad to start a terrific newspaper called Iraq Today (www.iraq-today.com). Before the fall of Baghdad, though, he worked as a reporter in the West Bank. "I sympathize with the Palestinian cause," he said, "but after the fall of Baghdad, when I told Palestinians that I was an Iraqi, they would say to me, `You sold us out. You sold Iraq for nothing.` I was called a traitor. The average Palestinian wanted to see us fight — to resist — America, and the American `occupation,` because that is what they understood."

Of course, Iraqis want to run their own government as soon as possible, said Mr. Fattah — but not in order to join the old Arab nationalist parade, but rather to focus on themselves. "Iraqis know Saddam was a fake," he explained. "His Arabism came at their expense. For Iraqis it was not Arabism, it was torture and subjugation. [Now] there is this feeling that the Arab world has lashed out at us because we did not `resist` the Americans. It was because Iraqis have learned the lessons of phony Arabism — that Saddam could send $35,000 to the families of [Palestinian] suicide bombers, while leaving his own people starving and living on two dollars a day.

"That`s why there is a dramatic gulf now between Iraqis and a lot of other Arabs. Young people here want to move on. In 10 years, this will be a very different place. If I can be a part of it, it will be like Hong Kong or Korea — but with an Iraqi face."

Talking to young Iraqis such as Hassan, you sense how much they want to break the old mold — how much they want to be Arabs, with an Arab identity, but to build a modern state that actually focuses on tapping its people`s talents and energies, rather than diverting them, and one that seeks to base their dignity on what they build, not on whom they fight. Root for them to succeed, for having such a state in the heart of the Arab world would be a very, very good thing.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

[Joerver]

August 17, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Batteries Not Included
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Klaatu barada nikto. I couldn`t help but flash on the 50`s sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," watching New York and other cities plunged into sweaty darkness when the 50`s equipment on the power grid gave out.

That`s the movie where Michael Rennie, as the superior alien, and his silver robot, Gort, land their spaceship on the Washington Mall. Mr. Rennie ends up shutting down electricity on earth — suspending elevators midskyscraper, turning off TV midshow — to get skeptical earthlings to listen to his message. (Stop fighting among yourselves or we`ll destroy your puny little planet.)

New York took on a retro tone Thursday, gamely going back to batteries, relying on ice blocks to cool food and transistor radios to hear news. Without a blow-dryer, the usually sleek CNN anchor Paula Zahn was relegated to bedhead waves.

TV reporters offered New Yorkers tips. Be careful that your candles don`t tip over. But unplugged Gothamites, busy using cigarette lighters to find their way out of subways, had no TV`s on which to hear the tips. (Except the paranoid rich, who partied in Westchester with backup generators. Once, private jets were chic; now you must have private juice.)

Residents of Iraq and India, interviewed on television, seemed shocked to learn that the most technologically advanced nation had an electrical support system so rickety it is "third world," as Bill Richardson put it. (Indians call their underperforming electricity "bijli," rhymes with "Gigli.") Steamed Iraqis offered us tips, including: Sleep on the roof and take showers. As in showdenfreude?

Thursday reminded us of the tenuousness of our romance with technology; we spend our days using a thicket of high-tech equipment without a clue about how it actually works or what to do when it doesn`t.

We have BlackBerrys that are also telephones and Palm Pilots that are also cameras and cellphones that also send text-message mash notes. We take it on faith that the power will come on when we switch on computers to send e-mail around the world instantaneously from our air-conditioned, well-lit, cable-TV-equipped, key-coded, A.T.M.-financed worlds, without ever knowing that our power might be originating in Canada — eh? — or looping eerily around Lake Erie.

Now comes news that our foamy lattes are steamed by the antiquated, overloaded system at Niagara Mohawk? I thought we`d already seen the Last of the Mohicans.

It was disturbing that the experts were having so much trouble figuring out what happened, resorting to mumbo jumbo about "forensic analyses" and "cascading outages" while lapsing into border bashing about which country`s lightning or power surges were to blame.

Holy Enron! Who knew, until 21 plants shut down in three minutes, that they worked on the discredited domino theory? Who knew our grid was more stressed than we are?

When the blackout began, President Bush said he thought the grid needed to be modernized, "and have said so all along." The White House and Congress have been warned repeatedly by engineers that the tattered links needed to be fixed fast.

You would think that the first White House team from the energy bidness — the Houston Oilers, as they were dubbed during the campaign — would have jumped all over that.

But all Dick Cheney`s secret meetings with unnamed energy officials were, sadly, not about saving us from this day. The White House has been too busy ensuring that Halliburton has no competitors for rebuilding Iraq to worry about rebuilding our own threadbare grid.

Tom Ridge would have been better off fixating on this weakness than playing with his color swatches.

Washington is a welter of blame. Democrats fingered the Republicans for catering to the oil industry; Republicans fingered the Democrats for being cowed by the environmental community. The only illumination in the blackout was this: Pols have been holding the energy bill hostage to their special interests.

Just when we`re feeling vulnerable to terrorists — does anybody believe our ports are secure? — we learn we`re also vulnerable to the very system meant to protect us.

This has got to be giving terrorists ideas as they watch from their caves. Osama may be plotting on his laptop right now, tapping into the cascading effect of an army of new terrorists signing up every time we kill or arrest a terrorist.




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Iraqi Clerics Unite in Rare Alliance
U.S. Fears Shiite, Sunni Cooperation Will Bolster Resistance

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page A01


NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 16 -- A popular Sunni Muslim cleric has provided grass-roots and financial support to a leading anti-American Shiite cleric, a rare example of cooperation across Iraq`s sectarian divide that has alarmed U.S. officials for its potential to bolster festering resistance to the American occupation, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The ties mark one of the first signs of coordination between anti-occupation elements of the Sunni minority, the traditional rulers of the country, and its Shiite majority, seen by U.S. officials as the key to stability in postwar Iraq.

The extent of the cooperation remains unclear between Ahmed Kubeisi, a Sunni cleric from a prominent clan in western Iraq, and Moqtada Sadr, the 30-year-old son of a revered Shiite ayatollah assassinated in 1999. But ideologically and practically, it represents a convergence of interests between the two figures, who were left out of the Iraqi Governing Council named last month and, in their own communities, have emerged as influential if still minority voices of opposition to the four-month-old occupation.

Supporters of the two clerics acknowledged cooperation, but denied there was any financial support.

U.S. officials say they are especially worried that such cooperation will strengthen Sadr. U.S. officials were taken by surprise by the young cleric`s rise to prominence and have remained publicly dismissive of his influence. But they privately acknowledge his support among the poorest and most alienated in cities such as Baghdad and Basra -- a constituency that has long played a role in Iraqi politics -- and express frustration over their inability to curb his influence at a time of growing criticism of U.S. reconstruction efforts.

"This is a political challenge, and it is a distraction, and it keeps the show from getting on the road," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We cannot afford the distraction."

Kubeisi, a charismatic speaker and respected religious scholar, enjoys support in conservative Sunni regions as a political and spiritual leader. Since the fall of the Sunni-led Baath Party, he has emerged as one of a handful of figures seeking to speak on behalf of the Sunni community, which has been left largely leaderless and adrift since the war.

The senior official said reports of financial support from Kubeisi to Sadr -- widely circulating among Iraqi officials -- came from U.S. intelligence in Iraq. According to one report, Kubeisi provided Sadr with $50 million, though the official cautioned that it was "unevaluated intelligence."

"He`s getting a lot of money from Sunnis. I can`t put a figure on it, but it`s really a lot of money," he said.

Maj. Rick Hall, the executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, said the support was confirmed to him by Iraqi sources, though he had no specific figure. He called the reports "very reliable."

"We feel very confident" that Sadr had meetings with Kubeisi and "we believe reports we are told are true, reports of him receiving financing," Hall said at the Marines` base in Najaf, one of Iraq`s holiest Shiite cities.

A senior official with the 25-member Governing Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the financing as "100 percent true" and said it was common knowledge among Iraqi politicians and parties on the council.

U.S. officials declined to say where the money was coming from, but the Iraqi official said he believed it came from private individuals in the Persian Gulf, whose conservative, Sunni Muslim states have viewed with anxiety the prospect of a Shiite-dominated government in neighboring Iraq. By supporting the most radical Shiite elements, he said, they hope to prevent a united Shiite front in the contest for postwar power.

U.S. and Iraqi officials offered different assessments of how Sadr`s group may have spent the money. At least some of it, they said, appears to have gone to supporters, part of the social welfare that has proved remarkably effective with Islamic groups elsewhere in the Arab world.

Hall said he believes it has been used in part to bring supporters from Baghdad and other Sadr strongholds to the Friday prayers in Kufa, near Najaf. The senior Iraqi official said he believed money was going to powerful tribes in southern Iraq, long a key source of support for the competing ayatollahs who vie for influence and supporters from their base in Najaf.

The U.S. and Iraqi officials said they believe Kubeisi has also encouraged followers from the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in western Iraq -- the region where he draws his greatest support -- to attend Sadr`s Friday sermons in Kufa.

Those sermons, which have at times drawn tens of thousands of supporters over the past month, have served as a key public venue for Sadr. Wearing a white funeral shawl to signify his willingness to sacrifice himself, he has railed against the Governing Council, calling it a tool of the U.S. occupation that should be dissolved, and repeatedly urged the creation of a religious army, albeit unarmed.

Mustafa Yaacoubi, a spokesman for Sadr, denied the reports that Sadr has received money from Kubeisi. He said the group raises its funds entirely from religious taxes and then, only from inside Iraq. Another spokesman, Adnan Shahmani, has put the taxes at $65,000 a month.

Taghlib Alusi, a spokesman for Kubeisi, who is currently in the United Arab Emirates, also denied that money had gone to Sadr. "There`s no truth to it," he said. Sadr "has a lot of money. There`s no need for Sheik Ahmed to give it to him."

But Alusi acknowledged cooperation between the two, beginning with a meeting in Najaf in late April. He said Sadr had sent a delegation from Najaf to Baghdad two weeks ago to explore greater cooperation. In the interests of sectarian harmony, he said that Kubeisi has encouraged his followers to pray with Shiites, who traditionally worship in separate mosques.

"We are friendly and we are brothers," he said.

Beyond their roles as religious officials, Kubeisi and Sadr share little in background. Kubeisi, who had a long, if ambivalent relationship with Hussein, went into exile in the United Arab Emirates in 1999. He returned soon after Baghdad fell on April 9 and then electrified a crowd of Sunni Muslims with a speech that warned U.S. troops their time was limited in Iraq.

"You are the masters today," he said. "But I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we force you out."

Sadr, the son of Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was killed with his two sons by Hussein`s government, has inherited at least part of his father`s popular, largely youthful following. His group, dominated by junior clerics engaged in grass-roots work and community organizing, remains one of the few mass-based movements in Iraq and draws on the deeply resonant symbols of Shiite suffering and martyrdom. In the past month, he has become increasingly vocal in his opposition to the occupation.

Both Kubeisi and Sadr have preached unity among Shiites and Sunnis. Those divisions run deep in the history of Iraq, where the Sunni minority has long dominated and Shiites were often brutally repressed by Hussein.

Both have also run afoul of U.S. authorities. U.S. officials criticized Kubeisi`s newspaper, Al Sa`a, when it published a report in June about soldiers raping two Iraqi girls. U.S. officials said the story was false. Last week, soldiers visited Kubeisi`s office after the newspaper published a story -- disputed by them -- that said U.S. soldiers had killed six children in Baghdad`s Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya.

The senior U.S. official said authorities were also on the verge of closing a religious and anti-Baathist newspaper they said belonged to Sadr. Last month, it published a list of 134 Iraqis, many of them former senior government figures and party officials. The list declared them "tails of Saddam`s tyrannical regime and his gang who will be caught by our hands sooner or later" and promised "the worst torture." Yaacoubi denied the newspaper, "The Echo of Sadr," was published by Sadr`s group.

In the broadest terms, the senior U.S. official said he worried that funding from Kubeisi would add to Sadr`s ability to organize his supporters, creating what he called an obstacle to U.S. efforts to oversee a new Iraqi government and constitution.

In Basra, for example, a group linked to Sadr holds one-third of the seats on the local council. While it denied having any hand in riots there earlier this month, it nevertheless supported the protests and warned of more. In a statement, it also accused British troops who control the city of depriving the population of basic services as part of "the enemy`s conspiracies and imperialist schemes."

"He`s a populist, a critic and a rabble-rouser and he`s gotten awful, awful close to the line," the senior U.S. official said of Sadr. He added, "If the Shiites end up in an eye-gouging, ear-biting dispute among themselves, that`s going to be bad for them, and it will certainly retard the progress that is supposed to be accomplished at a time in Iraq when time is important."

Reluctant to act themselves, U.S. officials have turned to Iraq`s most senior Shiite clerics, also known as mujtahids, who have privately dismissed Sadr as a figure with no religious standing but are hesitant to publicly criticize him. Traditionally, the clergy have sought to keep disputes among themselves, projecting an image of unity. Given Sadr`s lineage from a long and storied clerical family and his street support, the clerics seem unwilling to pick a fight with a potentially unpredictable and even violent outcome.

"We`re watching him and some of the big mujtahids are watching us and we`re both hoping the other does something," said the U.S. official.

Yaacoubi, the Sadr spokesman, said U.S. officials had no reason to act against the group and accused occupation forces of trying to provoke them, most recently when a helicopter knocked down a religious banner in Baghdad last week. In sermons and statements, aware of the crackdown it might bring, Sadr`s followers have assiduously avoided any call to arms.

"Until now, we can say our office hasn`t trespassed any red lines," Yaacoubi said in the group`s headquarters in Najaf, which sits along a winding alley near the shrine of Imam Ali, one of Shiite Islam`s most revered figures.



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Afghan Governor Resigns As Karzai Asserts Control



Associated Press
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page A23


KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 16 -- The powerful governor of a province in southern Afghanistan formally relinquished power today as President Hamid Karzai asserted more control in the far-flung provinces and began to rein in regional warlords.

Gul Agha Shirzai handed power to Yusuf Pashtun in a quiet ceremony at the governor`s residence. Shirzai will become a federal minister of urban affairs.

"Afghanistan is a democratic country," Shirzai said at the ceremony, held in Kandahar -- the spiritual headquarters of the former Taliban leadership. "President Hamid Karzai has authority to change or dismiss anyone in Afghanistan."

In the 18 months since the Taliban fell, Karzai has come under increasing international criticism for failing to assert his authority outside Kabul, the capital. Warlords across the country have their own armies and a great deal of power.

Shirzai`s peaceful surrender of power contrasts to his behavior in December 2001, when he surged into Kandahar with his private army and took control of government offices despite a promise by Karzai to give the job of governor to another commander.

In another move to curb regional warlords, Karzai dismissed the governor of Herat province, Ismail Khan, as military commander of western Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch has accused him of repressive rule and attacks on intellectuals, dissidents and women.

Gen. Baz Mohammed Ahmadi was appointed as the new corps commander for Herat, state television reported.

In Kabul, a spokesman for Karzai, Jawid Luddin, said the peaceful transition shows the government`s growing legitimacy.

"It`s a good illustration of the fact that the present administration in Afghanistan does have legitimacy as a national, representative government," he said. "It does represent the will of the people and it works for the national interests."



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No Time for Half Measures




Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page B06


PRESIDENT BUSH has proclaimed the democratization of the Arab world a central goal of his administration. Writing on these pages recently, Mr. Bush`s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, urged "the transformation of the Middle East." She likened the dedication needed to achieve that goal to the generational effort by the United States to rebuild Europe after World War II and anchor democracy there. Some critics assert that the goals are too sweeping -- that the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East are not ready for democracy, or that the stakes do not justify the resources that would be demanded of the United States and its allies to hasten such a transformation. We disagree on both counts. Mr. Bush`s goal of political liberalization throughout the Middle East is a noble one, worthy of the highest traditions of U.S. foreign policy, and also is important to long-term U.S. national security. In the long run, the economic and political success of now-impoverished Islamic nations would diminish the threat of radical Islamist terrorism. But we agree that the goals put forward by the Bush administration are extraordinarily ambitious, and we continue to question whether the president is mustering the resources necessary for the challenge.

Exhibit A has to be Iraq. Having toppled a murderous dictator there, the Bush administration has promised that the United States will help put the nation on a road to prosperity and liberty. If it succeeds, the result will have a powerful effect throughout the Arab world, proving that U.S. motives extend beyond America`s own well-being and deflating the excuses of authoritarian rulers in neighboring lands. As Ms. Rice wrote, "Much as a democratic Germany became a linchpin of a new Europe that is today whole, free and at peace, so a transformed Iraq can become a key element of a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish." By the same token, if the United States fails in Iraq, the entire transformation agenda will be doomed. The stakes could not be much higher. You would imagine therefore that administration commitment would be just as high.

The reality is more mixed. Certainly the U.S. effort is greater than some critics suggest, and the results are less gloomy than you might imagine from the inevitable daily attention to the latest problem. Some of the worst scenarios, widely foretold before the war, have not played out; there have been few revenge killings between Iraqis and little of the kind of communitarian violence that would threaten Iraq`s unity. The majority Shiite community, though resentful of America`s abandonment in 1991 and suspicious of the occupiers` motives, seems willing at least for the moment to tolerate a U.S. presence. Nor is the absence of negatives the only good news. As the fear of one of the 20th century`s most vengeful rulers lifts, many Iraqis are reveling in new freedoms. There has been an explosion of political activity, of debate on campuses, of political parties and newspapers. In many cities, U.S. authorities have helped create local governing bodies that are ethnically mixed and broadly representative; an interim national council is also in place. U.S. service men and women are working heroically, tolerating stifling heat and difficult living conditions and often accomplishing with great patience and sensitivity tasks of municipal administration for which in many cases they had little training.

But that can-do spirit raises questions: Why are combat troops receiving so little help in these jobs? Why are there not more military police and civilian police trainers, more civil administrators, more democracy trainers? Why do the opportunities for communication between Iraqis and American authorities remain so limited? Why are troops stretched so thin in areas where they remain under threat? After an inexcusably hapless beginning, the occupation has gained some traction under the firmer guidance of L. Paul Bremer III. But is he really being given all the resources he could use? Could the United States really not be doing more to get Iraqis back to work, to turn the electricity and the air conditioners back on, to convince ordinary Iraqis that ordinary life will improve?

The greatest challenge remains security, both for Iraqis and for Americans. Fifty-nine American fighters have been killed in action since May 1, when Mr. Bush declared an end to major combat operations. Sabotage is endemic and demoralizing. Many Iraqis do not feel safe on their streets, especially in Baghdad. U.S. generals say they are making progress in rooting out the remnants of the old regime that they believe pose the greatest threat, and they express confidence in eventual success. But time may not be on their side. The security threat impedes the U.S. ability to improve Iraqis` daily life, to deploy civilian contractors and to enlist Iraqis in the new administration.

All of this argues for a maximum effort now. Yet the administration seems oddly reluctant to make such an effort. It continues to resist on an international level the steps that would be required to attract broader participation from countries that could contribute serious numbers of troops or police. Ms. Rice wrote that the transformation of the Middle East "will require the broad engagement of America, Europe and all free nations, working in full partnership with those in the region who share our belief in the power of human freedom." That partnership ought to begin in Iraq.

Domestically, the administration continues to resist an honest accounting to Congress or the public of the resources that likely will be needed. There may be understandable political reasons for this. In the coming election season, some of Mr. Bush`s opponents will decry what they see as a diversion of resources to Iraq while many Americans also have needs. But if Mr. Bush is committed, as he maintains, to an effort in the Middle East comparable to what past generations achieved in Europe, he should be prepared to make the case. And surely, even on a political level, it would be better to make the case now than to seek to muddle through in Iraq with less than full resources and then, a year from now, have to defend less than stellar results. We have seen that scenario play out in Afghanistan. In Iraq, just avoiding total failure isn`t good enough.



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Doing Democracy Right . . .


By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page B07


Arab rulers have created great cities and citadels throughout their realm. But they have not produced a successfully functioning modern state. It is audacious of President Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to think that Americans can achieve this outcome in Iraq.

Audacious -- but not impossible. To succeed, they must develop and communicate a clear vision that fills in details omitted in Rice`s recent statements on America`s "generational commitment" to Iraq. Here are some thoughts on what that vision should contain:

It should be based on developing a self-governing administration that will initially be involved in and then quickly become wholly responsible for decisions that shape the medium- and long-term future of Iraq. An embryonic national political process is in fact underway in Baghdad. It urgently needs to be encouraged, accelerated and elevated.

From privatizing industry to determining the national standard for a cellular phone system, Iraqis must be visibly and effectively involved now in decisions that they will have to live with long after occupation ends. That unfortunately is not the case nearly four months after major combat ended.

In particular, U.S. involvement in economic decisions in a country conquered by American arms must do more than diminish over time: It must be totally transparent and above reproach. U.S. honor, as well as the effectiveness of the political and cultural transformation effort in Iraq, depend on U.S. officials, politicians and business leaders not misusing positions or influence to create uneven playing fields for themselves, their friends or their clients, or for favored Iraqis.

There must be no giving in to the temptation to play empire or to seek unfair advantage in Iraq. Throughout the 20th century, the United States helped rid the world of colonialism, even though it did not do all it could all the time. It is neither in America`s interest nor in its nature to try in the 21st century to establish a neocolonial economic dependency in Iraq.

The administration has already been taken to task for favoring Vice President Cheney`s old firm, Halliburton, and giant Bechtel Corp. in initial reconstruction contracts. U.S. and corporate officials deny any favoritism.

And strong pressure for political intervention is likely to be exerted in Congress as constituents press their elected representatives for help in acquiring lucrative pieces of the Iraqi pie. This lobbying, which is much more difficult for critics and the press to follow, is already underway, as shown by a recent, misguided and unsuccessful attempt to restrict a new wireless phone network in Iraq to U.S. standards.

Congressional delegations visiting Baghdad this summer and autumn will find a familiar face on hand to greet them -- Tom Korologos, who recently retired as one of Washington`s most effective corporate lobbyists. Korologos was dispatched to Iraq by the Pentagon to help establish and run the beleaguered occupation authority. He will also acquire an unrivaled view of future business opportunities there.

Other countries should be free to share in Iraq`s economic opportunities and its burdens. An international conference in October to generate aid pledges for Iraq will usefully illuminate which countries are prepared for both.

But it is illusory to allocate contracts to other countries to lure them into joining a peacekeeping force sponsored by the United Nations or to expect that such a force would be created or effective if American and British troops left, as Bush`s critics advocate.

The United Nations enforced economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein`s regime for a dozen years. Neither Baathist dead-enders nor the lunatic followers of Osama bin Laden and his murdering kind will respect U.N. "blue helmets." Nor is the Iraqi population likely to be as sympathetic to a U.N. command as many of those urging that approach on Bush assume.

Ensuring equal economic opportunity for Iraqis and foreigners alike performs a more fundamental political task: It will reduce or help eliminate the resentments and anxieties against exploitative foreign domination that fed Arab nationalism at its creation at the beginning of the last century.

Political commitment in the Muslim Middle East historically runs first to tribes or to cities, not to nation-states whose boundaries were drawn by colonial fiat. But a feeling of being exploited or cheated would amplify and embitter Iraqi nationalism and make it an enduring counterforce to U.S. objectives in the region, just as Arab nationalism was born out of World War I and colonial occupation.

Bush and Rice see great opportunities. They deserve credit for their idealism and ambition. But they must also keep their eyes on the great dangers in the Middle East that rise not from American weakness but from America`s strength and ability to force its will on others.

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THE WORLD


Where`s Saddam? Ask His Sorcerer
Deposed dictator is said to have believed in wizardry, which thrives in Iraq. Hussein`s guide to the supernatural asks `genies` about his fate.
By Niko Price
Associated Press Writer

August 17, 2003



HEET, Iraq — The wrinkled old man sprays perfume around the sparse, dingy room, then holds out his hands and feet. He instructs one of his visitors to tie him up, knot the cloth three times and blow on it.

The lights die and small red flashes go off beneath the black cloak that covers a bowl of magic powders and water. The visitors feel pokes, jabs and things fluttering over their heads in the darkness — "birds," the wizard says. Water splashes out of the bowl.

The genies have arrived, and the questions begin.

Will Saddam be found? A genie answers in the old man`s voice: "Yes."

Dead or alive? "Dead."

And the $25-million question: Where is he? "Dhuluaiyah," he says. Dhuluaiyah is a village 55 miles north of Baghdad.

Thousands of magicians, fortunetellers and faith healers make up a huge world of Iraqi spirituality that thrives despite being considered sinful by many Muslims.

But this man is different. He was Hussein`s own sorcerer and, therefore, for Iraqis his visions of the dictator`s demise carry special weight.

The sorcerer asks that he not be identified; he won`t even pronounce the name of the man he once served.

"That man is still alive, so I`m afraid," he said. "I helped him, his sons, his ministers, his wife, his cousins, but I can`t mention names. When he is dead, I can talk about him."

According to the magician and several others interviewed in Baghdad, Hussein was a firm believer in magic and even applied himself, with modest success, to "studying the sands" and summoning genies.

He consulted frequently with two magicians from Iraq, one from Turkey, one from India, a French Arab and a beautiful Jewish witch from Morocco, the wizard says.

Hussein is still protected, he says, by a pair of magic-infused golden statues. The deposed president speaks daily with the king and queen of genies — the same ones who provided the information on his whereabouts.

Other magicians also talk about Hussein, some describing fleeting meetings in which the president measured them up. Several say he has a powerful stone — or the bone of a parrot — implanted under the skin of his right arm to protect him against bullets and to make people love him.

Maher al-Kadhami, a Baghdad faith healer, repeated a story often told in postwar Iraq: Some years ago, a fortuneteller told Hussein that he would fall on April 9, 2003. Hussein flew into a rage, killed the fortuneteller and launched a violent campaign against all those dealing in the occult.

And lo and behold, April 9 turned out to be the day the world saw Hussein`s statue topple in Baghdad.

Tales like these abound in Iraq and are firmly believed, Islam`s abhorrence of witchcraft notwithstanding. Hussein`s oppressive rule actually made the magicians stronger, academics say.

"When you are weak, when you are oppressed, where can you go? You can`t go outside. You go inside yourself," said al-Haareth Hassan al-Asadi, who studies parapsychology at Baghdad University. "You stimulate the superstitious part of your psyche, which is there innately."

It was Hussein himself who ordered the parapsychology department set up to help him wage psychological warfare during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and later to mind-read U.N. inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to former Iraqi officials.

Al-Asadi reckons that more than half of Iraq`s 24 million people use some sort of magic, and a tour of magicians in Baghdad bears out his words.

Unannounced storefronts across Iraq boast a rich array of psychics, fortunetellers, healers and spellmasters, most of whom invoke the Islamic, Christian and even Jewish holy books in their bids to control the genies, or spirits, that many Iraqis believe rule their lives.

In his dingy Baghdad house, Sayed Sadoun Hamid el-Moussaoui al-Refai, 56, squats on cushions and wears a traditional Iraqi robe and skullcap. To demonstrate his prowess, he pushes a kebab skewer through his cheek and wipes away the blood.

His 7-year-old son, Hassan, is his medium. Recently, he says, a family came to ask about their son, who disappeared during the war. Hassan entered into a trance and looked into a mirror.

"I saw him tied up, surrounded by Americans," the boy said. "He was in Basra, but I knew he would be released soon."

Indeed, al-Refai claims, the young man returned home days later, having been a prisoner of the Americans in the southern city of Basra.

"We use the genies or the angels," the magician said. "But we prefer the angels, because the genies lie 75% of the time."

Khalifa Ahmed al-Duleimi, 53, combines spiritual healing and diatribes against the Jews, who he says have sent Israel-educated genies to control President Bush.

Abbas Abdullah, 42, walks in to complain that after 1 1/2 years of marriage, his wife, Zeyneb Fadel, 31, doesn`t like him anymore. Abdullah pushes her onto a chair and tells al-Duleimi to exorcise the genie — a Jew, of course — that is competing for her affection.

Al-Duleimi screams Koranic verses into Fadel`s ear, converses with the genie inside and beats Fadel with a rubber hose. Abdullah, clearly thrilled, yells at the genie inside his wife: "Get out or I`ll pour boiling water over you!"

Fadel, her face swollen from tears and pain, confesses quietly to a journalist: "I don`t like my husband."

Hussein`s wizard is in a different category. He has been studying magic since he was 10, learning from his aunt`s husband. Now 62, he is one of the most revered magicians in Iraq.

He shows visitors a guest book of other powerful clients: a Saudi prince who paid 20,000 riyals, or about $75,000, for a spell to make a woman love him; a Jordanian businessman who wanted his daughter to divorce her abusive husband; a Syrian singer who wanted more success.

For Hussein`s family, he dealt mostly with issues of love, faithfulness and sexual prowess. He says he was once imprisoned for six months when Hussein suspected his wife of having the magician throw a spell that made his leg hurt. The magician was pardoned.

He occasionally dabbled in politics as well. But his last attempt to advise Hussein on strategy, just before the war, met with failure.

"I told him through [his son] Qusai`s assistant that he faced great dangers in the war," he said. "I told him that for a Rolls-Royce and 100 million dinars ($59,000), I would give him the specifics. I would show it to them on the wall before it happened, but they just laughed. Qusai said the old man had gone crazy."

"I only wanted 100 million dinars," the wizard said, then began to sway his hips in a clumsy rendition of a sexy dance. "That`s what they gave their belly dancers."

As for the magician`s information about Hussein`s whereabouts, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the coalition commander in Iraq, laughed when told about it. But he noted the name of the town and said he`ll order a raid.

He means it, said his spokesman, Col. Guy Shields.

"We know it`s about a one in a thousand chance, but we do check stuff out," Shields said. "When the boss says, `Check it out,` we check it out."



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WEAPONS
a

New Nukes? No Way
William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail: warkin@ igc.org.

August 17, 2003

SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. — Earlier this month, more than 150 nuclear scientists, war planners and policymakers met behind closed doors at Strategic Command in Omaha to discuss the U.S. nuclear posture. Strategic-arms reductions were debated. The health of the existing nuclear stockpile was discussed. And the possibility was raised of creating a new generation of nuclear weapons suitable for combat against terrorists or rogue states possessing weapons of mass destruction.

American proponents of "mini-nukes" argue that the country needs a new weapon that can attack facilities deep underground or burn up bioweapons with less harm to civilians. They say that a new generation of limited-use nuclear weapons could be an important deterrent in dealing with rogue states, that opponents would be less likely to build underground facilities or stockpile bioweapons if they knew the U.S. had a nuclear weapon it would be willing to use.

The Bush administration is on the record supporting the concept of new, more usable nuclear weapons. But the idea is both unnecessary and dangerous.

The long-term consequence of developing new nuclear weapons might well be to push Iran, North Korea and other states to work harder and faster in developing and manufacturing their own nukes. Moreover, as we witnessed in March during the "shock and awe" phase of the Iraq war, the country`s latest-generation bombs and other "smart weapons" seemed more than up to the tasks at hand. We don`t need to further alienate the rest of the world by rejoining the nuclear arms race.

This is not the first time that bomb makers have proposed more specialized and usable weapons of mass destruction.

On numerous occasions in the last 30 years, nuclear weapons advocates have pushed their point of view with sympathetic administrations or when it seemed possible to turn world events to their advantage. Early in the Reagan administration, the nuclear faithful attempted to revive interest in the neutron bomb, first proposed during the Carter administration as a way of providing "enhanced radiation" with reduced blast that could be used to kill Soviet troops if necessary without destroying European cities.

During the administration of George H.W. Bush, the keepers of the nuclear flame scrambled to formulate a new rationale for developing a next generation of nukes absent the threat of the Soviet Union. A Strategic Deterrence Study Group organized by the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff predicted that "more nuclear weapons states are likely to emerge" and warned of American combat with a nuclear-armed nation such as Iraq. "We are not comfortable that we can count on deterrence to deal with many lethal Third World threats," the group stated. It proposed that the U.S. should "retain an option to leave ambiguous whether it would employ nuclear weapons" in retaliation against a variety of nonnuclear provocations.

But despite near-constant urging from the nuclear constituency for at least the last 20 years, no new tailored nuclear weapons have been produced. All that could change now. Or not.

It certainly looks like the U.S. is closer than it has ever been to building a smaller, more usable nuke. The administration`s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review found a new rationale for using nuclear weapons in the unstable world revealed by Sept. 11. And the nation`s fears of terrorism and of an increasingly hostile nuclear-armed North Korea may make such an extreme step more politically palatable.

But there is one powerful force that could keep a new nuclear genie in its bottle: the uniformed military. Men and women in uniform have, from the beginning, been the truest skeptics and the most important power passively opposing neutron bombs and mini-nukes.

After the 1991 Gulf War, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Carl E. Vuono wrote of the "preeminence of conventional forces" despite Iraq`s chemical weapons and its nascent nuclear potential. "It was America`s conventional forces, not its nuclear arsenal, that defined President Bush`s response to the crisis and ultimately decided its outcome." Today, the conventional military (which is by far the dominant force in the American military) not only believes that it has the tools to deal with any threat; it also recognizes the long-term benefit of not fanning the flames of proliferation. Senior officers are privately shaking their heads about how, while they are on the front lines winning the war on terrorism, the rest of the government does little to deal with the roots of the problem. And many of them see a renewed nuclear focus as likely to aggravate the situation.

It`s not hard to understand why nuclear scientists would love to get a crack at incorporating the enormous advances that have transformed conventional weaponry into a new generation of nuclear bombs. But it is these very technologies that have made nuclear weapons largely unnecessary. In Iraq, the U.S. military avoided many dangers, leapfrogging over them, going around them when necessary, employing special forces and covert ops and cyber-strategies. Many bunkers and other tough-to-get-to targets were left standing: The U.S. military found other ways to neutralize any advantages they provided the Iraqis.

The Defense Department`s official position is that it "has not identified any requirements for new nuclear weapons," according to a briefing paper prepared by the office of the secretary of Defense. "Cost and feasibility studies related to possible nuclear modernization," the paper says, "in no way represent a decision to proceed with development of a new warhead."

But this is pure evasion. The administration`s interest in nuclear tools to fight the war on terrorism is about more than just keeping options open. And the administration needs to understand that even contingency planning for the development of new nuclear weapons is threatening and can encourage other countries to join or escalate the arms race.

The conventional military needs to stand up and be counted. The Iraq war plan was constructed with the possibility that Iraq might use chemical or biological weapons. Saddam Hussein had underground bunkers galore. At the top, the nuclear establishment pushed prudent contingencies just in case, but in the field, where commanders were responsible for their troops and the real war was being waged, no one wanted anything to do with something that ultimately would dishonor the American military and America.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Civil-rights motive for Iraq a stretch
James P. Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
Sunday, August 17, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/17/ED29…


HAVE YOU heard about the latest civil-rights issue? It`s the war in Iraq. That`s the argument put forth by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and, given her position of influence, attention must be paid.

Yes, it may seem strange that the Southern-dominated Republican Party, which came to power starting in the late `60s on a "backlash" platform of opposition to the liberal and integrationist Great Society agenda, is now claiming the civil-rights mantle. Indeed, the GOP today is the mirror image of the party of Lincoln. The old-line abolitionist states in New England and the Midwest are mostly Democratic, while Republicans dominate such once- Confederate states as Mississippi, Florida and, of course, George W. Bush`s Texas.

In a speech last Thursday to the National Association of Black Journalists, Rice said that America must make a "generational commitment" to the task of transforming not only Iraq but the entire Middle East. Her remarks garnered headlines because they dramatically extended the time horizon of Americas` Iraq engagement. Not so long ago, we were told that we`d be there for a few months. Now, it`s looking like a few decades.

So, in the meantime, as public support for the effort falls, Rice has taken it upon herself to define American involvement as "the moral mission of our time." Recalling her own background as a child growing up in Alabama during the most tumultuous period of the civil-rights movement, she derided "condescending voices" who argue that Iraqis and Arabs are not ready for American-style freedom. "We`ve heard that argument before," she told the black journalists, "and we more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and the rest of the Middle East."

One supposes, by that logic, Bush is the equivalent of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a compassionate man willing to use federal force to keep the peace and open up schools and polling places.

Rice`s claims are, to put it mildly, a stretch. In the `60s, Southern blacks -- who were, after all, U.S. citizens -- were truly "jubilant" to see federal troops in Dixie, smiting Jim Crow, because they wanted their piece of the American dream.

By contrast, it`s not so clear that ordinary Arabs are pleased to see us in their midst.

And, of course, African Americans have long rejected the idea that fighting foreign wars equals advancing civil rights at home. In the `60s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War, continuing a long line of pacifism among black leaders. Last year, 32 of the 37 members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against the Bush administration`s war resolution. In March, just as fighting started, a Gallup Poll found that just 29 percent of blacks supported the conflict, compared to 78 percent of whites.

But words from a high-placed woman have consequences. Rice`s decision to invoke the moral weight of the `60s civil-rights movement on behalf of Iraq will likely guide policy for years to come.

Yet one might wonder: What will happen if the U.S. government repositions Arabs as victims, rather than aggressors -- in Iraq, and also, maybe, in the Palestinian areas? The most obvious answer is that such a view will lead to shifts in American strategy. After all, just a few years ago, the United States attempted to subdue Iraq through strangling economic sanctions. Post- Rice, surely we wouldn`t do that again. That is, we wouldn`t wish to further victimize the "victims." Indeed, if we regard Arabs as "needy," then presumably the spigots of American aid will be opened, just as they were during the Great Society `60s.

Thus the irony: Today`s Republican Party, which came to power decades ago in opposition to free-spending liberalism, is today poised to re-create the all-embracing nanny state -- in Arab states.

James P. Pinkerton is a Newsday columnist.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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IQ Warning: Each issue contains ALL of the day`s cartoons on a single printer-friendly page. If you have a slow mind i.e. regularly watch Fox News it may take several minutes to get the jokes. Please be patient - its worth the wait.

Wieder frische Cartoon-Ware. Heute 80 Stück. Bitte obigen Warnhinweis beachten.
http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030816_080_toons.htm

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This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030901&s=hutton


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The American Prosperity Myth
by WILL HUTTON

[from the September 1, 2003 issue]

Everyone knows the story by now. America may have its social problems, but its highly productive, job-generating, innovative economy is the envy of the world. Europeans, on the other hand, are in a despond of high unemployment and economic sclerosis. Europe`s addiction to welfarism--its overcooked social contract--is killing the economic goose that lays the social egg. Americans may pay a price in inequality for their economic vitality, but when you take the country`s extraordinary social mobility and opportunity into account the price is worth paying. You might want to reverse Bush`s tax cuts for the very rich, but nobody sane is going to tinker with the essence of the great American Business Model that delivers so much wealth.

I contend--unfashionably and, I know, incredibly, given the consensus--almost the opposite. The American economy has great strengths, but it is not so all-conquering. And the American Business Model, with its ruthless focus on shareholder profits, has profound weaknesses. Indeed, American industry is at its strongest where it has not observed antistate, progreed precepts and operated in more European ways. Smart action by the state, a viable social contract and efforts by companies to harness human capital and serve a purpose larger than short-term profit maximization turn out to be indispensable components of successful American capitalism as well--though America`s public conversation hardly concedes these points. It`s a gaping omission that is costing the country dearly.

Signs of trouble are everywhere. For a start, the United States is experiencing an alarming and unsustainable growth of international indebtedness. By the end of this year the country`s net liability to the rest of the world will approach $3 trillion, and it is growing exponentially. At the current rate, liabilities will double again over the next five to seven years, taking the United States into banana republic territory. At some point foreigners will cease holding dollars and instead buy the alternative world currency--the euro. The dollar will crash and interest rates will jerk upward in response.

America has been running a trade deficit for so long that it has ceased to be worthy of note. Yet the consistent inability of so many American companies in so many sectors to compete against their foreign rivals surely exposes faults in our approach to investment and productivity. From cars to aerospace, industrial gases to cell phones, American companies lag behind their European competitors in technology, production savvy and rate of innovation. Ford and GM are a decade behind Volkswagen in the sophistication of their production techniques. Nokia has 39 percent of the world mobile phone market, more than twice that of Motorola, its nearest rival--despite Nokia`s being based in the highly taxed, highly unionized, generous welfare state of Finland. Boeing`s government subsidies through its military contracts, grants and tax breaks comfortably match the diminishing support proffered Europe`s Airbus, but it is Airbus that is pioneering the next generation of civilian aircraft and whose market share is larger. British Rolls Royce is the trailblazer in aero-engines. And so on. Beyond the sheltered world of America`s defense industrial complex, where fat Pentagon contracts helped create outstanding technological leadership in weapons and the Internet, there is scarcely a high-tech sector where US companies can claim systematic leadership over their European competitors--a truth you would scarcely know from a casual inspection of the American business press.

America`s once proud culture of business building has given way to a culture of financial engineering, a doctrine of shareholder value maximization and a cult of the takeover. The game is to keep the share price up, and every sinew of the organization is bent to that end; shortcuts are ever tempting, and inevitably some companies resort to straight fraud. Nevertheless, the conservative inclination is to overlook one or two bad apples like Enron and WorldCom and to celebrate the rule of America`s capital markets. It is Wall Street constantly holding corporate managements to account that drives up innovation and productivity, or so runs the conventional argument, with companies that fail to keep up facing a takeover.

Yet the evidence is that takeovers fail to raise shareholder value; consultant KPMG reports in a survey of 700 takeovers that more than four out of five either added no value or lost it. Still, investment banks continue to seduce overpaid CEO after CEO into believing that his deal will be the exception. And with share options that will provide fortunes if the deal comes off and golden parachute clauses that will secure an equally good pay-off if it bombs, most CEOs fall prey to the seduction. Despite a welcome wave of criticism of this febrile, amoral atmosphere, few took note in the heady days of the dot-com and telecom bubbles that this system was hollowing out the US economy. It is coming back to haunt the United States now.

American productivity measured as output for every person-hour worked is now lower than in France, the old West Germany, Belgium and Holland. Most other parts of Europe are catching up with the United States fast, a trend that began in the late 1960s and has been continuing ever since. Economist Julian Callow of Credit Suisse First Boston calculates that after adjusting for the very kind way American statisticians compute productivity compared with those in Europe, Europe`s growth in productivity outstripped the United States during the 1990s.

This is the reality behind the ballooning current account deficit numbers. The US economy may boast an innovative IT sector and technological leadership in the military industry; beyond that, its claims for universal competitive strength are more and more dubious. Of course, America is home to some great companies, but not so many to justify the fawning acceptance that the American Business Model is better in every respect than the European one.

Europeans do not view the company as a casino chip to be traded away in a single-minded quest to enrich directors and shareholders. Rather, they see companies as living things, each one a network of human relationships organized to serve an overriding economic and social purpose. In the European perspective, a company has a defining organizational reason-to-be that serves as a jumping-off point for maximizing profits, a repudiation of the idea that anything goes in the quest for a fast buck. A company needs to be built over time, as resources are husbanded, personnel are groomed and trained, customers courted and innovation nurtured; its directors need to manage a complex set of trade-offs between the demands of shareholders and stakeholders, marketplace trends, the need to innovate and the engagement of employees. In this view, if only one voice counts--shareholders who want fast returns now--the company risks ruin.

The United States is vandalizing this conception of the company--once inherent in American capitalism--and is pulling down the structures that support innovation and productivity. It is Europeans who now invest more, sustaining a range of institutions that produce a highly skilled work force and a business-building culture. They may at first sight look like economic tortoises; in fact, they are set to overtake the American hare. High European unemployment, concentrated in Germany, which has made massive mistakes in macroeconomic policy by fixing its exchange rate too high within the euro, disguises the real performance of the European economy: Unemployment is lower in seven European Union countries than in the United States, and on the continent as a whole the participation rate of 25-to-54-year-old men in the labor market is almost the same as in the United States. As the euro becomes embedded, Europeans will secure the advantage of a single continental market even larger than the United States; when they get their macroeconomic policy right, the advantages of their economic and social model will become more evident.

This economic strength pays for a social contract that offers most individual Europeans opportunity, mobility and security that is beyond the compass of most ordinary Americans. For here is another uncomfortable truth. American social mobility, traditionally comparable to Europe`s, is falling as decades of tax cuts and spending cuts undermine the opportunities for advancement.

The chief culprit is the emergence of a highly stratified, increasingly class-based university system, whose very accessibility was once one of America`s glories. The academic excellence of top US universities is not in question, but it is unclearwhether they still contribute as they once did to equal opportunity and social mobility. For American universities have become very expensive. The competition to attract the world`s best academic talent and fund cutting-edge research has meant an explosion of costs and a parallel explosion in tuition fees. For the private universities--and all but one of the top twenty are private--annual tuition, even before living expenses, tops $17,600. The rates are similar for the top law and business schools. Even public university tuition now averages more than $7,000 per year.

The conservative defense is that rich endowments allow private universities to practice "need blind" admission and offer students whose families cannot afford the cost a mix of grants, loans and work-study that together will see them through college. The same principle is meant to apply to public universities. Universities may be getting more expensive, so the mantra goes, but there is sufficient support to help the poorest. Equality of opportunity survives.

It is a lie. Endowment income is not matching the rise in tuition--now set to go substantially higher in public universities as states struggle to balance their budgets. At the same time, the Federal Pell Grant has been pared back by successive administrations in a conservative climate hostile to sustaining such "social" expenditures. With fewer grants, students have to incur huge loans to complete college, which unsurprisingly deters those from poorer homes. In 1979 children from the richest 25 percent of American homes were only four times more likely to go to college than those from the poorest 25 percent of homes; by 1994 they were ten times more likely. With the recent rise in tuition fees--up by a cool 20 percent on average since 2000--and further erosion of private and public grants, the divide can only have deepened.

University is becoming the preserve of the better-off in the United States to a degree unparalleled in the rest of the industrialized West, with attendance at the elite colleges, law and business schools--which serve as passports to the upper echelons of American life--increasingly restricted to the sons and daughters of the very rich. A new aristocracy is emerging in a country whose original ambition was to prevent such a phenomenon from ever taking place. It was only in Old Europe that status, opportunity and life chances were determined by accident of birth. Twenty-five years of conservative economic and social policies are burying that American dream.

The constricting access to university for students of middle- and low-income homes is remarkably underreported in the American media, as is the consequent impact on social mobility. The blithe assumption remains that opportunity in the United States is unparalleled. It is not. At the primary and secondary levels, public schools, profoundly underfunded, are a second-class system compared with private schools. Students in public schools are less likely to complete their courses, and achieve poorer grades when they do. But for the beleaguered community-college system, the United States has no formal means of giving extensive vocational and apprentice training. The combination of high dropout rates, gaps in the system, sheer lack of capacity and indifferent standards means that an astonishing 31 percent of American 18-year-old dropouts receive no vocational or other formal training after leaving school. In Germany, by contrast, that proportion is 1 percent.

Thus the children of poor and middle-income families are doubly victims. They are less likely to go to a top-ranked university, and they are more likely to enter the labor market with no qualifications. It should be no surprise, therefore, to find that 24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor--the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract.

Philosophically, culturally and practically, the social contract has been attacked head-on and undermined at every turn; its destruction has been one of the great objectives of the renaissance of American conservatism. As a result, its supports have been increasingly eroded. If there is to be what political philosopher John Rawls calls an infrastructure of justice--one insuring that everyone, despite any accident of birth, gets a chance to develop his or her talents, participate in the life of society, exercise liberties and enjoy basic living standards--then a system must be in place to maintain it. And that system is of necessity the state, with its ability to tax and spend. In this conception, the state is not a coercive interloper but a trustee of social fairness, providing the foundation for any society`s long-term social health and wealth.

Yet since the mid-1970s taxation has been depicted by the right as a coercive intrusion upon individual liberty imposed by an oppressive government. Grants to poor students, for example, are seen as wasteful subsidies that undercut self-reliance and the robust qualities of independence that the early settlers possessed and upon which America was built. Yet America`s social contract, hewn out of searing experiences like the Depression and bolstered by respect for the Constitution`s claim that citizens should have equal opportunity, requires that the state act as its trustee--with the tax revenue to pay for it. To attack taxation as a moral evil and economic drag, and the state as oppressive and inefficient, is to knock away the key underpinnings of the social contract.

There is no need to recite details of the consequences: lower life expectancy than in Europe, vicious inequality and desperate lack of social mobility. Yes, it is true that the European social contract can produce perverse incentives, so that, say, excessively generous unemployment benefits in Germany undermine individuals` desire to look for and accept work. But the solution is to reform the excessive generosity, as German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is doing, rather than abandon the social contract altogether. The impact of America`s approach on individual lives shows up in international surveys of happiness and sense of well-being, where Americans score so badly. An obsessive individualism in a society in which so many are harmed eats away at the capacity to empathize, and the very stuff of human association is undermined. A Hobbesian society, a war of all against all, is not an environment in which human beings can flower.

It also pollutes the economy, despite claims to the contrary. America is richer than Europe not because it works smart but because it works long. Americans work, on average, 300 hours more a year than people in Britain, France and Germany, a sixth more American women work than European women, more American old people are at work and fewer young Americans get to study. Americans have to work this hard because their productivity at work tends to be lower than in Europe, and that is because American companies tend to innovate and invest less; the injunction is to sweat assets rather than be creative.

The values that underpin a social contract--fairness, a belief in opportunity for all and respect for human potential--are precisely those that underpin a successful company. Great visionary companies inspire their work forces and enlist their energy, and that cannot be done when human values are subordinated to the enrichment of a few at the top. Equally, the institutions of a social contract--great public schools, universities and hospitals; codes of quality corporate governance; great transportation; affordable housing for all--are the same institutions that support long-term wealth generation. America, in the grip of conservative dominance, is undermining not only the well-being of its citizens but its capacity to create national wealth and economic growth.

To this Englishman, it is extraordinary that the American liberal tradition has given up so much ground to the resurgent American right. The evidence does not exist to support the conservatives` case. Moreover, translated into international relations, the same doctrine has had baleful results. Pre-emptive unilateralism and the militarization of foreign policy--a transfer of the dog-eat-dog model to international relations--is undermining the rule of international law and leaving America to assume ever more expensive burdens without even achieving the results it wants. Iraq is turning into a quagmire, while terrorist networks are still at large. At home and abroad, America`s overconfident conservatives have led the nation into a cul-de-sac. It is time to say so--and loudly.

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Will Wesley Clark Run?
The former NATO commander discusses the burgeoning effort to draft him into the 2004 White House race—and when he’ll make a decision

By Jennifer Barrett
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE


Aug. 15 — Will he or won’t he? With Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden’s announcement Monday that he would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination, pressure is mounting on former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark to announce his own intentions.

CLARK SAYS HE has not yet decided if he’ll run. But that has done little to stem the groundswell of support for him. The grass-roots movement to put the West Point graduate on the ballot, DraftWesleyClark.com, has already gained tens of thousands of supporters across the nation and nearly $500,000 in pledged contributions should Clark enter the race. Next week, the group will air a television ad in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa and New Hampshire, urging the retired general to toss his hat in the ring. While Clark would be entering the field late and would have to scramble to raise as much money as candidates like Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, the retired general can take heart from the experience of another latecomer who began his campaign a dozen years ago in Clark’s hometown of Little Rock. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton didn’t launch his successful presidential bid for the 1992 election until mid-October the previous year. Clark says he will make a decision earlier into the 2004 race.
He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett about what he would do differently if he held the nation’s highest office—and when he’ll decide whether to make a run for it. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Earlier this summer, you said that you would give some serious consideration to the “DraftWesleyClark” movement’s request that you run for president, and that you owe them an answer. What would you tell them now?
Wesley Clark: I haven’t made the decision yet. It’s not yet time. But I continue to be impressed by them. It is really remarkable.

You’ve dropped many hints that you would enter the race. When will you make a final decision?
Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll decide one way or the other.

What could influence your decision to run at this point?
The thing is, you never make a decision until it’s time for a decision. That’s what I’ve learned. I haven’t even speculated on what could influence it now.

OK, fair enough. I understand that, through the DraftWesleyClark.com site, at least 30,000 people have sent letters asking you to run though. How many letters do you figure you’ve gotten asking that you run?
I just got back to my office from a vacation and there were several stacks of letters that haven’t been opened. I just don’t have time to go through every letter anymore. The post office has begun delivering letters to our office now, too, even though we have a P.O. box, because it had filled up.

Are you surprised by the number of people—and the ads—urging you to run?
Yes and no. It’s a personal surprise, but it’s no surprise that Americans are desperate for leadership because the course the country has embarked on is fraught with problems at home and abroad.

What would you consider the top problem at home?
Jobs. It’s a near-term problem. People are still losing jobs, and the recovery, thus far, has been essentially jobless. And all indications are that it will remain that way. The official unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, but if you look at the labor-force participation you can imagine that the actual rate of people unemployed—including those who have simply given up—is substantially higher than that.
This recession has been a structural recession associated with a number of different factors, which have converged. It’s impacted in the near term by health costs, which are essentially increasing at such a rate that they are eating up productivity improvements, and in the mid and long term by education. We cannot create the kind of high-quality and high-value jobs we must have without substantially improving education for more people in this country.
In terms of the economy itself, the fundamental economic problem has been a lack of aggregate demand. The spark you have seen over the last quarter has been in large part because of increased defense spending. I think there are far more productive ways to use that additional money.

Like what?
Instead of spending money on the development of Iraqi infrastructure, I would rather see it go into U.S. infrastructure. Helping Iraqi schoolchildren get back into the classroom is a good thing to do, but I would like to see American children achieve more in the classroom.

How would you improve education here?
It’s partly a matter of resources and accountability, but it is also matter of good professional teaching skills and proficiency. If you look at how the U.S. Army improved its noncommissioned officer corps after Vietnam, we did it through lots of investment, through leadership development—and that’s what teachers are. They are leaders. And one could argue that they are the country’s most important leaders. And they are not only underfunded but underdeveloped. The classrooms are underresourced. People are finally recognizing this. There are efforts in some school districts to put more resources into professional development like teacher coaches and other programs. We know these principles work, we saw them work with the U.S. Army. I also think there are problems with achievement testing for students. It’s useful but it’s not necessarily definitive.

Members of the DraftWesleyClark.com movement discuss fundraising strategies


So you don’t support the use of achievement tests for graduation or class advancement?
I think it leads to teaching the test and puts enormous restrictions on leadership in classrooms. What you want teachers to be doing is stretching themselves so that every student can live up to his or her full potential year by year, grade by grade. You can’t have a committee legislate that by creating standardized tests. I don’t have any issue with having student performance as part of a system. But we would have to go beyond that too.

That would surely require more resources though. Would you increase federal funding for education?
Yes, that’s one failure of the current administration—the failure to put the resources in place for education.

How do you feel about Bush’s tax plan? Would you keep it as is, scale it back, or get rid of it?
Well, the tax plan is enacted. I am in favor of having taxes as low as feasible, but essential government functions have to be resourced. In general, in the long term, the economy and the government functions better if you set up a system in which expenses are roughly matched by receipts.
In the short term, you have an aggregate demand problem in this country and, when you have that problem, it justifies deficit spending. But virtually every economist will tell you—if they are honest about the tax cut anyway [laughs]—that the tax cuts are very inefficient in creating the kind of increase in demand that is required to pull the economy out of recession. They are not antirecessionary tax cuts. Primarily, they have been designed for other issues—partisan issues and theological issues.

Not economic.
Correct.

Let’s go back to Iraq. You’ve also been openly critical about the Bush administration’s handling of operations there. How would you have done things differently?
In the first place, I think you have to go back to the logic of why we went. The administration’s case was, to put it mildly, weak. A.) The Iraqi threat to the U.S. wasn’t significant; B.) there were other ways to work the issue, and C.) the threat wasn’t imminent—at least, in so far as any evidence anyone has been able to present has established.
I thought it was a problem to be dealt with in parallel with the war on terror, with its own pace and timing and to be worked on through the United Nations and other nations, rather than as the centerpiece in the war on terror. We’re there now and the principal connection with terrorism we’ve found is that terrorists are coming in to attack us.

Would you have given the United Nations more of a role in the rebuilding efforts as well?
I would have gone to the U.N. long ago. I would never have undertaken this operation without a full postconflict plan in place that was approved, resourced, agreed to and signed up and committed to by all members of the U.N. Security Council. We did this in Kosovo. We know how to do this.

You say you’ve been nonpartisan all your life and yet most supporters expect you to enter the field as a Democratic contender. Would you run as a Democrat?
I haven’t crossed that bridge yet.

If you were to run for President as a Democrat, who do you think would be your toughest Democratic challenger for the nomination? Why?
I haven’t considered those things. I have not worked my way through them yet. I am only thinking about the issues. I am really concerned about where we are as a country and where we are headed.

Many see you as a strong candidate in part because of your military record. But you don’t have a lot of political experience. How would you overcome that if you were to run?
It would depend on how you define political experience. My political experience is in dealing with governments. I dealt with 19 governments in NATO and 20-odd governments that were part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace. I worked with ambassadors and ministers of foreign affairs and ministers of defense and, in some cases, heads of state, in Latin America and Europe and parts of Africa. I dealt extensively with the U.S. Congress, as well as, in some cases, local authorities here and in Europe. You could say that it is a true fact that I have not stood for elective office, but I have held high positions of authority and dealt extensively at the political and diplomatic levels with major issues.

What should the American people know about you that they might not know now?
People have an impression of you based on how they last saw you, and they have seen me in uniform and as a commentator. But people in uniform are just ordinary Americans. I grew up in a normal home and I went to a normal school and I chose public service as my calling. I went to West Point to pursue my public service in uniform, but that doesn’t change the fundamental humanity underneath the uniform … The military is an organization like other organizations—it’s full of human beings.

If you don’t run for president, would you accept a nomination to the ticket as vice president?
I haven’t even considered that question. I just—well, I haven’t considered it. Let’s leave it at that.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/953102.asp?0cv=KB20

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Exclusive: Ashcroft’s Campaign to Shore Up the Patriot Act


By Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman
NEWSWEEK


Aug. 25 issue — Attorney General John Ashcroft this week will launch a cross-country barnstorming tour designed to shore up support for the USA Patriot Act—the controversial measure passed after 9/11 giving the Justice Department broad new powers to combat terrorism.
OVER THE NEXT three weeks, Ashcroft plans to swoop into 18 cities, give speeches, meet local officials and grant select press interviews touting department successes using the law. In a conference call and e-mails last week, sources tell NEWSWEEK, the country’s 94 U.S. attorneys were instructed to help gin up support by convening “community meetings,” writing op-ed articles in local newspapers and ensuring that uniformed cops are seated in bleachers behind the A.G. during his visits.
Why? Ashcroft and his top aides are worried that a grassroots campaign to roll back the Patriot Act is gaining momentum. More than 140 local governments—including three states—have passed resolutions condemning the act as an infringement of civil liberties. Some of those resolutions even ban state law-enforcement officials from cooperating with the Feds on cases that use Patriot Act-authorized techniques. Just as alarming was last month’s lopsided U.S. House vote forbidding Justice from spending funds to use the act’s controversial “sneak and peak” provision that authorizes federal agents to conduct secret searches of homes and businesses. Alarmed that the anti Patriot Act movement was spiraling, and might torpedo internal Justice plans for even more expansive antiterrorism proposals, Ashcroft aides concluded they needed to strike back. One method, said an official, was “to roll out Ashcroft.”
The anxiety at Justice is intensified by the fact that the anti Patriot Act campaign is being driven by a coalition that includes such diverse groups as the ACLU and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. The House sponsor of the anti-sneak-and-peak amendment, for example, was GOP Rep. Butch Otter, an Idaho conservative, who told news-week his concerns were heightened when anti-abortion groups warned that abortion protesters could be targeted as “domestic terrorists.” Justice officials say Otter and his supporters are grotesquely distorting what the law does, and that federal judges must still approve any secret searches conducted by federal agents. Ashcroft aides insist that if they could just get their message out, they are confident they will prevail—and tout recent poll numbers showing 55 percent of the public still backs the act. After you get past the interest groups, says one Ashcroft aide, “the rest of the country is saying, ‘Just keep us safe’.”
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/953414.asp

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Äußerst amüsanter Artikel, lesenswert.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rummy17…

Pentagon Reform Is His Battle Cry
Donald H. Rumsfeld, with new political clout won in Iraq and Afghanistan, intensifies his war on the military establishment.
By Doyle McManus
Times Staff Writer

August 17, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Donald H. Rumsfeld has won two wars and won them his way, overruling military traditionalists. But to the secretary of Defense, Afghanistan and Iraq were merely two battles in a larger crusade.

Even as he directs military operations around the world, Rumsfeld has seized a leading role in the national security debate in Washington, giving the Pentagon new clout in administration debates on foreign policy and intelligence.

He has set out to "transform" the military establishment. He wants everything to move more quickly, whether it`s getting Marines to trouble spots or designing and delivering new weapons systems.

Pentagon officials would write fewer reports to Congress, get raises based on performance rather than seniority, and buy weapons and supplies at the best value for the dollar. And overseas troops would shift from Cold War garrisons in Europe to terrorism hot spots like East Asia and the Middle East.

All that at the age of 71, on the final lap of a long political career.

If Rumsfeld succeeds on all those fronts, he may enter the history books as one of the most powerful secretaries of Defense since the office was created — as powerful as Robert S. McNamara, who remade the Pentagon in the 1960s.

But the prickly Defense secretary can only hope the analogy ends there. McNamara was undone by the war in Vietnam. Will Rumsfeld be undone by the "peace" in Iraq?

For Rumsfeld, peace — or the half-peace that has followed the end of major combat on May 1 — is proving at least as difficult as war. Another 129 soldiers have been killed since then. The 148,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq is tied down battling guerrillas loyal to the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein, delaying the homecoming of thousands of troops and straining the armed forces.

Enlisting other countries to help has been more difficult than some Pentagon officials anticipated; fewer than 6,000 troops from nations besides the United States and Britain have arrived so far.

And despite his clout in Washington, Congress has pared back some of Rumsfeld`s bureaucratic reforms — to the point that he may ask President Bush to veto this year`s defense bill.

Rumsfeld says he believes that he is making progress on all fronts; Iraq, he vows, will not be another Vietnam.

"I don`t do quagmires," he told reporters last month.

Rumsfeld`s record suggests that it might be foolish to doubt him. Admirers and critics alike, many of whom would only speak anonymously about him for this article, credit the Defense secretary with unusual prowess as a war leader and bureaucratic gladiator.

"There`s no question he`s one of the strongest and most powerful secretaries of Defense we`ve had," said Robert S. Strauss, the longtime Democratic Party patriarch. "Whether you like him or dislike him, you have to recognize that he`s smart as hell, and he understands bureaucracy and bureaucratic infighting better than almost anyone in town."

Rumsfeld is pugnacious, demanding, brusque and, to his rivals, infuriating. That, admirers say, is what makes him effective.

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger collided with Rumsfeld almost 30 years ago, when Rumsfeld was on his first tour as Defense secretary under President Ford. Kissinger described the young Rumsfeld in his memoirs as "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly."

To quote "Rumsfeld`s Rules," a collection of aphorisms the Defense secretary has compiled over half a century: "Don`t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership."

Or, more succinctly: "If you try to please everybody, somebody`s not going to like it."

"Rumsfeld has a black belt in both proactivity and reactivity," said a former senior official. "[Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell is spending most of his time being reactive.... The result is that Rumsfeld often dominates. On a lot of issues, he`s this administration`s thought leader."

State Department officials complain that Rumsfeld sometimes plays unfair by sending underlings to negotiate on policy decisions, only to withdraw his assent later — leaving the decision-making process in chaos.

An official in a third agency said there is some truth in that but added another factor. The Department of Defense is "chaotic, but at least it has a policy," he said. "State is orderly, but it has no policy."

Rumsfeld also keeps rivals and underlings off balance with a constant blizzard of dictated memos — known as "snowflakes" inside the Pentagon and "Rummygrams" elsewhere — asking questions and proposing new policies.

"What are you doing about this? How long is it going to take?" a senior Pentagon official said, describing the memos. "It`s a management technique to keep people on their toes.... We joke about how we`d like to steal his Dictaphone."

At the State Department, though, Powell and his aides consider the Rummygrams — and their peremptory tone — a disruptive nuisance. "We don`t even answer some of them," one official said.

On key issues of defense policy, Rumsfeld is even more relentless, aides say.

The U.S. war plan in Iraq, for example, came together through what one aide called "literally countless conversations" between Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. military commander in the Middle East.

By contrast, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded U.S. forces in Kosovo in 1999, wrote that he had almost no direct contact with then-Defense Secretary William S. Cohen in the run-up to that conflict.

Rumsfeld insisted that the lean, swift plan that conquered Iraq was "Tommy Franks` plan," but to many generals it looked like the secretary`s plan.

A top Pentagon aide described a typical decision: "Rumsfeld got on the VTC [video teleconference] with Franks ... [and] said to Franks, `What do you want to do?` And Franks ran through the whole rationale, and there was lots of give and take."

Aides say Rumsfeld`s decision-making process is "iterative," a management term meaning the secretary intervenes on important issues again and again — and again. "When Rumsfeld says he iterates with people, he iterates with people," an aide semi-explained.

During the war, when the U.S. advance on Baghdad momentarily faltered, traditionalists in the Army`s retired officer corps struck back, charging that Rumsfeld had fatally under-planned. When it turned out they were largely wrong and Rumsfeld largely right — just as he had been right under similar circumstances in Afghanistan — the argument, to many, was settled.

"The importance of having won two wars, and won them quickly, should not be underestimated," said Michael O`Hanlon, a military scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank who is often critical of Rumsfeld. "Success in war is, in a sense, the first test of any secretary of Defense."

Victory in Afghanistan and Iraq made officers more willing to accept Rumsfeld`s ideas for pushing rapid change through the military establishment, and made Congress more willing to accede to Rumsfeld`s demands for funding and legislative changes.

Rumsfeld has spoken candidly of the war`s usefulness as a catalyst for institutional change.

"The war is like a giant laboratory," he said in April, when U.S. forces were fighting their way to Baghdad, "an opportunity to take those lessons learned from that and plug them into this building — this institution, the department — in a way that makes it a much better institution."

Now, however, Iraq has turned into a laboratory for two missions that Rumsfeld had never willingly embraced: nation-building and counter-insurgency.

Rumsfeld and his aides waged a determined bureaucratic battle last year to win full control over the occupation of postwar Iraq. The State Department wanted a role too, officials said, but Powell recognized that the Pentagon — with thousands of troops on the ground and assets beyond any his department could muster — was, in the end, going to be the lead dog.

"There were hurt feelings," a senior official acknowledged. "That`s the price of big organizations. And, obviously, it means Rumsfeld has a big responsibility."

But the occupation was immediately set back by unwelcome surprises. Pentagon officials did not expect Baghdad to descend into looting when Hussein fell, did not expect to find public services in a state of collapse, and did not expect to face a determined guerrilla resistance waged by remnants of the Baathist regime. And one price of Rumsfeld`s lean-force, high-speed invasion plan turned out to be an occupying force unprepared for the violence and looting that followed.

Rumsfeld has responded by putting his head down, declaring that "progress is being made" and promising that staying the course will bring results.

"The coalition effort is succeeding, and the Baathists will not be returning to Baghdad, except to answer for their crimes," he said July 24.

He has bristled at criticism. He spent the better part of two weeks insisting that the well-armed, apparently organized military attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq should not be referred to as "guerrilla war," even though his own newly appointed commander in the area, Gen. John Abizaid, agreed that the term applied.

A reporter recited the Pentagon`s own definition — "military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces" — and observed: "This seems to fit a lot of what`s going on in Iraq."

"It really doesn`t," Rumsfeld replied.

Behind the bluster, though, Rumsfeld has allowed Abizaid and the top U.S. civilian in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, considerable leeway to change course. Bremer has reorganized the staff that Pentagon officials initially sent to Baghdad and pushed the quick formation of a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. Abizaid is replacing the armored units used in the invasion with new counter-insurgency formations.

And Rumsfeld has even said he would welcome troops from France and Germany, which opposed the war, to assist American forces in Iraq.

Behind the scenes he has been less diplomatic. Because of his continuing ire at Paris, the U.S. military and even U.S. aerospace firms largely stayed away from the annual Paris Air Show and froze other exchanges with the French.

In a speech in Germany in June, Rumsfeld pointedly praised Romania and Albania for sending troops to Afghanistan — but somehow forgot to mention his German hosts` much-larger contingent in Kabul.

To State Department officials who are trying to repair traditional U.S.-European alliances, Rumsfeld seems bent on making things worse.

"To a lot of Europeans, Rumsfeld is the face of America — and it`s a pretty scratchy face," one senior U.S. diplomat said.

Like all secretaries of Defense, Rumsfeld has sometimes disagreed with his opposite number at the State Department. But in the Bush administration, the rivalry is not only bureaucratic, it`s also ideological. Rumsfeld and Powell are on opposite sides of a foreign-policy fault line: How far should the United States bend to accommodate its traditional European allies, and how ready should the United States be to act alone if the allies disagree?

More often than not, Rumsfeld has been in the "go-it-alone" camp. And more often than not, he has a key ally in Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he has worked since 1969 (when a young Rumsfeld hired an even-younger Cheney into the administration of Richard Nixon).

"Part of Rumsfeld`s power is due to the fact that his view of the world is more in keeping with the administration`s view of the world than Colin Powell`s — and by the administration, I don`t mean just the president; I mean the vice president and other people in the White House," said Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Reagan administration who is a friend of Rumsfeld and Cheney.

But Rumsfeld probably doesn`t qualify as a neoconservative of the crusading stamp of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. Where Wolfowitz has described the U.S. mission in Iraq as part of a drive to implant democracy across the Arab world, for example, Rumsfeld has cast it in a more traditional (and potentially less expansive) mold of eliminating threats to U.S. security.

As a byproduct of the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld has already won his main foreign policy priority: restoring U.S. readiness to use military force.

Before he took the job as secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld told friends that he worried the United States under Bill Clinton had become "risk averse." One thing he wanted the newly elected Bush to do, he reportedly said, was "to correct the widespread view that the United States would fold after taking casualties."

That perception is gone, a senior aide to Rumsfeld said.

"Can you imagine what our enemies think of us right now?" asked the aide, Undersecretary Douglas Feith. "The deterrent value of what we`ve accomplished far overshadows the direct results."

But the most difficult part of Rumsfeld`s agenda may not be winning the peace in Iraq, or even winning the war against terrorism, which he has warned will long outlast his tenure. It`s his crusade to transform the armed forces and the Pentagon`s civilian bureaucracy into leaner and more flexible organizations.

"His interest is, No. 1, changing the way people think about defense strategy and policy," Feith said. "That is what he mainly cares about."

To be sure, Rumsfeld is only the latest in a long line of Defense secretaries who have promised to change the Pentagon; would-be military reformers have been proposing to transform the armed services for decades. And with support for defense spending high, Rumsfeld has done little to pare spending on military equipment; his proposals for procurement reform won`t be unveiled until the fall.

"I would actually put transformation last among his achievements," said O`Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "I know he would put it toward the top ... but I`m skeptical that he has accomplished much in that domain."

So far, some of Rumsfeld`s bureaucratic changes have had the effect of shifting decision-making power from the four armed services to the civilians around the secretary of Defense — a trend unpopular among traditionalists, especially in the Army.

The secretary has decreed that all promotions to three-star and four-star rank must go through his office, which is being perceived as a blunt message that only officers who fully agree with his vision will reach the top. He has criticized the Army as wedded to old defense concepts focusing on large, heavy forces; he undercut his first Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, by naming a replacement 14 months ahead of schedule.

In the search for a new Army chief, two generals turned Rumsfeld down, and he bypassed several others to reactivate a retiree, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who made his career in special operations — the light, swift soldiering that Rumsfeld likes most.

In a final signal, he fired his first secretary of the Army, Thomas White, a retired Army general, and replaced him with Air Force Secretary James Roche — making the Army`s top leadership all Rumsfeld picks.

The relentless drive for change has left many officers feeling bruised.

"He has the military terrified," said a retired officer who has worked as a consultant in Rumsfeld`s office.

Asked whether he likes Rumsfeld, a senior Army officer paused and said, finally: " `Like` is such a strong word."

"If you have a thin skin, don`t work here," said Roche, who then cited, from memory, one of Rumsfeld`s Rules: "You have to be prepared to say goodbye every day."

Rumsfeld, in a speech to business executives in June, acknowledged that the job of transformation is largely undone. "Big institutions ... are enormously difficult to change," he said. "Things at rest tend to remain at rest."

But he said his changes at the top are having some effect. "It`s like dropping a pebble in a pond and watching the ripples go out," he said.

Congress has been a tough target as well.

In this year`s Defense Authorization Bill, Rumsfeld sought a long list of changes to give him more flexibility in running the department, including new hiring and firing rules, a system for giving raises based on performance more than seniority, the right to suspend employees` collective bargaining rights, and easing the "Buy America" rule that requires most defense equipment to be U.S.-made.

The House bill gave Rumsfeld most of what he wanted on the personnel front; Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the secretary had earned the right to remake the bureaucracy through his victory in Iraq. But instead of easing the "Buy America" rule, Hunter proposed toughening it. Rumsfeld replied with a warning that he will ask Bush to veto the entire bill if that provision stays.

But a Senate bill written by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) scaled back Rumsfeld`s proposals significantly, denying him the right to waive collective bargaining and preserving more elements of the current civil service system. The two houses will try to reconcile the bills in a conference this fall.

And for three years in a row, Rumsfeld has sought to pare down the number of reports that Pentagon officials are required to write to Congress. Every year, Congress has largely ignored his requests.

Rumsfeld has not said how long he wants to remain as secretary of Defense, or whether he would stay another four years if a reelected Bush were to ask.

His main objectives — stabilizing Iraq, pressing institutional reforms — will take longer to achieve than the year and a half remaining in this term.

Illinois Republican leaders sounded out Rumsfeld on running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated this year by Republican Peter Fitzgerald, but he wasn`t interested.

On domestic issues, friends say, Rumsfeld is a closet moderate, reflecting his roots as a traditional Republican from Chicago`s affluent North Shore.

As a member of the House of Representatives, he voted for the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964. He drew protests from social conservatives in 2001 when he hired a prominent gay Republican as a consultant on personnel issues.

His Chicago friends include Democrats like William Daley, who was secretary of Commerce under President Clinton, and Newton N. Minow, a former aide to President Kennedy. "He believes in civil liberties and civil rights," Minow said. "He gets on with people who don`t agree with him."

Rumsfeld rebuffed a request for an interview for this article. An aide said the secretary was willing to talk about Iraq but not an assessment of his overall record. One aide, noting that Rumsfeld`s tenure could run out in only 19 months at the end of the presidential term, said the secretary wanted to avoid putting himself in a "straitjacket" by being explicit about his remaining goals.

Aides and friends scoff at the notion that Rumsfeld is thinking about his legacy or worried about the history books. But they acknowledge that they — and he — know that this is his final lap.

"This is his last job, and that`s an important factor," Adelman said. "He is no longer on the make. That helps.... My feeling is there is nothing else in life he`d rather be doing."

Times staff writers John Hendren and Esther Schrader contributed to this report.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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British Cameraman Shot Dead Near Baghdad
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 17, 2003; 3:39 PM
LONDON - A Reuters cameraman was shot and killed Sunday while working near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, the London-based news agency said.
Witnesses reported that Mazen Dana, 41, was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad when he was shot, Reuters said.
A Reuters staffer told The Associated Press in Baghdad that Dana, a Palestinian, appeared to have been shot by U.S. soldiers as he was videotaping outside the Abu Ghraib prison after a mortar attack there Sunday, in which six prisoners were killed and about 60 others were wounded.
The staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the videotape in Dana`s camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him, two shots, apparently from the tanks, ringing out and Dana falling to the ground. He was taken away by a U.S. helicopter for treatment.
"Mazen was one of Reuters` finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss. He was a brave and an award winning journalist who had worked in many of the world`s hotspots," Stephen Jukes, Reuters` global head of news, said in a statement.
"He was committed to covering the story wherever it was and he was an inspiration to friends and colleagues at Reuters and throughout the industry."
A U.S. military statement issued in Baghdad confirmed "a fatal accident involving a civilian at Abu Ghraib prison" and said an investigation was underway.
Dana`s death brings to 17 the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the war started March 20.An outspoken critic of the Israeli government`s treatment of journalists, Dana was honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists with an International Press Freedom Award in November 2001 for his work covering conflict in his hometown of Hebron in the West Bank. He was shot at least three times in 2000, according to the citation on the group`s Web site.
"Words and images are a public trust and for this reason I will continue with my work regardless of the hardships, even if it costs me my life," Dana said after accepting the award.
A large water main in northern Baghdad was hit by an explosion early Sunday, flooding streets in the capital. Witnesses saw two men on a motorbike leave a bag of explosives and detonate it minutes later. Engineers had to turn off water to the whole city until the damage is repaired.
Two ferocious blazes are raging out of control along the pipeline that exports Iraq`s oil to the north. The first began Friday, only two days after oil exports to Turkey resumed, and the second happened Saturday night. Iraqi officials blamed the first on saboteurs, but U.S. military officials say it`s too soon to say what the cause was.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, says the country is losing $7 million a day with the pipeline out of operation.
A mortar attack at a prison outside Baghdad has killed three Iraqis and wounded 61. A U.S. military spokesman didn`t know whether the casualties were guards or prisoners, or who was behind the attack.
The Danish army reports one of its soldiers died from a gunshot after stopping a truck of Iraqis on Saturday in southern Iraq. The soldier was the first Dane killed since Denmark sent about 400 soldiers this summer to join the stabilization force around Basra.
Attacks continue against U.S. forces. The military says two U.S. soldiers were shot Saturday coming out of a Baghdad restaurant, but were able to drive themselves to a medical facility for treatment.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Summary
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Latest Fatality Date: 8/17/2003

08/17/03 Radio Free Europe
A Danish soldier has been killed in a clash with Iraqi gunmen in Al-Basrah, Danish Army command in Copenhagen confirmed today.
08/16/03 Yahoo
Two US soldiers wounded in attacks north of Baghdad
08/15/03 Reuters
The U.S. military also increased the overall U.S. death toll in Iraq on Thursday, saying the adjustment was to take account of soldiers wounded in action who later died of their wounds.
08/15/03 Reuters via Yahoo
Two U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi civilians were wounded when gunmen fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a small military convoy near the town of Balad, northeast of Baghdad.
08/14/03 Ministry of Defense
A Territorial Army soldier died on 13 August in southern Iraq.
08/14/03 Yahoo (Reuters)
One British soldier was killed and two were wounded when a bomb blast hit a military ambulance in the southern city of Basra

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Trading on Terror: Linking Financial Markets and War
by Heather Wokusch

The Pentagon`s online "terror" futures market may have gone down in flames, but questions surrounding 9/11 insider trading and market rigging before the Iraq invasion still linger.

In a much-aligned plan the Pentagon described as "engaging and ... profitable," anonymous traders were invited to bet on the likelihood of Middle Eastern death and destruction; public outcry forced the "Policy Analysis Market" (PAM) plan to be yanked days before its scheduled launch.

But allegations about the ultimate "terror" futures market, 9/11 insider trading, have yet to be adequately addressed. It`s known that just weeks before the attacks, speculative trading surged on companies to be hardest hit, such as those located in the World Trade Center. There was a rally in five-year US Treasury notes, the best investment in times of US crisis, and sales of airline-based put options (bets a stock`s price will fall) increased sharply too; interestingly, many such put options were sold through a firm previously managed by top CIA director, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.

Estimates of 9/11 profit-taking are in the billions of dollars, and according to Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, "This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you`ve ever seen in your entire life. This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence."

Bowing to public pressure, the FBI and other federal watchdogs promised swift and thorough investigations into potential 9/11 insider trading. Significant that today, almost two years after the attacks, no progress seems to have been made.

It`s also indicative that the US government didn`t take market volatility preceding 9/11 more seriously, especially since the rationale behind its recent PAM terror-trading scheme was that the "extremely efficient" predictive quality of futures markets could enhance national security.

But some analysts charge the Bush administration has actually been too active in the markets, effectively manipulating levels to build up public support before its invasion of Iraq. Here`s how analysts say it worked: a secretive US governmental committee orchestrated massive selling in the euro, crude and gold right before the invasion, effectively lowering prices and bumping up the dollar. The covert committee simultaneously purchased targeted Dow Jones equities to prop up the relatively unsophisticated index, thereby creating a rally big enough to calm investors. How else, analysts say, to explain the market rally when it seemed an invasion would be postponed, followed by a rally one week later at news war was imminent?

The fact that a team of US governmental and Wall Street leaders periodically moves the markets in US interests is undisputed; the group was created by Executive Order 12631 in the Reagan years and continues today under the nickname Plunge Protection Team.

What is less clear, however, is if the Bush administration`s desired invasion of Iraq was deemed a US interest vital enough to rig the markets.

The Pentagon`s dubious futures-market scheme may have been axed, but far too many questions surrounding the link between US stock markets, war and terrorism remain.

Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer. She can be contacted via her web site: www.heatherwokusch.com

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0817-05.htm

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More than skin deep
Don`t be fooled by the success of a few minority Americans - racism is still rife

Trevor Phillips
Monday August 18, 2003
The Guardian

`I believe in America. America has made my fortune". The opening lines of The Godfather are not the rhetoric of some Aryan super-patriot, but the words of an Italian immigrant, barely able to speak English. They could equally have been uttered by the putative governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or by my own father. After years of low-status employment in London, the Powellite menace of the late 60s drove him to the US. Late in life he fulfilled a modest version of the American dream, a white-collar job on a university campus. So I, too, believe in America. But adult passions pass unless you can also embrace their imperfections.

America`s most abiding failure has been an inability to erase the racial divisions etched in its social DNA; its defining success has been a genius for embracing and exploiting the economic potential of a continuous stream of immigrants. By contrast, Europe trembles at a level of migration that Americans would regard as piffling. Yet from Rome, through Constantinople to Venice and London, our nations have a history of peacefully absorbing huge, diverse movements of people, driven by war, famine and persecution; and there is no history of long-term ethnic segregation of the kind one can see in any US city.

That is why it is so exasperating when friends return from their summers on Martha`s Vineyard or in San Francisco, enthusing about the success of minority Americans. I know that we home-grown black folk can`t aspire to the glamour of some Americans - Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice or my great friend from Harvard, Skip Gates, who has become a BBC TV star. But our lack of celebrity should not blind intelligent people to a few basic truths.

First, on race equality, America has failed in every way possible. The small group of successful black professionals and the ghetto-fabulous gangsters who turn up on our TV screens loom too large in our picture of the US. For the average black or Latino American, life is better than it was; but the gap between minority households and whites continues to grow every year, in terms of employment, education and health.

Those who do succeed outside of entertainment and sport do so only and exclusively through two routes, both of which are widely regarded with distaste by Europeans. One is contract compliance, in which both the government and big private sector companies are, in effect, compelled to give a proportion of their work to minority entrepreneurs. I have yet to learn of a black millionaire who has not benefited from this provision; I have yet to meet a white liberal who does not feel uneasy about it.

The other route is affirmative action. Powell, Rice and Gates all state baldly that they would never have reached their current eminence without positive discrimination at some stage in their lives. In his single public disagreement with the president, Powell cited his own successful military career to argue why American universities should retain the right to use race as a factor in admissions policy. Affirmative action alone accounted for most of the black senior American faces we saw in Iraq.

So everyone who yearns for a "British Colin Powell" should think about what they are signing up to - if they are serious. Politicians could signal support for contract compliance by handing the production of their next party political broadcast to a black production company, or the printing of their manifesto to an Asian firm. Or they could just select some black or Asian parliamentary candidates for safe seats.

This summer has brought a new discovery: multiracial America, or as Timothy Garton Ash called it in these pages last week, "Californication". Visiting Stanford University, he has been bowled over by a student body "sporting every shade of skin colour" and representing a spectrum of ethnic combinations. This, he declares, offers "the ultimate answer to the problem of racial difference". How can someone so galactically brainy put his name to this tosh? In the 1970s some of my fun-loving student comrades advocated the left`s cause through what we called the "horizontal road to socialism". The difference is that we thought substituting sexual congress for the trade union version was a joke.

The truth is that even in liberal California, racial mixing is still a rarity. More than 30% of the US population is either black, Asian or Latino. Statistically, if Americans chose their partners at random, more than a third of American births should be of mixed race. The figure is, in fact, just 1.6%. Here, it`s about 1.1%. But to count inter-racial sex as a reliable indicator of good race relations you`d have to write off the entire history of slavery in America; there was probably more miscegenation on the plantations than at any time in human history. Even if you were silly enough to confuse sexual intercourse with social integration, we still beat the pants off the US. In Britain, up to half of all marriages involving a black man are with a white partner - and "mixed" is now the fourth largest group in the population, after white, Indian and Pakistani.

Of course, the Brits have been at it longer. Two centuries ago, there were some 20,000 to 30,000 black Georgians in London, so familiar they got a name - the Blackbirds of Covent Garden. Yet four generations later, a black face was unusual in London, because the blackbirds had produced so many mixed-race chicks. And it`s worth reminding ourselves that Americans have a unique way of discouraging inter-racial relationships: US papers were last week reporting yet another mysterious hanging of a black man alleged to have been in a relationship with a white woman.

Yet American liberals glow with pride over Muslims who wear hijab but speak with authentic American accents. In the university where one of my relatives taught I would lay a penny to a pound that, given the $40,000-a-year fees, these students were more likely to be Saudi princesses who learned their Valley Girl English at exclusive private schools than the daughters of Arab-American shopkeepers from Michigan. For the real thing, you`re better off going to any college in Oldham or east London, where the clothes may be imported from Pakistan or Bangladesh, but the accents are pure Coronation Street and Albert Square.

The place where Americans do have something to teach us is on immigration and asylum. They aren`t perfect, but I would happily exchange our miserable and mean-spirited attitude to migrants for their energetic pursuit of talents and energy from everywhere in the world. Great Britain was created out of the vitality of a multiracial, polyglot empire, but we kept our subjects at arm`s length. The Americans are less fussy about who they let through Ellis Island. They raid the world for the best and the brightest and turn them into Americans with hi-tech jobs and green cards. Instead of being dazzled by the few bright sparks in America`s racial nightmare, Europe should be working out how we can copy the real success at the heart of the American dream.

· Trevor Phillips is a journalist and broadcaster. Since March 2003 he has been chairman of the commission for racial equality

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With friends like these...
If Bush and his cronies won`t listen to us, why do we expect any other countries to?

Peter Kilfoyle
Monday August 18, 2003
The Guardian

I am always intrigued by the indignation voiced by Europhobes when any trans-EU initiative is announced. Up goes the cry that our national sovereignty is being given away to perfidious Europeans. Never, they say, can this latest treachery be countenanced.

Yet the same people who rise up in anger at even the most sensible rearrangement remain ominously silent when a far greater threat to the British nation state rears its head. I refer, of course, to the US and its at times pernicious "special" relationship with the UK.

Our national chauvinists tell us that a common European defence and security policy is beyond the pale. A common foreign policy is painted as almost treasonable, and unworkable anyway. A common currency removes the last vestiges of our ability to run our economy. What nonsense.

What does Nato stand for if it is not a common defence and security policy? Does not the EU already try - Iraq apart - to coordinate the foreign policy of its members towards an effective relationship with the world to the benefit of Europe`s citizens? Is not a common currency, of itself, a logical progression from the trade arrangements within the common European market?

The unspoken issue is that the EU, by definition, excludes the US. That worries the latter and its acolytes within our own country. There is a fear that a possibly protectionist and interventionist Europe is counter to American interests. Therefore, Europe must be kept as a loose trading market and no more.

There are those who wish a special designation for the UK - as a "bridge" between a European trading bloc and the US. Unfortunately for them, many in Europe see this as a one-way bridge for American influence and advantage, with the UK cast as a Trojan horse.

As these arguments rage abroad, few at home comment on developments in the Anglo-American relationship. Militarily, we grow ever closer to the US. The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, has acknowledged that we are to be to the US armed forces what the sepoys were to the British Indian army.

Increasingly, our armaments are American-made and American-controlled. Senior officers, frustrated by procurement problems in Europe, demand the Americanisation of military "kit". American pressure is brought to bear against new European military equipment, in favour of weapons procurement from American companies, as the British government sinks deeper into dependency on the US.

Meanwhile, the home secretary, David Blunkett, allows a one-way extradition process to be imposed in favour of the Americans, at their demand and without the standards of evidence required hitherto. British subjects languish in Guantanamo Bay, without recourse to due process and the jurisprudential standards demanded by international law. Helplessly, the British government wrings its hands as Bush contemptuously turns its arguments away.

Diplomatically, the gains of many decades have been frittered away by our blind obedience to the American administration`s wars. Huge numbers of people view the British prime minister as Bush`s poodle, and see Britain as no more than the errand boy for the American neo-conservatives. What price British influence in the world if Albion has no influence with its American godfather?

For that is the case. We have next to no influence with the US administration. If we did, we would surely have demanded some quid pro quo for our loyal support to America in its military adventives. Perhaps some flexibility would have been forthcoming on the Kyoto protocol or on America`s development of nuclear weapons. Not a chance. We continue to cravenly support all things American-inspired, whether missile defence or a distorting World Trade Organisation. In return, the prime minister receives plaudits from Congress delivered in a manner reminiscent of Beijing`s Great Hall of the People. As America`s love affair with Tony Blair blossoms, the world - and the UK`s place within it -becomes less stable.

What an ignominious way we have begun the 21st century - as a satrapy of the new American world order. Old friends despair as old rivals mock this once-proud nation. No longer is it able to hold its head up as a free-thinking, sovereign state.

We are now viewed as a rather ignoble island, subservient to the world`s superpower, and incapable of committing itself to its natural home within Europe. The irony of our position is that, as we further alienate our friends, including those in America who look for constructive criticism rather than sycophancy, so we reinforce the prejudices of our enemies. Thus do nations dwindle into insignificance and irrelevance.

· Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister

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US unveils new secret weapon
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Monday August 18, 2003
The Guardian

First they tried to bomb him, then they tried the offer of a reward. They even released images of what he might look like with no hair.

But now the US army would appear to be getting desperate with its latest ploy to catch Saddam Hussein: pictures of the elusive dictator as Hollywood sex goddess.

In a scheme likely to raise as many laughs among Iraq`s hardline Islamic clerics as Salman Rushdie`s The Satanic Verses, troops of the 4th Infantry brigade in Tikrit are planning to put up pictures around the town of Saddam`s face superimposed on the bodies of a busty Veronica Lake, a slinky Zsa Zsa Gabor, a grooving Elvis and British-born rocker Billy Idol.

The aim, apparently, is to so enrage Saddam`s followers that they will draw themselves out.

"We`re going to do something devious with these," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell told Reuters, referring to a range of spoof Saddam pictures taken from the internet site www.worth1000.com.

"Most of the locals will love `em and they`ll be laughing. But the bad guys are going to be upset, which will just make it easier for us to know who they are."

Col Russell, of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, told the news agency he hoped to have the posters slapped up on walls around Tikrit from today.

However his plans might be thwarted by superiors in Baghdad.

"I think a lot of local people might find that offensive," a spokeswoman in Baghdad said. "I`m going to call them [the 4th ID] now and try and find out what`s going on."


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22 die in Taliban attack on police station
Rory McCarthy in Islamabad
Monday August 18, 2003
The Guardian

At least 22 people died when hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters seized control of a police station in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, one of the most serious attacks against the government for a year.

At least 400 heavily armed gunmen poured into Barmal, 125 miles south-east of Kabul, late on Saturday in a convoy of trucks. Mohammed Ali Jalali, the governor of Paktika province, said they had come across the Pakistani border, five miles away.

The fighters attacked the police station with rockets, heavy machine guns and grenades. Seven policemen, including the district chief of police, were killed, and at least 15 of the gunmen.

"These police died defending themselves," the governor said yesterday. "The attackers, they were a very big group."

The mob held the building throughout the night and then destroyed it yesterday morning before apparently driving back across the border into Pakistan`s lawless tribal areas.

There has been increasing violence in the southern, Pashtun, provinces of Afghanistan, once the Taliban heartland, in recent weeks.

In the space of 24 hours last week 64 people were killed by a series of shootings and bomb blasts across the south.

In an effort to confront the violence the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, replaced the governor of Kandahar with one of his closest colleagues on Saturday.

Though popular with western governments, Mr Karzai has struggled to enforce his control in his own country, and it is unclear how much change the new governor, Yusuf Pashtun will manage to bring about.

The killings underline the setbacks suffered in the postwar reconstruction of Afghanistan. The promise of national elections next June will be difficult to keep.

Yesterday`s attack was significantly bigger, and showed that the Taliban fighters are no longer focusing just on western soldiers, but are going for Afghan officials as well.

Other recent targets in the south have included Afghans working for western aid agencies, soldiers of the new nat ional army, and clerics who have defended the government.

If, as appears likely, the attackers did start from Pakistan, the government in Islamabad is likely to come under severe pressure to explain why there has been no curbing of Taliban ambitions.

"This was an operation by the terrorist groups and it happened in a district just by the border with Pakistan," said Javid Loodin, a spokesman for Mr Karzai.

"The security concerns that we have in those areas arise from the cross-border problem. They come across the border, perform their terrorist operations and when the Afghan government forces try to respond they cross back."

Military analysts in Pakistan say that the Islamabad government is turning a blind eye to the actions of Taliban insurgents. Until the September 11 attacks, Pakistan gave direct financial support and covert military advice to the Taliban.

Pakistan`s foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, is due to make an official visit to Kabul on Thursday and will face a difficult reception.

Before yesterday`s attack there had been a spate of clashes on the border between Afghan and Pakistani forces.

Two Pakistani soldiers were killed on the border last week in a hail of fire from US forces who took them for Taliban fighters.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was forced to call the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, at the weekend to apologise.

The western peacekeeping forces, now commanded by Nato in its first mission outside Europe, are confined to the capital, Kabul, and their number is limited to 5,000.

There are another 12,000 US soldiers engaged in combat operations in the country, but their focus remains on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

Western governments are reluctant to commit soldiers and the money to expand the peacekeeping operations.

A sweeping disarmament programme was meant to begin in March or April to curb the influence of at least 100,000 militia fighters loyal to dozens of warlords but is still at least a month away from starting.


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Sabotage threatens Iraq`s economy
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
18 August 2003


Sabotage left two fires burning out of control on the main pipeline exporting Iraqi oil to Turkey yesterday and the main pipe supplying water to Baghdad was bombed, flooding a motorway and leaving the city of five million without water. And, last night, a Reuters cameraman was shot dead while filming outside Iraq`s main prison, which had earlier come under mortar attack.

The American-led occupation is going badly wrong before our eyes. Already US soldiers are dying daily in attacks and there is anarchy on the streets. As of yesterday, the Americans appeared to be facing an all-out assault on another front - on their efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq.

This is the occupation that was supposed to pay for itself. All the Americans had to do was to get Iraq`s vast oil reserves flowing out of the country and that would finance the occupation. The sabotage of the pipeline, which will take 10 days to repair, means at least $70m (£43m) in lost revenue.

The cost of the occupation, being almost exclusively borne by US taxpayers, is out of control. The Pentagon conservatively estimates it is costing $5bn a month. Other analysts have put it at $600bn over 10 years - bigger than the current record US federal deficit.

"The irony is that Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor," The American "administrator", Paul Bremer, said yesterday. "An event such as the explosion on the Kirkuk pipeline costs the Iraqi people $7m a day and hurts the process of reconstruction." But it is not only the Iraqi people it costs. As long as the Americans are here, the US has to foot the cost of running Iraq.

Already the Americans are facing massive public opposition from Iraqis enraged by constant power cuts and severe fuel shortages. Now they may have to add to that water shortages, in the middle of August, with daily temperatures still above 40C. Iraqi children may have been playing happily in a flooded motorway underpass yesterday, jumping from the bridges, but that can be expected to be the only smiles if the occupation administration does not fulfil a promise to get water pumping.

And in the midst of the attacks on economic targets, three mortars were fired into Baghdad`s Abu Ghraib prison, killing six Iraqis inside and injuring more than 70, the Americans admitted yesterday.

The dead Reuters cameraman was named as Mazen Dana, a Palestinian with years of experience in war zones. Just as the first fire on the oil pipeline, which started on Friday, was being brought under control overnight, another one started a few miles up the line. One could have been a misfortune, two looked like sabotage. The pipeline, which leads from the oil city of Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, is the main export route for oil from Iraq`s northern oilfields. It was only reconnected for the first time since the war last week.

In a separate attack, witnesses saw two men on a motorbike leave something on a water pipe minutes before an explosion at the spot yesterday. The pipe is exposed because it runs over a motorway underpass. On their own, the oil pipeline explosions could have been the work of oil smugglers who make good money trucking Iraqi oil over the Turkish border, looking to protect their trade. On its own, the water pipe explosion could have been a bomb intended for a different target, such as an American convoy, that went wrong.

But when they are put together it looks as if the Iraqi resistance groups have begun to target Iraq`s infrastructure.

A motive for the sabotage of the oil pipeline is simple enough. Ordinary Iraqis believe the Americans are here to steal their oil while they face fuel shortages inside Iraq. To them, attacking the pipeline is attacking American efforts to get the oil out of the country.

The bombing of the water pipe could be to stir up anger among ordinary Iraqis. British troops in Basra faced riots last weekend from Iraqis who had had enough of power cuts and an acute fuel shortage. Until the electricity and the fuel ran out, Basra had been quiet while the Americans took the heat in Baghdad. And the power went down in Basra because of sabotage on power lines, according to the British.

It is possible someone wants discontent brewing on Baghdad`s streets. The motive of the attack on the prison was not clear: some speculated the intended target may have been American soldiers stationed inside the vast complex. A new resistance group, the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance Movement, released a tape shown on al-Jazeera yesterday saying: "This resistance is not a reaction to the American provocations against the Iraqi people or to the shortage of services ... but to kick out the occupiers as a matter of principle."
18 August 2003 10:23


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Bush blamed for chaos which led to blackouts
By Andrew Gumbel
18 August 2003


The Bush administration rushed to defend itself yesterday from accusations that reluctance to upset its friends in the energy industry was to blame for the regulatory chaos leading to last week`s massive power blackout across the north-eastern United States and Canada.

The lights may be barely back on and the cause of the electricity failure still subject to preliminary investigation, but that has not prevented finger-pointing from beginning in earnest. And it is the White House - 18 months after dodging a bullet over the collapse of Enron, the politically juiced Texas energy trading giant - that is finding itself in the hot seat.

President Bush`s energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, popped up on the Sunday TV talk shows to insist the administration was doing everything it could to update an electrical grid that, by his own admission, was already obsolescent at a time of tremendous growth in demand.

"We`ve identified the corridors where we need more transmission," he said. "We`ve been working with the states to upgrade and improve the identification of new technology. We`ve invested more than 50 per cent in our budget on research." None of that, however, answered the crucial question, which is how the most advanced economy in the world could experience the biggest blackout in its history and not even know why.

Writing in The New York Times, President Clinton`s energy secretary, Bill Richardson, accused the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress of stalling on legislation to force power companies to take measures guaranteeing grid reliability. Very similar criticisms were voiced by some of the leading contenders for next year`s Democratic presidential nomination.

"Just two years ago, [President Bush] and his allies in Congress blocked a Democratic proposal to invest $350m in upgrading America`s electrical grid system," said the Florida Senator Bob Graham. "The blackout is further evidence that America needs to invest in its infrastructure."

Investigators have narrowed down the origin of the blackout to a number of high-voltage transmission lines near Cleveland, Ohio. Just over an hour before the lights went out, the first 345-kilovolt power line went down. A parallel line that automatically picked up the slack then overloaded, sagged and hit a tree, causing it to shut down.

Those failures apparently initiated a chain reaction throughout the vast area administered by the North American Electric Reliability Council. FirstEnergy, the utility responsible for the downed Ohio lines, said it did not become aware of the problem fast enough because its alarm system did not kick in. That does not explain, however, how the rest of the north-east was taken unawares. But most energy experts agree on the root causes of a failure many of them have been predicting for years.

Deregulation of the power industry has left energy companies with insufficient incentive to invest in new transmission lines or enough generating capacity.

In California, affected by rolling blackouts a couple of years ago, public utility regulators went so far as to accuse private-sector companies of artificially engineering a crisis for financial gain. That charge was directed at the White House, because many of the companies involved had close ties to the Bush administration, and because federal regulators did little to relieve the pressure on Californian consumers. Enron was a key player, both as an energy supplier and as one of the architects of California`s ill-conceived energy deregulation.

But this is a bipartisan problem long predating President Bush`s arrival in the White House. With corporate interests lobbying both main parties, no consensus has been reached on how to regulate the industry or provide incentives for its growth.

Maureen Dowd wrote in yesterday`s New York Times: "The only illumination in the blackout was this: [politicians] have been holding the energy bill hostage to their special interests." Community leaders, meanwhile, are taking extraordinary measures to ensure no further blackouts today. In Detroit, the big three US car makers and other industries will take the day off to make sure demand stays low.
18 August 2003 10:25

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Iraqi children played near a gap in northern Baghdad`s water main on Sunday, after a bomb blast cut off water to most of the capital.
August 18, 2003
Attacks in Iraq May Be Signals of New Tactics
By JOHN TIERNEY and ROBERT F. WORTH


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 17 — In a turbulent 12-hour stretch, a pipeline supplying much of Baghdad`s water was blown up this weekend, a huge new fire was set off along an oil pipeline, and a mortar attack on a prison left 6 Iraqis dead and 59 wounded.

The attacks raised new concerns that the insurgents who have been singling out American soldiers may be widening their strikes to include civilian targets and economic sabotage. The explosion at the water pipeline was the work of saboteurs, investigators said, and the fire along the pipeline appeared suspicious as well.

It occurred near the spot in northern Iraq where saboteurs on Friday blew up another part of the pipeline, which carries Iraqi oil into Turkey.

The mortar attack occurred shortly before midnight Saturday at Abu Ghraib, a prison that became notorious during Saddam Hussein`s rule for its terrible conditions and for the torture and execution of political prisoners. Some of its current prisoners are suspected of being part of the violent insurgency against American forces by members of the former government. Shortly before midnight, three mortar shells were fired into the prison compound, where inmates were being held in tents.

At the prison this afternoon, a Reuters cameraman identified as Mazen Dana was shot and killed by a soldier, a spokesman for the occupation said. Reuters reported that Mr. Dana, 43, a Palestinian, had been filming outside the prison when he was shot by a G.I. in a tank.

Officials said the motives for the mortar attack on the prison Saturday were unknown, as was the identity of the attacker. But they suggested that the shelling, like the sabotage of pipelines, might be part of the larger effort to destabilize Iraq and drive out Americans. Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy, a member of the new Iraqi interim government, the Governing Council, condemned the attack after visiting some of the victims who had been taken to an American military hospital.

"Attacking prisoners is just unexplainable and completely incomprehensible," he said. "The only deduction I have is that these attackers have lost their way. They have no strategy. They just want to create mayhem, create chaos.

"This will certainly not hasten the departure of coalition forces. In fact, it will probably increase the time of their staying here," he said.

The sabotage of the water pipeline was the first such strike against Baghdad`s water system, city water engineers said. It happened around 7 this morning, when a blue Volkswagen Passat stopped on an overpass near the Nidaa mosque and an explosive was fired at the six-foot-wide water main in the northern part of Baghdad, said Hayder Muhammad, the chief engineer for the city`s water treatment plants.

Instantly, jets of high-pressure water shot into the air and began flooding the roadway below, which links Palestine Street to the Adhamiya neighborhood. The break left residents with little or no water most of the day in about 10 neighborhoods covering a large part of the city.

Water continued to pour from the jagged two-foot-wide hole in the main this afternoon, and hundreds of children and young men were swimming and splashing.

"Most of the area will be without water, and now people will start saying the Americans did this," said a bystander, Hissan Baghdadi, 35. "But it has nothing to do with the Americans at all. It was Iraqis who did this."

The deputy mayor of Baghdad, Faris Abdul Razaq al-Aasam, said workers were trying to restore water as soon as possible. City engineers warned that there could be some problems for several days.

As the fire at the oil pipeline burned this afternoon in northern Iraq, sending black smoke nearly three miles high northwest of Mosul, occupation officials in Baghdad noted that they had recently signed a contract with a private firm to hire 6,500 guards for Iraq`s oil facilities. After the pipeline was shut down Friday by an explosion and fire, officials said that it would take perhaps two weeks to repair the damage and that the loss of the pipeline was costing Iraq $7 million per day.

In southern Iraq, a Danish soldier and two Iraqis were killed in a firefight Saturday night about 30 miles north of Basra, Danish military officials said. It was the first military casualty for the Danish.

The firefight broke out in the town of Medina when a Danish patrol tried to prevent Iraqis from stealing electrical cables, said Lt. Col. Jens Kofoed, a Danish military spokesman. Two Iraqis were killed along with the soldier, Lance Cpl. Preben Pedersen, Colonel Kofoed said.

The incident is being investigated, and it is possible that Lance Cpl. Pedersen was killed accidentally by one of his fellow officers, Colonel Kofoed said.



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Iraqi men made their way yesterday through the Valley of Peace cemetery in Najaf, a sacred burial ground for Shiite Muslims.
August 18, 2003
A Shiite Burial Ground Awaits Foreign Faithful
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


AJAF, Iraq — The dead from around the Shiite Muslim world are again welcome at this holy site.

The Valley of Peace cemetery, which seems to stretch to the horizon here, has been the sacred burial ground of choice for Shiite Muslims for more than 1,000 years. Believers are convinced that awakening on Judgment Day next to the shrine of Imam Ali, whose death led to the founding of their sect, will speed their acceptance into heaven or at least abbreviate their time in hell.

Saddam Hussein put a stop to all that, gradually waging war after war against important Shiite seats like Iran and the nations of the Persian Gulf, where many of the imported bodies originated. The dead stayed home.

Not, of course, that the thousands of people who depend on the cemetery for their livelihoods were exactly idle during the gory years of his rule.

"We must consider Saddam a good friend to the cemetery workers because we were always busy, although perhaps you shouldn`t write that," said Tariq Ghazi, the cemetery`s unofficial mayor. "Thanks be to God, under Saddam we had lots of disasters and crises in Iraq."

Since the fall of Mr. Hussein`s government, however, bodies from outside Iraq have started trickling in — a few each month smuggled across the mostly sealed border from Iran, a few from Kuwait, the first anyone can remember from Saudi Arabia since the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The cemetery workers look forward to calmer days, when the faithful no longer fear joining the deceased by venturing onto Iraq`s brigand-infested roads. In the cemetery`s halcyon days, bodies arrived daily from a broad swath of territory from Lebanon to India and from the Iraqi diaspora in the world beyond.

In the meantime, the cemetery remains plenty busy with domestic business. A ready access to weapons means that killing a man in Iraq "is as easy as killing a chicken," as one undertaker put it.

Given that bodies arrive from throughout Iraq, the cemetery workers have an ear firmly stuck to the country`s robust grapevine. In late July, a butcher who arrived to bury his mother said he had seen the former president.

Three men in a Mercedes came to his Baghdad shop, he said, and asked him to come slaughter a few sheep. Suddenly, they blindfolded him and stuck a gun to his neck during a 30-minute drive. As he was working, he told them, Mr. Hussein walked up.

Mr. Hussein`s only question was how the Iraqis were doing without him, the butcher related, to which he replied they were like cows without a cowhand. The men paid him more than $60, and Mr. Hussein told him, "Send my regards to the Iraqi people," cemetery workers recall the man saying.

As for Mr. Hussein`s sons, buried at a tribal plot in their hometown, the undertakers would rather not see them in the Valley of Peace for eternity. "We won`t accept Uday and Qusay because half the people here were slaughtered by them — more than by God," Mr. Ghazi said.

"I`d do it for two notebooks," interjected one of his colleagues, using Iraqi slang for packets of $10,000.

Plots at the cemetery are actually free as long as you want only one or two, because it is part of the endowment of Imam Ali`s shrine. After that, the prices escalate from around $125, depending on the proximity to the shrine. Tradition has it that merely one day next to Ali is more auspicious than 700 years of prayer.

The cemetery workers hope for something of a windfall once the borders are reopened for bodies. They are convinced that not just the newly departed will appear, but that tens of thousands of bodies buried elsewhere or otherwise preserved will be dug up and shipped to Najaf. The main benefit is summed up in a line of Arab poetry: "Many are buried, but few are protected."

The bodies` late arrival would not be without precedent.

First, Iraq`s Ottoman rulers and then the British colonizers demanded that only dry bodies be imported to prevent the spread of disease, mandating that the dead be buried in their own lands for up to three years before being transferred to Najaf. Occasionally clerics issued edicts against the trade because the huge camel caravans transporting 400 bodies at once subjected them to gross indignities along the way.

At the height of the trade, when more than 5,000 bodies a year were brought into Iraq, according to an authoritative account of Iraq`s Shiites by the historian Yitzhak Nakash, a profession of corpse driers sprang up on the Iranian side of the border to help thwart zealous inspectors.

Each body was taxed. Smuggling proved rife. It still occurs.

One Iranian family showed up a couple of months ago with a pungent body buried under an ice chest in the back of a GMC Suburban. "I asked them why the body smelled so much, and they said every border crossing they tried was closed," said Hadi Bilash, a Najaf undertaker. "It took them three days to find a way across."

Najaf keeps a time all its own, literally. The more militant clergymen teaching and studying here consider daylight savings time a heretical Western innovation, so much of the town operates on Najaf Standard Time, an hour behind the rest of Iraq.

There is actually an old Iraqi saying about the city: "It has no industry, but it exports turbans and imports corpses."

The cemetery covers about four and a half square miles, prompting local residents to call it one of the world`s largest. Plots can be recycled roughly every 35 years, when all traces of the previous occupant have disappeared. Some families build elaborate crypts, the odd turquoise onion dome poking out of a sea of khaki-colored brick squares.

When the cemetery workers reel off the list of professions tied to the trade, the degree to which it floats the local economy is readily apparent. There are 200 pallbearers who lug coffins around the shrine of Ali for extra blessings before the burial; at least 100 ulema who read the Koran over the graves; 600 undertakers; 4,000 grave diggers; 250 body washers and countless professional mourners, shroud sellers, tombstone calligraphers and others.

"When people from outside start burying their dead here again, everything will flourish in Najaf," Mr. Ghazi said.

The most frequent foreign burials these days are of Iranian pilgrims visiting Najaf who collapse and die. It is the dream of many elderly pilgrims, their younger relatives relate as they pass through the burial rituals.

The mostly Iranian male pilgrims are often dressed entirely in black, their visits one long symbolic mourning for the death of Ali on the battlefield at the hands of a rival Muslim army in A.D. 661. But these days the youths are clearly transfixed by an entirely different army: the American troops sharing their favorite chicken restaurants.

When four such young pilgrims at one popular restaurant screwed up their courage and asked an American marine to pose for a picture with them, the Iraqis in the establishment hooted with derision. "They are coming to you next!" they jeered repeatedly.



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August 18, 2003
For Bush, Loss of Jobs May Erode Support in South Carolina
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY


GREENVILLE, S.C., Aug. 12 — Lynn Mayson is an unemployed machine operator here. Roger Chastain is president of a textile company. While they travel in distinctively different circles, they have quite a bit in common.

Both are Republicans. Both were part of the Solid South vote that helped George W. Bush win the White House in 2000. And, now, both say they are angry enough about job losses in the region to vote for someone else in 2004.

"Something`s got to give," said Ms. Mayson, a mother of three, as she left a state-run jobs center the other day. "I`m not going to vote for Bush unless things change. The economy has got to get better, and it`s only going to do that if someone makes something happen."

Mr. Chastain, whose company, Mount Vernon Mills, has laid off 1,000 workers in recent years, is part of a coalition of textile executives who have formally complained to the White House about trade practices they contend are driving Americans out of jobs and manufacturers out of business, while giving huge advantages to China and other countries.

"Bush can forget about the Solid South," Mr. Chastain said. "There`s no Solid South anymore."

The frustrations of Ms. Mayson and Mr. Chastain over the slow pace of economic recovery, shared by a growing number of Republicans in upstate South Carolina, have not reached such a critical mass that anyone is predicting that President Bush could lose the state next year. But the Republican wall of support here is indeed showing cracks, reflecting economic trends that Democrats say make Mr. Bush vulnerable. Since the president took office, more than 2.5 million jobs have been lost across the country, a downturn that administration officials contend is now turning around.

Mr. Chastain said problems had reached such a point that he would consider voting for a Democrat, perhaps Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who is a persistent critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta. Ms. Mayson said she would vote for anyone with a plan to create more jobs.

Does such talk signal a new South in the making? Probably not yet. But Bush-bashing among Republicans is almost unheard of in this part of South Carolina, one of the most conservative areas in the United States. In winning the region, Mr. Bush outpolled Al Gore by a ratio of almost two to one.

The trade issue has even become a major factor in the early stages of a United States Senate campaign here, and could affect a Congressional district race. Representative Jim DeMint, a three-term Republican who angered many of his constituents by voting for fast-track procedures for trade agreements, is stepping down to run for the seat of Senator Ernest F. Hollings, a six-term Democrat, who is retiring.

Danny Varat, an adjunct professor of history at the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg, said that if the economy was ailing a year from now and trade policies had not changed enough to help manufacturing in the state, Republicans could have a hard time winning both the Senate race and the Fourth Congressional District seat that Mr. DeMint is vacating.

As for the president, "If there`s a faltering economy, he bears the responsibility, and that has political consequences," Mr. Varat said. "To the degree he could lose the state? It`s too early to assess that right now."

Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush re-election campaign, dismissed the idea of any problems for Mr. Bush in South Carolina by defending him against critics of his economic stewardship. Mr. Stanzel said the recent tax cuts that Mr. Bush aggressively sought demonstrated his abiding concern for the economy and the nation`s jobless.

"The president will not be satisfied until every American looking for work can find it," Mr. Stanzel said, adding that the tax cuts were "a victory for American workers, their families and America`s small businesses."

Still, many industries here and elsewhere are reeling, perhaps none more so than textiles and apparel manufacturing, which today employ only about half the 1.5 million workers who had jobs in 1994, when Nafta went into effect. Industry officials say that about half of those losses have come since Mr. Bush was inaugurated, and in upstate South Carolina, once the vital core of America`s textile industry, many major companies have cut back their work forces or closed. This month, South Carolina`s unemployment rate reached 7 percent, the highest level in more than nine years, compared with a national rate of 6.2 percent.

Like his two-term predecessor, Bill Clinton, who twice failed to carry South Carolina, Mr. Bush has argued that free trade has been good for the country. Over all, the region has attracted companies from nearly 20 other countries in recent years.

But economic experts in the state, like R. Carter Smith, chief executive of the Spartanburg County Economic Development Corporation, say the number of new jobs has not matched those lost, keeping South Carolina among the highest-ranked states in percentage of jobs lost during the Bush years, at No. 3 behind Massachusetts and Ohio.

Textile industry leaders blame the administration for not demanding that China alter trade practices that enable Chinese companies to sell goods cheaper in the United States than American businesses do, making it harder to compete. J. Richard Dillard, a spokesman for Milliken & Company, a major manufacturer in the Carolinas, said Mr. Bush promised such protections, called "safeguards," before and after he was elected but had not followed through.

"We`ve heard a lot from elected officials that free trade creates jobs," Mr. Dillard said. "That`s absolutely true. It has created jobs in Mexico, China, Indonesia and everyplace else in the world, but not here. We`re tired of it."

They are so tired of it, he said, that for the first time industry leaders are drawing a line in the cloth, insisting that if the Bush administration does not narrow the trade gap with China by the fall, company executives will withhold support for Mr. Bush or even campaign for another candidate. That was the principal message of two news conferences the officials held in Greensboro, N.C., and Spartanburg, although only Mr. Gephardt emerged as a possibility.

Among other major Democratic contenders, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida are strong supporters of free trade. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina favor balanced approaches with stronger protections for American workers.

Asked for a show of hands in Spartanburg to indicate how many of the executives voted for Mr. Bush in 2000, all indicated they had. Asked for a show of hands of how many would be willing to abandon him in 2004, all indicated they would.

"This is an excellent opportunity for any elected official to base their campaign on jobs," said Roy Baxley, chairman of the South Carolina Cotton Board. "This is the time to step up to the plate."

Ms. Mayson said jobless people in the area could not agree more. "I know he`s trying," she said of Mr. Bush. "But too many jobs are going overseas. What about the people here?"



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 18, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Staying in the Dark
By BOB HERBERT


We never heed the warnings.

When the power failed last Thursday afternoon I was reading a report commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations that found that even now — two years after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 — the United States remains "dangerously unprepared" to cope with another catastrophic terrorist attack.

The blackout that interrupted my reading showed once again how suddenly we can be thrown out of our daily routine and into a widespread emergency. I walked down the 10 flights from my office in the Times Building and out to Times Square, where the bewildered, disoriented throngs, frightened by thoughts of terror, were trying to get their bearings in an environment that had been transformed in an instant.

It seemed that almost everyone had a cellphone and none of them were working. That freaked out a lot of people. Cellphones have emerged as the lifelines of the 21st century, the quintessential emergency gadget. It`s the one device that`s supposed to work when everything else is falling apart.

There were already reports circulating (true, as it turned out) that the blackout extended all the way into Canada and as far west as Ohio. A woman asked a reporter if he thought the entire nation was under attack. The reporter said no, he thought it was just a blackout, like the ones in 1965 and 1977. But bigger, maybe.

The night would bring a reacquaintance with deep silence and flickering shadows and the comfort of listening to baseball on a battery-operated radio. But there was also the disturbing sense (nurtured in the long, dark, humid hours of the night) that much of our trust is misplaced, that in instance after instance the people in charge of crucial aspects of our society are incompetent or irresponsible, or both, and that American lives are far more at risk than they should be because of that.

Last week`s enormous, cascading blackout should never have occurred. We knew the electrical grid was in sorry shape and the experiences of 1965 and 1977 were still in our collective memory. The experts told us again and again to expect a breakdown. Two years ago an official with the North American Electric Reliability Council said, "The question is not whether, but when the next major failure of the grid will occur."

We ignored the warnings, which is what we always do with warnings, and we paid a terrible price. Now we`re left wondering what might happen if terrorists linked their madness to our electric power vulnerabilities.

The report I was reading when the power failed was issued less than two months ago and was titled, "Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared."

The report acknowledged that some progress against terrorism has been made through the Department of Homeland Security and other federal, state and local institutions. But it said, "The United States has not reached a sufficient national level of emergency preparedness and remains dangerously unprepared to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents, or coordinated high-impact conventional means."

The task force that conducted the study was headed by former Senator Warren Rudman, a Republican, who, with former Senator Gary Hart, a Democrat, wrote two previous important studies that spotlighted the woeful state of our defenses against large-scale terror attacks.

Their first study was issued before the Sept. 11 catastrophe. It predicted a deadly attack, saying, "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."

Their second study was issued last year and it accused the White House and Congress of failing to take the extensive and costly steps necessary to defend against another catastrophic attack, which they said was almost certain to occur.

Now we have yet another warning. If an attack were to occur, the report said, the so-called first responders — police and fire departments, emergency medical personnel, public works and emergency management officials — are not ready to respond effectively. And one of the reasons is that we won`t spend the money or invest the effort necessary to adequately train and equip them.

After the next attack we`ll have another study to assess what went wrong. And we won`t pay attention to that study either.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Troubles Temper Triumphs in Iraq
Problems Persist in Reconstruction Despite Gains

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 18, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD -- Two months after U.S. soldiers arrested him for hawking guns at an illegal firearms bazaar, Iqbal Hassan shuffled into a stifling courtroom to have his fate determined by a trio of black-robed Iraqi judges.

As the 36-year-old carpenter trembled in the wooden dock, his legs bound by irons and his scruffy head hung low, the prosecutor asserted that guilt was a near certainty because the defendant had been apprehended by U.S. troops. But when the judges asked for proof, the prosecutor acknowledged that his office had received no evidence from U.S. military personnel or Iraqi investigators to support that contention.

"We can`t show he was carrying a gun," the prosecutor said. Minutes later, the judges set Hassan free without even bothering to bang a gavel.

Hassan`s acquittal was a small but significant example of the unevenness of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In one sign of change since the end of the war, more than 400 courts have reopened across the country. But at the same time, lawyers and judges in those courtrooms often lament that the U.S. military has failed to give Iraqi prosecutors the evidence needed to secure convictions.

Four months after the fall of President Saddam Hussein`s government, the overall U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq has encountered a similar mix of success and failure. Although the occupation authority has compiled a lengthy list of achievements -- from setting up municipal councils in 85 percent of the country`s towns to distributing monthly food rations and allowing Iraqi judges to dismiss suspects arrested by American soldiers -- glaring troubles persist. Electricity production still is well below prewar levels. The unemployment rate is 60 percent. Fuel is in short supply, causing hours-long waits at gas stations. Murders, carjackings and other violent crimes are rampant.

Those problems have fueled complaints on the streets of Baghdad and other cities that the Americans are not working, spending or devolving authority fast enough.

"Why don`t they give all the unemployed people a stipend? Why don`t they bring in generators so we`ll have electricity? Why don`t they give our policemen more cars so they can protect us?" asked Kassim Mohammed, an out-of-work engineer who participated in a recent demonstration over a lack of jobs held outside the gates of the vast Republican Palace, which houses the headquarters of the occupation authority. "America can do it if it wants to."

Occupation officials insist they are moving quicker in many key areas -- such as the reopening of courts and the training of policemen -- than their predecessors did in post-World War II Germany and Japan or the United Nations did in Bosnia and Kosovo. But, the officials maintain, their efforts have been bedeviled by resistance attacks, sabotage and unrealistic expectations.

The occupation authority has begun to involve more Iraqis in the daily day-to-day governance of their country, partly as a way to shift responsibility for problems to local leaders. Iraqi policemen now patrol cities in white-and-blue sedans and operate their own checkpoints to search for weapons, stolen cars and other contraband.

A 25-member Governing Council has been given the power to select cabinet ministers, author next year`s budget and determine how a new constitution will be written.

"We have to counsel patience," L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, said in an interview. "It`s a difficult message for Iraqis to hear. But when you have 35 years of economic and political mismanagement, as this country had under Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, you can`t fix those problems in three weeks or three months."

With popular discontent on the rise, Bremer has opted to focus the energies of the 1,000-member occupation administration on four areas: giving Iraqis more responsibility for governance, improving security, resuscitating the economy and restoring public services. Bremer`s staff has made headway in each area, but it also has run up against a host of complexities -- from political infighting to antiquated infrastructure -- that have made quick results elusive.

Governance


On July 29, more than two weeks after they were chosen by Bremer`s staff, the 25 members of the Governing Council assembled in one of Hussein`s former ministry buildings for their first big decision: selecting a leader. As they took turns speaking, most members around the large oval table voiced support for a single president backed by two deputies. A vote was called. Seventeen members -- a two-thirds majority -- approved the proposal.

Then, several recalled, Jalal Talabani, one of Iraq`s two most influential Kurdish leaders, interjected. "He said, `I will not accept this. There must be other people,` " recalled council member Songul Chapouk, a women`s rights activist who is an ethnic Turkman.

Talabani, a stout and imposing figure, insisted the heads of political parties form a leadership council, several members said. Members first suggested selecting a three-person committee that would have one representative from each of the country`s three major religious and ethnic groups: one Shiite Muslim Arab, one Sunni Muslim Arab and one Kurd.

But then several Shiites objected, arguing that because Kurds are Sunnis, too, that proposal would give the Sunnis a 2-to-1 majority, while Shiites represent about 60 percent of population.

The idea of expanding the leadership council by two was debated, but some members said they feared that all the seats would be grabbed by five prominent former exiles and Kurds who lived outside the control of Hussein`s government for more than a decade. A seven-member group was rejected on the grounds that the other two seats also would be claimed by former exiles. One member eventually raised the idea of having 11 presidents.

"That`s a football team," council member Ghazi Yawar, a businessman who recently returned from exile in Saudi Arabia, said he told the group. "That`s crazy."

Grudgingly, the group settled on nine -- with 14 members vying for a spot.

At that point, several members said, a small group of former exiles, including Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Ayad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord and Ibrahim Jafari of the Shiite Dawa Party, broke away for private discussions. When they returned, the members said, they produced a list of nine names -- all of whom were Kurds or former exiles.

"We thought there would be a democratic process," said Chapouk, who nominated herself to serve on the committee but was not among those on the list. Also excluded were a professor at Baghdad University and another woman, neither of whom were exiles.

The professor, Mohsen Abdul Hamid, objected. He argued that because he was a leader of a prominent Sunni party and not a former exile, he should be among the presidents. After another round of negotiations, one of the nine agreed to step aside for Hamid.

As they left the room late in the afternoon to speak to the media, members refrained from criticism. But in private conversations, several said they felt the process was hijacked by a small group of politicians. "We`re trying to take our first step toward democracy and we screwed up our first big vote," one member said.

The presidency will rotate among the nine once a month. "We acknowledge it is a bit large," said Jafari, the president this month. "But we felt it was the best solution."

By giving the council the power to name ministers and shape the budget, Bremer wanted to mute criticism from Iraqis that the occupation authority was not ceding control fast enough. But U.S. officials here have been frustrated that the council, which meets behind closed doors within the U.S. security cordon, has not moved faster in seizing its new responsibilities.

"They need a more organized decision-making process," Bremer said.

Security


A half-dozen armed men in police uniforms knocked on Thaer Bahauddin`s door early one morning in late July. "We`re here to inspect the house," one of the men told Bahauddin`s family.

After prowling through the two-story structure in eastern Baghdad, they announced that Bahauddin`s son Thamir, 17, would need to accompany them to the police station. They also said they were going to impound the family`s two cars.

"We were suspicious, but not too much," said Bahauddin, a wealthy trader. "This was how the police behaved in Saddam`s time."

It was not until someone telephoned later in the day asking for $100,000 that he realized his son had been kidnapped.

For six days, Bahauddin went through what has become an increasingly common nightmare in the Iraqi capital. Fearful that calling police might endanger his son, he haggled with the kidnappers himself, insisting that he did not have $100,000.

As the negotiations dragged on, Thamir was locked in the bathroom of a house in central Baghdad with five other people, including two bank looters, who had been captured by the same gang. "They told the looters, `You`ve stolen and now you must give us your share,` " he said.

Finally, Bahauddin managed to get the ransom down to $3,000. A few hours after Bahauddin he paid, Thamir was dropped off at home by a taxi.

Although there are no reliable statistics to compare the level of crime before and after the war, Iraqi police believe it has skyrocketed. Car heists, armed robberies and cold-blooded killings -- for both robbery and revenge -- have become alarmingly common. The director of Baghdad`s central morgue said his facility handled 10 times more shooting victims this July than it did last July.

The military has stepped up patrols in major cities, and the occupation authority has accelerated plans to bring Iraqi policemen back to work. More than 34,000 are now in uniform, said Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who is a senior adviser to Baghdad`s police force. He said he hoped to have 65,000 policemen nationwide by the end of next year.

Many of the officers who have returned lack cars, weapons and a desire to patrol -- something the police rarely did while Hussein was in power. Kerik is putting all returning policemen through a three-week course designed to teach them to respect human rights, investigate crimes and walk the beat. "We need to change their culture," he said.

So far, however, only about 300 officers have been through the refresher course in Baghdad. In the 35 police stations that have reopened in the capital, officers still mill around instead of patrolling.

The new police force has had some successes of late, including capturing a 10-person gang that is believed to be responsible for kidnapping Thamir and about 20 other people. But Bahauddin said such victories are not enough to make him feel safer.

"I`m thinking of leaving the country with my family," he said. "Crime is out of control. The police are not up to the task."

Economy


Faez Ghani Aziz, the avuncular director of a state-owned vegetable oil factory in southern Baghdad, was under intense pressure. Dozens of workers who had been dismissed before the war were demanding their jobs back, but the Industry Ministry told him to reject those requests because the factory already had plenty of workers.

A man had recently walked into Aziz`s office with a grenade and threatened to pull the pin if his job was not reinstated, factory officials said. Although Aziz managed to restore calm, scores of people protested the next day in front of the ministry`s temporary headquarters to demand jobs.

"These people were saying, `Either you let us back to work or we`re going to do something,` " said Luay Ali, security director for the ministry, which oversees owns the vegetable oil company.

Two days after the grenade incident, Aziz drove to work in his white Isuzu Trooper sport-utility vehicle. Gunmen cut him off with two cars. They dragged him out of the Trooper, threw him to the ground and shot him five times, ending with a bullet to the head.

The killers never stated their reason for targeting Aziz, but his colleagues have little doubt he was murdered because he refused to rehire the workers. "There is a very clear connection," Ali said.

Rampant unemployment has long been a problem in Iraq, where a once-prosperous, oil-slicked economy ground to halt after eight years of war with neighboring Iran and 13 years of U.N.-imposed economic sanctions following Hussein`s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. When the Americans arrived, though, many here assumed they would secure the well-paying job of their dreams -- or at least unemployment insurance payments.

"There is such a thing in America, so why can`t we have it here?" said Suhail Abdul Hussein, the leader of a group of jobless men who have been staging a sit-in across from the Republican Palace. "We have no money to live."

American officials have paid salaries to a quarter-million government workers. And Bremer also has decided to compensate several hundred thousand former soldiers.

But those payments cover only a fraction of Iraq`s workforce. Abdul Hussein and his fellow protesters are among the 60 percent of Iraqis who were unemployed before the war and, as a result, are ineligible for a payment from the occupation authority.

To address the problem, Bremer said he is spending $300 million on short-term jobs and other plans intended to stimulate the economy, such as offering micro-loans to small-business owners. In southern Iraq, he said, almost 90,000 people have been hired by the authority to clean out irrigation canals.

The authority also has been continuing the monthly food rations that were handed out by Hussein`s government, but it lacks the funds to start doling out unemployment benefits to every jobless person. "There`s no spare money sitting around," said Peter McPherson, a former Treasury Department official who is Bremer`s top economic adviser.

Among ordinary Iraqis, however, that is difficult to believe. "We sit on a lake of oil," said Walid Azzawi, an unemployed engineer who said he and his family of five would be evicted at the end of the month if he could not come up with a $210 annual rent payment. "If the Americans wanted to, they could give us jobs."

Public Services


If two of Daura Power Plant`s four skyscraping smokestacks are spewing an acrid cloud across southern Baghdad, it`s a good day. If just one is, it`s not. And lately, there haven`t been too many good days.

Built in 1966 and expanded over the years, the generating station is supposed to produce 740 megawatts of electricity -- about a third of Baghdad`s current demand. These days, though, the plant can barely eek out 180 megawatts, not because it was bombed, but because it was deprived of spare parts and annual maintenance during the 13 years of sanctions.

Two of the four oil-fired units need a full overhaul before they can work again. The other two, which operate at about 50 percent capacity, have been held together with jury-rigged parts and daily repairs. "We`re like an old man standing on one leg," said the plant`s director, Janan Matti.

Last week, an internal fan sputtered to a halt on one of the units, forcing Matti to crank down the plant`s output by 60 megawatts, cutting off power to about 6,000 homes in the capital just as temperatures were hitting 110 degrees. Dressed in a khaki boiler suit, he directed the repair effort from a scorching metal platform, ordering the broken part be replaced with an old bearing that had been patched up in the workshop. "It`s all we have," he said.

Finally, after five hours of work, technicians in the control room restarted the unit, sending a blast of black smoke into the air and much-needed electricity into the city`s starving power grid. "It`s a daily fight," he said. "We`re just trying to keep up."

U.S. and Iraqi power specialists said the rest of the country`s power generation and distribution system suffers from similar maintenance woes, exacerbated in many cases by the looting and sabotage of transmission lines. The result has been a precipitous drop in electricity production -- from 5,200 megawatts before the war to about 3,300 megawatts now.

The problem has been particularly acute in large cities because U.S. officials have discontinued a Hussein-era policy that diverted most power to urban areas. Although Baghdad`s power demand is estimated at 2,200 megawatts, it now receives only about 1,200 megawatts from the national grid, turning the once-modern capital into a place where merchants set up shop on the sidewalk and housewives store food in iceboxes.

The lack of power has been one of the biggest catalysts of public anger at occupation forces. In Basra, the country`s second-largest city, frustration over lengthy power outages erupted into large riots last weekend.

Restoring the power system is expected to take more than two years and cost more than $2 billion, U.S. officials said. The U.S. Agency for International Development already has earmarked more than $200 million of a $680 million contract it awarded to engineering giant Bechtel for electricity repairs. But some Iraqi officials have said that the firm has been slow to start work.

At the Daura plant, Matti said the first foreign specialists arrived only last week to assess the two inoperative units. They told him the repairs would not be finished until January at the earliest.

He said he worries whether people -- who already are seething at the lack of power, jobs and public security -- will be willing to wait that long to see all four of his smokestacks puffing away.

"We`re at a very fragile stage," he said. "We don`t have much time to demonstrate results."

Photos relating to this story by Andrea Bruce Woodall and a narration by Rajiv Chandrasekaran can be found at www.washingtonpost.com.



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washingtonpost.com
Saudi Arabia`s Teachers of Terror


By Jon Kyl and Charles Schumer

Monday, August 18, 2003; Page A19


The House of Saud has for decades played a double game with the United States, on the one hand acting as our ally, on the other supporting a movement -- Wahhabism -- that seeks our society`s destruction. Because of other strategic interests, our government has long indulged the Saudis, overlooking their financial and structural ties to one of the world`s most violent terror organizations.

After the attacks of 9/11, President Bush made clear that America would no longer play that game. He said: "Every nation will have a choice to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." It is time for Saudi Arabia to make that choice.

Upon its establishment as the nation`s ruling family, the House of Saud forged an alliance with the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam. The deal that was struck gave the House of Saud control over political and foreign policy, while the Wahhabis would be free to take charge of the society`s religious and cultural institutions.

Recently our subcommittee on terrorism held the first of a series of public hearings on the activities of this Wahhabi sect. The findings were alarming. Wahhabism is an extremist, exclusionary form of Islam that not only denigrates other faiths but also marginalizes peaceful followers of Islam. As witnesses testified, Wahhabism uses mosques and schools, called madrassas, to indoctrinate mostly young people with a hatred of Jews, Christians and traditional Muslims who reject this radicalism. Its goals are world domination and the destruction of its enemies.

Osama bin Laden is a follower of Wahhabism. So were all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Bin Laden`s al Qaeda trained the Taliban in Afghanistan, formed a movement that threatens the government of Pakistan and is the source of terrorist atrocities from Morocco to Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi Arabia itself.

The sect has established mosques in the United States and elsewhere in the world. According to federal officials, money collected at these mosques is often used to help finance the Wahhabis` global mission. Followers have developed new ways to recruit supporters in America by seeking out U.S. citizens or persons with Western passports, and infiltrating U.S. prisons and universities.

The Saudi government has conferred dangerous legitimacy on the Wahhabi sect. As Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis noted: "Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe." A Treasury Department official testified that Saudi Arabia is often the "epicenter" of funding for terrorist activities.

The House of Saud allows the sect to hand-pick imams to control local mosques and to run the madrassas. The Saudi-controlled media continue to abet Wahhabi teachings by spreading lies about the West. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, has issued a report on the Saudi media`s denial of the Holocaust and their charges that Jews run U.S. foreign policy.

It should be noted here that, through an expensive public relations campaign aimed at an American audience, the Saudi government vehemently denies any relationship to the Sept. 11 attackers. It also professes steadfast support for America`s war against terrorism. Recently the Saudi ambassador to the United States urged the Bush administration to release classified pages of an intelligence report that allegedly listed Saudi ties to terrorism. He further stated on the Saudi government`s Web site that "Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public."

The Saudi ambassador is right to encourage candor. It is time for the U.S./Saudi relationship to be based on a mutual commitment to eradicate terrorism. That commitment must be unambiguous, and it must include effective efforts by the Saudi government to stop Wahhabi support of terrorism.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and government information. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is a member of the Judiciary Committee.



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Posted on Mon, Aug. 18, 2003

MODIFY TRIBUNAL RULES
PROCEDURES SHOULD BE FAIR, IMPARTIAL

If skeptics around the world are to believe that the terrorism suspects being held at the U.S. military facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are receiving the benefits of an impartial system of justice, the captives must have access to competent defense lawyers. No one is better equipped to engage in the intense forensic duels that these cases could produce than American criminal-defense lawyers, but will they be available? Not likely. The rules devised by the Pentagon -- the list of promises lawyers will be required to sign if they want to participate -- are so restrictive, and contrary to fairness and due process, that lawyers rightly are balking.

UNFAIR STANDARDS

Standards of evidence are unfair, they say; and there are questions about appeal procedures. Defense lawyers must get government permission before talking about the case outside the courtroom, and the government insists on eavesdropping on conversations between suspects and their lawyers. Alfred P. Carlton Jr., outgoing president of the American Bar Association, said that he, for one, couldn`t sign such a list. Lawrence S. Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that he couldn`t advise members to participate either.

Last week, an ABA panel recommended that the Pentagon modify the rules. Among other things, the panel objected to restrictions on civilian defense lawyers` access to information and to a requirement that lawyers pay their own expenses. Neal Sonnett, a Miami defense lawyer and principal author of the report, said he, too, could not agree to the Pentagon`s conditions.

The Pentagon insists that the tribunals will be ``full and fair trials.`` But it says that security and intelligence agents must be able to listen to attorney-client conversations, even though the information won`t be used against the defendant at trial. Then why listen at all? The Pentagon`s assertion simply isn`t believable.

The Pentagon must address the defense lawyers` concerns because they aren`t mere legal pettifoggery. The right of confidentiality between lawyer and client is a bedrock principle of criminal jurisprudence, and no student leaves law school without learning a maxim coined by Justice Felix Frankfurter in McNabb vs. U.S.: ``The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.`` That applies both in and out of the courtroom.

JUSTICE CHALLENGED

Whisking some 660 terror suspects to be held incommunicado for months in cages on an island prison has already aroused legitimate questions around the world about the nature of American justice.

Failure to live up to our standards of fair trial in these cases would only provide more ammunition to those who say that Americans believe in liberty for themselves -- but not for others.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6556631.ht…

[Joerver]

Posted on Sun, Aug. 17, 2003

ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS
U.S. CREDIBILITY ON THE LINE IN AFGHANISTAN

Contrary to outward appearances, command central in the war against terrorism is Afghanistan -- not Iraq. Afghanistan is home to the Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists -- and maybe even Osama bin Laden. Yet recent reports suggest that conditions in Afghanistan are spiraling out of control despite U.S. efforts to stabilize the country and President Bush`s pledge to implement a Marshall Plan-type reconstruction there.

Rescuing Afghanistan from its desperate poverty, chaotic history and, lately, from the Islamic extremists known as the Taliban, has never been an easy proposition. The former Soviet Union tried but failed to bring Afghanistan to heel after 10 years, thanks in no small measure to U.S. support of the tribal warlords known collectively as the Mujahedeen.

ATTEMPT TO BRING ORDER

Now it`s the United States` turn to attempt to bring order to the country, only this time we are armed with the moral imperative that comes from the audacious 9/11 suicide attacks. The Taliban welcomed bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorism network into the country, gave them a base from which to operate and cover for their terror attacks against innocents. Unlike with Iraq, there was no second-guessing President Bush when he pledged to take the fight against terror directly to terrorists on their own turf in Afghanistan, and do whatever it takes to prevail.

A spate of bombings and attacks in Afghanistan over the past several months is the most visible challenge to the U.S. commitment in that country. If we are going to live up to that commitment -- as indeed we must -- then our efforts must become a national priority. U.S. credibility is on the line.

The signs of slippage are ominous. In a single day last week, 58 people in all were killed in factional fighting, a Taliban bomb attack and the explosion of a homemade bomb. In June, an al Qaeda suicide attack killed four German soldiers, and in May a plane filled with peacekeepers was shot down, killing 75. Humanitarian agencies warn that the attacks, orchestrated by terrorists, the Taliban, warlords and bands of bandits are signs that anarchy may once again rule in Afghanistan. They warn, too, that narco-traffickers dealing in opium and heroin are gaining strength and taking root among the poverty-stricken population.

SECURE THE COUNTRYSIDE

Last week, NATO forces took control from the International Security Assistance Force, which has brought security to the capital, Kabul -- a hopeful development. Some 8,500 U.S. personnel are part of an 11,500-member anti-terror coalition force -- but many more such forces are needed to secure the countryside. In addition, mobile and fast-moving Provincial Reconstruction Teams of soldiers help with rebuilding efforts, but there aren`t nearly enough of them to make a difference.

Success requires the United States to spend billions of dollars, invest significant military resources and be prepared to stay for a very long time. That`s what President Bush promised to end the scourge of al Qaeda terrorism -- and Afghanistan is the place to do it.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editorial/6542706.…

[Joerver]

US shifting focus, agents from Kabul to Baghdad
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/18/2003

WASHINGTON -- As the hunt for Saddam Hussein grows more urgent and the guerrilla war in Iraq shows little sign of abating, the Bush administration is continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers from the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to the Iraq crisis, according to intelligence officials who have been involved in the redeployments.

The recent moves -- involving both analysts in Washington and specially trained field operatives -- follow the transfer of hundreds of elite commandos from Afghanistan duty to service in Iraq, Pentagon officials said.

The activity reflects the priority of capturing Hussein quickly, ending the guerrilla war, and locating possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, officials said. It also gives further ammunition, however, to critics who have long claimed that fighting the Iraq war would divert resources and attention from the hunt for bin Laden, the primary architect of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other Al Qaeda fugitives.

"The intelligence brainpower is focused on Iraq," said a European diplomat who has recently been in Afghanistan and asked not to be named. "If you didn`t have Iraq, the intellectual energy would be on Afghanistan."

The Bush administration insists it can keep up the hunt for both bin Laden and Hussein and simultaneously tackle the enormous challenges of bringing stability to Iraq and Afghanistan. Administration officials stress that the global war on terrorism requires doing both. And the US Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Pat Roberts, said yesterday on CNN`s "Late Edition" that the "noose is tightening" around both bin Laden and Hussein. The Kansas Republican receives regular briefings on terror threats.

International diplomats and specialists, however, worry that the achievements of toppling the Taliban regime, denying Al Qaeda its primary sanctuary, and setting Afghanistan on a path toward representative government and economic independence are at risk of being eroded as Washington trains its sights on Iraq.

About 400 guerrillas drove a convoy of trucks late Saturday from Pakistan into southeastern Afghanistan and attacked a police headquarters building, according to the Associated Press. At least 22 police and rebels were killed in the ensuing firefight. The rebels held the police building until dawn yesterday, when they destroyed it and withdrew.

Last week, Afghanistan suffered the deadliest day since the end of major combat operations in the former Taliban stronghold. A bus bombing and clashes between the newly created Afghan National Army and Taliban and Al Qaeda guerrillas left 58 people dead and dozens wounded.

The United States has maintained about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. The troops have been operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, ferreting out Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who have found refuge in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding. On July 31, there were three skirmishes involving US forces near the capital of Kabul, including an attempted bombing. The US Central Command, meanwhile, has dispatched a series of provincial reconstruction teams to some of the country`s hardest-hit areas -- including Gardez, the former nerve center of Al Qaeda -- to enhance security and improve public services.

Defense officials said in interviews that these activities indicate there has been no reduction in the intensity of the Afghan operations. Some said last week that US forces are still trying to kill or capture Taliban and Al Qaeda holdouts.

"Warrior Sweep was an activity recently concluded, and there are others underway which continue to focus on these small elements, Taliban and/or Al Qaeda," Lieutenant General Norton A. Schwartz, director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. "And we will eliminate those elements."

One senior defense official said in an interview that Afghanistan remains a top priority and that the "facts back it up." On the eve of the Iraq war, he said, "we captured Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," an Al Qaeda operations chief who was detained in Pakistan. "We are rolling these guys up. Special forces are in the tribal areas, as we speak, working with the Pakistanis."

"I don`t think there has been any reduction in focus," added a Pakistani government official in Washington. He said that the pace of the ongoing US-Pakistani operations was illustrated last Monday when two Pakistani soldiers were accidentally killed by US forces who were chasing militants across the border near the northwestern Pakistani province of North Waziristan. "You could well imagine from that that it is pretty intense," said the Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified. In Peshawar on Thursday, at least one Al Qaeda suspect was killed during a six-hour gun battle with Pakistani security forces.

Pakistanis have "stepped up troop levels and patrols on the country`s borders with Afghanistan and, in the settled areas, have detained the largest number of Al Qaeda that we`ve captured," Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after returning from Afghanistan earlier this month. "Right around 500 Al Qaeda [have been] captured in the settled areas in Pakistan, either by Pakistani units or in conjunction with US and others."

Still, US officials acknowledge that the war in Iraq has siphoned some key military and intelligence resources from the US efforts in Afghanistan -- even as regrouping radical elements, a fragile security situation in the countryside, and a dramatic increase in opium production threaten to destabilize the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

"Did the intelligence community reallocate intelligence assets to Iraq? Sure," said one senior US intelligence official who asked not to be named. "We need to be flexible enough to surge. When you surge, you have to rededicate. You can move assets back and forth to the detriment of the other."

Another senior defense official, who asked not to be identified, pointed out that the Army`s Fifth Special Forces Group -- which consists of more than 300 Green Beret commandos -- was shipped from Afghanistan to Iraq in the early days of the Iraq war. Some have since returned to the United States, while others are still engaged in Iraq. He said that reserve troops, most of whom lacked Green Beret training, were sent into Afghanistan to replace them.

"It appears that our mission in Afghanistan would be advanced by a larger complement of US forces and bigger infusion of resources," said Loren Thompson, a defense specialist and president of the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank in Arlington, Va. "Most of the people who are on the ground there say that the reconstruction has moved at a snail`s pace." Meanwhile, NATO recently took command of the International Security Assistance Force, a 5,000-person army that patrols Kabul and helps train the Afghan Army. Its mandate, however, allows it to operate only within the confines of the capital, leaving the search for Al Qaeda to the United States.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/18/us_shi…

[Joerver]

Heute nur 24 Cartoons frische Ware, wieder mit dem Warnhinweis.

IQ Warning: Each issue contains ALL of the day`s cartoons on a single printer-friendly page. If you have a slow mind i.e. regularly watch Fox News it may take several minutes to get the jokes. Please be patient - its worth the wait.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030817_024_toons.htm

[stockmarketbull]

Was fasziniert dich bloss so an Bush,dass du dich von morgens bis abends mit ihm beschäftigst

[Joerver]

Media Bodies Want U.S. Probe of Reuters Man`s Death
Mon August 18, 2003 07:02 AM ET


NEW YORK (Reuters) - International media rights bodies called on the United States on Monday to launch a full inquiry into the killing of award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot dead by U.S. troops in Iraq.
Soldiers on an American tank shot at Dana on Sunday while he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack, witnesses said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders, RSF) in Paris urged the U.S. authorities to conduct a full inquiry.

Dana, a 43-year-old Palestinian, had worked for Reuters mostly in the West Bank city of Hebron. The CPJ honored him with its International Press Freedom Award in 2001 for his work in Hebron where he was wounded and beaten many times.

"In the midst of frequent violence, and often under attack himself, Mazen was a determined witness who took constant risks in order to tell the world the news from the West Bank -- and more recently from Iraq," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement on the committee`s Web site.

The statement said the CPJ "calls for a full investigation into the shooting and a public accounting of the circumstances."

"We are shocked and extremely disturbed by this new death," Severine Cazes of RSF told CNN television. "There have been many mistakes...by the U.S. military during the war."

The group would be writing to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday to seek a fuller investigation than those inquiries made into previous incidents in Iraq, Cazes said.

"It`s disappointing to see that a country which is a big democracy, which respects freedom of the press and which is waging a war in the name of those values is not able to do proper investigations," she said.

RSF urged Rumsfeld to launch an "honest investigation that will not lead to just a whitewash of the U.S. military."

The U.S. armed forces said on Sunday that their troops had "engaged" a Reuters cameraman. It said soldiers had thought his camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer has called for "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Dana is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the U.S.-led force invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. His death brought to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since the war began on March 20.

On April 8, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian based in Warsaw, died when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, the base for many foreign media in Baghdad.

[Joerver]

@Stockmarketbull
Bush ist doch nur das Warenzeichen. Die Gedankenwelt dahinter das ist das interessante. Und das führt zu Verzweigungen in alle Richtungen. Du glaubst garnicht in welch dunklen Räume das führt.
Wenn Du hier mehr liest, merkst Du in wievielen verschiedene Wissensgebiete das sich bewegt.

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraqoil…
THE WORLD

U.S. to Let Iraq Manage Its Oil
A plan for international advisors is dropped, signaling increased confidence in the competence of local technocrats.
By Warren Vieth
Times Staff Writer

August 18, 2003

WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has abandoned plans to create an international advisory board to oversee the country`s battered oil industry, opting instead to give Iraqi technocrats a freer hand to chart their own course.

While U.S. and allied officials remain in charge of reconstruction, the decision to scale back foreign supervision signals their increasing confidence in the competence of Iraqi oil professionals and heightened concern about Iraqi political sensitivities, officials said. Instead of answering to a global board of directors, oil technocrats will report to a minister named by the new Iraqi Governing Council.

The move could disappoint those who viewed the ouster of Saddam Hussein as an opportunity to set Iraqi oil policy on a pro-American course, open the nation`s oil sector to Western companies and reduce the influence of OPEC on world oil production and prices.

The decision was prompted in part by the reluctance of foreign oil company experts and prominent Iraqi expatriates to join the board, officials said. The expatriates expressed concern they would be perceived by Iraqis as agents of a U.S.-orchestrated takeover of the Iraqi industry. Some oil companies reportedly were reluctant to assign key personnel to the effort, fearing that their participation might sour future business deals in Iraq.

Retired Shell Oil Chief Executive Philip Carroll will continue to serve as the U.S.-led administration`s senior advisor to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, officials said, but the corporate-style advisory board he was supposed to chair will not be established.

Former Iraqi oil marketing chief Fadhil Othman, who was chosen three months ago to serve as Carroll`s vice chairman, said coalition authorities had concluded there was no longer any need for a high-profile oversight panel.

"Since the advisory committee has not met and has not been completed, they thought the best way was just not to continue with it," Othman said. "Since there is a new civilian government which can carry out the job, it is of no use any more."

Othman`s account was confirmed Friday by an official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, in Baghdad.

"Once we got in here and got to know the folks in the Oil Ministry and the employees at the oil companies, it became obvious that the expertise was already there," said the official, who requested anonymity. "So the advisory board just became unnecessary."

The signal of confidence comes at a particularly sensitive time, as rival political factions within Iraq jostle for influence over postwar oil policy. The Iraqi Governing Council is expected to announce its choice of an interim oil minister within days.

Coalition officials and many industry insiders are backing Thamir Ghadhban, a state oil company executive who has served as de facto minister since the end of the war. Competing exile groups have been promoting their own candidates, arguing that the top job should go to a political leader instead of a career bureaucrat. Perceptions of U.S. intent could affect the debate.

Some critics have accused the U.S. and its allies of waging war in Iraq to secure access to the world`s second-largest petroleum reserves and privatize its state-run oil companies. The creation of a multinational advisory board — with a U.S. oil company executive as chairman — was seen by some as confirmation of that agenda.

Decisions about Iraq`s oil industry are critical to the reconstruction effort as well as to the country`s future. Oil provided virtually all of Iraq`s export revenue in recent decades, and the United States and its allies are counting on a rapid restoration of production to bankroll most of the costs of reconstruction.

Over the longer term, policy decisions regarding foreign participation in oil field development and privatization of state-owned enterprises could have significant effects on Iraq`s economic progress and domestic politics.

Coalition officials said they would leave it up to the new Governing Council to determine whether any kind of advisory group was needed to oversee Iraq`s oil industry.

"The Governing Council really needs to make the decision if there should be an advisory board and who should sit on that advisory board," the CPA official said.

The creation of the advisory board was announced with considerable fanfare in early May. U.S. authorities said it would consist of a dozen or more international oil experts, including Iraqi industry expatriates, who would provide "professional advice and guidance" to the Oil Ministry management team headed by Ghadhban.

To chair the panel, the coalition turned to Carroll, a veteran oil industry executive who retired as chief executive of Royal Dutch/Shell Group`s U.S. operations in 1998 and later spent three years at the helm of Fluor Corp., an Irvine-based engineering and construction firm.

Othman, who headed Iraq`s State Oil Marketing Organization before retiring to Turkey in 1995, was named vice chairman, and coalition officials said other oil experts would be added to the advisory board to help guide the reconstruction effort.

But no other appointments were made, and word began circulating that the coalition was finding it difficult to recruit qualified candidates.

"They did have problems in getting people," said former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi, now an independent industry consultant in Jordan, "not only Iraqis, but even some experts from oil companies who preferred to stay away from such a board, thinking this might harm their future business relations."

Meanwhile, Carroll and other coalition officials were becoming increasingly impressed with the management and leadership skills of Ghadhban, who headed the Oil Ministry`s planning department before the war, and other top Iraqi technocrats who remained on the job after the fall of Hussein`s regime.

"With time, the administration has gradually built up confidence. It has learned that the Ministry of Oil has a lot of experts, and they know what to do," said Thamir Uqaili, a former ministry official who advised the State Department on reconstruction policy and now represents industry interests in Iraq.

Uqaili said he thought the original plan to create an advisory board made sense several months ago but that its value has diminished.

"At the time, the administration didn`t know the Iraqi facilities or the capabilities of the Ministry of Oil. There was a complete absence of knowledge," Uqaili said. "The committee, had it been formed earlier, would have been very good to bridge the gap, and could have influenced the decision-making process. Now we are a little bit late."

Although some administration critics had predicted that Carroll`s appointment was the first step in a U.S.-led effort to promote international oil ventures in Iraq, the silver-haired Shell veteran has kept a relatively low profile since arriving in Baghdad.

Industry insiders said he had developed a close working relationship with Ghadhban and had helped convince U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer III and other coalition officials that the Iraqis could be trusted to run their own oil shop.

Carroll could not be reached for comment. Coalition officials said he was taking time off in London and would return to Iraq this week.

Recent industry rumors that Carroll was reducing his involvement in the reconstruction effort were erroneous, a CPA official said.

"He is definitely continuing in his capacity as senior advisor," the official said. "His time commitment in Iraq is not going to be scaled back at all."

Othman, however, said his role as Carroll`s partner is through.

"We worked for two or three months to build the ministry and nominate candidates," Othman said. "I will not be continuing. My job is finished."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Monday, August 18, 2003

First Person: How serious is fight against terrorism?

By KAREN HEDWIG BACKMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST

When are we going to get serious about the war against terrorism?

We have been diverted into what appears to be an "unnecessary war" as indicated by the latest word from Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary. We have expended human life, manpower and an enormous amount of money into a war that does not seem to be directed at protecting this nation from terrorism.

Removing Saddam Hussein from power is an admirable goal but, unfortunately, it also appears to have been the goal of Osama bin Laden (who had no great love for Saddam) to have the secular leader of Iraq taken out of action in order to make Iraq safer for the bin Laden type of Islam.

I must also note that U.S. activities in Iraq were carried out in concert with the removal of U.S. military personnel from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, another stated goal of bin Laden. Meanwhile, we appear to be no safer from the threat of terrorism at the hands of the Taliban and al-Qaida. We do not have enough presence in the supposedly liberated nation of Afghanistan to keep the Taliban and al-Qaida from running rampant in that nation.

We have answered the call for help from Liberia and our military protective potential is spread woefully thin. So many personnel of the National Guard have been called into active duty in Iraq that I often wonder if we have enough soldier-power based here to keep our homeland safe from an invasion.

Should I be in a state of constant preparedness to protect our nation from foreign incursion, my cast-iron skillet in hand to bean the invaders? A very sad situation, if that is the case, as I doubt that foreign invaders would be kind and cooperative to get in close enough without shooting me first so that I could repel them with my handy skillet.

If that were not enough, President Bush seems very unwilling to provide adequately for the defense and security of our portals of entry, such as international airports, seaports and other points. He has made a great deal about the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which seems to be a fluff operation that hands out medals and press releases but does nothing of substance to promote actual homeland security.

The Bush presidency has justified many of its questionable decisions (the Iraqi conflict, incursions on the civil liberties of American citizens) on the urgency of fighting terrorism and keeping our nation secure. Unfortunately, I do not feel particularly secure and I find myself growing more and more angry at what appears to be a constant stream of window dressing and farce, rather than the actual, solid, reality-based achievement of national security.

Bush ain`t fishing and he ain`t cutting bait, either. He just seems to pulling off an ongoing shell game.

Karen Hedwig Backman lives in Federal Way. Submissions for First Person, of up to 800 words, can be e-mailed to [e-mail], faxed to 206-448-8184 or mailed to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, P.O. Box 1909, Seattle WA 98111-1909.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/135246_firstperson18.h…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/135246_firstperson18.h…

[Joerver]

The Kindergarten Colors Zwei Teile. Flash.


http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/schwarzenegg…

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/schwarzenegg…

Top 11 administration reactions to the Great Bush Blackout of `03:
11. "Get me out of harm`s way!"

10. "Upgrading the infrastructure? Sounds like a job for Halliburton!"

9. "We`ve got to do something ... Oh, wait. They`re all blue states."

8. "If only we had more people with energy experience in this administration."

7. "So much for your appearance on The Daily Show, Ms. Clinton! MUHWWAHAHAHAHA!"

6. "The energy industry needs a tax cut!"

5. "Endangered arctic wildlife, allow me to introduce Mr. Backhoe."

4. "Whatever, I`m going jogging."

3. "I`m telling you, we can sell it, `Bill Clinton`s penis took out a transformer.`"

2. "Should we cancel the fundraiser? HAHAHAHAHHAHA!"

And the number one administration reaction to the Great Bush Blackout of `03...

1. "Hello, you`ve reached the office of de facto president Dick Cheney. I`m on a vacation, but if you leave your name and number, I`ll get back to you next month."

[Joerver]

America Two Years after 9/11:
25 Things We Now Know

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, "The Crisis Papers."
August 18, 2003

Last year, close to the time of the first anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks, I wrote "Twenty Things We`ve Learned One Year After 9/11." Now we`re approaching the second anniversary, and it`s time for an update.

Things we could only speculate about a year ago have taken place -- to name just three: an invasion and occupation of Iraq (based on misleading intelligence and outright lies), an administration that may have committed the treasonous act of deliberately revealing the identity of a CIA agent, and shocking revelations about the computer-screen voting system now being put into place around the country for the 2004 election.

The abbreviated list below can be used both as a reminder to all of us why we`re fighting this good, oppositional battle, and as a place to start from when organizing and talking to others about why you will be voting for someone other than George W. Bush in the presidential vote next year.

Here are the topics and here`s what we`ve learned, all factually validated by -- or strongly suggested in -- journalistic reports.

THE IRAQ WAR

1. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and State Department.

They helped found the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America`s will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony."

All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late 2002.

2. We know that Bush and his highest officials -- notably Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and, to a lesser extent, Powell -- lied outrageously about Iraq`s weapons capabilities in order to get their war plans endorsed by the Congress and the American people. The biggest of many whoppers involved were the made-up stories about nuclear "mushroom clouds" over America, unleashed by the Iraqi drone air force.

These lies may have fooled many Americans at the time, but other countries, especially in Europe, smelled the rotten evidence and the imperial ambitions and would have nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, denouncing the Bush Administration to its face. Up to 10 million citizens (mostly organized via the internet) marched worldwide on the same day to try to stop the invasion -- before the war had even started! -- something that had never happened before in world history.

3. We know that Rumsfeld wanted to move on Iraq just a few hours after 9/11, even though he was quickly informed that it was an al-Qaida operation and that there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement. When the CIA and other intelligence agencies said the same thing about a supposed al-Qaida link -- and Iraq`s alleged nuclear program and other WMD -- Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence-gathering unit inside the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, and installed a number of PNAC hardliners to tell him what he wanted to hear. Their cooked-books "intelligence" became the basis for invading Iraq.

4. We know that Bush and his highest officials, their lies having been exposed by their own contradictory words, as usual first decided to blame others: The patsy this time was the CIA, and Tenet fell on his sword, sort of, in accepting the blame. (Angry elements in the CIA then began leaking damning information about Bush&Co. involvement in other WMD lies.)

When Karl Rove and the others snookered the media into focusing on a mere 16 words in Bush`s State of the Union Speech about supposed uranium sales to Iraq, they looked at the polls showing a majority of Americans not caring about the lies as long as the evil Saddam had been removed, and began telling even more whoppers. (Meanwhile, in the U.K., Blair could lose his job because he lied even more blatantly than did Bush, if such is possible -- he trumpeted that Iraq could launch biochemical agents at British sites within 45 minutes -- and now he`s been found out as well.)

5. We know that Bush and Blair felt compelled to "sex up" their justification for going to war against Iraq by focusing on the WMD issue because the real reason -- to bomb and take over a weak nation in that area of the world as a demonstration warning to other Middle East, oil-rich countries that they`d better come on board or face the same consequence -- would never win the support of the American people. Americans aren`t big on overt imperial rule, and the bullying and arrogant militarism that go with such rule, preferring more subtle means of influence and control.

6. We know that although the U.S. promised that there would be a swift turnover of civil rule to the Iraqis, that promise has been revoked. The U.S. occupying authority has appointed its own governing council of hand-picked Iraqis, over which it has veto power, and is hoping that gesture will suffice long enough to set up the Western looting-system. Such behemoth Republican-supporting corporations as Halliburton and Bechtel are making out like bandits with reconstruction contracts awarded by the Bush Administration (in the case of Cheney`s old firm Halliburton, with no competitive bidding!).

7. We know that the PNAC cabal, which relied on Iraqi exile fantasies, believed that the citizens of that invaded country would welcome the American & British forces with kisses and flowers. Instead, major factions of the country are engaged in nightly guerrilla warfare against their "liberators" and have killed and wounded more U.S. soldiers after Bush declared the end of major hostilities than were killed in the invasion battles. Oil pipelines and water systems are blown up regularly. There is the familiar odor across Iraq of a Vietnam-type syndrome; you know what I mean: just a little more force and we`ll have them on the run/are those friendlies or bad guys? don`t take chances, fire!/the troops will be home by Christmas/send another 100,000 soldiers quick.

8. We know that elements of the PNAC/Bush cabal appear anxious to move on to another country, though it`s still unclear whether the next target for control (and perhaps "regime change") will be Syria or Iran -- with North Korea becoming more and more bellicose off to the side.

9. We know that two high officials of the Bush Administration leaked to a conservative newspaper columnist the name of a covert CIA agent -- which is a felony. The agent is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man sent by Cheney to Niger last year to see if there was anything to the story that Iraq supposedly was trying to buy "yellowcake" uranium; Wilson reported back saying that the story was "highly unlikely." After the Bush Administration continued to use this lie in various public speeches -- even though they knew the documents were forgeries -- Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, documenting his version of events. Wilson has since said that by naming his wife, the Bush Administration is sending a warning to other potential whistleblowers in the Administration not to speak up or risk unpleasant consequences. The FBI says it may investigate the matter. Sure it will.

10. We know that just prior to the launch of the Iraq war, the U.S. announced its "road map" for Middle East peace in order to lower the possibility of upheavals in the Arab world. Since the U.S. refuses to fully and energetically engage in the peace process -- to do so would mean leaning heavily on Israel to make major concessions and remove its permanent settlements on Palestinian land -- there is not likely to be genuine and lasting peace in that tortured area of the world. Abbas can`t control his extremists, Sharon has his own extremist streak -- the perfect ingredients for more slaughter, and more anger in the Arab/Islamic world against the U.S. and its Israeli proxy. And more fertile soil in which young terrorists can be grown.

THE 9/11 COVERUP

11. We know that the inner national-security circles of the White House knew an attack was coming from al-Qaida, with planes used as weapons, aimed at American icon targets. (These warnings were coming from other governments -- sometimes directly to Bush -- as early as the Spring of 2001 and intensified greatly during the Summer. That is the period, you may remember, when Bush went to ground in Texas for a month and Ashcroft would no longer fly in commercial jets. Even with this advance warning, the Bush Administration did nothing to interdict, stop or otherwise interfere with the terrorist attacks they knew were coming.

12. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities of the Administration.

13. We know that, to this day, the Bush Administration has stonewalled and delayed turning over essential information to both the Congressional committee and to the blue-ribbon independent panel investigating the pre-9/11 period. When the Congressional report recently was released, the Administration redacted 28 pages dealing with the role of Saudi individuals and government officials in financing the terrorists, and, what`s perhaps even more vital, redacted all papers related to the May 6 presidential briefing document from the CIA about the likelihood of a domestic terrorist air-attack in the United States.

14. We know that the coverup continues today, from the first days after 9/11, when Condeleeza Rice claimed that the Administration had no idea that planes could be used as weapons against buildings, to the blaming of the FBI for "not connecting the dots." The incoming Bush Administration, including Rice, had been warned by the outgoing Clinton Administration that the #1 national-security threat was al-Qaida terrorism; other Islamic terrorists had tried to use planes as weapons previously, and the chief defendant in the 1993 WTC bombing had admitted that al-Qaida wanted to bomb key buildings, including the Pentagon and the Congress, in future attacks.

The independent 9/11 commission has publicly expressed its frustration at how their investigation -- which must submit its final report in just a few months -- is being hampered by the consistent stonewalling and delaying tactics of the Bush Administration. Likewise, the victims` families are appalled by and angry at those examples of foot-dragging, denials and lying.

DOMESTIC ATROCITIES

15. We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. This was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks was growing even larager from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan (other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the economy and creating jobs. More than 2,000,000 citizens have lost their jobs since Bush was installed in the White House.

16. We know that the HardRight conservatives who control Bush policy want to decimate and eviscerate popular social programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors), aspects of public education. Since the programs are so well-approved by the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic words of "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going to the public and saying that they`d love to keep the programs intact but they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit and weak economy.

17. We know that those with a vested interest in energy policy (the Kenny Lays of America) had major impact in writing that policy, with no consumer-group input; this basically gave these energy cartels carte blanche to rob the states and the public blind. The push for "deregulation" led to gross and illegal manipulation of the energy markets in state after state, and has nearly pushed California, for example, into bankruptcy, with the Bush Administration not lifting a finger to help. And Cheney continues to refuse to tell the courts who attended those energy-policy meetings and what was discussed.

18. We know that Bush environmental policy -- dealing with air and water pollution, national park systems, and so on -- is an unmitigated disaster, more or less giving free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better when they don`t have to pay attention to the public interest.

19. We know that in general, the public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the Bush Administration. Those on the inside who have left have revealed that political considerations are at the heart of all decision-making, with little if any discussion of what might benefit the people. Further, they say, there is little or no curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other opinions -- in other words, don`t bother me with facts, my mind`s made up.

20. We know that there seems to be a "faith-based" view of reality. For example, when there was public clamor for policy to deal with the effects of global warming, the Administration said that was a "controversial" issue that would need more study; it appointed a scientific panel to review the situation. When that panel reported that global warming was real and needed to be dealt with on an urgent basis, Bush denounced the scientists that he himself had appointed as little more than "bureaucrats" and dismissed their conclusions; he also deleted the section on global warming from the annual EPA report. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman resigned, one would imagine at least partially out of total frustration in dealing with these Neanderthals.

21. We know that the Patriot Act -- which was rushed through Congress in the days right after 9/11, with few legislators having had a chance to read the final draft -- has generated a huge groundswell of public opposition. More than 130 towns and cities have passed resolutions opposing it in part or in whole. The main objections center around the removal of all sorts of constitutional guarantees of due process of law, such as lawyer-client confidentiality and the sanctity of home privacy, and which authorizes wiretapping and snooping into personal computer files without you ever knowing about it. Even though Ashcroft already has thrown U.S. citizens into military prisons, thus removing them from judicial review, he appears to be desirous of even more outrages in Patriot Act II, including the exiling and deporting of American citizens deemed to be "terrorists."

We know that the Bush neocons were able to get these and similar bills passed by invoking the patriotic buzzwords "national security" and "homeland defense." Most members of Congress went along so that they wouldn`t be tarred with the "unpatriotic" brush. And, in general, the Administration constantly has manipulated post-9/11 fears in the population, because it serves their electoral/policy purposes to keep folks jittery and looking to the central government for assurance and stability. (There ARE bad guys out there who wish us harm, but it`s possible to deal with that reality without all the Constitution-shredding and psychological manipulation.)

22. We know that more and more, the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home -- with the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens from a potential repressive government -- are taking us into a kind of American fascism domestically and an imperial foreign policy overseas. As a result, we are beginning to see more alliances between liberal/left forces and libertarians/traditional conservatives horrified that their party has been hijacked by extreme ideologues.

23. We know that the response to the 2000 Florida election debacle -- going to touch-screen computer voting machines -- may turn out to be even worse. Three outfits dominate the computer-voting market, all companies owned or supported by Republicans, and that they refuse to permit their software to be examined by outsiders, even though tests have revealed major flaws in their systems: The votes can be manipulated easily without any evidence that the count has been tampered with, and with no verifiable paper trail to check against the final tallies. (There are suspicions that this may actually have happened in the 2002 elections in a number of states, where Democrats were leading in the last-minute polls going into the election but lost when the computer votes were added up.)

Given what happened in Florida, the 2004 vote must be honest and fair and, perhaps even more important, must be SEEN as honest and fair by the citizenry at large. Another disputed election and democracy in America may well die a quick death -- or lead to revolutionary discontent about the need to restore our Constitution.

24. We know that the Bush Administration continues to nominate ideologically-minded conservative judges, especially for the all-important appellate courts. The Democrats fall for the bait -- opposing the handful of nominees who are truly repellant extremists -- and, to show how fair they are, approve the 100+ others. Thus, the neoconservatives lock in approval for their HardRight policies for years, maybe even decades, to come.

25. We know that after a long, quiescent snooze, where the ostensible opposition party, the Democrats, played obedient lap dog to Bush&Co., things are starting to shift. Many Democrats have suddenly discovered their spines and are opposing HardRight initiatives, though not as consistently and as firmly as they should (Daschle, for example, is a notorious wimp). The Democrats see the Bush Administration as more vulnerable with the voters today as a result of the disastrous and duplicitous way they bamboozled American citizens and Congress into approving the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Having a number of tough-speaking presidential contenders aim their darts at Bush&Co. policies certainly helps generate more opposition.

Well, those will do for starters. No doubt, you have plenty more to add: The possibilities seemingly are endless when it comes to Bush&Co. misdeeds, scandals, incompetencies, lies and crimes.

As the presidential election run-up approaches, and if we do our jobs correctly, more and more citizens will add up what has happened to their country since the terror attacks of two years ago, and decide that Bush&Co. has to go -- preferably by resignation, but, if not, by impeachment or by the voters.


Copyright 2003, by Bernard Weiner

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America fights for freedom to read

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By James Bovard
Originally published August 18, 2003



THE BUSH administration, Congress and civil liberties groups are heading for a showdown over Patriot Act provisions on library searches.
Unfortunately, the Justice Department is using a blizzard of fabrications to defend its new post 9/11 powers. Public libraries are rapidly becoming the front line for determining how far the Feds will be permitted to intrude into Americans` lives in the name of anti-terrorism.

A secret court now has jurisdiction over the reading habits of the American people. Section 215 of the Patriot Act empowers FBI agents to go to any library or bookstore and demand a list of what people have borrowed or bought -- or even what people have asked about.

As part of a terrorist investigation, the FBI need not have any evidence of wrongdoing, only a blanket authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which never holds public hearings and always grants the government`s request for search warrants and other intrusions.

The Patriot Act nullified federal, state and local laws protecting the privacy of library users and bookstore customers from federal agents. Within months after 9/11, federal or local lawmen had already visited nearly 10 percent of the nation`s public libraries "seeking September 11-related information about patron reading habits," according to a University of Illinois survey.

The Patriot Act gags librarians and bookstore employees, prohibiting them from disclosing to targeted individuals that the FBI is probing their literary proclivities. Many librarians are protesting the new policies.

Libraries in Santa Cruz, Calif., posted warnings to their patrons informing them that the Patriot Act "prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you. Questions about this policy should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. 20530."

Dale Canelas, library director at the University of Florida at Gainesville, observed: "Just because you read a book about explosives, doesn`t mean you`re going to blow something up."

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo continually seeks to blunt criticism of the library searches by misrepresenting the law. He told the Florida Today newspaper: "This is limited only to foreign intelligence. U.S. citizens cannot be investigated under this act."

But when FBI agents get warrants to sweep up all the names of someone who borrowed or bought a specific book, there is no way for libraries or bookstores to segregate the names of American citizens from foreign agents before satisfying the government`s demands.

Mr. Corallo told the San Francisco Chronicle that before an FBI agent gets library or bookstore records, he must "convince a judge that the person for whom you`re seeking a warrant is a spy or a member of a terrorist organization. The idea that any American citizen can have their records checked by the FBI, that`s not true."

But the Patriot Act assures that the unsubstantiated assertion by an FBI agent is enough to start vacuuming up names. All that is necessary for a rubber stamp search warrant is for a federal agent to assert that the records are "sought for" an on-going terrorism investigation.

Justice Department chief spokeswoman Barbara Comstock asserted July 30: "Section 215 provides for thorough congressional oversight. Every six months, the attorney general is required to `fully inform` Congress on the number of times agents have sought a court order under section 215, as well as the number of times such requests were granted, modified or denied. While this information is classified, Congress has been fully informed about how many times this provision has been used."

But the Justice Department`s concept of "fully inform" is little more than a one-page memo listing the number of search warrants secured from the FISC with no details about how many people were searched as a result of each warrant, how many records were confiscated and how many people were gagged and prevented from disclosing that their library or bookstore had surrendered information in response to a federal warrant.

The American Civil Liberties Union last month filed a federal lawsuit to get Section 215 struck down as an unconstitutional violation of Americans` freedom of speech and freedom from warrantless searches. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., proposed the Freedom to Read Protection Act to repeal Patriot Act provisions which subvert library patrons` privacy.

How much of a right to deceive the public do government officials deserve in the name of anti-terrorism? None of the false statements about library searches have anything to do with preserving national security -- only with protecting the image of the Justice Department and FBI. There is no need to give federal agents an unlimited right to rummage in Americans` lives in order to stop further al-Qaida attacks.


James Bovard is the author of Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan. He lives in Rockville.



Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.patriot18aug…

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CIA REPORT


Global Trends 2015:
A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts


NIC 2000-02, December 2000
To purchase... (GPO stock number 041-015-00211-2)
Adobe Acrobat® PDF Version (6.438 MB)


This paper was approved for publication by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under the authority of the Director of Central Intelligence.

Prepared under the direction of the National Intelligence Council.

Letter from the Director of Central Intelligence
Letter from the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council


Note on Process
In undertaking this comprehensive analysis, the NIC worked actively with a range of nongovernmental institutions and experts. We began the analysis with two workshops focusing on drivers and alternative futures, as the appendix describes. Subsequently, numerous specialists from academia and the private sector contributed to every aspect of the study, from demographics to developments in science and technology, from the global arms market to implications for the United States. Many of the judgments in this paper derive from our efforts to distill the diverse views expressed at these conferences or related workshops. Major conferences cosponsored by the NIC with other government and private centers in support of Global Trends 2015 included:

Foreign Reactions to the Revolution in Military Affairs (Georgetown University).


Evolution of the Nation-State (University of Maryland).


Trends in Democratization (CIA and academic experts).


American Economic Power (Industry & Trade Strategies, San Francisco, CA).


Transformation of Defense Industries (International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, UK).


Alternative Futures in War and Conflict (Defense Intelligence Agency and Naval War College, Newport, RI, and CIA).


Out of the Box and Into the Future: A Dialogue Between Warfighters and Scientists on Far Future Warfare (Potomac Institute, Arlington, VA).


Future Threat Technologies Symposium (MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA).


The Global Course of the Information Revolution: Technological Trends (RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA).


The Global Course of the Information Revolution: Political, Economic, and Social Consequences (RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA).


The Middle East: The Media, Information Technology, and the Internet (The National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC).


Global Migration Trends and Their Implications for the United States (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC).


Alternative Global Futures: 2000-2015 (Department of State/Bureau of Intelligence and Research and CIA`s Global Futures Project).
In October 2000, the draft report was discussed with outside experts, including Richard Cooper and Joseph Nye (Harvard University), Richard Haass (Brookings Institution), James Steinberg (Markle Foundation), and Jessica Mathews (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). Their comments and suggestions are incorporated in the report. Daniel Yergin (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) reviewed and commented on the final draft.



http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/globaltrends2015/globaltrends…

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[Joerver]

The Atlantic Monthly | September 2003


The Age of Murdoch

Many see him as a power-mad, rapacious right-wing vulgarian. Rupert Murdoch has indeed been relentless in building a one-of-a kind media network that spans the world. What really drives him, though, is not ideology but a cool concern for the bottom line—and the belief that the media should be treated like any other business, not as a semi-sacred public trust. The Bush Administration agrees. Rupert Murdoch has seen the future, and it is him

by James Fallows



No civics text has the stomach to describe Washington`s "wait in line" industry. When a famous witness is to appear before a committee of Congress, or a famous case is to be argued at the Supreme Court, tourists imagine they can drop in to watch; but they discover that the line for admission formed well before dawn. Professionals in town—lawyers, lobbyists—can`t afford to be left out, especially if clients` money is at stake. So they hire services to do the waiting for them. On the days of big events, lines resembling those outside soup kitchens or for-pay blood banks snake through marble corridors in House and Senate office buildings and spill out onto the sidewalk long before most staffers show up for work. At 9:45 or so, for the typical 10:00 A.M. committee hearing, taxis and town cars begin depositing passengers who have come from breakfast or early meetings at their firms. The paid placeholders hold up little signs with names on them, like limo drivers greeting arrivals at an airport, and the switch occurs. Someone with wild hair or wearing several sweatshirts leaves his place in line or his seat in the hearing room, and someone in a nice suit steps in. Economically the arrangement makes sense, but it`s a little too crass a reminder of the different standing of citizens before their democratic government.

A line formed outside the Russell Senate Office Building early one morning this May, in anticipation of a session that would combine glamour and money. Congress was beginning to pay attention to pending changes in the rules that restrict the number of radio and TV stations a person or company may own. The proposed revisions were highly technical, but if the changes went through, they would provoke a wave of buying, selling, and consolidation in the media business. In particular they would allow, and therefore presumably encourage, a large number of mergers or takeovers among newspapers and TV stations. Supporters argued that this would be economically efficient and productive, opponents that it would give too much power to too few companies. A Senate committee chaired by John McCain had summoned several expert witnesses to discuss the implications of the changes that morning, along with a man who was not directly involved in the debate but who seemed to personify media power: Rupert Murdoch.

At this hearing, as in most of his public appearances, Murdoch would dismiss the idea that he is anything like a media "baron" or that the holdings of his company, News Corporation, constitute an "empire"—a term he dislikes. The company is generally referred to as "News" or "News Corp"; politicians often pronounce the name "News Core," as if it were akin to the Peace Corps or the Marine Corps. Its main holdings are the Fox broadcast networks and Fox News, Fox Sports, FX, and other Fox cable channels in the United States; 20th Century Fox studios; thirty-five local U.S. TV stations; the New York Post plus The Times and The Sun of London; the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard; the publishing house HarperCollins; the Sky satellite system in England and the Star satellite system in Asia; the Los Angeles Dodgers, which News Corp is selling; and various publications in Murdoch`s native Australia. In addition, Murdoch is now seeking federal approval to buy a one-third share in DirecTV, the leading satellite-broadcast system in North America.

To someone not named Murdoch, this might sound like a lot. But Rupert Murdoch frequently points out that the three established TV networks in the United States are part of conglomerates much larger than his. Last year the total revenues of News Corp were about $17 billion. CBS belongs to Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster, Blockbuster, Infinity radio, and so on, with total revenues of $25 billion. ABC is part of Disney, with revenues of $26 billion. NBC is owned by General Electric, whose total revenues were $131 billion. Murdoch`s upstart Fox News Channel, founded in 1996, has for more than a year consistently beaten the better-known CNN (founded in 1980) in cable-news rankings. CNN is part of the AOL Time Warner combine, whose revenues last year, despite the historic AOL collapse, were $42 billion—two and a half times News Corp`s.

So Murdoch didn`t represent the biggest media company, or even one that was directly affected by the proposed changes in ownership rules. His share in DirecTV would involve legal and regulatory issues different from the ones Congress was discussing. But Murdoch was the media heavyweight the politicians wanted to hear from, because News Corp and Fox are personal companies in a way that other networks have not been since the days of William S. Paley and "General" David Sarnoff. Murdoch and his relatives control some 30 percent of all News Corp shares, through a family trust called Cruden Investments. That stake is worth about $12 billion at News Corp`s current market capitalization. Because of his role as owner, and also his market success, Murdoch`s reign has been long and unchallenged in a way not seen for the past few decades, during which CBS and NBC (the networks Paley and Sarnoff founded), and most of the rest of the media world, became the province of corporations. Jack Welch was in charge of GE for more than two decades, and Michael Eisner has run Disney for nearly that long. But neither of them can expect to stay in command as long as they`re physically able, which Murdoch clearly intends to do. And unlike Paley and Sarnoff, whose familial power died with them, Murdoch has planned his succession.

Whether or not News Corp is an empire, functionally it is a dynasty. At seventy-two, Murdoch is four years older than Welch—but twenty-two years younger than his own mother, Dame Elisabeth Greene Murdoch, who as of this summer was still active in Australia. (Murdoch is said to have remarked when he heard that Britain`s Queen Mother had succumbed at 102, "An early death!") His father died at sixty-seven, after heart and prostate problems. After a prostate-cancer scare three years ago, Murdoch become a diet-and-fitness enthusiast. His third wife, Wendi Deng, is thirty-five. His fifth child, Grace, is not yet two, and a sixth child is on the way. He has two older daughters—Prudence, age forty-five, and Elisabeth, thirty-five—and two sons. Lachlan, thirty-two, is the deputy chief of operations at News Corp. James, who will turn thirty-one late this year, runs the Star satellite business in Asia. For several years Murdoch has been indicating that one of the sons—probably Lachlan but perhaps James, depending on how he does in the next few years at Star—or both jointly will succeed him at News Corp.

Several years ago I ended up, to my shock, sitting across from Murdoch at a long restaurant table at a crowded technology conference. He said hello and asked my name, went back to finishing his meal, and in general didn`t behave as if I should be in awe of him. We discussed nothing of substance on that occasion, and News Corp officials told me not even to dream of interviewing Murdoch for this article. I was able to watch him testify and speak to groups several times, and I interviewed people who have worked or still work closely with or who have competed against him. All the associates and employees I reached, and most of the business rivals, refused even to meet for a discussion unless I agreed not to use their names. The Fox News organization is under blanket orders not to talk to the press unless pre-cleared. I did not manage to get anyone at Fox to admit the incongruity of a news organization`s taking this stance.

Billionaires, based on the seven-person sample I`ve had the chance to observe, tend to be either superpolite and ostentatiously respectful or the reverse. Murdoch is in the polite camp. When he stepped into the Senate hearing room, his personal bearing set him apart from the senators who had asked him to appear. Senators carry themselves as if waiting to be noticed. Murdoch eased into the hearing room as if hoping not to make a stir. He was wearing a plain dark suit and not-very-stylish large glasses. His face is heavily lined; his hair is thin and combed straight back; he is of medium build. He would not stand out in a crowd. Nonetheless, TV cameras immediately surrounded him, and senators came down from behind the podium to shake his hand.

Murdoch gave a brief, upbeat opening statement that was almost identical to what he had told a different congressional committee two weeks earlier: "We have a long and successful history of defying conventional wisdom and challenging market leaders ... We started as a small newspaper company and grew by providing competition and innovation in stale, near monopolistic markets." When asked about the topic of the hearing, the new rules for media ownership, he said, to appreciative laughter, "I don`t have a dog in that fight." He was being cute: although unaffected by the specific measure under discussion, he obviously supported a general relaxation of rules. Then he responded tersely but with a wry edge to what the senators, especially the Democrats, were really asking: whether he had become too powerful for the world`s good.

Ernest Hollings, of South Carolina, a Democrat in his eighties who often makes folksy remarks, held up a long list of companies controlled by News Corp to counter Murdoch`s self-portrayal as a small fish in the media sea. The list ran to a full ten pages. Hollings drawled, "I wish I could buy some stock in this thing."

"Any day," Murdoch deadpanned (the company is, after all, listed on the New York Stock Exchange), bringing laughter from everyone but Hollings. Murdoch then gave a discursive answer about his holdings that lasted until a light turned red in front of Hollings, signaling that his time for questions was up. "Your lawyer is good!" Hollings told Murdoch. "Your answer went past the red light." Then, thinking that the microphone was turned off, sounding both exasperated and impressed, he muttered "Jesus!"

What about the imbalance of political views on talk radio and many cable TV channels? asked Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota. Murdoch repeated his standard claim that his news organizations always strove to be "fair and balanced." Then could he explain the fact that radio had 300-plus hours of nationally syndicated conservative talk each week, versus five hours of liberal talk?

"Yes," Murdoch said with a twinkle. "Apparently, conservative talk is more popular." As if aware that he might have needlessly shown up Dorgan, Murdoch added, in charmer mode, "If we could find a popular, amusing broadcaster to talk for an hour or two every day and he was a liberal, we`d have him on like a shot." Senator Dorgan, Murdoch said, was "doing very well" in his tryout for the job.

Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, pointed out that Murdoch`s New York Post had introduced the label "Axis of Weasels" for France and Germany, and that his Fox News had enthusiastically repeated and amplified the message. Didn`t this show that one man could become his own media echo chamber? She then asked, "Do you believe there should be any limits—at all—on how much media one individual or one company can control?" The result was a David Mamet-style dialogue.

MURDOCH: I don`t know what the right limits are, but I`m certainly in favor of relaxing the existing limits, Senator.

BOXER: You`re in favor of relaxing the limits! ... Well, what if you owned everything?

MURDOCH: If I owned everything?

BOXER: Do you think there ought to be limits on you?

MURDOCH: No, of course not. And we don`t—

BOXER: You think there should be limits?

MURDOCH: I think there should be competition everywhere. My life has been built, and my business, [by] starting competition and starting up against—

BOXER: So we`ve gotten this far.

MURDOCH: —other people and providing diversity.

BOXER: So we`ve gotten this far. So you agree there should be limits. And the—

MURDOCH: I think there should always be diversity.

BOXER: Good. Limits and diversity. We agree. So then the question is how much? And that`s—you`re saying you can`t put a number on it.

MURDOCH: There should be no limit to diversity.

(Laughter.)

or all the surreal, ultimately pointless show-trial aspects of the session, there was a larger historical logic to the meeting between Murdoch (who must have left the room thinking They didn`t lay a glove on me) and the forces of government that day. Two great and opposing conceptions of the press and its role in public life had just collided. One of them holds that the press is basically different from other businesses: the unique protection it enjoys under the First Amendment gives it unique responsibilities to serve the public interest. The other holds that the news business is basically the same as other businesses. The second version—the Murdoch version—has now won, and Murdoch deserves to move from "controversial" to "visionary" status.

It is thanks largely to Joseph Pulitzer, who invented a new kind of journalism in the late 1800s, that newspapers moved from the open partisanship of an earlier era to a pretense of objectivity today. Henry Luce transformed magazine journalism before World War II with Time, Fortune, and Life. After the war a handful of television-news pioneers created the documentary form, the evening newscast, the Sunday talk show, and other staples. Then TV news changed again, starting in the late 1970s, through the efforts of, among others, Roone Arledge, of ABC, who made news profitable; Ted Turner, of CNN, who made the news cycle continuous; and Larry King and Geraldo Rivera, who merged news and entertainment.

Rupert Murdoch is this era`s influential figure. His holdings have grown surprisingly fast, over a surprisingly long period of time. The cartoon explanation of his success is that he is ruthless or power-mad or even today`s Hitler, as his former friend and current antagonist Ted Turner has called him. The real explanation is that he has combined several crucial ingredients—an instinct for mass taste, an appreciation of technology, a concept of strategic business structure, and a knack for exploiting political power—in a new and uniquely effective way. His is not the largest media company, but it is now the model to beat—or to imitate.


A Taste for Risk and Contention


upert Murdoch was born into a newspaper family, but one far less established than those of his near contemporaries Arthur ("Punch") Sulzberger Sr., of The New York Times, and Otis Chandler, of the Los Angeles Times. (Both are a few years older than Murdoch, and both are retired.) Murdoch`s father, Keith, was the son of a Presbyterian minister who had emigrated from Scotland to Australia in the 1880s. Early in life Keith decided that he wanted to be a reporter. After an apprenticeship in his home town, Melbourne, his big break came during World War I. He took part in an early version of "embedding" with Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, where he assured the commanding general that what he saw would remain confidential. In violation of that assurance, he then wrote a bitter letter to the Australian Prime Minister about conditions for ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) troops. Eventually the general was recalled, the troops were withdrawn, and Keith Murdoch, age thirty, became known as a man who could rock the boat. "Oh, sure, it may not have been fair," Rupert Murdoch told an interviewer, Gerard Henderson, in 1989. "But it changed history, that letter."

The rest of Keith Murdoch`s rise in journalism had a similarly scrappy, anti-elite quality. He went to London and learned the techniques of mass marketing from Alfred Harmsworth, who became Lord Northcliffe, the Fleet Street genius of the time. As William Shawcross points out in Murdoch: The Making of a Media Empire (1997), a respectful and authoritative biography of Rupert Murdoch, Northcliffe`s papers introduced many of the irresistibly vulgar come-ons associated with London tabloids—and, now, with the Fox network and the New York Post. A typical headline would read "DO DOGS COMMIT MURDER?" or "WHY JEWS DON`T RIDE BICYCLES." "A newspaper," Northcliffe told his acolytes, "is to be made to pay. Let it deal with what interests the mass of people. Let it give the public what it wants."

Keith Murdoch put this philosophy into effect when he returned to Australia. With Northcliffe`s encouragement, he took over Melbourne`s stagnant evening paper, the Herald, and revived it with racy features. Through the late 1920s he acquired other newspapers and turned them into a chain, to which he added radio stations. His son, Keith Rupert, was born in 1931. (There were also three daughters in the family.) Over the Depression decade Murdoch`s newspaper and radio holdings expanded, and the family business entered a nationwide market struggle against Australia`s established and respectable press dynasty, the Fairfax family, whose base was the Sydney Morning Herald. The Murdoch chain kept growing through the war and postwar years.

By the time young Rupert went off to Oxford, in 1950, Keith was in his mid-sixties, sick, withdrawing from the business, and greatly concerned about its future. While Rupert was largely frittering away his time at Oxford, his father discovered a plot led by his deputy to push him out of power within the company. "I can`t die yet," Keith Murdoch said in 1952, according to Neil Chenoweth`s recent book Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World`s Greatest Media Wizard. "I`ve got to see my son established, not leave him like a lamb to be devoured and destroyed by these people." After Keith Murdoch`s death, in the fall of 1952, company rivalries and disputes broke into the open, and the family`s holdings were greatly reduced. Keith Murdoch had stated in his will that he hoped Rupert would "have the great opportunity of spending a useful, altruistic, and full life in newspaper and broadcasting activities"—that is, would succeed him in control of the company. But the company Rupert inherited, now called News Limited, was battered and troubled. Most of what is said about Rupert Murdoch and his operations was said about Keith Murdoch as well: that despite his great influence he always felt at odds with a respectable elite; that he understood himself to be running a family business; that he believed controversy was beneficial and understanding mass taste was indispensable. But Rupert Murdoch was also motivated to rebuild a family business that his father had created and partially lost.

Between the young Rupert Murdoch who took over an Australian family business in the early 1950s and today`s globally recognized symbol of media power is a path described in hundreds of articles and numerous books. In reading through the vast public record, I was surprised to be reminded of how many dustups Murdoch has been involved in. He has been like Zelig, seemingly everywhere that important changes in media were taking place—but at the center of the action rather than the periphery.

He entered British journalism in the late 1960s and was soon in a tussle with Robert Maxwell for control of the British tabloid News of the World. Over the next fifteen years he mounted campaigns to take business and editorial control of the low-end Sun and the high-end Times and Sunday Times of London. In the mid-1980s, as Margaret Thatcher was fighting coal miners, Murdoch waged an epic battle against press unions and built an entirely new printing plant so as to operate with much cheaper labor.

He entered the U.S. newspaper world in the early 1970s, with a quiet takeover of the San Antonio Express and News; noisier takeovers of the New York Post and New York magazine soon followed. (It was under Murdoch that the Post published the great tabloid headline "HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.") He also owned, briefly and improbably, the Village Voice. To satisfy U.S. ownership requirements of the time, he applied for U.S. citizenship and was naturalized in 1985. Murdoch was forced to sell the Post in 1988, mainly because of the efforts of Senators Edward Kennedy and Ernest Hollings to overturn a previous waiver of ownership rules. But he bought it again, out of bankruptcy, in 1993.

His real entry into the American consciousness came with his move into television. Murdoch took over 20th Century Fox in the mid-1980s, and at about the same time announced a fanciful-sounding plan to assemble small TV stations into a fourth national network. In the late 1980s he bought the parent company of TV Guide and also began creating his Sky and Star satellite systems in Britain and Asia. In the early 1990s Fox Broadcasting shocked CBS by outbidding it for the rights to National Football League games—the first of many contracts that have made Fox the dominant broadcast sports network. Murdoch fell out with Ted Turner in the mid-1990s, and the two waged personal and business war. (After Turner compared Murdoch to Hitler, the Post ran the headline "IS TED NUTS? YOU DECIDE.") Murdoch started the Fox News Channel partly with the goal of overtaking and thus humiliating Turner`s CNN.

everal striking themes recur in this saga. One is Murdoch`s long-standing determination not simply to broaden News Corp`s portfolio—by diversifying, for instance, into new or unrelated businesses—but to extend his strategic control of the supply and distribution channels on which his existing businesses rely. His father had moved from print to radio with the understanding that each medium could publicize and support the other. Murdoch`s companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its integration. They supply content—Fox movies (Titanic, The Full Monty, There`s Something About Mary), Fox TV shows (The Simpsons, Ally McBeal, When Animals Attack), Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They sell the content to the public and to advertisers—in newspapers, on the broadcast network, on the cable channels. And they operate the physical distribution system through which the content reaches the customers. Murdoch`s satellite systems now distribute News Corp content in Europe and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV`s largest single owner, that system will serve the same function in the United States.

In his biography of Murdoch, Neil Chenoweth, who has worked for years as an investigative reporter for the Australian Financial Review, stresses that the DirecTV deal is valuable to Murdoch mainly as a way of ensuring wide distribution for his movies and his news, sports, and original TV programming. "We are going to see a landslide of Murdoch content produced for DirecTV and his global satellite network, and it will just blow everybody else away," he recently wrote in an e-mail. The next big wave of media consolidation, Chenoweth predicted, would be driven by other companies trying to match what Murdoch had put together.

Another constant in his career is its embattled, roller-coaster quality. Murdoch is said to be popular and admired within his own organization, rather than resented, mocked, or gossiped about behind his back. But with business rivals he is always in feuds and showdowns, and not only high-profile ones like that with Turner. He has taken big risks (one associate describes Murdoch`s making, in a matter of minutes, the billion-dollar decision to back Fox News "the way you or I might order lunch"), and his business has suffered serious reverses. In 1990, in an episode vividly described by Shawcross, Murdoch was nearly forced to liquidate News Corp after a bank in Pittsburgh refused to roll over a small but crucial portion of his corporate debt. Although admirers compare him to Bill Gates or John D. Rockefeller because of his appreciation of technology and his instinct for strategic advantage, Murdoch is perhaps best compared to Bill Clinton: his nature keeps getting him into predicaments from which his talent lets him escape.

Political involvement has been one more constant in his career. The simple view of Murdoch, especially among liberals who fear him, is that he is a dangerously obsessed conservative propagandist—Richard Mellon Scaife with a job. This is imprecise. The exact nature of his political views is a subject of some debate among his associates. Overall he is of course more right- than left-wing. Murdoch likes to refer to himself as a "moderate libertarian" rather than a "conservative" or, in U.S. terms, a Republican. Two of his lieutenants—Roger Ailes, who runs the Fox News Channel, and Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard—have worked in Republican Party politics. Murdoch`s own involvement with the party itself, as opposed to with specific politicians who might prove useful to him, has been limited. His associates report that he has never met George W. Bush, hard as it may be to believe. He has, though, developed a respectful relationship with Bill Clinton. Each has lunched at the other`s office in New York, and Murdoch came away impressed by Clinton`s ability to discuss impromptu almost any issue arising almost anywhere on earth. Associates of both say that despite the political differences between the men, they clicked because of complementary personalities: Murdoch loves to listen, and Clinton loves to talk.

The strongest element in Murdoch`s conservatism is his taste for leaders who take clear, decisive, line-in-the-sand positions on important issues. That is what he admired in Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and what he respects, post-September 11, in Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush. Where he strays furthest from Republican Party orthodoxy is on social issues—gay rights, public religion, "traditional family values," and so on. Given the vulgar-to-raunchy tone of Fox programs like Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire and That `70s Show, it would be awkward if Murdoch publicly pushed a conservative social agenda. As a personal rather than a political matter, Murdoch was known to be unhappy about the violent nihilism of the Brad Pitt movie Fight Club, which the Fox studios produced, and about an episode of Fox TV`s recent Married by America in which shots of a woman`s naked breasts were not digitally blurred. But he is usually happy with whichever show on Fox—or headline in the Post, or topless Page 3 model in the London Sun—draws a big audience. He is proud of The Simpsons for both its popularity and its wit. He has done voice-overs for a self-mocking appearance on the show, in the role of a grasping plutocrat.

he real difference between Murdoch and an activist like Scaife is that Murdoch seems to be most interested in the political connections that will help his business. A few examples of his better-known political engagements bear out this view. Soon after the 1994 elections, which made Newt Gingrich the first Republican speaker of the House in decades, Murdoch`s publishing company, HarperCollins, offered Gingrich a $4.5 million two-book deal (Gingrich was later shamed out of accepting it). Murdoch made his sweetheart offer to Gingrich only after Gingrich had gained power, not to help him on the way up.

Similarly, his notorious China "policy" is that of a dealmaker and not a conservative purist. Just before Gingrich came to power, Murdoch made a speech with the Gingrichian theme that advanced communications technology would be "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere." The Chinese government immediately banned satellite dishes, sabotaging Star TV`s satellite transmissions into China. In a highly publicized and controversial series of atonements, Murdoch had his companies publish a book by Deng Xiaoping`s daughter; cancel another book, about Hong Kong, that was likely to provoke the Chinese; and drop the BBC World Service, with its independent news broadcasts, from the Star TV lineup.

In 1995 Murdoch funded the creation of The Weekly Standard in Washington, which gave conservative writers another home. But at the same time, his papers in England were playing a significant role in the downfall of the Tory government. That same year the young Labour politician Tony Blair came to Australia to speak at a News Corp retreat on Hayman Island in the Great Barrier Reef. His speech and general energy impressed Murdoch. Two years later the tabloid Sun in London plumped hard for Blair and "New Labour" in an effort to unseat John Major and the conservatives. Murdoch`s British press has been as pro-Blair as his U.S. outlets were anti-Clinton through the late 1990s. The Blair government has proposed relaxing TV-ownership rules in ways that would benefit News Corp.

In short, some aspects of News Corp`s programming, positions, and alliances serve conservative political ends, and others do not. But all are consistent with the use of political influence for corporate advantage. In the books I read and interviews I conducted, I found only one illustration of Murdoch`s using his money and power for blatantly political ends: his funding of The Weekly Standard. The rest of the time he makes his political points when convenient as an adjunct to making money. But there are many examples of Murdoch`s using political connections to advance his business ends. "Andrew Heyward [the head of CBS News, a Viacom subsidiary] would be allergic to the idea of attacking a politician who opposes a Viacom interest," says a man who has competed against News Corp. "Murdoch has been shameless about using his journalism for the advancement of his business interests." In this view, The Weekly Standard and the New York Post, neither of them profitable, are more means than ends.


Changing the Rules


urdoch`s use of political power for commercial ends naturally brings us back to Washington. The dispute over ownership rules for the broadcast industry, about which Murdoch had been summoned to testify, was at face value too narrow and technical to sustain a real political debate in America. But the intense, if brief, controversy over this seemingly arcane dispute was appropriate to the long-term implications of the changes.

The most immediate and direct effect of the revised rules was likely to be on local news coverage. In as many as 180 metropolitan areas the new rules would allow the leading newspaper and the leading TV station to be owned by the same company—something that has until now been outlawed except in a few special-waiver cases. Because the leading newspaper is the only newspaper in the great majority of cities, the new rules would mean that in all but the very largest American cities one news organization could dominate. Supporters of the changes said that this might free resources for better programming—and that other sources of information, whether the Internet or national TV and print outlets, would ensure diversity and competition. Opponents said that the new rules would concentrate press power unacceptably, first at the local level and then nationally: other proposed changes would also permit the formation of larger nationwide chains.

Other than during a few weeks in May and early June, the dispute drew little coverage from the national media. Opponents said, This proves our point! Because most large media companies stood to profit from the changes, they of course devoted much less space to them than to, say, the Laci Peterson murder case. John McCain, who sometimes seemed to support the changes and sometimes did not, observed acidly at a hearing in May that newspaper editorial policies conveniently tend to follow the newspaper`s economic interest. In a Washington Post story Frank Ahrens reported that at one hearing McCain reminded a lobbyist for the newspaper industry that during a Clinton-era regulatory fight all the newspapers that editorialized in favor of a certain rule change were owned by companies that would have benefited from it, and all the papers that editorialized against it were owned by companies that would not.

eyond its immediate impact on local news and on media-business prospects, the debate symbolized a historic shift in concepts guiding the business of journalism. The shift is back to the idea of journalism as principally a business—and away from an idea promoted over the past seventy years by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC is in a way the most futuristic arm of the government. The operating agreements that govern the structure of today`s Internet and tomorrow`s wireless networks are generally thrashed out there. But the official seal that hangs over the FCC`s hearing rooms is almost comically retro, with an eagle circling crudely drawn radio transmission towers while holding lightning bolts in its talons. It reflects not just the artistic style but also the technological attainments at the time of the agency`s creation, as part of the early New Deal, in 1934. One of the FCC`s most important, and most anomalous, functions was rooted in Depression-era technology and is now undergoing inevitable and painful change.

The anomaly was the FCC`s ability to regulate news coverage. The First Amendment`s stricture that "Congress shall make no law" that might abridge "freedom of speech, or of the press" has effectively kept the government away from newspaper regulation. Apart from special circumstances involving libel or wartime national-security concerns, what newspapers and magazines decide to publish has been strictly up to them.

Broadcasting—which emerged as an important news medium in the 1920s, with radio, and as the leading news source in the 1950s, with TV—differs in one fundamental way from print. In theory, anyone can start a new publication, but the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum means that only so many broadcast TV or radio channels can co-exist. Since the 1930s the FCC has therefore administered an underappreciated news-management policy. It awards licenses for local broadcast stations, and for combinations of stations into networks. These are effectively licenses to make money. Lyndon Johnson`s route to wealth during his years in Congress, for instance, was based on his family`s role as the radio and TV licensee for KTBC (now KLBJ) in Austin.

In exchange for this lucrative right, broadcast licensees—and their news operations—have been subject to rules that affect no other part of the press. Their licenses are up for renewal every few years. At least in theory, the FCC will grant a renewal only if the licensee proves that it is serving the public interest with the programming it offers. Broadcasters can`t use foul language or be too risqué. This was the basis for George Carlin`s famous "Seven Dirty Words" routine, about the words flatly outlawed by the FCC, and it is the reason that Oz and The Sopranos cannot appear on broadcast TV. Until the rules were relaxed, in the Reagan era, broadcasters had to apply a "fairness doctrine" in their coverage of political issues. Under the rules up for reconsideration this summer broadcasters couldn`t own a large number of stations, or newspapers in the same cities where they had TV stations, so the political influence that comes with their favored, licensed position would be kept within bounds. They have had to offer children`s programming and respond to local concerns.

Broadcasters are in the news business but have been treated like a public utility, with public responsibilities. The most famous words ever spoken by an FCC chairman were those of Newton Minow, who told the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961 that television programming amounted to "a vast wasteland." "I am here to uphold and protect the public interest," he said. "Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree."

None of these rules, as rules, applied to the nonbroadcast press. But at the time of Minow`s speech the idea behind them did: that the press enjoyed unusual privileges and therefore had unusual responsibilities. "Our republic and its press will rise or fall together," Joseph Pulitzer wrote in 1904, in words now engraved by the entrance to the Columbia Journalism School. "A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." With allowances for fancy rhetoric, this admonition guided news operations through most of the twentieth century.

n the world beyond the FCC`s purview the idea that the news business differed from other businesses had started to erode as early as the 1970s. The process involved "infotainment," corporate mergers, pressure for greater profits, and other well-known phenomena. The change within the FCC has been more distinct, though less publicized, and it is the background to this summer`s drama.

Ronald Reagan`s first chairman of the FCC, Mark Fowler, removed many of the controls on what radio stations could air. Before the mid-1980s Sunday-morning schedules on radio stations were laden with dutiful public-affairs and religious programs; after the controls were lifted, stations could air whatever they thought the market wanted. Fowler indicated that the same reasoning might apply to television. He is responsible for the second most famous utterance by an FCC chairman: TV, he said, was only a "toaster with pictures"—that is, a commodity requiring product-safety regulation but nothing more. Fowler`s FCC also enabled Murdoch to create a fourth major network, Fox, by approving his acquisition of local TV stations.

A more dramatic change came in the following decade, when a Democratic FCC, chaired by an antitrust lawyer and close friend of Al Gore`s named Reed Hundt, worked with a Republican Congress to pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This was arguably the most important economic event of the Clinton era: its effects have been greater than NAFTA`s, and they will clearly last longer than the brief achievement of eliminating the federal budget deficit. The act was a top-to-bottom reconsideration of FCC policies that has had dramatic consequences, foreseen and not, for the mobile-phone industry, telephone companies, Internet-based businesses, and many other firms.

For our purposes, what mattered about this bill was clause 202(h). These few lines instructed the FCC to review every two years its rules limiting media ownership—and to "repeal or modify" any rule that "it determines to be no longer in the public interest." These words could mean a lot of things—including not very much, if they were interpreted as instructing the FCC to stick with rules unless there was flagrant evidence of their pointlessness. But new players entered the drama: the judges of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a man who had once been law clerk to one of them—a man who would be the lead player in the next act. In their collective view, clause 202(h) was full of possibilities.

The D.C. Circuit, which is of great importance as the venue for most suits against federal agencies, has recently been a source of conservative intellectual energy, as the Ninth Circuit, on the West Coast, has been a stronghold of liberal judges and views. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas both came to the Supreme Court from the D.C. Circuit (as did the more liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Robert Bork was on this circuit when Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court. Douglas Ginsburg, now the D.C. Circuit`s chief judge, was nominated by Reagan for the Supreme Court and would in all probability have been confirmed had it not been for controversy over his admitted marijuana use in the 1960s and 1970s, which caused him to withdraw. Another judge on the court, David Sentelle, is a former aide to Jesse Helms and was part of the three-judge panel that selected Kenneth Starr as the special prosecutor.

The judges on this circuit had a chance to examine clause 202(h) when several media companies sued the FCC to overturn limits on their expansion, merger, and cross-ownership plans. In two influential rulings issued last year, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled for the companies and against the FCC. Unless the FCC could prove the need to maintain its regulations, specifically the limits on cross-ownership, it had to change or remove the controls forthwith. In his ruling on one of the cases, Fox Television Stations v. FCC, Chief Judge Ginsburg wrote that some people may have imagined that Congress intended the FCC to take an "incremental" approach to relaxing ownership rules. But they couldn`t be more wrong. "The mandate of § 202(h)," he wrote, "might better be likened to Farragut`s order at the battle of Mobile Bay. (`Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.`)"

Some lawyers and legal scholars say that what the court was asking—all it could properly ask, despite Ginsburg`s breezy remarks—was that the FCC do more to explain and defend its rules, such as those that kept the dominant newspaper in a city from buying the dominant TV station. "One way to respond to that sort of decision would be to go out and get proof that the limits are serving interests consistent with the First Amendment," Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford`s law school, recently told me. He pointed out that the Supreme Court`s rulings in this area have given the FCC considerable leeway to apply ownership rules. By this logic the FCC could have responded to the Fox ruling not by removing its ownership limits but by more fully explaining the rationale for them. If companies filed another suit, and if the D.C. Circuit Court sided with them yet again, the FCC could in principle appeal to the Supreme Court. Robert Pitofsky, a law professor at Georgetown University who was the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission during the Clinton Administration, says, "The courts were asking for a greater burden of proof. This didn`t mean you have to throw all the rules out."

It did not look that way to the man who had to decide whether to fight the rulings: the chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell.

owell, who turned forty this year, is Secretary of State Colin Powell`s son. He is just under six feet tall and squarely built, with a somewhat high voice. By the time he graduated from William and Mary, in 1985, his father was already famous. Like his father, Michael went into the Army out of college—but two years later, when he was serving with an armored unit in Germany, he was gravely injured in a Jeep accident and hospitalized for a year. He left the Army and eventually enrolled in Georgetown`s law school. After graduation, in 1993, he became a clerk for Harry Edwards, then the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit. Later he worked as an antitrust lawyer, and then served as an FCC commissioner; he became the agency`s chairman in 2001.

"In some ways this is such a silly debate," Powell said when I asked him about assertions that the D.C. Circuit Court had not actually forced him to dismantle the ownership rules. "Let me put this in perspective. I clerked on that court. For the chief judge of that circuit! I bring, in my opinion, some credibility to the question. But put aside that selfish point—" He then went on to argue that anyone who really understood how courts work would know that the FCC was indeed being told to get rid of its rules. "It`s not the fact that we lost that case. It`s the basis on which the court relied in saying we lost that matters ... If you really, honestly read those cases, you understand that the status quo [maintaining the ownership rules] becomes extraordinarily vulnerable."

A reader of his transcribed words might not be surprised to learn that people who dislike Powell consider him aloof and conceited. In person he did not strike me that way. He seemed affable and engaging—but eager to explain the rightness of his views, as if disagreement must be rooted in either emotion or illogic. This is an approach I associate with theoretical economists. Like them, Powell punctuates his explanations with "Let`s be honest about this" or "Once you move past the subjectivity and emotions ..." With great nuance he laid out his case for relaxing ownership controls on the media. With less nuance the argument boils down to two big ideas:

First, cable TV, satellite TV, Internet news sites and blogs, and countless other data sources give modern Americans more choices about information than any previous society has enjoyed. Therefore, rules to ensure competition among broadcast stations matter much less than they used to.

Second, complaints about overconcentrated media are really complaints about what`s on the air—and the content of news or entertainment should not be the government`s concern. "Either you don`t see enough of something you like, or you see too much of something you don`t," Powell said. "But at the end of the day you have to ask whether you want three out of five unelected regulators"—that is, a majority on the FCC—"saying, I want the public to see this but not that." The market for news may not be perfect, but the government should be very reluctant to interfere with what people like to watch.

What`s significant about these views? They lead logically to the conclusion that the news business is basically like all other businesses, and should therefore be regulated in the way the rest are—that is, the government protects against price-gouging, fraud, and other run-of-the-mill economic abuses, but ends its oversight there. The idea that press responsibility begins and ends with attracting a market has historical precedents. It was the lesson young Keith Murdoch learned from the tabloid genius Lord Northcliffe: give the public what it wants. But for at least a century newspaper and broadcasting companies were expected to serve interests beyond the purely commercial. That is what made news different from entertainment. Entertainment`s only purpose is to be popular. News is supposed to be as popular as it can while also introducing readers or viewers to thoughts, problems, and opportunities that affect them. American news companies have for a number of years been moving toward just-a-business operating principles. The FCC changes give them a governmental mandate.

he circumstances of the FCC`s rules changes were noisy, amusing, instructive, and embarrassing, often all at once. Michael Powell thought he had things under control. More than a year ago, after he had read the D.C. Circuit Court rulings, he told Congress that he would launch a new study to see how many ownership rules the FCC could and should relax. He said that new rules should be ready for an FCC vote this past spring. Through most of its history the FCC has operated with little or no attention from the general press, and Powell could well have expected these changes to sail through too.

But complications arose, unusually baroque even for Washington. The FCC normally has a three-two majority in favor of the party that controls the White House, and there are two other Republican commissioners serving with Powell. But all three of the Republicans are young enough to think that other important political jobs may still be ahead of them, and their personal ambitions seemed to explain more than did simple partisanship.

Michael Powell had been considered one of the Republican Party`s future stars—at least until early this year, when he ran up against another potential star, a new Republican commissioner named Kevin Martin. Martin is not quite four years younger than Powell, but he looks as if he could be in Powell`s freshman seminar. A lawyer from North Carolina who was student-body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Martin is sometimes called Harry Potter at the FCC, because of his glasses and hairdo. The better comparison is to Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition, who also seemed too unlined to have survived long political wars. Martin joined the Bush campaign in the summer of 1999 and helped to manage its Florida-recount strategy after the election; his wife succeeded Mary Matalin as Dick Cheney`s communications adviser. They are considered a very well connected young Republican couple.

Early this year Martin weakened and embarrassed Powell by voting against him and joining the Democrats to defeat an important part of Powell`s program for telephone deregulation. The essential question was whether regulators in each state could continue to apply price limits and other rules to the "Baby Bell" telephone companies. Powell argued that the limits were out of date. Martin, to widespread surprise, lined up with the two Democratic commissioners in saying that the rules were necessary to protect the consumer. His defection was mortifying to Powell—a sign that Powell could not control his troops. It didn`t work out that well for Martin, either. Telecom stocks crashed after the surprise defeat of Powell`s plan, leading the trade press to call Martin "the sixteen-billion-dollar boy." Powell, statesmanlike, declined to comment on the episode when I spoke with him. Martin`s office canceled a long-scheduled interview on all FCC matters at the last minute, and returned no subsequent calls.

As the media-ownership decision neared, Powell and Martin both seemed certain to vote for the changed rules, albeit for different reasons. "Michael will always go with his analysis of the issue, and Kevin will go with the politics," an aide who works with both men says, referring in Martin`s case to personal ambition as well as party politics. Powell genuinely believed that the D.C. Circuit rulings made changes inevitable. Martin knew that a majority vote was important to the Bush Administration—and he must have understood politically that the issue, already attracting public debate, would only become more controversial the longer it was left unresolved. The third Republican commissioner, Kathleen Abernathy, who had been faultlessly loyal to Powell and was assumed to want to succeed him, was also going to vote for the rules changes.

But while the two Democratic commissioners—Michael Copps, a former aide to Ernest Hollings, and Jonathan Adelstein, a former aide to Tom Daschle—traveled around the country holding hearings to oppose the changes, or at least to delay the vote, Kevin Martin deftly got out of the way. On interview shows and in congressional testimony Michael Powell became the face of what William Safire, in The New York Times, called the "round-heeled FCC." During and after broad and wounding attacks for a policy Martin favored—attacks that may well have made Powell too controversial to be a viable future candidate—Martin left few tracks.

he politics of the issue took on their strange shape through the late spring. In favor of the changes were a variety of large media organizations, especially regional newspaper powers like the Chicago Tribune and the Belo Corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News. The big media companies—Viacom, Disney, and so on—were also in favor. When asked, Rupert Murdoch said he supported the liberalization but was mainly pushing for approval of his DirecTV deal. The Bush Administration strongly supported the changes, as did the many Republican senators and congressmen who support most forms of deregulation. One striking quality of the pro crowd was how silent it was. The White House, the Republican Party, and most of the big corporations left the arguing to Powell. Months in advance it was obvious that the rules would be changed, by a 3-2 vote. So there was no reason to waste energy or risk political exposure by arguing in public.

Meanwhile, interest groups that had nothing else in common launched letter-writing campaigns to oppose the changes. Members of the National Rifle Association mailed tens of thousands of protest postcards to the FCC. Common Cause reported that more of its members were mobilized on this issue than on any other in decades. The National Organization for Women and the Rainbow Coalition sided with Christian fundamentalists and the Conservative Communications Center. The common strand among the protesters, according to Mark Cooper, of the Consumer Federation of America, was that all were "controversial minorities" who felt that the national press was biased against their views. The bigger and more market-minded the media conglomerates become, they argued, the harder it is for anything other than mainstream views to be heard. Even Republican senators such as Trent Lott and Wayne Allard joined most Democratic senators in protesting the changes.

Cooper was one of a group of policy activists who went from hearing to hearing challenging the technical merits of the FCC changes. He talked about the "diversity index" the FCC produced to show that there would still be plenty of competition after newspapers and TV stations combined. The formula measures the number of "media choices" each community would have after the mergers. Cooper pointed out the grotesque flaw: the index assumes that every print or broadcast "outlet" has the same amount of influence. Thus if a community went from having two competitive papers to having one dominant paper and a community newsletter, there would supposedly be no real change.

Cooper also answered an argument made often by the Republican commissioner Kathleen Abernathy: that when technology makes so many choices available, concerns about concentrated media are overblown. What does it mean, she asked rhetorically, that 75 percent of prime-time viewers watch programs produced by just four companies? "I can only presume that this means that Americans are watching these providers because they prefer their content." To social scientists this kind of market result is known as a "revealed preference." When I asked Cooper about this explanation, he said, "We`re talking about `revealed preferences`? Okay, you give me NBC`s broadcast frequencies for everything that`s on my Web page, and I`ll give them my Web page for everything they`re broadcasting. You`ll see some `preferences` then."

One of the Democratic commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein, said, "Of the hundreds of citizens I heard from directly at field hearings across the country, not one stood up to call for relaxing the rules." The FCC order changing the rules, he said, "often equates the public interest with the economic interests of media conglomerates." He argued that the "marketplace of ideas" was being turned into a plain old bazaar. The other Democrat, Michael Copps, said that the FCC was "outdriving the headlights," making dramatic changes whose consequences it could not foresee.

"You know, it makes me feel extremely old to say so, but it is astonishing to see how young these guys are," Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford, told me. (He is forty-two.) "Powell and Kevin Martin are just at the beginning of their careers, and these are such enormous decisions. The idea that this naive, simple libertarian ideology gives you any handle on these issues is astonishing. What is essential here is pragmatism that is informed by experience and empirical measure."

n June 2 a line of activists, reporters (including me), and paid placeholders formed early outside the FCC building to watch the long-scheduled vote on the new ownership rules. Copps and Adelstein had asked for the "customary courtesy" of a thirty-day delay in the vote. Powell said no. "Let`s be blunt," Powell later told me. "They asked for the thirty days not for more time to consider but to stop the results from being produced. I wasn`t born yesterday." In the spring, in an episode I did not learn about from Powell, the White House political strategist Karl Rove had met with Powell to urge him to wrap up these controversial regulatory issues as soon as he could. Powell stood on his independence as a regulator and said he couldn`t be rushed. But his principles led in the same direction the Administration sought: toward a vote with no further delay.

At 10:00 A.M. Powell gaveled the meeting to order, and the commissioners heard reports from their staff specialists about the virtues of relaxing ownership controls. Powell gave a ten-minute speech endorsing the changes, and Abernathy did the same. Copps and Adelstein each spoke twice as long in dissent. Kevin Martin briefly congratulated all sides for their hard work, said there was "strong evidence on both sides of this issue," and said he would vote for the changes. Powell called for the "ayes." Three hands went up. He asked for "nos," quickly slapped down the gavel, said "The ayes have it," and got out of his chair to leave the room. Security guards rushed toward a group of female protesters, who were dressed all in pink and had burst into song as Powell was calling the vote, and hustled them away. Out on the sidewalk Jesse Jackson and Dick Gregory were giving interviews, and other protesters were marching with placards showing a scowling Rupert Murdoch, who faute de mieux was the symbol of the evil consequences of the decision.

Two days after the vote all five FCC commissioners were called before John McCain`s Senate Commerce Committee to explain why they voted for rules for which there was so little identifiable support and such broad opposition. Two weeks later McCain`s committee voted to recommend that the new FCC rules be overturned.

This was symbolically important but isn`t likely to mean much. Even if a revocation measure could get through the full Senate, it would be likely to fail in the House. The chairman of the corresponding House committee, Billy Tauzin, of Louisiana, said he would not even schedule a committee hearing for the measure. Various groups promised to file lawsuits challenging the new ownership rules. Such lawsuits go first to the D.C. Circuit Court—where the outcome seems preordained—and then, if accepted for review, to the Supreme Court. The last time the Supreme Court ruled on media ownership, it gave great deference to the FCC`s judgments about what limits were (and were not) necessary in the public interest. Whether it would maintain that deference or instead agree with the D.C. Circuit that such limits are largely outdated and should be reviewed is hard to predict—especially given its recent closely divided "liberal" rulings in affirmative-action and sodomy cases.

Immediately after the FCC vote the shares of media companies rose, based on the widespread expectation that most such companies would soon be either buying or getting bought. (As I left the hearing room, I walked a few paces behind the lobbyist for the Chicago Tribune Company, who had worked for months on this issue. On his first cell-phone call he asked, "How`s the stock doing?") "Eventually you`re going to see more and more of these huge conglomerates," Blair Levin, a former FCC official who is now a media analyst for an investment bank, told me, "because everyone`s going to need to do it to survive. I think of it in Pentagon terms. Rupert is the first one to have put together an Army, an Air Force, a Navy, and a Marine Corps. Inside the Pentagon people could argue about which force is more important and which is getting enough money. But if you`re the Iraqis, it`s a bitch to compete with."

Levin continued with his view of the future. "The next phase after that will be the really big deals," he said. "Who does NBC ally with? If Murdoch`s model really demonstrates the synergies of a multi-channel distribution network, with a broadcast network, with a content provider, then you may see Echostar [another satellite company] with Viacom [the parent of CBS]. The other networks will have to ask, Do we do a Comcast deal [referring to the major cable-TV system]? The change in the rules put a lot of wood on the fire. The question is what will light the spark."

To extend the military analogy, a corporate arms race is about to begin. "The FCC ownership stuff is not all that important to Murdoch," Neil Chenoweth told me in an e-mail. "It just helps everybody else catch up with him."


The New "News" Gamut


few days before the FCC vote the liberal groups MoveOn.org, Common Cause, and Free Press organized a nationwide ad campaign to protest the likely result. A full-page ad ran in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other papers. The ad showed four TV screens, representing coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, and on each screen was the same glowering picture of Rupert Murdoch, looking like Big Brother. "THIS MAN WANTS TO CONTROL THE NEWS IN AMERICA," the large-type headline said. "THE FCC WANTS TO HELP HIM." Chellie Pingree, the recently chosen president of Common Cause, told The New York Times, "He is the poster child of media consolidation. Who better to personify what the trends are than Rupert Murdoch?"

I talked with a News Corp official the morning the ad came out. He was exasperated by it and by the "poster child" quotation. News Corp was just a small player, he said. It had always stood for shaking up the status quo. And anyway, it didn`t care about the FCC vote. Gary Ginsberg, a senior News Corp official, said to The New York Times in responding to the ads, "The reality is that in the past two decades no company has brought greater choice, unlocked more monopolies and invigorated more stagnant media markets than News Corporation."

Still, Pingree had a point—less about Murdoch than about the world around him. By example and by competitive threat, Murdoch was showing other companies the way ahead. What would it be like?

For people inside News Corp, it seems, not bad at all. Media organizations are dens of bitterness, intrigue, and insecurity, but News Corp seems no worse than most. Despite some fallings-out and notable firings, Murdoch`s management team has been stable. The mood at Fox News seems positively jaunty, as the organization steadily overtakes CNN in the ratings with a much smaller staff. All of News Corp has an on-the-rise feel. The people I know who work at Fox News complain less than my friends in other news organizations. Murdoch will say "Sorry for interrupting" before coming into an employee`s office. He is said not to yell or throw tantrums when things go wrong.

I heard several tales meant to illustrate Murdoch`s reluctance to micro-manage in his empire—but I heard them in circumstances that make it difficult to determine whether they are true. Several people would, however, vouch for this incident: Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime friend of Murdoch`s, was booked on a Fox News Sunday talk show. But he got there late (offense No. 1 for a live show) because he was taping another Sunday show on another network (offense No. 2). The Fox News producers decreed, No more Bibi on our airwaves for a while! Netanyahu went to Murdoch and asked him to fix it. Instead of bigfooting, Murdoch told him to work it out with Brit Hume—the head of the Washington bureau. Netanyahu did, and the loyalty of the Fox staff increased.

From what I could gather in a number of off-the-record conversations with Murdoch`s associates, he loves political gossip and is always calling officials to ask what they`ve heard, what`s new. He is far more likely to use the telephone or talk in person than to send a memo. He rarely bothers with e-mail but is always interested in the details of new technology—especially the sort that can affect his business, from satellite to broadband. No one could remember Murdoch`s recommending a novel to others, but he is always touting new nonfiction books—for instance, Robert Kagan`s Of Paradise and Power, which contrasts American resolve with European weakness.

What Murdoch does pay close attention to is his divisions` finances. He looks carefully through "The Weekly Flash," a financial summary of the performance of News Corp divisions for the week and compared with the previous year. He makes lobbying calls when necessary in Washington but is not personally close to many of the big figures of the moment there. He is unlike Richard Nixon in seeming basically happy rather than tormented, but like him in believing that the "intellectual elite" is permanently scheming against him. Murdoch lives not on the Upper East Side but in a TriBeCa penthouse. One associate told me that Murdoch would rather be tortured than spend a weekend in the Hamptons. He is hypersensitive to criticism of his business judgment but laughs off complaints about his political or cultural role as mewls from the chattering classes.

Murdoch is known to be in close touch with his children, and he often gives James and Lachlan, the two with major management positions, life coaching on the phone. "Well, darling, it`s okay," he might say, after one of them has described a recent problem, and then go on to impart what he has learned from similar challenges. The role of Murdochs within News Corp is basically similar to that of Sulzbergers within the New York Times Company, or Grahams within the Washington Post Company. In each case the family controls large blocks of stock and expects, but is not guaranteed, to run the company. One difference is that Rupert Murdoc

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David Rozelle: Bush`s lie tactics to make case for Iraq war are Orwellian

By David Rozelle
August 18, 2003

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

Our time is still George Orwell`s time. The year may be 2003, but never in history has the clock ticked more Orwellian than it ticks at this moment in America.

Exploded, like excuses on Judgment Day, are the lies, distortions and innuendoes that George W. Bush used to stampede us into war with Iraq.

There were no Iraqi nuclear weapons.

There were no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

No Mephistophelean bargain had been struck in the desert between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

In "defense of the indefensible," George W. Bush lied to us.

Oil? What oil?

Even Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists like Thomas Friedman have gone "1984" on us.

Bush finds himself stripped all but naked to his final falsehoods: that the war was a "good war" because Saddam Hussein was a bad man. That we conquered, devastated, occupied and spilled the blood of thousands of human beings to rescue not only Iraq, but to save our America. And the estimable Friedman concurs.

In the Aug. 3 edition of The New York Times, Friedman argues, with a straight face, that the United States had sent a "message" to the Middle East that we are "not going to sit back and let them incubate suicide bombers and religious totalitarians."

Has it not struck him yet that the war appears to have had precisely the opposite effect? Has it not occurred to him that by that Strangelovian twist of logic, a Paul Wolfowitz or Donald Rumsfeld might propose shattering South Korea to stop North Korea from amassing nuclear weapons?

No one among us doubts Saddam`s malevolence. None of us disputes his "evil." But why, we should ask ourselves as a nation, why him? Why choose to end - by violent, bankrupting intervention - Saddam Hussein`s evil in particular? The world is much larger than Friedman`s Middle East, and the wider world is awash in monstrous evil, too. No oil, but monstrous evil.

A few weeks ago, Amnesty International, the global human rights organization, made available to its members - and undoubtedly to journalists like Friedman - a map on which it pinpointed "major human crises in the world."

Iraq was one. But only one among 16. The map crisscrossed the planet from Nepal to Guatemala, Burundi to Indonesia, North Korea to Algeria, Liberia to the Philippines, to name just half of the bloodthirsty regimes fingered by Amnesty International.

Among the crimes against humanity being committed by these governments, according to the organization, are these: unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests, prisoners of conscience, ill treatment in prison camps, secret detention, extrajudicial executions, mistreatment of children in custody, rape, etc. Sound familiar?

And these 16 malodorous regimes represent only the worst cases. Burma and Zimbabwe, for example, aren`t even on the "short" list.

So, again, why attack Iraq? Or is the melancholy truth, as Friedman also propounds, that in order to get the American public to make Iraq a "war of choice - but a good choice," Bush had to lie to make Iraq a "war of necessity"? "People in democracies," the widely read columnist calmly asserts, "don`t like to fight wars of choice." Kudos, Thomas Friedman. Neither Paul Wolfowitz nor Hermann Goering nor Machiavelli himself could have phrased that awful axiom more succinctly - or cynically.

In waging this war, the Bush administration has given us its answer to a question that points at the heart of democratic governance: What is a president supposed to do when his nation`s citizens might not sanction what he thinks is right? Lie is the answer from this administration, and from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Defend the indefensible. Lie to us for our own good.

But that`s not the end of it. When all is said and done, once that Orwellian tack has been taken by the leader of a democratic nation, how are we to know he isn`t also lying when he tells us what he thinks is good? Thomas Friedman sure as hell won`t help.

All we can know for certain at this point about this government is that oil`s good if you`re from Texas. So are money and power and snakeskin boots. That`s no lie.

Meanwhile, George Orwell turns in his grave with the tens of thousands of lives needlessly lost - and still being lost - during The Liar`s War of 2003.

David Rozelle lives in rural Spring Green.


Published: 5:51 AM 8/18/03
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/guest/54958.p…

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 1:10 p.m. EDT August 18, 2003

Fellow journalists say a Reuters cameraman who was shot to death by U.S. soldiers in Iraq yesterday was clearly identified as a newsman. They say the soldiers were negligent. Mazen Dana was dressed in civilian clothes, videotaping a U.S.-run prison in Baghdad after a mortar attack that killed six prisoners and wounded dozens more. A U.S. military official says from a distance the soldiers mistook Dana`s camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in northern Iraq when guerrillas attacked their convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. A spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division says both soldiers are in stable condition. The incident happened east of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
On Sunday, U.S. forces shot and killed two Iraqis in unrelated incidents. The military says one man had driven through a checkpoint north of Baghdad. The other was suspected of looting and failed to stop despite warning shots being fired.
British soldiers searching for contraband weapons in southern Iraq made a shocking find. There was a newborn baby girl locked inside an ammunition box in a house they were searching in Basra. The baby appeared to be close to death. Two soldiers revived her, and she was taken to a hospital along with the baby`s mother. The British Defense Ministry alleges the baby`s father locked her in the box, and he has been arrested.
U.S. military officials in Baghdad say a raging fare along an oil pipeline to Turkey may not have been sabotage. The army says one fire started when someone ignited oil leaking from a burst pipe, but it might not have been sabotage. Military officials don`t know how a second pipeline fire started. Some Iraqis are also dealing with water shortages. The water main in Baghdad was bombed Sunday.
A delegation of the Iraqi interim authority arrived in the United Arab Emirates Sunday on the first stop of a regional tour seeking to drum up political cooperation and possible economic aid from fellow Arab countries.
A new group of resistance fighters, the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance Movement, said in a videotaped statement aired on the Al-Jazeera television network that they would battle the occupying troops even if the U.S.-led coalition helps Iraq recover from war. They said they`ll try "to kick out the occupiers as a matter of principle."
A letter allegedly from Saddam Hussein`s deputy vows that Iraqis will avenge the American killings of Saddam`s two sons last month. The letter was broadcast by the Al-Arabiya satellite TV channel based in Dubai. The broadcast did not say how the station concluded the letter is authentic. Nor did the report say how and when the letter was delivered.

COALITION CASUALTIES
As of Monday, August 18th, the Pentagon says 268 U.S. soldiers have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq.

The British government has reported 45 deaths.

On or since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 130 American troops have died in Iraq, according to the latest figures.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days

++++268++++47++++315+++++151

Latest Fatality Date: 8/18/2003

08/18/03 CENTCOM
US SOLDIER KILLED BY EXPLOSIVE DEVICE ON AUG. 18TH IN BAGHDAD
08/17/03 CENTCOM
US forces kill reporter outside of Abu Ghyriab prison
08/17/03 Reuters via Yahoo
U.S. troops have shot dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
08/17/03 San Francisco Chronicle
Journalists who died in Iraq since the U.S.-led military campaign began
08/17/03 Radio Free Europe
A Danish soldier has been killed in a clash with Iraqi gunmen in Al-Basrah, Danish Army command in Copenhagen confirmed today.
08/16/03 Yahoo
Two US soldiers wounded in attacks north of Baghdad
08/15/03 Reuters
The U.S. military also increased the overall U.S. death toll in Iraq on Thursday, saying the adjustment was to take account of soldiers wounded in action who later died of their wounds.

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No 10 knew: Iraq no threat
Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicholas Watt
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

One of the prime minister`s closest advisers issued a private warning that it would be wrong for Tony Blair to claim Iraq`s banned weapons programme showed Saddam Hussein presented an "imminent threat" to the west or even his Arab neighbours.

In a message that goes to the heart of the government`s case for war, the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, raised serious doubts about the nature of September`s Downing Street dossier on Iraq`s banned weapons.

"We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat," Mr Powell wrote a week before the document was finally published on September 24.

His remarks urging caution contrasted with the chilling language used by Mr Blair in a passionate speech in the Commons as he launched the dossier a week later.

He described Iraq`s prog-ramme for weapons of mass destruction as "active, detailed, and growing... It is up and running now."

Mr Powell`s private concerns came in the form of an email which was copied to Alastair Campbell, Downing Street`s director of communications, and Sir David Manning, Tony Blair`s foreign policy adviser.

The fact the three closest men to the prime minister knew of this information strongly suggests Mr Blair would have been aware.

Downing Street also faced severe embarrassment yesterday when the Hutton inquiry was told the prime minister`s official spokesman in an email had described the government`s battles with the BBC as a "game of chicken".

The email revealed how senior Downing Street officials - and on occasion Mr Blair himself - became intimately involved in the events which led to the death of the government scientist David Kelly.

Mr Powell was the first Downing Street official to appear before the inquiry. Within minutes of taking the witness stand, he was asked about his explosive email to John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee. Writing on September 17, he said he believed the arms dossier "does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam".

He added: "In other words, it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the west."

The case the government was making, said Mr Powell, was that "he has continued to develop WMD since 1998, and is in breach of UN resolutions".

The Hutton inquiry heard last week that the final version contained claims that a senior defence intelligence official agreed were "noticeably" hardened up.

They included a claim in the dossier`s foreword, signed by Mr Blair, that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons would be "ready" within 45 minutes of an order to deploy them.

Mr Blair also described Iraq as posing a "serious and current threat".

Documents disclosed by the inquiry yesterday reveal the close interest Mr Blair and Mr Campbell showed in the dossier as it was being prepared.

On September 5, Mr Campbell`s office emailed Mr Powell with the message: "Re dossier, substantial rewrite. Structure as per TB [Tony Blair] discussion." The email refers to the need for "real intelligence material". Mr Powell responds by asking, "will `TB` have something he can read" on the plane on his way to meet President George Bush.

The Hutton inquiry yesterday revealed that top officials in the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street - and Mr Blair himself - made it clear they wanted Dr Kelly to give evidence both in private to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) and in public to the Commons foreign affairs committee (FAC) despite the intense personal pressure he was under.

The government was worried about what Dr Kelly, who had criticised the language in the dossier, would tell MPs.

In an email to Clare Sumner, one of the prime minister`s private secretaries, Mr Powell wrote: "We tried the prime minister out on Kelly before FAC and ISC next Tuesday. He thought he probably had to do both but need to be properly prepared beforehand."

Three days earlier, on July 7, Mr Blair asked his closest advisers what they "knew of Dr Kelly`s views on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what would he say if he appeared before the ISC or the FAC".

Sir Kevin Tebbit, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, warned that Dr Kelly might say some "uncomfortable" things.

The inquiry heard that the Downing Street press office was kept closely in touch with the MoD`s strategy which led to Dr Kelly`s name being made public. On the day he was named, July 10, one of those officials, Tom Kelly, wrote his devastating email to Mr Powell.

"This is now a game of chicken with the Beeb - the only way they will shift is they see the screw tightening," he wrote.

He was referring to plans to make the scientist appear before the committees in the hope of forcing the BBC to confirm that Dr Kelly was its source.


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US troops `crazy` in killing of cameraman
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

Journalists who were with a Reuters news cameraman shot dead by US troops while filming outside a Baghdad prison yesterday accused the soldiers of behaving in a "crazy" and negligent fashion.

They claimed the Americans had spotted the Reuters crew outside the jail half an hour before Mazen Dana was killed and must have realised he was not a guerrilla carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The chief executive of Reuters, Tom Glocer, said: "The latest death is hard to bear. That`s why I am calling upon the highest levels of the US government for a full and comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Dana, 43, is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the US-led force invaded Iraq. His death brought to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since the war began on March 20.

The journalist was killed on Sunday when soldiers in two tanks opened fire while he was filming near Abu Ghurayb prison, which had earlier come under mortar attack.

The US army, which has launched an investigation, claimed its soldiers thought his camera was a weapon.

But colleagues who were with the award-winning cameraman when he was killed told a different story.

Nael al-Shyoukhi, a Reuters soundman, said the soldiers "saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission.

"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film.

"I followed him and Mazen walked three to four metres. We were noted and seen clearly.

"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest. I cried at the soldier, telling him `you killed a journalist`. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said `I will step back but please help, please help`."

He said they tried to help but Dana was bleeding heavily. "Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

Stephan Breitner, of France 2 television, added: "We were all there for at least half an hour. They knew we were journalists. After they shot Mazen, they aimed their guns at us. I don`t think it was an accident. They are very tense. They are crazy."

Dana`s death has once again turned the spotlight on US soldiers and their shoot first, ask questions later tactics in Iraq.

Numerous civilians have been killed by American troops at roadblocks, often without warning.

The shootings have helped to undermine confidence in the US-led coalition among the Iraqi population.

Film that Dana was shooting as he died showed a tank driving toward him. Six shots were heard. The camera appeared to tilt forward and drop to the ground after the first shot.

The US army spokesman, Colonel Guy Shields, said: "Last night we had a terrible tragedy. I can assure you no one feels worse than the soldier who fired the shots."

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which honoured Dana with an International Press Freedom Award in November 2001 for his work covering conflict in his hometown of Hebron in the West Bank, yesterday wrote to the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, asking him to conduct a full inquiry.

Meanwhile US army engineers continued to fight a blaze yesterday on Iraq`s main oil export pipeline after two attacks by saboteurs last week set it on fire.

Paul Bremer, the US governor of Iraq, said on Sunday the country was losing $7m (£4.4m) a day because of the sabotage of the export pipeline to Turkey.

The pipeline only reopened last Wednesday but was shut down two days later after saboteurs blew a hole in it.

A second fire broke out nearby late on Saturday, which is also thought to have been the work of guerrillas.


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Iraq victory fails to oil world economy
Heather Stewart and Charlotte Denny
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

If President Bush`s real reason for rolling his tanks into Iraq was to turn on the taps of the world`s second-largest oil reserves to lower the cost of energy, he must be sadly disappointed. Following this weekend`s attacks by saboteurs on Iraq`s main oil pipeline to Turkey, oil prices in London are nearly back to where they were as military commanders prepared the first strikes in March.

The three months since full-blown hostilities ended have been a hard lesson for markets which had hoped to see oil exports from Iraq climb swiftly towards the 2m barrels a day the US promised to deliver by the end of the year. Southern refineries have been plagued by power cuts, the north-south "strategic pipeline" had already been sabotaged, and the weekend`s attacks brought exports from the north of the country to a complete standstill.

After the fragility of America`s energy supply was demonstrated last week by the worst blackouts for 30 years, and with US oil reserves running at historic lows, the attackers chose their timing well. Brent crude for October delivery was trading up 35 cents a barrel yesterday at $29.16, after hitting a high of $30.34 earlier this month.

With some analysts predicting that it could take more than a month to fix the damaged pipeline, and Opec showing no signs of using reserves to cool the overheated markets, oil prices could stay at this level for some time.

"I think the only hope one has of a drop in prices would be the Opec meeting in September," said Sarah Lloyd, senior Middle East energy analyst at the World Markets Research Centre. But most analysts believe Opec`s 11 members are likely to be happy to continue reaping the benefits of prices at the top end of their target range.

Leo Drollas of the Centre for Global Energy Studies said: "Iraq is helping keep prices around $28-$29, which suits producers such as Saudi Arabia, but affects oil demand growth in the long-term."

With anti-coalition guerrillas having discovered economic terrorism, few now believe the 2m barrel objective is achievable. "There are a lot of factors out there supporting the oil price right now, but the overriding question is when Iraqi production comes back," said Razia Khan, of Standard Chartered bank. A prolonged period of $30-a-barrel prices is not the prescription central bankers and finance ministers would have written for the world economy right now.

While second quarter growth in the US and Japan was stronger than expected, three of the eurozone`s 12 members are in recession. The UK is the only major economy to have avoided recession since the dotcom bubble burst but it looks set to chalk up its third year of below-trend growth.

Forecasters on both sides of the Atlantic are relying on businesses to take over from consumers as the engines of growth, but with high energy prices putting the recovery in doubt, firms could rethink investment plans.

However, not everyone is pessimistic about the threat to Iraq`s oil exports. David Gignoux at Citigroup said the markets overreacted to weekend pictures of the burning oil pipe - reminiscent of the mass torching of Kuwaiti oil fields in the first Gulf war.

Hawks in the Bush administration had hoped before the war that oil revenues of up to $15bn a year would offset the $4bn a month cost of keeping troops in Iraq. But far from profiting from the war by seizing a cheap source of energy, Washington is having to throw money at securing Iraq`s oil sector, at a time when its finances are already showing a record deficit.



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30% of black men in US will go to jail
Gary Younge in New York
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

Black men born in the United States in 2001 will have a one in three chance of going to prison during their lifetime if current trends continue, according to a report by the US justice department.

More than 5.6 million Americans are either in prison or have served time there - and that number will continue to rise, the report shows.

By the end of 2001 one in every 37 Americans had some experience of prison, compared with one in 53 in 1974. Continuing at that rate, the proportion will increase to one in every 15 of those born in 2001.

In 2001 a sixth of African-American men were current or former prisoners, compared with one in 13 Latinos and one in 38 whites. The incarceration of women remains lower than of men but has increased at twice the rate since 1980 and shows similar racial disparities.

"Prison had become the social policy of choice for low income people of colour," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a group which promotes reduced reliance on imprisonment. "Nobody`s stated it that way but we have inner-city areas starved of investment but no shortage of funds to build and fill prisons."

Those incarcerated for the first time accounted for two-thirds of the growth in prison population between 1974 and 2001. This is largely the result of the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing: one in four inmates in federal and state prisons is in for drug-related offences, most non-violent. "Every dollar spent on drug treatment is better employed reducing crime than one spent building prisons," said Mr Mauer.

The effect of high imprisonment rates goes beyond crime to employment and enfranchisement. More than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners are denied the right to vote, and in 12 states that ban remains for life.

The prison system also ill prepares people for release, making recidivism more likely. Only about 13% of prisoners take part in a pre-release programme.

"Our contemporary prisons basically replicate the social order that produced the offenders to begin with," Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles, told the Atlantic Monthly.


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American voters have two choices: Bush or Bush-lite
To win in 2004, Democrats must confront the hard right

Hugo Young in Vermont
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

The oldest saw in modern politics is that elections are won only on the centre ground. Extremists have to abandon, or at any rate disguise, their passions, and move to positions as close to being all things to all fickle voters as they can invent. That`s how Tony Blair made Labour electable. The coalitions of continental Europe are built round the same inescapable proposition. In such politics, nuance replaces conviction, and manoeuvre boldness, as the identifying marks of a winning team.

What`s going on in America as the 2004 election begins is unnervingly the opposite. It`s one of the more extraordinary spectacles a political scientist, or journalist, let alone a professional politician, could encounter. George Bush is running his campaign from the same fringe position as the one he has adopted for his presidency.

This is a hard-right administration offering virtually no concessions to the soothing niceties that might make it more electorally attractive to voters who are not Republicans. Its tax policy is grotesquely loaded against the masses and in favour of the rich. Its bias on the environment unfailingly comes out on the side of the big commercial interests. It is daily tearing up tracts of policy and practice that protected the basic rights of people snared in the justice system. It is the hardest right administration since Herbert Hoover`s from a very different era. And, which is the point, delights in being so. There is no apology or cover-up.

But even that isn`t the most striking thing about the set-up as it now stands. For this we have to turn to the Democrats. Unlike Bush, many Democrats are sticking to the conventional wisdom. They grope for some kind of centre ground. But so far has the territory shifted, thanks to the Republicans` shameless stakeout on the hard right, that their quest continues to drain their party of most of its meaning and any of its capacity to inspire.

The rules are being observed, but we find that in some circumstances these rules are a fallacy. They draw a party so far into the orbit of its rival as to render itself meaningless as anything except a political machine of variable potency around the country. Yet the dominant mode of most presidential candidates is still to cling to the kind of centrism that defines them at best as Bush-lite, at worst as people who have nothing to say that could send the smallest shiver up the spine of afloating voter.

One should hesitate to second-guess all these massively professional politicians, laden with polls. But their reflex looks to me as unnecessary as it is self-destructive. One way to respond to Bush`s rewrite of the rule book - which covers more contentious ground than Ronald Reagan`s campaigns ever did, for example - may be to meekly accept the new setting for old maxims. The other is to treat the maxims, in present times, as a snare.

For one thing, many Democrats seem to have forgotten that they did win the election last time. For four years it has been idle to challenge the Florida vote and the bizarre workings of the electoral college, but now is the time to recall that in 2000 half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore`s progressive version of the future than Bush`s more conservative one. Bush was still posing as a bit centrist then, and Gore was scarcely a raving liberal. Gore mostly stuck to the Clinton third way doctrine that had taken the Democrats away from the narrowest version of their past. But there was a left-right choice, and more Americans voted left than right.

In most systems, that would have been another reason for the technical winners to gravitate towards the centre. Since that did not happen, it is instead an excellent reason for the losers to rediscover their raison d`être. Yet most of them seem mesmerised with terror at the prospect, and full of guff about Democratic "values" which they take to excuse them from advancing any awkward Democratic policies.

The Iraq war is to blame for this, but only partly. It is Bush`s alibi for everything else. To the extent that voters dislike his right-wingery on domestic matters, Iraq and terrorism give cover to the Great Leader. We may be sure he will exploit this until the day of the election. It puts Democrats in a bind, though something has changed when dreary Joe Lieberman, an early war supporter, now feels it necessary to bleat defensively that his was a "principled" position, and posturing John Kerry - probably the favourite as things stand - calibrates a position edging finely away from believer to mealy-mouthed critic. Another year of Baghdad body bags, with Osama bin Laden still at large, and the politics of the war cannot be so neatly predicted.

For any Democrat to take advantage of Bush`s waning popularity and overcome his vast campaign finances, however, he must have something to say. There needs to be some clarity, on all fronts. The other day, the same edition of the New York Times carried stories saying that neither young African-Americans nor the Boston Irish could any longer be counted on as part of the core vote. Is this heresy surprising when nobody knows with any certainty what Democrats stand for? If a party can`t fire up its core vote, it will be deader quicker than if it can`t draw in people who`ve never voted for it before. Watching what Bush has done to both the economy and the constitution, it should be easy for a Democrat to come up with soundbites and articles of simple faith to inspire a few more than the millions of Americans who voted for Gore last time.

Wiseacres continue to pretend otherwise. They think Howard Dean, the most lefty of the candidates, and former governor of the state of Vermont, could never get elected. Transfixed by the attractions of triangulated centrism, they`re prepared to have its geometry laid out exclusively by their opponents. They come out against a bit of the Bush tax plan but not all of it. They`re all but silent, as are much of the media, on what anti-terrorism psychosis is doing to civil liberties.

Yet the Republicans didn`t get where they are today by such half-baked timidity. The challenge they make is for the life and death of the soul of the America very many Americans still believe in. What their opponents need is a leader whose voice rings more eloquently than Bush`s - surely not the hardest contest to win. That won`t happen until they abandon their backing and filling, and their belief that being a Democrat no longer adds up to anything more than a milder version of their enemies.

"Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice ... Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Barry Goldwater said that 40 years ago. It was the start of the recovery of the right. The words now belong rather exactly in the other side`s mouth. If they came out of Senator Kerry`s this autumn, they`d make him sound less like a calculating wimp.

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Mass graves to reveal Iraq war toll
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

The task of identifying thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians who died during this year`s war has begun with the exhumation of a mass grave at one of Saddam Hussein`s former palaces in Baghdad.

The Iraqi Red Crescent, the Islamic version of the Red Cross, which is coordinating the exhumations, said 45 bodies had been recovered since vthe palace beside the Tigris river, now used as the coalition headquarters.

Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqis died in the war, but an Anglo-American research group, the Iraq Body Count, has estimated the number of civilian fatalities at between 6,000 and 7,800. The number of military casualties is between 10,000 and 45,000.

"It is very important for the families to get the bodies back, but this has to be done in an organised, respectful and scientific way," said Nada Doumani, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who estimated that there were between 10 and 15 mass graves in Baghdad.

The volunteers carefully remove the bodies, which are checked for anything that may identify them.

If that fails they are taken to the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, where they are forensically examined.

Those that remain unclaimed after 10 days will then be reburied in a marked temporary grave at a public cemetery, until somebody comes forward to claim them.

Many places where retreating Iraqi troops or arriving Americans buried the dead are known to locals, but the Red Crescent has urged people not to disturb the graves in order to avoid the destruction of identification evidence.

Ali Ismael Ahmed, the Red Crescent official in charge of exhuming bodies at the presidential palace and other sites in Baghdad, thought that the biggest mass graves in Baghdad were likely to be at the airport. But the Red Crescent had not been told when, or even if, it would be allowed to start exhuming bodies from the site.

Mr Ahmed said that some families were unlikely to ever get the bodies of their relatives back.

"During the war the American soldiers told my volunteers not to go near the bodies in burnt-out tanks, because they would almost certainly have been attacked with depleted uranium," he said.

"We never knew what the Americans did with these bodies, and we probably never will."

Another problem the Red Crescent faces is creating a comprehensive list of those who are missing. They have asked families to register missing loved ones at local offices.

Hussein Abdul Razaq, 49, a taxi driver, was one of those at the Red Cross centre in Baghdad yesterday. His son Ala, 21, was in the air defence, based at Deir, near Basra. Mr Razaq has not heard from him since March 18, two days before the warbegan.

He said that his son had wanted to desert from the army. "I encouraged him to go. If I had not pushed him to go back they would have executed all of us, his whole family. I did not expect to see him again, I saw death on his own face, I knew he was not coming back."



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The e-mails, the rewritten dossier and how No 10 made its case for war
By Kim Sengupta and Nigel Morris
19 August 2003


The extent to which Downing Street sought to convince a doubting British public of the need to go to war in Iraq was exposed before the Hutton inquiry yesterday.

Hitherto unpublished official papers disclosed at the inquiry showed grave doubts at the highest level of government about its own case for supporting the invasion of Iraq.

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair`s chief of staff, admitted a week before the publication of the Iraq weapons dossier that it did "nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam", the inquiry was told yesterday.

The Prime Minister had already authorised a "substantial rewrite" of the document, before the complaint by Mr Powell.

The latest in a series of highly damaging revelations came as the inquiry focused on the role of Downing Street, not only in the circumstances of David Kelly`s death but in the wider issues surrounding the countdown to war.

With the credibility of Mr Blair`s government increasingly at stake, Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister`s director of communications and strategy, will take the witness stand today to answer questions on his role.

Mr Campbell has vehemently denied the allegation that he "sexed up" last September`s dossier, while the Prime Minister has declared that this was the most serious charge that could be levelled against a government.

Yesterday the inquiry was shown an e-mail from Mr Campbell to Jonathan Powell, dated 5 September, 19 days before the dossier was published, disclosing that the document was being substantially rewritten.

It said: "Re dossier, substantial rewrite with JS and Julian M in charge, which JS will take to US next Friday, and be in shape Monday thereafter. Structure as per TB`s discussion. Agreement that there has to be real intelligence material in their presentation." JS apparently referred to John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, while Julian Miller was the chief of the assessment staff at the Cabinet Office.

But despite the "substantial rewrite" 12 days earlier, with the date of publication approaching, Mr Powell reflected the alarm within No 10 that the intelligence services had failed to produce the smoking gun that would swing public opinion behind war.

The e-mail to Mr Scarlett, in charge of compiling the dossier, stated: "The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced. The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam ... We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat. In other words it shows he has the means, but it does not demonstrate that he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the West."

The e-mail also sought further information on the Iraqi regime`s alleged links with al-Qa`ida. Efforts had been made to blank out a section that said: "The document says nothing about these, and TB will need ..."

The inquiry had been told that a draft dossier produced on 5 September did not contain the now notorious claim that Iraq would be able to launch a chemical and biological attack within 45 minutes. However, in the final version published on 24 September, Tony Blair declared in the foreword that Saddam Hussein would be "ready" to carry out the 45-minute threat.

Yesterday there was further discomfort for Downing Street with the disclosure of tension and acrimony over its festering feud with the BBC over the reporter Andrew Gilligan`s claim that the Government had inserted the "45-minute" threat into the dossier despite scepticism from the intelligence services.

The Prime Minister`s official spokesman Tom Kelly had written in an e-mail to Mr Powell: "This is now a game of chicken with the Beeb. The only way they will shift is if they see the screw tightening."

Mr Blair`s spokesman, who referred to Dr Kelly, described by international experts as one of Britain`s foremost authorities on biological weapons, as a "Walter Mitty"-type fantasist, will give his evidence tomorrow.

The inquiry was told that a letter sent to Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC`s board of governors, from the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, was a virtual copy of the wording used in a memorandum by Mr Campbell.

Contradicting Downing Street claims that the Kelly affair was left as an internal matter for the Ministry of Defence, it was disclosed yesterday that Mr Blair himself chaired crisis meetings in No 10 on successive days after it was revealed that the scientist could be the source of Mr Gilligan`s "sexing-up" claims on Radio 4`s Today programme. Documents produced at the hearing revealed that Downing Street played a central role in drafting a press statement by the MoD announcing that an unnamed official had admitted meeting Mr Gilligan in a hotel in central London.

As a further indication of Mr Blair`s difficulties in rebuilding public confidence, a poll by ICM published in today`s Guardian revealed that only six per cent of people believe that the Government is more trustworthy than the BBC. Half of those polled also believed the Government had deliberately embellished the dossier to strengthen its case for the war.

5 SEPT E-MAIL

This memo to Jonathan Powell from Alastair Campbell makes clear that the very first draft of the Iraq dossier was not strong enough. The phrase "substantial rewrite" shows that Mr Campbell had agreed that John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and Julian Miller, head of the JIC assessment staff, should come up with a new version. The e-mail also suggests No 10 wanted "real intelligence". This would explain why the 45-minute claim was seized on so eagerly.

17 SEPT E-MAIL

Mr Powell`s description of the dossier as "convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced" is extraordinary, and betrays the level of doubt within the Government. He states that the Government should make clear it has no evidence that Iraq is an "imminent threat".

THE DOSSIER

Published on 24 September, Mr Blair`s own phrase, "current and serious threat", led MPs and the public to believe that Saddam should be dealt with urgently. But this contradicts Mr Powell`s e-mail advice of only a week earlier. Presenting the 45-minute claim in his foreword as a fact suggests the dossier was hardened up, despite the qualms of some defence intelligence staff officers.
19 August 2003 09:12


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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From the site of the ruins of Babylon, a palace built by Saddam Hussein can be seen in the distance.
August 19, 2003
Hussein`s Babylon: A Beloved Atrocity
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


ABYLON, Iraq — In the realm of Saddam Hussein kitsch, it is hard to compete with Babylon.

The Iraqi leader found the squat, khaki-colored nubs of earth and scattered stacks of bricks left over from one of history`s glorious empires somehow lacking, far too mundane to represent the 2,500-year sweep of Mesopotamian history that was to be reborn through his rule.
Saddam Hussein spent $5 million recreating a palace at Babylon.

So he ordered one of the three original palaces rebuilt.

Never mind that nobody really knows what the imposing palaces looked like. Nor did Mr. Hussein pay much heed to the fact that the archaeological world cried foul — deriding his project as Disney for a Despot — because he was violating their sacred principle of preserving rather than recreating.

But as with many moves by Mr. Hussein, the end result garnered great populist appeal and hence he will probably have the last word on the fate of the famous ruins.

The name Babylon rang with deep significance for Iraqis long schooled in their role as descendants of the people who more or less invented civilization. What remained here was little more than rubble, however, because the prize pieces had long since been carted off to European museums.

Once the $5 million replica was finished, though — at lightning speed, with construction crews working in three shifts toward the end — everybody could see that it was a palace.

"I don`t like it," said Lamia Gaylani, an Iraqi art historian who has returned after decades overseas to help rebuild the country`s antiquities institutions. But she added that because other Iraqis "love it," she was "all for it."

"It is not just about Saddam`s time," she said. "Ruins in Iraq are ugly for most people. Ordinary Iraqis want something they can be impressed by like this. This is a symbol of their history."

Donny George, the assistant curator of the Baghdad Museum, well remembers the day Mr. Hussein came through the ruins, demanding that the palace be rebuilt in time for the start of the first Babylon arts festival in September 1987.

Mr. Hussein did not talk much — he mostly listened — but he did ask how the curators knew when the original had been built. Mr. George showed him one of the original bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II and the construction date, which was around 605 B.C.

The Iraqi leader instantly suggested that bricks used in the re-creation bear some similar inscription. His suggestions had a way of sticking.

"He was the president," said Mr. George, shrugging off a decision that had sent a wave of angst through the antiquities department at the time.

The results are now laced throughout the walls, with scores of bricks stamped with the legend: "In the reign of the victorious Saddam Hussein, the president of the Republic, may God keep him, the guardian of the great Iraq and the renovator of its renaissance and the builder of its great civilization, the rebuilding of the great city of Babylon was done in 1987."

It goes on to mention the name and the date of the earlier despot, inexorably linking the two. (The Arabic script is very small.)

Mr. George, who was then field director of the ruins, recalls the difficulty involved in recreating the palace, one that rivals the Louvre in Paris for size, without an iota of the original plans.

Take the soaring arches that link the myriad rooms. No one really knows how high they were, or how high the original walls were, for that matter.

The arches in earlier royal courts in the region were roughly a boxy rectangle, the height of the arch around twice the width of the entryway. Mr. George decided that the Nebuchadnezzar palace would have been built on an even grander scale, so he tripled the height of the archways.

"It was just like his building massive palaces everywhere," said Mr. George. "It`s to be remembered forever."

Actually the site has become something of a project for the United States Marines, whose main base in central Iraq incorporates the ruins and the palace that Mr. Hussein had built for himself after 1991 on an artificial mound overlooking the whole thing.

The American troops restored the looted gift shop and museum, replacing the roof, laying new linoleum floors and installing a new air-conditioning system.

The only pieces left in the museum are two hefty sections of the walls. One is covered with a scrawl of graffiti executed in what looks like black charcoal, including a fine wiggly snake and other figures. The second piece came from the brightly hued, mile-long Processional Way, depicting a lion in full stride and some flowers that would have done a 1960`s "flower power" T-shirt proud.

The rest of the artifacts once housed in the museum were all copies — the real clay tablets, statuettes and other finds having been carted off to Baghdad, where secure store rooms kept them from looters. (Of course, Iraqis will tell you that the major looting occurred in 1914, when the Germans who had been excavating the site hauled away the famous Ishtar Gate and other booty to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.)

Sometimes the juxtaposition of the ancient — even recreated — and the modern can seem a little jarring, like watching huge gray Marine transport helicopters hover over the airfield just beyond the walls.

Art and archaeology experts joke about history repeating itself, about how the Babylonians, tired of their oppressive leaders, cooperated with the Persians to help toss them out.

Garish reminders of the excesses of Mr. Hussein`s era have been brought crashing down all over Iraq. But experts touring these historic ruins recently concluded that Babylon stays. Even a folly has its place.

"Nebuchadnezzar was a despot and Saddam Hussein was a despot," said Mrs. Gaylani, the art historian. "Would you take away what Nebuchadnezzar built? No. It`s part of history. You have to accept it."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 19, 2003
Bush Administration Plans Defense of Terror Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU


WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — The Bush administration, under increasing criticism over its terrorism policies, is beginning an unusual counteroffensive this week in an effort to shore up support for the prized legislation that grew out of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The pitchman for the campaign-style initiative is Attorney General John Ashcroft, a politically divisive figure who plans to deliver more than a dozen speeches around the country beginning on Tuesday in defense of the administration`s terrorism efforts.

The campaign will take Mr. Ashcroft to states that are considered central to Mr. Bush`s 2004 re-election effort and where some political strategists say the administration`s tough antiterrorism tactics play well.

The USA Patriot Act, as the sweeping legislation passed after 9/11 is known, has formed a cornerstone of the administration`s antiterrorism policies in giving law enforcement agents expanded powers to identify, track and apprehend suspects.

But the legislation has also become almost a dirty word in some circles in recent months. The Republican-led House voted overwhelmingly last month to repeal a key provision on the use of surveillance, 152 communities have passed resolutions objecting to the legislation because of what some saw as its Big Brother overtones, and civil liberties groups are suing to have parts of the law struck down as unconstitutional.

The increasingly vitriolic concerns over the measure and its future have thrown the administration on the defensive, according to people close to the administration. Mr. Ashcroft, though often criticized by liberal and conservative policy-makers, is seeking to solidify support for the law.

"The administration realizes that Ashcroft is a bit of a lightning rod," said a prominent Republican consultant. "He has his down sides, but not in the realm of prosecuting terrorism and protecting national security. He works well in that area."

Over the next month the attorney general will promote the law as an effective tool against terrorism before law enforcement organizations, and conservative groups in such states as Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. Two of the cities where the talks will be held later this week, Philadelphia and Detroit, have passed resolutions opposing the act. But Justice Department officials said political calculations did not factor into the attorney general`s itinerary.

"The majority of American people are clearly supportive of our counterterrorism efforts, including the use of the Patriot Act," said Mark Corallo, a department spokesman. "It`s important that after months of misinformation being spread by a small but vocal minority inside the Beltway that we go out beyond Washington and talk to people in law enforcement and let them know that their efforts are appreciated."

Viet Dinh, a former Justice Department official who drafted the Patriot Act, said that Mr. Ashcroft`s agenda would be "to correct the misperceptions that are out there and to disabuse the American public of the misinformation they`ve gotten."

The themes will be similar to those that Mr. Ashcroft and top aides have voiced for months — that the Patriot Act is essential to fight terrorism and that critics have distorted what the law does to make it seem more onerous than it really is. But the heightened pitch of his message underscores the urgency of a political debate that many Republicans and Democrats say they think the administration is losing.

Representative C. L. Otter, Republican of Idaho, who sponsored last month`s amendment in the House repealing a surveillance power in the Patriot Act, said in an interview today that he viewed the campaign by Mr. Ashcroft as an effort "to try to reclaim the ground that the Justice Department has lost."

Mr. Otter, who voted against the act in October 2001, said he thought it was a mistake for Congress to move ahead with it just weeks after the 9/11 attacks at the administration`s urging. The legislation gave law enforcement agents dozens of new tools for wiretapping and following terrorism suspects and probing their financial and personal records, and it made it easier for law enforcement and intelligence officials to share information they obtained in their inquiries.

"The smoke was still coming out of the rubble in New York City when we passed the law," Mr. Otter said. "I think there`s a sense in Congress now that maybe we moved too far too fast."

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, agreed.

"Among conservatives, more and more people are saying that the Patriot Act oversteps the powers that government needs," Mr. Keene said. "The mood in Congress has clearly changed since the law was passed after 9/11, and I think the attorney general is trying to reverse that trend."

The debate over balancing counterterrorism demands against civil liberties has shaped issues including law enforcement budgets and the government`s ability to monitor people`s reading habits, and it will become even more pressing as the expiration of some parts of Patriot Act nears in 2005.

Some Republican Congressional leaders have hinted that they want to introduce legislation expanding powers granted under the act. They have also sought to extend the life of the law by removing the so-called sunset provisions, only to be beaten back by concerns from civil libertarians in Congress who say the legislation needs greater scrutiny.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said today that only by backing away from efforts to repeal the sunset provisions and giving Congress more complete information could Mr. Ashcroft "begin repairing the unease" over the Patriot Act.

Both Democrats and Republicans said that Mr. Ashcroft could prove either an asset or a liability for the administration in pushing greater acceptance of the measure. His stance on social issues appeals to what Laura Murphy, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, called "the hard-core, right-wing, rabble-rousing base." But he has also proved to be a lightning rod for criticism in part because of what critics see as his confrontational approach and his conservative politics.

Mr. Ashcroft has angered some lawmakers by suggesting that critics who raised civil liberties concerns were soft on terrorism, and he urged prosecutors last year not to shrink from their duties in the face of "slings and arrows in the public arena."

But even some of his critics say that Justice Department officials appear to have become more responsive to their concerns about the civil liberties implications of the Patriot Act and their repeated demands for information on how it is being used.

"People are still concerned, but at least they`ve finally gotten around to giving us some actual answers," said a Republican Congressional aide. "The suspicions have come when they refused to provide answers. That`s when people think they must have something to hide."




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 19, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Road to Ruin
By PAUL KRUGMAN


We still don`t know what started the chain reaction on Thursday. Whatever the initial cause, however, the current guess is that a local event turned into an epic blackout because the transmission network has been neglected. That is, the power industry hasn`t spent enough on the control systems and safeguards that are supposed to prevent such things.

And the cause of that neglect is faith-based deregulation.

In the past, electric power was considered a natural monopoly. It was and is impractical to have companies competing either to wire up homes and businesses, or to build long-distance transmission lines. Because effective competition was impossible, power companies were given local monopolies, and regulated to keep them from exploiting customers.

These regulated monopolies took responsibility for the whole system — transmission and distribution as well as generation. Then came the deregulation movement. It argued that a competitive market could be created in power generation (though not in transmission and distribution), and in much of the country utilities were forced to sell off their power plants.

In fact, effective competition has been elusive even in power generation. In California, deregulation led to one of history`s great policy disasters: energy companies drove up prices by creating artificial shortages. This plunged the state into a crisis that ended only after much of its electricity supply was locked up in long-term contracts, and price controls were imposed on the rest.

Incidentally, there seems to be a weird reluctance to face up to what happened in California. Since the blackout, I`ve seen national news reports attributing California`s woes in part to environmental restrictions, while ignoring the role of market manipulation. Huh? There`s no evidence that environmental restrictions played any role; meanwhile, even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which strongly backs deregulation, has concluded that market manipulation played a major role. What`s with the revisionist history?

Anyway, market manipulation aside, energy experts have long warned that deregulation would lead to neglect of the grid. Under the old regulatory system, power companies had strong incentives to ensure the integrity of power transmission — they would catch the flak if something went wrong. But those incentives went away with deregulation: because effective competition in transmission wasn`t possible, the companies providing transmission still had to be regulated. But because regulation limited their profits, they had little financial incentive to invest in maintaining and upgrading the system. And because of deregulation elsewhere, responsibility was diffused: nobody had a strong stake in keeping the system reliable. The result was a failure not just to add capacity, but to maintain and upgrade capacity that already existed.

These experts didn`t necessarily oppose deregulation; their point was that deregulation could lead to disaster unless accompanied by policies not just to keep the grid reliable, but to expand it. (To make competition possible, a deregulated system needs considerably more transmission capacity than one based on regulated monopolies.) But their warnings weren`t taken seriously; politicians and deregulation enthusiasts simply had faith that somehow "the market" would take care of the problem.

Four years ago, Paul Joskow of M.I.T. told FERC: "Proceeding on the assumption that, at the present time, `the market` will provide needed network transmission enhancements is the road to ruin." And so it was.

Have we learned our lesson? Early indications are not promising. President Bush now says that "our grid needs to be modernized . . . and I`ve said so all along." But two years ago Tom DeLay blocked a modest Democratic plan for loan guarantees for system upgrades, calling it "pure demagoguery." And press reports say that despite the blackout, the administration will bow to pressure from Senate Republicans and put on ice the only part of its energy plan that had any relevance to the blackout, a FERC proposal for expanded oversight of the transmission system.

This nation needs to invest billions in its power grid, yet given recent history, it`s crucial that this investment not be simply another occasion for energy-industry profiteering. Somehow, I`m not optimistic.







Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Heute 59 frische Cartoons. Für jeden etwas. Auch heute den Warnhinweis:
IQ Warning: Each issue contains ALL of the day`s cartoons on a single printer-friendly page. If you have a slow mind i.e. regularly watch Fox News it may take several minutes to get the jokes. Please be patient - its worth the wait.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030818_059_toons.htm

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washingtonpost.com
Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by U.S. Military


By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A02


Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty International that they were subjected to human rights abuses.

The accounts, which provide some of the most detailed information so far on alleged violations, include claims that people were forcibly injected, denied sleep and forced to stand or kneel for hours in painful positions. These charges are included in a new report from the human rights organization, which is reviewing 23 months of U.S. actions in the war on terror.

Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment yesterday, saying he had not seen the report. NSC spokesmen have challenged previous claims of ill treatment, saying that the United States treats enemy combatants humanely.

About 700 prisoners have been kept at Guantanamo Bay, most captured in Afghanistan after the war in 2001. About 60 men have since been released. Many had been transferred there through the base at Bagram, north of Kabul, which still holds an unknown number of prisoners. The United States has designated the prisoners "enemy combatants" and has refused them access to lawyers or relatives. Earlier this year, it scheduled six detainees to face military tribunals, but three of those prosecutions have been suspended pending the completion of negotiations with the defendants` governments in Britain and Australia.

The report, "Threat of a Bad Example," concludes that conditions at the bases may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses -- or release them.

In the report, one Afghan detainee, Alif Khan, recalled being given two injections, producing "a kind of unconsciousness," for his transfer from Bagram.

Another, Sayed Abassin, said that while at Bagram, he was awakened by guards, denied adequate food and forced to stand or kneel for hours.

A third man, Muhammad Naim Farooq, said fellow detainees at Guantanamo had wept because of pain from handcuffs. He also said that two men who had attempted suicide were punished with solitary confinement.

"These interviews with former prisoners are damning and add to the poor record of the Bush administration with regard to human rights over the past 23 months," said Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International USA.

"The record is shameful: hooding, blindfolding and shackling of prisoners, together with arbitrary arrests, prolonged incommunicado detention, ill treatment and interrogations without legal counsel," she said.

After several months of controversy over tactics in dealing with prisoners, the Bush administration pledged two months ago that the United States would not torture terrorism suspects or subject them to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment to extract information.

Arriaga said it was impossible to independently judge conditions at the camps, as the organization had been denied entry.

Allegations of serious mistreatment have centered on Bagram. In interviews with The Washington Post last year, members of the U.S. national security apparatus said "stress and duress" techniques had been used there.

Concern for detainees mounted earlier this year when pathologists at Bagram called the deaths of two Afghan prisoners after interrogation homicides and blamed blunt-force injuries in addition to other causes. The U.S. military is still investigating the deaths.

Jamie Fellner, U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch, said it has been "extremely difficult to know" if the United States is treating people humanely during interrogations. "No one has been allowed to talk to detainees. These [accounts] are the beginning of the first insight into their experiences," she said.



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U.S. Taps Media Chief for Iraq
Regulation Attempted Without Appearing Heavy-Handed

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A14


BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 -- U.S. authorities have appointed a media commissioner to govern broadcasters and the press, establish training programs for journalists and plan for the establishment of a state-run radio and television network -- part of an effort to regulate Iraq`s burgeoning news media while dodging allegations of heavy-handed control.

The standards and enforcement mechanisms are being "fleshed out," said a senior official of the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. A board to take complaints about media excesses was envisaged, but the official declined to specify the limits on news coverage.

In June, L. Paul Bremer, the civil administrator in Iraq, issued guidelines for all media outlets here, forbidding them from inciting violence, promoting "ethnic and religious hatred" or circulating false information "calculated to promote opposition" to the occupation authority.

Occasionally, U.S. soldiers have raided newspaper offices deemed to be in breach of the regulations, and they have closed at least two newspapers and one radio station. But the delicacy of sending heavily armed troops to enforce media rules has prompted the occupation officials to look for other ways to exercise their power to censor.

The new media commissioner will be Simon Haselock, a spokesman and media supervisor for U.N. authorities overseeing Kosovo. In June, he drafted a proposal to regulate journalists` activities through a panel that officials here have dubbed a "complaints commission." The commission, which would include journalists, would levy fines. Alleged transgressors could appeal. The system is similar to one functioning in Kosovo.

Haselock, who has been visiting Baghdad in recent days, was not available to comment.

Setting up a state-run network is almost sure to create a minefield of controversy. The U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network (IMN), the embryo for the future state system, has AM and FM radio outlets and a television network capable of reaching about two-thirds of Iraqi homes.

Science Applications International Corp., an American company contracted by the Pentagon to launch IMN, oversees the network`s operations and supplies equipment to upgrade its facilities. The network`s budget is about $6 million a month. The network is expanding its reach to try to cover all Iraq, set up a training school and establish a 24-hour TV news station. There are also plans to increase the network`s technical prowess to compete with Arabic-language outlets and eventually beam its broadcasts by satellite.

U.S.-appointed administrators in charge of the network say they want to model it on the BBC or American public broadcasting organizations, which receive public money but strive to maintain independence. If it follows this model, IMN would break with tradition not only in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world, where state-funded broadcasting is tightly controlled.

IMN employees stand in the crossfire of competing demands. Authorities here labor to present the positive side of a military occupation that is beset by problems in restoring utilities and economic activity to Iraq, as well as by persistent attacks on U.S. forces. Iraqis are keenly attuned to the issue of government media control and appear to view IMN as an occupation mouthpiece.

To some, extensive coverage of Bremer`s inspection tours of Iraq and his public statements recall the rigid broadcast style of deposed president Saddam Hussein`s government.

"I look at it like this is what the authority wants us to know. It belongs to them, so I don`t really expect anything different," said Moustafa Salman, a truck driver who was shopping for a satellite TV antenna last week.

"When I see Bremer walking around shaking people`s hands on the television, I think of Saddam," said Rima Kadri, a homemaker. "What has changed?"

Although IMN officials insist that Bremer`s administration does not censor its broadcasts, they nonetheless face a dilemma on how to define the occupation authority`s prohibition on "incitement." IMN appears to enforce these prohibitions liberally.

"We have to take into account our audience," said Shamin Rassam, an Iraqi-American who directs IMN`s FM radio outlet as well as newscasts on the AM station. "It is an emotional people with bitter leftovers of 30 years` misrule. Do I want to incite the streets? No. We take care.

"So if we are reporting on unemployment, we would also discuss solutions," continued Rassam, who was a well-known broadcaster for Hussein`s Information Ministry before going into exile in 1990. "If someone says that American troops should not be in their neighborhood, we would also have to ask what would be the alternative."

Moustafa Kadhimy, an IMN television newsman, said the station would be reluctant to broadcast a letter from Hussein, or someone`s rants about killing Americans. "Those are tough calls for us," he said.

He and Rassam said it is a duty of IMN to broadcast the occupation authority`s announcements, but they insisted IMN is not its mouthpiece. On occasion, the network has gone out of its way to prove it.

In July, when U.S. soldiers killed two of Hussein`s sons and a 14-year-old grandson, IMN television withheld the news for several hours, lest it be seen as providing official confirmation. Rather, George Mansour, the station director, broadcast a carefully written statement on the deaths in the evening, attributing the information to other news agencies.

Mansour said he was trying to persuade his reporters to be bolder in covering the occupation authority`s problems. "They ask, `Well, can we show a dead American soldier?` I tell them we have to be real," Mansour said. "We can`t always think about whether Bremer will get mad or not."

Some reporters seem inclined toward self-censorship. Last Wednesday, when troops in a U.S. military helicopter apparently toppled a religious flag from a Baghdad telecommunications tower, prompting Shiite Muslims to riot, Haidar Kadhimi, an IMN radio reporter, decided not to cover the melee.

"We are not going to help support the saboteurs," he said, in reference to Shiites who stoned American soldiers. "We`re not going to blow it out of proportion."

Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, two foreign Arabic-language satellite TV networks, covered the event in detail. Yet Kadhimi considered his decision correct given the volatile circumstances in the city. "Jazeera and Arabiya are biased against the American occupation. They want to pressure the Americans all the time," he said. "We know the situation better. We deal with the reality here."

Growing competition from al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, as well as from broadcasts beamed from Iran, has led critics to conclude that IMN is losing a propaganda battle. Ahmed Rikaby, who recently resigned as IMN`s director and was replaced by Mansour, told reporters in London that a lack of resources meant that the network "didn`t really succeed in countering the propaganda of such anti-coalition networks." He said that U.S. overseers considered IMN the occupation authority`s outlet and not an independent entity.

U.S. officials contend that IMN`s goal is not to produce propaganda but to broadcast "factual and authoritative information," according to Dan Senor, an occupation authority spokesman. "IMN is not supposed to be the dominant media in Iraq, but one of many voices. We never viewed our goals to be built around a propaganda war."

Mansour, who spent many years in exile in Canada, said he believed that IMN could win an information battle with al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, because many Iraqis felt the networks worked hand-in-glove with Hussein`s government and "ignored the suffering of Iraqi people."

"We will be all right if we give a real picture of Iraq," he said. "Technically, we can`t compete with them yet. But we might have an advantage, because people don`t trust them either."



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Wenn Bush es einsieht, sollten es auch die Boardhardliner einsehen, es gibt noch Kämpfe im Irak. Einiges über Afghanistan steht auch noch in dem Artikel.

washingtonpost.com
Bush Revises Views On `Combat` in Iraq
`Major Operations` Over, President Says

By Dana Milbank and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A15


President Bush, revising his earlier characterization of the fighting in Iraq, said in an interview released yesterday that combat operations are still underway in that country.

In an interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service given on Thursday and released by the White House yesterday, Bush interrupted the questioner when asked about his announcement on May 1 of, as the journalist put it, "the end of combat operations."

"Actually, major military operations," Bush replied. "Because we still have combat operations going on." Bush added: "It`s a different kind of combat mission, but, nevertheless, it`s combat, just ask the kids that are over there killing and being shot at."

In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." The headline on the White House site above Bush`s May 1 speech is "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended."

Since then, a search of Bush speeches on the White House Web site indicates, the president had not spoken of the guerrilla fighting in Iraq as combat until this interview; he had earlier spoken of the "cessation of combat" in Iraq.

A White House spokesman said Bush was not making a distinction between combat and military operations. "What the president declared on May 1 is that major combat operations were over," he said. "He did not say that combat was over."

The description of active combat in Iraq was one of several statements Bush made in the interview that differed with earlier administration positions as he discussed his foreign policy while visiting a military facility in Miramar, Calif.

Asked about U.S. force presence in Afghanistan, Bush said the U.S. presence is being "gradually replaced" by other troops.

"We`ve got about 10,000 troops there, which is down from, obviously, major combat operations," he said. "And they`re there to provide security and they`re there to provide reconstruction help. But both those functions are being gradually replaced by other troops. Germany, for example, is now providing the troops for ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], which is the security force for Afghanistan, under NATO control. In other words, more and more coalition forces and friends are beginning to carry a lot of the burden in Afghanistan."

In fact, the 10,000 troops in Afghanistan represent the highest number of U.S. soldiers in the country since the war there began. By the time the Taliban government had been vanquished in December 2001, U.S. troops numbered fewer than 3,000 in Afghanistan. And three months later, in March 2002, when the last major battle against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda took place in eastern Afghanistan, about 5,000 U.S. troops were in the country.

Germany has participated in the 29-nation ISAF since January 2002. The 4,600 troops in ISAF provide security only in the Kabul area, and the United States, which is not part of ISAF, has operations throughout Afghanistan.

In the interview, Bush, asked about the burden on U.S. troops in Iraq, said other nations will be providing troops. "Polish troops are now moving in and will be in, I think, by September 4th of this year, which is in two weeks -- that`s a major Polish contingent," he said. "There will be other nations going in to support not only the Polish contingent, but the British contingent."

The Poles have agreed to send 2,400 troops to lead a multinational division including 1,640 troops from Ukraine, 1,300 from Spain and smaller units expected from Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mongolia and the Philippines. The Pentagon has agreed to pay much of the cost of the Polish troops.



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The Shah and Us -- and Regime Change


By George F. Will

Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A19



Tehran, Iran, Aug. 19 -- Iranians loyal to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, including Tehran civilians, soldiers and rural tribesmen, swept Premier Mohammed Mossadegh out of power today in a revolution and apparently had seized at least temporary control of the country.

-- the New York Times,

Aug. 20, 1953.

This anniversary reminds us that America is not new to the business of regime change. Fifty years ago U.S. and British intelligence services -- the principal U.S. operative was Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy`s grandson -- had a remarkably easy time overthrowing Iran`s government.

It took just two months and $200,000, mobs being cheap to rent back then. It was so easy that, according to the late CIA director Richard Helms in his just-published memoir, "A Look Over My Shoulder," Roosevelt felt the need to sound a warning that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles did not want to hear.

Roosevelt said the coup succeeded because the CIA had accurately concluded that the Iranians, including most of the military, "wanted exactly" the result we were seeking. "If we," said Roosevelt, referring to the CIA, "are ever going to try something like this again, we must be absolutely sure that [the] people and army want what we want. If not, you had better give the job to the Marines!"

The shah`s "at least temporary control of the country" lasted just a bit more than half of these 50 years. The fact that his control crumbled in 1979 under the assault of Islamic fundamentalists responsive to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini does not mean the coup was misguided or unavailing.

History teaches that everything is temporary. Besides, the coup`s purpose was to confound Soviet designs, not settle Iran`s future in perpetuity. The fact that the coup in some sense set in train events that led to today`s highly unsatisfactory situation in Iran does not mean that the coup was not successful, any more than Soviet control of Eastern Europe for almost a half-century after 1945 meant that the Second World War was not worth winning. Rather, the point to be pondered on this anniversary is that U.S. involvement in regime change deeply implicates the United States in the future of the affected country.

Much ink has been spilled in arguing about when the U.S. commitment in South Vietnam became large and irreversible. It is at least arguable that the day can be pinpointed: Nov. 2, 1963. That was when the United States was involved in regime change -- in the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Again, the reason for remembering such U.S. undertakings at this moment is not to reopen arguments about their wisdom but to underscore the point that the United States has been practicing the craft of regime change for a long time. And that such changes inevitably are the beginnings of long and sometimes melancholy entanglements.

We are in the process of acquiring yet another in Liberia. That one arises from historical ties, supplemented by President Bush`s post-9/11 conclusion that "weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states."

The Economist of London, which was founded in 1843, when British imperialism was flourishing, is neither squeamish about the fact of empire nor tainted by anti-Americanism. But as an anxious friend, the Economist notes:

In less than two years the United States has occupied two Muslim countries with a combined population of more than 50 million. Afghanistan "remains a failed or nonexistent state" where "the government`s writ does not extend much beyond Kabul" and "local warlords, deep into the heroin trade, wield the real power." In Iraq, where a U.S. general says the current condition is "war, however you describe it," there are 161,000 occupying troops, of which 148,000 are American. The largest contingent of the other 13,000 are British and the other 18 participating nations have sent on average a few hundred.

It might be time to pause in pushing the American project that was implicit in Woodrow Wilson`s assertion that America`s flag is "the flag not only of America but of humanity." Wilson was echoing Lincoln`s belief that our nation is "dedicated to a proposition" that is "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." But the belief that the American model of civic life could be a blessing to everyone is as old as Benjamin Franklin`s proclamation that America`s "cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind."

Franklin did not say, but probably was wise enough to think: "Eventually. Maybe."

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Bush`s Neverland Economics


By David Ignatius

Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A19


INDIANAPOLIS -- When all 50 state governors agree on something, that`s a powerful message. Especially when it`s a cry for help in dealing with what many governors say is a national fiscal crisis -- invisible at the federal level but ravaging state government.

This rare display of unanimity came in a plea to Congress from the governors gathered here this week for their semiannual meeting. They asked the federal government to take responsibility for billions of dollars in Medicaid prescription drug costs that are now burdening the states.

Without help, Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee told me, the states face a "galloping" crisis that could destroy their ability to pay for schools, hospitals and other basic services.

You don`t get this sense of looming disaster in the Neverland of Washington, where the Bush administration continues to pump the deficit and ignore any serious accounting for the cost of war in Iraq.

But governors can`t play games with numbers. Every state but one is required to balance its budget annually, and over the past several years, governors have faced some excruciating choices on what to cut -- a state nursing home or a junior college, a prison or a new highway.

The governors have cut spending so much that even Republicans have been doing the unthinkable and raising taxes. But the attempt to recall California Gov. Gray Davis, who raised taxes to deal with his state`s $38 billion deficit, was a warning that these budget ills can be politically fatal.

The fiscal squeeze was the first topic many governors brought up at the conference. The war in Iraq is far away, but the economic crunch is here and now.

Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico explains that President Bush is still very popular in his state, regardless of the troubles in postwar Iraq. Fellow Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius agrees that voters in her home state of Kansas are worried about the economy, not Iraq.

Huckabee illustrates how the fiscal crunch is playing out across the country. He says that 91 percent of his budget now goes for education, Medicaid and prisons. These amount to fixed costs. Because of declining revenues, he had to cut his budget 11 percent over the past two years -- despite raising the state`s tobacco tax last May.

"You`re cutting down to the bone," he says. "It comes down to deciding how many inmates you will release from prison, which colleges and nursing homes you will close."

Without federal help on Medicaid spending, says Huckabee, he fears rolling cutbacks that will undermine the economy of his state. A reduction in Medicaid reimbursements could force him to close some rural hospitals; that loss of health services, in turn, might lead companies to decide not to locate in Arkansas; that would increase unemployment and lower tax revenue . . . and down it goes.

Huckabee exemplifies the tax-cutting fever of the 1990s that got many states into such trouble. Like many governors, he rushed to cut taxes during the boom years. His 1997 tax cut was the first in the state`s history, and he followed with another in 1999. Then, the bubble burst, revenues began to fall and the fiscal squeeze began.

"This is a burning crisis," says Huckabee. "There is no indication that it will get better," without federal help. Though the Arkansas governor is a conservative Republican, he could be mistaken for a New Dealer when he calls for the federal government to accept responsibility for health care of the elderly.

I can`t help but contrast this sense of urgency and political realism with the happy talk coming from Washington. The federal budget deficit is nearing $500 billion, more than 50 percent bigger than the $304 billion deficit that was forecast early this year. That doesn`t include the full costs of the war in Iraq, for which the administration still hasn`t provided detailed numbers. Estimates range from Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer`s recent prediction of up to $100 billion over the next three years to a Brookings Institution forecast of $300 billion to $450 billion.

Does the Bush administration plan to raise taxes to pay for the war? Does it plan to cut spending? Or does it just plan to wing it and hope for the best? That would ignore the one clear lesson of Vietnam, which is that if you decide to go to war, you have to pay for it -- or risk the damage of severe inflation.

But the Bush administration apparently thinks it is exempt from the laws of economics. It can wage war, cut taxes, spend what it likes -- and worry later about the consequences. That choice is not open to the nation`s governors. Their unanimous cry for help should be a wake-up call to the White House.

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August 18, 2003

Desperate Imperialism
The Bush Administration in Context
By MATT SIEGFRIED

The current Bush-Cheney administration is the most right-wing government the United States has had in many years. Bush`s regime came to power in a flawed, even fraudulent, election process whose outcome was decided by the Supreme Court. Its election has been considered illegitimate, even an usurpation, by many from liberal Democrats to the far left. The new government spent its first months trying to convince people it had gravitas when its chairman, the President, found it hard to put together intelligible sentences or an understanding of the policies that were to be implemented in his name. Tax cuts for the already rich, environmental rollbacks, the abrogation of certain international treaties and a decidedly isolationist approach to foreign policy were to be the agenda.

Much has since been said about the changed posture of US imperialism after the attacks of September the 11, 2001. But trends, movements and shifts were already underway in the world that were changing attitudes among the US moneyed interests at whose behest every American administration, Democrat and Republican, act. These attitudes are based on their position internationally as the leading imperialist power in the world. That is, the national ruling class with the most penetration and ownership of the global capitalist economy, the predominate military power and the leading political and cultural force on the planet. The United States has had this leading position since it emerged on top of the heap of corpses following the end of World War II. For the next 45 years the Cold War between it and the Soviet Union guaranteed its place as it led the other large capitalist powers in their subservient roles in the common struggle against the USSR and the exploited classes.

The competition and conflict with the USSR created an equilibrium in the world that helped, despite the horrendous bloodletting and exploitation of the second half of the 20th century, to divert most challenges against the order of both blocs for fifty years. While the USSR may have been the chief competitor of US power its competition was the dynamic that ensured the American position of preeminence. The imperialists saw the struggle against the Soviet Union as existential. After the rising challenge to imperialism of the late sixties and early seventies imperialism collected itself for an offensive.

The United States, first under Carter then Reagan, was able to force the Soviet Union to bankrupt itself expending its resources in an arms race with a many times more productive American economy while aggressively intervening in proxy wars in Latin America (where it utilized military juntas in horrifically bloody repressions) and Central Asia (where it fostered Islamic fundamentalism against the secularists, nationalists and left). The collapse of the Soviet bloc and then the Soviet Union under the weight of the capitalist offensive and its own wretched bureaucracy was a generational victory for international capitalism, in many ways its biggest ever victory against the forces seeking to go beyond capitalist system. The scale of the victory[-- ideologically, militarily and economically -- meant that the US stood unrivaled in its dominance for the first time. Now the peoples of the world would have to define themselves by their relationships to the United States.

The forces in the world opposed to capitalism, and imperialism, whether influenced by, independent of or hostile to the Soviet Union, found themselves weakened and fractured. The US victory in the first Gulf War further demoralized and isolated the left in the post-Soviet "New World Order". These victories combined with huge speculation in new technology markets allowed the nineties to become a brief boom time for American capitalism. The "End of History" was announced and TINA ("There Is No Alternative") was declared by a capitalism seemingly without challenge and expanding.

The Democrats were able to elect Clinton as President of the United States proclaiming himself a moderating force in a party whose moderation on behalf of the oppressed is boundless. The United States came to use its military power with increasing frequency as the "humanitarian" interventions of the Clinton years gave legitimacy to the continuation of massive defense contracts and the existence of a large standing army. There was no "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War.

Clinton forced through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect in 1994, as the US and other ruling classes utilized the retreat of the left, the struggles of national liberation and the workers` movement in general to push forward a neo-liberal offensive.

Neo-liberalism is the attempt to role back the gains made by working people as well as national economic protections utilized by exploited countries in the post World War II era. By systematically privatizing and degrading regulations, tariffs, environmental and labor standards, etc., the imperialists attempt to create greater flexibility for and an end to restrictions on the movement of their capital in an uphill battle to reverse the long term problem of the declining rate of profit. This meant an attack on the living standards of nearly every sector of the population in the world at a time when the capitalist pundits were declaring that the economy had never been so good.

Resistance began. Those left out of the "Roaring Nineties" began to move. The Zapatistas briefly answered NAFTA with arms in hand, declaring it a death sentence for indigenous people. Then the dramatic French public worker`s strikes in the fall of 1995. In the United States a determined struggle by the Teamsters union against United Parcel Service (UPS)showed that it was possible to fight and win something even in the heart of the imperialist monolith. In 1998 the long simmering populace of Indonesia exploded ending the particularly murderous career of Washington`s strongman Suharto. In many areas local, regional, national and international networks formed to address the concerns that had all but been ignored by the elite at their policy gatherings in summits, retreats, boardrooms, barrooms, conference calls, skiing trips, golf outings and who knows what else. By the late nineties people were posing the question: "Is this really all we can hope for?"

The answer came by way of the Seattle demonstrations and the remarkable growth in the global justice movement that has brought together activists from both the imperialist countries and the countries oppressed by them. The answer was an energetic "No!".

This new internationalist understanding coincided with the reemergence of an heroic resistance to the "New World Order" by the Palestinian people. Clinton and Israeli leader Barak agreed on the outcome of "negotiations" to be had with the Palestinians. The culmination of the pacification process of Oslo was to be the cornerstone of the regime of Pax Americana in the Middle East. The Palestinians were presented with the not-so-generous offer of 90% of 22% of what was stolen from them to begin with, no sovereignty and no return of refugees. They refused to give up the hope of living in dignity rather than the labor camps of the Camp David Agreement.

The second Palestinian intifada erupted as the Israelis attempted to implement the US-Israel agreement by force. These two events, the Palestinian intifada and the movement heralded in Seattle, soon found themselves acting in the context of a general economic downturn adding more misery to ever more people just after capitalism had proclaimed it growth unstoppable. The US stock markets dramatically deflated, especially those bursting with ephemeral high tech "new economy" dollars. These are some of the defining events that have set the stage f or our current situation.

Bush was elected at a time when many around the world had already began to question the premise of Pax Americana and when the tenacity of the Palestinians and the resourcefulness of the global justice campaigners were succeeding in placing their issues center stage. Facing growing resistance globally and an economic downturn at home, the US ruling class found itself under increasing pressure. Though none of the movements had been able to move from a protest of the inequalities innate in the global imperialist economy to an actual challenge of its rule, the imperialists began to worry.

The right was brought to power in a series of elections in Europe and where the Social Democrats were still in power they pushed forward and sought to complete the austerity agendas set by the right. It was becoming increasingly clear that the United States could not simply deal with the world the same way it did in the early and mid 90`s. The levels of resistance, continued instability in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and notably Latin America combined with financial troubles at home meant that some were considering a radically different approach from the "smile while you steal" Clinton years. Then came September the 11th.

The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 did not change in outlook of US imperialism, rather they gave the changed outlook expanded influence, adherence and legitimacy. The world had changed 10 years earlier and the reality of that change was still in contention. The world had not yet found a new equilibrium to replace the one shattered by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The United States, still the unrivaled military power in the world, had seen its economic and political standing continue to erode in the the 1990`s, as it faced increasing resistance. US imperialism eagerly seized the opportunity presented by September 11.

Al Qaeda could not have toppled US imperialism or global capitalism even if it wanted to. The Palestinians remained isolated, and while the acquiescence of the client Arab regimes in the face of the Israeli onslaught brought them odium, none were effectively challenged by their own people.

The global justice movement had failed to, and has yet to now, formulate what we are against. Is it neo-liberalism? Is it capitalism? Is it just the excesses of these? "Another world is possible." But the debate on what it should be called and how to get there has barely begun. Socialism, cooperatism, anarchism, Luddism, lifestyle changes, something so amorphous that our enemies and our adherents could claim whatever they wanted by it?

Imperialism was shaken by September 11th, which had symbolically showed it to be vulnerable. But, despite the scale of its destruction and loss of life, the event was an episode in a larger context, playing the relatively minor role of causus belli.

It is in this context that we should view the Bush administration. Undoubtedly September 11th has unleashed an expansion of police powers in the US. Soon we could be back to the days of the early seventies -- the days of COINTELPRO and domestic assassinations. Bush, Vice President Cheney (Cheney may in fact have more control over policy than Bush) and the people they represent have used the stifling atmosphere post-September 11th to push forward a series of hard-right initiatives domestically. The discourse of the US has moved to the right with the Democrats by and large acting as junior partners, rather than even a tepid opposition to the process (see "The War at Home" in issue 13 of Fourthwrite).

While the attacks of September the 11th led directly to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and shut down Al Qaeda camps, it wasn`t the first time the United States had engaged in war on that impoverished country. But the real prize for the ruling class was to be Iraq -- Iraqi oil and the message sent by its conquest. The ability to put American troops on the ground and to take casualties in the name of "national security" has been an important conquest of the Bush administration. The aggressively interventionist, "unilateral" policies of the present US government are not the policies he was elected on, but neither are they new ideas.

The neo-conservatives of the "New American Century" were busy promoting such policies nearly a full decade before the September 11th, 2001. The confluence of events propelled them and their specific ideas into center stage. Other events may push them into the wings. What we should look to are trends and movements, not individuals and episodes. The neo-cons have played their part, and, unfortunately, they are not done playing it, but forces far greater than the neo-cons are also in play and they continue to have a greater impact.

The Bush administration has convinced very few. Rather, it has enraged the world with its arrogance, its destructive use of power, its blatantly partisan practices on the behalf of the American ruling class. It has flouted the norms of democracy, disappearing Arab and Muslim men in the black hole of federal detention, trials without juries, snooping, assassinations, torture, etc. All of these practices, incidentally, used to effect by the British in Ireland over the years. The Bushies have sought to go as far as they can go, but they have not solved their larger crisis because their crisis cannot be solved. Capitalism is incapable, despite what we were told in the 1990`s, of generalizing human happiness, let alone providing for the basic needs of the world`s people. And certainly is no guarantor of peace, but a perpetuator of war. Even in polite circles the word "imperialism" is increasingly used to define the United States. It is important that this definition be grounded in a real understanding of what that means. Imperialism is an economic system, and one not confined to the United States. A system whose underlying logic is profit for a very, very few. Imperialism is a system in need of constant expansion, without regard for the consequences of that expansion, which often means clearing room by way of a path of destruction.

But even in the best of times, when the economy is doing well enough to convince people that capitalism offers them a future, we know that every period of growth has been followed by a slump. Capitalism is the real usurpation of democracy, whether it going up or going down. The consequences of such a system are murder on a mass scale all of the time, in peace and in war. Lives are ruined incrementally through years of work, privations, dashed hopes and hollowed dreams, or all at once from an American bullet at a Baghdad roadblock or the "smart" bomb which ingeniously severs its victim`s limbs, heads and history from her or his body, her or his life.

So how does Bush fit into this framework? Is he, as some on the left have said, a fascist or a crypto-fascist? The thing about fascism is that it announces its intentions. Fascism has historically been the place that the ruling class has turned to when its rule is under extreme threat and democracy simply won`t work anymore. This is especially true in the context of workers` and revolutionary movements that have forcefully challenged the rule of capital and failed. Democracy, the way it is practiced in capitalist countries, acts to mask the reality of the rule of the very rich and help it administer its order with the promise of social peace. This social peace is always one sided, as the class war rages all the time and almost always with the ruling class as the aggressors. Bush and Company have certainly undermined democracy, but they haven`t yet turned to the fascist alternative, though the uniforms may be pressed and hanging in the closets of some of them.

But Bush is not the only possible choice of the American oligarchy. All the leading Democrats are fully committed to the unending "War on Terrorism", the occupation of Iraq and full support to the state of Israel as it seeks to complete the destruction of the Palestinian nation. In all probability the Democrats will seek to "out-hawk" the hawks in the run-up to the November 2004 elections. Bush may be dumped[in the next election, especially if the Iraqi resistance grows and gains more sympathy and the economy doesn`t recover.

The important thing for the movements of the last period -- those campaigning for global economic justice, in solidarity with Palestine and against the war against Iraq -- is to formulate a real challenge to the policies of Bush and his cabal, as well as their Democratic alter-egos. By seeking to challenge the system, rather than just the specific policies. The broader we generalize our struggles, the more we incorporate the concerns of an ever greater number of people, the more we will be able to draw from in formulating and implementing the strategy and tactics necessary to bring "Another World" into being.

Putting the Bush administration in the proper context helps us to take the long view, not defining our resistance by the episodic lurches and punctuations of a system in which lurches and punctuations are routine. The generalizing of our struggles means that the logic of our resistance goes beyond what is currently on offer and begins to be revolutionary. To be revolutionary means, in part, to take hold of history instead of being held by it. Bush is a dangerous man who may lead the world into further horrors. He and his government are undoubtedly the criminals the world views them as.

But even the United States, the most powerful imperialist nation the world has had the misfortune to host, is a product of forces not entirely within their control. Those of us who resist, build movements, study, act and seek to formulate new models of society confirm that history has, indeed, not ended. Let us seek to be, in gathering strength, a force with the ability to make history. Let us intervene in our world now with the firm conviction that the future is ours to write.

Matt Siegfried writes for the Irish journal Fourthwrite, where this essay originally appeared. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

http://www.counterpunch.org/siegfried08182003.html

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Other People`s Kids
Posted August 18, 2003 thepeoplesvoice.org

By Mary Walworth

What you do with other people`s kids…. Well, you feed them, of course. You figure out what`s in your fridge that resembles what they`re used to at home. You talk to them. You find out if they would like to make a picture with paints or magic markers (though you secretly hope they say magic markers which are so much easier to deal with). You make them feel safe and loved when they come up to you looking a little scared wondering why mom hasn`t picked them up yet, and you say she`s almost here, she just called as she was leaving work -- you`re hoping that accident on the Parkway isn`t going to add another hour to this kid`s wait - and wouldn`t you like to pick out a video…Magic School Bus? Dora the Explorer? You find out if they want white milk or chocolate milk, chicken nuggets or meatballs, a Power Puff Girls cup or a Barbie cup.

These are things you do for other people`s kids.

One of the things you don`t do to other people`s kids is bomb them and burn them alive. And blow the limbs off their little sisters and blind their little brothers. And send their mothers (stained with blood and stuck all over with little pieces of broken glass) running away from flames, shrieking with grief.

You just really don`t do that.

And you don`t kill their daddies. And you don`t steal their countries and their assets. And as for how you act when a kid comes up to you and says he`s thirsty, well, you find out if he likes ice cubes or just plain water, sippy cup or big boy cup or the Spiderman sports bottle or would you rather have the last inch of apple juice from the bottle in the fridge. You don`t cut off their drinking water and make them desperate with thirst and sick with cholera.

And let me tell you, you just do not turn off their electricity! You`re supposed to turn on the night-light so they aren`t scared. Why on earth would you cut off their electricity?!

And you certainly don`t leave radioactive containers lying around for them to drink out of. Or unexploded bombs for them to play with. No, you just don`t find that in the baby-proofing manuals.

You don`t make their moms afraid to go out for fear of being robbed and raped. You don`t break down their door in the middle of the night and hold machine guns to their older brothers` faces. These are just things you don`t do to other people`s kids.

And your neighbor`s grown kids? You ask them if they could please feed your cat and water the lawn while you`re away. You need the money, we`ll pay you $50 for the week, that sound fair? You ask them what colleges they`re thinking of applying to. You nod approvingly when they say pre-med or something to do with computers. You don`t sit by and accept the fact that their leader is sending your neighbors` kids off to have the most unimaginably scary, sickening experience of their lives for no just cause but simply to allow some rich people in certain corporations to get even more obscenely rich.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You don`t sit in front of the TV and allow yourself to be brainwashed into thinking Saddam is connected to Osama and Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (when the facts do not support this). You don`t just figure, well, my neighbor`s kids are worth sacrificing so we can all feel "safe from terrorists" - freedom isn`t free! -- they keep saying this on Fox News so it must be true! You don`t nudge these wonderful, almost-grown-up kids (you have that picture of them at their high school graduation, arms wrapped around each other - oh my gawd, check out those bangs)…you don`t nudge these sweet, almost-grown-up-but-not-quite kids who were rug rats not so long ago…you don`t nudge these guys into seeking self-worth by fighting in a war that will leave them permanently shattered and terrorized and scarred… fragile and brittle from the horror… never fully able to stop hearing the screams of scared children and the moans of dying soldier-friends… stinging with grief and guilt and trauma for the rest of their days.

These are things you don`t do to other people`s kids. Whether they live next door to you, down the street from you, across the country or across the globe. You just don`t do these things to other people`s kids.

-###-

© Copyright 2003 All rights reserved by Mary Walworth. [Mary Walworth is a speech-language therapist and mother who lives in central New Jersey] [e-mail]
http://liberty.hypermart.net/editorials/2003/Other_Peoples_K…

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Shh, don`t tell anyone; we`re running things
Jon Carroll
Monday, August 18, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar…



People with something to hide usually try to hide that something. Not a remarkable leap of logic, but lots of people are refusing to make it. The Bush administration doesn`t have anything to hide, it`s just, let`s see, behaving prudently, or protecting executive privilege, or refusing to speculate.

That last excuse is used for the question, "How much is the occupation of Iraq costing?" The Defense Department refuses to speculate. I mean, the Pentagon brass could look at the invoices and the pay stubs and get a rough idea, but they`re unwilling to do that.

Why? Because they want to protect the president. Why? Because he has something to hide. He has consistently lied to the American people about how much the war would cost -- and how long it would last, and why we were fighting it, and, gosh, just about everything.

We do know that it must be costing an embarrassing amount because the Pentagon wanted to cut the extra monetary benefits to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to reduce the money drain. Then the news leaked out, and the Pentagon said oh no, it wasn`t actually going to reduce the money going to soldiers, it was going to make up for the cuts in "imminent danger pay" and "family separation allowances" with compensatory raises in other, uh, somethings. The somethings weren`t in the budget sent to Congress, but they were definitely in the plans for the, you know, next thingie.

Soldiers make a great backdrop for presidential speeches, but let`s face it,

they just eat up money that could be better spent for shiny new weapons systems. And God knows we wouldn`t want to raise taxes to pay our soldiers more. No, here`s the plan: Increase the deficit and call it a growth package. Also, the soldiers should stop whining to reporters because their tours of duty keep getting extended. Oh, and sorry about the Taliban creeping back into Afghanistan, but we`re a little overextended. Hold that line and fight fight fight, and we`ll see you when we see you.

I am not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here. Long after George W. Bush has retired to the board of directors of the Carlyle Group, the rest of us will be still wandering around in the great information blackout of aught-three.

The Bush administration is now thoroughly devoted to its black-is-white strategy. We save the forests by cutting down the trees. We preserve the wilderness by building roads into its heart. We keep the air clean by lowering vehicle emissions standards. And we always, always, stay on message.

Here`s a problem that people with something to hide always have: The lies get so complicated that they get real hard to keep straight. The solution to that is to say as little as possible. When President Bush was finally embarrassed into holding a news conference, he managed to spend almost an hour saying nothing at all.

He did say that we`re all sinners but that gay marriage is a bad idea, which is a hard concept to parse. If we`re all sinners, then who the hell are you to tell me which way to sin? It`s the old marijuana bad, alcohol good tap- dance. Heterosexual oral sex good, homosexual oral sex bad. The Bible tells us so.

The Bible also tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, but never mind that now. You queers wanna get married? Not on my watch.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney continues to refuse to release the details of his energy policy meetings. He has something to hide. Halliburton and Enron pretty much got the keys to the Treasury handed to them, but if we can`t prove it, it didn`t happen.

Oh, and joblessness is at an all-time high even though we`re just about to turn the corner, and we live in the United States of Insurance Companies, and, and . . . ah well. I`ll take the Frappuccino, please, heavy on the nepenthe.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It`s not really lying because I`m up here on a podium with my truth jacket on.
He chases round this desert `cause he thinks that`s where I`ll be, that`s why I love [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-blac…
THE WORLD


Iraqi Chaos Feeds a Black Market
No power? Ask the guy on the corner with a generator. No passport? Ask the guy in a stall. Need a job? You may have to do like them.
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer

August 19, 2003

BAGHDAD — Mohammed Walid sweats so that others can be spared a long, deadening wait under the white-hot glare of the desert sun.

Three or four times a day, the ex-bus driver joins the snaking lines for gasoline. He waits several hours in the withering heat, fills the tank of his minibus, then siphons the gasoline into plastic canisters. His three sons sell the fuel for five times the official price, while he goes back to the end of the line.

Thair Saleem, 45, also is making a living from Baghdad`s chaos. Iraqis say the August heat can melt a nail on the inside of a door, yet electricity for fans, air conditioners and refrigerators is sporadic.

Saleem`s big generator roosts on a street corner, with a chaotic cobweb of wires running to about 50 houses and businesses. Inside a shed is a jury-rigged switchboard. When the city`s free power supply goes off, electrician Ali Khalil, 18, turns on the generator and flicks dozens of switches to give customers power for $1.90 per ampere. Although Saleem owns his generator, many other power brokers are using ones looted from government ministries.

Because of what U.S. occupation authorities and Iraqi officials say are severe problems with sabotage, maintenance, looting and smuggling, Iraq remains without reliable supplies of electricity and gasoline. The government is just beginning to function. Put such conditions together with rampant unemployment, and the result is a flourishing black market for power, fuel and much more.

In the market stalls of Baghdad Jadida, or New Baghdad, young men tempt passersby with towers of new Iraqi passports, driver`s licenses, government-car license plates, merchant permits and other official documents looted from government offices.

One trader, Saad Mohammed, 21, offers two old passports, either stolen or taken from their owners. He has government license plates for $1.50. He says he found his wares.

"People make a living by forgery, by stealing, by any way they can," said one 21-year-old trader, a former soldier who gave his name only as Sermed.

Occasionally, Iraqi police or U.S. soldiers arrest black-market document sellers. Mohammed said he was recently hauled in but won his freedom with a $400 bribe.

Men like Walid, 39, the gasoline seller, and Saad Bashi, 45, a father of 10 who trades looted car parts, say they would like nothing better than to find steady work. But with Iraq`s economy in crisis, they say they do what they can to survive.

"All the people are jobless and everyone wants a job. I used to be a traffic policeman," Bashi said.

Ali Abdullah, 31, a gasoline black marketeer, gets his supplies from stations on the edge of Baghdad in the hottest part of the afternoon, when lines are shortest. He cruises from one to another with his canisters, convincing the operators to break the rules against filling anything but vehicle tanks.

"I pretend my car`s broken down. Of course they know what`s going on, but I have to pretend so they won`t be embarrassed in front of the people," Abdullah said.

Sometimes, when no one is around, he convinces them to fill up a 200-liter barrel. He makes $43 a month, enough, he says, for him to support his family, including two brothers injured in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

The gasoline black marketeers are cursed for their high prices.

"Sometimes people call me bad names, insulting me and shouting at me," Abdullah said. "So I tell them my problem is I can`t get any job so I`m doing this job. It`s better I do this than go out and steal."

Walid suffers similar insults from people at his mosque. A highly religious man, he feels guilty, though not enough to stop.

"They tell me I`m profiteering from the crisis," he said ruefully. He hates selling gasoline but earns $335 a month, much more than at his old job.

The U.S.-led occupation administration is struggling to deal with the gasoline shortage. Officials say they recently caught two ships, 20 barges and 79 tanker trucks smuggling oil products out of Iraq. In one 48-hour period last week, about 9.8 million gallons were imported to help meet demand, estimated at 4 million gallons daily.

The acute shortages of fuel and electricity were blamed for triggering riots last weekend in Basra, where residents suffered without power for four days and endured 24-hour waits for fuel.

Adel Shindah, 36, a lecturer at an Islamic college, was furious after paying five times the official price to fill his car with black-market gasoline. Echoing many other Iraqis, he said he was convinced the coalition could solve the crisis if it really tried. "Even a mayor of a small city could organize this," he complained.

Though at times it is hard to distinguish bluster from rage, some people say that unless the problems are resolved soon, the situation could turn uglier.

"The Americans know the Iraqis will not tolerate this more than two or three months," warned Mohammed Jaff, a 28-year-old building contractor who spends $500 a month so his office can have electricity. "I could very easily take my machine gun and kill two or three Americans each day. But not yet."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
Thread-Nr.:Thread: Kein Titel für Thread 76608213

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zimmerm…
COMMENTARY

Making the Grade
New school testing takes the U.S. closer to `Old Europe`
By Jonathan Zimmerman
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University.

August 19, 2003

Twenty years ago this fall, I joined the Peace Corps. Posted as an English teacher in Nepal, I arrived with a characteristic American blend of zeal and naiveté. Rather than simply drilling my students in the required curriculum, I resolved, I would teach them how to think.

Yet whenever I introduced a game or a song — or anything outside of the official course of study — the students bridled. "Sir," they complained, "this is not on the SLC."

The SLC was the School Leaving Certificate examination, which all Nepalese had to pass to qualify for higher education and lucrative government jobs. Although Nepal was never colonized by the West, its school system closely resembled neighboring India and other former imperial outposts. To get anywhere in life, you had to get past the SLC.

My Peace Corps friends and I often commiserated about the evils of the test. It made students anxious; it encouraged rote instruction; it fostered cheating. As I wrote in a letter home, the SLC was "the worst educational legacy that Europe gave to the world."

Little did I know that the U.S. would embrace this legacy two decades later. At last count, 24 U.S. states require or plan to require that students pass exit exams to earn high school diplomas. Under President Bush`s No Child Left Behind Act, meanwhile, states will have to administer annual tests in six elementary and junior high grades. In our schools, the U.S. is becoming more like Donald Rumsfeld`s "Old Europe" than many of us care to admit.

Remember Old Europe? For the most part, Bush and Rumsfeld would prefer that you forgot it. On issues from arms control and the environment to the World Court and the war in Iraq, the White House has repeatedly flouted or ignored our putative allies across the Atlantic.

When it comes to education, however, the U.S. has moved in a remarkably European direction. Bush and his followers have demanded public vouchers for parochial schools, a mainstay of many European democracies for a century. Most of all, though, both the federal government and the states are requiring new high-stakes tests that put Old Europe to shame.

Consider two children, one who grows up in Massachusetts and another in Britain. Already, to graduate from high school, the Massachusetts student must pass the English and math portions of the state`s school-leaving test. Starting with the 2005-06 school year, federal law will require her to take reading and math exams every year from third grade through eighth. Her school will have to report its annual results; if it does not show sufficient improvement, she will become eligible to transfer elsewhere.

The British student, by contrast, will have to take exams only three times: at ages 7, 11 and 14. The first set of tests is graded within each school, and the results are kept private; the second set is marked by external reviewers, with the results still private. Only the third exam, also graded externally, is reported to the public. The worst-performing schools then face a variety of sanctions, including the replacement of their staffs.

Defenders of high-stakes testing in the U.S. might point out that Massachusetts devises its own tests, whereas Britain administers a single nationwide exam. True enough. But other European countries allow more local flexibility. In Germany, for example, state education ministries write their own questions for the national exam that qualifies students for university.

Still other countries differentiate their examinations according to academic disciplines. All French candidates for higher education take the same national test in core subjects, but they also choose additional exams in an area of concentration: liberal arts, social sciences and so on.

Given our history of local control in education, it`s hard to imagine the U.S. requiring a single national test. But our desire to require high school leaving tests — no matter who writes them — has already eroded a distinctive American educational tradition, bringing us closer to the European model.

That`s not necessarily a bad development. For too long, many American schools have operated with low standards, or with no standards at all. If we craft the new exams with care and act upon their results, the tests might spur student learning. Or, as I saw in Nepal, they might simply spawn more corruption, cynicism and rote instruction.

For good or ill, though, the new education reforms will make us more like other countries, especially European ones. Even as we turn our noses up at the rest of the world, our schools are starting to emulate it.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/135517_thomas19.html

No mercy in Ashcroft`s brand of justice
Tuesday, August 19, 2003

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn`t have enough to do, hunting down terrorists.

With the help of a rollover Congress, he now has a new and bigger club to go after federal judges who impose lighter sentences in criminal cases than he would like.

As a faithful lord high executioner of the administration`s much touted "compassionate conservatism," Ashcroft wants to clamp down on those judges.

At issue are the sentencing guidelines laid down by a federal commission that Congress created in 1984. Under pressure from Ashcroft, Congress voted in April to restrict the flexibility of federal judges to depart from the guidelines. The new law also makes it easier for prosecutors to appeal more cases when they don`t like the court-imposed prison sentences.

As it stands now, the attorney general must report within 15 days to Congress the identity of any federal judge who deviates from the rules and the reasons why. And the department must report within five days whether it intends to appeal.

The empowered attorney general then issued an order on July 28 to federal prosecutors, directing them to report all "downward departure" sentencing decisions in criminal cases.

Previously, the prosecutors were required to report to the Justice Department only those sentences that they had objected to and wanted to appeal.

The overall effect is to give Ashcroft more control and the final say on whether to appeal a sentence. And it reduces the powers of the prosecutors in the field, the people who know more about the defendant and the circumstances of the case than does anyone in Washington.

It looks to me as if Ashcroft has designed a new program to intimidate federal judges.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused Ashcroft of an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" and said he was requiring federal prosecutors to establish a "black list" of judges who diverge from the guidelines.

Department lawyers say the new rules are in the interest of uniformity. But Ashcroft obviously was miffed that some judges weren`t handing out the tough sentences that he wanted.

The sentencing commission has statistics showing that 35 percent of the sentences handed down in federal court in the 2001 fiscal year fell below the guidelines. Many of those sentences were the results of plea-bargaining and had the approval of the prosecutors.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said many judges have denounced the guidelines for producing "unduly long sentences" and hampering the courts` ability to fashion punishments to fit the crimes.

Ashcroft wants judges to treat defendants as "statistics rather than individuals," Turley added. In all fairness, Congress shares the blame for giving him even more power to do so.

In his new order to the prosecutors, Ashcroft cited a May 5 speech by Chief Justice William Rehnquist who acknowledged that it was up to Congress to establish guidelines on sentencing policies.

But Ashcroft conveniently failed to mention that Rehnquist also used the same speech to criticize the sentencing restrictions as "an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their official duties."

Rehnquist also complained to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that limiting judicial discretion "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."

In a recent speech to the ABA convention in San Francisco, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative, criticized mandatory minimum sentencing and said prison terms were too long. He told the lawyers "our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long."

He branded the guidelines as "not wise, not just."

An even more dramatic protest against the guidelines came from U.S. District Judge John Martin. He quit the bench in Manhattan in June and charged that Congress was attempting "to intimidate judges."

U.S. District Judge Irene Keeley of Clarksburg, W.Va., who heads the ABA`s National Conference of Federal Judges, supports the critics of the guidelines.

She said the jurists would continue to "evaluate each sentence on a case-by-case basis." A study of the facts will show there is no evidence that judges have been bending the sentencing rules, she said.

Obviously Ashcroft`s sense of justice is not the kind that is touched by the quality of mercy.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: [e-mail]. Copyright 2003 Hearst Newspapers.

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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August 18, 2003

"Sign On and Stop Whining!"
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
By STAN GOFF

When I came back from Vietnam in 1971, there was a new program in the Army called VOLAR. That`s short for volunteer Army, because the military would prefer an arcane acronym over plain language any day of the week.

The draft was being dumped because it was being blamed for the sorry state of the US military in Vietnam, where the armed forces were melting down with low morale, poor discipline, and generalized mental illness often taking the form of substance abuse. The draft, it was reasoned, was tapping unreliable sectors for unmotivated troops who were too quick to rebel against being press-ganged into an actual shooting war.

The same people who applied this scalpel-like logic were, of course, completely unprepared to assess the impact of the character of the war itself on troops:

(1) a war that had been misrepresented as a defense of America;

(2) a war against a tenacious enemy with a home-court advantage, and

(3) a war with a geo-strategic disposition such that a US defeat was nearly certain.

On top of all that, millions of civilians were killed, before and after we burned their houses and slaughtered their livestock and poisoned their land, and many of us began to question the morality of how exactly the war was being conducted.

None of this--applying the logic that the draft was the problem--could ever in a million years really account for a troop growing weary of slogging through dioxin-stained wilderness for a month at a time without a bath, subjected to being picked off or maimed in an unpredictable, terror-stricken instant, smoking God-knows-what to take the edge off his conscience and his frazzled nerves, and filling his idle time with fantasies of shooting his officers.

No, indeed. It was the draft.

The draft was a public relations problem at home. No parent is keen to surrender the fruit of his or her loins to an impersonal government, at an age where the youngster can barely grow a moustache, and have him shipped home in a wheelchair or a box or crazy as hell. No spouse wants a partner sent back that way. No kid wants a parent sent back that way.

Based on the faulty logic that associated conscription with political defeat, and upon the real rebellion against conscription into an immoral military adventure, the US Department of Defense decided that it needed for troops to sign themselves in voluntarily. Pay was increased. Quarters were improved. Many abuses were rousted out. More medals and merit badges were authorized. Services were increased. The general economy went into the crapper, and voila! VOLAR was a success.

Oh yeah. They also withdrew from Vietnam. That, too.

Today, there is an additional benefit to war apologists of a volunteer force. Using the consumer culture aversion to and overwhelming lack of familiarity with the basic rules of actual logic, war boosters now trot out the "volunteer military" as justification for any hare-brained, wicked, or illegal military adventure in which they decide to engage.

That justification goes like this: Every troop signs on the dotted line without a gun pressed to his or her head, knowing that the armed forces are used for armed conflict. Therefore, neither they nor we have any right to complain about the conditions they might face, since everyone knows that war is hell.

Something like that. "So stop whining."

The sly thing about this argument is that it is used today against people like me, who want the occupation of Iraq ended and the troops--one of whom is my son--sent back to their home duty stations.

What`s sly?

Our argument to bring the troops home is based not on the conditions, but on the faked premises for and illegality of the war itself. Our complaint about the conditions, about our loved ones being exposed to hardship and danger, is based on the fact that the whole adventure is hare-brained, wicked, and illegal. This counterfeit rebuttal about "volunteer military" has about as much to do with the stupidity, immorality, and criminality of the war as the validity of a driver`s license has to do with the model and make of a car.

Note, we haven`t been saying bring them home now from their mission to do holy work. We have said bring our loved ones out of an incompetently executed, illegal war that was entered into based on lies and fabrications. Jumping off into a discussion about our loved ones` volunteer status is a way to duck that last part... that part about incompetence, illegality, lies, fabrications... stuff like that.

Sly.

To make our argument that a volunteer military does not magically waive international law, commons sense, and common decency, we need not even digress to point out that all "volunteering" is not equal; that the "choice" between working in a shit job for poverty wages or joining the Army is not quite the same a "choice" between going to Harvard Law School or joining the Army. Just like the choice between being drafted into Vietnam or going to jail is not the same as the choice between being drafted into Vietnam or getting a special slot assigned to you in the Texas Air National Guard and being allowed to skip drills to attend alcoholic frat parties.

Yeah, that "volunteer" definition can be pretty sly, too. It reminds me of those Galois-smoking existentialists arguing that we are always free no matter what because we can opt out through suicide. A pretty clever conceit, but not exactly something most of us rely on for day-to-day decisions.

At the end of the day, here`s the real deal. Volunteer or not, in the United States, for those who haven`t checked into this subject, the military NEVER decides when we will or won`t go to war. The people who "volunteer" that decision are civilians, i.e., Congress and the President (unless of course, a cowed, spineless, opportunistic, anemometric Congress abdicates all its power to a semi-literate demagogue in the Oval Office).

So toss that smelly old red herring into the trash, will you, and carry it out to the curb.

Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier`s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier. Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is [e-mail].

Goff can be reached at: [e-mail]

[Joerver]

One Hundred Days of Ineptitude

By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com
August 18, 2003

On May 1st, dressed in a naval flight suit, President Bush dropped onto the deck of the USS Lincoln sitting off the coast of California. Posing beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner the president announced the end to major combat operations in Iraq. One-hundred days later, vacationing on his Crawford, Texas ranch the president assessed the invasion: "We`ve made a lot of progress in a hundred days, and I am pleased with the progress we`ve made, but fully recognize we`ve got a lot more work to do."


Bush`s pronouncement was timed with the White House release of a 24-page report called "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom," detailing "highlights of the successes" in Iraq. Prepared by the White House Office of Global Communications and the staff of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, the report claims to focus "on 10 areas where the liberation of Iraq has improved the lives of Iraqis and the safety and security of the world."


The report`s claims differ significantly from the dozens of daily reports filed by journalists on the ground. Through a finely-honed rose-colored lens the document claims: Electricity "is now more equitably distributed"; water supplies are "now at pre-conflict levels"; the oil distribution system is being repaired and modernized; road repairs are underway and the Baghdad and Basra airports will soon reopen; democracy is being institutionalized – "more than 150 newspapers are now published in Iraq"; and "health care, previously available only for Baathist elite, is now available to all Iraqis." (For the full report, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/100days/100days.pdf.)


The report fails to mention the ongoing casualties being taken by both U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians.


Casualties


As of the morning of August 14, "Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation" – a Web site affiliated with Antiwar.com – places the total American casualties in Iraq since the president`s May 1st photo op at 130: 59 have been killed in combat; dozens of have died in accidents; several have committed suicide; two are dead from a still-to-be-explained cluster of pneumonia cases; and three have died mysteriously in their sleep.


CNN.com also has a special Web site called "Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties", which provides a list of coalition casualties and includes pictures of the victims (when available), and the ages, units, hometowns and an explanation of how each soldier died.


Trying to ascertain totals of U.S. wounded in Iraq is a much more difficult task. According to report in the Guardian, the Pentagon puts the number of wounded at 827 but reporter Julian Borger claims that "unofficial figures are in the thousands." Central Command in Qatar claims 926 wounded, but "that too is understated," Borger writes. Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, who is in charge of the airlift of the wounded into Andrews air base, recently told National Public Radio that "Since the war has started, I can`t give you an exact number because that`s classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews, and that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda, which are in this area also."


Regarding U.S. casualties, the president said that Americans "suffer when we lose life," and that the country "grieves with those who sacrifice."


A report issued August 7th by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) claims that nearly 20,000 civilians have been wounded in the Iraq war. "The maimed civilians of Iraq have been brushed under the carpet," the IBC report said. According to IBC, there have been close to 7,800 deaths since the beginning of the U.S. invasion. In this new report, derived from data gathered from over 300 published reports, the IBC claims that "three times as many injuries as deaths have been reported."


In addition, IBC cites a report from UNICEF which claims that "more than 1,000 children have been injured by unexploded ordnance since the end of the war, including by cluster bombs (and now unguarded) Iraqi munitions, and emphasized that `the coalition forces have a clear obligation under humanitarian law to remove these dangers from communities`" (For more see, www.un.org.)


And, contrary to the White House`s assessment that health care is now "available to all Iraqis," the IBC report claims that Iraq`s hospitals, "run-down and neglected for years under the sanctions regime, have suffered looting, vandalism, loss of electrical power, the deaths of staff and even (in at least three of them) direct bombardment, all attributable to the war; however heroic the efforts of their staff, there is no denying that the country`s health system is now in a desperate state."


Budget Busting


The president was asked to give an estimate of how much it will cost the American people to attempt to stabilize Iraq over the next year. "We generally don`t do our estimates on the back of an envelope," he said. President Bush added that he had faith that planners will bring "good, sound data," to Congress "at the appropriate time." Bush`s faith in "good, sound" budget data sounds eerily reminiscent to his comments that he had faith in the "good, sound intelligence" that he receives; intelligence that led to him making the phony charge that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, a claim that had been included in his State of the Union address.


According to The Economist, "The price of occupation has been estimated at $1 billion a week, contributing to what is already the largest federal deficit in American history." Hopes that this cost would be covered by oil exports have yet to be realized due to the sabotage of oil pipelines and the hesitancy of private investors to step into such a volatile situation. The president did say that he was trying to line up other nations to chip in with the costs of reconstruction, a project that has thus far met keen resistance.


The Return of Militants


On the 101st day after Bush`s May Day declaration, L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) running Iraq, told the New York Times that he feared that hundreds of fighters from Ansar al Islam, a militant organization that the United States had hoped it had destroyed during the war, had returned from their refuge in Iran and may have been responsible for the August 7 car bomb outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad that killed 17 people and wounded dozens of others.


"My initial instinct was to believe that this had to be done from somebody from outside," Bremer told the Times. "But I have been told we captured and spoke to some ex-regime people and that there was part of the Mukhabarat (Iraqi intelligence) that specialized in sophisticated bombing and it is possible that this kind of technique did exist."


The bombing was the most brazen attack thus far in the three-plus-months since Bush`s USS Lincoln stunt, and Bremer`s remarks seemed to indicate that more attacks of this nature were to be expected.


"Intelligence suggests that Ansar al Islam is planning large-scale terrorist attacks here," Bremer said. "So as long as we have ... substantial numbers of Ansar terrorists around here, I think we have to be pretty alert to the fact that we may see more of this."


Governing without Legitimacy?


A Governing Council, a group of Iraqis appointed by the CPA, was appointed several weeks ago, but according to The Economist, "the council got off to a rocky start, taking more than two weeks to decide who was to be its president," finally choosing "a nine-member rotating presidency, bringing in just about every member with an independent constituency who had a reasonable claim to the job."


Before an election can be held, a constitution must be drawn up. According to The Economist, "Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a senior cleric, has issued a fatwa stating that delegates to a constitutional convention must be elected," a proposal that would present all sorts of problems. The Economist also claims that "the council has a legitimacy problem. Its seeming ineffectualness has been mocked in newspapers, in Friday sermons and by ordinary Iraqis."


In recent comments, Bremer was hopeful that he would be heading home before next summer, and elections could be held sometime in mid-2004. Bremer`s plan appears to contradict the comments by Army Lt. Gen. Richard Sanchez, who recently said that U.S. forces would remain in Iraq for two years at an "absolute minimum," and in all likelihood longer.


Fresh from meetings with the Iraq Invasion All-Stars – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Meyers, and the embattled national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Bush told the press that the hailstorm of criticism the administration was receiving for misleading the public about his reasons for invading Iraq, was "pure politics."


According to a Washington Post reporter, the president repeated that phrase three times and added, "As far as all this political noise, it`s going to get worse as time goes on, and I fully understand that, and that`s just the nature of democracy." Apparently Bush won`t connect the dots between the criticisms the administration is receiving and the misstatements, lies and misinformation it put forward to justify its invasion of Iraq.


While the president told reporters that the country grieves over each U.S. casualty, the 100th day after the president`s "Mission Accomplished" dropdown at sea, also saw the obliteration of Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children in Iraq.


Reports from the scene have it that the Iraqi family was killed by jittery U.S. forces as they slowly approached a checkpoint. According to the Independent`s Justin Huggler, "Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital."


On the 102nd day, Reuters reported that "one soldier was killed and two wounded on Sunday night in a bomb blast in Baqub; three other soldiers were wounded, one seriously, in a combined bomb and rocket-propelled grenade attack Monday near the town of Shumayt, north of Tikrit."


A final note from the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count*:



Total deaths from May 1st – the day of Bush`s USS Lincoln landing and announcement - through August 13: 127.



Total deaths since July 2nd – the day Bush exclaimed "Bring Them On": 62.



Total deaths since July 22nd – the day Odai and Qusai Hussein were killed: 34.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16615

[Joerver]

By Zelda Morgan - All Hat No Cattle Mercenary Journalist

Dirty Laundry Done Dirt Cheap

August 19 2003



"Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and Presidiot Bush is from The Planet of the Apes." - Anita Beer sitting by the side of the road, getting drunk with the truck driver who stopped to help her fix her car.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"I play by the Chicago Rules. You come after me with a knife, I come after you with a gun. You come after me with a gun, I come after you with a howitzer." - Sidney Blumenthal*

Sex

Some things are more fun to consider than others. Sex is more fun than war. Thinking, reading and talking about sex is very entertaining and sometimes causes arousal in the loins. War is entertaining for some who enjoy all the drama, blood and anguish but often leaves them with an empty feeling.

It is no secret that sex sells. We blatantly abuse that privilege here at All Hat No Cattle with no end in sight. We are just playful girls having fun and trying to rustle up a buck or two. Sometimes sex is just the comedic fodder we are looking for to suit the mood. Plus, it`s in my contract. I would get bored if I couldn`t spice it up. I have a war clause in the contract too. I do not have to write about war if I don`t want to. And I am the only war correspondent on staff. So goes life with a press pass in the pixel lane.

One Sunday on Meet the Oppressed, Tim Russert asked Senator Joe Biden, "What if Bill Clinton had told these same lies about the war in Iraq?" Not exactly a direct quote as we know Tim Russert is rarely this lucid.

Biden didn`t even stop to think and replied, "They`d skin him alive." (Making a subtle reference to the justice system in Afghanistan.)

Not so, Joe, I say.

The issue of a war would not have perpetuated itself as did the sex lie.

President Bill Clinton bombed Sudan, Afghanistan and Kosovo. We don`t know if he lied about the bombing but he was accused of "wagging the dog, to distract us from the blow job" which brought it back home to the titillating topic of sex.

(Read this aloud to a republican: When Clinton bombed Sudan and Afghanistan, he was fighting terrorism.)


The Chicago Rules

Get a bigger gun than the other guy.

Make up a bigger lie than the other lie.

Since you are already lying, add sex to turn them on. Wiggle your ass to keep them coming back for more.

Never take crap from a republican.

Never do time for your lover`s brother.

When you see a republican, clutch your purse and walk to the other side of the street.

Focus on the list and don`t waste time adding numbers or bullets.

Tell everyone you are a pacifist and unarmed even if it`s a lie.

If you are lying again, don`t forget to add more sex.

Always add potential legal fees to the cost of the deal.

Simply refuse to pay for stems and seeds that you don`t need.

If you step on a republican, wipe the crap off your Doc Martens quickly and move on

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Stratfor Report: Military Doctrine, Guerrilla Warfare and Counter-Insurgency
Summary

The current situation in Iraq requires revisiting the basic concepts behind counter-insurgency. Iraq now is an arena in which counter-insurgency doctrine is being implemented. Historically, counter-insurgency operations by large external powers have not had positive conclusions. Vietnam and Afghanistan are the obvious outcomes, although there have been cases where small-scale insurgencies have been contained. The actual scale of the Iraqi insurgency is not yet clear. What is clear is that it is a problem in counter-insurgency, which is itself a doctrine with problems.

Analysis

The current situation in Iraq, Chechnya and Afghanistan demonstrates the central problem of modern warfare. Contemporary warfare was forged during World War II when the three dominant elements of the modern battlefield reached maturity: the aircraft carrier-submarine combination in naval warfare, the fighter and bomber combination in aerial warfare and the armored fighting vehicle-self-propelled artillery combination on land. Tied together with electromagnetic communications and sensors, this complex of systems has continued to dominate modern military thinking.

It was not the weapons systems themselves that defined warfare. Rather it was the deeper concept -- the idea that technology was decisive in war. The armed forces of all major combatants in the 20th century were organized to optimize the use of massed technology. The neatly structured echelons in each sphere of warfare were designed not only to manage and maintain the equipment, but also to facilitate their orderly deployment on the battlefield. Even the emergence of nuclear weapons did not change the basic structure of warfare. It remained technically focused with the military organization being built around the needs of the technology.

The modern armored division, carrier battle group and fighter or bomber wing represent the optimized organization built around a technology designed to assault industrialized armies and societies. They remain the basic structure of modern warfare and they carry out that function well. However, as the United States discovered in Vietnam and the Soviet Union discovered in Afghanistan, this force structure is not particularly effective against guerrilla forces.

The essential problem is that the basic unit of guerrilla warfare is the individual and the squad. They are frequently unarmed -- having hidden their weapons -- and when armed, they carry man-portable weapons, such as rifles, rocket-propelled grenades or mortars. When unarmed, they cannot be easily distinguished from the surrounding population. And they arm themselves at a time and place of their choosing -- selected to minimize the probability of detection and interception.

Guerrilla war, particularly in its early stages, is extremely resistant to conventional military force because the massed systems that dominate mainstream operations cannot engage the guerrilla force. Indeed, even if collateral damage were not an issue -- and it almost always is -- the mass annihilation or deportation of a population does not, in itself, guarantee the elimination of the guerilla force. So long as a single survivor knows the location of the weapons caches, the guerrilla movement can readily revive itself.

Therefore, in modern military thinking, a second, parallel military structure has emerged: counter-insurgency forces. Operating under various names, counter-insurgency troops try to overcome the lack of surgical precision of conventional forces. They carry out a number of functions:

1. Engage guerrilla forces on a symmetrical level, while having access to technologically superior force as needed.
2. Collect intelligence on guerrilla concentrations for use by larger formations.
3. Recruit and train indigenous forces to engage guerrilla forces.
4. Organize operations designed to drive a wedge between the guerrillas and population.

The basic units carrying out these counter-insurgency missions have two components. First, there are Special Forces -- highly trained and motivated light infantry -- intended to carry out the primary missions. Second, there are more conventional forces, either directly attached to the primary group or available on request, designed to multiply the force when it becomes engaged.

During the first stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, counter-insurgency units -- designated Special Forces or Green Berets -- carried out these operations. There were two fundamental and unavoidable weaknesses built into the strategy.

There number of trained counter-insurgency troops available was insufficient. The measure to be used for sufficiency is not the number of guerrillas operating. Rather, the question is the size of the population -- regardless of political inclination -- that must be sorted through and managed to get through to the guerrillas. This means there is a massive imbalance between the guerrilla force and the counter-insurgency force that is intensified by the need for security. Guerrillas operate in a target-rich environment. The need to provide static security against attacks on critical targets generates an even greater requirement for forces, although not necessarily of counter-insurgency forces.

The huge commitment of forces needed to begin the suppression of a guerrilla force cannot be managed by an external power. Unless the target country is extremely small both in terms of population and geography, the logistical costs of force projection for a purely external force is prohibitive. That means that a successful force must recruit and utilize an indigenous force that serves two purposes. First, they serve as the backbone of the main infantry force, both defending key targets and serving as follow-on forces in major engagements.

Secondly, since the counter-insurgency force normally needs intense cultural and political guidance to separate guerrillas from the population, these forces provide essential support -- from interpreters to intelligence -- for the counter-insurgency team.

This leads directly to the second problem. The guerrillas can easily penetrate an indigenous force, particularly if that force is being established after the guerrilla operation has commenced. Recruiting a police and military force after the guerrillas are established guarantees that guerrilla agents will be well represented among the ranks. Since it is impossible to distinguish between political views using technical means of intelligence, there is no effective way to screen these out -- particularly if the first round of recruitment and organization is being carried out by the external power.

This means that from the beginning of operations, the guerrillas have a built-in advantage. Having penetrated the indigenous military force, the guerrillas will have a great deal of information on the tactical and operational level. At that point, the very sparseness of the guerrilla movement starts to work to its advantage. Hidden in terrain or population, armed with information on operations, guerrillas can either decline combat and disperse, or seize the element of surprise.

The reverse always has been the intention for counter-insurgency forces, the idea being that they would mirror the guerrillas` capability. This sometimes happened on a tactical level. However, the ability of foreign forces to penetrate guerrilla movements on the operational level was severely limited for obvious reasons. It was tough for an American to masquerade as a Vietnamese. It could potentially be done, but not on a decisive scale. That means that penetration on the operational level -- knowing plans and implementation -- depended on indigenous allies whose reliability was often questionable. Therefore, the ability of the counter-insurgency forces to mimic the guerrillas was constrained. In neither Vietnam nor Afghanistan was the operational intelligence of the counter-insurgency forces equal to that of the guerrillas.

The normal counter to this was to use imprecise intelligence and compensate for it with large-scale operations. So, one counter for not having precise knowledge of the location of guerrillas was to use large, mobile formations to move in and occupy a region, in an attempt to identify, engage and destroy guerrilla formations. This had two consequences. First, it meant a violation of the rules of the economy of forces as battalions were used to search for squads. In this case, massive superiority in forces did not necessarily translate to strategic success. The guerrillas, disaggregated in the smallest practicable unit, could not be strategically crushed.

Second, the nature of the operation created inevitable political problems. Operations of this sort were not dominated by specialized counter-insurgency units, which were at least trained in discriminatory warfare -- trying to distinguish guerrillas from neutral or friendly population. By the nature of the operation, regular troops were used to seize an area and search for the guerrillas. Since the area was frequently populated and since the attacking troops had little ability to discriminate, it resulted frequently in the mishandling of civilian populations, hostility against the attackers and sympathy for the guerrillas. Then, counter-insurgency troops, already handicapped in their own way, were bought in to pacify the region. The result was unsatisfactory, to say the least.

This points to the essential problem of guerrilla war. At its lowest level -- before it evolves into a stage where it has complex logistical requirements supplied from secure areas in and out of the country -- guerrilla war is political rather than military in nature. The paradox of guerrilla war is that it is easier to defeat militarily once the guerrilla force has matured into a more advanced, and therefore more vulnerable, entity. However, by the time it has evolved, the likelihood is that the political situation has deteriorated sufficiently that even heavy attrition will be overcome through massive recruitment within the disaffected population.

The loss of the political war makes a war of attrition extremely difficult. As both the Soviets and Americans discovered, the ability of the outside force to absorb casualties is inferior to that of the indigenous force -- if the indigenous force is politically motivated. Since the process of suppressing early stage guerrilla movements almost guarantees the generation of massive political hostility, the later war -- which should be favorable to the counter-insurgency forces -- turns out to be impossible to win. Even extreme attrition ratios are overcome by recruitment.

The dilemma facing the United States in Iraq is to surgically remove the guerrilla force from the population without generating a political backlash that will fuel a long-term insurgency regardless of levels of attrition. This is much easier to say than to do. The heart of the matter is intelligence -- to deny the guerrillas intelligence about U.S. operations while gathering massive intelligence about the guerrillas. The only way to win the war is to reverse, at the earliest possible phase, the intelligence equation. The guerrillas must be confused and blinded; the Americans must maintain transparency of the guerrillas.

That is clearly what the U.S. now is attempting to do. It is limiting its search and seize operations while massively increasing its intelligence capabilities. This is happening both in terms of human intelligence and technical means of intelligence. It is unclear whether this will work. Human intelligence is political in nature and requires extreme expertise with the culture without dependency on indigenous elements that might be unreliable. It is very difficult for someone from Kansas, however gifted in the craft of intelligence, to make sense of a tactical situation -- and at this point, the guerrillas present only a tactical face.

It is nevertheless the key to any hope for success. It also is an operation that will take an extended period of time. The U.S. hope obviously is that by curtailing its own large-scale operations and moving into an intense intelligence phase, the guerrilla operations will alienate the population. It is possible but difficult. It also will take time. But it is clear that the United States is in the process of rewriting parts of the counter-insurgency book and, therefore, is beginning to write a new -- and as yet uncertain -- chapter in military
http://www.stratfor.com/corporate/index.neo?page=center&stor…

[Joerver]

August 19, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Paul Newman Is Still HUD
By PAUL NEWMAN


The Fox News Network is suing Al Franken, the political satirist, for using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his new book. In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.

Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.

In the 1963 film "HUD," for which Mr. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, the ad campaign was based on the slogan, "Paul Newman is HUD." Mr. Newman claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called HUD, is a fair and balanced institution and that some of its decency and respectability has unfairly rubbed off on his movie character, diluting the rotten, self-important, free-trade, corrupt conservative image that Mr. Newman worked so hard to project in the film. His suit claims that this "innocence by association" has hurt his feelings plus residuals.

A coalition of the willing — i.e., the Bratwurst Asphalt Company and the Ypsilanti Hot Dog and Bean Shop — has been pushed forward and is prepared to label its products "fair and balanced," knowing that Fox News will sue and that its newscasters will be so tied up with subpoenas they will only be able to broadcast from the courtroom, where they will be seen tearing their hair and whining, looking anything but fair and balanced, which would certainly be jolly good sport all around.



Paul Newman, an actor, is chief executive of Salad King.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 11:14 a.m. EDT August 19, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide attacker set off a truck bomb on Tuesday outside the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters, U.S. officials said. At least 20 U.N. workers and Iraqis were killed, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, and 100 were wounded.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old veteran Brazilian diplomat who was nearing the end of his four-month mission, was in his office when the explosion ripped through the building about 4:30 p.m. and was trapped in the rubble.
U.N. officials said 15 people were killed and 100 wounded. A survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found 20 people killed, including 14 U.N. workers.
Vieira de Mello`s death was announced by U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, and all the national flags that ring the U.N. headquarters` entrance in New York were removed from their poles. The blue and white U.N. flag was lowered to half staff.
U.N. staffers gathered in corridors, on the promenade facing the East River and around television sets as they mourned the loss of the man Eckhard called "a rising star."
According to two witnesses, a cement truck exploded at a concrete wall outside the Canal Hotel, where the U.N. was based, but there were conflicting reports about whether the truck was parked or trying to drive through the security barrier.
An AP reporter counted 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving first aid. Some were loaded into a helicopter while others were led away by soldiers.
The former vice president of Iraq, known as Saddam Hussein`s "knuckles," is in U.S. custody. Taha Yassin Ramadan was handed over to U.S. forces in Mosul. Ramadan was 20th on the most wanted list. Arab TV reports Kurdish troops caught him wearing peasant cloths as a disguise.
The top U.S. official in Iraq says Syria is letting "terrorists" cross its border into Iraq. Paul Bremer tells a London-based Arab newspaper he`s also concerned about Iran meddling in Iraqi matters. He says Baghdad must be free of "interference by its neighbors."
Another U.S. soldier has died in Iraq. The military says a soldier from the Army`s 1st Armored Division was killed by an explosive device Monday in Baghdad. The military says it`s not clear if the blast was the result of a hostile act.
Two soldiers were wounded in a separate incident, after guerrillas attacked their convoy with rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire about eight miles east of Tikrit. The soldiers were in stable condition.
The top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq says that attacks by saboteurs on Iraq`s decrepit infrastructure and oil industry have cost the economy billions of dollars. L. Paul Bremer told CNN the apparent sabotage of water, petroleum and electrical lines is slowing U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq.
The U.S. Army says a suspicious fire continued to rage Tuesday on Iraq`s main northern oil export pipeline into Turkey. Accounts varied over whether the blaze was accidental or an act of sabotage. The military says it will take at least ten days to repair the damaged pipeline.
A delegation of the Iraqi interim authority has arrived in Oman on the second leg of a regional tour aimed at drumming up political cooperation and possible economic aid from fellow Arab countries. The delegation was received by various high-ranking Omani officials. The six-member delegation is also scheduled to visit Bahrain and Kuwait, both close allies of the United States.
On Monday huge fires burned in warehouses in northeast Baghdad where a guard told The Associated Press that 50 gunmen had charged past him, looting spare parts from buses and other state vehicles and setting fires in old tires and buses. The guard said a U.S. Army patrol passed the area about 30 minutes later but took no action.
Two press advocacy groups are demanding a full investigation into the deadly shooting of a Reuters cameraman in Iraq. Mazen Dana was killed by U.S. soldiers Sunday while he was shooting videotape near a prison. The army says soldiers mistook Dana`s camera for a grenade launcher.
On Sunday, U.S. forces shot and killed two Iraqis in unrelated incidents. The military says one man had driven through a checkpoint north of Baghdad. The other was suspected of looting and failed to stop despite warning shots being fired.
British soldiers searching for contraband weapons in southern Iraq found a newborn baby girl locked inside an ammunition box in a house they were searching in Basra. The baby appeared to be close to death. Two soldiers revived her, and she was taken to a hospital along with the baby`s mother. The British Defense Ministry alleges the baby`s father locked her in the box, and he has been arrested.
An audiotape purportedly from an Islamic militant calls on Muslims around the world to fight the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq. The audiotape was aired on Al-Arabiyah TV, and it`s reportedly the voice of Abdur Rahman al-Najdi, a Saudi-born militant sought by the United States.
A letter allegedly from Saddam Hussein`s deputy vows that Iraqis will avenge the American killings of Saddam`s two sons last month. The letter was broadcast by the Al-Arabiya satellite TV channel based in Dubai. The broadcast didn`t say how the station concluded the letter is authentic. Nor did the report say how and when the letter was delivered.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary:
++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days

++++269++++47++++316++++++152

Latest Fatality Date: 8/18/2003
At least 321 Coalition forces have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
278 from the US and 43 from the UK.

http://www.pigstye.net/iraq/staticpages/index.php?page=20030…
08/19/03 Associated Press
Huge Car Bomb Blast Hits UN HQ in Iraq
08/18/03 News Interactive Australia
FIVE US soldiers were wounded today when their convoy hit three landmines on a road near the hot-spot western town of Ramadi
08/18/03 Des Moines Register
HEATSTROKE KILLS IOWA GUARDSMAN IN IRAQ
08/18/03 Department of Defense
DOD ANNOUNCES DEATH OF US SOLDIER ON AUG. 14TH - OTHER SOURCES CITE HEATSTROKE
08/18/03 CENTCOM
US SOLDIER KILLED BY EXPLOSIVE DEVICE ON AUG. 18TH IN BAGHDAD
08/17/03 CENTCOM
US forces kill reporter outside of Abu Ghyriab prison
08/17/03 Reuters via Yahoo
U.S. troops have shot dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
08/17/03 San Francisco Chronicle
Journalists who died in Iraq since the U.S.-led military campaign began
08/17/03 Radio Free Europe
A Danish soldier has been killed in a clash with Iraqi gunmen in Al-Basrah, Danish Army command in Copenhagen confirmed today

[Joerver]

Iraq: the agony goes on
UN chief among 20 dead as bombers wreck headquarters

Jamie Wilson, Baghdad and Julian Borger, Washington
Wednesday August 20, 2003
The Guardian

A huge truck bomb struck at the heart of the international humanitarian effort in Iraq yesterday, destroying part of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and killing at least 20 people including the head of the UN mission.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special representative, a respected Brazilian diplomat and the embodiment of the international community`s post-war role, survived for at least three hours trapped under the rubble, but died of his injuries before rescue workers could reach him.

Iraqis and international workers were among the dead and more than 100 wounded. Many of the casualties were rushed to a local civilian hospital, while some were taken by helicopter to US military hospitals. Last night the rescue work was still going on.

Blackhawk helicopters ferried the seriously injured away from the scene, though a field hospital was also set up close to the site.

US officials described the bombing as a suicide attack directly targeted on Mr de Mello, 55, who was in his office on the third floor when the truck exploded. One news agency reported that Mr de Mello was able to call for help on his mobile phone.

The bomb was hidden in a cement mixer lorry, but confusion surrounds whether it was allowed into the compound - where building work had been going on - or whether it was detonated while parked outside a new 12ft-high perimeter wall. The truck was thought to have contained 500lb of C4 military plastic explosive.

"All this happened right below the window of Sergio Vieira de Mello," a UN spokesman, Salim Lone, said. "I guess it was targeted for that. It was a pretty huge bomb. His office and those around it no longer exist, it`s all rubble.

"I grieve most of all for the people of Iraq because he was really the man who could have helped bring about an end to the occupation. An end to the trauma the people of Iraq have suffered for so long."

Coming 11 days after a car-bomb at the Jordanian embassy, the attack confirmed a shift in tactics away from the American military to "soft" international targets in an apparent attempt to disrupt Iraq`s reconstruction. It also left no doubt that the blue UN flag offers no protection.

It was the worst attack on a UN civilian mission in its 58-year history. But in a statement, the security council said it would not be deterred from continuing relief work. "Terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community to further intensify its efforts to help the people of Iraq," it said.

The Arab League condemned the bombing as a "dangerous terrorist crime", and urged "all national forces in Iraq to join forces and work to prevent these acts which do not serve the interests of the Iraqi people".

The UN will now be constrained by much more cautious security precautions for its 600 foreign and roughly 2,500 Iraqi employees in Iraq.

It had deliberately opted for minimal security, to avoid being associated with the occupation forces. But the strategy made the headquarters, formerly the Canal Hotel, vulnerable and it was unclear last night whether any review of conditions had been undertaken since the bombing of the Jordanian embassy.

The UN in Iraq was at threat level 4 - one below its highest, which if reached would have resulted in all its workers being withdrawn from the country. Yet security at the building was about as lax as it was possible to get in postwar Baghdad.

There were US soldiers at the gate, but unlike coalition buildings in the city, cars and other vehicles were allowed to pull up directly in front of the compound. Searches of vehicles were left to the Iraqi gate guards. There were no body or electronic searching, and there were no tanks or armoured vehicles at the gates.

"It is quite unspeakable to attack those who are unarmed," Mr Lone said. "We are unprotected. We`re easy targets. We knew that from the very beginning, but every one of us came to help the Iraqi people who have suffered so long, and what a way to pay us back. I think their real target is the Iraqi people."

The bomb exploded at about 4.30pm just as UN spokesmen were holding a press conference. Japanese television coverage of the conference turned black momentarily and when the pictures resumed, they showed journalists and UN officials, some bleeding and all covered in dust, groping through the darkness in search of a way out.

The blast could be heard across the city, and a huge mushroom cloud of dust rose into the sky.

"It may have been a suicide bomber. There`s evidence to suggest it," Bernard Kerik, a former New York city police commissioner who is training a new Iraqi police force, told reporters at the scene.

The bombing is a serious setback for the US-led occupation, and the coalition`s struggle to prevent Iraq sinking into chaos. "By their tactics and their targets these murderers reveal themselves once more as enemies of the civilised world," a sombre President George Bush said at his Texas ranch.

The attack overshadowed a success for the US forces in Iraq, the capture of Saddam Hussein`s vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was caught by local forces in Mosul and handed over to the Americans. He was number 20 on the most wanted list.

With the death of Mr de Mello, the UN has lost its most experienced troubleshooter. He was sent on many of the most sensitive and dangerous peace missions of recent years.

Mr Lone said: "He didn`t want to come here because he was now high commissioner for human rights, and he said `I don`t want to give up my commitment to human rights in order to do this`. But everyone said to him we need you here, and indeed in Iraq it is a question of human rights. So he agreed, for four months only."

Brazil last night declared three days of national mourning in honour of the envoy.



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Bloodshed in Baghdad
Yesterday`s bombing challenges the world

Leader
Wednesday August 20, 2003
The Guardian

If there is any organisation in Iraq about which it can be said unequivocally that it is there to help, it is the United Nations. The bombing of its Baghdad headquarters yesterday is thus doubly a tragedy, both for those who lost their lives - including the UN`s most senior envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello - and for the people of Iraq, whose future was as much a target in the attack as was the world body.

It is also further and startling evidence of the vulnerability of the occupation regime to what appear to be new tactics by the diverse saboteurs who have harassed it from the start and who may have more recently been joined by extremists coming from outside. Convoys and patrols were their first targets, but they soon added exposed sections of the physical infrastructure of power lines, oil installations, and water mains to their list, and struck at American troops guarding hospitals and ministries. With the blast at the Jordanian embassy this month, they took on even softer targets, and the attack on the UN headquarters seems to confirm that ominous shift.

The last few weeks have seen blows on all three of these fronts - the continued daily toll of "ordinary" military casualties, the destruction of a section of the oil pipeline to Turkey and the sabotaging of the Baghdad water supply, and now the death and destruction wrought at the Canal Hotel. What was presented as reassuring at an earlier stage, that the saboteurs were not a unified force, now appears almost the opposite, in that the coalition cannot even reliably identify its enemies. But their aim is clear enough - to spread fear and confusion, make Iraqis angrier with their occupiers, and stretch the coalition forces ever more thinly by multiplying what has to be protected. Senator John McCain said in Baghdad yesterday even before the UN headquarters were hit that more American troops might be needed, an expansion that would be deeply unpalatable to the Bush administration. If more troops are needed, American or British, they will no doubt be found. The ultimate solution, however, has to be an Iraqi one. Real security can only be achieved by the coalition forces and the Iraqis working in tandem, in policing, in intelligence and, eventually, in military action. In its efforts to expand the Iraqi police and lay the basis for a new Iraqi army, the occupation regime has recognised this truth, but there is unhappily a long way to go.

Yet there is another side to these events. They are not likely to lead to a general repudiation of the occupation, and may even stiffen Iraqi support for the Americans and British, albeit in a despairing way. Whatever the imperfections of the project to bring stability and normality back into Iraqi life, it can be presumed to be still preferable to the chaos and bloodshed which is all that the spoilers have to offer.


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Lest we forget: September`s dossier did not send us to war
Who said what to whom is not the issue - why we invaded Iraq is

Polly Toynbee
Wednesday August 20, 2003
The Guardian

Every day news from Iraq gets worse, with bombed oil lines and water pipes. Now this attack on the UN. Those who know Iraq well are still tolerably optimistic that most Iraqis will resist the extremists. But all this makes a grim backdrop to Lord Hutton`s courtroom where the reasons for war are being excavated daily.

As the inquiry stretches on for weeks ahead, the danger is that memory fades and the myth grows that it was the September dossier that sent us to war. Yet it was only a sideshow, a small piece of propaganda along the tortuous warpath. Events unleashed by Alastair Campbell`s furious defence of his innocence grossly inflate the dossier`s significance.

To put this into perspective I looked back on an event in early February. Several senior journalists were invited by a minister and Downing Street officials to a dinner to listen one last time to the case for war. As we unfolded damask napkins in the candlelight, a high-ranking US official sitting near the minister tried to terrify us with Saddam`s clear and present danger as revealed by US intelligence reports - irrefutable since we had no access to them.

Arguments raged back and forth as the minister and the US ally ran through that familiar array of reasons for war. (So many reasons only underlined the lack of one overwhelmingly good cause). As ever, there was silence about other unspoken Bush administration purposes. Some reasons were good: Saddam is a bad man - here`s the chance to free the Iraqi people. Others were disputed: Saddam infects the whole region, while a democratic Arab state would light a beacon for a new wave of modern Middle Eastern freedom. That insouciant cultural naivety airbrushed out the nature of Islam, hatred of the west and Arab scepticism about George Bush`s hazy notions of democracy.

We argued on and government realists acknowledged pressing questions remained unanswered: why here, why now? Why not let the weapons inspectors finish and maybe the Europeans would stay on side. Keep up the containment and the pressure, but what`s the rush? There was never an answer. The rush was American impatience, American political momentum, too large a build-up of troops Bush dare not leave sweating in the desert all summer while Hans Blix hunted down or failed to find the WMD.

Our dinner hosts were heavy on the frighteners: if he didn`t have nuclear weapons now, he would have them in a couple of years when it would be too late to take him out. He would threaten all around him. We who were brought up on Mad (Mutually Assured Destruction) deterrence asked how he could ever use them if it assured his own instant destruction by Israel? And if he did have some useable WMD, surely he`d only use them if attacked, either in suitcases in the west or against invading troops? I doubt anyone left that dinner any more or less convinced of the need for war. Minds were not changed.

There was only one thing that would have changed many minds in Britain. On that day the prime minister was meeting Jacques Chirac one more time to try to push through the second UN resolution - success would have changed everything. There were many backbenchers, Labour supporters and others who would have swung behind a removal of Saddam that had explicit UN support.

So by then the content of the September dossier some six months earlier was beside the point. At that table, in bars, pubs and sitting rooms around the country where war was argued over, belief that Saddam would strike within 45 minutes was not the reason most people supported or opposed the war. The idea that the nation was mendaciously frogmarched into war by the 45-minute canard is just not so, but the danger is that Alastair Campbell`s fit of lunacy over an insult from the BBC has suddenly made it seem so. Looking back it is always hard to keep remembering what you thought back when - and the dossier is assuming an all-important stature in national mythology it never had. To be sure, the prime minister hyped the evidence - war leaders tend to.

Meanwhile , in the courtroom things look grimmer by the day for both the BBC and the government. Chief of staff Jonathan Powell describes life inside Downing Street in a state of high alarm, as non-stop meetings wax and wane in perpetual motion. But see how his Foreign Office diplomatic skill ensures he leaves only clean footprints in the archives. His killer memo exonerates him completely: "We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that [Saddam] is an imminent threat". And that is what Tony Blair did not do in his impassioned speech to parliament. He over-egged it, as he was bound to.

As for the BBC`s case, what we learned yesterday is that Campbell did not add the 45 minutes - it was already there. Nor did he write the dossier - that was quite properly done by the head of the joint intelligence committee, John Scarlett. So that leaves Gilligan`s claim that No 10 sexed it up, let alone his claim that Campbell personally added the 45 minutes, as not true. However he did have an excellent story in no need of sexing up: the top weapons inspector refuted the key claim in the dossier. But it looks increasingly unlikely that Dr Kelly would have known exactly who rewrote the dossier or the progress of the 45-minute inclusion. It was indeed a "gossipy aside".

This is an inquest into David Kelly`s briefings to journalists: as things stand, he may be rubbished for spreading rumours and alleging far more than he knew. He was caught out and lied to his bosses about what he had said. The embarrassment was more than he could stand so his careless talk cost him his life. Who killed him? He killed himself (unless you believe the swirling emails from conspiracy fruitcakes). His tragedy is that he was indeed an important whistle-blower: he did know one big thing - that the dossier was wrong, the 45-minute claim especially. All the evidence so far from Iraq suggests he was right. As Robin Cook has said: "There aren`t any weapons ready for use in 45 minutes; there was no uranium. There were no chemical production factories rebuilt; there was no nuclear weapons programme."

To historians and the public, who got it wrong hardly matters. That it was wrong is important. But not all that important. Robin Cook is one of those who would have gone along with the war if the UN had endorsed it: that`s why he stayed so long. Removing Saddam was not a bad idea - so long as the rest of the world supported it. So long as the UN was there too. So long as Britain was not sundered from Europe over it. So long as our foreign policy was not irredeemably in hock to a neo-conservative White House. Pacifists would always have opposed the war, but many others couldn`t stomach going it alone with Bush. Don`t let the dossier distract from the real politics of this war.

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The spectre of Operation Ajax
Britain and the US crushed Iran`s first democratic government. They didn`t learn from that mistake

Dan De Luce, Tehran
Wednesday August 20, 2003
The Guardian

Ignoring international law, Britain and the US opted for the high-risk strategy of regime change in order to pre-empt a volatile enemy in the Middle East. It was not Iraq, however, that was in the firing line but Iran, and the aftershocks are still being felt.

Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS orchestrated a coup d`etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain`s ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves.

Britain accused him of violating the company`s legal rights and orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iran`s oil that plunged the country into financial crisis. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup, an idea originally rebuffed by President Truman. But when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, cold war ideologues - determined to prevent the possibility of a Soviet takeover - ordered the CIA to embark on its first covert operation against a foreign government.

A new book about the coup, All the Shah`s Men, which is based on recently released CIA documents, describes how the CIA - with British assistance - undermined Mossadegh`s government by bribing influential figures, planting false reports in newspapers and provoking street violence. Led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, the CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. By the end of Operation Ajax, some 300 people had died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.

The crushing of Iran`s first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy, with Iran`s new hardline theocracy declaring undying hostility to the US.

The author of All the Shah`s Men, New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, argues that the coup planted the seeds of resentment against the US in the Middle East, ultimately leading to the events of September 11.

While it may be reaching too far to link Mossadegh`s overthrow with al-Qaida`s terrorism, it certainly helped unleash a wave of Islamic extremism and assisted to power the anti-American clerical leadership that still rules Iran. It is difficult to imagine a worse outcome to an expedient action.

The coup and the culture of covert interference it created forever changed how the world viewed the US, especially in poor, oppressive countries. For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth.

On yesterday`s anniversary, there was no official government ceremony honouring Mossadegh`s legacy. Deemed too secular for the Islamic Republic, the conservative clergy never mention him. But at a time when the Bush administration expresses impatience with diplomacy and promotes "regime change" as a means of reshaping the Middle East, the anniversary recalls some unwelcome parallels.

The mindset that produced the coup is not so different from the premises that underpin the current doctrine of "pre-emption" or the belief that the war on terror can justify ignoring the Geneva convention, diplomacy and the sentiments of a country`s population.

Veterans of the cold war in President Bush`s administration are cultivating relations with Iranian monarchists in exile while Congressmen are calling for a campaign to undermine Iran`s clerical leadership. Washington`s tough rhetoric and flirtation with the Shah`s son are a kind of nightmarish deja vu for the embattled reformists and students struggling to push for democratic change in Iran.

"Now it seems that the Americans are pushing towards the same direction again," says Ibrahim Yazdi, who served briefly as foreign minister after the Shah fell. "That shows they have not learned anything from history."

The reformists allied with President Khatami believe their country now faces another choice between despotism and democracy, and they worry that the combination of outside interference and internal squabbling within their own ranks could once again defer their dream. The more neo-conservatives attempt to pile pressure on Iran, the more ammunition they provide for the most hardline elements of the regime.

Beyond Iran, America remains deeply resented for siding with authoritarian rule in the region. It would be comforting to think "reshaping the Middle East" means promoting democratic rule. But if it merely allows for the ends to justify the means, then the spectre of Operation Ajax will continue to haunt the region.

· Dan De Luce is the Guardian`s correspondent in Tehran

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August 20, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS
Chaos as an Anti-U.S. Strategy
By THOM SHANKER


ASHINGTON, Aug. 19 — The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad today provided grisly evidence of a new strategy by anti-American forces to depict the United States as unable to guarantee public order, as well as to frighten away relief organizations rebuilding Iraq.

Military officers and experts on terrorism said the bombing fit a pattern of recent strikes on water and oil pipelines and the Jordanian Embassy, although they emphasized that it was too early to uncover any connections among the attacks.

In recent weeks terrorists have conducted almost daily attacks on the American military. But after the bombing today there is a growing belief that anti-American fighters, whatever their origin and inspiration, have adopted a coherent strategy not only to kill members of allied forces when possible, but also to spread fear by destroying public offices and utilities.

President Bush was defiant today. He said: "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam`s brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq."

Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., he added that the assailants were "the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people."

But the problem now posed for American forces in Iraq is an acute one. Put simply, if Iraqis are afraid and unconvinced that their situation is improving, their hostility to the United States may grow.

The attacks on foreign embassies and the headquarters of international organizations, as well as water and oil pipelines, appear specifically devised to halt improvements in the quality of life for average Iraqis.

"The goal is to deny the American occupation force the ability to pacify Iraq, to prevent the Americans from winning the hearts and minds of the people," said Loren Thompson, a military affairs analyst with the Lexington Institute. "If Iraq is in constant chaos, the United States can never move on to the next stage."

It is unclear whether the fighters are remnants of the former government or foreign Islamic zealots who have crossed into Iraq to kill Americans.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But it seems clear that any improvement in the standard of living of Iraqis is viewed by opponents of the occupation as a victory for the United States and its efforts to create a stable, democratic Iraq.

Across the government today, officials said the tactics and procedures used by the bombers were highly proficient but so standard as to offer no technical "fingerprint" to immediately identify those behind the attack.

Car and truck bombings are a signature tactic of religious-based Middle Eastern terrorism. The technique was used by Hezbollah in its fight against Israel and spread around the world over the last two decades, including the attacks against two American embassies in East Africa that intelligence agencies attribute to Al Qaeda.

But one Pentagon official said Saddam Hussein`s secret service had trained in those methods, and that the Baghdad government was accused of planning a car-bomb attack to assassinate former President George Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

"You can`t arbitrarily eliminate regime elements as involved in this attack," one official said. "They`re well versed in these techniques."

Military officers and American administrators in Iraq have warned that fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a murky organization whose bases in northeastern Iraq were destroyed during the war, escaped to Iran but were returning.

Ansar is a small fundamentalist group accused of having links to Al Qaeda, and it acts as an underground network for handfuls of disaffected Iraqis and many foreigners who want to take part in missions against the American military and its interests in Iraq.

About 150 fighters with ties to Ansar are now believed to be inside Iraq, and American intelligence had warned they were preparing to attack allied military forces or the administrative offices of those involved in reconstruction.

Ansar fighters may have carried out the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Aug. 7 that killed at least 17 people, Pentagon and military officials say, but there is still no final determination.

American officials said today that their military and intelligence agencies had gathered no specific information about an attack being planned on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Last spring, even before the war began, the Central Intelligence Agency warned that terrorists operating in Iraq would carry out attacks against American and allied forces there after any invasion, government counterterrorism officials said.

"Inherent in a terrorist`s strategy, through the ages, is to embarrass the ruling power and depict the ruling power as inept and incompetent and unable to maintain even a modicum of authority," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at the Rand Corporation.

One military affairs expert said the attack could backfire on those who had planned it.

"The attacks on the oil pipelines and the water are in some ways stupid, because if the United States plays it right, the government can run that back against these elements pretty effectively as hurting the average person," said Richard H. Shultz, director of the international security studies program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

He said the bombing today might also quiet some critics of American policy.

"In hitting the United Nations, it could put into a rather tough position those in the U.N. who might have opposed what the United States is doing in Iraq, and even opposed our entry into the war to begin with," Mr. Shultz said.

In other words, by attacking the United Nations the bombers may have made it easier for President Bush to convince European and Arab nations that they have a stake in a peaceful, stable Iraq.

"This will be a loud call to them to get involved," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.



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August 20, 2003
A Mission Imperiled

errorists aim not just at inflicting death and devastation. They also hope to poison the emotional and political climate around their targets. Tragically, the truck bombers who blew up the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad yesterday have already succeeded on the first score, killing the chief U.N. representative in Iraq and at least 16 others, and disrupting desperately needed international relief efforts. They must not be allowed the second triumph, further deepening the psychological chasm between reconstruction efforts and Iraqi civilians.

The Bush administration has to commit sufficient additional resources, and, if necessary, additional troops, to prevent that. Iraqis need to see that Washington has the will and the means to get their country back on its feet. American soldiers cannot be left fearing so much for their own safety that they start treating all Iraqis as potential enemies. And international relief agencies must not be frightened away from what is now the most important American foreign policy endeavor.

Yesterday`s attack, the worst in U.N. history, was another sign that surly, chaotic postwar Iraq is becoming a magnet for terrorists. That is yet another consequence of the Iraq war that the Bush administration failed to anticipate, like the uncontrolled postwar looting, the delays in restoring water and electricity, the ambushes of American soldiers and the sabotage of infrastructure.

The upsurge of terrorism, which began earlier this month with the deadly bombing of Jordan`s embassy in Baghdad, is all the more alarming because the list of potential targets seems almost limitless. As things now stand, any public building not fully surrounded by a fortified, patrolled concrete perimeter appears vulnerable.

So far, the identity of the terrorists, the resources available to them and their geographic reach all remain unknown. These attacks appear to reflect more than spontaneous local discontent or the rear-guard efforts of fugitive former Baathist officials. There have been reports of radical Islamists infiltrating into Iraq from Iran and Saudi Arabia.

What seems clear is that those carrying out the attacks are organized and seek to thwart relief and recovery efforts. They seem intent on fanning hostility to American occupation authorities by prolonging the misery of ordinary Iraqis. Targeting the U.N. is especially chilling because it conveys a message to international organizations that they are not safe. Washington cannot let this message sink in.

To prevent that, the administration will have to radically rethink its approach to postwar Iraq. Unrealistically optimistic assumptions have led the White House to severely underestimate troop and spending requirements and wrongly dismiss the need for more international help through the U.N.

More must be done to reestablish security for Iraqis, aid workers and American troops, without creating a bunker mentality that walls foreigners off from the Iraqi population. Washington needs to accelerate its efforts to restore vital services and normal economic life. The administration should also drop its ideological resistance to a larger U.N. role in Iraq — and prevail on the U.N. to maintain its presence, despite the terrible bloodshed.



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No Time to Lose in Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


I was stopped the other day at the U.S. Army checkpoint on the July 14 Bridge in the heart of Baghdad and told by the sergeant on duty that I didn`t have the proper ID to enter the U.S. compound, which clogs the heart of the capital. So I called the U.S. Army officer I had an appointment with, and he offered to drive out to escort me in. To make certain he found me, I asked the sergeant who was running the checkpoint to take the phone and tell the officer exactly where we were standing. "Sir," the sergeant said, "we`re on the enemy side of the July 14 bridge. . . ."

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "the `enemy side` of the July 14 Bridge? He`s referring to Baghdad outside the walls of the U.S. compound."

I couldn`t blame the sergeant for having that impression. The bad guys in Iraq have been gaining so much momentum in recent days — with their attacks on pipelines, U.S. forces and the U.N. headquarters — that they are steadily eroding the sense of partnership between U.S. forces and the Iraqi people.

The mounting attacks are forcing U.S. troops in Iraq to crouch more and more behind their own barricades, to mistrust more and more Iraqis, and to put up more and more roadblocks. There is now a huge cement wall being built around part of the U.S. compound in central Baghdad that is a carbon copy of the wall Israel is building in the West Bank.

The same is happening on the Iraqi side. The Pentagon, with its insistence on doing nation-building in Iraq on the cheap, has been too slow in forming a provisional Iraqi government, too slow in getting the electricity on, too slow in turning security over to Iraqis. As a result, while most Iraqis are happy to be rid of Saddam, too many feel that their lives are tangibly worse in every other respect — jobs, electricity, roadblocks — because of the U.S. presence. "Saddam was paranoid, but he kept the streets open — you`re closing all the arteries," Muhammad Kadhim, a Baghdad professor, said to me.

Everyone has advice now for the U.S.: bring in U.N. peacekeepers, bring in the French. They`re all wrong. There are only two things we need: more Americans out back and more Iraqis out front. President Bush needs to give the U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer III, more resources to get basic services here running and Iraqis in charge as fast as we can. This is not Germany 1945. America is much more radioactive in this region. We don`t have infinite time.

Which is also why we need Iraqis out front — fast. They need to be seen to be solving their own problems. They need to be manning the checkpoints because only they know who the good guys and bad guys are, and they need to be increasingly running the show so attacks on Iraq`s infrastructure are seen and understood as attacks on Iraqis, not on us.

And, most important, we need them out front because the Iraqi silent majority is our only potential friend in this whole neighborhood. Everyone else wants America to fail. But we have not empowered that Iraqi silent majority enough, and it has been too timid and divided to step forward yet. "The Iraqi people are the only ones in the area who have an interest in your success," said Masrour Barzani, the security chief for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, a real friend of America`s. "But you have not allowed that friendship to emerge."

It can only emerge if America gets the basics right — water, jobs and electricity — and lets Iraqis run things faster. "Let [Iraqis] take the credit; let them take the blame," Mr. Barzani said. "We need Iraqis to face their own problems and each other, and right now you`re in the way."

I heard a similar message just a few days ago from Sergio Vieira de Mello, the chief U.N. officer in Baghdad, who was killed in yesterday`s bombing. We met over Lebanese beer and pistachios at his hotel, and he told me how much he believed that Iraqis could build a different Iraq, if they were given half a chance. Like me, he was a congenital optimist who believed in people`s better angels. His senseless death is heartbreaking.

It`s also a challenge. Whoever blew up the U.N. office in Baghdad was trying to blow up Iraq`s future. Yes, America must work harder now and devolve more power to Iraqis faster. But when all is said and done, only Iraqis can rescue this place. Only they can show us whether the diverse communities that make up this nation can rule themselves and take on their evil angels within. Only they can prove whether Iraqis are a nation with a collective will to be free and united. Only they can really tell us the true identity of the people on the other side of the July 14 bridge.



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August 20, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Magnet for Evil
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq.

Rushing to pummel Iraq after 9/11, Bush officials ginned up links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. They made it sound as if Islamic fighters on a jihad against America were slouching toward Baghdad to join forces with murderous Iraqis.

There was scant evidence of it then, but it`s coming true now.

Since America began its occupation, Iraq has become the mecca for every angry, hate-crazed Arab extremist who wants to liberate the Middle East from the "despoiling" grasp of the infidels.

"Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq, in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against U.S. and U.K. forces, security and Islamist sources have warned," The Financial Times said yesterday, quoting a Saudi dissident who noted that Saudi authorities are concerned that "up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone `missing` in the kingdom in two months."

One of the things the terrorists in Baghdad and Jerusalem blew up yesterday was the credibility of the Panglossian Bush version of what`s happening in the Middle East.

The administration`s optimism was exposed as a fantasy when the two efforts it holds most dear — the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq, and advancing the Palestinian-Israeli peace process — both went up in smoke yesterday, literally.

Before the Iraq war, the Bush team inflated the threats to America; since the war, the Bush team has deflated the threats to America.

In yet another spun-up government document on Iraq, the White House listed 100 ways that things were going great in the 100 days we`ve been on the scene. The report burbled with gimcrackery about the "10 signs of better infrastructure" — days before an oil pipeline and then a water pipeline were blown up — and about soccer balls and science textbooks.

"Most of Iraq is calm, and progress on the road to democracy and freedom not experienced in decades continues," it said. "Only in isolated areas are there still attacks."

Even the Bush people, who tend to look at excruciatingly difficult problems and say no prob, were shaken by yesterday`s carnage, which delivered a terrible truth: just because we got Uday and Qusay, Iraqi militants are not going to stop blowing up Westerners. Even if we get Saddam, the resistance will no doubt keep at it, hoping the dictator will enjoy the carnage from paradise.

"The dynamics have really changed," said an administration official on the reconstruction team. "Now we`re dealing with a guerrilla war, not terrorism."

Osama bin Laden was inspired to attack us partly by his hatred of the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. Now foreign zealots from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, enraged about the American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, are slipping over the Iraqi border to help Saddam loyalists.

Bush officials, who before the war also overdramatized the connection between Saddam and the Ansar al-Islam militants in northern Iraq, have now become spooked about hundreds of fighters coming back from Iran to attack Americans.

The Qaeda and Ansar zealots, along with old Baath soldiers and new foreign recruits, are intent on keeping Iraq in anarchy, even as Afghanistan also slips back into chaos, with a reconstituted Taliban fighting machine killing 90 in the last month.

The democracy dominoes are not falling as easily as Paul Wolfowitz and other neocons had predicted.

It`s hard to believe that this is just a few "dead-enders," as Rummy says. It`s hard to believe that it`s going to be easy for America to get control of the streets. It`s hard to believe the occupation is not going to last a very long time. It`s hard to believe that liberal institutions will flourish where basic security is a distant dream.

Some United Nations experts have been saying that we have only half the number of troops we need to subdue Iraq, and Senator John McCain and others agreed yesterday that we need more reinforcements.

The countries that could help us out with more troops won`t do it unless Iraq is turned over to the U.N. And Rummy & Co., always doctrinaire, doesn`t want turn Iraq over to those wimpy guys with blue helmets.

So where are we? We can`t leave, and we can`t stay forever. We just have to slug it out.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 20, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
How America Created a Terrorist Haven
By JESSICA STERN


Yesterday`s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.

Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created — not through malevolence but through negligence — precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens` rudimentary needs.

As the administration made clear in its national security strategy released last September, weak states are as threatening to American security as strong ones. Yet its inability to get basic services and legitimate governments up and running in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq — and its pursuant reluctance to see a connection between those failures and escalating anti-American violence — leave one wondering if it read its own report.

For example, the American commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, has described the almost daily attacks on his troops as guerrilla campaigns carried out by Baathist remnants with little public support. Yet an increasing number of Iraqis disagree: they believe that the attacks are being carried out by organized forces — motivated by nationalism, Islam and revenge — that feed off public unhappiness.

According to a survey this month by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, nearly half of the Iraqis polled attribute the violence to provocation by American forces or resistance to the occupation (even more worrisome, the Arabic word for "resistance" used in the poll implies a certain amount of sympathy for the perpetrators). In the towns of Ramadi and Falluja, where many of the recent attacks have taken place, nearly 90 percent of respondents attributed the attacks to these causes.

Why would ordinary Iraqis not rush to condemn violence against the soldiers who liberated them from Saddam Hussein? Mustapha Alani, an Iraqi scholar with the Royal United Services Institute in London, gave me a possible explanation: even in the darkest days of the Iran-Iraq war, most Iraqis (other than Kurds and Marsh Arabs) did not have to worry about personal security. They could not speak their minds, but they could count on electricity, water and telephone service for at least part of the day. Today they fear being attacked in their bedrooms; power, water and telephones are routinely unavailable. As Mr. Alani put it, Iraqis today could could care less about democracy, they just want assurance that their daughters won`t be raped or their sons kidnapped en route to the grocery store.

Blaming the violence on isolated Baath loyalists was perhaps more plausible when the violence was centered in the Sunni heartland. But the recent riots in the southern Shiite city of Basra, and the sabotage of a major oil pipeline in the Kurdish north, make clear that other regions may not be peaceable indefinitely.

Shiites widely supported the operation to remove Saddam Hussein, but they are furious about what they see as American incompetence since the war. This set the stage for religious extremists. Moktada al-Sadr, a vitriolic cleric in Basra, says he has recruited a 5,000-man Shiite army to take on the occupiers. In public he is urging his followers to engage in "peaceful" resistance, but some have told Western reporters that they are prepared to carry out "martyrdom operations" if and when they receive orders to do so.

In addition, in the run-up to the war, most Iraqis viewed the foreign volunteers who were rushing in to fight against America as troublemakers, and Saddam Hussein`s forces reportedly killed many of them. Today, according to Mr. Alani, these foreigners are increasingly welcomed by the public, especially in the former Baathist strongholds north of Baghdad.

As bad as the situation inside Iraq may be, the effect that the war has had on terrorist recruitment around the globe may be even more worrisome. Even before the coalition troops invaded, a senior United States counterterrorism official told reporters that "an American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups." Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa say that the recruits they are seeing now are younger than in the past. Television images of American soldiers and tanks in Baghdad are deeply humiliating to Muslims, even those who didn`t like Saddam Hussein, explained Saad al-Faqih, head of Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a Saudi dissident group in London. He told me that some 3,000 young Saudis have entered Iraq in recent months, and called the war "a gift to Osama bin Laden."

Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, told a crowd of 150,000 in a March religious observance that the United States was trying to create a "tragedy for humanity and to spread chaos in the world" and predicted that the people of Iraq and the region would "welcome American troops with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom."

The occupation has given disparate groups from various countries a common battlefield on which to fight a common enemy. Hamid Mir, a biographer of Osama bin Laden, has been traveling in Iraq and told me that Hezbollah has greatly stepped up its activities not only in Shiite regions but also in Baghdad.

Most ominously, Al Qaeda`s influence may be growing. It has been linked to attacks as far apart as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. One suspect in yesterday`s attack is Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose camps in Northern Iraq were destroyed early in the war. In recent weeks American officials acknowledged that members of the group had slipped into Iraq from Iran, had begun organizing in Baghdad and were suspected of plotting bombings, including the Aug. 7 attack on the Jordanian Embassy. In addition, Mr. Mir reported that Al Qaeda was carving out new training grounds in the border region between Iraq and Syria.

While there is no single root cause of terrorism, my interviews with terrorists over the past five years suggest that alienation, perceived humiliation and lack of political and economic opportunities make young men susceptible to extremism. It can evolve easily into violence when government institutions are weak and there is money available to pay for a holy war. America is unlikely to win the hearts and minds of committed terrorists. After some time on the job, it is hard for them to imagine another life. Several described jihad to me as being "addictive."

Thus the best way to fight them is to ensure that they are rejected by the broader population. Terrorists and guerrillas rely on getting at least some popular support. America`s task will be to restore public safety in Iraq and put in place effective governing institutions that are run by Iraqis. It would also help if we involved more troops from other countries, to make clear that the war wasn`t an American plot to steal Iraq`s oil and denigrate Islam, as the extremists argue.

The goal of creating a better Iraq is a noble one, but a first step will be making sure that ordinary Iraqis find America`s ideals and assistance more appealing than Al Qaeda`s.


Jessica Stern, a lecturer at Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, is author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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U.S. Links Islamic Charities, Terrorist Funding
Affidavit Alleges Role of Northern Va. Groups

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A02


Islamic charities based in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia invested millions of dollars in a company suspected of funding al Qaeda and the Islamic Resistance Movement, the government alleged for the first time yesterday.

An affidavit made public in federal court in Virginia contends that the Muslim charities gave $3.7 million to BMI Inc., a private Islamic investment company in New Jersey that may have passed the money to terrorist groups. The money was part of a $10 million endowment from unnamed donors in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, according to the affidavit filed by David Kane of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"My investigation demonstrates that BMI and its affiliates may have transferred funds to or for terrorists," Kane said. "I am aware that BMI made or conducted financial transactions with persons" who were designated terrorists by the United States and the United Nations, Kane said in the affidavit.

The government has been investigating for several years allegations of money laundering, tax evasion and other financial improprieties against the cluster of Herndon-based organizations. But yesterday was the first time any government agency publicly tied the investigations to support of terrorists.

In March 2002, federal agents raided about 100 companies operating in a single office at 555 Grove St. in Herndon and took hundreds of boxes of documents. No charges have been brought so far against any companies or individuals as a result of that action and the ensuing investigation.

The sprawling probe, active on four continents, is the largest current U.S. investigation into terrorist financing, U.S. officials said.

The charges come as relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia continue to fray over public accusations that the Saudi government is not doing enough to crack down on suspected terrorist financiers. A recent congressional report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks includes a section, most of which is still classified, that reportedly describes the role of the Saudi government in financing terrorists. Top Saudi officials have demanded that the 28-page portion be made public so they can rebut the charges.

In recent weeks, Saudi officials also have said repeatedly that the government cannot be held responsible for the operations of far-flung Saudi charities. Saudi officials have contended that much of the money for the charities came from wealthy individuals and contributions made through mosques, not solely from the government.

Kane`s affidavit was filed in support of the detention of Soliman S. Biheiri, who was indicted two weeks ago on charges of making false statements to obtain U.S. residency and other immigration charges. Before that, he was secretly held for more than a month as a material witness in the Justice Department`s investigation of terrorist financing, according to knowledgeable sources.

Biheiri`s lawyer did not return telephone calls seeking comment, but a government official and a friend of Biheiri`s said the questioning of him centered on his knowledge of Muslim charities in the United States, including some in the Herndon group, most of which were affiliated under a now-defunct organization known as the SAAR Foundation.

"It was a fishing expedition where they asked him all kinds of disparate questions," one associate said.

Biheiri founded BMI Inc., an investment firm that adhered to Islamic principles, in Secaucus, N.J., in 1986. One of BMI`s chief investors was Saudi businessman Yasin Qadi, who the United States and United Nations named a "specially designated global terrorist" in October 2001 for his alleged support of both al Qaeda and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. Another major BMI investor, according to court documents, was Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.

Qadi has repeatedly denied supporting terrorism.

The affidavit also alleges that Biheiri and BMI did business with other designated terrorist financiers, and that Biheiri`s laptop computer contained contact information for two other men designated by the United States and the United Nations as terrorists -- Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada, members of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.

Himmat and Nada have denied funding terrorism but have repeatedly declined to comment on the U.S. investigation.

In the affidavit, government investigators allege that BMI attracted millions of dollars in investment capital from the Virginia-based charities, which are largely funded by the Saudi government and wealthy Saudi businessmen. However, it is unclear in the affidavit whether the $3.7 million invested by the charities in BMI came from the Saudi government or from individuals in the desert kingdom.

In early 1991, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), one of the largest Saudi-sponsored charities in the world, opened a U.S. branch, which was based first in Washington and then in Northern Virginia. The IIRO is part of a huge Saudi-sponsored charitable and religious organization called the Muslim World League.

Shortly after opening its office, the IIRO, which operates in the United States under the name of the International Relief Organization (IRO), received $10 million from Saudi Arabia, according to the affidavit. The money was used to set up yet another company, Sana-Bell, Inc., which was responsible for investing the money. The return on the investment was to be used to fund IRO`s charitable activities. Sana-Bell`s office was also in the Herndon complex.

From 1992 to 1998, the affidavit said, Sana-Bell gave $3.7 million to BMI.

But by the late 1990s, the Sana-Bell money invested with BMI had disappeared. Sana-Bell sued BMI over the missing money, a move that Kane questioned in the affidavit.

In his affidavit, Kane noted that Sana-Bell was awarded a $2.3 million judgment against BMI, but never collected the money, and "the disposition of Sana-Bell`s investment in BMI was never disclosed."

Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Baghdad, Jerusalem Attacks Test Bush Policy
New Questions Raised About U.S. Resolve in Iraq, `Road Map` to Peace Between Israelis, Palestinians

By Amy Goldstein and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A14


CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 19 -- President Bush was on the front nine of the Ridgewood Country Club`s golf course when the call came from his national security adviser, telling him a truck bomb had hit U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

The bucolic setting in which Bush received the grim news served as a symbolic reminder to the president: There is no escape from Middle East violence. Bush cut short his golf game and returned to his ranch -- where, in the afternoon, he received word of a second bombing, this one on a Jerusalem bus.

The combined blows killed at least 35 people, including the U.N. envoy to Iraq whom Bush had known personally, and jeopardized two vital pieces of Bush`s foreign policy. The bombings, coming at a time when violence was already escalating in Afghanistan, raised fresh doubts about the administration`s peace "road map" for Israelis and Palestinians and tested the resolve of the U.S. occupation force in Iraq. Yet Bush`s aides, while horrified by the violence, were not surprised.

"It was the routine of it that struck me more than anything," said one senior official who monitored events from the White House. "It`s unfortunately what we`re dealing with and will be for a long time."

Indeed, the administration is becoming sadly proficient in responding to grisly news from the Middle East. A year ago, Bush was criticized for commenting on the bloodshed in one breath and boasting about his golf swing in another; this time, he was whisked from the golf course and put on a jacket and tie before he faced the cameras. There was no talk of Bush cutting short his month-long visit to his ranch; he and his aides have by now become comfortable handling the never-ending Middle East crisis from any location.

Bush called U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, to coordinate the response to the U.N. bombing. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to express U.S. condolences for the victims of the Jerusalem bombing and the Bush administration`s determination to push ahead with the Middle East peace process.

Administration officials sent signals to the Israelis that Bush would have no objection to an Israeli decision to freeze the talks on the handover of four West Bank cities. Powell planned to call Mahmoud Abbas to put new pressure on the Palestinian prime minister to restrain the terrorists.

Publicly and privately, Bush and his lieutenants said there will be no wavering on U.S. policy. "Terrorists are testing our will," Bush said in a hastily arranged appearance in a helicopter hangar at the ranch after the first bombing. "Across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken."

Bush teed off at about 7:30 a.m. CDT, 15 minutes before the Baghdad bomb exploded. Bush was driving his own golf cart and joshing with photographers. Less than two hours and 11 holes after he began, Bush decided to cut the game short and board his black Suburban sport-utility vehicle for the 20-minute ride back to his ranch.

By the time Bush reappeared before reporters, he had traded his golf shirt for a blazer and a tie, and his relaxed demeanor for a stony expression. The White House staff had moved swiftly so that no images of a golf course would detract from the president`s vow: "These killers will not determine the future of Iraq."

Not long after that appearance, Bush was given word of the Jerusalem attack by deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who was with Bush at the ranch.

The rhythm of world events does not always mesh smoothly with Bush`s penchant for month-long August vacations at his beloved Prairie Chapel Ranch. His aides call these sojourns "working vacations," and the White House has taken pains to reinforce that image, importing the president`s senior defense advisers for a meeting during his first week here and his economic team for several hours last Wednesday. Though the president has had no public duties or appearances since he returned Friday evening from a two-day trip to California, the White House scrambled to ward off any appearance that the president was at play while trouble was deepening in the Middle East.

Today was the second day in a week that the president`s itinerary was jarred by catastrophe. Last week, Bush was in San Diego, appearing at a Marine base to praise U.S. troops, when the largest blackout in North American history knocked out power to parts of the Northeast, the Midwest and Canada. On that day, the damage to the energy grid did little to alter his public appearances and words. In a response that Democrats have criticized as too slow, Bush did not speak publicly about the blackout until 41/2 hours after it occurred -- timing that his aides have said reflected prudence in an effort to rule out terrorism. Today, the White House`s response was prompt.

In contrast to the Bush administration`s studied calm, Bush`s opponents raised alarms today about the president`s policies. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a presidential candidate, suggested that the Baghdad bombing might have been avoided "had the president pursued the war on terrorism prior to initiating military action against Saddam Hussein."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), another Bush challenger, issued a statement saying that the Bush administration should "reassess" its Iraq policy. "It is becoming increasingly clear each day that the administration misread the situation on the ground in Iraq," he said.

Middle East combatants, meanwhile, issued ominous warnings that the Jerusalem bus bombing could mean the end of the U.S. peace plan. An Israeli diplomat said the "whole road map" is in danger of failing if the Palestinian Authority cannot crack down immediately on terrorist groups.

But White House officials saw no cause for panic. They spoke of a "new sense of urgency" in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, but referred to the bombing as typical. "Everybody understands there are going to be setbacks the closer we get to a true political solution," a top official said.

Milbank reported from Washington. Staff writer Michael Dobbs contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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No Stalling on the Road Map


By Brent Scowcroft

Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A21


The United States is heavily engaged in the Middle East, as we were all painfully reminded yesterday by deadly bomb attacks in Baghdad and Jerusalem. Not only is that region the nest from which "terrorism with a global reach" springs, it is the location of countries and conflicts that pose some of our most important and difficult challenges: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Each of these issues has its pressures and demands, its opportunities and pitfalls. While each demands individual attention, they are in many respects interrelated.

In Afghanistan we face the problem of containing violence and establishing authority throughout the country so that it does not once again become a haven for terrorists. In Iran, we seek to terminate the regime`s support for terrorism and aspirations to become a nuclear power. The regional problems that are currently the most volatile, however, are Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

In Iraq we have no choice but to succeed, whatever that may require. Should we fail in our stabilization and restructuring efforts, Iraq could become an engine of instability in the region, while the willingness of friends and allies to support future U.S. ventures would be sharply diminished. At the same time, we must recognize that achieving our goals in Iraq is likely to be an extended process, requiring long endurance rather than a short sprint. Yesterday`s bombing at the United Nations` headquarters in Baghdad only reaffirms this truth. A steady and consistent course, while at the same time not allowing Iraq to monopolize our attention in the region, should optimize our chances for success.

The problem facing us in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is significantly different. Iraq is now principally a matter of staying the course. But if the peace process does not move steadily forward, it will move quickly backward into renewed violence. Without sustained forward movement, the current cease-fire on the part of Palestinian militants will not hold. If it does not, the renewal of large-scale terrorist attacks will bring Israeli retaliation, and President Bush`s current initiative will almost certainly collapse into deadly disarray.

The president seized the momentum provided by military victory in Iraq to energize the peace process. This was a bold and courageous action, especially with an election year looming. The road map that the president is supporting lays out steps that Israel and the Palestinians each must take in parallel, rather than sequentially, in order to increase the prospects for building and sustaining momentum. But there is a daunting obstacle at the very outset. At present each party is insisting on steps it wants the other side to take first in order to provide political cover for its own initial moves. That is a potentially fatal deadlock, a deadlock that only the United States can break -- and keep broken. No one else possesses the authority and rapport with both sides to play that role. Should we not move the parties, the process will relapse, with dire consequences, and not only for the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

The suicide bombing in Jerusalem yesterday is the first crisis in the road map and the first test of President Bush`s initiative. It will require determined American leadership to persuade the parties to continue to push ahead on the road map and to prevent this cruel act from derailing the entire process.

Because the peace process is not just another isolated, albeit central, issue in the Middle East, our success or failure here will spill over and have major consequences for other key U.S. objectives. Devoting enough attention and determination to induce Israel and the Palestinians to move ahead would provide leverage for other issues in the region as well, especially terrorism and Iraq. Its success would give new hope to those who have turned to or supported terrorism in despair that the United States would ever reach out to put them on the road to a life worth living. It would give strength and determination to those in Iraq who are struggling to produce a modern, stable and progressive state. Finally, it would bring to an end the ability of governments throughout the region to divert their peoples` frustration about their own governing failures toward hatred of the United States for its unwillingness to move Israel.

The Middle East presents a daunting menu of problems and pressures for U.S. policy, and we certainly do not have the luxury of picking and choosing among the various issues that confront us in the region. At the same time, to succeed, we should not fail to be aware of the range of near-term opportunities and pitfalls as we allocate our attention and prioritize our efforts among these vexing issues.

The writer was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. He is now president of the Forum for International Policy.



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The Name Atop Everyone`s List


By Richard C. Holbrooke

Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A21


Until Sergio Vieira de Mello`s death in Baghdad yesterday, almost no Americans had heard of him. Yet for several decades this remarkable United Nations career official had been advancing many of America`s long-term policy interests while loyally serving the United Nations.

He saw nothing incompatible in this. In Iraq, he was working for peace and security and self-government -- the key American goals -- and while he appreciated American domestic politics, he could never fully understand why Washington so often undermined the United Nations instead of strengthening it.

Sergio, my friend for more than 20 years, went wherever the danger was greatest. Once there, he always carried out his mission with charisma, charm and courage -- and, I must add somewhat enviously, sartorial perfection, no matter how difficult the terrain.

Sergio`s track record was remarkable. Since 1971 he had served in Bangladesh, right after its war for independence, in Sudan, Cyprus (after its war), Mozambique (during its war), Peru, Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and the Congo, Kosovo and -- finally, or so he believed at the time -- East Timor.

In that distant corner of Southeast Asia, he reached his greatest heights. Sent there in 1999 by the man he called "my brother," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Vieira de Mello took control of a half-island torn by 24 years of war with Indonesia, and in less than three years guided it to full independence as the 21st century`s first new nation. On May 20 of last year, we watched as the U.N. flag came down at midnight in the capital, Dili (former president Clinton and I among the official U.S. delegation), and the new national flag rose. Sergio`s job was over, and with great relief he prepared to take up a more peaceful post.

We embraced on a dusty field in Dili, and Sergio said, "It`s time to go home" -- meaning not his native Brazil but Geneva, where he would become the new High Commissioner for Human Rights and reunite with his family.

But within months, Iraq demanded a strong U.N. presence, and one name was atop every list. Even the Bush administration knew that Vieira de Mello was something special. Uncomplainingly, he set off again at the request of his "brother."

It has been widely reported that he was instrumental in convincing the American authorities in Baghdad that the Iraqi Governing Council needed to be more than just an advisory group -- a wise and far-reaching decision based in large part on Vieira de Mello`s experience in Kosovo and East Timor.

As Americans learn -- too late -- about this great man, I hope they will recognize that he and the others who died or were wounded in Baghdad were part of a vast army of U.N. civilian personnel serving in often hellish conditions around the world. Of course, they are not all as good as Sergio Vieira de Mello. Some are simply time-serving bureaucrats, as is true in most large institutions. But many are very good indeed.

Make no mistake: Yesterday`s attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was also an attack on the United States. The target chosen was simply "softer," in the jargon of terrorism experts. Although underrecognized, overcriticized and underfunded by the United States, the United Nations in Iraq -- as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan -- is serving America`s long-term interests, and always with less protection and fewer resources than it deserves.

The writer was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard Heute 73 Cartoons frische Ware. Muß natürlich den Warnhinweis wieder geben:

Warning: Each issue contains ALL of the day`s cartoons on a single printer-friendly page. If you have a slow mind i.e. regularly watch Fox News it may take several minutes to get the jokes. Please be patient - its worth the wait.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030819_073_toons.htm

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UN Attack Underlines America`s Crumbling Authority And Shows It Can Not Guarantee The Safety Of Any One

Robert Fisk
08/20/03: What UN member would ever contemplate sending peace-keeping troops to Iraq now? The men who are attacking America`s occupation army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know that President George Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything - that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help - to reduce US military losses in Iraq. But yesterday`s attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad has slammed shut the door to that escape route.

Within hours of the explosion, we were being told that this was an attack on a "soft target", a blow against the UN itself. True, it was a "soft" target, although the machine-gun nest on the roof of the UN building might have suggested that even the international body was militarising itself. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the UN as an institution. But in reality, yesterday`s attack was against the United States.

For it proves that no foreign organisation - no NGO, no humanitarian organisation, no investor, no businessman - can expect to be safe under America`s occupation rule. Paul Bremer, the US pro-consul, was meant to be an "anti-terrorism" expert. Yet since he arrived in Iraq, he has seen more "terrorism" than he can have dreamt of in his worst nightmares - and has been able to do nothing about it. Pipeline sabotage, electricity sabotage, water sabotage, attacks on US troops and British troops and Iraqi policemen and now the bombing of the UN. What comes next? The Americans can reconstruct the dead faces of Saddam`s two sons, but they can`t reconstruct Iraq.

Of course, this is not the first indication that the "internationals" are in the sights of Iraq`s fast-growing resistance movement. Last month, a UN employee was shot dead south of Baghdad. Two International Red Cross workers were murdered, the second of them a Sri Lankan employee killed in his clearly marked Red Cross car on Highway 8 just north of Hilla. When he was found, his blood was still pouring from the door of his vehicle. The Red Cross chief delegate, who signed out the doomed man on his mission to the south of Baghdad, is now leaving Iraq. Already, the Red Cross itself is confined to its regional offices and cannot travel across Iraq by road.

An American contractor was killed in Tikrit a week ago. A British journalist was murdered in Baghdad last month. Who is safe now? Who will now feel safe at a Baghdad hotel when one of the most famous of them all - the old Canal Hotel, which housed the UN arms inspectors before the invasion - has been blown up? Will the next "spectacular" be against occupation troops? Against the occupation leadership? Against the so-called Iraqi "Interim Council"? Against journalists?

The reaction to yesterday`s tragedy could have been written in advance. The Americans will tell us that this proves how "desperate" Saddam`s "dead-enders" have become - as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying US rule in Iraq. The truth - however many of Saddam`s old regime hands are involved - is that the Iraqi resistance organisation now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime. Increasingly, the Shias are becoming involved in anti-American actions.

Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness upon Saddam`s former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Saudi "terrorists", al-Qa`ida "terrorists", pro-Syrian "terrorists", pro-Iranian "terrorists" - any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: that our occupation has spawned a real home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on Earth.

With the Americans still trying to bring other nations on board for their Iraqi adventure - even the Indians have had the good sense to decline the invitation - yesterday`s bombing was therefore aimed at the jugular of any future "peace-keeping" mission. The UN flag was supposed to guarantee security. But in the past, a UN presence was always contingent upon the acquiescence of the sovereign power. With no sovereign power in existence in Iraq, the UN`s legitimacy was bound to be locked on to the occupation authority. Thus could it be seen - by America`s detractors - as no more than an extension of US power. President Bush was happy to show his scorn for the UN when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect UN lives in Iraq. Does anyone want to invest in Iraq now? Does anyone want to put their money on a future "democracy" in Iraq?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=435…

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Wed 20 Aug 2003



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Senator says more troops needed

MARGARET NEIGHBOUR


THE leading Republican Senator John McCain said yesterday that the United States needed additional troops in Iraq to deal with increasingly more sophisticated attacks against US forces and strategic targets.

Mr McCain, a member of the armed services committee, said from Baghdad - where he met the US civilian governor, Paul Bremer, and US generals - that troops had a tough time ahead and needed help.

"I don’t think any of us - including them [US troops] - anticipated the amount and sophistication of these attacks," the Arizona senator said.

"I think they may need more people, both in the military overall and perhaps here on the ground. That’s one of the things, I think, we will be looking at."

Mr McCain, a Vietnam War veteran, did not specify how many more troops he thought were needed. According to the Pentagon, there are about 140,000 US troops in Iraq.

While most Iraqis were relieved Saddam Hussein had been ousted, Mr McCain said they were frustrated at the level of services such as electricity and water.

"Then when you layer on top of that, a group of criminals, Baathists and outright terrorists, and we have a significant problem here. We cannot afford to lose this. We need to do whatever is necessary," he said.

He believed the American people had been misled over how tough the job was in Iraq.

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Why the UN is a target

By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

The attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad, in which the Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello died, might have been carried out not only because the Iraqi resistance objects to all occupiers.
There could have been a specific reason as well, tied to a vote in the Security Council last week.


On 14 August the Council gave its approval to the recently formed Iraqi Governing Council and it also approved the establishment of a United National Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami).
The UN might therefore have been seen by the Iraqi resistance as an instrument of the United States and Britain in their occupation of the country.


Whether Mr de Mello was an individual target is not known. It is comparatively rare for senior UN figures to be attacked, though lower level workers close to the action do from time to time get killed by design or accident.

The most infamous killing in UN history was that of Count Folke Bernadotte who was shot by Israeli extremists in Jerusalem in 1948.

Bernadotte was UN Mediator in Palestine and had angered the Jewish underground by recommending that Jerusalem become an international city.


The Council welcomes the establishment of the broadly representative Governing Council of Iraq as an important step towards representative government
Security Council resolution 1500 14 August

In our day and especially post 9/11 it should perhaps be no surprise that the UN should again be singled out. And those who opposed it could claim cause.
By approving the Governing Council of Iraqis appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Security Council put its weight behind the move towards an eventual democratic Iraq.

By setting up the Assistance Mission, the UN was throwing its influence and resources behind that same move.



Whether those behind the attack were supporters of the old regime or Islamists intent on making Iraq a new battleground, the United Nations presented a target.

Security Council resolution 1500 said that the Council "welcomes the establishment of the broadly representative Governing Council of Iraq on 13 July 2003 as an important step towards the formation by the people of Iraq of an internationally recognized, representative government that will exercise the sovereignty of Iraq."

An accompanying report by the Secretary General Kofi Annan listed a number of ways in which the 300 strong Assistance Mission Unami could assist in that process - from helping the national political dialogue, training police, establishing a media centre, setting up an electoral process and delivering aid.

Huge blow to UN

The attack on UN headquarters was not the first time the Iraqi resistance has targeted the UN.

In July UN offices in Mosul were attacked and staff in the city had to be reduced for their own safety. UN flights were switched from Mosul to Irbil.


On 29 June shots were fired outside the now-bombed headquarters of the organisation in Baghdad itself, the Canal Hotel.
But this attack is something far bigger and is a huge blow not just for the UN operations in Iraq but for the hopes of those who want a much bigger UN role in the country.


This attack might have also been intended to try to stop any greater UN presence, especially a peace-keeping force.


Currently in New York, discussions are going on about how to increase the UN role. One British official said that it was a "live issue." However, it does not appear to be moving very fast.

Reluctant peacekeepers

Some countries, led by France, want the UN to be much more of an equal with the Coalition Authority (that is the Americans and British).

The resolution laying out what the UN should do in Iraq - 1463 - gives it a rather secondary position, for example in helping to form the Governing Council. It could advise, but the Coalition decided.

In addition, many governments (India was an important recent example) will not send troops to help in peacekeeping in Iraq without a UN mandate.

But if the resistance is now targeting the UN itself, then those countries will be reluctant to help even with a mandate.

The United Nations was seen by many as the solution to the present crisis.

This attack may force them to think again.

Story from BBC NEWS:
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Published: 2003/08/19 19:04:54 GMT

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ANALYSIS: IRAQ / BOMBING IN IRAQ


Postwar Saboteurs Target U.S. Credibility
By Alissa J. Rubin and Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writers

August 20, 2003

BAGHDAD — The truck bomb that shattered the U.N.`s compound in Baghdad and killed its chief official leaves little doubt that a campaign of violence is overwhelming the ability of U.S.-led occupation forces to reconstruct Iraq.

Since a car bombing at the Jordanian Embassy on Aug. 7, security in Iraq has deteriorated markedly on many fronts. There have been multiple acts of sabotage against key installations such as pipelines and a water main. Attacks on U.S. soldiers have continued.

It seems clear that those opposed to the U.S.-led occupation want to force the Americans into an ugly battle to provide security, and in the process halt both reconstruction and efforts to install a government friendly to the West.

There was no consensus Tuesday on who attacked the United Nations compound. Suspicion for the recent attacks has fallen on either remnants of Saddam Hussein`s regime or on the Al Qaeda terrorist network and its affiliates.

U.S. and other Western officials say they do not know if these attacks have been carried out by one group or many, whether the attacks are coordinated or merely concurrent. However, the answer to those questions might matter less than the attacks` cumulative impact.

Enemies of the occupation force have chosen a wide range of targets: U.S. troops, economic infrastructure and anyone who cooperates in the rebuilding effort — electrical company workers, newly appointed mayors, policemen and now the U.N.

The U.S. military has been forced to conduct broad sweeps of Iraq to round up suspects, alienating many Iraqis, and still has not been able to stop the violence. Iraqis are losing confidence that the United States can deliver on its promise to improve daily life. Under such conditions, the U.S. cannot stabilize the country — and will have more difficulty persuading others to stay the course.

Paul Rogers, a terrorism expert at the department of peace studies at Bradford University in Britain, said he believed that Tuesday`s bombers were former Baathist members of Hussein`s regime and that they seemed "intent on preventing any kind of reconstruction."

The strategy seemed to be "economic sabotage — making it as difficult as possible to rebuild Iraq," he said.

The goal was to discredit the Americans as a force capable of protecting international organizations in Iraq, thus undermining the U.S. and creating doubts about whether outsiders would be safe, said Mustafa Alani, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies.

"It`s a very important attack because the U.N. cannot protect itself, nor can the Iraqi police protect them. At the end of the day, it is an American responsibility to protect organizations like that. So, from their [the attackers`] point of view, it`s a major achievement to bomb the U.N. and show that the Americans cannot maintain security," he said.

Typical of guerrilla warfare or a terrorism campaign, it is impossible to predict where the next bombing might occur. Trying to guard against all attacks is impossible. The 146,000 U.S. troops in a country the size of California are insufficient even to guard key infrastructure such as Iraq`s vital oil facilities.

Although the U.S. has sought to downplay the possibility of long-term resistance, top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III recently acknowledged the seriousness of the escalation. Even before Tuesday`s attack, he said the terrorism threat and the amount of sabotage worried him.

"We could and did anticipate we would have criminality, we knew we would have some resistance from the old regime, we knew we would have some terrorism — but I`m a little uncomfortable with the amount of terrorism we have seen and the number of terrorists we are seeing coming in," he said in an interview last week.

"The sabotage part is certainly taking more time than I anticipated, I think largely because I had not understood — I would say we had not understood — how fragile the economic infrastructure of this country was," Bremer said.

Ten days ago, just after the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, Walter Slocombe, the senior coalition advisor to the Iraqi Defense Ministry, said in an interview with The Times that "we have to be prepared for a spectacular attack."

He said at the time that he had no specific information that one was about to occur but that it appeared to be a possibility after the embassy bombing.

Bremer and top officials have reacted in recent weeks to the increasing instability. But the solutions — doubling the police force and training a new army — are expensive and will take time.

Bremer has said repeatedly that the only short-term defense against terrorist attacks is good intelligence. He will not say how many Western intelligence operatives are on the ground in Baghdad, but there has been a massive influx. However, they have limited local contacts and are essentially starting from scratch. That slows even the "short-term" solution.

The situation could force the U.S. to reconsider the size of its military deployment in Iraq.

The Pentagon has resisted the idea of boosting the force from the beginning, but many policy experts have said it is essential. Besides patrolling the country, U.S. troops are also rebuilding damaged infrastructure and guarding U.S. civilian contractors and international aid workers.

"When major combat ended, the coalition did not send an overwhelming force into Iraq to win the peace," said Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, an expert in post-conflict policy.

"If you compare the density of troops in Iraq to Kosovo or Bosnia, there is no comparison per capita, or by territory — so from the beginning, we never provided the manpower to overwhelm opponents and external threats."

In assessing the recent attacks, U.S. officials and terrorism experts cite several potential enemies of the occupation. Remnants of Hussein`s regime are thought to be responsible for most of the grenade, mortar and bomb attacks on U.S. soldiers, many of which have resulted in one or two casualties.

The attack on the Jordanian Embassy was more sophisticated. A car bomb was used, killing at least 17 people and wounding about 50 others. Officials suspect either highly trained former regime members such as Mukhabarat secret police or military intelligence agents, or Al Qaeda operatives or their surrogates.

Iraq`s long border, which touches several countries, is virtually impossible to guard, and there are widespread reports in the intelligence community that hundreds of people affiliated with the extremist group Ansar al Islam have entered Iraq in the last two months. Fifty alleged Ansar members were arrested in the last week in northern Iraq. Some members are believed to have Al Qaeda training.

Even if such new arrivals were not responsible for bombing the U.N. compound, their presence would complicate the future.

"The terrorist threat and the border are related," Bremer said. "The borders are not entirely open, but they are certainly a lot less controlled than they need to be."

Bremer has ordered the Iraqi border police, once a force of 8,700, back to work. So far, about 1,100 have returned to work on the borders. Thousands of others have returned, but are working as customs officers.

"Now, you can ask how effective they are, and the answer is probably not as effective as we want them to be," Bremer said. "It is an area where we are going to have to do better."

Bremer, a man of tremendous energy and optimism, never concedes that the attacks are slowing his efforts to get the economy going, create jobs and restore the infrastructure, but outside experts agree that it is impossible to move ahead on such complex issues when day-to-day security is so precarious.

"Security is linked to everything they are trying to do. And when it`s a preoccupation, as it is now, it`s very hard to move onto other things," said Sheba Crocker, a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, who recently visited Iraq. She is a co-author of a report on Iraq reconstruction commissioned by the Defense Department.

"Pretty much everywhere we went felt edgy — you`re having to do reconstruction in what is still essentially a war zone," Crocker said.

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Williams reported from Baghdad and Rubin from Vienna.



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ANALYSIS: POLICY / BOMBING IN IRAQ


A Double Setback for U.S. Goals in Mideast
By Maura Reynolds and Paul Richter
Times Staff Writers

August 20, 2003

CRAWFORD, Texas — The back-to-back bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem on Tuesday shook the twin pillars of President Bush`s ambitious Middle East policy: building peace and democracy in Iraq and settling the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The attacks were a one-two punch to an administration that has been relentlessly upbeat about its ability to tame the region.

Some conservative members of the Bush administration have argued that by establishing a friendly government in Iraq and taking a more aggressive stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U. S. could solve a pair of problems that have bedeviled Bush`s predecessors. Tuesday`s events put both goals in jeopardy, at least for the moment.

Early in the day, on his way to the first golf outing of his August vacation, Bush had expressed optimism.

"A free Iraq will make the Middle East a more peaceful place, and a peaceful Middle East is important to the security of the United States," he said.

Less than two hours later, Bush was conferring heatedly with top aides about the Baghdad bombing. He went on the air shortly after noon, East Coast time, to denounce the bombers as "enemies of the civilized world."

In another two hours, the packed Jerusalem bus exploded.

Bush did not reappear for the rest of the day, and White House aides clung nervously to talking points and the president`s earlier expressions of resolve.

"The attacks bring to light in a vivid way that terrorists are the enemies of the civilized world," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said gamely.

Administration officials said it was too early to determine the impact of the Jerusalem bombing on the Mideast peace plan known as the road map. Bush has taken the plan on as a personal cause and has a huge stake in its success.

National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack insisted that the bombing should not be seen as the beginning of the end of the peace effort.

"Our commitment to help the parties reach the goals [of the road map] remains unchanged and unshaken," he said.

But former Middle East envoy Dennis B. Ross, who negotiated with the Israelis and the Palestinians during the Clinton administration, said the peace process could easily stall.

"Now everything is probably going to be frozen," he said, predicting that the Israelis will again insist, as they have for some time, that nothing can be accomplished until the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure is dismantled.

"My guess was the Israelis who were prepared to say, `You don`t have to arrest people` are now going to say, `We must have a demonstration,` " Ross said.

As for the fate of the U.S. occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, Bush`s televised remarks provided clues that the administration is beginning to fear that ordinary Iraqis are turning against the United States. Without their support, the U.S. intervention is likely to fail.

"Iraqi people face a challenge, and they face a choice," Bush said. "The terrorists want to return to the days of torture chambers and mass graves. The Iraqis who want peace and freedom must reject them and fight terror."

News of the Baghdad bombing arrived shortly after the president teed off at 7:30 a.m. By 8:15, the long lenses of TV cameras caught him talking into a cell phone, brow furrowed.

After conferring with a string of advisors, Bush cut short his round after the 11th hole and rushed back to his ranch. As he spoke before the television cameras, his face was tense as he argued that such attacks are a sign not of a failure of U.S. policy, but of its success.

"Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam`s brutal regime," the president said. "Iraq is on an irreversible course toward self-government and peace."

Previous attacks in Baghdad did not appear to upset White House routine or White House confidence. When a car bomb killed at least 17 people at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad less than two weeks ago, Bush`s public schedule did not change and the only public White House reaction was a brief statement from a junior spokeswoman.

But Tuesday`s truck bombing in Baghdad clearly struck a nerve. And the Jerusalem bombing added to the concern, jeopardizing Bush`s efforts to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Washington, administration officials acknowledged they had many reasons to be gloomy.

For one thing, the Baghdad bombing was likely to dishearten Americans whose support is crucial for the reconstruction effort. Some experts have predicted that a large-scale attack might turn American public opinion against the intervention in Iraq.

"This is a terrible tragedy and it can`t help but intimidate some people, even though our government`s response will be to redouble our efforts," one State Department official said.

The bombing may also dishearten some of the countries that U.S. officials are trying strenuously to persuade to donate peacekeeping troops, an official said. The administration needs tens of thousands of additional troops so that war-weary U.S. units can return home.

At the Pentagon, officials worked late, fretting privately that new terrorist-style tactics against civilian targets would discourage help from both nongovernmental organizations and foreign troops.

"It is an attack on the international community," a senior defense official said, on condition of anonymity. "This is very clearly an attack to prevent a free and democratic Iraq."

Also a setback for the administration was the loss of U.N. mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello, who had been highly effective in his post and, unlike some U.N. officials, had seen eye to eye with U.S. officials on many issues.

On a practical level, the bombing may increase the distance between Iraqis and those foreigners who are trying to rebuild the country by forcing the United Nations and nongovernmental groups to increase security. Until now, U.N. officials and others involved in the reconstruction had sought to distinguish themselves from U.S. military forces by interacting with Iraqis without bulletproof vests, weapons or armored vehicles.

There is some small room for optimism in both regions, some officials said.

The Jerusalem bombing could turn some Palestinians against militant groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas — both of which claimed responsibility for the attack — making it easier for the Palestinian Authority to crack down on them.

Ross, the former Mideast envoy, said the best hope for progress would be the U.S. pushing each side to spell out specific actions it will take — and pushing the Palestinian leadership to arrest members of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

"I don`t know how sustainable the process is going to be unless we see some action now," he said.

And in Iraq, the Baghdad bombing could wind up helping the administration if it makes U.N. members feel that they are united in the same cause with the Americans.

While many countries did not support the invasion of Iraq, none really wants to see the reconstruction effort fail.

"At the top level, this could draw leaders together. This could fortify the group And it could turn out that for the bombers, attacking the U.N. was a really bad idea," one Pentagon official said.

But a senior State Department official acknowledged that the world`s reaction can`t be predicted until more facts are in. And in both conflicts, world reaction could cut either way.

If the outcome depends on Bush, his determination — at least halfway through the double-whammy day — appeared firm.

"By attempting to spread chaos and fear, terrorists are testing our will," Bush said in his televised address. "Across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken. We will persevere through every hardship."

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Reynolds reported from Crawford, Texas, and Richter from Washington. Times staff writers John Hendren and Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.



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BOMBING IN IRAQ


More Troops Needed, Analysts Insist
Pentagon disagrees, saying more Iraqis should be defending their own country.
By John Hendren and Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writers

August 20, 2003

WASHINGTON — Amid calls for the Bush administration to reevaluate its handling of the Iraq occupation in the wake of Tuesday`s deadly truck bombing in Baghdad, Pentagon officials stood by their position that they do not need more troops to ensure security.

The shift in tactics by insurgents toward attacking "soft" targets such as foreign aid workers and Iraq`s own infrastructure poses a new set of security challenges by significantly increasing the number of potential sites and victims, analysts said.

Retired Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, former commander of U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, said the deteriorating situation called for an additional four brigades — as many as 25,000 troops — besides the 146,000 U.S. troops already there.

"The pattern we have seen since earlier this month shows there is a terror offensive taking place," said Nash, now with the Council on Foreign Relations. "It`s not going to stop unless we put a stop to it."

Pentagon officials insist that is not under consideration. Instead, they call for involving more Iraqis in the defense of their own country.

"There are more answers to the security situation than more guards," a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Perhaps one of the big results coming from this will be Iraqis recognizing the need to assume responsibility for their own security."

Officials in Baghdad have warned in recent weeks that the risk of terrorist attacks had climbed sharply. U.S. troops had begun erecting barriers around military and some potential civilian targets, designed to stop vehicles such as the bomb-laden cement truck that ripped through U.N. headquarters Tuesday.

Pentagon officials said that U.N. officials had not requested security from U.S. forces at their hotel headquarters.

Gamal Ibrahim, who had served until recently as the personal bodyguard of U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in the blast, said his security team felt that coalition forces were not providing sufficient protection for the U.N. headquarters, and asked for submachine guns for his detail. The guns arrived at the beginning of August, he said.

"We were protecting the head of the U.N. with a 9-millimeter pistol when everybody else in Baghdad had an automatic weapon," said Ibrahim, who returned to New York from Baghdad three weeks ago and said there had been a threat against the U.N. headquarters in Iraq about a week ago.

Iraqi Face on Security

Pentagon officials contend that putting more Iraqis in charge of security — and in harm`s way — will undercut public support for the attacks because they would endanger Iraqis rather than Americans.

U.S. military strategists envision an expanded police force, a new Iraqi army and a paramilitary civil defense force that would work with coalition troops to protect an increasing number of buildings.

But putting an Iraqi face on security will take months. The Iraqi army will number just 12,000 at year`s end and 40,000 at its full force in two years, and the civil defense force is envisioned at just 3,500 fighters within the next month and about 30,000 in four years.

The United States will also step up its efforts to persuade more countries to send troops, although it was not immediately clear whether that campaign would be helped or hindered by Tuesday`s blast.

"A lot of countries prefer to send troops to relatively quiet places," said Ruth Wedgwood, an international law professor at Johns Hopkins University and a terrorism expert. "This isn`t going to help."

Officials have said they have commitments for up to 30,000 foreign troops, many of whom will be arriving this month and next. But they are intended not to increase overall troop levels but to replace some U.S. soldiers so they can return home. Many of the foreign troops are scheduled to begin leaving in February.

The Pentagon has pending requests for thousands more troops from Turkey, Pakistan, India and several European countries. Although some of the governments are eager to strengthen their ties to the Bush administration, they may have a tough battle overcoming resistance from their citizens, many of whom don`t want their nations bolstering what they view as an occupation force.

Ultimately, President Bush might have no choice but to increase troop levels, said Michele Flournoy, a former deputy assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. The ratio of troops to population in Iraq is less than in Kosovo and Bosnia, she said, and should be increased.

"We don`t have the overwhelming troop presence required to provide the foundation for winning the peace in Iraq," said Flournoy, now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The bombing should raise the question of whether we need more troops to secure the environment."

The troops now on the ground are insufficient if anti-coalition forces continue going after nonmilitary targets, agreed Patrick Garrett, an analyst at GlobalSecurity.org of Alexandria, Va.

"The car bombing may mean the coalition is going to have to step up security not just for U.S. facilities but on Iraqi governmental facilities and third-party facilities like the U.N.," Garrett said.

Attacks and Sabotage

The bombing comes 12 days after a similar attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and on the heels of acts of sabotage over the last week against an Iraqi oil pipeline, a prison and perhaps even a water main.

L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, told ABC`s "Nightline" late Tuesday, "Obviously, we will reexamine all of our security procedures around our forces around the country and around our civilian sites around the country.

"This we`ve been doing anyway because of the clear information about foreign terrorists coming in here. But we will obviously reexamine that. We`ll learn what we can from this particular incident, and then we will continue, as always, to make security our first job. But I don`t know, at this point, exactly, how that will play out."

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Hendren reported from Washington and Kraul from Baghdad. Times staff writers Paul Richter in Washington and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.


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COMMENTARY


Jihadis View Iraq as the Place to Slay the Great Satan
The United States must not bow in the face of escalating attacks.
By Avigdor Haselkorn
Avigdor Haselkorn is the author of "The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence" (Yale University Press, 1999).

August 20, 2003

The United States and its allies have been facing difficult days in Iraq. On top of the daily shootings of coalition soldiers, a new phase seems to have begun with the bombings of the Jordanian Embassy and the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. Though it is not clear who is behind these attacks, there should be little doubt that the struggle underway transcends the "liberation" of Iraq from Western "occupiers."

The U.S. is facing much more than disorganized attacks by remnants of a dying regime that seek revenge or act simply out of despair given that they have no future in the new country.

Iraq post-Hussein has become a flash point where regional interests have joined in the common goal of ousting the West. Even if the effort is not coordinated, those involved are unwavering in their aim to defeat the U.S., and at least some see Iraq as a test case of American fortitude.

From a strategic point of view, the ouster of the Hussein regime and the deployment of the U.S. military in Iraq for the foreseeable future have brought a geopolitical transformation in the global struggle between Islamic extremists and the West. By positioning itself militarily in this area, the U.S. has turned the tables on its enemies. It seized the strategic initiative and, instead of radicals holding it and its allies hostage, it is regimes such as those in Iran and Syria that have been boxed up.

The mullahs in Tehran, for instance, who have staked their survival and Iran`s regional designs on Iran building nuclear weaponry, are now afraid to do so. They are aware that pursuing this course would probably end their political longevity. After all, the U.S. military is now poised on Iran`s western and eastern borders. Moreover, as long as U.S. forces are patrolling the Syrian border, Iran can`t use Hezbollah to distract Israel from going after Tehran`s nuclear efforts.

The Syrians have been under heavy U.S. pressure to cease their support for Hezbollah and an array of Palestinian terrorist groups. But Damascus is even more nervous that the U.S. example in Iraq — the forceful disarming of an extremist regime believed armed with weapons of mass destruction — signals that its vast stores of chemical weapons could become the next casus belli for the Bush administration.

The downfall of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan is also worrisome to Islamic radicals who now see that Osama bin Laden`s grand design of the U.S. being destroyed and an Islamic hegemony established has backfired. In the wake of the "global jihad" proclaimed by Al Qaeda and its ilk, there should be no surprise that with the escalation of attacks in Iraq has come a new phase of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan as well.

Even if the U.S. military presence in Iraq were viewed as benign by the rest of the Arab world, it is unlikely that it would have been tolerated. Were the U.S. to be successful in establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq and rehabilitate the country`s economy, the political danger of the new regime serving as an example to the rest of the neighborhood would have led to intensive efforts to subvert the experiment. The extensive campaign of sabotage underway in Iraq, exemplified just recently by new bombings of the oil pipeline to Turkey and the water main in Baghdad, should be seen as confirmation of this trend. It is imperative that the U.S. prevail in this conflict. Were the American forces to pack up and leave Iraq under pressure, as some have already called for, the war on terror would crumble.

If the U.S. forces were to retreat now, the perception that the U.S. is nothing but a paper tiger unable to sustain casualties would prove itself. Such a realization would open the gates to a relentless onslaught against the U.S. itself, its interests worldwide and its regional allies.

Even Washington`s two-faced allies like Germany and France, or Russia, which sees itself as embroiled in its own version of jihad in Chechnya, should realize that they must act so that this does not happen.


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Mal was ganz anderes. Eine Geschichte von einem weißen Hai.
Avila Beach liegt in der Mitte zwischen L.A. und S.F. am Ende der Steilküste von Monterey nach Süden. Der bekannteste Strand ist Pismo Beach, der einzige Strand, an den man mit dem Wagen fahren kann. Herrliche weisse Strände mit Dünen. Ein anderer Strand dort ist Grover Beach. Auch in der Nähe Morro Bay mit dem Morro Rock.

Shark kills woman in Central Coast attack
50-year-old bitten while swimming among sea lions
Maria Alicia Gaura, Chuck Squatriglia, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


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Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County -- A woman swimming among sea lions in the ocean off the Central Coast town of Avila Beach died Tuesday morning after she was bitten by what authorities believe was a large great white shark.

Deborah B. Franzman, 50, was attacked as she swam alone within sight of beachgoers on the Avila Beach pier and of about 30 lifeguards training on the beach.

The shark struck from below, breaching the surface and tearing most of the tissue from Franzman`s left thigh. Although no one saw the entire animal, a witness saw a gray fin in the churning water, and authorities said the nature and severity of the attack left little doubt it was a white shark.

"The bite was fairly massive," said Robert Lea, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game. "The white shark is one of the few animals that could make a bite that large. From the description witnesses gave, everything indicates" it was a white shark.

Should the autopsy slated for today confirm that Franzman was killed by a shark, it would be the first fatal shark attack along the California coastline since 1994. Two men were attacked by white sharks off Bay Area beaches last year, but both survived.

Despite the animals` fearsome reputation as relentless predators, attacks by great white sharks -- and all sharks, for that matter -- are exceedingly rare. There have been 106 shark attacks along the West Coast since the Department of Fish and Game began keeping statistics in 1952. Just 10 have been fatal.

All of the deaths occurred in California, and at least nine involved great white sharks, officials said.

Authorities closed the picturesque beach in Avila Beach as well as those in Cayucos, Morro Bay, Oceano and Pismo Beach immediately after the 8:15 a.m. attack. The beaches reopened at midday, drawing hundreds of visitors, but authorities barred people from entering the water until further notice.

Avila Beach is a beach town of 2,300 people in San Luis Obispo County 241 miles south of San Francisco. Franzman lived in the nearby town of Nipomo and was a regular at the beach, officials said.

Her teenage son, Alex Franzman, said his mother taught philosophy and ethics at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria. She was a strong athlete who swam in the ocean three or four times weekly. She was often joined by friends, but she swam alone Tuesday when none showed up, he said.

Her partner, who declined to comment, watched from shore as Franzman ventured into the sea. Franzman was about 75 yards from shore and 200 yards south of Avila Pier in water roughly 20 feet deep when the attack occurred, officials said. Authorities said she was well within the swimming boundary.

As she swam, more than two dozen local lifeguards were training and competing in shows of skill just north of the pier.


SWIMMING WITH SEA LIONS
Witnesses told investigators that Franzman, clad in a wetsuit and fins, was swimming among a pod of sea lions when the mammals suddenly vanished and something large and gray breached the water.

A friend of Franzman`s screamed, "A shark`s got her! A shark`s got her," bringing five lifeguards dashing off the pier, said Casey Nielsen, head of the San Luis Harbor District, which has jurisdiction over the beach.

One grabbed a passer-by`s cell phone and called 911. The others dove into the water despite having no rescue gear and little idea what might be waiting for them, Nielsen said.

"It was heroism," he said. "They knew someone was bit, and they went into the water and brought her to shore anyway. My first thought would have been `Stay out of the water.` "

The four men, who could not be reached for comment, pulled Franzman ashore and loaded her into a pickup truck, where they began cardiopulmonary resuscitation and tried to stop the bleeding.

"A bunch of local lifeguards come out and drag her in, and she was bleeding.

It was bad," eyewitness David Abbott, his voice cracking, told KCOY-TV in Santa Maria.

Paramedics pronounced Franzman dead at the scene.


SIGNS POINT TO GREAT WHITE
Experts said the attack is typical of the white shark, an "ambush predator" that strikes quickly and from below with a devastating bite.

One witness told investigators the animal bit the woman twice, but that could not be confirmed.

"It appears she was bitten once primarily in the left leg, but there also is a wound on the right leg," said Lea of Fish and Game.

Few animals other than the white shark are capable of so large a bite, he said.

The bite in all likelihood severed Franzman`s femoral artery, contributing to her death, Lea said. Had the bite missed the artery, she might have survived the attack but would have undoubtedly lost her leg, he added.

Lea said he will not know for sure it was a white shark until he examines the woman`s wounds, which also may shed light on the size of the animal.

"We know it`s large, and large for a white shark can be anywhere from 12 to 18 feet," he said. Such an animal could easily top two tons, he said.

Sharks do not prey upon humans, Lea said. Instead, researcher believe most attacks are "a case of mistaken identity" in which the animals mistake humans - - especially those wearing fins or riding surfboards -- for seals or sea lions,

their primary prey.

The most recent California shark attack occurred last year on Thanksgiving Day, when Michael Casey was bitten by a 16-foot white shark while enjoying the surf at Salmon Creek Beach in Sonoma County.

Casey, a Santa Rosa deputy city attorney, was bitten at least twice in the legs; the resulting wounds required more than 80 staples to close.

Another surfer, Lee Fontan of Bolinas, was bitten four times by a 12- to 14- foot great white on April 30, 2002, near Stinson Beach in Marin County. -------------------------------------------------------------

E-mail the writers at [e-mail] and [e-mail].


Fatal shark attacks in California
Date Victim Place, county Mode
Depth1 12/7/52 Barry Wilson Pacific Grove, Monterey Swimming
20` 2 4/28/57 Peter Savino Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo Swimming
<10` 3 5/7/59 Albert Kogler Jr. Baker Beach, San Francisco Swimming
<15` 4 6/14/59 Robert Pamperin La Jolla, San Diego Freediving
30` 5 12/19/81 Lewis Boren Spanish Bay, Monterey Surfing
<10` 6 9/15/84 Omar Conger Pigeon Point, San Mateo Freediving
15` 7 1/26/89 Tamara McAllister off Malibu, Los Angeles Kayaking na 8 4/16/94 Michelle VonEmster Pt. Loma, San Diego Swimming na 9 12/9/94 James Robinson Harris Point, San Miguel Is. Diving na 10 8/19/03 Deborah Franzman Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo Swimming <20`
Source: California Department of Fish and Game



©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

[Joerver]

Wals Bingoroom.

Bingo, The Death Of Souls
Do you think you know Hell? I have seen Hell. I am here to reveal all truths, and you must listen, take heed
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/


I have glimpsed the mouth of Hell.

I have felt the soft whooshing sound as the demon casually attempted to Hoover my soul from its moorings, stab my very anima with the rusty ice pick of lethargy and small cash prizes, lower the collective social vibration to that of a small tree fungus atrophying somewhere in the rain forests of Peru.

I have been to the Strip in Reno, Nev. Recently. It is, by almost every account, one of the more pure, time-tested rings of Hell. Las Vegas has gone family, upscale, almost cool, fancy billion-dollar hotels and superlative entertainment and passably edible food, a huge array of inane excess. The Strip in Reno, by contrast, attained 1974 and stopped dead.

But there are, of course, levels to Hell. Floors. Decks. Stratum. I have stayed overnight in the Sands Regency hotel in Reno. The Sands, too, is a strata of Hell -- lower, deeper, more sinister and sad, all rank beer and stale cigarette smoke and mysterious carpet stains, and to the two sweet, sad, newly arrived Polish girls working the drab counter at the mini Pizza Hut off in the corner of the lobby, I wish you so much luck, and love -- and please know, that ain`t America.

Is this as low as it gets? Is the Sands Hell`s inner sanctum? Because maybe you think it would be enough. Maybe you think this might be a sufficient dosage of sticky tackiness for anyone to endure.

You would be wrong.

There is yet another. There is a Hell inside the Hell inside the Hell. I have seen it.

Here is how you get there: Just past the Sands check-in counter and the chirping screaming banks of video-poker machines and "I Love Lucy" video slots by the rickety parking-garage elevator and just over there on your left, there it is, you see it, this opening, this short passageway, this gaping maw of beckoning neon and drifting smoke and quiet rashy death.

You wander near. You tentatively enter the passage. You look down toward the end and see a large cluster of people, maybe 50 or more, sitting in rows, facing away from the entranceway, heads bowed, silent.

They are all middle aged or above. They are all hunched. Pale and detached and wilting and otherworldly. They are all locked in deep concentration/lethargy, and it`s apparent that their copious bodies have long ago admitted defeat and their spines have long given up strength or flexibility or anything resembling verticality.

There is almost no movement whatsoever. There almost is no sound. There is an overwhelming sense of stasis, an interminable sinking, like lukewarm pudding, like spiritual quicksand. On the left is a raised platform upon which sits a hooked woman, emaciated and alone, a long-necked microphone arcing up from the podium toward her mouth. She leans in, and in that muffled, hospital-room PA sound, you hear it, like someone dropping a large bag of sand on a small penguin, slowly.

"B-27."

Oh yes. It is the bingo room. In the Sands. In Reno. You have found it. It has found you. You feel the whooshing. The tug of the demon. And it is wrong on levels you never even knew existed.

"N-15."

No one moves. Three grayish heads twitch slightly, someone shifts in her seat, you hear a phlegmy cough off in the corner. The ceiling is low and discolored. There are no windows. There are no plants or soft lighting or traces of tasteful decor. No one shouts "Bingo!" and stands up and does a little dance. No one laughs or smiles or chats or even looks up. There is much smoking. There is much sitting. There is very little else.

"H-14."

You can go no further. You can only watch. Hell inside Hell inside Hell. It is like nothing you have ever seen or ever want to see again and it pulls at this deep part of your psyche, yanks you close and squints its eyes and looks at you intensely and says, See? Do you see?

Here is your metaphor. Here is your ideal and painfully real analogy. The dank and stained bingo room in the Sands, in Reno. This is exactly what is happening in this country. This is what we have become.

This room, this mind-set, it is devoid of sunlight or beauty or nuanced thought, a breeding ground of catatonia and intellectual anesthesia and careening obesity and a weird sense of hopelessness, of defeat, and you want to shrug it all off and let it be and remember that just because it`s not your thing doesn`t mean it`s necessarily evil or malevolent or karmically debilitating. But you can`t. It just won`t let you.


Because it is but a short little spiritual/psychological leap to note how we all have our bingo rooms and we all feel that soft whooshing, that sinister tug from the demons of mass cultural stasis and inertia and noxious television and poisonous junk food and Wal-Mart and BushCo squinting and trying to look all fierce and manly when he can`t even pronounce the name of the latest country we`re about to massacre.

The bingo room is in you, always. It is latent and cancerous and it is like "Everybody Loves Raymond" or born-again Christianity or the Olsen twins, weirdly tantalizing and notoriously toxic and yet part of you wants to succumb to its poisonous charms, its slow-motion heart attack, its river of Lethe.

Because in the bingo room, there is no pain. There is no suffering or political bickering or gutted school budgets or taxes or screaming breakups or bad sex or rampant lies about endless wars.

There is only the harmless shifting of numb buttock muscles, the marking of bingo cards, and of time. There are only the tiny but endlessly alluring cash prizes, the haze of menthol smoke, a makeshift community of lostness and decay and happy emphysemic stupor, that sinking feeling that it`s all going to be over soon anyway so might as well just plop down and order another white zin and wait for your number to be called. Because it always comes.

The question is, are you going to succumb.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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©2003 SF Gate

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[Joerver]

Why we`re losing in Iraq


With exploding pipelines and flooded streets, it`s time to ask why we`re losing this war.

First, the entire war was based on a series of false assumptions, which centered on the political fiction that exiles would be warmly accepted by the Iraqi people as viable representatives of a post-Saddam Iraq. Why that assumption was made is beyond me, but since ideology trumped basic common sense, there was no way that the kind of people who are eventually going to run Iraq would have been acceptable. The idea that we would fight a war to make Ayatollah Hakim President of Iraq would have gotten zero support.
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2003_08_17_stevegilliard_a…
In reality, the exiles, many of whom had dealings with Saddam or were completely unknown, were resented as tools of the US. One cleric allied with the US was chopped into tiny bits by Shias in Najaf. The great neocon hope, Ahmed Chalabi, is now the most hated non-Baathist in Iraq. Far too little was understood about how dissident politics would play out, even though, it is clear that only home grown heroes would ever make the cut. Only an exile leader with demonstrable suffering, like a Hakim, can have any credibility. Exiles who have grown up with fairy tales about life in Iraq, or who left as children, have little chance to be accepted by average Iraqis.

Second, at every opportunity, we have been giving the wrong signals. Relying on exiles, attacking Islamicist parties, living in Saddam`s palaces. Iraqis figured the score as their libraries and museums were looted while the oil ministry was protected. Jerry Bremer, completely untrained in any civil skill useful to rebuilding a country, acts like a viceroy. Instead his expertise is in "terrorism". It`s like Red Dawn where the Russians bring in a guy who`s expert on hunting partisans. You don`t have to be a scholar in American studies to see what the Americans are really thinking. He lives in Saddam`s palace, drinks his booze and drives around in an armored SUV. To the average Iraqi, the only difference is that he doesn`t have people tortured by his sons.

The conduct of the troops belies a deep contempt and racism for Iraqis. But unlilke uneducated Somalis, many of these folks not only speak and read English, they understand the world. Iraq is not some backwards swamp, but a complex, cultured country with plenty of educated people. Baghdad is not Kabul. They know how Americans live and how they live and they think it`s not funny they`re suffering and the Americans are not. We have completely underestimated the attitudes and resolve of the Iraqi people, who see no reason for their continue joblessness and wretched misery.

Third, there is no information gap. Iraq is not Somalia or Afghanistan, where the locals barely read and are lucky to have radios. Kids in Iraqi streets worship David Beckham, watch Premiership soccer, listen to the BBC and go online. When ABCNews runs a story on Halliburton and Bush, they can read it or watch the video. The BBC tells them about Tony Blair`s lies the same time they tell us. Iraq is a wired country with lots of information available to the public. Within minutes of lights going down on the east coast of the US, Iraqis were laughing about it in their tea houses. We are dealing with a sophisticated, educated, armed populace. We act as if we are dealing with ignorant children. They are not.

The racist assumptions about Iraqi awareness means that we discount real threats like Sadr and his tacit working arrangement with Hakim and Sistani and seek to blame our problems on Saddam and his friends and Al Qaeda. At no point has the US been able even to manage the anarchy. The police are ineffective because we don`t fully trust them. We expect Iraqis to work with the US, yet provide them no protection or safety. We use them and they get killed, at points, by their own families.

Fourth, US tactics range from the abysmal to the common sense. It is increasingly clear that there is a leadership problem in the 4th Infantry Division. Their battalion commanders seem to lack basic common sense in dealing with Iraqis. While the 3rd ID is burnt out, the 4th ID seems to revel in bad tactics and bad leadership. You have commanders using questionable tactics and the command staff living in luxury while the manuever units live in hell. Special Ops is uneven at best. The vaunted and secretive Task Force 20 seems to have little regard for Iraqis or their safety. Meanwhile, the 101st, while losing men, has a much better commander and command structure. The difference in their operations seems to be night and day. But it goes deeper than leadership.

The US military is tactically at sea in Iraq. Each battalion, in each brigade, in each division seems to be doing its own thing. Not in terms of tactics, but in terms of everything. Some units are well supplied, some are not. Some sweep through towns and make enemies, some don`t. It seems to be that every unit is working off of a different playbook, yet none of the plays work. It seems clear that the leadership at the top of CENTCOM is so busy trying to run two wars, they haven`t noticed the 4ID is a disaster in the making. The current use of partisan sweeps is a failure. The locals are not going to help the US find their relatives. Every time they announce that they`ve taken 20 AK`s, remember Iraq has over 5 million of them. Or about 55 for every GI in country. We are fighting a colonial war against the best armed population in history. Iraq was a vast storehouse of weapons and those who wanted them, took them. We are sending in units against Iraqis who have the same basic weapons we do, automatic rifles, machineguns, mines, grenades. No colonial population has ever had the chance to resist their occupiers on nearly as even terms. Most Iraqi men have military training, hundreds of thousands have combat experience. Their tactics negate our equipment. They are able to use signal flares to manuever, which is a basic infantry manuever, but almost impossible for the untrained to master correctly. These are no fat former secret policemen doing this.

US troops are so trigger happy and so poorly trained, they shoot civilians without pause. A cameraman shooting US troops was gunned down. Whole families have been blown away by US troops. Abuse of Iraqis is common. You have to wonder what isn`t making the papers. Our MOUT (urban warfare) training is so unrealistic, that basic car stops often end in tragedy, while guerrillas brag about shipping guns past them. Most American soldiers patrol with their weapons pointed at the locals, off safe. We often shoot recklessly among civilians as well. The desire to go home is obvious, but when troopers kill a child because they freak when Iraqis fire guns in celebration, that`s a failure of training. The brutal fact is that the US Army was unprepared to occupy Iraq and its current methods make the occupation worse.

[Joerver]

Fortsetzung von #5958
This is from today`s Guardian:
But colleagues who were with the award-winning cameraman when he was killed told a different story.

Nael al-Shyoukhi, a Reuters soundman, said the soldiers "saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission.

"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film.

"I followed him and Mazen walked three to four metres. We were noted and seen clearly.

"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest. I cried at the soldier, telling him `you killed a journalist`. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said `I will step back but please help, please help`."

He said they tried to help but Dana was bleeding heavily. "Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

Stephan Breitner, of France 2 television, added: "We were all there for at least half an hour. They knew we were journalists. After they shot Mazen, they aimed their guns at us. I don`t think it was an accident. They are very tense. They are crazy."
Fifth, the occupation has no political supporters. You have some exiles, some grifters and some parasites, but even most of Saddam`s stooges won`t suck up to the US. You would think that a country riven with informers would be either in civil war or vying to get close to Uncle Sugar. Instead, they`re not supporting the US and turning their back when the guerrillas strike. No one serious in Iraq wants anything to do with this occupation. Those that do are angling for power at best. The US is unable to deliver basic services and is, thus, losing the middle and working classes they desperately need to support them.

The US, unable to provide basic security, is discredited by this more than anything else. Without power, light and gas,the US are just occupiers who need to leave.

Finally, the cost of rebuilding Iraq is begining to dawn on the administration. The lack of consensus from our European allies means they will refuse to help. Without UN help, the cost of running Iraq is too much to bear. We can`t afford it, not the $2b for the electrical grid, forget the billions to rebuild the oil industry, forget the actual war-related damage. The guerrillas don`t have to do much, just blow thing up the US cannot afford to fix. Of course, there is no relation to the fact that Bush`s cronies have gotten all the big contracts, despite rank imcompetence. Why should France sink billions into Iraq so Dick Cheney can make more money?

The Iraqis know this. They know the jury-rigged CPA is an obstacle, not an aid, to real rebuilding. Why should they support an occupation which, at its core, seeks to remake their country for the safety of Halliburton? A free, independent, Iraq sounds great. But since the US is allowing the exploitation of the oil fields in the name of crony capitalism, they know that`s a pipedream. When they go online and read the NY Times, they take the hint.

Everyone talks about 4th generation warfare. Well, we live in a 4th generation information age. If we write it and say it, they see it. Forgetting that fact, gets Americans killed.

[Joerver]

Aug. 20, 2003. 01:00 AM

A guerrilla war takes root
Iraqis opposed to U.S. are destroying structures and services on which the population depends, by Gwynne Dyer





United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is outraged. U.S. President George W. Bush makes his usual clumsy attempt to paint the Iraqi resistance as just another bunch of "terrorists," and to link them with some worldwide conspiracy of terrorists who attack the United States because "they hate freedom."

All the usual suspects express their shock that the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad has been bombed. And you wonder: Can they really be surprised?

To adapt Bill Clinton`s famous phrase: It`s a war, stupid.

In the first phase of the war, cluster bombs were the weapon of choice, and so the United States won. Now we have moved into the phase where the dominant weapon is the truck bomb and that levels the playing field. A classic guerrilla war is taking shape in Iraq and such wars are a contest not of technology, but will.

In this sort of struggle, guerrillas have several inbuilt advantages. They are at home, among friends and relatives, with all the local knowledge (starting with language) that the foreign troops lack. They can wrap themselves in the local flag (or increasingly, in the case of the non-Baathist resistance in Iraq, in the green banner of Islam), options that are simply unavailable to the occupying forces.

And there is something more: The occupiers have to build; the resistance only has to destroy.

There is a key concept of revolutionary guerrilla warfare that has, oddly, no standard translation in English: la politique du pire. Literally, it is the strategy of (making things) worse.

The idea is that the guerrillas, who lack the military strength to beat their opponents in open battle, should concentrate instead on destroying the structures and services on which the population depends.

If their attacks and sabotage make the lives of ordinary people awful, the people will not blame the guerrillas. They will blame the authorities whose duty it is to provide those structures and services — the occupation authorities, in this case.

This is already happening in Iraq, where the failure of the U.S. forces to restore power and water four months after the fall of Baghdad contrasts sharply with Saddam Hussein`s rapid restoration of essential services after the heavy bombing of the 1991 Gulf War.

In this context, attacks on infrastructure like the recent bombings of oil and water pipelines make perfect sense.

The wholesale looting of copper cable that is the largest single reason for the U.S. failure to restore electricity supplies in Iraq is mostly a freelance activity undertaken for profit, but certainly the resistance forces have no objection. And the bombing of the U.N. headquarters will not be unpopular in Iraq either.

Iraqis who watched their once-comfortable living standards collapse over the past 12 years under the impact of U.N. sanctions have a rather different perspective on that organization than the rest of the world.

Saddam`s regime brought those sanctions upon itself by its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but since Iraqis never chose Saddam in any meaningful sense they feel no blame for that crime — and they certainly bore the punishment. The Iraqi resistance does not discredit itself at home by attacking the U.N.

On the contrary, it furthers its principal strategic goal, which is to demonstrate that the U.S. cannot bring even security and prosperity to Iraq, let alone democracy.

The U.S. is already having immense difficulty in persuading other countries to send troops to Iraq to share the burden of the occupation, because, in addition to their original misgivings about the wisdom and legality of the invasion, they now have to worry about a significant toll of casualties.

All the more is this true of international organizations.

For all the rhetoric that ricochets around Washington about building democracy in Iraq like the U.S. and its allies built German and Japanese democracy after World War II, this is an administration that does everything on the cheap, and there is no Marshall Plan in the offing.

On the contrary, the Bush administration was hoping to pay much of the cost of the occupation out of Iraqi oil exports (which is why pipelines are being attacked), and to unload a lot more onto the U.N. and the alphabet soup of humanitarian aid organizations that generally follow in its wake.

It was never likely that the U.N. would let itself be used in that way: The mistrust of U.S. motives and tactics goes too deep in a lot of the members.

But Iraqi guerrillas are not up on the latest intrigues in the

Security Council, so to them it makes sense to bomb the U.N.`s headquarters in Baghdad.

And the bombing is also meant to tell all the international aid organizations that they are vulnerable to attack and to scare them off: Exactly what the politique du pire is all about.

The U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua followed this strategy, as did the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the FLN in Algeria, and it worked for all of them. It did not work, on the other hand, for the Montoneros in Argentina, the IRA in Northern Ireland, or the New People`s Army in the Philippines.

There are no foolproof, one-size-fits-all strategies in guerrilla/terrorist campaigns; the specific context always makes a difference.

But at the moment, the Iraqi resistance is on a roll.



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Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist based in London whose articles are published in 45 countries.

http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename…

[Joerver]

Published on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
16 Words, But Not the Ones You`re Thinking Of
by John Turri

Those sixteen words should never have made it into the President`s speech. The President`s advisors should have known better; they should have been aware of the abundant evidence indicating that what the President said was false. The U.S. intelligence services should have been more aggressive in vetting the speech. By the time all is said and done, heads may roll for this.

It is obvious that President Bush should have never uttered those sixteen words about ... Afghanistan?

"Afghanistan today is a friend of the U.S. It`s not a haven for America`s terrorist enemies."

Just for good measure, Bush also added, "Afghanistan is no longer a haven for terror, the Taliban is history...."

Once again, George Bush has shown himself to be either woefully misinformed on matters of tremendous national and international importance, or willing to lie to the American public about them. Neither option is pleasant: He`s either habitually ignorant or a habitual liar.

It is beyond dispute that Afghanistan is once again a haven for terrorists. Indeed, it has been for some time, as even a cursory review of recent history shows.

In just over two months, from late December 2002 through mid-February 2003, U.S. forces were forced to abandon five outposts along the Afghan-Pakistan border because of persistent attacks. In February 2003, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued a call for a holy war against the U.S. and its allies. Robert Fisk reported in early February, "al Qaeda has a radio station operating inside Afghanistan which calls for a holy war against America." Shortly after these calls for holy war, U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, Colonel Roger King, remarked that there were "probably several hundred" and possibly more al Qaeda and Taliban forces either operating in Afghanistan or just across the border in Pakistan.

Colonel King knew about this, but apparently the President did not.

Or did he?

By the end of April 2003, Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times was able to report that there would likely be "a significant escalation of the country`s ongoing guerrilla war," especially in the southeast. Opposition to U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan was becoming more organized and deadly, and posed a serious threat to the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. Attacks were being coordinated by a group named "The Sword of Muslims" consisting of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar`s forces, the Taliban, members of Osama bin Laden`s International Islamic Front, and members of al Qaeda. Shahzad concluded in early May 2003 that Afghanistan had once again become a "breeding point and a safe sanctuary for an international Islamic resistance front against U.S. interests."

Shahzad knew what was going on in southeastern Afghanistan, but apparently the President did not.

Or did he?

Right about the same time President Bush spoke those sixteen words, sixteen people were killed when a bus bomb went off in southeastern Afghanistan, and another died later from injuries. Associated Press reporter Noor Khan reported from Kandahar, "Officials were quick to blame al Qaeda insurgents and Taliban loyalists for the bus explosion...." Later that same day, heavy fighting between government and guerilla forces claimed the lives of dozens.

Khan knew that al Qaeda and the Taliban were being blamed for the attack, but apparently the President did not.

Or did he?

After Bush`s speech, the attacks continued. Within the last day, there were two more guerilla attacks, each "attributed to the Taliban, al Qaeda and supporters of the warlord and former premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar." In one of the attacks "a 300-strong gang burnt down a police station, killed three policemen and took four others hostage."

Anyone with an Internet connection could have easily made him or herself aware of the plentiful evidence that al Qaeda and the Taliban were operating in Afghanistan, with lethal effectiveness.

As I said earlier, either Bush is woefully ignorant or a liar. It is beyond belief that he was not briefed on the situation in Afghanistan. That eliminates the first option. So we are left only with the second: George Bush lied to the American public about what is happening in Afghanistan.

We have not dismantled al Qaida, the Taliban is not history, and Afghanistan is in no better shape today than it was a year and a half ago. Afghanis face more problems than the return of terrorist thugs. Afghanistan is once again the world`s leading supplier of heroin; women still have no rights to speak of; torture and other human rights abuses are common; the country`s justice system is either in shambles or sorely inadequate; and people are still being subjected to harsh restrictions and punishment at the hands of religious fundamentalists.

It is time for the administration to own up to the failure of U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan.

And it`s time the President started telling the truth.

John Turri is a Javits Fellow at Brown University

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0819-09.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 11:25 a.m. EDT August 20, 2003

FBI agents are leading the search for clues in the rubble of the United Nations compound in Baghdad. U.S. soldiers are maintaining a large presence in the area.
Iraq`s governing council has declared three days of mourning for those killed in the blast. The council has condemned the attack. Council members believe it was carried out by members of Saddam Hussein`s ousted regime, with help from outside militants.
Britain`s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, says he`s spoken to Secretary of State Powell about giving the U.N. a bigger role in Iraq, following the attack.
The civilian administrator in Iraq says yesterday`s deadly bombing of the United Nations headquarters shows terrorists have regrouped in Iraq. Paul Bremer tells NBC`s "Today Show" that security reviews are being conducted in the region but there`s no such thing as 100-percent security against terrorism.
The U.S. military says guerrilla fighters attacked a U.S. convoy with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms in Tikrit today, killing an Iraqi civilian working as a translator for the occupation force and wounding two soldiers. The interpreter was the second civilian working with U.S. soldiers to be killed this month in the city, hometown of Saddam Hussein.
U.N. workers have been told to stay at home today after a cement truck packed with explosives blew up outside the offices of the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, killing him and 19 other people. The FBI is leading the search through the rubble for clues.
After an all-night effort to find survivors, the rescue operation appeared to have turned into a grim search for the bodies of the many people unaccounted for at the heavily damaged U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. U.S. soldiers maintained a big presence in the area and American Army trucks were coming and going from the compound.
American military officials say U.N. officials declined U.S. offers to provide tighter security at their Baghdad headquarters so they would have a friendlier image with the Iraqi public.
A United Nation`s spokesman says U.N. security is the responsibility of the United States and U.N. staff are demanding an investigation into "why adequate security was not in place to prevent such a horrifying attack."
The first American identified as a victim of Tuesday`s terrorist attack in Iraq was no stranger to that region. Forty-year-old Richard Hooper was an Arab expert from California. He was on special assignment with the U.N. when a bomb exploded outside its headquarters in Baghdad.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
++++US++++UK++++Total++++Days

++++270++++47++++317+++++153
Latest Fatality Date: 8/20/2003

08/20/03 CENTCOM
One 3rd Corps Support Command soldier was killed and another injured when they received small arms fire and struck another vehicle.
08/20/03 CENTCOM
One U.S. citizen working as a contracted interpreter was killed and two U.S. soldiers were wounded in a small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenade attack in Tikrit on Aug. 20.
08/19/03 Associated Press
Huge Car Bomb Blast Hits UN HQ in Iraq
08/18/03 Des Moines Register
HEATSTROKE KILLS IOWA GUARDSMAN IN IRAQ
08/18/03 Department of Defense
DOD ANNOUNCES DEATH OF US SOLDIER ON AUG. 14TH - OTHER SOURCES CITE HEATSTROKE
08/18/03 CENTCOM
US SOLDIER KILLED BY EXPLOSIVE DEVICE ON AUG. 18TH IN BAGHDAD

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Ex-envoy holds Pentagon responsible for chaos in Iraq

LONDON: Following are reactions from military analysts and security experts to the explosion at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday.

HAROLD WALKER, LAST BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ (1990-91): "It`s worrying because it`s an incremental worsening of the targets selected by people in Iraq.

"There`s been some intelligence of outsiders coming in to stiffen the opposition. Some of these people are Al Qaeda types. "The targets so far have been almost entirely US military, apart from the oil pipeline and water pipeline, which suggests that there are people who want to impede the reconstruction of Iraq.

"They really want to make Iraq into a quagmire. They want to make Iraq so difficult for the United States that it withdraws with its tail between its legs. "(But) all the signs are the US is very determined. "It`s rather depressing at the moment. It all goes back to the decision of the Pentagon to fight the war `lite`.

"They fought the war extremely effectively, but then they were unable to make the transition from war-fighting to peace-making. "They`ve been playing catch-up and right now it doesn`t look like they are catching up."

CHARLES HEYMAN, EDITOR OF JANE`S WORLD ARMIES: "There`s a possibility - just a possibility, and no more than that - that this is really the opposition`s warning to the United Nations not to get involved in Iraq. But it`s early days. We will have a clearer picture later on tonight."

AZIZ ALKAZAZ, ANALYST AT GERMAN INSTITUTE FOR MIDDLE EAST STUDIES:

"I`m tempted to think a whole number of groups are involved in the series of attacks we`ve seen and some with different motives. It`s striking how few reports of responsibility there are, or at least how few are seen by the western media. "The strategy is a fairly simple one of hit-and-run.

"I think there is likely to be a growing measure of frustration in the general population with little sign, for example, that the promised elections will happen on time.

"Weapons have been distributed among the population ahead of the war. There was little surprise that a war was going to happen. I think you could see an increasing number of attacks in the future."

FRANK UMBACH, SECURITY ANALYST AT THE GERMAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS:

"It seems there is an escalation with the United Nations rather than just the United States being targeted. It would appear that it`s an attack aimed at foreigners operating in Iraq, not just America.

"It points in the direction of those who have no interest in the secular state which might be necessary to bind together all the separate groups in Iraq. That could be, but isn`t necessarily, a Shia grouping wanting an Islamic state along the lines of 1979 Iran.

"It would be easy to say the attacks are the work of Al Qaeda, but you have to be cautious before attributing all the responsibility to them.

"There have been reports of 3,000 young men waiting at the border, and it is a very porous border, to cross into Iraq to wage a war against what they see as occupying forces.

"It could also be forces loyal to Saddam, wishing to be seen as Al Qaeda or as an Islamic groups. Indeed there could be cooperation between the grouping, even if they do not share common goals.

"I wouldn`t say that the United States is losing control, but it is facing increasing problems of daily security.... There`s an important issue of how many troops they and their allies want to contribute.

"The US has about 140,000 troops there now, plus 18,000-20,000 from other nations. If you take the troop contingent in Bosnia as a model, there would need to be 360,000 troops in Iraq. If you took Kosovo, up to 500,000 - that`s based on troops per civilian population."

MUSTAFA ALANI, ASSOCIATE FELLOW AT THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE, LONDON:

"This is a similar attack to the one on the Jordanian embassy 10 days ago. It is not an amateur job...To assemble this sort of bomb, it must be a well-organised group with a plentiful supply of explosives.

"I think we are now entering a new stage of the Iraqi resistance movement: from random attack to well planned attack. "I believe the clear candidate here is an Islamist group which considers the UN an enemy as much as the US..The aim is to show that America is not in control of the security situation in Iraq.

"The impression now is that America is losing control and resistance is intensifying every day. I think this is the major objective."

MAGNUS RANSTORP, IRAQ EXPERT AT ST ANDREW`S UNIVERSITY, SCOTLAND:

"There`s a unifying (opposition) strategy of bleeding the United States to death, of sabotaging their ability to reconstruct...It`s a war of attrition."

TOBY DODGE, IRAQ EXPERT AT BRITAIN`S WARWICK UNIVERSITY:

"It`s an escalation both in terror, the public nature of the spectacle, and of course of the casualties. And I think clearly this has been in the offing.

"Where do you go from a war of attrition, killing an American every day? You go to the next step up in a level of violence and fear, and I think this marks a new chapter in the horrific mess that is Iraq.

"Given the indiscriminate nature of the bomb, the ruthlessness involved and the level of technical competence, I think we`re looking at probably the rump elements of Saddam`s security service or the army."

ROSEMARY HOLLIS, MIDDLE EAST EXPERT AT LONDON`S ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: "I think it`s about wrecking the prospects of effective rebuilding in Iraq. "So it is someone who is not just anti-US and the US occupation, but someone who intends to profit from the fear and chaos felt by all members of the international community. "It would have to be either a fairly extreme supporter of the old regime or a supporter of anarchy - a category which would include Al Qaeda." -Reuters

http://www.dawn.com/2003/08/20/int14.htm

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Bush in talks to bolster UN role
Security advisers discuss plan for Baghdad force

Julian Borger in Washington, Sarah Hall and Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian

President George Bush`s top national security advisers yesterday held an urgent debate over whether to seek a new UN resolution backing an international stabilisation force, in the wake of Tuesday`s devastating truck bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq.

The Blair government is attempting to persuade a reluctant White House to give the international community a greater say in running Iraq in return for a UN endorsement of foreign troop contributions.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who is due to fly to the UN today, insisted that Britain and the US remained "open-minded" about the UN moving beyond its current humanitarian role. "I started talking to [US] secretary of state Colin Powell last night about this," he added. "Obviously now, given this appalling tragedy ... the UN`s role, its practical role and its mandate, will be top of my agenda in New York," he told BBC Radio 4`s Today programme.

The talks on how to prevent Iraq slipping into chaos started as the UN ordered a "partial evacuation" of its Baghdad staff to Jordan. The number of victims of the bombing seemed certain to rise well above 20, as it emerged that up to 10 bodies could still be in the debris.

US troops yesterday used heavy lifting gear to remove large pieces of the building as the hunt for survivors was replaced by a more methodical and sombre search for the bodies. At one point troops stopped for what looked like a moment`s silence before removing a body.

The soldiers mingled with FBI agents hunting clues to whoever set off the bomb that left a 6ft crater.

Human remains found in the area of the crater suggested a suicide bombing, said FBI special agent Thomas Fuentes, but laboratory tests were needed to confirm this.

He said the attackers packed a Soviet-made lorry with more than 1,000lb of old Iraqi army munitions, including a single 500lb bomb.

As the investigation continued, the administration`s national security "principals", including Mr Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, were due to discuss the UN`s role last night in a video-conference with Mr Bush at his Texas ranch. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was in Central America.

An official familiar with the conference agenda said it was unlikely the hawks were ready to compromise over the administration negotiating US command and control of the occupation force and the unquestioned authority of Paul Bremer`s coalition provisional authority.

Instead, the administration hawks hope that Tuesday`s attack will shock the international community into making a greater military and economic contribution to Iraqi stability. "They are grasping this attack as an opportunity to get more people aboard," the official said.

The official added that the new draft resolution under discussion would "call for more troops, more money, more recognition, especially from the Arab states. It will frame the argument that it is not just the US, but the whole international community who loses if Iraq goes wrong."

It could also include a security council instruction to Syria and Iran to make more effort to secure their borders against the infiltration of Islamic militants.

Until now, almost all potential troop contributors have told Washington they will not send soldiers without a security council mandate.

Mr Bremer yesterday denied that the situation in Iraq was unravelling, arguing that security was improving across much of the country. However, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, offered a radically different assessment of the situation. "We had hoped that by now, the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on ... economic reconstruction and institution-building," he said. "That has not happened."

While saying nothing could justify the current violence in Iraq, he noted: "Some mistakes may have been made, some wrong assumptions."



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De Mello knew sovereignty, not security, is the issue
Britain should persuade the US to give the UN a larger role in Iraq

Jonathan Steele
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian

My time here could come to an abrupt end," Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN`s special representative to Iraq, commented just three weeks ago as I sat on a sofa in the Baghdad office which on Tuesday became his tomb. He never seriously imagined he would be an assassin`s target, and his reference to an "abrupt end" was delivered with a smile.

It was a standard line in the conversations he enjoyed having with journalists whom he knew and trusted, leaving it to us to decide what was on or off the record at the risk of jeopardising his job. That trust was one element in the gamut of qualities, along with charm, brilliance, accessibility, dedication and compassion, that made him the "best public servant in the world", as one American admirer described him yesterday. For three decades de Mello had worked as a UN official at human rights trouble-spots in every continent, combining diplomatic flair and tough negotiating skills with barely concealed anger at the suffering he witnessed.

In Iraq, the point that dominated his thinking was that Iraqis had to recover their independence. The primary issue was not security, but sovereignty. Only if Iraqis began to feel the occupation of their country was coming to an speedy end would there be a reduction in the sense of humiliation which helped to sustain the resistance.

This was his gut instinct when he arrived in Iraq in June, and it was rapidly confirmed by the talks he had with political and religious leaders of every persuasion. No one else had such a comprehensive sense of Iraqi opinion, since the top Shia clerics saw US and British officials as occupiers and refused to meet them. It prompted him to press the Americans to nominate an interim "governing council" of Iraqis to start the clock ticking towards elections next year and a US withdrawal.

His shocking death makes it safe to report his regrets that the Americans did not understand Iraqi feelings properly - though he probably told them himself in private. He saw the US rocket attacks on the house where Saddam Hussein`s sons were hiding as "overkill" because it would have been better to put them on trial. He initially described Paul Bremer, the US head of the coalititon provisional authority, as a "true neo-con who does not care about getting international legitimacy" for what the US did. Later he felt Bremer had begun to change.

Whether Saddam was captured would make little difference to the number of attacks on the 150,000 American troops, de Mello argued. The perpetrators might be former Saddam security agents, militant Islamists or people seeking revenge for the deaths of relatives. But their activities would go on being condoned rather than condemned by most Iraqis as long as the occupation continued. "Security can only get worse. Iraqis` impatience and exasperation with such a massive foreign force is likely to increase and is psychologically understandable," de Mello told me in that last talk at the end of July.

Now, in the wake of his death, there is new talk of "internationalising" the peacekeeping and reconstruction role in Iraq so that the Americans are not in sole charge. De Mello encouraged this discussion, though he was a realist who knew how hard it would be to make the US share power.

He certainly did not want or expect to be offered the extraordinary authority he had in East Timor, where the UN security council gave him the powers of a colonial governor as he took the territory to independence last year. He had overall military control and was in charge of the Australian-led peace force.

Earlier, as UN special representative in Kosovo in 1999, he had political control while security was conducted autonomously by Nato. This division of labour is also a model which, at the moment, looks remote for Iraq. George Bush has invested so much in his war on Iraq that he will not readily contemplate any hint of retreat or ceding control to others.

Nevertheless, the task must be tried. Britain now has a unique opportunity to persuade the Americans to give the UN a larger political and peacekeeping role. By chance, Britain holds the presidency of the security council next month at a time when many world leaders come to New York for the annual opening session of the general assembly. This creates a crucial moment of leverage.

In his dealings with Bremer in Baghdad, de Mello regularly praised the mediating role played by John Sawers, the UK envoy on the coalition authority. Here was a case where the "bridge" to America, which Tony Blair claims to want Britain to be, really worked in practice. Britain took up other people`s ideas and persuaded Washington they were right.

The same pattern can be followed in the larger picture. As Downing Street continues to face domestic criticism for joining Bush`s war without a second UN resolution, the government has a real chance to retrieve public trust by showing the independence from the US which most people in Britain want.

Britain should accept that its position in Iraq as an occupier alongside the US is undesirable and untenable. As security council president, it can promote wide-ranging consultations with France, Germany, India, Russia and other potential troop-contributing states on new ways to divide political and security responsibilities between the US and the UN. Perhaps they could both be there, as they are in Afghanistan and were in Somalia, with a UN-mandated international force operating in one part of the field and the Americans in another. The model is far from ideal but at least it removes the US monopoly.

Could the UN be given political primacy over Iraq`s transition to independence? UN resolution 1483 already authorises it to work with Iraqis in restoring representative government. This could be widened so that the UN rather than the coalition runs the entire process of rebuilding civil governance.

Careful diplomacy will be needed, but events are running in favour of reducing the American role in Iraq. Pressure on Bush to withdraw US forces encompasses a quarter of the US electorate, and it may grow if US casualties continue and the Democratic party recovers its courage and dares to criticise the manifold mistakes of Bush`s war on terrorism.

Britain has a powerful sanction. It can threaten to withdraw its own troops from Iraq unless Washington agrees to an enlarged UN role which ends the occupation, abolishes the "coalition authority" and gives international legitimacy to new security arrangements. Influence with Washington does not only come from quiet words in ears but from a willingness, when necessary, to leave the table and say no.

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Into the quagmire
American rhetoric cannot deceive history, which shows that occupying armies are never seen as liberators

Robert Gildea
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian

After the latest attacks on coalition forces and now UN personnel the US must be wondering why the original script, so persuasive in its simplicity, has become so distorted and bitter. Instead of freedom there has been a struggle of sectional, if not national, liberation against the occupying forces. What was supposed to be a re-enactment of the landing on the Normandy beaches in 1944 looks like the descent into the Vietnam quagmire after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.

What has gone wrong? To begin with, the US message of liberation has never been unadulterated. It has been said that there are two Americas, that of the Declaration of Independence and that of the CIA and the Pentagon. "Our commitment to liberty is America`s tradition", said George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, but he also announced that "the United States upholds these principles of security and liberty in many ways". Of course all conquering nations argue that they are exporting liberty or civilisation or both, and end up exploiting them and suppressing opposition in the name of security. The French constitution of 1946 said that the French would never use force against the liberty of any people, and that at a time when they were putting down nationalist revolts in Algeria, Syria, Vietnam and Madagascar. But few are deceived by their own rhetoric of liberation as much as the Americans are, or so ill-equipped to understand that an occupied people might not see things in the same way.

The original script was that Saddam Hussein would be toppled by a clinical strike, and the Iraqi people would embrace freedom and the forces that brought it. But how separable is a dictator from the people he rules? And how far can a regime be changed without an impact on that people?

On May 1 Bush said that with new tactics and precision weapons,"we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians." This not only glosses over the huge number of civilian Iraqi casualties but also ignores the historical truth that if there is one thing that has triggered nationalist revolt it is foreign occupation. "No one likes armed missionaries," said Robespierre in 1792, even before French revolutionary armies surged across Europe, and within a generation French occupation had fuelled nationalist revolts in Germany and Italy, Spain and Russia that brought down the French empire.

In the absence of state power and regular armies, such nationalist revolts are undertaken by informal groupings and irregular forces. These may be denounced as terrorists, saboteurs and bandits by the forces of occupation, but one man`s terrorist is another man`s freedom fighter. Were the tactics of the French resistance any different from what we now see in Iraq? Even if they did not have oil pipelines to blow up, they sought to undermine the German military machine by cutting communication cables, bringing down power lines, derailing troop trains and throwing bombs into restaurants frequented by military personnel. They are hailed as heroes.

The German occupying forces responded to such attacks with a ruthless policy of collective reprisals. Oradour-sur-Glane, a French village near Limoges which was thought to be harbouring terrorists, was razed to the ground by SS troops in June 1944; 642 civilians were killed. Where the populations were considered racially inferior the reprisals were even more savage: there were 700 shot in the Greek village of Kalavyrta in 1943, 2,300 in the Yugoslav town of Kragujevac in 1941 and 23,000 Jews the same year at Babi Yar outside Kiev.

The Americans, operating as the occupying power within the Geneva convention, do not have this option.

Can the Americans, torn between the need to impose order while preaching the gospel of liberty, learn anything from previous occupations? The passage from occupation to liberation in France in 1944 was relatively smooth, for two reasons. First, while leading political figures associated with the puppet Vichy regime were purged, local government continued virtually intact. The playing-card figures are being rounded up in Iraq, but it would be unwise to purge everyone who has been identified with the previous regime. Deals will have to be done with politicians and notables who are not squeaky clean, because only they can provide the infrastructure that the country desperately needs. Second, the transition from dictatorship to democracy promised by the coalition must proceed as fast as possible. Of course there are risks in holding elections, but democracy, as Abraham Lincoln said, is government of the people, by the people, for the people, not on behalf of the people, for the Americans.

De Gaulle prevented the establishment of an Allied military government in France in 1944, and made possible the transition from servitude and division to national independence and unity. It is a pity that in Iraq the alternatives to the previous regime seem so divided and inadequate - that there is no Iraqi De Gaulle.

· Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern French History at Oxford University. His book on France under German occupation, Marianne in Chains, was published in the US by Metropolitan Books this month.

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Camp Delta justice urged
Mark Oliver
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian

The heads of 10 leading law bodies around the world call on the US today to give a "fair and lawful trial" to prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay and be a "beacon of justice in an unjust world".

In a letter to the Guardian, law society chairmen and presidents, including those from Britain, France, Sweden, Australia and Canada, express misgivings about the US plan to put foreign prisoners held at Camp Delta in Cuba before partially secret military tribunals without juries.

Human rights groups have voiced concern about the treatment and fate of the 650 or so prisoners, who include nine Britons, seized during the war in Afghanistan and accused of being members of the Taliban or al-Qaida.

Today`s letter says: "As leaders of the legal professions in our respective countries, we wish to make public our concerns at the treatment of the non-US `enemy combatants` detained by the US authorities. We strongly believe that there are now only two legally acceptable courses of action open to the US authorities.

Either the US government must return the detainees to their own home countries where they can be tried under their own national laws, or they should be tried in a US civilian court with full guarantees for a fair trial."

Amnesty International accused the US of human rights abuses of prisoners in the "war on terror" this week, and there have been reports that Camp Delta prisoners may face execution on the island.

It was announced in July that two of the Britons held at the US naval base would be among the first six prisoners to be placed before US military tribunals.

This month lawyers for the men, Feroz Abbasi, 23, from south London, and Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham, threatened to boycott any hearings unless they received guarantees that they would be fair.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, held talks last week with William Haynes, the Pentagon`s most senior lawyer, about the prisoners.


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After the Baghdad bombing: Pressure mounts on US to expand role of UN
By Andrew Buncombe, Anne Penketh and Daniel Howden
21 August 2003


America was under pressure last night to grant the UN a greater role over security in Iraq, as Washington began to be deserted by its allies on the ground after Tuesday`s devastating truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

It was also revealed that Iraqi officials had warned the US of a possible attack before the bomb, which killed 20 people including the UN envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will hold talks in New York today with Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, and members of the Security Council, to discuss the deteriorating security. He said he was carrying proposals for a "strengthened UN mandate". But as the casualties mount, Mr Straw faces an uphill struggle to convince more countries to take part in Allied operations, and the creation of a UN force has been ruled out by the Americans and the UN.

Poland, which is to take military control of Iraq`s central sector, signalled yesterday that it was handing back some territory to US troops because of the heightened risk. In Spain, opposition parties called for the withdrawal of 1,300 troops committed to Iraq for peace-keeping operations, after one of its naval officers was killed.

Before the Security Council was briefed by Mr Annan in emergency session last night, Mr Straw admitted that Allied forces had not properly prepared for the war`s aftermath. Mr Annan said the Canal Hotel bomb would not deter the UN. "We will persevere ... We will not be intimidated," he said.

The UN discussions are expected to focus on the composition of forces in Iraq, and particularly on how to integrate Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt into the security operation.

Some countries, such as India, have said they will only provide troops if the UN has primary responsibility for Iraq.

The aim is to find a "face-saving solution that [US Defence Secretary, Donald] Rumsfeld can live with," said one UN diplomat. Mr Rumsfeld said last night that US commanders in Iraq believed that the current force of 150,000 troops was adequate.

Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress, said that last week the Iraqi Governing Council received intelligence, passed to the US, warning that "Iraqi political parties or other parties including the UN" would be bombed.
21 August 2003 09:56



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Jason Pronyk, a United Nations worker from Canada wounded in Tuesday`s blast, at a military hospital.
August 21, 2003
U.S. Will Ask U.N. for Move to Widen the Force in Iraq
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN with FELICITY BARRINGER


WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 — The Bush administration, seizing on the bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, is preparing a new Security Council resolution that would urge other nations to send troops and aid to secure Iraq, administration officials said today.

The new resolution would allow the American military to maintain control over any international forces in Iraq — something the Pentagon has insisted on. But the Bush administration is hoping that a new resolution, if passed, would encourage nations like India, Pakistan and Turkey to contribute troops by providing some sort of United Nations cover to the American operation.

Up to now, those nations, and others, have balked at contributing troops without a United Nations resolution backing such a deployment.

In Iraq today, the top American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, demanded that the Iraqi Governing Council condemn Tuesday`s bomb attack and begin to take greater responsibility for security. And American F.B.I. agents combing the scene of the bombing, which killed 20 people, said the truck used in the attack had carried about 1,500 pounds of explosives including mortar shells, hand grenades and a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking in Honduras, said that despite the bombing in Iraq, he saw no need to increase troop levels, at least for now. "At the moment, the conclusion of the responsible military officials is that the force levels are where they should be," he said.

But the diplomatic maneuvering today suggested that some officials in the administration, particularly in the State Department, believe that the bombing demonstrates that military reinforcements are needed. There are now 139,000 American troops in Iraq and 21,700 troops from other countries, half from Britain.

Some experts say it is unrealistic to think that Iraq can be secured with troops at the current level. A debate over this subject flared in May, when Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, said hundreds of thousands would be needed to secure Iraq after the war.

James F. Dobbins, an expert in peacekeeping operations who was the Bush administration`s special envoy to Afghanistan, said in an interview today that the United States might need 300,000 to 500,000 troops to maintain stability in the country.

"Whatever the right number is, it`s significantly larger than what we have," said Mr. Dobbins, director of international security and defense policy at the Rand Corporation. "But, let`s face it, we`re going to be driven by what can be deployed rather than what the situation calls for."

India, Turkey and Pakistan have been regarded by the Pentagon as potential contributors of additional forces. India, which opposed the war in Iraq, has offered to send a division now, or about 18,000 troops. But it refuses to do so without United Nations authority over the operations.

An American official said that those countries might be looking for some way to help, and that a strong United Nations resolution citing the dire conditions in Iraq might bring a favorable decision. But an Indian diplomat said he was not sure what the response would be in New Delhi.

"Obviously, our government will have to see the wording of any new resolution to see if it is in line with our thinking," the diplomat said.

Even if such a resolution is approved, it is not clear whether additional troops from other countries would lead to an overall increase in troops in Iraq, or merely enable the United States to pull some of its troops out.

Administration officials said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell started preparing the new resolution on Tuesday, after the Baghdad bombing. Mr. Powell will travel to the United Nations on Thursday to confer with the secretary general, Kofi Annan, about the new resolution, an American official said.

Along with the debate over troops, United Nations officials say wealthy countries in a position to provide assistance to Iraq are also reluctant to contribute without more authority being given to the United Nations.

There is to be an Iraqi donors` meeting in October, but some nations planning to send envoys say the demand to give the United Nations more authority over Iraq — also being resisted in Washington — will be the major issue.

"The donor countries may put up all kinds of pledges," said an envoy from a country under pressure to make a large contribution. "But when it comes to writing the checks, who do we write them out to? We`re not writing them to the occupation. There has to be more of a U.N. role."

An administration official said a separate idea floating around was for the Iraqi Governing Council — whose existence the Security Council "welcomed" in a resolution passed last week — to be asked to request military help from the United Nations.

The official explained that since it would not involve the United States` asking for the troops, the request might not be resented by nations that opposed the war earlier this year.

But knowledgeable diplomats at the United Nations scoffed at the idea, in part because of widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of the Governing Council, which consists of 25 Iraqis handpicked by the American occupation led by Mr. Bremer.

"The Governing Council does not have the status of a government in the eyes of most members of the United Nations," a Western diplomat said. "It will be hard for the United Nations to invite them in even to make a presentation."

An Arab diplomat, going further, said Arab countries would oppose vesting any authority in the Governing Council. "No request from that council will be seen as legitimate," he said.

Asked how the bombing of the United Nations headquarters might have changed Islamic countries` thinking on providing assistance, Pakistan`s United Nations ambassador, Munir Akram, said the question being asked in the Islamic world was: "What can the United States do to make the presence of its forces there more acceptable to the Iraqi people?"

Among other possible concessions, he said, were "an indication of a timetable for withdrawal, and a greater degree of international participation in economic decision-making."

The wording of the resolution to be proposed by the United States was not clear tonight, but a diplomat at the United Nations warned that unless it gave the United Nations a measure of "authority, responsibility or control" over the security situation, it probably would not pass.

Some weeks ago, after India first rebuffed a request by the United States to send troops to Iraq, American officials indicated that they were open to a resolution that would give the United Nations more authority over peacekeeping, senior officials said today.

But subsequently, the officials said, American diplomats ran into snags from Russia and France, both of which raised objections and demanded greater control for the United Nations.

A diplomat knowledgeable about those discussions said it had become clear to the American officials that Russia and France wanted more control for themselves — and perhaps more contracts for Russian and French companies. At that point, they said, the idea of a new resolution was shelved.

"The issue of more U.N. involvement was dead only last week," said a diplomat involved in the discussions. "Tragically, the events of this week has revived the debate, but it`s not clear what the result will be."

Some American officials said there was disappointment among those around Mr. Powell that the administration had not signed on to the idea of giving the Iraqi occupation, and the American and British security forces, more of an international flavor with United Nations authority.

On the other hand, Mr. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was said to be sympathetic to the Pentagon view that it would be dangerous to dilute American authority over the occupation at a time of such difficult security conditions.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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August 21, 2003
THE OCCUPATION
U.S. Official Tells Iraqis to Assert More Authority
By DEXTER FILKINS and NEIL MacFARQUHAR


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 20 — Sharp differences emerged today between the top American administrator in Iraq and the country`s interim government as the United States sought to calm a city unnerved by the truck bomb that killed 20 people in the United Nations headquarters.

Iraqi officials described a tense meeting between L. Paul Bremer III and the Iraqi Governing Council. Mr. Bremer, they said, demanded that the 25-member Council exert more authority, condemn the bombing strongly and communicate better with the Iraqi people.

Mr. Bremer`s office did not respond to a request for comment. But a memo prepared by two of his staff and dated today listed measures that the Iraqi Council should be encouraged to take, including calling on Iraqis to "take responsibility for their own security" by joining a newly created Iraqi civil defense force and holding "town hall meetings" in their local districts.

The confrontation clearly reflected a growing American conviction that a greater and more visible Iraqi involvement in government might allay some hostility to the American-led occupation. Iraqi officials said the Council had responded by saying it lacked authority to convince Iraqis it was effective or relevant.

Iraqi Council members have repeatedly said they should be granted more authority over the police force."You can`t blame for us anything," said Adnan Pachachi, a council member, in a recent interview. "We don`t have any responsibility."

After the meeting, the Iraqi leaders declared a three-day period of mourning for those killed in the attack. Mr. Bremer, in an apparent attempt to force the Council members onto the political stage, was hardly seen today.

The political tensions surfaced as American F.B.I. agents combing the scene today said the truck used in the attack had carried about 1,500 pounds of explosives including mortar shells, hand grenades and a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb. Contrary to earlier reports from witnesses that a cement mixer had been used, the F.B.I. said today that the bomb was carried by a flatbed truck.

Thomas V. Fuentes, the special agent in charge of operations in Iraq, said the munitions had probably been packed on top of the bomb, which was of the kind normally dropped from airplanes.

A flatbed truck was also used in a bombing attack on the Jordanian Embassy earlier this month, he said. The F.B.I. is awaiting chemical analysis to find out if the materiel used in that attack consisted of old Iraqi munitions.

Investigators said they would conduct a chemical analysis of human remains found in the truck debris at the United Nations building to determine how many people were inside.

They added that they would try to trace the vehicle`s identification number, but said that the looting of vehicles and the destruction of so many records would make such identification difficult.

The nature of the weapons suggested to some experts here that the authors of the attack included former members of Saddam Hussein`s regime, but without proof of such a link or any claim of responsibility, the nature of the organization behind the bombing remained murky.

Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said at a press conference today that he had passed intelligence to the Americans earlier this month indicating that a militant Islamic group had discussed the possible truck bombing of several targets in Baghdad, including the United Nations. American officials here declined to comment.

With their headquarters destroyed, most United Nations workers remained confined to their hotels. United Nations officials said they were not planning a full-scale evacuation but would probably draw down their staff of 350 foreigners by about 10 percent.

Perhaps more would be leaving soon, said Salim Lone, a spokesman for the organization here.

"Yesterday people were saying let`s stay and show them we can`t be driven out like that," Mr. Lone said. "There was an element of bravado. I think things are setting in now. There is a lot of tension in the city, with roads blocked off. It`s not as if something terrible can`t happen again."

Concern was clearly widespread today among Western officials that Iraq could find itself in a political void. The memo prepared for Mr. Bremer suggests that American officials are concerned that in the aftermath of Tuesday`s truck bombing, Iraq`s leaders might appear disconnected from the tragedy.

"Tell them that the GC needs to be seen governing, not later but now," the memo said, referring to the Governing Council. "Encourage them to come out with a forceful statement," the memo said. "Urge them to undertake an aggressive press outreach strategy," it added.

The apparent tension between Mr. Bremer and at least some of the Council members suggests the delicacy of the political enterprise here. American officials say they are eager to turn over the reins of the Iraqi government to the Iraqi leaders, but not so fast as to overwhelm their untested democratic skills.

But Iraqis seem to feel they are being given power too slowly. "We should have a real government, and then we could begin to solve Iraq`s problems," said Adil Abdul Mahdi, senior adviser to Governing Council member Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. "The Americans don`t want the help of the Iraqi forces."

With such responsibility, the Iraqis say, they would be able to deflect at least some of the blame away from the Americans for such things as the looting and lack of electricity.

At least one Iraqi Council member challenged what he described as Mr. Bremer`s patronizing tone, an official present at the meeting said.

Since the interim government was established on July 13, the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council have met several times but taken few concrete political steps.

For several days, they have discussed the appointment of a cabinet to take over the day-to-day running of the Iraqi government, but they have yet to agree on a list of names. They seldom appear in public, preferring instead to gather inside the sheltered confines of what used to be called the Republican Palace.

Some Iraqi officials, including Council members, defended Mr. Bremer, saying that he was merely recommending steps that the Iraqi Governing Council should have taken on its own. They said they were sometimes frustrated by the slow pace of deliberations undertaken by the Council.

"He was telling us that we need to tell the people what we have done," said Dr. Raja Khuzia, a Governing Council member. "We should have done these things anyway."

Officials said today that all of those injured in Tuesday`s attack would be taken out of the country immediately, with others to follow.

As in the period right before the American invasion in March, the United Nations faced a problem over how to reduce its staff without appearing to quit the country. Staffers said they were being offered two weeks leave in Amman, Jordan, while the situation stabilized, before a decision was made on whether they should come back.

During special meetings today for expatriate employees, some United Nations staffers said they were determined to stay. Others said they were angered by the poor security under the United States occupation, while still others wept over their missing comrades.

"The situation here is such that the Iraqi people need a lot of help," said Robert Painter, coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Baghdad and two other central provinces. "I don`t think we can turn our backs on the humanitarian needs in Iraq."

But others were doubtful, saying that planning United Nations programs seemed futile given the basic lack of security.

"How can you go assess water pollution if you don`t know if the program you want can be put in place?" said one woman who was planning to leave. "Security is the most important thing right now. There is very localized security in small pockets and the rest of the country is going to the dogs."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 21, 2003
The Recall Debate Begins

The celebrity power of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action-movie star who would be California`s governor, was graphically clear yesterday as a corps of reporters worthy of Oscar night clamored to record his first substantial words on the state`s crippling fiscal crisis. Through the glare and handsome set design of the event, the state`s voters heard the candidate rule out tax increases and promise some sort of spending cuts as his solution to the state`s rolling budget deficits. Critical if vague differences have thus begun emerging among the better known figures on the prodigious slate of 135 candidates. We hope the October recall vote will veer even further from the carnival grounds where it has been capering and beeping.

Mr. Schwarzenegger showed practiced theatricality but was hardly specific in saying what services he would cut to close an $8 billion deficit, emphasizing that he tells his children, "Don`t spend more than you have." There`s a message he should share with his fellow Republicans now controlling the deficit-swollen federal government. In contrast, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, is taking more chances with the tax-wary electorate and offering a mix of tax increases and largely unspecified program cuts. He calls it "tough love," just as Mr. Schwarzenegger talked, by contrast, of the singular need to "cut to save the patient."

One measure of the fractured state of California politics is that Mr. Bustamante, knowing that the Legislature is paralyzed by partisanship, is promising to go directly to the voters with his program. He would float yet another ballot initiative, adding one more to the hundreds that have hobbled the state`s taxes, spending and political options for a generation.

For his part, Mr. Schwarzenegger carefully made a point of genuflecting at the populist shrine of Proposition 13 — the 1987 initiative that cut property taxes in half and tightly limited their growth at the hands of elected officials. He grinned and glossed over the criticism by Warren Buffett, his billionaire friend and chief economic adviser, that California has a grave revenue problem because of that proposition.

There is no denying that a choice is emerging for the voters, whether they buy into such positions as Mr. Schwarzenegger`s triage, Mr. Bustamante`s tough love or the right-wing plot that Gov. Gray Davis envisions as he fights the recall effort.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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August 21, 2003
A Price Too High
By BOB HERBERT


How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.

"This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans.

"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can`t even read the street signs."

The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why we are in Iraq. And the troops don`t have a clear understanding of their mission. We`re fighting a guerrilla war, which the bright lights at the Pentagon never saw coming, with conventional forces.

Under these circumstances, in which the enemy might be anybody, anywhere, tragedies like the killing of Mazen Dana are all but inevitable. Mr. Dana was the veteran Reuters cameraman who was blown away by jittery U.S. troops on Sunday. The troops apparently thought his video camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The mind plays tricks on you when you`re in great danger. A couple of weeks ago, in an apparent case of mistaken identity, U.S. soldiers killed two members of the Iraqi police. And a number of innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, have been killed by American troops.

The carnage from riots, ambushes, firefights, suicide bombings, acts of sabotage, friendly fire incidents and other deadly encounters is growing. And so is the hostility toward U.S. troops and Americans in general.

We are paying a terribly high price — for what?

One of the many reasons Vietnam spiraled out of control was the fact that America`s top political leaders never clearly defined the mission there, and were never straight with the public about what they were doing. Domestic political considerations led Kennedy, then Johnson, then Nixon to conceal the truth about a policy that was bankrupt from the beginning. They even concealed how much the war was costing.

Sound familiar?

Now we`re lodged in Iraq, in the midst of the most volatile region of the world, and the illusion of a quick victory followed by grateful Iraqis` welcoming us with open arms has vanished. Instead of democracy blossoming in the desert, we have the reality of continuing bloodshed and heightened terror — the payoff of a policy spun from fantasies and lies.

Senator John McCain and others are saying the answer is more troops, an escalation. If you want more American blood shed, that`s the way to go. We sent troops to Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands. There were never enough.

Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. The occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation, and by terrorists and other bad actors as an opportunity to be gleefully exploited.

The U.S. cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. It needs allies, and it needs a plan. As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

The idea would be to mount a massive international effort to secure Iraq, develop a legitimate sovereign government and work cooperatively with the Iraqi people to rebuild the nation.

If this does not happen, disaster will loom because the United States cannot secure and rebuild Iraq on its own.

A U.N. aide told me: "The United States is the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world, and right now it`s sitting on the terrorists` doorstep. It needs help. It needs friends."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Die Erklärung zu der vorhergehenden Karikatur.

August 21, 2003
Islamic charities accused of supporting terror
By Marianne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden in Washington

A group of Saudi-backed Islamic charities operating in the US gave material support to terrorists linked with al-Qaeda and Hamas, the US government has alleged for the first time.

The allegations concerning the Muslim World League and an affiliate, the International Islamic Relief Organisation, are likely to reignite concerns about Saudi Arabia`s possible role in funding terrorist organisations. The two charities are at the centre of the largest-ever US investigation of terrorist financing.

According to an affidavit made public this week, the charities gave money to BMI, a New Jersey-based company suspected of transferring funds to three individuals designated terrorists by the US government.

Concerns over Saudi Arabia`s role in terrorist funding surfaced last month in a congressional report into the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. That report included a classified section thought to describe the role of the Saudi government in financing terrorists.

The two charities, which operated out of a common address in northern Virginia, were raided by US agents more than a year ago. The raid was part of a sweeping investigation into a network of Saudi-backed charities and companies suspected of financing terrorist groups.

The money invested in BMI by the two charities came from a $10m endowment from unnamed Saudi donors, according to the affidavit by David Kane, an agent with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While it is not clear whether that money came from the Saudi government, the affidavit quotes a CIA report that says the Muslim World League "is largely financed by. . . Saudi Arabia".

Mr Kane said that the charities gave $3.7m to BMI, which may have passed the money to individuals considered terrorists by the US.

They include Yassin Qadi, accused by the US government of transferring millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden through charities such as the Muwafaq Foundation; Mousa Abu Marzook, the self-professed head of the political branch of Hamas, the radical Palestinian organisation; and Mohammad Salah, a member of Hamas who spent five years in an Israeli prison.

Mr Kane suggested the charities were aware of BMI`s involvement with terrorists but tried to hide that they knew.



© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2003.

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Renews Bid To Involve More Nations in Iraq
Security Council Support Sought for Additional Troops to Police Country

By Peter Slevin and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A01


The Bush administration, under pressure to improve security in Iraq following the devastating bombing of the United Nations` Baghdad headquarters, revived a discarded effort yesterday to win U.N. Security Council support for a broader international role in policing the country.

The effort, initiated by the State Department, is designed to harness outrage at the bombing to draw more countries into securing and rebuilding Iraq, without surrendering significant American authority, U.S. sources said. The Pentagon, which opposes diluting U.S. command, has offered its tentative approval, according to administration officials.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that U.S. military commanders are satisfied with the size of the U.S. military force, despite suggestions by lawmakers and defense specialists that the administration should increase U.S. troop levels beyond the 139,000 already deployed. Rumsfeld said the focus should be on developing Iraqi security forces.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will fly to New York this morning to discuss a new resolution with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who criticized the administration yesterday for poor postwar planning. A U.S. official said, "It`s time for the international community to stand up and do more."

The administration is scrambling to regain political and military momentum after Tuesday`s attack in Baghdad, which killed at least 20 people and underlined weaknesses in the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. President Bush`s top foreign policy advisers telephoned their foreign colleagues late into the night, while White House speechwriters prepared a presidential address on Iraq and terrorism to be given Tuesday in St. Louis.

Iraq dominated the agenda of two meetings of Bush`s national security team yesterday as the administration also sought to contain the damage to Israeli-Palestinian relations caused by a suicide bombing Tuesday in Jerusalem that killed 21 people, including the bomber. The twin blasts shook the administration at a time when the foreign policy principals are also hurrying to develop strategy for next week`s nuclear weapons talks with North Korea in Beijing.

The administration is facing an extraordinary array of complex foreign policy challenges. Michael McFaul, a professor of political science at Stanford University, said of the Bush team, "Just when they think they`re getting to their equilibrium point, there comes a day like yesterday when everything looks as though it`s going down the tubes."

As the United Nations mourned its dead, including its respected chief Iraq representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Annan voiced frustration with the lack of security and the failure of the U.S.-led occupation powers to anticipate the dangers and hardships of Iraq after Saddam Hussein`s government fell.

"Better planning would have made a lot of difference. Some mistakes have been made. Some wrong assumptions may have been made," the U.N. chief told reporters in Sweden before returning to New York. He called on other countries to contribute more energetically to Iraq`s rebuilding.

"The pacification and stabilization of Iraq is so important that all those who have the capacity to help should help," Annan said. "But, of course, the conditions must be created for them to provide that help."

In a letter to Bush yesterday, two of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee`s most senior members called on the president to grant a broader role to the United Nations and recruit more police and military units from other countries, especially from NATO allies. A "genuine international effort" is needed, wrote Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.).

"There still is this ongoing war within the administration about whether or not to internationalize this," Biden said in a telephone interview. "Every single member of Congress I know who went to Iraq came back with the same conclusion: We have a hell of a team over there, but they don`t have enough of anything."

On Tuesday, shortly after the Baghdad explosion, State Department officials began working on language for a U.N. resolution that would show respect for the victims of the bombing and the good works they were doing. The resolution would stress the need for more foreign contributions and improved security if the reconstruction mission advanced by the United Nations is to succeed.

"Let`s leverage yesterday`s horrific events to emphasize our renewed commitment and what we really need to do," said one State Department official, who said the central goal is to persuade reluctant countries such as India and Pakistan to provide peacekeeping troops.

Bush, who is spending the month at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., approved the effort yesterday morning by videoconference with aides including Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, an administration official said. The president`s advisers met again later to work out an approach. Wording of the resolution was circulated to senior officials for overnight consideration.

"We don`t know what countries would want," the State Department official said, "but we think it`s doable."

Powell led an administration effort several weeks ago to seek a Security Council endorsement of the U.S. occupation strong enough to give political cover to governments reluctant to support a postwar plan dictated by the United States. The White House abandoned the effort after it became clear that council nations wanted more authority in Iraq -- and, in some cases, more certain business opportunities -- than the administration was willing to concede.

It remained unclear yesterday how far the U.S. administration was willing to go to win support. One official said Bush`s advisers supported the effort "in principle. When we get a little farther down the road, we`ll have to see what the specifics are. Obviously, if it started to go the wrong way, there would be problems."

A French diplomat described the prospective U.S. move last night as a "cynical" attempt to "take advantage" of the suffering of U.N. staff members. One council official said that if the resolution simply asks for money and troops but delivers no significant sharing of authority in Iraq, the measure "will be unacceptable."

Another diplomat expressed skepticism that the council would adopt a new resolution that reflects only the Bush administration`s ambitions. British diplomats, replaying a role they have assumed for months, are exploring ways to broaden the United Nations` role. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is due in New York today.

"My reading is that people in Washington have a wish list and they are saying, `Here is a chance to get everything we wanted,` " said one council diplomat who asked not to be further identified. "I`m not sure that`s actually the way things are going to work out. Countries are not going to completely move away from previous positions. I`m not sure we can really move forward if this is purely on the basis of one side`s point of view."

While the Pentagon is anxious for foreign reinforcements who could replace U.S. troops, Rumsfeld said at a news conference in Honduras that current force levels in Iraq are sufficient.

"At the moment, the conclusion of the responsible military officials is that the force levels are where they should be," Rumsfeld said. "The effort should be on developing additional Iraqi capability rather than additional coalition capability."

Asked about what it means to devote more attention to building up Iraqi police forces, another official listed a range of actions that included asking Iraqi volunteers to step forward in greater numbers and arranging for U.S. and allied forces to provide more time, energy and money in developing the force.

Members of Congress are anxious to have a broader international and Iraqi role in Iraq`s security, both to improve the country`s stability and to decrease the price of an operation that is costing U.S. taxpayers about $4 billion a month.

"The big challenge is to bring as many international peacekeepers in as possible and to accelerate the process of fielding the police force," said Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), reached in Jerusalem yesterday. "Once Iraqi policemen are in charge of the security situation, it changes the dynamic."

"You`ll need a U.N. resolution and you`ll need to give a greater role to the U.N. over time," Kirk added. "Every international peacekeeper brought in is a chance to replace an American."

Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
U.N. Will Cut Staff, Up Security In Baghdad
Bomb Attack Shatters Workers` Sense of Safety

By Daniel Williams and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A10


BAGHDAD, Aug. 20 -- The United Nations will reduce the size of its Baghdad staff and step up security as a result of the truck bombing that killed at least 20 people at its headquarters here, U.N. officials said today.

In Stockholm, Secretary General Kofi Annan vowed that the U.N. mission in Iraq would continue. "We have work to do," he told reporters before returning to New York from a vacation. "The least we owe them," he said in reference to the dead, "is that their deaths not be in vain."

Among the fatalities was Sergio Vieira de Mello, 55, Annan`s special representative to Iraq. U.S. soldiers pulled his body from the rubble Tuesday night.

A day after the powerful bomb destroyed a corner of the three-story building, three people were still unaccounted for. U.S. soldiers and Iraqi rescuers continued to pull away debris in a search for bodies, though none expressed hope of finding survivors. Remains or survivors still might be found in the many local hospitals where some of the more than 100 people injured in the blast were taken, U.N. officials said.

Meanwhile, attacks on Americans continued today. Guerrillas attacked a convoy with rocket-propelled grenades in Tikrit, 90 miles north of Baghdad, killing an American civilian contractor and wounding two soldiers, U.S. officials said. Two other soldiers died in a vehicle accident after their convoy came under fire at Diwaniya, 110 miles south of Baghdad.

The United Nations` 350 foreign staff members in Iraq will be reduced to a level not yet specified. Enough people will remain, however, to keep the many U.N. humanitarian, human rights and development programs operating, said Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman here. "We`re deciding where we`re going to work and how many people need to remain. We`re going to keep just a core staff here," Lone said.

Thousands of Iraqis also work for the United Nations, and the status of their jobs was unclear.

The fate of the U.N. operations is likely to influence other humanitarian organizations in Baghdad, as well as others contemplating work in Iraq, Lone said. Already, two international finance agencies -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- have pulled their staffs out of Baghdad, news services reported.

In the meantime, U.N. workers were being told to keep a low profile. "Moving outside is forbidden," said Salam Quzaz, an official with the U.N. Development Program.

Foreign U.N. employees have been offered the opportunity to leave Iraq, Lone said, but added, "So far not many have said they want to leave."

At least three flights ferried wounded employees from Baghdad to Jordan for treatment today. A statement issued by U.N. headquarters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said a "partial evacuation of staff from Baghdad" was underway.

Tuesday`s attack shattered the sense among U.N. personnel here and in other countries that they are considered neutral figures. "No matter what, this has been a devastating blow. We have to find the right balance, and we`re not sure what that balance is," Lone said. "We know now we are the targets of massacres, not just a lone gunman or two."

Lone said U.N. workers wanted to appear close to the people they had come here to serve and hoped those people would provide a shield of goodwill.

As a result, many U.N. offices here are protected by little more than metal barriers and armed guards, a sharp -- and intentional -- contrast to the sandbags, barbed wire, armored vehicles and heavily armed troops that surround facilities occupied by U.S. and allied forces.

"We tried to be as accessible as possible," Lone said. "You always thought your best protection was the people, not the security measures. We did not want to be behind barbed wire and tanks. We would move freely without protection, without armored cars."

At U.N. headquarters, for example, the road on which the truck bomber traveled paralleled a new wall built around the compound. The road was unguarded and at one point passed no more than 20 feet from Vieira de Mello`s corner office. It was there that the truck driver detonated the bomb that caused the huge explosion.

To a security specialist, this approach seemed pure folly. "There were no checkpoints, no guards at all. This was an open driveway. No security whatsoever," said Thomas Fuentes, the special agent who heads FBI operations in Iraq and is investigating the blast.

In a heated meeting today between L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq, and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Bremer urged members to be more publicly forceful in their condemnation of the bombing, a council aide said.

In the latest sign of tension between Bremer and the council over the scope of its duties, council members shot back that security is a priority and that the Americans are not providing it, the aide said.

Armored vehicles blocked access to the headquarters complex today, and soldiers kept watch from a pedestrian overpass that is now off-limits.

Khaled Mansour, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, described the mood among co-workers as "a mixture of shock, disbelief and grief, as well as a sense we are still motivated professionals. I was asked whether I wanted to go or stay, and I`m staying."

At the same time, Lone said, initial reactions of defiance appear to be softening. "Yesterday a lot of people said we can`t let them drive us out. But I`m hearing less of that today. The reality is beginning to set in," he said.

He was mourning the loss of a young woman from the staff in New York whom he had invited to work in Iraq.

"I asked her to come, and she came," Lone said. "Now she`s dead."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
U.S., U.N. Differ on Issue of Protection
Responsibility Over Site of Blast Disputed

By Colum Lynch and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A10


UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 20 -- The Bush administration and the United Nations differed today over who bore responsibility for protecting the U.N. compound in Baghdad that was targeted by a suicide bomber Tuesday in an attack that killed at least 20 people, including the United Nations` top envoy to Iraq.

U.S. defense officials said the United Nations had rebuffed an offer from the United States to station troops around the U.N. facility, clearing U.S. forces of responsibility for defending the former hotel. But U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said ultimate responsibility for defending the U.N. installation rested with the United States and its military allies.

"I don`t know if the United Nations did turn down an offer of protection, but if it did, it was not correct, and they should not have been allowed to turn it down," Annan told reporters after returning to U.N. headquarters in New York. "We all live in this city, and nobody tells you if you want police to patrol your neighborhood. They make the assessment that patrol and protection is needed, and it is done. And that`s what should be done in Iraq."

L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, acknowledged in an interview with NBC`s "Today" show that the U.S.-led military force in Iraq has ultimate responsibility for overall security in the country and did provide some security for the U.N. headquarters.

A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, Lt. Cmdr. Steven Franzoni, said a U.S. Army platoon was present inside the U.N. compound and was guarding the front entrance at the time of the attack. A platoon typically consists of about 40 infantry soldiers. But there were no U.S. troops along the roadway on the other side of the building, where the truck bomb exploded.

"At some level, the United States offered to do more but was told by U.N. officials that they`d prefer to remain separate and distinct," a defense official said. "So the U.N. contracted with a private firm to provide additional security."

Annan and other senior U.N. officials in New York said they were unaware of any decision by the U.N. mission to refuse U.S. protection. But they said it was impossible to determine precisely what arrangements had been made, because the key officials involved were killed in the attack.

Bremer said U.S. authorities have initiated a review of security conditions at a number of buildings housing diplomats and foreign workers in Baghdad.

"We are calling a meeting of all of the diplomatic missions to Iraq for Friday, where we`re going to sit and talk with each of them about their security arrangements, offer them our assistance in assessing whether they`ve got the best fixed-site security available and . . . in improving their security," he said.

U.S. and U.N. officials said that before Tuesday`s bombing there had been no reason to anticipate that the United Nations would become the target of an attack. Annan noted that U.N. aid workers had served in Iraq for 12 years without a major incident. "Yesterday was a terrible day for all of us and something that we had not anticipated," he said. "Generally, the Iraqis have welcomed us."

The U.N. chief, who cut short a vacation in Sweden to manage the world body`s response to the crisis, called an emergency meeting of the Security Council to reassess the United Nations` security needs in Iraq. He noted that the United Nations will move ahead with plans to establish a new mission in Iraq for coordinating U.N. relief operations.

"We will persevere," he said. "We are not going to be intimidated."

The issue of security is a delicate one for the United Nations. While it relies on the United States for protection in Iraq, it has been trying to preserve the perception that it is independent of the occupying powers.

Fred Eckhard, the chief U.N. spokesman, said the United Nations wants to maintain an open-door policy with a broad range of Iraqi representatives.

"We did not harden our headquarters location from a security point of view, because we didn`t think it was necessary," Eckhard said. "As a result of the attack of yesterday, obviously, we`re going to have to rethink."

Graham reported from Washington.




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Mr. Ashcroft`s Roadshow




Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A22


ATTORNEY GENERAL John D. Ashcroft is hitting the campaign trail this week -- not on behalf of a candidate but in defense of the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation enacted in the aftermath of 9/11. It speaks volumes about the administration`s assessment of public sentiment that Mr. Ashcroft feels the need to go on the road -- and to presidential battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- to defend a statute that was, after all, approved overwhelmingly in Congress. The House voted last month to repeal the law`s "sneak-and-peak" provision that permits the government to delay notifying suspects that their homes or workplaces have been searched. Communities across the country, and three states, have passed resolutions condemning the law, and they`re joined by such surprising allies as the American Conservative Union.

Yet the Patriot Act is neither the dangerously authoritarian threat its critics suggest nor the magic (and painless) bullet Mr. Ashcroft and other cheerleaders would have you believe. It reflects an imperfect compromise between the need to safeguard civil liberties and new challenges posed by domestic terrorism. And it is, appropriately, a temporary measure; over the administration`s vociferous objections, some critical provisions expire after 2005. Much of the criticism of the law has been shrill and ill-informed. It doesn`t, as former vice president Al Gore suggested in a recent speech, let federal agents troop "into every public library in America and secretly monitor what the rest of us are reading." Such information can be gathered only in cases of national security, and with a warrant. Similarly, despite the Sturm und Drang over sneak-and-peak, such searches with delayed notification have been approved by judges for years.

But if people are worried about how the Justice Department is wielding its authority under the Patriot Act, a big piece of the blame lies with Mr. Ashcroft himself. Muscular congressional oversight of this new law is critical, but the department has until recently balked at answering reasonable questions from lawmakers. At one point last fall, House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) was so exasperated he was threatening to issue a subpoena to get the information. This is no way to make the public feel better about how the department is handling sweeping new powers.

More important, it strikes us that a great measure of the public`s "unease" over the law, as Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) put it, is in fact discomfort -- legitimate discomfort -- over the administration`s broader disregard for civil liberties: its insistence that American citizens can be held for months without access to lawyers simply by designating them "enemy combatants"; its sweeping roundup of non-citizens in the days after 9/11; and its unapologetic stance toward the treatment of detainees who had nothing to do with terrorism but were held for months. Technically, these are separate matters from the Patriot Act. In reality, the Patriot Act has become something of a repository in the public mind for wider worries about Mr. Ashcroft`s Justice Department. As the attorney general barnstorms the country, he might do a little less preaching to the already converted and a little more listening to the legitimate concerns of the American public.


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Two Brands of Terror


By Richard Cohen

Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A23


In the newspapers yesterday -- and on TV on Tuesday -- the two bombings in the Middle East got almost equal attention. They had much in common -- both suicide attacks, both heinously directed at civilians and both resulting in about the same number of victims. It seemed, as George Bush has always said, that terrorism is terrorism, whether in Baghdad or Jerusalem. That, though, is not the case.

First, the Baghdad bombing of the United Nations headquarters. It proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that internationalizing the occupation of Iraq is not by itself going to do the trick. The United Nations, it is often said, has no enemies -- yet its headquarters was blown up and at least 20 people were killed. They were in Iraq simply to do good.

But inevitably the United Nations was helping to do the work of the United States. America urgently wants to make Iraq a functioning state -- with running water, electrical power and, ultimately, some form of self-government. So far, that goal has been beyond our grasp. Anyone who aids in that effort is going to be seen by Islamic militants and Baath Party bitter-enders as doing the dirty work of the West. The bombing banished neutrality.

But that doesn`t mean that the goal of a restored Iraq is a chimera. It can be done, if only because it must be done. The United States -- which is to say the soldiers who seem to get killed on a daily basis -- is paying the price of an administration that was far too cocky for its own good. It thought, based on lousy intelligence and a proclivity to believe what it wanted to believe, that the leadership of Saddam Hussein`s Iraq could be decapitated but that the body would continue to function. Instead, it collapsed.

It didn`t help any that the Pentagon planners -- those who were told what to think, anyway -- did not have enough troops on the ground at the end of the war. Widespread looting resulted. The infrastructure was ripped apart -- and carried home. Iraq literally plunged into darkness. The world`s only superpower has the capacity to turn the lights on, however.

The difference between Israel and Iraq is palpable. The Islamic militants who are suspected in the U.N. bombing are mostly coming from elsewhere. They do not represent a national movement, like the Viet Cong or, for that matter, the various Palestinian liberation movements. Not only are they not indigenous but they cannot really promise a better life for the average Iraqi. A Taliban-like state would propel Iraq into the dark ages -- no lights and no freedom.

There is some suggestion that the moths are being lured to the flame -- militants from all over the Islamic world flocking to Iraq to assist Hussein loyalists in the battle with the United States. The flame, of course, always wins, but real life is not a metaphor. There is always the possibility that these militants will make matters so nasty that we will give up and, as with Vietnam, leave.

But that`s not likely. The pool of militants is not infinitely deep. Without the backing of an organized state -- the U.S. support of the Afghan mujaheddin, for instance, during the Soviet occupation -- they are not likely to win. Things may get worse before they get better -- but sooner or later they will get better.

Israel, on the other hand, is in a different position. It unmistakably squats on land that was once Palestinian -- never mind its international right to do so. That grievance, particularly when it comes to the West Bank, is not likely to be mollified by turning on lights or giving everyone a food blender. The Palestinian grievance is real and continuing, exacerbated by Israel`s persistent encroachment on West Bank territory.

The two brands of terrorist are not the same. The Palestinian ones are indigenous, maybe funded by others, but coming from the very communities that Israel occupies. What`s more, some of the suicide bombers are not religious militants but merely people who in their own way are saying they can`t take it any longer. The trick for Israel is, as always, to pull out of the territories, build its defensive fence -- and wait for a new generation to accept the status quo.

The trick for the United States in Iraq is to persevere and, as quickly as possible, turn the running of Iraq over to Iraqis. While it is hard for some -- or many -- Palestinians to imagine a future without the land that was once theirs, it is not hard for an Iraqi to imagine a non-repressive Iraq, governed by Iraqis with a standard of living that they once had. Both peoples seek the past. One can have it, the other can`t. It makes all the difference.

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In Iraq, Merchandising Mass Destruction


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page A23


The privatization of the Iraqi economy has begun in characteristically macabre fashion. Under Saddam Hussein, rape, extortion and murder were largely state-run monopolies. Today those activities fall in the private sector.

"Before liberation, a substantial part of the crime in this country was conducted by designated offices in the Interior Ministry," Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner and now the man in charge of building a new police force for Iraq, told me in Baghdad last month.

"We found records and personnel of the seven units of the Baathist secret police that were centers of organized corruption and crime," Kerik said. He suggested that many of the law-and-order problems that Iraq faces today stem from remnants of these and other special police or military units that once had free rein to terrorize the populace. They can`t seem to break the habit.

An Iraqi friend provided an even more graphic account of Baghdad`s informal privatization at work the day after I talked to Kerik. A former army officer offered to dig up a Soviet-made T-72 tank that had been buried in the desert for safekeeping. He priced it at $10,000. Mr. X could also supply a trained driver and gunner as well, but they would cost extra.

I shook my head in disbelief -- until a few days later, when U.S. troops dug up an entire squadron of MIG fighter-bombers that had been buried in the sand in exactly the fashion described by Mr. X.

In Iraq today, you can buy an automatic rifle for $100 or contract for the killing of an American soldier for $500. But as horrible as this situation is, it is dwarfed by the deadly business practices of a small but growing band of nations and individuals who have taken the merchandising of mass death and destruction for profit to new levels.

As readers of The Post learned last week, North Korean ships that covertly transport assembly lines for missiles have been discovered marketing their wares for cold cash. Pyongyang`s Stalinists today spread weapons of mass destruction not to ideological soul mates or to military allies, but to those who can pay cash on delivery.

International controls on the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, missiles, chemical arms and biological warfare instruments are being flouted by a new category of mercenary rogue states -- the determined proliferators. North Korea and Pakistan head this infamous list, with Libya, Iran and others vying for positions on it.

Fortunately, investigative journalists are beginning to describe in detail the seamy world of international corruption, failing governments and boundless greed that fuels a deadly new form of the arms trade, which flourishes alongside and increasingly mixes with drug trafficking. May this ink-stained tribe multiply, and stir outrage internationally.

Joby Warrick`s two-part series on North Korea`s criminal export-import business in The Post on Aug. 14 and 15 exemplified serious investigative work that alerts citizens and politicians alike to the growing dangers of WMD and advanced technology trade. So did Douglas Frantz`s detailed disclosures in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 4 about Iran`s burgeoning clandestine drive for nuclear weapons.

"Technology and scientists from Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan have propelled Iran`s nuclear program," Frantz wrote before presenting persuasive evidence. It may not astonish you to learn that I was particularly interested in the new information he gathered about Pakistan`s long-standing nuclear weapons help to Iran, initially disclosed in this column on May 17, 1995, and immediately denied by Islamabad, which also denies Frantz`s report.

Eight years have passed since I quoted from a U.S. intelligence report that flatly stated: "We know that Iran has an organized structure whose purpose is the production of nuclear material for nuclear weapons." That structure, the report continued, was modeled after Pakistan`s successful campaign over the previous eight years to buy technology and hardware piece by piece from Western and Asian companies. Pakistan exploded a nuclear device in 1998.

Iran is diligently following Pakistan`s path. Only a concerted international effort can impede Tehran`s ayatollahs, who are intent on breaking out of the pledges they had to make under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to get Russian civilian nuclear help. Iran`s breakout, on the heels of North Korea`s trashing of the treaty, will fatally undermine that document and the international control system it outlines.

Russia and China give some signs of being sobered by the awareness that they have helped create nuclear Frankenstein`s monsters in North Korea, Pakistan and soon in Iran. Awareness is not enough. They must now become part of the solution rather than of a globe-endangering problem.

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Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary

Heute wieder frische Ware 104 Cartoons.

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TURMOIL IN IRAQ


Baghdad Bomb Had the Mark of Experts
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Tracy Wilkinson
Times Staff Writers

August 21, 2003

BAGHDAD — The bomb that devastated the United Nations complex in Baghdad was a potent blend of Soviet-era artillery shells, mortar rounds and grenades packed around a powerful centerpiece — a 500-pound bomb meant to be dropped from an aircraft, the FBI said Wednesday.

Although the explosives are widely available in armament-strewn Iraq, the bomb`s structure suggests a high level of expertise, authorities said.

"This was not a homemade bomb," said Thomas Fuentes, the FBI official heading the investigation. "We`re talking about highly powerful, military-grade munitions."

Investigators are considering a wide array of potential attackers, including Saddam Hussein loyalists, foreign and domestic terrorist groups and religious extremists — or some combination of these and others enraged at the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

The use of weaponry once part of the largely Soviet-equipped Iraqi arsenal strongly suggests a connection to Hussein loyalists.

The munitions were standard issue and would have been relatively easy to obtain for any Iraqi close to the nation`s former security apparatus. And many former military men in Iraq are well trained in explosives and sabotage.

The FBI said it was too early to say whether the bombing was a purely Iraqi operation or involved foreign collaborators. At the least, the sheer size of the bomb suggested an operation involving several people.

The proliferation of munitions in Iraq underscores a deep irony: While no one has yet found the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were the catalyst for the war to topple Hussein`s regime, the easy availability of high-powered explosives provides anti-U.S. militants with an almost limitless supply of conventional weaponry with which to wreak considerable havoc and destruction.

The audacity and precision of Tuesday`s attack also suggest a foreign hand, according to several Iraqis.

"There is a feeling, based on accumulated data from the past, that it is the remnants of Saddam`s regime and their `friends` " who staged the attack, said Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the fledgling Iraqi Governing Council, at a news conference Wednesday.

Chalabi did not offer evidence of his claim.

Officials with the Governing Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that U.S. as well as Iraqi officials had intelligence that Hussein loyalists and Muslim extremists had met about a week before the bombing and planned a large attack on a "soft target" in Baghdad.

Chalabi said the information was detailed.

"The information specifically said the attack would use a truck and would be carried out by using a suicide mechanism or by remote control," he said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said officials there and at the U.S. Central Command were unaware of any notification by Chalabi of a potential terrorist threat.

Tuesday`s massive blast — the second in Baghdad in less than two weeks — added to the debate here over the extent to which foreign fighters have joined the campaign against U.S.-led forces.

L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said this month that several hundred operatives from the Islamic extremist group Ansar al Islam — who fled their bases in northern Iraq during the war — have slipped back into the country since May 1, and that radical Iranians and suspected members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network have also entered. Some have used passports from Sudan, Yemen and Syria, according to Bremer.

The U.N. bombing was "of a different scale than the ones we`ve seen here before," he said after the attack.

"It does not mean that we can exclude the possibility that the Fedayeen Saddam [militia] or some of the old Saddam guys did it," he said. "They had very substantial explosives capabilities in parts of their intelligence services, and it`s not impossible that it was done by them."

The degree to which foreign and home-grown groups cooperate remains a matter of debate. An emerging theory is that well-armed former Baath Party militants may now be teaming up with Islamic extremists from outside the country who see occupied Iraq as the new battleground against the West.

Body parts discovered amid the truck wreckage point to a suicide mission in Tuesday`s attack, the FBI said, but officials were awaiting forensic examination of samples that were to be sent to the United States.

Another possibility is that the lethal package went off somewhat prematurely, not giving the driver or others in the truck time to escape.

Several Iraqis interviewed, including police Maj. Riad Kadhm, whose precinct is participating in the U.S.-led inquiry, said it was not likely that many Iraqis would eagerly take on a suicide mission.

There is no tradition of suicide bombings in Iraq. The intense religious zeal, for example, that motivates some Palestinian suicide bombers has not materialized here to the same degree; in fact, several recent fatwas, or religious edicts, have instructed Muslim Iraqis to remain calm.

A suicide mission, Kadhm said, suggests the participation of Ansar or other more radical elements.

U.S. intelligence officials working with the FBI said they had yet to determine who was behind Tuesday`s blast.

"Right now, there`s nothing that would point one way or the other," one U.S. official said. "And no one we`ve seen has stepped forward."

The official said a bombing that killed 17 people this month outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad involved some sort of dynamite-like explosives, not the aerial bomb, hand grenades and other military munitions used in Tuesday`s truck bomb at the U.N. headquarters.

The attack on the Embassy involved a truck but was not a suicide attack, the FBI says. In that case, someone parked the bomb-laden vehicle and walked away before it was detonated.

"It`s too early to tell whether or not they`re related," the official said.

Another official said U.S. eavesdroppers had intercepted no phone calls or other electronic "chatter" between suspected terrorists in Iraq or elsewhere that clearly indicated whether Al Qaeda or one of its affiliate groups was responsible for either attack. "It just isn`t clear yet," he said.

In Tuesday`s bombing, plotters loaded the lethal amalgamation — weighing as much as 1,500 pounds — onto a huge flatbed, had it driven to an unguarded alley adjacent to the U.N. compound and detonated it around 4:30 p.m., the FBI said. The size of the charge means a team of attackers must have been involved, the FBI said.

The truck — its lethal cargo presumably concealed — was somehow able to maneuver its way through busy Baghdad streets to its destination without raising suspicion among occupying forces. The FBI dismissed early reports that the vehicle was a cement mixer.

So powerful was the explosive heap that there was no need to drive the truck into the U.N. compound: The adjoining alley was only 10 yards or so away from the building, and a protective concrete wall put up recently was obliterated.

The blast left a crater more than 10 feet deep and sent what is thought to be a piece of the truck`s bumper flying more than 500 yards, across a nearby highway and canal. Authorities believe they have found the truck`s identifying numbers — its license, engine and vehicle ID numbers. But tracking the vehicle`s ownership will take time, because many of those records were destroyed or looted in the U.S. invasion and its aftermath. The truck may have once been part of a government fleet, the FBI said.

"This is not as easy to investigate as it would be back in the United States," said Fuentes, assigned to Iraq a month ago from his regular duty as head of the FBI office in Indianapolis. "You can`t just telephone some of these people and make an appointment for them to come over to your office."

Still unclear is whether the truck was parked in a specific site to kill the top U.N. official, Sergio Vieira de Mello — who died in the blast — or whether its placement in line with his office was simply designed to ensure maximum carnage.




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Times staff writer Bob Drogin in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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TURMOIL IN IRAQ


U.S. to Seek International Effort in Iraq
A U.N. resolution would be the basis for foreign troops and financial help. The White House wants to keep control of the political transition.
By Robin Wright and Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writers

August 21, 2003

WASHINGTON — After urgent talks with his top foreign policy team, President Bush decided Wednesday to return to the United Nations for a resolution seeking greater international involvement in Iraq, including more foreign troops and wider funding for reconstruction, U.S. officials said.

The Bush administration had resisted going back to the U.N. for a potentially contentious debate that might pressure the United States to cede partial control of Iraqi reconstruction. But after a devastating bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, it began talks with key allies Wednesday and is expected to begin circulating language for a draft resolution at the Security Council in New York today.

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte confirmed that the U.S. is working on a new document.

"We`re looking at the possibility of another resolution," he said. "I think it`s going to be in terms of what are the challenges we face, and what further can the council do in order to face up to these challenges?"

The United States hopes to tap into global outrage over Tuesday`s bombing to win quick passage of a resolution providing more troops and financial assistance to stabilize Iraq and support the U.N. mission — without diluting U.S. control of the coalition forces or the political transition, according to U.S. officials.

"We intend to introduce a resolution as a way of moving forward, which means providing a basis for other people to get involved in several areas, including security," a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At the Security Council, there was little appetite for any plan that would give the U.S. control over foreign troops. Countries that were once reluctant to support the reconstruction effort said Wednesday that they were more inclined to contribute money — even troops — but only under U.N. control.

Syria, Germany, Chile and Pakistan, countries that did not support the war in Iraq and have withheld help for reconstruction, all said they would back a new resolution ceding more control to the U.N. But there seems to be little common ground between the conditions they envisage and the wishes of the United States.

"There is one thing I`m sure of. Arab nations will not send troops to Iraq under a foreign occupation," said Fayssal Mekdad, Syria`s deputy ambassador. "The Fourth Geneva Convention describes the responsibilities of the occupying powers, and one of those is to provide security. The U.N. shouldn`t have to ask for other troops to do the job."

Until now, the absence of U.N. backing has been a major obstacle to winning troop commitments from India and even some European countries.

The State Department hopes that the attack will stir them to offer their soldiers and financial support to stabilize the country.

"A lot of people are thinking about how yesterday`s events have changed the landscape and how the world`s attention has refocused on Iraq and reconstruction. The international community is now more aware of what`s at stake," said a second senior administration official, who requested anonymity.

The U.S.-led administration in Iraq is particularly hopeful that a new resolution will pave the way for troop commitments from India, Pakistan, Turkey, France and Germany to help meet growing security needs, according to U.S. officials and diplomats in Washington.

"The coalition has been expanding, and I`m sure it will continue to expand as we move forward," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Wednesday at the president`s ranch near Crawford, Texas. "You saw the outrage from the international community, from civilized nations, at this most recent attack. And I think that only reinforces the will and the resolve of what we are doing in Iraq."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will travel today to the United Nations for talks with Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the new resolution and the U.N. presence in Iraq after the bombing, according to administration sources.

Britain, the leading U.S. partner in Iraq, is also dispatching its foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to New York.

One possible compromise could separate the roles of U.N. and coalition forces, with U.N.-authorized troops providing security for U.N. humanitarian missions and some reconstruction efforts.

Washington also hopes the resolution will call on Iraq`s neighbors, particularly Iran and Syria, to block the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, according to diplomats in Washington. The United States has cited an influx of foreign forces, calling it a leading U.S. security concern.

The Treasury Department is sending a team to Amman and Damascus, the Jordanian and Syrian capitals, to press both governments on the issue of assets. The Security Council has already mandated a universal freezing. There is an estimated $4 billion in Iraqi assets in Syria and "less, but a significant amount" in Jordan, according to a U.S. official.

The resolution may also seek greater backing for the new Iraqi Governing Council, whose members were picked by the U.S.-led occupying forces and so far has been largely shunned by the Arab League.

The Arab League has refused to recognize the Iraqi council, which it views as a puppet government. A resolution passed last week by the Security Council welcomes the Iraqi council but does not endorse it, language finessed to satisfy Arab concerns.

The new U.S. strategy was discussed by the administration in two sessions Wednesday. Bush held talks in the morning with the key members of his foreign policy team during a videoconference linkup among Washington, Baghdad and Crawford. They included Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, and Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, also participated in the talks.

Powell held talks Wednesday with several of his counterparts, including the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other nations in the European Union, according to State Department officials.

The resolution may not take final form this week, U.S. officials caution. "It is neither solid nor gas but more like plasma at this point. There are going to be ideas circulating tomorrow and maybe some paper, but it`s still in this protoplasmic stage where people are talking about what things might look like," the second administration official said.

"What happens next depends on the reaction," he added.

The stepped-up effort to win broader international backing comes as congressional pressure builds on the administration. A letter to the White House on Wednesday from two key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), said the Tuesday bombing underscores the "urgent need to recruit additional military and police forces from other countries, particularly from our NATO allies, to improve the precarious security situation."

Iraq is "the world`s problem, not just our own," they wrote.

So far, 27 countries in addition to the United States have contributed about 21,700 troops to stabilization operations in Iraq. Four others — Moldova, the Philippines, Portugal and Thailand — have pledged additional forces, while Washington is now talking with at least 14 other governments about possible commitments, the State Department said Wednesday.

"There are many members of the international community that have wanted to contribute to this effort, provide security and stability for the people of Iraq and for the humanitarian operations that are being conducted," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.


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Wright reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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TURMOIL IN IRAQ


Lives Hold Stories of Loyalty, Generosity, Love and Courage
Many of the victims had followed their boss on another mission to be of service to others.
By Edmund Sanders And Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writers

August 21, 2003

BAGHDAD — Chris Klein-Beekman was a jovial Canadian who planned to settle in Iraq. Sahir Khuhir Salim was a somber, love-struck Iraqi desperate to get out of the country.

Just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Klein-Beekman, 32, program coordinator of UNICEF`s Iraq operations, walked into the U.N. headquarters for an appointment. Salim, 31, was parked in front of the building, the former Canal Hotel, waiting to give a neighbor a lift.

A moment later, an explosives-laden truck blew a massive hole in the side of the building, killing Klein-Beekman, Salim and 18 others.

On Wednesday, their friends and neighbors struggled to make sense of the violent deaths.

"Chris was everybody`s friend," said Geoffrey Keele, communications officer for UNICEF`s Iraq office who had worked with Klein-Beekman for the last year. "He was the backbone of the organization."

In a Christian suburb south of downtown Baghdad, Salim`s family lamented that he never achieved his dream of moving to the United States to marry the girl he loved. "He just wanted to get out of Iraq and start a new life," said Hiba Hani, his sister-in-law.

U.N. officials released a partial list of casualties, including Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil, special representative to Iraq; Richard Hooper of the U.S., Arab expert in the U.N. Department of Political Affairs; Ranillo Buenaventura of the Philippines and Martha Teas of the U.S., both of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and Jean-Selim Kanaan and Nadia Younes of Egypt, Fiona Watson of Britain and Marilyn Manuel of the Philippines, all members of Vieira de Mello`s staff.

Among the non-U.N. victims were Gillian M. Clark, a Canadian, working for the Christian Children`s Fund of America and Arthur C. Helton, director of peace and conflict studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Each had a story.


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Arthur Helton was in a meeting, probably with Vieira de Mello, when the bomb went off. An expert on forced displacement, the 54-year-old Helton was in Baghdad to help assess humanitarian issues.

A native of St. Louis, Helton graduated from Columbia College and from the New York University Law School. From the early 1980s, he directed the Refugee Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. In 1994, he founded and then directed the Forced Migration Project at the Open Society Institute. He joined the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1999.

"Arthur was one of our most respected senior fellows and a noted expert on refugee and humanitarian issues and international law," Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a statement posted on the think tank`s Web site. "He had devoted much of his life to improving the lives of others The world has lost a devoted and talented champion of the rights of the dispossessed."

Helton wrote a number of scholarly papers on humanitarian issues and contributed to several books. His 2002 book, "The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century," analyzed refugee policy in the 1990s.

Helton is survived by his wife, Jacqueline D. Gilbert of New York City.


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Vieira de Mello inspired great loyalty among the people who worked for and with him in the world`s hot spots. Among those who died with him, many had come to Iraq because Vieira de Mello asked them.

Richard Hooper, 40, an expert on the Arab world on special assignment in Iraq, was from Walnut Creek, Calif. Fluent in Arabic, he had spent most of his life working on issues in the Middle East and joined the U.N. in 1990 to work with Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.

"He had a better sense of the politics of the situation in the Middle East than anyone out there," said Michele Griffin, a friend and colleague in the Department of Political Affairs. "We relied on him heavily. He leaves a very big hole.

"He was itching to get out in the field," Griffin said. "His most recent holiday was in Yemen, and his next one was planned for Gaza. That`s the kind of person he was, taking vacations in the places you`d have to pay most people to go to."


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Nadia Younes, 57, Vieira de Mello`s chief of staff, was also believed to have been in his office when the bomb went off. A year ago, she left New York to take over media operations for the World Health Organization in Geneva before going to Iraq several months ago.

Younes had a deep tan, a deep, gravelly voice from years of chain-smoking, and a deep dedication to the U.N. "She was so much fun," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. "After a long day, she would break out the wine. There was a party in the office almost every night, and she was the spark," he said, smiling softly at the memory.




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Ranillo Buenaventura, 47, had been in Irbil since 1997, helping run the U.N.`s "oil-for-food" program in the northern part of Iraq, and later moved to Baghdad to help coordinate relief. Born in the Philippines and known to his friends as "Ronnie," he was "exactly the kind of guy you want to work with," said a colleague.

"He was very serious — a quiet, dedicated man," said his former boss, Antonio Donini. "He didn`t give much away of his character, but he gave a lot to his work."


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Marilyn Manuel, 53, had just taken a break from her job in Vieira de Mello`s office in August to attend her daughter`s wedding. She returned Aug. 8 and was due to leave Iraq at the end of the month. Originally from the Philippines, she had worked with the U.N. in Somalia, Liberia, East Timor and, from 1997 to 1999, Iraq. She was Vieira de Mello`s personal assistant in New York at the U.N.`s humanitarian affairs office and was part of his team in East Timor.

When he asked her to come along for four months to Iraq, she agreed, her colleagues said, because she felt a special connection to both Vieira de Mello and Iraq.

"Lyn was very well thought of, very professional and upright and, at the same time, high-spirited and bubbly," said her colleague Stephanie Bunker. "She was so warm, and always proud to serve the organization."

Manuel`s 54th birthday would have been today.


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Like so many aid workers, Martha Teas, 47, spent her career in the world`s trouble spots giving everything to those who had nothing. Before she joined the humanitarian information center in Baghdad, she had been posted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Thailand, and had consulted in many other places.

The Iowan had recently organized a humanitarian affairs retreat in Amman, Jordan, that showcased her trademark leadership and competence, but most of all, her compassion, said her colleague Djoeka Van Beest.


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Vieira de Mello knew Jean-Selim Kanaan, 33, from their work together rebuilding Kosovo and asked him to come with him to Iraq. It was a good fit. Friends say that Kanaan was "like a young Sergio" — he spoke several languages, was experienced, efficient and clever. Kanaan had done humanitarian work in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia and Kosovo, and he had just published a book about his experiences.

He had been deeply affected by the human tragedies he had witnessed on his missions and had taken a "quiet" job in Geneva. He was anxious to return to Geneva and his new family — his wife, Laura, whom he met while they were both with the U.N. in the Balkans and married last September, and their 3-week-old son.


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For someone in his early 30s, Chris Klein-Beekman had already developed an impressive resume, doing stints in hot spots like Ethiopia and Kosovo.

"He was not someone who shied away from difficult assignments," Keele said. "In fact, he felt like these were the places where he could make a difference."

Klein-Beekman met his wife, who also works for the U.N., during an assignment in Ethiopia. But he left her behind in May 2002 when he relocated to Iraq to help oversee UNICEF`s efforts to help the country`s impoverished children.

He seemed happiest when he could be out in the community, friends said, overseeing UNICEF`s various projects, from refurbishing health-care clinics to feeding hungry children.

Though his duties required 80-hour workweeks, Klein-Beekman seldom lost his easygoing style, friends said.

"He was very involved in this country," said Fuad Hussein, a special advisor to Iraq`s Ministry of Education. After returning from a visit this month to see his wife, Klein-Beekman had told Hussein that he was planning to ask her to join him in Baghdad.

"He was thinking about starting a family here," Hussein said.


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Sahir Khuhir Salim had dreams of starting a family too, but in Detroit, where Clara, the woman he loved, moved three years ago to marry another man. Salim believed she still loved him and they could be together if only he could join her in the U.S., relatives said.

"He was terribly in love," Hani, his sister-in-law, said. "He would sit and just look at her picture for hours. You couldn`t talk to him."

Earlier this week, Salim, who worked as a taxi driver, arranged to make some extra money by ferrying his neighbor, a U.N. staff employee, to and from work.

Choking back tears, Hani recalled Salim`s dour mood at his 31st birthday party this month. "He didn`t feel like celebrating," she said. "It was like he realized his life`s dream would not come true."




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TURMOIL IN IRAQ


To Many Arabs, the U.S. and U.N. Are One Entity
The invasion of Iraq put the world body in danger by rendering it irrelevant, some argue. `Didn`t they see it coming?` asks one.
By Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writer

August 21, 2003

AMMAN, Jordan — The silence said the most: Aside from a chorus of official sympathy and condemnations, the devastation of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad drew barely a shiver on the Arab street and in the Middle Eastern media Wednesday.

In a shift made blazingly clear with the bombing, the United Nations` status has become so thoroughly degraded in the Arab world that many people here no longer draw a distinction between the international body and the United States. It has long been criticized as puny and has traditionally been mistrusted in these parts, but the U.N.`s inability to stop the war in Iraq has sowed new seeds of resentment.

"Didn`t they see it coming?" Mohsen Farouk, a 36-year-old carpenter from Cairo, demanded. He decried the deaths of innocent people but insisted that nobody should be surprised. "It was just a matter of time," he said. "The U.N. is just a puppet of the U.S., and anyone who is angry with the U.S. is likely to consider the U.N. a target."

The hard-line Iranian newspaper Kayhan was even blunter. A front-page headline Wednesday read, "Destruction and Killing the Result of Bush`s Policies in Iraq."

Throughout the Arab world and Iran, the bombing was chalked up — tacitly or explicitly, depending on who was talking — to a blundering U.S. occupation, an organic outgrowth of the untenable instability in Iraq. Moreover, many Arabs argued, the U.S. invasion endangered the United Nations by rendering it irrelevant.

"There has been resentment simply because the U.N. became a tool in the hands of superpowers," said Hasan abu Nimah, a longtime Jordanian diplomat and former representative to the U.N.

The power wielded by the U.S. at the United Nations has long stoked anger in much of the Middle East. The Arab world has seethed whenever Washington used its U.N. veto — as it has done with some frequency — to quash efforts to send international observers into the Palestinian territories or halt the construction of Israeli settlements.

"The U.S. is so powerful and the U.N. is so weak," said Mishary Nuaim, a political analyst at Saudi Arabia`s King Saud University. "Nobody can do anything to stop the U.S."

But in a region that scorns weakness, the United Nations sank to new depths in public opinion when the United States invaded Iraq without the international body`s approval.

"There`s a widespread feeling that the Americans were lazy in protecting the United Nations. Perhaps they`ve done it on purpose. Now it has been proven to the Arabs that it is a weak instrument," said George Jabbour, a Syrian political scientist. "It was assassinated twice — first when the U.S. went to war without a decision from the Security Council, and again yesterday."

When the U.N. entered Iraq after the war, some neighboring countries decried the move as lending a whiff of U.N. legitimacy to an unjust occupation. To critics, the world body appeared to endorse the controversial U.S.-led administration of Iraq.

"The U.N. did nothing for the Iraqis during the war," said Mohammed Hindawi, a 32-year-old engineer in Cairo. "They arrived in Baghdad when the coast was clear. People expected the U.N.`s support, and they didn`t get it. It`s payback time."

At a cafe in Cairo`s leafy Zamalek district, where the drone of Al Jazeera television mingled with the clatter of conversation, a table full of men erupted in protest at the mere suggestion that the U.N. and the U.S. are two distinct bodies.

"The U.N. is just a screen for the U.S. — it lost all credibility during the war," said Ahmed Dafran, a 60-year-old retired cabdriver. "The Iraqis haven`t had time to breathe since the war and haven`t got their heads around what`s happened. All they see is a stream of foreign bodies coming in and telling them what`s good for them."

Although some Arab governments supported the war, most of the Arab street was bitterly opposed to it from the outset — and has interpreted the chaos of the occupation as confirmation of its worst fears.

In their political rhetoric, Arab countries have dealt uncomfortably with the occupation. A deeply divided Arab League decided this month not to grant a seat to the new Iraqi Governing Council. It wasn`t an elected government, members explained, although it was a step in the right direction.

Beneath the criticism, analysts say, neighbors are gulping against the fear of what might happen if the United States eventually became so bloodied it pulled its troops from Iraq.

"We`re now entering a dangerous phase, and there`s an understanding that if the United States should leave Iraq, there would be chaos and it could engulf them," said Michael Young, a political analyst in Beirut. "So even though publicly there may be talk of ending the occupation, privately they understand the U.S. has to stay."

Still, many mainstream Arabs draw a certain quiet satisfaction from the stream of guerrilla attacks on U.S. soldiers, said Abu Nimah, the Jordanian diplomat.

"They didn`t support the war, and they don`t support the occupation," he said. "And they don`t want to make the life of the occupiers easy."


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Times staff writer Azadeh Moaveni in Tehran and Jailan Zayan in The Times` Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.



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U.S. Wants Army of Many in Iraq
Washington hopes allies will commit to large numbers of troops, but the idea is hard to sell.
By Paul Richter and Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writers

August 21, 2003

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration`s decision to seek more help from the United Nations in Iraq underscores the difficulty it has had for five months in finding allies willing to take on the risky and unpopular task.

The administration proudly points out that 27 countries are providing 21,700 troops to supplement the force of 146,000 Americans in Iraq. But setting aside the British contingent of 11,000, the remaining nations are providing, on average, just over 400 soldiers each.

A new division under Polish leadership is preparing for duty in southern Iraq, and the Pentagon hopes to find another division early next year to permit some tired American forces to rotate out.

Even so, U.S. officials are not promising that allies will ever shoulder much more than the 13% of the manpower they now provide.

U.S. officials have recently been working hard to win commitments of relatively large numbers of troops — more than 10,000 each — from Turkey, India and Pakistan, all of which have large armies. But the U.S.-led war against Iraq is highly unpopular in those countries, and their governments have moved cautiously.

The leaders of Pakistan and India have insisted they could consider providing troops only after passage of a U.N. resolution that would broaden international authority and make such a mission more acceptable at home.

Navtej Sarna, a spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, said that while the government has condemned the bombing of the Baghdad offices, its rejection last month of a U.S. request for troops remains unchanged.

At the U.N. on Wednesday, Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said: "We`ve been very clear about what Pakistan requires before we send troops to Iraq. It`s not a question of a U.N. resolution. It`s a question of public opinion and sentiment and how we can assure them we aren`t supporting the occupation.

"There has got to be a call from Islamic people and their leadership. Then we could go to our people and say: `This is for the Iraqis. Let`s go.` "

In June, Turkey offered to provide 10,000 troops. But the U.S. and Turkish governments are struggling to agree on the terms, and it appears that a deployment could take place only with the blessing of the Turkish parliament. In March, Turkish legislators angered the Bush administration by blocking a proposal to allow U.S. troops to attack Iraq from the north, through Turkish territory.

The Turks would like to command their own forces rather than serve under another allied military.

They would prefer to serve in northern Iraq, even though U.S. commanders have insisted they serve farther south, to avoid potential clashes with their rivals, the ethnic Kurds. And the Turks want the U.S. leaders to make sure that someone else pays most of the costs of any deployment.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters after a meeting with Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the terrorist attack Tuesday on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was a "separate issue" from the deployment.

Bulent Aliriza, an expert on Turkey at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said U.S. officials told the Turks in meetings this week that they wanted parliament to approve a deployment before the two governments discussed the terms of such a contribution.

Aliriza said some Turkish officials were already concerned that the legislature could block the plan. Public opinion in Turkey remains "very skeptical, if not hostile," to a deployment, Aliriza said. "This is not going to be easy."

The Bush administration has been prodded often in recent months to seek help from other European allies.

Germany, France and Russia, for example, have highly trained and well-equipped militaries. However, the Russian and German governments have made it clear they would not supply troops, even with passage of a U.N. resolution.

A spokesman for German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer repeated Wednesday that there was "no question" of a German military commitment.

At the United Nations, a diplomat from a European country that opposed the war said the attack on the world body`s headquarters in Baghdad might make the members of the U.N. Security Council, which would vote on any resolution, more inclined to offer help — including troops — as long as such assistance was clearly defined to support only the U.N. mission and was not under the command of U.S.-led forces.

Another Security Council diplomat thought sentiments might be changing among countries that opposed the war and the American-led reconstruction of Iraq.

"There is some hope that countries who were reluctant to offer support in Iraq because it might be seen as a retroactive endorsement for the war might change their minds now," said the diplomat, who requested anonymity.

"Maybe we can see if there is the scope to bring people in to help support Iraq."

Before the attack, the diplomat said, the question was " `Are you with the coalition or against it?` The attack potentially changes the question to `What can be done to support the U.N. and the Iraqi people?` But it also raises a question for the coalition side: Under what conditions would they accept that support?"

Yet there were also signs that the bombing in Baghdad, by raising fears about security, might slow some deployments.

Asahi Shimbun, a leading Japanese newspaper, reported that Tokyo might delay the deployment of about 1,000 noncombat military personnel to Iraq. Japan had planned to send the force in November, by which time it had expected that Iraq would be stabilized.

Now, in light of the bombing, the mission will be reviewed, the newspaper said.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country has sent a military force to Iraq and suffered its first combat casualty last week, called for the French and Germans to join the international force.

"After the attack, additional countries have to join," he said, adding that "a U.N. mandate has to be worked out."


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Richter reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Ela Kasprzycka in Warsaw, Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and Janet Stobart in London and special correspondents Shankhadeep Chowdhury in New Delhi and Colin Joyce in Tokyo contributed to this report.



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COMMENTARY


Iraqi Insurgency Enters a New Phase
Escalation of attacks suggests the enemy and strategy are changing.
By Graham E. Fuller
Graham E. Fuller is former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and author of the book "The Future of Political Islam" (Palgrave, 2003).

August 21, 2003

The shocking attack against U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that took the life of the head of the U.N. mission there, among many others, represents not only an escalation of the violence in Baghdad but a sharp change in the character of the anti-U.S. insurgency.

Despite past administration rhetoric that suggested the bulk of the insurgency and attacks had come from former elites around Saddam Hussein, it is increasingly clear that a variety of groups is involved in this campaign.

Furthermore, the shift of the insurgency in recent weeks to take on non-American targets suggests perhaps new players and even a new strategy that might end up alienating the Iraqi public itself.

The one thing that unites all insurgents in Iraq is their desire to rid themselves of the U.S. occupation as soon as possible. They have a mixture of motives: revenge on the part of the Baath Party elite for the war that destroyed them; and Iraqi frustration and anger at the slow progress of postwar reconstruction, aggravated by the fact the U.S. is largely alone in the process.

The guerrilla attacks also attract other Iraqis who have no love for Hussein but who feel humiliated by defeat and occupation and want the Americans out yesterday. And finally, the occupation attracts all those radicals across the region simply looking for a chance to kill Americans to make up for past grievances, both real and imagined.

But the violence has now moved beyond strictly American targets to take on all those supporting the U.S. in any capacity — witness the killing of other allied soldiers, the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy and now the U.N. headquarters.

Is this tactic smart, even for the most radical guerrilla faction? Although many Iraqis are quite capable of being both anti-Hussein and anti-American at the same time, most Iraqis do not want to see progress toward restoration of the infrastructure sabotaged. Attacks against the Iraqi oil pipeline to Turkey and water pipes to civilian areas are not helping the Iraqi public by any measure.

If most Iraqis don`t like Americans, the United Nations surely could deliver services that are less "tainted" than those provided by American occupation personnel. The chances are that the radical guerrillas and terrorists responsible for the recent attacks may provoke a public backlash against all the insurgents.

Indeed, what should the insurgents` rationale now be? Is it better to attack only Americans — emphasizing that Washington is the occupier and primary enemy? Or all foreigners? After all, attacks against even non-American forces may now simply encourage much of the rest of the world to fight the insurgents in Iraq.

The ultra-radicals may calculate that they can drive everyone out and leave Iraq free of foreigners, in chaos and without much aid, poisoning the well for all. Few Iraqis want that. But that was really the war Hussein always wanted to fight — not a high-tech war from 50,000 feet but one fought down in the trenches and in the cities, where attacker and attacked are on more equal terms.

The sad part is that even if the "silent majority" of the Iraqis want the U.S. to restore much of the infrastructure and establish some nascent national institutions before it leaves, they may not have a say in it.

Guerrilla forces always seek to polarize civilian populations — you are either with us or with the enemy — and they surely wish to warn off other U.S. allies. Moderate elements, such as the Iraqi Shiites, have so far refrained from the use of violence against the United States, even while waiting for the U.S. to depart so they can assert their majoritarian power over the state.

But if fighting and violence are going to be the order of the day, can the Shiites, especially the more radical elements, afford to sit out the struggle against occupation? Are Arab Sunnis now seeking to adopt a mantle of legitimacy, heroism and nationalism in making up the chief force of resistance in the country? Such a tactic raises the stakes all around.

The chances are that we are now witnessing multiple and competing insurgent agendas. With luck, the nihilists — those striking at all forces linked with the U.S. or the West in any way — will now be discredited by violence that ultimately hurts Iraq.

The clock is ticking in Iraq for Washington to demonstrate that the occupation is both productive and soon to end — or else it will play into the hands of the increasingly ruthless insurgency forces that don`t want to give Iraqis any choice.


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COMMENTARY
a d v e r t i s e m e n t




Cure for an Islam Gone Mad
Moderates must be encouraged to leaven extremists destroying our civilizations.
By Amos Oz
Amos Oz is an Israeli novelist.

August 21, 2003

The suicide-murder at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the suicide-murder in Jerusalem that targeted a bus full of families and children on their way back from prayer occurred only about five hours apart. They claimed about 20 lives each and also injured about 100 people. We do not yet know who carried out the attack in Baghdad, but we know exactly who destroyed the families` bus in Jerusalem.

He was Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq, from Hebron. He was not the usual brainwashed teenage suicide bomber. No. In fact, he was one of the brainwashers: a chief cleric, an imam, in one of the most prominent Hebron mosques; he was also a teacher of religion in a high school.

The two crimes were not orchestrated by the same mastermind, but they do have a great deal in common: A force that once was described by Salman Rushdie as "paranoiac Islamism" was at work in both cases.

The same phenomenon is probably behind the fact that out of 28 violent conflicts raging right now all over the globe — from Indonesia to Kashmir, from Sudan to Chechnya, from the Middle East to North Africa — 25 involve an Islamist faction.

Paranoiac Islamism maintains that "modernity" or "the West" or "the Jews" or "the superpowers" or even "the entire international community" are conspiring to erase Islam and therefore true believers must act preemptively by wiping out all Islam`s enemies — and almost everyone in the world is considered a deadly foe.

Paranoiac Islamism has become the worst enemy of Muslim civilization, an enemy of its values, of its heritage and of its long-standing tradition of tolerance and wisdom.

Chauvinistic extremism has become the worst threat to the culture of the Arabs in general and to almost every Arab political structure in particular. Ironically, it must be noted that a somewhat similar mixture of paranoia and aggressive chauvinism is also threatening Jewish Israel from within, and certain Christian societies may not be immune either.

This bloody ailment cannot simply be squashed by force. It is not enough to tame it with a big stick; it needs to be cured.

I believe that the antidote for Islamism gone mad can be found only within the realm of moderate, sane Islam. And the same is true for other cultures that contain seeds of internal insanity. We cannot cure madness just by smashing it. We are bound to endorse, support and indeed to rely primarily on the healthy elements, on the silent majorities, on the pragmatic forces within each infected society and culture.

Rather than wag our fingers at Islam, or at the Jews, or at the "West," let us seek, find and reinforce the moderates in every society. Let us help them prevail. Let us help them tame and heal the contaminated parts of their own families.

The trouble is that moderates normally don`t have the zeal to defend their moderation against fanatics. If they have zeal, they might easily lose their moderation.

Yet I believe it is time to combine zeal and moderation. Those who have the blend of moderation and determination deserve to inherit the Earth, if only because they never crusade for the Earth and never launch a jihad for it.


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Bush`s support in California falling steadily, poll shows
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, August 21, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/…


Facing a sputtering economy and ongoing chaos in postwar Iraq, President Bush`s support among Californians continues to slip, with less than a majority of voters backing him for a second term, a Field Poll released today reveals.

Fifty percent of the state voters surveyed approve of Bush`s job performance -- down slightly from 51 percent support last month, but far below his peak of 76 percent support three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The slip in Bush`s support in the state comes as Democrats and independent voters, many of whom backed the president after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, are now questioning his handling of the conflict in Iraq and his stewardship of the economy.

"A lot of the issues that Bush is being evaluated on now seem to be highly contentious, and the voters are divided along party lines," said Mark DiCamillo, the poll`s director. "Right after Sept. 11, we had more of a bipartisan, patriotic, rally-behind-the-president effect, whereas now it`s much more partisan and back to politics as usual in evaluating the performance of the president."

The poll released today also found that only 42 percent of California voters were inclined to re-elect Bush, while 50 percent were not. That`s a steep drop from just one month ago, when 46 percent of state voters were inclined to give him a second term, and 44 percent were not.

Bush has never had an easy time selling himself in California, a state where he was defeated by a whopping 1.3 million votes by Democrat Al Gore in 2000.


RAY OF HOPE DIMS
But the president may have seen a ray of hope in a Field Poll in April that showed him leading the yet-undetermined Democratic Party nominee by 45 percent to 40 percent.

"The Bush strategists were saying, `Maybe this could be the year when we could come and win California,` " DiCamillo said. "Well, since then, this image has faded, and now he`s trailing by five points."

The new poll showed state voters preferred the unnamed Democratic nominee to Bush, 47 percent to 42 percent.

The anemic state of California`s economy continues to plague Bush. State voters, by 50 percent to 43 percent, disapproved of the president`s handling of the economy.

But Bush`s numbers in the state may have been hurt even more by the war in Iraq, which divided the electorate and alienated some of the Democrats and independent voters who had rallied behind the president.

Asked whether the war in Iraq is worth the toll in lives and other costs, 74 percent of Republicans said "yes." But two-thirds of Democrats and 50 percent of nonpartisans said the war was not worth the costs.

Overall, more than half of those polled -- 52 percent -- approved of Bush`s handling of the war, which was down from the 60 percent support he enjoyed in April, when U.S. troops were still battling Saddam Hussein`s forces for control of Iraq.

70% OF DEMOS DISAPPROVE

In the new Field Poll, 82 percent of Republicans approved of his handling of the conflict, while 70 percent of Democrats disapproved of his handling of Iraq. Nonpartisan voters were almost evenly split.

DiCamillo said the "steady drip, drip, drip of bad news" out of Iraq since Bush announced in May that major combat operations were over had eroded voters` confidence in him.

"It`s having an effect," he said. "It really makes it tougher for Bush to go outside of his party and get support among Democrats and nonpartisans."

Some Republicans speculate the recall campaign against California Gov. Gray Davis could help boost Bush`s chances in the state in 2004, particularly if Davis is ousted and replaced by a Republican.

But Bush, who was in the state last week to raise money for his re-election campaign, may not get many requests from GOP candidates to appear at his side - - particularly those who are trying to attract Democratic and independent voters.

"If they want to reach across the aisle, (the president) would be kind of a divisive figure," DiCamillo said. "Some would be turned off. Some would say OK.

But it`s a shrinking proportion who are attracted to Bush outside of his party."

The random telephone survey of 1,036 California adults -- yielding 629 registered voters -- was conducted Aug. 10-13. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

E-mail Zachary Coile at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Posted on Thu, Aug. 21, 2003

NEW CHALLENGE IN IRAQ
MAKE STRATEGY WORK, OR FIND A NEW ONE

The terrorist attack at the United Nations headquarters in Iraq drives home this gloomy reality for the Bush administration: Forces opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq will stop at nothing to disrupt and thwart the U.S. occupation. Even innocent third-party participants who deliver humanitarian aid to Iraqis, such as the scores of people who worked at the U.N. headquarters, have become targets.

The new escalation is an urgent reminder that the administration must do what it thus far has failed to do: devise an effective strategy for bringing stability to Iraq now that major hostilities have ended, and rebuild the country as promised.

The radical escalation in violence that targets innocent noncombatants challenges the Bush administration`s assertion that post-war Iraq can be managed by better intelligence that identifies the attackers and broadening the coalition to include other nations. Meanwhile, the president has steadfastedly refused to ask the United Nations to play a larger role, as has been suggested by Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

One purpose of Tuesday`s bombing may have been to send a message that international groups, including the United Nations, shouldn`t get involved -- and maybe should leave Iraq altogether. After all, the suicide attacker crashed his bomb-laden truck directly below the third-floor office of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the well-regarded Brazilian diplomat who headed the U.N. mission in Iraq.

But there was a larger message, too. The bombing of the U.N. headquarters comes on the heels of the bombing of Jordan`s embassy and of massively disruptive attacks on Iraq`s oil and water pipelines. U.S. forces already were being targeted in almost-daily attacks that have taken the lives of more than 60 soldiers since Mr. Bush announced the end of major hostilities on May 1. It is highly unlikely that the disparate attacks are authored by a cohesive force. But that hardly matters. Various groups are committed to giving the United States a bloody nose in Iraq, including Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein, former Iraqi military fighters and Islamic extremists now pouring into the country.

Whether organized or not, the collective actions of these factions mean that U.S. forces must be concerned not only about protecting themselves but also concerned with protecting other innocents and ``soft targets,`` such as embassies and Iraqi infrastructure.

These aren`t the roles envisioned for the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq -- and without reinforcements, U.S. success is jeopardized. Mr. Bush faces a difficult choice: sending more troops is politically risky. The U.S. military presence alone costs $4 billion a month, and a price tag for reconstruction has yet to be determined. Germany, Russia, Japan, France and other allies are reluctant to join the coalition. Yet the administration denies the United Nations a bigger role. President Bush must show that the U.S. strategy is working in Iraq or find one that does.

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