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washingtonpost.com
U.N. Holds Meeting on Iraq Resolution
By EDITH M. LEDERER
The Associated Press
Friday, September 5, 2003; 3:32 PM
UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council held its first informal meeting Friday on a U.S.-proposed resolution to get more troops and money into Iraq, with Russia giving cautious approval to the draft.

The United States welcomed the "good discussion" at the meeting, but Russia, France and Germany said serious negotiations were still necessary on two key issues - how quickly Iraq`s sovereignty can be restored and how large the U.N. role should be in rebuilding the country.

France and Germany want the U.S.-led coalition to transfer political power to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible, and their leaders made clear Thursday the U.S. draft did not meet this objective.

But British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Friday he was "optimistic" a compromise could be reached with France and Germany.

The 15 Security Council nations had widely differing reactions to the resolution: While France, Germany and Syria criticized it, council supporters of the Iraq war - Britain, Spain and Bulgaria - welcomed it as a positive step.

Still, France and Germany called the U.S. proposal a basis for negotiations, and Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was ready to listen to their suggestions and consider any other "constructive input."

The five veto-wielding permanent council members - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China - met for 1 1/2 hours Thursday afternoon to discuss the draft. But Friday`s informal session at the British U.N. Mission was the first for all 15 members. Discussions are to continue next week and some members may propose amendments to the United States or at the next council meeting.

"We think that there was a good discussion," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said as he left Friday`s meeting. "I think there was satisfaction on the part of many delegations with the way in which we`re going about this process."

"We think this is a strong resolution. We think that it charts a way forward. We certainly think that the focus is on the rapid restoration of full sovereignty to Iraq," Negroponte said.

However, the draft resolution doesn`t relinquish U.S. political and military control of Iraq, and many council nations are demanding a much stronger U.N. role.

France would like to see the United Nations replace the United States as Iraq`s interim administrator. Syria also wants the United Nations - not the United States - to command the U.N.-authorized multinational force envisioned in the resolution.

While the U.S. draft invites the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to work with the United Nations and U.S. officials to produce a timetable for drafting a new constitution and holding democratic elections, it contains no timeframe for when this should happen, and leaves the key decision in the hands of the Governing Council, which took months just to form a Cabinet.

The United States believes the Iraqis must remain in charge of this process - but France and Germany want more Security Council control.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave cautious approval to the resolution Friday, but reaffirmed Russia`s push for a quick restoration of Iraq`s sovereignty, adding that the draft will need more work to win approval at the U.N. Security Council.

"Preliminarily speaking, I can say that this initiative deserves attention since the content of the proposed resolution reflects those principles which Russia has consistently championed," Ivanov said, according to the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies.

"The American draft outlines movement toward those principles, and, naturally very serious work needs to be done so that they are fully reflected" in the final version.

Still, in a strong signal Moscow was edging closer to Washington than to France and Germany - which it joined in opposing the war - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Thursday Russia may send peacekeepers to Iraq as part of an international force.

China was also against the war. But in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Thursday that the U.S. offer to share Iraq`s postwar reconstruction was in line with the objectives of China, which has "actively participated in the endeavor."
© 2003 The Associated Press

Bush to Address Nation on Iraq Sunday
Fri September 5, 2003 05:34 PM ET
INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - President Bush will address the nation on Sunday night about the war on terrorism with a focus on Iraq, the White House announced.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on Friday Bush`s speech came as the United States was in a "critical moment in the war on terrorism."

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Comment
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This war on terrorism is bogus
The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination

Michael Meacher
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld`s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush`s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney`s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America`s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush`s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".

Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan`s two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden`s extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.

The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney`s energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban`s refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow`s dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world`s oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

A report from the commission on America`s national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron`s beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India`s west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.

Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that "the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts" with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

· Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003

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Meacher sparks fury over claims on September 11 and Iraq war
Fury over Meacher claims

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

Michael Meacher, who served as a minister for six years until three months ago, today goes further than any other mainstream British politician in blaming the Iraq war on a US desire for domination of the Gulf and the world.

Mr Meacher, a leftwinger who is close to the green lobby, also claims in an article in today`s Guardian that the war on terrorism is a smokescreen and that the US knew in advance about the September 11 attack on New York but, for strategic reasons, chose not to act on the warnings.

He says the US goal is "world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies" and that this Pax Americana "provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis".

Mr Meacher adds that the US has made "no serious attempt" to catch the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden.

He also criticises the British government, claiming it is motivated, as is the US, by a desire for oil.

The US government last night expressed abhorrence at Mr Meacher`s views. An embassy spokesman in London said: "Mr Meacher`s fantastic allegations - especially his assertion that the US government knowingly stood by while terrorists killed some 3,000 innocents in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia - would be monstrous, and monstrously offensive, if they came from someone serious or credible.

"My nation remains grateful for the steadfast friendship of the British people and Her Majesty`s government as we face, together, the serious challenges that have arisen since September 11 2001."

Downing Street also distanced itself from the views of an MP who only a few months ago was in the government. "The prime minister has responded to those who argue it was about oil," a spokeswoman said, adding that oil profits from Iraq are to be fed back into the country`s development.

Former ministers such as Robin Cook and Clare Short have criticised the British government for misleading the public over the reasons for going to war. But Mr Meacher has gone much further in his analysis of US and British motives.

He says that the plans of the neo-conservatives in Washington for action against Afghanistan and Iraq were well in hand before September 11. He questions why the US failed to heed intelligence about al-Qaida operatives in the US and the apparent slow reaction of the US authorities on the day, as well as the subsequent inability to lay hands on Bin Laden.

He argues that the explanation makes sense when seen against the background of the neo-conservative plan.

"From this it seems that the so-called `war on terrorism` is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives."

He adds: "Given this, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance."

Mr Meacher, who was environment minister, says: "The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies."

He is critical of Britain for allegedly colluding in propagating the myth of a global war of terrorism. He asks: "Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy?"


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Clarity emerges as court closes its doors
What has been learned on 10 key points as inquiry`s first phase ends

Richard Norton-Taylor, Vikram Dodd and Ewen MacAskill
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

The doors of Court 73 closed on Thursday after four weeks in which the inner workings of the British government were laid bare as seldom before. Lord Hutton will return to the Royal Courts of Justice a week on Monday. In the first phase of the inquiry a wealth of emails, memos, letters, minutes and personal testimony have revealed several important truths about the government`s handling of the case for war and its impact on one man, David Kelly:

1 The many faces of Dr Kelly

The portrait emerging is of a complex, self-contained individual, a man enthusiastic about his work but uncommunicative in private life who found it difficult to share his personal worries.

An intimate description of the man was given by his widow Janice, daughter Rachel, and by friends and colleagues.

His religious beliefs - the Baha`i faith - and his scientific background committed him to telling the truth. But inconsistencies have been thrown up. He told the Commons foreign affairs committee he had not spoken to the BBC reporter, Gavin Hewitt, and he failed to acknowledge a phone conversation with another BBC reporter, Susan Watts.

2 Dr Kelly apparently killed himself having come under growing pressure in the glare of public attention

The evidence from his widow, his daughter and Keith Hawton, director of the centre for suicide research at Oxford University, created a vivid picture of a man under growing pressure.

Mr Hawton concluded that he almost certainly did commit suicide and that, though the causes of suicide are multi-faceted, he had not made the decision until the day of his death.

One factor was the continuing emails and calls from the Ministry of Defence that may have led him to realise that his evidence to committees of MPs did not mark the end of the affair but instead meant he was being drawn further in.

Mr Hawton said Dr Kelly had suffered "severe loss of self-esteem" as a result of being described by the MoD as a low-ranking civil servant, and felt a sense of "dismay at being exposed to the media".

3 Downing Street took very seriously the BBC`s allegation it had inserted the 45 minute claim into the Iraq dossier knowing it to be wrong

Lord Hutton has heard that for Tony Blair the allegations could not have been more serious: "You already have this extraordinarily serious allegation which, if it were true, would mean we had behaved in the most disgraceful way and I would have to resign as prime minister," Mr Blair told the inquiry.

It amounted to lying to parliament, and Mr Blair said he viewed the BBC report as having accused him of having duped the public into the war.

The PM admitted the festering row had derailed his agenda: "Since then that has been the issue. I mean we are three months on and it is still the issue."

4 No 10 was keen to see Dr Kelly`s name become public partly to forward its case against the BBC

Alarm bells rang in Downing Street and the MoD when Dr Kelly admitted speaking to the BBC`s Andrew Gilligan. As soon as they suspected he was Gilligan`s source, they wanted to use him in their battle with the BBC, in particular to say that Gilligan had embellished what the scientist had told him.

The MoD gave clues to journalists about his identity before confirming his name. Dr Kelly, a very private man, was told to give televised evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee, an experience from which he never recovered, the inquiry heard. Lord Hutton has made clear that the outing of Dr Kelly, and the way the MoD treated him, will feature strongly in his report.

5 Tony Blair was intimately involved in the naming strategy of Dr Kelly

Mr Blair was told on July 3, by Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, that a possible source for Gilligan`s story had emerged.

The prime minister`s weekend at Chequers was peppered with further discussion about the matter with his most senior officials, including Alastair Campbell. On Monday July 7 Mr Blair met officials in his study, and asked what was known of Dr Kelly`s views and what would he say to MPs. A decision was made to have him reinterviewed.

On Tuesday the Kelly issue arose at three meetings involving the PM. The decision to issue a press release was approved and written by Mr Blair`s spokesman and other top officials.

On July 9 the PM`s official spokesman revealed a crucial detail about the identity of the supposed source which helped to lead reporters to Dr Kelly.

6 The Iraq dossier on weapons of mass destruction was over-egged

Compare a copy of the draft dossier on September 5 and the final publication on September 24 and there is no doubt that it was hardened up.

The draft, which had existed since February last year, was a typically dry Foreign Office/M16 document, with the emphasis on how Iraq had these weapons before 1998. The final document uses the same information but the emphasis has switched to such weapons presenting a current threat.

Brian Jones, a former analyst with the MoD`s defence intelligence staff, claimed it had been over-egged. Mr Campbell denies sexing it up, but the changes he suggested did alter the presentation by portraying Iraq as a bigger threat than it appeared to be on September 5.

7 The claim in the dossier that Iraq could deploy its chemical weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so came from a second-hand and dubious source

The claim was controversial before the inquiry, but now looks very tarnished. The government said it came from an Iraqi officer. Possibly, but this is not quite the whole truth. In fact it came second-hand through another source.

Staff in defence intelligence, according to one of its former top analysts, feared the motive of the source who reported the claim, worrying he might be trying to influence rather than inform. Even intelligence officials who thought the dossier a good idea were worried about the 45 minute claim. Dr Kelly thought it "risible" that WMD could be deployed so soon, one witness said.

John Scarlett, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, let slip the claim referred to battlefield munitions, and not missiles with a longer range. The dossier led to claims that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes towards British bases in Cyprus.

8 There were rows within the intelligence community over the wording of the dossier

Intelligence officials, notably experts in the MoD, questioned many of Iraq weapons dossier`s key assertions. Dr Kelly shared these concerns, but they were ignored by those drawing up the dossier under the overall supervision of Mr Scarlett, who developed a very close relationship with Mr Campbell.

Mr Scarlett insisted that he, and not Mr Campbell, retained "ownership" of the dossier until its contents were agreed. But the inquiry heard that the full JIC did not approve the dossier, which was drawn up by a special group including Mr Campbell. The full extent of concerns about the dossier were not aired in the inquiry since MI6 officers - who provided much of the raw intelligence - did not give evidence.

9 Geoff Hoon was less than fully truthful in his evidence to the inquiry

The defence secretary`s evidence to the inquiry saw him try to deny any responsibility for how Dr Kelly, effectively his employee, was treated.

The last revelation of stage one of the inquiry was that he appeared to have been less than candid with Lord Hutton. Mr Hoon had been at a key meeting to approve the naming of Dr Kelly, his special adviser, Richard Taylor, revealed.

The defence secretary had failed to mention this in his evidence, during which he said he had not been involved in any talks about confirming Dr Kelly`s name to the media. An admission from Mr Hoon that he knew about the decision to confirm the scientist`s name had to be dragged out of him by the inquiry counsel James Dingemans QC.

10 Andrew Gilligan`s story that No 10 wanted to "sex up" the Iraq dossier has largely been vindicated, but his claim that Downing Street inserted the 45 minute claim knowing it to be wrong has not been substantiated

The claim by the BBC journalist, based on a meeting with Dr Kelly, that No 10 wanted to "sex up" the dossier has been largely supported by evidence.

The inquiry has heard that defence intelligence officials believed the dossier was "over-egged" after pressure from outside, taken to mean No 10. But there is no evidence to back Gilligan`s initial claim that the government knew the 45 minute claim was wrong.

The inquiry also heard that Gilligan wrote an email to David Chidgey, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, outing Dr Kelly as the source of a Newsnight story by his BBC colleague Susan Watts.

Gilligan was also accused at the inquiry of playing a "name game" with Dr Kelly, trying to get the scientist to identify Mr Campbell as responsible for "sexing up" the dossier.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Back to the UN
All sides must face Iraqi realities

Leader
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

The Bush administration`s appeal for more United Nations help in Iraq undoubtedly marks a significant shift in policy, in spite of White House denials. It certainly represents a telling reverse for Washington neo-conservatives who encouraged President George Bush to bypass the UN last spring, maintaining that in Iraq as elsewhere the US was powerful enough to ignore the views of many of its allies, and of international opinion, and go it alone. This change of tack may thus have longer-term, positive implications for future US foreign policy-making and multilateralism in general.

Yet any temptation by the war`s opponents towards self-congratulatory "I told you so`s" should be resisted. Schadenfreude is too expensive an indulgence at a time when the situation of the Iraqi people, and not just of Iraq`s occupiers, is so perilously fraught. An American failure in Iraq might momentarily gladden many embittered hearts. But however much Mr Bush and his often arrogant advisers might be felt to deserve a come-uppance, failure is not in the wider regional and international interest. Nor, indeed, is it in the interest of Britain whose armed forces remain boxed-in in Iraq and, far from coming home, may soon have to escalate their troop levels.

French, German and Russian pledges to work constructively on the proposed new UN resolution comprise a welcome and pragmatic recognition of this uncomfortable reality. But when President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder say that the US proposal still does not go far enough, they in turn deserve to receive the fair, objective hearing that was denied them in the finger-pointing frenzy that accompanied last February`s UN breakdown. What must be avoided at all costs is another transatlantic shouting match that exacerbates the already high levels of mutual US-Europe public distrust revealed in this week`s Marshall Fund opinion survey.

Mr Chirac and Mr Schröder do indeed have a case. By retaining ultimate political and military decision-making powers in Iraq in American rather than UN hands, the US draft perpetuates the fundamental mistake enshrined in UN resolution 1483 last May. That formally designated the US and Britain as occupying powers with primary, indefinite responsibility for all aspects of Iraq`s postwar rehabilitation. Despite its wording, 1483 denied the UN the promised "vital role". The two allies plainly took too much upon themselves and have found it all but impossible to fulfil their obligations, particularly regarding internal security and the enormous actual and projected costs of occupation and reconstruction. That is why more UN help is now sought. And that is why the US, finding itself in a position of unexpected diplomatic weakness, will certainly be pressed to give more ground in New York.

But the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, also makes a fair point when he asks to whom in Iraq the French and Germans would pass political authority. Given its record to date, there can be little confidence that the governing council, with all the help in the world, is ready for the job now - and no other viable body or forum presently exists. Yet here is common ground between the two camps if they care to find it. Accelerating and empowering Iraq`s indigenous political evolution towards sovereign self-governance is the shared interest of all responsible nations. Recognising this, they should work together to achieve it. On the security front, however, the US and Britain must be under no illusion that the deployment of even all of the 15,000 UN-flagged foreign peacekeepers sought by the Pentagon will somehow magically ease their burden. They started this fight. Whatever the UN does, they are stuck with it. Rarely can the lack of a thought-through exit strategy have been so widely foretold and so grimly confirmed.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Tony Blair will be reminded daily that you only live once
How much longer can the prime minister take the pressures of the job?

Jackie Ashley
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

Like nothing else, death changes perspective. I know. My wonderful mother died this summer, suddenly and unexpectedly. So for me, normally a political nerd, the intricacies of the Hutton inquiry have been a mere background buzz through dreadful weeks of mourning. I have diligently read the reports, but the detail of who said what to whom, in which email, and at which meeting, has failed to excite.

This may be a failure of duty, but it feels like a chance for a fresh look. In the Westminster village, I`ve gone to the back of the crowd. What you see from here is a story about death, far away in Iraq and close at hand in an Oxfordshire wood; and around those deaths, vulnerable, human players trying to make sense of their own lives.

When people talked of the post-September 11 world being a changed one, they meant, among other things, that terrorism had entered mainstream western life. Now there is no "there": what happens in poor, Asian villages can change lives in London, New York or Paris. Tony Blair`s prime ministership was changed too: this domesticated lawyer became a war leader.

For all the mass of evidence that Lord Hutton has to pore through, the big picture doesn`t change. It still seems that the government over-egged the threat posed by Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction, in order to go along with a war that George Bush was determined to pursue. Never mind what the dossiers said, no such weapons have been found. The military victory may have been easy, but looking at Iraq now, it`s hard to claim it was a quick, clean liberation. Almost daily, there are more deaths, more attacks. This is a foreign policy sore, I fear, that will dog Tony Blair every day for the rest of his leadership.

Yet nothing hits you like deaths at home. Whitehall has long been used to planning and ordering momentous events in other parts of the world; but the Westminster world is unused to one of its own being a casualty. Dr Kelly was known in politics and journalism. He sat in meetings with cabinet ministers. Tony Blair may not have known his face personally, but that is almost coincidental: he was doing Tony Blair`s work in Iraq and in London.

And it is Dr Kelly`s death which will have given Tony Blair a new perspective. As he lay on his lounger in Barbados, Blair must have been asking himself whether it was all worth it. Not the war on Iraq, for he has a theological belief that it was right - he has to believe it was right, or he would go mad - but the political war afterwards, the attacks and the fury, the spin and the rebuttals. Was it for this that he came into power?

What is he here for? Where is he going? How much longer at the top? Of course, he showed not a scintilla of self-doubt at Thursday`s press conference. He is far too good a political performer for that. Once again the press pack marvelled at his command of the occasion: the easy manner, the tanned open face, the serious points mingled with the odd joke. And his message seemed clear - no turning back, no concessions, no regrets... "Blair?" scoffs a colleague, when I talk of his future, "he`s never seemed more determined to carry on - and on - and on."

Yet I`m not so sure. He did not seem happy this week. It was a curiously passionless performance, like a hugely experienced actor going through the motions of a too-familiar part. Tony Blair is nothing if not human. He needs friends and colleagues. He likes to be liked. Suddenly, he does look very isolated. Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson may still pick up the phone. But they are not there.

And Campbell will now show Tony Blair an alternative way of living. He will now become a wealthy man, with ample free time, and his life back, and a wonderful chance to rebuild family relations strained by long years of long hours. He will tour America, and pursue his hobby horses, and have time left over for doing good works. Campbell will be a media star, and enjoy the dolce vita that fame and money can offer in Britain. He will, in short, have a lot of fun. Tony Blair, being attacked every day, feeling lonelier in Downing Street every day, will look on with mixed feelings. You only live once.

The same happened, by the way, with that other Blairite escapee, Alan Milburn. Although his best political friend, Stephen Byers, was forced to quit front-line politics, Milburn quickly noticed how fit, relaxed and happy in his private life Byers then became. This is perhaps the first government really affected by baby-boomer attitudes to self-development and work-life balance. It may be dominated by workaholic males, as all previous governments have been; but increasingly, they are looking over their shoulders with agonised expressions, and Blair himself cannot be wholly immune.

If that is the pull-factor, the push-factor is possibly stronger still. The party is pushing for a change of direction, and not just the activists, many of whom are angry about the war, and fed up with the public service reforms. Several in the cabinet are also against the "no turning back" rhetoric. One loyal senior cabinet member tells me he and his mates are determined that foundation hospitals won`t become a great totemic issue for Labour: "None of us could tell you in detail what they bloody well are," he says. Another, equally pro-Blairite minister insists the government must tilt much further in the direction of the party. No doubt Peter Hain and Patricia Hewitt, two of the braver ministers, are even now penning the conference darts they will chuck at the prime minister.

And, overhanging it all, silently, is the looming presence of Gordon Brown. "I`m really struck," says a Labour insider, "by the warmth now in all sections of the party towards Gordon." I wouldn`t call it striking: more a quite natural reaction in politicians to gravitate towards the centre of power. Call it sucking up if you will, but there has been a definite change in attitude towards Brown this summer. He is no doubt waiting and praying - with the goodwill of the country behind him - for his new baby to arrive. But tails are up at the Treasury, and it`s not just the prospect of an addition to the Brown family that is making them all smile.

So there`s Tony Blair, in Downing Street with more dry civil servants around him and fewer close friends. He knows that his older kids won`t be around at home for much longer. He has given up on the euro: as Nick Watt reported in the Guardian last month, that has become another casualty of war. He faces battles ahead on public services, without a very clear idea of what to do. He sees the political obituaries of Blairism being written daily. And he knows that Gordon will sooner or later take over.

Yes, I know: as the political season picks up again, the smart money is still on Blair fighting the next election. Power at that level is hard to give up. He craves vindication. But if he has been reflecting on his own life this summer he could yet surprise us. It is all - all - perspective.

[e-mail]


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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September 6, 2003
MUNITIONS
Security at Iraq Munitions Sites Is Vulnerable, U.S. Officials Say
By ERIC SCHMITT with LOWELL BERGMAN


WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — American officials said today that about 50 munitions sites in Iraq containing explosives similar to those used in the recent major bombings had only light security and were poorly guarded.

An official from the United States Central Command, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged today that the American-led military operation in Iraq did not have enough troops to heavily guard all 2,700 Iraqi munitions sites that have been identified.

Every ammunition dump has some level of security, the Central Command official said. But he added that increasing demands on American troops have meant that the military has had to reserve the heaviest security for munitions sites containing weapons like rocket-propelled grenades that could be used most readily against allied forces; that left other sites, with larger weapons like bombs and missiles, with less security or Iraqi guards who may be prone to bribes.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan G. Whitman, said tonight, "All known Iraqi munitions sites are being secured by coalition forces." But Mr. Whitman said he could not address questions of security at each munition site, saying that would be a matter for the local ground commander.

Senior civilian American officials in Iraq, who have privately raised concerns about security at some munitions sites, say even a small number of poorly guarded sites would pose a risk to American forces and the reconstruction effort. "It`s a problem," said a senior American official who has been actively involved in Iraqi security matters.

Another problem for the American-led forces is the looting that followed the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein. A senior defense official said today that the rapid collapse of the Iraqi Army during the war had left extensive ammunition dumps unguarded for many days, and that in many cases virtually everything had been looted by fleeing conscripts and officers.

The defense official said United States forces had worked hard to secure the dumps since then. But their presence, and delays in destroying some of the ammunition caches, were cited as a source of concern today by Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the commander of the Army`s Fourth Infantry Division, in a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is visiting Iraq.

"That`s where a lot of the stuff has come from," the defense official said of explosives, rocket-propelled grenade and other ammunition used in attacks against American troops by supporters of the ousted government and others.

Recent bombings at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, as well as one at a Shiite shrine in Najaf, have added to growing criticism of the government`s Iraq policies, concerns that President Bush is expected to address in a nationally televised speech about Iraq on Sunday night.

The bombings at the United Nations headquarters and the Jordanian Embassy used vehicles packed with high explosives drawn from old Iraqi military stocks, counterterrorism officials said. F.B.I. agents have said the truck used in the United Nations attack carried about 1,500 pounds of explosives, including mortar shells, hand grenades and a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb from old Iraqi military stocks.

At a briefing at F.B.I. headquarters on Thursday, a senior bureau official said chemical tests found that similar munitions were used in the Aug. 7 bombing of the Jordanian Embassy and the attack on the United Nations headquarters 12 days later. The official, John Pistole, said results from tests on last Friday`s bombing in Najaf should be available in a few days.

Officials cautioned that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to trace the source of the explosives used in the bombings to specific sites in a country awash in weaponry. Officials said that vast caches of ammunition were hidden before the war and that military sites had been pilfered in the chaos following the conflict.

But the senior American officials say they were troubled about reports of munitions sites with no visible security.

American officials and troops visited a number of sites in the last month, including a former Iraqi Air Force base southwest of Baghdad and a storage area north of the capital, according to an American official in Baghdad familiar with the visits. Neither site had any visible security, the official said.

At the air base there were no guards present or an effective security gate. Local villagers were rummaging inside buildings and fled when the Americans approached. Explosives like TNT were found along with live shells and a wide variety of bombs and mines.

At the site north of Baghdad that American officials visited, experts discovered shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons that were apparently overlooked during previous inspections, an American official said. The inspections of both sites revealed munitions clearly marked with Russian writing.

Recently, Iraqi police and civil officials in Najaf told United States officials in Baghdad that corrupt Iraqi guards at a munitions storage area near that city were allowing looters to make off with bombs and others explosives, according to a American official familiar with the allegations.

A senior American official in Washington who follows Iraq closely said that about 50 sites had only light security now after American troops went through them after the war, seizing the most dangerous weaponry, like surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The American-led military in Iraq is responsible for seizing weapons and munitions stocks from the former Iraqi armed forces and security services. Tons of ammunition have been confiscated, often from homes, schools and other buildings.

Just today, the Central Command announced that Army troops in an area northeast of Baqubah, in north-central Iraq, had detained a taxi driver and captured a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 12 grenade-launcher rounds, one AK-47 automatic rifle and a submachine gun. Military demolition specialists were summoned to destroy the munitions.

Some weapons and ammunition are being stockpiled to be used by the new Iraqi army and Iraqi security forces that the United States is helping to train. Older stocks typically are destroyed.

But civilian American officials in Iraq say officers have told them that there are shortages of engineers to transport captured weaponry, military personnel to guard it and demolition experts to destroy it.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute 91 neue Cartoons frisch aus USA. Achtung IQ-Test für alle Nannsen-Reps.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030905__091toons.htm

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Bush on Labor Day: Emperor Has Clothes
Re "To Save Jobs, Bush Will Appoint a Manufacturing Czar," Sept. 2: Emperor Bush trots out new outfits each day depending on what audience he is aiming to win over: flight suit as he lands on an aircraft carrier, leather jacket and cap for the working folks, cowboy outfit when on the ranch. What anyone with half a brain sees is a commander in thief whose naked lies and tricky footwork have led this country into disaster. No outfit can hide the nakedness of deception, greed and hawkishness of his administration.
LATimes
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washingtonpost.com
Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds


By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01


Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq`s Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

The main reason for the endurance of the apparently groundless belief, experts in public opinion say, is a deep and enduring distrust of Hussein that makes him a likely suspect in anything related to Middle East violence. "It`s very easy to picture Saddam as a demon," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and an expert on public opinion and war. "You get a general fuzz going around: People know they don`t like al Qaeda, they are horrified by September 11th, they know this guy is a bad guy, and it`s not hard to put those things together."

Although that belief came without prompting from Washington, Democrats and some independent experts say Bush exploited the apparent misconception by implying a link between Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the months before the war with Iraq. "The notion was reinforced by these hints, the discussions that they had about possible links with al Qaeda terrorists," said Andrew Kohut, a pollster who leads the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

The poll`s findings are significant because they help to explain why the public continues to support operations in Iraq despite the setbacks and bloodshed there. Americans have more tolerance for war when it is provoked by an attack, particularly one by an all-purpose villain such as Hussein. "That`s why attitudes about the decision to go to war are holding up," Kohut said.

Bush`s opponents say he encouraged this misconception by linking al Qaeda to Hussein in almost every speech on Iraq. Indeed, administration officials began to hint about a Sept. 11-Hussein link soon after the attacks. In late 2001, Vice President Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

Speaking on NBC`s "Meet the Press," Cheney was referring to a meeting that Czech officials said took place in Prague in April 2000. That allegation was the most direct connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. But this summer`s congressional report on the attacks states, "The CIA has been unable to establish that [Atta] left the United States or entered Europe in April under his true name or any known alias."

Bush, in his speeches, did not say directly that Hussein was culpable in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he frequently juxtaposed Iraq and al Qaeda in ways that hinted at a link. In a March speech about Iraq`s "weapons of terror," Bush said: "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."

Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions."

Moments later, Bush added: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We`ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."

A number of nongovernment officials close to the Bush administration have made the link more directly. Richard N. Perle, who until recently was chairman of the Pentagon`s Defense Policy Board, long argued that there was Iraqi involvement, calling the evidence "overwhelming."

Some Democrats said that although Bush did not make the direct link to the 2001 attacks, his implications helped to turn the public fury over Sept. 11 into support for war against Iraq. "You couldn`t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," said Democratic tactician Donna Brazile. "Every member of the administration did the drumbeat. My mother said if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes a gospel truth. This one became a gospel hit."

In a speech Aug. 7, former vice president Al Gore cited Hussein`s culpability in the attacks as one of the "false impressions" given by a Bush administration making a "systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology."

Bush`s defenders say the administration`s rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein`s involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein`s secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. "The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn`t do that," said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. "They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem."

A number of public-opinion experts agreed that the public automatically blamed Iraq, just as they would have blamed Libya if a similar attack had occurred in the 1980s. There is good evidence for this: On Sept. 13, 2001, a Time/CNN poll found that 78 percent suspected Hussein`s involvement -- even though the administration had not made a connection. The belief remained consistent even as evidence to the contrary emerged.

"You can say Bush should be faulted for not correcting every single misapprehension, but that`s something different than saying they set out deliberately to deceive," said Duke University political scientist Peter D. Feaver. "Since the facts are all over the place, Americans revert to a judgment: Hussein is a bad guy who would do stuff to us if he could."

Key administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was involved in the 2001 attacks. "I`m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading hawk on Iraq, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Aug. 1.

A top White House official told The Washington Post on July 31: "I don`t believe that the evidence was there to suggest that Iraq had played a direct role in 9/11." The official added: "Anything is possible, but we hadn`t ruled it in or ruled it out. There wasn`t evidence to substantiate that claim."

But the public continues to embrace the connection.

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents were generally unsure why they believed Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, often describing it as an instinct that came from news reports and their long-standing views of Hussein. For example, Peter Bankers, 59, a New York film publicist, figures his belief that Hussein was behind the attacks "has probably been fed to me in some PR way," but he doesn`t know how. "I think that the whole group of people, those with anti-American feelings, they all kind of cooperated with each other," he said.

Similarly, Kim Morrison, 32, a teacher from Plymouth, Ind., described her belief in Hussein`s guilt as a "gut feeling" shaped by television. "From what we`ve heard from the media, it seems like what they feel is that Saddam and the whole al Qaeda thing are connected," she said.

Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University professor of linguistics who has studied Bush`s rhetoric, said it is impossible to know but "plausible" that Bush`s words furthered such public impressions. "Clearly, he`s using language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th," she said.

"There is a specific manipulation of language here to imply a connection." Bush, she said, seems to imply that in Iraq "we have gone to war with the terrorists who attacked us."

Tannen said even a gentle implication would be enough to reinforce Americans` feelings about Hussein. "If we like the conclusion, we`re much less critical of the logic," she said.

The Post poll, conducted Aug. 7-11, found that 62 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents suspected a link between Hussein and 9/11. In addition, eight in 10 Americans said it was likely that Hussein had provided assistance to al Qaeda, and a similar proportion suspected he had developed weapons of mass destruction.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Administration Comments on Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks
Hier die erstaunlichen Zahlen des Polls von heute, Telefoninterviews wurden durchgeführt Anfang August, es könnte sein, dass seitdem sich die Meinung geändert hat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/st…

Five months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence linking the Iraqi leader to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- yet seven in 10 Americans continue to believe there may have been such a link. Bush`s political opponents say he and administration officials encouraged this misconception by linking al Qaeda to Hussein in most every speech on Iraq. Bush`s defenders say Americans instinctively lump both foes together without any help from Bush.

Below are some key comments made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Vice President Cheney: Sept. 16, 2001 -- Meet the Press

NBC`S TIM RUSSERT: Saddam Hussein, your old friend, his government had this to say: "The American cowboy is rearing the fruits of crime against humanity." If we determine that Saddam Hussein is also harboring terrorists, and there`s a track record there, would we have any reluctance of going after Saddam Hussein?

CHENEY: No.

RUSSERT: Do we have evidence that he`s harboring terrorists?

CHENEY: There is--in the past, there have been some activities related to terrorism by Saddam Hussein. But at this stage, you know, the focus is over here on al Qaeda and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein`s bottled up, at this point, but clearly, we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned.

RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?

CHENEY: No.

National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice -- Nov. 18, 2001 Meet the Press

RUSSERT: If we are, indeed, successful in Afghanistan in eliminating Osama bin Laden and rooting out al-Qaeda, will the war on terrorism then turn to Saddam Hussein in Iraq?

RICE: The president has made very clear that this is a broad war on terrorism; that you cannot be supportive of al-Qaeda and continue to harbor other terrorists. We`re sending that message very clearly. Now, as to Iraq, we didn`t need September 11 to tell us that Saddam Hussein is a very dangerous man. We didn`t need September 11 to tell us that he`s trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. There could be only one reason that he has not wanted U.N. inspectors in Iraq, and that`s so that he can build weapons of mass destruction. We know that he tried twice before to acquire nuclear weapons. In 1981, when the Israelis pre-empted at Osyroc, he was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. In 1991, when our forces arrived in Iraq, they saw that, again, he was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. He is a very dangerous man. We have to deal with him on his own terms. We didn`t need September 11 to tell us that he`s a threat to American security.

RUSSERT: Would the world be safer if he was eliminated?

RICE: The world would clearly be better and the Iraqi people would be better off if Saddam Hussein were not in power in Iraq. I don`t think there`s any doubt about that.

RUSSERT: Czechoslovakian government has told us that they have evidence that Iraqi agents met with one of the hijackers who flew the plane into the World Trade Center. Do you agree with that assessment?

RICE: In evaluating the report, certainly one would have to suspect that there`s no reason to believe Saddam Hussein wouldn`t do something exactly of that kind; that he would not be supportive of terrorists is hard to imagine. But this particular report I don`t want to comment on because I don`t want to get into intelligence information, but I will say again, we do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that this is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Vice President Cheney: Dec. 9, 2001 -- Meet the Press

RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. When you were last on this program, September 16, five days after the attack on our country, I asked you whether there was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack and you said no. Since that time, a couple articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: "The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out."

And this from James Woolsey, former CIA director: "We know that at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eyewitnesses--three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. Inspectors--have said--and now there are aerial photographs to show it--a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives." And we have photographs. As you can see that little white speck--and there it is, the plane on the ground in Iraq used to train non-Iraqi hijackers. Do you still believe there`s no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?


Vice President Cheney on NBC`s Meet the Press (AP)


VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, what we now have that`s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that--it`s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don`t know at this point, but that`s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

MR. RUSSERT: What we do know is they--Iraq is harboring terrorists.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Correct.

MR. RUSSERT: This was from Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post: "George Bush said that Abdul Rahman, who helped bomb the WTC back in 1993, according to Louis Free, was `hiding in his native Iraq.`" And we`ll show that right there on the screen as an exact quote.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: If they`re harboring terrorists, why not go in and get them?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, the evidence is pretty conclusive that the Iraqis have, indeed, harbored terrorists. That wasn`t the question you asked me last time we met. You asked about evidence...

MR. RUSSERT: Correct.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: ...in involvement in September 11. Over the years, for example, they`ve provided safe harbor for Abu Nidal, worked out of Baghdad for a long time. The situation, I think, that leads a lot of people to be concerned about Iraq has to do not just with their past activity of harboring terrorists, but also with Saddam Hussein`s behavior over the years and with his aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

If we go back and we look in 1981, he was pursuing nukes. The Israelis pre-empted when they hit the Osryic reactor and shut down the program. In 1991, 10 years later, when we went in, we found evidence of a very aggressive nuclear program. For the last three years, there have been no inspectors in Iraq, and he has aggressively pursued the development of additional weapons of mass destruction. He`s had significant sums of money from smuggling oil that are outside the oil-for-food program that are available to him to undertake these activities. And we know, as well, he`s had a robust biological weapons and chemical weapons program, and unlike just about anybody else in the world, he`s used them. He used those weapons against the Kurds in Iraq and against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war.

President Bush: March 8, 2003 -- Weekly Radio Address

Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes. He possesses weapons of terror. He provides funding and training and safe haven to terrorists -- terrorists who would willingly use weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people.

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.


President Bush speaking on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (AP)


President Bush: May 1, 2003 -- Speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln Declaring the End of Major Combat in Iraq

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation`s resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a Special Operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al Qaeda killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al Qaeda`s senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We`ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of American justice.

Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -- and will be confronted.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Badr Brigade members guard area around the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, where a bomb attack killed many last week.
washingtonpost.com
Shiite Militia Deploys Forces
Brigade Poses Challenge to U.S. Authority in Najaf

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01


NAJAF, Iraq, Sept. 5 -- Dozens of armed men belonging to a militia loyal to Iraq`s best-organized Shiite Muslim party deployed today in this sacred city, posing a challenge to U.S. forces that have vowed to disband them.

The Badr Brigade, a force of lightly armed fighters once said to number 10,000, was supposed to have been disarmed early in the U.S. occupation. But in the wake of the assassination last week of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, killed with scores of others in a car bombing outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, the brigade has returned to the streets of this southern city.

Men in black uniforms with armbands that read "Badr" in Arabic were visible throughout Najaf today. About a dozen were posted atop the shrine, the most sacred to Shiites in Iraq, and others manned checkpoints on roads leading to its grounds. Several pickup trucks, carrying men with Kalashnikov rifles, roamed the city`s streets and the perimeter of the shrine.

"We don`t depend on the Americans, we depend on ourselves," said Montadhir Naim, a 23-year-old militiaman.

The public presence of the Badr Brigade suggests another fault line between Iraqis and U.S. forces seeking ways to enhance security in the country, which is reeling from four car bombings in a month. The U.S.-led occupation has increasingly turned to Iraqi forces, in particular the police, as a way to address growing public demands for a safer environment. But the police still suffer from a lack of public confidence, and Shiite leaders in Najaf have promised to take security into their own hands if U.S. forces fail to take more assertive steps.

"The Badr Brigade must continue to exist and thrive. They must be supported and recognized," said Sadreddine Qobanji, who delivered the Friday sermon at the Imam Ali shrine to thousands of supporters, some of whom chanted, "We are all Badr Brigade."

Formed in exile in Iran and long funded by the Islamic government there, the Badr Brigade was the military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the parties now participating in Iraq`s U.S.-appointed Governing Council. In exile, the militia was led by Abdul Aziz Hakim, who inherited leadership of the Supreme Council after the death of his elder brother last week.

U.S. forces ordered the group disbanded soon after the fall of president Saddam Hussein on April 9. While its members were believed to have kept their weapons, the militia maintained a low profile until last weekend, when it reappeared in force to help provide security during Hakim`s three-day funeral procession, which traveled from Baghdad to Najaf.

At a news conference Thursday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, said U.S. officials have yet to confirm the brigade`s reemergence but said the military would not tolerate any independent militias in a country increasingly beset by sectarian and ethnic tensions.

"Americans are not turning a blind eye to any militias coming together in this country," he said.

Maj. Rick Hall, executive officer of the U.S. Marines in Najaf, said U.S. forces realized the friction the brigade`s presence could cause and said his troops would disarm any of its followers carrying an unlicensed weapon in the street.

"We`re not looking the other way," he said in an interview this week. "If they do not have a weapons card, they are not allowed to have a Kalashnikov out on the street. That is a violation of the law, and we will uphold the law."

The Supreme Council, a highly disciplined organization honed by years in exile, is one of several groups vying for influence among Iraq`s Shiite majority. Since the start of the U.S. occupation, it has advocated cautious cooperation with American authorities, in contrast with senior religious figures who have remained largely silent on political issues and a more radical movement led by a junior cleric, Moqtada Sadr, who has formed his own unarmed militia and denounced the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Even with the return of the brigade, the Supreme Council`s leaders have said they are not seeking a showdown with U.S. authorities. "We`re not looking for any confrontation," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, the director of the group`s political bureau.

But like other officials, he said Hakim`s assassination only reinforced their demands for more aggressive steps to police Iraq, specifically by turning over control to Iraqi parties taking part in the Governing Council.

"We can`t wait for their measures, and our people are being killed," he said. "Nobody wants militias in the street, but nobody wants these kinds of assassinations either. A security vacuum is not acceptable."

The militiamen in Najaf today said their presence was not a show of force, but rather a measure to defend themselves.

"We are protecting our clergymen and we are protecting our leaders," said Qassim Jabbouri, 33, a militiaman from nearby Mashkhab. "We are providing protection by ourselves, not through the Iraqi police and not through the Americans."

Outside the shrine, a group of vendors selling soft drinks and bottled water looked on approvingly as pickup trucks with armed men careered dramatically around the shrine. Men in black uniforms were posted every 10 yards or so along the streets, directing crowds and communicating by walkie-talkies.

"They`re good people. They`re the people of the city and they know who`s a stranger," said 46-year-old Raja Allah Sayhoud, one of the vendors. "If there are Badr troops, that means there`s security."

His friend, Hussein Khalil Ibrahim, nodded in agreement, saying: "The Americans come for 15 minutes and they leave, and they`re afraid to come out at night. You can find the Badr troops in any place, at any time, at any hour."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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[/]Workers pave a remote section of the 300-mile road between Afghanistan`s two major cities, Kabul and Kandahar. Rebuilding the war-ravaged highway has been a top priority of President Hamid Karzai.[/I]
washingtonpost.com
Attacks Slowing Key Afghan Road
Deadly Nighttime Assault at Police Post Seen as Evidence of Resurgent Taliban

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A10


SHAH JOI, Afghanistan -- Even on a good day, progress along the 300-mile highway between Kabul and Kandahar, Afghanistan`s two major cities, is painfully slow. In a few spots, massive machines inch along under the hot sun, laying a coat of asphalt that extends perhaps 100 yards by dusk. Ahead wait endless stretches of rutted, sandy track, passing through parched lands of grazing sheep and camels.

But on a bad day, it seems that forces more nefarious than equipment breakdowns, shipping delays or hot weather are determined to sabotage the U.S.-funded project to rebuild Afghanistan`s most important road, the centerpiece of national reconstruction and reunification efforts.

Just before midnight last Sunday, a gang of armed men on motorbikes attacked a police checkpoint near a camp for Indian and Afghan highway workers in this remote district of Zabol province. Six of the sleeping guards were killed, several others were kidnapped and two vehicles were incinerated by rockets and gunfire.

"The people who did this do not want Afghanistan to be rebuilt," said Mahmoud Sozan, 40, a shopkeeper in Shah Joi, a town about three-quarters of the way from Kabul to Kandahar. "This road has been destroyed by fighting since I was a boy. If it is paved again, we will be able to send our grapes and melons to the cities much faster. But these strangers who come in the night, they want to stop everything."

None of the assailants was caught, but officials suspect they were part of a newly regrouped and well-organized force of fighters from the Taliban, the Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan for six years and was overthrown in late 2001. Since July, more than 200 Afghans have been killed in bombings and other guerrilla assaults blamed on the Taliban.

Two weeks ago, in their boldest offensive to date, as many as 1,000 Taliban fighters occupied a mountainous region of Zabol called Dai Chupan between the highway and the Pakistani border. U.S. military forces responded by launching Operation Mountain Viper, which combined sustained bombing with ground attacks by hundreds of Afghan and U.S. forces.

On Wednesday, Afghan security officials in Zabol announced that they had driven most renegade fighters out of the province and that 125 bodies of dead enemy fighters had been found. But Taliban commanders -- who felt bold enough to name their own provincial governor last week -- reportedly said they had only made a tactical retreat.

In the wake of Sunday`s attack near the highway camp, project officials in Kabul said they have asked Afghan and U.S. military authorities for extra protection in addition to the 800 Afghan troops that currently patrol the highway in trucks or stand guard at roadwork sites. But they insisted that the work would proceed and be completed, on schedule, by year`s end.

"We are committed to having a paved road by December 31st. There is a determination to carry on, but security does have to be beefed up," said Michael Staples, a spokesman for the U.S.-based Louis Berger Group, which is overseeing the $250 million reconstruction contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Japan is funding the last 50 kilometers -- about 30 miles.

Staples said rebuilding the highway is an important "symbol of unification" for Afghanistan after 25 years of conflict, as well as a practical means of speeding goods, services and government authority to remote regions of this impoverished nation.

But the project, which President Hamid Karzai named one of his top priorities after taking office in December 2001, was plagued by repeated bureaucratic and financial delays. An official ribbon-cutting was held in October 2002, but work did not begin in earnest until May, with bids awarded to Turkish, Indian and Afghan American firms to build five sections of road.

The logistics were daunting enough; power shovels, drums of asphalt and virtually everything else had to be imported by air or road. While most grading has now been completed, paving is still in the early stages. The journey between Kabul and Kandahar, while swifter and less jolting than a year ago, is still marred by patches of deep sand, zigzagging detours and cratered sections of old asphalt destroyed by tanks, land mines and thousands of cargo trucks.

From the beginning, the job has also been fraught with danger. Much of the route had to be cleared of mines left from the civil war of the 1990s, a painstaking process in which teams test the earth square by square, using trowels, metal detectors and dogs.

The de-mining teams, working alone in remote areas of the ethnic Pashtun heartland that brought forth the Taliban, were also easy targets for saboteurs. One de-miner was killed in May, causing work to be temporarily suspended, while others have been beaten or had their vehicles burned by unknown attackers.

But Sunday`s brutal assault, coming at a time of unprecedented Taliban resurgence, has sent new jitters up and down the highway, where gas stations and restaurants sporting colorful flags and neon lights have been built in anticipation of a long-distance traffic boom. Along the route this week, people expressed anger at the attack and fear that the project would be suspended.

Many said repairing the road was so important to the country`s future that they could not believe other Afghans -- even the Taliban -- would sabotage it. Instead, they blamed next-door Pakistan and its powerful intelligence agencies, accusing them of seeking to destabilize Afghanistan and paying saboteurs to slip across the border.

"Pakistan does not want Afghanistan to improve. It pushes people and pays them to do these things," said Mohammed Nader, an engineer who was supervising a paving operation in Ghazni province. He also said he had heard that Taliban forces were distributing leaflets at mosques telling local people not to be afraid, because their aim was only "to stop the Americans."

Tensions between Pakistani and Afghan authorities have been running high in recent months, with widespread reports of Taliban forces and guerrillas loyal to fugitive Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar being given safe haven inside Pakistan. Pakistani officials deny sheltering the renegades and blame the long, porous border and its lawless tribal areas for the problem.

Gen. Sayed Ahmed, an Afghan army official from Ghazni who is investigating the attack, said the circumstances were murky and that there were indications the checkpoint commander may have been cooperating with the Taliban. He said he was bringing 60 additional troops to guard the area.

"For two months I have been patrolling this highway, and this is the first fatal incident," Ahmed said as he indicated the charred hulk of a van resting in front of the now-abandoned checkpoint and the spots where the guards` bodies had lain. "My job is to make sure this road gets built. If I need more men, I will ask for them."

Along the highway, the rash of conflicting rumors surrounding Sunday`s attack reflected the confusion and prejudices of postwar Afghan society. Many Afghans harbor long-standing animosity toward Pakistan, while many rural Pashtun communities still harbor goodwill toward the Taliban.

In contrast, the 800 Indians and Turks carrying out much of the roadwork, from surveying to driving bulldozers, have been living in an isolated bubble. They know little about Afghanistan, speak none of its dialects, work on remote sites in the rural semi-desert and live in temporary roadside camps.

Attempts to speak with some of them this week ended mostly in frustration, and the project manager said the attack would have no effect on the work. But one English-speaking Indian worker, resting in his camp just down the road from Sunday`s attack, looked bleak and murmured, "We all have fear in our hearts now."

For residents of Shah Joi, the central preoccupation is making sure nothing stops the highway from being built. After years of war and drought, they said, the local economy has fallen into such ruin that the town is full of single men who cannot afford to pay the customary bride price.

"This road will be a great blessing to us. We can get our patients to the hospital sooner and send our products to markets faster. Foreign agencies will come and everyone will be busy," said Hayatullah, a tractor driver. "We like Karzai and we like the Americans, but only if they bring us security and the reconstruction goes on. This is the future of our country."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Rumsfeld Touts U.S. `Success`
Defense Chief Says Attacks Will Not Deter Forces in Iraq

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A14


BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld criticized the U.S. news media today for ignoring "the story of success and accomplishment" in Iraq and said the speed of improvements here "dwarfs any other experience I`m aware of," including Germany and Japan after World War II.

Speaking in a marble-walled palace adjacent to Baghdad`s international airport, Rumsfeld said the impact of continued attacks against U.S. forces had been overstated and likened them to isolated terrorist violence "in every country in the world."

Rumsfeld`s optimistic assessment was repeated during visits with Iraqi officials in Mosul and chipper members of a newly formed civil defense force in Tikrit, and in a video address to the Iraqi people in which he said, "The changes that have taken place . . . are extraordinary."

"The coalition will not be dissuaded from its mission in Iraq -- not by sabotage, not by snipers, and not by terrorists with car bombs," Rumsfeld said in the taped address.

The secretary`s sentiments were echoed by the U.S. civilian administrator and the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. "It is disturbing to me when I watch the news -- the focus on the bad," said Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. "We ought to make sure America knows that their sons` and daughters` sacrifices are for a good cause."

Asked about a spate of car bombings, which included a blast last month at the U.N. headquarters that killed 24, Sanchez said, "There is no tactical threat, no strategic threat to the coalition." But he then went on to describe the situation facing U.S. forces in what is known as the Sunni triangle around Baghdad as a "low-intensity conflict, terrorist threat" that included "more sophisticated" tactics and devices.

"It`s definitely a combat zone," he added later.

But Sanchez contended that attacks were low in number -- 14 or 15 a day, down from 20 to 25 two months ago. He acknowledged that there was insufficient intelligence to adequately identify the perpetrators or determine the extent of their organization.

There is likely some "local-level coordination, synchronization and regional command and control being exercised," he said. It is also possible that ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or his loyalists could be coordinating the attacks across the country, he said, and there was clearly "some support base that exists" within the Iraqi population, but "we don`t know whether the base is growing."

L. Paul Bremer, Iraq`s civilian U.S. administrator, also listed accomplishments, including the election of town councils in 85 percent of Iraq`s cities and the completion of 6,000 reconstruction projects. But Bremer, who recently estimated it would cost "several billions of dollars" to adequately help Iraq in the near future, said revenue generated from the sale of 3 million barrels of oil a day would not be enough to pay for the badly needed repairs to water, electricity and other essential services.

Bremer said he also hoped a request to Congress for additional funds would be approved so that 45,000 trained security forces could be added to the current 55,000 within a year.

On the issue of Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction, which was the principal argument put forth by the Bush administration for going to war, local commanders said they had yet to receive information from Iraqis leading them to such weapons. Asked where the weapons could be, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division occupying Mosul and environs, shrugged his shoulders. "I don`t know," he said, speaking on the hot, dusty tarmac as Rumsfeld`s entourage prepared to return to Baghdad after two helicopter rides. "It`s like finding Saddam. You`ve got to find that one person who`s going to crack."

Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, Hussein`s ancestral home and the stronghold of his supporters, said he thought Hussein was in that vicinity, "moving constantly around the area. If he makes a mistake, we`re going to be there and that`s what we`re waiting for."

Odierno said he drew his conclusion from the historic tribal support for the Iraqi leader in Tikrit and from the fact that several of Hussein`s low-level bodyguards had been captured in the last 30 days. Other defense officials said Hussein`s "personal effects had been found in safe houses."

Other defense officials, however, believe Hussein could be in the Mosul area.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
`Liberated` But Not Free


By Ellen Goodman

Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A19


There is a moment in Azar Nafisi`s memoir of life in Iran when she describes what it was like to be a captive in someone else`s dream. "A stern ayatollah," she writes, "a blind and improbable philosopher-king, had decided to impose his dream on a country and a people and to re-create us in his own myopic vision."

Nafisi`s book, whose very title -- "Reading Lolita in Tehran" -- was to set all the ayatollahs on edge, chronicles her resistance to this "myopic vision." She created an air pocket in the suffocating atmosphere of the Islamic revolution, a private classroom where a handful of students could come and talk about literature and life.

The subject of her book is not only freedom but what it was like for a woman to lose it. "Now that I could not call myself a teacher, a writer, now that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the streets to the beat of my own body, shout if I wanted to or pat a male colleague on the back on the spur of the moment, now that all this was illegal," she recalls, "I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe."

This "memoir in books" is a remarkable blend of imagination and politics. But it`s a way to think about Iraq and Afghanistan as well. You see, things are not going so well for the women in the countries that we have "liberated." There is a struggle there too with "stern ayatollahs."

Last Wednesday another school south of Kabul was torched, the grounds littered with leaflets saying girls shouldn`t be in the classroom. Outside the cities, modern women no longer wear the burqas by fiat; they wear them because of fear. In places where warlords rule the roads and Islamic clerics rule the courts, little has changed.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, have you noticed that the man-on-the street interviews in Baghdad are, literally, man on the street interviews? Saddam Hussein is gone, but women don`t feel safe; kidnappings are common and so, Human Rights Watch reports, is rape. There are signs in the market -- "Sister, Veil Yourself" -- and cars line up outside the schools to pick up daughters who cannot walk home safely.

As for women in public life, well, this summer the appointment of the first female judge in years was "postponed" in Najaf after a senior ayatollah ruled that judges had to be mature, sane and male. And this week the Iraqi Governing Council appointed a cabinet -- 24 men and one woman.

Through it all, there`s a curious silence from the White House. In 2001, right after the Afghanistan war, the president proudly declared that "we fight for the values we hold dear," and one of those values was the freedom of women. He said, "The central goal of the terrorists is the brutal oppression of women," and so women`s freedom was proof of our victory. "Women now come out of their homes from house arrest, able to walk the streets without chaperones."

Now I wonder. Women in these countries have had their rights given and taken away before. Will they find themselves used as a cheap bargaining chip with the religious -- male -- fundamentalists?

The other day Noah Feldman, a law professor who`s worked on the new Iraqi constitution, was interviewed about democracy and Islam. Feldman cautioned against expecting full equality. But he added, "We should not think that just because right now there is deeply unequal treatment of men and women, that stops Muslim countries from ever being democratic." After all, he said, America was once a fully functioning democracy with deep inequality.

Fair enough. But America was once a democracy with slavery too. Would we accept a democracy without freedom today? Without women`s rights? Remember Abigail Adams`s letter to her husband in 1776 as he wrote the laws for the new country? "I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors."

Women in Afghanistan are better off than they were under the Taliban, those poster boys of oppression. And few women in Iraq miss Saddam Hussein. But we are at a point of great uncertainty about the future of our "liberated" women -- whether they will be free or forced to conform to a womanhood imagined by a theocrat.

So I am haunted by the story Nafisi tells of a 10-year-old who woke up inconsolable, racked with guilt, for having had an "illegal dream." There is no room in the dream of universal human rights for an illegal dream. Once more: Remember the Ladies.

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washingtonpost.com
A Plan With Fundamental Flaws


By Colbert I. King

Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A19


On the way toward transforming the Middle East into a region more to their liking, Bush administration postwar Iraq strategists ran afoul of the Law of the Six P`s that, for those who don`t know it, is: "Proper Planning Prevents Pitifully Poor Performance."

That is not my conclusion.

I surmised as much from a Washington Times story on Wednesday regarding "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned," a classified report prepared last month for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The report, the Times said, claimed that a rushed war planning process short-circuited the time needed to focus on postwar operations, including the all-important search for weapons of mass destruction. Of course, that critical finding will be of little consequence to the Pentagon`s senior policy hotshots, who remain the toast of the town in Washington`s conservative circles.

True, U.S. forces have been subjected to a dozen attacks a day since President Bush declared major combat to be over on May 1. And, yes, more than 145 troops have been killed since then. That`s not counting the more than 1,100 U.S. wounded since the March invasion. But don`t hold your breath waiting for senior Pentagon officials to be held accountable for the ineffective postwar game plan. If anyone is going to be forced to walk the plank, it probably will be some poor bird colonel or harried civil servant. Meanwhile, senior administration national security officials will continue to wax lyrical about America`s moral mission to bring democracy to the region.

Let`s be clear: The notion of a democratic Middle East is fine by me. After all, given a choice between a society that honors freedom and a tyrannical government in which political dissent is stifled, the economy is controlled and respect for human rights is nonexistent, who wouldn`t choose democracy?

But as with the administration`s now debunked rose-colored postwar Iraq scenario, it`s fair to ask whether what the Bush administration calls its Middle East Transformation vision is based on hard-nosed analysis or wishful thinking.

Oh, I get the part about the people of the Middle East sharing "the desire for freedom," as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the Veterans of Foreign Wars Aug. 25. I`m sure they do. And I`m with her when it comes to finding ways to lift the fortunes of 22 Middle Eastern countries that have a combined population of 300 million but a combined gross domestic product less than that of Spain. Millions live in misery -- criminally shortchanged by their governments. What`s more, I take a back seat to no one in the Bush administration in singing the praises of freedom and wishing it on everyone.

But when Bush and Rice start talking about how democracy and prosperity will dissuade people of the Middle East from buying into ideologies of hate, I have to ask for more evidence to support their assertion.

Was it the absence of freedom and fat wallets that led those men from the Middle East to fly passenger jets into the twin towers and the Pentagon?

C`mon.

Those vile hijackers weren`t politically oppressed, uneducated Islamists from the Arab street. As Youssef Ibrahim, a former Middle East and energy correspondent for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal observed in a March 23 Post article, Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind, was an architect; Osama bin Laden is an engineer, and his number two, Ayman Zawahiri, was a successful physician. And likewise, the men and women who are blowing themselves up and taking innocent people with them are not homeless, psychotic, former child stone throwers; today`s suicide bombers can be found in the ranks of the Arab educated middle class.

Democracy, prosperity and economic freedom have boundless virtues. But are they guarantees against intolerance and hatred, particularly of the radical Islamic fundamentalism variety that fuels anti-West hostility? We need look no further than our own history for examples of hatred trumping prosperity and freedom.

Henry Ford was financially independent and well-positioned to enjoy the benefits of American democratic institutions and human freedom. Yet he nourished and spewed a particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism that reached far beyond his offices and bedroom.

More? This country produced generations of freedom-loving, self-governing people who profited mightily from American democracy, living lives far removed from tyranny and torture. But for centuries, they did not believe that other Americans of a darker hue deserved the same freedom they enjoyed. And because they represented the majority, their prejudices and racist ideologies were enshrined into law, thanks to the prosperous and free lawmakers they sent to state legislatures.

It took more than hope and appeals to the better nature of folks to turn things around. Lawsuits, demonstrations, plenty of broken heads and bodies, and a muscular federal intervention with troops, civil rights statutes, and law enforcement were needed to break the back of segregation.

So when Rice tells the American Legion that the Bush administration believes "the transformation of the Middle East is the only guarantee that it will no longer produce ideologies of hatred," I hunger to learn more about how she and her colleagues know that. Does the administration really believe that ending hopelessness and institutional neglect in the Middle East will stop the breeding of terrorists and suicide bombers? What about the Islamic fundamentalists who want nothing to do with our secular world and everything to do with establishing and maintaining an Islamist order?

Does the Bush administration view the Middle East Transformation as a dollars-and-cents challenge with constitutions, elections and free enterprise thrown in for good measure? Or is the administration`s grand Middle East vision up against something else, more central to the enmity that causes well-fed and educated people to fly planes into buildings and strap bombs around their waists: Islamic fundamentalism?

Is transformation of Arab countries out of the question? No. But it`s not a notion to flirt with, either. The administration had better know what it`s taking on . . . and by all means, know what it`s doing.

Remember the Law of the Six P`s.

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SUMMER CONCLUDED, PRESIDENT BUSH REVELS IN AMERICA`S UNEQUIVOCAL VICTORY OVER TYRANNY AND PANDEMONIUM IN THE NEW & IMPROVED IRAQ
Press Briefing by the President

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I hope you four-eyed press spazzes missed me this past month while I was kicking back in the Promised Land of Tejas – where men are men, and womenfolk make biscuits and put out with the clang of a cow bell. Did y`all see me kicking ass on those cedar trees in my back yard? Think John Kerry could clear brush like that? No sir – he`d prick his dainty little fingers, then cry like a bitch while he bleeds milk and perfume.

Now I might be smirkin` at you pencil munching puke stains, but I am one unhappy cowpoke about having to mosey back here to this marble latrine of a non-city to talk at you. The great thing about Crawford is it`s so remote, it`s easy to control vermin like you who think the American people want the "truth." Hell, a few of them voted for me. That`s the only truth you donkey cum-guzzling socialist media ass-waxing fairy fatsos need to report.

Now on to important crapola: Iraq. Everything is going turbo-perfecto over there, let me tell you. Patriotic prophets like Paul Wolfowitz were right when they predicted that we could squelch the specter of Muslamianistic terror by rolling up our sleeves, and giving it to those Comanche sand niggers right on their own front porch!

We are winning the Iraq war that ended in May. Let there be no doubt. You hysterical girl scouts in the press spend all your time reporting about massive infrastructure sabotage and a measly four or five car bombs that killed some Godless clerics, UN bureaucrats, and blah blah blah. Why don`t you report on the thousands of cars that are totally NOT exploding in Iraq, huh?

You report about guerilla warfare and resistance from Baathist sympathizers. But do you report on the piles and piles of dead Iraqi bad guys? I mean, we could build two or three exact replicas of the Washington Monument out of the bones of all the festering mustachioed carcasses that Rummy`s Rumblers have fragged.

Sure, huge swaths of Baghdad are without power and water. But we are providing free oil showers to anyone without electricity or running water. On top of that, the all-American multinational stomach filler corporation McDonalds has donated thousands of almost non-rancid McRib pork sandwiches to our Islamiac brothers. And by "Islamiac brothers," I mean any towelhead who reflexively faints in fear whenever he hears the CLACKCLACK of a scared silly, all-American 19 year-old GI Bill killing machine.

As you know, we are pursuing help from the, gulp, the United Nations. This is not because we made various tactical, arrogant, and irrationally idealistic decisions concerning this jihad… but rather, the more UN workers on the ground, means more targets, thus deflecting angry bullets from our boys, who are busy trying to collect ear lobes, nose tops, and fingernails as war trophies. You know how much a pouch of Iraqi Republican Guard foreskin jerky goes for on the ol` eBay these days?

Lots of you smarty pants accuse my administration of trying to make America an Empire. We`re not an Empire. That flies in the face of the rugged soul of individuality and the respect of freedom Americans treasure. We just want to leverage our vast military might to subjugate and conquer sub-human peoples who are too stupid to thank us for exploiting their country and steamrolling their primitive cultures.

And so today, as I head back to work here in the teeming intestinal slurry that is Washington DC, I`m here to challenge you press folks to gaze deep into the eyes of real Americans through your glass screens, cathode tubes, and hundreds of miles of cable to say, "You may be broke, but at least you`re not dead from A-rabonic plague."

Thank you, and good day.

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2003/090203.asp

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-hallibu…
EDITORIAL



Bad Whiff From a Big Deal

September 6, 2003

Vice President Dick Cheney has long insisted that the private sector can handle some chores better and more cheaply than the military can. His habitual advancing of this cause, however, demands renewed, outside scrutiny. The need for this has grown especially acute since the appearance of conflict of interest involving Cheney and Halliburton, his former firm, and its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary, has escalated in the $1-billion-a-week U.S. campaign in Iraq.

New documents show that Halliburton has been awarded deals in Iraq worth more than $1.7 billion and could make hundreds of millions more under an effectively open-ended contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It was almost inevitable that these questions would arise. When the Cold War ended and military cuts began, Cheney, as Defense secretary in 1991, pressed the Pentagon to contract out as many services as it could. Despite concerns then about the appearance of conflicts, Halliburton`s subsidiary was hired to draw up a 10-year, renewable contract — a plan dubbed the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program — for a giant contractor to provide the military with everything from facilities and base camps to billeting and food preparation. Halliburton in 1991 bid for and won this pact, which its subsidiary had drawn up. Halliburton was awarded the contract again in 2001.

Under the program — and the prevailing logic that combat situations demand utter expediency, even as taxpayer dollars get spent — Halliburton has received money to work on U.S. base camp operations in Kuwait and to build Iraqi prisoner-of-war facilities. But here`s where the program causes new concern: Halliburton subcontracts most of its work, and its pact is so open-ended that it`s difficult for the military to control the services delivered or costs. Just imagine dealing with a general contractor and subs on a home remodel without clearly defined spending caps and the program`s flaws become apparent.

Because civilian subcontractors in Iraq are working in a war zone, insurance has been expensive and difficult to obtain, with premiums shooting up and the costs being rolled into an escalating tab. Also, if civilian employees or their companies decide a situation is too risky, they can`t — unlike troops — be compelled to work.

No matter how fast the Pentagon wants to move, it doesn`t make sense to allow one company to dominate this process. A better idea would have been to carve up the giant contracts so there was more competition. Others suited for this work include Fluor of Aliso Viejo, DynCorp and San Francisco`s Bechtel Group, which has received a $350-million hike in its Iraq contracts.

The General Accounting Office is looking at military contracts and should pay special attention to this program and its ilk. The administration should welcome independent scrutiny to lift any suspicions hanging over Cheney and his one-time employer.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/money/138317_patriotact06.html

Patriot Act halts would-be investor
Graduate gets mired in new rules to open brokerage account

Saturday, September 6, 2003

By KATHLEEN PENDER
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Shortly after he graduated from college in May, French Clements of San Jose, Calif., tried to open an online brokerage account with Harrisdirect, where his stepfather has an account.

A day after he completed the online application, however, he got a brief e-mail from Harrisdirect saying, "We regret to inform you that we are unable to approve your application at this time: The customer`s identity not properly authenticated per the USA Patriot Act."

Clements was stunned, and so was his mother, Alayne Yellum.

"Maybe they don`t like people named French," she says.

Changing his first name to Freedom would not help.

Clements is an unintended victim of Section 326 of the Patriot Act, which requires financial institutions to:


Verify the identity of anyone opening an account.


Maintain records of the information used to verify identity.


Determine whether the person appears on any list of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations.

Banks, savings-and-loan associations, credit unions, securities brokers, mutual funds and futures merchants must comply with the act by Oct. 1. Many firms, such as Harrisdirect, are already doing so. Eventually, other companies that open accounts may have to comply.

Section 326 of the Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, is designed to "ensure that all financial institutions are appropriately identifying customers to guard against money laundering and the financing of terror," says a Treasury Department official. Preventing identity theft is an auxiliary benefit.

Complying with the law will cost companies a small fortune.

"It`s very expensive. The numbers are extremely large," says Alan Sorcher, associate general counsel for the Securities Industry Association.

Some of the costs will be passed along to consumers.

Consumer advocates also fear the Patriot Act will give companies another reason to invade privacy and prevent some people without criminal intent from opening accounts.

"This ranges between stupid, insidious and dangerous," says Doug Heller, a senior consumer advocate for the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.


How it works

The law applies only to new account holders, not existing ones.

It requires financial institutions to collect at least four pieces of information from prospective customers: name, street address, date of birth and a taxpayer identification number, such as the Social Security number.

Institutions have been collecting all or most of this information for years, but now it`s required.

Next, the institution must verify that new customers are who they say they are through "documentary evidence," such as a passport or driver`s license, or through "non-documentary evidence."

If a customer walks into a bank or brokerage office with a valid driver`s license and tries to open an account with $10,000, the institution probably won`t ask for more information. When a customer tries to open an account online or over the phone, things get complicated.

Many online brokers are trying to verify applicants` identity by cross-checking the information they provide with credit bureaus and other external databases.

"We know how many mistakes are in credit reports. If that`s where they`re getting information, we`re all in trouble," says Emily Whitfield, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union.


Clements` story

At Harrisdirect, prospective customers must give the brokerage firm permission to access their credit report. At the end of the online application, customers are asked four multiple-choice questions drawn from their credit report at Equifax, one of three major credit bureaus.

They might be asked which bank holds their home loan and the size of their monthly payment. If they answer incorrectly, they could be rejected.

After Clements was spurned, he called Harrisdirect. A service rep said he must have answered the questions from his credit report wrong. But Clements says he never saw any questions from his credit report.

He applied a second time. Again he saw no questions from his credit report, and again he got an identical rejection citing the Patriot Act.

I called Harrisdirect on his behalf. Executive Managing Director Mike Hogan looked into Clements` application and said he must have bungled the credit-report questions.

When I said Clements never saw those questions, Hogan said that was next to impossible.

"We`re happy to see if there was a burp in the system that caused this problem," he said. "I`d be pretty surprised if that was the issue."

Later, a spokeswoman from Harrisdirect called back with a new explanation: "The address he was using did not match what was in his history with Equifax, so he didn`t get the four questions."

After graduating from Fordham University in New York, Clements moved back to San Jose.

"He never got to the authentication because his address didn`t compute," says John Ford, chief privacy officer with Equifax.

Hogan says people who are rejected online can mail in a copy of their license or passport to verify their identity. Clements says Harrisdirect never suggested that.

Clements, 22, has $3,000 to invest and hoped to start a retirement plan.

Now, "part of me just wants to take my money and put it a paper bag under the mattress," he says. "Part of me wants to go to a different firm. But what are they going to do? Check the same Equifax? It`s a little scary knowing they have this much power over my finances, especially for such a lame reason -- a wrong address."

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Rival factions struggle to lead Shiites in Iraq
Moderates, militants vie for top cleric`s post
Borzou Daragahi, Chronicle Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/…


Najaf, Iraq -- As believers filed in to Friday prayers, grieving over last week`s assassination of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, clerics huddled in this holy city wrestled with a potentially explosive succession battle that will decide who will lead Iraq`s 15 million Shiites.

"A fierce competition is taking place," said Loulouwa al-Rachid, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a public policy think tank based in Belgium, and an expert on the Shiite community.

The stakes -- for both Iraqis and the U.S.-led occupation authority -- are high.

"An uprising by Iraq`s majority Shiites would be a catastrophe for the American occupation force," al-Rachid said. "It would destabilize Iraq."

The power struggle pits moderate middle-class followers and clerics aligned with the al-Hakim family against the poorer, younger and more militant followers of a young clerical student named Moqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Hakim, despite his close ties to the anti-American clerical leadership in Iran, had emerged as a voice of moderation and even allowed his political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to participate in the U.S.-backed Governing Council, where his brother, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, serves. Al-Sadr, on the other hand, has repeatedly made strident calls for the American-led coalition forces to get out of Iraq.

On Friday, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim was expected to officiate at the weekly prayer service in Najaf, but he failed to appear, citing security concerns. His slain brother`s deputy, Seyyed Sadreddin al-Kubbanji, stood in for him, but neither man is expected to assume leadership of Najaf`s Imam Ali Mosque.

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim does not have the religious credentials to lead Friday prayers on a regular basis. He ran the Badr Brigade, the Supreme Council`s 10, 000-man militia, before returning from exile.


NAJAF ASSUMING MAJOR ROLE
The city of Najaf, where Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and scores of others died in the Aug. 29 car bombing, "is rapidly becoming the Vatican of Shiism," said William Beeman, an anthropologist who heads the Middle East studies department at Brown University.

During the secular rule of Saddam Hussein, the theological center of Shiism shifted to religious cities in Iran. But with the Shiites` oppressor deposed, Najaf is reclaiming its historic place, Beeman said. "Anyone preaching at the Ali mosque is going to be listened to with special acuteness by the body of believers," he said.

Devout Shiites must choose a cleric as a marja, or person to emulate. They follow their marja`s orders on everything from personal hygiene to declarations of violent struggle.


RIVALS FOR DECADES
The two factions vying for the leadership post made vacant by Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim`s assassination have been rivals for decades, and both suffered greatly under Hussein`s rule. The al-Hakims say they lost more than 50 relatives in their struggle against the former dictator, while al-Sadr`s father, a famous ayatollah, and two brothers were killed by Hussein`s henchmen.

Both groups also claim to speak for the majority of the Iraqi people. Shiites make up about 60 percent of the nation of 25 million. And in the wake of the car bombing that killed al-Hakim, both groups have begun arming themselves in the name of protecting Iraq`s holy sites.

"There are discussions going on, but they`re peaceful," said Muwaffak al- Rubayee, a Shiite scholar and member of the Governing Council. "The important thing is that people are calling for calm. The debate is not being conducted with guns."

But the potential for violence was evident Friday as about 15,000 worshipers filed into Imam Ali Mosque. Kalashnikov-wielding militiamen wearing black armbands that read Badr Brigade stopped vehicles entering the square outside the shrine, and the crowd, chanting "Death to the Baathists, Death to America," vowed to wage holy war in the name of the fallen al-Hakim.

Hussein banned Friday prayers at the Imam Ali mosque, one of many steps he took to stifle Iraq`s rebellious Shiites. Al-Hakim, who lived in exile in Iran for 23 years, entered Iraq in May and grabbed control of the vacant pulpit in a flurry, to the chagrin of some and the relief of others.

Although he had lived abroad during most of Hussein`s rule, the ayatollah brought back with him enough clerical stature to stabilize the leadership of Najaf. "Al-Hakim was both religiously and politically qualified for the job," said Naseer Kamel Chaderji, a Sunni member of the Governing Council whose wife hails from a well-known Najaf Shiite family.


HARD-LINER WAITS IN THE WINGS
No one believes the young al-Sadr, who has yet to complete his religious studies, could take the helm of Imam Ali mosque. But some fear he would try to use his family`s connections to bolster his faction`s standing and pave the way for the arrival of his mentor, Ayatollah Kadhem Husseini Haeri, an ultra- conservative Iraqi cleric based in the Iranian seminary city of Qom.

One of Haeri`s first acts after the April 9 fall of Baghdad was to issue fatwas, or edicts -- printed on pamphlets and distributed through poor sections of Baghdad -- denouncing the U.S.-led occupation and calling for Iraqi Shiites to resist it.

Other candidates who have been mentioned include Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, a relative of the slain cleric, and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, perhaps the most revered of all Iraq`s Shiite clerics. But many religious students and clerics in Najaf dismissed them as too absorbed in their books and religious scholarship and too out of touch with the lives of the people.

It is al-Sadr`s salty speech and modest clerical training that has helped him connect with the masses of poor, young alienated Shiites, al-Rachid says. He is known popularly as the marja for the Break-iya -- gangs of young thugs with crew cuts who adopted break-dance culture and were notorious for getting drunk and harassing women in Baghdad`s streets.

Leaders of the Shiite community worry about an armed factional fight breaking out between the al-Hakim and al-Sadr camps, both of which claim to represent the Hawza, Najaf`s seminary and incubator of Shiite thought.

Although few believe al-Sadr`s followers are cold-blooded enough to have pulled off the car bombing that killed al-Hakim, his followers are thought to have been behind the killing of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, an American-backed cleric who was stabbed to death outside the Imam Ali mosque on April 10.

"The situation is very dangerous now," said Sheikh Hassan al-Zergani, a cleric who preaches in the poor Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Published on Friday, September 5, 2003 by the Daily Mirror/UK
What If We`d Never Gone To War With Iraq?
by Jonathan Freedland

WHAT if the war on Iraq had never happened? What if America and Britain had stepped up to the brink last March, peered over the edge, only to pull back at the very last moment?

Let`s say George Bush had been persuaded to give the United Nations inspectors what they wanted: more time.

The British and American soldiers had been told to stand by; the bombs had stayed in their bays.

How different would our world have been? Whose lives would be better, whose worse? Who would still be here, and who would have gone?

Start at the obvious place: Iraq itself.

That statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad`s Paradise Square would still be standing, as tall and imposing as ever - and no one would know that, on the inside, it was completely hollow.

The people of Iraq would still be living under Saddam`s murderous tyranny.

Those who dared to speak out would lose their tongues, if not their lives.

But the electricity would still be working, and so would the running water and sewers.

There would be no freedom, no marches in the street, no rallies at the mosques. But there would be order.

Those who kept their heads down and their mouths shut could at least count on life`s basic services.

The country would be under dictatorship, but not anarchy.

Iraq`s National Museum would still contain its priceless collection of mankind`s oldest treasures, remnants from the very birth of civilization.

No looters would have broken the glass cases and hauled off Baghdad`s ancient wonders for sale on the international market.

THE United Nations building in the capital would still be intact, along with the Jordanian Embassy and the Imam Ali shrine at Najaf, one of Islam`s holiest sites.

The UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello would still be alive and so would Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the leader Iraq`s Shi`ites revered more than any other.

The country would not be a magnet for radical Islamist terrorists, said to be flocking from across the Arab world to take shots at the great American infidel: there would be no US occupation to "resist".

Saddam would still be in charge, cracking down on any hint of al-Qaeda activity within his borders - regarding the organization as a threat to his own rule.

Hans Blix would still be around, irritating his Iraqi hosts with his daily requests to snoop and probe every factory and laboratory in the country.

The Iraqis would bob and weave, of course, but with the threat of force hanging over them, they would co-operate, no matter how grudgingly.

Whatever program Saddam once had to devise weapons of mass destruction would now be on hold: thanks to Blix, Saddam couldn`t organize a fireworks display, let alone build a nuke, without the world knowing about it. His hands would be tied.

The United Nations would declare that the beast of Baghdad was not dead - but firmly locked in his cage.

In the United States, the landscape would look just as different. George Bush would have shocked his right wing by giving in to the people they regard as whining, limp-wristed, European pinkos. By going through the UN, and delaying war, he would have broken the go-it-alone, gung-ho stance that is holy writ for muscular Republicans.

ONE of that faction - say, Congressman Tom "The Hammer" DeLay - would now be preparing to challenge Bush for the Republican nomination in next year`s presidential election.

Donald Rumsfeld would have resigned, along with all the civilian hawks that rule America`s defense department. The hardline vice-president Dick Cheney would have quit, too, citing "ill health".

The new star of the administration would be the man who always wanted to give diplomacy more time, the Secretary of State Colin Powell.

He would not be planning to quit next year, as he is now, but lining up to serve as vice-president in the next Bush team. Powell and Bush would be hailed as statesmen everywhere but on the American right. French shopkeepers would hang posters of Bush in the window: bravo to the man who stopped war.

In Britain, impersonators would no longer cast the American president as a simpleton with a monkey walk: he would be hailed as a man of reason and restraint, the greatest US leader since John F Kennedy.

Public opinion in the US would be right behind him, with the polls steady rather than sliding, as they are now.

AMERICANS would have been cheered to see the resources now in Iraq directed instead against al-Qaeda.

With Baghdad safely contained, the US would have concentrated all its might on the hunt for Osama bin-Laden. International allies, anxious to reward Washington for its moderation on Iraq, would have given unprecedented levels of co-operation, leading to success after success in the real war on terror - the campaign to find and capture the killers of al-Qaeda.

Who knows, Bin-Laden himself might be behind bars by now.

If he were, Bush`s re-election in 2004 would be safe - with none of those daily headlines about US casualties in Iraq to threaten it. And here in Britain, Tony Blair would look a different man. His determination to stay close to Bush would have paid off: he could claim credit for holding back the US president and averting war. In Europe, he would be a lion among leaders, at the heart of the European Union at last.

By now, he would be launching the Yes campaign for a referendum on the euro.

"Trust me," he could say, and no one would laugh in his face.

AFTER all, he had not gone to war on false pretences. Instead, he had stuck to his word. He had always said that he would be reluctant to go to war without UN backing and - since that backing never came - he had kept the troops at home.

He would style himself as a leader strong enough to influence the world`s sole superpower, but humble enough to listen to his people.

They had opposed a war on Iraq, and their voices had been heard.

The Conservatives would be itching to brand him weak - "He threatened force and chickened out" - but they would not find it easy.

After all, if Blair had been weak, then so had Bush - and no Tory wants to badmouth a Republican president.

Iain Duncan Smith wouldn`t know what to say.

Blair would be cruising towards a third election victory and all IDS could do is watch.

Alastair Campbell would have gone six months ago.

With no Iraq crisis to manage, he could have quit at a time of his choosing.

By now his diaries would be in the shops, just in time to be a big hit at the Labour party conference later this month.

There, Blair would be feted by activists who had learned to fall in love with their leader all over again.

Lord Hutton would be in his study, poring over law books, weighing up grave, but obscure cases - and almost nobody would have heard of him.

DAVID Kelly would have been announced as a senior member of Hans Blix`s on-going inspection team in Iraq, applying his phenomenal expertise to the task of keeping Saddam`s hands out of the WMD jar.

After that stint, he would have confidently looked forward to his reward. Most people would not know his name, but those who did would know it as Sir David Kelly.

And somewhere in West Yorkshire, 32-year-old Samantha Roberts would be preparing for a weekend at home with her husband, Steven.

The sergeant from the Royal Tank Regiment would not have been killed at Al Zubayr while trying to calm a civilian riot on the fifth day of the conflict in March.

Tomorrow he would be tinkering with the car or maybe watching a game of rugby.

With autumn underway, maybe he and Samantha would be making plans for Christmas.

But that`s not how things turned out, is it?

Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for The Guardian

© Copyright Trinity Mirror Digital Media Limited 2001

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Posted on Fri, Sep. 05, 2003

Bush administration fulfills wish list for corporate America

By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6702095.htm?templ…
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration eased a series of important environmental regulations in a quiet flurry of late-summer activity, delivering almost every rule change on corporate America`s wish list.


In the past few weeks, the administration diluted federal rules governing air pollution from old coal-fired power plants; emissions that cause global warming; ballast water on ships contaminated with foreign species of plants and animals; sales of land tainted with PCBs; drilling for oil and gas on federal land; and scientific studies that underpin federal regulations.


In every case the business community got what it wanted, and environmentalists got mad.


Administration supporters say the rule changes are in part attempts to eliminate unnecessary government edicts that curtail energy production, discourage investment, hinder the economy or cost jobs. Moreover, they say, not all rule changes have favored industry, although they acknowledge that most have.


Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist at the Bracewell & Patterson law firm in Washington, pointed to new rules restricting diesel engines, issued last April. Those strong rules, praised by environmentalists, were enacted over the objections of the diesel-engine industry, Maisano said.


Nevertheless, Bill Kovacs, the vice president for environmental issues of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the business community won more environmental battles during the final week of August than it had during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration.


"We certainly had a number of victories this week; I don`t think anyone can deny that," Kovacs said on the Friday before Labor Day.


He and two big-industry lobbyists said the Bush administration had delivered nearly every environmental regulatory change business put on its to-do list in January 2001. Their industries got every change they wanted, the lobbyists said.


"This administration is dismantling anything that`s impairing industry or the private sector`s ability to develop, use land or produce energy," said Carl Reidel, professor emeritus of environmental policy and law at the University of Vermont.


Experts say the timing of the changes wasn`t accidental.


"They need to get this stuff out of the way before they get into an election year; they need to get enough below the radar," said political science professor Stephen Meyer, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project on Environmental Politics and Policy.




"The Bush administration always likes to announce unpopular environmental policies in the dead of political and press night. And you can`t find a week when people are less likely to pay attention than the end of August," said Phil Clapp, the president of the National Environmental Trust.




Lisa Harrison, the Environmental Protection Agency`s chief spokeswoman, denied that the timing was politically motivated.


"It is interesting sport for people to offer their conjecture, but it`s nothing more than that," she said. "A lot always comes out of the agency. I never had a week that was not like last week."




John Byrne, the director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware, said the record spoke for itself: "If you just looked at what were rule-making efforts by the administration, you`d see this is a crowded four-month period, particularly in difficult decisions."




Harrison agreed that the administration has put most of its regulatory agenda in place. "That`s certainly a testament . . . to the president keeping his commitment," she said.


Environmentalists don`t see it that way. While all the changes involved rewrites of arcane regulatory language, they constituted major U-turns in policy.


"They`re trying to dismantle some of the original clean air and water legislation that (President) Nixon put through," charged environmental economist Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute. "They`re going full bore."


The decisions included:


- Two controversial changes in a rule governing expansion of old coal-fired power plants, dramatically easing the rules requiring companies to install new pollution controls when they make big upgrades.


- Two legal opinions ruling that carbon dioxide, which most scientists say is the chief cause of global warming, isn`t a pollutant that the EPA can cite to regulate emissions from cars and power plants. The rulings reverse a Clinton administration legal opinion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.


- An EPA legal opinion declaring that it won`t regulate ships` ballast water under the Clean Water Act, turning the issue over to the Coast Guard. The ballast water contains billions of tiny fish, plants and other foreign invasive species that scientists say are major threats to native species in American waters.


- An edict changing a 25-year-old rule to allow the sale of land tainted with toxic PCBs.


- An order to Bureau of Land Management field offices in the West telling them to speed up the process permitting drilling for oil and gas on federal lands.


- A new Office of Management and Budget policy governing scientific studies used to justify costly federal regulations. The policy orders more stringent peer review; environmentalists fear it will slow the enactment of environmental regulations.


"There`s a lot of dramatic change going on. And a good bit of which would be thought of by many as not very environmentally sound," said Dan Esty, who was the EPA`s deputy chief of staff in the first Bush administration and now heads Yale University`s Center for Environmental Law and Policy.




The rule changes that affect air pollution from power plants "are really breath-taking in terms of the scope of regulatory change," said Chuck Davis, a Colorado State University political scientist who specializes in environmental policy. "And there`s not a whole lot environmentalists can do about it, except challenge it in courts."


Unable to get bills that would weaken environmental laws through Congress, the administration made all these changes as administrative rulings.


"They leave the laws in place, but undermine the regulations below them, undermine the rules and undermine the agencies," said MIT`s Meyer. "The details get lost because the average person doesn`t have the details or the time to follow it."


Kovacs of the Chamber of Commerce said Bush was simply borrowing a tactic that the Clinton administration routinely used.


"They figured out what the Clinton administration figured out," Kovacs said. "If you control the agencies, you use them. I wish they had done it sooner."

© 2003 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.realcities.com

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The U.N. and Iraq
By Paul Craig Roberts
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published September 5, 2003


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

Do you remember the ridicule neocons heaped on critics who predicted a quagmire in Iraq? Now neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagen are calling for more troops and more money — two more Army divisions and an additional $60 billion, to be exact. "Next spring, if disaster looms," they write, "it may be too late."
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona — who experienced, but has forgotten, the Vietnam quagmire — has taken the bait and is urging President Bush to send more troops. But there are no troops to send. The Pentagon doesn`t know where it is going to get the troops to carry on the occupation of Iraq at the present level of troop strength. The Associated Press reports that our combat troops are going to be saddled with back-to-back assignments to overseas hot spots.
Army officials are concerned that they are going to begin losing many sergeants and junior officers. Officers in infantry divisions are scrambling to find other military jobs that are not subject to overseas deployment.
Meanwhile, the handful of neocons who got our country into this growing mess are still talking about the United States invading other Middle Eastern countries as part of their program to deracinate Islam. On top of it all, neocons want to take on North Korea, whose army outnumbers ours 2 to 1.
Mr. Bush is trying to get other countries to send their soldiers to occupy Iraq. So far, success has eluded him. Other countries don`t like to tell us "no" repeatedly. They say they have to have the cover of the United Nations, which the neocons intended to keep out. The United Nations would likely get in the way of the neocons` plan to use Iraq as a staging ground for invading Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Bush, however, is getting desperate. As our soldiers are pushed off the streets of Iraq and congregate behind hopefully impenetrable barricades, Mr. Bush might have to let the United Nations rescue him on its own terms.
The United Nations should not do so, however, without a firm understanding that it is not freeing up U.S. troops for an attack on another Middle Eastern country.
If you think about it, you will realize that the neocons` war plans are taking us back to the draft. There`s no way around it. Lacking sufficient military forces to occupy Iraq with its small population of 25 million, what would we do once neocons get us mired down in Iran or Egypt, with their large populations?
Somebody needs to call a halt to this. It will not be the neocon press or Fox News that does it. These folks hide behind superpatriotism, but their real motive is to make the Middle East safe for Israel. The alliance of neocons with white Southern evangelicals is not enough to control U.S. foreign policy. Sooner or later, even the brain-dead are going to realize that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, was not a threat to us (until neocons got us mired down there) and had nothing to do with the events of September 11.
We spent a fortune attacking a country that had done us no harm, killing tens of thousands of its people and giving the United States a black eye as an aggressor that starts wars on the basis of lies and disinformation. In the process, we also wrecked the political standing of our best ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Two-thirds of the British people now believe that Mr. Blair intentionally made a false case for invading Iraq.
When the public tires of flag waving and war propaganda, how will the Bush administration carry on with its pretense that we have made the world safe from terrorists by overthrowing Saddam Hussein? Voters will begin to wonder why Mr. Bush doesn`t sack the neocons who have brought him such deep embarrassment. The longer Mr. Bush waits before sacking the neocons, the more voters will wonder why they voted for him.
Our situation in Iraq is already bad. It will become untenable if the Shi`ite majority decides to join in the effort to drive us out. It doesn`t appear we will be able to buy off our adversaries with our money. Will we as a proud nation respond to Iraqi resistance by conscripting our sons and grandsons as targets for terrorists and guerillas? While we are bogged down, what happens if something hits the fan in another part of the world? Will we be forced to resort to nuclear weapons?
Many people much smarter than neocons gave these warnings in response to the neocons` promise of a cakewalk. It is time Mr. Bush replaced his delusional neocon advisers with wise people of integrity.

Paul Craig Roberts is a columnist for The Washington Times and is nationally syndicated.
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/print_story.cfm?StoryID=2003090…

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SOS from a superpower

September 6, 2003

As US marines moved in their tanks to topple the giant statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, a bitter power struggle was being fought in the corridors of the Pentagon. The US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was about to axe his Secretary of the Army, Thomas E. White.

It was early April and Rumsfeld was in a triumphant mood. The stunning military victory in Iraq had vindicated Rumsfeld and his close advisers, who had argued strenuously for the removal of Saddam Hussein after the September 11 attacks. He and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, beat off opposition from the United Nations and the State Department and swung President Bush firmly behind the pre-emptive war.

But behind the scenes, Rumsfeld faced dissent within his own ranks. Both White and the Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, were warning that the occupation of Iraq would be a massive and costly operation, that Rumsfeld had too few troops to secure the country and that he would put the military victory and the soldiers in jeopardy.

"I was fairly blunt on where I thought the situation on Iraq was headed," White told the Herald this week. "That was not a particularly popular viewpoint and it still isn`t. Consequently, I have returned to the private sector."

White and Shinseki were confronting Rumsfeld with the limits of US power and their reality check was not welcome. Not only were they challenging their boss, they were also exposing a deep weakness in Bush`s doctrine of pre-emption born after the September 11 attacks.

The Bush doctrine, announced one year after the attacks, redefined America`s role in the world. Bush and members of his cabinet saw September 11 as their Pearl Harbour. They were determined to prevent another strike on US soil at all costs. Under the doctrine, America would launch a pre-emptive attack against any rogue state it considered a threat and Bush was prepared to act without the backing of the UN.

While North Korea, Iran and Syria were all viewed as potential threats, Iraq was to be the first target.

Today, as American soldiers are dying daily on the streets of Iraq and Congress faces a new bill of more than $A100 billion for the operation, Americans are only now coming to grips with what the doctrine of pre-emption actually means.

"If you go ahead and pre-empt, you create vacuums that you must fill for some period of time," explained White, who has just co-authored a book on Iraq, Reconstructing Eden. "I think when the doctrine was put in place there was the simplistic view that one could go ahead and pre-empt to remove the military danger and that the consequences of pre-emption would be fairly short-lived and with the threat removed that we could go back to business as normal.

"What we found in Afghanistan and Iraq is if you pre-empt, you become the sovereign leader of a geographic area and it carries with it enormous consequences that cost a lot of money and take a great deal of time."

Before the war, when White and Shinseki warned Rumsfeld he would need 200,000 troops to secure Iraq, he rejected their advice. When Shinseki went public with the figure, he was slapped down by Wolfowitz. Not long after, in late April, White was axed. When Shinseki retired six weeks later, neither Wolfowitz nor Rumsfeld attended his farewell ceremony at the Pentagon.

But Shinseki delivered a blunt message to them in his farewell speech. Warning against "arrogance and mistrust" among leaders, he said pointedly: "We must ensure the army has the capabilities to match the strategic environment in which we operate, a force sized correctly to meet the strategy set forth in the documents that guide us ... beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division army."

This week in Washington, a critical report drawn up by the Congressional Budget Office has vindicated Shinseki. It frankly spells out that the US now has more than 180,000 personnel in and around Iraq attempting to secure the country at a cost of almost $US4 billion ($6.23 billion) a month. It also warns that in six months these troop levels will be unsustainable unless the Pentagon takes drastic measures, including keeping military units on the ground for more than 12 months at a time without relief.

At the same time, US and British forces in Iraq are reeling in the face of mounting guerilla warfare, terrorist attacks and sabotage. The punchline once seen in cartoons, "Is this Vietnam yet?", is now being quoted seriously.

Despite calls for more troops on the ground, Rumsfeld has doggedly insisted no more US troops are needed. But on Tuesday, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, emerged from a meeting with President Bush to announce that the US was returning to the UN Security Council to seek international military support in Iraq backed by a UN mandate. Desperately hoping to persuade other countries to send in their troops, the Bush Administration is now willing to make concessions, albeit limited ones, to the UN.

Two years after September 11 the Bush doctrine is at a critical juncture. The world`s global superpower, it seems, needs the UN. The reality, said Marina Ottaway, a post-conflict analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington, is that the US does not have the troops and the money to continue with the Bush doctrine. "That acknowledgement can be seen in the decision to go to the UN," Ottaway said.

"I think they are getting pretty desperate. The present level of troop deployment is unsustainable. In an election year, if Bush has to start calling up more reserves to maintain a presence in Iraq that is already inadequate, then it is going to have significant political repercussions and he knows it."

When US tanks rolled into Baghdad live on global TV just a few months ago, it appeared to many Americans that Bush had finally restored the sense of security they lost on September 11. A massive overhaul of the intelligence and security services had prevented any new terrorist attacks on US soil. Al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts had been swiftly evicted from Afghanistan. And the massive technological superiority of the US had resulted in a stunning, quick victory in Iraq.

In Washington, the hawks were in the ascendancy. The man of the hour was Wolfowitz, the strategic thinker behind Rumsfeld who had driven the Iraq policy. The Pentagon was given control over Iraq, not only for the war but its political aftermath. But that critical decision by Bush is now under attack.

While the Administration justified the pre-emptive war against Iraq as a response to September 11, Wolfowitz and the hawks made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein their goal almost a decade earlier, after the end of the first Gulf War.

When Bush came to office, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were committed to removing Saddam Hussein and they had support from Bush`s Vice-President, Dick Cheney. Four daysafter the September 11 attacks, at a crisis cabinet meeting at Camp David, Wolfowitz first suggested that Iraq should be a target, along with al-Qaeda and Afghanistan, despite there being no Iraqi links to September 11.

At that time, Powell argued strongly against Wolfowitz`s line. He urged the building of a global coalition for an attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban and warned that key Muslim allies such as Pakistan and the Arab states would baulk if Iraq was targeted.

But by January 2002, the speed of the military victory in Afghanistan had emboldened the hawks and Bush. In his State of the Union Address in January, 2002, just four months after the September 11 attacks, Bush signalled he would follow the hawks and expand the war on terrorism to what he called rogue states.

Naming Iraq, North Korea and Iran as "an axis of evil", Bush accused them of "arming to threaten the peace of the world". And, he warned: "I will not wait on events."

Explicit in the Bush doctrine was a deep ideological belief, championed by Wolfowitz and Cheney, that the overthrow of rogue leaders such as Saddam would be wars of liberation, allowing democracy to flourish throughout the Middle East and turning the region away from terrorism.

"When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving people of the region will have a chance to promote values that can bring lasting peace," said Cheney. "Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart."

Cheney repeatedly claimed that the Iraqis would welcome the US as liberators. This flawed assumption, it now appears, was allowed to dictate the Pentagon`s postwar planning in Iraq.

"Everyone thought, based on discussions with the exile groups, one could very quickly put an interim government in place and then there would be a constitutional convention and a new democratic government would be elected and that could be done in fairly short order," said White, who saw the strategies. "The base plan had us removing fairly rapidly after the war roughly 50,000 soldiers per month. Clearly that is not happening. We are going in the opposite direction."

After the terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq three weeks ago, the US commander for the region, General John Abizaid, proclaimed that Iraq had become the central battlefield in America`s war on terrorism. US soldiers under his command are dying daily. And while he publicly backs Rumsfeld`s claim that he does not need more US troops, the general and his fellow officers wanted Bush to go back to the UN in the hope of securing more foreign troops.

Americans are beginning to question whether Bush`s response to the September 11 attacks is still on track. Right now, most are still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. His success in preventing any new attacks at home is still seen as a major achievement. But by September next year, if US soldiers are still dying in Iraq, the Bush doctrine, if not the Bush presidency, could be history.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/05/1062549019743.html

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John Muir on Bush`s JudeoRoman Metaphysics
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota

John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1838 and immigrated to America at the age of ten with his father. From 1848 to 1860, John lived on a central Wisconsin farm on the Wisconsin River, a flat land of sandy loam, red and white oak savanna, prairie grasses and evergreen forests. On this piece of Wisconsin farmland, John would learn lessons that would morph him into one of America`s most renouned naturalists, the father of several National Parks, and the icon of environmental preservation and the Sierra Club.

Earlier, in 1832, the Indian "problem" in Wisconsin had been quelled with the BlackHawk Massacre on the Mississippi River, and central Wisconsin had been made safe for eastern American and European immigrants to move in and open up new farmland to the plow and woodland to the saw. But there were still minor problems with some Indian tribes, e.g., the Potawatami, that had been peaceful and accepting of the white presence from the start and were allowed to roam more or less freely. Peaceful as they were, they sometimes found it to their advantage to steal corn from the large fields of European immigrant farmers, who typically chased them off with shotgun blasts into the air. On one of these occassions, John Muir learned a lesson about JudeoRoman religious attitudes and their influence on the way people think. His lesson is entirely relevant to comprehending and coping with Bush World.

"I well remember my father`s discussing with a Scotch neighbor, a Mr. George Mair, the Indian question as to the rightful ownership of the soil. Mr. Mair remarked one day that it was pitiful to see how the unfortunate Indians, children of Nature, living on the natural products of the soil, hunting, fishing and even cultivating small corn fields on the most fertile spots, were now being pushed ruthlessly back into narrower and narrower limits by alien races who were cutting off their means of livlihood.

"Father replied that surely it could never have been the intention of God to allow Indians to rove and hunt over so fertile a country and hold it forever in unproductive wilderness, while good Scotch and Irish and English farmers could put it to so much better use. Where an Indian required thousands of acres for his family, these acres in the hands of industrious, God-fearing farmers would support ten or a hundred times more people in a far more worthier manner, while at the same time helping to spread the gospel."

"Mr. Mair urged that such farming as our first immigrants were practicing was in many ways rude and full of mistakes of ignorance, yet, rude as it was, and ill-tilled as were most of our Wisconsin farms by unskilled, inexperienced settlers who had been merchants and mechanics and servants in the old countries, how should we like to have specially trained and educated farmers drive us out of our homes and farms, such as they were, making use of the same argument, that God could never have intended such ignorant, unprofitable, devastating farmers as we were to occupy land upon which scientific farmers could raise five or ten times as much on each acre as we did?"

"And I remember thinking that Mr. Mair had the better side of the argument. It then seemed to me that, whatever the final outcome might be, it was at this stage of the fight only an example of the rule of might with but little or no thought for the right or welfare of the other fellow if he were weaker; that `they should take who had the power, and they should keep who can,` as Wordsworth makes the marauding Scottish Highlanders say."

"Many of our neighbors toiled and sweated and grubbed themslves into their graves years before their natural dying days, in getting a living on a quarter-section of land and vaguely trying to get rich, while bread and raiment might have been serenely won on less than a fourth of this land, and time gained to get better acquainted with God."

John had that natural human tendency to think for himself (like most everyone else, until they get it beat out of them by traditional cultural "isms"). Otherwise, John`s father might well have taught him a lesson not worth learning, and yet backed by the authority of his father`s religion. Had John chosen to side with his father, he would have been a "saved" man, not from Biblical "evils" but from a life of naturalism, national contribution and a sure shot at human immortality.

John chose instead to side with their neighbor, Mr. Mair, in making a choice that many people never have set before them in such stark contrast. John chose empiricism over transcendentalism, human honesty over religious "faith," nascent Christianity over JudeoRoman religion, compassion over self-righteousness, and naturalness over supernaturalness. As a teenager, John was already on his way to greatness, for doing nothing more than thinking for himself, as the first Christian would have it. Like Thomas Jefferson, John Muir was a sect unto himself.

There is, of course, in the stance of John`s father, a not-very-well-concealed religious self-righteousness (currently running rampant in Bush World) based on presumed superior knowledge and technique, presumed superior culture and cultural purpose. Afterall, European immigrants were "christian," the JudeoRoman defenders of compassion and brotherhood in the world, even if defending required offending.

Treading in the footsteps of America`s fathers, Muir recognized that self-righteousness was built directly into JudeoRoman religion, because JudeoRomanism`s adherents were so dog-damned sure that they, and only they, knew the truth of the world and how it works. Afterall, the Pope had declared in 1870, when John was 32, that Catholicism was infallible, that no one but the Roman Pope knew anything, just never you mind people like Jefferson, Darwin, Lincoln and Pasteur. John recognized that nascent (uncompromised, pre-Constantine) Christianity takes the mind far beyond religion and rigid adherence to law and ritual, far beyond vengeance and self-righteousness, and far beyond supernaturalism. Nascent Christianity accomplishes this by never departing the honest human world.

The lesson to be learned here has to do with our metaphysics, those assumptions implicitly held as convictions, convictions about the land and our relationships to it, and convictions about ourselves and our relationships to each other. These assumptions are typically held subconsciously, learned early on and unquestioned. Quite because these assumptions are conveyed in the name of religion, they oftentimes survive for a lifetime without ever being brought to the surface for a little interrogation. Were they to do so, expose themselves in the light of day as they did in John Muir`s youthful experience, they would not long survive honest scrutiny. The sorry metaphysics of John` father certainly didn`t survive long in John`s youthful mind. All praise St. Socrates.

The metaphysics beneath JudeoRomanism are uniformly just that, assumptions, with no empirical basis and no human content. They range from being simply ludicrous to outrightly sociopathogenic. In John`s case, his father`s assumptions about the superior nature of western culture distills down to pure faith-based self-righteousness. The flip side to thinking of oneself as being superior, of course, is to think of others as being inferior. Here JudeoRomanism comes likewise to the fore with assumptions of "original sin," that some people (excepting those among the believers) are just born to be bad. Laws and prisons and punishments are necessary to make up for God`s failures. Here, we have the core of "Straussian" political philosophy, which divides the entire world into despotic rulers and the despotically ruled, wolves and sheep.

For John`s father, challenging one`s acquired religious metaphysics was tantamount to challenging one`s very being. Afterall, religion tells these people what they want to hear, that they are better people for being advocates of a compassionate Savior and believers in a vengeful, vindictive God. It follows that this "betterness" provides the right to control the less better people, their interpretations of reality and their behavior. John`s dad took a stance based on this assumption. The Bush administration has abandoned multilateralism abroad and the notion of civil rights at home, and it has dispensed with morality in launching an unprovoked war - all based on this JudeoRoman assumption.

It is always easier, and immensely dangerous, to stick with what others have told us, for a blind better or worse. It is always easier to deny our own experiences and our own eyes. It is always easier and safer to go with the cultural flow. It is in this way, by discouraging and denying individual thought, that grotesque old cultural ideas are able to rule the day. Nourishing faith instead of reason is absolutly essential to the Bush administration`s despotic dominion. America ends up with educated and would-be decent citizens abiding a mindless religiosity, the sheep being lead to the slaughter by men of enormous greed and covetness, and wearing shepard`s clothing. This is JudeoRoman Bushism.

So, it all comes down to metaphysics, does it not? Next time we are asked to support a right wing religious assault on our civil liberties as part of John Ashcroft`s contribution to Bush World, we must pull out our metaphysical assumptions and interrogate them. Do we really believe that we ought shoot at the Indians in the corn field? Do we really believe that wealthy "compassionate" conservatives are superior and deserving to make our decisions? Do we really believe in original sin and inherent human "evil" that requires we need Bush`s "Straussian" approaches of "fighting tyranny with tyranny?"

Or do we believe as John Muir believed, that we best be getting our metaphysics straightened out and start thinking for ourselves? Bush`s JudeoRoman metaphysics hold the people apart from God and apart from the pagan Land and Nature. Bush` metaphysics hold the people apart from each other, the good and the bad, with the self-defined good having a heavenly right to control in the name of their goodness.

Muir`s metaphysics hold the people as an integral part of God and the Land and Nature. Muir`s metaphysics hold that the people have common origins, a common God, and intertwined destinies on earth. Juxtaposed in this fashion, the choice does not seem particularly difficult. But, first one must get a grasp of one`s own metaphysics. This is accomplished with a little introspective attention, not to what one thinks and says, but to what one does. This pretty much leaves the Bush administration without hope.

To paraphrase Jefferson, it is less dangerous to think for oneself and be wrong than to think one needn`t think for oneself at all, just because someone else claims to have it all figured out. In Jefferson`s words, "he who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." It is America`s reliance on minds filled with falsehoods and errors, and the resulting cultural mindlessness, that has gotten us to where we are, under the despotic dominion of Bush`s JudeoRoman church-state.

"Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance." Thomas Jefferson, 1786 --09.05.03

-------------------------------- Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Keystone, South Dakota. His primary concern is the development of a rigorously-definable global philosophy and ethics suitable for a global democracy. His new book, "Jefferson`s Eyes • Deist Views of Bush World," can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at [e-mail].

John Muir wurde 1838 in Schottland geboren. Als er elf Jahre
alt war, wanderte seine Familie in die USA aus und siedelte sich auf einer Farm in Wisconsin an. Dort durchstreifte er gemeinsam mit
seinem jüngeren Bruder die Natur und tat sich als Erfinder hervor.

Um sich weiter zu qualifizieren begann Muir 1860 ein Studium an der University of Wisconsin, das er aber nach drei Jahren abbrach.
Nach einer fünfjährigen, abenteuerlichen Reise durch die USA und Kanada traf er schließlich in Kalifornien ein und siedelte sich in der Sierra Nevada an. Durch mitreißende, naturkundliche Publikationen machte Muir auf sich aufmerksam. Er verfaßte zehn Bücher und mehr
als 300 Aufsätze, in denen er sich z. B. für den Schutz der späteren Nationalparke Yosemite, Sequoia und Grand Canyon einsetzte.

1892 gründete John Muir den Sierra Club und trug seit 1901 durch seine engen persönlichen Kontakte zu Präsident Theodore Roosevelt maßgeblich zur Entwicklung des Nationalparksystems bei.
John Muir war der vielleicht berühmteste und einflußreichste Natur-und Umweltschützer der Vereinigten Staaten
John Muir starb 1914 in Los Angeles.

1976 wurde Muir zum größten Bürger Kaliforniens ernannt.

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Bush Says "Divine Intervention" Responsible
For Higher Labor Day Gas Prices
++++++++++++++++++++++++

CRAWFORD, TX (IWR Satire) -- President Bush today explained the annual rise in Labor Day gas prices as part of God`s plan to reward loyal conservatives.
"When people ask me why gas prices always seem to rise on holiday weekends, I tell them it`s all due to the divine intervention of Lord. He knows that the conservatives, who control the oil, gas and energy reserves in this country, occasionally need a helping hand. He knows these kind hearted conservatives would never price gouge the American people on gasoline.

Shoot, if it wasn`t for God naturally driving up gasoline prices on holidays, prices could rise when demand was lower and then my campaign contributors wouldn`t be adequately compensated.

You see, God knows that. It`s just the Lord`s way of being compassionate to conservatives," said Mr. Bush.

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Bush seeks an exit strategy as war threatens his career
The President will make a dramatic U-turn on Iraq in a TV broadcast tonight to try to salvage his hopes of re-election amid Americans` growing hostility to the casualties and chaos. Report by Paul Harris in New York, Jason Burke and Gaby Hinsliff

Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

George Bush will attempt tonight to convince the American people that he has a workable `exit strategy` to free his forces from the rapidly souring conflict in Iraq, as Britain prepares to send in thousands more troops to reinforce the faltering coalition effort.

Frantic negotiations continued this weekend in New York to secure a United Nations resolution that would open the way for other countries to deploy peacekeeping troops to help after Bush - with one eye on next year`s presidential election - signalled a change of heart on America`s refusal to allow any but coalition forces into Iraq.

The President has been left with little practical choice. Concern among the American public has reached such a pitch that, with his approval ratings plummeting, he will deliver a televised address to the nation tonight to reassure them that they do not face another Vietnam. With their sons and daughters dying daily in guerrilla attacks, Americans may now be becoming more frightened of being bogged down in a hostile country than of the terrorist threat against which Bush has pledged to defend them.

Meanwhile in London, with MPs due to return to Westminster tomorrow after the long summer recess in no mood to be generous, the Prime Minister faces fresh scrutiny of Britain`s role in the rapidly souring peace. Bush`s change of heart over the UN is potentially good news for Tony Blair, who has long discreetly tried to persuade him down this route: if successful, it could eventually allow Britain to scale back its troops, and help repair the diplomatic rift with the European Union caused by the abandoning of the UN process before the war.

In the short term, however, troop numbers will have to rise instead. Geoff Hoon, the embattled Defence Secretary, will make a statement to the Commons tomorrow. He is expected to confirm the departure of up to 2,000 British soldiers to the Basra area: the first 120 soldiers are leaving Cyprus this weekend. With routine defence questions tabled for the Commons tomorrow as well, and two debates on defence later this week, rebel Labour MPs will be queuing up to condemn the handling of the peace where once they condemned the war.

The question now being asked on both sides of the Atlantic is how the allies could find themselves in such trouble. One key mistake both Washington and London made was to assume that, once Baghdad fell, countries such as France and Germany, which had stood on the sidelines, would relent and offer peacekeeping troops. They underestimated the unexpected domestic popularity of anti-war leaders.

`That was the diplomatic advice. That was what we believed would happen, and it didn`t,` said one Whitehall source. `What we were unable to read was how popular the decision [to stay out of Iraq] would be in the long run for the leaders who took it.`

In New York, diplomats were upbeat last night about the chances of securing a UN resolution allowing troops to operate under a UN mandate but with the US retaining operational command. One source in the office of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said such an agreement could `transform the occupation`.

Complications remain, however. The French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans are playing it tough, aware that they have Bush over a barrel, British sources say. `They can squeeze more concessions out of Bush at the moment and they know it,` one source said.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who flew to Lake Garda in Italy for an informal meeting with his European Union counterparts late last week, is attempting to mediate between EU governments and the White House, but have want a fundamental shift in US policy on Iraq. Sticking points include a firm timetable for handing over power to Iraqi authorities, drawing up a constitution and holding elections.

Other anti-war nations, such as Russia, China and Germany, have signalled that they expect a deal. `It is a remarkable change for the better,` Chile`s UN ambassador and Security Council member Heraldo Munoz told The Observer.

After being sidelined in the build-up to the war the UN is now moving centre stage, but it the risks of becoming embroiled in a dangerous, unpredictable mission means few nations will be willing to take casualties without securing serious concessions. `The US has come seeking assistance and there will be a price for it,` said one senior UN diplomat.

But Bush has now accepted the warnings of his Secretary of State Colin Powell and the more hawkish Under Secretary John Bolton that there will be a worse price if he doesn`t back down. Bush`s approval ratings have sunk to around 55 per cent - around 20 points lower than those of his father after the 1991 Gulf War.

Bush Senior still went on to lose the next election: and the American economy is more fragile now than it was then. The nation can ill afford the extra $60 billion the White House is expected to ask Congress to occupy and rebuild Iraq next year, and sabotage to Iraqi oil pipelines and infrastructure means oil revenues will not rescue them.

Although the polls show Bush would still beat any likely Democrat contender, Bolton argues that approval ratings are a better guide. Voters feel it is unpatriotic to threaten to vote against a President during a war, so the polls could underestimate Bush`s plight.

The Democrats, who once saw Iraq as their weakness, now scent blood: last week`s live televised debate between eight Democratic candidates echoed to easy potshots at the President, with front-runner Howard Dean saying it was time for troops to come home.

Yet more than Bush`s political survival resting on the outcome of the talks: with less domestic support than Bush for the war to start with, Blair is even more vulnerable to public anger if British casualties go rising. A leaked memo from Straw, published in the Daily Telegraph last week, warned that up to 5,000 extra British troops might be necessary or the Iraqi mission risked failure.

Its emergence has, however, only fuelled suspicions at Westminster about the skill with which Straw is now positioning himself over Iraq. He has managed to escape being summoned before the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly, even though his department originally employed the scientist, or embroiled in the wider row about intelligence in the run-up to the war.

With the departure of key Blairites such as former Health Secretary Alan Milburn from the Cabinet, Straw is now considered a possible contender as the `anyone but Gordon` candidate to succeed Tony Blair, and MPs report he has been cosying up to the Parliamentary Labour Party since the early summer. With Blair facing another three weeks of minute scrutiny by Lord Hutton over every twist and turn of the run-up to the Iraq war, nerves are taut.

Similarly in Washington, a rapid revision of the pecking order in the White House is going on, with the hawks wrongfooted by the unravelling of their thesis on Iraq. `They were true believers, and are stunned by the fact that its not worked out,` said the University of San Francisco political scientist Richard Stoll.

A classified report drawn up by the US US Joint Chiefs of Staff and leaked last week blamed hurried and inadequate planning for the crisis, with too great a focus on an invasion and not enough on organising the peace. As the leading dove, Powell`s stock is now rising in the White House, while that of the President`s hawkish National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is judged to be falling.

`Condi Rice is in trouble,` said one Whitehall source.

`She has been consistently wrong since this thing started, wrong about what would happen, and Colin Powell has been consistently right.` The Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s insistence during a trip to Iraq last week that the situation was `getting better every day` is also ringing increasingly hollow.

Rumbling in the background in America, meanwhile, is the same debate that is at the foreground of Westminster politics: question marks over intelligence. Although the official line in Washington is that weapons of mass destruction are still being looked for, there is no sign of the 38,000 litres of deadly botulintoxin or the 25,000 litres of anthrax or the 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent claimed by Bush in his State of the Union speech last January as a justification for going to war.

The President has much to explain to the American people when he takes to the airwaves tonight.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Screwing the public
Andrew Phillips
Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

The idea of Hollywood caricaturing Wall Street by exposing someone with the Bunyanesque name of Grasso grabbing $140 million a year would be reckoned over the top. Yet it would be true. To add to the symbolism, the gentleman concerned heads the New York Stock Exchange.

Although we have largely become anaesthetised to the shameless rewards fat cat corporate honchos and City big hitters award themselves, Richard Grasso`s package carries grotesquery to obscenity. Some think that, unconstrained by anything but increasing, and increasingly ineffectual, regulation Anglo-American market capitalism carries the seeds of its own self-destruction.

Shame is not much in evidence on the pay front these days. It is almost as quaint as the notion of greed, which has been legitimised as the indispensable motive force of modern capitalism. Contrastingly, in the domestic lives of these high riders their children will be firmly finger-wagged for taking more than their fair share of the strawberries.

The long process of separation of work values from family values, never a workable dichotomy, has led on to invasion of the latter by the former. The demoralising effects have seeped into the very lifeblood of society at large and the world beyond. The anti-globalisation movement is partly fuelled by it. So, too, an element of the noxious brew out of which has come the deathly antipathy between `the West` and the world of Islam derives from the insatiable, aggressive, amoral materialism into which we are seen to have declined.

Though of course markets need competition, where that lapses into crude acquisitiveness which chokes other essential virtues, community life and society itself are put at risk. For example, we now experience widespread work obsessiveness which prevents a sensible work/life balance, affects our physical and psychic health and inadvertently squeezes out our relationships. Ironically, it also often saps the very capacity to enjoy the material fruits of such (often self-imposed) sacrifices. The unsustainability for those in this bind is predictable and already revealing itself.

As to the impact on the public realm, the huge benefits from the City of employment, tax contribution and service exports also have to be set against intangible yet highly pernicious consequences.

For example, an all-encompassing work regime has caused a substantial disengagement of many if not most of our business and professional leaders in civic and public life, locally and internationally. But a far greater evil is the example which elevated greed sets and the emulation it begets. In a society in thrall to money, sex and celebrity, the distinction and justification proferred as telephone-number earnings `lawfully made` and theft is not at all clear to those at the bottom of the pile.

The pathetic failure, among a myriad examples, of the remuneration committee of New York Stock Exchange to stop Grasso`s piracy will confirm to the cynics (ie most people now) what snouts-in-the-trough, you-scratch-my-back affairs high finance has become.

The substantial minority of disaffected young adults looking at all this from below will also note that, not content with their massive salaries and bonuses, many of the self-same grandees have been caught screwing the public by systematically the markets. Forget Enron et al. That was the work of a few bad apples but the spectacular frauds perpetrated on Wall Street was by more than 50 of New York`s biggest investment banks during the collapse of the hi-tech boom, culminating last autumn in SEC fines on 10 of them of $1.35 billion, with many more billions worth of civil claims now flooding in. The fact that among the malefactors were many of the US banks which now dominate the City of London confirms the extent and depth of the crisis. Chaucer put it neatly 600 years ago. `If gold rust, what will iron do?`

The question is whether implosion is preventable. Until some very bold and wise spirits in London and New York really confront these complicated and deep-seated problems with the same rigour, skill and commitment which they devote to enriching themselves, plus some simple morality, the answer must be `no`. Pray God they do. Too much hangs on it.

· Andrew Phillips is a practising solicitor and a life peer


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Four steps to peace in Iraq
America must share the burden

Leader
Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

No one, except a few hawks in Washington, expected it to be easy. Now the difficulties in restoring security to Iraq and setting the country on the road to peace and prosperity are becoming clear. The coming days and weeks will be crucial. Failure in Iraq is unthinkable. Afghanistan was allowed to slide into chaos in the early Nineties and, almost exactly two years after 11 September, it is useful to remember where that led. And, notwithstanding our own security interests, we owe a duty to the Iraq people. Having liberated them, we cannot now abandon them.

The Americans` application to the United Nations for more assistance from the international community last week is an implicit admission that Plan A has failed. Though most Iraqi people have yet to take up arms against their occupiers, the security situation in the country is fast deteriorating. With militants, whether Sunni extremists, Baathist diehards, Muslim Mujahideen or a combination of all three, apparently able to strike at will, that failure is now manifest. We need a Plan B.

Washington`s confession of weakness has provoked unhelpful `I told you so` smugness. There is an irony in a bullishly unilateral American administration asking for the aid of the nations and an institution it belittled so recently. But no one should indulge in point-scoring. The worst thing that could happen would be for the US, sick of a $3 billion-a-month price tag and mounting casualties, to pull out entirely. We need America`s manpower, financial resources and its can-do attitude.

And, for once, the US needs the rest of the world. This offers an opportunity to Washington to begin to repair the damage done to international relations in recent months. Tony Blair, with his much vaunted special relationship with President Bush, is in an especially strong position to help broker an agreement that smooths over old disputes.

The basis of this agreement - this Plan B - must be an acknowledgment that, if Western Europe and states such as Russia, Turkey, India and Pakistan contribute troops, they have a significant stake in policy in Iraq. The Americans are wrong to resist power-sharing.

First, Paul Bremer, America`s proconsul in Iraq, should go. His autocratic rule has become a symbol of all that is wrong with the administration of the country. He should be replaced by a figure, sanctioned by the UN, who has the backing of the international community and who will have a chance to win over the Iraqi people. No civil administration headed by an American is going to be viewed with anything but suspicion.

Second, Bremer`s huge error in disbanding the Iraqi army should be reversed as soon as possible. The obvious place to look for more troops is Iraq itself. Most Iraqi soldiers would be proud to serve their country again. If some are former Baathists, then so be it.

Third, reconstruction contracts must be distributed more broadly. At the moment, US firms have a virtual monopoly. Somewhere between $30bn and $100bn worth of work is needed. This huge pot of cash should be used to reward states which put their soldiers at risk.

Finally, any administration must be far clearer about the timetable for a transition to genuine Iraqi democratic rule. Earlier this month, Lateef Rashid, a Kurdish politician, called in these pages for the international community to stop treating Iraqis `like children`. We should heed his words. Plan A failed. Plan B must succeed. There will be no chance for a Plan C.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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America gets touchy about `self-dating`
Lawrence Donegan in San Francisco
Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

After years of mercilessly chronicling America`s politics, social mores and cultural hang-ups, cartoonist Gary Trudeau has discovered that there is at least one private activity that remains taboo; masturbation, or, as one of the characters in the latest instalment of his famed Doonesbury strip calls it, `self-dating`.

One-in-a-bed sex romp, masturbation; call it what you will, it`s still a notion too far for an estimated 300 of the 700 newspapers across the US that regularly carry the cartoon.

Instead of enjoying a new strip today - in which Trudeau`s characters discuss a recent study published in New Scientist suggesting that frequent masturbation might help prevent men developing prostrate cancer in later life - readers of those easily shocked newspapers will be offered a strip that was first published last year.

`We felt it was something our readers would not like, and we did not have a good reason for running it,` said Diane Bacha, assistant managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , whose initial reluctance to publish the `self-dating` strip sparked a prudish debate among editors about masturbation.

`It seems kind of obvious to us that this was beyond the reasonable boundaries of good taste,` said Frank Fellone, deputy editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. ` Other newspapers may feel differently.`

Coming to Trudeau`s defence was the St Louis Post-Dispatch , which will publish today`s Doonesbury . `Our policy is not to censor our comic strips,` a spokeswoman said.

Nevertheless, Universal Press, which syndicates the cartoon across America, agreed to offer newspapers an alternative instalment. `For some papers, the use of the m-word per se , no matter how deftly it is referenced, may cross the line,` Universal`s editor Lee Salem said

This is not the first time that newspapers have refused to run Doonesbury . In the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, at least two editors pulled an instalment that accused George W Bush of abusing cocaine.

Trudeau, himself, doesn`t appear unduly worried about this latest spat. `There are certain words that trigger a response simply because they`ve never before appeared in a family-friendly context like the comics - "Masturbation" is obviously a loaded word, but as a descriptor, it`s not actually vulgar or coarse,` he said. `And the strip in question isn`t actually about masturbation or cancer, it`s about the inability of two particular adults to find a mutual comfort zone to discuss a serious subject.`

Nevertheless, Trudeau said his decision to allow newspapers to run an alternative strip did not mean that he would start supplying replacements to appease the sensibilities of easily offended editors.

`Younger readers are unlikely to be shocked or confused by anything they find in Doonesbury ,` he said.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
Die Homepage:
http://www.doonesbury.com/

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Und gleich das umstrittene `Machwerk` schon vor der NYTimes

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Paying the price
Even if the UN takes on a bigger role in Iraq, George Bush`s prewar tactics mean that Iraq will remain primarily an American problem, writes Simon Tisdall

Simon Tisdall
Friday September 5, 2003
The Guardian

If the Bush administration is expecting grateful thanks for its proposal to give the UN a bigger role in Iraq, it is going to be sorely disappointed. If the White House thinks that as a result, foreign peacekeeping forces and funds will soon be flooding into occupied Iraq, it will likely be disappointed about that, too.

It is plain that the US push for a new security council resolution does not derive from newly rediscovered respect for the UN. President George Bush and his senior officials were happy to bully and bypass the UN in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It is a grim irony that they are now trudging back, cap in hand, to seek the help of the same organisation they resoundingly rubbished.

Most countries will be broadly pleased by the prodigal`s return. But that does not mean they will now do everything the US wants. And even if they forgive, they will not forget Bush`s behaviour. Whatever they agree to do to help will come at a correspondingly higher price - if it comes at all.

It is also plain to all that the US proposal for new Iraq resolution proceeds from a position of weakness, not strength. The problems facing the US (and British) military forces in Iraq have been steadily worsening. The overall security situation is dire for Iraqis and occupiers alike.

But the US and Britain are locked in, manacled by chains of their own making. UN resolution 1483, passed last May, appoints the two countries as Iraq`s official occupying powers. Their legal obligations, not least to provide security, are unlimited and of indefinite duration.

The financial cost is also becoming unsupportable, as a long overdue, increasingly candid debate within the US is finally making plain to the American public. The Pentagon, having spent its $79bn (£50bn) additional allocation for the war, is reportedly looking for between $60-80bn to maintain current operations.

Reconstruction costs, if the security situation ever allows reconstruction to get properly underway, will add tens of billions more to the bill, as the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer says. Despite rash prewar assumptions, Iraq`s sabotaged and decrepit oil industry will not provide any significant reimbursement for many years to come.

The political cost to Bush and the Republican party is similarly rising. As America moves into its election season, polls show steadily falling support for the administration`s Iraq policy coupled with worries about Bush`s economic management. That is a potentially knock-out combination, as the Democrats are belatedly realising.

The White House`s resort to the UN is thus seen internationally for what it is: less a strategic choice, more a cry for help.

It is true, as secretary of state Colin Powell argues, that all responsible countries, including those most vehemently opposed to the war, have an interest in a stable, peaceful, democratic and prosperous Iraq. But disagreement on how best to achieve that objective did not begin last year. It has lain at the heart of more than a decade of arguments, pre-dating the first Gulf war.

In the view of France`s president, Jacques Chirac, and Germany`s chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, the new US draft resolution, even with its latest concessions, still does not provide the answer. Speaking in Dresden on Thursday, they said the fact that the US still insists on retaining pre-eminent military and political control in Iraq is unacceptable.

They want executive political power to be handed over to an interim Iraqi government "without delay", under the auspices of the UN, rather than have Bremer and the coalition provisional authority set up by resolution 1483 dictate the pace and scope of the transition. "We are quite far removed from what we believe is the priority objective, which is the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible," Chirac said.

These statements mark the opening of another protracted UN negotiation, with Britain - the current security council president - in the familiar role of US-Europe go-between. A resolution will probably eventually be agreed. But it will not happen quickly. And the US, in its currently weakened position, will be forced to concede more ground.

Yet, as already noted, agreement on a new resolution does not necessarily mean sufficient foreign troops will make their way to Iraq any time soon; it certainly does not mean the attacks on the US and British forces will cease.

While no disrespect is intended to India and other possible troop contributors, their presence may simply increase the number of targets for Iraqi gunmen and bombers while doing little to enhance overall security. The arrival of more "allies" will not suddenly mean America can start bringing its boys home. Thanks to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & co, they are going to be stuck there for a long time to come.

Nor does agreement at the UN mean that next month`s Madrid Iraq donors` conference will even begin to find the enormous sums of money required to get Iraq up off its knees. Security council resolutions are cheap; but true, long-term nation-building is not.

There is not much spare donor cash around these days; just ask the Afghan government. Nor does any UN agreement mean that the tap will be opened on all-important private sector investment. Initial excitement over opportunities in Iraq has evaporated. For businessmen, Iraq now looks like a very dodgy proposition and that perception will be hard to shake.

One episode this week shows how very difficult is the US position in Iraq as its tries to rally support. For weeks it has been urging Turkey to send troops to help with the peacekeeping effort. Despite the well-founded misgivings of Iraq`s anti-Turkish Kurds and the Turkish public, the Ankara government is considering doing so.

Yet in almost his first remarks since assuming his post, Iraq`s new foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said on Thursday that the Turks (and other neighbours) were not welcome in his country and could add to its instability by pursuing "their own political agendas". That statement caused some anger in Ankara.

So who will decide whether or not the Turkish army comes? Iraq`s foreign minister and its governing council? The Turks themselves? The UN? Or the US administrator, Bremer, and US military commanders? And if they do come, will their presence merely intensify the security chaos?

Here in microcosm is the problem of governing Iraq. Overall, it is going to take many years to sort out. And like it or not, Bush in his infinite wisdom has ensured, whatever anybody else does or does not do, that Iraq will remain primarily an American problem.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Clare Short: The corrosion of integrity at Labour`s heart
07 September 2003


In the past 10 days we have seen a set of milestones. Alastair Campbell resigned. Mrs Kelly gave us the human face of the tragedy of Dr Kelly. And senior representatives of Defence Intelligence told us that the dossier was "over egged" and that "the spin merchants" had too big a role.

In my view, all these events are related. They reflect the disease that has corroded the integrity of the Blair government. We have a Prime Minister so focused on presentation that there is inadequate consideration of the merits of policy. At the same time, there has been a massive centralisation of power into No 10. And beneath the smiling demeanour, a ruthlessness that is accompanied by a lack of respect for proper procedure, and a willingness to be "economical with the actuality".

Much of the commentary on Campbell`s resignation reflected how deep the disease has gone. Political journalists seem to think that presentation is politics, and therefore Campbell a central figure. But history is being rewritten. Labour was set to win the election under John Smith`s leadership. There was clear evidence from authoritative sources that Tory decline and Labour`s restoration of trust - including on the economy - meant that we were very likely to win. Smith had views on presentation that rang loud with wisdom. He said that commercial organisations do not ask what products they should sell. They are committed to soap powder or beans, and then they ask advice on how best to present their product. If only Labour had remembered this distinction.

It is untrue that Labour was unelectable before Tony Blair and Campbell took over. Most of the hardest reforms had been taken forward by Neil Kinnock and many of us who served on the National Executive Committee. Expulsion of the Militant MPs and revision of much of the policy on which we fought the 1983 election, including unilateralism, was complete before Blair joined the National Executive. It was also clear that the party was ready for power, and was determined to be united and disciplined. I have no doubt that Blair and Campbell`s ruthless focus on presentation increased our majority, but it is untrue that they were responsible for preparing the party for power.

Much of the success of Labour`s first term came from Labour ministers implementing Labour policy - full employment, the minimum wage, devolution, tax credits to make work worthwhile, a strong commitment to debt relief and development, better achievement in schools, improved public spending and so on. Spin was a problem: initiatives and new expenditure were announced and re-announced so that people began to doubt the truth of the announcement. But overall we did reasonably well and were re-elected to a second term.

But in the second term there was hubris. The Cabinet has not functioned as a decision making body since 1997. There was a bit more discussion in the second term, but it was always short and never authoritative. By then people were promoted only if willing to bend the knee to No 10. I understood Charles Clarke to be against top-up fees before he became Secretary of State for Education. And Patricia Hewitt promised she would help block the disgraceful sale of a defective and unaffordable British Aerospace air traffic control system to Tanzania. But then she said she couldn`t "because of No 10". If you toe the line, No 10 briefs favourably. If you run your own department and stick to the merits of policy and refuse to kowtow, they brief against. Journalists write up the anonymous briefings, and this is how people are seen to be rising or falling. It has nothing to do with competence or achievements in the real world. Campbell and almost all our political journalists were joined at the hip on spin. It only works because journalists co-operate, and this becomes our political discourse.

And this brings me to Dr Kelly. He, like many of us, believed that Saddam Hussein was committed to programmes to develop chemical and biological weapons and had been defying the UN for too long. He, like many of us, believed that action was needed. But it seems that he, like others in Defence Intelligence, was attached to accuracy. He objected to the exaggeration of the threat from Saddam`s programmes and the falsity of the 45-minute claim. It was part of his job description to brief journalists. He - among others - let those views be known. They appeared in many press articles, and it is now clear that the Today programme story was fundamentally true. In my view, the BBC would have been at fault if it had not broadcast it. But our Prime Minister told the Hutton inquiry that once Campbell was mentioned it became "no longer a small item". Then No 10 went to war with the BBC. The issue was presentational. There was no policy or national interest at stake. And yet, once Dr Kelly came forward and said he had talked to Andrew Gilligan, the power of the state was focused on using Dr Kelly to get Gilligan. Dr Kelly`s wife has described what this did to her husband. We politicians volunteer for the role, but when the press is after you and No 10 briefing against you, life can be hell. And I am sure that the briefing describing this dedicated international expert as merely a middle level technical officer hurt him to the quick.

Dr Kelly found the pressure of No 10, the Ministry of Defence, the Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the threat to his pension and job, and "being treated like a fly" too much to bear. I think most people would break under that strain. To use Dr Kelly in this way - to get at the BBC - was an abuse of power.

The Prime Minister has told us that the claim that he had knowingly exaggerated the threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons would be a resignation issue. It is now clear that the threat was exaggerated. And that John Scarlett - Campbell`s fig leaf - had gone native with the No 10 entourage. If he did not know members of the intelligence service were unhappy with the dossier, then he wasn`t doing his job adequately.

All of this came before we were misled on the promised second UN resolution. And on top of this, there is the total negligence of failing to prepare for the inevitability of a speedy military victory. Many, many lives have been lost and are being lost in Iraq because of this incompetence.

This sorry tale shames my party, Government and country.

Clare Short is MP for Birmingham Ladywood

Alan Watkins is away
7 September 2003 10:03

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Britain and US will back down over WMDs
By Andy McSmith, Raymond Whitaker and Geoffrey Lean
07 September 2003


Britain and the US have combined to come up with entirely new explanations of why they went to war in Iraq as inspectors on the ground prepare to report that there are no weapons of mass destruction there.

The "current and serious" threat of Iraq`s WMD was the reason Tony Blair gave for going to war, but last week the Prime Minister delivered a justification which did not mention the weapons at all. On the same day John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for arms control, said that whether Saddam Hussein`s regime actually possessed WMD "isn`t really the issue".

The 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group, sent out in May to begin an intensive hunt for the elusive weapons, is expected to report this week that it has found no WMD hardware, nor even any sign of active programmes. The inspectors, headed by David Kay, a close associate of President George Bush, are likely to say the only evidence it has found is that the Iraqi government had retained a group of scientists who had the expertise to restart the weapons programme at any time.

Foreshadowing the report, Mr Bolton said the issue was not weapons, or actual programmes, but "the capability that Iraq sought to have ... WMD programmes". Saddam, he claimed, kept "a coterie" of scientists he was preserving for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhindered by international constraints. "Whether he possessed them today or four years ago isn`t really the issue," he said. "As long as that regime was in power, it was determined to get nuclear, chemical and biological weapons one way or another. Until that regime was removed from power, that threat remained - that was the purpose of the military action."

Last week Mr Blair declared at his Downing Street press conference: "Let me say why I still believe Iraq was the right thing to do and why it is essential that we see it through. If we succeed in putting Iraq on its feet as a stable, prosperous and democratic country, then what a huge advertisement that is for the values of democracy and human rights, and what a huge defeat it is for these terrorists who want to establish extremist states."

He added that if anyone were to ask the average Iraqi whether they would prefer to be still living under the old regime, "they would look at you as if you were completely crazy".

This contrasts starkly with what the Prime Minister said in his speech to the Commons on 18 March, the day when MPs voted to endorse the decision to go to war. Then Mr Blair asserted, "I have never put the justification for action as regime change."

Just as Britain and the US send more troops to Iraq and seek international help to restore stability, it has emerged that Mr Blair, almost alone among leaders of major nations, is to stay away from the opening of the UN General Assembly later this month. The development is bound to increase the Prime Minister`s isolation following his decision to join the US in going to war without a UN resolution, and has led to speculation that he is reluctant to leave the country at a time when his conduct is under examination in the Hutton inquiry.

Downing Street yesterday refused to comment on the grounds that it does not disclose the Prime Minister`s movements in advance. But this has not applied to other international summits, where his attendance has been announced well in advance.
7 September 2003 10:05

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Videoaufnahmen von 911:


September 7, 2003
A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked
By JAMES GLANZ


They did not even see the pale fleck of the airplane streak across the corner of the video camera`s field of view at 8:46 a.m. But the camera, pointed at the twin towers from the passenger seat of an S.U.V. in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, kept rolling when the plane disappeared for an instant and then a silent, billowing cloud of smoke and dust slowly emerged from the north tower, as if it had sprung a mysterious kind of leak.

The S.U.V., carrying an immigrant worker from the Czech Republic who was making a video postcard to send home, then entered the mouth of the tunnel and emerged, to the shock of the three men inside the vehicle, nearly at the foot of the now burning tower.

The camera, pointed upward, zoomed in and out, and then, with a roar in the background that built to a piercing screech, it locked on the terrifying image of the second plane as it soared, like some awful bird of prey, almost straight overhead, banking steeply, and blasted into the south tower.

It was not until almost two weeks later that the worker, Pavel Hlava, even realized that he had captured the first plane on video. Even then, Mr. Hlava, who speaks almost no English, did not realize that he had some of the rarest footage collected of the World Trade Center disaster. His is the only videotape known to have recorded both planes on impact, and only the second image of any kind showing the first strike.

The tape — a kind of accidentally haunting artifact — has surfaced publicly only now, on the eve of the second anniversary of the attacks, after following the most tortuous and improbable of paths, from an insular circle of Czech-American working-class friends and drinking buddies.

At one point, a friend of Mr. Hlava`s wife traded a copy of the tape to another Czech immigrant for a bar tab at a pub in Ridgewood, Queens. Mr. Hlava and his brother, Josef, who was also in the S.U.V. on Sept. 11, tried at various times to sell the tape, both in New York and in the Czech Republic. But with little sophistication about the news media and no understanding of the tape`s significance, the brothers had no success.

Eventually, a woman happened to learn of the tape from the pub deal at a school where one of the Czech immigrants was studying English. She brought it to the attention of a freelance news photographer who doubled as her ballroom dancing partner, and that man, Walter Karling, brought the tape to The New York Times.

For all the tape`s imperfections — the first plane is seen distantly, and Mr. Hlava`s hand is understandably far from steady at many points during the hourlong record — federal investigators who are studying the collapse of the towers say that they are now trying to obtain a copy for the data it may contain. A lack of information on the first strike, for example, has posed a major challenge to engineers trying to understand exactly why the north tower crumbled. The tape could, for example, help investigators pin down the precise speed at which the first plane was moving when it struck the tower.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Hlava said through a translator — David Melichar, who with Mr. Karling now describes himself as Mr. Hlava`s agent — that the language barrier had much to do with why no one beyond his family and friends had seen the tape. Finally, Mr. Hlava said, so much time had passed that he doubted anyone would still be interested.

"All his friends, they told him, `Hey, you made a mistake. You waited too long.` `` Mr. Melichar said.

Mr. Melichar also made it clear that the driver of the S.U.V., a Ford Explorer, had strong objections to releasing the tape. And because the driver, a Russian native named Mike Cohen, is Mr. Hlava`s boss on his construction job, that wish carried a certain weight.

"Three thousand people died in that place," Mr. Cohen said when reached on his cell phone on Friday. "I told him the day he`s gonna sell that film, he`s not gonna work for me anymore." Mr. Karling said yesterday morning that The New York Times had not paid for the tape, and that it had not been sold to any television station. ABC is scheduled to show the tape for the first time on the program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" at 9 a.m. today. ABC did not pay for the tape, said Tom Bettag, executive producer of the program.

But last night, Mr. Karling, who said he was acting as Mr. Hlava`s agent, asserted that ABC did not get the tape from Mr. Hlava and would be violating his copyright if it was broadcast. He warned the network that Mr. Hlava was prepared to take legal action to protect his copyright.

A spokesman for ABC could not be reached for comment early today.

In the months after the attack, the tape bounced around in Mr. Hlava`s apartment in Ridgewood. Once, he found it in his daughter`s closet, Mr. Hlava said; another time, in a drawer in his living room table.

On one occasion he noticed that his son was playing with the video camera and erasing the tape. Mr. Hlava snatched the camera away before either of the plane impacts had been wiped away.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Mr. Cohen was driving with Mr. Hlava, who was in the passenger seat, to a job site in Pennsylvania. Normally he would have driven around Manhattan. But Mr. Hlava`s brother Josef had just arrived from the Czech Republic and was coming along on the trip to Pennsylvania. So, Mr. Cohen recalled, Mr. Hlava asked him if he would drive past the towers — Josef had never seen them up close.

Mr. Cohen had no objection, and he headed for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. As they drove, he listened to talk radio in English and spoke to the Hlava brothers in Russian, which they understood by virtue of having grown up in a country that was part of the Eastern Bloc. As the brothers spoke to each other in Czech, occasional one- or two-word exchanges in English also punctuated the conversation.

Pavel Hlava also decided to try out a new Sony video camera by recording everything he could see on this trip — traffic, billboards, the cityscape — and sending it back to his family in Europe. So, as the S.U.V. drove beneath the Gowanus Expressway toward the tunnel entrance, he zoomed in on the twin towers, which rose up beyond the other side of the East River, northwest of him.

"Now they are beautifully visible," Mr. Hlava narrated in the manner of home movies. "Do you see that? The two tallest buildings in New York: 411 meters."

Several officials at the Czech Center in Manhattan, who listened to the tape and translated portions, said that Mr. Hlava`s accent was heavy with the cadences of a depressed mining region centered on a town called Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Mr. Hlava said he spent many years working the mines near Ostrava before losing his job and coming to the United States in 1999.

The S.U.V. continued toward the tunnel. Panning left, above the buses and delivery trucks and cars in the toll plaza, Mr. Hlava zoomed in on a poster for the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Collateral Damage." A big yawn, presumably by Mr. Hlava, punctuated the tape. Then he panned to the right.

There were the twin towers again, geometric shapes in whites and pale blues against the slightly deeper blue of the sky. The tops of the towers stuck up above a white railing in the foreground, the south tower closer, the north tower with its television antenna behind.

Mr. Hlava would remember that as he zoomed in at that moment, he was looking at the camera`s relatively low-resolution LCD display, not through the viewfinder. He did not see the whitish object move nearly parallel to the top of the railing, toward the towers. His camera was jostling around slightly as the object went behind the northeast corner of the north tower.

What looked at first like a sort of avalanche of dust spurting from the tower`s side, then a silvery, expanding cloud, appeared in the image, growing until its upper edge reached high above the top of the tower.

American Airlines Flight 11 had struck the north tower, but seemingly no one at the toll plaza had noticed. The traffic crept forward toward the tunnel entrance. Mr. Hlava kept the camera on.

Inside the tunnel, Mr. Cohen heard a radio report that a small private plane had hit the World Trade Center. He warned the Hlava brothers that traffic could slow down, since the towers were straight ahead outside the tunnel.

But when they came into the sunlight, the north tower, looming hugely above them, was bursting with flames, like a giant candlestick. `Stop, stop, Mike!` one of the brothers shouted in English. `Oh my God! Oh my God!` another exclaimed. `Stop, Mike,` the first said again.

They stopped and got out of the S.U.V. Mr. Hlava could not absorb what he was seeing. He gamely tried to continue with his video postcard.

"A short while ago we were camera-ing the twins and they were cool," he said in Czech. "And now they`re on fire."

For some reason, Mr. Hlava turned the camera sideways, so in the videotape, the towers appeared to be horizontal. He turned it back.

Next there was the shrieking crescendo of a jet approaching from behind them. The volume of the noise was terrifying, Mr. Hlava later said. The dark shape of the plane shot into view, its right side tilted up so high that the wings seemed to be almost vertical.

The plane dived into the belly of the south tower, an orange fireball burst forth, and papers flew in every direction, fluttering through the air. What looked almost like a dual mushroom cloud crept up a corner of the tower. People were heard screaming on the street. Car alarms went off, like demons released from the earth.

"Mike!" Mr. Hlava shouted. "I got it on tape!"

Someone else, possibly Josef, shouted: "It`s an attack, brother. That`s not normal."

After a few moments, the reply was "Let`s leave or something else will happen, dude."

For a few minutes the brothers looked around for the plane, which seemed to have simply disappeared. In the confusion of the moment, Josef Hlava said he thought that it must have shot through and fallen to the ground.

Equally confused, Mr. Cohen offered the theory, in Russian, that the first plane knocked out crucial communications by disabling the big antenna on top of the north tower; that, he said, left other planes without guidance and one of them had wandered into the south tower accidentally.

In spite of all the chaos, Mr. Hlava still recognized, on some level at least, that he had created an irreplaceable record. "I hope no one takes my camera," he said at one point.

By the time police officers had directed the S.U.V. in a wide circle, first to the western edge of Manhattan, then around its southern tip and north again on the F.D.R. Drive along the East River, Mr. Hlava had regained some of his composure and continued with what had become, perhaps, the strangest and most tragic video postcard of all time.

"Right now I`m under the Brooklyn Bridge and I`m taping," he said as they drove north, still very close to the burning twin towers. "After the Brooklyn Bridge," he said, panning back toward the flames, "comes the catastrophe."

Soon thereafter, his camera was again rolling as the south tower tilted to one side and then fell amid heavy, black smoke. "Mike!" Mr. Hlava shouted again. "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!"

"It`s falling down!" he said in Czech. Then he shouted in English, "Downstairs, downstairs building," apparently meaning that it had fallen.

They drove on to Pennsylvania.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 7, 2003
Iraq Bombings Pose a Mystery U.S. Must Solve
By ERIC SCHMITT


WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 — American military, intelligence and law enforcement officials cannot yet determine whether the recent spate of major bombing attacks in Iraq are part of a coordinated campaign, and they are wrestling with several competing theories about who is behind the continuing violence against the postwar reconstruction effort.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of insurgents from Saddam Hussein`s former government have organized into cells, especially in the Sunni-dominated areas in and around Baghdad, to resist the United States-led occupation, American intelligence officials say. The nature of their resistance is clouded by the presence of hundreds of criminals freed from Iraqi jails just before the war, and as many as 1,000 foreign fighters, mainly Islamic militants, who have filtered into Iraq from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. Some are suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda, the officials said.

But even the most experienced and senior intelligence and law enforcement officials say they are still unsure about the degree to which these ideologically disparate forces have made temporary marriages of convenience, uniting to try to disrupt the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Among the clues and theories that officials are exploring are these:

¶A recently seized document suggests that remnants of the Baathist government are abandoning the party`s traditional secularism and reaching out to Islamist radicals. That pairs with a growing belief among Iraqi leaders that such alliances have been made. Some Iraqi groups have offered details of such cooperation, but their allegations have been impossible to verify so far.

¶The methods used in the attacks on the United Nations and the Jordanian Embassy suggest that former members of the Iraqi military or paramilitary forces were involved.

¶Attacks aimed at convoys of the occupying forces, often using roadside explosives, may reflect the expertise of terrorist organizations based outside Iraq, like Hezbollah.

Among the documents recovered in the capture last month of Mr. Hussein`s vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was one that offered tantalizing clues to an apparent strategy to reconstitute the Baath Party and organize the Iraqi people for revolt.

American officials remain cautious. "You get all kinds of theories," Thomas V. Fuentes, the special agent in charge of F.B.I. operations in Iraq, said in an interview. "In all of them, we are still in fact-finding mode."

The four major attacks — against the Jordanian Embassy, the United Nations headquarters, an influential moderate Shiite cleric who was assassinated outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf and the Baghdad police headquarters — have all clearly involved meticulous planning and the selection of highly visible targets that were involved in the efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Meanwhile, attacks on American forces have averaged more than a dozen a day. Commanders are most concerned about increasingly sophisticated roadside bombings, in which, Army intelligence officials say, guerrillas place "improvised explosive devices" in soda cans, plastic bags or dead animals, along railroad tracks and roadsides, or drop them from highway overpasses, and detonate them remotely or with timers. Commanders say these reflect the expertise of foreign fighters from Syria, Lebanon and other countries.

Today, there were reports that two surface-to-air missiles were fired at a C-141 transport plane taking off from the Baghdad airport, but they exploded before striking.

Investigators say they have not seen a common signature in the major bombings. The bombings at the United Nations headquarters and the Jordanian Embassy used vehicles packed with explosives drawn from old Iraqi military stocks, counterterrorism officials said, strengthening suspicions that former members of the Iraqi military or paramilitary forces were involved. Forensic experts are analyzing the sites of bombings in Najaf and the police offices in Baghdad for similar clues.

But the officials cautioned that military munitions might be easy to obtain in postwar Iraq. American officials in Iraq say about 50 munitions sites still have only light security and are poorly guarded.

And the presence of similar munitions does not necessarily prove the bombings are linked. "It`s too early to tell," Larry Mefford, the F.B.I.`s top counterterrorism official, told reporters this week. "I don`t think we know enough yet."

American officials say they need better intelligence from Iraqis to help fight the shadowy guerrilla war and are pressing to increase the ranks of the new Iraqi Army, the police and the civil defense corps, in large part to enlist them as eyes and ears. But that effort will take time.

American commanders say information provided by Iraqis has been instrumental in almost daily raids to round up insurgents. American intelligence officials have gleaned valuable information from the 225 foreign fighters and hundreds of Iraqis captured in the raids. But a shortage of qualified interrogators and translators has hampered that effort.

"When you look at the number of detainees, security detainees that we`ve got," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, "it is an issue of being able to process detainees rapidly."

Perhaps most troubling is the sense among allied officials that they are in a contest with the insurgents for the long-term support of the Iraqi people. Officials worry that the continuing security problems, lack of reliable electricity and water — especially in the searing summer heat — and the guerrillas` ability to use hoarded or stolen money (or ransom from kidnappings) to recruit disaffected former Iraqi Army or security service personnel, or even out-of-work Iraqi farmers or fishermen, could fuel long-term resistance.

"We`ve got to restore the services or they`re going to turn against us," said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican on the Armed Services Committee, who met with American commanders in Iraq last month. "Time is not on our side."

In the quest to determine what, if any, linkages exist between Hussein supporters and other groups, American officials are focusing on hundreds of Islamic fighters who have recently crossed Iraq`s porous borders, including many affiliated with Ansar al-Islam, the small pocket of militants based in northern Iraq. Those fighters were run out of the camps on the border during the war.

Officials with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Sulaimaniya, one of two Kurdish groups that control parts of northeastern Iraq, say they are holding more than 50 suspected militants caught as they were crossing the border from Iran. Some are foreigners; one recent raid of militants crossing from Iran netted a Tunisian, a Palestinian and three Kurds. Americans have taken some of these prisoners away, Kurdish officials said.

Some military officials in Washington suspect that the United Nations bombing was a joint Baathist-Islamist operation. A senior American official in Baghdad also said investigators were looking at whether security guards at the headquarters gave information to the bombers. The official said the same guards had been employed at the United Nations compound before the war and regularly reported on activity there to the Iraqi secret police. The United Nations kept employing the men after the war.

F.B.I. officials are not even sure whether the bombing was a suicide attack, suggesting that the bombers might have hired an unwitting driver and detonated the truck themselves.

Some American officials say it is too early to settle on any one theory for that bombing or the other major attacks. "There is no specific evidence to say one group did it or not," Mr. Fuentes, the F.B.I. special agent, said of the United Nations bombing. "Many groups or many individuals could have done it."

Until now, American officials have said the attacks on American soldiers in Iraq have been largely uncoordinated. But the document found in former Vice President Ramadan`s suitcase suggests that, at the least, the remnants of Mr. Hussein`s government are moving rapidly to pull themselves back together. It also suggests that Mr. Hussein`s supporters have begun to reach out to radical Islamic leaders.

The untitled, unsigned document, a copy of which was given to The New York Times, calls on local cells to fall back on their "best, secret work methods" to bring the party back together. Although it calls on Iraqis to "resist the occupier," it appears to be outlining a political, and not a military, strategy to expel the Americans from Iraq. "Spread feelings of hate and dissatisfaction towards them and their presence on the land of Iraq," the document says.

Among other things, the manifesto urges cell leaders to take advantage of holidays by urging the Iraqi people to scrawl anti-American slogans on buildings and walls. Such graffiti is already common throughout Baghdad and in places where Mr. Hussein is still thought to have strong support, like Ramadi and Tikrit.

A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, which operates in the Mosul area, said he had no immediate comment on the document.

To what extent Mr. Hussein himself, who is most likely being harbored by relatives or former government supporters, is influencing the resistance is also an open question. American intelligence analysts say the Baath cells are organized at best on regional level, casting doubt on the possibility that Mr. Hussein is giving any overarching direction.

But the recent attacks have killed Muslims, not just Americans or Westerners, raising the possibility of a backlash.

That may have prompted the release of an audiotape broadcast on Arab television last Monday. The speaker, who the C.I.A. said this week was probably Mr. Hussein, said he and his followers had played no part in the bombing that killed the Shiite cleric in Najaf and almost a hundred others.

For now, American officials say, the Iraqi police are in charge of all the major bombing investigations. The F.B.I. is playing a crucial support role in all the inquiries, collecting samples, examining the sites and sending evidence, from body parts to blast fragments, back to forensic laboratories in the United States.

The F.B.I. is taking a larger role in the United Nations bombing, since American citizens were killed. Agents were already on the ground in Baghdad and were at the site within 90 minutes. In contrast, in the case of the United States Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, it took a week or so to assemble an F.B.I. team and get it to the scene.

But the American and Iraqi authorities have clashed over the gathering and assessment of information. Iraqi officials say the Americans` biggest problem is that they will not take advice from Iraqis on intelligence. These officials say that Americans are inundated with tips and information, but that they treat all information equally, the implausible with the plausible.

The result, some Iraqis assert, is that the Americans are very slow to act, and waste a lot of time. "The Americans don`t listen to us," said Adel Murad, a Kurdish official in Baghdad.

American officials dismiss these criticisms, and say that they are acting aggressively on all credible information, but that they must carefully assess intelligence before sending troops or other operatives, and are wary of being used by Iraqi factions to settle old scores. In some cases during the war in Afghanistan, Americans relied on Afghans to help identify targets only to discover that their sources had manipulated the Americans into attacking a rival Afghan faction.

"It is difficult for them to understand when they are not even inside our intelligence system," General Sanchez, the American commander, said this week. "For them to be making those kind of assessments is kind of ludicrous. I`ve stated over and over again, my challenge is to get actionable intelligence that I can then turn very rapidly into operations against the terrorists who are out there."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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September 7, 2003
From Swagger to Stagger
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON — On one channel tonight, we can watch the iconic side of the Bush presidency. In the risibly revisionist Showtime movie "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," George W. Bush is Vin Diesel-tough as he battles terrorists. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me," the fictional president fictionally snaps on Air Force One after the 9/ll attacks. "I`ll just be waiting for the bastard."

On network channels at the same time — W. is pre-empting himself! — we can watch the ironic side of the Bush presidency. Even though Bush the Younger has done everything in his power not to replicate the fate of his dad, he is replicating the fate of his dad. Only months after swaggering out of a successful war with Iraq, he is struggling with the economy. His numbers have fallen so fast, Top Gun is now tap dancing. He will address the nation to try to underscore the imaginary line that links the budget-busting pit of Iraq to the heartbreaking pit of 9/11.

Just as the father failed to finish off Saddam, so the son has failed to finish off Saddam. Just as the conservatives once carped that the father did not go far enough in Iraq, now the "cakewalk" crowd carps that the son does not go far enough.

"We need to get Iraq right and we`re trying to do it a little bit on the cheap," Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor, chastised on "Nightline." "I think we could use more troops; we could certainly use more money."

The more you do, the more you need to do. That`s the Mideast quicksand, which is why it is so important to know how you`re going to get out before you get sucked in.

Dick Cheney`s dark idea that a show of brutal force would scare off terrorists has ended up creating more terrorists.

Tonight will be a stomach-churning moment for Mr. Bush, and he must be puzzling over how he got snarled in this nightmare, with Old Europe making him beg, North Korea making him wince, the deficit making him cringe, the lost manufacturing jobs making him gulp; with the hawks caving in to the U.N. and to old Saddam Baath army members who want to rebuild a security force; with Representative David Obey demanding the unilateral heads of Rummy and Wolfie, so that "Uncle Sam doesn`t become Uncle Sucker"; with the F.B.I. warning that more Islamic terrorists who know how to fly planes may be burrowing into our neighborhoods.

Does Mr. Bush ever wonder if the neocons duped him and hijacked his foreign policy? Some Middle East experts think some of the neocons painted a rosy picture for the president of Arab states blossoming with democracy when they really knew this could not be accomplished so easily; they may have cynically suspected that it was far more likely that the Middle East would fall into chaos and end up back in its pre-Ottoman Empire state, Balkanized into a tapestry of rival fiefs — based on tribal and ethnic identities, with no central government — so busy fighting each other that they would be no threat to us, or Israel.

The administration is worried now about Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the face of roiling radicalism.

Some veterans of Bush 41 think that the neocons packaged their "inverted Trotskyism," as the writer John Judis dubbed their rabid desire to export their "idealistic concept of internationalism," so that it appealed to Bush 43`s born-again sense of divine mission and to the desire of Mr. Bush, Rummy and Mr. Cheney to achieve immortality by transforming the Middle East and the military.

These realpolitik veterans of Bush 41 say that Bush père, an old-school internationalist who ceaselessly tried to charm allies as U.N. ambassador and in the White House, "agonized" over the bullying approach his son`s administration used at the U.N. and around the globe.

Some of the father`s old circle are thinking about forming a Republican group that would speak out against the neocons. "What`s happening in Iraq is puzzling," said one Bush 41 official. "The president ran on no-nation-building. Now we`re in this drifting, aimless empire that is not helping the road map to peace."

W. has always presented himself as the heir of Reagan, and dissed his father`s presidency, using it as a template of what not to do.

But as he tries to dig himself out tonight, he may wish he had emulated the old man, at least when it comes to slicing the deficit and playing nice with the allies.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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In Speech, Bush to Ask Americans and Allies for Teamwork on Iraq


By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page A21


President Bush will use a prime-time address tonight to make a conciliatory appeal to countries that opposed the war in Iraq and will warn Americans that peace will take much more time, administration officials said yesterday. He also is likely to reveal the amount of money he plans to request from Congress for Iraq next year, officials said.

The tone and content of the 8:30 p.m. White House address will continue a fundamental reworking of the administration`s Iraq strategy that first became apparent last week when Bush decided to negotiate for a U.N. mandate for a multinational force in Iraq as a way to attract more troops and money from allies.

"The president will reflect on the fact that we didn`t all agree on how to confront the threat from Iraq, but that`s behind us and we need to focus on the future," a senior administration official said. "Iraq is now the central battlefield in the war on terror. These attacks have been on the civilized world. Collectively, we have an interest in getting this right."

Bush has resisted giving the United Nations greater control in Iraq, and his aides described no significant concessions in the speech. The senior official said Bush will say that "long-term success will require increased international cooperation, among other ingredients."

In a possible sign of Bush`s willingness to reach out, officials said he may try to mend sour relations with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by meeting when Bush goes to the United Nations for a speech in two weeks. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in remarks aimed abroad, said Friday that Bush has "a strategy of partnerships" with other nations.

The president`s speech, to last about 15 minutes, comes at a time of growing concern in the White House. Bush is ramping up his reelection campaign against the backdrop of persistent job losses, and Democratic presidential candidates have seized on his handling of postwar Iraq as a potential vulnerability. Only months ago, Bush`s strategists saw his handling of the war on terrorism as a political trump card, and Democrats had planned generally to focus on other topics as much as possible.

"He`ll make it very clear that our success in Iraq is directly linked to the security of the American people and to peace in a vital part of the world," the administration official said. "It will require a sustained commitment of time as well as sacrifice."

Until now, Bush`s speeches about Iraq have said little about a need for sacrifices from society as a whole.

Analysts called the address an attempt by Bush to take command at a time when his justification for the war has proved factually flawed, his planning for the occupation is being criticized as inadequate, and Iraq is beset by rising sectarianism, sabotage and chaos.

Ivo H. Daalder, a senior foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he sees no indication that Bush plans to redress the concerns that have made foreign governments reluctant to contribute money or troops to the occupation.

"This is typical Bush: `I know what`s right; here is what`s right; you have to do what I tell you to do,` " Daalder said. "They think they can fix this with a speech instead of doing the hard work of traveling to these countries and convincing them that we`re willing to listen to their point of view and figure out what they need for us to do in order for us to do this together."

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said Bush "should take this opportunity to acknowledge the administration`s failures in Iraq and make it clear that he is willing to work as partners with our allies at the U.N. and achieve real compromise."

Another administration official said that sovereignty for Iraqis is a major focus of coalition efforts and that Bush will discuss "the benefits of returning a renewed Iraq to Iraqis in a democratic way," although he will not give a timetable.

As described by aides, Bush`s speech will confront several Iraq-related questions that Congress has been imploring him to decide for months. A Republican official said Bush "will discuss in specific terms the amount of money that will be needed in the near future." The official said Bush waited so long to give a figure because he "felt an obligation that when he gave one, that it be accurate."

"This is an effort to remind people of the stakes," the official said. "That gets lost sometimes in the day-to-day quibbles about this fact or that fact, or that dollar amount or this dollar amount. You can see in the kinds of bombings that we`ve seen that the enemy understands the stakes."

Bush is trying to convince domestic and global audiences that he has followed a sound course in Iraq, but has struggled to win over either one. Polls have suggested a majority of U.S. voters think the United States should be reducing, not deepening, its involvement in Iraq. A Time/CNN poll released yesterday found that 49 percent of respondents thought the war has been worth its toll, and 43 percent said it has not been.

Bush also needs to convince skeptical members of the U.N. Security Council -- notably France and Germany -- that they should in effect endorse the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq after opposing the war. Leaders of both nations immediately rejected the administration`s first draft of a resolution as giving the United Nations too small a role in Iraq and failing to provide for a fast-enough transfer of political control to Iraqis.

The senior administration official said Bush plans to argue "that a free, stable and democratic Iraq in the center of the Middle East will be a serious blow to hateful ideologies of terror."

A major section of the speech will be devoted to progress that the administration contends is occurring. The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council named a 25-member cabinet Monday to take over key ministries, and the administration says that 46,000 Iraqi police officers are on the job and that 90 percent of towns and cities have functioning local governments.

Bush does not plan to announce the discovery of any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, his staff said. He will defend the U.S. troop level in Iraq but does not plan to announce any increase, officials said.

Aides said Bush will seek to rebut the notion that the deaths of U.S. soldiers in guerrilla and large-scale attacks in Iraq bear any relation to the fact that the United States had emphasized planning for humanitarian and refugee crises and was left less prepared for security and infrastructure emergencies.

"This is not the local Iraqi who is now frustrated that he doesn`t have electricity or running water," the official said. "These attacks have been on religious sites and on the U.N. and have been very sophisticated. That is separate from the issue of reconstruction."

Bush`s last prime-time address was May 1 from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. "The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free," he said, to applause.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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A Saudi security officer passes a building damaged in a May 12 attack on a compound housing foreigners in Riyadh.
washingtonpost.com
Al Qaeda Plans A Front in Iraq
Strategy Shift May Signal Weakness

By Peter Finn and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page A01


BERLIN -- Two years after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden`s leadership cadre has been isolated and weakened and is increasingly reliant on the violent actions of local radicals around the world to maintain its profile. But the al Qaeda network is determined to open a new front in Iraq to sustain itself as the vanguard of radical Islamic groups fighting holy war, according to European, American and Arab intelligence sources.

The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said. Two seasoned operatives met at a safe house in eastern Iran. One of them was Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, the military chief of al Qaeda, who is better known as Saif Adel. He welcomed a guest, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had recently fled Iraq`s Kurdish northern region in anticipation of the U.S. targeting of a radical group with which he was affiliated, Arab intelligence sources said.

The encounter resulted in the dispatch of Zarqawi to become al Qaeda`s man in Iraq, opening a new chapter in the history of the group and a serious threat to American forces there.

"The monster is already near you," said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. "I don`t know if you can kill it."

The official added: "Iraq is the new battleground. It is the perfect place. It will be the perfect place."

After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the locus of al Qaeda`s degraded leadership moved to Iran. The Iranian security services, which answer to the country`s powerful Islamic clerics, protected the leadership, including Adel and a son of bin Laden`s, Saad, as well as other senior figures, according to the intelligence officials.

From guesthouses in Iran`s east and south, this al Qaeda group planned the May 12 bombing of residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the intelligence sources said. The group might have hoped that a campaign of violence, including the planned assassination of leading members of the Saudi royal family, would lead to the fall of the kingdom`s government, Arab officials said.

After the Riyadh bombing, the Iranians, under pressure from the Saudis, detained the al Qaeda group. One European source said the Iranians had "freeze-dried" the group. Also, Saudi Arabia launched a major crackdown domestically.

But it was too late to snare Zarqawi. He had returned to Iraq. Arab intelligence reports have placed him in Baghdad, although he still retreats to the Iranian side of the border with Iraq when he senses his security is threatened, officials said.

Magnet for Foreigners


Crossing Iraq`s borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent with Jordan and Turkey, hundreds of foreign fighters have begun to flow into the country, according to both U.S. and Arab officials.

A U.S. military official said in a recent interview that there were already 220 foreign fighters in U.S. custody in Iraq. But American and Arab officials also said that al Qaeda has not yet coalesced in Iraq, and Zarqawi`s mission to form a new network and manage these fighters in the country is still embryonic.

The occupation of Iraq -- once the home of the caliph, or universal leader, of Muslims -- is a galvanizing symbol for radical Islamic groups. On Internet sites and in mosques across the Islamic world, thousands of potential fighters are hearing -- and heeding -- calls to go to Iraq to fight the infidel, according to European and Arab intelligence sources who have tracked some of the movements of the recruits.

Egypt, for example, announced last week that it had arrested 23 men and was seeking two more on charges of belonging to a terrorist group. The suspects -- 19 Egyptians, three Bangladeshis, a Turk, an Indonesian and a Malaysian -- were planning to fight U.S. forces in Iraq, Egypt`s interior minister, Habib Adli, said in an interview with the magazine Al Mussawar.

Kurdish forces in northern Iraq recently arrested a Tunisian carrying an Italian passport and attempting to cross from Iran.

Syria arrested and deported an Algerian national and a German resident who organized a group of radicals to travel to Iraq from the same Hamburg mosque where Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, once worshiped. German officials said the man, who is currently free but under observation, had ties to Zarqawi and had also recruited volunteers in Italy to fight in Iraq.

"They are coming," said an Arab official from a country that borders Iraq. "They are coming from everywhere."

After the meeting at the safe house in February, Iranian authorities placed Zarqawi, a 42-year-old Jordanian, under house arrest, according to Arab intelligence sources. It is not clear why they did so. Zarqawi was the head of a cluster of Arabs who had attached themselves to Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist group vowing to establish an Islamic state in northern Iraq. Ansar is believed to be closely allied with al Qaeda, according to the U.S. government. Zarqawi also is believed to have a network of contacts in the Middle East and Europe.

Word that Zarqawi was under house arrest in Iran reached Amman, the Jordanian capital, and officials there sent a detailed extradition request, including nearly a dozen photographs of him, to Tehran, according to American and Arab officials. Zarqawi was wanted in connection with a planned hotel bombing in Amman on the eve of millennium celebrations and with the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence M. Foley in the city last October.

The Iranians rebuffed demands to turn over Zarqawi, who became more widely known when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said at the United Nations in February that he was a key link between the government of Saddam Hussein, then Iraq`s president, and al Qaeda.

Zarqawi had had a leg amputated at an exclusive Baghdad clinic in 2002, suggesting he had connections to government figures in Iraq, but European officials scoffed at the larger allegation. Zarqawi was an independent operator, they said, citing the interrogation of some of his allies in Germany.

Later in the spring, Zarqawi was released from house arrest and allowed safe passage along smuggling routes to Iraq, the sources said. By then, U.S. and British forces were occupying the country. The sources added that Zarqawi then became what the Americans had charged but never proved to the satisfaction of others on the U.N. Security Council: al Qaeda`s man in Iraq.

A recent internal German law-enforcement report on al Qaeda described Zarqawi as someone who has "assumed leadership responsibilities" that have been delegated "from the original center to the regional level."

Zarqawi "would be a logical person to control things there," said Matthew Levitt, a Middle East analyst formerly with the FBI counterterrorism section and now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "He has a fantastic relationship with other groups -- the Baathists, radicals in Kurdistan, in Germany. . . . They will work with whoever they need to work with. He is a real personification of a global network."

Firm numbers on foreign fighters in Iraq are impossible to come by, but estimates in the intelligence community in Washington on how many have already entered the country range from 1,000 to several thousand. U.S. military officers in Iraq, and officials with the occupying authority led by L. Paul Bremer, say the figure is much lower but don`t deny the potential threat the fighters represent or the difficulty of policing Iraq`s borders.

The Iraq-Syria border, for instance, is an arid, mostly unmarked frontier, crisscrossed by hard-packed roads. The landscape is intersected by wadis, rocky outcroppings and a scattering of farms irrigated by wells. Much of the traffic in the area is smugglers transporting sheep and other livestock across routes they have used for decades. The territory is ideal for subterfuge. So is the mountainous Iran-Iraq border.

U.S. officials said there was no evidence that al Qaeda or other fighters were behind the recent bombings in Iraq, including the attack on the U.N. headquarters. "Most intelligence agencies think the Baathists are behind the current violence," said a spokesman for the State Department, referring to Hussein`s party.

`A Threat Down the Line`


But even in the muted language of those attempting to put the best face on the situation in Iraq, the fear of al Qaeda is apparent. "There is a significant concern about the people moving in here," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad. "I don`t feel they have the capacity right now where they`re sitting and organizing and being very strategic." But, he added, it "could be a threat down the line."

When bin Laden was trapped at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in 2001, he and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, dispatched military chief Adel to Iran to negotiate a safe harbor for some of al Qaeda`s scattering ranks.

Zawahiri had long-standing ties with Ahmad Vahidi, then the commander of the Iranian Qods force, a special operations unit, according to a European intelligence official.

A deal was struck. Iran`s elected leadership, led by President Mohammad Khatami, repeatedly denied that senior al Qaeda figures were in the country, and pointed to the extradition of some fighters to Saudi Arabia as evidence of Iran`s good faith. But Khatami has no control over security organs such as the Revolutionary Guard, which answers to the office of the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Among those who made it to Iran with Adel and bin Laden`s son were Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian and head of the religious committee that issued fatwas justifying attacks, and Abu Mohammed Masri, an Egyptian who is wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and who has been al Qaeda`s chief financial officer, setting up its illicit diamond trade as a way to hide funds.

Others who went to Iran were Zawahiri`s deputy, Abu Khayr, and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, al Qaeda`s spokesman, who was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after an appearance on al-Jazeera television in which he vowed retaliation for U.S. airstrikes against Afghanistan.

With the capture of other top-tier al Qaeda leaders around the world, the group in Iran -- accompanied by numerous low- and mid-ranking Saudis, including some who would later participate in the May Riyadh bombings -- became the core of al Qaeda`s functioning leadership.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri went into hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and their ability to communicate with their followers has been severely constrained, often limited to oral messages or handwritten notes.

Elsewhere, al Qaeda`s leadership structure began unraveling in earnest a year ago, with the capture in Pakistan of self-proclaimed Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh. Since then, many of the senior leaders have been caught, with information gleaned from one arrest leading to others. Among those now in custody are the U.S. operations chief, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, another key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; and two planners of the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000, Tawfiq bin Attash and Rahim al-Nashiri.

Last month, Thai police captured Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, leader of the Southeast Asian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiah, who is accused of orchestrating deadly bombings against Westerners at tourist sites in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia. The United States and allied governments have rolled up thousands of others -- some sworn al Qaeda members, but mostly sympathetic radicals.

According to Arab and U.S. officials who have been briefed on American interrogations, almost all of the senior figures in captivity have been cooperating with the United States, which has employed a variety of stress techniques that stop short of direct physical abuse or torture to disorient the prisoners and break their morale.

In some cases, U.S. officials, who are holding these senior al Qaeda figures at a secret location, have created a parallel universe to hasten their cooperation. Some of the captives, for instance, have been given what appear to be copies of Arab and Western newspapers and magazines that are, in fact, written and printed by the CIA. Stories in these phony publications include reports that bin Laden had been killed or that the Saudi government had fallen in a coup d`etat, the Arab officials said.

"The logic is: `Look, it`s over` or `You got what you wanted, so cooperate,` " said one Saudi source.

And for some of those arrested, it did appear that they were losing. When Zarqawi met Adel in Iran, al Qaeda was in some disarray.

The operational leadership in Iran, despite some of the swaggering statements issued by bin Laden or Zawahiri, felt that another spectacular attack in the continental United States was operationally impossible, according to the analyses by Arab intelligence agencies. The leadership could only hope that the Taliban could regroup in Afghanistan, as it appears to be doing, and that other radicals would rally to the al Qaeda cause of their own volition and commit atrocities in its name.

Saudis Launch Crackdown


Adel -- prompted by the large number of Saudis around him, including bin Laden`s son, and with a little cash and some bomb-making expertise at his disposal -- decided to focus on toppling the Saudi government and encouraging attacks elsewhere in the Arab world. Moroccan officials, for instance, have linked the bombings in Casablanca on May 16 to the al Qaeda group in Iran.

Law enforcement officials at the same time concluded that Saudi Arabia had become the favored staging area and target for al Qaeda. "Saudi Arabia is a planning center -- that`s correct. It`s a hub for the Gulf," said a U.S. official.

But Adel`s strategy strained the hospitality of the security services in Iran.

The May bombings in Riyadh killed 35 people. The Saudi government unleashed a major crackdown, killing some suspects during gun battles and arresting others. The Saudis obtained a trove of evidence -- phones, computer hard drives, documents and cash -- that pointed back to Iran and Adel. In addition, one of al Qaeda`s local leaders in Saudi Arabia, Ali Faqasi Ghamdi, turned himself in and confessed that Adel and his associates were behind the bombings.

Furious, the Saudis sent two delegations to Iran. One was led by the interior minister`s son, Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, the assistant interior minister for security affairs, and the other by a general in the intelligence service. They demanded that the Iranians turn over bin Laden`s son and other Saudis, including the cousin of one of the Riyadh bombers, Turki Dandani.

The Saudi delegations also requested that Adel be returned to Egypt.

"They got the runaround," said a Saudi source.

The Iranians have assured the United States and numerous other countries that Adel and other al Qaeda operatives are now under house arrest and unable to communicate with others in the network, according to an official at the State Department. But the Iranians have refused to relinquish custody of the operatives.

"We are trying to get the Iranians to turn bin Laden`s son over to the Saudis," said a senior counterterrorism official, adding that several countries have tried to act as intermediaries.

Some U.S. officials say they believe that Iran will never relinquish custody of Adel and the others because they could reveal connections between Iran and al Qaeda going back to the mid-1990s. Moreover, Western and Arab officials say they believe Iran is calculating that they are a useful chip in any future standoff with the United States over Iranian policy toward Iraq or Iran`s alleged efforts to develop a nuclear bomb.

Iranian officials refuse to confirm publicly that Adel is in custody, saying only that they are holding some "big fish" who they allege threatened Iran with terrorist attacks.

Schmidt reported from Washington. Correspondents Anthony Shadid and Theola Labbé in Baghdad, staff writer Doug Farah in Washington and special correspondent Souad Mehkennet in Frankfurt contributed to this report.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Democratic Differences

Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page B06


THE DEMOCRATIC presidential candidates debate Thursday night was a rather mild affair. The eight hopefuls who turned up in Albuquerque -- a ninth, the Rev. Al Sharpton, had plane troubles -- spent much of their time agreeing with each other about the shortcomings of President Bush`s handling of Iraq. On this score, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri had the quote of the night when he termed President Bush "a miserable failure," though he probably didn`t need to say it five times to get viewers` attention. The candidates also devoted less energy than a rapacious press corps had hoped to trying to take down the newly anointed front-runner, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, even as, out of camera range, their staffs were busy bombarding reporters with examples of Mr. Dean`s supposed inconsistencies.

Underneath the aura of agreement, however, the debate made clear some important differences on a range of issues, from Iraq to trade to the future of the Bush tax cuts. The disagreement about Iraq has moved from the "should we have/shouldn`t we have" battles of the spring to: What should we do now -- in particular, should additional U.S. troops be deployed? Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman was the one candidate who unequivocally supported sending more U.S. troops. Several others, including Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Dean, took the easy way out, saying that while additional forces are required, they should come from assembling a broader international coalition. But at best, more international troops, which Mr. Lieberman also favors, can supplement, not supplant U.S. efforts. And only Mr. Lieberman focused on the importance of the mission, while most of the Democratic field talked only about exit strategies.

"We need more troops," Mr. Dean said. "They`re going to be foreign troops, as they should have been in the first place, not American troops. Ours need to come home." But wait: Didn`t Mr. Dean say just a couple of weeks ago that the United States needed to commit to being in Iraq for a long time to come? Even the Dean campaign seemed to acknowledge that its candidate had been a little loose with his language, saying afterward that he remained dedicated to the rebuilding effort and meant only that the sooner the troops come home, the better. That`s not a matter on which anyone would disagree. It`s also not what Mr. Dean said.

A similar question of meaning arose on free trade. In one of the few pointed exchanges of the evening, Mr. Lieberman said that Mr. Dean`s views on trade "would cost us millions of jobs" and create "the Dean depression." What sparked Mr. Lieberman`s concern, and understandably so, was a recent interview with this page in which Mr. Dean said, as he repeated Thursday night, that the United States shouldn`t have trade agreements with foreign countries unless they agree to abide by our labor and environmental standards. As Mr. Dean put it in the debate, "We ought not to be in the business of having free and open borders with countries that don`t have the same environmental, labor and human rights standards. And if you do that, we`re going to be able to create manufacturing jobs in America again, and they`ll stay in America." The discussion between Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Dean bogged down over whether Mr. Dean was referring to American or international standards. "Either way is fine with me," Mr. Dean said.

What we find troubling is Mr. Dean`s apparent willingness to use whatever standards he would apply not as a way to help workers overseas but as a protectionist wedge. Forcing other countries to adopt labor standards wouldn`t mean that manufacturing jobs would "stay in America" unless the standards were so onerous as to essentially end all trade. Labor costs are cheaper in Mexico and would remain so even if workers there won collective bargaining rights entirely to Mr. Dean`s satisfaction. Trade overall has been good for America`s economy and for its trading partners, too, and it`s discouraging that in this large Democratic field only Mr. Lieberman and, in one brief aside, Mr. Kerry dared say so.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Progressive Centrism


By Mark J. Penn

Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page B07


George W. Bush`s negative ratings on domestic policy suggest that compassionate conservatism is a philosophy that is dead with the American public. Instead, people are seeking a progressive moderate -- someone who is strong on defense and earns high marks on personal values but who truly has the interests of the middle class and our growing immigrant communities at heart.

Over the past two decades, we have seen huge changes in Americans` attitudes as they have become increasingly independent, better educated, suburban and moderate. These new voters are increasingly tolerant of alternative lifestyles and are more environmentally conscious, but they have rejected big government programs as the answer to our country`s problems.

They are also increasingly skeptical, however, that corporations are paying their fair share, and they see President Bush as failing to protect manufacturing jobs, health care and retirement benefits.

Overnight, Sept. 11 made security and national defense critical matters, rather than the peripheral issues they were in the 2000 election. Voters will want more than on-the-job training from the next presidential challenger. As we have seen with Jimmy Carter, they can be merciless even to an elected Democrat when he is perceived as weak in dealing with terrorists. And remember how they treated Michael Dukakis after he appeared so obviously out of place in a military tank. Former President Clinton`s progressive but moderate formula still holds considerable sway today. He was strong on defense yet internationalist in outlook, opening up new markets for U.S. goods while protecting workers` rights and tax cuts for the middle class. It was, after all, Clinton who modernized the military so it was ready to go after the perpetrators of Sept. 11, and Clinton who fought in Bosnia and Kosovo -- over loud Republican objections.

Clinton`s was the most successful governing philosophy since FDR`s.

It prepared United States for the 21st century with unprecedented peace and prosperity. It far outshines the hollow compassionate conservatism of George Bush. So why would some of the Democratic candidates want to abandon the clear path Clinton showed us?

Why would Howard Dean be so antiwar he appears weak on defense?

Or Dick Gephardt offer a $2.3 trillion health care plan? Or several of the candidates, including Dean and John Kerry, abandon Clinton`s trade policy that helped create 22 million jobs?

Some believe that merely challenging the candidates on these positions is somehow anti-party. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no anti-Iraq-war consensus among Democrats. Polls show the party is split on the war, with three-fourths of Democrats favoring it at key points and no less than 43 percent favoring it at its lowest point.

It is a debate that cannot and should not be stifled. It is a debate for the heart and soul of the party and one that can unite a party that otherwise has drifted to its lowest point in four decades, partly because the party is seen as so weak on defense.

Most Democrats -- 68 percent in the last Gallup poll -- want to see a moderate candidate for president. They overwhelmingly prefer a candidate who would offer middle class tax cuts, not one who would reverse all tax cuts.

There was plenty of Republican Party anger at Clinton, but Bush didn`t beat Vice President Gore by being the angry anti-Clinton. He did it by casting himself as compassionate, taking enough of what people liked about Clinton to be elected. And no one said he was attacking the Republican Party.

This is an important time for rank-and-file Democrats to be heard. Their desire for a candidate who supports middle-class tax cuts and a strong national defense is something they can achieve if they vote their numbers in the primaries or come out to the caucuses. Activists need to realize, as they did with Clinton, that candidates such as Joe Lieberman are just as pro-choice, pro-environment and anti-discrimination as any of the antiwar candidates.

Having a debate about the most important issues we face is not attacking the party at all. It is trying to lift the party up and put it on the road to regaining the membership it had in the 1960s, when John F. Kennedy was elected on a platform of lower taxes, strong international involvement and optimism about the future.

The writer, who heads a Democratic polling firm, did polls for President Clinton`s 1996 reelection campaign and is working now for Sen. Joe Lieberman.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Democratic Vistas


By George F. Will

Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page B07


Iraq in the throes of rebirth is a reminder that political science is a science of single instances, which means it is not a science. The fact that almost every large political event is unique and unrepeatable is not news to Condoleezza Rice, a Stanford political scientist before becoming the president`s national security adviser.

Still, last week, when considering the task of reconstituting Iraq, she said she was heartened by the fact that her scholarship taught her this: Democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable culture, they also can help create such a culture. They did in America and, she is confident, they will in Iraq. They will, she says with a steely serenity, with the help of an America that has no choice but to succeed and has a staying power that is frequently underestimated.

Rice`s comparison last month of America`s troubles in occupied Iraq and those in Germany in 1945 were intended to make this point: You cannot tell after three months of an occupation how things will turn out. The Marshall Plan, she reminds, was a response to Europe`s humanitarian and economic crisis three years after the war ended. That plan expressed the belief that if great-power wars were to end, there must be a different kind of Germany -- and Japan.

Reconstituting Iraq is in some ways more difficult than the tasks America took up in 1945. Both Germany and Japan had been rendered almost clean slates, politically -- thoroughly defeated by protracted war, their old elites had been destroyed. And as Henry Kissinger remembers, the obedience of Germans in the American, British and French occupation zones was encouraged by the example of the terrible alternative -- the Soviet zone.

Those who in 1991 favored going beyond the liberation of Kuwait to the capture of Baghdad cheerfully foresaw a "MacArthur regency" for Iraq akin to Gen. Douglas MacArthur`s governance of Japan in 1945. But who would have played MacArthur?

In "American Caesar," biographer William Manchester noted that MacArthur had lived in the Orient for decades and "had studied Nipponese folklore, politics and economy; most of all he had pondered how [Emperor] Hirohito`s people lived, worked and thought." When Hirohito suddenly repudiated what he called "the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese are superior to other races and fated to rule the world" -- the myth for which 1.3 million soldiers and 672,000 civilians had died -- this created, MacArthur said, "a complete vacuum, morally, mentally and physically." Apathy reigned.

Apathy is not the primary problem in Iraq. Rice wonders: What would it have been like reconstituting Germany and Japan in today`s media environment, on a daily news cycle?

One might add: or with Iraq`s kind of violence, which neither occupied Germany nor Japan knew in 1945.

The bombing of the Shiite shrine in Najaf seemed intended to incite civil war, and not one analogous to the English, American and Spanish civil wars. Those were relatively tidy, two-sided conflicts -- king against parliament, North against South, rebels against loyalists. An Iraqi civil war would be more like Hobbes`s state of nature, a "war of everyone against everyone." Think of Lebanon, 1979-90.

Rice briskly dismisses that possibility.

Iraq is, she says, "a media society." Today it has 186 newspapers, 26 radio stations and 27 television stations, and satellite dishes are proliferating. The literacy rate among those 15 or older is 40 percent. Iraq, says Rice, is porous to information about models of modernity beyond the Arab world, models that will inform Iraq`s coming constitutional convention.

Fine, but it was astonishing that America in 1787 even was home to the 55 men who attended the Philadelphia convention and even more astonishing that it gathered those 55 in Philadelphia. The administration expects Iraqis to find their James Madison.

How long will it take to make Iraq into a Middle Eastern example, with the power to encourage regional transformation?

Rice speaks of a "generational" commitment to Iraq. There is not today a visible Iraqi majority that the remaining minority of Iraqis would consent to be governed by.

But Rice believes that Iraq has more of a national identity than it is commonly given credit for. Granted, its regional differences largely coincide with creedal differences. But this, Rice believes, actually can facilitate national cohesion under loose central authority, at least in the short run.

All societies reverberate with what G.K. Chesterton called "the thunder of the authority of human habit." Some lethal Iraqi habits are now being heard from, thunderously. However, Rice remains confident that Iraq can be the thin end of democracy`s wedge in the Arab world.

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washingtonpost.com
It Takes a World


By Ivo Daalder and Robert S. Gelbard

Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page B07


France and Germany`s quick negative reaction to the Bush administration proposal for a greater role for the United Nations in Iraq underlines an obvious truth: Getting more nations to join the U.S.-led effort in that troubled country will not be easy. The risks and costs of involvement are great. To get others to sign on, the administration will have to cede more control over the non-military side of the Iraq operation than it is now contemplating.

With the right kind of U.N. resolution, it will be possible to add 50,000 to 70,000 non-U.S. troops to the 21,000 already there. Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey could each deploy 10,000 troops or more within the next few months. Other countries, including many of our NATO allies, should be able to provide an additional division`s worth of troops. These additional forces could protect vulnerable sites and infrastructure, leaving the American forces to concentrate their efforts on hunting down killers.

Beyond new troops, more money is needed. The bill to the U.S. taxpayer for our involvement in Iraq may top $150 billion for one year -- and that covers only the American military effort and emergency reconstruction spending. Paul Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, has said it might well take "several tens of billions" more to begin putting Iraq back on its feet. These are amounts that other countries, especially our friends in Europe and Asia, should help provide. It is important to remember that in the Balkans, the United States contributed no more than 20 percent of the reconstruction funding.

And we need more people to help the civilian rebuilding effort. Bremer`s CPA is stretched too thin to have any real impact. Even today it has no permanent presence in half the Iraqi provinces, leaving many civilian nation-building tasks in the hands of an overstretched U.S. military. Enhancing policing capacity is priority one. We need foreign monitors, trainers and actual police in large numbers -- capabilities that our European friends and countries such as Argentina and Brazil can help with.

To get more troops, more money and more civilians to join the Americans and others already in Iraq will require a new U.N. resolution. The military side of this will be uncontroversial. The United States can remain in overall command, as it has in many previous instances when the United Nations authorized deployment of a multinational armed force (e.g., in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia). These are combat forces, not blue-helmeted troops, no different from the soldiers and Marines who are there now.

The critical issue instead will be the political side of the effort -- and the kind of deals Washington is willing to make to get other countries to contribute the troops, money and personnel needed to succeed.

To get others to join, President Bush must be willing to hand over leadership of the CPA and political control to others. We have done this before. In Bosnia, we maintained command of the military structure but ceded leadership on the civilian side in order to obtain the strong engagement and resources of the international community. In Iraq, as also was done in Bosnia, there could continue to be a free-standing body -- not a U.N. offshoot -- to develop that country`s political and economic institutions. The head of such an organization would report to the U.N. Security Council but could also report to an ad hoc body -- call them the Friends of Iraq -- that would include the enhanced number of nations making real contributions of troops and money. This would not be the U.N. nightmare some have envisioned.

We`ll have to strike some side deals with countries such as Russia to get them on board. Iraq`s financial situation must be regularized through the International Monetary Fund and with debt rescheduling (and perhaps forgiveness) through the Paris and London Clubs. To secure the agreement of Russia and others who hold significant prewar contracts, we and the new Iraqi leadership will have to honor many of these contracts. Doing that, along with allowing these countries to participate in new contracting, would open the way for their security forces to engage -- and for a positive attitude toward the new Iraq.

What would we get from this? First, by reaching deals with countries that need a Security Council resolution to justify their participation in Iraq to their publics, we would dramatically increase the numbers of military and police and spread the political responsibility and risk among a much larger pool of nations, including Islamic countries. Right now the United States is the sole focus and target.

Second, dividing responsibility between U.S. military leadership and a European at the head of the political/economic area would allow for the entry of many more talented and experienced personnel to manage the nation-building process that Pentagon senior officials abhor and want to be rid of. Along with the injection of much greater financial resources, this would help jump-start a slow and inconsistent development effort.

Washington would not need to lose influence in this important area. We should ensure that the new CPA chief is from a supportive European ally, such as Britain. One suggestion would be Jeremy Greenstock, the new British representative in Iraq -- an ideal candidate who has vast experience in post-conflict operations and was until last month Britain`s U.N. ambassador. We cannot afford to fail in Iraq, but it is becoming painfully obvious that we are unlikely to succeed on our own. Ceding some control so that others can share the burden would seem a small price to pay.

Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, coordinated U.S. policy toward Bosnia on President Clinton`s national security staff. Robert S. Gelbard was Clinton`s special envoy to the Balkans from 1997 to 1999 and has worked in a number of other peacekeeping operations.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute da Bush eine Rede halten wird[genügend Jokes garantiert] nur 58 frische Toons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030906__058toons.htm
Übrigens solange hat Bush noch nach
1 year 4 months 16 days 3 hours 28 minutes (34.3%) remaining in the Bush Occupation

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WHY GEORGE W. BUSH CAN`T WIN
Fri Sep 5, 8:03 PM ET Add Op/Ed - Richard Reeves to My Yahoo!


By Richard Reeves

WASHINGTON -- It could be argued now that President George W. Bush cannot be re-elected -- not after screwing up most everything he touches.
If you doubt that, look at the record. The poor guy is a disaster. I`ll just list the first 10 reasons GWB looks like a lame duck -- or a dead duck:


1. GWB misunderstood the limits of the super power he inherited and over-reached around the world. He learned a bit about far places -- Afghanistan , Iraq , Iran, Syria, North Korea -- and then personally declared war on them, war on the cheap.


A classified report being prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned," obtained by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times, discusses the search for weapons of mass destruction and concludes: "WMD elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process ... Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission."


2. In the process of going to war, GWB began mocking and pushing around old allies like a school yard bully. Then he was surprised when they -- beginning with France, Germany and Russia -- began pushing back.


3. Rushing in as fools are said to do, GWB has tied down the greatest military in the history of the world. Ours. Half our combat-ready army is looking for snipers and bombers in unruly countries that look as tribal as they were a century ago when the British failed as imperialists in the same sand and mountains.


4. GWB dissed the United Nations (and, again, our allies) and now is coming back to ask everyone else to help clean up the mess he made.


5. "He" -- we always overstate presidential power over the domestic economy -- has "lost" 2 million jobs here at home as the stock market went south.


6. GWB is presiding over the economic decline of millions of American families -- and not only the poor ones left behind long ago. Take a look at the new book "The Two-Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, published by Basic Books. Comparing the early 1970s with the early 2000s, the authors report that a typical family with only the husband working earned $38,700 30 years ago, and after fixed expenses like shelter, food, transportation and taxes, had $17,834 to spend for tuitions and other incidentals. Now, with both husband and wife working (if they`re lucky) and earning $67,800, the fixed expenses total $50,755 and $17,045 is left to pay for everything else. (That`s all in constant dollars.)


7. GWB is a "big government" big spender, compared to, say, his predecessor, Bill Clinton. The Center for Public Service at The Brookings Institution, directed by Paul Light, has just issued a report indicating that the number of federal employees and contractors is increasing for the first time since the 1980s, led by a 43 percent increase in employees of defense contractors feeding on federal contracts.


8. GWB is running a "borrow as you go" government, exploding the national debt by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars compared to Clinton-era surpluses. Given the choice of "tax and spend" or "borrow and spend," he has chosen to pass the bill on to new generations.


9. GWB`s environmental record is comic, confirmed when Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" showed him walking through a national park filled with "future two-by-fours."


10. GWB lies a lot.


At least, these are the things that Democratic candidates for president should be saying. The one coming closest is Howard Dean, he of thin credentials and not much to lose, and that has made him the Democratic front-runner at this moment.


That shows Democrats are not totally clueless, but this moment is not yet election time. Many Democrats, and some Republicans, too, might agree that Bush has not been a very successful chief executive or commander-in-chief, but is he more impressive and more trustworthy than whoever the Democrats finally chose as his opponent? After all, assuming the economy begins to improve and there are more jobs out there, the president may well look a lot better than he does at the end of this summer of our discontent.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=761…

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-tactics…
U.S. Adopts New Tactics to Counter Iraqi Foes
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2003

BALAD, Iraq — Facing stubborn, guerrilla-style resistance, the U.S. military is shifting tactics: It is trading the conventional warfare it used to oust Saddam Hussein for a campaign of swifter, more nimble strikes.

The military is also seeking to improve its intelligence-gathering and shift routine security tasks to Iraqis while accelerating efforts to win the hearts and minds of an edgy civilian population.

The goal of the counterinsurgency strategy is to confront and destroy an elusive enemy whose persistent attacks have impeded troop and supply movements and slowed national reconstruction.

The U.S. military is trying to be smarter, aiming to eliminate the armed cells in assaults featuring overwhelming might and advanced technology — while at the same time reinforcing vital supply routes, communication lines and logistics centers.

"We have to deny the enemy sanctuary," said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, an infantry brigade commander who led a large-scale assault last week on a suspected guerrilla safe haven near Tikrit. "Unless we get this under control, there is fertile ground for external influence."

Commanders throughout Iraq have scrapped heavy-handed search tactics to mollify complaints and are handing out soccer balls and candy to children. The military is directing millions of dollars toward Iraq`s reconstruction, providing jobs to destitute young men who, officers fear, might otherwise be recruited to take up arms.

"I figure if someone has their stomach full and can feed their family, they`re less likely to go out there and try and kill young Americans," said Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, a former quarterback at West Point who heads an infantry battalion based in Balad, north of Baghdad.

Some military officials speak of "Iraqization" of the conflict, evoking America`s "Vietnamization" campaign more than three decades ago, under which the U.S. military gradually transferred responsibility for prosecuting the Vietnam War to the South Vietnamese.

But officials point to what they say are decisive differences: The armed opposition in Iraq has very limited popular backing, U.S. officials say, and there is no evidence of a national network directing the attacks.

"We`re using Vietnam-type tactics, but I don`t see a real guerrilla war in Iraq," said Capt. Todd Brown, who was leading a platoon in the assault. "There`s just not that level of organization, of national hierarchy or popular support for the enemy."

Nonetheless, the daily attacks against coalition troops — combined with acts of sabotage and large-scale, lethal car bombings — have clearly exacerbated a climate of instability and sapped the morale of weary soldiers.

Whether the new tactics are slowing the number of daily attacks is not clear. Even harder to gauge is whether the U.S. can prevent major bombings, which are almost impossible to eliminate and can have significant political repercussions, as experience across the Middle East has shown.

U.S. troops came to Iraq to fight a conventional war featuring tanks, heavy artillery, fighter planes and all the other trappings of large-scale, modern conflict. The aftermath was widely expected to be no more than a mop-up operation. But today the U.S. military finds itself embroiled in a draining struggle that demands alternative tactics, different equipment and a distinct brand of soldiering.

As of last week, 287 U.S. soldiers had been killed in the Iraq war and more than 1,110 had been wounded. More than half of the American troop deaths occurred after President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1.

"Tanks are great for destroying stuff, but you can`t completely destroy a place you`re supposed to rebuild and protect," Sassaman said.

In fact, tank guns and howitzers are seldom fired here and serve largely as barriers at the many U.S. Army checkpoints.

The steady assaults on U.S. convoys have slowed down troop mobility in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the heartland of central and western Iraq that was the principal base of support for Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Army does not own the roads here. Large convoys now regularly receive protective air cover.

Combat units have been repositioned to provide protection for essential supply, communication and logistics posts, like the giant military airfield near Balad, called Anaconda, on the site of a former regime airbase. The enemy employs a textbook guerrilla tactic: hit rear-guard areas, which have relatively little protection.

"The enemy tends to flow where we`re not," said Rudesheim, who heads the 3rd Combat Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.

Commanders have been forced to spend long hours combing prospective convoy routes for now-notorious improvised explosive devices — homemade bombs fashioned from artillery shells, grenades, mortar rounds and other explosives that have struck with devastating force, producing many U.S. casualties.

"Before I do an operation now, I have to go down and clear the whole route with an armored vehicle," Capt. James Dayhoff said in Fallouja, west of Baghdad and a hotbed of resistance since the early days of the conflict.

"We`re more on the defensive now," Dayhoff said. "We`re in a more `protect ourselves` mode."

Troops also spend time clearing brush along the major roadways that typically follow the routes of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, where lush stands of bulrushes and other vegetation provide potential ambushers with ideal cover.

"The other side tends to use the terrain quite well," Staff Sgt. Johnny Johnson, master gunner on a convoy near Samarra, said as he cradled his black M-16 and peered intently through his shades at the dense stands of reeds. "We tend to make a lot of noise. They know we`re coming."

Meanwhile, the daily routine of policing this occupied nation is increasingly being left to an array of new Iraqi security forces who accompany U.S. troops on patrols, guard duties and searches.

U.S. forces are now noticeably absent in the centers of large towns and cities, including those in the Sunni Triangle, where armed resistance is stiffest.

The shift — gaining impetus as new Iraqi civil defense forces, guard units, a border patrol, army and even U.S.-style neighborhood watch groups come on board — is by design.

"We want to pull the coalition forces to the outskirts of the cities, minimize our presence, still conduct periodic patrols, but hand over as much of that responsibility to Iraqi security forces as they can handle," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commanding officer in Iraq, told reporters recently. "Reduce our footprint. That`s our goal."

The revised strategy has helped curb confrontations between U.S. troops and angry Iraqis that produced many civilian casualties early on, souring relations.

"We want to be sure that every operation we conduct doesn`t create more enemies than it takes off the streets," said Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commands the Mosul-based 101st Airborne Division. "We try to be very precise in our operations now. Rather than doing dragnet operations, we try to have a bit more precision."

In another bow to concerns from Iraqis, the U.S. side has modified its controversial "dynamic entry" search tactics, which involved breaking down doors, screaming orders at terrified civilians and pointing weapons at everyone inside. Iraqis often spoke of the humiliation of soldiers placing their boots on suspects` heads.

Today, soldiers are instructed in "knock and talk" techniques, beginning with encircling targeted structures to ensure that no one escapes. Troops are instructed to request permission to enter, which is usually granted, commanders say. Metal-detecting wands are now used to check women for weapons; bags of money found in homes are placed in women`s possession as the searches proceed, to counter widespread charges of theft by GIs.

"We`re not hesitant about blowing doors down," Petraeus said. "But we only do that when we`re absolutely sure that there`s a hostile target inside, and it`s necessary to do that."

The adjustments have forced a distinct change in approach for individual soldiers, most of whom motored up from Kuwait on an adrenaline-rush cocktail from fierce firefights alternating with rapid advances.

"We`re used to big machinery, big guns," noted Maj. Paul Green in Fallouja. "We`re not used to saying, `How are you? Do you mind if we have a little look?` When a guy is used to pulling a lanyard on a howitzer, and now you`re telling him to maintain a traffic control checkpoint, it`s quite different."

Soldiers in Iraq view the enemy as deadly serious, despite word from the high command that the armed opposition is scattered Baath Party remnants or small bands of pro-Hussein Fedayeen paramilitaries. To hear the grunts tell it, their foes are wily combatants who have utilized classic partisan techniques to sidetrack for the time being the world`s greatest military power.

"It`s the invisible enemy," said Spc. Richard Almaraz, an infantryman from Gardena. "The mortars come into the base. We go and look for the people who fired them. And they just melt away."

Soldiers speak of an increasing sophistication in today`s attacks, compared with the amateurish ambushes earlier in the conflict that inevitably ended with the enemy being killed by return fire. Attackers now often distract soldiers with improvised bombs before opening fire from strategic points that allow for safe retreats.

"In the beginning, they were just running around out there with weapons and didn`t seem to know where to go," said Spc. Jason Testa, from New Jersey. "Now they`re consolidated, they get together with more people It`s scary out there. You don`t know when you`re going to get hit."

Frustrated by the attacks, some commanders are denying much-needed economic aid to zones where attacks have been mounted, urging local sheiks and political leaders to turn in assailants or put pressure on them to stop.

"I`ve told the mayor and the sheiks, `I`ll support what priorities you want to fix in your towns and cities, providing they`re in areas where we`re not getting attacked,` " said Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey in Fallouja, where both bomb attacks and Fedayeen-style ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, have repeatedly targeted U.S. forces. "If we`re getting attacked in certain areas, I will not help them in those areas."

Typically, commanders say, sheiks and other leaders confronted about aggression blame unspecified "outsiders." U.S. military authorities say they are not easily buying the excuse and are pressuring sheiks and others to inform on the enemy.

"Eleven guys don`t just show up with RPGs and machine guns without someone knowing about it," Hickey said, referring to a recent ambush involving almost a dozen attackers.

Commanders` oft-stated priority is to capture or kill the insurgents, especially the leaders and funders. Attackers taken into custody, wounded or killed tend to be lower-level operatives paid for their efforts but unable to lead authorities to insurgency leaders. Improved intelligence is essential, military leaders agree.

"Everything is intelligence-driven at this point," Petraeus said. "You have to be able to identify the structure of who is out there and who their leaders are; what their support system is; where their weapons caches are; who`s funding them."

There is no shortage of raw intelligence flowing into military bases, though much of it is useless or deliberately misleading.

In one recent case, an officer recalled, the Army mounted a raid on a middle-class family`s house northwest of Baghdad after an informant denounced a male occupant as a Baath loyalist. An armored vehicle climbed the home`s marble stairs and buckled the walls. The man was found to be innocent, and the U.S. government paid more than $20,000 in compensation.

"This," Petraeus said, "is a culture of denunciation."


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Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Baghdad and Jeffrey Fleishman in Najaf, Iraq, contributed to this report.

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THE NATION



As Bush Gains, Florida Democrats Losing Enthusiasm for a Rematch
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2003

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — No Democrats anywhere have been anticipating a rematch with President Bush more eagerly than those in Florida, the state whose bitterly contested vote finally decided the White House race three years ago.

But now that the 2004 campaign is gearing up, some Florida Democrats are concerned that none of their party`s potential nominees are up to the job of defeating the president in a state where his younger brother, Jeb Bush, won a landslide reelection as governor just 10 months ago.

"They really have to get their act together, and they don`t seem to have their act together," said Catherine McNaught after she joined others at a gathering organized by the state party to watch last week`s nationally televised debate among the Democratic candidates. "Jeb is big down here; he`s huge and I don`t see that we have anybody stepping up to the plate."

All signs suggest that Florida once again will play a pivotal role in the presidential election. Karl Rove, Bush`s chief political strategist, has already described it as "ground zero" for 2004.

Given the president`s continuing strength in the South, the Mountain West and the Plains states, many strategists in both parties believe it could be almost impossible for the eventual Democratic nominee to win an electoral college majority without capturing Florida.

But, in what`s looming as a major challenge for Democrats, Bush looks much stronger in the state than he did in 2000, when Florida symbolized the nation`s 50-50 partisan divide.

Florida`s underlying demographic and partisan balance makes it too close for either party to view it as safe in next year`s election. But when Bush visits Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday, he will arrive in a state where all the key indicators show Republicans gaining strength and Democrats struggling to keep pace.

"Florida is becoming an increasingly more Republican state," said Bob Buckhorn, a longtime Democratic activist from Tampa. "We start light-years behind the Republicans in terms of our fund-raising ability, our farm team and the technical apparatus to make this thing work. We are in a rebuilding phase — no question about it."

Little to Cheer About

The party`s prospects would immediately improve if Sen. Bob Graham, one of the state`s most popular politicians, succeeded in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. But his campaign has so far drawn little support.



Florida Democrats have had very little to cheer about since the December day in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recounting of ballots in the epic struggle between Bush and Al Gore. That decision let stand a count that gave Bush a victory in Florida of 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast — and with it, the presidency.



The state`s Democrats have used that fierce fight as a rallying cry. But that hasn`t prevented Republicans from gaining ground on most key measures of political strength in the state since.

One basic indication is party registration. In 2000, there were 372,843 more Democrats than Republicans registered in the state; by this summer, the margin had dwindled by nearly 60,000, to 314,969.

More dramatic were the results of the 2002 election. Republicans padded their majorities in both the state House and Senate. With the help of a favorable redistricting map, they expanded their lead in the state`s 25-member congressional delegation from seven seats to 11.

And the GOP dominated the statewide elections, crushing Democrats in the contests for attorney general and agriculture commissioner, while watching Jeb Bush power to a one-sided reelection over Democratic nominee Bill McBride. Though Democrats still hold both U.S. Senate seats, the victories gave the Republicans a clean sweep of statewide executive offices.

Gov. Bush`s victory was especially emphatic. Lifted by a surge of Republican turnout, he overwhelmed McBride, a trial lawyer making his first bid for public office, by 56% to 43%, a 655,000-vote margin. Jeb Bush won nearly as many votes as his brother did in the 2000 presidential election, when overall turnout was much higher.

Almost no one in either party believes Florida will be as easy for President Bush to carry in 2004 as it was for his brother in 2002. "I don`t think any of us believe the eventual Democratic presidential nominee is going to play as weakly in Florida as Bill McBride," said Neil Newhouse, who polled for Jeb Bush in 2002. "It is still going to be a very competitive, very difficult state."

But the magnitude of Jeb Bush`s vote in 2002 does point to two trends that are likely to benefit the president next year.

One is the intensity of feeling among Florida Republicans for the Bush brothers. The tidal wave of GOP turnout in Florida, like similar surges last year in Colorado and Georgia, suggests that President Bush can translate his glowing approval ratings among Republicans — which have consistently held at 90% or above — into votes.

Perhaps even more important for 2004, the 2002 election demonstrated that Florida Republicans now exceed Democrats in the capacity to identify, contact and turn out their supporters.

In 2002, for instance, the state GOP sent every registered Republican an application to vote by absentee ballot — and followed that with another mailing and phone calls from volunteers. The result: Jeb Bush won over 510,000 votes — almost 200,000 more than McBride — from either absentee ballots or theose cast in the state`s early-voting system.

By contrast, with McBride focusing his resources on television advertising, the Democratic Party didn`t receive money for its get-out-the-vote campaign until five days before election day, said Scott Maddox, the former Tallahassee mayor who became state party chairman in January.

Energetic and ambitious, Maddox is rebuilding the frayed Democratic infrastructure. He`s raised the money to open a new headquarters, expand staff and increase the party`s presence on the Internet.

Yet the Florida GOP, working closely with the 2004 Bush campaign, is already raising the bar. From its headquarters on a quiet, shady street just a few blocks from the courthouses where Bush and Gore waged war after election day in 2000, the state party has launched a program that will pay local GOP organizations $2 for every new Republican voter they register.

The other big change from 2000 is in the perception of President Bush himself. As in many states, he has benefited in Florida from a widespread belief that he`s provided strong leadership in the war on terrorism.

"If you look at his job approval ratings and how people rate the fight against terrorism, at this stage people are saying, `Stay the course,` " said Jim Kane, executive director of the nonpartisan Florida Poll.

But amid all these blue skies, some clouds still loom for the president.

Republicans worry that many of the 97,488 Floridians who voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 will switch to the Democratic nominee in 2004. Election reform measures mandating the use of high-tech voting machinery in the wake of the 2000 debacle also could mean more Democratic votes, since under the old punch-card systems more ballots were often discarded for mistakes in lower-income and minority precincts.

The GOP is even more concerned about widespread complaints in the Cuban American community — a critical bloc of support for Bush in 2000 — that the White House hasn`t been tough enough on Fidel Castro.



Fears on Economy, Iraq

Bush is also vulnerable in Florida to the same storm winds battering him elsewhere. Though the state`s economy has performed better than most, unemployment is still higher in Florida than when Bush took office. Some observers see growing jitters over Iraq too.

Indeed, the key to Florida`s role in the presidential race may be its sensitivity to national currents. The state`s blend of African Americans, Latinos, moderate suburbanites in the Orlando-to-Tampa corridor, rural conservatives in the northwest and die-hard liberal retirees in the southeast tends to produce a remarkably accurate political microcosm of the nation.

That suggests that if Bush has a comfortable lead nationally, he`s likely to be secure in Florida as well. But that also means that if the overall race is close next year, all of the advantages Republicans have accumulated here since 2000 may not prevent Florida from again becoming a nail-biter.
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THE WORLD



Dynasty and Democracy -- Azerbaijan at a Crossroads
As the oil-rich nation heads for an election, U.S. support of the president`s son is seen by some as conflicting with American goals.
By David Holley
Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2003

DIGAKH, Azerbaijan — At first glance, the scene in the village tea shop is idyllic: men passing the day playing backgammon and dominoes. But under the surface, anger seethes.

In a country riding an oil boom, the men agree that life is bad — and getting worse. But they are less than unanimous about who is to blame.

Amid widespread public disenchantment, the first handover of power from father to son in a former Soviet republic appears to be well underway in this predominantly Muslim nation of 8 million perched on the Caspian Sea`s western shore. But much still depends on how the unemployed men at the backgammon table choose to respond.

A pall of post-Soviet fear that hangs over this society makes it particularly difficult to know whether they will regard Prime Minister Ilham Aliyev as a worthy successor to his ailing father, 80-year-old President Heydar A. Aliyev, a former KGB general who has become an ally of Washington. And if October elections appear to be fraudulent, it is unclear whether these men will take to the barricades.

With the U.S. seeking both to diversify its sources of oil and promote democracy in the Muslim world, Azerbaijan has become a key playing field. But there is tension between U.S. goals: How hard should Washington push for democratic change at the risk of alienating a government it sees as a geopolitical partner, an ally in fighting terrorism and a force promoting key Western oil interests?

With the Caspian Sea region rapidly emerging as one of the most important new sources of oil, U.S. moves here can be seen as part of an updated version of the 19th century struggle between Britain and Russia for influence in Central Asia — what Rudyard Kipling called the "Great Game."

After Ilham Aliyev`s appointment by his father as prime minister in early August, President Bush sent a message of congratulations in which he said Washington looked forward to cooperating with him in building democratic institutions. The letter was treated in Azerbaijan as a show of support for the younger Aliyev.

Heydar Aliyev, the republic`s onetime Communist boss and later a Soviet Politburo member, became president in 1993 at a time of crisis. Azerbaijan faced the threat of civil war in addition to a territorial conflict with Armenia. The elder Aliyev drew in Western companies to develop and export the country`s vast oil supplies. Key to this effort is a 1,100-mile pipeline under construction from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey`s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

The U.S. government backs the $3-billion pipeline project, due for completion in early 2005, as a way to shore up the independence of former Soviet states around the Caspian by providing a way to export oil without needing to send it across Russia or Iran.

U.S. diplomats in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, and State Department officials in Washington have called for the October presidential elections to be free and fair.

"If the voting is marred by fraud and manipulation, and if the results of the election are deemed inaccurate or illegitimate, it will be a debilitating step backward," Nancy McEldowney, U.S. Embassy deputy chief of mission, wrote in a commentary distributed to local media.

But in the eyes of many, the Bush letter trumped such warnings.

"It is widely believed here that the Americans and Turks are betraying the ideals of democracy for the sake of protecting their interests in Azerbaijan," said Rauf Mirkadyrov, a political commentator for the independent daily newspaper Zerkalo.

Government critics warn that if the United States goes along with a dynastic succession, that could encourage similar father-son handoffs in Central Asia, to the detriment of democracy and long-term U.S. influence.

Azerbaijani society is highly secular, but radical Islamists have made inroads in recent years, Mirkadyrov said. If Washington does not give greater support to democracy here, that could discredit the pro-Western opposition and open the door to more serious gains by religious radicals, he said.

"The main protest of the opposition and the people in Azerbaijan is against the establishment of a monarchy or dynastic rule," said Isa Gambar, 46, head of the opposition Musavat party and a leading presidential candidate. "We don`t want Azerbaijan to go back to the Middle Ages."

Ali Kerimli, 38, head of the Popular Front party and also a presidential candidate, said the appointment of the younger Aliyev as prime minister put Azerbaijan on a list of countries such as North Korea and Syria "where authoritarian leaders left power to their sons as if it were their own private property."

Ilham Aliyev, 41, dismisses such criticism.

"The opposition is conducting its actions with old methods and will not achieve anything with rallies and demonstrations," he said. "The opposition should be asked what they can do if they come to power Their goal is to destroy the current situation, thus causing a civil conflict in the country."

Previous elections conducted under the elder Aliyev have been viewed by outside observers as blatantly rigged. Opposition leaders now say that the Americans must apply great pressure to ensure that the Oct. 15 vote is reasonably honest.

"There is a danger they may decide to shut their eyes to what is happening," said Etibar Mamedov, 55, head of the Party of National Independence and another leading opposition candidate. "Our task is to make it impossible for them to do that."

Both Aliyevs are actually registered as candidates. The elder Aliyev has been receiving treatment at a Cleveland hospital since early August for heart and kidney problems, and his ability to govern again is in doubt.

The appointment of his son as prime minister makes him the political heir in two ways: If the president dies in office, the prime minister automatically becomes interim president. If the elder Aliyev is too ill to run in October, the son will be the standard-bearer for the ruling elite.

Since his appointment as prime minister, the younger Aliyev has stressed his experience in the oil industry, where he was vice president of the state oil company.

The paradox of Azerbaijan is reflected in the trip of a dozen miles from Baku to Digakh, past hundreds of oil rigs.

At Ilham Mirzoyev`s tea shop, where two bare lightbulbs hang by their cords from the ceiling, beige wallpaper peels at its edges and dirty sheets of tile-patterned linoleum are laid loosely on the floor, no one has seen any oil money. Dreams of a better future seem as unreal as the kitsch posters that brighten the room: images of a bowl of cherries next to a huge strawberry with cream, and of a fancy cake with green grapes, tulips and roses.

Life here is no bowl of cherries. For one thing, villagers say they barely have any natural gas for heating in the winter.

"In Soviet times there was gas," said Vagit Mamedov, 53, a small farmer and unemployed driver. "We use firewood, but it`s almost impossible to find here. You can see there are no trees. This winter I slept in my jacket, my coat and two layers of underwear, wearing a hat, and still my teeth were chattering with the cold."

Critics blame President Aliyev for the failure of oil wealth to vastly improve the lives of most citizens.

During his first few years as president, Aliyev "achieved a lot, and he stabilized the situation in Azerbaijan," said Etibar Mamedov, the opposition leader. "He could have continued and made sure a system of political and economic freedoms was formed. Unfortunately he didn`t do it. He created a system responsible to himself personally, and this system is based on bribery, corruption and lies."

But the president`s supporters argue that he has played his oil cards brilliantly, building the Western ties needed to guarantee his country`s sovereignty against potentially ambitious neighbors. They also say that selection of his son as his successor was the right move.

"There was a choice Aliyev was confronted with: either choose the ostensible route of democracy, and appoint someone else prime minister, or guarantee the stability that has existed in the country for the past 10 years," said Djanguir Mouslim-Zade, a former member of parliament who now runs Azinteroil, a company specializing in purification of wastewater from oil industry operations.

"I think stability was the more important consideration. It`s only Ilham Aliyev who can assure stability in this country, and no one else."



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THE WORLD
a d v e r t i s e m e n t




Troops Find Anchor, but No Hussein
Soldiers conducting a raid in a village run into Dan Rather. He joins them on a search for a sheik said to have ties to the ex-leader.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2003



ALBU TALHA, Iraq — Just before dawn, U.S. troops descended from the skies in massive force upon this remote village of mud huts and shepherds. Their quarry: Saddam Hussein, a top henchman and squads of loyalist fighters said to be holed up here.

But instead of the former dictator, the soldiers ran into bewildered inhabitants, agitated dogs and CBS newsman Dan Rather, decked out in a flak jacket and a blue helmet.

"This is the cleanest place we`ve been to," a frustrated Maj. Robert Gwinner said after determining that there were no known enemies or arms caches.

So it goes these days in the often-exasperating hunt for Hussein: lots of expectation, lots of energy and hours expended and lots of what the soldiers call "dry holes" — leads that go nowhere.

One theory shared by troops here is that planning — including close passes by U.S. scouts — tips off the enemy.

"Keep in mind that the other side has its scouts too," noted one GI, a veteran of half a dozen missions seeking so-called high value targets — Army-speak for Hussein or other most-wanted regime loyalists. "And they know the country a lot better than we do."

U.S. raids targeting Hussein, close associates or suspected fighters are daily events in Iraq, especially in the territory north and west of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, which is based in Tikrit, near Hussein`s hometown. Journalists are keen to "embed" with "4 ID," hoping they will be along for the operation that snares the ousted leader.

By most accounts, Hussein is believed to be moving among relatives and friends somewhere in the arid expanses, evading detection by relying on tribal connections. Intelligence suggests that he may have grown a beard or even be wearing a bomb to avoid being taken alive. Whether any of this is true remains to be seen.

"You probably won`t find him with a beret," one commander advised his troops before the incursion early Tuesday into this hardscrabble hamlet, about 30 miles east of Tikrit.

Informant reports suggested that Hussein may have been spotted recently in the vicinity, which was described as his mother`s ancestral homeland. Also said to have been seen in the area was Izzat Ibrahim, a military aide to Hussein who was No. 6 on the U.S. most-wanted list and is now the top fugitive after Hussein.

Officials say the $25-million reward on Hussein`s head has prompted hundreds of tips, many of them dubious.

Extensive planning and rehearsal went into the raid last week, which was undertaken by nearly an entire battalion from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, part of the 4th Infantry Division. Reports of the presence of Fedayeen Saddam militiamen resulted in a deployment of about 400 soldiers, some armed with missile launchers. Artillery, Apache attack helicopters and Air Force support were on standby. Planners working from satellite photographs assigned numbers to each of the town`s structures.

Teams were assigned to secure specific objectives and given code names such as Vulture1. Particular attention was given to House No. 38, where groups of young men in white pickups had been seen congregating around an older man.

Another target was a certain "Sheik Mubarak," said to be close to Hussein and known to own a herd of 1,000 sheep. (Later, the sheik`s son said his father met Hussein only once, at a formal event attended by many tribal leaders.)

"I want everything to be squeaky clean," the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, told his troops before they boarded the choppers. "We got media all over the place."

Big Chinook helicopters brought the first 100 or so troops just before dawn, disgorging them just outside the mud walls. Dogs yelped, chickens squawked and terrified villagers stared at the twilight figures as if they were alien invaders just beamed in from the heavens.

Soldiers sealed the village`s entrances and exits. Dozens of armored vehicles soon were rumbling in. Wire and metal posts for a temporary holding pen were unloaded from a flatbed truck.

"Why would a man such as Saddam ever come to this place?" asked a perplexed Aziz Shuker Himid, 46. He was standing alongside his five incredulous children, huddled in beds placed outdoors, as is the custom here, to take advantage of nighttime cooling. "We`ve only seen Saddam on television."

Dan Rather and his crew also had arrived by helicopter. No real action was to be found, but the celebrity newsman posed for photos with delighted fighters and headed out with the brigade colonel in search of the sheik of 1,000 sheep.

Soldiers searching homes uncovered nothing more incriminating than a single rocket-propelled-grenade round, a paltry thing in Iraq. Another dry hole.

After a few hours, the battalion packed up its portable holding pen and headed south, looking to "clear" several other villages. Not a shot had been fired.

"You never know unless you try," Lt. Col. Sassaman said. "We had to come see for ourselves."

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS



Benign Autocracy Is Answer for Iraq
By Ray Takeyh and Nikolas Gvosdev
Ray Takeyh is a professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University, and Nikolas Gvosdev is a senior fellow at the Nixon Center.

September 7, 2003

WASHINGTON — Last month, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice declared that it was in America`s strategic interests "to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom." A democratic Iraq, she continued, "can become a key element of a very different Middle East." But would the flourishing of democracy in Iraq really serve America`s core interests? In a country lacking a strong national identity, a country in which ethnic and regional loyalties are paramount, democracy could well result in another Lebanon — an unstable patchwork of local ethnic fiefdoms perilously perched at the brink of civil war.

Iraq lacks well-rooted institutions. It lacks the national political parties, civic associations, even business conglomerates that create common interests upon which a stable democracy rests. The looting triggered by the collapse of the old regime clearly demonstrated the lack of a civil society capable of promoting general interests above individual ones.

Moreover, even if a sustainable democracy could be created in Iraq, there is no guarantee it would be amenable to American strategic interests. The ongoing acts of resistance — as well as the growing frustration with the presence of American and British forces even in Shiite areas of the country — point to a nationalistic rejection of the occupation.

Iraqis were happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein but show little inclination to be directed by the United States in any aspect of domestic or foreign policy. Under such conditions, it`s ludicrous to expect an Iraqi leadership to be responsive to American concerns and, at the same time, seek an electoral mandate from a disgruntled populace that does not support U.S. goals for the region.

America`s democratic impulse is similarly self-defeating in the rest of the Middle East. Despite the claims of the Bush team, our essential interests are unlikely to be realized in a more democratic Middle East. To maintain stability, contain its rivals and displace its nemeses, the U.S. needs garrisons, naval installations and the cooperation of local intelligence services. It needs to ensure that the price of oil remains stable. And it needs to continue its commitment to Israel.

It is hard to see how any of these responsibilities can be easily discharged in a democratic Middle East.

Throughout the region, opposition to the United States cuts across ideological and cultural boundaries and unites seemingly disparate groups. Take the case of the peace process. In the two states that have enacted formal peace treaties with Israel — Egypt and Jordan — much popular opinion is strongly hostile to such obligations. It is autocrats, not popular assemblies, who keep the peace process alive.

Given such views, American policy objectives are unlikely to fare well in a pluralistic Middle East.

Nor would the United States find a democratic Middle East a more hospitable terrain for its antiproliferation priorities. Prospective democracies in the Middle East, including Iraq, would face strong nationalistic pressure to modernize their armed forces and develop weapons to compete with a nuclear-armed Israel. Washington has had some success in coaxing, bribing and pressuring Arab despots to comply with nonproliferation treaties, but it would have little leverage with democratic regimes. It is significant that none of the opposition parties in either Pakistan or Iran supports any move toward a nuclear freeze.

The best that the United States can hope for is to encourage the rise of liberal autocracies that will accommodate popular demands for accountability and participation while still maintaining close ties with the United States. The model of liberal autocracy is not without precedent in the Arab-Muslim world. Several of the region`s most stable and pro-American regimes are already moving toward this type of governance. The modernizing monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait and the liberalizing one-party state of Tunisia all serve to illustrate this indigenous trend.

This sort of liberal autocracy should be America`s model for political reconstruction in Iraq. Instead of quixotic democratic schemes, Washington should create a strong central government in Baghdad, one that is responsive to its citizens but also capable of regulating local rivalries and is insulated from popular pressure.

America`s goal should be to transfer power to an indigenous regime as soon as possible, not to use Iraq as some sort of social-science laboratory for nation-building. The United States should select an efficient new leadership capable of initiating market and other reforms while also managing popular discontent with American policies. There is a great deal of talent in the midlevel ranks of the military and civil service that can be tapped for such a purpose.

Empowering pragmatic local administrators (as opposed to exiled politicians) would ensure that the leadership is in touch with the needs of the Iraqi people, and that it would have a good chance of surviving even after the U.S. withdraws.

The continuing unrest in Iraq today demonstrates that its citizens crave services, not abstract notions of pluralism. If a new regime improves the quality of life for Iraqi citizens, it will gain popular support — even if it was backed initially by the U.S.

The United States is at a crossroads. It can either face the very real risks of democratization or dispense with its Wilsonian pieties and craft a durable new order for the Middle East. It cannot do both.

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WAR IN IRAQ



History Spurned
The Middle East is tough to occupy, as Bush would know if he`d really studied the Crusades
By James Reston Jr.
James Reston Jr. is the author of "Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade" and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

September 7, 2003

WASHINGTON — At a press conference in July, President Bush said that he was "confident history will prove the decision we made [in going to war with Iraq] to be the right decision." His remark echoed something British Prime Minister Tony Blair had said a couple of weeks earlier, when he announced that he was certain that, even if no weapons of mass destruction were ultimately found in Iraq, "history will forgive" the allies` actions in destroying "a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering."

I think it`s time for historians to stand up in defense of their craft. Bush and Blair have no standing in our province. It will be at least 10 years before any respectable and authoritative history of the Iraq adventure can be written, and it certainly won`t be up to the war`s architects to decree whether it was a success or failure.

Historical judgments can be passed only after the last American, British and other soldiers have left the desert, after the last billions have been spent and after Iraq is again a self-governing nation — whatever religious or secular form that may take. Even then there will be disagreement. Bush and Blair may infatuate a historian or two, who will praise their war plans and overlook their misrepresentations. But no self-respecting historian will be able to separate the war from the occupation. The judgment of history will take the two aspects together as a package.

History is not a monolith that speaks, basso profundo, with a single voice. It is more art than science, offering analysis rather than proof. It is not a church that confers blessings or forgiveness. If we look back at the histories of the Vietnam War, history did not forgive President Johnson for pressing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution based on, at best, a gross exaggeration of Viet Cong aggression. It did not praise the politicians who argued the abstractions of a domino theory as passionately as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz argues the abstractions of preemptive strikes and a new Americanized Middle East. Historians could not consider the full debacle of Vietnam until the long years of the war and occupation of South Vietnam were complete, with the last American jumping into a helicopter on the roof of the American Embassy in old Saigon.

Thus, to invoke the judgments of history now, in the first few months of the American-led occupation of Iraq, is absurd, no matter how well it plays before a joint session of Congress, where applauding members love to see themselves as writing history.

In fact, Bush embraces history only when he`s trying to avoid the scrutiny of today. He ignored it when it could have helped him the most: before he gave the order for a massive deployment of troops to the Middle East.

In January 2002, only a few months after Sept. 11 and many months before last fall`s marching orders, the New York Times reported that Karl Rove, the president`s political advisor, urged Bush to read several histories that would help him to better understand the American dilemma in the Middle East. One of those histories was my own about the Third Crusade of Richard the Lionheart and his encounters with Saladin.

The paramount lessons of that crusade were clear — and might have helped the president understand what he was getting into. The sultan of the Arab peoples, Saladin, was (and still is) considered the greatest of Muslim heroes in the Middle East because he defeated a Western occupation of Arab lands and defended Islam with a broad-based jihad. He has remained a hero to Arabs because the sense that Arabs should control their own land is as strong today as it was then.

Another lesson he might have learned is that the Middle East is a tough place to occupy. During the Crusades, just as now, Western soldiers longed to go home right after the enemy army was defeated. In the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart avoided capturing Jerusalem because he knew that once that mission was accomplished, his troops would rush for home-bound ships. No Western army has had the stomach to remain indefinitely in a hostile Arab country — thousands of miles from home in a vastly different culture. What U.S. soldier wants to commit to the decades that would be required to transform an Islamic civilization into a compliant Western client-state?

Another history that was urged on Bush by Rove was Jay Winik`s "April 1865." An expert on guerrilla warfare as well as a historian, Winik views the noble (but surprising) decision of Robert E. Lee to surrender unconditionally at Appomattox as a defining moment in the shaping of the modern American nation. Winik`s history makes clear that Lee faced considerable pressure from his top commanders, who wanted the Southern armies to fight on as guerrillas in the Appalachian mountains for as long as necessary. They made a convincing case that the North would surely tire of a war of attrition by the guerrillas and would eventually sue for peace and compromise. They may well have been right, and without Lee`s decision to take another course, history itself might have taken a very different course.

So what is the lesson for Bush? It was abundantly clear from the beginning that Iraq would have no Robert E. Lee. And that die-hard Iraqi guerrillas dedicated to wearing down the U.S. military might well be willing to continue fighting to protect their homeland and their religion against foreign invaders and evangelists.

If President Bush wants to continue talking about history, he`d be well advised to study the lessons of the past rather than muse about how future histories will view him. Perhaps then he`d be more likely to avoid the kind of mistakes that would cause future historians to judge him harshly.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Clearing the air

Sunday, September 7, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/07/ED30…


IT SEEMS the Bush administration is determined to establish America`s most environmentally hostile presidency ever.

How else to explain the White House`s zeal for oil drilling in Alaska`s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and other protected regions, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, dismissing Clinton administration initiatives on drinking water or balking on a pledge to regulate carbon dioxide pollution?

And now, the White House has undercut the Clean Air Act, abolishing safeguards that have protected air quality for 25 years. On Dec. 31, 2002, Bush gutted the act by repealing "new source review" which required refineries,

power plants and other industries to install modern pollution controls to offset major increases in emissions.

It`s the most damaging rollback of the act in its 30-year history. It could allow 1,288 industries in California alone to increase the contaminates they already spew into air by thousands of tons. And it`s medically devastating, according to health experts who predict dramatic increases in lost work and school days, and respiratory diseases and deaths.

"The administration`s changes essentially allow old, dirty facilities to continue emitting excessive levels of pollution -- forever," said a letter from the American Lung Association, Sierra Club and others in support of SB288,

a state clean air act.

SB288, by Sen. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto, would keep the new source review intact. So, it`s puzzling and regrettable that the Coalition for California Jobs -- a Chamber of Commerce creation -- calls it a "job-killer" that will hurt business, as if quality of life were not a major reason why people want to work and live in this state.

But SB288 imposes no new restrictions. It`s just a fail-safe against a federal act that could make California air unbearable.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Assembly is expected to vote this week on the Senate-passed SB288. You can find the name and contact information for your Assembly member by typing in your ZIP code at www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Return to regular view
9/11: Yesterday and tomorrow
How we could lose the war on terror
John Arquilla
Sunday, September 7, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/07/IN18…


The war on terror has become a global intifada, but despite our all- out commitment we`re not much safer than before 9-11.

As the conflict enters its third year, the greatest threat is that our failure to cripple al Qaeda and its allies will inspire the rise of even more terror networks. The dark, looming specter is the possibility that 10 years from now, there will be 10 al Qaedas -- fanatical, highly organized and well disciplined terror networks, some of them in secret service to rogue (or maybe not-so-roguish) nations that really do possess weapons of mass destruction.

This troubling future must not come to pass because it heralds a world in which the backbone of our national defense, security-through-deterrence, will lie in tatters. How is one to threaten retaliation against a network with no identifiable territory of its own?

Current U.S. counter-terror doctrine, which is shifting from deterrence to preemption, features two core elements, each of which has proved counterproductive.

First, the focus on attacking nations has caused us to be distracted from the prime mission of ripping apart terror networks. Our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have not pacified either country. Our forces in each land must live now in environments that have become hothouses for terror. Afghanistan is now home to more terrorist training camps than it harbored prior to Operation Enduring Freedom in the fall of 2001. The terrorists, it seems, have endured freedom quite ably.

The situation is much like the dilemma described in John Steinbeck`s World War II-era story, "The Moon Is Down." Dr. Winter, a small-town physician, tells Col. Lanser, the occupation commander, that "the flies have conquered the flypaper." Steinbeck names neither Norway nor the Nazis explicitly, but the message is clear and timeless: A resistance network has the power to prevail against an enemy whose strategy is based on territorial conquest.

The second problem with U.S. strategy in the terror war is that as networks become targets, we concentrate far too much on going after their leaders. True networks don`t require much centralized control. Osama bin Laden may be dead. Hambali (leader of the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah) is in custody. And only 15 "cards" remain free in that notorious deck of wanted Iraqi leaders. But still, al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah are potent threats, and a grassroots Iraqi "Faith Campaign" is gathering steam as a broad-based resistance movement.

We must see that networks are about individual initiative and creativity rather than about "great man" leadership. This has already been proved true in cutting-edge business networks over the past decade. Now we know that it is true of terrorist organizations as well.

Though al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah and their cohorts all feature a very resilient form of organization that has kept them on their feet despite serious losses, none can hope for victory in a straightforward confrontation with U.S. forces. This constraint on their taking direct military action makes very appealing to them a strategy based on episodic attacks distributed widely over time and space

As they look at the Palestinian struggle for statehood, terrorist networks take heart from seeing Israel`s inability to defeat Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which are themselves highly networked organizations. Despite all that Israel`s defense forces have hurled at them, the terrorists still hold the initiative, deciding when and where to strike next.

The fact that most Israelis now agree that an independent Palestinian state must be created is yet another sign that even a stern opponent like Israel can eventually be ground down by a terror-based war of attrition.

Just as the Palestinian intifada encourages al Qaeda and its dark allies to believe that in the long run their triumph is inevitable, they are also emboldened by the growing U.S. sensitivity to the steadily mounting casualties in Iraq. A decade ago, the deaths of just 18 U.S. soldiers in a firefight in Somalia led to an embarrassing withdrawal from that sad land.

The mistakes in the U.S. campaign plan are natural, understandable ones. In the long history of conflict, occupying territory and eliminating enemy leaders have generally gone hand in hand with victory.

But in the current era, the destructive and disruptive power of even very small groups grows at a cancerous rate. In such a world, taking ground simply exposes a force to more widely distributed attacks. And chasing down enemy leaders is counterproductive when there is no central control of an enemy force that is widely dispersed in small cells.

What can we do to start winning the war on terror?

A first step is to learn as much from the intifada as our adversaries have. Aside from analyzing how the Palestinians have persisted, there is much to gain from considering the moves the Israelis have made. Their best adjustment has been to cease thinking in territorial terms.

A few years ago, Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon rather than continue to subject themselves to continual attacks from Hezbollah, yet another vibrant terror network. And now, instead of thinking about permanent occupation, the Israelis engage in brief, violent incursions -- very much like the characteristic Arab fighting technique of "attack and withdrawal" described by the 14th Century Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun.

This lesson from the intifada means we should avoid going out and conquering any more "flypaper." Instead, our forces should prepare to operate in a swift, swarming raiding style, anywhere in the world.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, eschewing territorial conquest should encourage us to hand off these nettlesome occupations to the United Nations -- although we ought to retain a capacity for making lightning raids with special operations forces if and whenever terrorists come out of hiding.

Our British allies have also had much experience in dealing with terrorists and insurgents. When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These "pseudo gangs," as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists` camps.

What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today`s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult. If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with al Qaeda, think what professional operatives might do.

One last adjustment to our war strategy is needed: We must stop trumpeting our role as the leader in this conflict. Instead, we should reinvent ourselves simply as equal members of a worldwide counterterror network. If we can find some of the "humility" with which President Bush once said he would conduct U. S. foreign policy, we might find that our allies have much to bring to this conflict. We might find that the ultimate lesson of these first two years of the war is that it takes a network to fight a network.

If we learn to network better, we can make the case more convincingly that this war is not bin Laden`s "clash of civilizations" but rather a fight for the future based on ethical and universal values adhered to by civilized countries around the globe.

If any lasting good comes from this war, it will be that, in response to a broad-based terrorist uprising, a global civil society arises, mastering the current challenge and changing the world forever for the better.

John Arquilla is professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and co-author of "Countering the New Terrorism."

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Das ist der erste Poll in dem Bush overall Rating unter 50% fällt.
Zogby International America Poll and Reuters/Zogby Poll

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=732

Released: September 06, 2003
Bush Numbers Hit New Low; Dean Tops List of Democratic Presidential Contenders, New Zogby America Poll Reveals



President George W. Bush’s job performance ratings have reached the lowest point since his pre-Inauguration days, continuing a steady decline since a post-9/11 peak, according to a new Zogby America poll of 1,013 likely voters conducted September 3-5.

Less than half (45%) of the respondents said they rated his job performance good or excellent, while a majority (54%) said it was fair or poor. In August Zogby International polling, his rating was 52% positive, 48% negative. Today’s results mark the first time a majority of likely voters have given the president an unfavorable job performance rating since he took office.



A majority (52%) said it’s time for someone new in the White House, while just two in five (40%) said the president deserves to be re-elected. Last month, 45% said re-election was in order, and 48% said it was time for someone new.

A like number (52%) said the country is heading in the wrong direction, while 40% said it is the right direction.

Overall opinion of President Bush has also slipped to 54% favorable – 45% unfavorable, compared to August polling which indicated 58% favorable, 40% unfavorable.

Just two in five (40%) said they would choose Bush if the election were held today, while 47% said they would elect a Democratic candidate. In August polling, respondents were split (43% each) over President Bush or any Democratic challenger.

In the same poll, likely Democratic primary voters give a plurality of their support to former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean (16%), whose campaign has been gathering support in recent polling. He is followed by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (13%), Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman (12%), and Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt (8%). No other candidate polled more than 3%.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the likely Democratic primary voters said it is somewhat or very likely that President Bush will be re-elected in November 2004, regardless of how they intend to vote.

The Zogby America poll involved 1,013 likely voters selected randomly from throughout the 48 contiguous states using listed residential telephone numbers. Polling was conducted from Zogby International’s Call Center in Utica, NY. The poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3.2%. The Democratic candidates’ portion of the poll involved 507 respondents, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.5%.

[Joerver]

Die Einsamkeit von Noam Chomsky
von Arundhati Roy
ZNet 01.09.2003
"I will never apologise for the United States of America - I don`t care what the facts are." -- President George Bush Sr.

Ich sitze in meinem Heim in New Delhi, sehe, wie sich ein amerikanischer Newskanal selber bewirbt ("We report. You decide."), und stelle mir Noam Chomskys amüsiertes Lächeln vor, das seinen abgebrochenen Zahn sehen lässt.
Jeder weiss, dass autoritäre Regimes, unabhängig von ihrer Ideologie, die Massenmedien für Propaganda missbrauchen. Doch was ist mit demokratisch gewählten Regimes in der "freien Welt"?
Dank Noam Chomsky und anderen Medienanalysten seiner Schule ist es heute für tausende, ja Millionen Menschen eine unumstössliche Gewissheit, dass die öffentliche Meinung in einer Demokratie des "freien Marktes" produziert wird wie irgend ein anderes Produkt des Massenmarktes - Seife, Lichtschalter oder Toastbrot. Wir wissen, dass wir zwar das gesetzlich und verfassungsrechtlich garantierte Recht auf freie Meinungsäusserung haben, uns aber der Raum, in dem dieses Recht ausgeübt werden kann, enteignet und an den Höchstbietenden verschachert worden ist. Der neoliberale Kapitalismus beschäftigt sich nicht allein mit der Anhäufung von Kapital; manche beschäftigen sich auch mit der Akkumulation von Macht, und wieder andere mit der Akkumulation von Freiheit. Auf der anderen Seite bedeutet er für die Menschen, die vom Machtzentrum des Neoliberalismus ausgeschlossen sind, ein Verlust von Kapital, Macht und Freiheit. Im "freien" Markt ist die freie Meinungsäusserung [free speech] zu einem Gebrauchsartikel geworden wie alles andere auch - Gerechtigkeit, Menschenreche, Trinkwasser, saubere Luft -, nur noch jenen zugänglich, die es sich leisten können. Und natürlich benützen jene, die sie sich leisten können, die freie Meinungsäusserung dazu, jene Art von Produkt herzustellen, jene Art von öffentlicher Meinung zurechtzuschneidern, die ihren Absichten am besten dient: "News they can use". Wie sie dies genau tun, war der Gegenstand vieler politischer Texte Noam Chomskys.

* * *

Premierminister Silvio Berlusconi hat gegenwärtig einen kontrollierenden Einfluss auf die grössten italienischen Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, Fernsehkanäle und Verlagshäuser. "Der Premierminister hat in der Tat Einfluss auf gegen 90 Prozent des italienischen Fernsehpublikums", berichtete die "Financial Times". Was kostet freie Meinungsäusserung? Freie Meinungsäusserung für wen? Zugegeben, Berlusconi ist ein Extrembeispiel. In anderen Demokratien - in den USA im Besonderen - sind Medienbarone, mächtige Unternehmenslobbys und Regierungsbeamte auf eine ausgeklügeltere, weniger augenfällige Weise miteinander verbandelt. (George W. Bush Jr.`s Kontakte zur Öllobby, zur Rüstungsindustrie, zu Enron, und Enrons Durchdringung von Instanzen der US-Verwaltung und der Massenmedien - all das ist jetzt öffentliches Wissen.)

Nach dem 11. September 2001 und den Terroranschlägen in New York und Washington wurde das laute Geschrei der Mainstream-Medien als Sprachrohr der US-Regierung - ihr rachsüchtiger Patriotismus, ihre willfährige Bereitschaft, die Pressemeldungen des Pentagons als Newsnachrichten zu verbreiten, ihre explizite Zensur abweichender Meinungen - zur Zielscheibe schwarzen Humors im Rest der Welt.

Dann crashte die New Yorker Börse. Bankrotte Fluggesellschaften appellierten an die Regierung, ihnen finanzielle Bürgschaften zu stellen, und es war davon die Rede, Patentrechte zu umgehen, um generische Medikamente zur Bekämpfung der Anthraxgefahr herzustellen (viel wichtiger und dringlicher natürlich als die Bekämpfung von Aids in Afrika). Plötzlich schien es, als ob die beiden Mythen der freien Meinung und des freien Markts zusammenbrechen könnten wie die beiden Türme des World Trade Centers.

Selbstverständlich geschah das nicht. Mythen leben weiter.

Es gibt jedoch eine andere Sicht auf die zunehmende Menge an Einsatz und Geld, die das Establishment ins Business der "Beeinflussung der öffentlichen Meinung" investierte: Es deutet auf eine reale Furcht vor der öffentlichen Meinung hin. Es legt eine beharrliche und berechtigte Sorge nahe, dass, wenn die Menschen die wahre Natur der Dinge, die da in ihrem Namen geschahen, entdecken (und verstehen) würden, dass sie dann aufgrund dieses Wissens handeln könnten. Mächtige wissen, dass gewöhnliche Leute nicht immer reflexartig rücksichtslos und eigennützig sind. (Wenn gewöhnliche Menschen Kosten und Nutzen abwägen, kann jederzeit so etwas wie ein Unbehagen leicht die Spitzen brechen.) Aus diesem Grund müssen sie vor der Wahrheit beschützt werden, begleitet in einem kontrollierten Kontext, in einer veränderten Realität, wie Masthühner oder Schweine in einem Stall.

Jene von uns, die diesem Schicksal entrinnen konnten und sich nun im Hinterhof sammeln, glauben nicht länger, was sie in den Zeitungen lesen und im TV sehen. Wir legen unser Ohr auf die Erde und suchen nach anderen Wegen, die Welt zu erklären. Wir suchen nach der nicht erzählten Geschichte, dem beiläufig erwähnten Militärputsch, dem verschwiegenen Völkermord, dem Bürgerkrieg in einem afrikanischen Land, berichtet in einer Kurznachricht neben einer ganzseitigen Werbung für Unterwäsche.

Wir sind uns nicht immer bewusst - und manche wissen es nicht einmal -, dass diese Art des Denkens, dieser einfache Scharfsinn, dieses instinktive Misstrauen gegenüber den Massenmedien im besten Fall eine politische Ahnung, im schlechtesten eine lose Anklage wäre, hätte sie nicht einem der grössten Denker der Welt Anlass zu einer unnachgiebigen und unbestechlichen Medienanalyse gegeben. Und das ist nur einer der Wege, auf denen Noam Chomsky unser Verständnis der Gesellschaft, in der wir leben, radikal verändert hat. Oder sollte ich sagen, unser Verständnis der durchdachten Regeln dieses verrückten Asyls, in dem wir alle freiwillige Insassen sind?

* * *

In einer Rede über die Anschläge des 11. Septembers in New York und Washington hat Präsident George W. Bush die Feinde Amerikas als "Feinde der Freiheit" bezeichnet. "Die Amerikaner", sagte er, "fragen, warum sie uns hassen. Sie hassen unsere Freiheiten: unsere Religionsfreiheit, unser Recht auf freie Meinungsäusserung, unser Wahlrecht, unsere Versamlungsfreiheit und unser Recht, anderer Meinung zu sein."

Wenn die Menschen in den Vereinigten Staaten eine ehrliche Antwort auf diese Frage wollen (die im Gegensatz steht zu jenen im "Idiot?s Guide to Anti-Americanism", wie etwa "Weil sie eifersüchtig sind", "Weil sie uns hassen", "Weil sie Verlierer sind", "Weil wir gut sind und sie schlecht"), würde ich ihnen raten: lest Chomsky. Lest Chomskys Texte zu den amerikanischen Militäroperationen in Indochina, Lateinamerika, Irak, Bosnien, im ehemaligen Jugoslawien, in Afghanistan, im Mittleren Osten. Wenn gewöhnliche Menschen in den Vereinigten Staaten Chomsky lesen würden, wären ihre Fragen vielleicht etwas differenzierter. Vielleicht würden sie fragen: "Warum hassen sie uns nicht viel mehr, als sie es tun?", oder "Ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass der 11. September nicht schon früher geschah?"

Unglücklicherweise werden in dieser nationalistischen Zeit Wörter wie "wir" und "die anderen" locker gehandhabt. Die Trennlinie zwischen den Bürgern und dem Staat wird absichtlich und mit Erfolg verwischt, nicht nur von Regierungen, sondern auch von Terroristen. Die zugrunde liegende Logik von Terrorattacken und von "Vergeltungskriegen" gegen Regierungen, die "den Terrorismus unterstützen", ist dieselbe: Beide bestrafen die Bürger für das Handeln ihrer Regierungen.

(Eine Randbemerkung: Ich bin mir bewusst, dass die Kritik Noam Chomskys als US-amerikanischem Bürger an seiner Regierung besser greift als die Kritik meinerseits, von einer indischen Staatsbürgerin. Ich bin keine Patriotin, und ich bin mir dessen bewusst, dass Käuflichkeit, Brutalität und Heuchelei Teil der bleischweren Seele eines jeden Staates sind. Aber wenn ein Staat aufhört, ein gewöhnlicher Staat zu sein, und zu einem Imperium wird, dann ändert sich das Ausmass ihrer Handlungen drastisch: Kann ich also sagen, dass ich als Teil des US-Imperiums spreche? Ich spreche als eine Sklavin, die sich erdreistet, ihren König zu kritisieren.)

* * *

Wenn man mich darum bäte, einen bedeutenden Beitrag Noam Chomskys zur Welt zu nennen, wäre es die Tatsache, dass er das gefährliche, manipulative, unbarmherzige Universum entlarvt hat, das sich hinter dem hübschen Wort "Freiheit" verbirgt. Er hat dies rational und auf empirischer Basis getan. Das Gewicht der Beweise, die er zusammengetragen hat, um seine Sache zu belegen, ist beeindruckend. Oder genauer: erschreckend. Die Prämissen von Chomskys Methode ist nicht ideologisch, aber höchst politisch. Er fährt seinen Kurs des Hinterfragens mit einem anarchistischen, instinktiven Misstrauen gegenüber der Macht. Er nimmt uns mit auf eine Reise durch den Sumpf des US-Establishments und führt uns durch das verwirrende Labyrinth der Korridore, welche die Regierung, das Big Business und die Meinungsbildungsindustrie miteinander verbinden.

Chomsky zeigt uns, dass Ausdrücke wie "Meinungsfreiheit", "freier Markt" und "freie Welt" wenig, wenn überhaupt etwas, mit Freiheit zu tun haben. Er zeigt uns, dass zu den unzähligen Freiheiten, die die US-Regierung für sich beansprucht, die Freiheit gehört, andere Völker zu töten, zu vernichten und zu beherrschen. Die Freiheit, Despoten und Diktatoren in aller Welt zu finanzieren und zu unterstützen. Die Freiheit, Terroristen zu trainieren, auszurüsten und zu schützen. Die Freiheit, demokratisch gewählte Regierungen zu stürzen. Die Freiheit, Massenvernichtungswaffen zu bauen und einzusetzen - chemische, biologische und nukleare. Die Freiheit, gegen jedes Land Krieg zu führen, dessen Regierung ihr nicht passt. Und, was das Schlimmste ist: die Freiheit, diese Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit im Namen von "Gerechtigkeit", "Rechtschaffenheit" und "Freiheit" zu begehen.

Der Rechtsanwalt und General John Ashcroft hat erklärt, dass die US-amerikanischen Freiheiten nicht "durch irgendeine Regierung oder ein Dokument begründet" seien, "sondern durch eine göttliche Sendung [our endowment from God]". Wir haben es also mit einem Land zu tun, das mit einem himmlischen Auftrag ausgerüstet ist. Vielleicht kann dies erklären, warum die US-Regierung es ablehnt, denselben moralischen Massstab an sich zu legen, mit dem sie über andere richtet. (Jeder Versuch, dies zu tun, wird als "moralische Gleichmacherei" niedergeschrien.) Ihre Methode ist, sich selber als wohlwollenden Riesen darzustellen, dessen gute Absichten in fremden Ländern von berechnenden Einheimischen vereitelt werden, obwohl sie doch nur deren Märkte öffnen, deren Gesellschaft modernisieren, die Frauen befreien und ihre Seelen retten wollen.

Vielleicht erklärt dieser Glaube an die eigene Göttlichkeit auch, warum die US-Regierung sich selber das Recht und die Freiheit übertragen hat, andere Völker "zu deren eigenem Vorteil" zu massakrieren und zu vernichten.

* * *

Als Präsident Bush Jr. die US-Luftschläge gegen Afghanistan ankündigte, sagte er: "Wir sind eine friedfertige Nation." Und er fuhr fort: "Dies ist die Stimme der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, der freiesten Nation der Welt, eine Nation, die auf Grundwerten errichtet ist, die Hass, Gewalt, Mord und das Böse ablehnt. Und wir werden nicht ermüden."

Das US-Imperium beruht auf einer grässlichen Grundlage: dem Massaker an Millionen Eingeborener, dem Diebstahl ihres Landes und in der Folge der Gefangennahme und Versklavung von Millionen schwarzer Menschen in Afrika, um dieses Land zu bebauen. Tausende starben auf See, als sie eingepfercht wie Vieh auf den neuen Kontinent verschifft wurden. "Stolen from Africa, brought to America" - Bob Marleys "Buffalo Soldier" umfasst ein ganzes Universum unsäglicher Traurigkeit. Der Song erzählt vom Verlust von Würde, von Wildheit, von Freiheit, vom gebrochenen Stolz eines Volkes. Völkermord und Sklaverei bilden das soziale und wirtschaftliche Grundgerüst der Nation, deren grundlegende Werte Hass, Mord und das Böse ablehnen.

Doch lesen wir, was Chomsky in seinem Essay "The Manufacture of Consent" über die Gründung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika geschrieben hat:

"Vor einigen Wochen besuchte ich während Thanksgiving mit einigen Freunden und meiner Familie einen Nationalpark. Wir kamen an einem Grabstein vorbei, der folgende Inschrift hatte: ,Hier liegt eine indianische Frau, eine Wampanoag, deren Familie und Stamm sich selbst und ihr Land aufgegeben hat, damit diese grosse Nation entstehen und wachsen konnte.?

Sicherlich ist es nicht treffend, zu sagen, dass die indigene Bevölkerung sich selbst und ihr Land zu diesem edlen Zweck aufgegeben habe. Vielmehr wurden sie geschlachtet, dezimiert und versprengt im Laufe eines der grössten Völkermorde der Menschheitsgeschichte ... den wir alljährlich im Oktober feiern, wenn wir Columbus - ein bemerkenswerter Massenmörder auch er - am Columbus Day die Ehre erweisen.

Hunderte amerikanischer Bürger, wohlwollende und anständige Leute, passieren diesen Grabstein regelmässig und lesen seine Inschrift, offenbar ohne Reaktion; ausser vielleicht mit einem Gefühl der Befriedigung, dass wir der Opferbereitschaft der Urbevölkerung wenigstens ein bisschen von der schuldigen Anerkennung zollen ... Vermutlich würden sie anders reagieren, wenn sie Auschwitz oder Dachau besuchen und einen Grabstein finden würden, auf dem steht: ,Hier liegt eine Frau, eine Jüdin, deren Familie und Volk sich selbst und ihren Besitz aufgegeben hat, damit diese grosse Nation wachsen und gedeihen konnte.?"

* * *

Wie haben die Vereinigten Staaten ihre schreckliche Vergangenheit bewältigt und ihren süssen Duft hervorgebracht? Nicht, indem sie bekannt haben, nicht durch Wiedergutmachungsleistungen, auch nicht durch Entschuldigung bei den schwarzen Amerikanern oder der Urbevölkerung, und sicherlich auch nicht durch eine Verhaltensänderung (heute exportieren sie ihre Grausamkeit). Wie die meisten anderen Länder auch, haben die Vereinigten Staaten ihre Geschichte neu geschrieben. Was aber die USA von anderen Ländern unterscheidet und ihr einen grossen Vorsprung gibt, ist, dass sie die mächtigste und erfolgreichste Werbemaschinerie der Welt in ihre Dienste eingespannt hat: Hollywood.

In der bestverkauften Version des populären Mythos als Geschichte erreichte die US-amerikanische "Gütigkeit" während des Zweiten Weltkriegs einen Höhepunkt (auch bekannt als "Amerikas Krieg gegen den Faschismus"). Doch im Lärm von Fanfaren und Trompeten geht unter, dass die US-Regierung wegschaute, als der Faschismus Europa überrannte. Als Hitler seinen Pogrom gegen die Juden durchführte, verwehrten US-Beamte aus Deutschland geflohenen jüdischen Flüchtlingen die Einreise. Die Vereinigten Staaten traten erst in den Krieg ein, nachdem Japan Pearl Harbour bombardiert hatte. Übertönt von lautstarkem Hosanna wird die barbarischste aller ihrer Taten, der Abwurf der Atombombe auf die Zivilbevölkerung von Hiroshima und Nagasaki. Der Krieg war schon fast zu Ende. Die hunderttausenden Japaner, die getötet wurden, die ungezählten der folgenden Generationen, die verkrüppelt sind und an Krebs leiden, waren keine Bedrohung für den Weltfrieden. Sie waren Zivilisten. Genauso, wie auch die Opfer der Angriffe auf das World Trade Center und das Pentagon Zivilisten waren. Wie auch die hunderttausenden von Menschen, die im Irak wegen der von den USA diktierten Sanktionen gestorben sind, Zivilisten waren. Die Bombardierung Hiroshimas und Nagasakis war ein kühl berechnetes Experiment, ausgeführt, um Amerikas Macht zu demonstrieren. Präsident Truman nannte es "the greatest thing in history".

Der Zweite Weltkrieg, so wird uns gesagt, war ein "Krieg für den Frieden". Die Atombombe war eine "Waffe des Friedens". Wir werden aufgefordert, zu glauben, dass die nukleare Abschreckung einen dritten Weltkrieg verhindert habe. (Das war bevor Präsident Bush Jr. seine "Preemptivschlag-Doktrin" verkündete.) Gab es aber einen Ausbruch des Frieden nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg? Sicher, es gab einen (relativen) Frieden in Europa und in Amerika - aber zählt das bereits als Weltfrieden? Nur, wenn die wilden Stellvertreterkriege in Ländern, in denen farbige Rassen leben (Chinks, Niggers, Dinks, Wogs, Gooks) gar nicht als Kriege gezählt werden.

* * *

Seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg haben die Vereinigten Staaten unter anderem gegen folgende Staaten Krieg geführt oder sie angegriffen: Korea, Guatemala, Kuba, Laos, Vietnam, Kambodscha, Grenada, Libyen, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Irak, Somalia, Sudan, Jugoslawien und Afghanistan. Diese Liste müsste ergänzt werden durch die verdeckten Operationen der US-Regierung in Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika, die Staatsstreiche, die sie arrangiert, und die Diktatoren, die sie ausgerüstet und unterstützt hat. Weiter müsste den von den USA gewollten Krieg Israels gegen Libanon enthalten, in dem Tausende getötet wurden, Amerikas Schlüsselrolle im Konflikt im Mittleren Osten, in dem Tausende im Kampf gegen die illegale Besetzung palästinensischen Landes durch Israel umkamen, Amerikas Rolle im afghanischen Bürgerkrieg in den Achtzigerjahren, in dem mehr als eine Million Menschen getötet wurden, und schliesslich die Embargos und die Sanktionen gegen verschiedene Länder, die direkt und indirekt den Tod von hunderttausenden von Menschen verursacht haben, am besten sichtbar in Irak.

Alles in allem sieht es sehr danach aus, als ob es sehr wohl einen dritten Weltkrieg gegeben habe, und dass die US-Regierung einer der Hauptprotagonisten war (oder ist).

* * *

Die meisten Essays in Chomskys "For Reason of State" widmen sich der US-Agression in Südvietnam, Nordvietnam, Laos und Kambodscha. Es war ein Krieg, der sich über mehr als zwölf Jahre dahinzog. Achtundfünfzigtausend Amerikaner und annähernd zwei Millionen Vietnamesen, Kambodschaner und Laoten kamen ums Leben. Die USA liessen eine halbe Million Bodentruppen aufmarschieren und warfen mehr als sechs Millionen Tonnen Bomben ab. Und dennoch, auch wenn Sie es nicht glauben werden, wenn Sie die Hollywoodfilme gesehen haben: Amerika verlor den Krieg.

Der Krieg begann in Südvietnam und weitete sich dann nach Nordvietnam, Laos und Kambodscha aus. Nach der Installation eines ihr ergebenen Regimes in Saigon bat es die US-Regierung, sich an den Kämpfen gegen die kommunistischen Aufstände zu beteiligen - gegen die Vietkong-Guerilla, die in ländliche Regionen Südvietnams eingedrungen war, wo sie in Dörfern Schutz fand. Genau nach gleichem Muster ging Russland vor, als es sich 1979 in Afghanistan einnistete. Niemand in der "freien Welt" wird daran zweifeln, dass Russland in Afghanistan einmarschiert war. Nach Glasnost bezeichnete sogar ein sowjetischer Aussenminister die Invasion der Sowjetunion in Afghanistan als "illegal und unmoralisch". Aber in den Vereinigten Staaten gab es nie eine solche Selbstprüfung. 1984 schrieb Chomsky in einer verblüffenden Enthüllung:

"In den letzten 22 Jahren habe ich versucht, im Mainstream-Journalismus und im Schulwissen Hinweise auf die amerikanische Invasion in Südvietnam 1962 (oder wann auch immer) oder die amerikanische Aggression in Indochina zu finden - erfolglos. Es gibt kein solches Ereignis in der Geschichte. Vielmehr gibt es da eine amerikanische Verteidigung Südvietnams gegen Terroristen, die von aussen, vor allem von [Nord-]Vietnam, unterstützt wurden."

Es gibt kein solches Ereignis in der Geschichte!

* * *

Im Jahr 1962 begann die US-Air-Force ländliche Regionen in Südvietnam zu bombardieren, wo 80 Prozent der Bevölkerung lebte. Die Bombardierung dauerte über zwölf Jahre an. Tausende Menschen starben. Das Ziel bestand darin, durch eine Bombardierung kolossalen Ausmasses eine Panikmigration von den Dörfern in die Städte auszulösen, wo die Menschen in Flüchtlingscamps interniert werden konnten. Samuel Huntington bezeichnete es als einen Prozess der "Urbanisierung". (Ich habe mich während meines Architekturstudiums in Indien mit Urbanisierung befasst. Irgendwie kann ich mich aber nicht erinnern, dass Luftangriffe etwas damit zu tun haben.) Huntington - heute berühmt für seinen Essay "The Clash of Civilizations?" - war damals Vorsitzender des Council on Vietnamese Studies der Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group. Chomsky zitiert seine Beschreibung des Vietkongs als "eine mächtige Kraft, die nicht von seiner Wählerschaft losgerissen werden kann, solange diese existiert". Huntington riet die "direkte Anwendung mechanischer und konventioneller Gewalt" - mit anderen Worten: den Krieg des Volkes zu zerdrücken, das Volk zu eliminieren. (Oder, um die These zu erneuern: Um einen "Clash of Civilisations" zu verhindern, vernichte die Zivilisation.)

Ein Zeitzeuge zu den Grenzen der technischen Macht Amerikas: "Das Problem ist, dass amerikanische Maschinen der Aufgabe nicht gewachsen sind, kommunistische Soldaten zu töten, ausser mit einer Politik der verbrannten Erde, die alles andere mit zerstört." Dieses Problem ist heute gelöst. Nicht mit weniger zerstörerischen Bomben, sondern mit einer fantasievolleren Sprache. Es gibt eine elegantere Art zu sagen, dass "alles andere mit zerstört" werde: Der Begriff lautet "Kollateralschaden".

* * *

Ein zeitgenössischer Bericht aus erster Hand über das, was Amerikas "Maschinen" (Huntington nannte sie "Modernisierungsinstrumente", leitende Beamte im Pentagon "Bomb-o-grams") anrichten können. T. D. Allman, nach einem Flug über die Jars-Ebene in Laos:

"Selbst wenn der Krieg in Laos morgen enden würde, die Wiederherstellung des ökologischen Gleichgewichts nähme noch Jahre in Anspruch. Der Wiederaufbau der zerstörten Städte und Dörfer würde ebenso viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen. Selbst wenn dies alles bewältigt wäre, bliebe die Ebene wegen der hunderttausenden von Blindgängern, Land- und Personenminen eine ständige Gefahr für menschliche Siedlungen.
Ein kürzlich erfolgter Flug rund um die Jars-Ebene hat gezeigt, was weniger als drei Jahre amerikanischen Bombardements aus einer ländlichen Region machen können, selbst wenn die Zivilbevölkerung evakuiert worden ist. Auf weiten Gebieten ist die Hauptfarbe der Tropen - hellgrün - einem abstrakten Muster von Schwarz und hellen metallischen Farben gewichen. Vom übrig gebliebenen Laub wirkt vieles künstlich, stumpf durch den Einsatz von Entlaubungsgiften. Heute ist Schwarz die dominante Farbe der nördlichen und östlichen Gebiete der Ebene. Regelmässig wurde Napalm abgeworfen, um das Gras und das Buschwerk, das die Ebene und die zahlreichen engen Schluchten bedeckt, abzubrennen. Die Feuer scheinen permanent zu brennen, sie hinterlassen schwarze Rechtecke. Während des Fluges kann man schwarze Rauchschwaden von kürzlich bombardierten Gebieten aufsteigen sehen. Die Hauptstrassen, die von kommunistisch besetzten Gebieten in die Ebene kommen, werden gnadenlos bombardiert, anscheindend pausenlos. Dort und entlang der Kante der Ebene ist Gelb die vorherrschende Farbe. Alle Vegetation wurde zerstört, es gibt zahllose Krater. Das Gebiet wurde dermassen zerbombt, dass das Land der pockennarbigen, durchwühlten Wüste in stürmischen Gegenden der nordafrikanischen Wüste gleicht. Weiter im Südosten liegt menschenleer und zerstört Xieng Khouangville - einst die bevölkerungsreichste Stadt im kommunistischen Laos. Im Norden der Ebene wurde der kleine Ferienort Khang Khay ebenfalls zerstört. Rund um das Rollfeld der Basis von King Kong sind die Hauptfarben Gelb (von der aufgewühlten Erde) und Schwarz (vom Napalm), gespickt von hellroten und blauen Tupfern: Fallschirme, die dem Abwurf von Nachschub gedient haben. Die letzten Einheimischen waren per Lufttransport fortgebracht worden. Verlassene Gemüsegärten, die niemand mehr abernten wird, wachsen neben verlassenen Häusern, in denen die Teller noch immer auf dem Tisch stehen und die Kalender an den Wänden hängen."

(Niemals erscheinen in den "Kosten" eines Krieges die toten Vögel, die verkohlten Tiere, die versengten Insekten, die vergifteten Wasserquellen, die zerstörte Vegetation. Selten wird die Arroganz der menschlichen Art gegenüber anderen Lebewesen erwähnt, mit denen er diesen Planeten teilt. Sie alle gehen vergessen im Kampf um Märkte und Ideologien. Diese Arroganz wird vielleicht der letzte nicht wieder gutzumachende Fehler der Menschen sein.)

* * *

Das Herzstück von "For the Reason of State" ist ein Essay mit dem Titel "The Mentality of the Backroom Boys", mit dem Chomsky eine aussergewöhnlich gewandte, erschöpfende Analyse der Pentagon-Dokumente vorlegt. Er sagt von ihnen, sie seien "der dokumentierte Beweis einer Verschwörung zum Einsatz von Gewalt in internationalen Konflikten, der gegen das Gesetz verstösst". Auch hier weist Chomsky darauf hin, dass zwar die Bombardierung Nordvietnams in den Pentagon-Papieren ein Stück weit diskutiert wird, die Invasion in Südvietnam hingegen kaum der Erwähnung wert ist.

Die Pentagon-Dokumente sind magnetisierend. Nicht als Dokumentation der Geschichte des US-Krieges in Indochina, sondern als Einblick in die Mentalität der Männer, die ihn geplant und durchgeführt haben. Es ist faszinierend, in die Ideen eingeweiht zu werden, die da herumgeboten wurden, in die Anregungen, die gemacht wurden, die Vorschläge, die weiterverfolgt wurden. In einem Abschnitt unter dem Titel "The Asian Mind - the American Mind" untersucht Chomsky die Diskussion über die Mentalität des Feindes, der "stoisch die Zerstörung von Reichtum und den Verlust von Leben hinnimmt", während "wir das Leben, das Glück, den Reichtum und die Macht wollen" und für uns "Tod und Leiden eine irrationale Wahl sind, wenn es Alternativen dazu gibt". Wir lernen daraus, dass die asiatischen Armen Amerika dazu auffordern, seine "strategische Logik zu Ende zu bringen, was den Genozid bedeutet", vermutlich weil sie nicht wissen, was die Bedeutung von Glück, Reichtum und Macht ist. Doch dann halten "wir" ein, denn "einen Völkermord zu verantworten ist eine schreckliche Bürde". (Klar, vielleicht machen "wir" auch weiter damit und begehen den Genozid dennoch, und dann geben wir vor, dass er nie stattgefunden habe.)

Natürlich enthalten die Pentagon-Dokumente auch einige gemässigte Anregungen.

Schläge gegen Ziele in der Bevölkerung (per se) könnten nicht nur eine kontraproduktive Welle der Auflehnung im Ausland und zu Hause mit sich bringen, sondern auch die Gefahr einer Ausweitung des Krieges mit der Sowjetunion und mit China in sich bergen. Die Zerstörung von Staumauern und Dämmen jedoch - richtig ausgeführt - könnte vielversprechend sein. Das sollte studiert werden. Solche Zerstörung ertränkt keine Menschen. Die Überflutung der Reisfelder führt aber nach einer gewissen Zeit zu einer weiträumigen Hungersnot (mehr als eine Million Tote?), wenn keine Nahrung geliefert wird. Diese könnten wir dann "am Verhandlungstisch" anbieten.

Schicht für Schicht entblättert Chomsky den Prozess der Meinungsfindung durch die Beamten der US-Regierung, um im Kern das erbarmungslose Herz der amerikanischen Kriegsmaschine zu zeigen, vollständig isoliert von den Realitäten des Krieges, blind durch Ideologie und bereit, Millionen von Menschen zu vernichten, Zivilisten, Militärs, Frauen, Kinder, Dörfer, ganze Städte, ganze Ökosysteme - mit wissenschaftlich geschärften Methoden der Brutalität.

Ein amerikanischer Pilot, der über die Freuden von Napalm spricht:

"Sicher, wir hatten Freude an den Hintermännern im Waffenlabor. Das Originalprodukt war nicht so heiss - wenn die Gooks [despektierliche Bezeichnung südostasiatischer Menschen, bes. von Vietnamesen] schnell genug waren, konnten sie es auskratzen. Also begannen die Jungs, Polystyren beizumengen - jetzt klebt es wie Scheisse an einer Decke. Aber wenn die Gooks ins Wasser sprangen, hörte es auf zu brennen, also mengten sie weissen Phosphor bei - damit brannte es besser. Jetzt brennt es auch unter Wasser weiter. Und ein einziger Tropfen genügt, er brennt sich durch die Haut bis auf den Knochen, so dass sie schliesslich an einer Phosphorvergiftung sterben."

So wurden die glücklichen Gooks zu ihrem eigenen Vorteil vernichtet. Besser tot als rot.

* * *

Dank dem verführerischen Charme Hollywoods und dem unwiderstehlichen Reiz von Amerikas Massenmedien sieht die Welt nach all diesen Jahren den Krieg als eine amerikanische Geschichte [story]. Indochina lieferte den üppigen tropischen Hintergrund, vor dem die Vereinigten Staaten ihre Fantasien der Gewalt durchspielten, ihre neueste Technologie testeten, ihre Ideologie förderten, ihre Gewissenhaftigkeit prüften, sich mit ihrem moralischen Dilemma quälten und mit ihrer Schuld haderten (oder vorgaben, es zu tun). Vietnamesen, Kambodschaner und Laoten waren lediglich Statisten. Namenlose, gesichtslose, schlitzäugige Humanoide. Sie waren nur die Menschen, die starben. Gooks.

Das einzige, was die US-Regierung aus dieser Invasion in Indochina gelernt hat, ist, wie man einen Krieg führt, ohne amerikanische Truppen der Gefahr auszusetzen und amerikanische Menschenleben zu riskieren. Deshalb haben wir jetzt Kriege, die mit Weitstreckenraketen geführt werden, mit Black-Hawk-Hubschraubern und "Bunkerbrechern". Kriege, in denen die "Alliierten mehr Journalisten verlieren als Soldaten".

Als ein Kind, das im südindischen Bundesstaat Kerala aufgewachsen ist - wo 1959 die erste demokratisch gewählte kommunistische Regierung der Welt an die Macht kam -, fürchtete ich mich schrecklich davor, ein Gook sein zu müssen. Kerala war nur wenige tausend Meilen westlich von Vietnam. Wir hatten den Dschungel, Flüsse, Reisfelder und auch Kommunisten. Ich stellte mir meine Mutter, meinen Bruder und mich selbst vor, wie wir durch eine Granate aus dem Busch herausgebombt wurden oder wie die Gooks in den Filmen niedergemäht von amerikanischen Marines mit muskulösen Armen und Kaugummis. In meinen Albträumen war ich das brennende Mädchen auf der berühmten Fotografie, die auf der Strasse von Trang Bang aufgenommen ist.

* * *

Als Mensch, der auf dem Höhepunkt sowohl der amerikanischen als auch der sowjetischen Propaganda aufgewachsen ist (die sich gegenseitig mehr oder weniger neutralisierten), geschah es mir, dass mir Chomskys Beweisführung, die Menge seiner Belege, ihre Unnachgiebigkeit - wie soll ich sagen? - ein wenig verrückt vorkam. Nur schon ein Viertel der Beweise, die er zusammengestellt hatte, hätte genügt, um mich zu überzeugen. Ich wunderte mich. warum er es brauchte, so viel zu arbeiten. Aber jetzt verstehe ich, dass die Grösse und Intensität von Chomskys Werk ein Gradmesser der Grösse, Reichweite und Unnachgiebigkeit der Propagandamaschine ist, gegen die er kämpft. Er ist wie der Holzwurm, der im dritten Regal meines Büchergestells lebt. Tag und Nacht höre ich seine Kiefer knirschen, die sich durch das Holz fressen und es zu feinem Staub zermahlen. Es ist, als ob er anderer Meinung als die Literatur wäre und die Unterlage, auf der sie steht, zerstören wollte. Ich nenne ihn Chompsky.

Ein Amerikaner zu sein, der in Amerika lebt und schreibt, um Amerikaner von seiner Sicht der Dinge zu überzeugen, muss tatsächlich sein wie einen Tunnel durch Hartholz zu bohren. Chomsky ist einer von ganz wenigen Menschen, die gegen eine ganze Industrie ankämpfen. Und das macht ihn nicht nur brillant, sondern geradezu zu einem Helden.

* * *

Vor einigen Jahren sprach Chomsky in einem treffenden Interview mit George Peck von seinen Erinnerungen an den Tag, als die Bombe auf Hiroshima fiel. Er war 16 Jahre alt:

"Ich erinnere mich, dass ich buchstäblich zu niemandem mehr sprechen konnte. Da war niemand mehr. Ich ging weg. Ich war in einem Sommerlager, und ich ging weg in den Wald und blieb mehrere Stunden allein, nachdem ich davon gehört hatte. Nie konnte ich mit jemandem darüber reden und verstand auch nie die Reaktionen anderer. Ich fiel in eine totale Isolation."

Diese Isolation schuf einen der grössten, radikalsten Intellektuellen unserer Zeit. Wenn die Sonne untergehen wird über dem amerikanischen Imperium - sie wird es, denn sie muss es - dann wird Noam Chomskys Werk überleben.

Kühl zeigt es mit dem Zeigefinger auf ein gnadenloses, machiavellisches Imperium, so grausam, selbstherrlich und überheblich wie jene, an deren Stelle es getreten ist. (Der einzige Unterschied ist, dass es über eine Waffentechnologie verfügt, die Verwüstungen verursachen kann, welche die Welt noch nie gesehen hat und die sich Menschen kaum vorstellen können.)

Als eine, die eine Gook hätte sein können, und wer weiss, vielleicht eine sein wird, vergeht selten ein Tag, an dem ich mich nicht dabei ertappe, wie ich - aus diesem oder jenem Grund - denke: "Chomsky Zindabad" [Es lebe Chomsky!]"

--

Übersetzt von: Kreck
Orginalartikel: "The loneliness of Noam Chomsky"

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

What Can We Do About Terrorism?

You said that we are a target because we stand for democracy, freedom, and human rights in the world. Baloney! We are the target of terrorists because we stand for dictatorship, bondage, and human exploitation in the world. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our government has done hateful things.

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

SOME YEARS AGO, terrorists destroyed two U.S. embassies. President Clinton retaliated against suspected facilities of Osama bin Laden. In his television address, the President told the American people that we were the targets of terrorism because we stood for democracy, freedom, and human rights in the world.

On that occasion, I wrote: "Tell people the truth, Mr. President ... about terrorism, not about poor Monica. If your lies about terrorism go unchallenged, then the terror war you have unleashed will likely continue until it destroys us.

"The threat of nuclear terrorism is closing in upon us. Chemical terrorism is at hand, and biological terrorism is a future danger. None of our thousands of nuclear weapons can protect us from these threats. These idols of plutonium, titanium, and steel are impotent. Our worship of them for over five decades has not brought us security, only greater danger. No `Star Wars` system ... no matter how technically advanced, no matter how many trillions of dollars was poured into it ... can protect us from even a single terrorist bomb.

Not one weapon in our vast arsenal can shield us from a nuclear weapon delivered in a sailboat or a Piper Cub or a suitcase or a Ryder rental truck. Not a penny of the 273 billion dollars a year we spend on so-called defense can actually defend us against a terrorist bomb. Nothing in our enormous military establishment can actually give us one whit of security. That is a military fact.

"Mr. President, you did not tell the American people the truth about why we are the targets of terrorism. You said that we are the target because we stand for democracy, freedom, and human rights in the world. Baloney! We are the target of terrorists because we stand for dictatorship, bondage, and human exploitation in the world. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our government has done hateful things.

"In how many countries have we deposed popularly elected leaders and replaced them with puppet military dictators who were willing to sell out their own people to American multinational corporations?

"We did it in Iran when we deposed Mossadegh because he wanted to nationalize the oil industry. We replaced him with the Shah, and trained, armed, and paid his hated Savak national guard, which enslaved and brutalized the people of Iran. All to protect the financial interests of our oil companies. Is it any wonder there are people in Iran who hate us?

"We did it in Chile when we deposed Allende, democratically elected by the people to introduce socialism. We replaced him with the brutal right-wing military dictator, General Pinochet. Chile has still not recovered.

"We did it in Vietnam when we thwarted democratic elections in the South which would have united the country under Ho Chi Minh. We replaced him with a series of ineffectual puppet crooks who invited us to come in and slaughter their people - and we did. (I flew 101 combat missions in that war which you properly opposed.)

"We did it in Iraq, where we killed a quarter of a million civilians in a failed attempt to topple Saddam Hussein, and where we have killed a million since then with our sanctions. About half of these innocent victims have been children under the age of five.

"And, of course, how many times have we done it in Nicaragua and all the other banana republics of Latin America? Time after time we have ousted popular leaders who wanted the riches of the land to be shared by the people who worked it. We replaced them with murderous tyrants who would sell out and control their own people so that the wealth of the land could be taken out by Domino Sugar, the United Fruit Company, Folgers, and Chiquita Banana.

"In country after country, our government has thwarted democracy, stifled freedom, and trampled human rights. That`s why we are hated around the world. And that`s why we are the target of terrorists.

"People in Canada enjoy better democracy, more freedom, and greater human rights than we do. So do the people of Norway and Sweden. Have you heard of Canadian embassies being bombed? Or Norwegian embassies? Or Swedish embassies. No.

"We are not hated because we practice democracy, freedom, and human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in third world countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. And that hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism - and in the future, nuclear terrorism.

"Once the truth about why the threat exists is understood, the solution becomes obvious. We must change our government`s ways.

"Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so the oil companies can sell the oil under their sand, we must send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children.

"Instead of continuing to kill thousands of Iraqi children every day with our sanctions, we must help them rebuild their electric powerplants, their water treatment facilities, their hospitals - all the things we destroyed in our war against them and prevented them from rebuilding with our sanctions.

"Instead of seeking to be king of the hill, we must become a responsible member of the family of nations. Instead of stationing hundreds of thousands of troops around the world to protect the financial interests of our multinational corporations, we must bring them home and expand the Peace Corps.

"Instead of training terrorists and death squads in the techniques of torture and assassination, we must close the School of the Americas (no matter what name they use). Instead of supporting military dictatorships, we must support true democracy - the right of the people to choose their own leaders. Instead of supporting insurrection, destabilization, assassination, and terror around the world, we must abolish the CIA and give the money to relief agencies.

"In short, we do good instead of evil. We become the good guys, once again. The threat of terrorism would vanish. That is the truth, Mr. President. That is what the American people need to hear. We are good people. We only need to be told the truth and given the vision. You can do it, Mr. President. Stop the killing. Stop the justifying. Stop the retaliating. Put people first. Tell them the truth."

Needless to say, he didn`t ... and neither has George W. Bush. Well, the seeds our policies have planted have borne their bitter fruit. The World Trade Center is gone. The Pentagon is damaged. And thousands of Americans have died. Almost every TV pundit is crying for massive military retaliation against whoever might have done it (assumedly the same Osama bin Laden) and against whoever harbors or aids the terrorists (most notably the Taliban government of Afghanistan).

Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post screams "Kill the bastards! Train assassins, hire mercenaries, put a couple of million bucks up for bounty hunters to get them dead or alive, preferably dead. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts." It`s tempting to agree. I have no sympathy for the psychopaths that killed thousands of our people. There is no excuse for such acts. If I was recalled to active duty, I would go in a heartbeat. At the same time, all my military experience and knowledge tells me that retaliation hasn`t rid us of the problem in the past, and won`t this time.

By far the world`s best anti-terrorist apparatus is Israel`s. Measured in military terms, it has been phenomenally successful. Yet Israel still suffers more attacks than all other nations combined. If retaliation worked, Israelis would be the world`s most secure people.

Only one thing has ever ended a terrorist campaign -- denying the terrorist organization the support of the larger community it represents. And the only way to do that is to listen to and alleviate the legitimate grievances of the people. If indeed Osama bin Laden was behind the four hijackings and subsequent carnage, that means addressing the concerns of the Arabs and Muslims in general and of the Palestinians in particular.

It does NOT mean abandoning Israel. But it may very well mean withdrawing financial and military support until they abandon the settlements in occupied territory and return to 1967 borders. It may also mean allowing Arab countries to have leaders of their own choosing, not hand-picked, CIA-installed dictators willing to cooperate with Western oil companies.

Chester Gillings has said it very well: "How do we fight back against bin Laden? The first thing we must ask ourselves is what is it we hope to achieve -- security or revenge? The two are mutually exclusive; seek revenge and we WILL reduce our security. If it is security we seek, then we must begin to answer the tough questions -- what are the grievances of the Palestinians and the Arab world against the United States, and what is our real culpability for those grievances?

Where we find legitimate culpability, we must be prepared to cure the grievance wherever possible. Where we cannot find culpability or a cure, we must communicate honestly our positions directly to the Arab people. In short, our best course of action is to remove ourselves as a combatant in the disputes of the region."

To kill bin Laden now would be to make him an eternal martyr. Thousands would rise up to take his place. In another year, we would face another round of terrorism, probably much worse even than this one. Yet there is another way.

In the short term, we must protect ourselves from those who already hate us. This means increased security and better intelligence. I proposed to members of Congress in March that we should deny any funds for "Star Wars" until such time as the Executive Branch could show that they are doing all possible research on the detection and interception of weapons of mass destruction entering the country clandestinely (a far greater threat than ballistic missiles).

There are lots of steps which can be taken to increase security without detracting from civil rights. But in the long term, we must change our policies to stop causing the fear and hatred which creates new terrorists. Becoming independent of foreign oil through conservation, energy efficiency, production of energy from renewable sources, and a transition to non-polluting transportation will allow us to adopt a more rational policy toward the Middle East.

The vast majority of Arabs and Muslims are good, peaceful people. But enough of them, in their desperation and anger and fear, have turned first to Arafat and now to bin Laden to relieve their misery. Remove the desperation, give them some hope, and support for terrorism will evaporate.

*Dr. Robert M. Bowman directed all the "Star Wars" programs under presidents Ford and Carter and flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:42 a.m. EDT September 7, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says President Bush will emphasize the progress made in Iraq when he addresses the nation tonight. But he says Bush also will acknowledge that more work lies ahead and that the U.S. must finish the job because success in Iraq is crucial to victory in the war on terrorism.
A new poll finds 71 percent of Americans think the U.S. has done a good job in Iraq since major fighting came to an end. The Time-CNN poll also finds two in three Americans surveyed say the U.S. was right in going to war with Iraq. But they`re split on whether the war was worth the toll it has taken in American lives and other costs.
Britain`s defense ministry says 120 soldiers stationed in Cyprus are being deployed to Iraq. A ministry spokeswoman says the soldiers have been on standby for Iraq duty for some time, and their deployment is not related to a new review of British troop strength. There are about eleven-thousand British soldiers in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has wrapped up a three-day visit to Iraq. He lashed out at Iraqi critics of the U.S.-led occupation, demanding that they give American forces more information about saboteurs and terrorists. Rumsfeld said, "Instead of pointing fingers at the security forces of the coalition, it`s important for the Iraqi people to step up and provide information."
Pentagon chief Rumsfeld has visited the graves of about 900 people summarily executed in Iraq during a Shiite Muslim uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They were the unidentified among more than three-thousand massacre victims unearthed near the site of ancient Babylon after U.S. troops moved through last spring.
An Islamic militia disbanded by the United States has emerged with weapons and in uniform in Najaf (NAH`-jahf), Iraq. But the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, says the armed men are in the city "with the full cooperation of the Coalition Provisional Authority and in full cooperation with the coalition forces."
Pentagon officials say weapons hunters in Iraq have found what they interpret as evidence of Iraqi preparations to secretly produce chemical and biological weapons. But as the postwar weapons hunt enters its sixth month, it remains unclear whether they have found evidence that Iraq had made such weapons or whether it was only prepared to do so.
Secretary of State Powell says U.S. efforts to get more international help in Iraq have one goal -- to eventually return full power to the Iraqi people. Powell says some nations want to see the U.S.-led coalition move along faster in Iraq, while others want to be more cautious. He says the U.S. will listen to their suggestions.

CASUALTIES
A total of 287 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 70 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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When dogma meets democracy
Larry Elliot
Monday September 8, 2003
The Guardian

Gags about economics are few and far between. One of them concerns a scientist and an economist marooned on a desert island. The good news is that the pair find a crate of tinned peaches washed up on the beach. The bad news is that they don`t have a can opener.

Faced with this predicament, the scientist scours the island in vain for a rock with which to prise open the tins. The economist, meanwhile, sits serenely on the beach enjoying the view. When the scientist expresses concern at his insouciant behaviour in the face of potential starvation, the economist replies that he sees no problem because they will eat when they are hungry.

"How can we do that without a tin opener?", asks the scientist. "Assume we have a tin opener", replies the economist, "and then it`s easy."

This joke should perhaps be borne in mind over the coming week as the World Trade Organisation meets in Mexico, because the background music to the talks will be that the way for poor countries to escape poverty is simple. All they have to do is assume free trade. Protectionism equals stagnation and misery. Free trade equals growth and prosperity. For its devotees - and that means all mainstream politicians - the freer trade can become, the better. And the sooner the better.

The classic modern text on free trade is from Paul Samuelson, who won a Nobel prize for work showing that free trade benefits all nations. Samuelson provided an accomplished proof, although it has to be said that the thesis was based on a number of - let`s put it politely - questionable assumptions. If you assume no government, no trade deficit, that wages are equal in all industries and that capital stays at home rather than seeking out low wages abroad, it all works just fine.

Preconditions

The fact that these preconditions are not likely to appear in reality has never really worried economists, a branch of science or pseudo-science where the practitioners never seem to be discouraged by the failure of their experiments. It does, however, help explain why there will be little mention of Samuelson`s seminal work in Cancun this week. Instead, there will be the usual mercantilist power struggle between negotiators out to secure concessions from their rivals while giving away as little as possible themselves.

So forget the theory for a minute and concentrate on the evidence. What this shows is that no country in the west got rich by laying itself open to unfettered international competition that could wipe out its nascent industries. Britain didn`t, the United States didn`t, Germany didn`t, Japan didn`t, Taiwan didn`t. All these countries grew first and liberalised their markets later. Growth leads to trade, rather than vice versa.

This view of the world fitted well with the era of social democracy in the middle of the last century, which was infused with the belief that capitalism needed to be managed properly in order to garner the rewards that were available from markets. Sadly, however, this arrangement was not good enough for the economists sitting on their desert island with their imaginary tin openers.

Free trade is one of the three pillars on which modern political economy is built, the other two being price stability through the agency of independent central banks and capital liberalisation. Faster growth is possible, so the theory goes, but only if democratically elected politicians have their grubby fingers removed from the levers of power and a country`s destiny is left to the market.

For the free market right, this presented few ideological problems. The social democratic left has, however, been equally acquiescent, failing even to ask for the empirical evidence to support the new regime. This is a profound error. The difficulties supporters of the new world order are having in proving their case were perfectly highlighted in an article in last week`s Financial Times, in which Ken Rogoff, the IMF`s chief economist, reported the findings of an in-depth study into capital integration. "The conclusions are rather sobering, suggesting that many developing countries have been unable to get the full benefits although they have borne the full weight of the risks," he wrote.

The fund found that it was hard to establish that financial integration by itself led to higher levels of growth, but that there was evidence that "financially integrated developing economies have in some respects been subject to greater instability than other developing countries ... it is precisely those countries that made the effort to become financially integrated that, in general, faced more instability".

Arm-twisting

Predictably, Rogoff`s conclusion was not that capital integration was misguided - he`s an economist, after all - but that it should not be rushed. Developing countries would be advised to adopt a similar approach to trade liberalisation rather than allow themselves to be dragooned into lopsided agreements.

Cambodia is a case in point. Together with Nepal, Cambodia will be joining the World Trade Organisation this week, but the price of entry is high, with the country being forced to commit itself to cuts in tariffs well beyond what the US or the European Union are prepared to sign up for.

Most of this arm-twisting goes on behind the scenes but Franz Fischler, Europe`s farm commissioner, rather let the cat out of the bag last week with his rant against developing countries for having the temerity to demand cuts in support to farmers provided by the common agricultural policy.

For years, politicians in the west have been shedding bucketloads of crocodile tears about the need for the developing world to develop the capacity to fight their corner in trade talks. Yet when Brazil, India and China mobilised a group of developing countries to oppose attempts by the EU and the US to bounce them into the usual one-sided deal, Fischler had a hissy fit.

At one level, the temptation is to wish devoutly for a collapse in the trade talks this week to precipitate the break-up of the global trading system and the demise of the WTO. The danger is, however, that it would be a further, and perhaps fatal, blow to multilateralism and would encourage a form of brutal bilateralism in which power politics ruled unchecked.

A more sensible set of suggestions is provided in a Fabian Society pamphlet released today, which - drawing on the tradition of 20th century social democracy - calls for a new system of global governance based on four pillars: equitable trade, economic regulation, global redistribution and democratic governance.

This excellent study repays reading in full, but in terms of trade it notes how Europe and the New World used tariff barriers, industrial subsidies, nationalised infrastructure investment and public services free at the point of use to develop national economic strength.

"At the same time experience from many developing countries shows that over-rapid, poorly planned, and badly sequenced import liberalisation can be economically disastrous. It can contribute to the collapse of fledgling local industries and of potentially competitive sectors."

It concludes that protectionism is clearly not a panacea for poverty - and import barriers can hurt as well as protect the poor. But is clear that a dogmatic application of free trade principles can undermine poverty reduction efforts."

Developing countries, in other words, should not put trade liberalisation at the top of their list of priorities. They should consider that the history of the US in the 19th century shows that countries can be highly dynamic behind big tariffs provided there is vigorous domestic competition. They should ask themselves whether it would be better to have an industrial strategy before a trade strategy. And they remember Virgil`s warning about Greeks bearing gifts.

· Progressive Globalisation; Fabian Society; £6.95

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No sex please, you`re American
The Bush administration is pouring millions of dollars into programmes that persuade teenagers to hold on to their virginity. And it`s working. Suzanne Goldenberg reports

Suzanne Goldenberg
Monday September 8, 2003
The Guardian

It`s a few minutes before showtime, and the air in the church hall has that slightly tingling sense of anticipation that often occurs in crowds of sweaty teenagers. The girls are tugging at their T-shirts and smoothing their hair, the boys laughing too loudly. They are here to spend the next few hours talking about sex. Then, they are going to declare in front of total strangers that they will swear off all forms of sex until they are married.

"I just want to wait until I meet the right person," says 16-year-old Lindsey Bocheck. "The world is so messed up as it is. Society wants you to be a whore basically."

Welcome to the world of teenage abstinence, a choice championed by the reigning Miss America and until recently (following her confessions about the true nature of her relationship with Justin Timberlake) Britney Spears, and embraced by some 2.5 million young people in the United States in the past decade. In an age obsessed with sex, they inhabit an interior universe where intercourse turns relationships stale and leads to break-ups, condoms don`t work and those weak enough to have tried the pleasures of the flesh are inevitably sorry.

"You don`t realise what you are doing until everything has changed," says 16-year-old John Wagster, peering earnestly through round glasses as he explains his decision to embrace chastity. "You are having oral sex, and you don`t realise it`s wrong. It`s like eating Pringles. Once you start, you can`t stop."

Only you can - or you should. At least that is the message heavily promoted by the Bush administration which has allocated $117m (£74m) for abstinence-only education for teenagers this year, and hopes to raise it to $135m.

The administration has also begun to preach the same gospel to adults, releasing funds to make the nation chaste. In June, the Department of Health and Human Services published a circular on funding for family planning projects for the poor. It said programmes with "extramarital abstinence education and counselling" were the highest priority.

The growing desire to remain a virgin, and the Bush government`s eagerness to back programmes which would lead Americans to a biblical lifestyle, has alarmed organisations such as Planned Parenthood, and those who support sex education in schools. In a country where the teenage pregnancy rate is double that of Britain`s, 35% of all school districts have replaced sex education with classes that focus solely on why not to have sex. During the last few years Planned Parenthood itself has been forced to mention abstinence as a strategy for avoiding pregnancy and disease.

For organisations such as the Silver Ring Thing, which hosts tonight`s event, it is the only way. Since emerging in 1995 from Christian youth outreach programmes, Silver Ring Thing claims to have persuaded 14,000 young people to keep themselves pure until the day they wed. Since August, it has become impeccably situated to do so, after it received $700,000 (£443,000) from the US government, the largest such grant awarded.

The Silver Ring Thing`s premise is simple. In a confusing world of choice it offers only absolutes: stay pure or else have sex, lose your boyfriend and your self-respect, and arrive at the altar at some unspecified future date as damaged goods. Those are the emotional costs. The health risks conjured up are even scarier, as activists make extremely liberal use of data on the rise in sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia and the human papilloma virus, a main cause of cervical cancer. The moral perils are scarier still, with dark warnings that the "epidemic" of oral sex has got "out of control".

None of what Silver Ring Thing preaches is new - even its tirades against condoms are familiar fodder in Bible-thumping sermons of the American south. What is different on this night, where 500 teenagers - mostly white, and mostly female - have assembled to take the pledge, is the fact that these exercises are now being funded and supported by the US government.

The sermons have now become shows. At the Silver Ring Thing events testimonials are mixed with loud music, skits, videos and flashing lights. Fellow teens recount the pressures to have sex, and rue the day it ruined their relationships. "Couples stop having fun when they have sex," says one follower of the programme, now married. "I was able to give my wife the best gift you could give - your virginity".

Nobody on stage actually talks about sexuality, beyond stock references to raging hormones. Nobody is very specific about what they mean by sex - though it`s clear that they think oral sex is bad. There is no mention of masturbation. Heterosexuality is automatically assumed.

After sitting through two hours of this, the teens stand to take the pledge publicly. They then slip on a silver ring, on sale in the foyer for $12.

The symbolism is no accident, says Denny Pattyn, who developed Silver Ring Thing while working at a Christian youth ministry in Arizona. During the show, a woman, Deb, appears to tell the new pledgees that if they are going to fall further down the road and have sex, they should flush the ring down the toilet, rather than dishonour their comrades.

"This is a constant reminder. They are making a vow tonight to wait until they are married to have sex," Pattyn says before the show. He is a little more explicit on stage where he warns the crowd that the modern world is quite literally a cesspool, swirling with sexually transmitted diseases. "On your wedding day you give the ring to your husband or wife and say, `I waited for you, let`s get it on`," he tells the audience. Then he leads a short prayer, asking the teens to take Jesus into their lives.

In the foyer Shelly Povazan is trying to extract a smile from her daughter, Kayla. Povazan, a neo-natal nurse who says she has seen far too many teenage mothers on her ward, does not really expect her daughter to remain a virgin until she is married. But she is afraid for her.

"I just want her to be older [when she loses her virginity]. I`m thinking, Kayla is 12. Soon she could be making that kind of decision. I would just like her to wait," she says. "When we were growing up, it was just `Don`t get pregnant`. Now it is much bigger."

Kayla isn`t quite ready to deal with sex. "It would be nice if you had told me before I came here. Then I wouldn`t have come," she hisses at her mother. But she soon relents. "The rings are cool," she says.

Such adult fears of teenage sexuality - and teenage assertiveness - have colluded in the growth of the abstinence cult. "It`s been out there for decades, but now they have George W Bush in the bully pulpit and he has increased funding for abstinence-only programmes many times over," says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood and advocate of a more reasoned approach to family planning.

Meanwhile, spending on sex education has declined, and projects are stifled yet further by being prohibited from mentioning abortion. In contrast to the $117m allocated to abstinence programmes, the US government has set aside just $48m for sex education, and that sum includes free samples of contraceptives.

For Planned Parenthood and others, the consequences are clear: a new generation of teenagers is growing up ignorant, or misinformed, and the abstinence-only movements perpetuate that trap. They also fear the sermons against condoms are going to reverse progress made in 20 years of safe-sex campaigns. But it is impossible to dismiss abstinence movements outright. While it is highly unlikely that the teenagers who slipped on their silver rings near Pittsburgh will stay virgins until they marry, they will keep the faith for an average of between one and two years, according to a 2001 study in the American Journal of Sociology.

"Of course the programme fails in an absolute way, but I would not say it fails," says Peter Bearman, co-author of the study and director of Columbia University`s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. "For kids who took the pledge, the age when they first had sex was 18 months after they otherwise would have."

But when they do become sexually active, they are far less likely to use contraception than other teens - partly because they spent those months denying that they would ever need it - and so increase their risks of pregnancy and disease.

The power of the virginity pledges is also limited. The vows work best for teens aged 15 to 17, and hold sway only as long as the pledgees are in a community with a number of like-minded teens. They also cease to be effective once an entire high school class is won over and the special identity has been lost.

Bearman`s research was conducted before Bush came to power, and before the US government began making a cult of abstinence, so it is impossible to predict the long-term effects of the abstinence movements on the generation just coming of age in America.

But for Feldt and others, the implications are clear. The focus on abstinence harkens a return to the dark ages. "It is horrifying. It is frightening," she says. "It is back to the 1950s - only it`s even worse now because in the 1950s they simply didn`t talk about it at all."


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Fear of $80bn Iraq bill moves Bush to address nation
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad, Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday September 8, 2003
The Guardian

President George Bush sought to reassure jittery Americans about their country`s involvement in Iraq last night, dismissing doubts about the human and financial cost of the operation by arguing that it remained a central front in the war on terror.

In a televised address to the nation, Mr Bush said he would spend as much as was needed to "destroy the terrorists" in Iraq, hitting back at opponents who have criticised the mounting casualties and economic costs of the war.

Mr Bush is continuing to link Iraq to the "war on terrorism" days before the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, in an effort to explain why the operation may now cost the US taxpayer as much as $80bn (£50bn) next year. He is believed to be considering asking Congress for such a sum.

Over the past week Demo cratic party presidential contenders have increasingly criticised his handling of Iraq. Senator John Kerry accused him of a "swaggering" approach to the issue.

"We will do whatever is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our nation more secure," Mr Bush said, according to excerpts of his speech.

"Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives: destroying the terrorists ... enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq ... and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defence and their own future."

Americans should brace themselves for further sacrifice, he said, but added that other countries should also get involved.

US calls for UN troops for Iraq have had a cool response so far, although Britain is sending more.

A first contingent of 120 reinforcements flew into Iraq yesterday, and up to 3,000 more are expected in the coming weeks.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, is expected to announce today that he is sending 1,000 soldiers from the 2nd battalion, Light Infantry and the 1st battalion, The Green Jackets. About 10,000 British troops are already based in Basra.

The reinforcements are flying into hostile terrain. Yesterday the US command said that heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles had been fired at a US military transport which had taken off from Baghdad airport.

Both missiles fell short of the plane, which was at 14,000ft. It was the third such attack near the airport in recent weeks: a week ago another missile fell a long way short.

Surface-to-air missiles have become a matter of concern since a lorryload was seized in Saudi Arabia last month. Similar weapons were used in an attempted attack on an Israeli airliner in Kenya last year.

The White House has made it clear that it will send no more of its own troops to reinforce the 140,000 already in Iraq.

But political leaders in Washington now admit that there is a need for more troops, an assessment some respected American military figures had made even before the war began. It wants other countries to add as many as 20,000 soldiers to the overall force.

One of the tasks of the British reinforcements is likely to be guarding oilfields.

Commanders are concerned about the delay in restoring Iraq`s infrastructure, notably its power supplies: a problem compounded by sabotage and looting. With civilian organisations and aid agencies reluctant to go in, the problem has become a vicious circle.

Lawlessness remains a problem, too. Two children, a boy aged 11 and a girl aged nine, died yesterday in the troubled town of Falluja during a gun battle between Iraqi police and suspected thieves. On Saturday US troops shot dead two Iraqis who fired on an observation post.


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Hillary Clinton says White House hid New York toxins risk
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
08 September 2003


Senator Hillary Clinton has put herself at the forefront of an attack on the Bush administration, threatening to block a key political appointment until the White House explains why it failed to issue accurate warnings about air quality in Manhattan after the World Trade Centre collapse.

The former first lady said she would use her position on the Senate`s Environment and Public Works Committee to prevent Mike Leavitt, the outgoing governor of Utah, being confirmed as the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Although she has no particular problem with Mr Leavitt, Mrs Clinton made clear that she was furious with the White House for failing to explain why air quality reports were toned down in the days after the 11 September 2001 attacks and why cautionary language directed at elderly people, children and others was edited out of news releases.

"This is a really serious issue that has long-lasting consequences not only for New York, but also for the quality of our environment and the trust in our government,`` Senator Clinton told The New York Times. "I can see no other way to get the administration`s attention.`` Two weeks ago, the EPA`s inspector general reported that the White House`s Council on Environmental Quality had intervened to "add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones`` from official assessments of toxins swirling in the air following the twin towers` collapse.

A news release issued on 18 September 2001 left out a line raising health concerns both for rescue workers digging through the rubble at ground zero and for Wall Street employees nearby. Instead of noting the presence of deadly contaminants, the release said that the air was generally safe to breathe.

According to Nikki Tinsley, the EPA`s acting inspector general, official eagerness to get Wall Street up and running took precedence over providing the fullest information available.

"That was wrong. That was inexcusable," Mrs Clinton said. "I want to know exactly what happened.`` Mrs Clinton and another influential Democratic senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, wrote to the White House 10 days ago demanding a "thorough and expeditious accounting" of what happened by the end of last week. But the White House was silent, accusing Mrs Clinton of exploiting the issue for political gain.

The former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman has defended herself vigorously against charges of impropriety. "There`s no way in hell - excuse my language - that I would ever, ever play games with this kind of information,`` she said last week.

Mrs Clinton`s sights are set not on Ms Whitman but on the President`s immediate entourage. "I know a little bit about how White Houses work," she said. "I know somebody picked up a phone, somebody got on a computer, somebody sent an e-mail, somebody called for a meeting, somebody in that White House probably under instructions from somebody further up the chain told the EPA, `Don`t tell the people of New York the truth`. And I want to know who that is.``
8 September 2003 10:13

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September 8, 2003
TEXT
President Bush`s Address to the Nation

Following is a transcript of President Bush`s address to the nation last night, as recorded by The New York Times:

Good evening. I have asked for this time to keep you informed of America`s actions in the war on terror.

Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. These months have been a time of new responsibilities and sacrifice and national resolve and great progress.

America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan, by destroying the training camps of terror and removing the regime that harbored Al Qaeda. In a series of raids and actions around the world, nearly two-thirds of Al Qaeda`s known leaders have been captured or killed, and we continue on Al Qaeda`s trail. We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland, and uncovered sleeper cells inside the United States. And we acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council. Our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.

For a generation leading up to September the 11th, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response. The terrorists became convinced that free nations were decadent and weak. And they grew bolder, believing that history was on their side. Since America put out the fires of September the 11th and mourned our dead and went to war, history has taken a different turn. We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.

This work continues. In Iraq, we are helping the long-suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming — transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions. This undertaking is difficult and costly — yet worthy of our country, and critical to our security.

The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.

Our enemies understand this. They know that a free Iraq will be free of them, free of assassins and torturers and secret police. They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator. And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq`s progress and throw the country into chaos.

Some of the attackers are former members of the old Saddam regime, who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows. Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. We cannot be certain to what extent these groups work together. We do know they have a common goal: reclaiming Iraq for tyranny.

Most, but not all, of these killers operate in one area of the country. The attacks you have heard and read about in the last few weeks have occurred predominantly in the central region of Iraq, between Baghdad and Tikrit — Saddam Hussein`s former stronghold. The north of Iraq is generally stable and is moving forward with reconstruction and self-government. The same trends are evident in the south, despite recent attacks by terrorist groups.

Though their attacks are localized, the terrorists and Saddam loyalists have done great harm. They have ambushed American and British service members who stand for freedom and order. They have killed civilian aid workers of the United Nations who represent the compassion and generosity of the world. They have bombed the Jordanian embassy, the symbol of a peaceful Arab country. And last week they murdered a respected cleric and over 100 Muslims at prayer, bombing a holy shrine and a symbol of Islam`s peaceful teachings.

This violence is directed, not only against our coalition, but — but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency and freedom and progress.

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.

America has done this kind of work before. Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit, for their sake and our own.

Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives: destroying the terrorists, enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future.

First, we are taking direct action against the terrorists in the Iraqi theater, which is the surest way to prevent future attacks on coalition forces and the Iraqi people. We are staying on the offensive, with a series of precise strikes against enemy targets increasingly guided by intelligence given to us by Iraqi citizens.

Since the end of major combat operations, we have conducted raids seizing many caches of enemy weapons and massive amounts of ammunition, and we have captured or killed hundreds of Saddam loyalists and terrorists. So far, of the 55 most wanted former Iraqi leaders, 42 are dead or in custody. We`re sending a clear message: Anyone who seeks to harm our soldiers can know that our soldiers are hunting for them.

Second, we are committed to expanding international cooperation in the reconstruction and security of Iraq, just as we are in Afghanistan. Our military commanders in Iraq advise me that the current number of American troops, nearly 130,000, is appropriate to their mission. They are joined by over 20,000 service members from 29 other countries. Two multinational divisions, led by the British and the Poles, are serving alongside our forces. And in order to share the burden more broadly, our commanders have requested a third multinational division to serve in Iraq.

Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq. I have directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to introduce a new Security Council resolution, which would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq, to be led by America.

I recognize that not all our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties.

Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.

Third, we are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people. Our coalition came to Iraq as liberators and we will depart as liberators.

Right now Iraq has its own Governing Council, comprised of 25 leaders representing Iraq`s diverse people. The Governing Council recently appointed cabinet ministers to run government departments. Already more than 90 percent of towns and cities have functioning local governments, which are restoring basic services.

We are helping to train civil defense forces to keep order and an Iraqi police service to enforce the law, a facilities protection service, Iraqi border guards to help secure the borders and a new Iraqi army. In all these roles, there are now some 60,000 Iraqi citizens under arms, defending the security of their own country, and we are accelerating the training of more.

Iraq is ready to take the next steps toward self-government. The Security Council resolution we introduce will encourage Iraq`s Governing Council to submit a plan and a timetable for the drafting of a constitution and for free elections. From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty.

Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which we expect will cost $66 billion over the next year.

This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads and medical clinics.

This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Later this month, Secretary Powell will meet with representatives of many nations to discuss their financial contributions to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Next month, he will hold a similar funding conference for the reconstruction of Iraq. Europe, Japan and states in the Middle East all will benefit from the success of freedom in these two countries, and they should contribute to that success.

The people of Iraq are emerging from a long trial. For them, there will be no going back to the days of the dictator, to the miseries and humiliation he inflicted on that good country. For the Middle East and the world, there will be no going back to the days of fear, when a brutal and aggressive tyrant possessed terrible weapons.

And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September the 11th, 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

The heaviest burdens in our war on terror fall, as always, on the men and women of our armed forces and our intelligence services. They have removed gathering threats to America and our friends, and this nation takes great pride in their incredible achievements. We are grateful for their skill and courage, and for their acts of decency, which have shown America`s character to the world. We honor the sacrifice of their families. And we mourn every American who has died so bravely, so far from home.

The Americans who assume great risks overseas understand the great cause they are in. Not long ago I received a letter from a captain in the Third Infantry Division in Baghdad. He wrote about his pride in serving a just cause and about the deep desire of Iraqis for liberty.

"I see it," he said, "in the eyes of a hungry people every day here. They are starved for freedom and opportunity." And he concluded, "I just thought you`d like a note from the `front lines of freedom.` "

That Army captain, and all of our men and women serving in the war on terror, are on the front lines of freedom. And I want each of them to know, your country thanks you and your country supports you.

Fellow citizens: We`ve been tested these past 24 months and the dangers have not passed. Yet Americans are responding with courage and confidence. We accept the duties of our generation. We are active and resolute in our own defense. We are serving in freedom`s cause and that is the cause of all mankind.

Thank you, and may God continue to bless America.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

[Joerver]

September 8, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS
Grim News About Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER


ASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — President Bush`s task tonight was to convince the country that the terrible toll of the long, hot, casualty ridden summer in Iraq was a necessary price to pay in a broader struggle against terrorism, and to prepare the electorate for years of occupation, billions more in expense, and many bad days.

His sobering speech to the nation was not the one that the White House was envisioning for the president four months after he declared the end of the "active combat" phase of the war. Even in July, as Mr. Bush prepared for a month at his ranch, his aides were talking optimistically about a fall devoted to transforming Iraq quickly into a model democracy at the heart of the Middle East, and making its transition to a peaceful nation contagious throughout the region.

Now there is reason to wonder whether that vision was unrealistically optimistic — at least on the time scale Mr. Bush and his aides once described — or whether it was, as one of his former foreign policy advisers put it recently, "optimism blended with a touch of naïveté."

Every week events from Baghdad to Jerusalem seem to be spinning out of the control of a Bush team that, during the president`s trip to the region in late May, seemed intent on demonstrating that it now had the power to transform the region.

Last month`s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, and this weekend`s resignation of the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, on whom Mr. Bush had pinned so many of his hopes of a broader Middle East peace, only reinforced the sense that the president`s post-Iraq strategy will need to be rewritten once again.

This evening, with his poll numbers dropping and his political problems mounting, Mr. Bush insisted there was no turning back. He described America`s mission in the region as open-ended, and came up with his own echo of John F. Kennedy`s famous inaugural phrase that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden" to defend liberty.

Iraq, he intoned, is now "the central front" in the war on terrorism, and he vowed "We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure."

For the first time he named that price: $87 billion for the first full year of occupation and reconstruction, of continuing his battle in Iraq and Afghanistan and his search for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It is a figure many experts believe may yet prove low.

In that sense, he has made the Middle East what Southeast Asia was to the nation of his youth: a place where dominoes could not be allowed to fall, where a vicious ideology could not be permitted to take hold and spread. His argument to the wider world tonight was that it had to put aside the bruising conflict with his administration over whether the invasion of Iraq was justified, and now had to join the fight to make the American experiment in Iraq work. The price of failure, he argued, would be too high for all.

His message to Americans — whom he clearly wanted to remind of his leadership after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon two years ago this week — was simple: "The dangers have not passed." Just as in the cold war, when presidents from Truman to Nixon argued that America was the target of Communists, Mr. Bush said, "We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities."

With that phrase, he fully merged the challenge of the occupation of Iraq with the terrorism of Al Qaeda, even though his own intelligence agencies found no link between Mr. Hussein and the conspirators of Sept. 11. Now, in a post-Iraq world, Mr. Bush is saying that link makes no difference — the arrival of terrorists blowing up Americans in Baghdad and Tikrit in the postwar period have turned this into a single war.

"The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations," Mr. Bush insisted, in justifying the cost in blood and deficit-inducing spending. "The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism."

To some of Mr. Bush`s admirers, like Eliot A. Cohen, a military expert at Johns Hopkins University, tonight`s speech was "an overdue explaining of the case — he has a sophisticated argument to make about changing Iraq and making it a decent place and a role model for the Mideast, but he doesn`t make it often enough," or in enough detail. "I`m struck by the fact that the view of elites, Democrats and Republicans, is that this has to be made to work, and the argument is over how."

To his critics — including most of the Democratic presidential aspirants, who believe that Mr. Bush`s initial go-it-alone instincts have become his biggest political vulnerability — the president is wrongly blending the war against terrorism with the effort to build a stable Iraq.

"I think it bears little to no resemblance to the war on terrorism," said James Steinberg, who served as President Clinton`s deputy national security adviser and is now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. "There was a theory in this White House that if you were just tough, and knocked Saddam and those like him off, people would not mess with you anymore," he said tonight. "They would no longer regard you as weak.

"Now there is a risk that our muscularity, if not used in a smart way, could make us more vulnerable, not less."

Mr. Bush`s aides dispute the notion that Iraq is now a more fertile breeding ground for terrorists than it was before Mr. Hussein was deposed, despite the arrival of what Mr. Bush described tonight as "foreign terrorists." In interviews in recent days they have played down the coordination of the Baathists, suspected Qaeda members and other fighters, and Mr. Bush said tonight "we cannot be certain to what extent these groups work together." But left unstated tonight was the critical question looming over the president as he goes before the United Nations this month, and the electorate next year: How quickly can he bring order out of the chaos?

He did not say tonight, and his Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell, appearing earlier in the day on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," did not sound as if even the passage of a United Nations resolution would bring much more force to quieting Iraq — he guessed 10,000 to 15,000 more foreign troops, at best a 10 percent increase over the forces now on the ground.

Yet the occupation forces face an environment far more complex than than the occupations of Japan and Germany, the models of success Mr. Bush cited tonight. Both were cohesive nations long before their defeat; Iraq never has been. And while there was more to rebuild in Tokyo and Berlin in 1945 than in Baghdad in 2003, the occupied were not shooting at the occupiers. That is why Mr. Bush could not predict the end point of the conflict he was rallying the country around tonight, and that is the problem he must solve first.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

September 8, 2003
Afghan Front Heats Up, and Rumsfeld Urges Patience
By DOUGLAS JEHL


KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 7 — The top American commander in Afghanistan said today that his forces had killed as many as 200 fighters suspected of being members of the Taliban in the southern part of the country in the last two weeks. He said the military operation was part of a campaign to combat a major effort by the Taliban to regroup in a bid for power.

The new details about the continuing operation came from Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands an American-led task force of 11,500 troops. General Vines said the infiltration of the Taliban had been significant and might include as many 1,000 fighters who had moved into the area northeast of Kandahar, the previous Taliban stronghold.

"They`re trying to regain power; we knew that was inevitable," General Vines said after meeting here with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "There`s no question that they`re trying to regroup, no question."

The infiltration has added to American and Afghan concerns about the degree to which Pakistan remains a sanctuary for Taliban forces, military officers here said. At a news conference here, the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, said this government was "very concerned about the increased activity of the Taliban on the Pakistani border."

American, Pakistani and Afghan officials are scheduled to meet later this week to discuss the matter as part of regular three-way discussions, officials said. Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing with Mr. Karzai, said the incidents showed how "terrorism is a problem that crosses borders."

Other officers said the American attacks, including both air and ground forces, are the largest in Afghanistan in more than a year. On Saturday night alone, American airstrikes in Zabul Province, east of Kandahar, carried out with fixed-wing aircraft, killed as many as 26 Taliban fighters, the officers said.

General Vines said there were indications that the infiltration had come from the Pakistani border. He said the main problem area included the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, as well as Zabul.

The general said he had seen reports indicating that the timing of the regrouping might have been prompted in part by members of Al Qaeda who have until now provided the Taliban with financial and logistical support, but might be planning to relocate to Iraq to attack American forces there.

American officials said the regrouping showed a boldness on the part of the Taliban that they had not seen since the fall of Mullah Muhammad Omar`s government in December 2001. But they said the American attacks were resulting in success.

"We`ve disrupted them, interdicted them, denied them sanctuary, and killed them," General Vines said.

The United States has about 8,500 forces in Afghanistan, within the coalition of 11,500. American officials said a significant number of the Americans had been active in the current operation.

Three American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in the last month, military officials said, bringing to 34 the number killed since the American war began in Afghanistan nearly two years ago.

Mr. Rumsfeld said today that he saw no need for any increase in American forces here despite the signs of a resurgence by the Taliban. In parallel with American policy in Iraq, he said a better answer for promoting security would be for other countries to contribute more forces to Afghanistan, and for the Kabul government to take on increasing security responsibilities.

An administration official said the White House would also soon announce a substantial increase in aid to Afghanistan. The current budget is about $900 million a year.

Mr. Rumsfeld stopped in Gardez today to praise the work of an American military team that is part of an effort to help the Karzai government extend its authority beyond Kabul, and his aides said that one of the next priorities in Afghanistan would be to help Mr. Karzai disband rival militias in the Kabul area.

Mr. Rumsfeld`s trip to Afghanistan and Iraq this week has taken him to the two biggest American battlegrounds in the campaign against terrorism. Today, he flew over craggy mountains in a Black Hawk helicopter for his visit to Gardez, a city that has come under rocket attack twice in the last five days, commanders there said.

In Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld flew by helicopter and transport plane in and out of Baghdad International Airport, where two surface-to-air missiles were fired at another transport plane about two hours before his departure on Saturday afternoon.

With guerrilla attacks on American forces continuing in both countries, Mr. Rumsfeld has suggested throughout the trip that such strikes should be regarded as a cost of doing business and may not diminish soon.

When asked by an American soldier when he expected the campaign against terrorism to end, Mr. Rumsfeld compared the military`s role to that of police officers and firefighters, who would always be needed. "You can`t tuck in and hide and pretend that it`s going to go away," he said of terrorism. "It isn`t. The only solution is to do what we`re doing."

On an average day in Iraq, American troops are the targets of 15 separate attacks, American commanders said this week. Since May, when the administration declared an end to major combat in Iraq, more than 60 United States soldiers have been killed in attacks by hostile forces.

[Early Monday, American troops raided homes in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown, seeking Hussein loyalists accused of financing or coordinating attacks on American soldiers, The Associated Press reported. The military said four men were arrested.]

In Afghanistan, the attacks on American troops have been less frequent, but they still average more than one a day, including shootings, shellings and the use of remote-controlled explosives, a military spokesman here said.

But in both countries this week, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides repeatedly portrayed the continuing attacks on American troops as more of an opportunity than a threat.

"The fact that they`ve grouped themselves together provides us with an opportunity to defeat them," one administration official said today of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld had called attention to what he called the country`s "breathtaking" progress since the war ended, while trying to fend off those who suggested that he might be too optimistic.

"I`m not being Pollyannaish," he said. " I`m telling the truth." But he did at times in both countries offer slightly more candor.

"Can I assume that the road ahead will be smooth?" he asked rhetorically about Iraq the other night. "No, it won`t be smooth; it will be bumpy, and there will be difficulties. But is it a trip that`s worth making? Yes."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

IRAQ American soldiers dig through the rubble of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on Aug. 20, one day after a truck bomb destroyed the headquarters of the United Nations mission to Iraq, killing at least 23, including the head of the mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

September 7, 2003
Why Are We In Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?)
By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF


In the back alleys of Iraq, the soldiers from the 101st Airborne and First Armored Divisions are hot, dirty and scared. They want to go home, but instead they`re pinned down, fighting off hit-and-run attacks and trying to stop sabotage on pipelines, water mains and electric grids. They were told they would be greeted as liberators, but now, many months later, they are an army of occupation, trying to save the reputation of a president who never told them -- did he know himself? -- what they were getting into. The Muslim fighters rushing to join the remnants of Saddam Hussein`s loyalists in a guerrilla war to reclaim Iraq have understood all along what the war has been about -- that it was never simply a matter of preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction; rather, it was about consolidating American power in the Arab world. Some in the administration no doubt understood this, too, though no one took the trouble to explain all their reasons for going to war to the American people or, for that matter, the rest of the world.

But now we know. Iraq may become for America what Afghanistan became for the Soviet empire: the place where its fight against Islamic jihad will be won or lost. Nor is the United States the only target. The suicide bomb that killed Sergio Vieira de Mello and decimated his team has drawn the United Nations into the vortex. The United Nations came to Baghdad to give American nation-building a patina of legitimacy. Now the world body has been targeted as an accomplice of occupation. If the United States fails in Iraq, so will the United Nations.

To see what is really unfolding in Iraq, we need to place it in the long history of American overseas interventions. It is worth remembering, for example, that when American soldiers have occupied countries before, for example Japan and Germany, the story started out much the same: not enough food, not enough electricity, not enough law and order (and, in Germany, ragtag Nazi fighters). And if this history is part of what drove us into Iraq, what doctrine, if any, has determined when and where Americans are sent to fight? Before the United States sends troops to any future front -- Syria? North Korea? Iran? -- it is crucial to ask: What does the history of American intervention teach us to hope and to fear? And how might the United States devise a coherent strategy of engagement suited for the perils -- and possibilities -- of the 21st century?

II.
From the very beginning, the American republic has never shrunk from foreign wars. A recent Congressional study shows that there has scarcely been a year since its founding that American soldiers haven`t been overseas ``from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,`` chasing pirates, punishing bandits, pulling American citizens out of harm`s way, intervening in civil wars, stopping massacres, overturning regimes deemed (fairly or not) unfriendly and exporting democracy. American foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people`s countries. In 1823, James Monroe committed the United States -- militarily, if it came to that -- to keeping foreign colonial powers out of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt added a corollary giving the United States the right to send in troops when any of its Latin American neighbors engaged in ``flagrant wrongdoing.`` Most Latin Americans, then and now, took that to mean that the United States would topple any government in the hemisphere that acted against American interests. Early in the last century, American troops went ashore to set up governments in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and chased Pancho Villa around Mexico. And this kind of intervention wasn`t just confined to pushing around Latin Americans. Twelve thousand troops were sent to support the White armies fighting the Communists in the Russian Civil War that began in 1918. In the 1920`s, during the civil war in China, there were 6,000 American soldiers ashore and a further 44 naval vessels in the China Sea protecting American interests. (Neither venture was much of a success. Both Russia and China eventually went Communist.)

AFGHANISTAN American troops pause in the village of Loy Kariz during an operation to search for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The slow process of nation-building is under way in Afghanistan, despite George W. Bush`s campaign promise never to engage in such policies.

Despite George Washington`s call to avoid foreign entanglements and John Quincy Adams`s plea that America should abjure slaying monsters abroad, splendid isolation has never proved to be a convincing foreign policy for Americans. First in 1917 and then again in 1941, American presidents thought they could keep America out of Europe`s wars only to discover that isolation was not an option for a country wanting to be taken seriously as a world power -- which, from the beginning, is precisely what America desired. Intervention required huge sacrifice -- the haunting American graveyards in France are proof of this -- but American soldiers helped save Europe from dictatorship, and their hard fighting turned America into the most powerful nation on earth.

Americans may think that their troops used to stay at home and that intervention and nation-building used to be rare. In fact, regime change is as old a story in American foreign policy, as is unilateralism. Until the United Nations came along in 1945, the United States did all this intervening without asking anyone`s permission. But after watching America be dragged into world war because the League of Nations had been so weak, Franklin Roosevelt decided to back the creation of a muscular world body. He was even willing to hand over some authority over interventions to the United Nations Security Council, leaving it to the council to decide which threats to international peace and security gave states the right to send in military force. Cold-war deadlock on the council, however, frustrated the Roosevelt dream. Besides, a substantial body of American opinion has always questioned why the United States should ask the United Nations` permission to use force abroad.

After World War II, the boys may have wanted to come home, but Truman kept American soldiers on guard around the world to defend free governments from Communist overthrow. This meant shoring up the Greeks in 1947 and sending troops to prevent South Korea from going under in 1950. But anti-Communism had its limits. It did not mean going to the aid of the Hungarians when they rose up against Soviet domination in 1956. When the Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest, Eisenhower turned a deaf ear as the Hungarians begged over the airwaves for American help. Ike decided that intervention that risked conflict -- perhaps nuclear conflict -- with a great power was not worth the candle.

III.
Never pick on someone your own size, which in our time means someone with nuclear weapons: this has been Rule No. 1 of intervention since the end of the Second World War. Minor rogues, would-be tough guys like Saddam Hussein, perhaps, but never someone who can actually deliver a nuclear bomb. (We are about to see whether this rule holds with regard to North Korea.) Even the enormous American intervention in Vietnam took great care to avoid a direct clash with Russia and China.

When Lyndon Johnson sent half a million troops to Vietnam, he thought he was containing Communism in Asia (without threatening either the Chinese or Russian regimes that were financing North Vietnam`s campaign). Johnson never realized his ultimate enemy was Vietnamese nationalism. The 58,000 names carved into the black granite of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington are the measure of Johnson`s mistake. Rule No. 2 of American intervention evolved out of Vietnam: Never fight someone who is more willing to die than you are. (This is the rule now being tested by the hit-and-run attackers and suicide bombers in Iraq.) The Vietnam veterans who came to command the American military -- led by Colin Powell -- also settled on Rule No. 3, which remains much debated: Never intervene except with overwhelming force in defense of a vital national interest. (Thus this summer`s gingerly approach to Liberia.)

But what has been the national interest once the cold war ended and the threat of a growing Communist empire evaporated? No clear national interest has emerged. No clear conversation about the national interest has emerged. Policy -- if one can even speak of policy -- has seemed to be mostly the prisoner of interventionist lobbies with access to the indignation machine of the modern media. America in the 1990`s intervened to oust an invader (the first gulf war), to stop civil war (Bosnia), to stop ethnic cleansing (Kosovo), to feed the starving (Somalia) and to prevent a country from falling apart (Macedonia). America also dithered on the sidelines and watched 800,000 people die in three awful months in Rwanda, when airstrikes against the government sponsors of the genocide, coupled with reinforcement of the United Nations troops on the ground, might have stopped the horror. Rule No. 4: Never use force except as a last resort (sometimes turned into an alibi for doing nothing).

During the Clinton years, there were presidential directives that sought to define exactly what the Clinton doctrine on intervention might be. But no doctrine was ever arrived at. There was a guiding principle: reluctance to shed American blood. Thus, Rule No. 5 in American interventions: When force is used as a last resort, avoid American casualties. Since the Clinton administration`s interventions were not of necessity to protect the national interest -- whatever that was at the time -- but matters of choice, this made a certain amount of sense, at least in terms of domestic politics.

The problem with Rule No. 5 is that it made force protection as important as mission accomplishment and may have sent the wrong signal to the enemy. By cutting and running after the botched intervention in Somalia in 1993, for instance, Clinton might have led Osama bin Laden to believe that Americans lacked the stomach for a fight. Ten years later, we may still be paying the price for that mistake.

By the end of the 1990`s, conservative commentators were complaining that Clinton`s intervention doctrine, such as it was, had lost touch with national interest and had degenerated into social work. The Bush campaign vowed that the 101st Airborne wouldn`t be wasted escorting foreign children to school and promised to bring the boys home from Bosnia. (They remain.) As far as the Bush administration was concerned, too much intervention, where too little was at stake, was blunting the purpose of the military, which was to ``fight and win the nation`s wars.`` Of course, at the time he became president, the nation had no wars, and none loomed on the horizon.

Then came Sept. 11 -- and then came first Afghanistan and then Iraq. These two reversed Rule No. 4. (Only use force as a last resort.) Now the Bush administration was committing itself to use force as a first resort. But the Bush doctrine on intervention is no clearer than Clinton`s. The Bush administration is committed to absolute military pre-eminence, but does anyone think that Clinton`s military was less determined to remain the single -- and overwhelming -- superpower? The Bush doctrine is also burdened with contradiction. The president took office ruling out humanitarian interventions, yet marines did (finally) go ashore in war-torn Liberia. During the 2000 campaign, George Bush ruled out intervention in the cause of nation-building, only to find himself staking his presidency on the outcome of nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. Having called for a focused intervention strategy, he has proclaimed a war on terror that never clearly defines terrorism; never differentiates among terrorist organizations as to which explicitly threaten American interests and which do not; and never has settled on which states supporting or harboring terrorists are targets of American intervention. An administration whose supposed watchword is self-discipline regularly leaks to the press, for example, that its intervention list might include Syria or Iran -- or might not, depending on the day of the week you ask. The administration, purposefully or not, routinely conflates terrorism and the nuclear threat from rogue nations. These are threats of a profoundly different order and magnitude. Finally, the administration promises swift and decisive interventions that will lead to victory. But as Afghanistan shows (and Iraq is beginning to show), this expectation is deluded. Taking down the state that sheltered Osama bin Laden was easy; shutting down Al Qaeda has proved frustratingly difficult. Interventions don`t end when the last big battle is won. In a war on terror, containing rather than defeating the enemy is the most you can hope for. Where is the doctrine acknowledging that truth?

The Bush administration, as no administration before it, has embraced ``pre-emption.`` It`s a strategy of sorts, but hardly a doctrine. Where is the definition of when pre-emption might actually be justified? The angry postwar debate about whether the American public (and the British public, too) were duped into the Iraq war is about much more than whether intelligence estimates were ``sexed up`` to make the threat from Hussein seem more compelling. It is about what level of threat warrants pre-emptive use of force. Almost 20 years ago, George P. Shultz, as Reagan`s secretary of state, gave a speech warning that America would have to make pre-emptive intervention against terrorist threats on the basis of evidence that would be less than clear. Since Shultz, no one has clarified how intervention decisions are to be made when intelligence is, as it is bound to be, uncertain. As Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration`s deputy secretary of defense, has candidly acknowledged, the intelligence evidence used to justify force in Iraq was ``murky.`` If so, the American people should have been told just that. Instead, they were told that intervention was necessary to meet a real and imminent threat. Now the line seems to be that the war wasn`t much of an act of pre-emption at all, but rather a crusade to get rid of an odious regime. But this then makes it a war of choice -- and the Bush administration came to power vowing not to fight those. At the moment, the United States is fighting wars in two countries with no clear policy of intervention, no clear end in sight and no clear understanding among Americans of what their nation has gotten itself into.

IV.
There has always been an anti-intervention party in American politics, one that believes that the Republic should resist the temptations of empire and that democracy at home is menaced when force is used to export democracy abroad. During the war to annex the Philippines in 1898, the fine flower of the American intellectual and moral elite was dead set against the war: the humorist Mark Twain, the union leader Samuel Gompers, the multimillionaire Andrew Carnegie, the social critic and activist Jane Addams. From these luminaries of yesteryear to the luminaries of today -- Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, the Dixie Chicks -- intervention has been excoriated as an imperial misadventure, justified in the language of freedom and democracy but actually prosecuted for venal motive: oil, power, revenge, political advantage at home and nefarious designs abroad.

The anti-intervention party in American politics often captures the high moral ground but usually loses the war for public opinion. With the single exception of Vietnam -- where the sheer cost in blood made the exercise seem futile both to moralists and realists alike -- the American public has never been convinced that the country would lose its soul in overseas wars. On the contrary, Americans have tended to get caught up in the adventure. They have also believed at times that intervention can serve their interests. When anti-interventionists in the months before the invasion of Iraq thundered, ``No blood for oil!`` many Americans no doubt thought, ``If you won`t fight to defend the oil supply, what will you fight for?``

Still, Americans want even this kind of interest backed by principle. Whether it is because America is a religious country at heart, ever concerned with the state of its soul, or just trying to set a better example than the nasty imperialists of old, its leaders have always justified intervention in righteous -- or at least disinterested -- terms. Teddy Roosevelt incessantly spoke of the restoration of civilized values when he laid hands on Cuba and the Philippines. His ulterior motives -- guarding the sea lanes to the Panama Canal he planned to open, securing naval bases in the Pacific -- were played down, lest they introduce a note of vulgar calculation into the proceedings. Likewise in Iraq, much mention was made of human rights and democracy and much less about the obvious fact that the operation was about oil, not in the callow sense of going to war for the sake of Halliburton but in the wider sense of America`s consolidating its hegemonic role as the guarantor of stable oil supplies for the Western economy.

Yet oil is not the whole story, as capitalist interest has never been. From Teddy Roosevelt to George W. Bush, moral feeling has made a real difference to the timing and scope of interventions. Just compare Bush the father with Bush the son. The father is a cold-eyed realist. In 1991, he did not think the oppression of the Kurds and Shiites justified going all the way to Baghdad. His son is more a hotblooded moralist. Bringing freedom to the Iraqis seems to matter to him, which is why, perhaps, he rushed to Baghdad not caring whether he had a coalition behind him or not. This is not to say that this president`s moralism is unproblematic or that it has gone unchallenged. When he went to the United Nations in September 2002 to make his case for action against Hussein, Amnesty International released a statement objecting to his citation of Hussein`s abject human rights record as a ground for the use of force. Nothing makes human rights activists angrier than watching political leaders conscript human rights into a justification for aggression. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which had denounced Hussein`s tyranny for some 20 years with little or no support from successive American administrations, had good reason to be suspicious of the motives of a presidential Johnny-come-lately to the human rights cause. Nonetheless, this put human rights advocates in the curious position of denouncing Hussein but objecting when someone finally proposed to do something about him. To oppose an intervention that was bound to improve the human rights of Iraqis because the man leading that intervention was late to the cause would seem to value good intentions more than good consequences.

Some of the immediate consequences of the Iraq intervention have been good indeed: a totalitarian regime is no longer terrorizing Iraqis; Shiites marching in their hundreds of thousands to celebrate at their shrine at Karbala, along with professors, policemen and office workers demonstrating in the streets of Baghdad, are tasting freedom for the first time; Iraqis as a whole are discovering the truth about the torture chambers, mass graves and other squalid secrets of more than two decades of tyranny. The people may be using their freedom to demand an early exit of the troops who won it for them, but that is exactly how it should be. If the consequence of intervention is a rights-respecting Iraq in a decade or so, who cares whether the intentions that led to it were mixed at best? But it does matter that American intentions were never really spelled out and that the members of the Bush administration do not seem to have a clear intervention policy on Iraq or anywhere else. Establishing and sustaining a rights-respecting Iraq will depend, in part, on setting a policy and convincing the American people of it. And future interventions will depend on policy coherence, too.

Yet it is also true that if a rights-respecting regime is not the result in Iraq, blame cannot simply be laid on the Bush administration. Anti-interventionists assume that all the bad consequences of an intervention derive from ignoble American intentions, just as pro-interventionists tend to accord American good will miraculous power. In this, both sides mistake the true limits of American capacity to determine outcomes. The way things are going in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III and his proconsuls in Baghdad must be fondly wishing that the reality of Iraq could be shaped by any American intentions at all.

The anti-interventionist party also charges that American good intentions in Iraq might be more credible if the United States defended human rights more consistently throughout the world -- though how this might be brought about without sending in the troops from time to time is at best unclear. Tony Blair, whose human rights bona fides are not in much dispute -- he had already dispatched British troops to prevent massacre and chaos in Sierra Leone before signing on for the Iraq invasion -- says he thinks the demand to intervene consistently or not at all is an argument for sitting on your hands. In the early days of the Iraq war, when British opinion was still against him, Blair remarked to a journalist at 10 Downing Street: ``What amazes me is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don`t get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot? Yes, let`s get rid of them all. I don`t because I can`t, but when you can, you should.`` A lot of people who would call themselves defenders of human rights opposed intervention in Iraq for sound, prudential reasons -- too risky, too costly, not likely to make America safer -- but prudence also amounted to a vote for the status quo in the Middle East, and that status quo had at its heart a regime that tortured its citizens, used poison gas against its own population and executed people for the free exercise of religious faith.

Human rights could well be improved in Iraqi as a result of the intervention. But the Bush administration did not invade Iraq just to establish human rights. Nor, ultimately, was this intervention about establishing a democracy or saving lives as such. And here we come to the heart of the matter -- to where the Bush administration`s interventions fit into America`s long history of intervention. All such interventions have occurred because a president has believed going in that it would increase both his and his country`s power and influence. To use Joseph S. Nye Jr.`s definition, ``power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants.`` Presidents intervene because successful interventions enhance America`s ability to obtain the outcomes it wants.

The Iraq intervention was the work of conservative radicals, who believed that the status quo in the Middle East was untenable -- for strategic reasons, security reasons and economic reasons. They wanted intervention to bring about a revolution in American power in the entire region. What made a president take the gamble was Sept. 11 and the realization, with 15 of the hijackers originating in Saudi Arabia, that American interests based since 1945 on a presumed Saudi pillar were actually built on sand. The new pillar was to be a democratic Iraq, at peace with Israel, Turkey and Iran, harboring no terrorists, pumping oil for the world economy at the right price and abjuring any nasty designs on its neighbors.

LIBERIA U.S. Marines in the port area of Monrovia last month. About 200 American troops entered Liberia to secure the U.S. Embassy and to offer some support of Nigerian peacekeepers, but most of the U.S. forces were withdrawn within a couple of weeks.

As Paul Wolfowitz has all but admitted, the ``bureaucratic`` reason for war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was not the main one. The real reason was to rebuild the pillars of American influence in the Middle East. Americans may have figured this out for themselves, but it was certainly not what they were told. Nor were they told that building this new pillar might take years and years. What they were told -- misleadingly and simplistically -- was that force was justified to fight ``terrorism`` and to destroy arsenals of mass destruction targeted at America and at Israel. In fact, while Hussein did want to acquire such weapons, the fact that none have been found probably indicates that he had achieved nothing more than an active research program.

The manipulation of popular consent over Iraq -- together with and tangled up with the lack of an intervention policy -- is why the antiwar party is unresigned to its defeat and the pro-war party feels so little of the warm rush of vindication. Even those who supported intervention have to concede that in justifying his actions to the American people, the president was, at the least, economical with the truth. Because the casus belli over Iraq was never accurately set out for Americans, the chances of Americans hanging on for the long haul -- and it will be a long haul -- have been undercut. Also damaged has been the trust that a president will need from his people when he seeks their support for intervention in the future.

V.
Critics view Iraq as a perilous new step in the history of American intervention: unilateral, opposed by most of the world, an act of territorial conquest. The truth is we have been here before. The Iraq operation most resembles the conquest of the Philippines between 1898 and 1902. Both were wars of conquest, both were urged by an ideological elite on a divided country and both cost much more than anyone had bargained for. Just as in Iraq, winning the war was the easy part. The Spanish fell to Commodore Dewey even more quickly than Hussein`s forces fell to Tommy Franks. But it was afterward that the going got rough. More than 120,000 American troops were sent to the Philippines to put down the guerrilla resistance, and 4,000 never came home. It remains to be seen whether Iraq will cost thousands of American lives -- and whether the American public will accept such a heavy toll as the price of success in Iraq. The Philippines also provides a humbling perspective on nation-building in Iraq. A hundred years on, American troops are back in the Philippines, hunting down guerrillas, this time tied to Al Qaeda, and the democracy that Teddy Roosevelt sought to bring to that nation remains chronically insecure.

Roosevelt`s ``splendid little war`` may not have done much for the Philippines, but it did a lot to make America a leading power in the Pacific. If Bush succeeds in Iraq, he will reap geostrategic benefit on the same scale. America`s enemies understand this only too well. The current struggle in Iraq is much more than the death throes of the old Hussein regime. The foreign fighters who have crossed into Iraq from Syria, Iran and Palestine to join Hussein loyalists in attacks on American soldiers know how much is at stake. Bloodying American troops, forcing a precipitous withdrawal, destroying the chances for a democratic Iraq would inflict the biggest defeat on America since Vietnam and send a message to every Islamic extremist in the region: Goliath is vulnerable.

But the American Goliath recovers quickly from failure, and this keeps presidents throwing the interventionist dice. Nor is the risk of imperial overstretch -- which kept the Romans and the British from battering every available barbarian rogue -- a very real constraint on America`s propensity to intervene. The occupation of Iraq is forcing the military to run at a high operational tempo, but still there appear to be enough troops to land in Liberia and garrison Bosnia and South Korea and all the other outposts of the imperium. Indeed, intervention is getting cheaper. The second gulf war cost half as much as the first gulf war and required about half the number of troops, and actual combat lasted a little more than half the time. If neither the risk of failure nor the cost of deployment is likely to restrain American use of force, what about the risk of casualties? While Clinton believed that Americans didn`t want their sons and daughters dying in wars of choice, studies show that Americans are prepared for casualties in wars -- if they understand them as wars of necessity. Besides, Americans count on precision missiles and stealth aircraft to deliver crushing lethality at low risk to American troops. Impunity lowers the threshold of risk for intervention. But that threshold does remain, and an army of occupation is particularly vulnerable. Nobody knows whether one of the president`s Democratic opponents will manage to turn the deadly drip of bloodshed in Iraq into an electoral liability. Only one president -- Lyndon Johnson -- was brought down by a botched intervention, but no president since has been able to afford to ignore that warning.

VI.
If we take stock and ask what will curb the American appetite for intervention, the answer is, not much. Interventions are popular, and they remain popular even if American soldiers die. Even failure and defeat aren`t much of a restraint: 30 years after Vietnam, America is intervening as robustly as ever. What Thomas Jefferson called ``decent respect to the opinions of mankind`` doesn`t seem to exert much influence, either. About Iraq, the opinions of mankind told the Bush White House that the use of force was a dangerous and destabilizing adventure, but the intervention went ahead because the president believes that the ultimate authority over American decisions to intervene is not the United Nations or the world`s opinion, but his constitutional mandate as commander in chief to ``preserve, protect and defend`` the United States. This unilateral doctrine alarms America`s allies, but there is not a lot they can do about it. When Bush went to war, he set the timetable, and not even Tony Blair, who desperately needed more time to bring his domestic opinion with him, was able to stretch it out.

To date, the only factor that keeps the United States from intervening is if the country in question has nuclear weapons. One of the factors driving pre-emptive action in Iraq was the belief that were Hussein to acquire a nuclear or mass-casualty chemical or biological weapon, it would then be too late to use force. No wonder a Pakistani general is supposed to have remarked in 1999 that the chief lesson he drew from the display of American precision air power in Kosovo was for his country to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

After Iraq, the key question is when the nuclear taboo will be broken. Already in 1994, over the last crisis with North Korea, the Clinton administration gamed out the possibilities of a conventional strike against a North Korean reactor where it believed nuclear weapons were being produced. Fortunately, it decided not to, realizing that any strike, either with conventional or the small precision nuclear weapons the United States is known to possess, might trigger horrendous military retaliation against South Korean or even Japanese cities.

There is actually a more daunting intervention possibility on the horizon. The United States recognizes one China but guarantees the security of Taiwan. Clinton sent the Navy into the China Sea in 1996 to make sure the Chinese respected that commitment. The freedom of Taiwan, one of the great success stories of American power in Asia, remains precarious. Were the Taiwanese to provoke the mainland, were the Americans to fail to hold them back or were the Chinese leadership to seek to divert attention from troubles at home with bellicose nationalism abroad, America might find itself having to decide how to confront a nuclear power of more than a billion people in defense of an imperative commitment to the freedom of 23 million. Doing so would require the president to break, or at least to threaten to break, the nuclear taboo that has restrained American intervention strategy since Hiroshima. Given American history, which seems to say that resolute use of force always pays dividends, it is difficult for the United States not to believe that it can get its way by relying on military force alone. Yet such a doctrine might end up endangering everyone, including itself.

VII.
For all its risks, Americans, by and large, still think of intervening as a noble act in which the new world comes to the rescue of the old. They remember the newsreels of G.I.`s riding into Rome in 1943 or driving through the lanes of northern Europe in 1944, kissing the girls and grabbing the bouquets and wine bottles held out to them by people weeping with gratitude at their liberation. All this has changed. There were few tearful embraces when the marines rode into Nasiriya, no bouquets and prayers of thanks when the Army rode into Baghdad. True, Iraq is not the first time an American intervention has been unpopular. Iranians were not happy that the C.I.A. engineered the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, Chilean democrats didn`t like what was done to Allende and students the world over protested against Vietnam. But these occasions apart, and right through the Kosovo intervention in 1999, our allies kept faith with American good intentions. Now all that moral capital has been spent. Some Europeans actually think, to judge from a few polls, that George Bush is more of a threat to world peace than Osama bin Laden. This may be grotesque, but it makes it much harder for American interventions to find favor in world opinion.

Its allies wept with America after Sept. 11 and then swiftly concluded that only America was under attack. The idea that Western civilization had been the target was not convincing. While America and its allies stood shoulder to shoulder when they faced a common Soviet foe, Islamic terrorism seemed to have America alone in its sights. Why cozy up to a primary target, America`s allies asked themselves, when it will only make you a secondary one? Indeed, after Sept.11 an astonishing number of the United States` friends went further. They whispered, America had it coming. Aggrieved Americans were entitled to ask, For what? For guaranteeing the security of their oil supplies for 60 years? For rebuilding the European economy from the ruins of 1945? For protecting innumerable countries from Communist takeover? No matter, after Sept. 11, memories of American generosity were short, and the list of grievances against it was long.

As the Iraq debate at the United Nations showed so starkly, the international consensus that once provided America with coalitions of the willing when it used force has disappeared. There is no Soviet ogre to scare doubters into line. European allies are now serious economic rivals, and they are happy to conceal their absolute military dependence with obstreperously independent foreign policies. Throughout the third world, states fear Islamic political opposition even more than American disapproval and are disposed to appease their Islamic constituencies with anti-American poses whenever they can get away with it.

There are those who think that the damage done by the Iraq debate at the United Nations can be repaired and that a coalition of the willing, at least one with more active players, might have been possible if the United States hadn`t been so backhanded with its diplomacy. Yet the days when the United States intervenes as the servant of the international community may be well and truly over. When it intervenes in the future, it will very likely go it alone and will do so essentially for itself.

If this is the new world order, it will have costs that the rest of the world will have to accept: fewer humanitarian interventions on behalf of starving or massacred people in the rest of the world, fewer guarantees of other people`s security against threat and invasion. Why bother with rescue and protection if you have to do everything alone? Why bother maintaining a multilateral order -- of free trade, open markets and common defense -- if your allies only use it to tie Gulliver down with leading strings?

American unilateralism will have costs for the United States too. The first gulf war was paid for by a coalition of the willing. The cost of the second one will be borne by the American taxpayer alone. The Bush administration affects not to care about the price tag of unpopularity abroad; foreigners don`t vote. But Iraq has shown the costs, monetary and otherwise, that are added to the exercise of power when friends don`t trust your intentions.

But can a war on terror be fought alone? The allies have intelligence networks and some good counterterrorist squads, and in a battle with Al Qaeda, the biggest breaks have come from the police work of specialists in Spain, Britain, Germany and Pakistan. In a war on terror, an isolated America whose military power awakens even the resistance of its friends may prove a vulnerable giant.

VIII.
There is a way out of this mess of interventionist policy, but it is also a route out of American unilateralism. It entails allowing other countries to have a say on when and how the United States can intervene. It would mean returning to the United Nations and proposing new rules to guide the use of force. This is the path that Franklin Roosevelt took in 1944, when he put his backing behind the creation of a new world organization with a mandate to use force to defend ``international peace and security.`` What America needs, then, is not simply its own doctrine for intervention but also an international doctrine that promotes and protects its interests and those of the rest of the international community.

The problem is that the United Nations that F.D.R. helped create never worked as he intended. What passes for an ``international community`` is run by a Security Council that is a museum piece of 1945 vintage. Everybody knows that the Security Council needs reform, and everybody also knows that this is nearly impossible. But if so, then the United Nations has no future. The time for reform is now or never. If there ever was a reason to give Great Britain and France a permanent veto while denying permanent membership to Germany, India, Brazil or Japan, that day is over. The United States should propose enlarging the number of permanent members of the council so that it truly represents the world`s population. In order to convince the world that it is serious about reform, it ought to propose giving up its own veto so that all other permanent members follow suit and the Security Council makes decisions to use force with a simple majority vote. As a further guarantee of its seriousness, the United States would commit to use force only with approval of the council, except where its national security was directly threatened.

All this is difficult enough, but the next step is tougher still. The United Nations that F.D.R. helped create privileged state sovereignty ahead of human rights: a world of equal states, equally entitled to immunity from intervention. One result has been that since 1945 millions more people have been killed by oppression, abuse, civil war and massacre inside their states than in wars between states. These have been the rules that made tyrants and murderers like Saddam Hussein members in good standing of the United Nations club.

This is the cruel reality of what passes for an ``international community`` and the comity of nations. United Nations member states will have to decide what the organization is actually for: to defend sovereignty at all costs, in which case it ends up defending tyranny and terror -- and invites a superpower to simply go its own way, or to defend human rights, in which case, it will have to rewrite its own rules for authorizing the use of force.

So what rules for intervention should the United States propose to the international community? I would suggest that there are five clear cases when the United Nations could authorize a state to intervene: when, as in Rwanda or Bosnia, ethnic cleansing and mass killing threaten large numbers of civilians and a state is unwilling or unable to stop it; when, as in Haiti, democracy is overthrown and people inside a state call for help to restore a freely elected government; when, as in Iraq, North Korea and possibly Iran, a state violates the nonproliferation protocols regarding the acquisition of chemical, nuclear or biological weapons; when, as in Afghanistan, states fail to stop terrorists on their soil from launching attacks on other states; and finally, when, as in Kuwait, states are victims of aggression and call for help. These would be the cases when intervention by force could be authorized by majority vote on the Security Council.

Sending in the troops would remain a last resort. If the South Africans can persuade Mugabe to go into retirement, so much the better. If American diplomats can persuade the Burmese junta to cease harassing Aung San Suu Kyi, it would obviously be preferable to using force. But force and the threat of it are usually the only language tyrants, human rights abusers and terrorists ever understand. Terrorism and nuclear proliferation can be contained only by multilateral coalitions of the willing who are prepared to fight if the need arises.

These rules wouldn`t require the United States to make its national security decisions dependent on the say-so of the United Nations, for its unilateral right of self-defense would remain. New rules for intervention, proposed by the United States and abided by it, would end the canard that the United States, not its enemies, is the rogue state. A new charter on intervention would put America back where it belongs, as the leader of the international community instead of the deeply resented behemoth lurking offstage.

Dream on, I hear you say. Such a change might lead to more American intervention, and the world wants a lot less. But we can`t go on the way we are, with a United Nations Charter that has become an alibi for dictators and tyrants and a United States ever less willing to play by United Nations rules when trying to stop them. Clear United Nations guidelines, making state sovereignty contingent on good citizenship at home and abroad and licensing intervention where these rules were broken might actually induce states to improve their conduct, making intervention less, rather than more, frequent.

Putting the United States at the head of a revitalized United Nations is a huge task. For the United States is as disillusioned with the United Nations as the world is disillusioned with the United States. Yet it needs to be understood that the alternative is empire: a muddled, lurching America policing an ever more resistant world alone, with former allies sabotaging it at every turn. Roosevelt understood that Americans can best secure their own defense and pursue their own interests when they unite with other states and, where necessary, sacrifice unilateral freedom of action for a common good. The signal failure of American foreign policy since the end of the cold war has not been a lack of will to lead and to intervene; it has been a failure to imagine the possibility of a United States once again cooperating with others to create rules for the international community. Pax Americana must be multilateral, as Franklin Roosevelt realized, or it will not survive. Without clear principles for intervention, without friends, without dreams to serve, the soldiers sweating in their body armor in Iraq are defending nothing more than power. And power without legitimacy, without support, without the world`s respect and attachment, cannot endure.



Michael Ignatieff, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 8, 2003
The President`s Speech

resident Bush urged the American people to stay the course in Iraq last night. We wish he had announced a course correction.

It was impossible to watch Mr. Bush`s somber speech without remembering that four months ago, when the president made his "Top Gun" landing on an aircraft carrier and declared an end to "major combat operations," the White House was worried about giving the world the impression that Americans were gloating.

Now, Washington has been compelled to recognize that it cannot succeed in securing Iraq alone and badly needs much more United Nations help. Yet the administration still resists paying the necessary price of accepting broad U.N. authority over rebuilding Iraq`s institutions and economy. Telling members of the U.N. that they have a "responsibility" to step up to the plate may seem a little presumptuous given the way Mr. Bush ignored their earlier concerns at the time of the invasion. The United States needs to negotiate realistically with France, Germany and Russia on expanding the peacekeeping forces and getting financial help with the huge reconstruction costs.

Given the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered in Iraq, the president needs to be much more up-front with the American people about why our troops are there. Polls show most Americans still believe that Iraq was behind the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, although there is no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to the terror plot. That is in part because the president continues to draw a line between Sept. 11 and Iraq. There are still good reasons to maintain America`s commitment in Iraq. But Mr. Bush`s tendency to refer to everyone from Baath Party loyalists to guerrilla fighters as terrorists seems designed to confuse the public rather than clarify the administration`s goals.

While Mr. Bush finally set a price tag on the upcoming cost of the Iraq effort, he still has not done nearly enough to level with the American people. The bulk of the $87 billion the president said he would request from Congress goes to the military and intelligence. The amount that would be left for things like restoring water and electricity seems very low, given recent information on the pathetic state of the country`s infrastructure.

Mr. Bush`s earlier attempts to evade setting a price tag on the Iraq effort were in part aimed at greasing the skids for the administration`s tax cut program. Certainly now it is time to give up on the idea that the tax cuts temporarily approved during the president`s tenure can remain in place. But while Mr. Bush is getting more specific about the numbers, he has yet to really tell Americans that they will have to make sacrifices to pay the bill.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 8, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Failuremongers
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


LONDON — While global attention is fixed on the Franco-German attempt to wrest control of the resurrection of Iraq from its U.S.-led liberators, practical elements in the Arab world are moving to influence the nascent government we have put in place in Baghdad.

In Cairo today, the Arab League considers whether to invite Hoshyar Zebari, the Kurd recently appointed foreign minister by Iraq`s Governing Council, to provisionally occupy Iraq`s seat. He is eager to make the three-hour flight to regional legitimacy.

What`s in it for Arab dictators who want no part of a democratic experiment in their region? Apparently the recent exercise of U.S. will and power has been taken to heart; to accommodate reality, the Arab nations are likely to play ball with post-Saddam Iraqis, expecting (1) to continue Iraq in the OPEC cartel, (2) to ensure Iraq`s support of Palestinians against Israel and (3) to prevent export of anti-Sunni zealotry. If President Bush abdicates control of Iraq to the U.N. soon, Arabs may gain all that and more.

On my return to the lists after vacation, let me animadvert on the swelling chorus of handwringing failuremongers. In Britain, for example, the BBC was recently revealed to have "sexed up" a story that accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of having "sexed up" a prewar intelligence report about Saddam`s weaponry. When the anti-Blair, antiwar BBC learned of its reporter`s exaggeration, it refused to correct his inflammatory story lest it appear to be caving in to government pressure. One board member claimed truth in reporting to be "less important" than an image of fearlessness.

Some European media that had mistakenly warned of a long, high-casualty campaign, and were discomfited by the ease of our military victory, now claim vindication. They cite the present lack of proof of mass-destruction weapons, the lawlessness that followed Saddam`s emptying jails of all criminals, and continued sniping and bombing. Iraqis are shown on TV blaming American troops — not Baathist-paid terrorists — for lack of electric power, lack of water and lack of protection (though 11,000 elderly Iraqis did not die from lack of care in the summer heat).

In what is called here "the Daily Schadenfreude," the impression is being marketed that the rebuilding of Iraq is a colossal flop. That Arabs are culturally incapable of self-government. That Islamic fundamentalism will sweep away any Western notions of individual dignity. That while Saddam was admittedly a "bad guy," the hundreds of thousands of his victims who are missing are none of the West`s concern, and that a cabal of neocon hawks manipulated President Bush into war.

So goes the failuremongers` pitch. Their purpose, beyond justification of their decade of appeasement, is to cast as both ignoble and doomed this most necessary long-term counter to state-sponsored and fanaticism-driven terror. To wear down our will, they emphasize the likelihood that as long as we stay to rebuild, terrorists will shoot at our service members and relief workers and will sabotage power plants and oil fields. As we return fire, inevitable pictures of bloodied innocents will be shown on home screens.

In the coming political campaigns, failuremongers in Europe and at home will exploit reactions to these costs in blood and treasure. They will beat the drums to abandon control to a feckless U.N. bureaucracy. George McGovern`s slogan of 1972 will be echoed by de Villepin Democrats and some panicky Republicans: "Come home, America."

How best to answer the merchants of dismay? Counseling patience is not enough. "Staying the course" needs no sexing up, as our British allies say, but does require the coalition`s measurable accomplishment of steady Iraqi-ization. (I seek a more pronounceable verb along with an indigenous Iraqi army.)

Success will be sped by straight reporting of the big picture as well as the shocking picture. Pols and pundits are obliged to cover misjudgment and misfortune, but also to examine evidence of progress toward a peaceful, prosperous, pluralistic Iraq led by the liberators, not the obstructionists.

Failure may boast a thousand fashionable fathers in this summer of discontent, but for us realistic optimists — if it succeeds, it leads.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Blunt Bow to Postwar Realities


By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2003; Page A01


After a string of setbacks, President Bush had to confront the obvious last night, that the postwar conflict in Iraq is not going well and that it will take considerably more time, money and sacrifice for the United States to prevail than he had told the country when he launched an invasion last April.

The war in Iraq that the president described last night is a far cry from the shock-and-awe power of the spring offensive that drove then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power in little more than a month. What he talked about in his nationally televised address was a dangerous and more grinding conflict in which sheer force and technological prowess may be less conclusive to the outcome than will, resolve and patience.

Bush also outlined his desire to transform the entire Middle East "by rolling back the terrorist threat . . . at the heart of its power" and establishing democratic institutions in what his advisers have described as a generational commitment to the region, an expansive and costly undertaking.

The result was a speech in which the president spoke with unusual bluntness about the challenges that still face the country. The terrorists, he said, "have done great harm" with their most recent attacks. "The Middle East," he added, "will either become a place of progress and peace or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and other free nations."

Particularly notable was Bush`s call for others to share the burden. Bush invaded Iraq without the support of many countries, but last night he said the United States cannot succeed in Iraq without greater involvement of the United Nations, the deployment of more international forces and the financial contributions of allies in Europe, the Middle East and Japan. He also said the United States cannot transform Iraq without more help from the Iraqi people themselves.

In abandoning his go-it-alone approach, however, the president did not give significant ground to allies who had opposed him at the time of the war and who want reassurances about greater political and economic influence in Iraq if they participate. His call for United Nations involvement was stated in declarative, not conciliatory, language. Members of the United Nations, he said, have "the responsibility" to help, he said.

Events forced Bush`s hand. Two massive suicide bombings and other attacks in the past month underscored the ability of terrorists and Baathist forces to wreak havoc in Iraq despite the presence of 130,000 U.S. and roughly 20,000 international troops and increased the pressure on the administration to seek help through the United Nations. The slow pace and mounting costs of reconstruction fueled talk from Bush`s critics that he was getting the country into a new quagmire.

The absence of any evidence of weapons of mass destruction has also been a continuing problem for the administration, whose credibility about the rationale for going to war has been challenged repeatedly. Bush made no mention of the progress in finding those weapons or evidence of weapons programs last night.

But it was more than events in Iraq. Bush was also driven to respond to the message that members of Congress carried back to Washington from their August recess. Not only Democrats but many Republicans returned with a warning to the White House: Tell Americans the truth about what is happening in Iraq and show there is a policy to deal with it.

Bush was determined in his rhetoric last night, as he has been since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Calling Iraq now the "central front" in the war on terror, Bush said, "Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there and they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do whatever is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our nation more secure."

But he is on the defensive over Iraq now, just as he is on the defensive at home over the sluggish economy, which continues to shed jobs despite the latest infusion of tax cuts. The irony is that, if there was anything White House officials and Republican leaders assumed, it was that Bush`s strength as a wartime leader would be a major political asset in his reelection campaign, offsetting persistent public concerns about his handling of the economy.

That may well continue to be the case, but only if the progress the president and other U.S. officials have promised in Iraq and the Middle East becomes a reality before too much longer. Whether Americans are ready for the kind of expansive commitment that the president described last night is an open question.

The president can blame himself for some of the unease that now exists in the country -- including within his own party -- about his Iraq policy. At the time of the war, he was encouraged, even by some who supported the invasion and the goal of deposing Saddam Hussein, to lay out in detail the potential costs and likely sacrifice the mission would entail.

The president decided not to do so then. Last night he handed a new bill to the country, a stunning $87 billion for the coming year to stabilize and begin to rebuild Iraq -- with a tiny portion of that earmarked for Afghanistan. He is likely to get the money, but may have to pay a price for it, given the fact that the projected annual budget deficit already is close to $500 billion.

Bush has not lost the support of the country on the war in Iraq, but there are clear signs of apprehension. A new Time/CNN Poll showed that more than three in five Americans (63 percent) believe going into Iraq was the right policy and almost three in four (71 percent) said the United States has done a good job since major fighting ended. The percentage of people who say the mission in Iraq was successful dropped 7 percentage points in the past month and a majority say it was "somewhere in between" successful and unsuccessful.

The president`s approval rating, however, has dropped. That same Time/CNN poll pegged it at 52 percent, about where he was before the attacks two years ago this week. Another new poll, by Zogby International, put the president`s approval rating at 45 percent positive and 54 percent negative.

Democrats see him as increasingly vulnerable, as the statements from two of his potential rivals reflected last night. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean said, "A 15-minute speech does not make up for 15 months of misleading the American people on why we should go to war against Iraq or 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction effort since we have been there." Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who strongly supported the war, was also skeptical, saying Bush had presented "a goal, not a plan" for winning the peace.

Just how vulnerable Bush may be is not clear, but the tone and timing of the speech indicates nervousness at the White House. Although it was never said explicitly, Bush`s speech last night represented an important turn in his administration`s approach to Iraq. Bush must now hope that it produces results that the current policy has not.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Shales ist Style Columnist, was das auch heißen mag.

washingtonpost.com
President Bush on the High Price of Freedom


By Tom Shales

Monday, September 8, 2003; Page C01


Aworried-looking George W. Bush had bad news and good news about Iraq for the American people in an 17-minute speech televised on all the networks last night. The good news, in his words: "We`re rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization." The bad news: He`s asking Congress for $87 billion to continue the rolling.

Consistently throughout the speech, Bush`s eyes were glued to the prompting device attached to the camera -- though he still kept turning the typed pages of text in front of him -- and at first he seemed to be reciting rather than talking. He was stiff and listless, as he sometimes is without an audience present. The expression on his face suggested anxiety as much as it did resolve.

But as he continued, Bush relaxed a little in his delivery and seemed less frozen before the camera. He stumbled over two words -- "transforming" early in the speech and "country" late in it -- but otherwise had no problems with the script. He wore a somber black suit and a necktie of darker blue than usual.

Though the speech ended at 8:49 (with "Thank you and may God continue to bless America"), NBC News stayed on the air until 9 with trenchant analysis of the president`s words and their importance -- Tim Russert calling Bush`s remarks "extremely significant." But those scamps ABC, CBS and Fox rushed back to regularly scheduled, and sponsored, programming. In ABC`s case, that meant continuing a moth-eaten old movie, "City Slickers," while CBS resumed a rerun of "Without a Trace," a popular drama series normally seen Thursday nights.

It hardly seemed worth dragging heavyweight anchors Dan Rather of CBS and Peter Jennings of ABC into the office on a Sunday night for the tiny roles they ended up playing in the broadcast. Bush stopped speaking and, after only two or three minutes, those guys were outta there.

Russert`s analysis was not namby-pamby, as TV commentators` sometimes are. He said that despite Bush`s call for international cooperation on Iraq, it remains "America`s war and George Bush`s war," and said that even under Bush`s plan, there will be three times as many American troops as international troops in Iraq attempting to keep the peace.

Anchor Tom Brokaw also interviewed Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) of the Foreign Relations Committee, who gave the president a rave review, calling the speech "an incredible first step" in implementing a new strategy. Bush had "made a real U-turn here," Biden said, rejecting the counsel of his "neo-con" hard-line advisers and instead adopting a course of action recommended by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"It took a big man to do that, and I plan to support him," Biden said. He also said of Iraq, in a much more persuasive tone than Bush had mustered, "We must win this."

Only moments later, Biden bounced up on CNN during its post-speech analysis, reacting to anchor Paula Zahn`s observation that the speech contained no references to that elusive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Biden said it didn`t matter, that American involvement had gone beyond that. "We have to secure Iraq for our safety`s sake," Biden said.

It was an odd situation, really: a prominent member of the opposing party doing a better job of making Bush`s case than Bush had done. Biden was amplifying Bush`s remarks instead of criticizing anything about the address, which presumably had been his reason for being there.

In a 30-minute pre-speech program, CNN noted that Bush`s job approval rating has fallen, according to the network`s latest poll, to 52 percent, said to be the lowest since he took office. CNN also spilled the beans on the $87 billion budget request, since the White House had released that, and other details of the speech, in advance.

CNN mercifully suspended its traveling ticker tape, usually seen at the bottom of the screen, while the president spoke. NBC, for some strange reason, chose to run a few random headlines about the speech under the president`s face; during a presidential address, that`s just plain rude and of no conceivable help to viewers. ABC and CBS practiced more respectable decorum. NBC also trashily posted its corporate logo in not one but two spots on the screen while Bush spoke.

Tony Snow anchored Fox`s coverage of the speech both on the Fox News Channel and on Fox stations, including Washington`s Channel 5. True to form, the pro-Bush Fox gave the speech as positive a spin as possible, with Snow declaring that Bush had spoken "movingly" of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Does anyone imagine for a minute that if the same speech had been delivered under the same circumstances by Bill Clinton -- a more skillful public speaker than Bush, for what that`s worth -- Snow would have been similarly moved? Not bloody likely.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/090703-…

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Boys study in a tent in Afghanistan, where there are scores of schools for boys and girls up to sixth grade, but few higher-level schools for girls.
washingtonpost.com
Attacks Beset Afghan Girls` Schools
Officials Say Sabotage Intended to Undermine Progress

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 8, 2003; Page A01


ZAHIDABAD, Afghanistan, Sept. 7 -- It was little more than a shed attached to a village mosque. It had no chairs, and no desks. But for the 50 young girls who had studied there since April, the two-room school in this pastoral pocket of Logar province was all that stood between a lifetime of ignorance and a glimmer of knowledge.

Now the doors have been padlocked, the teacher says he is too scared to return, and the former students are back to their customary chores -- pumping water at the village well, weeding onion fields and carrying loads of animal fodder on their heads.

That may be exactly what the unknown assailants had in mind when they broke into the shed late at night 10 days ago, doused the classrooms with fuel and set them afire, leaving behind leaflets in the Dari language warning that girls should not go to school and that teachers should not teach them.

"When I was walking home today, the little girls followed me and asked when they could go back to school. But I am not ready to teach them again because I am afraid for my own safety," confided Fazel Ahmed, 39, the school`s only teacher. "I`m very upset. These students will make the future of our community and our country."

The attack was followed two days later by the midnight burning of three tents used as classrooms outside another school in Logar province. According to officials of UNICEF, which is helping to revive the country`s long-neglected education system, there have been 18 incidents of school sabotage nationwide in the past 18 months, often accompanied by similar warnings.

The assailants could be from the Taliban, the former Islamic government that opposed girls` education as morally corrupting, and whose armed supporters recently have been regrouping. Or they could be from other conservative Islamic groups who once fought the Taliban but are now plotting a political comeback as guardians of religious purity.

Whoever they are, said school officials in Logar and education experts in Kabul, the capital, their goal is clearly to undermine Afghanistan`s successful emergence into the modern world after 25 years of military conflict and religious repression that paralyzed its development in every sphere -- particularly the emancipation of women.

And yet everyone involved in Afghan education -- from village elders to foreign charities -- insists that such tactics cannot slow the extraordinarily swift and widespread revival of girls` education that has taken place since the Taliban was defeated and replaced by a U.S.-backed government under President Hamid Karzai in December 2001.

"We have 4.2 million children in 7,000 schools now, and a 37 percent increase in the number of girls in school since last year," said Sharad Sapra, the UNICEF director for Afghanistan. The increase amounts to 400,000 more girls in school this year. "There is concern that these sporadic incidents should not become a wave, but almost everyone wants their daughters to go to school, and overall, people do not seem to be intimidated."

Indeed, the second Logar province school to be attacked, a primary school in the village of Mogul Khel where girls and boys study in separate shifts and separate areas, has already achieved national fame because of its immediate resistance to the threat. Karzai, speaking at a news conference in Kabul today with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, noted proudly that almost all students and teachers there had returned to class the day after the attack.

On Saturday, classes were in full, noisy swing, if in hastily improvised settings. Groups of boys recited their multiplication tables in unison, sitting on the playground next to the metal skeletons of the canvas classroom tents that were burned last Tuesday night. Groups of girls huddled on straw mats in the front lobby, reading their Pashto language lessons from a portable blackboard.

"We do not know who these saboteurs are, but our school is the cradle of education in Logar, and we will defend it," said Mahmoud Ayub Saber, 50, the principal, who returned home last year after waiting out the Taliban era in Pakistan.

"If some girls were occasionally absent before this happened," he said, "their parents are saying from now on none of their daughters will miss a single day."

Education Ministry officials in Kabul said they are determined to ensure the success of girls` education, but they acknowledged that they have limited resources to physically protect schools, and they noted with alarm that a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism is challenging the modernizing policies of the Karzai government.

Ashrak Hossaini, the deputy minister of education, noted that opposition to girls` education, as well as to women`s participation in work and public life, was a hallmark of the Taliban worldview, and that it remains a volatile issue for Islamic conservatives who oppose Karzai`s policies.

"Our society is going through many changes, and there are fundamentalists who want to resist this change," Hossaini said. "We are trying to move to a modern and civilized stage, and girls` schools are attacked because they represent this movement. We must not only provide physical protection, but also prepare the people mentally for these changes."

Indeed, while there seems to be near-universal public support for girls` elementary school education, the idea of female study beyond sixth grade is far more controversial, particularly in traditional, rural areas steeped in social and gender taboos that existed long before the Taliban took power in 1996.

Even in Logar province, a relatively prosperous and progressive agricultural region just south of Kabul, parents and teachers who strongly support girls` primary education take a far more cautious, and even dismissive, approach to secondary-level study for them.

While there are hundreds of schools in the area that teach boys and girls up to sixth grade, there are very few higher-level schools for girls. Coeducation is out of the question in conservative Afghan society, and most parents do not want their adolescent daughters attending even an all-female high school if it is not in or close to their village.

"In our district, there is no opportunity for girls to go beyond the fifth class. After that, most of them get married and have no need to continue their educations," said Saber, the Mogul Khel principal. He said education officials in Kabul had ordered a girls` high school to be built in Logar, but community elders opposed it because students would be required to travel some distance from their homes.

Officials at UNICEF said they are approaching such issues pragmatically, stressing the importance of getting girls into school at a young age so they will be exposed to basic knowledge and social interactions, while leaving the more controversial issue of female higher education for the future.

By turning schools into social service centers where people receive vaccinations, register births and even pump well water, Sapra said, the idea of education can become an integral part of village life. But in villages such as Zahidabad, where the two-room girls` school was built last spring, the most serious obstacle to education today is fear.

"We are all afraid of these bad people. We are Muslims, and we fear for the honor of our daughters," said Shah Agha, 50, a water and power department worker in Zahidabad whose 12-year-old daughter attended the village school until last week.

"We were very happy when this school opened, but one morning we went to pray and we found it was all burned," he said. "Unless the government brings us more security, we cannot let our daughters go back there."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Mr. Bush Reports




Monday, September 8, 2003; Page A20


PRESIDENT BUSH last night made clearer than ever that the U.S. commitment to Iraq will be costly, in dollars as well as in human casualties. It`s a message he should have been delivering since before the war began. It is welcome now, though, as is his willingness to specify to Congress how much money he will seek for Iraq and Afghanistan security and reconstruction in the coming fiscal year. Mr. Bush is right to say that the United States must stay the course in both countries, and he is right to seek substantial resources for the task. But that`s only the beginning of a conversation. Congress will and should ask many questions.

One set of questions has more to do with America`s economic future than with Iraq`s. For two years the president has been warning that the war on terror will be long and arduous. He now acknowledges that the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, important components of that war, themselves will cost tens of billions of dollars. And yet he refuses to adjust for that reality in the budgets he proposes. He argues for more and more tax cuts that would prevent the government from paying both for the war and for domestic needs. Congress cannot follow the president`s irresponsible lead on this score.

Some will criticize Mr. Bush for failing last night to provide a timetable or an exit strategy for U.S. troops in Iraq. But the president was right to focus the nation`s attention on important goals in Iraq, not artificial deadlines. Others will note, more fairly, that he barely mentioned the weapons of mass destruction that were a major justification for war. Sooner rather than later he must answer questions about prewar intelligence and postwar revelations.

For Iraq`s future, though, probably the most important questions concern the president`s commitment to seek allied help in Iraq. He said last night that enlisting support from other nations is a major goal. But on Fox News yesterday morning, his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, talked as though going back to the United Nations was mostly a tactic to deliver political cover to nations that can`t provide more troops or money without the imprimatur of the United Nations. Many of those nations, though, want more than a fig leaf with a U.N. logo. They want a genuine sharing of political control.

There are understandable reasons the administration may remain reluctant to cede authority in this way. As the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, argues in a column on the facing page today, the occupiers want to transfer authority as quickly as possible to Iraqis. Mr. Bremer writes that the process already is taking place swiftly. The unstated but implied question is whether a new overlord could do anything but slow the process. And the United States wants Iraq to become a federal, peaceful, democratic state in which the rights of women and minorities are respected. Transferring control to an international organization, many of whose members do not cherish the same values, may not increase the likelihood of success.

But the United States is a long way from the ideal in its occupation of Iraq. In the postwar period it has encountered many challenges that the administration did not foresee. A sharing of political authority won`t end those challenges. Other countries aren`t going to supply enough troops or pony up enough cash to reduce America`s burden. But they may help keep that burden from growing even heavier than Mr. Bush`s portrayal of it last night.

If the United States retains control over military forces in Iraq while an evolving Iraqi government reports to a U.N. administrator, Americans would lose little in the way of influence while gaining much in international support and credibility for their disavowal of imperial ambitions. It may be that France, wedded more to its anti-American leadership than to a responsible role in the Middle East, would block even such a reasonable compromise. But such a compromise should be the administration`s goal.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

They don`t really have a choiceDas ist ganz genau das, was ich seit längerem fürchte, wir werden keine andere Chance haben als zu helfen, dann auch noch unter dem Gelächter der Bushisten, die das dann als Versagen ansehen, obwohl es nichts anderes ist, als einen Unbelehrbaren aus dem Dreck zu ziehen.
Auf jeden Fall sollten dann auch Gewinne aus den Nachfolgegeschäften eingefordert werden. Da sind die Franzosen in einer klaren Position.

washingtonpost.com
No Choice but Rescue


By William Raspberry

Monday, September 8, 2003; Page A21


I`m feeling about the Bush administration`s Iraq adventure the way I feel about those daredevils who, against all advice and admonition, proceed with their plan to kayak the rapids, ascend the peak or swim the channel.

When they get in trouble, they expect help from the very folk who warned them in the first place.

The Bush administration wants the United Nations to help extricate us from the much-warned-about mess in Iraq.

In a draft resolution made public last week, we are asking U.N. member nations to help train and equip an Iraqi police force, help stymie the travel into Iraq of suspected terrorists and "accelerate the provision of substantial contributions to support the Iraqi reconstruction effort."

All that in addition to our repeated requests for major commitments of foreign troops to replace the tired and frustrated Americans.

So far, the rest of the world, as represented by the United Nations, has been kind enough not to say: We told you so.

They did tell us so -- repeatedly. They warned us that climbing the mountain was the easy part, that it was the descent that would prove treacherous. They told us that no matter how calm and conquerable the channel might seem, there was an undertow to be reckoned with.

They told us that there were reasonable alternatives to shooting the rapids of war and that they, no matter how irresistible we made the venture sound, wouldn`t accompany us. Except for the British and a few indebted others, they didn`t -- and we pooh-poohed them as pusillanimous wimps.

Now we are asking them to throw us a rope (though we do insist on dictating the terms of our rescue).

And like the Coast Guard and other rescue workers, they have no choice but to help. They have no moral obligation to do so, since we got ourselves into the mess, but their failure to act would unleash on them the consequences of our own hubris.

The world might have been willing to live with the tyranny of Saddam Hussein -- and it seems a certainty that he was no imminent threat to us. But neither we nor the rest of the world can live with the chaos that would result if the United States now washed its hands and walked away.

We may be years and scores of billions of dollars away from establishing democracy in Iraq (if that was ever our real intention), but we must not leave Iraqis worse off than they were under Hussein. On the other hand, we don`t want to leave ourselves worse off than before we achieved our resounding military victory.

At least I think it was a military victory. It would be interesting, wouldn`t it, to take our prewar estimates of Hussein`s troop strength, subtract the number of soldiers we`re known to have killed in the fighting and then ask ourselves what happened to the rest. How can we be certain that the assorted "saboteurs," "Hussein loyalists" and "Islamic terrorists" aren`t soldiers in mufti?

At any rate, we cannot allow our military and civilian personnel to be ambushed. And the rest of the world cannot afford for us to get discouraged and quit the scene. For whatever else Iraq would then become, it would assuredly become not merely a rallying point for, but a world-class incubator of, anti-West terrorism.

The free world cannot want that to happen. And so the United Nations will debate this way and that and, in the end, come up with a resolution that will allow member nations to supply troops, a modicum of security and some help in restoring Iraq`s infrastructure.

They won`t like it, because they think we shouldn`t have created the mess in the first place. But they`ll do it for the same reason that rescue teams climb treacherous mountains to save heedless and foolhardy climbers they tried to warn away.

They don`t really have a choice.

[e-mail]




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Now i have a break. Dafür gibt es 61 mal frische Toon Ware.
The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary


http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030907__061toons.htm

[Joerver]

Army to adopt `Ulster` tactics to defend Iraq bases
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 07/09/2003)


British commanders in Iraq are to adopt Ulster-style security measures in an effort to limit attacks on troops.

Police stations and buildings where troops are billeted will be protected by anti-rocket screens, bullet-proof glass and blast walls. Closed circuit television cameras will also be used to provide all-round security for military bases from attack by former Ba`ath Party supporters and al-Qaeda units operating inside Iraq.

Troops will also make more use of helicopters, rather than vehicles, to reduce the threat of sustaining casualties in roadside ambushes.

Commanders decided on the new measures, some of which are already in practice, after a soldier was murdered in an ambush last month. Fusilier Russell Beeston was the 50th British soldier to die on operations in Iraq and the 11th soldier murdered since May 1, when President Bush declared that major hostilities in Iraq were over.

His patrol was ambushed when it passed through the village of Ali-Asharqi, 150 miles north of Basra, as his unit was returning from arresting an Islamic leader, who was allegedly an Iranian spy. He died in what British commanders said was a "carefully planned" ambush. All 25 members of the patrol had to be rescued by helicopter.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, will tell the House of Commons tomorrow that an extra 3,000 soldiers will be sent to Iraq to reinforce the 10,700 troops already there.

Although Britain does have the capability to reinforce its operations in Iraq with a brigade of 6,000 troops if necessary, it would be unable to sustain the increase indefinitely. A senior officer said: "We are now facing a counter-insurgency operation in Iraq very similar to what we experienced in Ulster. A successful outcome to this situation can be achieved only by having more troops on the ground.

"We can`t afford to sit inside bases too afraid to come out and face the music. We need to be able to dominate the country with patrols so that we don`t give the enemy the opportunity to carry out attacks against us. At the same time we must improve the security of our bases. It`s been a tough few weeks but lessons have been learnt."

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/0…

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Sep. 7, 2003. 06:36 PM

Reasons to fear U.S.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thes…
NOAM CHOMSKY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Amid the aftershocks of recent suicide bombings in Baghdad and Najaf, and countless other horrors since Sept. 11, 2001, it is easy to understand why many believe that the world has entered a new and frightening "age of terror," the title of a recent collection of essays by Yale University scholars and others.

However, two years after 9/11, the United States has yet to confront the roots of terrorism, has waged more war than peace and has continually raised the stakes of international confrontation.

On 9/11, the world reacted with shock and horror, and sympathy for the victims. But it is important to bear in mind that for much of the world, there was a further reaction: "Welcome to the club."

For the first time in history, a Western power was subjected to an atrocity of the kind that is all too familiar elsewhere.

Any attempt to make sense of events since then will naturally begin with an investigation of American power — how it has reacted and what course it may take.

Within a month of 9/11, Afghanistan was under attack. Those who accept elementary moral standards have some work to do to show that the United States and Britain were justified in bombing Afghans to compel them to turn over people suspected of criminal atrocities, the official reason given when the bombings began.

Then, in September, 2002, 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 United States reigns supreme.

At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilize 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 out its radical international and domestic agenda.

The final days of 2002, foreign policy specialist Michael Krepon wrote, were "the most dangerous since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis," which historian Arthur Schlesinger described, reasonably, as "the most dangerous moment in human history."

Krepon`s concern was nuclear proliferation in an "unstable nuclear-proliferation belt stretching from Pyongyang to Baghdad," including "Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the Indian subcontinent."

Bush administration initiatives in 2002 and 2003 have only increased the threats in and near this unstable belt.

The National Security Strategy declared that the United States, alone, has the right to carry out "preventive war" — preventive, not pre-emptive — using military force to eliminate a perceived threat, even if invented or imagined.

Preventive war is, very simply, the "supreme crime" condemned at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

From early September, 2002, the Bush administration issued grim warnings about the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, with broad hints that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The propaganda assault helped enable the administration to gain some support from a frightened population for the planned invasion of a country known to be virtually defenceless — and a valuable prize, at the heart of the world`s major energy system.

Last May, after the putative end of the war in Iraq, President Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that he had won a "victory in the war on terror (by having) removed an ally of Al Qaeda."

But Sept. 11, 2003, will arrive with no credible evidence for the alleged link between Saddam and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden. And the only known link between the victory and terror is that the invasion of Iraq seems to have increased Al Qaeda recruitment and the threat of terror.

The Wall Street Journal recognized 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."

If the administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.

Meanwhile, bin Laden remains at large. And the source of the post-Sept. 11 anthrax terror is unknown — an even more striking failure, given that the source is assumed to be domestic, perhaps even from a federal weapons lab.

The Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are still missing, too.

For the second 9/11 anniversary and beyond, we basically have two choices. We can march forward with confidence that the global enforcer will drive evil from the world, much as the president`s speechwriters declare, plagiarizing ancient epics and children`s tales.

Or we can subject the doctrines of the proclaimed grand new era to scrutiny, drawing rational conclusions, perhaps gaining some sense of the emerging reality.

The wars that are contemplated in the war on terror are to go on for a long time.

"There`s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland," the president announced last year.

That`s fair enough. Potential threats are limitless. And there is strong reason to believe that they are becoming more severe as a result of Bush administration lawlessness and violence.

We also should be able to appreciate recent comments on the matter by Ami Ayalon, the 1996-2000 head of Shabak, Israel`s General Security Service, who observed that "those who want victory" against terror without addressing underlying grievances "want an unending war."

The observation generalizes in obvious ways.

The world has good reason to watch what is happening in Washington with fear and trepidation.

The people who are best placed to relieve those fears, and to lead the way to a more hopeful and constructive future, are the people of the United States, who can shape the future.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Noam Chomsky is a political activist and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[Joerver]

September 6, 2003
Bush`s Real Six-Point Plan for an Economic Recovery

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

NY Times: Bush Offers Six-Point Plan for an Economic Recovery [LINK]

Hey, who needs to actually read this one? I can already tell you the six points --

1. Cut taxes for wealthy

2. Lower taxes for wealthy

3. Reduces taxes for wealthy

4. Slash taxes for wealthy

5. Trim taxes for wealthy, and

6. Poor and middle class people, I`m ordering you to be patriotic and go max your credit cards out at the mall (since you don`t have any real money to spend).

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-assess8s…
NEWS ANALYSIS



President Focuses on Terrorism
By Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writer

September 8, 2003

WASHINGTON — President Bush`s speech to the nation Sunday was notable for three difficult foreign policy issues he did not address: whether he still expects to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what is he willing to offer other nations in exchange for any help there and whether the U.S. can prevent the collapse of the Middle East peace process.

Instead, Bush sought to portray the difficulties America faces in occupying Iraq as another phase in the war on terrorism that his administration has been waging since Sept. 11, 2001.

"The surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans," Bush said in the nationally televised speech, his first since May 1, when he declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. "We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities."

Before the March invasion of Iraq, Bush had justified the war as necessary to eliminate a threat posed by Saddam Hussein`s alleged cache of weapons of mass destruction. With no such weapons found more than four months after the U.S. takeover, Bush skirted the issue, mentioning only that the former regime "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction," an apparent reference to weapon stocks held by Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s.

In addition, the Bush administration has argued that a democratic Iraq would have a positive and stabilizing influence across the Middle East. Shortly after declaring an end to major combat, Bush began to push his "road map" as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But over the weekend, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas — regarded as a key figure in the process — resigned. Bush did not use Sunday`s speech to lay out how he intends to salvage prospects for peace, going only so far as to say that the Middle East is the crux of the war on terrorism.

"The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations," the president said. "Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat."

There is little doubt that Congress will approve the $87 billion Bush requested Sunday to pay for the war in Iraq and accelerate the reconstruction and ongoing combat efforts in Afghanistan. Lawmakers from both major parties said the cost of U.S. failure in Iraq would be too high to contemplate.

"We want other countries to participate," said Stuart Roy, an aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). "But in the event they don`t ... we can`t afford to lose the war on terrorism."

In March, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz testified before Congress that Iraq would begin to finance its own reconstruction through oil sales "relatively soon." A sober postwar assessment of Iraq`s decrepit infrastructure, further crippled by looting, sabotage and the lack of security, has quashed such hopes.

Bush cited three major U.S. policy objectives in Iraq. The first is to "destroy terrorists" and Hussein loyalists. The second is to expand the international role in Iraqi reconstruction and security, and the third is to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

U.S. military commanders have identified the "internationalization" of the Iraqi occupation force as key to defusing anti-American sentiment. But several countries, including India, have said they would not contribute troops unless Iraq was being run under a U.N. mandate.

The president said he had directed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to introduce a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq led by the U.S.

However, Security Council members France and Germany have rejected the draft resolution the Bush administration put forward last week, saying it did not sufficiently address handing over authority to an Iraqi government.

Powell, in television appearances Sunday, indicated a willingness to negotiate with France and Germany, but called on them to study the U.S. proposal and make specific suggestions before rejecting it out of hand.

"We want to move to sovereignty as quickly as possible," Powell said Sunday on NBC`s "Meet the Press." "But to think that somehow you could, tomorrow, wake up and say, `OK, fine, give sovereignty back to the Iraqi people,` before you have a constitution, before you`ve had elections, before you`ve had the institution of democracy put in place, is not a reasonable statement to make."

Even with a new U.N. resolution, Powell said, "I`m not sure the French and the Germans are prepared to send troops under any set of circumstances.... What we are really interested in in this resolution, though, is to get the international community to come together and participate in the political reconstruction of Iraq."

Bush said Washington is proposing that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council come up with its own timetable for adopting a constitution and holding elections.

However, Bush gave no ground — and no specifics — on any compromise with the Europeans who opposed the unilateral U.S. decision to use force in Iraq. Instead, he said other nations have an obligation to help. "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties," Bush said.

Referring to the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, he said, "Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation."

By handing over power to an Iraqi government as soon as possible, Bush hopes to cushion the political fallout of a long occupation of a Muslim country. The strategy is already being referred to in Washington as "Iraqi-ization," after the U.S. decision to pursue "Vietnamization" of the war in Indochina by turning most of the responsibility for fighting over to the government of South Vietnam.

"From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves," Bush said. "Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty."

The president used familiar rhetoric about America facing a prolonged and costly fight against terrorism, and stuck to his basic argument that tyranny in Iraq breeds instability and fosters terrorism elsewhere.

Many of the president`s critics reject that argument. But they concede that despite there being no evidence that Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, polls show that many Americans believe he was — and so the argument may be a political winner for Bush.

"The way he can sell Iraq is to say this is all about 9/11, and frankly I think it will work, and he will get his money," said Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder. "But you don`t invade countries and change tyrants and that`s how you win the war on terrorism.... It`s far more complex than that."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-afgh…
THE WORLD


Taliban Returning in Force, General Says
From Associated Press

September 8, 2003

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters, paid and trained by Al Qaeda, are pouring into Afghanistan from Pakistan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Sunday.

Lt. Gen. John Vines said the Taliban is trying to regroup and regain control of the country it ruled until it was ousted by the United States in late 2001. U.S., Afghan and coalition forces have responded with military operations against the radical Islamic fighters. As many as 200 Talibs have been killed in the last week alone, Vines said.

Vines added that as many as 1,000 of their forces were in the mountains of Zabol province south of the capital, Kabul. Some Afghan officials and defense policy analysts in the United States have said the Taliban`s reappearance is the result of the U.S. decision not to commit a substantial number of troops outside Kabul as a deterrent after the Taliban was defeated.

The Afghan government, the United Nations and aid agencies have long appealed for peacekeepers to be deployed outside Kabul. Hopes this might happen have risen since NATO took command of the 5,000-troop International Security Assistance Force in August.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld flew to Kabul on Sunday to show support for President Hamid Karzai`s government, which is plagued by political uncertainty, record opium poppy crops, violent warlord rivalries and an urgent need for basic services.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-outl…
RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOK



President Coming Up Short on the Means to Achieve His Ends
Ronald Brownstein

September 8, 2003

Call it a midcourse correction, an evolution in policy or a chastened reversal in direction.

Regardless, President Bush`s decision last week to return to the United Nations for help in reconstructing Iraq rests on the same conclusion: Under his present policies, Bush doesn`t have the means to meet his ends in that nation. Bush needs thousands more troops to pacify Iraq. But the American military is already stretched too thin by obligations around the globe to meet the need itself.

Bush needs "several tens of billions" of dollars to rebuild Iraq`s crumbling economic and social infrastructure in the next year alone, said L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator there. But the record budget deficits confronting Washington make it impossible for the U.S. to meet those needs on its own.

Asking for help now from the same countries that last winter opposed the war and were scorned as tired "Old Europe" by the administration could not have been easy for the president.

The neoconservatives who have dominated the administration`s foreign policy thinking believe that it`s more important for America to act decisively, alone if necessary, than to build consensus among allies. Bush had to recognize that reengaging the U.N. would give ammunition to those who argue that such an approach was always doomed to failure — a group that prominently includes the nine Democrats who want his job.

Given all the political and ideological arguments against changing direction, it`s reasonable to assume that Bush only returned to the U.N. because he believed he had no other viable option for obtaining the troops, and money, he needs to stabilize Iraq. In other words, in Iraq, reality trumped ideology.

Maybe it`s time for the same sort of midcourse correction at home, where Bush is also facing a huge shortfall between means and ends.

The president has a long list of domestic ambitions. He wants to steadily increase military spending. He wants to bolster homeland security. He wants to create a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare and has proposed tax credits to help those without health insurance obtain it. Eventually, he wants to restructure Social Security to add individual accounts that workers can invest in the stock market.

All of this will cost plenty. The price tag for the prescription drug benefit alone comes to $400 billion over the next decade. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says Bush`s long-term defense plans envision the Pentagon receiving about $80 billion a year more than it does now.

And it`s likely, on both defense and domestic needs, that Bush`s proposals are closer to the floor than the ceiling of the spending the political system will ultimately demand.

Pressure is developing in both parties to increase the size of the active military, which could swell spending even beyond the level Bush envisions.

Bipartisan commissions, like the recent Council on Foreign Relations panel chaired by Warren B. Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, have regularly concluded the U.S. must spend far more than the administration has proposed to upgrade the nation`s defenses against terrorism. In June, Rudman`s team said all levels of government need to spend $98 billion more than they budgeted over the next five years just to improve the capacity of first responders — police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel — to react to another attack.

Social needs are clamoring for attention too. The Census Bureau is expected to report this month that the number of Americans without health insurance rose again last year, so pressure to help the uninsured will grow. As more schools fail to meet the standards established by the education reform law Bush signed last year, demands for more spending on schools will increase as well. And once a prescription drug program is in place, seniors will inevitably win more generous benefits, raising the price.

And even as all of these needs cascade on Washington, the cupboard is bare.

Under the pressure of recession, the aftereffects of 9/11, the war in Iraq and the cost of Bush`s huge tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the federal government this year is facing its largest deficit ever — just more than $400 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said.

It projects that the deficit next year will soar to $480 billion. And when the costs of occupying Iraq, providing a prescription drug benefit and extending Bush`s tax cuts are included, it envisions deficits exceeding $300 billion a year into the distant horizon, even after the economy recovers.

Bush defenders like to say that, measured as a share of the economy, these deficits are smaller than those under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. But that`s only because today`s deficits are mitigated by the huge surpluses accumulating in Social Security until baby boomers retire. Take that money out of the equation, and the deficit next year will equal 5.6% of the gross national product, a level exceeded only once since World War II.

What`s more, for average families, the tax cuts that helped dig this hole were a solution in search of a problem. Last month, with almost no attention, the Congressional Budget Office released a study revealing that the federal income tax rate on all but the top fifth of families was lower in 2000 than it was in 1979. For middle-income families, the income tax rate was one-third lower in 2000 than 21 years ago.

Remember, that was before the Bush tax cuts.

The conclusion is becoming unavoidable that Bush`s repeated tax cuts are leaving Washington without the means to meet its ends. Next year, the federal government is projected to take in revenue equal to just 16.2% of the economy. That`s the lowest level since 1959 — long before Medicare, Medicaid and large-scale federal aid to schools, much less a massive obligation to strengthen homeland defenses and rebuild Iraq.

Surely it wouldn`t be easy for Bush to acknowledge that his tax-cut agenda has left Washington without the funds to meet his other goals. But could it really be more difficult than rattling the tin cup for Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder?

*


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



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq8se…
EDITORIAL



Facing Up to a Hard Reality

September 8, 2003

President Bush`s speech Sunday night amounted to a tacit admission of the mistakes that have riddled the occupation of Iraq. But if Bush is to justify the breathtaking $87-billion price tag he proposed for rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, he needs to provide Congress with more than vague assurances about bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Bush`s strongest argument is that, since 9/11, Americans must be ready to "engage the enemy where he lives," lest the war against terrorism play out here. It`s not what the administration is attempting to do in Iraq but how badly it is doing it that is so distressing. However welcome the removal of Saddam Hussein and his sons was, the steady spate of attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq shows that the administration wildly underestimated the costs and dangers of imposing its headstrong will in Iraq. It ignored experts who warned that failure to quickly provide to the Iraqi people the basics — like electricity and water — would make them wonder why U.S.-style democracy was superior to Hussein`s efficient tyranny. The Iraqi resentment has only grown.

A harbinger of present troubles came in March when four U.S. soldiers were killed in the war`s first suicide bombing. More recently, a truck filled with explosives destroyed the United Nations compound in Baghdad, a Shiite leader and dozens of his followers were blown up and the Baghdad police station was bombed. The administration is scrambling to prevent Iraq from descending into chaos.

Bush rightly emphasized that the United States cannot retreat in the face of such attacks. He invoked the memories of Beirut and Somalia, situations in which American presidents, in the eyes of the Arab world, cut and run after U.S. troops were attacked. Such actions may well have led Osama bin Laden and his followers to believe that the U.S., as Bush put it, had become "decadent."

Now that some 140,000 American troops have proven inadequate to police Iraq, the president has to come back to international allies like France and Germany, which the administration once derisively referred to as "chocolate makers," to help rescue Iraq. Despite administration efforts to portray the war as a multinational effort, six out of seven military personnel now in Iraq are Americans.

Bush was right to state that the United States and its allies "cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." The Iraq mess may be of Bush`s own making, but neither Democrats at home nor allies abroad can seriously wish for the situation to deteriorate further. The president said he was determined that the U.S. would not run, and indeed this nation has the moral obligation to finish what it started and hand Iraq back to the Iraqis. Then, perhaps, the dream of taxpayer dollars building new schools, roads and medical clinics can be one that can be afforded not just in Iraq but in the United States.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[bofex]

Hallo joerver,

Dein thread ist echt super, aber diese Werbeeinblendungen, welche die Seite am Anfang blockieren, sind extrem lästig.

Besteht vielleicht die Möglichkeit, auf ein anderes Forum auszuweichen oder evtl. eine Mailingliste einzurichten?

W"sucks"!

[Joerver]

Bofex
Wovon soll WO leben. Die Werbung nervt, aber am besten garnicht beachten, denn sie geht vorbei.
Dieser Thread gehört in die Politik und Listen von gesperrten Zeitungen helfen nichts. Da mußt Du schon alles eistellen, sonst kommt der Leser nicht rein und bei NYT mußt Du nach einer Woche bezahlen.
Gruß

[Joerver]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/138289_firstperson08.h…

First Person: Military morale at risk, unless changes made
Monday, September 8, 2003

By ROGER YOUNG
GUEST COLUMNIST

It is my personal observation as an Army veteran of the Vietnam War that the Bush administration, like past administrations, is circling the wagons and not looking inward for what we are failing to achieve in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wants to continue to shrink the Army from 12 divisions to 10 while operation tempo continues to swell. He apparently believes high-tech drones and space-based weapons alone can win wars. He fails to understand such weapons cannot control a country and its fractured populace following the outcome. It requires boots on the ground to secure the countryside.

The current downsized Army also places a growing and unacceptable burden on our reserve forces and National Guard that can cause undue personal financial sacrifice during long deployments and lead to low morale. If troop morale continues to fall, it will certainly lead to a drop in re-enlistments and new enlistments making matters even worse in our all-volunteer Army.

It often has been said that when the U.S. Army entered Vietnam, it was the best it had ever been in world history, but by the time we pulled out of Southeast Asia it was basically in ruins. To their credit, some soldiers remained in the service and helped rebuild that demoralized and tattered Army to make it what it has become today -- the greatest fighting force in military history.

This outstanding Army today -- to mention only a few accomplishments -- evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, took on Afghanistan and threw out the Saddam regime. It has been successful whenever called upon. It has done its duty and served our nation well.

However, I see the same sad fate: a demoralized and discouraged military unless course corrections are implemented -- and soon.

I have concluded that the current administration along with our intelligence agencies are making some of the very same mistakes we made in Vietnam, which, if unchecked, will demoralize our military and put our country in great jeopardy if we fail to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today our nation`s credibility is being seriously questioned regarding the reported weapons of mass destruction that we were told posed an imminent threat to our national security. The president should call for an open investigation of the flawed intelligence that led us to war. Solid intelligence is absolutely necessary for our nation`s credibility and to prosecute its current national security policy of the use of pre-emptive military force to limit the spread of WMD.

The administration also must realize that our nation cannot afford to have both "guns and butter" during a long-term war. The current fiscal policy is very reminiscent of the Johnson administration that while greatly expanding the war in Vietnam also pushed its very expensive "Great Society" programs here at home. As responsible Americans, we must face the fact we must pay for this war today and not place an even larger tax burden on our children and grandchildren.

Lest we forget, this administration promised the judicious use of military force abroad in its campaign to get elected, promised to rebuild the Veterans Administration and honor our nation`s promises to its veterans. Yet the debate on concurrent receipt for our retired military veterans continues today and serious cutbacks have impaired VA services. Once again, broken promises from our civilian leaders who continue to put politics before military objectives and our retired veterans. Such broken promises are well known in the ranks, adversely affecting current and future enlistments.

Sadly, as a fellow war veteran stated to me recently, few Americans care -- but they will in the future. I and many other vets supported and believed in this administration. I must acknowledge by supporting it I have also played a role in where our troops are today -- in a new hell, this one made of sand.

It is my profound hope that this administration will also accept personal responsibility, swallow its pride, admit mistakes made and make the necessary course corrections before it is too late. The future of our military and our nation`s credibility are at stake.



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

Roger Young of Seattle served with Troop A of the 3/17th Air Cavalry Squadron in Vietnam as an aero-scout crew chief from 1969 to 1970. He is a 3/17th Air Cavalry troop webmaster and troop historian. 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.

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[Joerver]

Bush asks $87 billion for war
ANALYSIS: War may have turned Iraq into a hub for terrorists
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/…


When he described Iraq as "the central front" of the war on terror in his televised speech Sunday night, President Bush confirmed what many analysts and U.S. officials have been saying for weeks -- Iraq is drawing Islamic militants from around the Arab world who want to kill Americans.

It`s a powerful argument for strengthening the U.S. commitment to staying the course in Iraq and defeating the enemy. At the same time, however, it opens Bush to unflattering questions:

Has the American presence in Iraq deterred terrorists or encouraged them? And has the U.S. administration itself been partially responsible for allowing the foreign militants to pass unhindered across Iraq`s sieve-like borders?

In his speech, Bush emphasized how postwar Iraq had transformed the terrorist equation. "Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places," he said. "Iraq is now the central front."

Ironically, many experts said, the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the chaos that has ensued have turned warnings of Iraqi terrorism into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Iraq has been converted from a country without a major terrorist presence into a serious terrorist threat," said Jessica Stern, a professor at Harvard University`s Kennedy School of Government who has written two books on religious terrorism.

Soon after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, some members of the Bush administration suggested Iraq might have had a hand in the attacks -- through an alleged connection between Iraqi intelligence agents and one of the Sept. 11 organizers -- and was linked to Osama bin Laden`s al Qaeda network. No hard evidence has been offered to back the allegations and most experts believe they are false, although recent opinion polls show that a majority of Americans believe the allegations nonetheless.


BORDER CROSSINGS
On Sunday, Bush confirmed recent assertions by U.S. officials that hundreds and perhaps thousands of Islamic militants -- some belonging to al Qaeda -- had crossed into Iraq from neighboring countries, especially Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations," Bush said.

While many of the attacks on Americans appear to be committed by Iraqis with no foreign involvement, there is considerable evidence to support Bush`s contention. No one yet knows for sure who is responsible for the truck and car bombings that have killed hundreds at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the Jordanian Embassy and the Shiite mosque in Najaf, but they have the hallmarks of al Qaeda-style terrorist operations.

The presence of about 130,000 American soldiers on Iraqi streets and roads gives Islamic holy warriors plenty of bull`s-eyes to shoot at, analysts said.

"It`s a short-term target of opportunity," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "For Iranians, Saudis, Syrians, it`s a nice, nearby, target-rich environment. They think, `All we need to have is one guy throw a bomb, and he`ll kill a bunch of Americans.` "

U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Syria and Iran of failing to stop, or perhaps even helping, foreign fighters from using their territory to infiltrate Iraq.

"They know we are unhappy about it," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a visit to Iraq last week. He called the two governments` efforts to stop the infiltrations "intermittent, uneven."

But foreign holy warriors do not need the help of neighboring governments to get into Iraq. In fact, the borders have long been wide open, traveled by large numbers of Arabs from many nations. The U.S. military appears to have done little to stop this flow.


NO VISAS NECESSARY
Officials of the U.S.-installed Iraqi government told The Chronicle last week that the Hussein regime`s stringent visa requirements for foreign travelers were now being ignored. No visas are required for travelers from nighboring Arab nations, they said. They described the lack of controls as the result of confusion and inattention among American and Iraqi authorities.

On Sunday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called for stricter border controls. But he did not explain how Iraq could do this without requiring visas for its neighbors -- a move that could severely hinder the traffic of imported food and consumer goods that have partially alleviated Iraq`s postwar economic crisis.

Until late last month, Iraqi authorities on the busy Syrian and Jordanian border crossings did not even bother stamping the date of entrance or departure on visitors` passports, travelers say.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, has admitted that there are not enough American troops or Iraqi recruits to patrol the 370- mile highway from Baghdad to Jordan.

On the Iranian frontier, U.S. officials last week closed the only official crossing, at Khanaquin, northeast of Baghdad, but the move had little effect, travelers said. Thousands of people continued their standard practice of crossing illegally, either by paying bribes to Iraqi migration officials or simply hiking through the hills to reach the other side.

Last month, when U.S. officials suggested that many of the anti-American fighters in Iraq had crossed from Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials pointed out that the Americans had left border posts on the Iraqi side of the frontier completely unmanned.

"Iraq is becoming very reminiscent of Lebanon`s civil war, because large numbers of people are filtering in from other nations to fight," said As`ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese expert on terrorism who is a political science professor at California State University Stanislaus.

AbuKhalil said that during his nation`s brutal fighting in the 1970s and 1980s, foreign radicals from around the globe had flocked into Lebanon because of the presence of Israeli and American troops. He said he had visited Syria in June, and "I was struck by the number of people who are going in and out of Iraq from Syria."

Many experts said that American authorities were overwhelmed by the scattering of militant groups and individuals who had streamed into Iraq, many of them unconnected to any terrorist organization and merely following their personal conviction that jihad, or holy war, is necessary.

AbuKhalil said stopping these flows would be impossible. "It reminded me that people have gone through these borders, traveling and smuggling, for centuries," he said. "If the Bush administration thinks that with another 20, 000 troops they can stop this, it`s absolutely foolish."

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

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

[Joerver]

Oval Office outrages just keep coming
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, September 8, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/



Suppose you were a screenwriter and you used the Bush administration as a model for a screenplay. Do you think anyone in Hollywood would buy it?

"Not a chance," would say Steven Spielberg. "Too outlandish. Nobody would believe anything as ridiculously far-fetched as that."

"Too violent," would say Quentin Tarantino. "Too much blood, too much gore."

"Far too Machiavellian," would say Oliver Stone. "The way the backroom guys take advantage of your Colin Powell character and that Condoleezza Rice character goes beyond belief. And whoever heard of a name like `Condoleezza` in the first place? Get real."

"It has possibilities," would say the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. "There certainly is a lot of gallows humor in it. Trouble is, the humor isn`t funny."

And so on. Nobody in Hollywood would touch such a bizarre screenplay.

Take the latest chapter of the George W. Bush saga, in which Mr. Bush and his cronies have finally realized what the rest of the world knew long before they attacked Iraq, that the war part would be relatively easy, but the aftermath would be impossible.

Now that the Bushies acknowledge that, they have the incredible chutzpah to go to the United Nations, hat in hand, and ask for help.

This is the same United Nations, bear in mind, that the Bushies said represented "old Europe" before the Iraq fiasco got under way. It is the same United Nations that was deemed irrelevant by the Bushies -- out of touch, tired and not up to 21st-century standards.

The Bushies told the U.N. to flake off. Who needs it? We are America, they said, the world`s only superpower, the land of the free and home of the brave. We have God on our side. What else matters?

What they called "the coalition of the committed" would go it alone, the Bushies said. Their message was, "We can handle it."

But they couldn`t, and now they have the audacity to ask the U.N. for help. "Sorry we dissed you, fellows, but, heh-heh, we wuz just kiddin`. That`s what we dude ranchers in Crawford, Texas, do. We kid a lot."

What is going on now between the Bushies and the United Nations is just the latest example of the most outrageous administration in American history.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was pretty audacious in his day, too, but nothing like the Bushies. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court by increasing its numbers and then adding Democratic justices, but he didn`t get away with it.

Most of Roosevelt`s heavy-handedness was aimed at controlling the excesses of Big Business or advancing the fortunes of the less fortunate. Bush, by comparison, is simply carrying on the Bush family tradition of using political office for personal financial gain.

You could count Roosevelt`s peccadilloes on your fingers, but Bush`s outrages occur on an almost daily basis. They just keep coming. Asking the U.N. now for help -- without offering power sharing or profit sharing in return -- is just the latest.

Another recent outrage, gargantuan in its immensity, was the doling out of huge no-bid reconstruction projects in Iraq to a handful of administration favorites. The Bushies just did that, gave away millions upon millions in taxpayer dollars to their buddies, and didn`t even bother to disguise what they were doing.

It`s that openness that worries me, that in-your-face attitude. Most politicians worry about the next election. The Bushies seem to be taking the 2004 presidential election for granted. They don`t seem to care what the people think.

They act like the fix is in and they know it.

Look back on election night 2000, when Al Gore called Bush twice, first to concede the election, then to withdraw his concession. In the second call, Bush told Gore that he had been assured by his brother Jeb, governor of Florida, that he would win Florida and thus win the national election.

As we later learned, there was good reason for Jeb to feel confident. It`s debatable, of course, but one could easily conclude from the facts that have since come out that in Florida, the 2000 election was rigged in favor of Bush.

Fast-forward now to Ohio, where Republican Walden O`Dell, in a fund-raising letter, recently wrote that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

That`s fine. That`s what political fund-raisers are supposed to say.

But in this case, maybe it isn`t so fine. Not when you consider who O`Dell is.

According to an Aug. 28 article in Cleveland`s Plain Dealer, O`Dell is chief executive of Diebold Inc. And Diebold is one of three firms "eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election."

Let`s put it another way: The guy whose machines might be counting the votes in Ohio next year is in Bush`s back pocket. (O`Dell visits Bush in Crawford and is a member of the Rangers and Pioneers, the unduly flattering names given to Bush`s wealthiest contributors.)

Add two and two together, and you might get four.

So what we have here is a situation in which Bush really doesn`t seem to give a hoot what voters think, in which he won last time through very questionable tactics in Florida and in which new, unproven electronic voting machines are going to be used throughout America. And, in at least one state, Ohio, the guy who hopes to have his machines installed is one of Bush`s best buds.

Perhaps it`s time to take Fidel Castro up on his offer and let him send Cuban observers to the States to observe the 2004 elections for fairness.

That`s a facetious suggestion, of course, but it`s not out of line to suggest that the Democrats had better be on their toes when November 2004 rolls around. The Bushies often seem crazy (brazenly ignoring the threat of global warming, for instance), but they`re crazy like foxes.

They very well might have a trick or two up their sleeves. There is nothing so outlandish that they won`t try it.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

©2003 SF Gate

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppin083445806sep08,0…

Bush Struggles With Iraq Burdens
James P. Pinkerton

September 8, 2003

President George W. Bush never wanted to give that speech last night, and it showed on his face.

He was much happier in May, when he landed on an aircraft carrier and gave an upbeat victory talk, all in front of a banner proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished." But now four frustrating months later, he had to concede that the ongoing mission in Iraq "will take time and require sacrifice."

Yes, reality sometimes contradicts rhetoric. And while the actual military campaign was a comparative cakewalk, the occupation has been a big cowpie. Last week, The Washington Times, an avowedly conservative newspaper, revealed that an internal Pentagon report gave the military a failing grade for post-Saddam Hussein nation-building.

One might consider the litany of miscalculations: How many troops? How much the cost? How long the stay? Indeed, in Great Britain, another right-of-center newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, broke the news last week that the Ministry of Defence believes that the Anglo-Americans risk "strategic failure" if they can`t immediately improve conditions in Iraq.

Surely the most teeth-grinding moment for Bush last night came when he said, "Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation." Oh, the irony. On Feb. 14, Bush warned that the UN must help him invade Iraq or else it would "fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society." The UN said "no," and now the president finds his own popularity fading. One poll shows his approval rating down to 45 percent.

And so Bush is back on the world stage, proclaiming, "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." But there was nothing really in his talk or tone that communicated conciliation. So now the price of international cooperation will be even higher. The countries that opposed the war feel vindicated; they are likely to take their sweet time in evaluating W`s request to "share the burden."

Two years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, a wave of pro-Americanism swept the world. The French newspaper Le Monde ran a front-page headline that read, Nous sommes tous Americains - "We are all Americans." But then came the tussle over Iraq, and French sympathy dissipated. Yesterday`s edition of Le Monde chortled that the Americans had failed to find weapons of mass destruction and had failed to quash Iraqi resistance. And so, the paper continued, Bush, finally cognizant of the "contradictions" undermining his policy, is now seeking the help of what the administration once disparaged as "Old Europe."

OK, that`s the French. A poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund - an entity created by Germans to preserve the memory of the Marshall Plan - found that just 16 percent of Germans approve of the way Bush is handling international relations. Indeed, the chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, won re-election in 2002 because he played the anti-American card. So how will Bush and Schroeder break the ice when they meet in New York City later this month?

And what about the Russians? Didn`t Bush and President Vladimir Putin bond a couple of years ago? Maybe, but Bush has been disappointed by Russia`s siding with France and Germany. And what of other friends? Turkey, for example, is a democracy - so democratic that popular opposition forced the Ankara government to cancel its tentative support for the Iraq war. And now, per a Pew Center poll, the most popular international political figure in that Muslim country is Yasser Arafat. Next.

Last night Bush went through the motions of asking for international support, but he offered the world little in return. The British will chip in more, at least as long as Tony Blair is prime minister. And a few other countries will be cajoled or bribed into putting something into the kitty.

Of course, what Bush really needs is national support. First, he needs the $87 billion from Congress. Second, down the road, he needs to get re-elected. So Bush concentrated on persuading Americans that we are making "great progress" in Iraq. After all, it`s this country that will be providing the money, votes and the blood that Bush needs. That was worth a speech on a Sunday night, even if he didn`t look particularly happy, or sincere, or even optimistic.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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Published on Monday, September 8, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Bush`s Speech:
The War in Iraq is Not Over and Neither Are the Lies to Justify It
by Stephen Zunes

President George W. Bush’s nationally-broadcast speech Sunday evening once again was designed to mislead Congress and the American public into supporting his administration’s policies in Iraq. Despite record deficits and draconian cutbacks in government support for health care, housing, education, the environment and public transportation, the president is asking the American taxpayer to spend an additional $87 billion to support his invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It is disturbing that President Bush has once again tried to link the very real threat to American security from mega-terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda to phony threats originating in Iraq. Not only does he try to link the terrorism that has grown out of the post-invasion chaos in Iraq to the devastating Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States two years ago, President Bush has depicted all the current violence against Americans and other foreigners in Iraq as part of this terrorist threat.

Like most Americans, I am deeply distressed at attacks on U.S. soldiers. However, the Fourth Geneva Convention -- to which the United States is a signatory -- is quite clear that a people under foreign military occupation have the right to militarily engage armed uniformed occupation forces. This is not the same as terrorism, which refers to attacks deliberately targeted against unarmed civilians and is universally recognized as a war crime. It is therefore terribly misleading for President Bush to try convince the American public that these two phenomena are the same.

President Bush also failed to differentiate between the increasingly disparate elements behind the attacks. Some of the violence may indeed come from those who have some connection with Al-Qaeda who have infiltrated Iraq since the invasion this spring; some may be supporters of Saddam Hussein’s former regime; some may be radical Iraqi Islamists or independent Iraqi nationalists who opposed the old regime but also oppose the U.S. occupation; still others may be foreign fighters who see driving American occupiers from Iraq as an act of pan-Islamic solidarity comparable to driving Soviet occupiers from Afghanistan.

However, President Bush now declares that a successful American-led pacification of the anti-occupation resistance in Iraq would be an “essential victory in the war on terror.” In linking the legitimate international struggle against Al-Qaeda with the illegitimate U.S. occupation of Iraq, it becomes possible for the administration to justify the president’s determination to “spend what is necessary” in controlling this oil-rich country and to depict those in the United States and elsewhere who oppose the occupation as being soft of terrorism.


Below are some excerpts from the September 7 speech that were particularly misleading:
“And we acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror…”

The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein indeed had sponsored terror over its nearly one- quarter of a century in power. However, according to both U.S. government agencies and independent researchers, Iraqi support for terrorism primarily took place in the 1980s, when the United States was quietly supporting the regime, and had dropped off dramatically since then. No significant Iraqi links have been found to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups that currently threaten the United States.

“…possessed and used weapons of mass destruction,…”

Iraq did use weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s when the regime was being supported by the U.S. government, but not since then.

It also appears that virtually all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were destroyed or otherwise made unusable some time between five and eight years ago. Neither the United Nations nor the Bush Administration has been able to show any evidence that Iraq possessed such weapons in more recent years.

“…and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council.”

It is true that Iraq openly defied or otherwise failed for twelve years to live up to demands of the UN Security Council regarding its destruction of and accountability for weapons of mass destruction, certain delivery systems, and other proscribed materials. However, once Iraq allowed the UN inspectors into their country for unfettered inspections last fall and ceded to UN demands regarding aerial reconnaissance, interviews with Iraqi scientists, and other means of insuring full Iraqi accountability several weeks later, one could argue that Iraq may have finally been in compliance with most, if not all, of those outstanding resolutions at the time of the U.S. invasion.

It should also be noted that Morocco, Israel and Turkey have failed to live up to demands of the UN Security Council for more than twice as long as did Iraq. Several other countries -- including Croatia, Indonesia, Sudan, Armenia, India, Pakistan and others -- continue to be in defiance of the UN Security Council from more recent resolutions. Despite these transgressions, however, the Bush Administration does not appear ready to invade these countries. Indeed, most of these countries receive military and economic aid from the U.S. government, raising serious questions as to whether the Bush Administration has ever really been concerned about the implementation of resolutions passed by the UN Security Council after all.

“Our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.”

First of all, the initial invasion was almost exclusively an American military operation with the exception of British leadership in some southern parts of the country. It could therefore hardly be referred to as a “coalition.”

More importantly, the invasion of Iraq was not an enforcement of these “international demands.” The United Nations Charter clearly states that only the UN Security Council itself has the ability to authorize military enforcement of its resolutions. The Security Council, however, refused to authorize the United States to enforce these resolutions through military means despite enormous pressure by U.S. officials to do so.

Finally, it was hardly a humane military campaign. More than 5000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the U.S.-led assault, far surpassing the number of American civilians killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

“For a generation leading up to September the 11th, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response.”

This is not true at all. During this period, countries where terrorists were harbored -- including Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan -- were subjected to major bombing campaigns (though more civilians than terrorists were killed during most of these military operations.) Sustained and serious responses by a series of American, Middle Eastern and European governments -- using a combination of aggressive police work, intelligence efforts, and paramilitary operations -- destroyed or severely weakened most of the major terrorist groups during this period, including Abu Nidal, the PFLP-GC, the PKK, Black September, and others.

“The terrorists became convinced that free nations were decadent and weak.”

As anyone familiar with any serious study of Middle Eastern terrorism recognizes, there is no doubt on the part of anti-American extremists of the United States’ military power. Indeed, the inability to take on U.S. military might directly is what has prompted these extremists to utilize the kind of irregular warfare that targets innocent civilians. Furthermore, the use of terror by groups like Al-Qaeda comes in large part from the hope that the United States will respond through disproportionate and poorly-targeted military actions that further alienate the general population and add to their ranks. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has fallen right into their trap.

“We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.”

If one wants to find a geographic center of the terrorist threat, it is U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, from which most of the Al-Qaeda leadership, sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, and most of the group’s financial support comes. By contrast, none of Al-Qaeda’s leadership, none of the 9/11 hijackers and none of the money trail appear to have come from Iraq.

However, the heart of terrorism’s power comes not from any particular geographic location, but from the individual terrorists whose violent anti-Americanism is rooted in large part to years of U.S. support for repressive Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. Current U.S. policy is making enemies faster than we can kill them.

“In Iraq, we are helping the long suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions.”

Most observers in Iraq have reported that the country is far from being “a decent and democratic society” and that foreign occupation forces are currently in charge of the legal system and governmental institutions.

Furthermore, the United States -- both currently and over the past three decades -- has been the single largest supporter of autocratic governments in the Arab world, raising serious questions as to whether freedom and democracy is even the goal of the United States in Iraq.

“The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.”

This is very true. This begs the question, then, as to why the Bush Administration continues to arm and support tyrannical governments like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt? These countries have produced far more anti-American terrorists that Iraq ever did, even under Saddam Hussein.

“The north of Iraq is generally stable and is moving forward with reconstruction and self-government.”

Actually, because northern Iraq had been an autonomous area under Kurdish rule ever since mid-1991, the region had been generally stable and was moving forward with reconstruction and self-government well prior to the U.S. invasion. Since the U.S. invasion, however, there has been an upsurge in ethnic clashes and other violence.

“This violence is directed not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom and progress.”

Some of the violence may indeed come from those who oppose decency, freedom and progress. However, history has shown that most people who have taken up arms against foreign occupation troops do so because they believe it is those who invaded and occupied their country who actually threaten its freedom and progress.

“Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.”

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was justified primarily on the grounds that Iraq supposedly possessed chemical and biological weapons and had an active nuclear weapons program. Only now, as it is becoming apparent that Iraq did not have such weapons or weapons programs after all, is the Bush Administration suddenly claiming that the reason for the United States to take over the country is that Iraq is now “the central front” of the “war on terror."

“Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit -- for their sake, and our own.”

There are some key differences between Germany and Japan of 1945 and Iraq today. Germany had a democratic parliamentary system prior to Hitler seizing power in the early 1930s and Japan had some semblance of a constitutional monarchy prior to the rise of militarism in the late 1920s, whereas Iraq has never had a representative government. Germany and Japan were homogeneous societies with a strong sense of national identity, whereas Iraq is an artificial creation thrown together by colonial powers from three Ottoman provinces by and has only been truly independent for just 45 years; fighting between various Iraqi religious and ethnic groups has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands in recent decades. In addition, most Germans and Japanese recognized that their defeat and occupation was a direct result of their leaders` aggression against the countries’ neighbors, whereas the Iraqis -- whose government was far weaker and less aggressive during its final twelve years than it was in the past -- are more prone to see the American takeover as an act of Western imperialism, not self-defense. As a result, it will be quite difficult for the United States to establish a widely accepted and stable regime. Finally, the idealistic New Deal liberals who helped create open political systems in post-war Germany and Japan arguably had a stronger personal commitment to democracy than the right-wing neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who have a history of supporting dictatorial governments that support U.S. strategic and economic interests.

“We are taking direct action against the terrorists in the Iraqi theater, which is the surest way to prevent future attacks on coalition forces and the Iraqi people.”

These kind of pro-active U.S. military operations against alleged terrorists in crowded urban areas tend to result in civilian casualties that will likely encourage attacks by both terrorists targeting civilians as well as other armed units targeting occupation soldiers.

More importantly, however, it is important to recognize that prior to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, there were no car bomb attacks against UN offices, foreign embassies or places of worship. Since the U.S. takeover, however, Iraq has become a hotbed of terrorism. This raises serious questions as to whether invading other countries actually makes the world safer from terrorism or if such actions actually help create terrorism.

“Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq. I have directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to introduce a new Security Council resolution, which would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq, to be led by America…. [W]e cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity -- and the responsibility -- to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.”

It is unlikely that the UN Security Council would take the unprecedented step of authorizing a multinational force to take part in an occupation which came through what most UN members see as an illegal invasion and a clear violation of the UN Charter. By contrast, if the United States was willing to transfer administration of Iraq to the United Nations -- creating a UN trusteeship like the one the Security Council set up in East Timor between the withdrawal of Indonesian occupation forces in 2000 and independence last year -- most countries capable of providing peacekeeping troops, financial support and technical expertise would probably do so. The United States has refused to allow the United Nations a significant role, however, insisting that the economic and political future of Iraq should be shaped primarily by the United States, not the international community. Until the United States allows the United Nations to take leadership, however, it is unfair to insist that UN members have a “responsibility” or a “duty” to help ameliorate the mess the United States has gotten itself into

“I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty.”

This statement may be preparing the way to convince Americans that, should the Bush Administration’s policy fail, it will be the fault of the Iraqis themselves, not the government that invaded and occupied them.

“This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement.”

Iraq and Afghanistan were indeed ruled by regimes which were oppressive and mismanaged their economies. However, development officials on the ground in these countries have argued that most of the rebuilding that is needed is related to damage from years of heavy bombing and economic sanctions, which – particularly in the case of Iraq – were largely a result of U.S. policy. It is thus far unclear as to how much of the $87 billion requested of Congress will actually help in rebuilding these countries and how much will go to supporting U.S. occupation forces and well-connected U.S. multinational corporations involved in reconstruction and administration.

“We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security.”

Hopefully, this will indeed be the case. It should be pointed out, however, that security in Afghanistan and Iraq has actually decreased dramatically since the U.S. ousted the previous governments and basic services like electricity and water are less available in Iraq now than they were prior to the U.S. takeover.

“For the Middle East and the world, there will be no going back to the days of fear, when a brutal and aggressive tyrant possessed terrible weapons.”

Hopefully, this will be true as well. However, none of Iraq’s neighbors had expressed particular fear of Saddam Hussein once the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent sanctions and UN-led disarmament efforts apparently eliminated the regime’s weapons of mass destruction and its offensive military capability. Not only did the U.S. invasion do nothing to improve the regional security situation, the Bush Administration has rejected calls for a weapons of mass destruction free zone for the entire Middle East, which could help prevent other tyrants from obtaining such weapons.

“We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

Again, there are no doubts among extremists in the Middle East regarding America’s military strength. The perceived weakness is in regard to America’s moral strength. Millions of people in the Middle East and beyond believe that it is morally wrong for the United States to support Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. They believe it is morally wrong that the amount of U.S. military aid to the Middle East is six times that of its economic aid. They believe it is morally wrong that the #1 U.S. export to the region is not consumer goods, high-tech equipment or agricultural products, but armaments. They believe it is morally wrong that a powerful country from the other side of the world would invade a sovereign Arab nation and justify it by falsely claiming that its government currently had weapons of mass destruction and was supporting Al-Qaeda. They believe it is morally wrong that U.S. bombing and sanctions against Muslim countries has killed far more civilians than have the terrorists themselves.

The unfortunate reality is that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become.

“And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.”

It is absurd to believe that those Iraqis and Afghanis currently fighting U.S. occupation forces in their own countries actually want to somehow sneak into the United States to fight Americans here. Indeed, no Afghans or Iraqis are known to have ever committed an act of terrorism against Americans on American soil.

The president’s statement is essentially a retread of the line used by supporters of the Vietnam War that “If we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here.” However, more than 28 years after the Communist victory in Vietnam, we are yet to fight the Vietnamese in our streets and there is no indication that we ever will. The Iraqis and Afghans, as were the Vietnamese, are fighting Americans because U.S. troops are in their country and, like the Vietnamese, will stop fighting Americans once U.S. troops leave their country.

Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism www.commoncouragepress.com and serves as Middle East editor of the Foreign Policy in Focus Project www.fpif.org where this analysis first appeared.

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http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0907-06.htm


9/11 ON OUR MINDS

The Rhetoric of Fear
Unraveling the message behind the president`s pronouncements since the terrorist attacks




By William D. Lutz
William D. Lutz, author of "Doublespeak Defined" and "The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone`s Saying Anymore," teaches English at Rutgers University, Camden.

September 7, 2003

A number of books have collected "Bushisms," those memorable turns of phrase that candidate and later President George W. Bush seemed to utter every time he opened his mouth.

In June 2000, for example, candidate Bush seemed confused when asked about the Taliban. So the reporter helpfully prompted, "Repression of women in Afghanistan?" The light dawned. "Oh, I thought you said, `Some band.` The Taliban in Afghanistan. Absolutely. Repressive," replied the president-to-be.

Such verbal gaffes ("You teach a child to read, and he or her will pass a literacy test," he once said) soon came to define the Bush presidency. Newspaper headlines highlighted Bush`s failures as a speaker: "At Night, Bush-Speak Goes into Overdrive" and "As Speaker, Bush Fails." So ineffective was Bush the orator that two months into his presidency a poll reported that 50 percent of Americans believed that people other than Bush were really running the country. Then everything changed.

Today, reporters discuss Bush as an effective orator, a president who "got his gravitas" and "found his voice." Now there`s another collection - a new book titled "President George W. Bush On War, Terrorism, and Freedom: We Will Prevail" to be published this week in connection with the second anniversary of Sept. 11 - composed not of Bushisms but 36 speeches and 55 excerpts that trace Bush`s statements since the terrorist attacks. It is these speeches that have given rise to the impression of Bush as Pericles.

But the question is, What is Bush`s rhetoric? It is the rhetoric of permanent war and fear.

Bush the orator did not happen overnight. This impression was created by many people using a variety of techniques. First, of course, are the speech writers. John Kennedy had Ted Sorensen and Ronald Reagan had Peggy Noonan, but George W. Bush has Michael Gerson writing, Karl Rove plotting the themes, and Frank Luntz polling for the right words to use. Second, Bush has held the fewest number of press conferences of any president in modern history, which limits those unprepared remarks that previously created so many laughs. Third, many in the media now edit transcripts to remove any embarrassing presidential verbal gaffes that may occur.

On Sept. 11, Bush spoke to the nation that evening, calling the destruction of the World Trade Center "acts of mass murder." He went on to reassure the public that the country had not been brought to a halt but that the government, business, life continued. He concluded his 600-word speech by calling on Americans to unite, and quoted Psalm 23, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me." However, this rhetoric of reassurance and hope was soon replaced with a rhetoric of fear.

Later, in his address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 23, Bush declared that "enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country," although individuals cannot commit an act of war, only a nation state can. By calling the attacks of 9/11 "acts of war," Bush accorded those who perpetrated the acts a dignity they did not deserve, awarding them the very status they seek as soldiers who can engage in acts of war. Soldiers who attack the enemy are not murderers.

Had Bush labeled the attackers murderers, he would have stripped them of a philosophical or religious rationale for their criminal acts and deprived them of any justification under any law. They would be held up as common criminals, violating criminal laws common to all nations. They would be stripped of the dignity of calling themselves "patriots," "martyrs" or "soldiers in a holy war." They could be hunted by the international community as criminals, just like any other criminal, deprived of any moral covering for their acts of murder.

Bush, however, chose a different rhetorical route. He chose not the rhetoric of crime but the rhetoric of war, even the rhetoric of permanent war: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen." Indeed, "Our war on terror . . . will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." Thus we are engaged in a war without end, for how can anyone ever know that every terrorist has been found?

By Jan. 29, 2002, when Bush gave his State of the Union Address, he added to the rhetoric of permanent war the rhetoric of fear. He opened his speech with the assertion that "our nation is at war," and he did not mean this metaphorically but literally, even though there has been no declaration by Congress. He used the words "terror," "terrorist" and "bioterrorism" 30 times. He depicted a world that is a terrible and dangerous place where "our worst fears" have been confirmed. "Thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder, often supported by outlaw regimes, are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go off without warning," he said.

We are threatened "by the world`s most dangerous regimes." We face "ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows," presenting us with a danger that will not soon pass but will last "long into the future." In using the rhetoric of war instead of the rhetoric of criminal law, Bush induces fear not among the attackers but among those who were attacked. To Orwell`s world of permanent war Bush adds permanent fear.

Bush has perfected the rhetoric of fear and permanent war, justifying a wartime military budget, using the Patriot Act to negate the Bill of Rights, promoting any and all proposals, and invoking special wartime powers. "Don`t you know there`s a war on?" has become the all-purpose reply to critics and those who would dare question the leader or his policies. The message of Bush`s rhetoric is simple: Be afraid. Be very afraid. But trust me.

`The Taliban in Afghanistan.

Absolutely. Repressive.`

`Enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.`

`Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.`

`Our nation is at war.`

`Thousands of dangerous killers ... are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs.`
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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This call for help is about re-election, not Iraq
By Anne Applebaum
(Filed: 07/09/2003)
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/o…

To outsiders, it might seem odd that the American Administration went to the United Nations last week to ask - so far unsuccessfully - for the Security Council to place its seal of approval on the US military operation in Iraq. In the run-up to the war, after all, the Bush White House treated the UN as a necessary evil, not a necessary ally.

Suggestions that America might need foreign assistance, even foreign troops, were brushed aside. The UN Security Council`s refusal to pass a second resolution authorising the invasion became a point of high controversy. Certain UN Security Council members became the butt of multiple jokes ("The French will only go in if we tell them we`ve found truffles in Iraq"). All of which would seem to make it embarrassing, at the very least, for President Bush to do an about-face now, and ask for help.

The request is stranger, given that it seems, objectively speaking, unnecessary. International embarrassment would be a small price to pay, of course, if the American military were really in deep trouble in Iraq. But despite the recent bombings, there is not actually evidence - so far - that "deep trouble" is the right description.

A number of things are not going well in Iraq. On the other hand, a number of things are going very well indeed. So far, the civil war that many predicted has not materialised. The majority of Iraqis are co-operating well with American and British troops. And if the United States really needed reinforcements, the American army could certainly produce them.

And yet over the past few weeks, a very distinct mood shift has taken place in the White House, and it probably doesn`t have much to do with Iraq at all. For while the rest of the world hears only the loud bomb blasts in Baghdad and Najaf, the Bush Administration is also listening to the quieter ticking of the political clock. The 2004 presidential elections are just over a year away, after all. Already, the Democratic candidates are gathering for regular debates. Suddenly, it is no longer taboo to criticise the commander-in-chief. Many of the Democrats now believe that the president is vulnerable, if not on his decision to wage war - most Americans still support that - then on its length, its cost and its casualties.

I suspect that the Administration is listening quite closely, for example, to Howard Dean, the Governor of the state of Vermont and the temporary front-runner. "We need more troops," Dean told an enthusiastic audience at a debate last week. "They`re going to be foreign troops, as they should have been in the first place. Ours need to come home." At the same debate, Dean`s words were echoed by those of one of his rivals, the North Carolina Senator John Edwards: "We have young men and women in a shooting gallery right now - and the primary reason is because this president had no plan." Dick Gephardt, a former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, was even blunter: "This president is a miserable failure. He`s a unilateralist. He thinks he knows all the answers."

A few months ago, similar barbs would have made no impact on the White House whatsoever, since no one in the White House believed that either new troops or more money would be needed in Iraq at all. Earlier this year, the deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, described Iraq as "swimming on a sea of oil". Before the war broke out, he was only one of many in Washington who were predicting that the war would not only be swift, but cheap as well: whatever the cost of keeping troops there for the brief time necessary, Iraqi oil revenues would soon make up for it.

Wolfowitz did not need to "sex up" his projections of the war`s costs to make them sound more reasonable. He genuinely believed that the war would end quickly, causing little pain to the American taxpayer. So did many others, including, apparently, the President. If Tony Blair relied excessively on the "weapons of mass destruction" argument to justify Britain`s participation in the invasion, the White House relied excessively on those who believed that "it will be over in three weeks and cost nothing".

They were wrong. Just last week, the Administration informed members of Congress to expect, next year, a bill for $60 to $70 billion for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, a number many times higher than any given in the past.

True, America is a rich country, and if this were a year of budget surpluses, under-employment, and high growth, even those high figures might be acceptable. But it is not. The budget crises now afflicting most American states are not the sort of thing that make headlines in Europe (except, of course, when fiscal catastrophe persuades Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for Governor of California). But budget crises are on front pages every day here, alongside news that schools are cutting music classes, cities will not carry out street repairs, and that money is being spent, instead, on schools and roads in Iraq

From that point of view, last month`s blackout could hardly have been more badly timed. Magically, the power outage seemed to inspire every one of America`s many talk show hosts to ask, simultaneously, "Why are we fixing the electricity grid in Iraq instead of fixing the electricity grid in the United States?"

This can`t last: while George Bush`s various advisers may have many faults, lack of political acuity is not one of them. They know perfectly well that Americans are much less interested in diplomatic shenanigans than they are in their city`s understaffed police force.

They are fully aware that the public will quickly forget anything said at the UN, and long remember the name of the local boy who died in Iraq. And they know - since so many of them worked for the current President`s father - that a Democratic presidential candidate might well make mincemeat out of a national leader who gets bogged down in foreign wars, and neglects the home front.

So when President Bush asks the United Nations to help it secure more troops and more funding for Iraq, do not be misled: he is not yet admitting that it was a mistake to invade Iraq. Instead, he is admitting that he fears losing power in 2004.

Anne Applebaum is a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.

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September 8, 2003
On Day After Bush Speech, Democrats Stay on the Attack
By DAVID STOUT


WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — Democrats kept up their criticism today of President Bush`s prime-time speech on Sunday night, accusing him of being too vague or even deceptive about the cost and duration of the campaign in Iraq.

The attacks were led by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, both of whom accused the president of misleading the American people. Senator John Reed of Rhode Island and Representative David Obey of Wisconsin also found fault with Mr. Bush`s stance.

Mr. Dean, who is seeking his party`s presidential nomination, appeared on ABC`s "Good Morning America" to reiterate the remarks he made immediately following the speech, in which the President said he would seek an additional $87 billion from Congress and warned the American people to prepare for a long road ahead.

Mr. Dean noted that Mr. Bush had described Saddam Hussein`s Iraq as a danger to the United States, and that Al Qaeda terrorists were in league with Mr. Hussein.

"None of those things have been documented nor are they likely to be true," Mr. Dean said. "In fact, it`s more likely that there are more Al Qaeda in Iraq today shooting and bombing both American troops and Iraqi civilians than there ever were before the president started his war."

Mr. Dean went on to call Mr. Bush`s speech part of "an additional campaign of some misinformation to the American people to try to justify spending $80 billion additional, additionally, on top of the $80 billion he`s already spending in Iraq."

"We can`t afford this, and this is a mess," Mr. Dean said. "I believe that at this time the security of the United States is in more danger than it was when we attacked Saddam Hussein.

Nonetheless, early reaction from lawmakers of both parties indicated that they would probably approve Mr. Bush`s request, albeit after some sharp questioning. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic minority leader, said she thought Congress would provide American troops "whatever resources they need to accomplish their mission." But she said legislators would be much more skeptical about money for rebuilding Iraq`s infrastructure.

Of the $87 billion, the White House said today, $66 billion would go to support the troops, with everything from body-armor and other equipment to two weeks of recreation for soldiers deployed in Iraq for a year. The remaining $21 billion would go toward rebuilding roads, water facilities, clinics and other services. Mr. Kerry, also seeking the Democratic nomination, criticized the president during an appearance before the Service Employees International Union, whose support he is seeking.

"I warned the president, as many of us did: `Mr. President, don`t rush to war. Take the time to build the kind of support we need because winning the war is not hard for the United States of America, it`s winning the peace,` " Mr. Kerry told the union audience. "And I warned the president above all the United States of America should never go to war because it wants to, we should go to war because we have to, and we have a standard in this country that we will live up to."

"We`ve been misled," Mr. Kerry said. "We have not been told the truth, and we deserve a president of the United States who knows the meaning of the words `last resort` and tells the American people the truth."

Mr. Bush did get some strong support on the same "Good Morning America" broadcast from Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama.

"Well, Howard Dean`s running for president of the United States," Mr. Shelby said. "It`s the political season. But I think President Bush has shown strong leadership in the fight against terrorism. He`s shown it in Iraq."

Mr. Shelby said he thought Congress and the American people would remain behind the president. "I believe they will follow him and we will prevail," said Mr. Shelby, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee`s defense and foreign operations subcommittees."We will win."

While the Democrats` criticism was sharp, and likely to grow sharper, Capitol Hill was relatively quiet. Senate and House leaders had not planned a busy schedule this week, since Thursday will mark the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Reed, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview on CNN that Mr. Bush`s speech had too many uncertainties about how much the United States would have to spend in Iraq, both in money and time.

"This is a very complex, complicated set of issues in Iraq and it`s going to be extremely costly," Mr. Reed said. "In fact, the only thing certain last night in President Bush`s speech was at least the initial price tag of $87 billion. There was no other certainty in terms of the duration of our presence there or even our approach to solving these difficult issues."

Mr. Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Mr. Bush`s speech amounted to "an admission of gross miscalculation" by the White House.

"And if you want to know the absolute truth, they`re going to require a whole lot more money than he asked for last night," Mr. Obey said on CNN "The Army is stretched incredibly thin. We don`t have the personnel to respond, if we had other problems in the world."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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Bush`s Life-Changing Year

Many people, including George W. Bush, credit his wife Laura with helping him to stop drinking. (Bill O`Leary — The Post)


By Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 25, 1999; Page A1


First of seven articles
On July 28, 1986, George W. Bush woke up with a hangover. It had been a loud, liquid night at the venerable Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs as he and friends from Texas celebrated their collective 40th birthdays. Now, as he embarked on his ritual morning run through a spectacular Rockies landscape, Bush felt lousy.
Forty: A symbolic halfway point, a moment of appraisal. For the eldest son of the then-vice president of the United States, it had been a year of business crises and personal drift. Bush had closely hewed to his father`s path through life – Andover, Yale, flying warplanes, then into the Texas oil business – but so far he had enjoyed very little of his father`s success.

The past six months had been a near-disaster. Oil prices in West Texas, as high as $37 per barrel a few years earlier, had plummeted to $9 by the time of Bush`s birthday, tipping his company into a spiral of debt and shaky payrolls, forcing him to enter merger negotiations. And his personal life was clouded by drinking.

A charismatic partier since his school days, Bush liked to drink what he called the four Bs – beer, bourbon and B&B; But he had begun to realize that his drinking was jeopardizing his relationships, his career and his health. Although friends say Bush did not drink daily or during daylight hours, even those closest to him acknowledge privately that if not clinically an alcoholic, Bush sometimes came close to the line. Sometimes he would embarrass himself; more often, he didn`t know how to stop.

"Once he got started, he couldn`t, didn`t shut it off," said Bush`s friend Don Evans. "He didn`t have the discipline."

Bush himself acknowledged in a recent interview: "I realized that alcohol was beginning to crowd out my energies and could crowd, eventually, my affections for other people. . . . When you`re drinking, it can be an incredibly selfish act."

That July day, Bush officially swore off alcohol. But his decision was about more than getting sober. Stirred in part by what he describes as an intense, reawakening Christian faith, Bush sought to seize control of his life. By doing so he would finally begin to close the gap between what was expected of him and what he had achieved.

Today, as Bush launches his presidential campaign as the anointed Republican front-runner, a sense of inevitability infuses his candidacy. In truth, his sudden rise to political prominence would have been very difficult to predict during much of the first half of his life. He was the swashbuckling fraternity president, raw and fun, who people loved to be around. But unlike almost any other serious presidential candidate in modern memory, no one who knew him envisioned George W. Bush in the White House.

"If I had to go through my class, and pick five people who were going to run for president, it would never have occurred to me he would ever run," said Robert Birge, who went to Yale with Bush and knew him well when both were members of Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society. "He did not carry himself like a statesman. He had good useful opinions but there were others in the class who came across as born leaders."

In 1986, however, something began to change. Bush himself marks it as a critical year, and so do dozens of friends, family and business associates interviewed for this series of articles. It was the year Bush started down the road to somewhere, leaving some baggage behind. It was the year he found God and found a future.

At the crossroads of his 40th birthday are visible the pressures and themes that have shaped all of Bush`s life. Many of them involve his complex relationship with his father. Being George Herbert Walker Bush`s son meant that outsiders would judge George W. – the name he often goes by to distinguish himself from his father – by nearly impossible standards of achievement. It meant business executives and others looking for lines to his father would see him as a connection, a middleman. It also meant that when he exceeded expectations or redeemed his family`s name, the triumph provided a special resonance.

A shadow, a competition, an opportunity – his relationship with his father has been all those things.

By choosing to so closely imitate the chapters of his father`s life, Bush in some ways has only emphasized the differences between them, and he has struggled to live up to his father`s extraordinary record.

At Andover and Yale, the elite schools where his father was a star athlete and student leader and seemed suffused with special grace, George W.`s academic record was mediocre, his achievements modest. His father rushed to volunteer during World War II and returned a hero; George W. never flew in combat, and his enlistment in the Air National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War raises the question of whether he sought to avoid front-line service.

His father did well early on in the oil business; George W. worked hard but never made much money, then was offered a new opportunity in baseball, where he finally succeeded on his own. In public life, his father moved seamlessly from one significant job to another, despite early frustrations running for office; George W. lost the only campaign he attempted and then reluctantly concluded he should not try again until his father had retired.

Yet as his recent success as governor of Texas has made plain, all along George W. harbored qualities that his father could only envy: a visceral and energetic charm, sound political instincts, an easy and convincing sense of humor, a common touch. Among other places, he drew these strengths and skills from his close relationship with his lively and strong-minded mother, Barbara Bush, a relationship forged in Texas during years when his father was absorbed by business demands and the family suffered a shattering tragedy.

In the end, Bush emerged as the convincing political Texan his father tried and failed to be. While his father was defeated seeking statewide office, George W. won twice – the second time attracting support from Democrats and Hispanics whom few Republicans from his father`s circle could ever have imagined as allies. And he ran tightly disciplined yet engaging campaigns that revealed George W. as a confident, mature and charismatic politician, qualities his father struggled to project even at the height of his popularity on the national stage.

When Bush is asked to cite the career accomplishments of which he is most proud, they begin at the age of 42, when he led an investment group that bought the Texas Rangers, followed by his two successful gubernatorial campaigns and his leadership of a state that, were it a country, would have the 11th-largest economy in the world. But for those who doubt his qualifications for the White House, his biography raises the question: Are Bush`s achievements and qualities enough to qualify him to be president?

Those who celebrate his maturity and strengths and those who question his credentials both point to the year of his 40th birthday as evidence for their arguments.

Midland Life: Debts, Deals
And a Deep Urge to Move On


In 1986, when Sen. Al Gore was preparing to run for president for the first time, and Rep. John McCain, a war hero, was running to replace Barry Goldwater in the Senate, and Sen. Bill Bradley was leading an effort to overhaul the tax system, George W. Bush was desperately trying to get out of the oil business and avoid a humiliating failure.

George W. had been living for 11 years in the dusty, flat plains of Midland, the oil capital of West Texas, where he had grown up before heading east for his education. His father was vice president, but Bush couldn`t have been further from the glamour and power of the White House.

He drove three minutes to work from his light green brick rambler on tree-lined Harvard Street, to the 13th floor of an office tower in downtown Midland. Little plastic red and blue pins attached his twin daughters` artwork to the walls. He spent his days tapping investors, cutting deals and looking to hit the big one that would set him up for life. At the same time, he gave little outward sign that he cared about money for its own sake, eschewing any outward signs of status or wealth, wearing ratty clothes and driving a vintage car. Yet he made clear that he wanted to be a success in the oil business.

At noon most days, Bush met the same group of middle-aged men at the rundown YMCA, changed into his jogging clothes and thundered through the streets of Midland, swapping leads and anxiously hoping for the return of the boom days.

He had matured some from his bachelor days of 1975, when he arrived in Midland, restless and rambunctious. He had first lived in Midland as a toddler, staying until junior high school as his father chased his own oil fortune. Then at 29, Midland had beckoned him back. With a business degree from Harvard and the remainder of an education trust fund, he launched himself in a place alive with wildcatters and risk-takers, lots of money and plenty of promise.

A decade later he was still the same old "Bombastic Bushkin" – as he quickly became known – and his tight group of friends, some of whom he had known since first grade, were still mesmerized by his bravado and his energy. He was unpredictable and he made their young lives fun.

Bush had been married by then to Laura Welch, a shy librarian who was the mother of his 4-year-old twins, Jenna and Barbara, named for the couple`s mothers. He hadn`t known Laura that well when they married three months after meeting in 1977. But they had the same roots and the same friends – the Evanses, the O`Neills, the Youngers, the Sawyers – and they traveled in a pack.

There were the potluck cookouts, regular tennis games at the country club, dinner at Dona Anita`s on Fridays and Scrabble on Saturday. Laura stopped working when they married, devoting her time to the twins and the Junior League. On Sundays some of the families would head to church together, and pick up fried chicken afterward.

"They weren`t our friends because his dad was the vice president," said Laura Bush. "Our friends had been our friends from first grade."

Today Bush and his friends look back on their lives more than a decade ago with great fondness – the risk, the unfettered optimism, the youthful ambition. But in 1986 it was coming to an end. Many were struggling to stay afloat. The kids were getting older and pulling them in different directions. One of the couples was going through a trying divorce, which cast a pall over the whole group. And Bush was starting to realize that it was time to move on.

The prospect of going to Washington to help on his father`s presidential campaign was a live option for Bush by that spring, but he told only a few close friends. "He was just itching to go," said Joseph O`Neill, a second-generation oilman who has known the younger Bush since grade school. "It was his hole card."

And he needed one: The oil game was going against him. With oil prices in a steep tumble, Bush`s company, Spectrum 7 – a firm he had merged with a few years earlier – had posted $406,000 in losses by June and was more than $3 million in debt. Bush, his geologist, Paul Rea, and his chief financial officer, Michael Conaway, had been spending much of their time searching for a white knight to bail them out. All 15 employees had taken a pay cut.

As would happen several times at key junctures of his business career, Bush was bailed out by a corporation interested in his company in part because of his name. The call had first come in February, as Bush was putting out feelers in other directions. Harken Energy Corp. was a big company with a smattering of famous names on its board and a strategy of buying distressed oil companies.

"One of the reasons Harken was so interested in merging was because of George," said Rea. "Having him with the company would be an asset . . . having George`s name there. They wanted him on their board."

By the time Bush arrived at the Broadmoor in late July for a relaxing weekend of sightseeing and golf, Spectrum and Harken were in negotiations. When the deal eventually came through, Harken would take on all $3 million of Spectrum`s crushing debt, absorb its operations, and provide Bush with a valuable infusion of Harken stock and a generous consulting contract. In return, Harken would receive the untapped oil reserves he had failed to profit from, and have Bush on its board at a time when his father was preparing to run for president.

But if the talks with Harken offered George W. the promise of a fresh start in business by the time of his 40th birthday, there was still a remaining issue that troubled some of those around him: his drinking.

By Bush`s own admission, he was drinking too much. By the accounts of those who were around him, he sometimes drank to the point where he would behave offensively.

In early April 1986, Bush ran into Al Hunt, then the Wall Street Journal`s Washington bureau chief, at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, where Hunt was dining with his wife, Judy Woodruff, and their 4-year-old son. The April edition of Washingtonian magazine had come out featuring 16 pundits predicting who would lead the 1988 GOP ticket. Hunt had predicted Jack Kemp over Vice President Bush. (Only half the group said Bush would be the nominee.)

Hunt said Bush approached the table and began cursing at him in front of his child. Hunt said there was no doubt that Bush had been drinking heavily.

"You[expletive] son of a bitch," Hunt quotes Bush as saying. "I saw what you wrote. We`re not going to forget this."

Hunt said he never gave the incident much more thought until he was asked about it last spring by Bill Minutaglio, a Dallas Morning News reporter who was writing a book about Bush.

Two weeks later, Hunt unexpectedly received a gracious call from Bush, who apologized.

When asked about it in an interview, Bush at first referred the reporter back to Hunt, who he said would have a better recollection. When told that the reporter had spoken to Hunt, Bush said he could not remember "what was said" in 1986 and could not recall whether he was drinking. He did acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate.

"There`s no excuse for me offending him in front of his child . . . I regret that," Bush said.

Asked why he apologized more than a decade later, he said, "I heard he was angry about it, and it began to weigh heavy on my mind. I would have done it earlier had I realized I had offended him."

It was a sign that drinking was getting him into trouble, and by the time Bush sat down to dinner with his friends at the Broadmoor in July, he had been trying to quit for a year.

Dinner and a Drinking Pledge:
`It Was a Big Turning Point`


The weekend dinner was an extravagant evening among close friends, complete with a multi-course dinner, ample bottles of $60 Silver Oak cabernet and endless toasts to one another. There was Don Evans, now Bush`s finance chairman, and his wife, Susie, who went to grade school with Bush; Joe and Jan O`Neill, who had introduced the Bushes; Penny Royall, a good friend who had just separated from her husband; and Bush`s brother, Neil. Everyone but Neil Bush spoke to The Post.

No one recalls anything outrageous about Bush`s behavior that evening that might have led him to a sudden epiphany. Nor do they recall any major proclamation. In fact, the consumption was such that evening that more than one person recalls making the predictable "never again" vow. Bush, they say, just stopped drinking.

"I didn`t get the sense at all that it was anything momentous at the time," recalled Jan O`Neill. "I think it was a big turning point in his own mind, but these things never take on momentous meaning until you follow through."

Numerous friends and business associates – from Yale through graduate school to his Midland oil days – have described Bush`s drinking as more in the nature of a fraternity house binger than evidencing the persistent signs of addiction. Bush himself insisted in the interview that his drinking was "occasional." His friends confirm this, and refer to him as a spree or binge drinker.

Charles Younger, a close friend and a Midland orthopedic surgeon, said that when Bush drank, he "could say some things that were not reflective of how he really felt when he was not drinking."

Paul Rea had seen alcoholism up close. His younger son had struggled for years, and when he traveled with Bush he didn`t like the signs. "George was not an alcoholic," said Rea, "but there`s a fine line between heavy social drinking and alcoholism. . . . I raised it with George."

There was at least one incident that his parents witnessed. When he was 26, he returned home inebriated one night to his parents` home in Washington – with his then-teenage brother Marvin in tow – and plowed his car into a neighbor`s garbage can, dragging it down the street. When his father asked to see him, George W. challenged him to go "mano a mano" outside. The senior Bush promptly got his son a job at a social service program in Houston, helping underprivileged kids.

"My dad was not happy," recalled his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, who witnessed the episode. "My dad did not think that was attractive or funny or nice."

"We did not know that he had an alcohol problem and we saw him a lot," said Barbara Bush. "That is not to say that we never maybe saw him when he`d had a little bit too much to drink. But nothing, nothing bad and he certainly never did anything bad to our knowledge. So we were sort of surprised when he gave up drinking and very pleased for him, because he seemed to feel he had a problem."

Many people, including Bush himself, credit Laura Bush for helping him to stop drinking. "She is just a very calm and loving person who reminded me in a mature and sobering way that going to a party and deciding to, you know, I`d be on four bourbons on the rocks, which is not all that smart," Bush said.

"He had been working toward it for a long time," said Laura Bush. "I think for a year at least he`d been thinking, `I really need to slow down or quit.` Most people who try to quit drinking first think, `Well, I`m just going to only have one drink.` And I think in his mind he thought, `Well, that`s what I`ll do.` And then, of course, it didn`t really work. Like for everybody, just about, who tries, it doesn`t really work."

In the end, Bush said, the key to giving up alcohol was the new spirituality he had begun to embrace the year before. Bush is not a particularly introspective man, but whatever soul-searching there was to do, he had started doing in the summer of 1985, after a conversation at the family summer retreat in Kennebunkport with the Rev. Billy Graham, a longtime family friend and spiritual adviser.

Graham, he said, "planted a seed in my heart and I began to change."

As a boy, Bush worshiped in both Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches. After he married, he switched to the Methodist church of his wife. He had attended a men`s Bible study group a few years earlier, but he began to take the Scriptures more seriously, reading the Bible cover to cover more than once.

As his faith began to take root, Bush found he could be exuberant without the aid of alcohol. The very aspects of his personality that made George W. Bush the guy everyone wanted to sit next to at dinner – the nervous energy, the sharp wit, the impulsiveness and lack of structure – were also the parts of himself that Bush wanted to seize control of but not lose.

"I think if . . . you become more spiritual, you begin to realize the effect of alcohol over-consuming because it begins to drown the spirit," he said.

Bush takes pride in saying that he never went into a substance abuse program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, but indicated that he was guided by the broader AA philosophy of placing one`s faith in God.

"If you change your heart, you can change your behavior," Bush said.

Bush said that he does not believe that he was "clinically an alcoholic."

"Well, I don`t think I had [an addiction]. You know, it`s hard for me to say," he said. "I`ve had friends who were, you know, very addicted . . . and they required hitting bottom [to start] going to AA. I don`t think that was my case."

Bush said that he hasn`t had a "drop of alcohol . . . not one drop," since 1986.

Asked what would happen if he took a drink today, he said: "I`d probably say foolish things."

`I Made Mistakes . . . And I`m
Going to Leave It at That`



It was during his 1994 gubernatorial campaign that Bush first referred to his "irresponsible" youth, a move that seemed designed to send a message that he had changed and to cover him in case anything was revealed by the media or his opponents that might seem embarrassing. The hope was also that, if something did turn up, it would seem anticlimactic – or, as Bush said, "irrelevant."

But Bush seems to realize that he has created something of a political monster through this approach, spawning countless rumors that have him doing everything from dancing naked on a bar to copping cocaine on a Washington street. "I`m amazed at how one simple statement has set off a swirl – that I`m the wildest man that ever lived," Bush said.

Barbara Bush said in an interview that her son brought all the scrutiny on himself and said there was nothing there. "He wanted to just say, `Look, you know I wasn`t perfect,`‚" she said.

"Oh, he knows what`s going to happen to him. And he just thought, `Oh, I`ll just get it over with," she added. "It never occurred to me it would boomerang so. I know George has been shocked by the reaction of the media."

"I think he overstated it," said Laura Bush. "But I also think people who drank a lot for some period in their life think, `Oh, gosh, I probably did some – you know, I probably embarrassed myself so many times."

Those closest to Bush say there is nothing in his background that would disqualify him from becoming president. He has stated that he has been faithful to his wife of 22 years. But he has been less unequivocal on the subject of illegal drug use, refusing to itemize any past transgressions.

Asked in an interview about cocaine use, he said, "I`m not going to talk about what I did years ago.

"This is a game where they float rumors, force a person to fight off a rumor, then they`ll float another rumor. And I`m not going to participate. I saw what happened to my dad with rumors in Washington, and I`m not going to participate in that type of game. I made mistakes. I`ve asked people to not let the rumors get in the way of the facts. I`ve told people I`ve learned from my mistakes – and I have. And I`m going to leave it at that."

He was reminded that he chose to publicly deny rumors in 1987 of his father`s infidelity and that non-denials can be misinterpreted and keep a rumor alive.

"If it`s not this, there`ll be some other rumor," he said. "I`m saying I`m not going to talk about what I did in the past. What I did 20 to 30 years ago, in my judgment, is irrelevant. What matters is who I am today. The politics of personal destruction is about floating rumors so that you then chase them and cause you to ask questions. I`m not going to participate in that."

Whether Bush can hold that line through a presidential campaign is, at best, uncertain. But whatever role his past plays in the campaign, few involved with him worry about his outlook and personal habits in the present.

Bush`s staff, his friends, his family, his wife, all describe Bush today as an intensely disciplined and focused individual. He goes to bed early, rises early, clocks a brisk 7- to 8-minute mile in his daily runs and puts a premium on punctuality. Laura Bush said that she believed her husband has always had discipline – he just didn`t know it until he quit drinking.

He also found a new serenity, those close to him say. "It was a transformation," recalled his youngest sibling, Dorothy Bush Koch. "It was not an overnight transformation, but it was when he became, when he found happiness in his life and himself – we knew it right away. You could see a confidence. He`s always had that bravado, but [this was] real confidence."

Bush, for his part, looks to the future with equanimity. "I feel like saying, `God`s will be done,`‚" he said in an interview. "That if I win . . . I know what to do. If I don`t win, so be it. So be it. . . . I`ve got this sense of come what may. I work hard, hopefully I`ll be able to survive all the gossip and slings and arrows and all the scrutiny and the discussions and the questions.

"And if it works, great. And I believe I can do the job. And if it doesn`t work, that`s just the way it goes, and I`ll come back home and my wife`ll love me, the dog`ll love me, the cats will play like they don`t but they really will."

At 53, Bush crisscrosses America projecting a relaxed sense of who he is and why he wants to reach the White House. In personal as well as political terms, he has covered a great distance since he woke up muddy-headed on that July morning in Colorado. However easy it now looks, those close to him know that it has been a difficult journey.

It has also been a journey propelled at key moments by the power, connections and good fortune of his family.

By October 1986, newly sober and increasingly focused, Bush had received his share of the Harken deal in stock, at the time worth a little more than $312,000. The stock would ultimately become the collateral he used to purchase the Texas Rangers, a deal that last year landed him $14.9 million, providing him with the financial security to pursue the presidency. After Bush closed the Harken deal, he stayed in Midland and tried to help find jobs for all his employees. He then started commuting to Dallas, where he was a consultant to Harken, and began preparing to join his father`s campaign for president.

Finally on his way at 40, Bush headed back toward where he had begun – as the scion of a political family, one infused with the possibilities of dynasty.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.




© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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Bush changes strategy with $87bn gamble
President calls for international community to take greater share of burden as he asks Congress for huge sum to aid occupation

Oliver Burkeman and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday September 9, 2003
The Guardian

The White House was facing intense criticism at home and a tepid response abroad yesterday as George Bush attempted to recast the occupation of Iraq as a global struggle requiring the support of the entire international community and a huge injection of cash.

The president put his domestic popularity on the line in an address calling for an $87bn (£55bn) increase in US spending on Iraq and Afghanistan that would double the cost of the Iraqi operation.

In perhaps his most humbling moment since the campaign began, he also used the nationally televised address on Sunday night to call for other countries to take on a greater share of the burden.

"Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilised world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilised world," he said.

But it was unclear whether the change in strategy would pay off. Democrats in Washington, bolstered by weekend polls showing the president`s approval ratings returning to pre-9/11 levels, accused Mr Bush of misleading the American people. And while Britain announced a new commitment of troops - the result of a review unconnected to the president`s speech - several countries said they would wait for a UN resolution first.

The $87bn that Mr Bush will ask Congress to authorise "amounts to more than 10 times more than the United States has ever spent in a year in any country," Paul Bremer, head of the coalition provisional authority, said in Iraq yesterday.

"And it`s a clear, dramatic illustration of the fact that the American people are going to finish the job we started when we liberated Iraq some four months ago."

The request would raise the cost of the Iraq war to the US to $150bn, dwarfing the $9bn US contribution to the first 1991 Gulf war, and pushing the country`s budget deficit beyond half a trillion dollars. Members of Congress, though likely to authorise the funds, are expected to demand that Mr Bush outline an exit strategy for US troops first.

The president`s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, defended the sum, arguing that if Iraq were stabilised, "those costs will be won back over and over again." Echoing Mr Bush`s speech, she told CBS television that Iraq was the main battlefield in the campaign against terror.

"What we are now seeing is a central battle in the war on terrorism, and these terrorists know it. That is why they are going to Iraq."

Internationally, though, while France and Australia praised the president`s appeal to the world community, neither announced plans to review their decision not to send peacekeeping forces. Greece and India said they would wait for a UN decision.

Germany, a longtime opponent of the war, still had "no plans for military engagement" in Iraq, a spokesman said.

The unprecedented size of the presidential request for funding suggests that Washington may already be resigned to receiving little financial aid from other countries, said Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador and now a professor at the National Defence University in Washington.

"The reality is that nobody is going to help the United States with significant financial resources, with the obvious exception of Britain," he said.

Democratic presidential hopefuls, sensing a public mood in which criticism of White House policy in Iraq is no longer vehemently condemned as inherently unpatriotic, wasted no time in attacking Mr Bush`s speech.

The $87bn figure, Bob Graham, a Florida senator, told CNN, was "more than the federal government will spend on education this year," while Representative Dick Gephardt said the speech showed that "the president has recognised that he has been going down the wrong path".

Howard Dean, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, compared the Iraq conflict to Vietnam, accusing the government of "feeding misinformation to the American people in order to justify an enormous commitment of US troops".

He added: "A 15-minute speech does not make up for 15 months of misleading the American people on why we should go to war against Iraq, or 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction effort since we have been there."

Judith Kipper, an expert on the region at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr Bush`s address had changed the focus of American engagement, redefining Iraq as a danger not because of weapons of mass destruction, or Saddam Hussein`s former regime, but because it was the centre of the war on terrorism. That meant the White House could now argue that "we need help".

The question, she said, "is whether France, Germany and the other Europeans are going to act like grown-ups. The international community is severely broken at the moment, and we need to stick together."

The way the US had handled the occupation of Iraq meant that claims of a terrorism problem connected to Iraq had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, Ms Kipper argued. "Iraq is now a global threat. It was not before. But it is now."

How the bill breaks down


$66bn to fight war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan "and elsewhere"

$21bn on reconstruction

Iraq

$51bn to support continuing military operations, including:

$800m on transport and support for non-US troops; $300m on body armour; $140m on Humvees

Plus:

$20bn for reconstruction, including:

$5bn to train new Iraqi army and build judicial system

$15bn on infrastructure

Afghanistan

$11bn to help "track down terrorists and provide stability"

$800m for "critical remaining security and reconstruction needs"

Total bill $87bn


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

David Aaronovitch
Has Meacher completely lost the plot?

Tuesday September 9, 2003
The Guardian

"In a startling allegation," the Hindu of India told its many readers last Saturday, "a former British minister has said the US may have deliberately allowed the events of September 11 2001, so that it could have a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq." The wires ran the story from Wellington to San Francisco. It was an "incredible piece", one happy blogger chortled, showing that conspiracy theories have "finally hit (the) mainstream media". In this case the "mainstream" was us here at the Guardian.

Made into a rough chronology of cause and effect, the argument from Michael Meacher, the minister in question, went like this:

1. The Americans (and the Brits, but not, it seems, the French or the Germans) are running out of oil and gas, and the Muslims have got lots.

2. A few years back, some neocons devised a plan to get their hands on the oil, etc, so as to be able to dominate the world.

3. Trouble was, they couldn`t go ahead with the plan unless public opinion was mobilised, as it was at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Which, by the way, President Roosevelt knew all about, but decided not to stop so that he could have a war.

4. Subsequently, the Bush administration and its agencies did "little or nothing" to stop the plotters of 9/11 and - when their operation was under way - little or nothing to bring it to a halt.

5. After September 11, the Bushites forgot all about terrorism and Bin Laden and concentrated on invading places that had oil and gas.

6. So, "the `global war on terrorism` has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for... the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies."

The oil and PNAC arguments in points one and two are so complex and recondite that I`ll begin at about point three, in which the US may create a pretext for attacks. "There is a possible precedent for this," says Meacher, "The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet."

US national archives "reveal" no such thing. Or rather, they reveal it to a select few people, but not to most historians. This may not be the place to talk about Japanese signals received in 1940/41 and not successfully decoded until 1946, but to state as fact that the President of the US (and former under-secretary of the navy) connived at an attack that sunk a large proportion of his own Pacific fleet, is to go well beyond the known facts. Which is where M cheerfully went.

However, armed with this non-precedent, Meacher then argues that "the 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the `go` button... which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement".

But how to organise the necessary casus belli? "First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11." And then, says Meacher, it was "astonishing that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself". He goes on, "The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not?"

Unfortunately, this is all rubbish. Six minutes after the notification of the first hijacking, at 8.44am, fighters were ordered to be scrambled from Otis Base in Massachusetts. Two minutes later the first plane struck the World Trade Center. Another 16 minutes on, the second plane struck. Twenty-three minutes on and the third plane was notified as having been hijacked en route from Dulles airport. Another two minutes later fighters were scrambled from Langley (not Andrews), but arrived over Washington two minutes after Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. Nor was this lateness unprecedented. A year earlier F16s had failed to intercept a Cessna light aircraft that deviated from course, and buzzed the White House.

But watch Meacher build. It`s a classic of its kind. "Was this inaction," he asks, "simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority?"

This is conspiracy 101. Say something is a fact which isn`t. Then ask questions, rising up through incompetence, gradually to mal-intention, and then - abruptly - demand who might be behind it all. Cui Bono, my dear friends?

After the hijackings came the war that wasn`t. "No serious attempt," charged Meacher, "has ever been made to catch Bin Laden." And he adds that, "The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that `the goal has never been to get Bin Laden` ".

The following is from the press conference where that quote originated. General Myers is taxed with the embarrassing fact of Bin Laden being still extant. He makes Meacher`s quote and then continues:

"Obviously that (the capture of BL) is desirable... the fact that we`ve been able to disrupt operations, get a lot of the people just under him and maybe just a little bit further down, has had some impact on their operations... So we`re going to keep the hunt on. Finding one person, as we`ve talked about before, is a very difficult prospect, but we will keep trying."

Do you think that Meacher gives an adequate account of Myers` words here? And don`t you seem to recall, over the past two years, an awful lot of chasing around the Tora Bora and through Pakistan, shoot-outs in various cities and captures of senior Bin Laden aides? Or is that all just some cunning smokescreen, to obscure the serious folk getting on with laying pipelines?

Questioned on ITN on Saturday Meacher denied that he was a conspiracy theorist, citing the "I`m only raising questions" defence. His information, he said, "comes from the collection of data that I have been doing meticulously. It comes from websites across the world."

The ones that suggest that the American agencies wanted an attack, so deliberately ignored the activities of terrorists in the US, and stood down their own air defences, in order to allow the worst terrorist atrocity in history to take place - all to secure oil and gas supplies. This act of treachery was accomplished with the complicity of military people, politicians and civil servants of all ranks, some of whose family members were on the planes and in the buildings.

I grant that Iraq has made us all a little mad. On either side of the argument many of us struggle to maintain our composure. Even so, I do not know what is more depressing: that a former long-serving minister should repeat this bizarre nonsense without checking it; that, yesterday, twice as many readers should be published supporting this garbage as those criticising it; or that one letter should claim that Meacher has simply said what "many have always known". Ugh! To give credibility to this stuff is bad enough, to "know" it is truly scary.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

The United States of Anxiety: survey reveals a jittery nation overcome with self-doubt
By David Usborne in New York
09 September 2003


It is two years this week since the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

A repeat of those awful incidents has so far not materialised and George Bush is crowing that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq have been removed from power. Have Americans regained their old optimism, therefore? Hardly.

That is the overall conclusion of a new survey released by Euro RSCG Worldwide, an international advertising group. The survey and a second poll published by The New York Times depict a country that remains unsure of its own future, jittery about the terrorists striking again and worried at the same time about its economy.

"It is not just that the anxiety remains, perhaps it is even greater now," said Marian Salzman yesterday, who is global chief strategist for RSCG and one of the world`s most respected futurologists. "In some ways, Americans are waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Her findings are based on a pair of surveys, one conducted six months after the 11 September 2001 attacks and the second completed last month. The reports provide a picture of a nation that has hardly moved on since the aftermath of the original attacks. The shock, in other words, has barely receded.

Very little, it seems, is what it used to be before 9/11. Attitudes towards foreign countries have changed fundamentally. The latest report shows a hardening of negative feelings towards France and, to a slightly less extent, Saudi Arabia.

Yet, Americans seem to be engaged in a full-blown love affair with the British. Never mind that anti-Americanism is seen to run far higher in the UK than in France.

And while feelings of patriotism towards their own country seem to be stronger than ever in the United States, there is a waning sense of pride in the nation and its standing. The latest survey shows a decrease in positive attitudes amongst Americans about their country compared to just after 9/11. On the other hand, distrust towards all Muslim nations seems to have moderated since the days just after 9/11.

Ms Salzman suggests, somewhat cynically, that it has simply taken longer for the events of that terrible day to sink into the American psyche than might have been expected. In a related observation, she argues that most Americans are simply "terribly naïve", thus ensuring that the pace of understanding of what occurred has been surprisingly slow.

"We are cowboys, like our president, and our first reaction was go get the evil ones. Now, two years later, we are starting to ask, what caused it, how did it happen, how come we didn`t know in advance. It has taken us two years to get serious about what all this means. That is fundamental shift."

Her conclusion that Americans are still waiting for the next terrorist outrage was borne out in a survey by The New York Times released yesterday showing that two thirds of New Yorkers, at least, are more concerned about another attack than they were on the first anniversary of 9/11.

That report suggested that while residents of New York may be talking and thinking less about that dark day than they were this time last year, they remain wary of what might happen. Nearly one third of those questioned said their lives had not returned to normal. Meanwhile, 60 per cent said the 9/11 attacks would have an enduring impact on the life of the city.

Flora Muca, a Brooklyn resident, said she basically functions fine, but the fear won`t lift. "Honestly, I think it`s going to happen again," she told The New York Times. "My idea is they wait until it slows down and everyone falls asleep." Her daughter, 14, has just started taking the subway alone to school, and that alarms her mother who bought her a mobile telephone. "Every time I pass a bridge, I still panic," she said. "A tunnel? That`s worse."

Piled on top of all the security worries are the economic anxieties. "At the end of the day is it is the economic uncertainties that are most unsettling," Ms Salzman said. "Americans are asking, will my kids be employable, will I be able to live my life as well as I did five years ago?"

The report highlights enduring distrust of corporate America in the wake of the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom scandals.

"A core part of American mythology," the report says, "has always been that anything is possible ... But in the shadow of 9/11 and the corporate fraud scandals, people are realising that `anything is possible`, doesn`t just mean good things. Any bad thing is possible, too."

The RSCG survey shows 55 per cent of the sample admiring Britain more than they did before 9/11. The UK scored especially well among American men. Women and young people were less in awe of Britannia. By contrast, 73 per cent said they admired France less, while 57 per cent expressed a diminished view of Saudi Arabia.

The sample covered 1,009 Americans, half men and half women, with a median age of 43.

The report is not all good news for the White House.

Asked if they agree with the statement, "I support President Bush`s decision to attack Iraq as an `axis of evil` nation", almost a quarter disagreed.

Meanwhile, there was a softening of support for the assertion, "I support the decision of President Bush to route out terrorists throughout the `axis of evil`", compared to immediately after 9/11. And more than one third supported the notion that the US is using the events of 9/11 to do "whatever it wants around the world".

The New York Times concluded that two years after the terror attacks, there remains little confidence in the security measures meant to protect the city. Most New Yorkers feel the city is unprepared for a biological or chemical attack and remains vulnerable.

The lag in getting to grips with the implications of 9/11 also relates to Americans` ignorance about world affairs. "Your average American doesn`t know that al-Qa`ida and Saddam Hussein are not the same. For us, there are just a hell of a lot of evil-doers out there," Ms Salzman said. There is evidence that Americans are watching, reading and listening to more news in the media. Much of it, however, maybe very partisan, rather than anything that could be described as objectively informative.

Asked, in the RSCG survey, to rate a range of perceived threats to American security, 84 per cent of those questioned cited WMD. This may explain why the White House was so emphatic about the risk of WMD in justifying the war on Iraq. Next down the list came the so-called "rogue nations", such as North Korea and Iran.

"The American way was always to save and plan and look into the future," Ms Salzman concludes. "Now they are having to live much more for the moment. It is hard for people, because they don`t really know how to do that. It is a very manic time in the US."

`You don`t know who your enemy is any more. This makes you more suspicious`
By Andrew Gumbel in Palmdale, California

The dusty desert town of Palmdale may be 3,000 miles from ground zero in New York. It may feel a world away even from Los Angeles, 60 miles to the south. But people here are still all-too aware of the impact of the 11 September attacks.

Stars-and-stripes flags still hang from lamp-posts and people`s houses. This week, local churches will hold a day of prayer and a vigil for those who died in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania two years ago. Outside City Hall, a big public gathering on Thursday night will honour the firefighters and ambulance workers who saved lives, even at the cost of their own. On the menu: New York hot dogs.

"We definitely cannot afford to forget," says Isaac Barcelona, chief executive of the city chamber of commerce. "It does affect you in a way. You don`t know who your enemy is any more ... Unfortunately, we have become more suspicious."

The anxiety is tempered, however, by Palmdale`s remoteness in the Mojave desert, and also by the fact that things have gone remarkably well recently. Palmdale is a booming dormitory town, with links to greater Los Angeles.

While the rest of the country has suffered cutbacks and heavy job losses, Palmdale is building houses and shopping centres. The recent surge in military spending has also helped. Lockheed Martin, for example, is building a new Joint Strike Fighter in Palmdale.

"The economy is good here, and that makes people feel more confident," Barbara La Fata, a city employee who puts out the local Palmdale newsletter, said. "It has helped them get back to their regular routines."

Politically, Palmdale is a conservative, deeply religious community that continues to stand four-square behind President George Bush. But it is also remarkably diverse and has done a good job of quelling any anger at Arabs or Muslims.

"We are very blessed to be in this town. We Muslims barely experienced anything," said Kamal al-Khatib, of the American Islamic Institute and executive director of the first charter school in the US to offer Arabic language lessons. "There were some very small incidents, but we were able to defuse the situation very quickly."
9 September 2003 09:50



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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September 9, 2003
Senator Clinton Says No to `04, but Playfulness Hints at Yes
By JIM DWYER


When the guests descended on the Clinton family home in Chappaqua on Sunday evening, most of them had already heard that the answer to the question was, roughly speaking, no, a thousand times no, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would not make a run for the presidency next year.

By the end of the night, "no" was not quite the word ringing in every ear as the guests — about 150 major campaign donors to the former president or to the senator — left the gathering. During cocktails in the back yard, one group heard former President Bill Clinton say that the national Democratic Party had "two stars": his wife, the junior senator from New York, and a retired general, Wesley K. Clark, who is said to be considering a run for the presidential nomination.

And during the dinner, according to a dozen people who were at the event, they heard Mrs. Clinton say how important their support would be "for my next campaign, whatever that may be." Later, Mr. Clinton, in discussing the presidential field, said, "We might have another candidate or two jumping into the race."

To John Catsimatidis, the chief executive officer of the Gristede`s supermarket chain, those remarks shifted his own views of whether Mrs. Clinton had definitively ruled out the presidential race.

"I was sitting next to her last night, and I didn`t get the impression that she had pulled the trigger in her mind" for or against a national campaign, Mr. Catsimatidis said. "Some people might have been left with the impression that there`s always a possibility. I was."

To others at the party, Mrs. Clinton, in alluding pointedly to an unspecified campaign, was merely having mild fun about a candidacy that not only has never been announced but whose existence has repeatedly been denied.

"She clearly laughed after that — she was totally making a joke," said Lisa Perry, one of many guests who contacted The New York Times at the request of Mrs. Clinton`s staff to douse whatever heat may have risen from the senator`s words. "She was playing with the notion that everyone thinks she may."

Any other interpretation, say Senator Clinton and her aides, was a matter of wishful listening among eager political supporters. While they did not deny the remarks attributed to either of the Clintons, they said that these were casual comments, made about the need to raise funds for Mrs. Clinton`s race for the Senate in 2006 — not about a run for president next year.

In a telephone interview, Mrs. Clinton said the entire focus of the evening was how to marshal forces against the as-yet unformed and anonymous opposition she will face when her Senate term expires in 2006.

"I try to be careful — but being careful was misunderstood, or misheard," she said.

Asked if it was impossible that she would run for president next year, she laughed. Asked again, she laughed again, then responded: "I have said I am not running. If I knew another foreign language, I`d say it in that. I`m saying, `I`m not going to do it.` "

One close ally of Mrs. Clinton, who asked not to be named, said that the people who took note of the remarks by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton "were not hallucinating. In the climate of heightened interest in a candidacy, they know they need to be extra, extremely careful with their language. Still, you don`t engage a possible presidential run with a casual remark at a dinner."

A Web site run by Mrs. Clinton`s staff, FriendsofHillary.com, regularly includes e-mail messages urging her to run for president. The messages are selected and posted publicly by her staff.

When these received attention in the press last month, Mrs. Clinton promptly told The Associated Press, "I am absolutely ruling it out." Even so, the Hillary-for-president e-mail messages appeared on the campaign Web site yesterday.

Mrs. Clinton said she had been busy raising funds for Democrats around the country and needed to get money together to protect herself from the onslaught promised by the Republicans after the 2004 elections. For Sunday`s dinner, the Clintons invited people who had raised $100,000 or more for the senator during the last year.

"I wanted to do something to thank them," she said. "It was a thank you dinner but also about what I was going to have to do about raising campaign money for myself. That was not an announcement for a campaign. It was raising money for a future that will be announced at some point down the road."

The guests arrived at 6 p.m. in a long line of luxury cars and limousines that were parked by valets. The donors wandered through the family home, decorated with pictures from Mr. Clinton`s years in office.

As dinner was served in a backyard tent, speakers, mostly alumni from the Clinton White House, spoke about what they saw as the failures of the Bush administration`s foreign policy. Ann F. Lewis, a former White House counselor who served in Mrs. Clinton`s Senate campaign in 2000, talked about polls that she said showed an erosion in Mr. Bush`s support, particularly among women.

These are the same people, Ms. Lewis pointed out, who have waited for hours at bookstores to shake Mrs. Clinton`s hand and buy a signed copy of her recently published memoir.

The thrust of her remarks at the party was Mrs. Clinton`s potency among Democrats. "What I was trying to walk through — she is the most popular, credible leader among that group of voters most important to the Democratic party," Ms. Lewis said yesterday. She said she had not talked about any national polls that put Mrs. Clinton against President Bush because "it was not useful."

The event was not a fund-raiser, one aide said, but a form of "donor maintenance" — the cosseting of important supporters. "I was not making an announcement that I was running for re-election," Mrs. Clinton said. "I didn`t want to announce at a private dinner. I was asking my supporters to begin raising money."

She acknowledged that the possibility of a presidential run was raised by a number of people at the party, and elsewhere. "It`s very flattering. I have a lot of supporters who continue to urge me to consider this," she said. "I keep saying no. That`s the same today as it has been."

The reason, she said, is that she enjoys her job as a senator, and feels it comes with a great deal of responsibility. She said she intended to work hard for a Democratic presidential candidate. And if it turns out that she would be the strongest candidate in the field? Again, Mrs. Clinton laughed. "I don`t see that happening," she said.

The remarks by Mr. Clinton about another "candidate or two" getting into the presidential race were explained in an e-mail message sent by his spokesman, Jim Kennedy, who referred to the constitutional amendment that limits presidents to two terms in office. "He meant Wesley Clark, and temporarily forgot about the 22nd Amendment," Mr. Kennedy wrote.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

[/]Reconstruction in Iraq would include work like the rebuilding of a shattered school last month in Diwaniyah.[/I]

September 9, 2003
U.S. BUDGET
78% of Bush`s Postwar Spending Plan Is for Military
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON


WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — President Bush`s $87 billion request for postwar costs is heavily weighted to maintaining military operations, with $65.5 billion directed to the armed forces, $15 billion toward rebuilding Iraq and $5 billion toward building its security forces, and $800 million to new spending for civilian programs in Afghanistan, administration officials said today.

The $87 billion price tag makes the package the most expensive postwar military and civilian effort since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Combined with the earlier $79 billion approved by Congress to conduct the war and pay initial postwar expenses, it would bring the cost to the United States of deposing Saddam Hussein and stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next to $166 billion. That is more than 25 times the $6.4 billion bill to American taxpayers, in today`s dollars, for the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

Most of the cost of the 1991 conflict — $60 billion at the time or about $84 billion in today`s dollars — was picked up by allies, including Saudi Arabia and Japan.

This time around, administration officials said, their main financial goal is to squeeze donations from other countries toward the difference between the $15 billion the United States plans to put toward physical reconstruction of Iraq and the total cost, which the White House put at $50 billion to $75 billion.

White House officials said Mr. Bush`s request, higher than the $60 billion to $70 billion that Congress had expected, should cover all costs for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. But some analysts said the figure might still prove to be low, especially if the United States cannot quell the growing terrorist threat within Iraq.

"This is the beginning of the administration presenting realistically eye-popping numbers to the American people," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The number is probably on the low side of what`s needed, but we`re finally in the realm of realism."

In his speech on Sunday night, Mr. Bush himself compared his plans to rebuild Iraq with the effort after World War II, saying, "America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit."

His request, though, amounted to an abandonment of a more optimistic plan sketched by administration officials earlier in the year. The administration told Congress in the spring that Iraq`s oil revenues would be sufficient to pay the bulk of the postwar costs, which they estimated then would be low.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a House subcommittee in March that Iraq could generate $50 billion to $100 billion of oil revenue over the next two to three years. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," Mr. Wolfowitz said at the time.

Last spring, when it sought the initial $79 billion for the war, the White House asked for $2.5 billion for reconstruction.

"It is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anyone on the outside anticipated," a senior administration official said today.

Administration officials said they now expect Iraqi oil revenues to increase from zero this year to $12.1 billion next year and $20 billion a year in 2005 and 2006.

The administration`s proposal includes $51 billion for military operations in Iraq and $11 billion for military operations in Afghanistan. The military money for Iraq would include $800 million to help cover the costs incurred by other nations that agree to send troops to a multinational division, as well as $300 million to buy more body armor and armored vehicles for American troops, who have been subject to regular bombing and sniper attacks.

In addition to seeking $15 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, the proposal calls for $5 billion to be put toward building up Iraqi security forces, including an Iraqi Army, a police force and a border and customs agency.

In many ways, the $87 billion figure was the most compelling evidence yet of how Mr. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against taking on such jobs, has reversed course to take on a more ambitious role in remaking parts of the world than any president since Harry S. Truman.

From 1948 until 1952, the United States spent just under $13 billion on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, an amount equivalent to about $100 billion today. The parallels to the spending request for Iraq are not exact, because the United States was also spending considerable amounts after World War II to maintain a large military presence in Europe and square off against the Soviet Union in the cold war.

But the White House`s overall estimate of $50 billion to $75 billion in civilian reconstruction costs for Iraq, much of which the United States expects to come from other countries, makes clear that the job in Iraq is one of huge scale. At that level, it would be on a par in today`s dollars with the reconstruction costs shouldered by the United States for Britain, France and Germany under the Marshall Plan.

To put the request into a different kind of perspective, the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, said $87 billion is roughly equivalent to two years of unemployment benefits, 87 times what the federal government spends on after-school programs and more than 10 times the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

September 9, 2003
PENTAGON CHIEF
Troubles in Iraq Dim Rumsfeld`s Star, but He Fights Back
By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL


WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — Only a few months after basking in the military`s swift victory over Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld seemed to be on the defensive today after absorbing criticism from several sides over the Pentagon`s planning for postwar Iraq.

Even some of Mr. Rumsfeld`s supporters acknowledged today that his star, at least for the moment, had lost a little luster.

"A high water mark for Rumsfeld was the period when they were winning decisively," said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and an informal adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld. "Now, he has a little bit less aura than in that period."

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, put it more bluntly: "Rumsfeld`s been diminished."

Mr. Rumsfeld has been so barraged by critics that today, on his way home from a six-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, he spoke out against his detractors, suggesting that critics of the administration`s handling of Iraq could be encouraging foes to believe that the United States might walk away from the effort.

"We know for a fact that terrorists studied Somalia, and they studied instances that the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," Mr. Rumsfeld said, echoing remarks Mr. Bush made on Sunday.

"The United States is not going to do that; President Bush is not going to do that," he said.

While Mr. Rumsfeld`s once sky-high standing may have been taken down a notch or two in the messy postwar period, even his critics acknowledge that he is in no danger of losing his job or the confidence of Mr. Bush.

Supporters dismissed the criticism as part of Washington`s running parlor game of "who`s up and who`s down."

"In pressland, Rumsfeld is the piñata of the week, but the president still trusts and believes in him," said Mary Matalin, Vice President Dick Cheney`s former senior political counselor who is still an informal adviser.

Mr. Rumsfeld has been criticized before, during the uneasy early days of the invasion of Iraq, when he was accused of bringing too few troops to the battle. The swiftness of the military victory, however, allowed him to mock the armchair experts as ill-informed and misguided.

But this time, the complaints seem to be sticking. His response has been typical, a blend of combativeness, charm and savvy from a man who nearly always seems convinced that he is on the right side of history, but who is also quick to reposition himself to avoid being seen as a loser.

"You take a lot of thumps over a period of time," Mr. Rumsfeld said aboard his plane today about those who have cast him as the architect of policies that have been called too unilateral in their dealings with allies, too cavalier in their reliance on small numbers of troops, too credulous of optimistic scenarios spun by Iraqi exiles and less than honest with the American public.

Most of the time, Mr. Rumsfeld insisted, the critics have been proved wrong. The costs and casualties of the Iraq occupation are on the rise, but he said a major shift in course would be unwise. Meantime, the sniping is coming from all quarters.

William Kristol, a conservative publisher with close ties to the administration, said today that Mr. Rumsfeld`s standing had fallen with some White House aides.

"Rumsfeld assured them he knew what he was doing in the run-up to the war, and he was utterly vindicated," Mr. Kristol said in an interview. "Then he assured them he had the postwar under control, knew what he was doing, and wanted to run it. Now the White House feels they`ve been falsely reassured by Rumsfeld."

As if to underscore the point, this week`s issue of Mr. Kristol`s magazine, The Weekly Standard, which supported the Iraq war, is filled with articles lambasting the current Iraq policy. One article about Mr. Rumsfeld carries the headline, "Secretary of Stubbornness."

Indeed, mid-level White House officials grumble privately that poor postwar planning by the Pentagon has dumped a huge political liability into Mr. Bush`s lap.

Last week, a senior House Democrat, Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, called for the resignation of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, saying that their miscalculations had cost American lives in Iraq and damaged the nation`s fiscal health.

A growing number of retired military officers are voicing anger over Iraq policies.

"The guy is a patriot and a dedicated public servant, but he has enormous difficulty listening to other people`s views," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a decorated Persian Gulf war veteran, said of Mr. Rumsfeld.

Mr. Bush`s decision last week to seek another United Nations resolution, and perhaps attract more international peacekeepers, was seen as a setback to Mr. Rumsfeld. Throughout his trip this past week, Mr. Rumsfeld sought to emphasize successes over setbacks, but he has sometimes bristled over criticism. He has insisted that the administration`s decision to seek a new United Nations mandate for Iraq did not represent a policy shift. He has said that there is no need for the United States to dispatch more troops to Iraq, suggesting that such a step would only make more Americans targets and would delay a handover of responsibilities to Iraqis.

He had not previously suggested that the administration`s critics might unwittingly be aiding the terrorist cause. He made that point in response to a question about criticism from Democratic presidential candidates and others, which Mr. Rumsfeld described as the "hits" that the administration was taking over issues related to costs, casualties, and whether the United States had enough troops in Iraq.

"There should be a debate and discussion on these things. We can live with that," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We can live with a healthy debate as long as it is as elevated as possible, and as civil as possible."

But he said that his experience as a Middle East envoy, after the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 Americans, had persuaded him that the United States needed a higher tolerance for the costs of warfare.

"Anytime an act of terrorism is rewarded, a lesson is learned by the terrorists," he said. "There are going to be losses if you do nothing, as we learned on Sept. 11, and there are going to be losses if you do something."



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September 9, 2003
Presidential Character

George Bush`s long-term plans for 2003 probably did not call for his August vacation to be followed by a national television address trying to justify a floundering policy in Iraq. Just about nothing, in fact, looks like what he must have hoped for in the run-up to an election. To many Americans, the economic recovery is anything but — 2.7 million private-sector jobs have been lost in the last three years. The number of people living below the poverty line is rising, the trade imbalance has reached unnerving proportions, and the federal budget deficits have grown so huge that even the International Monetary Fund has begun expressing concern. Most of the Bush domestic agenda is a sad deflated version of its earlier incarnation.

It is useful at times like this to look back on the road that brought a president into trouble and try to divide bad luck from bad guesses, and both from the wrong turns that stem from the innate nature of the presidency itself. In the case of Iraq, there is a little of each. Early in his term, Mr. Bush was stuck with trouble that was not of his making, including both the terrorist attack and the sinking economy. His judgment about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq appears to have been wrong — and, worse, hyped. But over all, it was a bad guess that was shared by intelligence experts from the Clinton administration and many allies.

Other wrong turns, however, were chosen because of a fundamental flaw in the character of this White House. Despite his tough talk, Mr. Bush seems incapable of choosing a genuinely tough path, of risking his political popularity with the same aggression that he risks the country`s economic stability and international credibility. For all the trauma the United States has gone through during his administration, Mr. Bush has never asked the American people to respond to new challenges by making genuine sacrifices.

He committed the military to war, but he told civilians they deserved big tax cuts. He seems determined to remake the Middle East without doing anything serious about reducing our dependence on Middle East oil. His energy policy is a grab bag of giveaways to domestic oil and gas lobbyists. He refuses to ask for even the smallest compromise when it comes to fuel-efficient cars.

The pattern goes further. Mr. Bush rolled out a domestic agenda that included some ambitious programs aimed at lifting up America`s least fortunate, particularly his No Child Left Behind education package. But in this — as in the African AIDS initiative and even his controversial faith-based initiative for social services — Mr. Bush has been content to take the credit for proposing, without paying the political dues necessary to get things done. Certainly most American parents, whose public schools are racked by state and local budget crises, are not feeling that their children are enjoying better educational opportunity. The AIDS program that got such a positive response when the president unveiled it has been underfinanced by Congress, with the White House`s encouragement.

Even the administration`s foreign policy reflects its tendency to go for quick gratification without much thought of the gritty long haul. The invasion of Iraq appears to have been planned by people who assumed that after a swift military assault, Saddam Hussein would be gone and Iraq would quickly snap into a prosperous, semidemocratic state that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East.

When it turned out that things were far more complicated, the president hedged on the price tag — apparently out of fear that if Congress knew how high the bill was going to be, there would not be enough votes for another round of tax cuts. Congress, however, was happy enough to be deluded until it was too late. Now we know the cost is going to be massive, with much of the tab to be paid by the future generations who will be saddled with the Bush debt.

The United States has no clear exit strategy from Iraq or immediate hope of a turnaround in a violent, complicated and expensive commitment. The hard realities of postwar Iraq have convinced Mr. Bush that he needs the United Nations support he snubbed before the invasion. But even there he is avoiding the hard choice of acknowledging his error and ceding real authority to other nations. Diplomats are wondering, with good reason, whether Mr. Bush is embarking on a new era of international cooperation or simply giving them permission to clean up his mess.

Mr. Bush is a man who was reared in privilege, who succeeded in both business and politics because of his family connections. The question during the presidential campaign was whether he was anything more than just a very lucky guy. There were times in the past three years when he has been much more than that, and he may no longer be a man who expects to find an easy way out of difficulties. But now, at the moment when we need strong leadership most, he is still a politician who is incapable of asking the people to make hard choices. And we are paying the price.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 9, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Whatever It Takes
By DAVID BROOKS


The Bush administration has the most infuriating way of changing its mind. The leading Bushies almost never admit serious mistakes. They never acknowledge that they are listening to their critics. They never even admit they are shifting course. They don these facial expressions suggesting calm omniscience while down below their legs are doing the fox trot in six different directions.

Sunday night`s presidential speech was a perfect example. The policy ideas Bush sketched out represent such a striking series of policy shifts they amount to a virtual relaunching of the efforts to rebuild Iraq. Yet the president unveiled them as if they were stately extensions of the policies that commenced on Sept. 11, 2001.

Fortunately, while in public members of the administration emphasize their own incredible foresight, in private they are able to face unpleasant facts and pivot in response. Sometime around the middle of August, while the president was on the ranch, members of the Bush team must have done a candid and scathing review of how things were going in Iraq.

This was the time, remember, when leading Republicans were falling out of love with Donald Rumsfeld. They were outraged with Rumsfeld`s unwillingness to even consider the possibility that the U.S. might need more troops in Iraq and a much bigger Army over all. Several Republicans were also coming to doubt the competence of the people running Iraq policy. While on visits to Baghdad, they were finding that civilian reconstruction efforts were absurdly underfinanced and understaffed. What`s more, there were no Iraqis in Paul Bremer`s administrative headquarters. The Iraqi Governing Council had been appointed, but its members were being treated like figureheads.

By the time the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was bombed on Aug. 19, President Bush was willing to strike out on a new course. It was in a phone call that day with Condoleezza Rice, a close Bush adviser reports, that Bush observed that the tragedy of the bombing might be turned into an opportunity to internationalize the rebuilding effort. Colin Powell was dispatched to talk with Kofi Annan about a resolution authorizing a greater U.N. role. Annan was receptive.

The decision to go to the U.N. is not the most important policy revision Bush executed. The coming U.N. debate will give a lot of second-tier powers the chance to preen about sending troops they don`t have and making contributions they can`t afford, but nobody should fool themselves into thinking it is in any way crucial to the region. Powell has estimated there may be a mere 10,000 to 15,000 additional international troops. Some technocrats from the Sorbonne may supplement the ones from Johns Hopkins, but the U.N. offensive is a long journey for only a modest reward.

The truly important initiatives Bush launched were, first, to sharply increase the level of spending on Iraq, and therefore increase the likelihood that major infrastructure problems will be addressed. With this, Bush is not only taking on the antiwar Democrats, but also the so far silent but oh-so-sullen fiscal conservatives in his own party.

Second, Bush has finally signaled that the U.S. is going to hand over real authority to newly selected Iraqi ministers. Yesterday, Bremer released a seven-step process for handing power back to the Iraqis that reads like a treatment program for Imperialists Anonymous. If this process is carried out, Americans administrators will be serving Iraqi executives, not the other way around.

Some close advisers suspect the violence may not abate in Iraq until early next year, and it will be interesting to see whether Americans can sustain their morale over that time. Still, as Bush makes these pivots, I`m reminded of the way Ronald Reagan made his amazing policy shifts at the end of the cold war, some of which outraged liberals (Reykjavik) and some of which outraged conservatives (the arms control treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev). Presidents tend to be ruthless opportunists, no matter how ideological they appear. Even as he announced his strategy on Sunday night, Bush left open the possibility that he might be compelled to shift again and send in more U.S. troops if circumstances warrant.

The essential news is that Bush will do whatever it takes to prevail, and senior members of his administration are capable of looking honestly at their mistakes. You will just never be able to get any of them to admit publicly they`ve ever made any.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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September 9, 2003
REACTION
Europe Hears Bush`s Call for Help Without Scorn
By ELAINE SCIOLINO


PARIS, Sept. 8 — Perhaps because President Bush`s words to the American people about Iraq on Sunday night were so sober, and because he sought the world`s help, the world did not gloat.

Rather, Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, moved swiftly back into the diplomatic debate on Iraq, calling today for foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the Security Council to meet him in Geneva next weekend.

Elsewhere, there was despair that the Iraq war had brought more terror and instability to the Middle East. There was anger that Mr. Bush seemed to have no intention of relinquishing military and administrative control over the country, even as he called for help.

In the governments and among the political elites of France and Germany, countries that opposed the American-led war, there was an uneasy blend of skepticism and a search for something positive in a speech in which Mr. Bush confessed that he could provide no overall price for reconstruction and no timetable for its completion, or the withdrawal of troops.

Under the headline "Saving Private Bush," an editorial in the Tuesday edition of Le Figaro said: "Without broader international military, political and financial help, the Americans will not find the light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time, George W. Bush really needs to make new friends abroad."

By contrast, Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Institute for Foreign Affairs, called Mr. Bush`s speech "a document of helplessness." He added: "You don`t have a stable Iraq. You don`t have support for the American presence. You don`t have greater democracy in the region, progress on the road map, or a diminution of terrorism."

Paradoxically, he said that failure has trapped Europe into sharing the burden. "It can`t be in our interest to have the major Western power in serious long-term difficulty in that part of the world," he said. "So we are doomed to cooperate with the United States."

Britain, America`s staunchest ally in the war against Iraq, reacted to Mr. Bush`s speech by announcing today that it would send about 1,200 new troops to Iraq to improve security and the infrastructure. But opposition politicians and critics in the Labor party said that the news was evidence that British and American policies in Iraq were not working.

The Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, said of the British government, "They seem to have taken their eye off this ball with their difficulties at home."

Last week, President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany said their countries would not support an American draft resolution at the United Nations because it did not transfer enough political control to the Iraqis or make the military force international enough.

Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov of Russia said today in Budapest that he hoped for agreement on a resolution increasing the United Nations role in Iraq.

"Russia is actively involved in drafting a resolution that would push the settlement from its current standstill," he said. "The situation is not very good and requires additional settlement efforts."

Today, French and German officials reacted warily to Mr. Bush`s call on the international community in its speech to assume its "responsibility" by committing resources to Iraq and to not let "past differences interfere with present duties."

Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, made clear that German soldiers would not take part in any new force. But Germany is reviewing other options, including a suggestion by Mr. Schröder over the weekend to train new Iraqi soldiers and police officers in Germany.

Karsten D. Voigt, coordinator for United States-German relations in the German foreign ministry, said of Mr. Bush`s address, "We tried to see the most positive in it that we can."

France appears determined to change the pending resolution at the United Nations and to avoid another diplomatic battle with the United States over Iraq, and officials applauded today a welcome tonal shift in Mr. Bush`s remarks.

One senior official praised what he called the "absence of religion" compared with previous speeches that he said had portrayed the battle against terrorism as one of good against evil. He noted, too, that Mr. Bush used the word "friends" in describing countries that did not agree with the war led by the United States and Britain.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, whose government is generally quick to offer financial help when Washington asks, had no response to Mr. Bush`s appeal for contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yu Kameoka, one of Mr. Koizumi`s chief spokesmen, told The Associated Press, "It has always been the position of the Japanese government that it is willing to assist as well as contribute to humanitarian efforts."

In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer applauded Mr. Bush for emphasizing that "the job is not finished in Iraq." But last week, Prime Minister John Howard said Australia would not send troops.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 9, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Other People`s Sacrifice
By PAUL KRUGMAN


In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn`t before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.

It`s now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts.

Now almost half the Army`s combat strength is bogged down in a country that wasn`t linked to Al Qaeda and apparently didn`t have weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Bush tells us that he needs another $87 billion, right away. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but I (like many others) told you so. Back in February I asked, "Is this administration ready for the long, difficult, quite possibly bloody business of rebuilding Iraq?" The example of Afghanistan (where warlords rule most of the country, and the Taliban — remember those guys? — is resurgent) led me to doubt it. And I was, alas, right.

Surely the leader who brought us to this pass, and is now seeking a bailout, ought to make some major concessions as part of the deal. But it was clear from his speech that, as usual, he expects to take while others do all the giving.

The money is actually the least of it. Still, it provides a clear test case. If Mr. Bush had admitted from the start that the postwar occupation might cost this much, he would never have gotten that last tax cut. Now he says, "We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary. . . ." What does he mean, "we"? Is he prepared to roll back some of those tax cuts, now that the costs of war loom so large? Is he even willing to stop urging Congress to make the 2001 tax cut permanent? Of course not.

Then there`s the issue of foreign participation. The key question here is whether the Bush administration will swallow its pride and cede substantial control over the occupation to the U.N. That`s surely the price of a large contingent of foreign soldiers. Mr. Bush didn`t address this issue directly, but he did say that he is seeking only one more multinational division, which suggests that he isn`t going to make major concessions.

Yet as I understand it, one more division won`t make much difference in the security situation. In particular, it will do little to alleviate the looming problem identified by the Congressional Budget Office: in March, the U.S. will have to start withdrawing most of its troops if it wants to maintain "acceptable levels of military readiness" in the Army as a whole.

Meanwhile, the administration is still counting on Iraq`s receiving billions of dollars in aid from other countries. Unless the U.S. makes major concessions, forget about it.

But the most important concession Mr. Bush should make isn`t about money or control — it`s about truth-telling. He squandered American credibility by selling a war of choice as a war of necessity; if he wants to get that credibility back, he has to start being candid.

Yet in the speech on Sunday he was still up to his usual tricks. Once again, he made a rhetorical link between the Iraq war and 9/11. This argument by innuendo reminds us why 69 percent of the public believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence. (There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of a Saudi link — but the administration`s handling of that evidence borders on a cover-up.) And rather than acknowledge that the search for W.M.D. has come up empty, he declared that Saddam "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction" — 1991, 2003, what`s the difference?

So will Congress give Mr. Bush the money he wants, no questions asked? It probably will, but it shouldn`t. Mr. Bush created this crisis, and if he were a true patriot he would pay a political price to resolve it. Maybe it`s time for him to do a couple of things he`s never done before, like admitting mistakes and standing up to the hard right.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Spy Agencies Warned of Iraq Resistance


By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A01


U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.

Although general in nature, the sources said, the intelligence agencies` concerns about the degree of resistance U.S. forces would encounter have proved broadly accurate in the months since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle.

Among the threats outlined in the intelligence agencies` reporting was that "Iraqis probably would resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the U.S. and the West," one senior congressional aide said. The general tenor of the reports, according to a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence, was that the postwar period would be more "problematic" than the war to overthrow Hussein.

As U.S. military casualties mount and resistance forces wage a campaign of targeted bombings in Iraq, some administration officials have begun to fault the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being overly optimistic and failing to anticipate such widespread and sustained opposition to a U.S. occupation. But several administration and congressional sources interviewed for this article said the opposite occurred. They said senior policymakers at the White House, Pentagon and elsewhere received classified analyses before the war warning about the dangers of the postwar period.

"Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness," said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. "The reports were written, but we don`t know if they were read."

In the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, senior Pentagon officials were privately optimistic about postwar Iraq, and their assessment shaped calculations about the size of the occupation force that would be required and how long it would have to be there, as well as the overall cost of the U.S. management of Iraq after the fall of the Hussein government.

The more pessimistic view generally remained submerged, but the controversy did occasionally break into the open, most notably when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told Congress in February that several hundred thousand occupation troops would be needed. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz rejected his estimate at the time as "wildly off the mark."

Although the Pentagon has said it has no plans to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq -- now nearly 130,000 -- the Bush administration has launched a new diplomatic campaign to win foreign pledges of more troops to help stabilize the country.

Before the war, the CIA passed on intelligence that some members of Hussein`s Republican Guard military units and his Baathist Party had plans to carry on resistance after the war, according to one senior intelligence official. "They had been given instructions should the regime fall," the official said. U.S. military and civilian leaders in Iraq have said they believe the daily attacks against U.S. forces are being carried out by Hussein loyalists.

CIA analysts last summer also expressed concerns that the "chaos after war would turn [Iraq] into a laboratory for terrorists," according to another former intelligence analyst. President Bush picked up on this theme in his nationally televised speech Sunday night, saying Iraq is attracting international terrorists and is now the "central front" in the war on terrorism.

There is not universal agreement about the clarity of the prewar intelligence that was forwarded by the CIA and its counterpart agencies at the Pentagon and State Department. Some administration officials said the intelligence was murkier than others now depict it.

"The possibility there would be armed opposition was based on inductive reasoning," one administration official said of reports from the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The analysts were guessing." Another congressional aide said the intelligence reports he had seen "were not very specific and had a range of outcomes and caveats depending on how the war would go."

However, the prevailing view within intelligence agencies, including the DIA, was that there would be resistance. Officials said this explained the thinking behind Shinseki`s congressional testimony earlier this year. A DIA memo last fall said postwar Iraq would be "highly complex and driven by political and religious factions," according to one former Pentagon analyst. "They [Defense Intelligence Agency analysts] said it would be hard to keep the lid on and to keep the various areas of the country from falling apart."

Former Army secretary Thomas E. White said that during discussions he had in the Pentagon before the war, he was told "the situation once the war was over would be contentious." Although White said he did not see intelligence on postwar Iraq first hand, it was discussed in meetings with Shinseki, who said there were reports that "you could expect a major influx of Islamic fighters."

It was for those reasons, White said in a telephone interview, that Shinseki saw the need "to size the postwar force bigger than the wartime force."

Speaking of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, White said, "Their view of the intelligence was much different. Their notion of it was resistance would run away as the few remaining Saddam loyalists were hunted down."

White said on NBC`s "Today" show Thursday that the postwar planning assumptions approved by senior Pentagon civilians were based on U.S. troops being "greeted in the streets by a euphoric public, glad of being rid of Saddam Hussein, and consequently we could very rapidly draw down the force structure."

White, who resigned his Army post in April, has published a new book sharply critical of the administration`s Iraq policy.

Pentagon spokesmen did not immediately reply to telephone questions about the prewar intelligence.

A White House official said the administration is not surprised by the level of resistance U.S. forces are encountering. "It does not come as a surprise that some of the bitter fanatics continue to fight against a foregone conclusion and that foreign terrorists would seek to hold back progress made in Iraq over the last five months," the official said.

Several senior policymakers, however, have said recently that they were not totally prepared for what has occurred. On Sunday, for example, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked on CNN`s "Late Edition" if there could have been better planning for the postwar period. She responded, "Obviously, there were things that were not foreseen. They have now -- [and] are now being addressed."

Before the war, intelligence analysts also questioned whether the administration would be able to achieve its goal of rapidly introducing democracy in Iraq, according to administration and congressional officials. Intelligence agencies reported that "any chance of achieving democracy was predicated on long-term active U.S. and Western military, political and economic involvement with the country," one administration official said.

On Feb. 26, the day Bush said in a speech that bringing democracy to Iraq would help democratize other Arab countries, the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research completed a classified analysis that dismissed the idea.

The State Department analysis reportedly stated that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve" in Iraq and that "electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Einj Beitrag zu dem Thema `Schöne neue Welt`

washingtonpost.com
The Snoop in Your Coupe
Data Recorders Interest Parents, Police

By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A01


On a freeway north of Los Angeles, as Ryan Evans`s sleek 1998 Honda Accord coupe speeds above 70 mph, the black box tucked under his front passenger seat grumbles a grating noise, warning the 18-year-old that he`s going too fast.

If he doesn`t ease up on the gas pedal within 10 seconds, the warning gets nastier. That`s when Evans`s souped-up "event data recorder" snitches on him. It will note the speeding incident, along with other dangerous driving behaviors, in a computer file.

"Most people`s first response is, `I don`t want this in my car! It`s an invasion!` But that all changes," says the Thousand Oaks, Calif., teenager. After 15 months of driving under close scrutiny of the black box, he is convinced he`s a better driver.

Road Safety International, a Thousand Oaks firm that has sold 10,000 of its professional-grade recorders to paramedic, police and firefighter fleets, designed the cheaper consumer model that Evans is test-driving specifically for parents to install in their teenagers` cars. The modular components record data, such as seat-belt use, speed, hard braking, hard cornering, pedal-to-metal acceleration and throttle position, that can be uploaded to home computers using software that analyzes driving performance.

Sound futuristic? The $280 RS-1000 black box went on sale yesterday after RSI`s owner, Larry Selditz, unveiled it at the National Safety Council`s conference in Chicago.

But that`s only the beginning: In three months, an under-$200 global positioning system accessory will be available to record where the car goes, "like bread crumbs on a road map," says Selditz. Next year, the communications module will allow parents to locate their teen drivers on an online map in real time.

"If my son says he`s going to a friend`s house to study tonight and he ends up going to the beach, I`m going to see that. If he speeds to the beach, I`m going to see that, too," says Selditz, who had the idea for the device when his son neared driving age.

"We`re not trying to make their life miserable, and I won`t tell you that they love it," he says. "But it really does change driving behaviors."

Selditz`s projects are an advancement on the not-so-new factory-installed event data recorders (EDRs) that are now standard equipment in an estimated 25 million to 40 million automobiles in this country.

But those devices, probably one of the auto industry`s most open secrets, are becoming the focus of privacy debates. Those questions are growing as law enforcement officials make greater use of the recorders in crash investigations and carmakers use their data as self defense against consumer allegations about poor-performing vehicles.

Until recently, however, few Americans even knew cars were equipped with the devices. A 2002 survey by the Insurance Research Council found that two-thirds of car buyers didn`t have a clue about the data recorders.

"People say, `What black box?` " says Susan Ferguson, senior vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the "crash-test dummy" group based in Arlington.

Rep. William Janklow`s high-profile manslaughter case changed that last month, when authorities pulled the EDR from the South Dakota Republican`s 1995 Cadillac, searching for information from the crash that killed a motorcyclist.

"EDRs in cars do not record conversation or long periods of time" -- as do the so-called "black boxes" on planes -- "only a snapshot of technical data of the car`s operation in the seconds prior to collision," says General Motors spokesman Jim Schell, adding that the device in Janklow`s car is too early a model to provide evidence to investigators.

GM, a leader in EDR technology, has been installing the nondescript silver devices in its air-bag-equipped vehicles since 1974. The brains that fire air bags at the right moment, those first EDRs also recorded minimal data in crashes to help auto engineers and safety experts analyze bag deployment. Starting with its 2000-year vehicles, GM tweaked its recorders to capture even more data, during the five or six seconds before a crash. The enhanced EDRs are now installed in all GM models.

Other carmakers install EDRs, too, but they emphasize that their systems collect less data than does GM`s. Ford Motor Co. has EDRs in all cars, light trucks and SUVs manufactured in North America since the 2002 model year.

Toyota reportedly is testing enhanced EDRs. Saab, a unit of GM, started installing enhanced EDRs midway in its 2003 U.S. model production.

Carmakers don`t talk much about EDRs, though GM, for example, has included information about the system in its owner`s manuals since 1994 and plans to expand the section for its 2004 cars. Manufacturers say they worry that some owners might try to disconnect the EDRs, damaging a car`s air bag system and breaking laws against tampering with car safety equipment.

Mercedes spokesman Fred Heiler says the company has developed super-EDR technology "sitting on the shelf. But we have made a corporate decision not to put it into our cars until government and society figure out what they`re going to do with this information."

The EDR is something of a Pandora`s box, where law enforcement, industry interests and privacy issues can be at odds.

Law enforcement and lawyers like EDR data because it can be even more telling than skid marks or car body damage. A Florida case last May could prove to be a benchmark. Recorder data showed Edwin Matos was traveling 114 mph when his Pontiac Firebird struck two teenage girls. Matos was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in their deaths.

"It is a powerful tool that`s going to be used in criminal investigations in traffic homicide cases," says Michael Horowitz, the prosecutor in that case.

In Maryland, Montgomery County State`s Attorney Douglas F. Gansler plans to introduce EDR evidence next month in the state`s first hit-and-run case tried as a felony. "It has been used so rarely in criminal cases because when you have that kind of information, it very often leads to a plea," Gansler says.

Dave McAllister, who heads the Virginia Crash Investigation Team based at Virginia Commonwealth University, says his organization is releasing a report this week on the validity of EDR data in 20 deadly accidents in the state.

"The bottom line is the validity of the data captured in the EDR is highly accurate," especially when combined with physical evidence at the crash scene, McAllister says.

As a result of the study, all Virginia State Police now have the hardware to download EDR data.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration currently is considering a petition to require the enhanced EDR systems in all vehicles.

"If we don`t have good data, we don`t have good rules and programs," NHTSA Administrator Jeff Runge says, mentioning the potential for additional recorder capabilities, such as automatic crash location notification. "It would be very useful if all the EDRs captured that."

But that kind of thinking sets off warning alarms for privacy advocates. They worry that EDRs are just another entry in the network of monitoring technology that is intruding on everyday life -- from supermarket discount cards that track customer grocery-buying habits, to home computers that store records of every Web site visited, to speed-trap cameras.

Privacy advocate Stephen Keating is also troubled by the lack of disclosure about EDRs in cars. "The deployment of technology this widespread without any notice given to car owners puts [drivers] in a tough spot," says Keating, the executive director of the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based research group.

Legal standing is another problem, he says. "If someone`s in an accident, does the data belong to the driver? The insurance company? Law enforcement? The automaker? They`re all going to want to get a piece of this action."

GM, for example, has used recorder data in legal battles and won. In a case decided a year ago in Illinois, Danielle Bachman sued GM, saying that when an airbag in her Chevrolet deployed improperly she crashed into a delivery van. Using EDR data, the company proved that the bag deployed on impact.

Spokesman Schell emphasizes, however, that GM`s policy is to get owner permission to extract EDR data. "The only other way that data can be extracted is through a court order."

Julie Rochman, spokesperson for the American Insurance Association, says insurance companies aren`t drooling over EDR data, as some skeptics suggest. "We don`t have access to the data. There is no magic cable that insurers can just plug in and download it," she says.

A California bill, approved unanimously by the legislature and now awaiting Gov. Gray Davis`s signature, would require carmakers to disclose that their vehicles have recorders and what data they track. It also would clarify that EDR data belongs to vehicle owners and can be accessed only with owner permission, by court order, or for safety research in which owners are anonymous.

"With any type of new technology, people start to imagine where is this all heading," Schell says.

But that`s exactly what people should be imagining, says Lee Tien, the senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group.

He raises concerns that EDRs could be developed to gather driver location records or track car movement just as "enhanced 911" enables authorities to locate wireless callers.

"The EDRs will get a lot more Orwellian than they are now," Tien says. "This is not something that`s 20 years off. This is very much a near-term thing."



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Rivals Criticize Dean For Mideast Comment


By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A02


Howard Dean came under fire yesterday from two rivals for the Democratic nomination for saying the United States should not "take sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Five days after Dean told supporters in New Mexico that "it`s not our place to take sides" in the conflict, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) accused him of advocating a "major break" from the United States` long-standing policy of explicitly siding with Israel in the Middle East.

"If this is a well-thought-out position, it`s a mistake, and a major break from a half a century of American foreign policy," Lieberman said in a statement. "If it`s not, it`s very important for Howard Dean, as a candidate for president, to think before he talks."

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said: "It is either because he lacks the foreign policy experience or simply because he is wrong that governor Dean has proposed a radical shift in United States policy towards the Middle East. If the president were to make a remark such as this it would throw an already volatile region into even more turmoil."

In an interview, Dean sought to clarify his statement but did not back down from his belief that the United State cannot negotiate peace unless it is seen as a neutral party in the region. "Israel has always been a longtime ally with a special relationship with the United States, but if we are going to bargain by being in the middle of the negotiations then we are going to have to take an evenhanded role," he said.

SUFor more than 50 years, the United States has backed Israel as its closest ally in the region, providing the Jewish state with billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid. Dean does not advocate breaking the U.S.-Israeli alliance, but believes the only way to bring peace to the Middle East is for the president to broker a deal without playing favorites. A top Dean adviser said the former Vermont governor is doing nothing different from what President Bill Clinton did when he reached out to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians as a path to peace.

Several Democrats predicted Dean would pay a political price for his remarks. Democratic candidates receive a significant amount of money and support from the Jewish community. It would be hard for any Democrat considered unsympathetic toward Israel by Jewish leaders to win the nomination, several party strategists said.

Dean believes his rivals are trying to slow his surge by manufacturing a "divisive issue." He specifically struck back at Lieberman, who is emerging as Dean`s harshest critic on the campaign trail. "For Joe to raise this as a divisive issue in the Democratic Party is a major error on his part," he said. "I am deeply disappointed in him."

The Dean-Lieberman spat comes only days after the Connecticut senator warned of an impending "Dean depression" if the country were to follow Dean`s trade policies.



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In Kabul, the image of Afghan rebel commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated two years ago, continues to dominate the political landscape

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Afghans` Goals Facing Renewed Threats
Worsening Security Could Undercut Progress Toward Democracy, Reconstruction

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A09


KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 8 -- Two years after the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary guerrilla leader who fought Soviet occupation forces and Taliban rule, Afghans fear time may be running out to achieve Massoud`s dream of a unified, democratic and moderate Muslim nation.

While slow but steady progress has been made toward holding national elections, revamping the security forces and reviving the war-ruined economy, Afghans and foreign observers say deteriorating security conditions -- including crime, regional warlordism and the recent emergence of Taliban guerrilla forces based along the Pakistani border -- are threatening to sabotage the country`s recovery.

Massoud, an intellectual and military commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, by two men posing as journalists. After the Taliban was overthrown in a U.S.-led invasion, Massoud`s image dominated the political landscape on posters and billboards.

"If Ahmed Shah Massoud were alive, he would want elections, the rule of law and no foreign intervention," Massood Khalili, a former close aide to Massoud, declared at a memorial conference Sunday. Another speaker pointedly added, "The time has come to move from the politics of individuals to the politics of institutions."

Gains and Losses


On paper, and to some extent in practice, Afghanistan has moved gradually toward those goals over the last year. Work on a draft constitution is nearing completion despite time-consuming disagreements over how Islamic or secular the text should be. A national ratifying assembly is expected to be held in December, and national elections are still slated for sometime late next year.

The building of a new, multiethnic national police force and army is well underway, though progress has been painfully slow. Reforms in the Defense Ministry, the most powerful stronghold of Massoud`s former militia associates, are finally taking shape, with new professional standards to be instituted and 22 top officials to be replaced through a competitive nationwide search.

Visible strides have been made in economic reconstruction and investment, though most major projects are being funded by foreign aid. Hotels and restaurants have opened all over Kabul, public buildings are being refurbished, some roads are under repair and tiled mansions have sprouted in affluent districts. Inflation is low, the currency is stable and commerce is booming.

Yet the growing threat of political violence and criminal lawlessness, some of it linked to Islamic radicals, has dominated recent news here and raised fears that after two decades of conflict and five years of repressive Taliban rule, precious momentum for change may be slipping from President Hamid Karzai`s U.S.-backed coalition government.

"Security has been the real disappointment, and we are far, far behind. The state can exist without a lot of things, but it cannot exist without a professional military, police and justice system," said Anwar Ahady, the central bank governor, whose outlook on the economy and other aspects of Afghan recovery is far more optimistic.

In the past year there have been dozens of attacks on foreign aid facilities, killings of several aid workers, bombings of civilian buses and military jeeps, reports of rampant police abuse and government corruption, a rapid revival of opium poppy cultivation, the virtual paralysis of a program to disarm and demobilize private armies, and determined resistance to central authority by several powerful regional militia bosses.

Despite the presence of 8,500 U.S. combat troops and a multinational peacekeeping force in the capital, an aggressive and organized guerrilla force has become active during the past two months in areas close to the border with Pakistan.

The guerrillas, who occupied a mountainous region of Zabol province for nearly two weeks, are led by members of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. They have been joined by others, including a militia led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan minister who turned against the Karzai government and has been on the run for several years. Last week, Taliban spokesmen said their fighters now also include followers of Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, another Islamic militia leader, and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, said he was deeply concerned that the growing lack of security could jeopardize the democratic political process mandated under a U.N.-sponsored pact after the fall of the Taliban in November 2001. In a report to the U.N. Security Council last month, Brahimi dismissed elections here as useless without a safer environment and stronger government institutions.

"We have come out of our naive belief that elections are a magic cure for all ills," he said in an interview here last week. "People need security -- not just a lack of shooting, but no one telling them how they should vote, or else. . . . If we really want to help countries in transition, what they need first is the rule of law."

Opposing Threats


Ironically, Afghanistan`s peace is now under threat from two adversarial forces. One is the revived Taliban militia and its Pakistan-based allies. The other comprises Islamic groups that once fought the Taliban but may now have an equal stake in disrupting the political and security reforms that stand to exclude them from power.

The use of Pakistan as a launching pad by renegade forces has also raised the specter of an old threat that obsesses and unnerves many Afghans. While Pakistani authorities insist they are trying to curb cross-border terrorism, many Afghans have long viewed Pakistani interference as the source of all their ills, including the Taliban movement that was spawned in Pakistani religious schools.

In recent weeks, U.S. forces have conducted several major combat operations and sustained bombing raids in rugged, hilly border areas, and U.S. military officials have reported killing as many as 200 enemy fighters and successfully forcing the rest into retreat. On Sunday, President Bush promised to seek billions of dollars in new military aid to combat terrorism in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but efforts to reform or co-opt regional Afghan militias have taken a back seat to other U.S. priorities. And while the recent takeover of peacekeeping leadership here by NATO has raised Afghan hopes for a more aggressive international military presence, no foreign nations have been willing to take on an expanded security role outside the relative safety of the capital.

"They need to go out and collect every single gun. Only then will people feel secure," said Sarwad Borak, 55, a white-spattered painter who was working on a new traffic police booth at a busy urban intersection. "We have security in Kabul, but not as soon as you reach the outskirts," he added. "Where they are no international forces, there is no security."

Massoud`s former militia allies, the ethnic Tajik coterie from his base in the Panjshir Valley, have long dominated power in Afghan security ministries, wielding his name as an iconic cudgel to resist political and military reform sought by the United States, the United Nations and Karzai.

Despite lingering public skepticism, the Tajiks insist they have now become part of the solution and fully support the institutional modernization they resisted in the early stages of post-Taliban rule.

Gen. Mir Jan, Defense Ministry spokesman, said the institution has every intention of professionalizing its standards, though he cautioned that change is much harder to introduce in the countryside, where militia leaders have run fiefdoms for years.

"We can`t ignore the fact that for 25 years there was no law. The commanders were the authorities and each had his own kingdom," Jan said. "The stronger the central government can become, the weaker the local powers will become, but we must move slowly and be mindful of traditions."

`Between Fear and Hope`


Karzai, who commands no military muscle of his own and is protected by a force of U.S. commandos, has tried to use diplomacy and deal-making as peacemaking tools, with mixed results. One notable success was his recent removal of a thuggish provincial governor, who now sits in Kabul as a minor cabinet minister.

Karzai`s public efforts to distinguish between "good" and "bad" Taliban members, and perhaps woo some of the group`s former leaders into the government fold, backfired badly with the public. While the president remains a popular figure, many foreign and Afghan observers privately say they have been increasingly disappointed with his indecisive leadership.

As Afghanistan prepares to move toward its first democratic elections, anti-democratic and radical Islamic groups -- both those in hiding and those in public political life -- are becoming bolder in their challenges to a progressive but weak central government that still suffers from what Brahimi called the "original sin" of having been hastily cobbled together in an international, post-9/11 panic nearly two years ago.

"There is a great danger that we will have elections, but that the fundamentalist forces will mobilize and there will be no space or security climate for alternative views," said Vikram Parekh, an Afghan specialist with the nonprofit International Crisis Group.

While few Afghans or foreign observers believe the Taliban could manage a return to power, the movement`s recent surge of guerrilla activity has come as one more blow to an uncertain, war-weary nation that already has more than enough to worry about -- from absorbing millions of returning refugees to curbing the power of local warlords and finding the right balance between Islamic traditions and modern, liberal values.

"People are living between fear and hope," said Khalili. "The hope is that we have a government, we have international support, we have a road map of reconstruction that has started. The fear is that we see the emergence of an enemy that six months ago everyone thought was completely broken. Maybe people`s hopes were too high before," he added, "but they are much less now."



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Homemade Bombs Bedevil Troops


By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A12


BAGHDAD, Sept. 8 -- The weapons are homemade, cobbled together from artillery shells or other munitions, and hidden in such things as a clump of dirt, a soda can or a dead animal. According to military officials, they are usually planted at night and detonated during the day, often by remote control.

They are roadside bombs, known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Well suited to the disorder of postwar Iraq, they have killed 16 U.S. soldiers since July. The bombs have also killed one British soldier, an Iraqi interpreter working with Americans and a woman standing near U.S. troops.

Thirty U.S. soldiers have been wounded by such devices, including two today in central Baghdad. The soldiers were in a convoy traveling through a cavernous three-lane underpass this morning when a bomb was detonated by remote control, military officials said.

"That`s the terrorism part of the device," said Lt. Col. Tim Everhard, commander of the 3rd Ordnance Battalion, which is housed at Baghdad`s international airport and specializes in explosive removal. "That`s the key: that you don`t know where it is or when he is going to use it."

Hours after today`s explosion at Al Tayaran Square -- in which the military vehicles overturned and caught fire, military officials said -- fresh blood stained the pavement and hundreds of men craned over a railing to gawk. Inside the tunnel, the blast left craters on the walls that suggested the Moon`s surface.

Groups of men and boys clustered around the damage, some gloating with happiness. Thamir Mukhlif, 40, welcomed the attack.

"It is an honorable action. They try to resist the occupation," said Mukhlif, who is unemployed and was visiting from Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad where Iraqis and American troops have clashed several times. "Americans did nothing for us. Now they block the roads, but they do not secure the country."

Hussein Abboud, 18, said when he sees a soldier`s blood, "I feel happy, I feel it is an honest resistance."

For decades, weapons have been a part of Iraqi culture. When Saddam Hussein was president, his government encouraged citizens to store arms in their homes. Open-air weapons markets were common. When Hussein`s government fell in April, the plethora of guns and explosives became an enormous problem for occupation forces.

Members of the 3rd Ordnance Battalion say that when they first came to Iraq, they were busy trying to eliminate rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, which were used frequently against the occupation forces. Now roadside bombs, which have proved more deadly, have become the favored type of resistance. "We have seen a level of sophistication," said Maj. Leland Browning, the battalion`s operations officer.

So far, most roadside bombs have been detonated by a tripwire connected to a blasting cap, soldiers say. But remote-controlled devices have become increasingly common, often triggered with a car alarm or garage-door opener -- almost anything that gives off an electronic signal.

One busy July day in Baghdad illustrated the ubiquity of such bombs and the danger they pose.

Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division found an unexploded bomb outside their detention center, made from three pounds of plastic explosive with a timer. Later, an unidentified Iraqi man dropped off a black bag containing a bomb with a timing device near a unit of the 4th Infantry Division. An ordnance team neutralized it. And a 1st Armored Division patrol found and neutralized a bomb fashioned from a fragmentation grenade inside a plastic container of gasoline.

"There`s way too much access to munitions throughout the country," Everhard said.

Military officials say their ability to combat roadside bombs depends on tips from Iraqis on where bombs have been planted or where weapons warehouses are located.

"What we really need here is intelligence to take on where these people are acting and where they`re hiding from so we can conduct raids with speed and make sure it is secure," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground troops here, said in a recent interview.

Omar Khaudhairi, an Iraqi police official, said the American soldiers could reduce the risk posed by roadside bombs if they simply altered their daily routines.

"The problem with Americans is that they have the shift system, and it is known all over Iraq now," he said. "These soldiers, they use the same roads and they have to withdraw.

"It`s impossible that Country Number One doesn`t know that," he marveled. "They have to change this."



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Amid Iraq Policy Shift, Refusal to Admit Change Is a Constant


By Dana Milbank

Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A21


When President Bush last week decided to reverse course and seek a U.N. resolution giving the international body a greater role in Iraq, officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon marched forth with one familiar message: nothing new here.

"This is a continuation of what we have been doing," Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said from the podium.

"This isn`t anything new; there`s no big news story here," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld repeated.

"The president has said this from the very beginning," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell noted.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught the world that, because things are always changing, "we cannot step twice into the same river." Now, in the 21st century, the Bush administration is turning poor Heraclitus on his head with a firm belief that, regardless of appearance, Bush never changes. This bit of metaphysics, while creative, has a flaw: Transcripts of officials` earlier remarks indicate their views are not as pure as advertised.

Consider this argument, made last week by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz after Bush decided to offer to cede some power to the United Nations. "Let`s take specifically this issue of the U.N. resolution that didn`t sort of emerge out of nowhere a few days ago," he said. "It`s been on our agenda ever since the fall of Baghdad -- understanding that we wanted to bring in more international troops and part of that plan is going to try to get U.N. support."

Five months earlier, Wolfowitz struck a different tone. "I think what we are trying to avoid is a situation that we have seen in other places in the world where Iraq might become a sort of permanent ward of the international community," he said April 10. Though he welcomed U.N. humanitarian assistance, "it can`t be the managing partner. It can`t be in charge. . . . We don`t want to reproduce a Bosnia model, or a Kosovo model, or an East Timor model."

That humanitarian-only role for the United Nations does not sound like the proposal Powell outlined last week when he touted the new resolution. "With the resolution, you`re essentially putting the Security Council into the game," he said. "And the very fact that the [Iraqi] Governing Council is the body being invited by the Security Council to report to the Security Council on its plans . . . shows the involvement of the Security Council." Even the U.S. military command would "report on a regular basis to the United Nations," Powell said.

That`s not what Powell said April 9, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "The suggestion," he said, "that now that the coalition has done all of this and liberated Iraq, thank you very much, step aside and the Security Council is now going to become responsible for everything, is incorrect. And they know it. And they were told it." Powell added: "We believe that the coalition, having invested this political capital and life and treasure into this enterprise, we are going to have a leading role for some time as we shape this process."

Long before the Iraq war, the Bush administration presented its foreign policy as unwavering on subjects ranging from Middle East involvement to the "One China" policy to arms pacts with Russia. But now, with a highly visible shift on the United Nations, the administration has to contend with more of a paper trail as it tries to argue that nothing has changed.

Rumsfeld, for example, said there had been "no change in my position at all" when asked about the decision to go for a new U.N. resolution. In fact, in May, Rumsfeld cast doubt on the idea of approaching the United Nations, saying "certainly that`s a minority" of countries requiring a resolution to send troops. As recently as Aug. 25, Rumsfeld seemed dismissive of the whole notion. "[W]hat is the likelihood of our forces serving under a blue-hatted United Nations leadership?" he asked. "I think that`s not going to happen." Continuing, he said there are "important places and roles that could be played by United Nations forces," but he mentioned Liberia, not Iraq.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, like her colleagues, had little use for the United Nations back in April. "It shouldn`t be surprising to anyone that given what we`ve gone through and what we`re now going through, that the coalition will have the lead role," she said when asked about U.N. involvement. Though welcoming U.N. help, she rejected the models of previous U.N. efforts. "I would just caution that Iraq is not East Timor, or Kosovo, or Afghanistan," she said.

When asked last week about previous models such as East Timor, Rumsfeld was significantly more sanguine than Rice had been in the spring. "You know, there must be a dozen U.N. models that exist, and they run the gamut across the spectrum," he said. "We`ll end up with a model that will be acceptable to everybody."

Heraclitus might have called that a change. Not Rummy. "It`s a continuum from Day One," he said last week. "In fact, before Day One."

The Bush administration had a major-league case of potty mouth last week. Rumsfeld, reacting to an unfavorable Washington Post report, told reporters the story was "horse [bad word]." Retired Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a State Department consultant, said it was not surprising that U.S. forces prevailed in Iraq in the March-April war. "Ohio State beat Slippery Rock, 62 to nothing -- no [same bad word]," he said. Finally, White House press secretary Scott McClellan, at a White House briefing Friday, realized he was late for a meeting and said, "Oh, [that word again]." Reminded that he was on the record, McClellan replied, "I said `shoot.` "



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Without a Map




Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A22


BUSH ADMINISTRATION officials seem to hope that they can avoid accepting the collapse of the latest Israeli-Palestinian peace process simply by declaring it still alive. "The road map is still there," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisted Sunday. "What are the alternatives?" Sadly, those alternatives are very real -- and hard-liners on both sides are rushing to demonstrate them. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat smugly presides over the selection of a new prime minister after forcing the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Palestinian efforts to end violence and renew negotiations with Israel; Mr. Arafat believes his coup will compel Israel and the United States to deal with him once again. Israel, meanwhile, launches daily assassination operations against leaders of the extremist group Hamas; if the inevitable retaliatory suicide bombers succeed, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will again demand that the Bush administration agree to Israel`s expulsion of Mr. Arafat, a step that could bring about the final collapse of the Palestinian Authority. After several months of relative calm, Israelis and Palestinians now face the prospect of another thunderous eruption of violence, one that will further complicate the Bush administration`s effort to stabilize Iraq and build an international coalition in the Middle East.

Could the administration have avoided this reverse? Perhaps not. Though supported by President Bush in recent months, the "road map" may have been doomed from the beginning by the problem of Mr. Arafat. It is obvious that he will never renounce violence against Israel or agree to a final peace settlement with a Jewish state. And pro-peace Palestinian leaders such as Mr. Abbas are not yet strong enough to sideline him. Much of this summer`s diplomacy was aimed at bolstering the Palestinian moderates -- but little was done. Rather than embrace the strategy, Mr. Sharon took only small steps, just enough to avoid trouble with Mr. Bush; once again Mr. Sharon failed to take any significant action against Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

Mr. Abbas did little to encourage Israeli confidence in him. Though he forthrightly denounced terrorism, he shrank from the job of dismantling the terrorist cells of Hamas and other extremist groups. Instead, he lapsed into the familiar Palestinian strategy of demanding that Washington pressure Israel. Mr. Bush soon found himself thrust into the role of broker between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas -- and he failed to budge either side. A U.S. monitoring team diligently compiled a weekly report on each side`s noncompliance with the road map -- but the White House timidly declined to publicize it.

The administration seeks to salvage the situation by hinting that progress is still possible if the next Palestinian prime minister shares Mr. Abbas`s agenda and succeeds in gaining control over Mr. Arafat`s multiple security forces. The unlikelihood of this was underscored by the unrealistic conditions Mr. Arafat`s latest choice sought to put on U.S. diplomacy yesterday. Progress could only be made if Mr. Arafat were induced by concerted international pressure to yield the power he just consolidated, and if Mr. Sharon were persuaded to suspend the all-out war against Hamas he just launched. If this is not possible, the Bush administration at least ought to draw a lesson from the summer`s events: A successful peace process will require bolder and more forceful action than any of the parties -- including Mr. Bush -- have so far been willing to take.




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Whose Sacrifice?


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A23


President Bush`s address on Iraq was unpersuasive because he asked nothing of himself.

Consider these two sentences. "Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there, and there they must be defeated," Bush declared. "This will take time and require sacrifice."

Well, yes. But at no point in the speech did the president explain who would do the sacrificing except, of course, our troops on the ground.

With his postwar plans in tatters, Bush might at least have offered a wink or a nod to the fact that he did nothing to prepare Americans for the full cost of this enterprise -- perhaps because being too explicit too early about the burdens might have made it harder to pass his dividends tax cut. He couldn`t have that.

He might have sacrificed a bit by acknowledging that all the optimistic predictions that emanated from his administration -- that American troops would be treated as liberators and all that -- made this enterprise look a lot easier than it turned out to be. Was this just a big bait-and-switch operation? First persuade Americans to fight the war by minimizing the costs. Then, once we`re there, argue that we can`t cut and run and demand $87 billion in new spending, and who knows how much more later.

Let`s remember that the administration is on the record as predicting the opposite of the long struggle in Iraq that was the theme of Bush`s Sunday speech. On March 24 an administration spokesman justified the request for more than $70 billion to cover the costs of the war for the next six months with the prediction of "a period of stabilization in Iraq, and the phased withdrawal of a large number of American forces within that six-month window." Oops.

The same official spokesman said that there was still hope of "substantial international participation in the stabilization and the reconstruction of Iraq."

That was wrong too, and Bush was warned before the war that such aid was unlikely to materialize in the absence of United Nations support for the initial invasion. On March 12 Chris Patten, the European Union`s external relations commissioner, predicted correctly: "It will be that much more difficult for the EU to cooperate fully and on a large scale . . . in the longer-term reconstruction process if events unfold without proper U.N. cover and if the member states remain divided."

Yet the president who is now paying a price for ignoring the United Nations is the same president who mocked those Democrats who were wary of going to war without full U.N. support. On Sept. 13, 2002 -- before the midterm elections -- Bush characterized such Democrats as saying: "I think I`m going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision." Bush went on: "If I were running for office, I`m not sure how I`d explain to the American people -- say, `vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I`m going to wait for somebody else to act.` "

Sorry, Mr. President. You can`t politicize a national security argument before an election and then just assume that people will believe you are leveling with them now -- especially if you don`t level with them on how we got into this fix.

But most astonishing is the fact that Bush can ask for an additional $87 billion without explaining who will make those "sacrifices" he talked about. Who will pay?

Congress will give Bush most of what he wants eventually because the United States can`t afford to walk away from Iraq now. But Congress has a responsibility to withhold the money -- that includes voting "no" if necessary -- until Bush shows how he will cover the costs of his policies.

The fiscal burden for this war does not have to be piled onto future generations. And it should not be borne by Americans most in need, the ones who would suffer from the budget cuts that bigger deficits would inevitably bring on. It`s now obvious that the country cannot afford huge expenditures for war and reconstruction along with continued outsized tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

If Bush wants us to believe that this war is as important as he says it is, he needs to ask something from himself and something from Americans who can most afford it. That means rescinding some of his tax cuts for the most well-off even if his campaign contributors squawk. If Bush and his friends aren`t willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, they abandon the right to ask sacrifices from of the rest of us.

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Gen. Clark`s Critique


By David Ignatius

Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A23


GENEVA -- How do you say "I told you so" without sounding like you`re saying "I told you so"? That is the conundrum facing the Democratic presidential race`s leading non-candidate, Wesley Clark.

"Everything I said about Iraq has turned out to be correct," the retired Army general averred in a telephone interview several days ago. He rattled off the concerns he voiced before the invasion: Iraq didn`t pose an imminent threat to the United States; it wasn`t directly linked to the war on terrorism; an invasion might make the terrorism problem worse; there wasn`t an international coalition supporting the war; America had other ways to contain Saddam Hussein.

"This has been a root canal," Clark says of the Iraq campaign. And he warns that the worst may lie ahead: "You could have a catastrophic unwinding of this at virtually any time."

So, are the Bush administration`s troubles in Iraq a boost for Democratic critics of the war such as Clark? Right now it certainly seems so. In last week`s debate the Democratic candidates were lining up to denounce what they branded a failed policy. And Bush`s somber speech on Iraq Sunday night was all tunnel and no light.

Yet I suspect Iraq will prove to be a trickier topic for the Democrats over the long run. It`s easy now, looking in the rear-view mirror, to criticize the administration`s errors. But in doing so, the Democrats risk sounding like second-guessers at a time when American troops are still dying in Iraq. And being articulate is no guarantee of public support. Just ask Al Gore.

Bush can answer critics that he went to war believing that it would protect American security and liberate a desperately oppressed people. He had plenty of company in thinking that was the right course -- including me and many other pundits.

The Democrats` larger problem is that Iraq is now their war, too, since they mostly agree it would be disastrous for the United States to cut and run. Their critique of Bush doesn`t answer the question of how to exit Iraq in a way that protects U.S. national interests and keeps faith with the Iraqi people.

It is in these delicate areas that Clark may have a special advantage if he decides to run. Indeed, but for the Iraq factor, the politically inexperienced Clark wouldn`t merit serious attention.

On the big issue, Clark has the right stuff. He has commanded troops in battle and he won a decisive victory in his war -- the 1999 NATO campaign in Kosovo. He also stuck his neck out in criticizing planning for the Iraq invasion at a time when many Democrats were running for cover.

Clark`s critique of the war touches all the now-obvious points: Because it deployed a thin force and couldn`t invade through Turkey, the United States "trickled in, especially from the north and west" and didn`t take decisive control of Saddam Hussein`s strongholds. Worse, it failed to prepare seriously for postwar occupation, bungling what Clark says were obvious tasks:

"Where was the radio network that could have allowed the U.S. to communicate with the Iraqi people? Where were the thousands of Arab Americans ready to translate? Where were the trained Iraqi judges? Where was a new, mobile Iraqi police force that could have kept order? Where were the economic-development programs with contractors ready to go?"

They`re all good questions, but that`s not what makes Clark an interesting candidate. It`s the fact that, like Dwight Eisenhower talking about Korea in 1952, the retired general can argue that he`s the man to get America honorably out of a war others created.

A final reason to pay attention to Clark`s version of "I told you so" is that it`s linked to a broader analysis. He will argue in a book to be published next month that the administration showed "a fundamental misunderstanding of modern war." By rushing into battle, it lost the biggest advantage of American power, which is "the incredible leverage to bring other allies on board to help us."

Bush`s mistake, he argues, was not in overestimating U.S. power but in underestimating it. Rather than alienating allies by crowing about America`s new empire, the administration should have understood that "we already have a virtual empire," Clark says. The power of that virtual empire lies in America`s inescapable dominance of the global economy and the international organizations that underpin it.

Charles Peters, founder of The Washington Monthly, used to run cheeky advertisements for his neoliberal magazine challenging prospective readers: "If you`re not afraid of being right too soon." In a few days, a similar claim of prescience may become a theme of a Clark presidential campaign.

[e-mail]



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Wie Mr.Bush die UN einlädt zu einer Urlaubsreise in den Irak, so biete ich 74 mal frische Toons.
The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute wieder aus gegebenen Anlass mit IQ-Warnung für Nannsen, Schill und Co.
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/20030908__074toons.htm

[Joerver]

+++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For Immediate Release - Office of the Press Secretary - September 7, 2003 - 8:30 P.M. (EST)


PRESIDENT`S ADDRESS TO THE NATION: AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON THAT MEGA-SCARY TERROR STUFF THAT MAKES A HEMORRHAGING TREASURY & PANDEMIC UNEMPLOYMENT SEEM TOTALLY SNORESVILLE
Televised Address to the American People

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, America. Thank you for letting me interrupt your Sunday night TV advertising and Hungry Man Salisbury Steak buffets to talk at you about something dear to my heart: money, and its reallocation into my buddies` pocketbooks. Now, I want you all to stare into my steely peepers and have a good listen while I ramble on about – what else? – September 11th, terrorism, and that sweetheart hugga-bear abstraction called "freedom" – ad nauseum references to which deflect political bullets almost as good as a custom-made kevlar Stetson.

You know it`s hard to believe it`s been over four whole months since I appeared on the USS Lincoln and told everyone how Iraq is now our bitch. Well as we all know, bitches can get real ornery, especially when you don`t blow your whole paycheck and max out your VISA card on them. That`s why today, despite the fact that almost one in ten Americans is unemployed and we`ve got a fiscal China Syndrome going down at the Treasury Building, it`s my pleasure to announce a plan to mollify Lady Iraq by tossing her a teeny-tiny bit of bling-bling.

$87 Billion dollars. It`s a noble expenditure of mere pocket change – and it`s all for Iraq. Of course, in around six months, I`ll need to adjust that figure upward to $140 Billion or so, but for now, just stay focused on the paltry $87 Billion, which Halliburton will burn through while repeatedly patching up all that stuff we used to bomb over there, but now the Iraqazoids like bombing themselves.

Now before any Democrats start screaming about how American schools and roads and electricity grids are crumbling too, let me just say... "Freedom." Freedom, freedom, FREEDOM! And if I don`t blow this wad of cash into the non-quagmire vortex of post-Saddam Iraq, every last American will cease to know freedom. Indeed, we will all wake up one morning, and when we go to slip into our Freedom Levis and star-spangled Reebok cross-trainers, sabre-weilding Mullahs will materialize out of thin air and force our sweet blue-eyed families to wear table cloths and camel leather sandals.

$87 Billion Dollars. $87 Billion American Dollars. $87 Billion American Dollars which just miraculously pour in the United States` coffers without so much as a single tax being levied – especially not against our beleaguered millionaire class and long-persecuted multinational corporate conglomerates.

But back to September 11th. I`m pleased to hear that 70% of you are so piss-ignorant that you continue to think that has anything to do with Iraq. That`s why polls keep indicating that Americans are so gosh-darned PSYCHED about how we are KICKING SUCH MAJOR ASS. Because – all those dead American teenage GIs notwithstanding – we`re winning BIG over there! In fact, according to the geopolitical wet dreams of my blue ribbon caste of well-manicured, droning neoconservative Think Tank golfing partners, we are right on course in Iraq. And in a few years, once we`ve bombed the entire Middle East back three hundred years, we can rebuild that entire hunk of the Earth from scratch. First thing we`ll do is expel all Semites and re-populate that gorgeous oil sponge of a non-continent with, I dunno, the peaceful, amiable Dutch!

Oh, and by the way, remember Afghanistan? That other dump we decimated and then walked away from a year and a half ago? Well, it seems there are nine weaseley Democratic candidates who have recently been traitorously impudent enough to point out what a failure that`s been, too. So I want to take a moment to just mention it – so it seems like I`m actually doing something over there. Afghanistan. Afff-GHAN-isss-TAN. So remember, you heard it here.

Have I mentioned September 11th yet? Probably not. Did you know it`s been just shy of two years since that terrible day which turned my Presidency around? And since then – thanks to me – there has not been a single instance of four planes being hijacked and flown into buildings. And so long as we keep noodling around in Iraq, that will continue to remain the case up until the very last moment before it happens again – at which point it will be Bill Clinton`s fault!

Thank you, and good night.

[Joerver]

I Love My Country. I Hate My President.

A BUZZFLASH SPECIAL GUEST COMMENTARY
by James C. Moore, Co-author of "Bush`s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W.Bush Presidential"

When President Nixon died, I was assigned to travel to California and report on the funeral for a group of television stations. Although Yorba Linda is beautiful, with the kind of appeal that has drawn millions to Southern California, I was not interested in being a journalist at the funeral. Sure, this was history, but I despised Richard Nixon. His lust for power, and his absolute distrust of the public, nearly destroyed our country’s Constitution.

I think God even had some feelings about Nixon. For the first time in Yorba Linda’s recorded history, hail fell, a half a foot in a few minutes, just before the eulogies were to begin. After our satellite trucks had been rattled, and our rental cars dented, the historical revisionists began to march to podium to try to find good things to say. Every man, of course, should have friends to speak of him at his passing. But they should speak the truth. Let the opinions of his enemies also be heard. None of Nixon’s was spoken for, and they were many and manifest, all across America.

Another reporter, knowing that I had come of age during the Vietnam and Watergate eras, asked me what I thought about the former president being gone. I tried to remain ambivalent. But it wasn’t easy.

"It’s not a good thing to be happy about someone else’s death," I told her. "But I certainly will not miss him. Nor do I think will our country. And I know a lot of very patriotic people who, if they were here, would ask to open the casket so they could drive a stake through his heart to make certain he was dead."

I gave into dark, tasteless humor. But it was true. Nixon had scared and angered people in a way no president before him ever had. I was not certain my country was going to survive his lies until I heard the reassuring timbre in Congresswoman Barbara Jordan’s voice as she said, "My faith in the Constitution is whole."

But I only despised Richard Nixon. I never hated him. I have never known what it is like to hate anyone. Until now.

Until George W. Bush became president.

I hate Mr. Bush and what he is doing to my country. I cannot believe the range of duplicities involved in his administration; the gratuitous lying to serve profit and political purpose. As the president lies about Iraq, lies about the economy, lies about the environment, lies about his tax cut, lies about the education bill, lies about the budget, lies about his real interests in Africa, lies about Halliburton; he is destroying the American public’s faith in the democratic process.

Mr. Bush has done things in my name, and yours, which repulse me. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s two sons needed to be brought to justice. But I was disgusted that my country gave sponsor to the notion of showing their dead faces on television, as though that might reassure the Iraqis. This was the modern international equivalent of brutal tribes placing their conquered foes heads on a spike in the town square. I despise the way Mr. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and all of the neo-cons, had developed a military plan that sent our brave soldiers to secure oil fields, rather than protecting the people of Iraq, the institutions of their culture and commerce, which Saddam Hussein had been misusing for decades.

The president, and his cynic-in-chief, Karl Rove, are using a manufactured war to keep Americans scared. And it is working. But I am ashamed that the president of my country would go back to the United Nations, the very organization he ignored when he launched the war, to ask for help in securing Iraq. Mr. Bush grew up in West Texas, where billboards dot the Permian Basin landscape with the message: "U.S. out of U.N." And because Rove wants to keep the fundamentalist right happy, Mr. Bush made clear that he would act without the imprimatur of the U.N. And now he has the audacity to seek its help.

I am repulsed by my president. He allowed the drums of war to get hammered over aluminum tubes, which were never meant for anything more deadly than the making of rockets. The whole notion of the tubes being part of the construction of a centrifuge had been refuted by several international organizations, including America’s own Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, fourteen months before the story was leaked to a compliant, lazy U.S. media. The tubes were for the construction of Medusa 81 rockets, an Italian-designed weapon. Everybody in the intelligence community knew it, and Rove and the White House Iraq Group sent down orders that government intelligence experts were to keep their mouths shut about dissenting information.

I am ashamed of the actions that my president has allowed to take place in our democracy. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife have spent most of their lives in service to our country. When he was asked by the State Department to check on claims that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger, Ambassador Wilson came back to report the documentation was completely fake. The White House ignored his intelligence and the president put the claim in his speech. Wilson, who has devoted his life to the truth, wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times, and not too many weeks later, discovered that columnist Robert Novak was revealing his wife’s name and her undercover responsibilities for the CIA. Novak has long been Karl Rove’s favorite leak.

During the presidential campaign, when reporters began talking about Mr. Bush’s time in the Texas National Guard, Rove suggested, "You guys shouldn’t make too much of a few missed meetings." A few days later, during a discussion of the issue on "CNN’s Crossfire," Novak told other commentators they were getting carried away over "a few missed meetings." He is Rove’s conservative hand puppet. By leaking Ambassador Wilson’s wife’s name to Novak, and by Novak writing a column about her, Karl Rove has committed treason, violated the National Security Act, and should be brought to justice, as surely and swiftly as Osama bin Laden ought to be. All of the undercover operatives Mrs. Wilson dealt with during her career overseas, many of them Americans, are now at risk of being killed by the arms dealers, who thought they were something other than CIA agents.

There are too many lies, too many transgressions to list. Richard Nixon, in a less cynical era, told only one. And we were all supremely affronted by what he did to our democracy.

George W. Bush, and Karl Rove, has told dozens, each one of them more damaging than lying about a break-in of a political headquarters. And yes, Bill Clinton lied. But nobody died. He told an all too common male lie about consensual sex. But he did not send the sons and daughters of America marching off to war wearing the boots of a well-told lie.

George W. Bush’s one term will mark a low point in our country’s history. But if we all pay closer attention, and vote, we can recover.

I love my country. But I hate my president.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Eine kleine technische Spielerei Johnson(Vietnam) gegen Bush(Irak)


http://www.meridianmultimedia.com/gwbaddress1_player.swf

[Joerver]

Thousands of US troops evacuated from Iraq for unexplained medical reasons
By James Conachy
9 September 2003

Citing the US military Central Command as its source, the Washington Post reported on September 2 that “more than 6,000 service members” had been medically evacuated from Iraq since the launch of the war. At the time, the number of combat wounded stood at 1,124. A further 301 personnel had been injured in non-combat incidents such as vehicle accidents. The figure of “more than 6,000” supplied to the Post therefore implies that over 4,500 US troops have required evacuation from Iraq for medical reasons other than combat or non-combat injuries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12096-2003Sep…
The Washington Post article did not include any further information on what is a staggering admission by the military. At no point in the last six months have the American people been told that for every soldier who has been killed in Iraq, at least another 15 have fallen so ill that they had to be flown back to the United States. The Post described the unexplained evacuations simply as the “thousands who became physically or mentally ill”.

The obvious questions that must be answered are: what were they diagnosed with; what units are they from; what duties were they were performing; what long-term effects have they suffered; and what treatment are they receiving?

While large numbers of the evacuations may well be for routine medical reasons, such a detailed breakdown is essential. Apart from providing an insight into the true impact of the war on the American troops, it may provide evidence that supports the concerns among military personnel and their families that service in Iraq is exposing them to long-term and potentially fatal medical problems. In particular, there are fears that soldiers have already died or are falling ill due to their exposure to depleted uranium (DU) or the anthrax vaccine they have been compelled to take.

On July 31, the Army Surgeon General announced an investigation into the deaths of two soldiers, Michael Tosta and Josh Neusche, and the hospitalisation of another 100, diagnosed with severe pneumonia. It has been established that inhaling large concentrations of DU-contaminated particles damages the lungs and kidneys and can cause respiratory illness. There are also recorded medical suspicions that the US military’s anthrax vaccine can trigger pneumonia. In August 2002, three military doctors noted in the Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care Journal that a case of pneumonia in a healthy 39-year-old soldier “may be due to the anthrax vaccine”.

The US Department of Defense has only made public one progress report on the pneumonia investigation. On August 22 it announced that it was “making significant progress” in eliminating SARS and vaccines as a possible cause. It revealed that 10 alleged pneumonia cases showed a higher than normal number of the white blood cell eosinophils. It also reported that none of the 19 most severe cases belonged to the same units, that 13 had fallen ill in Iraq and that the remaining six fell ill in Kuwait, Qatar, Uzbekistan, and Djibouti. The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner was reportedly investigating the “specific cause or causes of death” of Tosta and Neusche.

Since July 31, however, another soldier, Zeferino Colunga, has died allegedly from pneumonia while Sergeant Richard Eaton has died from a pulmonary edema or fluid in the lungs. Two other soldiers have been found dead in their beds for as yet unexplained reasons.

Such is the distrust of the military that the families of both Josh Neusche and Colunga have demanded access to their loved ones’ medical records, personal effects and blood and tissue samples, so that independent medical opinions can be sought on the cause of death. The families sent letters on August 12 to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stating: “We as a family are concerned that we are not being told the truth.”

Stephanie Tosta, the 22-year-old widow of Michael Tosta, has publicly speculated the military is lying about the cause of her husband’s death. She told United Press International last month: “More and more I think it was the [anthrax] shots. I think they [the Army] might be lying about this stuff. I really feel like it. Nobody can tell me anything. If it is the shots, then of course they are lying. We just want to know what happened and we have a right to know. But the Army is acting like they are trying to hide something, and that just makes it harder.”

The family of Rachael Lacy, a young soldier who died in Kuwait on April 4 from a “pneumonia-like illness” but whose death is not included in the military investigation, is also alleging her death was due to the anthrax vaccine. Connecticut congressman Chris Shays, who chaired hearings last year on the possible side-effects of the anthrax vaccination program, is reportedly monitoring the investigation into the death of Sergeant Richard Eaton.

The website of “Bring Them Home Now”—an organisation of military families demanding the immediate withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East—bluntly warns soldiers that the only guaranteed way to limit the medical consequences from exposure to DU is to “get out of Iraq or Afghanistan”.

The groups’ statement of purpose declares: “Not one more troop killed in action. Not one more troop wounded in action. Not one more troop psychologically damaged by the act of terrifying, humiliating, injuring or killing innocent people. Not one more troop spending one more day inhaling depleted uranium. Not one more troop separated from spouse and children. This is the only way to truly support these troops, and the families who are just as much part of the military as they are.” (http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/)

The National Gulf War Resource Center (NGWRC), an advocacy organisation for veterans of the first 1991 US war on Iraq, is assisting the military families who believe they are being lied to. Among the suspected causes of a range of illnesses commonly referred to as “Gulf War syndrome” are DU exposure and complications triggered by vaccinations. By 1999, as many as 110,000 Gulf War veterans had reported health problems that they believe are due to their service in Iraq.

The sensitivity of the military hierarchy to the suspicions among rank-and-file troops, families and veterans is demonstrated by the reassurances on the official Army medical website that neither DU nor the anthrax vaccine pose a health risk. (http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/default2.htm) The US government also rejects any link between “Gulf War syndrome”, DU and vaccines. In 1998 however, the US military did finally admit that at least 436,000 American troops entered into areas during the first Gulf War that were contaminated to some extent by DU radioactive dust.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/wia-s09.shtml

[Joerver]

Am 11.09. vor 30 Jahren.
Auch wenn die Bushisten es nicht wahr haben wollen, die USA ist und war über Jahrzehnte immer wieder in zweifelhafte Operationen verwickelt. Das dies mehr beachtet wird, als ob Luxemburg die Quellensteuer einführt, ist selbstverständlich, weil immer wieder sehr viele Menschen von diesem Handeln betroffen wurden und sind.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-stad…
THE WORLD



Stadium`s Renaming an Ode to Singer Martyred There
Victor Jara was slain in Chile`s brutal 1973 coup. The venue where he was detained will be rededicated to him and many other victims.
By Héctor Tobar
Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2003

SANTIAGO, Chile — He was killed here, the workers say, down this narrow hallway, where basketball players and boxers and rock singers exit the dressing room before a game, match or concert.

No one who works at the stadium now witnessed the execution of Victor Jara, the folksinger whose death during the 1973 military coup became an enduring Latin American legend. But over the years, workers at Chile Stadium have passed down the stories about how and where it happened.

"People say it happened in this place. Those are the rumors," said assistant administrator Gloria Sepulveda as she stood at one end of the hallway. "And it makes sense, if you think about it. This was a place where no one would see."

For a few days in 1973, Chile Stadium was transformed into a concentration camp and torture center, as soldiers rounded up activists and government officials loyal to deposed President Salvador Allende. The most famous detainee was Jara, a 40-year-old folksinger and committed leftist with a growing international reputation.

This Friday, Chile Stadium will be renamed Victor Jara Stadium as part of an official effort to recognize the victims of the coup and the life of the singer who performed there many times.

For Jara`s widow, Joan Turner Jara, the dedication culminates a five-year effort that began on the 25th anniversary of the coup — which occurred on Sept. 11, 1973 — when thousands of people signed a petition requesting the change.

"For many years, everything from the government had been a blank wall," she said in the Santiago offices of the Victor Jara Foundation, which preserves the singer`s recordings and funds cultural work. "Then, suddenly, it was very easy."

President Ricardo Lagos called her last month with the news. Francisco Vidal, a spokesman for Lagos, said renaming the facility "was a gesture of reparation" toward one of Chile`s most respected artists.

The Victor Jara Foundation will have preferential use of the arena, which is operated by the Chilean sports federation.

"Only foreign stars can afford to sing there now," said Joan Jara, who runs the foundation. In recent years, the arena has been rented by rock groups such as Megadeth and Latin pop acts like Christian Castro. "We`re hoping to offer the facility to Chilean performers."

Victor Jara was born to a humble family in a village outside Santiago, where his mother taught him to sing and play guitar. He studied theater at the University of Chile, which was where he met his future wife, an expatriate British dancer. He worked at a musical club where he also met singer-songwriter Violeta Parra, who encouraged his musical career.

Jara songs such as "I Remember You, Amanda" and "Prayer to a Farm Worker" celebrated the lives of Latin American working people and became leftist anthems. He joined the Communist Youth and sang at Allende`s rallies during his successful 1970 presidential campaign.

On the morning of the coup, Jara left his wife and two daughters to go to the university, where he worked at its radio station. Army troops surrounded the campus, and thousands were detained. They were taken to Chile Stadium, one of dozens of temporary detention centers established throughout Chile.

"Victor Jara was held up there, in the red seats," says Juan Carlos Gonzalez, the current administrator of the indoor arena. "That was where they kept the `dangerous` prisoners."

Jara and the prisoners spent at least four days in the stands. At one point, he asked his companions for a piece of paper and wrote a poem titled "Chile Stadium."

In the poem, he described stands filled with 5,000 people—"So much humanity, suffering hunger, cold, fear and pain!"—and the death of six comrades in the coup, including one who was "beaten like I never thought a human being could be beaten."

Another prisoner would later smuggle out the poem. Jara was last seen alive on Sept. 15, when he was pulled out of a line of prisoners who were being transferred out of the stadium.

A week after she had last seen Victor, Joan learned that his body had been dumped at a morgue. Among hundreds of corpses, she found his body, the face disfigured.

"At least I had the truth," she said. "I had to live many years with the nightmares. But so many other people never knew what happened to their loved ones."

According to the official autopsy — made public in 1990 as part of a post-dictatorship government inquiry — Jara was shot 44 times. His hands were not severed, as one legend has it, but they were badly mangled.

The judicial investigation into Jara`s death remains open. Like other cases from the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet, it has gained momentum in recent years thanks to the appointment of special judges to try human rights cases.

Nelson Caucoto, a lawyer representing the Jara family, said several witnesses have stepped forward in closed court sessions to name the man they say was responsible for the atrocities at Chile Stadium, a mysterious officer known as "the Prince."

In the years after the coup, an official silence surrounded Jara`s name in Chile. His music was banned from music stores and radio stations. Abroad, however, his death only heightened his fame, with his widow traveling around the world to attend tribute concerts to her husband and the rest of the more than 3,000 people killed in the coup.

The arena will be officially renamed with a ceremony on the anniversary of the day prisoners were first brought there — the day after the Sept. 11 coup. A plaque will be installed remembering those who died there.

"When you come in here for the first time, you feel the weight of what happened," said Gonzalez, the administrator. "This whole place was filled with suffering.

"It`s right that the stadium carry the name of Victor Jara," he said. "The Chilean people owe a debt to that name."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

Es ist schon sehr zynisch. Man überfällt ein Land wegen der Verbindung zum Terrorismus, die es nicht hatte.
Und nun nachdem die Terroristen da sind, nimmt man diese als Begründung für den Kampf gegen den Terrorismus.
Erst erzeugt man ein Problem, das dann lösen muß.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-terr…
THE WORLD



Iraq-Terrorism Link Continues to Be Problematic
No evidence has come up tying Hussein to 9/11, but the war itself seems to have triggered attacks.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2003

WASHINGTON — In describing Iraq as the "central front" in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, President Bush was sounding a theme that continues to resonate powerfully with the American people — even as some in the counter- terrorism community increasingly wonder whether the assertion is true mainly because the American invasion made it so.

The president invoked the terrorism theme repeatedly in his speech to the nation Sunday night, portraying the invasion of Iraq as part of the U.S. response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

To have reacted otherwise, he suggested, would have reinforced the image of the United States as reluctant to confront terrorism head on, and would have imperiled more American lives.

"We have carried the fight to the enemy," Bush said. "We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence but at the heart of its power."

Iraq, it was clear the president meant, was within that "heart" of power.

Tying Iraq to the war on terrorism has become crucial to the Bush administration`s appeal for continued public support, particularly with the failure so far to find banned weapons and the ongoing turmoil that is undercutting visions of a swift transition to democracy that might spread across the Middle East.

But the terrorism link is problematic. The administration has yet to prove that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had any complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, or even any significant relationship with Osama bin Laden`s Al Qaeda network. For that reason, some counter- terrorism experts challenge Bush`s characterization.

"I do think this argument about terrorism is disingenuous," said James Steinberg, vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan public policy center in Washington. "This wasn`t the place you had to confront Al Qaeda. They weren`t there, and this is not what that war was about."

Meanwhile, the war has attracted foreign fighters to Iraq, Al Qaeda members reportedly among them, U.S. officials say. Some counter-terrorism officials and experts are expressing concern that the war could incite a new generation of terrorists.

White House officials bristled at the suggestion that the war in Iraq had exacerbated the terrorism problem.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice argued the opposite Monday, saying Al Qaeda sees U.S. involvement in Iraq precisely the way the administration would like the public to: as a potentially mortal blow to terrorist forces.

A transformed Iraq "is going to be the death knell for terrorism," Rice said on NBC`s "Today" show. "And that`s why foreign fighters are now coming to Iraq. Even though we don`t know the numbers in which they`re coming, they clearly understand that a victory for the peace in Iraq, like the military victory we`ve had there, will mean that their goals and their strategies will be severely undermined."

Bush`s speech and Rice`s remarks represent a new tack by the White House: a concerted effort to quiet second-guessing about the campaign, cast the effort as part of a broader anti- terrorism cause and remind the public of the outcome`s stakes.

In his speech, Bush used variations on the word "terror" at least two dozen times.

In so doing, Bush was playing to an American audience that already seems convinced. Polls have consistently showed a majority believing that the deposed Iraqi dictator played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, despite the lack of evidence and even skepticism voiced by intelligence agencies.

The White House effort comes at a critical juncture: U.S. soldiers are still being attacked in Iraq, anti-coalition violence is escalating, and reconstruction and military costs are ballooning.

The new White House push marks something of a departure from the administration`s case before the war, when it emphasized Iraq`s alleged stocks of banned chemical and biological weapons.

Bush was careful in the way he couched his statements Sunday. He said the United States acted in Iraq, "where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction."

Few counter-terrorism experts dispute that Iraq sponsored terrorism. Hussein`s government was said to have paid out $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

But evidence of ties to Al Qaeda were flimsy at best. And the Al Qaeda allegations were never as prominent in the White House`s case for war as Iraq`s alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction, its flouting of U.N. sanctions, and the argument that installing a democratic regime could transform the Middle East.

Some experts and U.S. officials believe that the war against Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism, distracting attention and sapping military and intelligence resources that had been trained against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Whatever the Iraq-terrorism nexus was before the war, several experts said it was indisputable now.

"In a sense, Iraq has become the central front, as Bush said," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert in the Washington office of Rand Corp., an independent public policy center based in Santa Monica. "The contest there will have a profound effect on [the war on terrorism]. Our ability to stabilize Iraq and bring democracy would certainly be a positive and salutary development. And that`s why the forces of terrorism are marshaling their efforts to challenge us in Iraq."

Bush blamed the turmoil on terrorists "desperately trying to undermine Iraq`s progress." Some, he said, are "foreign terrorists who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations."

Senior FBI officials said it was too soon to tell whether Islamic militants affiliated with Al Qaeda played a role in the three most significant bombings in Iraq in recent months — the attacks on the Jordanian Embassy, the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and a Shiite Muslim mosque in Najaf.

Larry Mefford, the FBI`s head of all counter-terrorism programs, said that "it`s under discussion" as to who was responsible for the bombings and whether they were related.

A U.S. congressional official with expertise in Al Qaeda and Middle East terrorism issues said evidence clearly indicated that Iraq was now attracting large numbers of Islamic militants who support Al Qaeda.

"It is a significant number of people, in the low thousands," said the congressional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said it was nearly impossible to tell whether any were high-level Al Qaeda members or merely sympathizers who lack the training and motivation to carry out large-scale attacks.

*


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Times staff writer Josh Meyer contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-turley9…
COMMENTARY



Enervated by Enlibrators
Can environmentalists and the EPA nominee come to terms?
By Jonathan Turley

September 9, 2003

This week, Capitol Hill is awash in "enlibra." The word became an overnight sensation after Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Invented by Leavitt a few years ago, the pseudo-Latin term is supposed to refer to a new approach to environmental regulation, an effort to "bring balance" in the use of our natural resources.

Not since Viagra has a new marketing term so captivated our elected representatives. Enlibra, however, is more than a brilliant form of political marketing. It is a new way of repackaging policy to make a governor`s pro-pollution measures seem as hip and trendy as ordering a double-espresso macchiato at Starbucks.

Though enlibra sounds like some ancient principle derived from Caesar Augustus, its origins can be traced to a meeting a few years ago in the Utah governor`s office. According to one former staffer who attended the meeting, Leavitt came into the room and said, "Let`s invent a word. Let`s invent a word that means balance and reasonableness in environmental debate." After some informal discussions, the result was enlibra — the type of trendy term that could promise a better night`s sleep, better sex or, in this case, a "balanced" environmental policy. It may be the first manufactured political trademark.

In creating the term, Leavitt was taking a lesson from Reuben Mattus.

Mattus was a Polish immigrant trying to make his way on the tough streets of the Bronx by selling ice cream. In 1959, close to bankruptcy because of weak sales, Mattus came up with a brilliant idea. He took his slow-selling ice cream and gave it an invented name that suggested something foreign and exotic: Häagen-Dazs. What Mattus discovered is that when the same ice cream was given this Scandinavian-sounding name, people could not have enough. It actually enhanced their eating experience. To this day, most people believe that Häagen-Dazs is made somewhere in Denmark by some ancient guild of ice cream makers.

This same kind of thing happened with the soup vichyssoise, which most people think of as a classic French dish. (In fact, it was invented in 1917 at the Ritz-Carlton in New York and given a French appellation.)

Enlibra was born of similar marketing needs. Leavitt found that the phrases "dirty air for higher corporate profits" or "fewer trees mean more roads" were not instant sellers. However, calling for enlibra was something that few could contest — or understand, for that matter. If anyone objected, Leavitt would simply respond with an element of sympathy that they simply did not understand enlibra. They were "unenlibrated."

It worked. Soon there were enlibra conferences, and Leavitt convinced all 50 governors to adopt the policy.

With hearings coming up on Leavitt`s nomination, enlibra has been heard as a noun ("this is precisely the purpose of enlibra"), a verb ("to what extent can federal regulations be `enlibraed` like state regulations") and an infinitive ("to enlibra environmental laws, we need more than rhetoric"), and there are rumors of a preposition in the works. The word has even been used as a new term of association: "I am an `enlibran.` " (Or, as President Kennedy might have said, "Ich bin Enlibraner.")

Enlibra can make even the most thuggish and anti-environmental measures seem progressive and New Age. State biologists in Utah were not "fired" for listing endangered species for protection, but merely enlibrated out of their jobs. Likewise, when Leavitt helped strip citizens of their right to sue hog facility operators for massive spills of manure, he was merely bringing a little enlibra into their lives. In opening up wilderness to development and racking up one of the worst clean-water records in the nation, he was merely realizing the "balance" promised by enlibra.

The creation of enlibra has been such a success that we can expect an avalanche of new government philosophies. John Ashcroft could coin "enlibertas," the seeking of "more balance" between civil liberties and authoritarian power.

Of course, Leavitt could object to such infringement. After all, Häagen-Dazs sued Frusen Gladje for trademark infringement after that company created its own fake foreign-sounding ice cream. (The courts dismissed the action.)

Despite the enlibra revolution, there remain those misguided souls who resist "enlibrafication." For example, Greenpeace Director John Passacantando has criticized Leavitt`s record and noted that Leavitt`s own family`s fish farm was cited for serious water violations. Yet the allegation that Leavitt was a source for "whirling disease" in Utah fish misses the point: There is now "balance" between crippled and noncrippled fish in Utah.

For my part, I never resist a trend. With the expected confirmation of Leavitt, I intend to join other New Age Bush environmentalists and watch the bulldozers putting in new roads through our wilderness areas — a common goal of Leavitt`s enlibra policy. Of course, in our new lexicon, they are not bulldozers but "enlibrators" building "enlib-roads." For those attending, Häagen-Dazs will be served.


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Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer9…
COMMENTARY


He Must Admit the Error of His Ways
Robert Scheer

September 9, 2003

How can the president tell us with a straight face that we taxpayers have a patriotic duty to cough up $87 billion more to enable him to sink us deeper into the Iraq quagmire of his making? That`s a lot of money on top of the $79 billion already appropriated by Congress in April — enough to bail out California and every other state experiencing a budget crisis because of economic problems this president has only exacerbated. Shouldn`t those who warned against Bush`s folly at least qualify for another one of his signature tax rebates?

Once again, Bush is using the Big Lie technique, continuing to slyly conflate those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, despite there being no evidence of such a relationship. It is an insult to those who died on that day of infamy to exploit them to defend a failed policy of preemptive war designed by a bunch of think tank neoconservatives as part of a cockamamie plan to remake the Middle East.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of Bush`s consistently defensive speech, however, was his naked attempt to turn what has become a security disaster for U.S. troops, United Nations workers and the Iraqi people into a positive situation. He makes it seem like it is almost a good thing that terrorism is on the rise in Iraq because we`ve got our enemies where we want them. In claiming that "Iraq is now the central front" in the "war on terror," Bush is heralding a self-fulfilling prophecy: He claimed Iraq was a hotbed of terrorism, and he turned it into one.

And by the way, what happened to the cheering crowds and the gushing oil that the administration predicted would make this a low-cost Mideast liberation venture?

Meanwhile, as Bush boasts of how many irrelevant ammunition dumps we have seized in Iraq, the region is spiraling out of control. Afghanistan is once again falling into anarchy, with the Taliban on the rebound. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is worse after the fall of Hussein, not better as the administration promised. And the mysterious kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains a very suspicious kind of "friend." Let`s remember, 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden himself, were Saudis.

If there is a linchpin nation for Islamic fundamentalist terror, it remains Saudi Arabia, a fact consistently obscured by the president. Someday we may gain access to the censored portion of the Sept. 11 congressional report dealing with U.S.-Saudi connections. Meanwhile, we can read in the current Vanity Fair about the White House-orchestrated post-9/11 evacuation of 150 Saudis — including relatives of Osama bin Laden — from the U.S. when most flights were still grounded.

It is apparently too much to ask that the president acknowledge his errors, so costly in American and Iraqi lives, and show some humility for this mess he has created with his "my way or the highway" approach. He could also apologize to "Old Europe," which warned him that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror.

But never mind — while he won`t ever admit it, Bush`s speech was in many ways an admission of failure. "I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision" to invade and occupy Iraq, Bush magnanimously allowed. "Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." Translation: We once thought it was Europe and the United Nations` duty to shut up and get out of our way. Now we think it is their duty to hurry up and throw us a rope.

It won`t work, though, because those other nations are not led by fools eager to pay for our president`s war mongering. What is needed instead is a reappraisal of U.S. policy and a good-faith move to share the leadership role with countries like France, Germany, China, Russia and Japan. If the president, like his predecessors Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, refuses to cut his losses and admit the error of an unwise military adventure, he will be judged and rejected as they were for the waste of American resources and the lives of our young people.


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Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
by JOHN CASSIDY
Who killed the boom? Two economists make their cases.
Issue of 2003-09-15
Posted 2003-09-08
Government actuaries, like observant Jews, celebrate the New Year in the fall. In September, 2000, when the books closed on the fiscal year, the federal government had the biggest budget surplus in history, and it was predicted that the accumulated surplus for the next decade would be more than five trillion dollars. The big question during the election was what to do with the money; Al Gore, as you may remember, called for it to be put in a “lock box” for retirement benefits, while George W. Bush said that some of the money ought to be put back in Americans’ pockets. Three years later, it all sounds like a debate between pre-Copernican astronomers. In the fiscal year that ends this September 30th, the deficit is expected to exceed four hundred billion dollars. And it is predicted that the accumulated deficit over the next decade will—in unhappy symmetry—be nearly five trillion dollars.

What went wrong? Two of the country’s leading economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, try to sort through the matter in their new books. Krugman, who teaches at Princeton, started writing for the Times Op-Ed page in January, 2000, and has hardly paused for breath since. “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century” (Norton; $25.95) collects his Times columns, a few articles from elsewhere, and a smattering of new material. Despite the inevitable limitations of such a miscellany, it represents a harsh indictment of the Bush Administration, which Krugman holds responsible for ravaging the nation’s finances and heading us toward a financial crisis. In the past two and a half years, the White House has reduced the top income-tax rates, lowered the taxes on corporate dividends, and prepared to abolish the estate tax. But Krugman is equally enraged by what he regards as the Administration’s deceptive presentation of its decisions. “Bush has pulled the largest bait-and-switch operation in history,” Krugman writes. “First he described a budget-busting tax cut, which delivered the bulk of its benefits to the very affluent, as a modest plan to return unneeded revenue to ordinary families. Then, when the red ink began flowing in torrents, he wrapped himself and his policies in the flag, blaming deficits on evil terrorists and forces beyond his control.”

To many liberals, Krugman is a beacon of sanity in a world gone mad; to many conservatives, he’s an infuriating polemicist who distorts the President’s record. What is beyond dispute is that he attracts plenty of attention; last year, the Washington Monthly hailed Krugman as “the most important political columnist in America.” Certainly his twice-weekly column has been distinguished by diligent research and a keen eye for cant. When the White House was busy distancing itself from crooked self-dealing by corporate executives at Enron, WorldCom, and other major corporations, Krugman reminded us how President Bush benefitted from dubious transactions while he was a director of Harken Energy. When conservative pundits were blaming misguided government regulation for the California energy shortage, he pointed out that the real culprits might be private power generators that deliberately withheld supply to drive up prices. (He turned out to be right.)

As a first-rate economist, Krugman knows how to parse the White House’s figures to get at the underlying reality. In a series of columns, he noted that forty per cent or more of the Bush Administration’s proposed tax cuts would go to the richest one per cent of the population, something that the Administration was eager to deny. Unlike most economists, however, Krugman is rarely content to let his figures talk for him, and the longer he has been at the Times the more outspoken he has become. “The Bush administration is an extremely elitist clique trying to maintain a populist façade,” he wrote in a typical column last fall. “Its domestic policies are designed to benefit a very small number of people—basically those who earn at least $300,000 a year, and really don’t care about either the environment or their less fortunate compatriots.”

Krugman has never shied from controversy. When he first accused the White House of trying to turn September 11th to political advantage, he received sacks of hate mail, but that didn’t dissuade him from repeating and amplifying the accusation. “Exploitation began within hours after the attack—and gradually it became apparent, not just to me but to a growing number of other observers, that we had some very unscrupulous people running the country,” he writes. “Every administration contains its share of cynical political operators—without them, even the best man has no chance of achieving high office. But this administration seems to have nothing but cynical political operators, who use national tragedy for political gain, don’t even try to come to grips with real problems, and figure that someone else will clean up the mess they leave behind.”

To Krugman, Bush is the front man for a radical conservative movement that is intent on slashing the federal government, imposing conservative values, and further enriching the corporate establishment. “This is hard for journalists to deal with,” he writes. “They don’t want to sound like crazy conspiracy theorists. But there’s nothing crazy about ferreting out the real goals of the right wing; on the contrary, it’s unrealistic to pretend that there isn’t a sort of conspiracy here, albeit one whose organization and goals are pretty much out in the open.”



Krugman, who grew up in a middle- class family on Long Island, first studied economics at Yale, with William Nordhaus and the late James Tobin, two liberal scholars who combined technical prowess with an abiding interest in public affairs. At M.I.T., where he did his graduate work, and then at Yale again, in his first academic post, Krugman specialized in international economics. He worked out a mathematical model of currency crises, but his biggest contribution was to so-called New Trade Theory, which challenged the classical argument that free trade is always in a country’s best interest. By incorporating elements that the older models had left out (economies of scale; the reality of imperfect competition), Krugman demonstrated that it sometimes made sense for countries to protect their industries from foreign competition.

Some of the papers Krugman wrote as a young scholar are still widely cited, and they earned him a tenured professorship at M.I.T. In 1982, he spent a brief spell in the Reagan Administration, working for Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor who was eventually forced out of his job as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers after warning that Reagan’s fiscal sums didn’t add up. Krugman himself was a Democrat. In 1992, Krugman met Clinton and endorsed his economic plan; some people expected him to become chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. This didn’t happen, reportedly because he had alienated two other Clinton advisers: Lawrence Summers and Robert B. Reich. Summers, also an M.I.T. wunderkind, joined, and eventually led, the Treasury Department; Reich became Labor Secretary. The Council of Economic Advisers post went to Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who was then a little-known Berkeley professor.

Left behind in academe—he moved between M.I.T. and Stanford before settling in at Princeton—Krugman entered the public arena by another route: he published a series of nontechnical books and started writing for Fortune, Slate, and the Times. His style of argument was always clear and often bristly; he never hesitated to lash out at writers he considered misguided (including me). Like many Ivy League economists, Krugman also did lucrative consulting work for corporations, including Enron, which in 1999 paid him fifty thousand dollars to spend a year on an advisory board. Krugman was then a mainstream neoclassical economist, who defended globalization, deregulation, and deficit reduction. In those days, much of his ire was directed against center-left writers, such as Robert Kuttner, who cited Krugman’s own earlier work in order to justify a policy of “managed trade.” Krugman claimed that his New Trade models were theoretical curiosities, and denied that they sanctioned any departure from free trade.

In the past five years, though, Krugman has become radicalized. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, he called for restrictions on how “hot money” moves into and out of developing countries, restrictions that the International Monetary Fund and the Treasury Department fiercely opposed. Around the same time, he looked at the seemingly endless Japanese recession and decided that Keynes was right, after all, when he warned that capitalist economies have a potentially fatal weakness: they can get stuck in a “liquidity trap,” which renders them impervious to government intervention. (Previously, Krugman had argued that the central bank could always revive an economy by simply lowering interest rates.)

For a neoclassical economist, these were significant leaps, and more followed when Krugman joined the Times Op-Ed page. He was immediately confronted with the political realities that many of his colleagues in academe are content to ignore: the campaign contributions, the lobbyists, the corporate-funded “research institutes,” the revolving door between government and business, and so on. “The Great Unraveling” is, in part, an attempt to explain how the federal government has been transformed into a political-action committee for the well-to-do. Instead of dealing with the problems facing the country, Krugman thinks, Administration officials and lawmakers spend most of their time trying to divide the spoils among their wealthy backers. “American politics has become highly polarized,” he writes. “The center did not hold. Underlying that political polarization is the growing inequality of income. The result is a form of class warfare—driven not by attempts of the poor to soak the rich, but by the efforts of an economic elite to expand its privileges.”



As regular readers of Krugman might expect, “The Great Unraveling” is more of a prosecutor’s brief than a history book. But tax cuts and Republican deceits are hardly the full explanation for what has gone wrong in the past few years. The economy has also been subjected to a stock-market collapse, a recession, a terrorist attack, and two foreign wars, all of which have had major implications for the budget. Part of the deficit can be ascribed to slow economic growth, which has reduced the tax base at the same time that it has required higher government outlays on things like unemployment benefits. Krugman knows this, of course, but he hasn’t tried to incorporate the various elements of the story into a coherent narrative.

Readers in search of that larger story should also turn to “The Roaring Nineties” (Norton; $24.95), an upcoming book by Joseph Stiglitz, another disenchanted luminary of neoclassical economics. In his previous book, “Globalization and Its Discontents,” which came out last year, Stiglitz criticized the I.M.F. and its backers in the Treasury Department. Now he has turned his attention to domestic matters, and the result is a long and surprisingly critical account of economic policy in the Clinton Administration.

Stiglitz writes as something of an insider: from 1993 to 1995, he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers; from 1995 to 1997, he was its chairman. At the time, he was not known to have voiced serious concerns, but now he argues that many of the problems afflicting the country date back to the Clinton Administration. “Americans should face up to the fact that in the very boom were planted some of the seeds of destruction, seeds which would not yield their noxious fruits for several years,” Stiglitz writes. Accounting standards were allowed to slacken, deregulation was mindlessly pursued, and corporate greed indulged. In short, he says, “we were too swept up by the deregulation, pro-business mantra.”

Stiglitz’s academic credentials are, if anything, even stronger than Krugman’s. Since getting his Ph.D. from M.I.T., in the late sixties, he has taught at Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia, where he is now based. In 2001, he was awarded a Nobel Prize for work done thirty years ago that explored situations in which one party to a transaction knows more than the other party, such as when somebody takes out life insurance. (Typically, the buyer knows more about his health than the insurance company does.) Stiglitz showed that if the problem of “asymmetric information” gets too severe, markets may fail to operate at all.

Stiglitz had made important contributions to a wide range of economic subjects by the time he arrived in Washington, and his new book reflects his frustrations during his tenure there. His skeptical advice about deregulation and free enterprise was regularly ignored by Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, whose neoliberal views came to dominate policy. It was the Clinton Administration, Stiglitz reminds us, that deregulated the two sectors at the center of the boom-bust cycle: telecommunications and finance. It was the Clinton Administration that shifted tax policy in a regressive direction, by cutting the capital-gains tax in 1997. And it was the Clinton Administration that stood idly by as corporate executives exploited captive boards and lax accounting standards to enrich themselves beyond all economic justification.

“We were, however, I think, in part a victim of our own seeming success,” Stiglitz writes:

At the beginning of the administration, the bold, broad-gauged agenda to address America’s problems was put aside in favor of a single-minded focus on deficit reduction. The economy recovered, and deficit reduction was given the credit, and with that credit, the credibility of those who had advocated it soared. If they advocated deregulation, we should listen to their wisdom. If they advocated deregulation for their own industry, we should be particularly attentive—after all, who knows more about financial markets than the financiers. So enthralled with our seeming success, we put aside two centuries of experience about problems of conflicts of interest—let alone the lessons in the recent advances in the economics of asymmetric information.


Stiglitz’s critique of Clinton’s economic record is novel, and there’s much to be said for his central point that “misguided deregulation, misguided tax policies, and misguided accounting practices”—all dating back to the Clinton Administration—“are at the core of the current downturn.” But he’s less persuasive when he claims that the long nineties boom had more to do with monetary policy, improvements in technology, and the opening up of global markets than it did with deficit reduction—the policy that Clinton will always be primarily associated with.

In early 1993, under the influence of Rubin and Summers, Clinton reluctantly embraced tax increases and spending restraints. This decision turned out to be inspired. Bond prices rose, long-term interest rates fell, and the stock market took off. The rally in the financial markets encouraged spending by corporations and consumers, and the two trends were mutually reinforcing. Stiglitz doesn’t dispute this part of the story, but he gives the credit to the Federal Reserve, which kept interest rates low as the economy recovered. Curiously, he fails to mention the reason that Alan Greenspan and his colleagues were willing to do so: they recognized that a President was finally adopting a sensible fiscal strategy. Without the commitment to a balanced budget, the Fed would have raised interest rates much earlier. In this instance, Stiglitz has taken his revisionism too far.



The key question now, of course, is the practical one: what impact do budget deficits have on the economy? Many people assume that all deficits are bad, but that’s not necessarily true. In an economic downturn, when taxpayers get laid off and social expenditures rise, deficit spending can actually be helpful. Even during a period of economic expansion, the government can sensibly decide to run a modest deficit in order to finance education, scientific research, and other areas that the private sector refuses to invest in. Deficits are dangerous when they are used to finance unproductive schemes (such as tax cuts for the rich), and when there’s no end in sight. Investors tend to be wary of such deficits, and demand a higher return for lending their money to the government concerned. The result is that interest rates generally rise, which rattles the stock market and chokes off spending by consumers and firms.

The Bush deficit satisfies all the requirements for a dangerous deficit. It is big and wasteful, and isn’t even an efficient way of stimulating the economy, since the wealthy tend to hoard their tax savings rather than spend them. Moreover, the deficit won’t disappear even when the economy is growing steadily. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international research group, the so-called “structural budget balance,” which strips out the impact of the cycle, has gone from a surplus of 0.9 per cent of G.D.P. in 2000 to a deficit of four per cent of G.D.P. in 2003.

It’s a figure that’s likely to increase. Many of the Bush Administration’s giveaways, such as the cut in dividend taxes and the abolition of the estate tax, are “back-loaded,” which means the really big handouts won’t get distributed until 2008, or later. As it happens, 2008 is also the year that the aging of the population will start to deplete the Treasury. In 2008, the first boomers will be able to pick up their Social Security checks; three years later, they will become eligible for Medicare. Unless the retirement programs are reformed (and there’s little sign of that happening), the aging of the boomers will have a crushing effect on the federal government’s finances.

If a Democrat takes the White House next year, he will find himself, like Bill Clinton, seriously constrained by the need to deal with the aftermath of Republican profligacy. Should Bush be reëlected, the likely consequences aren’t pleasant to contemplate, though one can debate just how dire they’ll be. Krugman writes:

One of these years, and probably sooner than you think, the financial markets will look at the situation, and realize that the U.S. government has made inconsistent promises—promises of benefits to future retirees, repayment to those who buy its debt, and tax rates far below what is necessary to pay for all of it. Something will have to give, and it won’t be pretty. In fact, I think the United States is setting itself up for a Latin American-style financial crisis, in which fears that the government will try to resolve its dilemma by inflating away its debt cause interest rates to soar.
You read it here first.


The last line is a bit boastful. For years now, skeptics have been describing the United States as the world’s biggest developing market, and predicting an eventual reckoning. That apocalypse hasn’t arrived, and the latest economic indicators are positive. Still, anxiety over the Administration’s fiscal indiscipline is starting to suffuse the markets, especially the bond market. This isn’t surprising, given that the White House is still promising to spend more on defense, health, education, and agriculture at the same time that it is cutting taxes. If mortgage rates keep rising, they could squash the nascent recovery and threaten Bush’s reëlection chances. Krugman isn’t the only one who would see that as justice served.

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Der Artikel in #6651 stammt aus dem `New Yorker`

http://newyorker.com/critics/books/?030915crbo_books

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Political Commentary from former Arizona talk radio host Bob Witkowski
I DON`T HAVE TO SUPPORT THE MORON.
I`M AN AMERICAN, NOT A JOCKSTRAP!
I`m really trying to understand the insanity of the Moron. So let me get this straight. He spoke to the nation tonight. Of course, I didn`t watch or listen. I waited for the transcript to be posted on the web and read it. I puked...or nearly did. But then, with copy in hand, I watched the reactions on CNN, MSGOP and FOX. Much to my surprise, CNN was pretty good, and the panel of journalists on Larry King were damned courageous this time instead of the usual bedwetting slobberers I`ve come to expect. I got that on Fox, of course.

More on the Media and Politicians in a minute...maybe..

What I`m trying to comprehend is this. If the Moron and his NeoCon Thugs lied their way into attacking Iraq; if they lied to us and themselves about the `Cakewalk Syndrome` (that they now deny); if they were so arrogant and/or STOOOOPID as to have no plan for the occupation and Post War rebuilding and its cost in money and troop strength; if they are in the process of bankrupting the American treasury by now asking for an additional 87 BILLION DOLLARS while continuing to refuse to say how much more they`ll need; if they continue to insult the Europeans while demanding their participation; and if they now demand more American sacrifice to a concept of Permanent War Against Terror,

WELL THEN, HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY JUST UP AND LEAVE IRAQ?

I`ll tell you how. This group got us deliberately into this pile of putrid dog feces that wasn`t there 8 months ago. It never existed except in their adolescent wet dreams. Unfortunately, they stole an election and got all the power they wanted and brazenly used it.

Am I pissed off? You bet! They bullied and attacked anyone who questioned their motives. Those of us who warned invading Iraq was wrong and that it would mire in a waste of treasure and lives while not even making a dent in the war against Al-Queada...that indeed such an unprovoked invasion would actually up the ante of terrorism against us and cause us to be isolated in the world from our allies. We were right!

The Bushits and their lackies in the Congress and the Media viciously attack all of us who dared question the great and fearless Moron. Democrats were reviled as traitors and they caved. On a daily basis the fascists on Hate Talk Radio continued to pound us relentlessly as Un American Traitors. Some even called for the return of the sedition Acts to be able to round us up in concentration camps. Yes, this was the Moron`s America on the March.

Well, the Dems caved and got clobbered in 2002. We still fought back against the Moron`s insanity and evil.

And now we`re proven right and what happens? He goes on National Television and tells us that we must stay the course no matter the cost because now that we`re in Iraq, we must not give up the fight against terra.

Well f**k it! We must use our limited resources to fund the Department of Homeland Security and the the Fierst Responders here at home. How about that? We must repeal thhose goddamned tax cuts. We must bolster our own intelligence here and abroad. How about re-hiring those 60 or so CIA analysts who spoke Farsi?

We don`t need to be bullied into staying a course into which we have only ourselves to blame. NONE OF THIS CRAP WAS HAPPENING IN IRAQ AFTER 9/11. YOU GOT THAT!!!???

And screw those Fascist Pig GOP`rs who are reverting to form once again tonight by attacking the Dems and those of us who are once again refusing to go along with the Moron`s clarion call for enabling his utterly bad alcoholic behavior.

What he`s doing IS NOT LEADERSHIP GUYS. IT`S UTTER BLIND HUBRIS AND IF WE DON`T PUT A STOP TO IT, `STAYING THE COURSE` WILL BE AMERICA`S EPITAPH.

My God, do you know what $87 Billion would do for American education or infrastructure or health coverage? It boggles my mind. It saddens me deeply. It enrages me. And when I hear and see Joe Biden saying that we should give the Moron credit for being straight with the American people tonight and support him, I want to puke. And when I see JD Hayworth attacking the now courageous Dems who have found their voice finally for being traitors once again, I want to egg him with an Ostrich egg! I`d like to suggest to JD that maybe he should sign up and go fight the good fight with the boys on the front lines. He`s just anohter putrid stinking coward, though. Just like Hannity, Limbaugh, O`Reilly and the Moron himself.

As my pal Bartcop often asks, "Why God? What did we do to deserve Your Wrath?"

Talk to you later...please, we`ve still got the momentum. Do not give in. These guys are trying to pull the greatest bait and switch in history. They are beyond ideology. They are crossing into the Zone of Pure Evil.

Bob

http://atwitsend.org/currentcommentaries.html

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Was It Worth It?
Poll: More Americans Think Iraq War Raises Risk of Anti-U.S. Terror

Analysis
By Gary Langer

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/poll030908_iraq.htm…
Sept. 8
— Americans express a growing suspicion that the war in Iraq will boost rather than ease the long-term risk of terrorism against the United States, a concern that directly challenges President Bush`s rationale for invading.This finding of a new ABCNEWS poll follows continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and on civilians elsewhere in the world, and marks a sharp turn in public attitudes.

A week after the fall of Baghdad, 58 percent of Americans thought the war would reduce the long-term risk of terrorism. Today that`s down 18 points, while 48 percent — up 19 points — think the war has raised the risk.

At the same time, the number of Americans who say the war was worth fighting has slipped to 54 percent — a new low, down from 61 percent in mid-August and a high of 70 percent as the main fighting wound down.

Such concerns, measured in interviews in this ABCNEWS poll from Thursday through Sunday evening, frame the conditions in which Bush addressed the nation about Iraq on Sunday night. The poll also found a drop in approval of his handling of the situation to a new low, 49 percent — down from 56 percent last month and 75 percent on April 30, a day before he declared the major fighting over.

Bush`s rating is very closely tied to perceptions of threat. Americans who think the war in Iraq has reduced the long-term risk of terrorism approve of his work there by 74 percent to 23 percent. Those who think it has increased the risk, however, disapprove of his Iraq policy by nearly as broad a margin.

Troops and Casualties

Concerns about the long-term risk of terrorism may be amplified by disquiet over continued U.S. military casualties in Iraq. A new high, 57 percent, term the level of U.S. casualties "unacceptable," compared with 38 percent — fewer than four in 10 for the first time — who say it`s acceptable.

Acceptability is clearly part of a cost-benefit analysis. Casualties are vastly more acceptable among Americans who believe the war has decreased the long-term risk of terrorism and who think it was worth fighting.

There`s very broad support for sharing the load — 85 percent favor supplementing U.S. troops in Iraq with troops from other countries to create an international force there. Burden sharing is so popular that a majority — albeit a much smaller one, 55 percent — say they`d favor such a force even if it meant placing U.S. forces under the command of the United Nations. (The administration, rather, has proposed a U.S.-commanded force.)

Support

Overall, about two-thirds of Americans, 67 percent, continue to support the U.S. military presence in Iraq. While a substantial majority, that`s slipped by seven points since July. Of those supporters, nearly seven in 10 say they support both Bush and the troops, while nearly three in 10 say they support the troops, but not Bush`s policy.


Will the War Increase or Decrease the Risk of Terrorism?
ABCNEWS and ABCNEWS/Washington Post polls
4/16/2003: Now:
Increase 29% 48
Decrease 58 40




A majority continues to accept the argument, propounded by Bush, that the war in Iraq is part of the broader war on terrorism — 65 percent in this poll agree, but that`s down from 77 percent during the war itself.

Unfinished Business

Most Americans see the job as unfinished: Sixty-two percent say the war in Iraq won`t be a success unless Saddam is killed or captured. Even among Bush`s most loyal supporters, 64 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of conservatives say the United States must get Saddam in order to claim victory in Iraq.

And there`s the continuing task of rebuilding. Fifty-three percent say the United States is doing good or even excellent work restoring civil order in Iraq. But just 7 percent say it`s doing an excellent job; more than twice as many pick the most negative rating, poor.

Views on Bush`s Iraq policy remain very highly influenced by partisanship. While Republicans approve of his performance on Iraq by an 80 percent to 17 percent margin, Democrats disapprove by 70 percent to 25 percent and independents by a narrower 52 percent to 44 percent. And while 56 percent of Republicans call the level of casualties "acceptable," that declines to 38 percent of independents, and drops further to 26 percent of Democrats.


Was the War Worth Fighting?
9/7 8/11 4/30
Yes 54% 61 70
No 42 35 27

Similarly, 89 percent of Republicans support the current U.S. military presence in Iraq, compared with 63 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats. And 77 percent of Republicans say the war was worth fighting; this declines to 52 percent of independents and 35 percent of Democrats.

Other Groups

Bush`s tougher audiences include minorities and women; many in both groups tend to be more skeptical of military action as well as more apt to be Democrats. While 56 percent of men approve of Bush`s work on Iraq, that declines to 43 percent of women; and it`s 54 percent among whites, but 31 percent among nonwhites.


U.S. Performance Restoring Civil Order in Iraq
Net Excellent Good
Positive 53% 7 45
Net Not Good Poor
Negative 44 28 17

Moreover, women are 11 points more apt than men, and nonwhites 21 points more apt than whites, to call the level of U.S. casualties in Iraq "unacceptable."

Methodology

This ABCNEWS poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 4-7 among a random national sample of 1,004 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation were done by TNS Intersearch of Horsham, Pa.

Previous ABCNEWS polls can be found in our Poll Vault.

See the full questions and results.


Copyright © 2002 ABC News Internet Ventures.
Click here for Press Information, Terms of Use & Privacy Policy & Internet Safety Information applicable to the site.

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September 8, 2003

Through Eyes of Foreigners
The US Political Crisis
By ROBERT JENSEN

Thanks to several exchange programs, every year I have the opportunity to speak with dozens of journalists and professors from around the world who tour the United States to "increase mutual understanding, " as the U.S. State Department`s "International Visitor Program" puts it.

This week it was two Indonesian professors. Before them, it was a Japanese professor, a group of Middle Eastern journalists, a delegation from Latin America. In the past five years, I have met with people from every continent (except Antarctica).

My job in these meetings is to answer their questions about U.S. media and politics, but the exchanges are truly mutual; I learn a lot about their countries. The most important lesson I have learned from these visitors, however, is about the United States and the crisis in our political system.

Every person with whom I have talked in these exchanges -- and I mean literally every single one, whether from Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, or Australia -- has made the same two observations about U.S. society. They all were surprised to discover:

* how far to the right the political spectrum is skewed, and;

* how depoliticized the entire society is.

Most of these visitors follow U.S. politics and have watched the steady rightward shift, especially since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. But when they travel in the United States, they develop a better understanding of this country`s increasingly reactionary politics. Few of these people are leftists themselves; they`re simply struck by the narrowness of mainstream U.S. political dialogue.

A number of them have told me that there are especially surprised to see how right-leaning the mass media and universities are. When I tell them that there is a widely accepted assertion here -- repeated constantly by people on the right -- that journalism and the academy are hotbeds of liberalism and even radicalism, they laugh. At first they assume I am joking; in many cases, I am the first leftist they have met on the tour. Then they look puzzled. In a country with such well-established legal guarantees of freedom of expression and political participation, they ask, how can left-wing political positions -- which they consider to be important even if they don`t hold them -- be so absent from the mainstream public debate?

Given those freedoms, they also want to know why there is so little political engagement in everyday life. People don`t seem to talk politics very much, they report. Local television news is more concerned with accidents and human-interest stories than public policy. The professional journalists and academics they meet seem curiously detached from political life.

I tell these visitors that the conditions they observe are not accidental. Conservative political forces have used coercion and public relations to achieve these results. The 20th century in the United States is the story both of the steady expansion of freedom through the actions of popular movements, but also the use of state and private violence to crush radical movements and the development of sophisticated propaganda to mold a society in which people don`t see active political participation as relevant to their lives. The United States also is an affluent society, I point out, which makes it easy for many people to ignore the political arena. There is, of course, grassroots political organizing going on, but it is largely ignored in the dominant political culture.

The most interesting reaction to all this comes from people who live in societies that have recently thrown off authoritarian regimes or still live without much political freedom. "Americans seem very cavalier about politics," one Middle Eastern journalist told me. "Perhaps if they lived without free speech for a few years they would use it more often."

U.S. officials constantly trumpet the success of democracy here, and there is much to celebrate about the U.S. system. However, formal guarantees of freedom are a necessary but not sufficient condition for meaningful democracy, for a system in which people can not only choose between candidates but be part of building a world through direct engagement with public policy.

Especially since 9/11, the Bush administration has tried to use public relations to get the world to view us as the good guys. But we could profit more by paying attention to how others see us. The international visitors I speak with are not suggesting that the systems in their countries are perfect. They offer their observations with respect and, often, admiration for some aspects of U.S. society.

Americans typically are eager to pay attention to the compliments; we would be wise also to take heed of their critique.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the forthcoming "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity" (City Lights Books). He can be reached at [e-mail].
http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen09082003.html

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The Burden Of "Victory"

By ROBERT FISK
THE INDEPENDENT

The dilemma faced by the Americans in Iraq -- and in which the British are powerlessly trapped -- is growing acute. The occupying powers need to win Iraqi hearts and minds so that the process of handing the country over to an Iraqi administration has the confidence of the people. To do that, they need to supply electricity and civil order. But these things require human resources, both to impose law and order for its own sake and to discourage sabotage of basic services, not to mention the sabotage of oil pipelines that are supposed to be providing the revenue for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The obvious source of recruits for this policing function is the Iraqi people themselves. But, while the Iraqis may be pleased that Saddam Hussein is gone, they do not trust the Americans sufficiently to make this an easy option in the short run. Which brings the Bush administration, and above all the Pentagon, round in a wide circle after four months to square one.

In a way, it is encouraging that Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, sees this so clearly, in his assessment leaked last week: "Lack of political progress in solving the linked problems of security, infrastructure and the political process are undermining the consent of the Iraqi people to the coalition presence and providing fertile ground for extremists and terrorists."

Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. defense secretary, who visited Baghdad late last week, persists in blaming everyone but his own department, which has jealously guarded its rule in Iraq, for this predicament. He complained that anti-American forces from Iran and Syria are infiltrating the country to carry out acts of terrorism. That may be true but it is (a) predictable and (b) not the main point, which is that he has failed to ensure the co-operation of most Iraqis.

Which is why other parts of the administration -- namely the State Department under Colin Powell -- have made some headway by looking for a way out of the impasse. The logic of the situation has pushed President Bush toward the United Nations as a way of trying to persuade other countries to fill the gap.

Powell knows that countries such as Pakistan and India are reluctant to supply troops if they will be seen as subordinate to the U.S. army of occupation. Yet the U.N. option offers no easy way out either. Unless the United States is prepared to concede overall authority in Iraq to the United Nations, the reluctance of other countries, most of whose populations were opposed to the war, to help out will remain. And the United States is not so desperate yet that it would grant the United Nations such power over its own troops.

Thus the logic of the dilemma is that the security situation in Iraq will take longer to stabilize than anyone hoped and certainly much longer than the Pentagon planned. And the main burden will fall on the United States and its junior partner, Britain. The implication of Straw`s assessment is that more British troops will be needed and that the wind-down of numbers since the end of the conflict will have to be reversed. The second implication is that our continuing role in Iraq will cost more money than the Treasury must have expected.

These burdens, in personnel and money, will fall even more heavily on the United States. But at least the Americans are deciding their own policy, divided, misguided and stubborn as they may be. Because we cannot simply abandon our responsibilities having played our part in the war, we have no choice but to tag along with whatever Bush`s fractious subordinates decide.

Robert Fisk writes for The Independent of Great Britain.

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For the Bush family, the young death of Robin Bush created a strong tie between George W. Bush and Barbara Bush.
Bush: The Making of a Candidate
A seven-part series on Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush traces the Texas governor`s lifelong effort to reconcile the expectations placed on him with the success he sought.
Nach dem ersten Teil gestern, heute der zweite Teil.
Von der WaPo
Tragedy Created Bush Mother-Son Bond

For the Bush family, the young death of Robin Bush created a strong tie between George W. Bush and Barbara Bush. (File)


By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 26, 1999; Page A1


Second of seven articles
On a fall day in 1953, George and Barbara Bush drove their green Oldsmobile up the gravel driveway at Sam Houston Elementary School in Midland, Tex., looking for their oldest child. George W. Bush and a friend from second grade were lugging a Victrola from their classroom to the principal`s office when he spotted his parents` car. He was sure his little sister was in the back seat.
"He went running back to the teacher and said, `I`ve got to go. My mother and father and Robin are here,` " Barbara Bush, the former first lady, recalled in a recent interview.

"I run over to the car," said George W., remembering the same moment, "and there`s no Robin."

"That`s when we told him," his mother said. "In the car."

Two days earlier, Pauline Robinson Bush – "Robin" – had died in New York of leukemia, two months shy of her fourth birthday. Her big brother had known she was sick but never dreamed she was dying. "Why didn`t you tell me?" Bush repeatedly asked his parents, and for years the question would resonate in the Bush family.

At age 7, Bush found himself surrounded by bewildering grief. His parents were not even 30 years old, trying to move past a devastating loss while raising George W. and his baby brother Jeb.

The death left indelible scars on the Bushes. Barbara Bush still has trouble talking about her daughter`s death. Her husband would cite the experience when he ran for president and was asked if he had ever known hardship. George W.`s eyes welled with tears when discussing his sister in an interview in May.

A child`s death reverberates in a family in unexpected ways. For the Bushes, among other consequences, the loss of Robin helped to establish and deepen an enduring and powerful link between Barbara Bush and her oldest son. It was during his childhood in Midland and Houston, the years he spent at home before going to boarding school at age 15, that George W. in many ways became his mother`s son.

When Robin had become sick, it was Bush`s father who wore his anguish openly, who had to leave the room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer center each time Robin had another transfusion. And it was Barbara Bush who stayed resolutely at their daughter`s side in New York, her strength belied only by her hair, which at age 28 began to turn white.

After the couple returned to Midland, Barbara plunged into despair. Her husband tried his best to cheer her up. But he was pulled away by the demands of building an oil business, working long days and traveling frequently. That left Barbara alone with her two children for long stretches. Of the two boys, only George understood what had happened.

As the gloom began to lift from the Bushes` three-bedroom frame house on West Ohio Street, it was their ebullient cutup of a son who, despite his own pain, helped drive it away – joking, playing, working hard to make his mother smile again. Time helped salve Barbara Bush`s pain, but so did "Georgie."

Barbara Bush once said it didn`t dawn on her what was happening until one day when she heard her son tell a friend that he couldn`t come out because he had to play with his mother, who was lonely. "I was thinking, `Well, I`m being there for him,` " she recalled. "But the truth was he was being there for me."

Elsie Walker, a Bush cousin who lost one of her own sisters, put it this way: "You look around and see your parents suffering so deeply and try to be cheerful and funny, and you end up becoming a bit of a clown."

As part of a family famously allergic to engaging in public introspection, Bush is reluctant to talk about the forces that shaped him. He acknowledges, of course, that his sister`s death was profoundly sad for him and his parents, but he also sees the sources of his personality as "more complex than one or two events." Few would argue with that assessment.

Yet some close to the Bushes do see the death of his sister as a singular event in George W.`s childhood, helping to define him and how he would deal with the world. Life would be full of humor and driven by chance. And it would be something approached with a certain fatalism. Even as an adolescent, Bush would tell his friends, "You think your life is so good and everything is perfect; then something like this happens and nothing is the same," recalls John Kidde, a high school classmate.

This attitude would ultimately liberate Bush to live his life in the present, "in chapters" as his brother Marvin would say, seizing opportunities as they came without fretting about what tomorrow might bring.

From his mother he would pick up a verve that echoes in the traits that have made Bush a more lively and comfortable politician than his father. His large-sized personality, his blunt outspokenness, his irreverence and readiness with a joke drew friends and allies to him long before he sought office, then became an important source of success once he entered politics.

From the time he was a boy, the intuitive, spontaneous son seemed very different from his guarded, dignified, overachieving father. When members of the extended Bush family gathered in Maine in the summers of George W.`s youth, the physical resemblance they noticed was to George, but the spirit was all Bar, headstrong and quick-witted. Mother and son, as one relative put it, were "always in your face."

"I don`t think George W. would ever be sassy or sarcastic with his father and if he was, it would be within the foul lines," said cousin John Ellis. "But Bar will say to George W. something like, `Oh, don`t be ridiculous,` and they`re off to the races."

Nor have George W. and his mother ever gotten out of each other`s faces. Even when her son was married and in his forties and on the cusp of his political career, Barbara did not hesitate to let him know what she thought.

Bush spent hours thinking and talking about running for governor of Texas in 1990, encouraged by the enthusiasm of his friends. Barbara Bush thought he should stick to running the Texas Rangers, the baseball team he had just bought with a group of other investors. "When you make a major commitment like that, I think maybe you won`t be running for governor," she told a group of reporters at the White House in 1989, who lost no time relaying her remarks to her son.

As he fielded calls from the reporters, Bush tried to make light of his mother`s remarks. But he was privately irked, according to a source who saw him that day. As it happened, it would be four years before he ran for governor.

A relationship of affectionate tension and banter, it has its origins in the Texas of the 1950s, when George W. was a boy coming of age and Barbara a young mother coping with the unexpected trials of early adulthood.

A Young Couple Makes a New Beginning in Oil Country



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For George and Barbara Bush, moving to Texas in 1948 was an adventure – a new start in a place far different than the affluent New York suburbs where they had grown up. It was a chance, as Barbara once put it, to get out from under the "parental gaze."
She the daughter of a New York publishing executive, he the son of a Wall Street investment banker, the Bushes had met in 1941 at a country club dance in Greenwich, Conn., became engaged in the summer of 1943 and were married in 1945. Their first son, George Walker Bush, was born in New Haven on July 6, 1946, as his father was finishing up at Yale.

Two years later, mother and son would make a 12-hour cross-country flight together to meet George W.`s father in Odessa, where the family took an apartment in a shotgun house with a bathroom shared with two prostitutes next door. The senior Bush had just started as a $375-a-month oil drilling equipment clerk for a company owned by the father of a Yale classmate. After a brief transfer to California, where Robin was born, the family settled in the more white-collar town of Midland.

An oil boom was underway in West Texas, drawing the bold and adventuresome. In late 1950, Bush`s father became an independent oil man, joining up with a neighbor to scout out land that had potential and negotiate deals with the owners for shares of the mineral rights. Then in 1953, with new partners, Bush started Zapata Petroleum Corp., named somewhat incongruously after the Mexican revolutionary played by Marlon Brando in a popular movie of the time.

The Bush family`s first real home was a tiny, matchbox-shaped house in a low-income section of town called "Easter Egg Row" – so named because the structures were identical except for their bright Easter colors. George W.`s father bought their bright blue, two-bedroom edition for $7,500 with an FHA mortgage. Two moves later, as Zapata succeeded, they settled in a sprawling rambler with a pool.

"Moved from the shotgun to a duplex apartment to a house and lived the dream," Bush`s father would recount in accepting his party`s presidential nomination at the 1988 Republican convention. "High school football on Friday night, Little League, neighborhood barbecue."

George W. was the only one of the living Bush children not born in Texas, but the one who would become the truest Texan, who had memories of the oil business, of sleeping in the back seat of the station wagon while his father waited for a well to come in.

For George W., life in Midland was something of an idyll, attending Sam Houston Elementary School, riding his bike, playing baseball and engaging in perilous acrobatics beneath the high school stadium. He is remembered as a hyper, precocious youngster, always on stage, always the center of attention.

As one family member recalled: "My memories of George are of his performing and his parents laughing."

Friends recall a pint-size pied piper they called "Bushtail," always leading his gang on adventures.

"We`d crawl underneath the stadium and get up on the cross bars," Bill Sallee, a boyhood friend, remembered. "We used to swing up there like a couple of monkeys. If anybody had ever slipped, they`d have killed themselves. Hell, you were a story and a half up. There were light poles that go around the stadium. We climbed all over those things, too."

"We were always playing – after school, during recess," recalled another childhood pal, Mike Proctor. "We`d head for the appropriate ball field ... pick teams and play. He`d jump out there to be captain."

Bush was raised in an upper-middle-class home, but the Bush kids never considered themselves wealthy. His father sold his shares of Zapata for $1 million in 1966, but that year, at 42, he embarked on a career in public service. The children were told bluntly that they should expect to eventually earn their own way. Barbara Bush said in an interview that she did persuade her husband to set up education trusts for the children at the time, fearing that with his move into politics, they would "never be able to do anything for our children."

It was just a few weeks after Jeb was born in February 1953 that the Bushes began to realize something was wrong with Robin. She had been strangely exhausted, telling her mother one morning she couldn`t decide what to do that day – lie down and read or lie down and watch cars go by outside. Blood tests showed she had advanced leukemia – a disease that today might well be curable.

Leaving their sons with friends, the Bushes immediately took Robin to New York, where an uncle, John Walker, was a renowned surgeon and president of Memorial Sloan-Ketteringcancer hospital.

The ensuing months were a blur of cross-country trips and sadness. George W.`s father flew back and forth to New York on weekends while working long hours at Zapata. Barbara Bush remained in New York.

By October, Robin was dead.

Even after all these years, Barbara Bush still questions the decision not to tell her son that Robin was dying. "I don`t know if that was right or wrong. I mean, I really don`t, but I know he said to me several times, `You know, why didn`t you tell me?` " she said. "Well, it wouldn`t have made a difference."

She and her husband feared that the young boy might inadvertently let Robin know she was gravely ill, but mostly, she said, they didn`t want to burden him. "We thought he was too young to cope with it," she said.

After Robin`s death, the pain that hung over the house was often unspoken, according to Randall Roden, a childhood friend of George W. Once, while Roden was spending the night, Bush had a bad dream and his mother rushed in to comfort him.

"I knew what it was about – he had nightmares for some period of time," said Roden. "It was one of the most realistic experiences I have ever had about death and I am certain it had a profound effect on him because it had a profound effect on me."

It bothered Barbara Bush that friends never mentioned Robin, no doubt because they wanted to spare her and her husband`s feelings. But the silence rankled. Finally, as she tells the story, George W. helped break the ice, when one day at a football game he told his father that he wished he were Robin.

Friends who were sitting with Bush and his father froze in embarrassment, and his father asked him why he said it. "I bet she can see the game better from up there than we can here," his son replied.

Mother Sets the Rules, Makes Way in the World



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even as a young man, George W.`s father had an exalted place in his family. Graced with good looks, athletic ability and proper ambition, "Poppy" Bush – a nickname bestowed because his grandfather George Herbert Walker was called "Pop" – was held up as a role model. Barbara Bush treated her husband with similar deference, insulating the first man she had ever kissed from the nagging and tiresome issues that naturally consume a growing family. Two more sons were born – Neil in 1955 and Marvin in 1956 – and finally, in 1959, Dorothy, filling a void left by the daughter her husband so deeply missed.
It was Barbara Bush who set the rules and became the authority figure, while her husband was held up as a much-revered statesman-like figure among the children. It was Barbara who drove the car pools, supervised the homework and piled five kids in a car with a housekeeper for the grueling cross-country trips to Kennebunkport for summer vacation.

It was a time when fathers had relatively little to do with raising their children, so George W.`s father was hardly conspicuous among the other Midland oilmen by his frequent travel and hard work. Joe O`Neill, a boyhood friend, recalls that some weekends George W.`s father, the former Yale baseball captain, would help coach the neighborhood boys, impressing them mightily by leaning forward to catch fly balls with his glove behind his back.

But, said Mike Proctor, another childhood friend, "The one who was always there was Barbara Bush."

Much later, Barbara Bush made clear the experience was not always a happy one. "This was a period, for me," she said, "of long days and short years; of diapers, runny noses, earaches, more Little League games than you could believe possible, tonsils, and those unscheduled races to the hospital emergency room, Sunday school and church, of hours of urging homework, short chubby arms around your neck and sticky kisses; and experiencing bumpy moments – not many, but a few – of feeling that I`d never, ever be able to have fun again; and coping with the feeling that George Bush, in his excitement of starting a small company and traveling around the world, was having a lot of fun."

In 1959, the Bushes finally pulled up stakes from Midland and moved to Houston. George W. had just finished the seventh grade at San Jacinto Junior High, where he played quarterback, ran for class president – and won. Bush has often invoked the school as proof of his Texas pedigree, compared to that of his father. "He went to Greenwich Country Day and I went to San Jacinto Junior High," Bush likes to say. What he doesn`t say is that he spent just one year at the school – his last year in public education.

The Bushes enrolled their oldest son at the Kinkaid School, a private academy in one of the nation`s wealthiest suburbs, an exclusive Houston enclave called Piney Point Village. The newly arrived eighth-grader made an easy transition. He was quickly elected a class officer and made the school football team. One classmate remembers him as a "classic good old boy type" – easygoing and swaggering, with a gift for making friends.

Even though Bush would live in Houston full time for only two years, he managed to amass a large group of friends who would carry him through holidays and summers. Sundays were the big socializing day, when the Bushes would open their home to neighborhood families for hamburgers and hot dogs and endless backyard softball games.

Barbara Bush always had a jigsaw puzzle going at the end of the living room, which she brilliantly used to rope her children – and the children of others – into conversation. "Come on down here, and help work on this," she would say to an awkward teenager who stumbled into the house.

"Before you knew it," a family friend recalled, "you were working on the puzzle, then talking about the puzzle and then telling her all your problems."

But she was also "the enforcer," as her children described it, the parent most concerned with discipline and rules. Barbara Bush never subscribed to the "wait till your father gets home" school. "I don`t think that`s any good," she said. "I don`t think your husband comes home, exhausted from work, and you say, `Well, go sock Marvin.` "

More often than not it was her oldest son who was the offender. "I think one of the things I`m most grateful to George for is that he certainly blazed the path for those of us who followed," said his brother Marvin.

Obnoxious behavior on Bush`s part drew swift retribution, according to Douglas Hannah, an old friend. When the three of them played a round of golf one summer in high school, Barbara Bush admonished her son to stop swearing – and then banished him from the game after he ignored her warnings. Hannah and Barbara Bush played out 16 holes while Bush cooled his heels in the car.

Bush`s friends recall his father being present mostly on weekends, frequently running the grill. But as his father`s career became all-consuming, the oldest son – only 20 years younger than his parents – came to function as a third adult in the household, and something of a young uncle to the other children.

Once, in the mid-1960s in Houston, when his father was out of town, he drove his mother to the hospital when she was having a miscarriage.

Halfway there, Barbara Bush told her son, "I don`t think I`ll be able to get out of the car."

"I`ll take you to the emergency room, don`t worry," her son assured her.

"He picked me up the next day. ... He talked to me in the car and he said, `Don`t you think we ought to talk about this before you have more children?` " his mother recalled.

To his much younger brothers and sisters Bush seemed his own force of nature, an exciting, unpredictable hurricane who could make any family gathering an event. "We all idolized him," said sister Doro Bush Koch. "He was always such fun and wild, you always wanted to be with him because he was always daring. ... He was on the edge."

"We`d go out in the boat at night [in Kennebunkport] and that was always an adventure. Now, if we went out in the boat at night with Neil, you know that was fine because he`s a boatsman, my brother Neil, and he knew everything about it – and still does. George, on the other hand, it was more of a kind of a wild risky thing because we`re not sure that he, you know, could manage the boat as well."

As the handsome son of a rising business and civic figure in Houston, George W. was always on the list for holiday balls and the social rituals of what was essentially a traditional southern town. But those who remember him from his early teen years recall a young man devoid of polish and pretense, spurning "snobs," sneering at anything that resembled ostentation.

"It was almost a reverse snobbery," recalled Lacey Neuhaus Dorn, Bush`s neighbor in the early `60s. "He just hated the glitz. ... If someone had a fancy car, he`d make a comment that it was too fancy for his blood."

But as George Herbert Walker Bush`s first-born, there were some privileges that he could not turn down. Ninth grade would be his last year at Kinkaid. His parents decided that in the fall of 1961 he should continue his education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., one of the nation`s most exclusive and rigorous prep schools and his father`s alma mater.

For the first time, Bush would feel the full weight of his father`s illustrious past.

"I remember ... walking up the driveway at our old house in Houston," Bush recalled, "and my mother said, `Congratulations, son, you got into Andover.` "

Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Margot Williams contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2003

INTERNATIONAL -- INT`L COVER STORY

Outsourcing War
An inside look at Brown & Root, the kingpin of America`s new military-industrial complex


Early on the morning of Aug. 5, a U.S. mail convoy pulled out of the airport in Baghdad and headed north. A U.S. Army Humvee bristling with weaponry led the way, followed by three heavily loaded trucks, each driven by a civilian employee of Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR). A second military Humvee brought up the rear. Near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown, a bomb detonated under one of the trucks. The military police pried its driver, Fred Bryant Jr., from the wreckage and raced him to a military field hospital. Bryant, 39, died en route, the first KBR combat casualty since the Texas contractor was founded in 1919.

Bryant`s death underscores the U.S. military`s heavy reliance on private military companies, or PMCs, to wage war in Iraq. By most estimates, civilian contractors are handling as much as 20% to 30% of essential military support services in Iraq. Scores of PMCs are active all across the country, but KBR in particular has become indispensable to the global projection of American military might in this unsettled age. "It is no exaggeration to say that wherever the U.S. military goes, so goes Brown & Root," says P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution fellow and author of Corporate Warriors. Widely known as Brown & Root, KBR is a unit of oil-services giant Halliburton Co. (HAL ) -- Dick Cheney`s old company.

KBR and its rivals figure crucially in the increasingly clamorous debate over the size and structure of America`s armed forces. To save money, the U.S. has pared its roster of active-duty troops by 32%, to 1.5 million, since 1991. But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the post-Cold War new world order: Terrorist networks proliferated, and long-suppressed ethnic conflicts broke out all over the globe, prompting the U.S. to intervene militarily. The Pentagon was able to maintain -- and perhaps even boost -- the potency of America`s armed forces by developing an awesome array of new high-tech weaponry and replacing tens of thousands of soldiers with civilian PMC workers.

The Bush Administration was so confident of America`s military superiority that it went into Iraq with a much smaller, more nimble force than the huge multinational coalition that was assembled to push Saddam out of Kuwait in 1990. The swift defeat of the Iraqi army seemed to invalidate the Powell Doctrine, which holds that the U.S. should fight only when it has an overwhelming numerical edge. But occupying Iraq with 140,000 U.S. troops (plus 21,700 from Britain and other countries) is proving another matter altogether, putting the new contractor-dependent military to its most severe test to date.

Critics of the Bush Administration argue that it will require a force of 300,000 to 500,000 soldiers to pacify Iraq. But even if the U.S. wanted to substantially boost troop levels, it`s not clear where reinforcements would come from. About 50% of the Army`s active-duty troops are on foreign soil already, and in many key military specialities, the deployment percentage is much higher. For example, 90% of all American military police are already on active duty. With U.S. troops tied down in terrorist-hunting and peacekeeping missions from the Philippines to Liberia to Uzbekistan, America`s downsized armed forces are stretched thin -- perilously so, say many experts.

The era of military shrinkage clearly has ended, yet the Bush Administration is resisting calls to begin expanding the Army again. Instead, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is weighing a series of measures designed to increase the potency of America`s armed forces without incurring the expense -- financial and political -- of putting more Americans in uniform. In essence, Rumsfeld wants the Pentagon to make more effective use of existing resources. Above all, that means substituting even more civilians for troops and leaning even more heavily on PMCs. There are "something in the neighborhood of 300,000 men and women in uniform doing jobs that aren`t for men and women in uniform," Rumsfeld said during Senate testimony in July.

No company is better positioned to take over those jobs than KBR. Over the past decade, the company has housed, fed, and maintained American fighting forces in some of the most geographically remote and politically dangerous regions on earth. It has proven itself capable of efficiently mobilizing its own vast army of engineers, cooks, and logistics experts, often on short notice. Even rival PMCs generally praise it as an adept and reliable operator. "They have a good performance record," says Albert J. Konvicka, president of AECOM Government Services Inc., a Fort Worth-based PMC. "They can react very quickly to situations. I respect them as a competitor."

But outsourcing is no panacea for America`s overextended military. Brown & Root and most other PMCs work strictly in a supporting role. Their employees maintain America`s high-tech weapons and train soldiers how to use them but depend heavily on their military customers for protection in combat zones. If security breaks down, as it often has in Iraq, the PMC support system is liable to malfunction, too. Lieutenant General Charles S. Mahan Jr., the Army`s top logistics officer, recently complained that so many civilian contractors had refused to deploy to particularly dangerous parts of Iraq that soldiers had to go without fresh food, showers, and toilets for months. Even mail delivery fell weeks behind, Mahan complained in a July 31 interview with Newhouse News Service. "We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kind of functions," Mahan said. But it got "harder and harder to get [them] to go in harm`s way."

General Mahan didn`t knock Brown & Root by name. He didn`t have to; the company is by far the biggest services contractor in Iraq, with more than 2,500 employees in Central Asia and the Middle East as a whole. U.S. Civil Administrator L. Paul Bremer III and the 1,000-person Office of Reconstruction & Humanitarian Assistance depend on the company for food and shelter, as do at least 100,000 of the U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. In addition, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned to KBR and KBR alone to help repair damaged oil wells and pipelines and get Iraqi crude -- the key source of reconstruction revenue -- flowing again to export markets.

For its work in support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, KBR has billed the U.S. government about $950 million for work completed under contracts capped at $8.2 billion. At the same time, KBR is in line to earn tens of millions of dollars more to maintain the archipelago of U.S. military bases that now arcs from the Balkans south to the Horn of Africa and east to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Closer to home, KBR built the detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that house Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners. All in all, no corporation has played as central a role in America`s global anti-terrorism campaign -- or profited as handsomely from it -- as KBR.

The company`s high-profile success in winning contracts, coupled with its intimate ties to the White House, has aroused suspicions that it is a beneficiary of political favoritism. Although Cheney no longer owns stock in Halliburton, he was its chairman and CEO for five years and either hired or promoted many of the executives now running Halliburton and KBR. At the insistence of two powerful House Democrats, Henry A. Waxman of California and John D. Dingell of Michigan, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, is looking into the issue of whether KBR has received special treatment in the awarding of Defense Dept. contracts over the past two years.

David J. Lesar, Halliburton`s current chairman and CEO, is exasperated by the controversy swirling around his company. "Despite some of the media scrutiny you`ve seen, within the organization we are very, very proud of what we do to support the military and, I think, save the U.S. taxpayer some money," says Lesar, who insists that all of KBR`s dealings with the Pentagon have been at arm`s length.

Robert "Randy" Harl, KBR`s president and CEO, insists that General Mahan`s complaints do not apply to KBR. The company "has met every commitment we have made to the military," Harl says. "Our company has no higher priority than to support our military on the ground." Mahan was unavailable to discuss his criticisms of civilian contractors with BusinessWeek; the 57-year-old three-star general retired from military service shortly after making his comments. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.

Mahan`s departure will do nothing to quell the debate over the military`s rising dependence on Brown & Root and other PMCs. There is general agreement that it makes sense to shift troops out of jobs that contractors can handle at least as well -- and probably at less cost -- and let them concentrate on purely military tasks. "The cost-savings argument for outsourcing is not nearly as compelling as the potential improvement from quality of service or flexibility," says Steven L. Schooner, co-director of government-procurement law at George Washington University Law School.

The outsourcing trend also is being driven by the accelerating sophistication of military software and hardware. The high-tech weapon systems used to such devastating effect in Afghanistan and Iraq are so complex that combat units in the field have no choice but to depend on expert civilians to maintain and, in some cases, operate them. The F-117 stealth fighter, M1A1 tank, Patriot missile, and Global Hawk unmanned drone are all heavily contractor-dependent.

Skeptics, who include many members of the military Establishment, warn that the growing PMC presence on the battlefield exposes America`s armed forces to potentially catastrophic risk. As civilians, contract employees are not subject to military command and discipline. Workers who refuse an assignment can be fired by their employers but not tossed into the brig. The Pentagon`s only recourse is to sue -- no comfort at all to a commander in the field who has been left in the lurch by vanished contractors. A PMC`s ultimate duty is not to its military customers but to its shareholders. "Contractor loyalty to the almighty dollar, as opposed to support for/of the front-line soldier, remains [a] serious question," warned a U.S. Army War College paper last year.

Although the ultimate interests of the military and the PMCs diverge, their routine dealings are defined by cooperation, not conflict. The emergence of a robust private military industry has set the revolving door between the Pentagon and private industry spinning faster than ever. From top to bottom, the typical PMC is heavily staffed by ex-military officers. "Roger that," replies Billy J. Gray, a well-traveled KBR manager now stationed at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, when asked if he is ex-Army. Like many of his colleagues, Gray gets a bigger paycheck from KBR than he did in his Army days, and he still gets his military pension, which, for a veteran with 20 years` service, amounts to 50% of his old salary.

Military Professional Resources Inc. (LLL ), an Alexandria (Va.) military consulting firm, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than the Pentagon." But no PMC has forged a more intimate connection with America`s warfighters than Brown & Root, whose forté is building and maintaining military bases in dangerous places. At locations such as Camp Bondsteel and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, KBR employees literally live with the soldiers -- albeit within a separate compound on the base -- thereby alleviating the privations while sharing many of the dangers of military life. Says GWU`s Schooner: "Brown & Root has won the hearts, minds, and stomachs of everybody in the military."

Unlike soldiers, however, KBR employees have the option of quitting at any time. "I`ve raised my hand before and said, `Guys, I`m burned out,"` says Gray, an engineer who oversees vehicle maintenance and electric-power generation at Bondsteel. Gray, who has worked for KBR for a decade, has taken three home leaves over the years. He just returned to work in April after a nine-month break. "I called up and said, `Hey, I`m deployable again,"` he says.

The Defense Dept. is the private military industry`s biggest customer, but hardly the only buyer in what is a truly global market. Great Britain and other established military powers have embraced military outsourcing to varying degrees, while numerous Third World countries have hired PMCs to train their armies and in some cases -- Sierra Leone, Angola, the Congo -- to literally fight their battles.

Brown & Root ranks among the five top defense contractors in the United Kingdom. Since 1997, KBR has owned a 51% stake in the Davenport Royal Docks, a former government facility where the company and its two English partners maintain the Trident fleet of nuclear submarines. In late July, the Ministry of Defense named a consortium led by Brown & Root as the preferred bidder for a 4 billion-pound, 30-year contract to upgrade British Army garrisons housing a total of 18,000 soldiers and civilians.

Everyone agrees that the global PMC business is booming, but no one knows exactly how big it is. A two-year study completed in 2002 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists identified 90 PMCs operating in 110 countries. U.S. companies dominate, but sizable PMCs operate out of Britain, South Africa, Russia, Israel, and elsewhere. Many PMCs are privately owned, and even the ones that are part of publicly held corporations, such as KBR, tend to provide minimal financial detail. Much of the work PMCs perform is classified "secret" by their government clients. But for many of them, reclusiveness also is a public-relations strategy. The private military industry has an image problem reducible to a single, rather dirty word: mercenary.

The tradition of hired foreign guns is older than the gun, dating to ancient times. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 criminalized the mercenary trade, driving it underground. Mercenaries are still very much with us -- especially in Africa -- but they tend to operate in small, ragtag units of limited effectiveness. In short, they cannot begin to compete with PMCs, which have legitimized the military-services business by reorganizing it into corporate form. Scrupulously avoiding the shadowy, freebooting margins of the business, KBR acts only as a working partner of the armed forces of the U.S. and its allies, never as their proxy. In addition, the company shuns all assignments that require carrying weapons, including sentry duty at military bases, a PMC staple.

Brown & Root`s military-contracting operation is an extension of the company`s original business: engineering and construction. During World War II, Brown & Root landed its first military contracts and eventually built hundreds of ships for the U.S. Navy. Its employees accompanied U.S. troops to Korea and Vietnam, building bases, roads, harbors, and so on. In 1963, Brown & Root sold out to oil-services giant Halliburton (becoming Kellogg Brown & Root with the addition of oil-pipe fabricator M.W. Kellogg in 1998). Taking its cues from Halliburton, KBR emphasized energy projects, exiting the military business altogether after the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam in 1973.

Desperate for new sources of revenue during the cataclysmic oil-industry contraction of the mid-1980s, KBR tiptoed back into military contracting in 1987 -- this time to stay. "We see it as a very nice adjunct to the rest of the business," says Halliburton CEO Lesar. "It requires many of the same capabilities that we must have to execute our basic strategy, which is serving our oil-and-gas customers: good engineering, good logistics, the ability to get people on the ground fast, the ability to handle enormous amounts of data."

Military contracting now accounts for only about 20% of KBR`s revenues -- which is unfortunate for shareholders, since this business is the best thing the beleaguered unit has going for it. Over the past 12 months, KBR has incurred operating losses of $675 million on revenues of $6.1 billion. The company is so weighed down by asbestos-related liabilities incurred by its construction business that it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this fall to settle pending personal-injury claims. KBR`s government-contracting unit will not be included in the Chapter 11 filing.

In this year`s second quarter, KBR earned $17 million on the $292 million in revenue produced by its work in Iraq, a paltry margin of 5.8%. On the other hand, the military business is reliably profitable and far less capital-intensive than either oil services or construction because the government owns virtually all the fixed assets. Under the "cost-reimbursable" contracts common in military logistics, KBR passes along 100% of its costs to the customer and is assured of a 1% profit. In addition, the company can earn an "award fee" of 1% to 8% of total expenditures depending on how well it performs.

The bulk of KBR`s military business has come in through a single, infinitely expandable contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP for short. When Brown & Root won the first LOGCAP contract in 1992 over three other bidders, no one imagined that it would burgeon into what the Contract Services Assn. calls "the mother of all service contracts." For a fee of $3.9 million, LOGCAP I required KBR to develop contingency plans for deploying U.S. forces to 13 different parts of the world. But LOGCAP was more than brainwork: The company had to be ready, on short notice, to transport a fighting force of up to 50,000 troops to any location in the world and to supply them with food and other essentials for as long as six months.

Brown & Root was called into combat for the first time in late 1992, accompanying U.S. forces into Somalia in support of a U.N.-sponsored intervention. Soon, KBR was Somalia`s largest employer, with 2,500 locals on the payroll. The Army paid the company $110 million for Somalia and $141 million to assist 18,000 troops sent into Haiti on another U.N. mission in 1994. But it wasn`t until the U.S. led NATO forces into Bosnia in 1995 that KBR -- and the entire private military industry -- came of age.

Limited by Presidential order to calling up no more than 4,300 reservists, the Army turned to Brown & Root and scores of other contractors. During one of the harshest Balkan winters on record, KBR joined with military engineers to create 34 bases from former U.N. camps, abandoned factories, ruined buildings, and open fields. The company supplied most of the building materials needed because it was able to make deliveries faster than the Army could, according to a GAO report. The 16,200 soldiers who filled the camps depended almost entirely on KBR for food and other necessities.

KBR`s LOGCAP agreement expired in 1997, and the U.S. Army Material Command awarded a new five-year contract to rival Dyncorp (CSC ) "Losing that was quite a blow," Harl concedes. "We turned in a proposal that was not fully responsive to what [the AMC] was looking for." The Army softened the blow considerably by carving out the Balkans under a separate contract given to Brown & Root. The company continued to operate in Bosnia -- and moved south into Kosovo with the Army when war erupted there in 1999. In short order, KBR built three more large bases and scores of peripheral outposts.

Through 2002, the Army has paid KBR about $2.5 billion for its work in the Balkans. Neither the company nor the Army will disclose how much of this is profit. An Army spokeswoman says that on average, KBR has received about 90% of the maximum fee award of 8% to 9%. This works out to a profit of about $200 million. In recent years, the U.S. has sharply reduced its troop levels in the Balkans and closed most of its bases. KBR continues to run the bases that remain and is projected to receive $367 million more in payments this year and next, when its contract expires.

The Army`s spending in Bosnia repeatedly exceeded projections, attracting intensive scrutiny in Washington. However, in 1997, a Logistics Management Institute study found that it would have taken 8,918 troops and $638 million to do what KBR`s 6,766 employees had done for $462 million. "When compared with the costs of using an equivalent military force," the study concluded, "the use of LOGCAP contractors is economical."

The big savings is in labor costs. A PMC does not have to pay the cost of training and deploying a soldier. It also can subcontract out to local workers -- "host country nationals" in the parlance of the trade -- at much lower rates than U.S. government scale. For example, in the Balkans, KBR paid carpenters, electricians, and plumbers $15.80 an hour on average, compared with the $24.38 government rate. The wage gap was largest for basic laborers: $1.12 an hour, vs. $15.99.

Still, the GAO, which twice investigated LOGCAP spending in the Balkans, chided the Army for the laxity of its oversight of contractors` cost-plus spending. "Army and other [Defense Dept.] officials have typically accepted [KBR`s] judgment and not questioned the level of services being provided," the GAO noted in a 2000 report entitled Army Should Do More to Control Contract Cost in the Balkans. The agency gave KBR high marks, the report continued, but noted that military officials often were unable "to explain the frequency of services being provided, such as...cleaning latrines three times a day."

In 2001, KBR outbid Dyncorp and another company to win back the LOGCAP contract, now extended to a duration of 10 years. Under LOGCAP, KBR has received assignments potentially worth as much as $183 million to support the hunt for al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. The company maintains the two biggest bases in Afghanistan -- at Bagram and Kandahar -- and Camp Stronghold Freedom in Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, Operation Iraqi Freedom has sent $1 billion more in LOGCAP business KBR`s way to date, and new work orders still are being issued at the rate of a half-dozen per month.

In late 2002, the Pentagon asked KBR to grapple with a question complicating U.S. plans for invading Iraq: What to do if Saddam torches his own oil fields, as he did Kuwait`s during the last Gulf War? KBR drew up a classified contingency plan to deal with this nightmare scenario. The work was done under LOGCAP, but to help implement the plan, the Army Corps of Engineers signed KBR to a separate contract capped at $7 billion. General Robert Flowers, the Corps` commander, said the contract was awarded to KBR because the Army had complete confidence in the company and there wasn`t time to put it out to bid -- an explanation that inflamed suspicions that the political fix was in.

Harl emphatically denies it. "Our people did a great job in securing that work, and Dick had nothing to do with it," Harl insists. Bill Allison of The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based government watchdog group, argues that Cheney does not have to actually pull strings to help his old company. "Cheney knows how things work," Allison says. "There are a number of ways you can help without actually being involved."

As it turned out, Saddam`s forces set fire to only 9 of Iraq`s 1,821 oil wells. But in the months since the U.S. captured Baghdad, saboteurs have done heavy damage to oil wells, pipelines, and other facilities throughout the country. This massive repair job has fallen to Task Force RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil), which consists of some 300 Brown & Rooters and a smaller Army Corps of Engineers contingent. KBR has finished $705 million worth of this work to date. The money will keep rolling in for another few months but likely will fall well short of $7 billion -- a figure that presumed an oil-field conflagration of apocalyptic scope. KBR`s contract, which was always intended as a stopgap measure, will be replaced at yearend by two new contracts, each potentially worth $500 million, according to the Corps of Engineers. KBR is an odds-on bet to win one but not both contracts, if only because a double victory likely would provoke Waxman and Dingell to new heights of outrage.

Lesar expects KBR to remain an opportune political target for as long as Cheney occupies the White House. "That`s just part and parcel of living with who my predecessor was," he says, adding that no amount of contention will dissuade KBR from pursuing new military business. "If I believe there is a piece of work out there that we have the capability to do," Lesar says, "I have an obligation to my shareholders to go after it."

In coining the term "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address to the nation in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- retired four-star general and war hero Eisenhower -- warned of the incestuous ties that had formed between the Defense Dept. and the "permanent armaments industry" birthed by World War II. Eisenhower worried that the Pentagon`s pursuit of its bureaucratic imperatives could combine with arms makers` pursuit of profit to thrust the U.S. into a war the country did not need and perhaps could not win.

The big weapons manufacturers that alarmed Eisenhower have shrunk in number and size since the Cold War ended. But the emergence of the private military company has extended the relationship that so worried Eisenhower, pushing it beyond the executive suite and factory floor onto the battlefield itself. The PMCs` adaptability is politically as well as militarily useful to the government. Why take the heat of calling up reservists when you can summon civilians-for-hire? Why try to persuade Congress to sanction the use of U.S. troops in Colombia`s war on narco-guerrillas when you can send in contractors to spray coca fields and train paramilitary groups -- as both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have done?

The new military-industrial complex seems to pose at least as much danger to itself as it does to society. Contractor no-shows in Iraq have jolted U.S. military planners who expected a repeat of Brown & Root`s yeomanlike performance in the Balkans. Says Brooking Institution`s Singer: "Now that the Army`s eyes have been opened up on this, they are thinking through other scenarios, with war in Korea being not only the most likely but the most worrisome possibility."

If conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate, plenty of other people will be focused on whether the policy of replacing soldiers with private contractors, even in support roles, can be taken too far. The ultimate fear, of course, is that contractors under extreme duress will flee en masse, exposing U.S. soldiers to catastrophic risk -- a disastrous outcome that not even Eisenhower foresaw.

By Anthony Bianco & Stephanie Anderson Forest
With Stan Crock in Washington and Thomas F. Armistead in Iraq
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_37/b3849012.…

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Welcome: this way for cluster bombs
Arms fair fails to stop promotion of controversial weapons

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian

Cluster weapons were on show yesterday at the opening of Europe`s largest arms fair in London Docklands despite an appeal from the organisers to hide them away.

The controversial weapons, which pose a potential threat to civilians because they contain many bomblets which can fail to explode in the initial attack, were on offer at the stand of an Israeli arms company, Israel Military Industries Ltd.

The firm said it could provide new types of cluster weapons, now described as "cargo ammunition". One is called Bomblet M85, which, IMI`s catalogue says, has been tested successfully in England.

The company has manufactured tens of millions of the bomblets for Nato, central and eastern European, and Asian countries.

Another IMI weapon on display, the Anti-Personnel, Anti Materiel Cartridge, or APAM, with assorted ammunition designed to hit armour and bunkers as well as soldiers in the open, is described as providing a "real breakthrough in anti-personnel warfare".

IMI`s catalogue recognises that "hazardous duds normally constitute a very serious problem for users of cargo ammunition". These duds, it admits, are "in essence mines".

But it adds that IMI has the "safest self-destruct bomblets in the world, the best penetration, and the widest lethal area".

A salesman for IMI told the Guardian that he could not speak about the supply of the controversial weapons to the British army, which fired hundreds of them during the war against Iraq. However, asked how many weapons his company sold to Britain, he replied: "Officially none."

A spokesman for BAE Systems, Britain`s largest arms company, said last night that it had bought 26,000 rounds of Israeli L20 artillery cluster shells in a contract agreed shortly before the Iraqi war. The Ministry of Defence has admitted that the army fired more than 2,000 Israeli cluster munitions from howitzers during the battle for Basra.

Israeli coyness may be explained by a request from Spearhead, the company organising the Defence Systems and Equipment Exhibition International, for companies not to show off cluster weapons. "We suggested it was inappropriate. Though they are not illegal there is a very strong feeling in this country about cluster bombs," said Paul Beaver, exhibition spokesman.

Cluster weapons contain multiple small bomblets, a significant number of which fail to explode leaving a potentially fatal attraction for civilians, children in particular.

Unexploded cluster weapons have maimed and killed civilians in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Charities and humanitarian agencies say they should be declared illegal along with anti-personnel landmines.

Richard Lloyd director of the campaign, Landmine Action, said yesterday dozens of Iraqis had been killed and maimed in southern Iraq and there was a "high probability" some unexploded bomblets were those fired by British guns.

The UN children`s fund, Unicef, says more than 1,000 children have been injured by cluster bomblets and other unexploded munitions since the official end of the war in Iraq.

The MoD said yesterday its policy was one of buying the most effective weapons for the best value for money. British defence officials said with Israeli cluster weapons "the legacy problem is reduced".

They say that Israeli cluster weapons have a failure rate of 2%, compared with between 5% and 10% for older types of cluster weapons dropped by Britain and US aircraft and fired by American rocket systems during the Gulf war.

Each L20 shell is believed to contain 49 bomblets. With 2,000 fired from British guns around Basra that would leave about 2,000 unexploded bombs. The MoD said during the war that British howitzers with a range of 30km fired Israeli-made L20 cluster shells on targets "in the open".

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, said after the war: "Cluster bombs are not illegal. There were troops, there was equipment in and around the built-up areas...the bombs were used accordingly to take out the threat to our troops."

The arms fair was opened yesterday by Geoff Hoon. There are about 950 companies showing their wares, half of them British.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Mr Blair`s blood count
AL Kennedy
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian

So, the lean and noble figure of Alastair Campbell jogs away from No 10, a whole new selection of profitable marathons opening up, and the luscious and reliable figure of Mandy slips back in. Doesn`t it all impregnate you with confidence and pride? Or do I mean nauseous rage and the kind of revolted neuralgia that makes you want to snap your own shins as a distraction? Apart from being an insult to every benighted UK voter, it just isn`t dealing with our central problem - the one involving Mr Blair and all that blood.

Obviously, we shouldn`t take the phrase "blood on his hands" terribly literally, because that wouldn`t be fair - Blair`s only our prime minister, sitting at the centre of a complex and sophisticated network of advisers and in possession of global influence and serious investment capital. You wouldn`t want to go holding him responsible for things. So I`m trying to approach the whole blood issue in a considered way.

I am willing to ignore the blood spilled as a result of Blair`s transport policies, Blair`s health policies and Blair`s decisions relating to arms sales and the escalating bloodbath that is Afghanistan. This leaves me with only Iraq - a country where a good deal of blood has undoubtedly been shed; but a little rational consideration will undoubtedly render the accumulated volume really quite palatable.

Naturally, in the interests of Truth and Justice, we wouldn`t want to include the blood of Iraqi servicemen, because the ones the CIA couldn`t buy off beforehand were, therefore, Evil and deserved to die. Which leaves the blood of Iraqi civilians.

Of course, it`s tricky to establish the true levels of civilian injury and death in Iraq, due to it being a very big place and looking all the same because of the sand. Estimates of the completely dead vary between 37,137 and the much more comfortable 6,118. Your average person contains around eight pints of blood, but Iraqis have suffered various medical difficulties caused by starvation, stress and speaking Arabic, so let`s guess there are seven pints in each Iraqi adult. And many of the casualties - say 3,000 - will actually have been kiddies, whom we`ll average out at three pints each.

That makes 21,826 adult pints and 9,000 junior pints. Not all the blood in someone leaves their body when they die, so we might want to round those 30,826 possible pints down to 27,000. Then we add in the 20,000 or so civilian wounded - three pints each seems not unreasonable - and we get another 60,000, which brings us up to 87,000 pints of Iraqi Blood Spilled.

Now one wouldn`t want to be racist about this, but Iraqi blood does seem to matter a good deal less than more civilised, more Christian, more Caucasian blood. After all, if that`s what God is telling George Bush, then who are we to argue, or to wonder why US forces include 37,401 non-US citizens? If they survive their (now possibly two-year) tours of duty, they may win a coveted US passport, and, if not, well, they were only foreigners.

Naturally, all US military personnel, despite pisspoor support from contractors unwilling to work in war zones, are healthy and stuffed with at least eight pints each. That makes 2,288 pints available from US dead at the time of writing. Round that down to 2,000 for actual Blood Spilled and then reduce by, oh, another 40 pints to account for the two who died of mystery pneumonia and the three who popped off in their sleep. So that`s 1,960 pints.

Curiously, the numbers of US injured are almost impossible to ascertain. Official sources quote 1,124, while sources at the Andrews airforce base say they`ve processed more than 4,000 wounded. But I feel we should always trust official figures, which gives us 3,372 pints and a total of 5,332 pints of US Blood Spilled.

Then there were those two coalition-of-the-willing guys who died - say, 14 pints from them. And those 17 journalists who snuffed it. Oddly, only two were embedded journos (one died in his sleep, one in an accident), while the rest were reckless, probably pro-terrorist, independents, who were, quite reasonably, mainly killed by US forces - producing say, 105 pints, all in.

British deaths, with which we are, of course, most concerned, amount to 50 at the time of writing - let`s chalk up 350 pints from them. Numbers of wounded are open to debate, but seem set at four. So we`ll top up with another 12 UK pints for luck.

Excluding Dr Kelly`s contribution, this brings us to a minimum Total Blood Spilled of 92,811 pints - or a touch over 11,600 gallons of human blood on Blair`s hands, the hands of the man who still runs our country, blood that I just can`t help imagining - a dark, congealing lake of misery and waste and our leader there in it, sinking.

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France and Germany seek full UN control over Iraq
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian

France and Germany will back the new UN resolution on Iraq sought by President George Bush only if the proposal gives the UN full political rule over the country.

The countries have also demanded a clear programme for returning power to Iraqis.

The high price sought by the French suggests that Mr Bush is going to struggle to win UN agreement ahead of his planned speech to the security council on September 24. Foreign ministers of the five permanent members are due to meet the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in Geneva this weekend to try to find common ground.

Paris wants the UN to run Iraq temporarily on the model of Afghanistan, but insists its proposals do not represent an attempt to settle scores over the unilateral action by the US and Britain in Iraq.

France and Germany will accept the authority of the 25-strong governing council of Iraq, even though its membership was largely handpicked by the Anglo-US provisional authority. France believes the handover needs to be quick since many Iraqis fail to distinguish between US and UN control of the country.

Mr Bush has already tabled a draft resolution to leave US in full control of the coalition military, and give the UN only limited authority.

French sources insist they will approach the talks constructively, and not attempt to humiliate the US over its inability to restore order after the invasion.

The French remain surprised at the lack of planning for postwar reconstruction, and of any apparent serious thought about the prospect of conflict between the Shia and Sunni groups. France doubts a solution lies in extra troops, but says the governing council needs to be given a clear impression of a timetable leading to democratic elections and a constitutional assembly.

Both Britain and the US have suggested elections are held within a year, but they have failed to put this timetable into the draft. France is not insisting on a specific timetable, since such dates might not be met, which could lead to a more general loss of momentum.

It remains sceptical of the idea that Britain is wielding significant influence over the new conservative mood in Washington. It has been suggested that No 10 saw the draft US resolution only a couple of days before it was circulated to security council members.

France is also seeking greater UN control of Iraqi oil revenues.

· Mr Bush`s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, appeared to admit yesterday that the US government had failed to appreciate the scale of the reconstruction job in Iraq. She blamed a lack of information under the rule of Saddam Hussein, which meant any underestimate of the size of the task "was not at all surprising".

However, according to the Washington Post, violent resistance to US forces in Iraq was predicted by intelligence agencies, whose warnings may have been ignored by the White House. An unnamed senior administration official told the paper: "Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness."


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America`s dirty torture secret
Henry Porter
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian

Remembering al-Qaida`s attacks on America tomorrow, many will wearily note that the world did indeed change that day two years ago and that our newspapers are still full of the reverberations. Without 9/11 there would have been no Iraq war. Without Iraq there would be no Hutton, and without Hutton, TB wouldn`t be looking quite as weak as he is.

The American press betrays the same pattern, but there is one important and - to me - astonishing absence. Weeks go by without serious newspapers investigating or commenting on human rights abuses by the American government. At home and abroad, hundreds, maybe thousands, of men are being held in camps and prisons by the military, by the CIA and by the justice department, incommunicado, without legal representation or hope of release, there to endure prolonged and terrifying interrogation. Alone, this is enough for the US government to place itself in contravention of the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which it is obligated to uphold. But that is not all. There is evidence that the US authorities have encouraged the use of torture and may indeed have participated in the torture of those men they believe to hold information on past and future terrorist attacks.

We surely didn`t imagine two years ago that this would be an outcome of 9/11 and yet it has happened with such ease, the once rights-conscious American public turning its gaze the other way, along with the self-regarding worthies of the American newspaper industry. The one exception has been the Washington Post, which alone has pressed the US government on the legality of Guantanamo Bay and the processes instituted there, not by lawyers, but the jesuitical neo-conservative mandarins of the Pentagon, and it has gone some way to exposing the "stress and duress" techniques applied to prisoners at the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan.

Researching my book Empire State, a novel set against the background of these abuses, I discovered that the information is not terribly difficult to come by. In March, prisoners at Bagram reported being beaten, deprived of sleep and made to lie naked on a sheet of ice. The same month, US military coroners ruled that the deaths of two prisoners in mysterious circumstances were homicides. Just before the invasion, I met an American who is attached to a shadowy military/espionage operation; I asked him about the rumours of torture. He replied with a look of astonishment, "Are you crazy? Of course. That`s the war we`ve got on our hands. We didn`t ask for it this way."

By far the most disturbing development is the American practice of handing over recalcitrant prisoners to be tortured by compliant regimes in Jordan, Morocco and particularly Egypt, where beating, drowning and even electric shock treatment are used.

When a man is transported bound and blindfolded - in the American parlance "packaged" - it is said that he has been "rendered" to a foreign service, and from the unutterable hell of his subsequent experience come "extreme renditions". The desired result of this process is a complete set of answers to questions drawn up by US intelligence that are then fed into a database which, without a trace of irony, has been codenamed Harmony.

Naturally, the CIA officers are not themselves applying the electrodes to genitals or rubber truncheons to the soles of the feet, but in the case of prisoners being tortured in Saudi Arabia, they are on hand, in the words of CIA director George Tenet, to "share the debriefing results".

All of the above may make you think that I have become violently anti-American. I have not - I still love the place and the people - but it is profoundly disturbing that our closest ally has slipped so easily into methods which begin to match the theocratic savagery that launched the 9/11 attacks in the first place.

I also shudder at our failure to act. When confronted with the facts about the treatment of British subjects in Guantanamo Bay, the government fielded Baroness Symons from the Foreign Office, who refused to condemn outright either the lack of rights in the camp or the threat of the death penalty being ordered by a military panel. If she can`t see it as her primary duty to speak out against human rights abuses by an ally, what on earth is she is doing in the government?

No to a DNA database

The home secretary, David Blunkett, hopes to announce this month that the identity cards scheme is going ahead with each of us paying £25 for the privilege of a card. So ends the inviolable right to anonymity.

But much worse schemes are afoot. A twerp named Kevin Morris, chairman of the Police Superintendents` Association, is hoping this week to add one more piece to the apparatus of control when he asks his association to call for a national DNA database that will include every man, woman and child in the country.

The seriousness of the threat to individual liberty cannot be underestimated. Once a person`s DNA is held by the police, there will be nothing they won`t be able to tell about him or her. Every week, our ability to read the 30,000 human genes increases, and it cannot be long before scientists start making assumptions about personality traits from particular constellations of genes. Imagine this capability in the hands of a murder squad desperate to solve a difficult crime. Everyone with a particular profile would become a suspect.

To place this power at the disposal of the police at this early stage in the development of genetics would be a disaster. But maybe we just don`t care. As long as our comfort and pleasure are not immediately inconvenienced, we seem to go along with the idea of cars that automatically alert the authorities to speeding, or cameras that log our every movement.

Welcome to the age of the velvet tyranny, where men like Morris are king.

Calling all whistle blowers

It is my personal belief that, having bought their very own Chechnya in Iraq, neither Bush nor Blair will be in office in 18 months` time. The unfolding chaos and dissolution in Iraq should do for both, but a good longshot bet is that Blair will come unstuck on the Hutton inquiry.

When you read all the evidence released by Lord Hutton you do get the picture of a prime minister pushing for a dossier that supported a war agenda that had been settled with Bush in March 2002.

The proof is not yet there, but an awful lot of evidence must exist in the British military about the notice and instructions received by the generals from the government during the summer of 2002.

It would be helpful if whistleblowers would come forward to testify to the military planning prior to the release of the dossier, and thus demonstrate the motives of No 10. Given what happened to David Kelly, I think this is unlikely.

· Empire State, Henry Porter`s novel about an Anglo-American counterterrorist operation in the post 9/11 world is published this week by Orion.


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US has no idea when troops will pull out of Iraq
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
10 September 2003


Under fierce grilling from both Democratic and Republican Senators yesterday, senior US officials admitted they had no idea how long American troops would be staying in Iraq, or when the extra international forces sought by President George Bush would be deployed to help them.

In further attacks against US troops, a car bomb exploded outside an office used by American soldiers in northern Iraq, killing one Iraqi and wounding six Americans and 41 Iraqis.

A US soldier was killed and one wounded when a homemade bomb exploded near a military vehicle on a supply route north-east of Baghdad, US Central Command said today.

Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered the first defence on Capitol Hill of President Bush`s $87bn (£55bn) funding request, for the US military and reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their appearance coincided with reports that some 20,000 National Guard personnel and reservists will have their tours of duty in Iraq and other Gulf countries extended to 12 months to relieve pressure on the 130,000 soldiers on active duty in Iraq. These have already seen their stay extended far longer than expected.

At the same time, claims of poor planning for the post-war period have been reinforced by a new report that US intelligence had warned the administration before the invasion to expect considerable armed resistance to occupying forces.

But according to The Washington Post, such sombre predictions seem to have been brushed aside by the Pentagon`s civilian leadership. In February for instance, General Eric Shinseki, who was the Army Chief of Staff at the time, told Congress that "several hundred thousand" troops might be needed in the aftermath - only to have Mr Wolfowitz call his estimate "wildly off the mark". Yesterday Mr Wolfowitz was in the hot seat, trying to explain his previous assurances that Iraq would soon be paying for its own reconstruction. He also had to square Pentagon assertions that US commanders in Iraq believe they have sufficient troops with President Bush`s call for an extra foreign division to share the burden.

The $87bn request, on top of the $79bn allocated by Congress last spring, was "a bitter pill for the American people to swallow", said the Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the top-ranking Democrat on the panel. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and supporter of the war, said the Pentagon "clearly underestimated" the extent of the difficulties.

Forced to return to the United Nations, the Bush administration has submitted a new draft Security Council resolution enlarging the role of the UN in post-war Iraq, which it hopes will persuade others, especially Islamic countries such as Turkey and Pakistan, to send forces. This weekend the Secretary of State Colin Powell travels to Geneva to meet the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Russia and China, the four other veto-wielding members of the Council, in an attempt to reach a deal before Mr Bush addresses the General Assembly on 23 September. But, under insistent and sceptical questioning from Mr McCain, Marc Grossman, under-secretary for political affairs at the State Department conceded he had "no idea" when forces for this international division would be going to Iraq. However unhappily, Democrats are likely to join Republicans in approving the $87bn package when it comes up for a vote, probably early next month.But further intense questioning is certain.

But Mr Wolfowitz insisted the spending was essential, to train Iraqi and international troops, and to give US forces what they required to win the war. He claimed that 55,000 Iraqi soldiers were fighting alongside the Allied forces. General Myers added that by 2005, that number would grow to 184,000.
10 September 2003 09:38


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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September 10, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS: THE MONEY
War Budget Request More Realistic but Still Uncertain
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON


ASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — As the war wound down last spring and gave way to armed occupation, administration officials reassured Congress that rebuilding Iraq would be no big deal, at least in terms of cost to the United States.

"We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a House appropriations subcommittee on March 27. Alan P. Larson, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 4 that "Iraq will rightly shoulder much of the responsibility."

Their optimistic view rested on two assumptions — that the Pentagon would be able to reduce its military presence fairly quickly and that Iraq was reasonably well developed economically. Both assumptions have proved wrong.

In requesting $87 billion from Congress for next year to keep trying to stabilize Iraq and get a start on reconstruction, President Bush has acknowledged the error, setting off fiscal and political aftershocks that could be substantial.

Even if the White House is right that Iraqi oil production will eventually help foot a portion of the bill, and even if other countries agree to chip in more than token amounts, American taxpayers now confront the prospect that Iraq`s needs will compete for years with domestic programs, tax cuts and efforts to rein in the budget deficit.

"The administration may finally have leveled with the Congress and the American people about the initial costs," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, the libertarian research organization in Washington. "It has not yet leveled with the Congress or the American people about the length of the American mission in Iraq. One wonders about the domestic reaction if this becomes a perpetual mission."

The new budget request is built around an assumption that allied troop levels will have to remain roughly where they are now for a year, with the United States even picking up much of the tab for several tens of thousands of soldiers from other countries to replace the same number of American troops. And it reflects a judgment that Iraq was an economic shell even before the war, and needs far more extensive investment than the administration had anticipated.

Analysts said the $87 billion package, which also includes money for security and reconstruction in Afghanistan, amounted to a realistic assessment of what the American presence in Iraq will require in the coming year. They said it reflected both the possibility that other nations would balk at donating large sums to the rebuilding effort and a clear desire by the White House not to risk forcing Mr. Bush to seek more money from Congress next year, in the heat of a presidential campaign in which his handling of Iraq is sure to be a major issue.

"They stepped up to a politically tough call for the president to get enough money so he doesn`t have to go back again next year," said John J. Hamre, chief executive of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former senior Pentagon official in the Clinton administration. "My read of the number is that we`re not counting on anybody else and we may have to do this ourselves."

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Mr. Wolfowitz defended the costs as necessary to protect the United States from terrorism. "As large as these costs are, they are still small compared to just the economic price that the attacks of Sept. 11 inflicted, to say nothing of the terrible loss of human life," he said. "And even those costs are small in comparison to what future more terrible terrorist attacks could inflict."

But the package by no means assures that Mr. Bush will be able to dispense with the issue in one quick piece of legislation.

Any intensified attacks against American and allied troops could further raise the financial cost of the occupation and discourage other nations from deploying their military personnel.

Even after downgrading its initial estimates of Iraqi oil sales, the administration`s plan still rests heavily on the prospect that oil revenue — $12 billion next year and $20 billion in each of the two following years, up from nothing this year — will finance both routine government operations and some of the reconstruction. But there is no guarantee that Iraqi oil production, already suffering from sabotage and creaky equipment, will reach the needed level, or that oil prices will remain high enough to generate the projected revenues.

Should international donations fail to fill the gap between the $15 billion the United States has pledged for rebuilding Iraq`s infrastructure and the $50 billion to $75 billion the White House says is needed, the administration would also have to decide whether to seek further money from American taxpayers.

To the degree the United States presses other nations for military and financial help, it will open the door to highly sensitive negotiations over how to parcel out Iraq`s oil wealth and what role American companies like Halliburton should play in the rebuilding effort.

As international aid pours into Iraq, it is also likely to set off a debate over why Iraq should be showered with assistance while much less money goes to poorer nations — including some that are breeding grounds for terrorism as much as Iraq was said to be or is.

At the same time, the sheer scale of the Iraq request will put the administration in a difficult position as it tries to hold the line on other spending programs. Even as it completes its $87 billion package, all of which will ultimately show up in the budget deficit and the national debt, the White House is blocking Democratic attempts to add $1 billion for fighting AIDS in the poorest nations to the $2 billion Mr. Bush wants.

Then there is the potential domestic political fallout heading into an election year. A few fiscal conservatives have suggested that the postwar costs in Iraq might lead them to rethink their willingness to vote for a prescription drug benefit for the elderly. Democrats said their call to roll back some of Mr. Bush`s tax cuts, while unlikely to go anywhere legislatively this year or next, might resonate on the campaign trail if the bill for Iraq is perceived to be coming out of domestic programs like health care and education.



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September 10, 2003
ISLAMIC ALLY
Questions Grow on Pakistan`s Commitment to Fight Taliban
By DAVID ROHDE


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 9 — Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, questions are growing about whether Pakistan, a crucial American ally in the campaign against terrorism, is mounting a sincere effort to crack down on a resurgent Taliban and other Islamic militants.

The Pakistani military, which dominates the country, is credited by American officials with excellent cooperation in hunting down members of Al Qaeda. But members of the Afghan government and some Pakistani political and intelligence officials suggest that Pakistan is not doing all it could to stop Taliban forces from using its territory to attack Afghan territory, and that some elements of Pakistan`s army are harboring Taliban and Qaeda members.

At least three low-level Pakistani army officers have been arrested on charges that they helped Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda`s chief of operations, hide in the country before his arrest in March, Pakistani intelligence officials said. These officials believe that that the most likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden is in the tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Overwhelming public support for Mr. bin Laden among the area`s religiously conservative Pashtun tribes continues to thwart efforts to arrest him, they said.

Such support is also evident elsewhere. Islamic militants are again operating openly in Pakistan. Last Friday afternoon at the Red Mosque in the center of Islamabad, the nation`s capital, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the former head of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, delivered a sermon to hundreds of worshippers as police officers lounged outside.

The State Department has declared the group a terrorist organization. In 1998, Mr. Khalil supported Mr. bin Laden`s call for attacks on the United States and Western interests. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Pakistan`s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, banned the group. Mr. Khalil dissolved his former group and created a new one, Jamiat-ul-Ansar.

On Friday, he exhorted listeners to participate in "jihad," or holy war, but did not to say where.

"Our salvation lies in obeying the orders of Allah, not America," Mr. Khalil said. "If we don`t do jihad, our prayers and fasting will not be accepted. This is a sacred duty."

After he spoke, members of a new group collected money from worshippers. Asked what the money was for, two members of the group said jihad in Kashmir, where Islamic guerrillas are fighting to overthrow Indian rule. Asked if it was also for jihad in Afghanistan, one answered "Praise be to God." The other quickly cut him off and said "no."

Members of the group sold a copy of the September 2003 issue of their magazine. Its cover featured an interview with Mr. Khalil in which he stated that "America should announce its defeat" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The back page contained a report saying that in Afghanistan, "a raging battle betwen Islam and the infidels is continuing."

In an interview, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said Pakistan was fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism by all possible means. He cited the influx of 3.5 million Afghan refugees into Pakistan over the last 25 tumultuous years and scoffed at the idea that Pakistan would try to destabilize its neighbor.

"We have perhaps more to lose than any other country," he said, referring to a rise in poverty and Islamic radicalism that he attributed, in part, to Afghanistan`s wars. "We have paid in ways no other county has paid."

The United States has shown no sign of questioning Pakistan`s commitment to fighting terror. President Bush called Mr. Musharraf on Monday to thank him for Pakistan`s contribution, the Foreign Ministry said. American officials believe that the Pakistani intelligence services, once seen as a key agent in the creation of the Taliban, have been thoroughly reformed since Sept. 11, 2001, and are now committed to fighting both Islamic extremism and terrorism.

Western diplomats say the Taliban is building up its forces along the border and running a recruiting network inside Pakistan. But they see the problem as one of Pakistani capacity and politics, not will, and say they have seen no evidence of direct aid from Pakistan`s government to the Taliban. "They may not know what to do," said one Western diplomat.

They said the problem was that Pakistan`s government was struggling to counter a culture of Islamic militancy that dates back to the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan in the 1980`s, a movement the United States helped to create.

But Afghan and Indian officials, as well as some Pakistanis, contend that the Pakistani military, its allegiances torn, is playing a double game with the United States.

Pakistan serves up the occasional Qaeda fugitive to appease American officials, they say. At the same time, it makes little effort to eradicate the Taliban and other militant groups that serve its foreign policy goals by fighting against India, its archrival.

Pakistani hard-liners see Northern Alliance commanders that dominate the Afghan Defense Ministry as Indian allies and warn that Pakistan is being surrounded by hostile neighbors.

Senior Pakistani government and intelligence officials dismissed the idea that their country might seek to foment trouble in Afghanistan for strategic reasons. General Musharraf has faced assassination attempts from militants, they say, for aiding the United States.

Whatever the real extent of Pakistan`s assistance, there are signs that the invasion of Iraq, as well as disappointment with the American effort to rebuild Afghanistan, have deepened an ambivalence in the lower ranks of Pakistan`s army and law enforcement agencies. One Pakistani intelligence official involved in the hunt for militants said that Al Qaeda was a threat to Pakistan`s government, but that the Taliban are not.

In the border regions, an alliance of Islamic political parties won control in elections last October. The leading party in the alliance, the Jamiat Ulema Islam, runs a network of Islamic religious schools, known as madrasas, inside Pakistan that produced the Taliban leadership.

Afghan officials say Quetta, a city in southwestern Pakistan, has become a new haven for the Taliban.

Last Saturday, Taliban flags flew from shops in Pashtunabad, a quarter in the city packed with ethnic Pashtuns refugees from Afghanistan. Dozens of young students from madrasas wore large black turbans, a Taliban trademark.

Mullah Borjan, a madrasa student who said he was 23 or 24, said he planned to join the fight over the border.

"I will help Islam," he said, as other young students looked on approvingly. "I will start fighting."



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Iraqi day laborers stand in Tayeran Square in Baghdad in the hope of finding work. The country`s great oil wealth has done them little good.

September 10, 2003
IRAQ`S WEALTH
A Popular Idea: Give Oil Money to the People Rather Than the Despots
By JOHN TIERNEY


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 9 — Few Iraqis have heard of the "resource curse," the scholarly term for the economic and political miseries of countries with abundant natural resources. But in Tayeran Square, where hundreds of unemployed men sit on the sidewalk each morning hoping for a day`s work, they know how the curse works.

"Our country`s oil should have made us rich, but Saddam spent it all on his wars and his palaces," said Sattar Abdula, who has not had a steady job in years.

He proposed a simple solution instantly endorsed by the other men on the sidewalk: "Divide the money equally. Give each Iraqi his share on the first day of every month."

That is essentially the same idea in vogue among liberal foreign aid experts, conservative economists and a diverse group of political leaders in America and Iraq. The notion of diverting oil wealth directly to citizens, perhaps through annual payments like Alaska`s, has become that political rarity: a wonky idea with mass appeal, from the laborers in Tayeran Square to Iraq`s leaders.

American officials have projected that a properly functioning oil industry in Iraq will generate $15 billion to $20 billion a year, enough to give every Iraqi adult roughly $1,000, which is half the annual salary of a middle-class worker.

No one suggests dispensing all of the money — and some say the government cannot afford to give up any of it — but there have been proposals to dispense a quarter or more.

Leaders of the American occupying force have endorsed the oil-to-the-people concept and said recently that they plan to discuss it soon with the Iraqi Governing Council.

The concept is also popular with some Kurdish politicians in the north and Shiite Muslim politicians in the south, who have complained for decades of being shortchanged by politicians in Baghdad.

"Giving the money directly to the people is a splendid idea," said one member of the Governing Council, Abdul Zahra Othman Muhammad, a Shiite from Basra who leads the Islamic Dawa party. "In the past the oil revenue was used to promote dictatorship and discriminate against people outside the capital. We need to start being fair to people in the provinces."

When oil wealth is controlled by politicians in the capital, one result tends to be the resource curse documented in the last decade in academic works with titles like "The Paradox of Plenty," "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" and "Does Mother Nature Corrupt?"

Among the many researchers have been Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and Paul Collier of Oxford University, both economists, and Michael L. Ross, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The studies have shown that resource-rich countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are exceptionally prone to authoritarian rule, slow economic growth and high rates of poverty, corruption and violent conflict.

Besides financing large armies to fight ruinous wars with neighbors, as in Iraq and Iran, oil wealth sometimes leads to civil wars over the sharing of the proceeds, as in Sudan and Congo.

"Governments tend to use mineral revenues differently from the revenues they get from taxpayers," said Dr. Ross, who found an inverse relationship between natural resources and democracy. "They spend more of it on corruption, the military and patronage, and less of it on basic public services. Oil-rich governments don`t need to tax their citizens, and taxation forces governments to become more representative and more effective."

On April 9, the day Saddam Hussein`s statue was toppled in Firdos Square, a plan to end Iraq`s resource curse was published by Steven C. Clemons, executive vice president of the New America Foundation, a centrist research group.

He proposed using 40 percent of Iraq`s oil revenue to create a permanent trust fund like the one in Alaska, which has been accumulating oil revenue for two decades. That capital is invested and each year a share of the income is distributed — more than $1,500 to each Alaskan in recent years.

"A fund like Alaska`s is the best way to prevent one kleptocracy from succeeding another in Iraq," Mr. Clemons said. "It would go a long way to curbing the cynical belief that Americans want Iraqi oil for themselves, and it would give more Iraqis a stake in the success of their new country. It would be the equivalent of redistributing land to Japanese farmers after World War II, which was the single most important democratizing reform during the American occupation."

In America, Mr. Clemons`s idea was quickly embraced by many foreign aid experts, editorial writers, Bush administration officials and politicians of both parties. Some experts, though, have faulted the trust fund, saying it would be expensive to administer and would pay out small dividends at first, perhaps only $20 per Iraqi adult, until more capital was amassed.

As an alternative, some have suggested skipping the individual payments in the early years and dedicating the money to economic development or social programs. Money could be invested in a long-term pension program, as Norway does with some of its oil revenue.

Another alternative would be to make bigger payments up front by giving the money directly to citizens instead of putting it into a trust fund. Thomas I. Palley, an economist at the Open Society Institute, proposed dividing a quarter of the oil revenue each year among all adults in Iraq. That could amount to $250 per adult, assuming that the administration`s hopes for oil production prove accurate.

Oil companies would not be directly affected by an oil fund, since they would be paying the same taxes and fees no matter what the government did with the money. But they could benefit indirectly if citizens eager for higher payments pressed the government to increase production and open the books to outside auditors.

"The oil industry likes working in countries with dedicated oil funds and transparent accounting, because there`s less loose money to corrupt the government," said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, an American consulting firm to the oil industry.

"Corruption is bad for business," Mr. West said, "because it creates instability. In places like Alaska and Norway, people support the oil industry because they see the benefits. In places like Nigeria, they see all this wealth that doesn`t benefit them, and they start seizing oil terminals."

Iraq`s civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, has praised the idea of sharing "Iraq`s blessings among its people," and suggested that the Governing Council consider some kind of oil fund. Iraqi politicians, of course, have no trouble understanding the appeal of handing out checks to voters.

The chief argument against an oil fund is that Iraq`s government cannot afford to part with any oil revenue for the foreseeable future. It faces a large budget deficit this year, and sabotage to the oil industry has reduced oil production far below projections.

"There isn`t that much money now, and we need every penny for rebuilding the country," said Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Governing Council and former foreign minister of Iraq.

"Giving away money would be politically popular," he said, "but we should not gain popularity at the expense of the long-range interests of the country. By giving away the money you may sacrifice building more schools and hospitals."

Some have suggested letting the government keep all of the revenue until oil production increases well beyond current levels, then putting the extra money into a fund.

But the oil-to-the-people advocates say that now is the time to at least establish the framework for the fund, before a permanent government gets addicted to the revenue. If experience is any guide, that government would probably not be devoting the money to schools and hospitals.

"There is a direct proportional relationship between bad government and oil revenue," said Ahmad Chalabi, the current chairman of the Governing Council and the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. "If the government performs well or badly it doesn`t matter, because the oil revenue continues to flow. The government will use the oil revenue to cover up mistakes."

Mr. Chalabi pointed to a precedent: a trust fund that existed in Iraq during the 1950`s, when part of the oil revenue went not to the government`s budget but to a development fund whose disbursements were directed by Iraqi and foreign overseers.

"The fund worked very well," he said. "Iraq`s economy in the 1950`s and 1960`s was relatively good."

Back then, Mr. Chalabi said, oil revenue was a relative pittance, adding up to less than $10 billion in the four decades preceding the Baath Party`s rise to power in the late 1960`s. But then came the resource curse. During a single decade, the 1980`s, Iraq`s oil revenue amounted to more than $100 billion.

"What happened to it?" Mr. Chalabi asked. "Iraq was a much better country in every aspect before it got that money."



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September 10, 2003
Edward Teller Is Dead at 95; Fierce Architect of H-Bomb

Edward Teller, who was present at the creation of the first nuclear weapons and who grew even more famous for defending them, died yesterday at his home on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif., according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which Dr. Teller once headed. He was 95.

Physicist for Nuclear Age

By WALTER SULLIVAN

Few, if any, physicists of this century have generated such heated debate as Edward Teller. Much of it centered on his decade-long effort to produce the hydrogen bomb, his ardent promotion of nuclear weapons in general, his deep suspicion of Soviet intentions and his opposition to curtailment of nuclear testing.

His frustrations in seeking to win support for development of the hydrogen bomb led to his testimony that helped deprive J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the development of the first atomic bomb, of his security clearance. The result in much of the scientific community was a backlash against Dr. Teller that clouded the rest of his life.

Nevertheless, he continued to exert important influence on government policy.

While many colleagues did not share Dr. Teller`s political views, to some scientists his was a voice of realism crying out in a wilderness of liberal naveté. But Dr. Teller`s critics were as impassioned as his supporters. During the Vietnam War, Dr. Teller was the target of unrelenting vilification from antiwar activists. He was seen as the model for Dr. Strangelove, the motion picture character with an artifical arm who "loved the bomb" and spoke with a Central European accent.

Dr. Teller`s English, though fluent and eloquent, revealed his Hungarian roots, and he had an artificial replacement for the foot he lost in 1928 as a student when he jumped from a moving Munich streetcar.

Edward Teller was born in Budapest on Jan. 15, 1908, the son of Max Teller, a lawyer, and Ilona Deutsch Teller, an accomplished pianist.

As an infant Dr. Teller, like Einstein, was slow to begin speaking, but as he developed he displayed amazing mathematical ability. When he told his father that he wanted to study mathematics, his father discouraged him, saying that he would not be able to make a living as a mathematician. In a compromise, young Teller agreed to study chemistry, but he later said that he "cheated" by studying mathematics too.

When he was about 20, a new subject captured his imagination. He began to hear of advances in atomic theory and "a whole new world" opened up to him, he later said in an interview.

After receiving his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 1930, he joined the faculty of the University of Göttingen, where he remained until 1933. But it became clear that, as a Jew, he would have to leave Nazi Germany. He joined the faculty of George Washington University as a physics professor in 1935 and became a United States citizen six years later.

The idea for a hydrogen bomb, based on the fusion of atoms, apparently originated with Enrico Fermi, the Italian physicist, in 1941, a year before Dr. Fermi`s team achieved the first fission chain reaction at the University of Chicago, opening the way for developing the atomic bomb.

The energy of the atomic bomb derives from the splitting of very large atoms like uranium or plutonium. In contrast, the hydrogen bomb depends on the fusion of various forms of hydrogen atoms.

In 1941, a few weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while Dr. Teller had a temporary appointment at Columbia University, Dr. Fermi suggested at lunch that an atomic bomb explosion might create conditions sufficiently close to those inside a star to induce the fusion of heavy hydrogen (deuterium) nuclei, releasing an enormous burst of energy.

At first Dr. Teller doubted that fusion could be induced in this way. Nevertheless, when Dr. Oppenheimer called a meeting of top physicists a year later at the University of California in Berkeley, Dr. Teller proposed that they consider building a hydrogen bomb.

When the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory was secretly set up in 1943 to develop an atomic bomb, Dr. Teller, by then at the University of Chicago, agreed to give up pure research and join the project.

Early in 1943 Dr. Teller boarded a train for Los Alamos with his wife, the former Augusta Maria Harkanyi, who died in 2000, and their son, Paul, born only six weeks earlier. His hope, to design a hydrogen bomb, or "super"` led to early friction with Dr. Oppenheimer, the laboratory`s director, who insisted that they concentrate on the atomic bomb, which, in any case, would be needed to ignite the hydrogen bomb.

The situation, after the first Soviet atomic bomb was detonated in 1949, considerably sooner than expected, changed drastically. Teller saw in the hydrogen bomb the one hope for survival and his warnings of a Soviet menace began to reach receptive ears.

While many — probably most — scientists opposed the H-bomb, Dr. Teller had the support of such distinguished figures as Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence and Dr. Luis W. Alvarez at the University of California, both later Nobel Prize winners.

In addition to Lewis L. Strauss, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission who became a strong ally of Dr. Teller, Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, and others worked to persuade President Truman to press forward with the hydrogen bomb. On Jan. 31, 1950, Truman announced that he had directed the Atomic Energy Commission "to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super bomb." It was a major victory for Dr. Teller.

Teller then pressed for creation of a laboratory, independent of Los Alamos, that would focus on the hydrogen bomb. The proposal was rejected by Dr. Oppenheimer`s General Advisory Committee, adding to Dr. Teller`s resentment. He was able, however, to persuade his friends in the Pentagon — ultimately in a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett — of the merits of his proposal and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory came into being east of San Francisco Bay. Dr. Teller served as its director from 1958 to 1960.

The first American fusion, or "thermonuclear," explosion occurred at Eniwetok Island in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952. The device was a cumbersome assemblage weighing 65 tons. The Soviet Union achieved such an explosion three years later.

The hearings on Dr. Oppenheimer were held in 1954 after J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, received a long letter from William Liscum Borden, a member of Senator McMahon`s staff, explaining why he believed Dr. Oppenheimer was an agent of the Soviet Union.

The accusation led President Eisenhower to order the Atomic Energy Commission to review whether Dr. Oppenheimer`s security clearance should be revoked. Hearings were held by the commission`s Personnel Security Board, which asked Dr. Teller to appear.

Asked if he considered Dr. Oppenheimer disloyal to the United States, Dr. Teller said no. He was then asked whether he regarded him as a security risk. He replied that he often found Dr. Oppenheimer`s actions "hard to understand."

"I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated," Dr. Teller told the panel.

A large part of the scientific community, dismayed at the witch-hunting of the McCarthy era, aware of long-standing friction between Dr. Teller and Dr. Oppenheimer, and loyal to the leader of the original atomic bomb project, turned its back on Dr. Teller. "By old friends we were practically ostracized," he reported later. His wife "was very badly hurt" and became ill.

In contrast to his negative testimony in 1954 Teller in the 1980`s was warm in his praise of Oppenheimer. "He knew how to organized, cajole, humor, soothe feelings — how to deal powerfully without seeming to do so. He was an exemplary of dedication, a hero who never lost his humanness. Los Alamos` amazing success grew out of the brilliance, enthusiasm and charisma with which Oppenheimer led it."

Dr. Teller continued to be highly regarded in many quarters and his role as scientific leader and adviser to those in high places increased. After the first Soviet Sputnik was launched in 1957 he was featured on the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of American scientific vigor.

On July 23, President Bush presented Dr. Teller with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country`s highest civilian award.

In addition to his son, Dr. Teller is survived by a daughter, Wendy.

While, unlike many atomic scientists, Dr. Teller did not argue against dropping the bomb on Japanese cities, he repeatedly said afterward that doing so had been a mistake. Far better, he maintained, would have been to fire a bomb in the evening high enough above Tokyo to spare the city but to flood it in blinding light.

"If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person," he said, "all of us would now be happier, more reasonable and much more safe."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 10, 2003
Paying the Bills for Iraq

With American military casualties rising and Iraqis restive over shortages of electricity, water and most other things, Congress is inclined to give President Bush the full $87 billion he wants for Iraq and Afghanistan next year. But sticker shock is just starting to set in — not to mention an awareness of potential costs the president neglected to bring up. Members of Congress are right to ask hard questions about how these huge bills will be paid, whether yielding some authority over Iraq may induce other countries to share the burdens and just how much a prolonged occupation will damage the military.

Mr. Bush`s request for the next year would bring American spending on Iraq to some $150 billion. The most costly element is military operations — roughly $1 billion a week. Long-term military costs are unknowable because they depend on how many troops will be needed, and for how long. The strain is already plain. The Army announced yesterday that it was extending the Iraq duty of thousands of reserve and National Guard troops, keeping their jobs and families in limbo.

Even if the White House can mend the damage done to American alliances before the war, the prospects for sharing these military burdens are necessarily limited, at least until combat gives way to peacekeeping. Only a few countries have troops adequate for the current phase. Britain is already contributing all it can. A new U.N. resolution could add perhaps an additional 30,000 from Western Europe. Turkey, Pakistan and India might provide peacekeepers, but would probably expect loans and other concessions in return.

Reconstruction costs are more predictable. A further $50 billion to $80 billion will be needed over the next few years — more if continued sabotage delays the rebuilding of electricity grids and oil pipelines. In future years, a revived Iraqi oil industry may be able to pay some of the bills. If the White House finally agrees to yield political and economic authority to the U.N., Europe and Japan may also be persuaded to make substantial contributions. Many donors would reasonably demand assurances of fair access to Iraqi reconstruction and oil contracts.

For now, Washington will have to pay most of the bills, and those sums cannot simply be added on to a deficit already nearing a half-trillion dollars. The $87 billion Mr. Bush seeks is equal to a fifth of next year`s civilian discretionary spending at home — more than the combined total for education, job training, and employment and social services.

But as big as these issues are, Congress already needs to think beyond them. Before the war, the administration failed to define achievable American goals for Iraq or an eventual exit strategy. Those questions can no longer be deferred.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Nicholas D. Kristof directed an inflatable raft down the Canning River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Bush administration would like to open the coastal plain of the refuge to oil drilling.
September 10, 2003
Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


RCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — Here`s a helpful hint for backpackers here in the Arctic: If you`re lying in your sleeping bag and suddenly feel a pat on the behind from outside the tent, YELL!

Several campers have been subjected to this kind of sexual harassment lately, and when they opened their tent flaps, they found polar bears grinning at them. This refuge is, after all, a bit like a wildlife safari in reverse — curious animals have the opportunity to gawk at humans.

After rafting and backpacking through this wilderness for a week, weighing whether Congress should allow oil drilling here, I`ve reached a few conclusions. One is that both the oil industry and environmentalists exaggerate their cases.

For starters, no one has any idea how much oil is here, and we will never know unless it is explored. There has been limited exploration and test drilling in Eskimo-controlled lands in the refuge, but those results have been kept secret. Environmentalists say contemptuously that there`s only a six-month supply, while Big Oil speaks of a 25-year spigot — and they`re both talking through their hats.

Estimates range from 3.2 billion barrels (which would supply all U.S. needs for six months) to 16 billion barrels, but these are all wild guesses. The top end of the range would be very significant, coming close to doubling America`s proven petroleum reserves of 22 billion barrels, but there is some reason to be skeptical of the higher estimates — particularly because the oil here may not be economical to extract.

One clue, for example, is that the Badami oil field, almost adjacent to the Arctic refuge, is now being mothballed because it was producing only 1,300 barrels a day instead of the 30,000 expected.

Arctic oil can be chimerical, and it would be tragic to sacrifice this wilderness for a series of dry wells.

It is true that oil drilling would not ravage the entire refuge. Only the coastal plain, 7 percent of the total area, would be open to drilling. The coastal plain is endless brown tundra, speckled with ponds and lakes, boggy and squishy to hike in. It is by far the least scenic part of the refuge, and if one has to drill somewhere in the area, this is the place to do it.

It`s also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra.

Yet drilling proponents who dismiss the coastal plain as a wasteland — Alaska`s governor, Frank Murkowski, has likened it to a sheet of white paper — are talking drivel.

They should have been with me as I sleepily opened the tent flap early one morning to see a herd of caribou outside, or beheld the polar bears swimming along the coast, or admired a huge grizzly as it considered dining on nearby musk oxen.

Drilling supporters also grossly understate the impact of drilling when they speak of only a 2,000-acre "footprint" in the Arctic. The reality is that oil would mean roads, lodgings, pipelines, security fences, guard stations and airstrips — and my children would never be able to experience the Arctic as I have.

True, we need to get our oil from somewhere, and Americans are dying now in Iraq because of our dependence on foreign oil. So I would endorse drilling in the Arctic refuge if it were part of a mega-environmental package that also addressed global warming, an environmental challenge where we have even more at stake than in the Arctic.

Daniel Esty, a Yale scholar of the environment, proposes such a deal — with trepidation — in the interest of breaking the national deadlock on environmental policy.

The package could include careful oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (exploratory drilling could be done in winter without permanent damage) and, if it turned out to be the oil lake that proponents claim, commercial drilling as well.

In exchange, the right would accept a beyond-Kyoto framework to control carbon emissions, with tighter standards but a longer time frame. The deal would include $1 billion in additional financing for solar, wind and hydrogen energy, and significant increases in vehicle mileage standards to promote conservation.

Yet President Bush`s push to open the Arctic refuge is not part of such a bold and thoughtful package to break the stalemate on the environment. Rather it is simply a lunge for oil. Without trying to conserve oil, Mr. Bush would gobble up a national treasure, the birthright of our descendants, as a first resort.

The argument that I find most compelling is that this primordial wilderness, a part of our national inheritance that is roughly the same as it was a thousand years ago, would be irretrievably lost if we drilled. The Bush administration`s proposal to drill is therefore not just bad policy but also shameful, for it would casually rob our descendants forever of the chance to savor this magical coastal plain — and to be slapped in the butt by a frisky polar bear.



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Who Aided Hijackers Is Still Mystery
FBI Disputes Findings Of Congressional Inquiry

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A01


Two years after al Qaeda terrorists slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, FBI and congressional investigators remain deeply divided over whether the 19 hijackers received help from other al Qaeda operatives inside the United States and still are unable to answer some of the central questions in the case.

The uncertainties persist despite the largest FBI investigation in U.S. history -- which has included 180,000 interviews and 7,000 agents -- and raise the possibility that Americans will never know precisely how the conspirators were able to pull off the most devastating terrorist attacks in U.S. history.

"We know quite a bit about the attacks," FBI counterterrorism chief Larry Mefford said last week. "Unfortunately, we don`t know everything."

Some of the doubts surround intriguing details: Investigators still have no firm grasp on why the hijacker pilots booked layovers in Las Vegas during apparent practice runs on commercial airliners in 2001. Authorities also have found no definitive explanation for why ringleader Mohamed Atta and another hijacker, Abdulaziz Alomari, began their suicidal journey on Sept. 11, 2001, with a seemingly risky commuter flight from Portland, Maine, to Boston -- coming within minutes of missing their flights out of both cities. And what exactly was discussed at a pivotal meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, where investigators believe -- but cannot prove -- that the Sept. 11 plot was put in motion?

But perhaps the biggest riddle -- one that has only become murkier in recent months -- centers on the support given to the hijackers while they were laying the groundwork for the attacks, and what that suggests about a pre-existing network of operatives in the United States.

A recent congressional inquiry raises the possibility that al Qaeda supporters were in place in this country to help the hijackers; were aware of at least some aspects of the plot; and may have been supported by elements of another government, Saudi Arabia. If true, that could mean that domestic accomplices to the attacks are still at large.

FBI investigators -- who initially believed that such a support network was likely -- concluded by early 2002 that no evidence could be found of any organized domestic effort to aid the hijackers. Since then, FBI, Justice Department and intelligence officials have portrayed the hijacking teams as disciplined operatives who kept to themselves and did not draw upon existing terrorist cells for help. Investigators believe the hijackers relied on unwitting fellow immigrants in obtaining apartments, identification papers and other assistance after they had entered the United States.

"While here, the hijackers effectively operated without suspicion, triggering nothing that would have alerted law enforcement and doing nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said during a joint inquiry of House and Senate intelligence committees in June 2002. "As far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States."

But in a scathing report released this summer, the joint inquiry reached a much different conclusion: that intelligence sources and the FBI`s own investigation had revealed contacts between the lead hijackers and at least 14 suspected terrorist associates in San Diego and elsewhere in the United States -- including several whom the FBI was monitoring at the time of the contacts. The congressional inquiry also alleged that two of the associates may have had ties to the Saudi Arabian government, a charge that has strained U.S. relations with Riyadh.

The claims refocused attention on the performance and competence of the FBI, which along with the CIA, came under fierce criticism last year for not acting more aggressively to locate two of the hijackers who were known to have entered the United States in the summer of 2001.

"The fact that so many persons known to the FBI may have been in contact with the hijackers raises questions as to how much the FBI knew about the activities of Islamic extremist groups in the United States before September 11," the congressional report concluded, adding that the extent of any support network "is vitally important in understanding the modus operandi of the hijackers and al Qaeda."

Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who has criticized the FBI`s role in combating terrorism, said, "The FBI`s line for the longest time after 9/11 was that this was a revolutionary act in terms of the history of terrorism because it was done by terrorists who came into this country and did not plug into the local infrastructure. Now it looks like that is not the case."

But officials at the FBI and elsewhere in the Bush administration strenuously dispute those characterizations, arguing that the congressional inquiry`s conclusions rely on outdated or inaccurate evidence and contradict the most recent findings in the case.

Officials said all of the alleged associates referred to in the report have been exhaustively investigated. Although some of the key figures appear to have radical Islamic beliefs or ties, there is no evidence of prior knowledge or involvement in the Sept. 11 plot, investigators said.

"The 14 people that they say are so-called associates to the hijackers have been thoroughly investigated and, in some cases, are two and three times removed from any hijackers," one investigator said. "These were people who had some limited contact with people who later turned out to be hijackers; that does not mean they were in on anything or part of al Qaeda."

Eleanor Hill, staff director for the joint House-Senate inquiry, said she remains concerned that the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies are "missing the point" of why contacts between hijackers and suspected terrorist associates are important.

"The question shouldn`t be, `Did these people know about the plot?` " she said. "The question should be, `Were they placed here by al Qaeda to help al Qaeda operatives, whether or not they knew about the plot, and are they still here?` "

For example, Hill noted, the CIA found that al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, traveled to the United States as recently as May 2001 and had sent recruits here to establish terrorist networks. CIA Director George J. Tenet also told the inquiry that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers may not have known details of their mission.

"It`s very consistent for al Qaeda operatives not to know exactly what is being planned, but that does not mean they aren`t here or don`t pose a threat," Hill said.

The congressional inquiry released to the public in July provides details on approximately half of the 14 associates alleged to have had contact with the hijackers. They include an unnamed individual who took flight training with hijacker Hani Hanjour in Phoenix, and another unidentified person "on the East Coast" who had ties to one of Atta`s former college roommates.

But the most controversial allegations, the ones that receive the most attention in the report, center on a cast of characters in San Diego, where hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi settled in early 2000. The differing opinions on the events in San Diego illustrate the depth of disagreement between the congressional inquiry team -- which concluded that the hijackers probably were aided by terrorist associates -- and FBI investigators, who have determined that the contacts were essentially innocent.

The most prominent associate named in the report is Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi national who befriended the hijackers and apparently encouraged them to relocate from Los Angeles, where they had arrived in January 2000, to San Diego.

There is great debate within intelligence and law enforcement circles about Bayoumi and whether he had ties to al Qaeda operatives or was, as one source told the FBI, an agent for the Saudi government. The FBI, which recently completed interviews with Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia in reaction to pressure from Congress, has concluded that those claims are without merit and has largely abandoned further investigation, sources said.

One key component of the conflicting assessments of Bayoumi was his initial meeting with Almihdhar and Alhazmi.

According to the inquiry`s report, an unnamed source interviewed by the FBI said he traveled to Los Angeles with Bayoumi on Jan. 15, 2000, to visit the Saudi consulate, details of which the FBI has not been able to determine. Afterward, the report said, Bayoumi and the source went to a restaurant, where they struck up a conversation with Almihdhar and Alhazmi after hearing them speak Arabic. The report notes suspicions by FBI agents that the "meeting at the restaurant may not have been accidental," and an FBI written response to the inquiry refers to the encounter as a "somewhat suspicious meeting with the hijackers."

But FBI investigators said that subsequent investigations have erased many of their suspicions. Investigators have determined through interviews that Bayoumi and his companion initially sought out a different Arabic restaurant that had closed and been turned into a butcher shop. The butcher has told the FBI of encountering the pair, and of directing them to the other restaurant, where they met the hijackers.

FBI officials said they also have discounted other suspicious information about Bayoumi, including a claim by one source that Bayoumi delivered $400,000 from Saudi Arabia to a Kurdish mosque in San Diego. While Bayoumi did provide a cashier`s check for the hijackers` initial rent payment and security deposit in San Diego, it amounted to nothing more than a "seven-minute loan" that was repaid with a cash deposit into Bayoumi`s bank account, one investigator said.

The bureau`s Sept. 11 investigative team, which is still tracking down details of the plot, has reached similar conclusions about other associates named or referred to in the congressional inquiry report.

"There is no indication that these people who provided assistance knew what they were up to," said Mefford, the head of counterterrorism and counterintelligence at the FBI. "Most of this assistance is very benign cooperation. . . . Did anyone in the United States know what they were up to? At this point, there is no evidence of that."

Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.



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Marines Put Militias On Deadline in Najaf


By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A15


NAJAF, Iraq, Sept. 9 -- The U.S. military commander in this sacred Shiite Muslim city demanded today that religious factions remove armed followers from the streets by Friday. Dozens of militiamen were deployed here last week in a move the factions said was an attempt to improve security in a city still reeling from a car bomb that killed a senior cleric and scores of others.

The deadline was set at a meeting today between U.S. military officials and Najaf`s political parties, which have complained about a lack of security in the streets. Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, the commander of the Marines occupying Najaf, said only the police force would be allowed to carry weapons in the city, home to Iraq`s holiest Shiite shrine.

"You`re either a police officer or not," Woodbridge said in an interview. "You can only have one police force."

At Friday prayers last week, dozens of armed men belonging to the Badr Brigade, a militia loyal to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, were visible throughout Najaf in black uniforms and arm bands that read "Badr" in Arabic. About a dozen were posted atop the shrine, and others manned checkpoints on roads leading to the grounds. Several pickup trucks, with men carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, roamed through the streets and the perimeter of the shrine, where the car bomb exploded Aug. 29.

The bomb killed Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was head of the council.

In neighboring Kufa, armed men loyal to a rival of the Supreme Council, a junior cleric named Moqtada Sadr, helped man checkpoints around the city`s sprawling mosque, where he delivers the sermon every Friday.

At a news conference Saturday, L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq, said that the additional security in Najaf had the blessing of the Coalition Provisional Authority and that the militias were working "in full cooperation with the coalition forces."

But Woodbridge said today that only the police are authorized to carry weapons. Rather than create a confrontation last week, just days after the assassination of Hakim, the Marines chose to wait until tempers had cooled to order the militias` removal, he said. He called many of the armed men "thugs" and said he warned the parties not to try to advance their own agendas.

"They`re not to mistake our kindness for weakness," Woodbridge said. "We want to discourage them from exploiting that opportunity presented by the bombing of the shrine to field a force and to gain a little bit of leverage."

The question of security and who controls it has become one of the most sensitive points of disagreement between officials with the U.S.-led occupation and Iraqis who complain that U.S. efforts have fallen short. U.S. officials have increasingly turned to the Iraqi police as the front line in enforcing order, but to many Iraqis, that force still suffers from a lack of credibility or is shadowed by ties to its predecessor under former president Saddam Hussein`s government. In increasingly vocal terms, members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council have insisted that more authority be turned over to them in devising security and vetting those responsible for it.

"How much more sacrifice shall we give than the blood of Ayatollah Hakim?" said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, director of the Supreme Council`s political bureau. Referring to the Americans, he said: "They cannot do it themselves, simply. They cannot do it."

Neither the Supreme Council, whose new leader sits on the Governing Council, nor Sadr`s followers are expected to defy the deadline. Abdel-Mehdi suggested that men would store their weapons at home and avoid a confrontation. Sadr, while not addressing the question directly at a news conference Monday, said his militia was unarmed and dedicated only to "peaceful resistance."

"The feedback so far is that they`re cooperating," Woodbridge said.

In addition to the police force of 3,000, a new guard that will eventually number 400 has begun patrolling the area around the Imam Ali shrine. Woodbridge said religious leaders would be allowed to keep a personal armed detachment of no more than 12 bodyguards. While the police force will accept volunteers, he said, they will not be allowed to carry weapons, which are plentiful in Iraq.

Rather than just a question of law and order, the dispute over who carries arms goes to the heart of Iraq`s postwar arrangement. In a country riven by ethnic and sectarian differences, the prospect of competing militias has alarmed military officials charged with keeping the peace and even some Iraqis who fear the potential for violence in a country with a long history of it.

"This could very easily become an extremely tense confrontation, and we don`t want that," Woodbridge said. "We`re not going to let this escalate into a flash point. There is only one legitimate authority and that is the Najaf police."

But for many in Najaf, the bombing at such a sacred site has sent a chill through the city, and a sense of siege has ensued. The streets are filled with rumors that cadres loyal to Hussein are planning attacks against Shiites, who are the majority in Iraq but suffered the brunt of his government`s repression, and that militant Sunni Muslims from Iraq or abroad have entered the fray.

"Iraq is inside a very, very long, dark tunnel," said Sheik Bashir Hussein Najafi, the son of one of Iraq`s leading ayatollahs in Najaf. "We hope to God things will get better, but we see the next day worse than the one before."

"If we left security to the Americans to protect the clergy," he added, "all the ayatollahs would be dead."

Until now, most of the violence has remained focused in Baghdad and to the Sunni Muslim areas north and west of the capital, where U.S. forces face a simmering guerrilla war. In an attack today in Fallujah, three soldiers were wounded when their vehicle struck an improvised mine. Two other soldiers were wounded in Baghdad in a similar attack, said Staff Sgt. Shane Slaughter, a military spokesman. In Balad, a city 50 miles north of Baghdad, a soldier was wounded in a mortar attack Monday, he said.



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washingtonpost.com
Stuck Like Lyndon


By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A19


So much for American unilateralism.

As our strategic doctrine of choice, unilateralism had a one-year run, from one Labor Day to the next. A year ago the administration announced we had both the right and the might to run the world free from the constraints of entangling alliances or multinational accords.

George W. Bush didn`t repudiate that right in his speech to the nation on Sunday, but he did allow how we didn`t have the might.

Grudgingly, to be sure. The current number of U.S. troops in Iraq, he said, was "appropriate to their mission"; then he asked other nations to come up with another division. Apparently, our mission in Iraq is to be one division short of providing adequate security for that nation`s reconstruction.

In this administration, the definition of a U.N. supporter is a unilateralist who`s been mugged by reality. How far Bush is willing to go to entice other nations into the joys of nation-building is not at all clear. France and other critics of our war will doubtless demand that postwar Iraq be placed under the United Nations` political authority -- a position at which Bush will balk. But he needs other nations` troops to be patrolling the streets of Baghdad, especially because it`s inconceivable that other nations` money will be made available to fund the occupation.

Like Lyndon Johnson, Bush has gotten us stuck in a no-win conflict in a distant land, and, as they did during Johnson`s war, the American people know it. The action, thankfully, is nowhere near so bloody now as it was then, and partly for that reason hardly anyone is demanding, as Americans did of Johnson, that Bush bring all the troops home right now. The American left as well as the American right understands that we have a moral obligation to help rebuild Iraq, though liberals believe that task will be more readily accomplished when under a genuinely international aegis.

There will be arguments over how to come up with an additional $87 billion for Iraq but not, I suspect, much argument over our obligation to provide substantial funding for reconstruction. Even if we strike a deal with the French and persuade the Pakistanis to stand guard over the oil pipelines, it will be U.S. taxpayers who`ll finance the sentry duty.

But stuck is stuck, and the American people do not take kindly to leaders who squander U.S. lives and treasure for a cause that seems remote from U.S. interests. As Johnson did with Vietnam, Bush sought to depict the current action in Iraq as necessary to safeguarding our shores.

"We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities," Bush said. The president will have to deliver a more persuasive speech than he did Sunday, however, if he`s to convince Americans that our checkpoints in Tikrit somehow enhance our homeland security. The diehard Baathists who likely are attacking our soldiers plainly have no agenda outside Iraq, and if al Qaeda is now operating there, it`s because we have turned our troops, and supporters of the reconstruction efforts, into sitting ducks for religious fanatics.

When it comes to justifying the financial costs of the war, Bush`s hand is actually weaker than LBJ`s was. Johnson argued that the United States could afford guns and butter simultaneously, that we could find the resources to save Vietnam from communism even as we built the Great Society -- establishing Medicare and federal aid to education -- here at home. Bush must argue that we can afford guns and tax cuts, that we can find the resources to reconstruct Iraq, though we must neglect the reconstruction of our power grid and our health care system so that we can shower the rich in trillion-dollar tax giveaways. Worse, he must argue for funding the aftermath of his war even as the constant decline in American jobs continues apace, and he seems powerless to arrest it.

The nervousness that suddenly hangs over the Bush White House is well deserved: The president has lost control of the situation he created in Iraq and of the American economy as well. It is not Bush`s fault that this is the first truly global recovery, that American corporations now rebound by hiring (when they hire at all) abroad rather than in the States.

It is most certainly Bush`s fault, however, that there is no funding to put people to work rebuilding our various tattered infrastructures because he has squandered it all on the rich.

Stuck in Iraq, stuck at home and the polling shows that the American people increasingly realize it and lay the blame on Bush.

Unilaterally.

The writer is editor at large of the American Prospect.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Muzzling Our Economic Negotiators


By C. Fred Bergsten

Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A19


Treasury Secretary John Snow returned home apparently empty-handed from his publicized visit to Asia last week. China rejected any rise in the value of its currency against the dollar now, pledging only to let it float more freely at some undefined point in the distant future. Japan would not agree to let its currency move upward either, and in fact resumed intervention to weaken the yen as soon as the secretary left Tokyo.

The only feasible remedy for the huge U.S. trade deficit, now approaching $600 billion, is a substantial decline of the dollar. Such adjustment is especially required against the major Asian economies, which have piled up the world`s largest surpluses in recent years. If the results of the past week are permitted to stand, the United States will lose additional high-paying manufacturing jobs. Pressures for trade protection will increase substantially. So will the risk of financial crisis, leading to higher U.S. interest rates, when the dollar ultimately crashes due to the implausibility of continuing to attract $4 billion of foreign capital every working day to finance our external imbalances.

The big and largely unnoticed story, however, is that Snow was not really permitted to try. The administration wants China to keep North Korea from going nuclear. It wants Japanese troops in Iraq. Hence the secretary of the Treasury was blocked from the aggressive effort that would be necessary to correct our massive trade problem via further orderly adjustment of the exchange rates.

This was not the first time that short-term foreign policy concerns trumped U.S. economic interests within the administration. Snow had already been dutifully giving Japan a pass as a reward for its supposed support in the Middle East. Despite his frostiness toward "Old Europe," President Bush pandered to his continental hosts in June by declaring that the decline of the dollar against the euro "was contrary to U.S. policy." The dollar started rising immediately thereafter and has since given back about one-third of its previous move against the only major currency where it had achieved significant correction.

Never mind that France and Germany are still stiffing the administration on Iraq. Never mind that Japan shows no signs of sending troops to the Middle East. Never mind that China blames the United States for the impasse with North Korea. The key questions are whether it is correct to subordinate legitimate U.S. economic concerns to such foreign policy goals and whether it is even good foreign policy to do so.

Throughout the Cold War, it was charged that successive U.S. governments placed overriding importance on international politics and, when necessary, shored up friends and allies at the expense of U.S. firms and workers. The termination of that conflict for global supremacy was supposed to end such practices, especially with the globalization of the U.S. economy and hence the growing impact of trade and international finance on our own welfare. Yet the current administration, while claiming concern about the economy, and especially its workers, has restored the old priorities to an extreme degree.

Ignoring serious domestic economic concerns is not even good foreign policy. The most important reason is that burgeoning trade deficits, and especially an overvalued exchange rate for the dollar, trigger protectionist forces that poison U.S. relations with all of this country`s major trading partners, which also happen to be its chief friends and allies.

The growing storm over China is the latest example. Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle, the business community and labor agree that the administration must take forceful action to bring that country into the center of the international adjustment process. Remarkably, there is a strong consensus that this should happen via revaluation of China`s exchange rate rather than new trade barriers. But Snow was precluded from pursuing the issue forcefully and was even instructed to ask the Chinese to "float their currency," when everyone knew they would rightly reject such an approach because it requires that they open themselves to the vagaries of global capital markets. The inevitable result of this impasse will be new assaults on China`s exports to the United States, badly undermining a Chinese leadership that overcame enormous domestic resistance to join the World Trade Organization. Similar dynamics would play out with Europe and Japan.

The president and his foreign policy officials should recall that huge economic imbalances can be as destructive of relations among nations as traditional security disputes. Ignoring such problems until they reach crisis proportions will in fact inflame our domestic politics (especially in the run-up to a presidential election in which jobs and trade will be major issues) and force the administration to lash out against key countries later in ways that cause far greater conflict than seeking modest adjustments now. In the case of the current administration, any such campaign would deepen worldwide perceptions of bullying and unilateralism. It would also jeopardize laudable current foreign policy initiatives such as the Doha Round in the WTO and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

It is time for the foreign policy team to let the economic team pursue legitimate U.S. goals through tough but legitimate means, pressing China to accept a substantial one-shot currency revaluation and directly countering Japan`s intervention to block dollar correction. If they will not do so on their own, the president must force a rebalancing of economic and foreign policy considerations to promote the overall national interest.

The writer is director of the Institute for International Economics. He will answer questions about this column during a Live Online discussion at 2:30 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary

Auch heute wieder 96mal frische Toon Ware ohne Bemerkung zum IQ von Nannsen, Schill und Co.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030909__096toons.htm

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and honoring the victims
By James Carroll, 9/9/2003

THE COINCIDENCE of dates is precious to human beings because it creates the impression that underlying the chaos of normality is a structure of order. The passage of time is not a mere matter of chance, and even things that seem unrelated are tied together, if not by links of causality, by meaning. In casting an eye back across the terrain of the past, a human being with a feeling for history looks for the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate events that will illuminate the hidden connection that alone explains their full significance.

Sept. 11 will live in the American memory. But as what? "Memory," the novelist Paul Auster says, is "the space in which a thing happens for the second time." On Sept. 11, 1941, at almost exactly the moment in which the Pentagon would be hit by American Airlines Flight 77 60 years later, ground was broken for that building in a solemn ceremony. On Sept. 11, 1944, Allied soldiers arrived at the German border, sealing Hitler`s fate.

But also on Sept. 11, 1944, as I read in W.G. Sebald`s "On the Natural History of Destruction," distant Germans watched the night sky above the city of Darmstadt: "The light grew and grew until the whole of the southern sky was glowing, shot through with red and yellow." It was a night of Allied terror bombing.

On Sept. 11, 1973, terrorists launched the violent overthrow of a democratic government in Chile. In that case, the result was the murder of the head of state, Salvador Allende, and the terrorists were sponsored not by an ad hoc nihilist group, but by the United States.

Sept. 11 as an anniversary of savage violence pushes the mind also to Sept. 11, 1945, the date that marks Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson`s post-Hiroshima proposal to President Truman that the United States immediately share the secrets of the atomic bomb with the Soviet Union in order to head off an arms race "of a rather desparate character," as Stimson put it. "The chief lesson I have learned in a long life," Stimson said, anticipating his critics, "is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him." As I noted a year ago, Stimson`s proposal marks the great American road not taken.

On Sept. 11, 1906, more than 3,000 men of Indian origin gathered at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa, to denounce the just-passed Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance -- a new set of racial laws condemning them to second-class citizenship.

As I learned from Jonathan Schell`s recent masterwork "The Unconquerable World," one of those who stood and took a God-invoking oath against obedience to such laws was Mohandas K. Gandhi. He recognized this joint commitment to a radically individual act -- "a new principle," he later said of that day, "had come into being" -- as the generating spark of Satyagraha, the "truth force." Gandhi said, "The foundation of the first civil resistance under the then-known name of passive resistance was laid by accident . . . I had gone to the meeting with no preconceived resolution. It was born at the meeting. The creation is still expanding." What began on that Sept. 11 would generate the great counter-story of nonviolence running through the most violent century in history.

At the dawn of the new century, what story do we tell? Does Sept. 11 represent only the experience of American grief, victimhood, justification for revenge? Does Sept. 11 live on only as the engine driving America`s shocking new belligerence? Or, in recalling the nobility of those selfless New Yorkers and Pentagon workers who reentered the wounded buildings, who remained behind to usher others out, or who simply maintained calm as worlds collapsed around them -- can we carry this date forward as an image of the possibility of public love?

It may help to see Sept. 11, 2001, in the context of those other days in other years. How, when the ground was first broken for the Pentagon, its builders assumed one day it would be a hospital. How the leader of America`s greatest war sought in its aftermath to end war forever. How knowing that Washington, too, can sponsor terrorism must lead to humility. How the age-old dream of nonviolence became actual.

Ordinarily, we think of such incidents in isolation, but there can be an archeology of the calendar that uncovers harmonies in the layers of time.

Sept. 11 is an anniversary of the future, a day enshrining the worst of human impulses -- and the best. A day, therefore, that puts the choice before us. How are we going to live now? We are on the earth for the briefest of interludes. Thinking in particular of all those who died in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, let us honor them by building the earth, instead of destroying it. Let us make peace, instead of war.

James Carroll`s column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti…

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The Post-Modern President
Deception, Denial, and Relativism: what the Bush administration learned from the French.

By Joshua Micah Marshall
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.marshall…



Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit. Ronald Reagan was a master of baseless stories -- trees cause more pollution than cars -- that captured his vision of how the world should be. George H.W. Bush, generally conceded to be a decent fellow, tended to lie only in two circumstances: When running for president, or to save his own skin, as in Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton famously lied about embarrassing details of his private life, and his smooth, slippery rhetorical style made some people suspect he was lying even when he was telling the truth.
George W. Bush has a forthright speaking style which convinces many people that he`s telling the truth even when he`s lying. But in under three years, Bush has told at least as many impressive untruths as each of his three predecessors. (See The Mendacity Index, p.27) His style of deception is also unique. When Reagan said he didn`t trade arms for hostages, or Clinton insisted he didn`t have sex with "that woman," the falsity of the claims was readily provable--by an Oliver North memo or a stained blue dress. Bush and his administration, however, specialize in a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. In his State of the Union address last January, the president claimed that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and a robust nuclear weapons program, and that therefore we needed to invade Iraq. Even at the time, many military and intelligence experts said that the president`s assertions probably weren`t true and were based on at best fragmentary evidence. But there was no way to know for sure unless we did what Bush wanted. When the president said on numerous occasions that his tax cuts--which were essentially long-term rate reductions for the wealthy--would spur growth without causing structural deficits, most experts, again, cried foul, pointing out that both past experience and accepted economic theory said otherwise. But in point of fact nobody could say for sure that maybe this time the cuts might not work.



This summer, when it became clear that Iraq had no active nuclear weapons program--indeed showed no apparent evidence of any weapons of mass destruction at all--that the economy was still losing jobs, and that the administration`s own budget office predicted deficits as far as it dared project, Bush`s reputation for honesty took a turn for the worse. By the middle of July, only 47 percent of adults surveyed by Time/CNN said they felt they could trust the president, down from 56 percent in March. The president`s response to all this was to make yet more confidently expressed, undisprovable assertions. He simply insisted that his tax cuts would create jobs--and who knows? Perhaps someday they will--and that American forces would eventually turn up evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But by then, the press was beginning to pick up on deceptions in other policy areas--the redaction of evidence of global warming in EPA reports, the administration`s refusal to provide Congress with any estimates whatsoever about the costs of the occupation of Iraq. The White House seemed guilty of what might be called persistent, chronic up-is-downism, the tendency to ridicule the possibility that a given policy might actually have its predictable adverse consequences, to deny those consequences once they have already occurred, or--failing that--to insist against all evidence that those consequences were part of the plan all along. By late July, even a paragon of establishment conservatism like Barron`s columnist Alan Abelson was lamenting the president`s "regrettable aversion to the truth and reality when the truth and reality aren`t lovely or convenient."

The president and his aides don`t speak untruths because they are necessarily people of bad character. They do so because their politics and policies demand it. As astute observers such as National Journal`s Jonathan Rauch have recently noted, George W. Bush campaigned as a moderate, but has governed with the most radical agenda of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, the aim of most of Bush`s policies has been to overturn what FDR created three generations ago. On the domestic front, that has meant major tax cuts forcing sharp reductions in resources for future government activism, combined with privatization of as many government functions as possible. Abroad, Bush has pursued an expansive and militarized unilateralism aimed at cutting the U.S. free from entangling alliances and international treaty obligations so as to maximize freedom of maneuver for American power in a Hobbesian world.

Yet this is not an agenda that the bulk of the American electorate ever endorsed. Indeed, poll after poll suggest that Bush`s policy agenda is not particularly popular. What the public wants is its problems solved: terrorists thwarted, jobs created, prescription drugs made affordable, the environment protected. Almost all of Bush`s deceptions have been deployed when he has tried to pass off his preexisting agenda items as solutions to particular problems with which, for the most part, they have no real connection. That`s when the unverifiable assertion comes in handy. Many of the administration`s policy arguments have amounted to predictions--tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower--that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn`t be definitely disproven until events played out in the future. In the midst of getting those policies passed, the administration`s main obstacle has been the experts themselves--the economists who didn`t trust the budget projections, the generals who didn`t buy the troop estimates, intelligence analysts who questioned the existence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That has created a strong incentive to delegitimize the experts--a task that comes particularly easy to the revisionists who drive Bush administration policy. They tend to see experts as guardians of the status quo, who seek to block any and all change, no matter how necessary, and whose views are influenced and corrupted by the agendas and mindsets of their agencies. Like orthodox Marxists who pick apart mainstream economics and anthropology as the creations of `bourgeois ideology` or Frenchified academic post-modernists who `deconstruct` knowledge in a similar fashion, revisionist ideologues seek to expose "the facts" as nothing more than the spin of experts blinded by their own unacknowledged biases. The Bush administration`s betes noir aren`t patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, but establishmentarianism, big-government liberalism, and what they see as pervasive foreign policy namby-pambyism. For them, ignoring the experts and their `facts` is not only necessary to advance their agenda, but a virtuous effort in the service of a higher cause.

Tinker Beltway

To understand the Bush administration`s need and propensity for deception one must go back to the ideological warfare of the 1990s, which pitted Bill Clinton`s New Democratic agenda against Newt Gingrich`s Contract for America Republicanism. Clinton`s politics were an updated version of early 20th century Progressivism, with its suspicion of ideology and heavy reliance on technocratic expertise. He argued that while government agencies or our relations with the international community might need reform, they were basically sound, and their proper use was to solve discrete problems. Crime on the rise? Put more cops on the street. Federal budget deficits out of control? Trim federal spending and nudge up taxes on the wealthy. Many in Washington debated whether Clinton`s policies would work; some still argue that they didn`t. But few ever questioned that their intent was to solve these specific problems.

Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans who came to power in 1995 held a very different, neo-Reaganite view. Deriding the whole notion of a federal response for every crisis, they argued that society`s problems could be solved only through a radical reordering, both of government in Washington and of America`s relationship with the world. This required tax cuts to drain money out of the Beltway; radically scaling back regulation on business; pulling America out of many international agreements; and cutting funding to the United Nations. The Gingrichites were not pragmatists but visionaries and revolutionaries. They wanted to overthrow the existing structure of American governance, not tinker with it.

The contest between these two worldviews played out during the middle 1990s, and eventually the public rendered its verdict at the ballot box. In 1996, Clinton decisively won re-election and Gingrich`s GOP lost seats in the House. Then in 1998, at the height of impeachment, the House GOP lost even more seats ­ marking the first time since 1934 that the party in the White House won seats during a mid-term election--and Clinton`s job approval rating soared as high as it ever would during his eight years in office.

Voters had chosen problem-solving moderation over radical revisionism--and perceptive GOP leaders knew it. Following the 1998 electoral setback, they quieted their talk of revolution and mulled over how to soften their image. More and more of them gravitated towards the son of former president George H.W. Bush, the kindler, gentler Republican. Texas governor George W. Bush had a reputation as a pragmatist who made common cause with Democratic leaders in the Texas legislature. He launched his campaign for president not as an ideologue, but as a "compassionate conservative," who spoke the language of progressive problem-solving on issues such as education, and was perfectly willing to use the powers of the federal government to get results. Even when Bush proposed a massive tax cut during the Republican primaries, most commentators dismissed it as a campaign ploy to fend off his more conservative GOP rival, Steve Forbes. After ascending to the presidency without winning the popular vote, Bush was widely expected to compromise on the size of the tax cut.

It soon became clear, however, that Bush would govern very differently from how he ran. Instead of abandoning the tax cut, for instance, he became more determined to pass it, for rather than being a mere ploy, cutting taxes was a fundamental goal of his agenda. Politically, it was a policy on which each part of the once-fractious conservative base could agree on. It also rewarded the party`s biggest donors. But most importantly, tax cuts would help shift the very premises of American governance. Republicans had come to view progressive federal taxation as the linchpin of Democrat strength. As Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), an up-and-coming conservative, told The New Yorker`s Nicholas Lemann during the 2001 tax debate, "[t]oday fewer and fewer people pay taxes, and more and more are dependent on government, so the politician who promises the most from government is likely to win. Every day, the Republican Party is losing constituents, because every day more people can vote themselves more benefits without paying for it." By this theory, the more the tax burden shifted from upper-middle-class and wealthy voters to those of the middle class, the more average voters would feel the sting of each new government program, and the less likely they would be to support the Democrats who call for such programs. To put it another way, it was a policy designed to turn more voters into Republicans, particularly the middle class. Without massive upper-bracket tax cuts, DeMint worried, "The Reagan message"--smaller government--"won`t work anymore."

But telling the majority of voters that your tax policies are designed to shift more of the burden of paying for federal government onto them is not a very effective way of eliciting their support. So, instead, Bush pitched his tax cuts as the solution to whatever problems were most in the news at the time. During the election, he argued that tax cuts were a way to refund to voters part of a budget surplus that people like Alan Greenspan worried was growing too big. By early 2001, it became clear that those surpluses were never going to materialize. So the administration cooked up an entirely new rationale: The tax cut was needed as fiscal stimulus to pull the economy out of an impending recession. In other words, the tax cut that was tailor-made for a booming economy made equally good sense in a tanking one. When the economy eventually began to grow again but only at feeble levels, the administration insisted that things would have been worse without the tax cuts (another assertion impossible to prove or disprove). And when, because of that anemic growth, coupled with gains in productivity, the unemployment rate continued to rise, the administration had yet another excuse: A new round of tax cuts, they said, would generate jobs.

The same technique--invoking the problem of the moment to sell a predetermined policy agenda--came to characterize just about everything the administration would do. Take energy policy. Oilmen like the president and vice-president have wanted to drill in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for years because of their generalized belief that U.S. energy supplies should be exploited as fully and rapidly as possible. But for a public increasingly enamored of the idea of protecting pristine wilderness areas, this rationale was insufficient to get the derricks pumping. Then, while the Bush administration was formulating their energy policy during the spring and summer of 2001, California had an "energy crisis." Suddenly, there was a big problem, and the administration had what it said was the perfect solution: Drilling in ANWR and giving free reign to energy producers. But California`s shortage had nothing to do with marginal supplies of oil, and we now know it had everything to do with companies like Enron gaming an ill-conceived energy privatization regime in that state. When that became apparent, the administration didn`t skip a beat. 9/11 came soon after, and instead of heading off an energy crisis, the administration pitched drilling in ANWR as a way to safeguard national security by weaning ourselves off from foreign oil supplies. Many pundits have mocked these constantly-shifting rationales as though the administration is somehow confused. But they only seem confused if you assume that the problem needing to be solved actually called forth the policy solution aimed at solving it. Once you realize that the desire for the policy is the parent of the rationale, and not the other way around, everything falls into place.

Trickle Down Deception

Iraq was the most telling example. Many neoconservatives from the first Bush administration had long regretted the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power in 1991. During their years out of power, as these neocons hashed out a doctrine of post-Cold War American military primacy, Saddam`s removal moved higher and higher up their list of priorities. He was, after all, the prime obstacle to U.S. dominance of the Middle East. And holding him in check was generating serious diplomatic and military damage in the region. Those plans to remove Saddam shot to the top of the White House`s agenda within hours of the 9/11 attacks. The neocons believed that the threat of catastrophic terror required not just taking down al Qaeda but solving the root problem of Islamic terrorism by remaking the entire Middle East. And ousting Saddam was at the center of the plan. Outrage over the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia--put there to contain Saddam--had helped Osama bin Laden recruit his jihadists. And installing a US-backed regime in Baghdad could, the neocons believed, help trigger a domino effect against the old order which would spread secular, democratic regimes throughout the region.

But that was just a theory. In practice, Saddam and al Qaeda were largely unconnected. In fact, the two goals were often at odds with each other. When the Pentagon needed its top special forces to lead the search for Saddam Hussein, Michael Duffy and Massimo Calabresi of Time reported, it simply reassigned the soldiers who had been on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Again, a newly apparent problem ­ the al Qaeda terrorist threat ­ was being used to advance an existing and largely unrelated policy goal.

The effort to make the Iraq-al Qaeda connection stick gave rise to the administration`s grandest deception: The charge that Saddam was rapidly reconstituting his nuclear weapons program and might slip a nuclear bomb--or the chemical and biological weapons he was thought to have already--to bin Laden`s terrorists. "We know he`s got ties with al Qaeda," Bush said at an election rally in November 2002. "A nightmare scenario, of course, is that he becomes the arsenal of a terrorist network, where he could attack America and he`d leave no fingerprints behind." To make that scenario seem plausible, the administration had to muscle all manner of analysts at the CIA, the State Department, and elsewhere. These analysts knew the Middle East best and doubted the existence of any Saddam-al Qaeda link. Nor did they believe that Saddam`s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons justified the crisis atmosphere the White House whipped up in the leadup to war.

The clash spilled into public view this summer, after American forces failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at all. The media began to press White House officials on how false nuclear weapons claims had made their way into Bush`s State of the Union address and other speeches. Administration officials have given shifting accounts, and tried to frame the story as a matter of procedural breakdown. But one former official of Bush`s White House has suggested a more compelling psychological explanation. Writing in National Review Online this past July, former Bush speechwriter David Frum argued that "[t]he CIA`s warnings on Iraq matters had lost some of their credibility in the 1990s. The agency was regarded by many in the Bush administration as reflexively and implacably hostile to any activist policy in Iraq. Those skeptics had come to believe that the agency was slanting its information on Iraq in order to maneuver the administration into supporting the agency`s own soft-line policies."

We have since learned that it wasn`t just mid-level aides who knew about and discounted the CIA`s warnings, though we still don`t know exactly how far up this dismissive attitude went. But Frum`s point rings very true for those who followed the infighting between Bush appointees and the Agency over the last two years. Within the White House, the opinions of whole groups of agency experts were routinely dismissed as not credible, and unhelpful facts were dismissed as the obstructionist maneuverings of bureaucrats seeking to undermine needed change.

Indeed, this same tendency to dismiss expertise shaped the whole war effort. Just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki--who had focused his tenure on peacekeeping and nation building--said that hundreds of thousands of soldiers would be needed to pacify and control Iraq. Days later, Paul Wolfowitz told another committee that Shinseki didn`t know what he was talking about; the occupation, Wolfowitz said, would require far fewer troops. At the time, many took Wolfowitz`s evident self-assurance as a sign that he knew something the general didn`t. Now, it`s clear that it was the other way around, and Wolfowitz was engaging in a typical undisprovable assertion. Senior officials like Wolfowitz set an example that trickled down the bureaucratic ladder. One Pentagon civil servant specializing in Middle East policy described to me how, a few months after 9/11, he was chastised by a superior, a political appointee, for delivering a negative assessment of a proposed policy in a briefing memo to the Secretary of Defense. The civil servant changed his assessment as instructed but still included a list of potential pros and cons. But that wasn`t good enough either. The senior official told him, "`It`s still not acceptable. Take out all the discussion of the cons and basically write there`s no reason why we shouldn`t [do this].` I just thought this was intellectually dishonest."

Hide the Baloney

That cavalier dismissal of expert analysis isn`t limited to the national security arena. In the summer of 2001, the Bush administration was looking for a decision the President could make on the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. His Christian conservative base wanted an outright prohibition. But such a ban would have alienated swing voters eager for the therapies that could come from that research, such as cures for Parkinson`s disease. As Nicholas Thompson explained in these pages ("Science Friction," July/August 2003), Bush`s advisors came up with a scheme they thought would pass muster with both the core and the swing voters: the President would limit research to only those stem cell lines which existed already. But before the decision was announced, federal scientists warned the administration that there simply weren`t enough reliable existing lines to be useful to researchers. The White House ignored the warnings, which have subsequently proved all too accurate, and went ahead with the decision, thereby setting back crucial medical research for years.

Look at just about any policy or department of government and you`re likely to see the same pattern. In July, Slate`s Russ Baker reported that the Bush administration "muzzles routine economic information that`s unfavorable." Last year, the administration simply stopped issuing a report that tracks factory closings throughout the country, the better to hide evidence of mass layoffs. The report was reinstated only after The Washington Post happened to notice the cancellation, disclosed only in a footnote to the Department of Labor`s final report for 2002, issued on Christmas Eve.

The sidelining of in-house expertise is nowhere more apparent than on the environmental front. This Bush administration came into office just as the consensus was solidifying among scientists that human activity contributes to climate change. That consensus, however, ran counter to key administration goals, such as loosening regulations on coal-burning power plants and scuttling international agreements aimed at limiting fossil fuel emissions. Rather than change its agenda, the administration chose to discredit the experts. As GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote in a memo just before the 2002 election: "The scientific debate [on global warming] is closing against us but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." The idea that global warming was a reality that actually had to be grappled with simply didn`t occur to Luntz. Indeed, when questioned about whether administration policies might contribute to global warming, White House spokesmen direct reporters to the small, and rapidly diminishing, group of scientists who still doubt that humans contribute to the problem. In June, when the EPA released an Environmental Progress report, the administration edited out passages that described scientific concerns about global warming.

In any White House, there is usually a tension between the political agenda and disinterested experts who might question it. But what`s remarkable about this White House is how little tension there seems to be. Expert analysis that isn`t politically helpful simply gets ignored.

The Boys in Striped Pants

Educated, liberal-leaning professionals are apt to see this conflict as an open-and-shut case: Expertise should always trump ideology. This has been the case for over a century, ever since Progressive Era reformers took on corrupt city machines and elevated technocratic expertise above politics. Those early Progressives restructured government by turning functions hitherto run by elected officials over to appointed, credentialed experts. And many of the ways they refashioned government now seem beyond question. Few would challenge, for instance, our practice of assigning decisions at the FDA or CDC to panels of qualified scientists rather than political appointees.

On the other hand, anyone who`s worked as a political appointee at the higher levels of government and tried to get anything new done has been frustrated by the myriad ways in which bureaucrats manipulate numbers and information in ways intended to thwart the new agenda and maintain the status quo. There is a long tradition in American politics of finessing policy initiatives past stubborn bureaucrats. Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, routinely used amateur diplomats and personal intermediaries to sidestep the professionals at Foggy Bottom ­ the "boys in striped pants," he called them ­ for fear that they would slow-roll, walk back or generally meddle in his chosen course in international affairs. As the historian Warren Kimball aptly notes, Roosevelt shared the conviction that foreign service officers believed that they had a "priestly monopoly against intervention by members of Congress, journalists, professors, voters and other lesser breeds."

All of this is to say that the Bush administration`s unwillingness to be pushed around by the bureaucratic experts or to have their ideas hemmed in by establishment opinion isn`t by itself a bad thing. Nor is this administration the first to ignore or suppress unhelpful data or analyses from experts that runs contrary to its agenda-­foolish as such conduct usually proves. But in this administration the mindset of deception runs deeper. If you`re a revisionist­someone pushing for radically changing the status quo­you`re apt to see "the experts" not just as people who may be standing in your way, but whose minds have been corrupted by a wrongheaded ideology whose arguments can therefore be ignored. To many in the Bush administration, `the experts` look like so many liberals wedded to a philosophy of big government, the welfare state, over-regulation and a pussyfooting role for the nation abroad. The Pentagon civil servant quoted above told me that the standard response to warnings from the Joint Staff about potential difficulties was simply to say: "That`s just the Joint Staff being obstructionist." Even if the experts are right in the particulars--the size of the deficit, the number of troops needed in Iraq--their real goal is to get in the way of necessary changes that have to be made.

Après nous, le déluge

In that simple, totalizing assumption we find the kernel of almost every problem the administration has faced over recent months--and a foretaste of the troubles the nation may confront in coming years. By disregarding the advice of experts, by shunting aside the cadres of career professionals with on-the-ground experience in these various countries, the administration`s hawks cut themselves off from the practical know-how which would have given them some chance of implementing their plans successfully. In a real sense, they cut themselves off from reality. When they went into Iraq they were essentially flying blind, having disengaged from almost everyone who had real-world experience in how effective occupation, reconstruction and nation-building was done. And much the same can be said of the administration`s take on economic policy, environmental policy, and in almost every sort of policy question involving science. Muzzling the experts helped the White House muscle its revisionist plans through. But in numerous cases it prevented them from implementing even their own plans effectively.

Everyone is compromised by bias, agendas, and ideology. But at the heart of the revisionist mindset is the belief that there is really nothing more than that. Ideology isn`t just the prism through which we see world, or a pervasive tilt in the way a person understands a given set of facts. Ideology is really all there is. For an administration that has been awfully hard on the French, that mindset is...well, rather French. They are like deconstructionists and post-modernists who say that everything is political or that everything is ideology. That mindset makes it easy to ignore the facts or brush them aside because "the facts" aren`t really facts, at least not as most of us understand them. If they come from people who don`t agree with you, they`re just the other side`s argument dressed up in a mantle of facticity. And if that`s all the facts are, it`s really not so difficult to go out and find a new set of them. The fruitful and dynamic tension between political goals and disinterested expert analysis becomes impossible.

Doctrinaire as they may be in the realm of policy, the president`s advisors are the most hard-boiled sort of pragmatists when it comes to gaining and holding on to political power. And there`s no way they planned to head into their reelection campaign with a half-trillion-dollar deficit looming over their heads and an unpredictable, bleeding guerrilla war in Iraq on their hands. At the level of tactics and execution, the administration`s war on expertise has already yielded some very disappointing, indeed dangerous results. And if that gets you worried, just remember that the same folks are in charge of the grand strategy too.



Joshua Micah Marshall is a Washington Monthly contributing writer and editor of www.talkingpointsmemo.com.

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The Mendacity Index
Which president told the biggest whoppers?
You decide.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacit…
Und hier für alle die mitabstimmen wollen:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/131/story_13121_1.html

This summer, after it became clear that President George W. Bush had made false statements about Iraq`s nuclear weapons capacity and links to al Qaeda in his January State of the Union address, some commentators accused him of being the most dishonest president in recent American history. There has been, however, no scientifically serious attempt to test such accusations--until now.

To come up with our Mendacity Index, we asked a nominating committee* of noted journalists and pundits to pick the most serious fibs, deceptions, and untruths spoken by each of the four most recent presidents. We selected the top six for each commander-in-chief, then presented the list to a panel of judges** with longtime experience in Washington. Panel members were instructed to rate each deception on a scale of 1 (least serious) to 5 (most serious). Then we averaged the scores for each deception and for each president. We believe their validity rests somewhere between the Periodic Table and the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. To view the results, click here.

But why trust the experts? We`d like to hear from you. The Washington Monthly and Beliefnet invite you to take the survey yourself and give each president a mendacity rating. We`ll be keeping a running tab of the results. May the best man win!

Instructions: Read the lists below of deceptions spoken by the four most recent presidents. Click the link after each president to give him an overall untruthfulness score from 1 (least serious) to 5 (most serious).

Click here to go directly to a specific president`s profile:

Ronald Reagan . . . George H. W. Bush. . . Bill Clinton . . . George W. Bush


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Ronald Reagan

Killer Trees.
After opining in August 1980 that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: "Chop me down before I kill again."

Balance the Budget And Increase Defense Spending?
The Reagan administration introduced the 1981 Economic Recovery Act by claiming that it would cut taxes by 30 percent, increase defense spending by three-quarters of a trillion dollars, and achieve a balanced budget within three years. Budget director David Stockman admitted in November of 1981 that, "None of us really understands what`s going on with all these numbers" and that supply-side economics "was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."

Guns of Brixton.
"In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn`t use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty," Ronald Reagan claimed in April 1982. When informed that the story was "just not true," White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, "Well, it`s a good story, though. It made the point, didn`t it?" Reagan repeated the story again on March 21, 1986 during an interview with The New York Times.

The Liberator.
In November 1983, Reagan told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that he had served as a photographer in a U.S. Army unit assigned to film Nazi death camps. He repeated the story to Simon Wiesenthal the following February. Reagan never visited or filmed a concentration camp; he spent World War II in Hollywood, making training films with the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps.

Arms for Hostages.
"We did not--repeat, did not--trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we," Reagan proclaimed in November 1986. Four months later, on March 4, 1987, Reagan admitted in a televised national address, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that`s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

Cadillac Queens.
Over a period of about five years, Reagan told the story of the "Chicago welfare queen" who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and collected benefits for "four nonexisting deceased husbands," bilking the government out of "over $150,000." The real welfare recipient to whom Reagan referred was actually convicted for using two different aliases to collect $8,000. Reagan continued to use his version of the story even after the press pointed out the actual facts of the case to him.

Your turn: Rate Reagan`s overall mendacity on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).



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George H. W. Bush

Read My Lips.
In his speech to the Republican Convention on Aug. 18, 1988, Bush predicted that, if he was elected, "the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I`ll say no, and they`ll push, and I`ll say no, and they`ll push again, and I`ll say to them, `Read my lips: no new taxes.`" In his budget for 1991, Bush raised the top income-tax rate and boosted levies on gasoline, tobacco, and booze.

Drugs in Lafayette Park.
Addressing the country about the war on drugs on September 5, 1989, Bush held a plastic bag of crack cocaine before the television camera and said it had been "seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House." In order to obtain the prop, however, undercover DEA agents had lured a teenage drug dealer from southeast D.C. to Lafayette Park. The dealer`s initial response to the request was, "Where the [expletive] is the White House?"

SCUD Studs?
On March 14, 1990, President Bush bragged that Patriot missiles placed in Israel and Saudi Arabia had successfully intercepted "41 of 42" Iraqi SCUD missiles. "Thank God for the Patriot missile," Bush said. But an Israeli Defense Ministry study found that only 1 of 17 Patriot missiles fired in Israeli had actually hit a SCUD. Studies by an MIT physicist suggested that the hit rate from Patriot missile launchers in Saudi Arabia was not substantially better.

The Best Man For The Job?
Upon nominating Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States, Bush told reporters, "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this sense that he is the best qualified at this time. I kept my word to the American people and to the Senate by picking the best man for the job on the merits." Thomas had served only one year as a judge and was given the middling endorsement of "qualified" by a divided American Bar Association panel.

Iran Contra.
In 1986, when asked whether he had participated in White House discussions about the Iran-Contra arms program as vice president, Bush claimed to have been "out of the loop." He specifically denied attending a January 1986 meeting at which Secretary of State George Schultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger opposed the arms-for-hostages deal. But White House logs, made public by independent counsel Kenneth Walsh in 1992, revealed that Bush had attended that meeting, and several others. In response, Bush claimed not to have heard Schultz`s and Weinberger`s objections, though Weinberger`s journal entry for the meeting noted of the deal "VP favored."

Bill Clinton, Taxaholic.
During the 1992 campaign, Bush repeatedly claimed that Bill Clinton had "raised taxes 128 times" as governor of Arkansas. The Wall Street Journal and the Congressional Research Service found that, to reach 128 increases, Bush had counted as "raising taxes" such acts as lengthening the state`s dog-racing season and simply counted many taxes twice. As governor, they concluded, Clinton had cut taxes about as many times as he`d raised them.

Your turn: Rate Bush Sr.`s overall mendacity on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).



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Bill Clinton

Draft-Dodging.
In a 1991 interview with The Washington Post, Clinton said: "The rule was there was no graduate deferment, but you got to finish the term you were in . . . I wound up just going through the lottery, and it was just a pure fluke that I was never called." But as both the Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal reported in 1992, Clinton received an induction notice before promising to join an ROTC program in 1969 and later wrote to a reserve colonel expressing thanks for "saving" him from the draft by letting him take the deferment even though he never in fact joined the ROTC.

Sending Troops to Bosnia.
In 1995, after deciding to deploy U.S. troops to Bosnia--in violation of a 1993 pledge not to deploy troops without a clear exit strategy--Clinton pledged that they would not be sent "unless I was absolutely sure that the goals we set . . . are clear, realistic, and achievable in about a year." U.S. troops are still in Bosnia today.

Remembering The Iowa Caucuses.
At the start of the 1996 election season, Clinton commented, "Since I was a little boy, I`ve heard about the Iowa caucuses." There were no Iowa caucuses when Clinton was a boy. They began in 1972, while Clinton was a graduate student at Oxford University.

Black Church Burnings.
During a weekly Oval Office radio address on June 8th, 1996, Clinton told his audience that "I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported the following day that there was no evidence available of a black church ever being burned down in Arkansas.

That Woman.
During a press conference on Jan. 26, 1998, Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." But Clinton had, indeed, received oral sex from Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern at the time.

Rwandan Inaction.
In March of 1998, Clinton traveled to Rwanda to apologize for U.S. inaction during the 1994 genocide, saying that he and others "did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror." But international press coverage, American intelligence, and reports from human rights organizations all indicated early on that hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis were the victims of systematic, state-sponsored killing. Just 11 days after the start of the killings, Secretary of State Warren Christopher had ordered U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright to call for an immediate withdrawal of all U.N. troops from Rwanda.

Your turn: Rate Clinton`s overall mendacity on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).



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George W. Bush

The Trifecta.
On many occasions during 2001 and 2002, President Bush talked about a campaign promise made in Chicago that he would only deficit spend "if there is a national emergency, if there is a recession, or if there`s a war," sometimes adding, after 9/11, "Never did I dream we`d have a trifecta." Reporters pressed the Bush`s communications staff to prove that Bush had actually made such a statement during the 2000 campaign, but the White House couldn`t turn up any proof. Bush continued to insist he`d made the promise.

Cutting AmeriCorps.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush made AmeriCorps the centerpiece of his new, post-9/11 service agenda, promising to expand the program`s roster by 50 percent in order that Americans might serve "goals larger than self." But in 2003, he signed legislation that cut the program`s operating budget by 30 percent. This year, AmeriCorps has half as many members as it did in 2001.

Going to War.
During a visit to West Virginia in January 2002, Bush joked, "I`ve been to war. I`ve raised twins. If I had a choice, I`d rather go to war." During the Vietnam War, however, Bush served with the Air National Guard in Texas, and had specifically noted on his Air Force officers test that he did not wish to serve overseas.

16 Words.
In making the case for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, President Bush stated in early 2003, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Yet the CIA had itself previously warned top White House officials and British intelligence that the reports of an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from African countries were almost certainly untrue, and no nuclear program nor weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq.

"Average" Tax Cuts.
Announcing his second big tax cut package in January 2003, Bush stated that "These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans. Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money." But because the package was tilted heavily towards the very wealthy, the average tax cut for households in the middle quintile of the income spectrum was only $217, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

What WMDs?
In May 2003, President Bush stated, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." U.S. forces have yet to find any evidence of chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons in Iraq.

Your turn: Rate W.`s overall mendacity on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).



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*Nominating Committee: Tony Blankley, Sidney Blumenthal, James Carville, John Fund, Joe Conason, Jonah Goldberg, Hendrick Hertzberg, Haynes Johnson, Hamilton Jordan, Michael Kinsley, Victor Navasky, Bruce Reed, Wlady Pleszczynski, and David Tell

**Panel of Judges: Jodie Allen, Russell Baker, Margaret Carlson, Thomas Mann, Norm Ornstein, Richard Reeves, Larry Sabato, and Juan Williams

All artwork by Taylor Jones (L.A. Times Syndicate/ Newscom)

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-usir…
THE WORLD



U.S. Dangles a Carrot: Opportunities in Iraq
The agencies of nations that contribute troops or funds to the postwar effort would `get in on the ground floor,` an American official says.
By Robin Wright
Times Staff Writer

September 10, 2003

WASHINGTON — To press its new Iraq initiative, the United States is crafting a strategy to isolate France and entice other countries to commit new troops and funds by offering them the prospect of an active role in the transition and after the U.S. returns political control to Iraqis, according to officials.

U.S. officials are engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions with U.N. Security Council members as well as potential donor countries about taking charge of one or more of the 14 critical areas for reconstruction recently identified by the World Bank and the U.S.-led provisional authority in Baghdad.

"We`re telling them that this is not just about writing checks or sending troops, but about having a stake in Iraq so their government agencies and humanitarian groups are involved in a sector when a new sovereign government is in power in Iraq. It`s a way to get in on the ground floor. That`s the selling point," said a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity.

Bush administration officials are counting on two international forums, scheduled in the next six weeks, to jump-start the new U.S. strategy: the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 22-26, and an international donors conference in Madrid, Oct. 23-24.

In the meantime, the administration hopes to isolate France to prevent it from thwarting Washington`s effort to win a new U.N. resolution and repeating what happened on the eve of the Iraq war. France`s threat then to veto any resolution authorizing war against Iraq ultimately forced the United States to lead a coalition without world support.

"France was the ringleader of the opposition last time. Our goal is to ensure it doesn`t happen again," the official said.

The critical first step in the interrelated efforts — to win passage of a new resolution calling for a greater international role in Iraq and to garner specific commitments, both financial and military, from other countries — will play out this weekend in Geneva. The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia — will meet for an unusual summit to discuss the controversial resolution proposed by the United States.

The administration is wary of the meeting, called by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prevent the kind of divisions that earlier this year undermined both the credibility of the United Nations and the U.S. war effort, U.S. officials said.

Washington believes that support for its new resolution comes largely from the 10 elected members of the Security Council. This could make the Geneva meeting, with only the five permanent members present, appear as if the U.S. resolution does not have the backing the Americans believe it does. U.S. officials are also concerned that the French might try to rally Russia and China to make joint demands.

The administration is already publicly testy about France`s criticism of the resolution and the fact that the French have not discussed specific points or offered alternatives. U.S. and foreign officials involved in the process say the other major Security Council players — including Russia and Germany, both of which stood against the Iraq war — are at least willing to talk about the resolution or suggest modifications.

"France is isolating itself by the way it`s handling itself," said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity. "The rest of us are working together well. It`s up to France to catch up with the rest of us."

In a further sign of tensions between Paris and Washington, the State Department said it was stunned by France`s statement Tuesday threatening to veto a resolution that would lift U.N. sanctions on Libya. Lifting the sanctions is part of a deal to settle the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, including Libya`s payment of billions of dollars in compensation to families of the 270 people who died in the attack.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the French threat "inexplicable" and "astonishing," given that France had urged the U.N. in 1999 to lift sanctions after negotiating its own settlement with Libya for the 1989 bombing of a UTA flight that killed 170.

When Libya recently agreed to a much higher settlement for the Pan Am bombing, France demanded that its settlement be renegotiated — and it now threatens to block a U.N. vote on the sanctions until Libya complies.

Though the government in Tripoli had not acknowledged responsibility for either bombing, Libyans were convicted of participating in them. U.N. sanctions were imposed in an effort to force the Libyan government to hand over the suspects for trial.

To ensure that the Geneva meeting does not backfire, U.S. officials are already downplaying expectations of significant developments. The foreign ministers will only "compare ideas," not discuss specific changes to the resolution, and will examine how to generally support Iraqis as they begin to assume aspects of sovereignty, Boucher told reporters.

"The secretary-general felt it was good at this juncture, particularly with the General Assembly coming up and the Iraqi resolution on the table, to have a discussion with the Perm 5 [the five permanent Security Council members] and see if we can align the ideas a little bit more, get together not only in person, but get together conceptually on how to support the Iraqis," he said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will not take any new language or options with him to Geneva, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

After Geneva, the administration will lobby hard for its resolution and try to work up a full list of objections or suggestions. The United States is not likely to indicate what compromises might be considered until Powell and President Bush attend the opening week of the General Assembly session, U.S. officials said.

Bush is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Sept. 23. The U.S. hopes to get the Security Council to vote on the resolution during that week or soon after, the officials added.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq10s…
EDITORIAL



Itemize the Bill, Mr. Bush

September 10, 2003

The $87 billion that President Bush seeks to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan is more than the $78 billion that all 50 states would need to balance their budgets next year. It`s more than the $68.7 billion Bush wants next year for homeland security and the State Department combined. It`s even more than the Pentagon plans to spend on all its new weapons systems next year.

So does it make sense for lawmakers to just fork over the whopping sum that Bush requested Sunday night? Only if Congress forces the administration to provide a clear plan for how it will spend the money and to ensure that it will halt further tax cuts for the wealthy.

Before the war, Congress barely debated the costs and dangers of invading Iraq. As Iraq teeters into anarchy and the United States faces a deficit of almost $500 billion in 2004, lawmakers can`t afford to commit a similar mistake.

The Senate Armed Services Committee made a start Tuesday in questioning Paul D. Wolfowitz, a top Pentagon official, about the price of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Unfortunately, he offered little more than vague generalities about the need to battle on in what Bush is suddenly calling the "central front" in the war on terror. Lawmakers need to cut through this fog and zero in on the administration`s spending.

Taxpayers first deserve to know, in detail, what happened to the $79 billion that Congress already allocated for Iraq. How will the military run through what the administration says is at least $65.5 billion more? Why do Bush officials in their latest proposal dedicate so relatively little to the physical rebuilding — the water, electric and oil systems — of Iraq ($15 billion) and civilian programs in Afghanistan ($800 million)? And, because this clearly isn`t the full and final bill, what might the final tab be?

The administration, which has been trying to put off delivering its latest budget figures for Iraq and Afghanistan until the last minute so lawmakers can`t scrutinize them, urgently needs to provide spending breakdowns. Otherwise, it makes serious U.S. overseas involvements just look like a bonanza for Halliburton, Bechtel and the other well-connected contractors the Pentagon relies on.

Bush, who is asking for the biggest emergency spending since the beginning of World War II, can`t evade efforts to tie together his foreign and domestic policies. The president`s $87-billion request amounts to more than the entire tax reductions the bottom 60% of Americans received in his 2001 cut. If the 2001 tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% were frozen, the country would save $442 billion — almost enough to wipe out the entire budget deficit for next year. Halting further tax cuts wouldn`t be imposing a sacrifice on Americans; it simply would be not giving them a gift the country can`t afford.

Until now, the administration, as Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) put it Sunday, has treated Congress "like a nuisance." Congress truly should become one and badger the administration to spell out its plans to pay for, execute and exit the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/138796_dowd10.html

Top Gun is now tap dancing
Wednesday, September 10, 2003

By MAUREEN DOWD
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- On one channel Sunday night, we watched the iconic side of the Bush presidency. In the risibly revisionist Showtime movie "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," George W. Bush is Vin Diesel-tough as he battles terrorists. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me," the fictional president fictionally snaps on Air Force One after the 9/11 attacks. "I`ll just be waiting for the bastard."

On network channels at the same time -- W. is pre-empting himself! -- we watched the ironic side of the Bush presidency. Even though Bush the Younger has done everything in his power not to replicate the fate of his dad, he is replicating the fate of his dad. Only months after swaggering out of a successful war with Iraq, he is struggling with the economy. His numbers have fallen so fast, Top Gun is now tap dancing. He addressed the nation to try to underscore the imaginary line that links the budget-busting pit of Iraq to the heartbreaking pit of 9/11.

Just as the father failed to finish off Saddam, so the son has failed to finish off Saddam. Just as the conservatives once carped that the father did not go far enough in Iraq, now the "cakewalk" crowd carps that the son does not go far enough.

"We need to get Iraq right, and we`re trying to do it a little bit on the cheap," Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor, chastised on "Nightline." "I think we could use more troops; we could certainly use more money."

The more you do, the more you need to do. That`s the Mideast quicksand, which is why it is so important to know how you`re going to get out before you get sucked in.

Dick Cheney`s dark idea that a show of brutal force would scare off terrorists has ended up creating more terrorists.

Bush must be puzzling over how he got snarled in this nightmare, with Old Europe making him beg, North Korea making him wince, the deficit making him cringe, the lost manufacturing jobs making him gulp; with the hawks caving in to the United Nations and to old Saddam Baath army members who want to rebuild a security force; with Rep. David Obey demanding the unilateral heads of Rummy and Wolfie, so that "Uncle Sam doesn`t become Uncle Sucker"; with the FBI warning that more Islamic terrorists who know how to fly planes may be burrowing into our neighborhoods.

Does Bush ever wonder if the neocons duped him and hijacked his foreign policy? Some Middle East experts think some of the neocons painted a rosy picture for the president of Arab states blossoming with democracy when they really knew this could not be accomplished so easily; they may have cynically suspected that it was far more likely that the Middle East would fall into chaos and end up back in its pre-Ottoman Empire state, Balkanized into a tapestry of rival fiefs -- based on tribal and ethnic identities, with no central government -- so busy fighting one another that they would be no threat to us, or to Israel.

The administration is worried now about Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the face of roiling radicalism.

Some veterans of Bush 41 think that the neocons packaged their "inverted Trotskyism," as the writer John Judis dubbed their rabid desire to export their "idealistic concept of internationalism," so that it appealed to Bush 43`s born-again sense of divine mission and to the desire of Bush, Rummy and Cheney to achieve immortality by transforming the Middle East and the military.

These realpolitik veterans of Bush 41 say that Bush pere, an old-school internationalist who ceaselessly tried to charm allies as U.N. ambassador and in the White House, "agonized" over the bullying approach his son`s administration used at the United Nations and around the globe.

Some of the father`s old circle are thinking about forming a Republican group that would speak out against the neocons. "What`s happening in Iraq is puzzling," said one Bush 41 official. "The president ran on no-nation-building. Now we`re in this drifting, aimless empire that is not helping the road map to peace."

W. has always presented himself as the heir of Reagan, and dissed his father`s presidency, using it as a template of what not to do.

But as he tried to dig himself out on Sunday night, he may have wished he had emulated the old man, at least when it comes to slicing the deficit and playing nice with the allies.



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Maureen Dowd is a columnist with The New York Times. Copyright 2003 New York Times News Service. E-mail: [e-mail]

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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9.11.01: Two years later
The new politics of national tragedy
ANALYSIS: Terror is now a partisan campaign tool
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/200…


Washington -- There was no place for politics on Sept. 11, 2001.

New York`s mayor, a Republican, raced to the inflamed World Trade Center towers. The secretary of transportation, a Democrat, ordered planes out of the nation`s skies. Fund-raisers were canceled. Political ads were pulled from TV. Members of Congress from both parties gathered on the steps of the abandoned U. S. Capitol to sing "God Bless America."

Driven by necessity and fear, Americans stood united behind a president who less than a year before had won a bitterly contested election in which he had not received a majority of the votes.

Two years later, that moment is gone.

It may be a measure of how comfortable Americans have become in two years with the new world order. Or perhaps it is a sign of political strategists trying to play off people`s fears.

Whatever the reason, bare-knuckle campaigns are back. Partisanship has returned. And now, a little more than a year away from the next presidential election, terror itself has become a potent political weapon.

President Bush begins each of his GOP fund-raisers with a boast about his administration`s war on terror. His party chose New York, and the latest date in party history, for the 2004 Republican convention in order to coincide with next year`s 9/11 commemoration.

Democrats, many of whom refrained from attacking Bush`s foreign policy and war on terror during the 2002 election, have put national security at the forefront of their presidential campaign, calling Bush`s anti-terror policies everything from dishonest and misguided to a "miserable failure."

9/11 CHANGED POLITICS

Just as the events of Sept. 11, 2001, inalterably transformed the Manhattan skyline, so too did it alter the political landscape for the foreseeable future.

"There has never been an event in my lifetime that has had the impact that 9/11 has had on American culture and the American psyche," said California Sen.

Dianne Feinstein.

Bush, who struggled through a politically tenuous first nine months in office, watched his popularity soar after Sept. 11 and remains a heavy favorite to win re-election, though his poll numbers are falling.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has emerged as a front-runner in the Democratic Party, in large part due to his vocal criticism of Bush and his handling of Iraq, which the president now calls the "central front" in the war on terror. Eager to establish their national security credentials, many Democrats are putting stock in retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark, who is expected to announce his candidacy for president by the end of next week.

"The entire debate has changed," said Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

McAuliffe, in an interview, said he believes the 2004 election will ultimately come down to the economy and jobs, but positions on Iraq and homeland security will play a large role in determining his party`s nominee, and the issue will be a major problem for Bush`s re-election.

"What George Bush and Karl Rove had hoped would be their biggest asset will turn into a major liability for them," McAuliffe said.

Democrats see such a ripe political opening, that some believe Clinton campaign manager James Carville`s famous mantra from the 1992 campaign -- "It`s the economy, stupid" -- is no longer appropriate.


SECURITY QUESTIONS RESURFACE
"The question is not only whether you are better off today than you were four years ago," said Chris Lehane, an aide to Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is running for president. "The central question is, `Are you safer today than you were two years ago?` "

It has been a long time since American politics was driven by national security concerns. Foreign policy was almost an afterthought in the last election, in which few high-profile differences separated Bush and Democratic Vice President Al Gore.

Though concerns about the Democratic Party`s handling of foreign affairs probably contributed to a long string of defeats in presidential elections through the 1970s and 1980s, one probably has to go back to the 1964 contest between President Lyndon Johnson and Sen. Barry Goldwater to find a campaign in which fear of attack played such a prominent role.

"Americans are not going to go for someone who is not going to be willing and able to stand up to America`s enemies," said Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism, and the former communications director for the Republican National Committee. "No one wins who`s not credible on national security."


BUSH STRONG IN POLLS
The signs of Bush`s popularity as a commander in chief are evident in polls,

which show a majority of Americans support his military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the job he has done to protect the United States from future attacks.

In speech after speech, Bush talks tough about America`s response to Sept. 11, telling GOP donors in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday night: "Terrorists, cold- blooded killers declared war on the United States of America -- and war is what they got.

"Two and a half years ago, our military was not receiving the resources it needed, and morale was beginning to suffer," Bush said to thunderous applause. "So we increased the defense budgets to prepare for the threats of the new era.

And today, no one in the world can question the skill and strength and the spirit of the United States military."

Democrats accuse Bush of trying to exploit the nation`s concern over safety for his own political benefit.


EXPLOITING TRAGEDY
They cite the unusual timing of the Republican National Convention, which will spill into September next year; the Republican Party`s sale of photographs taken on Air Force One just hours after the terrorist attacks; Bush`s dramatic, made-for-TV tailhook landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last May; and Bush political adviser Karl Rove`s leaked strategy presentation last year, which urged Republicans to "focus on war and economy," as examples of exploitation of the Sept. 11 tragedy.

"It is chilling to think that any part of your brain would be dealing with a political message when you are dealing with the security and the lives of the American people," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek.

"The way the Bush administration has tried to use the tragedy for partisan gain is disgusting," McAuliffe said.

Democrats have seized upon the problems in Iraq as a sign that Bush`s response to the terrorist threat is inadequate.

"This president is a miserable failure," Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., joining a chorus of anti-Bush criticism, said during a Democratic debate last week.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raised the prospect Sunday that the vocal criticism of Bush`s policies provides a boost to America`s enemies.

But there is little evidence that the old axiom that "politics ends at the water`s edge" still holds.

"Like so many taboos, this one has disappeared," May said.

Like so many American institutions, it appears to be a casualty of Sept. 11.

E-mail Marc Sandalow at [e-mail].

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Congress has no choice on Iraq
Even skeptics of war realize billions are needed for rebuilding
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/…


Washington -- Congress will give President Bush the mammoth $87 billion check he requested Sunday night to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq, not because Democrats or even Republicans agree with administration policy, but they feel they have no choice.

Bush`s tardy acknowledgment that Iraq is growing more unstable, not less, merely confirmed widespread warnings that if conditions there don`t improve soon, the situation could spin out of control into something arguably more dangerous to U.S. and global security than the Saddam Hussein regime that allied forces toppled.

"I think we`re in a very serious situation," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander in Desert Storm and Bosnia and a former U.N. civil administrator in Kosovo now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The best thing we`ve got going for us is the realization by the international community that our failure in Iraq will have significant consequences for the region as a whole and the larger international community, so there is a propensity by most people to help," Nash said. "But it will take dramatic action in the truest sense of the word to reverse the course of failure that we`re currently on."

And so the war`s skeptics -- in Europe and in Congress -- are cornered into throwing enormous money and effort into a cause they opposed. Indeed the greatest danger, many experts say, is that failure to intensify the rebuilding effort, or political pressure for a premature withdrawal, could lead Iraq to the very chaos and upheaval that would nourish terrorists.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein joined other Democrats Tuesday in demanding that the administration present a detailed report on its plans in Iraq, while insisting, "We must stay the course."

"But we need to hear from the administration on how it intends to stay that course and where that course will lead us," Feinstein said.

Bush acknowledged Sunday that Iraq has now become the "central front" in the war on terror in the wake of bombings and assassinations in Baghdad and rising attacks on allied forces. Indeed, those who are most alarmed by the lack of concrete progress strongly agree with Bush`s contention that the United States must "do what is necessary . . . spend what is necessary," to stabilize Iraq.

"To have started down this path, to have wrought all the destruction that we did, and then walk away and leave it to unravel, will undermine every effort that we undertake in the world in the future to really try and build a more secure and democratic world," said Larry Diamond, a democracy scholar at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution.

Diamond foresees two worst-case scenarios: "One is we walk away, and there`s civil war and absolute chaos. The second is we walk away, and there`s an Islamic fundamentalist government in Iraq that has many of the attributes of the Iranian regime and uses the United States as the devil. Either of those outcomes would be a disaster for American national security and could even be worse than Saddam Hussein."

There is widespread consternation in Washington about the administration`s lack of adequate planning for the post-conflict rebuilding, from such basic tasks as providing security, water and electricity, to the far more strenuous challenges of rebuilding the oil industry and the economy, and creating a functioning democracy that will allow U.S. troops to leave.

A widely circulated report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned of inadequate planning last January, before the invasion.

Bathsheba Crocker, an author of that report, said administration planning was based on highly optimistic assumptions and prepared for some events that never occurred, such as a humanitarian crisis, and failed to prepare for others, such as the serious security vacuum and looting, that did.

"Assumptions were made that things would go fairly easily and the Iraqi people would welcome coalition forces as liberators," Crocker said. "The planning didn`t fit the reality."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction, but oil production -- beset by sabotage -- has not begun to return to prewar levels, and the decrepit industry needs billions in capital investment.

Many observers, even the conservative Weekly Standard, contend the administration also grossly underestimated the number of troops that would be necessary to pacify the country after the invasion. When Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress before the war that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in its aftermath, he was quickly retired.

"There was a failure to understand that by senior defense officials who felt Iraqis would be too busy cheering and giving out fruit and wouldn`t have their own political intrigues to pursue," Nash said.

Still, he said, "We are where we are. The golf ball is in the tall rough, and we`ve got to think about our next shot, not our last one."

Bush will be asking other nations to contribute troops, but even if they do,

those numbers may fall far short of what is needed. Moreover, observers widely contend the administration will have to relinquish significant political and military control of Iraq if it is to get foreign help.

Bush`s new budget request for $87 billion -- arriving on top of the $79 billion Congress appropriated last spring -- also is likely to fall short of what is needed, many experts say. Already, the combined $160 billion-plus comes to about 40 percent of all nondefense discretionary spending this year, making the Iraq reconstruction the largest undertaking in nation-building since the post-World War II Marshall Plan.

Even the new budget request allocates just $21 billion for rebuilding Iraq, well short of the $50 billion to $75 billion the World Bank and others have estimated the job will cost.

"I think there were some serious miscalculations -- I think the president understands that now, and he is changing policy away from a unilateralist approach toward getting others engaged in sharing burdens, but it`s late," said Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute and a former ambassador to Egypt and Israel.

Many warn that time for dramatic progress is running out.

"These things are fluid, and credibility and the psychological dimensions of power are very important," Diamond said. "If people come to believe that the U.S. is going to withdraw after a certain point, or if responsible people come to believe that the U.S. can`t protect them -- if members of the Iraqi Governing Council, who are begging the U.S. now for bodyguards and personal protection, start getting assassinated one after another -- then who`s going to come forward to make this thing work?

"Then you begin to get a dynamic which is exactly what the terrorists are seeking, where things just unravel and the odds of it working become longer and longer, and the difficulty in persuading decent, well-meaning people to cooperate in this reconstruction effort becomes greater and greater."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

[Joerver]

Recall God And Fake Orgasms
Screw the whiny CA politicos and their PR machines. Let`s recall things that really matter
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/


Do you feel the pulse? The surging urge for delicious politician-free change? That`s right! It`s recall time!

Because this is your opening. This is your chance. Here is the insane inane circus of the California recall, and here is this huge gaping maw of political idiocy and infighting, and apparently they just really, really want you to know that all you really need is a million bucks and a million signatures and you too can change history to suit your whiny conservative whims. Ah, democracy.

Ha. You will show them. Because this is your chance. To harness the bitter energy of the bitchy little pundits and the hysterical media stories and the desperately weird Schwarzenegger campaign ads featuring all those "normal" citizens sitting around a classroom shooting the Mumbly Meat Man broad-stroke questions about CA`s never-ending fiscal crisis as if they weren`t talking to the Terminator, the big dumb action hero, Conan Kindergarten Cop himself. God but the world is strange.

But now is your chance. Leverage the hell out of all of it, make it personal, spin it all your way. They want a recall? You shall give them a recall.

Here is what you do: You ride the recall wave. Hop the glorious supercharged recall bandwagon. Only you do not stop with pallid politicos and desperate governor wanna-bes and Indian casinos and water rights and energy woes and talk of just what the hell to do with all those icky homeless and retired and mentally ill and newborn poor people.


You start with, say, beer commercials. Yes. Cast your vote now. Let us recall dumb frat guys toasting Michelob Lights and ogling anorexic frigid beer babes in loud bars. Let us recall beer-bellied lug nuts who wear grungy sweatshirts and baseball hats and last 1.7 minutes in bed before passing out and dreaming of, well, their next beer. Is that a good place to start?

But don`t stop there. Let us, furthermore, recall hugely overweight football-jerseyed lumps hawking giant Round Table pizzas and sniffing the slices as if they were a fine wine, before jamming another hunk down their throats and clogging their arteries and saying good-bye to the notion of ever seeing their toes again. Recall the toxic garbage-food obesity epidemic.

Recall the idea that if your ass isn`t making a permanent indentation in your $149 Ikea couch every Sunday for six hours straight during NFL season, you are somehow betraying the very notion of manliness and testosterone. This is your choice. You are the only voter that matters. Do you sense your power now?

Recall the toxic beauty myth. Recall Glamour and Cosmo and Modern Bride and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and every other mag that Photoshops the living hell out of Giselle`s overpampered ass and makes you somehow believe true divinity lies in having just the right $400 Gucci purse and $500 Botoxed forehead and 10 Tips to Force Him to Marry Your Desperate Needy Self.

Recall broken vibrators. Recall fake orgasms. Recall Escalades. Recall gum-snapping Marina girls with names like Taylor and Dakota who can`t parallel park those very Escalades because their cell is ringing and they forgot which way to turn the wheel because the L`Oreal Ultra Magenta has leeched into their brains.

Recall J.Lo. And Ben. Do it now.

Recall penny loafers and airline food and giant molded plastic lawn play sets for children that slowly bleach in the sun and last 15 million years and look like something hacked up by a screeching five-headed Wal-Mart hellbeast, and that sell for $38.97 and get used twice and are then left in the corner of the yard to pollute the planet forevermore.

Recall Monsanto. Oh dear god yes. Dump big agribiz, vile pesticides, food additives you can`t pronounce but which they swear on a stack of buried cancer data won`t hurt the integrity of your kids` bones over 10 years of sucking down corn-syrup solids and triglycerides and MSG. Vote for organic. Vote for locally produced, seasonal organic produce delivered to your door. Recall Safeway.

Recall Coke. Recall "Don`t bother me, I`m eating" gluttonous slop. Recall those disturbing packets of flavored yogurt that come in those little plastic tubes at Target that don`t need to be refrigerated, ever. You really want to put that into your body? Vote no.

Recall the Catholic Church. Oh sure, Catholic charities worldwide do some grueling and thankless work in some of the world`s grimiest, most poverty-stricken places. But as any altar boy or desperately gay seminary student or casual reader of a best-selling Dan Brown novel can tell you, the church has covered up more vital spiritual history and religious truth and brutal violence in the name of God while inflicting more harm on the notion of true individual divinity than just about any organization in history.

Extend this vote to almost every organized money-hungry religion in modern times. Watch as lightning doesn`t strike you dead. Vote for healthy lickable blasphemy. And while you`re at it, recall the karmically poisonous notions of guilt, sin and hell. See? Isn`t democracy fun?

And then, recall God. Not just any god, but that angry bitter Christian God, the one that says we should bomb with impunity and kill anyone who stands in the way of our petrochemical profits and our savage empire building.

The one who has apparently hand-picked America as his preferred land o` gluttony and who really loves dogma and hates choice and gays and book learnin` and European cars, the one who likes to count among His hollow self-righteous adherents born-again U.S. presidents who can`t even spell "Buddha." You know the one.

Recall patriotism. Or, rather, recall the idea that patriotism somehow means if you don`t sneer at the very idea of foreigners, if you don`t somehow wish hot steaming death upon each and every detractor of America, if you don`t wave the flag at least as high as your TV antenna and believe everything Rumsfeld & Co. hisses your way, you must be an impious fag traitor communist tree-hugger.

Recall the notion, in short, that if you have the gall to believe that peace and nonviolence and independent thought and personal spiritual questing and divine open-mouthed orgasms are the most patriotic notions of all, well, you do not belong in this fine country. Recall redneck thick-necked homophobic myopia.

Recall that stale recurring thought pattern. Recall that noxious diet, that sour road rage, that odious and stagnant treatment of your lover, wherein you have somehow forgotten the power of her eyes and the smell of her skin or the way he looks when he makes you dinner and laughs at sitcoms and sings old Def Leppard songs in the shower.

This is all within your power. This is all within your purview. They want you to think it`s not, that you are weak and trembly and that terrorism is ever ready to swoop in and eat your children and rearrange all the stations on your car stereo. They want you to believe you are powerless and small. This is, of course, utter BS. Your vote counts, perhaps more than it ever has.

So you vote, with all your might, to do everything in your power on a day-to-day basis to crank your divinity and lick the left nipple of your own personal Jesus and discover that the god you seek is actually you, is your true Self.

And you beam that healthy sexy individual robustness out to the world every goddamn day, minimize the refined sugar and the garbage food and the stomping of the planet and maximize the orgasmic sighs and the organic highs and the holistic everything.

What, you want me to tell you to vote no on the recall, yes on Bustamante, e-mail your senator, complain to management? As if. That ain`t the half of it.

Recall fear. Vote now to kiss with everything you`ve got, love deep, f--- with full intent, feel the divine`s hot breath on your skin at every possible moment, buy the best wine you can afford, read your ass off, hunker down, grit your teeth, scream your joy.

There. See? Politics isn`t so bad, after all.


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


Subscribe to Mark`s deeply skewed, mostly legal Morning Fix newsletter.
Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

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Will Press Roll Over Again on New WMD Report?
`E&P` Editor Cites `Depressing` Failure in Past
By Greg Mitchel NEW YORK -- Shoptalk Column September 9, 2003


Some time in the next two weeks, David Kay, head of the Iraqi Survey Group, is expected to finally release a crucial report on his findings so far in his search for weapons of destruction.

"I am confident that when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop more," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "We did not try to hype it or blow it out of proportion."

Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs recently (and hid them) and/or had numerous WMD programs underway that we succeeded in pre-empting.

In the parlance once used by Howell Raines, Kay thereby will "flood the zone" and hope the press portrays what may be largely assertion -- not fact -- as compelling proof. Would the media possibly fall for this? There are disturbing indications that they would.

Last month, one of the most important stories of 2003 appeared, and got significant play in a number of major newspapers -- but not nearly enough. There`s still time for the rest to catch up and, in most cases, honestly admit that they promoted one of the most lethal rush-to-judgements of the modern journalistic era -- and vow to do better in the future, starting with the Kay case.

The August report was written by Charles J. Hanley, special correspondent for the Associated Press, who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. It utterly demolishes Powell`s much-lauded Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction, and the need to go to war to destroy them. (Excerpts from Hanley`s story appear here and his entire 2500-word piece can be read at Philly.com).

Still, at this late date, why is this so significant, since the damage (lives lost, billions spent and billions more committed, anti-U.S. hatred inflamed in the region) is done?

Simply put, the Powell charade was the turning point in the march to war, and the media, in almost universally declaring that he had "made the case," fell for it, hook, line and sinker, thereby making the invasion (which some of the same newspapers now question) inevitable.

It`s a depressing case study of journalistic shirking of responsibility. The press essentially acted like a jury that is ready, willing and (in this case) able to deliver a verdict -- after the prosecution has spoken and before anyone else is heard or the evidence studied. A hanging jury, at that.

Consider the day-after editorial endorsements of Powell`s case, all from sources not always on the side of the White House. As media writer Mark Jurkowitz put it at the time in The Boston Globe, Powell may not have convinced France of the need to topple Saddam but "it seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe."

The San Francisco Chronicle called the speech "impressive in its breadth and eloquence." The Denver Post likened Powell to "Marshal Dillon facing down a gunslinger in Dodge City," adding that he had presented "not just one `smoking gun` but a battery of them." The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune called Powell`s case "overwhelming," while The Oregonian in Portland found it "devastating." To The Hartford (Conn.) Courant it was "masterful." The Plain Dealer in Cleveland deemed it "credible and persuasive."

One can only laugh, darkly, at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News asserting that Powell made his case "without resorting to exaggeration, a rhetorical tool he didn`t need." The San Antonio Express-News called the speech "irrefutable," adding, "only those ready to believe Iraq and assume that the United States would manufacture false evidence against Saddam would not be persuaded by Powell`s case." The Dallas Morning News declared that Powell "did everything but perform cornea transplants on the countries that still claim to see no reason for forcibly disarming Iraq."

And what of the two often tough-minded giants of the East? The Washington Post echoed others who found Powell`s evidence "irrefutable." That paper`s liberal columnist, Mary McGrory, wrote that Powell "persuaded me, and I was as tough as France to convince." She even likened the Powell report to the day John Dean "unloaded" on Nixon in the Watergate hearings. The paper`s George Will said Powell`s speech would "change all minds open to evidence" and Jim Hoagland called it "a convincing and detailed X-ray." He added that he did not believe that Powell could have lied or "been taken in by manufactured evidence," and "neither should you."

The New York Times, meanwhile, hailed Powell`s "powerful" and "sober, factual case." Like many other papers, the Times ` coverage on its news pages -- in separate stories by Steven Weisman, Michael Gordon, and Adam Clymer -- also bent over backward to give Powell the benefit of nearly every doubt. Apparently in thrall to Powell`s moderate reputation, no one even mentioned that he was essentially acting as lead prosecutor with every reason to shape, or even create, facts to fit his brief.

Weisman called Powell`s evidence "a nearly encyclopedic catalog that reached further than many had expected." He and Clymer both recalled Adlai Stevenson`s speech to the U.N. in 1962 exposing Soviet missiles in Cuba. Gordon closed his piece by asserting that "it will be difficult for skeptics to argue that Washington`s case against Iraq is based on groundless suspicions and not intelligence information." Try reading that with a straight face today.

Why does any of this matter? It`s fashionable to suggest that the White House was bent on war and nothing could have stopped them. But until the Powell speech, public opinion, editorial sentiment, and street protests were all building against the war. The Powell speech, and the media`s swallowing of it, changed all that. An E&P survey of editorial pages of major newspapers just after the Powell speech found the number of papers characterized as "hawkish" rose from 5 to 15 while those considered "war skeptics" plunged from 29 to 11.

After Hanley`s AP story appeared in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times in August, a reader named William C. Wilbur wrote to the editor, "I am surprised that the Times has not yet commented editorially on this further evidence of how the Bush administration has misled Congress, the American public, and the world in order to justify war." It`s time for many papers to admit they were hoodwinked -- and vow to be more skeptical of official presentations, by David Kay and everyone else, in the future.

Source: Editor & Publisher Online
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlin…

[Joerver]

Bürgerkrieg
von Robert Fisk
Independent / ZNet 01.09.2003

Jetzt gehen sie sich im Irak an die Gurgel: Vor zwei Wochen hat es den Top-Mann der UN erwischt, gestern einen der einflussreichsten Geistlichen der schiitischen Muslime. Wie hieß doch gleich die Devise im Libanonkrieg: Wenn genug Leute dich tot sehen wollen, bist du tot. Aber wer wollte Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim tot sehen? Oder präziser gefragt, wen würde sein Tod wenig stören? Natürlich sind da die berühmten `Versprengten Saddams`. Die Familie al-Hakims schiebt ihnen schon jetzt die Schuld für das Massaker von Najaf zu. Schließlich hatten Saddams Leute al-Hakim früher gefoltert, und als er ins iranische Exil ging, ließ Saddam Jahr für Jahr einen von al-Hakims Angehörigen exekutieren, um ihn zur Rückkehr zu zwingen - vergebens. Dann sind da die Kuwaitis und die Saudis - die ganz sicher nicht wollen, dass sein (al-Hakims) ?Oberster Rat der Islamischen Revolution im Irak? nördlich ihrer Grenzen irgendeine Art von `islamischer Revolution` zustandebringt. Auch in den USA gibt es jede Menge Neokonservative, die al-Hakim nicht über den Weg trauten - trotz seiner Verbindung zum Irakischen Interimsrat, den die Amerikaner in Bagdad leiten.

Und dann natürlich die Schiiten selbst. Vor wenigen Monaten hörte ich eine Predigt, die al-Hakim während des Freitagsgebets hielt. Darin forderte er zwar ein Ende der britisch-amerikanischen Besatzung, gleichzeitig sprach er jedoch vom Frieden - er verlangte sogar, dass irakische Frauen in die neue irakische Armee eintreten sollten. "Glaubt ja nicht, wir stünden alle hinter diesem Mann", sagte mir damals ein Gläubiger. Zudem stand al-Hakim im Verruf, seine früheren irakischen Kollegen an den iranischen Geheimdienst verkauft zu haben. Dann ist da noch Muqtada Sadr - ein junger, bei weitem nicht so gelehrter Geistlicher. Aber auf ihn fällt - in den Augen jüngerer Schiiten - der Abglanz des heroischen Heiligenscheins seines Märtyrervaters. Seit langem geißelt Sadr die `Kollaboration` mit den amerikanischen Besatzern im Irak. Weniger bekannt ist allerdings, dass seine eigene Organisation - vor der Invasion der Briten und Amerikaner - heimlich mit Saddams Regime kollaborierte.

Aber tiefer als dieser Einzeldisput gehen die verschiedenen Strömungen einer wütenden theologischen Debatte an den Seminarien Najafs, wo man die Idee der `Velayat Faqi` - der Herrschaft des Theologischen - nie akzeptiert hat, wie von Ayatollah Khomeini im Iran vertreten. Al-Hakim bezeichnete Khomeini bzw. dessen Nachfolger Khamenei als `lebenden Imam`, sich selbst verglich er mit den Imamen Ali und Hussein, die beide als Märtyrer gestorben waren. Auch deren Familien wurden ja ermordet - in den ersten Jahren des Islam. Das war ein plattes, schon leicht blasphemisches Mittel (al-Hakims), um Unterstützung zu heischen. Die Menschen in Najaf - die allermeisten - glauben jedoch nicht an `lebende Imame` dieser Art. Das Blutbad in Najaf - auch den Mord an Mohamed al-Hakim - wird man letztendlich als das sehen, was es tatsächlich ist: ein weiterer Beweis, dass die Amerikaner den Irak nicht kontrollieren können oder wollen. General Ricardo Sanchez, der US-Kommandeur im Irak, hatte noch 24 Stunden vor der Tat erklärt, er benötige keine zusätzlichen Truppen. Natürlich benötigt er sie - falls er die schreckliche Gewalt wirklich stoppen will. Denn, was hier vor sich geht - im sunnitischen Kernland rund um Bagdad wie in den Gebieten einer aufkeimenden Schia-Nation im Süden - ist nicht nur die Nachwirkung einer Invasion, es ist sogar mehr als ein zunehmender Guerillakrieg gegen die Besatzung, es ist der Beginn eines irakischen Bürgerkriegs, der die gesamte Nation verzehren wird - falls die neuen Herrscher nicht endlich von ihrer neo-konservativen Phantasie abrücken und die Welt anflehen, die Zukunft dieses Landes mit ihnen gemeinsam zu gestalten.

[ Übersetzt von: Andrea Noll | Orginalartikel: "Civil War

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Suicide Bomber in Iraq Kills Child, Wounds Scores
Wed September 10, 2003 03:58 PM ET
By Nabil al-Taei
ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber in northern Iraq killed himself and an Iraqi child and wounded more than 50 people, including six U.S. personnel, according to local people and the U.S. military Wednesday.
The military also announced the deaths of two more American soldiers, killed by makeshift bombs in Baghdad, as President Bush appealed to other nations to set aside "past bickering" to help with peacekeeping and reconstruction.
In the fifth vehicle bomb attack in Iraq in as many weeks, a four-wheel drive stopped suddenly in front of a house in the Kurdish city of Arbil Tuesday and exploded with the driver inside, residents said.
They said the house was used by U.S. intelligence agents. A military spokeswoman initially said it had been a "safe house." Later, military press officers became tight-lipped, confirming little more than that the blast had taken place.
Fierce flames leapt into the night sky after the blast. A woman hurried away cradling a baby and an armed man carried a bloodied man over his shoulder from the scene.
Local people said the bomber had died. A Kurdish official told Reuters a 5-year-old child had also died from injuries.
Forty-seven Iraqis were wounded, the U.S. military said, adding that six Department of Defense staff were also injured.
NEW SETBACK
The bombing 220 miles north of Baghdad was the latest setback to U.S.-led efforts to pacify Iraq following the war that ousted Saddam Hussein on April 9.
Almost 70 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since the official end of major combat in Iraq on May 1.
A soldier attached to the U.S. Army`s 1st Armored Division was killed in Baghdad Wednesday when a bomb exploded during an operation to defuse it, U.S. Central Command said.
The previous day, another soldier was killed when his vehicle ran over a homemade land mine northeast of the city, bringing to an end a period of more than a week during which no U.S. troops had died as a result of hostile acts.
Even more alarming for Washington has been the spate of car bombings against foreign organizations and against Iraqis working with the occupying powers in recent weeks.
U.S. officials have mostly blamed diehard Saddam supporters but also point the finger at foreign Islamic militants. Some are talking of a possible alliance between the two groups.
Vehicle bombers have hit the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, United Nations offices and the capital`s police headquarters. A top Shi`ite cleric was among more than 80 people killed by a car bomb in the city of Najaf last month.
MARINES SET TO HAND OVER NAJAF
A Polish-led force responsible for south-central Iraq said it planned to take over Najaf on Sept. 21 from U.S. Marines, who postponed the handover after the bombing there in an effort to keep a lid on tensions in the city. A U.S. general said the handover could take place even sooner.
With the occupation of Iraq imposing a mounting cost in American lives and money, Washington has launched efforts to get more countries to contribute troops and reconstruction aid.
It is seeking 15,000 more soldiers from other nations as well as reconstruction funds to back its own commitment of 130,000 soldiers and billions of dollars.
But Iraq`s U.S.-backed Governing Council said it opposed the arrival of any more foreign troops.
"We will not invite any troops. Our ultimate aim is complete sovereignty over Iraq," declared Ahmed Chalabi, a former exile who holds the Council`s rotating chairmanship.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members to meet in Geneva Saturday to bridge their differences on Iraq.
Some states are reluctant to make a commitment without the U.S. relinquishing some political power over the country.
France and Germany have offered the United States a deal that effectively recognizes an Iraqi transitional government but downgrades the U.S. political role in the occupied state, according to documents circulated Wednesday.
Bush called on the United Nations Wednesday to set aside past squabbles over Iraq and said he was "open for suggestions" from France, Germany and Russia on a postwar resolution.
"Let us not get caught up in past bickering. Let us move forward," he said.
He said Secretary of State Colin Powell would be "going around the world" asking countries to make "serious contributions" to the peacekeeping and reconstruction effort.
"I once again make that plea," Bush said. "We expect and hope that our friends contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq. It is in your interest that you do so."


Summary
++++US++++UK++++Other++++Total++++Avg++++Days

++++290++++50+++++2+++++++342+++++1.97++++174

Latest Military Fatality Date: 9/10/2003
09/10/03 Department of Defense
DOD releases name of U.S. soldier injured on Aug. 30th in a vehicle accident who has subsequently died on Sept. 7th at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
09/10/03 CENTCOM
One U.S. soldier killed in Baghdad today when IED exploded prematurely during disarming process.
09/10/03 BBC:Bomb hits Iraqi Kurd region
A car bomb has exploded outside an office used by US troops near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.
09/09/03 Yahoo: Three U.S. Soldiers Wounded by Land Mine
Firefighters on Tuesday contained an oil fire blamed on saboteurs on the major Turkish-bound pipeline, while witnesses said three U.S. soldiers were wounded when their Humvee hit a mine on the road near Fallujah
09/09/03 Yahoo (Reuters): From Afghanistan
Five Afghan government soldiers were killed and two American soldiers wounded in a series of attacks in south and east Afghanistan
09/09/03 Centcom: Confirms Fatality
One 3rd Corp Support Command soldier was killed and one was wounded in an improvised explosive device attack on their military vehicle along a major supply route northeast of Baghdad at approximately 5 p.m. on Sep. 9.
09/09/03 APF:US soldier killed in attack on tanker convoy
A US soldier driving a tanker full of liquefied petroleum gas was killed when an explosion hit his convoy as it passed between two underpasses on the main road north out of Baghdad
09/09/03 Yahoo(Reuters): Two soldiers were wounded
Two soldiers were wounded in an attack using an explosive device in the town of Ramadi, around 60 miles west of Baghdad at 7 a.m.
09/08/03 CNN: U.S. troops wounded in Baghdad attack
At least two U.S. soldiers were wounded Monday morning when an improvised explosive device hit a logistics convoy in Baghdad

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ROBERT KUTTNER
Neo-cons have hijacked US foreign policy
By Robert Kuttner, 9/10/2003

THE COUNCIL on Foreign Relations is the epicenter of the American Establishment. Its top three officers are Republicans -- Peter G. Peterson (chair), the former commerce secretary under Nixon, leading investment banker, and opponent of social outlay who must chair half the boards in America; Carla Hills (vice-chair), a corporate power-lawyer who was US trade ambassador for Bush I; and Richard Haass (president), who recently stepped down as one of President Bush`s sub-Cabinet appointees at the State Department. The council is best known for its journal, Foreign Affairs, ordinarily a fairly cautious and moderate publication. So it was startling to pick up the September-October issue and read article after article expressing well-documented alarm at the hijacking of American foreign policy. This is not how the council ordinarily speaks.

The must-read piece is "Stumbling into War" by former Assistant Secretary of State James P. Rubin. It documents that Bush`s feint to the United Nations was a charade; that even as the administration was going through the motions of diplomacy, war had been already decided upon.

More important, Rubin documents that another path to ousting Saddam Hussein was possible, had the administration been more patient. Other nations, even France, were in fact prepared to use force against Saddam, but insisted on letting the inspections process work first. Rubin demonstrates that every major European nation "would have been prepared to support or at least sanction force against Iraq if it had not fully disarmed by [fall 2003.]" The administration repeatedly rebuffed British entreaties to pursue this other course, which would have preserved a much broader coalition and shared responsibility for reconstruction.

So America`s lonely quagmire in Iraq was entirely gratuitous. But it`s still a well-kept secret that the vast foreign policy mainstream -- Republican and Democratic ex-public officials, former ambassadors, military and intelligence people, academic experts -- consider Bush`s whole approach a disaster. In fairness, it isn`t really Bush`s approach. Foreign policy is not something Bush closely follows. Mainly, he fell in with the wrong crowd. A determined band of neo-conservatives far outside the foreign policy mainstream persuaded the president that invading Iraq would demonstrate American power to tens of millions shocked and awed Arabs. Instead, it has demonstrated the limits of American power (but limitless arrogance), and stimulated a new round of fundamentalism, nationalism, and terrorism.

The neo-cons also contended that "the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad." In other words, get rid of Saddam and the Mideast balance of power would shift; Israel`s enemies would be softened up for a peace settlement on Israel`s terms. But much of the violence between Israel and Palestine is home grown, and any durable settlement must also be home grown. The sacking of Iraq has only made both Israel`s Ariel Sharon and the Palestinians more intransigent.

The same neo-cons persuaded Bush that nation-building and collaboration with bodies like the UN were for sissies. But now, Bush has blundered into nation-building in the worst possible circumstances, in which Americans are viewed as inept invaders rather than liberators. And he is begging for aid from the UN and the very nations he scorned.

Does Bush know that he`s been had? Increasingly, Iraq looks like Bush`s Vietnam -- a long-term occupation of unfriendly territory in which Americans are targets; an adventure based on misperceptions and misrepresentations, where the benefits fail to justify the costs.

US Representative David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, recently sent the president a letter which is worth quoting. "First," Obey wrote, in eloquent understatement, "I recommend that you allow the secretary and deputy secretary of defense to return to the private sector.

"Second, I recommend that the responsibilities for developing and implementing foreign policy that have traditionally resided in the Department of State be fully restored to that department."

Obey goes on to recommend that the military be restored to its proper role of military planning and that government-wide coordination of intelligence be resumed. All of this is by way of pointing out that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, with little knowledge of the region, arrogated to themselves diplomatic, intelligence, and operational functions, and made a mess of them all. Now Bush is trying to reverse course without admitting it. Nothing would make that prudent reversal clearer than firing this duo, who have ill served their president and country.As the Foreign Affairs issue makes clear, there`s a large, competent, and mainstream body of foreign policy experts ready to step in. Then, the American people can decide whether to fire Bush. Robert Kuttner is co-editor of the American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Der dritte Teil der Bush Serie von der WaPo. 1 vorgestern, 2 gestern.


Bush: So-So Student but a Campus Mover

George Bush pins a lieutenant`s bar on his son George W. Bush, a pilot with the Texas Air National Guard.
(Texas Military Forces Museum)


By Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 27, 1999; Page A1


Third of seven articles
Eventually George Walker Bush came to love Andover, the New England prep school where he was sent by his parents in 1961, but that wasn`t the way he felt when he arrived there as a 15-year-old who had never lived away from home. Rigorous, competitive and elite, Andover was an abrupt and scary change for a freewheeling young man raised in Texas.
"I was going from one world to another," Bush says now.

And the world he was entering was his father`s.

Andover had marked the beginning of George Herbert Walker Bush`s illustrious career. President of his senior class and captain of the baseball team, Poppy Bush cemented his place in Andover lore by ignoring the advice of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the school`s 1942 commencement speaker, that he and his classmates finish their education before thinking of military service. He enlisted instead, postponing college to become the youngest commissioned Navy pilot in World War II.

Nineteen years after his father`s graduation from Andover, Bush was following in his footsteps, setting a pattern for much of his adult life. He would go on to Yale, like his father, and join Skull and Bones, his father`s secret society. He would enlist in the military to become a pilot, go to Midland to seek his fortune in the oil business, run for Congress. He would even become engaged to be married at 20, the same age his father was when he married.

George W. would also anoint himself keeper of his father`s honor in politics – or as he put it, his "loyalty enforcer." During the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns, "Junior" – as he was sometimes called, inaccurately – made sure that everyone understood what he referred to as his "grenade" rule: If there was a grenade heading toward his father, their job was to jump on it.

Today, of course, Bush has embarked on trying to duplicate his father`s greatest accomplishment – becoming president of the United States. Relationships between fathers and sons are never simple, but the close parallels between their two careers, Bush`s fierce loyalty to his father and his thin skin whenever his father is criticized suggest something particularly complex.

"He had a huge influence on my life," Bush said in an interview. "And so does my mother and I presume that`s part of what you`re trying to figure out. ... I`m trying to figure it out, I guess."

In an interview in 1986, Bush more directly addressed the question of his relationship with his father, insisting that he had gotten over any sense of competition with him. "I worked it out because of my own strength but also because of him," Bush told Walt Harrington, a writer for the Washington Post magazine. "He never tried to mold me."

And, he added, he had gotten over his "self-pity" about "being George Bush`s son."

In going east for his education, in following his father to Andover and Yale, Bush was following what seemed a simple road. But he would discover that his father`s traditional formula for success did not necessarily fit him or the dramatically changing times in which he and his generation lived.

"You have to understand that Big George was the sun around which all the family galaxies rotated," said Elsie Walker, the former president`s first cousin but a contemporary of George W.`s. "There was a lot of pressure on George to ... develop himself within that family context. That`s why it took George a longer time to decide where he was going ... why he had to color himself in and figure out who he was for himself."

His years in prep school and college, from 1961 to 1968, were the first part of that process, but the process would be a long one.

"You get closer to your dad as you get older because you become more accomplished and cease putting your dad on a pedestal," says Joe O`Neill, one of Bush`s closest friends. "But as George got older, his father kept getting higher in stature. The pedestal kept getting taller."

An Inauspicious Start at School in Andover



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Bush did not get off to an auspicious start when he arrived as at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., as a sophomore or "lower middler" in the school`s vernacular. His first English grade – for an essay on emotions – was zero.
"As I remember, the impression of the red marker was so intense that it stuck out of the back side of the blue book," recalls Bush. With the help of a thesaurus his mother had given him, Bush had erroneously written about "lacerates" running down his cheek – instead of tears.

"And my math grades weren`t all that good either to begin with. So I was struggling," said Bush.

Bush kept up with the work but was an average student who never made the honor roll, according to his year book. He was considered a solid athlete – he played varsity basketball and baseball his senior year – but he was never among the class stars.

"George and I were both witness to the fact that Andover has such an excellent academic system and even people at bottom tier – where I was and George was – can be okay and go to good colleges," said Don Vermeil, a classmate friend who went to Stanford.

Bush would later tell friends he was terrified of flunking out of Andover, afraid that he would embarrass himself and his family. Despite Bush`s private fears and struggles, his classmates – all boys back then – saw him as a larger-than-life Texan – cocky and irrepressible. Within months of his arrival, Bush was seen as a campus mover, not on the strength his intellect or his athletic achievements, but by sheer force of personality. Bush was nicknamed "Lip" because he had an opinion on everything – and sometimes a tongue sharper than necessary.

Bush almost instinctively managed to always be in the center of the action, an ubiquitous, noisy presence at school events. He was the head football cheerleader his senior year, a member of his class rock-and-roll band, the Torqueys – not singing or playing an instrument but clapping – and organizer of the school`s stickball league.

Stickball had always been played at Andover as a casual after-dinner pickup game, but Bush institutionalized it, his title duly noted in the school yearbook: "High Commissioner of Stickball." He organized campus teams into a league that included every last uncoordinated soul who wanted to play. For this, many a former nerd is still grateful.

One day, Alan Wofsey, a classmate who described himself as more bookish than athletic, unexpectedly caught a fly ball. Bush stopped the game and insisted everyone applaud for Wofsey.

"He was kind to the athletically challenged," said Wofsey, now a Pennsylvania psychiatrist.

No one thought of him as a class leader in the traditional sense or had any inkling of the career he would ultimately choose.

"I would never have guessed he would go into public service. He never showed the slightest inclination toward it," said Dan Cooper, the class president. "I would have bet money that he would have turned out to be an investment banker living in Greenwich and happily belonging to the country club."

Cooper, now head of a Boston multimedia company, was voted Most Respected and Done Most for Andover. Bush came in second for Big Man on Campus.

In his senior year, Bush applied to only two colleges, the University of Texas and Yale. Barbara Bush said in an interview that her son was determined to go to his father`s alma mater, but knew it was not a sure thing that he would be admitted.

"George started hyping up the University of Texas, how he was going to love being a Longhorn," said Doug Hannah, a Houston friend who talked to Bush over Christmas holidays of his senior year. "My recollection was that he was shocked that he got into Yale."

Parties and Protests at Yale University



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When George W. Bush arrived in New Haven in the fall of 1964, his father was in the closing days of his first political race. Running against Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a liberal Democrat, he was the beneficiary of the largest Republican turnout in Texas history that November, but it was not enough. Riding the coattails of his fellow Texan, Lyndon B. Johnson, Yarborough defeated his Republican challenger by 300,000 votes.
Not long afterward, Bush decided to look up someone has father had told him he should go see, one of his contemporaries, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, the Yale chaplain later famous for his anti-war activities.

The greeting he received was hardly what he expected. "I knew your father," Bush remembers Coffin saying, "and your father lost to a better man."

Coffin says he has no recollection of his conversation with Bush and says if it happened, he was making a joke. But for Bush it was a jarring signal that Yale was going to be different, a place where he might not effortlessly fit in, where his father`s values were not universally admired.

"You talk about a shattering blow," said Barbara Bush in a recent interview. "Not only to George, but shattering to us. And it was a very awful thing for a chaplain to say to a freshman at college, particularly if he might have wanted to have seen him in church. I`m not sure that George W. ever put his foot again [in the school chapel]."

There would be more adjustments for Bush. He entered his freshman class as a "legacy," the son of an alumnus and the scion of a long line of Yale men, not just his father but his grandfather and uncles. By the time he graduated in 1968, the Yale that Bush entered that fall would be transformed, caught up in the cultural upheaval and national tumult caused by the Vietnam War and the 1960s.

It was a confusing time even for the most directed and driven, and Bush was neither. As Yale changed around him, Bush clung to the traditions of an earlier era, boozy fraternity parties, secret societies and football weekends, while other classmates protested the war and challenged the political establishment that was waging it.

After freshman year, he gathered up his Andover pals and lived with the same group in Davenport College for three years. A mediocre student, Bush majored in history, with grades that were apparently not good enough for admission to the University of Texas law school, which turned him down as an in-state applicant two years after he graduated. Bush has not given permission to either Andover or Yale to release his grades.

Bush seems to have made little impression on his teachers. One of his former Yale professors, James Hutson, now chief of the Library of Congress`s manuscript division, said he was "dumbfounded" that a transcript found in Bush`s National Guard records, with grades deleted, showed that Bush had taken his seminar on 18th century American history, which had no more than 15 students.

Bush played intramural sports with gusto and was elected president of his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, which was known as the hardest drinking jock house on campus. Bush was an enthusiastic participant in the partying, according to sources, but none of the several dozen Yale contemporaries interviewed could recall him doing anything that would embarrass him today – or disqualify him from being president.

"George was a fraternity guy, but he wasn`t Belushi in `Animal House,` " recalled Calvin Hill, who was in DKE with Bush and went on to play professional football. "He went through that stage in his life with a lot of joy, but I don`t remember George as a chronic drunk. He was a good-time guy. But he wasn`t the guy hugging the commode at the end of the day."

Russ Walker, a former Yale classmate and friend from Oklahoma City, recalls returning from a party with Bush one night in college when the inebriated Bush dropped to the ground and started rolling in the middle of the street. "He literally rolled back to the dorm," recalled Walker. "It was raucous, teenage stuff that he perhaps grew out of later rather than sooner."

Several times Bush got into minor trouble. Once it was for pulling down a goal post at Princeton with a bunch of friends while celebrating a Yale football victory.

"The game ended and we all poured out and George was on the goal post. I remember it like it was yesterday," recalled his friend Clay Johnson. "We tore that sucker down and the campus police said, `You all are coming with us.` So we went marching over to the campus police station and they said, `You`ve got 10 minutes to get out of town.` "

On another occasion, Bush got caught with some friends "borrowing" a Christmas wreath from a store door in New Haven. He was arrested for disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped.

Yale was still a men`s school in Bush`s day and friends do not recall Bush having a particularly exceptional personal life. "He was not a wild rapscallion when it came to girls and getting dates," said Terry Johnson, who lived with Bush for three years at Yale. "He was probably less successful than most actually."

In fact, his roommates were somewhat surprised when he came back from Christmas break junior year and announced he was engaged to Cathryn Wolfman, a student at Rice in her home town of Houston. Plans were made for a summer wedding, and like his parents had done 20 years earlier, the couple planned to live in New Haven during Bush`s senior year. But the wedding was delayed and then called off. Wolfman, who eventually married and divorced, recently indicated that the relationship ended amicably but would not say who ended it.

Bush said the parting was mutual, and Barbara Bush said the couple "sort of panicked." But at least one friend of Bush`s who was around him at the time says it was Wolfman who prolonged the engagement and then found someone else. "I assure you if she had stayed ... George would have married her," said Douglas Hannah, a Houston friend.

In the years since, Hannah said he could not help reflecting that Bush had gotten engaged at the same young age – 20 – at which his father had married. "The timing was almost identical," said Hannah.

Like his father, Bush could display good breeding along with his rough Texas edges. Several former classmates recall him going door to door with a sympathy card for a classmate from the West Indies – one of the few blacks on campus – who had lost his mother. Another classmate who hailed from a public school said he was struck by Bush`s efforts to reach out beyond his social circle.

"George moved seamlessly among all the different groups," recalled Ken Cohen, today a dentist in Georgia. At the same time, Cohen noted, "he was a Bush and he had a sense of who he was ... his family tradition. He was not a rebel."

Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer who was one of President Clinton`s most visible defenders throughout various White House scandals, was a fraternity brother of Bush`s and also lived in Davenport. During the height of the Clinton scandal last year, he suggested on national television that Bush might have some skeletons in his college closet, then quickly retracted the comment.

Davis says today he has only fond memories of Bush during those years and praised what he calls Bush`s "analytical people skills."

"He could capture somebody`s essence very quickly. What I remember is sitting around with George [and] listening to his analysis of people. He was extremely witty, which is something I don`t see in his public persona today," said Davis.

"Was he a spoiled, wealthy kid? Absolutely not. And I say this as a Democrat who hopes he does not get elected. The one thing he conveyed was a lack of pretense. You never would have known who his father was, what kind family he came from. There was nothing hierarchical about him."

Still, at Yale as on other campuses around the country, an era was ending and fun-loving preppies were falling out of step. In the fall of 1967, when huge numbers of college students were marching on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, Bush was quoted in the New York Times defending the branding of fraternity pledges with a hot coat hanger, saying the resulting wounds resembled "only a cigarette burn."

In a recent interview, Bush said he has no recollection of any anti-war activity on campus during his undergraduate years – an extraordinary statement considering that Coffin was by then a leader of the national anti-war movement and was arrested for aiding and abetting draft resistance during Bush`s senior year. Teach-ins about the war were popping up all over campus, anti-war petitions were circulating and first lady Lady Bird Johnson was greeted by a silent vigil of protesters when she came to Yale.

`Temporary` Forever at Skull and Bones



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By his senior year, Bush had found a port of refuge, a place where at least some of the outside world could be shut out. Skull and Bones was Yale`s most elite secret society, priding itself on tapping 15 of the college`s best and brightest in everything from academics to sports to music. Bush, by all accounts, was one of the "legacy" slots, a recruit whose father had been a Bonesman.
In his Bones class was the head of the Whiffenpoofs, Yale`s noted choral group; a Rhodes scholar; an Olympic gold medal swimmer; the black captain of the soccer team; and a Jordanian and an Orthodox Jew who would generate lively discussions about the Mideast just months after the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors.

During his father`s day, being tapped for Bones was considered one of the highest honors for a junior. By the late `60s, the clubs were held in disdain by many students. But for young Bush, it was the only place on campus where he could be free to speak his mind because every man who joined took a vow of secrecy not to disclose what was said behind the society`s closed doors.


• • •

At Skull and Bones, each young man was required to present his "PH" or personal history for the group as well as his sexual history ("SH"). Twenty years before, his father had dramatically told of being shot down from a fighter plane during World War II and his anguish over his inability to save a crew member. According to members of Bones, the younger Bush`s "PH" was less compelling, although all steadfastly refused to discuss its contents.

One source revealed that Bush was given the name "Temporary" as the secret name he was obligated to have for himself because he couldn`t think of anything else. He never changed it.

In the windowless building on High Street that was the Bones clubhouse, the 15 seniors would gather every Thursday and Sunday night for dinner to discuss their love lives, chew over their hopes for the future, and more often than not, explore their tortured views about Vietnam and what they would do when they graduated and faced the draft.

One of the things that Bush often talked about was his family, especially his father. Several of the Bonesmen said Bush described him in "almost God-like" terms.

"I can remember one instance of him using his Dad as an example of resilience, saying my father had a great disappointment in not winning the Senate seat, but this is what you do, you bounce back. So you`re down, you just get back up. His attitude was you gave it your best shot. And he used his dad to show this," recalled Robert McCallum, now an Atlanta lawyer.

Friends and family say that George W.`s views on the war must be looked at in the context of his relationship with his father, who was by then a Republican congressman who had publicly stated his support for U.S. war policy. In fact, George W. kept his own views and plans pertaining to the war close to the vest because of his father`s political position.

Yale friends say Bush made it clear that he respected his father for standing up for what he believed, despite the anti-war movement.

"He believed that his father`s position was correct – we`re involved, so we should support the national effort rather than protest it," recalled Robert J. Dieter, a Yale roommate for four years who is now a clinical professor of law at the University of Colorado.

"I told him I was thinking about going to Canada and he said, `That`s [expletive], that`s irresponsible,` " recalled Robert Birge, a fellow Bonesman.

"George was definitely not on the popular side of the war issue but he stood his ground," said Dieter. "Saying someone was conservative back then almost had a moral sting. I remember him coming back to the room and telling me that someone had been in his face about his father`s position. There was a certain arrogance that the left conveyed back then. It was hurtful."

And the hurt did not heal. A few years back, when Bush`s 25th reunion was coming up, his close friend Clay Johnson was fund-raising for the school and hit up his former roommate for a contribution. "I called him and said, `How much do you want to give?` " recalled Johnson. "He said: `I want to give nothing.` "

"The governor and Yale," said Johnson, "have been at odds."

Bush has never attended a Yale reunion in the 31 years since he graduated and has done little to foster any continuing relationship with the school, even rejecting entreaties to write personal essays to update the class book.

He has told friends that he could not wait to leave the place because of the "intellectual snobbery." But in recent years, his disaffection with the school could be traced to the way Yale had treated his father.

Bush said in an interview that he was "irritated" that Yale didn`t acknowledge his father`s achievements with an honorary degree until 1991 – after its famous alumnus had served as vice president for eight years and as president for three. But under prodding, Bush eventually gave some money to the school, not because of his affection for Yale but because of the friends he made there, many of whom are now supporting his presidential effort.

As his senior year wound down during the spring of 1968, evidence of change at Yale was everywhere. So few tickets to the senior prom were sold that the high-priced band had to be canceled. Dick Gregory showed up, unshaven, as the speaker for the senior dinner, and spoke of class inequality. Some students walked out.

When graduation and its accompanying festivities finally came, Bush was disappointed that his busy father could attend for only an hour or two.

"He hung out with my family for most of the two days," Johnson recalls. "I remember as his dad left, he made some comment about [wishing his] dad didn`t have these other obligations. `I wish, it would have been great if my dad could have been here during the whole time.`

"It wasn`t said in passing," said Johnson. "Everybody wants their family there sharing with them. ... He`s very aware of the toll that public service takes on the family members."

Bush said he doesn`t recall the incident.

Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Margot Williams contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 by Agence France Presse
Protesters Disrupt Rumsfeld Speech to National Press Club


WASHINGTON - Protestors briefly disrupted a speech by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the National Press Club, chanting, "How many children did you kill today?"
The protesters were escorted from a visitors gallery overlooking a hall where Rumsfeld was addressing a gathering of journalists on Iraq.

"Mr. Rumsfeld you`re fired," a woman yelled as Rumsfeld was beginning a speech on Iraq and the war on terrorism that followed the attacks on the US Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

"Your foreign policy is based on lies. The war in Iraq is unjust and illegal and the occupation is immoral," she said.

Shouts went up of "Bring the troops home now!" and "Tell us when the troops are coming home. They need to come home."

Protesters unfurled a banner from the gallery before being led away, chanting, "Hey, Mr. Rumsfeld, what do you say? How many children did you kill today."

Rumsfeld, watching from below, turned back to his audience and said: "Well, now."

"You know I just came in from Baghdad, and there are now 100 newspapers in the free press in Iraq -- in the free Iraq -- where people are able to say whatever they wish, people are debating, people are discussing, something they had not done for decades," he said.

Less than five months ago, the Iraqi regime was still filling mass graves with the bodies of men, women and children and executing people in its prisons, he said.

"It was still repressing thought and speech in that country," he said. "And that has ended."

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Leak puts Hoon under new threat
Claims that minister misled parliamentary committee investigating Iraq dossier

Michael White and Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

Geoff Hoon`s cabinet career was under renewed threat last night after a leak of today`s Iraq report from Westminster`s intelligence and security committee apparently revealed that the defence secretary had "misled" committee members over dissent within his own department about Saddam Hussein`s arsenal.

There were strong indications that today`s report will further weaken Mr Hoon`s already shaky position, despite the insistence of Whitehall officials that the claim was wrong. Downing Street angrily denied Conservative taunts that it had organised the leak to deflect ISC criticism away from No 10.

According to the London Evening Standard, the ISC will criticise the defence secretary for having flatly denied to committee members in a private hearing in July that there had been any discontent among officials about the contents of the government`s dossier on Iraq.

The newspaper said that the committee will also point out that Mr Hoon made his denial against the advice of his own senior civil servants.

It emerged at the Hutton inquiry that two experts on Iraq working for the Ministry of Defence`s intelligence staff had protested about the language used in sections of the government`s dossier. An advice note written to Mr Hoon by a defence intelligence official, Martin Howard, urging candour about the extent of unease about the dossier was posted on the Hutton website on August 12. The note seems to have alerted the ISC to the possibility it had not been told all it should have been.

In the Evening Standard`s account, this will be used as grounds on the part of the ISC to accuse Mr Hoon of having misled the committee - a charge that could provide a near-fatal blow to his ministerial career. Mr Hoon`s supporters insist that the word "misleading" is not in the report and that the minister volunteered the fact that two defence intelligence staff - subsequently interviewed by Lord Hutton - had registered doubts.

But, however delicately phrased, the report is likely to indicate displeasure at semantic evasions. In heated exchanges across the dispatch box at prime minister`s questions yesterday, the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, called on Tony Blair to dismiss the defence secretary if today`s ISC report accuses him of misleading parliament.

"Isn`t this leaked report another nail in the coffin of this government?" he said. "You can get rid of [Alastair] Campbell. You can even get rid of the defence secretary. But the lying and the spinning won`t stop until we get rid of this prime minister!"

Mr Blair refused to comment on the leak, saying it would be inappropriate before the publication of the report. But he defended Mr Hoon`s record, praising his role in the "magnificent victory" in Iraq.

The ISC has been working on its report for more than two months and took evidence from David Kelly, the government`s adviser on Iraq`s banned weapons programme, on July 16, the day before he apparently committed suicide.

Mr Hoon may not be the only party in the committee`s firing line.

If the leaks are correct, the report includes damning criticism of one of the main claims in the government`s dossier. The cross-party committee reportedly says that the claim that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so should not have been included in the dossier.

John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, is also likely to be singled out. He developed a close relationship with Mr Campbell during the compilation of the dossier. He was recently called back to face further questioning by the committee and is open to the charge that he allowed political considerations to influence him.

By contrast, Mr Campbell, No 10`s outgoing communications director, is likely to come off well, if the leak is accurate. He is said to be cleared of the BBC`s central allegation that he "sexed up" the dossier.

The ISC, a nine-member body made up of senior politicians from all three main parties and appointed by the prime minister, has a history of secrecy since its creation in 1994. Members pride themselves on not revealing details of the sensitive intelligence material they have access to.

Ann Taylor, the Labour ex-cabinet minister who chairs the ISC, will officially reveal the 50 page report`s contents at 10.30 this morning.

A copy of her report went to No 10 on Tuesday morning. No 10 is certain to have copied it to interested parties, the intelligence services, the defence and foreign ministries and others.

"It could be a department" behind the leak, one senior MP conceded.


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Two lost years
Leader
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

Wounds heal, anger abates, memories fade. As time passes, the human impact of even the most gruesome and shocking tragedies gradually lessens. Two years on, the survivors of September 11, and the relatives and friends of those who died, still suffer. Two years on, their pain and loss is not forgotten, and will be recalled again today in countless public and private memorials. But for most ordinary people, in the US and beyond, those dreadful events in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania are now beginning to slip into history. It happened; it was truly awful. But life must go on.

Yet when viewed in political, economic and geo-strategic rather than purely human terms, September 11 is proving to be unique. Far from diminishing as time goes by, its impact is ever more far-reaching - and ever more damaging. It is as if Osama bin Laden had exploded, figuratively speaking, a thermonuclear bomb at the heart of the global order. Two years on, its shockwaves still radiate outwards. Two years on, the fallout still causes daily death and injury, bringing in their wake fresh tears, new horrors and more cries for justice and vengeance. On September 11 2001, the Bush administration was confronted by the greatest, existential challenge to its power and authority that any US government has faced since Pearl Harbor or, perhaps, in the entire post-civil war history of the republic. The nature and manner of its response, as we said at the time, would be critical. Two years on, it must be judged, regrettably, to have failed that test. There have been successes. But overall, George Bush has made a bad situation worse.

How is such a verdict reached? Opinion polls are one guide. Surveys suggest that two-thirds of New Yorkers, for example, feel less secure today than a year ago. All polls agree that Americans` confidence in Mr Bush`s "war on terror" is falling steadily. In western Europe, it is all but non-existent. Mr Bush told the nation last Sunday that "great progress" has been made, with over half of al-Qaida`s "known leaders" captured or killed. But he could not disguise the fact that in Afghanistan, where the US fightback began, the Taliban and the terrorists are now resurgent. He could not hide the uncomfortable truth that Bin Laden remains at large or that, according to security expert Professor Paul Rogers among others, al-Qaida has demonstrated by numerous post-9/11 outrages an increased rather than a diminished capacity for mayhem. Mr Bush could not ignore the fact that even as he spoke, al-Qaida was issuing its own anniversary pledge to launch more attacks on the US.

If al-Qaida`s claim that its ranks have doubled in number is credible (and it probably is), Mr Bush`s mishandled, violent interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, his disastrously unbalanced approach to the Palestinian question, and his suborning or bullying of states like Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are largely to blame. From Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and north Africa to Britain and the US, Muslims everywhere have grown increasingly convinced of America`s hostility. Just as there is a terrorist threat in Iraq where none previously existed, so the clash of civilisations predicted two years ago is more nearly a reality than it was then. Just as Mr Bush`s cynical exaggeration of Iraq`s WMD threat and 9/11 links has eroded trust in him at home, so has it shattered European and Arab confidence that the US can be a dependable friend, not a reckless juggernaut.

Mr Bush has broken alliances with the same abandon that he has broken lives, causing permanent damage. Nor is there an end in sight. As pressing global issues of fair trade, poverty reduction and the environment languish unresolved or largely neglected, and as the "war on terror" transmutes into a loose, catch-all justification for all the US does or does not want to do, Mr Bush`s divisive policies presage new, avoidable physical confrontations with Iran and North Korea, especially if he is re-elected next year.

And therein lies the rub. Two years on, by these and many other measures too numerous to mention here, Mr Bush and his top officials are woefully failing the American people and America`s allies. America can do better than this. But it needs more able, less ideologically-warped people in charge. Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, whose judgments have repeatedly proved unsound, should be dismissed. And if matters have not greatly improved by this day next year, Mr Bush should decline to seek a second term. As a more eminent republican, Cicero, might have told this discredited, distrusted crew: "Among us you can dwell no longer."


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Behind the bigotry in Middletown, a stronger, more positive community
Gary Younge in Muncie, Indiana, on how life has changed, for better and worse, for residents in America`s heartlands

Gary Younge in Muncie, Indiana
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

Pat Helms, a member of the civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union, won`t talk politics at her bridge club anymore. Faiz Rahman, a Muslim lecturer, leaves himself an hour extra for the inevitable security checks when he takes a flight. James Dalton, a Vietnam veteran won`t visit France. Bill Gonsell, the director of Emergency Management, switches on the Fox News Channel as soon as he wakes up.

In myriad subtle ways the daily lives of the residents of Muncie, Indiana, have changed a lot since September 11 2001. This 70,000-strong town of many churches and increasingly little industry gained fame in the 20s as the subject of academic survey of the American heartlands called Middletown. Since then sociologists and pollsters have returned periodically to gauge the mood of Middle America. Geographically, it`s slightly more than 600 miles from the recently renovated storefronts of its main street to the hollowed pit of Manhattan`s ground zero. Culturally, it is like a different country.

"Most people in Muncie look at what happened in Washington and New York and think, that`s a long way away," says Muncie mayor, Dan Canaan. "Those are things that might happen in the big city but not here."

On a national level the last two years have left some obvious scars. Three-quarters of Americans now see the world as a more dangerous place than it was 10 years ago, compared to 53% just before the terrorist attacks, according to a Pew research poll. A similar number believe that occasional acts of terrorism will be part of life in the future.

But in towns like Muncie, you can see only the occasional evidence of these new concerns. Most schools in the town have closed all their entrances bar one. The county building has a guard and a metal detector while the water treatment plant has a guard and concrete barrier. "Nobody thinks for a minute that Osama bin Laden is going to attack Muncie," says Mr Gonsell. "But terrorists might attack Chicago or Indianapolis and the fallout from that would affect us."

More evident are the popular public responses to those concerns. Behind the bar at the American Legion there is a red, white and blue neon sign declaring United we Stand. In the foyer of the city hall a large poster covered in American flags drawn by third-graders gives: "A salute to Muncie`s heroes". On it the eight-year-olds have written messages to the soldiers saying: "Make us have peace" and "Thank you for going to war".

Muncie played host to many of the setpiece events that took place elsewhere in the country. Two restaurants changed the name of French fries to freedom fries; there was a pro and anti-war demonstration both of which attracted about 75 people; the sign for the local mosque was destroyed; on national prayer day the Reverend William Keller, a local preacher who has presided over the event for the last 10 years, refused to share the pulpit with Muslims, Jews or any other religion.

But if some of these episodes revealed an ugly streak, the town`s response to them showed an even greater atmosphere of tolerance - a core of local human decency in globally ugly times. After the incident at the mosque, Mr Rahman held a barbecue which attracted more than 200 neighbours. Ms Nilles says when the library hosted a session on understanding Islam there was standing room only. Even Mr Dalton is convinced that if he sat down with a Frenchman over a beer they would agree on more than they disagreed. Reverend Keller`s stance prompted an alternative interfaith service that received twice the number that his did, even though it rained. "The things he said didn`t surprise me," says Mr Rahman. "But the way people reacted did."

For a few people the changes have demanded significant alterations in their working lives. Mr Gonsell spends half an hour a day reading the New York Times and Washington Post to keep abreast with international news. In August 2001 he was pilloried in the local press for wasting taxpayers` money when he took the mayor and other key city employees to Mount Weather in Virginia for anti-terrorism training. That wouldn`t happen now. "September 11 made my life more difficult because I have much greater workload," he says. "But it has also made it easier because people are far more receptive to training."

At the public library, staff shred records of who has been using the computers and purge the files recording which books have been taken out and returned each day. Under the Patriot Act they are obliged to hand what information they have over to the Homeland Security department if requested. Getting rid of them is the easiest way to avoid breaching confidentiality. "You don`t have intellectual freedom if you have big brother breathing down your neck, looking at what you`re reading and researching," says Ginny Nilles, the libraries director.

More pervasive than the changes in routine are the small alterations in human relations. Like most, Mr Dalton now "takes a lot more notice of Middle Easterners". But there is not just suspicion of "the other" but also each other. Ms Helms is careful with whom she shares her liberal criticisms. "I have got to a point where I`m very reluctant to make nasty remarks about the Bush administration with people I don`t know. I like playing bridge so I just don`t mention politics when I`m there because I don`t know what the reaction will be."

But there have been similarly unpredictable responses from the other side. Mr Dalton says he has had arguments with his workmates on the railroad, many of whom are against the war in Iraq. "I don`t think they know what they`re talking about," he says. "There`s a lot in this country ain`t perfect but I don`t think anybody has a better system than we do."

"The day when you would go out of your way to make a political statement are gone," says Joseph Losco, chair of the town`s Ball State University political science department. "I don`t know if it`s gone for ever but it`s gone for now."

But in many ways September 11 did not so much change people`s behaviour here as exaggerate certain aspects of it. In a straw poll of students in a European politics class at the university, five out of seven said they had displayed a flag following the attacks. But three of those were doing so already.

Ms Helms` friend and fellow traveller in the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr Carson Bennett, says their views never did go down well in Muncie. "But before they just thought you were wrong-headed. Now they question your patriotism."

Bangladeshi-born Mr Rahman, one of around 200 Muslims in the town, was no stranger to anti-Muslim discrimination on September 10. When he saw the second plane fly into the world trade centre he called his wife to tell her not to let his two children play outside.

The attacks made that vulnerability more intense. "The problem is they can put you in jail first and then ask why." When he joined a Muslim delegation to see his local congressman, Mr Mike Pence, the politician put them on notice: "If there is another major event like 9/11 then you guys are in trouble."

Mr Rahman`s response has not been to withdraw but to further engage in Muncie society. He is more likely to talk to his neighbours and colleagues now so they know who he is and what he believes in and they no longer have to fear the unknown. "September 11 made us concentrate on our lives in this country and get more involved in things like schools, hospitals and libraries," he says. "That`s one of the positive things to come out of it."

Muncie may be small but it is not her metically sealed. Last week the local public radio station started broadcasting BBC reports (albeit between three and five in the morning) and three of the seven students said they now looked at foreign news sources and had travelled abroad.

True, according to Mr Losco, many of his students have never even been to Chicago, four hours drive away. But working class residents here have long been aware of the powerful impact the rest of the world can have on them since globalisation sent much of its industry to Mexico, leaving the university and the hospital as the town`s two largest employers. "Having been through that economically there`s a sense here that politically we`re not going to lose our place in the world too. Because the world`s a scary place."


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Two 9/11s, one story
To understand better what happened in New York in 2001, go back to Chile in 1973

Roger Burbach
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

On the morning of September 11 I watched aircraft flying overhead. Minutes later I heard explosions and saw fireballs of smoke fill the sky. As a result of these attacks thousands died, including two good friends.

I am not writing about September 11 2001 in New York City. I am writing about another September 11 - an equally horrible one - in 1973. The planes I saw were warplanes and their target was the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile. These two September 11s are related in many ways, and both help us understand why George Bush has led the US into a quagmire in Iraq.

On September 11 1973 Salvador Allende resided in the Chilean presidential palace. He was the first freely elected socialist leader in the world, and ever since his victory in September 1970, the CIA and the US government, headed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, were determined to oust Allende and his Popular Unity coalition.

It was on September 11 1973 that they succeeded. Led by General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military overthrew Allende, who died in the presidential palace. More than 3,000 people perished in the bloody repression that followed under Pinochet`s rule, including two American friends of mine, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi.

Prior to the attack on the Pentagon on September 11 2001, the most sensational foreign-led terrorist action in Washington had been carried out by a team of operatives sent by the Pinochet regime. On September 21 1976, agents of the Chilean secret police organisation, Dina, detonated a car bomb just blocks from the White House, killing a leading opponent of Pinochet`s, Orlando Letelier, and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt.

These assassinations were linked to the first international terrorist network in the west, Operation Condor. Begun in 1974 at the instigation of the Chilean secret police, it was made up by the intelligence services of at least six South American countries that collaborated in tracking, kidnapping and assassinating political opponents. Based on documents divulged under the Chile Declassification Project of the Clinton administration, it is now recognised that the CIA knew about these international terrorist activities and may have abetted them.

After the murders of Letelier and Moffitt, the CIA concluded that Condor was a rogue operation and may have tried to contain its activities. However, the network continued to act throughout Latin America at least until the early 1980s. Chilean and Argentine military units assisted the dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and helped set up death squads in El Salvador. Argentine units also aided Honduran military death squads that began operating in the early 80s with the direct assistance and collaboration of the CIA.

Similarities abound between the emergence of terrorist networks in Latin America and events leading to the rise of al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden first became involved in militant Islamist activities when he went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviet-backed regime that had taken power. Even in the 1980s it was recognised that many of those fighting against the Soviets and the Afghan government were religious fanatics who had no loyalty to their US sponsors. Ronald Reagan likened them to America`s "founding fathers".

In Central America, Reagan called thousands of former soldiers of Somoza`s national guard "freedom fighters" as they fought the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And when the Sandinistas went to the world court to press charges against the US for sending special operatives to bomb its port in Corinto, Reagan withdrew from the court, refusing to acknowledge the rule of international law.

In the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, former US government officials and conservative pundits attempted to rewrite this sordid history. Instead of acknowledging that past CIA operations had gone awry, they insisted that Bin Laden`s network had flourished because earlier US collaboration with terrorists had been curtailed. Kissinger said the controls imposed on US intelligence operations over the years had facilitated the rise of international terrorism. He alluded to the hearings of the senate foreign relations committee in 1975, headed by senator Frank Church, which strongly criticised the covert operations approved by Kissinger and led to the first legal restrictions on CIA activities, including the prohibition of US assassinations of foreign leaders.

Other Republicans, including George Bush Sr, who was director of the CIA when the agency worked with many of these terrorist networks, pointed the finger at Bill Clinton for allegedly undermining foreign intelligence operations. They argued against his 1995 order prohibiting the CIA from paying and retaining foreign operatives involved in torture and death squads. Today, we see the consequences of the Bush administration`s refusal to learn from the past. Instead of ending transgressions against other nations, the US has spread carnage and war, violating civil liberties and human rights.

Like many advocates of a world based on law rather than violence, the Spanish judge Baltesar Garzón, who issued the warrant for the arrest of Pinochet in London in 1998, proclaimed on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001: "Lasting peace and freedom can be achieved only with legality, justice, respect for diversity, defense of human rights and measured and fair responses." The failure of the US to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with stepped up terrorist activities around the world, demonstrates that the US war against terror is a failure.

But even in the midst of this war, judges, lawyers and human rights activists remain determined to see that international justice is carried out. Using the principle of "universal jurisdiction", 19 citizens of Iraq filed a suit in Belgium courts in May against Tommy Franks, the commander of the US invasion. They charged that his troops stood by as hospitals in Baghdad were looted, while other US soldiers fired on ambulances that were carrying civilians. The Bush administration threatened Belgium with "diplomatic consequences" if it allowed the case to go forward. Eventually, Belgium kowtowed to US demands and altered its laws relating to universal jurisdiction. But as we achieve some distance from the war, perhaps charges will yet be brought against the US invaders of Iraq.

The struggle is joined. The years to come will focus on the great divide that has emerged out of the two September 11s. On the one side stands an arrogant unilateralist clique in the US that engages in state terrorism and human rights abuses while tearing up international treaties. On the other is a global movement that is determined to advance a broad conception of human rights and human dignity through the utilisation of law, extradition treaties and limited policing activities. It is fundamentally a struggle over where globalisation will take us, whether the powerful economic and political interests of the world headed up by reactionary US leaders will create a new world order that relies on intervention and state terrorism, or whether a globalist perspective from below based on a more just and egalitarian conception of the world will gain ascendancy.

· Roger Burbach is the author of The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice, which has just been published by Zed Books

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`Security` has become the leitmotif for a new politics
Voters are afraid - but populist policies will do nothing to reassure them

Jackie Ashley
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

Two years on, and we need no reminding of the date today. The echo of September 11 rattles through our political world, shaking everything, changing everything. In the loss of those thousands in New York - why do we always talk of the towers, rather than the people inside them? - Britain lost years of ordinary, humdrum, domestic politics. Tony Blair became a different kind of leader - instead of focusing on schools or hospitals, he turned to Afghanistan and Iraq, to those summits with Bush and, latterly, the Hutton inquiry.

We live in a new world and there is a new politics, bleakly confronting everyone who grew up through the liberal revolution of the 60s. Ministers who have been talking to voters during the summer, looking for what the people really care about, are coming up again and again with the same word. "Security" has become the leitmotif for politics now. Like all strong political themes - Thatcherism, or sleaze - "security" suddenly seems to touch and change almost everything.

At its most basic, it means the people dressed in sinister versions of the Mr Blobby suit patrolling the underground on anti-terrorist exercises. Iraq is a security issue too, which deeply divides those who, instinctively, thought that toppling Saddam Hussein would make us safer and those (like me) who instinctively thought it would make us less safe. Are we better off being close to the US in these times, or would we have been shrewder to stand more with France and Germany? Again, it`s a security question.

But security politics is contagious and spreads fast. Asylum and Britain`s changing ethnic make-up has become part of the security question. Before September 11 there was plenty of bile and unease directed at incomers. But since then fear of Islamic extremists and "cells" has made the whole subject more toxic. As ever, the press hysteria is much worse than the reality for most people, most of the time. But immigration and the safety of people at home are now starting to fuse as issues - something that rightly worries David Blunkett.

If the politics of security stopped there, it would be difficult enough. But it spreads further: "security" is embraced as a term by all those who feel threatened by flexible labour markets; by the collapse of company pension schemes; by the export of jobs. The global free market, with its ruthless switching of capital around the world, means nothing if not insecurity. And for an island with abnormally strong global links, the insecurity, as well as the opportunity, is particularly high. For many, it all seems to connect - the free movement of capital, of jobs, of migrant people and of terror.

This is a glib response. It ignores the fact that the al-Qaida cells often come from parts of Saudi Arabia that are little touched by the outside world; that migrants are often among the most instinctively conservative people here; and that this country has done relatively well out of globalisation. But the connections are persuasive on the surface and politicians are finding they cannot just ignore them.

We should acknowledge that "security" neatly matches one strand in old Labour, too often ignored by the nostalgists. How many party members - or trade unionists - wanted both a high-spending, security-providing welfare state, and were also anti-immigrant and vehemently rightwing on crime, even including support for the death penalty? Secure jobs, secure pensions, secure streets... the programme of extreme-right parties like the National Front in France is only a distorted caricature of the instincts of many Labour voters.

But it is a caricature. So long as people think their government has a bit of a grip on things, everything can be held in check, and progressive politics moves forward. The danger starts when people feel their own state is powerless or out of touch. Whatever you think of New Labour in power, it is certainly not entirely ineffective: it runs a low-inflation, relatively successful economy and, as Gordon Brown reminded the TUC, Britain has lower unemployment rates than most competitors. At the macro-economic level, they do have a grip.

Much of the developing Labour agenda for the next few years seems designed to reassure insecure voters that the government has a grip elsewhere. Blair now harps on about the asylum figures as they start to come down. Yet more prisons are being built. Blunkett is pushing for ID cards with the latest technology - expensive, controversial, but they would be a visible symbol of the state trying to take more control over an amorphous and hard-to-count population. Belatedly, the government has started to wake up to the huge damage done by collapsing pensions.

The challenge for mainstream Labour supporters is pretty obvious. The politics of security is fundamentally reactionary. It is the politics of fear - fear of the outsider, fear of losing your job, fear of the people at the mosque down the road, fear of youths on the corner, fear of the European superstate, and fear of change. Any government which simply brushes fear aside as a force in politics is foolish. Fear is probably the strongest political force of all, even stronger than hope. But go very far in appeasing or reassuring fearful voters, and you become a reactionary government. So all those ministers coming back for the new session have to ask: how far do we go? When do popular initiatives to make Britain feel more secure become populist ones?

Every issue is a little different and there is a lot of teaching to do: Trevor Phillips, the new boss of the commission for racial equality, hits a good note when he reminds audiences of just how much the NHS they rely on for a sense of security is propped up by Indian and Pakistani doctors, Somali cleaners and Caribbean nurses. Everyone knows that Islamic terrorism is a real and continuing threat; and that there are extremist Islamic groups operating in the UK. So it is a particular duty of politicians to stay close to and publicly support mainstream Muslim leaders; and Blair is good at that.

But the best defence against security politics in its ugly guise is to show that government works. The global market and modern terrorism have this in common: they challenge the relevance of the nation state. Rich political types may be able to lobby supranational bodies, or consider themselves citizens of Europe. But for most people, the nation state is all the democracy they have. Insecurity is caused by a sense of powerlessness; if the state seems powerless (as during the Weimar period), truly evil politics crawls out from under the stone.

Perhaps all of us, reflecting on a rancorous, cynical period in politics, should think again about the need to work with progressive politicians instead of always carping from the sidelines. Two years ago, we entered a new world and a dangerous one, which scares many people witless. Effective parliamentary democracy - not troops, not spooks - is our only long-term defence.

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Suicide bombing at US spy base in northern Iraq
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian

A suicide car bomber has attacked a US intelligence service base in northern Iraq, killing three Iraqis and wounding at least 50 other people. Six of them were American agents, US officers said.

The bombing, late on Tuesday night, was the first of its kind in the previously stable northern Kurdish regions of Iraq. It appears to have been carefully aimed.

Among the three Iraqis killed in the bombing at Irbil, 200 miles north of Baghdad, was a boy of 12. The six Americans injured were reportedly from the defence human intelligence service.

This is a highly secretive service operating under the supervision of the defence intelligence agency, the US defence department`s foreign military espionage operation.

Some of the agents were living in the building as well as working in an office there. Others lived in houses nearby.

A Kurdish security official at the scene said the Americans suffered serious stomach injuries from flying glass and were transported by helicopter to a US military hospital.

US officers in Baghdad refused to give more details about the American casualties.

At least 47 Iraqis were hurt by the explosion, which also brought down several houses nearby.

"The whole neighbourhood shook," said Najib Abdullah, 50, the manager of a nearby gas petrol station. "Chunks of concrete were falling from the sky."

One witness said the bomber drove up to the office in a white four-wheel drive and detonated the bomb at the entrance.

Some Kurdish officials were quick to blame al-Qaida.

The building is 30 miles from the former base of Ansar al-Islam, a militant group which is suspected of being connected to Osama bin Laden`s al-Qaida network. The camp was bombed during the war.

Most members of the group are thought to have escaped across the nearby border to Iran. Nevertheless, there have been reports of Ansar fighters returning across the border from Iran to Iraq in recent weeks.

In Baghdad yesterday attacks on US troops continued. One soldier was killed as he tried to detonate a makeshift bomb planted by the side of the road. The soldier, from the 1st Armoured Division, was part of an explosive ordnance detonation team.

Soldiers had fired at the bomb with a machine gun from a Bradley fighting vehicle, but failed to explode it. It detonated as the soldier tried to pick it up.

On Tuesday night another American soldier was killed, and one injured, by a homemade bomb planted near a road north-east of Baghdad.

US patrols are increasingly being attacked with such homemade bombs. The army refers to them as improvised explosive devices.

Most are rocket or tank shells attached to trip wires or small detonators. They are frequently planted beside roads regularly used by US military vehicles.

There are at least a dozen attacks on American soldiers every day now.

US officials rarely publicise attacks in which American troops have been injured, but not killed, but they did admit this week that 18 soldiers had been injured in separate incidents in the space of just 24 hours.


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Two years on, is the world a different place?
11 September 2003


Diplomacy

The entente cordiale linking Britain and France survived 11 September but took a battering in the run-up to the war on Iraq and is now in intensive care. But beyond their relationship, the "war on terror" changed the face of international diplomacy as new strategic alliances were forged and old ones withered.

Russia`s relations with America, and with the West in general, were among the first to benefit from the post-11 September fallout. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, enthusiastically backed the US "war on terror" in return for winning international support for his continuing crackdown against Chechen separatist rebels, cast as part of that war.

Other countries, too, seized on the "war on terror" as part of their own domestic anti- terrorism agenda to improve relations with Washington, including Spain (Eta), India (Kashmir), Israel (Hamas) and China (Muslim separatists). The reward for President Bush`s new friends: a much-coveted visit to his Texas ranch.

President Musharraf of Pakistan was a big winner. His government was brought in from the cold, and praised by President Bush for co- operating in the hunt for al- Qa`ida after the war that removed Pakistan`s Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

The fault lines now running through Europe will take much time to heal, with France and Germany still leading vocal objections to the latest US plans for post-Saddam Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, twisted the knife into "old Europe," as he described the two countries, while the continent tore itself apart over the Iraq war.

Poland, and other EU candidate countries that endorsed an open letter dreamt up by Spain and Britain in support of American policy on Iraq, are not likely to forget President Jacques Chirac`s outburst at an EU meeting in February. He told them that they had "missed a great opportunity to shut up" in remarks that widened the yawning gap between the two European juggernauts and the pro-US young democracies of eastern Europe.

Tony Blair`s Government, too, has increasingly allied itself with the pro-war supporters, including the right-wing leaders of Spain and Italy. The new alliances in Europe have shifted loyalties that were previously based on party lines.

Anne Penketh

US politics

American politics, similar to most other aspects of national life, has been transformed by the events of 11 September 2001 - but in a way perhaps less evident than meets the eye.

The most obvious political consequence of the attacks was a surge in the popularity of President George Bush. The "amiable dunce" (to borrow Clark Clifford`s famous description of Ronald Reagan) became overnight the steely war leader around whom the US united. His approval ratings shot up from about 50 per cent to more than 80 per cent and, remarkably, stayed there for more than a year.

Today, of course, politics` own law of gravity is operating. The messy aftermath of the invasion of Iraq - the soaring human and financial cost of occupation - has combined with the faltering economy to bring the President`s popularity down to roughly where it was before 11 September. Although the Democrats are scoring some big hits, the most narrowly and controversially elected President in modern US history still looks odds-on to win a second term next November.

In that sense, American politics in September 2003 is back to normal, with all the rancour and partisanship of any year before an election. But in another sense it has changed, perhaps for good.

Until 11 September 2001, foreign policy and national security were hardly issues. George Bush and Al Gore found little to argue over in the 2000 campaign, and nobody minded that the future President could not name the leaders of several important US allies. Today, national security matters almost as much as the economy as an election issue.

If Mr Bush is defeated next year, the most likely reason will be deterioration in Iraq, and the fear of voters that America is being sucked into a new Vietnam. Democrats, always perceived as weaker on national security than Republicans, must take special care with the issue.

That is why the Massachusetts senator John Kerry reminds America in every speech that he was a war hero in Vietnam - and that is why the possible entry into the Democratic race of retired General Wesley Clark, with a 24-carat military record but no political experience, is being taken seriously by both parties.

The new reality may not, as some predict, guarantee Republican presidents as far as the eye can see. Indeed, it may cause a backlash against the unilateralist approach of the Bush team. But it does ensure that events outside the country`s borders will probably be as much a factor in its politics as what is happening inside.

Rupert Cornwell

UK politics

"This changes everything," was Tony Blair`s immediate private assessment of theattacks as he aborted a speech to the TUC conference and hurried to London from Brighton by train.

Mr Blair has been proved right - and in more ways than he imagined in the hours after the terrorist attacks. The event not only changed the geopolitical scene, it also transformed his second term in office by ensuring it was dominated by foreign affairs.

The Prime Minister restrained George Bush from taking immediate action against Iraq in the aftermath of 11 September. But the quid pro quo was that Britain would be on board when the Iraq issue was eventually tackled, and Mr Blair kept his bargain.

For Mr Blair, the attacks made it inevitable that the twin evils of terrorism and rogue states would join forces. He said last week: "The link between terrorism and rogue states with weapons of mass destruction is the crucial security threat of the 21st century." He admitted the link was still "not fully accepted by people".

There is a cruel irony here. Although London never joined Washington in claiming a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa`ida, Mr Blair`s prophecy came true after the war in Iraq ended and al-Qa`ida terrorists flooded into Iraq.

Mr Blair admits that Iraq led to a "lost year", which has diverted him from his priorities for his second term - improving public services and calling a referendum on the euro.

His energies have certainly been channelled into foreign affairs, first Afghanistan and then Iraq.

In both cases, he showed a boldness he sometimes seemed to lack on domestic issues. But the dominance of foreign affairs does not entirely explain the Government`s lack of progress on the domestic front. Turning round health, education and transport was always going to be a long-term task. And Gordon Brown was always likely to delay a euro referendum until after the next general election.

The attacks also had an impact on other parties. Iain Duncan Smith`s election as Tory leader two days later was eclipsed. So was his "unique selling point" - his close links to hardline Republicans in the US - when Mr Blair forged a bond with George Bush that grew even stronger over Iraq.

When the history books are written, Mr Blair`s initial response on 11 September may prove remarkably prophetic. As far as British politics is concerned, everything did change.

Andrew Grice

Security

Armed police officers and high-visibility street patrols in London are some of the most obvious changes to security in Britain since 11 September. Behind the scenes the security service, MI5, and anti-terrorist police have also been busy investigating and monitoring suspected supporters of al-Qa`ida throughout Britain.

Central London, and Westminster in particular, has been most affected with hundreds of police officers drafted in to provide reassurance and added protection around government buildings and other likely targets.

Boarding flights is now more time consuming because of extra security checks and the policing at airports is much tighter. Airlines are also considering employing sky marshals and fitting anti-missile defence systems.

Police forces and local authorities have had to make sure they have the equipment and procedures to deal with a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Last weekend London`s emergency services were tested in a terrorism exercise in which a chemical attack was staged on the Underground.

In the US, after an initial scramble, airport and airline security settled down with a few important changes. Bullet-proof cockpit doors were installed and are now kept locked during flights. Several thousand air marshals were trained to guard flights. The federal government took over baggage screening duties from much-criticised private companies.

Two years on, things are far from perfect. At many airports, powerful new screening devices for checked luggage are too big to fit comfortably behind the check-in counter, so passengers have to stand in line near the outside doors. Such clusters of people are in themselves regarded as security risks. Money has been scarce for security in other sectors. The US Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham, received just 7 per cent of the budget he requested earlier this year to secure energy facilities around the country.

Jason Bennetto and Andrew Gumbel

Architecture

The loss of the World Trade Centre`s twin towers has made no difference to the cult of architectural bigness. In New York, London and Europe, the physical ascent of workaholic man continues to be underwritten by surging market forces, and increasingly sophisticated architectural technology.

Property prices and rent-slab values have decreed a brave new, post-terrorism world sanctified by glass and steel monoliths. In London, for example, the future of Renzo Piano`s 1,000ft Glass Shard tower depends on the result of a dogfight between English Heritage and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, not any clamminess about aircraft strikes or bombs.

Norman Foster took 9/11 as a cue to fast-forward development of new structural and building escape methods, which will reduce the scale of death and injury if terrorists attack buildings. New structural jointing systems can delay total collapse for longer, and improved lift-clustering will ensure some will work regardless of damage elsewhere.

In Europe, top-flight architects remain engrossed in architectural upward mobility. Britain`s Will Alsop - famous for the inverted L-form of Peckham Library - has recently completed a bizarrely colour coded tower in Dusseldorf; and in Sweden, the great Spanish master of so-called zoomorphic architecture, Santiago Calatrava, is at work on his 190-metre-high "Turning Torso" in Malmo.

They are being driven ever upward by the force of land values and the desire of key financial centres for spectacular recognition. Just like London which is now falling prey to the risk of architectural terrorism. The next decade may throw up a number of genuinely brilliant skyscrapers, but most will be visual and physical affronts to urban environments.

Jay Merrick

Tourism

Holidaying at home suddenly became an attractive option after 11 September and, two years on, anxiety about flying and visiting exotic places remains high.

In Bali, the tourism industry suffered a double blow. Visitor numbers were down after the attacks in America; then came the massive car bomb last October that killed 202 people, mainly tourists, in the popular resort of Kuta Beach. As the first anniversary of the atrocity approaches, Bali`s hotels and bars are still half-empty.

International tourism bodies are putting on a brave face. Francesco Frangialli, secretary general of the World Tourism Organisation, said yesterday that 11 September was only one factor that had affected the industry - the others being the war in Iraq and the Sars outbreak. The industry, he said, had adapted in an "extraordinary" manner. Tourism globally had fallen by just 0.6 per cent in 2001, followed by a 3.1 per cent fall in 2002. "There has not been the kind of collapse that some people too swiftly predicted," he said.

British tourism has been badly affected by the problems. About £3bn has been lost through the reluctance of foreign visitors to venture abroad over the past two years.

In 2002, overseas visitors spent £11.9bn, an improvement on a disastrous 2001 where the industry was hit by foot-and-mouth as well as 11 September, but still below £12.8bn in 2000.

Kathy Marks in Sydney
11 September 2003 10:18


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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September 11, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS: THE CONTEXT
Counterterror Proposals Are a Hard Sell
By ERIC LICHTBLAU


ASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — President Bush, seeking still greater powers to fight terrorism, appears to have calculated that the renewed memories of the Sept. 11 attacks evoked by their second anniversary will be enough to outweigh rising concerns over civil liberties.

Mr. Bush`s proposal for stronger counterterrorism laws, made in a toughly worded speech today, faces a hard sell in Congress, as the administration tries to persuade skeptical lawmakers in both parties that the authorities will not abuse their growing power to investigate and lock up suspects.

The strategy is similar to the one the White House has employed in the fight over its tax cut plan. After its first tax cut in 2001 came under intense attack from Democrats and many economists for raising the deficit, the administration responded this year not by retreating but by successfully championing yet another tax cut.

But in this case, the administration is reviving some of the same terrorism proposals, including the expanded use of nonjudicial subpoenas in terror cases, that were considered and rejected by Congressional negotiators in debate over the Patriot Act in the fall of 2001.

In the last several months, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed making more terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty and making it more difficult for suspects to be released on bail, two critical components of the new initiative. But rather than using Mr. Ashcroft, a polarizing figure, to unveil the proposals, the White House decided to have Mr. Bush personally announce the plan on the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — and at an early stage of the presidential campaign.

Still, the political climate has changed markedly since the original Patriot Act was passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate. Some 160 communities around the country have voiced formal objections to the legislation, civil rights groups have sued to have it overturned, and it has become a rallying point for Democratic presidential candidates on the campaign trail who say it smacks of Big Brother tactics.

In pushing for new counterterrorism authority, the White House appeared undaunted by the increasing attacks from both Republicans and Democrats over the Patriot Act and the government`s expanded powers.

"The best defense is a good offense, and this administration plays that strategy very well," said Beryl Howell, a specialist in surveillance and counterterrorism law and a former Senate Democratic aide. "Their attitude is, `if you think the USA Patriot Act is so bad, wait and see what else we want.` They`re marking their position."

Administration officials and supporters said they thought the intense focus on the law in recent weeks could actually help their cause. "If you have a lively debate, that`s when you have the best chance to persuade the public and the Congress," said Viet Dinh, a former senior aide to Mr. Ashcroft who helped to draft the act.

Democrats in Congress were quick to attack the president`s proposals.

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said: "Removing judges from providing any check or balance on John Ashcroft`s subpoenas does not make us safer, it only makes us less free. Of course terrorists should not be released on bail, but this administration has a shameful record of deeming law-abiding citizens as terrorists and taking away their rights."

Other critics said the plan amounted to a revival of some of the main proposals included in that earlier plan.

"They don`t want to call this a sequel to the Patriot Act, but the fact is that that`s what it is," said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Democrats said the administration now appears intent on introducing new counterterrorism proposals in smaller, piecemeal fashion, rather than submitting to Congress an all-encompassing plan that many predict would face near-certain defeat.

And by having Mr. Bush announce the plan at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va., a setting clearly identified with law enforcement and on the day before the Sept. 11 anniversary, the White House hopes to quell criticism, especially from Republicans.

Even Republicans with deep-seated concerns about expanding the government`s counterterrorism authority said the timing made it difficult for them to speak out today without appearing insensitive to the memory of those killed on Sept. 11 and disloyal to President Bush.

"This is the president talking and not John Ashcroft," said a Republican Congressional aide, "and the fact is that we have to be as supportive as we can of the president and his efforts to combat terrorism."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Washington once hoped to develop closer relations with Indonesia, the most populous predominantly Muslim country, but respect for the United States among Indonesians has plummeted. Protesters gathered last month with signs saying, "America go to hell" and "Don`t mess with Islam."
September 11, 2003
WORLD OPINION
Foreign Views of U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN


BERLIN, Sept. 10 — In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world`s sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.

"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that`s changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."

In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower`s inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval.

To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world`s oil, if not the entire world.

Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures, born at the end of the cold war, that exploded into view in the debate leading up to the Iraq war. "I think the turnaround was last summer, when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. "That`s what triggered the counteralliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."

The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation`s battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The Bush administration`s recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may represent such an event.

Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.

Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America`s role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.

In Japan, a strong American ally that feels insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.

In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about the war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, 2001, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese leadership has largely embraced America`s "war on terror."

Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.

That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.

"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary crtic and writer in Moscow. "It`s a wonderful country, but it seized power. It`s ruling the world. America`s attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."

A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don`t agree with the means to achieve those ends. The United States can`t see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything, but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood."

Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, Kenya, said the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that`s why there`s so much animosity to the U.S."

The major English language daily newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, recently ran a prominent article titled, "Why moderate Muslims are annoyed with America," by Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo, a prominent figure during the Suharto years.

"If America wants to become a hegemonic power, it is rather difficult for other nations to prevent that," he wrote. "However, if America wants to be a hegemonic power that has the respect and trust of other nations, it must be a benign one, and not one that causes a reaction of hate or fear among other nations."

Bush as Salesman

Crucial to global opinion has been the failure of the Bush administration to persuade large segments of the public of its justification for going to war in Iraq.

In striking contrast to opinion in the United States, where polls show a majority believe there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists, the rest of the world remains skeptical.

That explains the enormous difference in international opinion toward American military action in Afghanistan in the months after Sept. 11, which seemed to have tacit approval as legitimate self-defense, and toward American military action in Iraq, which is seen as the arbitrary act of an overbearing power.

Perhaps the strongest effect on public opinion has been in Arab and Muslim countries. Even in relatively moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia and Turkey, or countries with large Muslim populations, like Nigeria, both polls and interviews show sharp drops in approval of the United States.

In unabashedly pro-American countries like Poland, perhaps the staunchest American ally on Iraq after Britain, polls show 60 percent of the people oppose the government`s decision to send 2,500 troops to Iraq.

For many people, the issue is not so much the United States as it is the Bush administration, and what is seen as its arrogance. In this view, a different set of policies and a different set of public statements from Washington could have resulted in a different set of attitudes.

"The point I would make is that with the best will in the world, President Bush is a very poor salesman for the United States, and I say that as someone who has no animus against him or the United States," said Philip Gawaith, a financial communications consultant in London. "Whether it`s Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt that he`s a silly man, and therefore they are not obliged to think any harder about his position."

Trying to Define `Threat`

But while the public statements of the Bush administration have not played well in much of the world, many analysts see deeper causes for the rift that has opened. In their view, the Iraq war has not so much caused a new divergence as it has highlighted and widened one that existed since the end of the cold war. Put bluntly, Europe needs America less now that it feels less threatened.

Indeed, while the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat.

"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics." "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between us and Europe wouldn`t be loosened.

"So, when the Bush Administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I`d argue that it made them worse."

"In the cold war you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Professor Mearsheimer continued. "But as we`re finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the U.N. The fact is that the United States can`t run the world by itself, and the problem is, we`ve done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."

Recent findings of international surveys illustrate those divergences.

A poll of 8,000 people in Europe and the United States conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and Compagnia di São Paolo of Italy found Americans and Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats but disagreeing sharply on how they should be dealt with.

Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84 percent of Americans but only 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a means of imposing international justice.

In Europe overall, the proportion of people who want the United States to maintain a strong global presence fell 19 points since a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50 percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition to American leadership.

Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S. `unilateralism` over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court and the Biological Weapons Protocol."

"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Mr. Sandschneider writes.

From this point of view, as he and others have said, the divergence will not be a temporary phenomenon but permanent.

A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example, that only 15 percent of Indonesians have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 61 percent a year ago.

Indonesia may be especially troubling to American policy makers, who have hoped that, as a country with an easy-going attitude toward religion, it would emerge as a kind of pro-American Islamic model.

But since Sept. 11, a virulent group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah has gained strength, attacking in Bali and Jakarta and making the country so insecure that President Bush may skip it during an Asian trip planned for next month.

One well-known mainstream Indonesian Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, an American-educated vice president of a Islamic organization that claims 30 million members, calls the United States the "king of the terrorists" and refers to President Bush as a "drunken horse."

This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by the State Department in which speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were sent last fall to Muslim countries, including Indonesia.

A Residue of Good Will

Still, broad sympathy for the United States exists in many areas. Students from around the world clamor to be educated in America. The United States as a land of opportunity remains magnetic.

Some analysts point out that the German Marshall Fund study actually showed a great deal of common ground across the Atlantic.

"Americans and Europeans still basically like each other, although such warmth has slipped in the wake of the Iraq war," Ronald Asmus, Philip P. Everts and Pierangelo Isernia, analysts from the United States, the Netherlands and Italy, respectively, wrote in an article explaining the findings. "Americans and Europeans do not live on different planets when it comes to viewing the threats around them."

But there is little doubt that the planets have moved apart. Gone are the days, two years ago, when 200,000 Germans marched in Berlin to show solidarity with their American allies, or when Le Monde, the most prestigious French newspaper, could publish a large headline, "We Are All Americans."

More recently, Jean Daniel, the editor of the weekly Nouvel Observateur, published an editorial entitled, "We Are Not All Americans."

For governments in Eastern Europe, Sept. 11 has forced a kind of test of loyalties. Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland have felt themselves caught between the United States and the European Union, which they will soon be joining.

Here, too, the war in Iraq seems to have been the defining event, the division of Europe into "new" and "old" halves, defined by their willingness to support the American-led war.

Most Eastern European countries side with the European Union majority on such questions as the International Criminal Court, which is opposed by the Bush administration, while helping in various ways with the Iraq war. Poland and Romania have sent troops and Hungary has permitted training of Iraqis at a military base there.

But even if the overall mood in the former Soviet Bloc remains largely pro-American, recent polls have shown some slippage in feelings of admiration.

"We would love to see America as a self-limiting superpower," said Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a former Polish defense minister.

Perhaps the administration`s decision to turn to the United Nations to seek a mandate for an international force in Iraq reflects a new readiness to exercise such restraint. The administration appears to have learned that using its power in isolation can get very expensive very quickly.

But the road to recovering global support is likely to be a long one for a country whose very power — political, economic, cultural, military — makes it a natural target of criticism and envy.

Even in Japan, where support for America remains strong, the view of the United States as a bully has entered the popular culture. A recent cartoon showed a character looking like President Bush in a Stars and Stripes vest pushing Japanese fishermen away from a favorite spot, saying, "I can fish better."


Contributing to this report were James Brooke, Frank Bruni, Alan Cowell, Ian Fisher, Joseph Kahn, Clifford Krauss, Marc Lacey, Jane Perlez, Craig S. Smith and Michael Wines.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 11, 2003
Two Years On

Even as the twin towers were falling, we wondered what kind of world we would find ourselves living in in the future. The trauma of that day led us to expect an abrupt demarcation in our lives and in the life of the nation. How abrupt, how tragic it has been for many people cannot be overemphasized. But coming into this second anniversary, our response is more measured; there is a recognition that we are now living among the uncertain ripples thrown out by that collision of worlds. The purity of our first reactions has been eroded by time and by some of the uses that have begun to be made of 9/11.

Any two years in which America fought two wars would be memorable in their own right, the wars themselves capable of shunting our sense of other events to one side. The first war, in Afghanistan, rose right out of the ashes of the World Trade Center. Its logic, if not its conclusion, was clear. But the reasons for the second war seem muddier now than when the conflict began. For many, there seemed to be a connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who crashed into the Pentagon and the trade center. That connection was encouraged by President Bush and his administration and taken on faith by much of the country. It is worth reminding ourselves, on this day particularly, that we come no closer to understanding the significance of 9/11, at home and abroad, if we use the memory of what happened that morning falsely and vainly.

It seemed as if two great tides emanated in response to the tragedy of that Tuesday. One was a sense of generosity, a deep compassion that expressed itself in immediate acts of cooperation and support. The other was a sense of patriotism, a strong consciousness of our American identity. When those two tides overlapped, as they often did in the months after 9/11, the result was impressive and profoundly moving. But we have also seen, in the past two years, a regrettable narrowing of our idea of patriotism. It has become, for some people in some ways, a more brittle expression of national sentiment — a blind statement of faith that does more to divide Americans from one another than to join them together.

We need to fear and temper that kind of rigidity. It is not the least bit unpatriotic to question some of the arguments that led to war in Iraq. No national purpose is served by losing our sense of political and historical discrimination in an upwelling of patriotic fervor. Much as it may seem logical that the horror of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, is inextricably linked to the other terrorist horrors around the world, the fact is that the connections are not all clear. The final answers must be as the evidence — not political will — determines.

One of the hardest parts of living with 9/11 may be learning to understand the ways in which it was a local and particular, rather than universal, event. Watching a disaster of those proportions gradually become scaled to a broader historical context does not come easily to those of us who witnessed it in one form or another. But that is what history will do and what we must accept.

For two years, and for many more years to come, we have had a chance to watch how individuals, communities and institutions have absorbed the shock of 9/11. It has illuminated all of us, thrown us all into a peculiar relief. It has taught us important things about who we are, what our government is, and who our elected leaders are and what they make of us. Whether it is the debate over the war in Iraq or over the proper memorial for Lower Manhattan, the memory of 9/11 should provide us with a standard of judgment, of moral assessment, based on our own behavior and on that of others, that is not easily faulted or compromised. Those buildings did not fall or their occupants die to become symbols in an incoherent argument. That outpouring of strength and consideration was never meant to serve as the pretext for false conclusions. The day will slip away from us as time passes, but not the clarity of the actions we took together in response. The purest patriotism we have in us to express was expressed in the common generosity of that moment.



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September 11, 2003
The Other Sept. 11

eath came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.

But the year was 1973, the building Chile`s White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile`s president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims` families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried.

Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980`s and 1990`s just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983.

In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation`s hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile`s Sept. 11, too. "The Pinochet File," a new book by Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at the nonprofit National Security Archive, presents declassified documents showing that the Nixon administration, which had tried to block Mr. Allende`s inauguration, began plotting to bring him down just 72 hours after he took office.

Mr. Allende, a Socialist but a democrat, had done nothing to Washington. President Nixon took his election as an affront — "it`s too much the fashion to kick us around," he said — and he worried most that a successful Socialist would inspire others.

The United States did not directly participate in the coup, but it laid the groundwork for it and supported the plotters. Afterward, even as mass murder ensued, the Nixon administration secretly embraced Mr. Pinochet`s regime.

Much has changed in 30 years in Chile. Today, a woman, Michelle Bachelet, is the respected defense minister, and she and the army`s commander, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre, are modernizing and depoliticizing the military. General Cheyre has denounced past abuses and vowed they will never be repeated. The courts are trying more than 160 former military men, but retired officers feel betrayed. They still argue that they saved Chile from communism, and they say Chile needs reconciliation.

That is code for enforced silence, for forgetting. But the lesson of Chile, Peru and Argentina is that reconciliation requires the opposite. Silence prevents a nation from coming to terms. Real reconciliation comes from what the guilty are trying to avoid: full information, reparations and justice.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 11, 2003
Two Years Later, a Thousand Years Ago
By ROBERT WRIGHT


Among the ideas that seemed to collapse along with the twin towers two years ago was a view of globalization as a kind of manifest destiny. Unlike the 19th-century version of manifest destiny, this vision didn`t involve expanding America`s borders. Rather, America`s values — notably economic and political liberty — would spread beyond those borders, covering the planet. And this time around America`s mission didn`t have the widely assumed blessing of God. But it had the next best thing: the force of history. Globalization was seen by some as a nearly inevitable climax of the human story — destiny of a secular sort.

In some versions of this scenario, like neoconservative ones, tough American guidance might be needed — coercing China, say, toward democracy. In other versions, international economic competition would do the coercing. After all, microelectronics was making free markets a more essential ingredient in prosperity, and free markets work best with free minds. As some libertarians saw things, all you had to do was end trade barriers and then sit back and enjoy the show.

Some show. As commentators started noting around Sept. 12, 2001, the terrorists had turned the tools of globalization — cellphones, e-mail, international banking — against the system. What`s more, their grievances had grown partly out of globalization, with its jarringly modern values. It started to seem as if globalization, far from being a benign culmination of history, had carried the seeds of its own destruction all along.

Two years later, that view is still defensible. Though the United States has been free from serious terrorism, anti-American terrorist networks are intact — and the war in Iraq has given them both a new rallying cry and conveniently located targets. Further, Islamist terrorism is assuming more global form; one can imagine a chain of attacks setting off a worldwide economic tailspin. With biotechnology and nuclear materials emphatically not under control, out-and-out collapse in some future decade is possible.

Still, viewed against the backdrop of history, the case for a kind of manifest destiny is stronger than ever. In this version, America`s mission is different from the ones libertarians and neoconservatives have in mind — passive role model or aggressive evangelizer, respectively. It is in some ways a grander mission, carrying a deep and subtle moral challenge. Indeed, the challenge is so deep, and so natural an outgrowth of history, that the idea of destiny in some nonsecular sense isn`t beyond the pale. In any event, Sept. 11, 2001, illustrates the challenge in painfully vivid form.

Globalization dates back to prehistory, when the technologically driven expansion of commerce began. Early advances in transportation — roads, wheels, boats — were used to do deals (when they weren`t used to fight wars). So too with information technology. Writing seems to have evolved in Mesopotamia as a recorder of debts. Later, in the form of contracts, it would lubricate long-distance trade.

All this is grounded in human nature. People instinctively play nonzero-sum games — games, like economic exchange, in which both players can win. And technological advance lets them play more complex games over longer distances. Hence globalization.

What makes globalization precarious is that nonzero-sum relationships typically have a downside: both players can lose as well as win. Their fortunes are correlated, their fates partly shared, for better or worse. As a web of commerce expands and thickens, this interdependence deepens. The ancient world saw prosperity spread but also saw vast downturns — like collapse across the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 B.C.

One reason trouble can spread so broadly is that it often uses the economic system`s conduits of transportation or communication. The collapse of 1200 B.C. seems to have been abetted by raiders who exploited shipping lanes. In the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague moved from city to city along avenues of commerce. Today a bioweapon could spread death globally the same way. And support for terrorism proliferates via the very satellites that convey stock prices, as appeals from Osama bin Laden, or images of civilian casualties in Iraq or Gaza, are beamed around the world.

One way to protect an expanding realm of interdependence is through expanded governance. The Roman Empire, in its heyday, kept vast trade routes secure. But governance needn`t come in the form of a full-fledged state. In the late Middle Ages, merchants in German cities formed the Hanseatic League to repel pirates and brigands.

Today the globalization of commerce, and of threats to it, has created the rudiments of international governance, from the World Health Organization to arrangements for policing nuclear weapons. Global governance sounds radical, but it`s just history marching on — commerce making the world safe for itself.

In light of 9/11, there is room for improvement. For starters, we need more routine and forceful means of policing the world`s nuclear materials and, more challenging still, its biotechnology infrastructure. This will involve rethinking national sovereignty — for example, accepting visits from international inspectors in exchange for the reassuring knowledge that they visit other countries, too. But we have little choice. The aftermath of the Iraq war suggests that even a superpower can`t afford to invade every country that may have illicit weapons.

History`s expansion of commerce has entailed the growth not just of governance, but of morality. Doing business with people, even at a distance, usually involves acknowledging their humanity. This may not sound like a major moral breakthrough. But prehistoric life seems to have featured frequent hostility among groups, with violence justified by the moral devaluation, even dehumanization, of the victims. And recorded history is replete with such bigotry. The modern idea that people of all races and religions are morally equal is often taken for granted, but viewed against the human past, it is almost bizarre.

Can moral enlightenment really be rooted in crass self-interest as mediated by the nonzero-sum logic of expanding economic interdependence? Certainly that would explain why an ethos of ethnic and religious tolerance is most common in highly globalized nations like the United States. And it would help explain why, in contrast, open hatred of Christians or Jews is found in some Muslim countries that aren`t deeply, organically integrated into the global economy.

Some favor a different explanation, blaming belligerent passages in the Koran for radical Islam`s intolerance. But during the Middle Ages, when Islamic civilization was at the forefront of globalization, and co-existence with Christians and Jews made economic sense, Islamic scholars devised the requisite doctrines of tolerance. Muslims can read Scripture selectively when conditions warrant, just as many cosmopolitan Christians and Jews are profitably unaware of the jihads advocated in Deuteronomy.

Globalization, then, might eventually dampen the appeal of radical Islam, especially if economic liberty indeed tends to bring political liberty. In a world of economically intertwined free-market democracies, not only will more Muslim elites rub elbows with non-Muslims in business class, but also more young Muslims will have nonlethal outlets for their energies, thanks to new avenues for political activism and economic ambition.

Sounds great — and, in fact, it`s a prospect that has been hopefully invoked by many, including some hawks in advocating war with Iraq. But before deciding how to get from here to there, we might ponder one of history`s lessons: bursts of technological progress can bring great instability. A particularly unsettling parallel with the current moment lies in a previous revolution in information technology, the coming of the movable-type printing press to Europe in the 15th century.

When transmitting information gets cheaper, groups that lack power can gain it. Within weeks of Martin Luther`s unveiling his 95 Theses in 1517, German printers in several cities took it upon themselves to sell copies. An amorphous and largely silent interest group — people disenchanted with the Roman Catholic Church — crystallized and found its voice. Protest was now feasible. (Hence the term Protestant.)

The ensuing erosion of central authority went beyond the church. The "wars of religion" that ravaged Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries were about politics, too, and by their end the Hapsburgs, not just the pope, had lost possessions. If Europe`s powers had adjusted more gracefully to the decentralizing force of print, much bloodshed might have been averted.

Today, similarly, new information technologies allow previously amorphous or powerless groups to coalesce and orchestrate activities, from peaceful lobbying to terrorist slaughter. And the revolution is young. As the Internet goes broadband, Osama bin Laden`s potent recruiting videos will get more accessible — viewable on demand from more and more parts of the world. Other terrorist televangelists may spring up, too. As in the age of print, far-flung discontent will grow more powerful — often through peaceful means, but sometimes not.

Paradoxically, the increasing volatility of intense discontent puts Americans in a more nonzero-sum relationship with the world`s discontented peoples. If, for example, unhappy Muslims overseas grow more unhappy and resentful, that`s good for Osama bin Laden and hence bad for America. If they grow more secure and satisfied, that`s good for America. This is history`s drift: technology correlating the fortunes of ever-more-distant people, enmeshing humanity in a web of shared fate.

The architects of America`s national security policy at once grasp this crosscultural interdependence and don`t. They see that prosperous and free Muslim nations are good for America. But they don`t see that the very logic behind this goal counsels against pursuing it crudely, with primary reliance on force and intimidation. They don`t appreciate how easily, amid modern technology, resentment and hatred metastasize. Witness their planning for postwar Iraq, with spectacular inattention to keeping Iraqis safe, content and well informed.

Nor do they seem aware, as they focus tightly on state sponsors of terrorism, that technology lets terrorists operate with less and less state support. Anarchic states — like the ones that may now be emerging in Iraq and Afghanistan — could soon be as big a problem as hostile states.

Grasping the new challenge of terrorism doesn`t render the problem simple or undermine President Bush`s entire terrorism strategy. Obviously, we can`t grow so concerned with grassroots opinion that we give in to specific terrorist demands. And sometimes we may have to use force in ways that, in the short run, inflame anti-Americanism. And so on.

Still, only if we see the growing power of grassroots sentiment will we give due attention to the subject that hawks so disdain: "root causes." With hatred becoming Public Enemy No. 1, a successful war on terrorism demands an understanding of how so much of the world has come to dislike America. When people who are born with the same human nature as you and I grow up to commit suicide bombings — or applaud them — there must be a reason. And it`s at least conceivable that their fanaticism is needlessly encouraged by American policy or rhetoric.

Putting yourself in the shoes of people who do things you find abhorrent may be the hardest moral exercise there is. But it would be easier to excuse Americans who refuse to try if they didn`t spend so much time indicting Islamic radicals for the same refusal. Somebody has to go first, and if nobody does we`re all in trouble.

Even if we dawdle, and make no progress on either the moral or governmental fronts — fail to move toward a global norm of tolerance and toward sound global governance — history will eventually concentrate our minds. A nuclear explosion, or epic bioterrorism, will lead even some hardened unilateralists to embrace arms control and other multilateral actions.

But it would be nice to avoid the million deaths. Besides, if we wait until an American city is erased, by then hatred of America will be broad and deep. One can imagine national and global policing regimes that could keep us fairly secure even then, but they would be severe, with expanded monitoring of everyday life and shrinking civil liberties.

In other words, the age-old tradeoff between security and liberty increasingly involves a third variable: antipathy. The less hatred there is in the world, the more security we can have without sacrificing personal freedom. Assuming we like our liberty, we have little choice but to take an earnest interest in the situation of distant and seemingly strange people, working to elevate their welfare, exploring their discontent as a step toward expanding their moral horizons — and in the process expanding ours. Global governance without global moral progress could be very unpleasant.

As the world`s most powerful nation, and one of the world`s most ethnically and religiously diverse nations, America is a natural leader of this moral revolution. America is also well positioned to lead in shaping a judicious form of global governance.

This role wasn`t inevitable. But for a few quirks of history, some other nation might be on top at this moment of challenge. What was more or less inevitable, in my view, is the challenge itself. All along, technological evolution has been moving our species toward this nonzero-sum moment, when our welfare is crucially correlated with the welfare of the other, and our freedom depends on the sympathetic comprehension of the other.

That history has driven us toward moral enlightenment — and then left the final choice to us, with momentous stakes — is scary but inspiring. Some, indeed, may see this as evidence of the higher purpose that was widely assumed back in the 19th century. But a religious motivation isn`t necessary. Simple self-interest will do. That`s the beauty of the thing.


Robert Wright, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is author or "The Moral Animal" and "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 11, 2003
We`re Not Happy Campers
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON — The Saudi religious police are harassing Barbie.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is warning that the "Jewish" dolls — banned in Saudi Arabia for a decade — are a threat to Islam.

The A.P. reported that a message posted on the mutawwa`s Web site chided: "Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful."

This, from a hypocritical desert kingdom with more lingerie stores in its malls than Victoria has secrets.

It`s probably useless to start correcting the inbred Saudis on facts, but just for the record, Barbie was a knockoff of a German floozy doll.

The place so eager to protect itself from "Jewish" toys and "the perverted West," the breeding ground of the 9/11 hijackers, is still the Bush administration`s close ally.

Osama bin Laden is urging the Muslim world to pursue a jihad against America, even as America pursues a GWOT in the Muslim world. (GWOT is how some Pentagon documents refer to the Global War on Terror.) They`re out to get us, and we`re out to get them.

Far from being the swift and gratifying lesson in U.S. dominance that Cheney & Co. predicted, our incursion into Iraq is turning into a spun-out, scary lesson in the dangers of hubris. Democrats are combing through the $20 billion part of the White House request involving rebuilding Iraq, trying to make sure there isn`t any Halliburton hanky-panky.

I`ve actually gotten to the point where I hope Dick Cheney is embroiled in a Clancyesque conspiracy to benefit Halliburton. Because if it`s not a conspiracy, it`s naïveté and ideology. And that means our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk.

On 9/11`s second anniversary, seven in 10 Americans still believe Saddam had a role in the attacks, even though there is no evidence of it, according to a Washington Post poll. That is because the president has done his level best to conflate 9/11 and Saddam and did so again in his speech on Sunday night.

Iraq never threatened U.S. security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country. And now they`re hoist on their own canard.

By pretending Iraq was crawling with Al Qaeda, they`ve created an Iraq crawling with Al Qaeda.

As Donald Rumsfeld finished up an upbeat talk at the National Press Club here yesterday, brushing off hecklers and calling the global war on terror "well begun," cable began airing fresh Flintstones video of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraging the Iraqi and Islamic fighters to "bury" American troops and send them to their mothers in coffins.

The Bush team`s logic before the war was infuriatingly Helleresque, and it still is.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who was so alarmed about Saddam`s W.M.D. before the war, is now so nonchalant that he said he did not even bother to ask David Kay, who runs the C.I.A.`s search for W.M.D. in Iraq, what progress he`d made when meeting with him in Iraq last week.

"I have so many things to do at the Department of Defense," Rummy told The Washington Post.

Asked at the press club why our intelligence analysts did not predict the extent of Iraq`s decayed infrastructure, Rummy said dismissively, "They were worrying about more important things." Yeah, like how to get Dick Cheney off their backs.

Testifying before the Senate on Tuesday on the $87 billion request, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon official who pushed so hard to own Iraq and control it, said, "We have no desire to own this problem or to control it." There may not be much choice, given Colin Powell`s pessimistic warning to Congress yesterday that no allies want to help us pick up the tab for rebuilding a country full of people who revile us.

I never thought I`d say this, but watching Dan Quayle`s marble bust, unveiled yesterday at the Capitol — soon to join John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Spiro Agnew — I was nostalgic for the days when Murphy Brown`s baby amounted to a serious mess.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Senate Blocks Overtime Revamp
54 to 45 Vote Is Rare Victory for Democrats, Labor

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A01


The Senate, defying a White House veto threat, voted yesterday to block the Bush administration from issuing new overtime pay rules that Democrats and their labor allies said could result in a loss of income to millions of American workers.

The planned changes would expand overtime protections for low-wage workers but make it easier for employers to exempt many better-paid workers. The proposal approved by the Senate would allow the expansion but not the curtailment of overtime coverage.

The 54 to 45 vote in favor of the proposal amounted to a rare victory for Democrats and organized labor in the Republican-controlled Congress, even though the struggle`s final outcome remains in doubt.

The votes appeared to signal a growing willingness on the part of both GOP-run chambers to break with the administration on selected issues, especially those that touch people personally and are likely to resonate in next year`s congressional elections. They also appeared likely to embolden Democratic challenges to the administration.

The Senate vote came a day after the House approved a larger pay raise than President Bush wanted for federal civilian workers and voted to derail his plan to provide more private-sector competition for federal work. And a few hours after the Senate voted on the overtime issue, it approved another Democratic amendment barring the administration from implementing the proposed changes in student aid rules that Democrats said would have made thousands of college students ineligible for financial assistance.

The overtime vote is "perhaps the most important victory that we have had for working families in some time," Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said.

Daschle acknowledged that obstacles remain, including Bush`s veto threat. "So our victory today is only the first step," he said. But he and other Democrats vowed to continue the fight, even if it means trying to rescind the overtime rules should the Labor Department put them into effect. "We`re in this for the long haul," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said.

After the vote, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao issued a statement describing her department`s proposed changes as "long overdue" and pledging to "continue our efforts to strengthen overtime protections for workers."

The proposed new Labor Department rules would revamp the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to redefine eligibility for overtime pay, which is paid at the rate of time-and-a-half after a 40-hour workweek. Under the department`s proposal, employers could more easily reclassify workers into the exempt categories as administrators, professionals or executives. Employees earning more than $65,000 a year could be denied overtime pay if they perform any of the exempted duties.

The administration estimates that 644,000 employees could lose overtime protection, but Democrats, citing labor and other studies, say the figure is closer to 8 million -- a disagreement that arises in part from conflicting interpretations of the proposed rules. The administration says 1.3 million low-wage workers would be made eligible for overtime, but Democrats contend that many of them are already covered.

The Senate Democrats` victory on the overtime issue was assured when six GOP moderates joined all Democrats except Zell Miller (Ga.) in voting to add the pay provision to a $138 billion spending bill for health, education and labor programs.

The six Republicans were Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.), Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), Ted Stevens (Alaska) and Arlen Specter (Pa.). Stevens is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Specter heads the subcommittee with jurisdiction over labor spending. Campbell, Murkowski and Specter will be running for reelection next year and face potentially serious challenges.

The House earlier this summer narrowly rejected a proposal to bar the administration from reducing eligibility for overtime. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who led yesterday`s fight to block the proposed overtime rules, said he sees "a good chance" the House will go along with the Senate in negotiating the spending bill`s final version.

An aide to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who helped lead the Democrats` fight in the House, said Democrats will try to put the House on record as being in favor of the Senate position.

But other hurdles remain. The White House last week said Bush`s top advisers would recommend a veto of the spending bill if the overtime provision is included, and it takes a two-thirds vote of both houses to override a veto.

Yesterday`s vote followed a vigorous lobbying war between business and union interests. The administration and its business allies said overtime rules needed to be updated in line with changing work patterns. But Democrats and union leaders said the administration plan would force people to work longer hours for less pay at a time of economic stress for many families.

In an attempt to head off the administration defeat, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chairman of the committee that handles labor legislation, said the vote was premature because the Labor Department has not finished drafting the rules. "For the Congress to step forward at this time is wrong," he said.



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President Asks for Expanded Patriot Act
Authority Sought To Fight Terror

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A01


President Bush, in a speech marking today`s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, called on Congress yesterday to "untie the hands of our law enforcement officials" by expanding the government`s ability to probe and detain terrorism suspects.

Hailing the passage of the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which expanded federal police powers, Bush said those changes did not go far enough. He called for empowering authorities in terrorist investigations to issue subpoenas without going to grand juries, to hold suspects without bail and to pursue the death penalty in more cases.

"Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting terrorism, obstacles that don`t exist when law enforcement officials are going after embezzlers or drug traffickers," Bush said at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. "For the sake of the American people, Congress should change the law and give law enforcement officials the same tools they have to fight terror that they have to fight other crime."

In endorsing an extension of the Patriot Act, Bush plunged into a contentious issue on the eve of the Sept. 11 remembrance, which Bush has proclaimed "Patriots Day." By endorsing an expansion of police powers, the president put himself at odds with a number of Republican lawmakers who have joined Democrats in an effort to scale back part of the original Patriot Act.

Opponents said Bush, in launching the offensive, was seeking to blunt an effort to repeal the increased authority the administration won shortly after the 2001 attacks. "It`s clear the administration, now on the defensive, is trying to use offense as a defensive strategy," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The public is saying they`ve gone too far. Now you have the president and the attorney general asking for additional power."

It was the first time Bush had advocated provisions beyond the Patriot Act, his aides said. In February, a draft of legislation being prepared by the administration proposed sweeping powers, including the ability to revoke citizenship of terrorism suspects, forbid the release of information about terrorism detainees, and set up a DNA database of people associated with terrorist groups. The House Judiciary Chairman, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), has said he told Attorney General John D. Ashcroft then that it would be "extremely counterproductive" to pursue such "Patriot 2" legislation.

Sensenbrenner was neutral on Bush`s proposal yesterday. "The committee will give these proposals careful consideration, as it does any legislation the administration is advocating," said his spokesman, Jeff Lungren.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, said both parties would reject the ideas. "I am confident we will continue to say no until Ashcroft explains why he has abused the power he already has."

Bush aides said the proposals Bush backed yesterday, parts of which had already been floating about Capitol Hill, were modest. Bush did not back a provision, suggested earlier by Ashcroft, to expand the authority to pursue those offering "material support" to suspected terrorist cells. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan would not rule out the possibility that Bush would back further provisions in piecemeal fashion. "The president is always looking at ways . . . that we can better secure the homeland and make America safer, and that`s what this is about," he said.

Ashcroft has been touring the country to build support for the original Patriot Act, and the Justice Department has been fighting an amendment passed this summer by the House that would cut off funding for so-called sneak-and-peek warrants in terrorism cases, one of the Patriot Act`s provisions. Congress must consider whether to renew several provisions of the law that expire in 2005.

Justice officials yesterday drew attention to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finding that only 22 percent of Americans thought the administration had gone "too far" in restricting civil liberties. Still, two-thirds said the government should not take anti-terrorism steps if those steps violate civil liberties.

Specifically, Bush called yesterday for allowing "administrative subpoenas," which would allow prosecutors to demand sensitive documents in terrorism cases without court approval. Bush also sought power to deny bail to suspects without proving that they are dangerous. He also proposed extending the death penalty to acts of sabotage that result in death.

"The House and the Senate have a responsibility to act quickly on these matters," Bush said. "Untie the hands of our law enforcement officials so they can fight and win the war against terror."

Georgetown University law professor David Cole, an opponent of extending the Patriot Act, said the three items "aren`t the worst parts of Patriot 2." But he said that the bail provision would allow the government to hold people suspected of "wholly nonviolent activity," and that the use of administrative subpoenas, though common in civil cases, rejects the "basic idea that criminal investigations ought to proceed by virtue of a grand jury."



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Gen. Clark Reportedly Is Asked to Join Dean


By Jim VandeHei and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A01


Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has asked retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark to join his campaign, if the former NATO commander does not jump into the race himself next week, and the two men discussed the vice presidency at a weekend meeting in California, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Clark, in a telephone interview yesterday, said he did not want to comment about the private meeting. Asked about reports that the two men had discussed a wide range of issues, including endorsing Dean, joining the campaign, possible roles in a Dean administration and the vice presidency, he said only, "It was a complete tour of the horizon."

Later, an adviser quoted Clark as saying, "I have only one decision to make: Will I seek the presidency?"

It was the fourth time Dean and Clark have met face-to-face to discuss the campaign. No decisions were made at the California meeting because Clark is still considering a run for president. Clark is scheduled to make a speech Sept.19 at the University of Iowa, when many political insiders expect him to announce his intentions.

"Most of our conversations have been around my getting advice on defense, and sometime he asks me about domestic issues," Dean said in an interview yesterday. "This is a guy I like a lot. I think he`s certainly going to be on everybody`s list if he`s not the presidential nominee himself." Dean declined to discuss their private conversations.

While it would represent a gamble for both men to team up so early in the campaign, such a move would rattle an already unpredictable nomination campaign. Dean and Clark have two things in common that if combined could prove formidable among Democratic voters: They both opposed the war in Iraq, and both are generating excitement on the Internet and with grass-roots activists.

But a Dean-Clark alliance would also underscore the relative inexperience that both men have in national campaigns. Clark has never run for political office, and Dean has created controversy for his off-the-cuff remarks last week on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last week, Dean said the United States should not "take sides" in the Middle East conflict and said that an "enormous" number of Israeli settlements would have to be dismantled as part of a peace agreement. Yesterday, Dean shifted course, saying the settlements should be left to negotiators.

The governor`s original comments angered a number of Jewish leaders and drew rebukes from two rivals, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Dean came under fire yesterday from a group of House Democrats for his comments on the Middle East. "This is not a time to be sending mixed messages," the Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), wrote to Dean.

Dean has increasingly talked up Clark as a possible running mate or as a presidential candidate, pointing to the general`s 33-year military record, which included a victory in Kosovo as commander of NATO forces in Europe. Dean`s laudatory comments have fueled speculation among top Democrats that the two men might join forces soon on a Dean-Clark 2004 campaign.

Dean`s campaign played down the significance of the talks. "I am certain along the way we have made it clear we would welcome General Clark`s support in the campaign, but I am assuming other Democratic campaigns have done the same," said Joe Trippi, Dean`s campaign manager. Trippi refused to discuss the meeting in California.

Other Democratic candidates have reached out to Clark, too, with Kerry talking to him by phone during the last week. But none apparently has courted the general as aggressively as Dean, a Clark adviser said. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he has not talked to Clark in weeks and would welcome him into the race. "I never worry about who`s in the race," Gephardt said.

Clark has been making the rounds of Democratic donors and Washington insiders for months as part of his exploration of a presidential campaign. More recently, he has been meeting with Democratic strategists who have expertise in managing presidential campaigns. Among those to whom he has reached out are Mark Fabiani, who ran the communications operation for Al Gore`s 2000 campaign and worked in the Clinton White House.

If Clark joins the presidential race, which some prominent Democrats predict he will do, he would become the 10th candidate. Still other Democrats think Clark will not run, partly because he would enter well behind Dean in both fundraising and grass-roots support. Clark has sent mixed signals in recent days, leaving some Democrats he has talked to with the impression that he is in, others with a suspicion that he is out.

Recent polls show nearly two-thirds of voters cannot name even one of the nine candidates, so there is room for a new candidate to move, some strategists think. But recent polls show Clark is not widely known and would enter near the back of the pack.

He would not enter empty-handed. DraftWesleyClark.com officials said they have generated pledges of more than $1 million for a Clark campaign. Dean`s campaign has said it will raise at least $10 million this quarter and other campaign strategists expect that number to be significantly higher.

The Draft Clark organization has begun running 60-second commercial spots in Iowa, New Hampshire and Clark`s home state of Arkansas, prodding Clark to run. Another Clark organization reports having grass-roots groups in numerous states.



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An Iraqi policeman guarded a looted Information Ministry building in Baghdad on Aug. 17. U.S. troops are handing security duties in the capital to less experienced and Iraqi forces.
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Iraqi Security Takes Shaky First Steps
U.S. Troops` Presence in Baghdad Fades With Transfer of Guard Duties to Anxious Local Forces

By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A18


BAGHDAD -- Razor wire and piles of sandbags remain on streets throughout Baghdad, but the U.S. forces who erected the barriers have become a less visible presence in the Iraqi capital.

Baghdad retains the militaristic look of a postwar city in transition, with heightened security in response to recent car bombings and other brazen attacks. More Iraqis, however, dressed in new uniforms and carrying U.S.-issued AK-47 assault rifles, are now guarding former U.S. military positions, and private Iraqi firms are protecting hotels and municipal buildings across the city.

The interim government has said that controlling security is an important step toward self-rule and has pushed to have more Iraqis performing those jobs. But lacking equipment and experience, many Iraqis appear anxious in their new roles.

At the Health Ministry`s Central Public Health Lab, pieces of rock placed in a straight line serve as a barrier to prevent cars from parking near the entrance. The Iraqi guards jump to attention when cars pull up to the building`s front gates.

"We fear car bombs," said Sgt. Qays Ghali, a guard with the facility protection service, a security force created by the Interior Ministry to guard government sites.

U.S. soldiers left the detail, which includes a hospital next door and one across the street, about two weeks ago, Ghali said. He is in constant touch with the Americans, who have promised to give him radios and barbed wire. "We have these rifles," he said. "Just the Kalashnikovs and men with Kalashnikovs."

The retrenchment of U.S. forces in some parts of the city has given U.S. soldiers fewer opportunities to mingle with Iraqis. Honer Ali, 14, who speaks with his hands on his hips, used to work as a runner for the U.S. soldiers, getting them cold sodas, changing money and charming them with English phrases such as "trust me."

Ali said he missed the Americans. "I had a soldier friend who left for the U.S., and he gave me a watch and said, `Whenever you look at this watch, you have to remember me,` " said Ali, beaming brightly. "Not only when I look at the watch, I remember him always."

Iraqis who have assumed responsibility for important sites are eager to leave their imprint on security. Ali Abdul Kareem, security manager at the Central Bank of Iraq, an eight-building complex along the busy marketplace of Rashid Street, said he wanted to replace the nearly three-foot-tall wire fence and maze of sand barriers put up by the Americans with other deterrents.

"When you go to the Central Bank of America you`ll see a beautiful looking building," said Kareem, a retired army general. "So we want to make that here, a good-looking building with good protection."

Kareem said he planned to install cameras on the walls when the security situation settled. "That will be very soon," he said. "I`m sure of that."

With U.S. soldiers no longer at the sprawling complex, only well-chiseled Iraqi men in uniforms and blue berets patrolled the courtyard this week. Workers outside put the finishing touches on a new guard post.

U.S. Army Sgt. Felipe Leal, 28, of Kennedy, Tex., who used to be part of the security detail at the bank complex, remembered when two Bradley Fighting Vehicles were parked at each entrance of the courtyard and no one was allowed inside. U.S. soldiers lingered on the roof and nervously patrolled the complex in search of assailants.

"Now, we feel a little more at ease," said Leal, a member of 3rd Squadron of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He watched five Iraqi boys who had gathered at the feet of two U.S. soldiers sitting on the hood of a Humvee. "When the children used to come up to us at first, we said stay back. Some of the Iraqi security guards come and talk to us. They look at our equipment and we look at theirs."

Sgt. Bryan Morrow, 23, of Atlanta, stood guard at a site near the Agriculture Ministry, but he noted that the Iraqi protection force inside the building was the first line of defense. "If they get killed, then we start shooting," he said. "We`re starting to turn everything over to the Iraqis."

Morrow said more sand barriers were planned for a section of the building that was protected now only with razor wire. A chain-link fence is planned for the top of the sand barrier to prevent assailants from throwing grenades. "As we get more materials, we upgrade force protections every chance we get," he said.

"In a sense it`s to protect us, but once we withdraw, it`s to protect the Iraqi people," said Morrow, a member of the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Armored Division.

Many sites that were once hot spots and had a larger military presence have grown quieter, and fewer troops are on stationary duty. Along Haifa Street, a busy strip of apartments and government buildings, an explosion and subsequent gunfire from U.S. troops in July killed two Iraqis and injured 12, and angry residents set a U.S. military vehicle on fire. Three U.S. troops were also wounded in the blast.

This week there was only one tank on Haifa Street, parked next to a bank. At his candy booth near a government building, Ali Khaddar, 40, has a clear view of the tank.

"They better come here again," Khudair said of the U.S. troops. "Sometimes bad groups come from the other side of the street to steal. It`s better with the Americans."

Down the street in front of an Education Ministry building, snipers used to patrol the rooftop, and a tank parked in front trained its gunner on anyone who approached. Now, two metal desks block the front gate, and Iraqis in uniform with AK-47s sit in front of the building.

Twenty-nine guards protect the building and a nearby water pumping station, said Shehab Ahmed, 30, a security adviser. More are needed, he said, complaining about the departure of the U.S. tank. A mortar shell was recently fired near the building.

"We don`t have any weapons, only rifles, and they attacked us with mortars and RPGs," Ahmed said, using the shorthand for rocket-propelled grenades. "So what can we do?"

On a narrow sidewalk in the Karrada shopping district, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle has been a steady fixture outside of a branch of the Rafidian Bank since June. Inside, Pfc. George Lopez, 22, of Salt Lake City, listened for radio traffic, but there was only silence.

Meanwhile, several Iraqi guards milled around outside the building, directing customers and conducting searches. "They`re starting to do more of their job," said Lopez, a solider with the 1st Armored Division, "so our job has become less and less."




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Troop Help In Iraq Tied To Broader U.N. Role


By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A18


UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 10 -- To win U.N. Security Council support essential to the deployment of new foreign troops to Iraq, the Bush administration must surrender a central political role to the United Nations, according to diplomats girding for the latest confrontation over Iraq`s future.

The United Nations, rather than the U.S.-led occupation authority, should be the institution that oversees the return of Iraq to Iraqi control, and the process should be accelerated, according to well-placed U.N. officials and diplomats who intend to test the Bush administration`s intentions in coming days.

President Bush, who has opposed a central political role for the United Nations since before the war in Iraq began, has not revealed how much power the administration is prepared to cede. "We`re open for suggestions," he said today, urging opposing governments not to "get caught up in past bickering."

As the foreign ministers of the five veto-wielding Security Council members prepare to debate the Iraq question in Geneva on Saturday, the U.S. administration appears to be making progress in its bid to win council support for a multinational military force under U.S. command, diplomats said.

The political side of the equation is more troublesome, with a battle for influence brewing in the carefully chosen phrases of competing draft Security Council resolutions. The administration intends to preserve its position in Iraq and the authority of U.S. occupation coordinator L. Paul Bremer.

"We want Jerry Bremer to be involved in this," a senior administration official said tonight. Fresh language proposed by France and Germany called for the United Nations to be granted primary responsibility for directing the establishment of an Iraqi government that would gradually take command.

The United Nations would also be assigned to coordinate the timing of a transfer of authority from occupation forces to Iraqis. Assigning the task to the United Nations -- rather than the U.S. government that overthrew Iraqi president Saddam Hussein -- would enhance the project`s credibility in the eyes of Iraqis and residents of neighboring countries suspicious of the nearby U.S. nation-building effort, diplomats said.

"When the new government is born, it`s born under the umbrella of the U.N.," said one senior U.N. diplomat who wants a stronger role for the world body. Accusing the Bush administration of seeking international help without yielding sufficient authority, he scoffed, "the Americans want to have their cake and eat it, too."

Despite the warning signs of a renewed diplomatic fight, some diplomats said they see more room for meaningful compromise than in the past. The French and German resolution does not, for example, call for control over postwar Iraq to be transferred from the United States to the United Nations, as French leaders have often suggested.

The administration is eager to win passage of a resolution that gives a U.N. mandate to the troubled and costly postwar occupation effort currently dominated by U.S. troops and civilian personnel. Without a more obviously multilateral effort, many countries have been unwilling to contribute significant forces or the billions of dollars needed to stabilize and rebuild the country.

U.S. forces are struggling to contain armed resistance in parts of the country and provide security essential to the work of international organizations and Iraqis themselves. American taxpayers are largely alone in paying the tens of billions of dollars necessary to support U.S. forces and the reconstruction effort.

As diplomats lay the foundation for an Iraqi donors conference in Madrid on Oct. 24, governments have said they want more control and greater security if they are expected to make large financial commitments. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today, "We`re encouraging all of our friends to come to this conference in a spirit of trying to do as much as they can."

In debating a new resolution, one critical question among the Americans is how quickly Iraqi sovereignty is transferred from the U.S. occupation to the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. Another issue is the degree of U.N. control over the political timetable and the way a U.N. special representative assigned to guide Iraqi political development would relate to Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority that runs Iraq.

Senior U.N. officials want to make sure that, whatever the outcome, the role for U.N. personnel is clearer than it is now. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the Geneva meeting in part to urge the five permanent Security Council members -- China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States -- to develop a workable consensus that does not leave things vague.

This is a particularly sensitive time for the United Nations, less than a month after the Aug. 19 terrorist bombing of its Baghdad headquarters, which killed chief representative Sergio Vieira de Mello. U.N. staffers, feeling bruised, say they are wary of returning to Iraq in large numbers without a clear purpose and a role visibly independent of the U.S.-led occupation.

As it stands now, Bremer is the civilian coordinator of an economic and political rebuilding process in Iraq that is dominated by the United States, with assists from Britain and representatives of other countries.



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Two Years Later, Abroad . . .

Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A22


THE FIRST LESSON of Sept. 11, 2001, was that the United States could no longer allow its enemies to choose the place and time of battle. In retrospect it is hard to fathom that this nation knowingly allowed thousands of people to train -- unimpeded and over many years -- to kill Americans. Yet the obtuseness that allowed the terrorist camps to operate openly in Afghanistan was bipartisan: President Bush was no more inclined during his first months in office to destroy them than President Clinton had been. After 9/11 the camps` continued existence became almost as unthinkable to most Americans as a preemptive strike against Afghanistan would have been before. There will be other terrorist attacks on this country, but the absence of successful strikes during the past two years owes something to the absorption of this first lesson.

The second lesson is harder and has been slower to sink in: that attacking the terrorists on their turf is essential to U.S. security but hardly sufficient as a strategy of overseas engagement. It is not true, as too many people now thoughtlessly declare, that the military campaigns against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein`s regime were the "easy part." Both demanded political will. Both encountered obstacles during the fighting that prompted predictions of failure. Both in the end succeeded thanks to the skill and courage of U.S. and allied fighters, too many of whom gave their lives or limbs along the way.

It is true, though, that the military campaigns only created conditions for possible eventual success -- success that will come only if, unlike on too many past occasions, the United States continues to pay attention. Iraq is the controversial case at the center of Washington debate, but Afghanistan provides an equally vivid example. Most Afghans are better off without the Taliban, and there has been progress since the war ended: some foreign investment, some movement toward elections, some gains in training a national army. But in many parts of the nation, corrupt warlords remain in control, and in others the Taliban is seeking to regroup. Poppy cultivation is increasing. Fragile advances for girls and women are under attack.

You can criticize the administration, as we have, for insufficient commitment to reconstruction and security in Afghanistan. But honest critics have to acknowledge that any postwar policy, including taking on the warlords more aggressively, also would have been fraught with risks. You can criticize the postwar lapses in Iraq, as we do, or the decision to send forces there, which we supported. But again you have to acknowledge that leaving Saddam Hussein in power contained its own risks, and that seeking international allies now will not solve all problems. The world, and particularly that part of the world, is home to murderous enemies of the United States who will not easily be defeated.

And the challenge, as many Americans also now understand, extends far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. As the administration has come to articulate, what was initially called a war on terrorism is a struggle against terror motivated by Islamic fundamentalism -- and for democracy and modernity in the Islamic world. Those forces are competing from the madrasas of Pakistan to the jungles of Indonesia, from the autocracies of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the intolerant courtrooms of northern Nigeria. In most such battlefields, military force will not be a useful tool, but sustained American engagement will be no less essential than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether that lesson has been learned remains a worrisome question.



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Patriot (Act) Games




Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A22


"I SUPPORT DRAMATIC revision of the Patriot Act. The last thing we should be doing is turning over our privacy, our liberties, our freedom, our constitutional rights to John Ashcroft." So said North Carolina Sen. John Edwards during the Democratic presidential candidates debate in Baltimore Tuesday night. Surely, then, Mr. Edwards voted against the anti-terrorism law rushed through Congress after Sept. 11? Well, no. When he rose on the Senate floor to speak on the proposal two years ago, he said: "The bill is not perfect, but it is a good bill, it is important for the nation, and I am pleased to support it." Indeed, Mr. Edwards voted against all four amendments offered by Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) to ameliorate some of the civil liberties concerns that Mr. Edwards now seems to feel so keenly -- and that the Democratic audiences he is wooing respond to with such fervor.

In Baltimore, Mr. Edwards decried "the notion that they are going to libraries to find out what books people are checking out." But this authority existed prior to passage of the Patriot Act; the law extends it to national security investigations, which isn`t unreasonable, and requires court approval. The Justice Department should be more forthcoming with numbers, and vigilance on behalf of privacy is certainly in order, but there`s no evidence to date of baseless government snooping. And Mr. Edwards voted against a Feingold amendment that would have given extra protections to libraries.

It`s time, in short, for a little bit of reality, and not just from Mr. Edwards, about two favorite, related targets of the Democratic candidates: the Patriot Act and the attorney general. We`ve got our problems with both. The Patriot Act was hastily drafted and is susceptible to abuse, which is why it was important that the law`s major provisions expire unless Congress votes to renew, and why congressional oversight is critical. Mr. Ashcroft and the Justice Department have been insensitive to civil liberties concerns, especially in the area of rounding up terrorism suspects, delaying release of those cleared of suspicion and denying the right to counsel of those who are suspected or accused. The fault, however, lies not with the Patriot Act but with the administration`s interpretation of other powers. Democrats are wrong when they ignore the dilemma that led them to support the Patriot Act: how to stop terrorists before they strike without abandoning cherished civil liberties.

And they err in making Mr. Ashcroft their all-purpose bogeyman. Tuesday night Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry -- who at least has the good grace to acknowledge his vote in favor of the Patriot Act -- noted, as he surveyed the debate audience, that there were "people from every background, every creed, every color, every belief, every religion. This is, indeed, John Ashcroft`s worst nightmare here." Mr. Kerry got his laugh, but he sullied himself in the process.

Democrats have enough to run on against President Bush. They don`t need to ignore their records, stray from the facts or take such cheap shots to make their case.



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What`s Going Right


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A23


For two years the United States has waged a furious campaign to put the forces of terrorism on the defensive in the Middle East and Central Asia. The second anniversary of 9/11 marks an appropriate moment for the Bush administration to consolidate the gains it has achieved and mold them into a strategy of regional containment.

Until Sunday night President Bush was clearer on vision than on strategy in describing his intentions in Afghanistan and Iraq. But his somber speech to the nation, and an earlier decision to seek greater involvement of the United Nations in Iraq, indicate new and more focused thinking at the White House.

Absent Sunday was the off-putting hubris that followed the quick collapse of Saddam Hussein`s regular army last spring. The president also put aside his sweeping vision of democracy flowering throughout the Middle East if things go well in Iraq. He spoke instead of the financial burden that Americans must shoulder to make sure things do go well in Iraq.

The $87 billion price tag that Bush finally put on the next phases of the pacification of Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have been taken in stride by the public, according to initial vox populi interviews of citizens conducted by newspapers and broadcast media.

The new sea of red ink is depicted and broadly accepted as one more obstacle to be navigated in the challenging new world ushered in by al Qaeda`s airborne attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The measured public response is another indicator of the failure of the crazed dream of Osama bin Laden`s band of fanatics to bring the United States to its knees through spectacular terror strikes here and abroad.

Terrorism operates from a template. It is intended to provoke paralyzing fear, anger and humiliation and to break the will of a population on which atrocities are visited. But the reaction to terror once the initial outrage and horror fade is far less predictable than the terrorists imagine.

Some societies do break apart on existing fault lines, as Lebanon did in the 1970s and as the car bombers of Baghdad and Najaf hope Iraq will. But other nations adjust and contain the terrorist threat, as Britain did against the Irish Republican Army, as India has in Kashmir and as the United States now does in the greater Middle East.

There is, of course, a crucial difference when the world`s only remaining superpower is doing the responding. America`s actions reshape the international environment and force other nations to adjust, whether they want to or not. Bush`s brash, no-nonsense leadership style added to the sense of injury felt at the United Nations and elsewhere as he moved inexorably to invade Iraq last March.

The modest proposals contained in the new U.S. draft resolution on Iraq have met with a generally positive reception at the United Nations, even though they are more cosmetic than cosmic. They are intended to change the atmosphere in the Security Council more than the balance of forces on the ground in Iraq. That would be a welcome step forward.

In the resolution, the United States and Britain seek explicit U.N. legitimacy for the Governing Council of 25 Iraqis they have already put in place. In addition, they hope the resolution would provide political cover to India, Pakistan, Turkey or other nations to provide a total of 15,000 to 20,000 peacekeeping troops to form a multinational division that would operate under U.S. command.

France, the swing country on the Security Council, seems prepared to support a resolution that accomplishes both those purposes if it also contains a commitment to an urgent transfer of sovereignty to the Governing Council -- a body Paris once openly disdained. The exact political role of a new special U.N. representative is the main sticking point to be resolved in high-level talks to be held in Geneva on Saturday.

In Cairo this week, the Arab League voted to seat the Governing Council`s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, who is a Kurd. The decision represents a small step toward tolerance and/or realism by Arab regimes. In New Delhi, Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli prime minister to receive a public (and warm) welcome from an Indian government that is increasingly showing its concern about the linkages between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

The world is beginning to absorb and adapt to the changes that the determined U.S. response to 9/11 has created abroad. This is a moment when more disciplined political leadership and more skillful diplomacy from Washington can bring dividends and should be pursued.

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Amateurs and Zealots


By Richard Cohen

Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A23


"Never explain, never complain," Henry Ford II said after wrecking a car that was not a Ford, accompanied by a lovely woman who was not his wife. This mantra, not original with Ford and always handy, could be the motto of the Bush administration. It has veered from one policy to another, changed direction on a dime, said one thing and done another -- all without complaining or explaining.

Particularly on foreign policy, George Bush has been all over the place. During the presidential campaign, he denigrated nation-building -- he would do no such thing. Now we are up to our eyeballs in building a nation in Iraq, where, it could be argued, there never was one to begin with. The gun, not the ballot box, is what held that nation together.

Bush and company disparaged the United Nations. Now we seek its imprimatur for the occupation of Iraq. The administration told our European allies -- the "Old" Europe of Don Rumsfeld`s scorn -- to kiss off. Now we`d like their troops and money for the effort in Iraq. Rumsfeld, in fact, became the face of a new, pugnacious diplomacy -- our way or the highway -- which now has been muted. The administration has gone from Jerry Springer to Dale Carnegie in a wink -- from in-your-face to kissy-poo, just like that.

Pragmatism and politics go hand in hand. FDR championed a balanced budget; so did Ronald Reagan -- and they both took the government into debt. Bill Clinton personified big government and then pronounced the era of big government over. Papa Bush asked us to read his lips, no new taxes, and then hiked them. Presidents, like parents, lovers and pension managers, sometimes break promises.

But Bush is a different kind of president because he is a different kind of man. No one, for instance, questioned Clinton`s intelligence or his knowledge. Bush, though, was widely viewed as slight, particularly unschooled in foreign affairs, where, above all, he was incurious, unquestioning and -- as we have learned -- unprepared. Always, though, he was certain.

That certainty was certainly misplaced. Bush`s foreign policy is a shambles -- a war against the wrong enemy (Iraq and not worldwide terrorism), for the wrong reasons (where are those weapons of mass destruction?), a debacle in postwar Iraq (who are those terrorists?), a Middle Eastern road map to nowhere (wasn`t Iraq going to make it all so easy?) and a string of statements about nearly everything (the cost of rebuilding Iraq, for instance) that have proved either untrue or just plain dumb. To make matters worse, truth-tellers have been punished while liars and fog merchants have remained in office.

Who in the administration paid a price for having the president tell the nation about nonexistent yellowcake uranium? No one. Who got whacked for preposterous manpower numbers for the occupation of Iraq? Funny you should ask. The guy who told the truth, Gen. Eric Shinseki. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz remain. In the Pentagon, the truth will really make you free.

For Bush, the danger is that this sorry record will revive the cartoon persona of a dummy -- not the steady custodian of our national security, as he seemed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, but a man without judgment, a naif who was manipulated by a cadre of hawks. For the rest of us, the danger is that the caricature was spot on, so obvious it was disregarded.

America is not a particularly ideological country. We simply like the job done, and pragmatism is generally admired. But foreign affairs is not Tom Edison`s laboratory -- if this won`t work, maybe that will -- but an area where lives are lost and nations suffer. It is not a field for amateurs or zealots -- and the Bush administration is proving itself to have a surplus of both.

George Bush won last time out because Al Gore lost. He won at a time when the world seemed safe, when it was unimaginable that the World Trade Center would become a hole in the ground. He won because he seemed the more genuine man, an aw-shucks guy who we could take a chance on. We took the chance.

But these recent changes in course -- the dash to the U.N., the revised costs of rebuilding Iraq -- may represent Bush`s last chance. In diplomacy, in foreign affairs, in the waging of war and maybe in protecting America, he has made mistake after mistake. Like Henry Ford II, he may never complain and he may never explain. But when you look back, there`s still a wreck in the road.

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Lieberman Looks Ahead


By George F. Will

Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A23


All candidates for a party`s presidential nomination should be Orthodox Jews, at least while campaigning. They would all have a duty, as Joseph Lieberman does, to repair to their hearths from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday, for a needed respite from the physical and moral wear-and-tear of incessant pandering to the party`s most ideologically demanding cadre, its nominating electorate.

Actually, Lieberman needs this respite less than his rivals, because he panders less, having a long record of centrism at the national level. That is his perhaps insurmountable problem.

A comparison with Sen. Scoop Jackson in 1976 is imperfect but instructive. Jackson`s strong stands on national security issues were unpalatable to the party that four years earlier had nominated George McGovern. Today the Democratic base is in a similar distemper that Howard Dean`s campaigning is deepening.

This distemper -- President Bush is as bad as it is possible to be, and Attorney General John Ashcroft is worse -- calls to mind an exasperated Englishman`s characterization of the Irish as people who "do not gladly suffer common sense." To much of the Democrats` activist cadre, this, from Lieberman in the recent debate in New Mexico, is insufferable: "I believe that the war against Saddam was right, and that the world is safer with him gone." Never mind that most of the country agrees with that.

Dean has been the Democrats` flavor of the month for many months. Initially he got abundant media coverage, the theme of which was how difficult it was for a small-state former governor, supposedly the political equivalent of a country church mouse, to get coverage. Now he gets abundant coverage partly because he says so many overripe things, such as this: "John Ashcroft is a descendant of Joseph McCarthy." That is distilled Deanism: It couples two of the Democratic left`s fright figures in one sentence that, considered calmly, as the Democratic left is unlikely to do, is not so much false as unintelligible.

Lieberman`s wager is that he can finish no higher than third in Iowa and New Hampshire and still be nominated. He says "my opportunity" is the cluster of seven events the week after New Hampshire. His task is to be the -- definite article, the -- alternative. That means being the last man, besides Dean, standing after Iowa and New Hampshire.

If Dean wins neither place, he is done, and neither Richard Gephardt nor John Kerry, having probably won one each (Iowa and New Hampshire respectively), is invincible. If Dean wins both -- arguably the ideal outcome for Lieberman -- Gephardt and Kerry are done. Then Lieberman can hope to prevail with the less liberal electorates in Delaware, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico and especially South Carolina, where perhaps 40 percent of primary participants will be African Americans.

If Lieberman wins South Carolina, it will be partly because, he says, "a certain bonding" with African Americans occurred in the 2000 campaign. It also will be partly because of the resonance among blacks of his religiosity. And it will be partly, he says, a reprise of 1960, when Lieberman, then 18, watched John Kennedy trying to become the first Catholic elected president. Lieberman recalls thinking: "If he does well, he opens doors for all of us." African Americans, he thinks, may feel the same about the first Jewish candidate for president from a major political party.

Mark Penn, pollster for Lieberman`s campaign, is nimble at the art of finding silver linings on clouds. He says, in effect: Pity poor Dean. He has already been on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Are they apt to do that again, even if he wins early contests? And Penn notes that Dean`s Vermont has "no inner city problems Democrats can relate to," and a budget too small to pose problems that can test a chief executive.

In 2000 Lieberman, embracing his role as Al Gore`s running mate, emulated Henri of Navarre, the French sovereign who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism to preserve his power, blithely explaining that "Paris is well worth a mass." For Lieberman, being on the ticket was worth trimming on some issues (tempering his criticism of Hollywood`s cultural coarsening, backing away from school choice through vouchers).

Dean fancies himself a bold risk-taker as he tells Democratic activists exactly what they want to hear. It is, sad to say, really risky in today`s Democratic Party, which is tethered to teachers` unions, for Lieberman to say that he will soon vote for legislation to establish an experimental voucher program for the poor children caught in the District of Columbia`s disastrous schools.

[e-mail]




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Gerade richtig zur Mittagspause 127 frische Cartoons heute.
http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030911__127toons.htm

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How We Lost The Vote - How To Get It Back Again


by Lynn Landes

OpEdNews.Com



Walden O`Dell wrote a letter the other day. He wrote a fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans. And, in that letter O`Dell said that he was, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year."



Walden O`Dell is the Chairman of the Board of Diebold Election Systems, the second largest company in America whose business it is - to count your vote.



O`Dell`s letter should serve as a call to action for Americans, and for citizens around the world, who have surrendered their elections to technology and those who control it. American tax dollars are helping to fund a worldwide conversion from paper ballots to computer and Internet voting. The effort to promote electronic elections is being led by three international organizations: The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. IFES was founded in 1987 by the late F. Clifton White, a high-ranking Republican Party official who is credited with turning the GOP into a bastion of right wing conservatives.



Today, the right to vote in America is held hostage by technology - a technology that stands between the voter and a real ballot - a technology that delivers only circumstantial evidence of a vote while people push buttons, punch holes, throw levers, and dial-up.



What is a real vote? In many countries it`s a paper ballot that you can touch and mark and know who you voted for, that gets hand counted at the end of the day by local election officials in full view of fellow citizens and poll watchers...all engaged in safeguarding your right to a free and fair election. But in America today, a vote is an electronic image, or an indecipherable punch card, or a paper tab that lever machines produce. Do we need both man and machine counting the votes? And if that`s the case, whose count should prevail in the end?



It`s not just political elections that are threatened by voting technology. The expanding use of the Internet to elect the leaders of our civic associations, business groups, and labor organizations... threatens the very fabric of our society. For the companies and individuals who control voting technology can come from anywhere and everywhere, unhindered by government restrictions or oversight or accountability. Last spring Election.com, an Internet voting company, was purchased by Osan, Ltd., a group of Saudi investors. In the year 2000, Election.com was used to count the votes in the Arizona Democratic Primary. Although another company, Accenture, has recently purchased the public sector portion of Election.com, that still leaves the private sector. Election.com has about 600 customers who use its Internet voting service, including the Democratic National Committee, the Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, the Sierra Club, and the Florida Bar.



We are in a constitutional crisis. Our right to vote for our political leaders and to have our votes counted properly is not just in jeopardy - there is mounting evidence that it has slipped away.



How did we get in this mess? It all started about 100 years ago. In 1892, the lever voting machine was first used in Lockport, New York. By the 1930`s most large cities were using these machines. In 1964, electronic scanners and computers entered the voting process. It was also in 1964 that pre-election polling and exit polls began to dominate the news. And although polling data can be used to raise red flags where election fraud may have occurred, polls can also be used to create false expectations and in the case of exit polling, data can, and some say was, used to legitimize rigged election results.



Today, we`re being told that touchscreen machines and Internet voting will make the process of voting quicker and safer. But in the 2000 election, Canada hand counted their paper ballots in four hours without suffering any of the boondoggles that continue to plague our electronic elections. Even if it took four days or four weeks to count ballots, democracy is not on a stop watch, where time is more important than how the race is won. And how the race is won, is at issue.



There is a long history of voting machine irregularities that span the last several decades. They have been documented in the Saltman Report, the book VoteScam, the landmark article Pandora`s Box, and in countless reports and news stories. And, although we may prefer that this not be a partisan issue, voting machine irregularities appear to overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates. This was alarmingly apparent in 2002, when 74% of the upset elections went to Republican candidates. Many of the Republican upset victories were well outside of the margin of error of the pre-election polling.



Who sells and services voting machines and technology is beginning to attract a lot of attention. Only U.S. citizens can vote... but anyone can count your vote, including felons and foreigners, political candidates and office holders, news organizations and defense industries. Many voting systems companies have partnerships and agreements with each other, making it difficult to separate one from the other.



As the situation stands today, three corporations (Election Systems and Software - ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia) sell and service the machines and software that counts about 80% of the electronic vote in the U.S..



ES&S, the nation`s largest voting company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald Company and has solid ties to the Republican Party. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was the past president of American Information Systems, the company that counted the votes in his first election. AIS then merged with Business Records Corporation to form ES&S, which then proceeded to count the votes in Senator Hagel`s second election. At that time, it has been reported, that the Senator had a substantial financial interest in the company.



Sequoia is owned by De La Rue, a British-based company whose machines will count the votes in more California counties than any other company in the upcoming recall election. De La Rue is the world`s largest commercial security printer and papermaker and owns a 20% stake in Camelot, the operator of the Great Britain`s National Lottery.



The Internet voting business is dominated by two corporations: Accenture, which is based in the British territory of Bermuda, and VoteHere from Seattle, Washington. The U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded a coalition of corporations, led by Accenture, the contract to provide the Internet service that will count the votes of the U.S. military and other civilians in the 2004 presidential election. As many as 6 million voters could use their system. Accenture was formally known as Andersen Consulting, a subsidiary of Arthur Andersen, a company convicted of destroying evidence in the Enron scandal. A major business partner of Accenture`s is Halliburton, Vice president Dick Cheney`s former employer.



The current Chairman of VoteHere, the leading worldwide supplier of Internet voting technology, is Admiral Bill Owens, a former senior military assistant to both Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Ex-CIA director Robert Gates, who was caught up in the Iran Contra scandal, also sits on the VoteHere board.



But there are many other corporations that work with the top voting companies and therefore have a piece of the action. It`s a who`s who of corporate America, a corporate America that we are routinely reminded doesn`t want to pay taxes, likes to cook the books, and frequently engages in predatory business practices. Some of the companies who want to count your vote include: Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and various military defense companies, such as Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Unisys, National Semiconductor, and Perot Systems Government Services. Yes, even Ross Perot wants to count your vote.



The new kid on the block is Populex, which is creating an electronic voting system for Illinois. It has on its advisory board, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle Group. Carlucci was the former Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, a Deputy Director of the CIA during the Carter Administration, and also worked in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Carlucci`s business partner is former President George H.W. Bush.



The boards of many of these companies are dominated by top donors to the Republican Party, former high ranking military officers, and several ex-CIA directors. The CIA directors include: James Woolsey, Bobby Ray Inman, and John Deutch, and as mentioned before, Robert Gates and Frank Carlucci. The CIA, it should be remembered, has a decades-long track record of assisting in the brutal overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world.



Some of the largest companies in the elections industry are privately held and therefore not open to scrutiny by investors or the public. And in a similar vein, the software used by voting systems companies to count your vote, is also not open to inspection... except by three individuals selected by a private non-profit organization called, The National Association of State Election Directors, which has close ties to the elections industry.



So, today, in most voting precincts, there is nothing for the poll watchers to watch, nothing for Federal Observers to observe, and no real opportunity to discover if votes are being altered and if election fraud is being committed. In many cases, there is no paper ballot or paper trail of any kind, eliminating the possibility of a recount or an audit. When legal challenges to election results do occur, these companies can and do go to court and successfully shield their technology from inspection by claiming proprietary rights. And even if their technology is open to inspection, the manipulation of votes can occur in an endless variety of ways and remain undetected.



The lack of transparency and accountability of voting technology in use today makes the Voting Rights Act of 1967 and its enforcement...moot...and that fact alone..one would think... would set the stage for a solid legal challenge. But to date there has been no litigation filed using that argument. Strangely enough, voting rights groups like Common Cause and the ACLU of Southern California have actually adopted policies in opposition to paper ballots. And some organizations for the disabled are taking a similar position. "Total access" to voting is really code language for imposing on the electorate a paperless voting process that provides no security against election fraud or technical failure.



Where does the federal government come into the picture? Nowhere, really. There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority over the elections industry. There are no restrictions on who can own or operate a voting systems company. There are no mandatory federal standards for voting technology, and no federal certification of that technology. Meanwhile, the states are relying on guidelines and a certification process that are essentially controlled by the industry. The free-market is in control of our elections and the result is that the process has been privatized and our votes are up for grabs.

Congress has made the situation worse. With no safeguards in place, The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) allocated $3.8 billion to encourage states to buy the latest voting technologies - touchscreen machines and Internet voting. These technologies, like the ones that have gone before them, are an open invitation to vote fraud and technical failure, except on a massive scale. And particularly, with the introduction of Internet voting, we are truly entering the Land of Oz where one person can literally control elections across the country.

The right to vote and to have your vote counted properly is the centerpiece of our democracy. Yet, most people today say that they don`t believe that their vote really counts. And perhaps, they`re right. Perhaps they`ve sensed it intuitively. Perhaps, when they look at our elected leaders, out of touch with the needs of most voters, unwilling to break with wealthy donors, they have every reason to suspect that elections are a charade to convince voters that the power lies in their hands, when it truly rests elsewhere. The concealment, the secrecy, the non-transparency, inherent in the use of any machine - mechanical, electrical, computerized, or the Internet - is counter to a process where local public oversight is a critical component to ensure our right to free and fair elections. Instead, voters are told that they should trust...trust in their election officials to pick an honest company with sound technology. But faith and trust was not what our forefathers had in mind when they created a government of checks and balances. With our current voting process, those checks and balances are a distant memory.



What can be done? Speak out. Educate those around you. Most people haven`t given this issue a second thought. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice should be sued for failure to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The exclusive use of technology to vote, technology that counts votes in a manner that cannot be observed, violates your rights. If technology is used, it should provide the voter with paper ballot that the voter verifies and then gets hand counted at the local precinct. And no election should depend on electricity or technology. If the power shuts off, the election should go on. But, speaking for myself, it seems that voting technology creates more problems than it solves.



As I look out over this room, full of concerned citizens...as I receive a steady stream of calls and emails...and see an increasing number of news stories about this issue, perhaps a second American revolution is on its way. A revolution to take back the vote. And it couldn`t begin in a better place than Philadelphia.


http://www.opednews.com/landes_how_we_lost_the_vote.htm

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Lynn Landes is the publisher of EcoTalk.org and a news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. Formerly Lynn was a radio show host for WDVR in New Jersey and a regular commentator for a BBC radio program. She can be reached at [phone] / [e-mail] This article is copyright by Lynn Landes, and originally published by opednews.com, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this entire credit paragraph is attached.

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Bush To Have Pledge Drive For Iraq
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WASHINGTON (IWR Satire) -- Scott McClelland announced today that President Bush would be organizing an international pledge drive to help raise the billions of dollars needed to pay for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq.
"The President got the idea when he was watching his favorite show, Zoboomafoo, on PBS," said Mr. McClelland.

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September 10, 2003

Bush`s Conceptual Blunders
At the Gates of Hell
By TIM LLEWELLYN

The American-British invasion and occupation of Iraq has put the clock back eighty years and inaugurated a hellish prospect for both baffled occupiers and benighted inhabitants. The argument about whether the Iraqis will at some unspecified future date and after who knows what suffering be better off without Saddam Hussein, or whether the corrupt and violent order he imposed should have been allowed to continue until Iraqis could oust him themselves, is one that more concerns Western intellectuals than the bombed, battered, powerless, sweltering, diseased, thirsty, dirty, hopeless masses who are a majority of Iraq`s 26m. citizens.

After the assassination of the country`s most powerful Shi`ite leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, at the holy shrine of Najaf, an editorialist in a Jordanian daily wrote, "the gates of Iraq have now opened to hell."

Even the most optimistic and moderate Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war if the majority Shi`ite population break loose and turn on their Sunni Muslim brethren, elements of whom are being held responsible for the bombings, or themselves fracture into warring factions. Or both.

As the death toll of Iraqis and Allied soldiers continues, the question is: how can the occupiers and occupied work to close those gates to hell and prevent the sundering of Iraq into warring regions or areas at war with themselves? There are already signs that if this happens among the Arabs of Iraq the relatively stable Kurdish region in the north would break away, exacerbating the collapse of the nation and over-exciting the Kurds` watchful and nervous Turkish neighbours.

The prospect is awesome. The bulk of Iraq`s majority Shi`ite population and their leadership, under Ayatollah Baqer al-Hakim`s guidance, had with reservations decided to co-operate with the occupation forces, and stayed calm, though they resented the Americans` ineptness: the lack of security, the failure, as ever, of the occupying forces to listen to let alone heed advice, and their refusal to hand over as much security as possible to the Iraqi Shi`ites and their militias.

Whoever blew up the ayatollah may well have exploded this consensual and co-operative approach, intentionally.

Whether among the Sunni Muslims, in whose strongest areas around and west of Baghdad the most persistent resistance to occupation exists; or among the Shi`ite Muslims, whose ranks include the firebrand Moqtada Sadr, a popular young religious leader with his own little army, who believes in an Iranian-model clerically ruled state in Iraq; or between Sunni and Shi`ite factions, the ingredients for civil strife are plentiful.

The American occupation was misconceived and misapplied: too few of the wrong sort of troops, combat regiments with little or no peacekeeping experience; therefore there followed crude or slack security and policing; little known and unpopular exiled Iraqis were parachuted into positions of nascent power---they are for the large part seen in Iraq as collaborators, CIA stooges and exploiters; the failure to reconnect power and clean water; the strong indications that Iraq`s resources were up for American industrial grabs; the deep Iraqi mistrust of and resentment towards a superpower that seems preternaturally suspicious of Muslims, even of Islam itself, and which persists in virtually uncritical support of Israel and its brutal tactics in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Of all the United States` conceptual blunders in the Middle East, this failure to understand how deeply the Palestinian tragedy is engraved in the Arab psyche, and how it has become the starkest model of how the US grades the peoples of the Middle East (Israelis good, Arabs and Moslems bad), has been the greatest of them. It is even greater than the expectation that with Saddam Hussein`s regime toppled the Iraqis would crawl out of their rubble, bereavement and misery and stand to, smiling and cheering, to join enthusiastically and without delay the American plan for free-market democracy (including Iraq`s recognition of Israel).

It is from this mire of ignorance and self-deception that the United States (with Britain) has to extricate itself. It may well not be possible. The chances must remain great that the Americans will tire of the extraordinary expense of occupation---tens of billions of dollars a year as L.Paul Bremer, their proconsul, chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, put it (I estimate $56bn a year, including military costs); of the deaths; of the concomitant prejudice to George W. Bush`s chances of re-election next year; and that the United States will spin the perceived aim of the exercise as a successful military operation to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and give a knock to "terror", then cut and run.

This is tempting for Bush and his disappointed but presumably wiser neo-conservative advisers, but will be difficult to pull off. There are signs, therefore, that the Americans are groping hopefully for ways of sharing the burden if not the power more effectively with other nations, through the United Nations or even Nato, and handing responsibility more quickly back to the Iraqis. The US Administration is still obsessed with running the whole show, and should this remain a sine qua non the chances of a successful shift from occupation to liberation are sharply reduced.

How could it work?

Security comes first. The prime need is for a new United Nations Security Council resolution setting out a UN Mandate for Iraq, with a clear timetable for a constitution, a census, national elections within two years and speedy return to full Iraqi rule and Iraqi-administered security. An essential part of this initially will be a much larger international military force, with representations from nations that publicly opposed the invasion, including contributors from Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Jordan, and from other non-European countries such as India; Nato could play an important role here; the existing coalition force, primarily American, would have to remain the core of this force, for the time being, but its (inevitably) American chief could double as UN commander; a UN blue-helmet force could protect particular United Nations agencies and institutions.

A priority for the UN force must be the re-creation as soon as possible of the Iraqi Army (its disbandment was one of the Americans` crasser actions) and Iraqi local police forces, and tolerance of and co-operation with the main Shi`ite militia in predominantly Shi`ite areas south of and even in Baghdad, always assuming this opportunity was not blown away in the Najaf horror.

Intelligence is the key to good security. This comes from Iraqis, not outsiders. Most of us would prefer our police to be fellow citizens than foreigners, especially aliens who do not speak our language. Iraqis are no different, and it is condescending to think otherwise. However, it is going to be difficult to find reliable Iraqis to help publicly what still, even under United Nations aegis, looks like an American enterprise in disguise.

As all this-if it can---takes effect, Iraq`s public institutions and ministries must be reconstituted and given back to Iraqis. Under Saddam Hussein there was, below the upper echelons in which his suborned apparatchiks operated, a perfectly respectable and efficient executive class of civil servants and technocrats who delivered services to Iraqis---such as the food ration, electricity, water and education---as well as anyone could have given the near-13 years of privations and depredations brought by war and Western-applied economic sanctions. Iraq`s civil society, lawyers, teachers, doctors, administrators, lecturers---for there was one---must be resurrected. One of the worst canards the British have been bandying about is that Iraq has suffered thirty years of neglect. Whitehall knows better. Even in 1990, after eight years` war with Iran, Iraq was still one of the most advanced, best educated and healthiest nations in the Middle East.

The idea that Iraq is some primitive society that needs the wisdom of the West to bring it to civilised fruition bears no close examination. There also persist among our leaders misleading emphases: on the Ba`ath Party, as if Ba`athism itself rather than Saddam`s twisted and personalised version of it was responsible for Iraq`s plight; and on "Saddam loyalists", as if to resent or resist foreign occupation one has to be a creature of Saddam Hussein. To have been in the Ba`ath Party does not automatically criminalise a civil servant or lecturer and to shoot an American it is not necessary to be a supporter of Saddam Hussein.

There are indications that this thinking might be changing, at least among some Americans on the ground and in certain corridors of the State Department. These are trying to speed the political development of the Iraq governing council, and though it is seen by most Iraqis as a creature of Washington it does contain a minority of respected Iraqis: Adnan Pachachi, for example, a patrician Sunni former Foreign Minister; Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party; the Shi`ite cleric, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, though he suspended his membership after the Najaf tragedy. This body has now appointed a cabinet, belatedly, though early comment indicates that some of these ministers, many of them exiles or creatures of the exiles, are seen as place-men in an American hegemony. What is needed is an early prospect of elections and a provisional government that brings Iraqis into governance. This can only happen effectively under the guidance and supervision of the United Nations. However, the killing of the UN Secretary-General`s special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, on August 19 sends an ominous message to UN agencies and prospective UN personnel.

It is vital that Iraq produce political leaders that are home grown, that many of the exiles fade away. Few of them have much support inside Iraq---"they`re little more than carpetbaggers", one Iraqi professor told me. Again, though, how can national figures emerge without the taint of association with the American Occupation? The UN has to be visibly in charge. Neither must the Americans horde Iraq`s economic resources to themselves---nations that risk troops and civilian aides and experts in Iraq must share any rewards as well: they will have earned them.

It is hard to be optimistic.

This intervention in Iraq was for the wrong reasons by the wrong coalition, a former and an existing colonial power . The United States needed a scalp after September 11, Saddam Hussein fitted the bill, it seemed, a saleable idea in the US at any rate, and the now-muffled hawks in the Pentagon seized the day to try out their fantasies of spreading American-fashioned democracy throughout the Middle East, with Iraq as the model and launching pad, and with Israeli domination of the region a bonus.

How to disguise such a prospectus?

My fear is that the Iraqi people are stuck with the consequences of an occupation that can neither be deftly ended nor easily change its nature. Even if the Americans make genuine efforts to redistribute power, the anger and dissidence among the people may still deny them success, and ordinary Iraqis could well either support insurrection or be sufficiently apathetic not to resist it.

Reducing the US profile and content of this enterprise and making real the prospect of an Iraq run by and for Iraqis is the only hope; it is a forlorn one.

Tim Llewellyn is a former BBC Middle East Correspondent.

http://www.counterpunch.org/llewellyn09102003.html

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A video grab image from Al Jazeera television shows what it said to be new footage of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, shot in an unknown location, and shown on September 10, 2003. The footage was aired along with a separate audio tape in which another al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged more attacks on the United States. Photo by Al Jazeera Television via Reuters

Bin Laden: Make Iraq a Graveyard for U.S.
Thu September 11, 2003 12:13 AM ET


By Firouz Sedarat
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden made a surprise appearance in a videotape aired on Wednesday to mark the Sept. 11 attacks, along with his top aide who urged fighters to turn Iraq into a graveyard for American troops.

Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his right-hand man, were shown in a rare tape obtained by Al Jazeera Arabic television, descending a rocky mountainside as they steadied themselves with walking sticks, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

"To our struggling brothers in Iraq: we greet you and we pray to God to be on your side in fighting the crusaders," Ayman al-Zawahri, or someone sounding very much like him, said on the tape.

"God is with you and the entire nation supports you. Rely on God and devour the Americans just as lions do with their prey, and bury them in the graveyard of Iraq."

The tape had an audio message said to be from Saudi-born bin Laden in which he praised the 19 suicide hijackers who flew planes into New York`s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington two years ago on Thursday.

"Whoever wants to be taught about loyalty and honesty should have known them (the attackers)... They were the most honest and the bravest," he said.

Bin Laden said the panic caused by the attacks made "people wake up from their slumber and rise for jihad (holy war)."

Islamic songs echoed in the background on his audio tape.

The CIA and analysts around the world immediately began poring over the tapes to gauge their authenticity and scour them for clues of when and where they might have been made. Al Jazeera said the video was probably filmed in April or May.

Messages from al Qaeda leaders are often seen as a signal to supporters to mount attacks. FBI and U.S. Homeland Security officials warned last week of the threat of more al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

MORE ATTACKS

Zawahri said U.S. efforts to crush al Qaeda had failed and the network had instead grown in the past two years. He promised more attacks to "punish" the United States.

"This is the second anniversary of the New York and Washington invasions which defied America and its crusade from whose wounds it is still staggering in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We tell you (America) that what you have seen so far are only the first skirmishes and the beginning of the clash. The real battle, however, has not started yet."

"We are not advocates of killing and destruction, but with the help of God, we will cut the arms of anyone that touches us or carry any aggression against us, so prepare yourself for punishment for your crimes," Zawahri said.

The video showed close-ups of a thin and haggard bin Laden sitting next to a tree. Both men wore Afghan- or Pakistani-style clothes, with baggy trousers and long shirts and vests.

Zawahri, 52, called on Palestinian militants to keep up their fight against Israel and attacked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, accusing him of treason for handing militants over to Washington.

President Bush said on Wednesday al Qaeda "still plots against our people" and would be defeated.

Until Wednesday`s tape, no new video pictures of bin Laden had been seen since April 2002, though al Qaeda has issued several audio messages over the last year.

The sudden appearances were meant to mark the September 11 attacks in which more than 2,800 people died. The hijackings were blamed on al Qaeda and sparked the U.S. "war on terror."

"We believe he is alive, but we can`t tell you when the picture was shot or when the audio was recorded," a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said bin Laden was believed to be in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Folly Taken To A Scale We Haven`t Seen Since WWII

By Robert Fisk

11 September 2003: (The Independent)
When the attacks were launched against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon two years ago today, who had ever heard of Fallujah or Hillah? When the Lebanese hijacker flew his plane into the ground in Pennsylvania, who would ever have believed that President George Bush would be announcing a "new front line in the war on terror" as his troops embarked on a hopeless campaign against the guerrillas of Iraq?

Who could ever have conceived of an American president calling the world to arms against "terrorism" in "Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza"? Gaza? What do the miserable, crushed, cruelly imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza have to do with the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania?

Nothing, of course. Neither does Iraq have anything to do with 11 September. Nor were there any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, any al-Qa`ida links with Iraq, any 45-minute timeline for the deployment of chemical weapons nor was there any "liberation".

No, the attacks on 11 September have nothing to do with Iraq. Neither did 11 September change the world. President Bush cruelly manipulated the grief of the American people - and the sympathy of the rest of the world - to introduce a "world order" dreamed up by a clutch of fantasists advising the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

The Iraqi "regime change", as we now know, was planned as part of a Perle-Wolfowitz campaign document to the would-be Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu years before Bush came to power. It beggars belief that Tony Blair should have signed up to this nonsense without realising that it was no more nor less than a project invented by a group of pro-Israeli American neo-conservatives and right-wing Christian fundamentalists.

But even now, we are fed more fantasy. Afghanistan - its American-paid warlords raping and murdering their enemies, its women still shrouded for the most part in their burqas, its opium production now back as the world`s number one export market, and its people being killed at up to a hundred a week (five American troops were shot dead two weekends ago) is a "success", something which Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld still boast about. Iraq - a midden of guerrilla hatred and popular resentment - is also a "success". Yes, Bush wants $87bn to keep Iraq running, he wants to go back to the same United Nations he condemned as a "talking shop" last year, he wants scores of foreign armies to go to Iraq to share the burdens of occupation - though not, of course, the decision-making, which must remain Washington`s exclusive imperial preserve.

What`s more, the world is supposed to accept the insane notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the planet`s last colonial war, although all mention of the illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank and Gaza have been erased from the Middle East narrative in the American press - is part of the "war on terror", the cosmic clash of religious will that President Bush invented after 11 September. Could Israel`s interests be better served by so infantile a gesture from Bush?

The vicious Palestinian suicide bombers and the grotesque implantation of Jews and Jews only in the colonies has now been set into this colossal struggle of "good" against "evil", in which even Ariel Sharon - named as "personally" responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre by Israel`s own commission of inquiry - is "a man of peace", according to Mr Bush.

And new precedents are set without discussion. Washington kills the leadership of its enemies with impunity: it tries to kill Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and does kill Uday and Qusay Hussein and boasts of its prowess in "liquidating" the al-Qa`ida leadership from rocket-firing "drones". It tries to kill Saddam in Baghdad and slaughters 16 civilians and admits that the operation was "not risk-free". In Afghanistan, three men have now been murdered in the US interrogation centre at Bagram. We still don`t know what really goes on in Guantanamo.

What do these precedents mean? I have a dark suspicion. From now on, our leaders, our politicians, our statesmen will be fair game too. If we go for the jugular, why shouldn`t they? The killing of the UN`s Sergio Vieira de Mello, was not, I think, a chance murder. Hamas`s most recent statements - and since they`ve been added to the Bush circus of evil, we should take them seriously - are now, more than ever, personally threatening Mr Sharon. Why should we expect any other leader to be safe? If Yasser Arafat is driven into exile yet again, will there be any restraints left?

Of course, America`s enemies were a grisly bunch. Saddam soiled his country with the mass graves of the innocents, Mullah Omar allowed his misogynist legions to terrify an entire society in Afghanistan. But in their absence, we have created banditry, rape, kidnapping, guerrilla war and anarchy. And all in the name of the dead of 11 September. The future of the Middle East - which is what 11 September was partly about, though we are not allowed to say so - has never looked bleaker or more bloody. The United States and Britain are trapped in a war of their own making, responsible for their own appalling predicament but responsible, too, for the lives of thousands of innocent human beings - cut to pieces by American bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq, shot down in the streets of Iraq by trigger-happy GIs.

As for "terror", our enemies are closing in on our armies in Iraq and our supposed allies in Baghdad and Afghanistan - even in Pakistan. We have done all this in the name of the dead of 11 September. Not since the Second World War have we seen folly on this scale. And it has scarcely begun.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=442…

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-un11…
THE WORLD


3 Nations Offer Iraq Proposals
The changes by France, Germany and Russia to a draft resolution at the U.N. may pave the way for a compromise deal, diplomats say.
By Maggie Farley and John Hendren
Times Staff Writers

September 11, 2003

UNITED NATIONS — France, Germany and Russia have put forth changes to the U.S. draft resolution seeking international help in Iraq that, though not entirely palatable to Washington, make some sort of compromise look possible, British and American diplomats said Wednesday.

France and Germany, in a joint proposal, have offered to recognize an Iraqi transition government and endorse a U.S.-led multinational force if the U.S. hands over most of its control over the political transition to the U.N. and the interim Iraqi leaders. Russia presented a separate proposal closer to U.S. and British ideas.

The U.S. has been unwilling to cede political authority, but American officials say everyone on the U.N. Security Council is aiming for the same result: for Iraqis to reclaim sovereignty as soon as possible. That may lead the council to find common ground in the coming weeks. But other issues loom: how much the U.S. will be willing to give up to win broader international involvement, and how nations that opposed the war can support Iraq without supporting the occupation.

France has led the opposition on the council to sharing the burden of rebuilding Iraq without sharing the power, and so any slight softening in its stance encourages U.S. negotiators.

Previously, the French reaction was negative, a senior U.S. official said. "This suggests that they`re moving to the position of `no, but,` which gives us something to work with."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, worried that the situation in Iraq is dangerously deteriorating, has summoned the foreign ministers from the Security Council`s veto-wielding nations — Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. — to Geneva on Saturday. They are expected to hash out ways to move from a U.S.-led occupation to greater international involvement in Iraq to restore security and, ultimately, the country`s sovereignty.

The French-German proposals cut the occupation authority out of Iraq`s day-to-day governance, including oversight of oil and aid, and put control instead in the hands of the Iraqi Governing Council under U.N. monitoring. They ask the Iraqi interim government, with U.N. guidance, to come up with a timetable for drafting a new constitution and holding elections.

The amendments also demand that the occupation powers to open their books and establish an international board to monitor the use of all oil revenue and aid before nations make any new contributions or loans. The U.N. is sponsoring an international donors conference in Madrid in October, and the coalition desperately needs funds.

The U.S. has strongly resisted loosening its grip on political oversight, but it has been exploring ways to keep hold of the reins while allowing the U.N. and the Iraqi Governing Council to steer the process. The coalition already has granted more responsibilities to the interim officials, while reserving veto power over their decisions, U.S. officials say.

"The point is not to argue either about which foreigner is going to take control in Iraq," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday. "The point is to go out and look and see what we can all do to support the Iraqis as they go forward in that process."

The White House is adamant, however, about keeping multinational troops under its command. But a recent congressional report saying that U.S. forces were overextended in Iraq added to pressure to bring in replacement troops from other countries.

President Bush said Wednesday that United Nations members and other countries had much to gain, or lose, in the reconstruction effort in Iraq and had strong incentive to contribute money and troops.

In an appearance with Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Jabbar al Sabah, Bush said that he and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would soon be seeking contributions.

Bush said the international community needed to move beyond past disputes. "A peaceful Iraq is in the world`s interest. And I`m confident we can work together to achieve that."

In asking for more international troops while insisting that an overall increase in the number of troops is not necessary, the administration is doing a delicate dance. Administration officials have argued for the political advantage offered by putting an international face on coalition security forces, which under current plans would simply replace American forces.

"Our goal is not to create a dependency in Iraq by flooding it with Americans, our goal is to get a broad, still broader international face on it, and then a considerably greater Iraqi face on it as they contribute more and more to their own political future and their own economic future," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington.

A new United Nations resolution authorizing U.N. troops to join coalition forces in Iraq probably would yield few additional soldiers but plenty of political cover, he added.

"The expectation is that you would not get a large additional number of forces as a result of an additional U.N. resolution," Rumsfeld said. "A new resolution would, however, provide some countries with a feeling that it was more of an international activity that they were engaged in, which would be a good thing, and it also would ease the process for some people to give additional money."

Meanwhile, the burden is on the U.S., as Congress considers a request for $87 billion in emergency funding in addition to more than $100 billion already approved for the administration`s war on terrorism, mostly to fund the military campaign in Iraq. Bush insisted that the U.S. contribution was unavoidable.

"It`s important to spend that money," Bush said. "It`s in our national interest that we spend it. A free and peaceful Iraq will save this country money in the long term. It`s important to get it done now."

*


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Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report from Washington.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-benjami…
COMMENTARY



Two Years Later, Is Terror Still Spreading?
We need an antidote for a Muslim ideology that breeds ever more radicalism
By Daniel Benjamin
Daniel Benjamin is a former National Security Council staff member and co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House, 2002).

September 11, 2003

Two years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most Americans are probably uncertain about the simplest of questions: Are we winning or losing the war on terror?

There is the encouraging fact that no major attack has been carried out on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. The captures of such top Al Qaeda operatives as Abu Zubeida and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as well as the leader of the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah known as Hambali, represent peaks in an intelligence campaign that has been far more successful than anyone could have predicted on Sept. 12 two years ago.

President Bush recently claimed that two-thirds of Al Qaeda`s senior leaders have been captured or killed, making it clear that the international jihadist network has suffered serious setbacks and that its capabilities have been degraded.

At the same time, the last two years have witnessed an unprecedented wave of terrorism outside the United States, including attacks in Bali, Moscow, Mombasa and Riyadh, to name only a few of the most lethal strikes.

Not even Hezbollah, at the height of its activity in 1982-83, rivaled this level of killing.

Although responsibility for the bombings of the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and the Shiite shrine at Najaf remains undetermined, jihadists are known to be infiltrating Iraq in significant numbers and could well have played a part. If they have not yet taken part in attacks, they will.

Perhaps most worrisome for the long term, Osama bin Laden`s ideology continues to spread among most of the world`s major Muslim populations even if his organization has lost strength.

Clerics who could once be counted on as moderates feel the debate shifting away from them, and they are tacking to the extremes to maintain some hold on their audience. For example, the sheik of Al Azhar University in Cairo, the preeminent seat of Islamic learning, has issued statements about the American. actions in Iraq that are so strident they nearly echo the jihadists` rhetoric.

Moreover, as polling — including the comprehensive survey released by the Pew Research Center in June — demonstrates, the war in Iraq has severely damaged the already poor American image in the Islamic world, and more Muslims are thinking in the terms of the jihadists.

Despite our claims to be liberators, they see the U.S. as the enemy of Islam, eager to destroy the faith and subjugate its people. Such radicalization is not confined to Muslim countries; it is also growing, for example, among the large Muslim communities in the nations of Europe.

Given this mixture of tactical success and strategic slippage, one can hazard a few predictions:

• As long as there are American troops in Iraq, they will be a target of violence in what will be a central theater of the radical Islamist struggle.

• The United States may have bought itself some time before the next round of major violent attacks. But no one should be fooled into thinking that radicals` increased focus on Iraq or the success of intelligence operations against Al Qaeda leadership provides perfect insurance against attacks on American soil, including those with weapons of mass destruction.

Al Qaeda has shown an extraordinary ability to vary its tactics.

• An overarching trend toward "relocalization" of the jihadist cause could be taking shape.

Islamist groups in numerous countries that have until now had little or no connection with Al Qaeda may be adopting its beliefs and mimicking its tactics. The May suicide-bombing attacks in Casablanca, which were carried out by just such a group, possibly with some financial and logistical support from Al Qaeda, may be a harbinger.

• The mimicry of Al Qaeda could eventually result in a second, more violent wave of attacks in several years. Even if nine out of 10 new jihadist groups are poor at carrying out attacks, the remainder may be even more technically sophisticated than Al Qaeda. The possibility that well-educated European or American radicals will join the extremists` cause in numbers makes this especially worrisome.

Why the divergence between current successes and long-term dangers? The key reason is the refusal of the Bush administration to recognize that we face not only a capable terrorist organization but a potent ideology that is gaining ground — one that explains to ordinary individuals why their lives seem bereft of hope.

Even if there is a hiatus from the worst violence because of successful intelligence and law enforcement work, those tools cannot hold back the tide of ideas. For that, we need a foreign policy that addresses the issues that are driving Muslims into radical anti-Americanism.

Such a policy would focus on promoting democracy (albeit in a measured way that will not precipitate unwanted revolutions); economic liberalization; building viable educational systems; and a sustained effort to move Israelis and Palestinians toward peace.

It still has not been sufficiently understood in Washington that what goes on within the borders of Muslim countries is now a matter of the deepest national security interest and that those countries that have been incubators of radicalism cannot remain so.

Authoritarianism, economic stagnation and broken schools are not the direct motivation for jihadist violence, nor do they in any way excuse it. But they are enduring aspects of life for hundreds of millions of people who are increasingly embracing a hatred-filled version of Islam.

If we want to stop that flow of people into the jihadist camp, we will have to address these facts.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-luttwak…
COMMENTARY


The Head of the Al Qaeda Snake Has Been Cut Off
By Edward N. Luttwak
Edward N. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

September 11, 2003

It happened only 24 months ago, but "before-Sept. 11" already feels like the remote past, an era of ignorance if not innocence.

Of course, many things we learned since the terrorist attacks were not very important, such as the briefly mythic names of many Al Qaeda operatives and chiefs, now dead or prisoners in Guantanamo and around the world. True, No. 1 is still free if alive, hiding in a Pakistani basement or perhaps a village in Yemen, but he is clearly no longer the chief of a functioning organization.

The attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca earlier this year are the best evidence of that. Al Qaeda attracted the passionate admiration of frustrated Muslim extremists by attacking hard targets in spectacular ways to kill and humiliate "the Christian crusaders": well-guarded embassies, a warship, the Pentagon. It was widely expected that Sept. 11 would be followed at intervals by further spectacular attacks, with nuclear power stations being only the most important of a long series of plausible targets in the United States and Europe. But instead there were only misdirected blows, which did little to attract funds and recruits to Al Qaeda.

There is a very good reason that Al Qaeda has not financed and directed well-planned operations in the manner of 9/11: It no longer exists as a functioning group with the headquarters, training camps, depots and secure bases it once had in Afghanistan.

When the United States set out to conquer that country within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was said the attempt would fail because of the vastness of the country, its terrain, the onset of winter and the ferocious resistance of the Taliban, which would defeat the Americans as it had defeated the Soviet army. When the Taliban instead collapsed with hardly a fight even before the main U.S. forces arrived in Pakistan for the planned invasion — they were defeated in three weeks by scouts, tiny advance teams and local allies — it was said Al Qaeda would merely disperse in other Muslim countries, becoming even more dangerous.

But we now know that only fragments of Al Qaeda remain, scattered individuals with some money, skills and weapons who can continue to carry out sporadic attacks but not anything resembling the terrorist offensive that culminated Sept. 11. Because there is no longer a headquarters to evaluate security measures and instruct operatives to overcome them, they continue to be arrested for doing what they were trained to do in Afghanistan, such as pretending to be Belgians. (Al Qaeda had a stock of Belgian passports.)

Above all, Al Qaeda`s attempt to ignite a global Muslim war against "Crusaders and Jews" has instead provoked the bitter opposition of traditional, orthodox Muslims everywhere, who bitterly resent the damage done to their secular reputation for tolerance. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are outgrowths of the Salafist-Wahhabi sect, heterodox extremists who refuse to accept the Koranic rule that Christians and Jews are free to practice their religion in Muslim lands as well.

Once very few, the Salafist-Wahhabis were largely confined to a remote corner of Arabia until the Saudi ruling family financed its global spread through their subsidized schools, luxurious new mosques and well-paid preachers. They have long undermined and humiliated traditional imams, who are now reacting by exposing their violations of the Koran.

The one great failure of the counteroffensive against terrorism is that Saudi Arabia continues to finance its schools of intolerance and its mosques of extremism, even a few miles from the White House.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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A special speech to the nation
Jon Carroll
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/10/DD29…



My fellow Americans: I come before you today to ask for all the money in your wallet, your checking account and your 401(k). And do you have one of those spare change jars on top of the dresser? I`d like that too.

I am planning to spend $100 zillion to fight international terrorism in Iraq -- and all this without raising taxes. I am therefore asking Americans to make a sacrifice. I am asking them to support their aging relatives, because I`m not going to have any money to fund Social Security right now. Or Medicaid.

Why? Because fighting terrorism is job one.

I am not asking you to do anything I would not do. Already I am sending money home to my mother and father every week. I am also supporting an impoverished Chilean general in exile. It`s the least I can do.

Because many people do not have elderly relatives, I am today asking for the creation of a new Department of Old People. All Americans will be assigned their very own old person.

In addition, every American will get his or her own veteran. Veterans benefits are so pathetic anyway we might as well just eliminate them. Please remember the great sacrifice these men and women made for their country. Do you have a spare room in your home? A veteran would like to live there.

Will this be difficult for some? Of course it will. But I ask you to remember three important things about freedom: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.

The peace in Iraq is going just as we planned. The escalating violence is exactly on schedule. Our friends in Syria and Iran have allowed terrorists to flow freely into Iraq from their nations. Our friends in Saudi Arabia continue to send them money. We knew what we were doing all along, even if we didn`t know exactly what we were doing.

I like to think of Iraq as a kind of flypaper. We lure all the internationalist terrorists there, and then we kill them. I have not revealed this plan before, because it would seem that I am using American soldiers as bait.

I am therefore authorizing Secretary Powell, who I believe is still the secretary of state although I have not checked recently, to ask the United Nations for a multilateral force of peacekeepers who can be used as bait. I dream of a world in which people of all nations, Poles and Turks, Pakistanis and Canadians, can be slaughtered by international terrorists in an oil-rich foreign country.

We have always supported the United Nations, even when we pretended to disdain the United Nations in order to fool Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein is on the run, cowering like some sniveling rat in a Iraqi slum that we are about to locate. So our plan worked, and Kofi Annan and I had a good laugh about that just last week.

We will not waver in our commitment to make a house-to-house search for terrorists in a place 19 time zones away. Sure, there will be casualties. I am authorizing all my commanders on the ground to say, with me: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.

Our battle for freedom is already paying significant dividends. Halliburton stock, for instance, is just skyrocketing. I urge you all to invest your dividends because, believe you me, we`re going to be destroying infrastructure as fast as we can rebuild it. This unprecedented breakthrough in supply-side economics will make America even more prosperous.

Certainly, we have been through some tough times. And let me just say in response to that: Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton. And there will be tough times ahead. And let me say in response to that: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.



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I regret that I cannot tell you how I am going to spend your money. Trust me.
Lavender`s blue, dilly-dilly, lavender`s green; when I am king, dilly-dilly, you shall be [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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NPR Interviews Economist Paul Krugman

How it was possible for a country with so much going for it to go downhill so fast, and why our leaders made such bad decisions."

this IS A MUST LISTEN INTERVIEW

CLICK PLAY TO LISTEN
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml;jsessionid=W1XX05SRTTD5…



http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4681.htm





Krugman has collected the last three years of his New York Times op-ed columns in the new book, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. In the preface he writes that the book is "a chronicle of the years when it all went wrong again -- when the heady optimisim of the late 1990s gave way to renewed gloom. It`s also an attempt to explain the how and why: how it was possible for a country with so much going for it to go downhill so fast, and why our leaders made such bad decisions." Krugman teaches at Princeton University.
http://freshair.npr.org/

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HOW BUSH CHEAPENED 9/11

By Ted Rall
My Yahoo!


NEW YORK--The doors of my New Jersey Transit train opened in Trenton, and a panicked madman scrambled aboard. "They`re diving planes into both World Trade Centers! They`ve bombed the Pentagon!" he yelled. I`ll always wonder whether it was because the guy looked a little disheveled or due to the information he conveyed, but my carload of New Yorkers stared at him silently, cynically, disbelieving. "It`s upstairs on TV!" he shouted for emphasis.


I took my cell and called my wife back in New York. "I`m watching it right now," she confirmed. "Oh, my God!" she said as my train pulled out of the station. "One of the towers just collapsed." More than 50,000 worked in those buildings. As we`d learned during the 1993 bombing, there had never been a real evacuation plan. How many people had gotten out? How many had died on the streets surrounding the buildings? A lot depended on whether the towers had tipped over or imploded vertically.


I hoped that an old pal, who worked on the 99th floor of Tower 2, hadn`t given up his slacking ways and arrived early at his desk.


Philadelphia was a surreal scene. Motorists parked and blasted their car radios for the benefit of small groups of passersby hungry for news of the horrific drama unfolding two hours north. Anxious cops shooed away tourists so they could cordon off the Liberty Bell. Half the population stood stunned while the other half shopped and gossiped like it was any other day. It was a slow-motion freak-out.


Distracted and trying to process the meaning of 9/11--who? why? what next?--I muddled through the business meeting that had put my friend and I on the Philly-bound 8:11 am train out of Penn Station. "Maybe we should get a hotel here until things calm down," he suggested before instantly changing his mind. We were both New Yorkers. He lived two and I lived six miles north of Ground Zero, and we knew our wives were safe. Still, we wanted to be home.


TV reported that people weren`t being allowed into Manhattan, but we decided to get as close to the city as possible. "New York isn`t organized enough to block every way in," I remember saying. "There`s got to be a way in." Two trains running truncated routes got us as far north as Newark. Minutes later, a policeman announced that a PATH subway would become the first train allowed into Manhattan since the attacks. No one collected the fare.


The PATH offers a breathtaking view of lower Manhattan as it rattles across the postindustrial marshlands of northern New Jersey. At 5 p.m., what should have been the end of another long day for office workers in the Trade Center, the rubble was ablaze. Eight hours later. I had never looked at those buildings without imagining the damage they`d do if and when they fell, but the dreadful scale of the plume of smoke that drifted south over New York Harbor was incomprehensible.


On West 34th Street a city bus stood where it had been abandoned that morning, its doors open, the engine left running. Some kids broke the glass at Macy`s and halfheartedly looted the window display. As I walked to the West Side IRT on 7th Avenue, I was passed by a parade of fire engines and ambulances from the Long Island suburbs: Freeport, Hempstead, Babylon. New York`s fire department never needed, nor requested, assistance. This was bad.


The subway was running uptown only. I lived uptown, so I got on. A uniformed police officer sat on the train directly across from me, half-covered with soot. He drank from an open gin bottle. I didn`t blame him.


As I walked home that night, the wind shifted, carrying the smell of 9/11--the familiar overheated electric odor of model trains mixed with burned flesh. It was a tiny hint of what Brooklyn got--the stench, dust and debris floated east for days. "Everything is different now," I remember thinking. "Partisan politics are out the window. Bush is gonna have to rise to the occasion, like FDR did after Pearl Harbor, and we`re all going to fight the bastards who did this." I wondered how this would affect my work. Critiquing the government is my job. That would be tough in a nation united against a common enemy.


A few hundred miles south, the administration of George W. Bush was deciding how to react to the murder of more than 3,000 Americans. Bob Woodward`s book "Bush at War," based on interviews with Bush and written with the cooperation of his top officials, explains how the White House saw 9/11 as an opportunity--not to pull us together, but to get its way on a long laundry list of partisan agenda items.


The Administration pinned the blame on Osama on the afternoon of 9/11, Woodward writes: "Al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization capable of such spectacular, well-coordinated attacks, [George] Tenet said." They didn`t have hard evidence, and no one had claimed responsibility, yet Bush had already decided to attack Afghanistan .

At a 4 p.m. meeting of the National Security Council on September 12, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "raised the question of Iraq . Why shouldn`t we go against Iraq, not just Al Qaeda? he asked." No one mentioned that secular Iraq and fundamentalist Al Qaeda were mortal enemies. On September 15, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "estimated that there was a 10 to 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks." More conjecture.


Despite an absence of evidence that Iraq had been involved with 9/11, Bush`s men had decided to take out Saddam years before taking office. After floating a variety of excuses that all turned out to be lies, they got their way in March 2003. Neither America`s allies, nor its people marching the streets, nor facts that contradicted Bush`s baseless charges, could stop them.


Instead of abandoning standard party-line politics, Bush cheapened the 9/11 attacks by using them to promote Republican platform planks like free trade and huge tax cuts for his rich contributors. Instead of uniting Americans, he smeared Democrats as unpatriotic. Instead of going after the Saudi and Pakistani government officials who contributed to 9/11, he called them allies in a "war on terrorism" that killed and maimed ordinary, innocent Muslims. And he ruined a feeling of post-9/11 national unity that had prevailed among all Americans.


9/11 sure as hell didn`t change the politicians. When that became clear, I swore--despite my sadness--that it wouldn`t change me either.


(Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back," an award-winning recounting of his experiences covering the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition containing new material. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

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Two Years Later -- 9/10/03



http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/


Mark Fiore is a San Francisco cartoonist and animator whose work also appears in the Washington Post, L.A. Times and other publications.

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Chilean Coup Memorial Edition
September 11, 2003

The Great Divide
State Terrorism and September 11, 1973 & 2001
By ROGER BURBACH

On the morning of September 11, I watched aircraft flying overhead. Minutes later I heard explosive sounds and saw fireballs of smoke fill the sky. As a result of these attacks thousands died, including two good friends of mine.

I am not writing about September 11 2001 in New York City. On that date I was thousands of miles away in Berkeley, California. I am writing about another September 11, equally horrible, that occurred in 1973 when I was living in Santiago, Chile. On that date I indeed saw planes flying overhead. They were warplanes and their target was the presidential palace in Santiago. Remarkably, these two September 11`s are related in a number of ways, and both dates help us understand why George W. Bush has lead the United States into a quagmire in Iraq. On September 11, 1973 Salvador Allende resided in the Chilean presidential palace. He was the first freely elected socialist leader in the world and ever since his electoral victory in September 1970, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US government headed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who chaired the National Security Council were determined to overthrow Allende and his Popular Unity coalition.

It was on September 11, 1973 that they finally succeeded. Lead by General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military overthrew Allende who died in the presidential palace. Over three thousand people perished in the bloody repression that followed under Pinochet`s rule, including two American friends of mine, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi.

Prior to the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 the most sensational foreign-lead terrorist action in the capitol had been carried out by a team of operatives sent by the Pinochet regime. On September 21, 1976, agents of the Chilean secret police organization, DINA, detonated a car bomb just blocks from the White House, killing a leading opponent of Pinochet`s, Orlando Letelier, and his assistant Ronni Moffitt. Letelier, whom I spoke to at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. before his death, was a man deeply committed to democracy and a more humane world who had served at the highest levels of the Allende government. These assassinations were linked to the first international terrorist network in the Western Hemisphere, known as Operation Condor. Begun in 1974 at the instigation of the Chilean secret police, Operation Condor was a sinister cabal comprised of the intelligence services of at least six South American countries that collaborated in tracking, kidnapping and assassinating political opponents. Based on documents divulged under the Chile Declassification Project of the Clinton administration, it is now recognized that the CIA knew about these international terrorist activities and may have even abetted them. After the murders of Letelier-Moffitt in Washington D.C., the CIA appears to have concluded that Condor was a rogue operation and may have tried to contain its activities. However, the network of Southern Cone military and intelligence operations continued to act throughout Latin America at least until the early 1980s. Chilean and Argentine military units assisted the dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and helped set up death squads in El Salvador. Argentine units also aided and supervised Honduran military death squads that began operating in the early 1980s with the direct assistance and collaboration the CIA.

Similarities abound between the emergence of terrorist networks in Latin America and events leading to the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden first became involved in militant Islamic activities when he went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviet-backed regime that had taken power in the country. According to the CIA 2000 Fact Book, the Mujahideen were "supplied and trained by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others." Even in the 1980s it was widely recognized that many of those fighting against the Soviets and the Afghan government were religious fanatics who had no loyalty to their U.S. sponsors, let alone to "western values" like democracy, religious tolerance and gender equality.

Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s, when the CIA was backing the Mujahideen warriors in Afghanistan, likened them to our "founding fathers." Then in Central America, Reagan called thousands of former soldiers of Somoza`s National Guard "freedom fighters" as they were sent to fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And when the Sandinistas went to the World Court to press charges against the United States for sending special operatives to bomb its major port facility in Corinto, the Reagan administration withdrew from the Court, refusing to acknowledge the rule of international law.

In the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, former US government officials and conservative pundits attempted to completely rewrite this sordid history. Instead of acknowledging that past CIA operations had gone awry, they insisted that bin Laden`s international terrorist network had flourished because earlier U.S. collaboration with terrorists had been constrained or curtailed. Henry Kissinger who was in Germany on September 11, 2001, told the TV networks that the controls imposed on US intelligence operations over the years facilitated the rise of international terrorism. He alluded to the hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1975 headed by Senator Frank Church, which strongly criticized the covert operations approved by Kissinger when he headed up the National Security Council. The Church hearings lead to the first legal restrictions on CIA activities, including the prohibition of US assassinations of foreign leaders.

Other Republicans, including George Bush Sr. who was director of the CIA when the agency worked with many of these terrorist networks, pointed the finger at the Clinton administration for allegedly undermining foreign intelligence operations. They argued vehemently against the 1995 presidential order prohibiting the CIA from paying and retaining foreign operatives involved in torture and death squads. These foreign policy hawks were standing historic reality on its head.

Today, two years later we see the consequences of the refusal of the administration of George W. Bush to learn the proper lessons of the past. Instead of ending US transgressions of the borders and sovereign rights of other nations, the United States has spread carnage and war, violating fundamental civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.

Like many advocates of a world based on law rather than violence, Judge Baltesar Garzon, who issued the warrant for the arrest of Pinochet in London in 1998, proclaimed on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001: "Lasting peace and freedom can be achieved only with legality, justice, respect for diversity, defense of human rights and measured and fair responses." The failure of the United States to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with stepped up terrorist activities around the world, demonstrate that the US war against terror is a failure.

But even in the midst of this war, judges, lawyers and human rights activists around the world remain determined to see that international justice is carried out. Using the principle of "universal jurisdiction" employed by Judge Garzon to pursue Pinochet, nineteen citizens of Iraq filed suit in Belgium courts in May against Tommy Franks, the commander of the US invasion. They charged that troops under his command stood idly by as hospitals in Baghdad were looted, while other US soldiers fired on ambulances that were carrying wounded civilians. The Bush administration reacted angrily, threatening the Belgium government with "diplomatic consequences" if it allowed the case to go forward.

Then when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attended a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels in June 2003, he threatened to end US financing for new NATO facilities and to move the headquarters to another country if the Belgium government would not intervene to suspend the court cases. Kowtowing to his demands, the Belgium parliament altered its laws relating to universal jurisdiction. But as we achieve some distance from the war, and perhaps a "regime change" in the United States, investigations and charges will be brought against the US invaders of Iraq in other countries for their human rights abuses and lies about the war, perhaps even in US courts.

The struggle is joined. The years to come will focus on the great divide that has emerged out of the two September elevens of 1973 and 2001. On the one side stands an arrogant unilateralist clique in the United States that engages in state terrorism and human rights abuses while tearing up international treaties. On the other is a global movement that is determined to advance a broad conception of human rights and human dignity through the utilization of human rights law, extradition treaties and limited policing activities. It is fundamentally a struggle over where globalization will take us, whether the powerful economic and political interests of the world headed up by reactionary U.S. leaders will create a new world order that relies on intervention and state terrorism, or whether a globalist perspective from below based on a more just and egalitarian conception of the world will gain ascendancy.

Special thanks to Hank Frundt and Jim Tarbell for editorial assistance.

Roger Burbach is the author of "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice," Zed Books, 2003.

Copyright © 2003 R Burbach.

http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach09112003.html

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Published on Thursday, September 11, 2003 bu CommonDreams.org
Bush Resignation Hailed by World Leaders
by Greg Palast

The surprise resignation of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on America, was hailed by chiefs of state throughout the world. Mr. Bush announced that after, "two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad," he saw no choice but to accept that, "I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified."

The text of the former President`s September 11 address to the nation follows:

"My fellow Americans:

I come to you tonight with a heavy heart. Two years ago today, thousands of innocent Americans were murdered by terrorist maniacs.

In the script I`ve been handed, I`m now supposed to tell you that America is safer today, and that the world is kinder and nicer and happier, because of I`m such a brilliant general in the War on Terror.

But who are we kidding? Yesterday, Osama released his new hit video. The terrorists are having a picnic ever since I turned over our foreign policy to Saudi Arabia and Exxon-Mobil.

And here`s the point in my speech where my handlers would have me tell you about how I`ve been praying hard, making it sound like I just got off the phone with the Lord. I don`t know about you, but I find it pretty darn offensive, downright blasphemous, to drag the Lord`s name into every cheap campaign speech and chest-pounding war threat. Osama says he talks to God too. Let`s leave Him out of the politics from now on, OK?

Look, in my speech this past Sunday, I used the word "democracy" about 11 times when talking about Iraq. It`s democracy Florida-style, I suppose. Except we`re not fixing the vote this time . we aren`t letting these people vote at all. "Iraqis aren`t prepared for democracy." That`s what Dick Cheney and Saddam Hussein told me.

So we`re blowing 100 billion bucks we don`t have to colonize a country we don`t want. Rummy tries to explain it to me each morning -- oil this and oil that -- but I just don`t see it. And one of our kids dying there every day - where are their parents, anyway? My dad didn`t let that happen - he got me out of the service. Didn`t I look neat in that fly-boy suit?

And, let me tell you, I just looked at our nation`s piggy bank. Uh-oh.

When I arrived, the last guy left me $4 trillion and said, "Be careful with all that cash in this neighborhood." Well, I have to level with you, America: it`s all gone. The cupboard`s bare and this year alone we blew half a trillion more dollars than we have in our bank account. Man, I can`t believe I went through all that dough stone sober.

And what did we get for it? A Fatherland Security Department that`s trying to read the labels on everyone`s underpants. Think about it, all this Total Information Awareness KGB stuff: two years ago Americans were the victims - but my government has made Americans the suspects. I don`t know about you, but this guy Ashcroft scares the bejeezus out of me.

And today I`m told that over nine million Americans are out of work. That`s not so bad: I haven`t done much work in my lifetime either. But my mama explained to me that not everyone`s daddy can lend them an oil well to tide them over.

It`s like I can`t get anything right. The lights are going out in Ohio and the North Pole is melting. I don`t get it. I appointed all those regulators that Ken Lay told me to, and I got rid of all the rules that got in the way of patriotic Polluter-Americans .. and what`s the upshot? America the Beautiful is looking like she`s had a pretty rough night. Won`t be long before the whole country smells like Houston.

And now the stock market`s floating face down in the swimming pool -- despite everything I`ve done for those guys on Wall Street. Even my plan to give every millionaire an extra million seems to have backfired. Greenspam says I`ve created "business risk." Says I spook investors. But when I asked Greenspam for a solution, all he did was hand me a bag of pretzels.

Hey, I can take a hint. OK, I`m over my head on this one. I look back over these last years, and what have I got to show you for it: two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad.

When I ran for this office, I said the issue was, "character." And just look at the characters around me. I`ve gotten all their resignations today. And while I`ve got some character left, here`s my own good-bye note too. Let`s face it: I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified. You know it. And I know it.

It`s at this point in the speech where I`m supposed to say, "And may God bless America." God better, because Dick Cheney won`t. Don`t panic: I`m not turning over this sacred office to Mr. Contracts-R-Us.

Instead, I`ve petitioned the United States Supreme Court to pick a President for us. Those guys picked the last one, why not the next one?

And so, my fellow Americans, you can take this job and .."

Here, Mr. Bush`s words became unintelligible. As usual.

Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, `The Best Democracy Money Can Buy`. Subscribe to his writings for Britain`s Observer and Guardian newspapers, and view his investigative reports for BBC Television`s Newsnight, at http://www.gregpalast.com//contact.cfm

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 12:27 a.m. EDT September 11, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Indonesia`s state-owned Pertamina oil company will restart an oil and gas exploration program in Iraq interrupted earlier this year by the U.S.-led attack on that nation. Pertamina will invest around 24 (m) million dollars in the first three years in the Western Desert block.
A British parliamentary panel has reportedly concluded that Britain`s defense secretary gave misleading evidence about Iraqi weapons when he testified before it. The newspaper the Evening Standard says the panel feels Geoff Hoon was less than honest about his staff`s concerns that a dossier making the case for war in Iraq relied on faulty intelligence.
France, Germany and Russia have ideas of their own for postwar Iraq. The three have proposed amendments to a U.S. draft resolution. The amendments, obtained by The Associated Press, demand more power for Iraqis and the U.N. in running the country.
The Dalai Lama, who implored President Bush to avoid a violent response after Nine-Eleven, now says the war in Afghanistan may have been justified to win a larger peace. But he says "history will tell" whether the Iraq war was justified.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is hopeful about the postwar progress in Iraq. At a news briefing following a meeting with Canada`s foreign affairs minister, Powell said "we are on the move in the transformation that everybody has been looking for in Iraq."
There apparently aren`t as many U.S. troops in Iraq as many thought. A spokesman for the U.S.-led war in Iraq says nearly 116-thousand U.S. troops are deployed there. That`s some ten thousand fewer than thought earlier. As recently as last week, the number of U.S. soldiers there was believed to be between 125-thousand and 130-thousand.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman says he didn`t support going to war with Iraq so that the U.S. could take over the country. The senator says it`s past time for the U.S. administrator in Iraq to hand over control of the country`s government to an international administrator. And he says that should happen within 60 days.
President Bush is urging U.S. allies to "not get caught up in past bickering" over Iraq and contribute to the country`s postwar recovery. He says it`s in other nations` interests to provide money and troops. Bush has requested an additional 87 (b) billion dollars in U.S. taxpayer money for the operation in Iraq.

CASUALTIES
A total of 289 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 70 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Summary
++++US++++UK++++Other++++Total++++Avg++++Days
++++291++++50+++++2+++++++343+++++1.96++++175
Latest Military Fatality Date: 9/11/2003

09/11/03 Yahoo: US forces were embroiled firefight
US forces were embroiled in a 90-minute firefight near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, and at least three Americans were wounded in the latest upsurge of attacks in Iraq
09/11/03 Centcom: ONE SOLDIER KILLED, TWO WOUNDED
One Coalition soldier was killed and two were injured when a tire on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck exploded while the soldiers were changing the tire in Balad
09/10/03 Department of Defense
DOD releases name of U.S. soldier injured on Aug. 30th in a vehicle accident who has subsequently died on Sept. 7th at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
09/10/03 CENTCOM
One U.S. soldier killed in Baghdad today when IED exploded prematurely during disarming process.
09/10/03 BBC:Bomb hits Iraqi Kurd region
A car bomb has exploded outside an office used by US troops near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.
09/09/03 Yahoo: Three U.S. Soldiers Wounded by Land Mine
Firefighters on Tuesday contained an oil fire blamed on saboteurs on the major Turkish-bound pipeline, while witnesses said three U.S. soldiers were wounded when their Humvee hit a mine on the road near Fallujah
09/09/03 Yahoo (Reuters): From Afghanistan
Five Afghan government soldiers were killed and two American soldiers wounded in a series of attacks in south and east Afghanistan
09/09/03 Centcom: Confirms Fatality
One 3rd Corp Support Command soldier was killed and one was wounded in an improvised explosive device attack on their military vehicle along a major supply route northeast of Baghdad at approximately 5 p.m. on Sep. 9.
09/09/03 APF:US soldier killed in attack on tanker convoy
A US soldier driving a tanker full of liquefied petroleum gas was killed when an explosion hit his convoy as it passed between two underpasses on the main road north out of Baghdad
09/09/03 Yahoo(Reuters): Two soldiers were wounded
Two soldiers were wounded in an attack using an explosive device in the town of Ramadi, around 60 miles west of Baghdad at 7 a.m.
09/08/03 CNN: U.S. troops wounded in Baghdad attack
At least two U.S. soldiers were wounded Monday morning when an improvised explosive device hit a logistics convoy in Baghdad

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Bush: The Making of a Candidate

Texas Gov. George W. Bush. (AP photo)


A seven-part series on Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush traces the Texas governor`s lifelong effort to reconcile the expectations placed on him with the success he sought.

Heute der4 vierte Teil. 1,2,3, an den letzten 3 Tagen.
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At Height of Vietnam, Bush Picks Guard

George W. Bush, right, during his Harvard Business School years. (Harvard Yearbook)


By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 28, 1999; Page A1


Fourth of seven articles
Two weeks before he was to graduate from Yale, George Walker Bush stepped into the offices of the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Field outside Houston and announced that he wanted to sign up for pilot training.
It was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list.

Bush had scored only 25 percent on a "pilot aptitude" test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics.

Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied. His commander, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, was apparently so pleased to have a VIP`s son in his unit that he later staged a special ceremony so he could have his picture taken administering the oath, instead of the captain who actually had sworn Bush in. Later, when Bush was commissioned a second lieutenant by another subordinate, Staudt again staged a special ceremony for the cameras, this time with Bush`s father the congressman – a supporter of the Vietnam War – standing proudly in the background.

Bush`s father went on to run for senator in 1970 against Lloyd Bentsen Jr. – a prominent Texas Democrat whose own son had been placed in the same Texas Guard unit by the same Col. Staudt around the same time as Bush. On Election Day, before the polls closed, Guard commanders nominated both George W. Bush and Lloyd Bentsen III for promotion to first lieutenant – even as the elder Bentsen was defeating the elder Bush.

Three decades later, as Bush begins a campaign for the presidency that has invited new scrutiny of his life, Staudt and other Guard commanders insist no favoritism was shown to him. But others active in Texas politics in the 1960s say the Texas National Guard was open to string-pulling by the well-connected, and there are charges that the then-speaker of the Texas legislature helped George W. gain admittance.

Vietnam was clearly a crucible for Bush, as it was for Bill Clinton, Al Gore and most other men who left college in the late 1960s. Bush maintains that he joined the National Guard not to avoid service in Vietnam but because he wanted to be a fighter pilot. Rather than be drafted and serve in the infantry – an assignment Bush has acknowledged he did not want – he agreed to spend almost two years in flight training and another four years in part-time service.

That commitment, in turn, was to frame a period of aimlessness and drift that Bush now calls his "nomadic" years: As the war and the youth culture of the 1960s rocked America, Bush partied and dated with gusto, dabbled half-heartedly in business and politics, and flew jets part time. Apart from his Guard commitment, he was unemployed for stretches that lasted for months. His last job before he returned to the East to attend Harvard Business School, as a social worker helping poor children, was arranged by his father after George W. drunkenly confronted him one night and challenged him to a fight.

Even after returning to the elite classrooms of the Ivy League, Bush seemed adrift compared with his classmates. But Harvard offered the beginnings of a self-discipline – his mother called it "structure" – that was to propel him back to Texas with an ambition to build his own future.

As he drifted, Bush struggled with his own feelings about Vietnam and the turmoil he saw around him in America. Over time, he now says, he became disillusioned with the war, even as he believed that he should support the government that waged it. "In a sense he was trying to remain a centrist in a time when there wasn`t anything left at the center," said Craig Stapleton, who is married to Bush`s cousin and has been a confidant of Bush`s for 25 years. "All of the sudden everybody moves and you`re still standing in the center. He didn`t dodge the military. But he didn`t volunteer to go to Vietnam and get killed, either."


Grabbing a Slot In the National Guard



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush learned that there were pilot openings in the Texas Air National Guard during Christmas vacation of his senior year at Yale, when he called Staudt, the commander of the 147th Fighter Group, and, he said, "found out what it took to apply."
"He recalls hearing from friends while he was home over the Christmas break that the Guard was looking for pilots and that Colonel Staudt was the person to contact," said his communications director, Karen Hughes. She said Bush did not recall who those friends were.

Retired Col. Rufus G. Martin, then personnel officer in charge of the 147th Fighter Group, said the unit was short of its authorized strength, but still had a long waiting list, because of the difficulty getting slots in basic training for recruits at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Martin said four openings for pilots were available in the 147th in 1968, and that Bush got the last one.

Staudt, the colonel who twice had himself photographed with Bush, said his status as a congressman`s son "didn`t cut any ice." But others say that it was not uncommon for well-connected Texans to obtain special consideration for Air Guard slots. In addition to Bush and Bentsen, many socially or politically prominent young men were admitted to the Air Guard, according to former officials; they included the son of then-Sen. John Tower and at least seven members of the Dallas Cowboys.

"The well-to-do kids had enough sense to get on the waiting list," Martin said. "Some [applicants] thought they could just walk in the door and sign up."

One address for those seeking help getting in was Ben Barnes, a Democrat who was then the speaker of the Texas House and a protege of Gov. John B. Connally. A top aide to Barnes, Nick Kralj, simultaneously served as aide to the head of the Texas Air National Guard, the late Brig. Gen. James M. Rose.

An anonymous letter addressed to a U.S. attorney in Texas, produced in a discovery proceeding for an ongoing lawsuit, charged that Barnes assisted Bush in getting into the Guard. The suit was brought by the former director of the Texas Lottery Commission, who believes Barnes, now a lobbyist, may have played a role in his dismissal.

In a deposition for the suit, Kralj confirmed that he would get calls from Barnes or his chief of staff, Robert Spelling, "saying so-and-so is interested in getting in the Guard." Kralj said he would then forward the names to Gen. Rose.

In an interview, Barnes also acknowledged that he sometimes received requests for help in obtaining Guard slots. He said he never received such a call from then-Rep. Bush or anyone in the Bush family.

However, when asked if an intermediary or friend of the Bush family had ever asked him to intercede on George W.`s behalf, Barnes declined to comment. Kralj, in his deposition, said he could not recall any of the names he gave to Gen. Rose.

Hughes, Bush`s spokeswoman, said: "The governor has no knowledge of anyone making inquiries on his behalf."

Martin and others said Bush was quickly accepted because he was willing to sign up for the intensive training and six years of service required of fighter pilots. "It was very difficult to find someone who would commit himself to the rigorous training that was required," says Martin.

Bush, said Staudt, "said he wanted to fly just like his daddy."

Bush`s father had volunteered for service in World War II at the age of 18 and was shot down while flying combat missions in the Pacific theater. By enlisting in the Guard, his son not only avoided Vietnam but was able to spend much of his time on active duty in his home town of Houston, flying F-102 fighter interceptors out of Ellington Air Force Base.

In discussing his own decision, he has always said his main consideration was that he wanted to be a pilot, and the National Guard gave him a chance to do that. In 1989 he tried to describe his own thought process to a Texas interviewer. "I`m saying to myself, `What do I want to do?` I think I don`t want to be an infantry guy as a private in Vietnam. What I do decide to want to do is learn to fly."

Asked in a recent interview whether he was avoiding the draft, Bush said, "No, I was becoming a pilot."

Four months before enlisting, Bush reported at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude – "about as low as you could get and be accepted," according to Martin – and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial testing, he scored 95 percent on questions designed to reflect "officer quality," compared with a current-day average of 88 percent.

Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."

Bush said in an interview that he did not recall checking the box. Two weeks later, his office provided a statement from a former, state-level Air Guard personnel officer, asserting that since Bush "was applying for a specific position with the 147th Fighter Group, it would have been inappropriate for him to have volunteered for an overseas assignment and he probably was so advised by the military personnel clerk assisting him in completing the form."

During a second interview, Bush himself raised the issue.

"Had my unit been called up, I`d have gone . . . to Vietnam," Bush said. "I was prepared to go."

But there was no chance Bush`s unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a "Palace Alert" program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.

He was turned down on the spot. "I did [ask] – and I was told, `You`re not going,` " Bush said.

Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970.

After basic training at Lackland and his commissioning as a second lieutenant in 1968, Bush got what amounted to a two-month-plus vacation that enabled him to head to Florida to work for a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Edward J. Gurney. Put on inactive duty status, Bush arrived in early September and stayed through Election Day, riding the press plane, handing out releases, and making sure traveling reporters woke up in time. He occasionally returned to Houston for weekend Guard duty.

In late November, Bush was sent to Moody Air Force Base outside Valdosta, Ga., for year-long undergraduate flight school. Bush impressed fellow trainees with the way he learned to handle a plane, but he became a celebrity for something else. In the middle of his training, President Richard M. Nixon sent a plane down to fetch him for an introductory date with his older daughter Tricia, according to fellow trainee Joseph A. Chaney. It did not lead to another date, but the story lives on. So does memory of the graduation ceremony: Rep. Bush gave the commencement speech.

In December 1969, George W. returned to Houston to hone his skills and eventually fly solo on the all-weather F-102, firing its weapons and conducting intercept missions against supersonic targets. He learned with a verve that impressed his superiors, becoming the the first hometown graduate of the 147th`s newly established Combat Crew Training School. The group`s public relations office celebrated his solo flight in March 1970 with a press release that began:

"George Walker Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn`t get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed. . . . As far as kicks are concerned, Lt. Bush gets his from the roaring afterburner of the F-102."

Brig. Gen. John Scribner, director of the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin, said it was only natural that the Guard would have publicized Bush`s service with special ceremonies and press releases. "That`s how they do things, play it up big, especially since he was a congressman`s son. That was important to the Guard," he said.


No Career in Mind, No Rush to Settle Down



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Bush graduated from Combat Crew Training School on June 23, 1970, having fulfilled his two years of active duty. But he still flew the F-102 Delta Daggers a few times a month; his unit kept two of the fighters, fully armed, on round-the-clock alert and needed the pilots to man them. With no career in mind, Bush was still "looking," as his mother said – looking for work and looking for his road. He seemed to be in no rush to settle down, which his mother said was fine by his parents.
Barbara Bush said she recalled that her father-in-law, Prescott Bush, came to Yale in the late 1940s and told her husband that " `you don`t have to make up your mind now what you`re going to be when you grow up.` " She added: "I think we told our children that. . . . I`m sure George did."

George W. promptly took a one-bedroom apartment at one of the most attractive complexes in Houston at the time, the Chateaux Dijon. A popular spot for singles, it offered fancy street lamps and striped awnings and six pools filled with ambitious secretaries, students and young businessmen. Bush relished his bachelor life there. He played hard, plunging into all-day water volleyball games, but left frequently for 24-hour flight duty in the alert shack at Ellington Field.

"He did some night-flying as I recall," said Don Ensenat, a Yale classmate who lived with him in Houston. "No alcohol 24 hours before. They had to keep planes on alert all the time." Bush had to be ready to scramble in his F-102 after any flying objects that Air Force radars couldn`t figure out.

Coincidentally, Bush`s future wife, Laura Welch, a public school librarian, lived at the Chateaux Dijon too, but they didn`t meet. Bush dated other women frequently, but none steadily.

"He had a couple of girls that were more than one date, but nothing that looked like a serious romance," Ensenat said. "Dates and the opposite sex were always high on the agenda. He was always enjoyable to be around. But we didn`t do anything anybody else in their twenties didn`t do."

Ensenat said he never saw Bush use illegal drugs.

That fall, as his father raced Bentsen for the Senate seat, both Bush and Ensenat, who had already entered law school at the University of Houston, applied for admission to the University of Texas law school. Both were rejected, though Ensenat later became a lawyer. Then, after losing to Bentsen, Bush`s father was named ambassador to the United Nations by President Nixon. The Bushes moved to New York, leaving their eldest son to rely on his family`s old school and corporate ties to find a job.

Bush called Robert H. Gow, a Yale man who had roomed with the senior Bush`s cousin Ray in college and who had been an executive at the senior Bush`s Zapata Off-Shore Co. In 1969, Gow left Zapata and started Stratford of Texas, a Houston-based agricultural company with diverse interests: from cattle to chickens to indoor, non-blooming tropical plants.

"We weren`t looking for someone, but I thought this would be a talented guy we should hire, and he was available," Gow said. In early 1971, Gow gave Bush a job as a management trainee. He was required to wear a coat and tie and dispatched around the country and even to Central America, looking for plant nurseries that Stratford might acquire. The newly buttoned-down businessman also moved into a garage apartment that he shared with Ensenat off Houston`s North Boulevard, an old 1920s neighborhood close to downtown.

"We traveled to all kinds of peculiar places, like Apopka, Florida, which was named the foliage capital of the world," said Peter C. Knudtzon, another Zapata alumnus who was Stratford`s executive vice president and Bush`s immediate boss.

Once or twice a month, Bush would announce that he had flight duty and off he would go, sometimes taking his F-102 from Houston to Orlando and back. "It was really quite amazing," Knudtzon said. "Here was this young guy making acquisitions of tropical plants and then up and leaving to fly fighter planes."

Bush learned the ropes quickly, putting in long hours, and fitting in smoothly – but this wasn`t the place for the impatient young man. He would later refer to his time at Stratford as a dull coat-and-tie job. Within weeks he was talking to Gow and Knudtzon about his future, questioning, searching – but never coming to any firm conclusion. His bosses recall today that he was weighing whether he should pursue public service or stick it out in the business arena to build some security.

Bush stayed at Stratford only about nine months, and by fall 1971 he was flirting – albeit very briefly – with running for the state legislature. The Houston Post reported the possibility in a story that misnamed him "George Bush Jr."

In the late spring of 1972, Bush was again looking, when he joined another political campaign. This time he helped longtime family friend Jimmy Allison work in Alabama on the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Winton M. "Red" Blount against longtime Democratic incumbent John J. Sparkman. Bush moved to Alabama and worked until November as political director for Blount, who lost by a wide margin.

By the end of 1972, Bush`s father was mulling over a new job offer from Nixon – to be chairman of the Republican National Committee. With his parents back in Washington, Bush went to stay with them for the holidays and was involved in one of the most notorious incidents of his "nomadic" years. He took his 16-year-old brother Marvin out drinking, ran over a neighbor`s garbage cans on the way home, and when his father confronted him, challenged him to go "mano a mano" outside.

There was no fight, and Bush was apparently able to mollify his father with the news that he had been accepted for the following fall at Harvard Business School. But with nothing to do until then, his father decided it was time to give this restless young man some broader exposure to real life.

Shortly after Christmas, Bush began working as a counselor with black youngsters in Houston`s Third Ward in a program called PULL (Professionals United for Leadership) for Youth. The brainchild of the late John L. White, a former professional football player and civic leader, it was set up for kids up to 17 in a warehouse on McGowen Street and it offered sports, crafts, field trips and big-name mentors from the athletic, entertainment and business worlds.

Bush and his brother Marvin, who tagged along for the summer weeks, were the only whites in the place. "They stood out like a sore thumb," said Muriel Simmons Henderson, who was one of PULL`s senior counselors. "John White was a good friend of their father. He told us that the father wanted George W. to see the other side of life. He asked John if he would put him in there."

Dressed in khaki, with his pants torn at the knees, Bush managed to fit right in. He "came early and stayed late," in the words of one former employee, playing basketball and wrestling with the youngsters, taking them on field trips to juvenile prisons so they could see that side of life and resolve not to end up there themselves. He also taught them not to run when a police cruiser came by.

"He was a super, super guy," said "Big Cat" Ernie Ladd, a 6-foot-9, 320-pound pro football great and PULL luminary who stopped by frequently. "If he was a stinker, I`d say he was a stinker. But everybody loved him so much. He had a way with people. . . . They didn`t want him to leave." One little boy in particular, a 6-or-maybe-7-year-old named Jimmy Dean, made a special connection with Bush. "He was an adorable kid," said Edgar Arnold, PULL`s operating director. "Everybody liked him, but he bypassed all these famous athletes, all these giants, and picked out George Bush, and vice versa." The two became inseparable. If George was a little late, Jimmy would wait for him on the stoop. "At business meetings," Arnold said, "that kid would be on top of George, head on his shoulders." When Jimmy showed up shoeless, George bought him shoes.

Bush says he heard many years later that little Jimmy Dean was killed by gunfire as a teenager. "He was like my adopted little brother."

In keeping with family tradition, Bush did not boast of his pedigree, or even mention it, to others at PULL. "I didn`t know he was of a silver spoon nature," Henderson said.

His car, like his clothes, carried no hint of it. "He had a bomb of a car," she remembered. "It was the pits . . . always full of stuff, clothes, papers. No one could ride in it with him. . . . He never put himself in the position of looking down his nose at someone, like, `I`ve got all this money, my father is George Bush.` He never talked about his father. He was so down to earth. . . . You could not help liking him. He was always fun."


Back to New England And Another School



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To start at Harvard, Bush needed early release from Guard duty in Texas, and he got it easily, about eight months short of a full six years. A Bush spokesman, Dan Bartlett, said early departures were quite common and, in Bush`s case, appropriate because his unit had phased out the F-102s. Bush was transferred to a reserve unit in Boston for the rest of his time, Bartlett noted.
Arriving in Cambridge in September 1973 in his spray-painted Cutlass and scruffy clothes, Bush was not at all what his classmates expected when the word spread that he was indeed the son of the Republican National Committee chairman.

"One of my first recollections of him," says classmate Marty Kahn, "was sitting in class and hearing the unmistakable sound of someone spitting tobacco. I turned around and there was George sitting in the back of the room in his [National Guard] bomber jacket spitting in a cup. You have to remember this was Harvard Business School. You just didn`t see that kind of thing."

Classmates vividly remember Bush as an iconoclast and a character, someone who didn`t fit the tailored mold of business students in the nation`s premier graduate program. Many of the students who arrived that fall, like Bush, had been out of college and working a few years. But unlike Bush, a good number were returning to school with a road map of where they were heading: Wall Street.

Bush`s entry into the program came five years after his graduation from Yale, and after a series of dead-end or unfulfilling jobs. He was 27 and clearly had not found his niche yet. "A lot of people went to Harvard Business School . . . for a job and all that. I went there to actually learn. And did," says Bush.

Indeed, many of those closest to him, including his mother, believe Harvard`s rigorous academic demands brought his life and potential career into focus. "Harvard was a great turning point for him. I don`t think he`d say that as much as I would," said Barbara Bush. "I think he learned what is that word? Structure."

Bush shrugged off the trappings of Harvard and avoided the official clubs that would showcase him in the yearbook and look good on his resume. Instead, he showed up for class looking like he had just rolled out of bed in the morning, often sat in the back of the room chewing gum or dipping snuff and made it clear to everyone he had no interest in Wall Street.

He was one of the few people who posed for his yearbook mug shot in a sports shirt, a wrinkled one at that. The other prominent picture of him in the book showed him sitting in the back row of class with longish hair blowing a huge bubble.

"This was HBS and people were fooling around with the accouterments of money and power," recalled April Foley, who dated Bush for a brief period and has remained friends with him. "While they were drinking Chivas Regal, he was drinking Wild Turkey. They were smoking Benson and Hedges and he`s dipping Copenhagen, and while they were going to the opera he was listen to Johnny Rodriguez over and over and over and over."

What Bush wanted to get out of Harvard were some practical business fundamentals. He wanted to do something entrepreneurial, he told his pals, but he wasn`t sure what. He mused about running for office but told friends he had to make some money first. Of this everyone was certain: George W. Bush would never end up on the East Coast. He was going back to Texas.


Staff researchers Nathan Abse, Madonna Lebling and Mary Lou White contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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September 11, 2003
Gas is Below $1.70 First Time in 2 Weeks
By REUTERS

Filed at 5:41 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. average retail gasoline prices dropped below $1.70 a gallon for the first time in more than two weeks on Thursday -- a relief to motorists who shelled out record prices after a spike in late August, the American Automobile Association (AAA) said.

Pump prices slipped to $1.69 a gallon from the all-time high of nearly $1.74 a gallon reached Aug. 30 during the travel-heavy Labor Day holiday, the traditional end to the summer driving season, the motorist and travel group said.

Still, gasoline prices are about 30 cents per gallon -- or 21 percent -- higher than they were a year ago.

``After the sharp run up we saw in August, even having prices hold steady feels like a victory to many motorists,`` said Justin McNaull spokesman for the AAA.

Pump prices jumped last month after the massive Aug. 14 power blackout in the Northeast that closed several refineries and the shutdown of a major gasoline pipeline in Arizona. The disruption happened during peak driving demand.

While prices are easing, drivers shouldn`t expect any bargains soon.

The federal Energy Information Administration said this week that the average price for self-serve gasoline won`t fall below $1.50 until November.

The government EIA said that September`s national average for gasoline will be about $1.67 a gallon, followed by $1.55 in October and then below $1.50 in November. The EIA shows that mid-November prices in 2002 were approximately $1.40 per gallon.

``In September, we see gas prices fall and the market fundamentals (of supply and demand) are such that there is no reason they shouldn`t fall, provided there are no surprises,`` McNaull said.

Gasoline prices are still the highest in California, which the AAA said on Thursday was averaging $2.124 per gallon. In Arizona, site of the pipeline break that has been fixed, average prices were $1.927 a gallon, down from just over $2 a gallon on Aug. 26, the AAA said.



Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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Report reveals Blair overruled terror warning
· PM told war would increase al-Qaida threat
· Campbell cleared over sexing up dossier
· Hoon `unhelpful, potentially misleading`

Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael White
Friday September 12, 2003
The Guardian

Tony Blair was warned on the eve of war by his intelligence chiefs that an invasion of Iraq would increase the danger of terrorist attacks, which they considered by far the greatest threat to western interests.

The warning is disclosed in a report by parliament`s intelligence committee which contains fresh criticism of the dossier on Iraq`s banned weapons programme which the government used to make its case for action against Iraq.

It says that last September intelligence chiefs distorted the threat posed by Saddam Hussein - mainly by the sin of omission - but clears Downing Street of "sexing up" the dossier and concludes that ministers did not mislead parliament.

Yesterday`s report discloses that in February this year, a month before the invasion of Iraq, Whitehall`s joint intelligence committee (JIC) warned that "al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq".

The intelligence chiefs added: "Any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, including al-Qaida."

The MPs` committee reveals that it discussed the risk with Mr Blair. He agreed there was "obviously a danger that in attacking Iraq you ended up provoking the very thing you were trying to avoid".

However, he added: "You had to ask the question, `Could you really, as a result of that fear, leave the possibility that in time this developed into a nexus between terrorism and WMD in any event?`"

The prime minister continued: "This is where you`ve just got to make your judgment about this. But this is my judgment and it remains my judgment and I suppose time will tell whether it`s true or it`s not true."

The committee`s report criticises the September dossier for failing to admit the paucity of hard information about Iraq`s banned weapons programme and for making claims out of context.

It says the use of the phrase "continued to produce chemical and biological weapons" in the dossier and its foreword, signed by Mr Blair, could give a misleading impression.

The JIC "did not know what had been produced and in what quantities", the report says. It did not know "precisely which munitions could be deployed from where to where".

Saddam was not considered a current or imminent threat to Britain - the most likely chemical and biological munitions to be used against western forces were battlefield weapons and not strategic, longer-range, ones. "This should have been highlighted in the dossier," the parliamentary committee says.

It says the dossier should also have highlighted the point that the claim that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order also referred only to short-range, battlefield, weapons. "The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of this issue."

The 45-minute claim - mentioned four times in the dossier, including, in the strongest language, in the foreword - is at the heart of the row between the government and the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan.

In its overall judgment on the credibility of the September dossier, the committee said: "The jury is still out on the accuracy of the intelligence, the assessments, and therefore the dossier."

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, and senior defence officials also come under criticism for their "unhelpful and potentially misleading" lack of candour about dissent within the defence intelligence service. Though Mr Hoon never denied there had been dissent among his intelligence staff, the committee was "disturbed" to discover that he had ordered his officials not to tell the committee about written complaints from two intelligence officials. The committee got to know about them only after they were disclosed to the Hutton inquiry.

The Tories instantly called for Mr Hoon`s resignation. "It is absolutely clear that Geoff Hoon`s position is quite untenable," said Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

However, Ann Taylor, chair of the committee, said that "at no point in this document do we call for his resignation".

"He did not tell us lies, he told us there had been a dispute," Tory MP James Arbuthnot said.

Later in the Commons Mr Hoon said he had "no intention whatsoever other than to be open and straightforward" with the MPs` committee over the Iraqi dossier. "I regret any misunderstanding that might have arisen."

Downing Street will be comforted by other key findings in the ISC report. "The dossier was not `sexed up` by Alastair Campbell or anyone else," it says, rebutting a central allegation of the initial BBC broadcast that prompted the row. The committee "accepts" that there was no political pressure placed on John Scarlett, chairman of the JIC, who produced the dossier.

One of five Labour members on the nine-member committee, Kevin Baron, said: "Do not look for any deep conspiracy theory because we could not find it and we did look."

Mr Campbell may be in the clear, but Mr Hoon, Mr Blair and John Scarlett are not.

The MPs` report did not pass a verdict on whether or not it was right to invade Iraq. Five of its members voted for war, four - including Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith - voted against, and they sidestepped that issue to ensure a unanimous report.

The unanimous report appears to conflict with evidence to the Hutton inquiry, notably over the claim that no one "sexed up" the dossier. The inquiry has heard how the language was strengthened, albeit with Mr Scarlett`s blessing.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Iraq dossier
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Hoon hangs on
Leader
Friday September 12, 2003
The Guardian

It is not hard to make the case against the way the intelligence and security committee has been established and does its work. The committee is appointed by the prime minister not parliament. It likewise reports to the PM and not to MPs. It conducts its business in secret. It does not publish the detailed evidence on which it reaches its conclusions. The prime minister retains the right to censor its reports.

In return for its privileged access, the committee therefore forfeits important parts of its independence. All in all, that makes it a very British body. Some would dismiss its members as mere cooptees of the establishment. That would be too hard. Yet no self-respecting advocate of open government can fail to have doubts about the committee`s ability to get to the root of the activities it was set up to monitor.

That said, the committee`s new report on intelligence assessments about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction reads as a fair-minded and informed assessment of many of the issues. It also makes the valuable point, reiterated by both Michael Mates and Alan Howarth at yesterday`s press conference, that the now controversial government dossier a year ago was the first sustained attempt by a UK government to put intelligence material into the public domain on this scale. That effort resulted in an extremely imperfect exercise, to put it mildly, which reflected the faults of the individuals, traditions and institutions who contributed to it. But the committee is right to remind the public that the production of the dossier was nevertheless a difficult and groundbreaking task - as well as a worthwhile one, which is likely to be repeated in future terrorist-related conflicts, and from which significant lessons must be learned.

It is clear from the committee`s report that editorial changes were made to the dossier which sharpened and oversimplified some of its claims, especially those concerning the "45 minutes" issue. Most of these changes took the form of late omissions rather than commissions. Among the important statements that were left out of the published dossier were the fact that Saddam Hussein was not considered a current or imminent threat to the UK (as distinct from wider UK interests), that the most likely chemical and biological munitions at Saddam`s disposal were battlefield weapons (as distinct from longer range missiles), and that there was real disagreement at a senior level within the intelligence world about the weight that should be placed on the single-sourced 45-minute claim. All this is not necessarily the same as saying that the dossier was sexed up; if anything it would be more accurate to say that it was not sexed down enough. But the committee rejects Andrew Gilligan`s allegation that Alastair Campbell was responsible for these changes.

The committee has a mixed verdict on the role of the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon. Contrary to some advance reports, Mr Hoon did in fact tell the committee in July that "there had been a dispute" in his department about some aspects of the dossier draft. But Mr Hoon also underplayed what he knew when he gave evidence to the committee. He did not disclose that two senior members of the defence intelligence service had put their concerns on paper. In their sharpest verdict on Mr Hoon`s role, the committee says that this was "unhelpful and potentially misleading". That was not enough to require Mr Hoon`s resignation, says committee chairwoman Ann Taylor. Yet no one who has studied Mr Hoon`s evidence to the Hutton inquiry will fail to recognise the shifty techniques which rightly irked the committee. The defence secretary got off with just a reprimand this time; but his apology yesterday does not bring him closure yet. Mr Hoon`s future still hangs in the balance - and in the hands of Lord Hutton.


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September 12, 2003
Returning From Iraq War Not So Simple for Soldiers
By STEVEN LEE MYERS


FORT STEWART, Ga., Sept. 9 — Susan W. Wilder paced the auditorium here like a motivational speaker and asked the new veterans of the war in Iraq what pleased them most now that they were, at last, home.

The soldiers arrayed neatly before her — the first sergeant saw to that — answered as they had months ago when, in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq and later in the swelter of Baghdad, they had let their thoughts drift achingly toward home.

"Beer," several shouted cheerfully. "Sex," others answered. It was hard to say, amid the laughter, which they had missed most.

The joking subsided, though, as Mrs. Wilder, herself a soldier`s wife, asked what bothered them most now that they were home.

"Less tolerant of stupid people," Staff Sgt. Matthew E. Jordan of the First Brigade, Third Infantry Division, said bitterly. "Stupid people doing stupid things."

There was a murmur of assent.

For the soldiers of the First Brigade, accompanied by this reporter during their surge into Baghdad in the messy aftermath in June and again now that they have returned, coming home has been a far more complicated, even conflicted, experience than it seemed it would be back in Iraq when they thought of little else.

They have returned to wives and girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends, and to new babies born while they were overseas. They have returned to families who lived in fear of the news and could not stop following it. They have returned to face emotions they expected and others they did not.

Sergeant Jordan, whose scouts fought in some of the First Brigade`s fiercest clashes, seethed with anger at the lurid curiosity of those who would never know what he now knew.

"The first thing he asked me was, `Did you kill anyone?` " he said after the gathering in the auditorium, referring to someone he asked not be identified. "Then it was, `How did it feel?` What kind of stupid thing is that to ask?"

The trajectory of the Third Infantry Division`s experience has closely followed that of the nation and of the war itself: fear and uncertainty at the outset in March, relief and jubilation at the swift victory in April, then fear and uncertainty again as the troops remained in Baghdad in the chaotic, deadly aftermath.

In the summer, morale plummeted as the division`s departure was ordered, then postponed, ordered and postponed again. It became an issue with reverberations from Baghdad to Georgia to Washington. Soldiers, including some who spoke to The New York Times, were admonished for voicing their frustrations publicly, and told not to talk again.

Now they are home, but homecoming is not simple and frustrations remain. Cpl. Keith D. Dries went out with friends in Savannah and discovered, as he put it, "I can`t stand crowds." Capt. James R. Lockridge, an easy-mannered combat engineer, said he found it hard to communicate with his wife.

Some, like Sgt. Mark N. Redmond, returned with debilitating injuries — cracked vertebras, in his case, from a blast in the battle for Kifl, a village on the Euphrates River. Still others — as many as 5 percent of the division, officials here said — have sought counseling for symptoms of combat stress or other problems with readjustment.

There is a lot of pain to digest. The division has planted a row of eastern redbud trees along one side of the parade field at Fort Stewart — one for each of those who did not return home. The trees will bloom each spring, when most of the soldiers died.

The division lost 38 soldiers; 4 more from other units that fought with the division also died. The First Brigade lost 19, the last of them, Sgt. Michael T. Crockett, on July 14, when guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into his Humvee on the road from the airport outside Baghdad.

"It`s not easy," Staff Sgt. Jennifer M. Raichle, an intelligence analyst, said as she drank beer with two other soldiers in her house in Hinesville the other night. "We have no patience for anybody."

Her parents, from Enterprise, Ala., redecorated her house in Hinesville and planted a "Welcome Home" sign in her yard, but she postponed a trip home now that the troops have been given leave.

"Don`t get me wrong," she said. "I love my family to death and I appreciate what they`ve done, but you just need time to be away from people."

The Army knows that. Having trained the soldiers to fight, it is now undertaking its greatest effort ever to ease their return to "civilian" life.

Even before they left Iraq, the division`s soldiers had been screened for symptoms of combat stress, and those with signs of it were referred to the division`s psychologists for further evaluation. They have also been required to attend sessions like one the other day in which they were encouraged to air their feelings after months of keeping them in check.

The images were jarring. Bess K. Stone, who works for Fort Stewart`s Army Community Service, an organization that provides assistance to soldiers and their families during deployments, led hundreds of battle-wearied soldiers of the brigade`s Second Battalion, Seventh Infantry, through a similar discussion last week on the difference between the sheer physical gratification of sexual relations, and more complex emotional intimacy.

"Your expectations and your spouse`s expectations regarding your sexual relations are different," she told them. "They are going to want to re-establish intimate relations."

Soldiers, being soldiers, irreverently call them the "don`t beat your wife" briefings, but the sessions are the sobering outgrowth of a wave of murders and suicides last year involving soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., after their return from the war in Afghanistan. There were four murders and three suicides, all involving special operations forces who had been in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Wilder, the local director of Army Community Service, said the purpose was to reassure soldiers that the strains they were experiencing — from paying bills to re-establishing relationships with spouses and children — are not unusual. Wives attended similar sessions here before the soldiers returned.

For the soldiers of the Third Infantry Division, the Army has also set up a 24-hour hot line, like one established at Fort Bragg, that soldiers can call when they feel overwhelmed.

Certainly, the welcome to the soldiers can seem overwhelming. All around Fort Stewart and in Hinesville, Pembroke and other small cities in the piney woods near the post there are flags, yellow ribbons and banners welcoming the division`s troops.

President Bush is expected here on Friday. Sgt. Kenneth N. Bortz, an infantryman with the Second Battalion, received a key to his hometown, St. Mary`s, Ga. The local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America sent a delegation to greet each group of returning soldiers, the last of whom arrived on Thursday night last week.

"One of the things our organization pledged when it was formed 25 years ago was that no generation of soldiers would be abandoned by the previous generation, as we were," Wayne Watkins, one of the Vietnam veterans, said as he waited for one of the last flights.

The First Brigade`s soldiers — the last of the division`s 18,000 troops to return — spent the last week attending briefings and awards ceremonies, undergoing medical tests and preparing for leave, which began for most on Friday.

Even though it is over for them, the war remains vivid, the news still close. "There are three things you experienced in Iraq that will be with you forever," Lt. Col. Gary P. Mauck, a reservist who has served as the Fort Stewart chaplain during the war, told the soldiers at each of the counseling sessions. "The sights, the sounds and the smells."

The United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that was destroyed by a car bomb was just down the road from the First Brigade camp near Olympic Stadium. The police academy attacked last week was across the street.

"We left right in time," Capt. Darrin E. Theriault, commander of Headquarters Company, told the brigade commander, Col. William F. Grimsley, two days after the latest attack. Colonel Grimsley said it was difficult to follow the news from Iraq. "It`s still too close," he said.

For all the questions that have been raised about the president`s rationale for the war and the Pentagon`s strategy for winning it, most of the brigade`s troops said they felt a sense of purpose and of mission, though as Captain Lockridge put it, it is "a mission still being accomplished."

What lasting effects the war had on the First Brigade`s soldiers — on re-enlistment rates, which have slumped, on broken bodies and on battered psyches — remains to be seen.

Sergeant Bortz said fighting in Iraq made him rethink a career in the Army.

"I feel good for what I did, but out there, that`s when you really think about what you want," he said on Friday. "And in Baghdad, I knew the Army wasn`t for me."

Sgt. Jamie A. Betancourt, also in the Second Battalion, plans to get out when his enlistment is up in May for a simple reason. "There`s nowhere else I can go in the Army," he said, "that`s not going back over there."

Others have no choice.

In June, when the brigade`s soldiers were living in steaming squalor at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, known among troops as Hotel Hell, Staff Sgt. Ray B. Robinson complained about staying on in Baghdad without a clear purpose.

The brigade had turned over its responsibilities for security but remained in reserve, still vulnerable to attacks, but not aggressively pursuing the attackers.

He compared the situation to the carnival game of shooting ducks. "I was the duck," he said.

On July 8, his squad had been assigned to patrol Route 8, the highway to and from the airport west of Baghdad. He spotted an orange-and-white taxi across the highway and two Iraqis walking away from it. He lurched his Humvee to the left, drove onto the median strip and ran over a mine.

The force of the blast blew him through the windshield. "Fox said I was dead," he said of initial television reports, but — he woke in the mine`s crater, both his feet shattered, his legs torn by shrapnel, his face and arm scorched, his left eardrum broken.

He has endured two operations and faces more. The doctors saved his feet, but he is not likely to walk normally again. After 16 years in the Army and the National Guard, his career is over.

Sitting in a hospital bed installed in his house on a neat cul-de-sac here at Fort Stewart, with his wife and three children coming in and out, he remains strikingly unembittered. "The disappointment is over," he said. "I`ve just got to deal with what I got."

For Sergeant Robinson`s unit, Company A of the Second Battalion, Seventh Infantry, the war exacted a heavy toll. Five of the unit`s soldiers died, four of them in a taxi bombing on the highway into Najaf on March 29.

"We can`t lose," he said. "We can`t lose this. It`ll all have been a waste. We`ve got five trees out there. If we pull out now, I got blown up for nothing."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 12, 2003
THE CAPITAL
A Baghdad Traffic Circle Is a Microcosm for Chaos
By JOHN TIERNEY


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 10 — Before the war, in that bygone era when Baghdad`s drivers stopped for red lights and drove on the right, Kahramana Square was controlled by one traffic policeman. Now there are 12, and they were still not enough to deter the guy in the red Caprice.

He drove from a side street up onto a sidewalk, then crossed against four lanes of oncoming cars to enter the traffic circle counterclockwise. As he wove across another six lanes of oncoming cars, a policeman named Ali Hussein Hamza dared to suggest an alternate route. This so appalled the driver that he got out of his car and administered a head butt to Mr. Hamza`s forehead.

The head butt, which drew blood and sent the policeman to the hospital, was enough to get the man arrested — an extraordinary experience for any driver since Operation Iraqi Freedom transformed Baghdad. On the streets here, freedom`s just another word for the wildest traffic in the history of the city, and quite possibly the world.

You could think of Baghdad traffic as the perfect storm. First the rules vanished in the chaos of the invasion, when there was no electricity for stoplights and no police officers to enforce the laws.

Every intersection became a perpetual game of chicken among cars, trucks, buses and carts drawn by horses and donkeys. Every lane became potentially two-way, even on expressways, where there quickly became no distinction between entrance and exit ramps.

Then, thanks to the newly opened borders and an end to Saddam Hussein`s 300 percent tax on imported automobiles, the price of cars plummeted and the streets became jammed with new imported (and unregistered) vehicles. Meanwhile, American soldiers blocked streets with temporary checkpoints and permanent barriers. To keep car bombs away from high-rise hotels and their own headquarters, the occupying forces closed major arteries in central Baghdad and a critical bridge across the Tigris.

New Yorkers might imagine shutting down Manhattan`s West Side Highway and closing the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour and diverting all traffic through Times Square, and they would get an idea of why it takes 45 minutes to travel a block near Kahramana Square.

"This is the hardest job in Baghdad," said Mr. Hamza, an hour after the head butt the other morning, as he returned to the square with a bandage on his head. It was his third injury on the job in the past month — his foot and his leg had each been smashed — and he announced he was quitting. His boss, Col. Mahdi Hamoudi, sent him home to rest and promised him a transfer.

"He`s right, the job is impossible," the colonel said. "We have no authority." Before the war, he explained, traffic policemen could not only issue tickets but also impound a car on the spot.

"People knew there were courts to enforce the laws," he said. "We had respect. We had guns, too. But they were all stolen from the station by looters when the Americans came."

Colonel Hamoudi was wearing a small pistol, a personal one he had saved from the looters, but the other policemen said they could not afford to arm themselves. They complained that there was no point in issuing tickets, since so many of the cars had fake license plates. Besides all the new unregistered cars from across the border, there was also a huge number of stolen cars as a result of the recent epidemic of carjacking.

"Look at that Ali Baba," said one policeman, Muhammad Nouri Azziz, pointing to the driver of a gray BMW. "I know his face. I`ve seen him driving other stolen cars, too, but what can I do? No one`s afraid of us anymore. We need two pistols each, like cowboys in Texas."

As Mr. Azziz dashed off to try to stop another car from entering the traffic counterclockwise, Colonel Hamoudi gripped his pistol and shook his head. "I am amazed at the way Iraqis are acting," he said. "What happened to them? This is not freedom. This is chaos."

If Baghdad traffic represents the state of nature, it confirms the philosopher Thomas Hobbes`s dark view of humanity: without the iron hand of a leviathan, brutishness will prevail.

But how could civility diappear so completely? What happened to people`s instinct for working out codes of conduct voluntarily, as documented by evolutionary psychologists and economic historians?

These questions were put to Daniel Klein, an American economist who has studied both modern traffic problems and the evolution of cooperation.

The problem in Baghdad, Dr. Klein said, is that the drivers don`t have to worry about their reputations. They`re constantly involved in what are called one-off transactions — one-time meetings with strangers.

"Even when there`s no law governing people, repeated interactions, especially face-to-face ones, can give rise to cooperation and eventually institutions, norms and practices that continually improve," Dr. Klein said. "But on the road people are in their own bubble, sealed off from one another, and they scarcely worry about repeated interactions."

The only solution, then, would seem to be an appropriately Hobbesian one, and the traffic policemen at Kahramana Square have an idea inspired by the sculpture in the square. It depicts Kahramana, the Iraqi name for the maid of the original Ali Baba in the story from "The Arabian Nights."

The sculpture shows her pouring a pot of boiling oil into a jar where one of the 40 thieves is hiding.

"We should be pouring hot oil on these drivers," Mr. Azziz said. "But we need more than a pot of oil. It would take a tanker truck."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 12, 2003
Exploiting the Atrocity
By PAUL KRUGMAN


In my first column after 9/11, I mentioned something everyone with contacts on Capitol Hill already knew: that just days after the event, the exploitation of the atrocity for partisan political gain had already begun.

In response, I received a torrent of outraged mail. At a time when the nation was shocked and terrified, the thought that our leaders might be that cynical was too much to bear. ``How can I say that to my young son?`` asked one furious e-mailer.

I wonder what that correspondent thinks now. Is the public - and the news media - finally prepared to cry foul when cynicism comes wrapped in the flag? America`s political future may rest on the answer.

The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration`s exploitation of 9/11, partly because that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out yesterday, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits and even campaign finance. Meanwhile, the crudity of the administration`s recent propaganda efforts, from dressing the president up in a flight suit to orchestrating the ludicrously glamorized TV movie about Mr. Bush on 9/11, have set even supporters` teeth on edge.

And some stunts no longer seem feasible. Maybe it was the pressure of other commitments that kept Mr. Bush from visiting New York yesterday; but one suspects that his aides no longer think of the Big Apple as a politically safe place to visit.

Yet it`s almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of 9/11 and, more broadly, the administration`s campaign to label critics as unpatriotic are past their peak. It may be harder for the administration to wrap itself in the flag, but it has more incentive to do so now than ever before. Where once the administration was motivated by greed, now it`s driven by fear.

In the first months after 9/11, the administration`s ruthless exploitation of the atrocity was a choice, not a necessity. The natural instinct of the nation to rally around its leader in times of crisis had pushed Mr. Bush into the polling stratosphere, and his re-election seemed secure. He could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be, and would probably still be wildly popular.

But Mr. Bush`s advisers were greedy; they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag.

Now it has all gone wrong. The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Mr. Bush`s poll numbers are at or below their pre-9/11 levels.

Nor can the members of this administration simply lose like gentlemen. For one thing, that`s not how they operate. Furthermore, everything suggests that there are major scandals - involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence - that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost.

The result, clearly, will be an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history. Four months ago it seemed that the 2004 campaign would be all slow-mo films of Mr. Bush in his flight suit. But at this point, it`s likely to be pictures of Howard Dean or Wesley Clark that morph into Saddam Hussein. And Donald Rumsfeld has already rolled out the stab-in-the-back argument: if you criticize the administration, you`re lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

This political ugliness will take its toll on policy, too. The administration`s infallibility complex - its inability to admit ever making a mistake - will get even worse. And I disagree with those who think the administration can claim infallibility even while practicing policy flexibility: on major issues, such as taxes or Iraq, any sensible policy would too obviously be an implicit admission that previous policies had failed.

In other words, if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it`s about to get worse. A lot worse.



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Panel Warned Blair of War Risk
British Leader Told Terrorists Could Gain Arms

By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A01


LONDON, Sept. 11 -- Britain`s intelligence chiefs warned Prime Minister Tony Blair a month before the invasion of Iraq that military action would increase the risk of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction, according to a parliamentary report released today.

The report said a Feb. 10 assessment by the top-secret Joint Intelligence Committee -- a cabinet-level body that includes the chiefs of Britain`s main intelligence agencies -- concluded that the collapse of Saddam Hussein`s government "would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists."

As of last February, the report said, the Joint Intelligence Committee had uncovered no evidence that Iraq had provided chemical or biological materials to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden`s terror network.

The report did not spell out why intelligence agencies believed military action might allow terrorists to obtain such weapons. But it said that "in the event of imminent regime collapse there would be a risk of transfer of such material, whether or not as a deliberate Iraqi regime policy."

The joint committee also concluded in its report that "al Qaeda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq," said the report, which was issued by the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee.

Blair, who was President Bush`s closest foreign ally in the U.S.-led campaign, has argued repeatedly that disarming Iraq was necessary to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Both the British and the U.S. governments have come under heavy criticism because no such weapons have been found.

In his testimony to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Blair acknowledged that "there was obviously a danger that in attacking Iraq you ended up provoking the very thing you were trying to avoid," said the report. But he insisted that over time the risk of Iraq providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists would have increased.

"This is my judgment and it remains my judgment," Blair was quoted as saying, "and I suppose time will tell whether it`s true or it`s not true."

The House of Commons report -- which follows a series of closed-door hearings with four cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs, government critics and Blair -- also concluded that an intelligence dossier on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction that the government published a year ago had been potentially misleading in several key points. But the panel cleared Blair`s office of claims it had purposely exaggerated intelligence claims to justify military action.

The report said the dossier was based on legitimate intelligence data. "There was no political interference -- the dossier was not sexed up," committee chairman Ann Taylor told reporters.

But the dossier`s claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes had been "unhelpful to an understanding of this issue," the panel concluded. The 45-minute claim -- "an arresting detail," according to the report, that was repeated four times in the dossier -- had referred only to "battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack." This fact "should have been highlighted in the dossier," the report said.

The committee said the dossier had failed to make clear that Hussein`s government posed no "current or imminent threat" to mainland Britain. In addition, the panel said that the dossier should have acknowledged there was an unresolved debate within the intelligence community over whether Iraq was actually manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier "could give the impression that Saddam was actively producing both chemical and biological weapons and significant amounts of agents," said the report, when in fact British intelligence did not know what had been produced or in what quantity.

"This uncertainty should have been highlighted," the report concluded.

The House of Commons intelligence committee -- which consists of nine senior lawmakers from the three main political parties, all of them appointed by the prime minister -- is well-regarded by members of Parliament. It oversees the work of Britain`s intelligence agencies in closed-door sessions, and its reports are made public only after they have been vetted by the prime minister`s office at 10 Downing St. and by intelligence officials.

Like all of its previous assessments, today`s report was unanimously approved. The committee said it had made no attempt to judge whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct, but whether the intelligence the government relied upon was adequate and properly assessed.

It said that Britain`s intelligence services were justified in continuing to claim that Iraq had expressed interest in obtaining "yellow cake" uranium from Niger, despite the CIA`s assessment that the claim was false. "We have questioned the Secret Intelligence Service about the basis of its judgment and conclude that it is reasonable," the report said.

While it cleared Blair and his former top aide, Alastair Campbell, of exaggerating the intelligence evidence, the report singled out Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon for concealing the depth of dissent over the dossier among defense intelligence officials when he testified behind closed doors to the committee earlier this year.

Hoon said there had merely been a dispute about some of the dossier`s wording and that it had been resolved, the report said. But the committee later discovered that two intelligence officers had written memos expressing their doubts, and that Hoon had decided not to send a subsequent letter to the committee outlining their concerns.

"We regard the initial failure by the [ministry] to disclose that some staff had put their concerns in writing as unhelpful and potentially misleading," the report said.

Hoon, who today rejected calls for his resignation from opposition lawmakers in Parliament, told the House of Commons he regretted "any misunderstanding that might have arisen" over his testimony. "I want to make it quite clear that I had no intention whatsoever in being other than open and straightforward with the committee," he said.

After he spoke, Hoon received a ringing endorsement from fellow Labor Party lawmakers, including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who stood on the steps of the prime minister`s Downing Street office to say Hoon was doing a wonderful job and had Blair`s complete support. But other analysts said Hoon remained vulnerable, pending the results of a separate judicial inquiry into the apparent suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, an employee of the ministry.



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Troops` Pneumonia Outbreak Spurs Medical Hunt


By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A01


Lt. Col. Janice M. Rusnak, recently arrived at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, for a tour as infectious-diseases specialist, walked into the third-floor intensive care unit. She didn`t know the name of the patient she wanted to see. But she had what she considered a fairly good description.

Can you point me to the soldier from Iraq who`s on a ventilator? she asked a nurse. The one with acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Which one? the nurse answered. We have three.

Three cases in one place -- pretty strange, the 50-year-old Rusnak remembers thinking.

Rusnak`s observation that morning in late July was the opening chapter of a medical whodunit -- the end of which still hasn`t been written. Although it has identified a surprising suspect, the military is still in the midst of a full-scale investigation to trace the source of a rare, and occasionally fatal, illness.

What`s clear so far is this: Since early March, about 100 soldiers deployed to the Persian Gulf region and Central Asia have contracted pneumonia. About 30 have been ill enough to be sent to hospitals in Europe or the United States. In medical slang, 19 "crashed" within hours of getting sick, not responding to antibiotics and requiring mechanical ventilators to breathe for them. Two have died.

On the day she walked into the Landstuhl hospital, Rusnak was looking for a patient about whom she had been told several days earlier in an e-mail from doctors at the Army`s 28th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq. They had a soldier with severe pneumonia whom they were thinking of evacuating to Germany. They were worried, and a little spooked. They had recently had a similar patient -- a 24-year-old sergeant with pneumonia who also needed a ventilator. He had gone into cardiac arrest and died while being prepared for a flight out.

There`s a saying in medicine that an "outbreak" is when you see one more case of a disease than you expect. Here were four young soldiers from Iraq sick enough with pneumonia to need machines to breathe for them, and one had died. This was not something Rusnak could easily pass by.

And she didn`t.

Before the day was over, she and colleagues at Landstuhl notified Army epidemiologists in the United States that they might be looking at some sort of outbreak. What or how extensive it was, they weren`t sure.

Nothing obviously links the cases, the severe ones in particular. There is no evidence the illness is passed person to person. The 19 people -- 18 men and one woman -- were stationed across 2,600 miles, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, with most in Iraq. They had a variety of military occupations. Only two were in the same unit, and they became ill six months apart.

Overall, the incidence of pneumonia in deployed troops has not been wildly out of line with what is expected. It`s the number of severe cases that`s unusual -- that and the fact that 10 of them showed proliferation of uncommon immune system cells called eosinophils.

Whatever the disease may be, it is clearly rare. It may even be new. The military`s interest, however, isn`t academic. It wants to learn what`s going on so it can prevent future cases.

The investigators are working in the long shadow of Gulf War syndrome, a grab bag of illnesses and physical complaints that emerged after the 1991 war against Iraq. The Pentagon was accused of not paying enough attention to that problem, and doesn`t want a repeat of that experience.

Although the pneumonia outbreak and Gulf War syndrome differ in nearly every important characteristic, the Army is going after this one aggressively, deploying investigative teams, searching old records for similar cases and consulting civilian experts from the start.

"Whether that reflects some hypervigilance -- I would say yes, it probably does. I would say I think we`re much more sensitive to it because of the Gulf War experience," said Col. Robert F. DeFraites, an epidemiologist and senior preventive medicine officer in the Army surgeon general`s office.

In many ways, it is a classic investigation of a rare medical event. Unlike outbreaks of diarrhea and bronchitis, where there`s an unmistakable spike in cases and the issue is what`s causing them, outbreaks of rare conditions begin with a more basic question. Is anything really happening here? Is there a new signal coming out of the usual background noise?

Janice Rusnak thought she did hear a new signal. On the other side of the Atlantic, at the Army`s Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine at Aberdeen Proving Ground outside Baltimore, Col. Bruno P. Petruccelli thought he heard one, too.

"On one day, sitting here in my office, two things happened," Petruccelli recalled recently.

First, he received a copy of several e-mails Rusnak had sent from Germany to colleagues at the Army`s infectious disease research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick. She described the rapid downhill course of several pneumonia cases she had seen. Electronically clipped to one message was a dramatically abnormal chest X-ray of a young soldier, the lungs nearly "whited out" with fluid, a condition often presaging death.

Then came another e-mail message, this one from a woman in Kuwait working for the Army team that samples soil, air and water at encampment sites. She had heard that the local military hospital had seen an unusual number of pneumonia cases. She even gave a number -- 17. The subject line of the message was "mysterious disease."

Shortly after he had read both messages, Petruccelli got a call from the doctor at Fort Detrick who had forwarded Rusnak`s e-mails. He wanted to talk about them.

"You couldn`t have done it better in Hollywood. It all kind of blows in on one day," Petruccelli recalled.

The military has a long history of making discoveries in epidemiology and medicine. Its closely observed population of mostly young healthy people is one in which the odd cases are likely to be noticed -- if your eyes are open to them. Already, doctors in the Iraq theater had noticed a number of infections in both American and Iraqi casualties caused by acinetobacter, a relatively rare microbe found in soil. The pneumonias were another blip worthy of attention.

Over the next two weeks, Rusnak and a military epidemiologist in Landstuhl tabulated cases of soldiers with pneumonia who had been sick enough to be flown out for treatment. They came up with 15 -- possibly an incomplete count, they thought -- and described them to Petruccelli and DeFraites in a conference call on July 3.

That afternoon, those two physicians held another conference call with stateside military doctors, one of whom suggested patching in Stephen M. Ostroff, an infectious-diseases expert at CDC and head of a committee of civilian advisers called the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board.

"I remember telling them that in my experience, when healthy young adults develop a typical bacterial pneumonia, if they get a whiff of antibiotics they tend to turn around fairly quickly. It`s unusual for people this age to deteriorate," Ostroff recalls. "I strongly conveyed to them that this needed to be looked into, without question."

There were hints these strange cases might not be infections at all. Many of the sickest patients had deteriorated with a speed rarely seen in bacterial or viral pneumonias. The soldier for whom Rusnak went looking in the Landstuhl ICU was a good example.

A soldier in his early twenties, he played volleyball the afternoon he got sick and after dinner was watching a movie when he suddenly became so breathless he thought he might pass out. The only other thing unusual that evening was a slight nosebleed. By the time he arrived by helicopter at the 28th Combat Support Hospital near Baghdad, he had a 102-degree fever and was struggling to breathe. Within six hours of his first symptom, he was on a ventilator.

A case from Uzbekistan in April was similar: a young soldier who felt well, then had 12 hours of mild chest tightness and shortness of breath before he needed a machine to keep him alive.

This picture is more typical of an out-of-control immune system reaction than an infection.

On July 12, a second soldier died of multi-organ failure in Landstuhl. He had had a day of chest pain and breathlessness before being put on a ventilator on June 30.

On July 17, the Army surgeon general launched an investigation.

Although the count of about 100 cases of pneumonia since March 1 through mid-August turns out to be about what one might expect, what was unusual were features of some -- but not all -- of the severe cases.

Of the original 19, four had evidence of bacterial infection. There was no evidence of other infectious respiratory diseases -- no severe acute respiratory syndrome, influenza, Legionnaire`s disease, hantavirus, mycoplasma or fungal infections. Even more peculiar was what laboratory tests did show -- large numbers of the usually rare eosinophil cells in the blood or lungs -- and sometimes both -- of 10 patients.

Occasionally, exposure to chemicals or specific drugs can cause such cells to proliferate. When large numbers turn up in the blood -- a condition called eosinophilia -- in someone taking many medicines, it is usually chalked up as a drug reaction.

There didn`t appear to be any drug that had been taken by the 10 patients, but they did have one thing in common. All were smokers, and nine, including one who died, had started or resumed smoking during the deployment.

One of the nine was Lt. Cmdr. Glen Todd. The 47-year-old Navy nurse-anesthetist was working in a hospital in Djibouti when he woke up in a breathless sweat the night of Aug. 6. His condition worsened rapidly, and he was evacuated to Landstuhl, where he was put on a ventilator Aug. 8.

Todd is the oldest of the 19 patients who became seriously ill. He had smoked for several years in his twenties, but quit. In May he started again, eventually getting up to a half-pack of cigarettes a day and two cigars at night.

"Why does anybody smoke or why does somebody drink a beer once in a while?" he asked rhetorically in a telephone interview from his home in Great Lakes, Ill., where he is recuperating. "I think I started smoking over there mostly as a social thing."

Like many of the patients who needed ventilators, he turned around quickly and was off the machine in a few days, with no apparent lasting damage to his health.

Smoking predisposes a person to pneumonia, and of the entire group of 19 people on ventilators, 15 smoked. Nevertheless, the eosinophilia in new smokers seemed more than just a coincidence to Maj. Andrew Shorr, a lung specialist in Landstuhl. He found 12 intriguing papers published by Japanese physicians in the past six years. They reported cases of the rare disease, most of them in teenagers who had recently started smoking. All recovered quickly, sometimes with the help of steroids, which decrease inflammation. The researchers had re-exposed several to cigarette smoke to see if the eosinophilia returned, and it did.

There was also a 1999 paper published by two Army doctors in the journal Military Medicine who reported two cases of severe pneumonia with eosinophilia in soldiers at Fort Irwin in Southern California. Both were smokers.

Speaking from a Baghdad rooftop on a satellite telephone recently, Col. Bonnie L. Smoak, an Army physician leading the investigation in Iraq, said an epidemiologist there is surveying a sample of deployed soldiers to see how many recently began smoking.

As to the ultimate explanation of the dangerous pneumonias, there is no shortage of theories.

Although the investigators are still searching for and reviewing the records of all pneumonia cases, at least some of the 19 severe cases are sporadic, garden-variety cases caused by infection. But the patients with eosinophilia are probably a subgroup of their own.

If they were all smokers, what else might they share? Was there a "second hit" they all got that hasn`t yet been identified? Was there some common environmental exposure? Did it have something to do with the desert? Was there a genetic predisposition that made them vulnerable?

Is it also possible that after a century in which hundreds of millions of people started smoking that a brand-new disease caused by the habit could turn up in 2003?

"I am skeptical about that," DeFraites said recently. "The big question to me is -- why here and why now?"

The last case occurred Aug. 19. The Army isn`t convinced it`s the last. The search for the culprit is narrowing, but it`s not over.



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Wolfowitz Shifts Rationales on Iraq War
With Weapons Unfound, Talk of Threat Gives Way to Rhetoric on Hussein, Democracy

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A23


As the Bush administration`s leading hawk on Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has been a tireless proponent of the argument that Iraq`s possession of weapons of mass destruction was a compelling enough reason for the United States to resort to war.

These days, his emphasis is different. In testimony to congressional committees and interviews with reporters, Wolfowitz prefers to stress the evil, dictatorial nature of former president Saddam Hussein`s defunct government and the opportunity to turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East. He depicts Iraq as the focus of a life-and-death struggle between the forces of democracy and the forces of intolerance.

Wolfowitz is by no means alone. Since the fall of Baghdad five months ago, senior administration officials from President Bush downward have been reinventing the rationale for war. In his television address Sunday night, Bush barely mentioned Hussein`s chemical and biological weapons programs. Instead, he described Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terror, the site of a desperate last stand by the "enemies of freedom," who include former Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists.

Even opponents of the war acknowledge that now that the United States is in Iraq, it cannot afford to fail, in effect conceding that the invasion has created its own justification. There is broad agreement across the political spectrum that a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops would destabilize the entire region and undermine U.S. credibility.

Congressional critics of Bush`s policy suspect that the new administration line on winning the peace is designed to distract attention from the failure to find evidence of Hussein`s biological, chemical or nuclear weapons programs. When Wolfowitz appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the end of July to share impressions from a visit to Iraq, he was chided by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) for skirting the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

"I don`t think [Wolfowitz and other administration officials] are being forthright," said Chafee, the sole Republican senator to vote against the war. "They are using whatever argument is most marketable at any given time."

In a telephone interview Saturday, Wolfowitz denied that the administration is providing different justifications for the war with Iraq. He said he and other administration officials had been "clear from the beginning" that there were three arguments for invading Iraq: halting the development of weapons of mass destruction, liberating the country from "a terrible tyranny," and creating a democratic model that would serve as an inspiration for the rest of the Middle East.

"I was often criticized for talking too much about what Iraq could become when it was liberated, and I believed it has to become," Wolfowitz said. "We have to win [this war], and when we win it, I believe it will advance American interests."

While it is true that Wolfowitz has long advocated a free and democratic Iraq, an examination of his speeches before and after the war nevertheless reveals a clear shift of emphasis away from the focus on weapons of mass destruction as the primary reason for going to war. During the run-up to the war, Wolfowitz argued that "disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons and dismantling its nuclear weapons program is a crucial part of winning the war on terror."

"This is not a game; it is deadly serious," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in January, in a speech aimed at convincing the country`s foreign policy elite of the case for war. "We are dealing with a threat to the security of our nation and the world."

More recently, on "The Charlie Rose Show" on PBS, Wolfowitz poured cold water on the why-did-we-go-to-war debate in the United States. " `Why are you Americans so obsessed about weapons of mass destruction?` " he quoted Iraqis as asking him during his visit to Iraq. " `Saddam Hussein was [himself] a weapon of mass destruction. The damage that he did to our country was a weapon of mass destruction.` "

A 1,200-strong team from the Defense Intelligence Agency has been scouring the country for evidence of chemical weapons for the past two months.

"There`s no question that the administration has shifted its ground" on the reasons for war, said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a supporter of the war. "They have gone from Saddam`s possession of weapons of mass destruction and a hint of his connections to al Qaeda to making the Middle East safe for democracy and getting rid of the tyrant."

Walter Russell Mead, another council member who listened to Wolfowitz`s presentation in January, said the administration had made a mistake by deciding to make Iraq`s possession of weapons of mass destruction the centerpiece of the case for war. He said there were stronger arguments for invading Iraq, including the long-term political and economic costs of containing Hussein in the decade that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"The administration should have argued that a root cause of much of the terrorism in the Middle East was the political instability caused by Saddam Hussein," said Mead, who referred to the need to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to deter Hussein from further adventures such as the invasion of Kuwait. "I think the administration is making a better case now. I wish they had made it at the time."

Mead and other analysts noted that the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia is a core grievance of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. Hussein`s overthrow has enabled the United States to close down its operations at the Prince Sultan Air Base south of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.



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An Apology Would Help


By Michael Kinsley

Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A31


President Bush will get his $87 billion for a year`s worth of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he will have to endure a lot of nyah-nyah-nyah and I-told-you-so along the way. He could have avoided all this irritation -- and he is just the kind of man to find it incredibly irritating -- with two little words in his TV address last Sunday evening: "I`m sorry." If he had acknowledged with a bit of grace what everyone assumes to be true -- that the administration was blindsided by the postwar challenge in both these countries -- this would have cut off a politically damaging debate that will now go on through the election campaign. And he would have won all sorts of brownie points for high-mindedness. Instead, he and his spokesfolk will be defending a fairly obvious untruth day after day through the election campaign.

Why do politicians so rarely apologize? Why in particular won`t they admit to being surprised by some development? Lack of scruples can`t explain it: Denying the obvious isn`t even good unscrupulous politics. For that reason, it is beyond spin. If spinning involves an indifference to truth, what`s going on here looks more like a preference for falsehood. The truth would be better politics, and the administration is fanning out to the talk shows to lie anyway.

This is not meant to be a partisan observation. Bush`s predecessor was, if anything, a more flamboyant liar. What`s going on here is something like lying-by-reflex. If the opposition accuses you of saying the world is round, you lunge for the microphone to declare your passionate belief that it is flat. Or maybe it has something to do with the bureaucracies that political campaigns have become. The truth, whatever its advantages, is messy and out of control. A lie can be designed by committee, vetted by consultants, tested with some focus groups, shaped to perfection. Anyone can tell the truth. Crafting a good lie is a job for professionals.

This $87 billion request is a minefield of embarrassments, through which a simple "We got it wrong" would have been the safest route. After all, Bush either knew we`d be spending this kind of money for two or more years after declaring victory and didn`t tell us -- or he didn`t realize it himself. Those are the only two options. He deceived us or he wasn`t clairvoyant in the fog of war. Apparently Bush would rather be thought omniscient than honest, which is a pity, since appearing honest is a more realistic ambition. Especially for him.

What`s more, this would have been a truth without a tail. Telling one hard truth can lead you down, down, down into a vicious circle of more truth, revelation, embarrassment and chagrin. That`s one reason for the truth`s dangerous reputation. But the Bush administration`s failure to realize how much its postwar festivities would cost is a truth that doesn`t lead anywhere in particular. Clearly, knowing about the $87 billion bill for year two would not have stopped Bush from conducting the war to begin with. Nor would this knowledge have stopped opponents from opposing it. Among supporters, there may be a few people who bought Bush`s initial war-on-terrorism rationale, didn`t mind the bait-and-switch to his revised freedom-and-democracy rationale, reveled in the military victory and yet would have opposed it all if they`d known about the $87 billion. But it is an odd camel whose back is broken by this particular straw.

Bush needs some truth-telling points, because another aspect of this $87 billion request is driving him to dishonesty that he can`t abandon so blithely. That issue is: If he gets the $87 billion, where will it have come from? Bush is sending Colin Powell around the world with a begging cup. But whatever can`t be raised from foreigners apparently can be conjured out of thin air.

Raising taxes to pay the $87 billion would be a bad mistake, Bush says: Economic growth -- fed by tax cuts -- will cover the $87 billion and then some. But however miraculous Bush`s tax cuts turn out to be, economic growth will not be $87 billion more miraculous just because that much more is suddenly needed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does Bush plan, or even concede the necessity, to harvest this $87 billion at some point by raising taxes (or not cutting them) by that amount. And although he talks vaguely about spending restraint, he and the Congress controlled by his party have shown very little of it. He certainly has not pinpointed $87 billion in other spending that the new $87 billion can replace.

So spending $87 billion costs nothing, apparently. This makes it even sillier to deny being blindsided. What difference does it make?

While apologizing to the citizenry, Bush could win even more points, at almost no cost, by apologizing specifically to his predecessor. Bush ridiculed Clinton`s efforts to follow up military interventions with "nation building." Believe it or not, this was a pejorative term, implying unrealistic ambitions. Now Bush talks about turning Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy.

And if Bush wants credit for a Gold-Star Triple-Whammy Zirconium-Studded apology, he should apologize to his father, who stopped the Persian Gulf War at the Iraqi border. Armchair Freudians believe that in going to Baghdad and toppling Hussein, George II was playing Oedipal tennis with George I. If so, junior has lost. The elder Bush`s most notorious decision as president looks better every day. And not just because of the $87 billion.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Doubts About an Ally


By Bernard-Henri Levy

Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A31


PARIS -- There have been reports recently in the American press concerning the probability that the government of Pakistan has traded nuclear secrets and maybe even technology with Iran. Such disclosures were welcomed by those of us here in France who consider ourselves part of the "anti-anti-American society" and who have long wondered why the United States doesn`t seem more concerned with the character of its major ally in the war against terrorism.

As an observer of Pakistan for more than 30 years -- I first went to the region in 1971 as a war correspondent covering the conflict between India and Pakistan over Bangladesh -- I have seen the government become ever more degraded as it fell from the hands of the Bhuttos to military leaders such as Pervez Musharraf and then to the point where now -- as the Daniel Pearl affair showed -- it is doubtful that the executive branch of the country`s government is fully in charge. Is it known in the West that President Musharraf himself had to cancel several trips to Karachi, the economic capital of his own country, for safety reasons?

My last few visits, including one on a diplomatic mission for France following the Afghan war and several more as part of my investigation into the death of journalist Daniel Pearl, brought this point home and gave me a full sense of who really runs things there. What has become obvious is the tremendous power of the ISI, Pakistan`s secret service -- so dreaded by average citizens that they rarely speak its name but refer to it instead as the "three letters" -- and the deep infiltration of this powerful organization by militant fundamentalists and jihadists.

The most dominant factions in the ISI, in fact, have come to constitute a virtual jihadist group itself. And this is why Pakistan has become the subject of numerous other urgent questions: Did it shelter Osama bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks? Has it provided bin Laden with medical attention since the Afghan war, in the Binori Town Mosque in Karachi, which I happened to visit? Was it involved, and to what extent, in the murder of Pearl?

It is in this context that it`s advisable to consider the problem of the Pakistani nuclear program and the dangers of proliferation that it presents -- with Iran certainly, but also with al Qaeda and the still-at-large elements of the Taliban. In my book I bring up the case of the so-called "father of the Islamist bomb," the man after whom Pakistan`s leading nuclear laboratory is named, Abdul Qader Khan. He is a revered figure in his country. He is cheered in the streets. His birthday is sanctified in the mosques. I witnessed an Islamist demonstration in which gigantic portraits of him led the march. But this man has long been not only a government official but a fanatical Islamist. This public figure, this great scientist, this man who knows better than anyone (since it is he who developed them) the most sensitive secrets of Pakistan`s nuclear program, is both close to the ISI and a member of Lashkar e-Toiba, a group closely allied with al Qaeda. My story concerned Khan`s "vacations" to North Korea and his links with bin Laden`s men; one of my hypotheses is that Pearl may have been killed to prevent him from reporting on such trafficking of nuclear know-how.

It is clear that the United States accepted the moral imperative when it came to the Afghan war. It is also obvious that, after Sept. 11, the war against terrorism had to be declared, and that it has to be carried on, with all the necessary alliances. But what is the real necessity, in this framework, of the U.S.-Pakistan alliance? Was it necessary, after the most recent visit of Musharraf to Washington, to continue the massive funding of his regime? Is it not possible at least to tie this aid to certain simple political conditions -- for example, that the Pakistanis must give proof of a genuine effort to reform the ISI; or that they impose the most severe sanctions on their high-ranking nuclear scientists and officials who take "vacations" in Iran, North Korea or Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan?

This story, unfortunately, I`m unable to cover further, because I have become part of a growing club of reporters who cannot return to Pakistan, simply because they don`t want to end up like one of the best journalists to have covered the nuclear trading story, Daniel Pearl. But I am convinced that a harsher tone, a reformulation of the terms of alliance, is called for, so that our relationship with Musharraf will be more than a gullible, naive embrace -- and will conform to moral as well as political imperatives. And I would add that waiting for us is the other Pakistan -- that which is liberal, democratic, secular, which fights, back against the wall, against mounting Islamism, and which does not understand why, in this combat, we are not at its side.

Bernard-Henri Levy is the author of "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?"



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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[Joerver]

The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute nichts Neues. Deshalb die Toons vom 31.08.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030831__050toons.htm

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-nohelp1…
THE WORLD



Quick Help With Iraq Unlikely, U.S. Says
By Sonni Efron, Robin Wright and Janet Hook
Times Staff Writers

September 12, 2003

WASHINGTON — Few nations will soon contribute troops or money to rebuild Iraq, even if the U.S. succeeds in negotiating a new United Nations Security Council resolution, administration officials said Thursday.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell leaves today for Geneva to discuss a compromise that would trade some U.S. authority over Iraq for more international help. The United States initially resisted the idea of sharing authority in Iraq but shifted that stand as costs and casualties increased.

Now the Bush administration is warning that significant international help will not come quickly even if Powell strikes a deal at the Security Council, congressional, administration and diplomatic sources said. But a resolution could, over time, improve the diplomatic atmosphere and win more assistance.

"Those looking for a large number of personnel [from other countries] will probably be disappointed in the short run but the need for a Security Council resolution to form the basis for cooperation remains very, very important," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The only countries seen as likely to send troops are Turkey and possibly Bangladesh. Turkey and India have both made the sending of troops conditional on a U.N. resolution. Neither France nor Germany, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, is expected to offer troops, and prospects are dim for forces from Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf is already under pressure for his close alliance with the U.S., the sources said.

Powell has said he hopes to get 10,000 to 15,000 international troops, enough for another division in Iraq, to supplement the more than 130,000 U.S. and allied troops there now. "We`re going to push very hard," a senior administration official said.

European governments want to put the U.N. in charge of deciding the pace and manner in which Iraqis regain political control of their nation. The U.S. wants a mandate for a U.S.-led international force but would like the U.S. civilian authority to retain control over Iraq`s political development.

Meanwhile, hopes for financial contributions are fading, said the sources, who included Republicans and Democrats, foreign and U.S. officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told senators this week that the bill for postwar reconstruction in Iraq was expected to run $55 billion more than the $87 billion President Bush asked Congress to provide in his speech to the nation Sunday night.

Powell, briefing senators behind closed doors, used the phrase "donor fatigue" to explain the difficulty the U.S. is facing in getting other nations to pledge money to rebuild Iraq. The administration has not received as much financial support as it would have liked for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, a far less controversial endeavor.

When senators asked how Powell and Rumsfeld thought they could fill the gap, "they looked at each other and there was sort of an embarrassing pause," a Senate official said. "Powell said maybe we`ll get a few hundred million from Europe [the European Union] and maybe a little help from Japan."

Administration officials said they were optimistic about the possibility of eventually reaching an agreement on a proposed resolution — though perhaps not as quickly as they had hoped.

But even if the U.S. gets a resolution, "we might not get much else," a diplomatic source said.

In a briefing Monday to congressional staff on Capitol Hill, mid-level administration officials also tried to lower expectations for allied help in Iraq.

Two House Republican sources said an aide to Iraq civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III said any financial contribution the U.S. could wrest from other nations toward the estimated $142-billion cost would be "gravy."

"If that`s the attitude, then that`s not a real good attitude to take into Geneva," one House source said, adding that the pessimism "did not go over well We were just floored."

A senior administration official said Thursday that the U.S. did not expect much to happen in Geneva, where U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked representatives of the U.S., China, Russia, France and Britain to try to hammer out a common position on Iraq before the Sept. 22 opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

"The discussion will center on France, Germany and Russia putting their positions in sharper relief," the official said. "Powell will be in a listening mode."

Said another official: "We`ve found the Russians to be constructive the Germans to have a different attitude than the French, and the French suggestions so far appear to us to be a denial of reality."

France would like to see power handed over "to a U.N. structure that sadly isn`t there and an Iraqi interim authority that doesn`t exist," the official said.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the discussions in Geneva were not designed to hammer out text but instead to discuss how the international community could help Iraqis take over the running of their country.

Washington also is no longer confident that the resolution will pass during the first week of the General Assembly session. "It`s going to take a while to put language on the table," the official said. Asked whether American diplomats were demoralized by the slow pace, the official replied, "It would be more depressing if it were dead entirely."

But even if a U.N. resolution would yield no immediate contributions of troops or treasure, the U.S. should seek it, said Michael O`Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. A resolution, he said, could improve the political atmosphere.

"This week`s conventional wisdom is wrong [in saying] we aren`t going to get help from our allies no matter what we do," O`Hanlon said. The administration has "so poisoned the waters that we can`t expect help now even if we go to the U.N. but the allies would help us down the road if we do the right thing now."

The administration also is disappointed in the response from countries invited to attend an international donors conference for Iraq in Madrid beginning Oct. 23. Only a few donors, including the Europeans, Japanese and United Arab Emirates, have signed up, the senior administration official said.

"People are queuing up to be observers but not participating," said the official. "They are not coming with checkbooks or a can-do attitude."

Another senior administration official confirmed that "people are working with us, but that`s a little different than writing checks."

He said the U.S. planned to launch a diplomatic campaign soon to seek donations for Iraq`s reconstruction.

"Until now, we`ve encouraged and cajoled and pressed," he said. "The next stage is saying, `It`s time to pony up.` Madrid`s the time to bring the checkbook."

Bush on Thursday reiterated his view that other nations have an obligation to participate in rebuilding Iraq.

"A free Iraq will be in their nations` benefit," he said. "It will make the world more peaceful, more secure."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Is Terrorism Making You Sick?
Sure BushCo has reamed the planet in the two years since 9/11. Question is, what about you?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 12, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/


Oh great, so here you are, two full years later.

Two full years after the 9/11 maelstrom and two years during which the term "hero" has been molested and slapped around and "patriotism" has been smashed and reconfigured into some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin, a conservative plastic surgeon`s wet dream, all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado you no longer relate to in the slightest.

And yep, sure enough, the world, as promised, has never been the same. Not one single heartfelt notion of large-scale, tangible peace and unity and tenderness among nations, no true sense of stunned, sad coming together in the wake of tragedy has managed to survive, has made it through the warmongering onslaught of the BushCo juggernaut. Nice time to be an American, really.

Do you remember? The days immediately after 9/11? That rich feeling of global sympathy and sincere concern and this powerful, overarching sense that maybe, just maybe, if we work together and reach out to each other without snide bias or prejudice, we can re-make the world in an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision? No? It`s OK. Neither does anyone else.

So here we are, the biggest deficit in U.S. history and the worst interstate financial crisis since the Depression and millions more people without jobs every day, the environment and independent thought and your civil liberties slowly being hacked away as more money is spent on our barbaric Iraqi occupation this year than on U.S. education. Ahh, patriotism.

Oh yes, rest assured, we learned a great deal from 9/11. We learned paranoia. We learned simmering dread and mistrust. We learned balled fists and WMD lies and how many Iraqi and Afghani civilians can be reduced to bloody cinder by a single Tomahawk missile.

We learned to hate France and Germany and almost all dark-skinned foreigners and detain them without reason or explanation or lawyer.

We learned to tap more phone lines and secretly check your credit cards and email records and sabotage our own well-being at every turn in the name of some draconian "Homeland Security" BS, as Ashcroft just snickers quietly and anoints himself in holy oil.

This is where we are. We are the world`s rogue superpower, attacking without provocation, launching war without a true enemy, not to be trusted in the slightest, our international U.N. standing at its lowest level in 50 years, the most embarrassing and inarticulate, spoon-fed president in decades.

Depressing stuff indeed. But wait, what about you? Forget BushCo`s reamings and Cheney`s hateful sneer and Rummy`s black eyes and the fact that Disney AOL Time Warner Microsoft ExxonMobil owns everything you see and hear. What have you done, in yourself, since 9/11? Is that a viable question now?

Ask yourself this: Have you invited all this bile and hate and fearmongering in, let it fester and take control? Have you buried your head in the quicksand of bitterness and ennui and godawful reality TV and Fox News spitting its lopsided hate-filled worldview in the face of a numb nation?

Have you taken 9/11 and its subsequent flurry and fury of sadness and antagonism and outright hate and let them dictate your life, run roughshod over your id like an SUV crushes a bird`s nest?

Or have you maybe used these karmic batterings as markers, as further inspiration and motivation to turn inward? Can we ask this now?

Have you maybe, just maybe, used these atrocities to look to yourself for the answers -- or at least, for the right questions -- as you realize no one else will provide them for you, not the dogma of vengeance, not self-righteous religion, not a guru or government or a war machine that so obviously doesn`t care a single whit for your individual spirit or well being it might as well be an Enron CEO.

How do you choose to engage the world now, from the trauma of then?

How do you choose to view the tragedy of 9/11 today? All überpatriotic and wistful and acidic, more than a little angry, eye for an eye goddammit let`s get those bastards and make them pay c`mon who`s next bitch you wanna piece of America well come and geddit boom crash kill?

Is it, in other words, a grand and bloody excuse to avoid looking inward? To avoid confronting the root causes? To take an honest look at your beliefs and ideas and core Self, at the very thoughts that shape the world around you?

Because this is what 9/11 is, was, and all it will ever truly be. An opportunity. A staggering and unprecedented chance to re-evaluate where you, where we, where the planet is truly coming from, and where you want to go from here.

And it no matter what they tell you, no matter how many bogus Orange Alerts and no matter how many tapped phone lines and presidential pleadings for tens of billions more of your tax money so we may continue to pulverize another ragged nation into submission, this is what 9/11 still remains. An opportunity.

Its lesson is ongoing. Its lesson is perennial and recurring and it colors every major event in your life, every tragedy and death and birth and trauma and disease and wart and pimple and orgasm and breakup and fender bender and crushing failure and blazing success and long lonely godless night.

What`s your choice? On what levels are you going to accept or reject this setback or that confrontation, this creative surge or that overture of love? What are you going to do with this ball of raw malleable energy in your lap?

Will you use it to work on yourself? To peel back the layers of your own BS, go deep and ask yourself the hard questions, what the hell do you really believe, with what sort of spiritual attitude and aggressive tone do you really want to go through this life? To what sort of symbol do you really want to pledge your true allegiance?

This is the only decision that really matters, the only choice that has any true power. Will 9/11 and every subsequent emotionally explosive event in your life result in bitter conflict and finger-pointing and bile, or self-discovery and personal opinion and raw compassion? It`s that simple. And that difficult.

Choose the former, you are a proud lockstep American, accepted and nicely conformist and a happy member of the Bush-approved herd, ready to shop hard and suck down that paltry tax refund and defend the nation against those gul-dang liberals and gays and America-haters.

Choose the latter, and you are quickly outcast, shunned, radiating all by yourself, dancing to your own inner samba, smiling like a demon, godless heathen pagan progressive intellectual traitorous blasphemous slut that you are, as the establishment just scowls and adds you to its blacklist.

Because it all comes down to one vital question, really. All the pain, all the forced patriotism, the commemorative plates, the media blitzing and force-fed jingoism and BushCo viciously leveraging 9/11 for political and corporate gain, and you merely left hanging by bare emotional and spiritual threads, raw and naked and wondering just what the hell is happening to the world, and where did this handbasket come from?

It all comes down to this: Can you, on the deepest and most acute levels possible, in a raw and divine way that does zero dishonor to the various tragedies of your world but instead injects them all with mandatory doses of perspective and divine drunkenness and hot screaming love, can you, with every fiber or your being, with the deepest breath you can possibly take, laugh at the cosmic carnival of it all?


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

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Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

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September 13, 2003
U.S.-French Rift Reopened as Powell Arrives for Talks
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN


GENEVA, Saturday, Sept. 13 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, reopening the trans-Atlantic rift over Iraq — this time about expanding the authority of the United Nations there — said today that a French proposal to cut back the role of the American-led occupation was unacceptable.

Arriving in Geneva after midnight for intensive talks on Saturday about what role the United Nations should play, Mr. Powell also labeled as "totally unrealistic" a French suggestion that Iraq establish a provisional government in a month, write a constitution by the end of this year and hold elections next spring, all under United Nations auspices.

[Reuters reported Saturday morning that Mr. Powell would visit Iraq and Kuwait after the meetings in Geneva.

"In Iraq, he will meet with Iraqis and with members of the Coalition Provisional Authority in order to see first hand the progress being made by the international community and by the Iraqi people in rebuilding their nation," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in the statement.]

"It is delightful if one could do that, but one can`t do that," Mr. Powell told reporters on the way here, adding that the French proposals were "interesting, but not executable."

His comments lent a sense of déjà vu to the Geneva talks, which were called by Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, expressly in order to avoid a repetition of the dispute that divided the United States from France, Germany and Russia in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war.

Mr. Powell said that an overly rapid timetable toward self-government would disrupt the efforts of the Iraqi Governing Council to restore stability in Iraq. He said the French proposals were "interesting, but not executable."

By contrast, American officials have said that a new Iraqi constitution probably could not be adopted until well into next year, and that it might take as much as a year after that for a democratically elected government to be installed. In the meantime, the United States wants to retain the main authority over the transition.

All the differences revolved around the timetable for self-rule in Iraq, and who would oversee it. Perhaps surprisingly, American and European diplomats say there is far less disagreement over the idea that a United Nations mandate is needed over the occupying security forces while the United States should remain in charge of them.

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, American officials worried that the control of the troops would be a major point of contention with other countries as Washington sought a United Nations blessing for a force that eventually may involve more troops from other countries, including some that opposed the American war in Iraq.

But Mr. Powell`s blunt dismissal of the French proposal on Iraq`s political timetable reflected continuing difficulties on the subject with France, Russia and Germany.

Mr. Annan is seeking to avoid a repetition of the breakdown that occurred when these countries, along with China, lined up to oppose an American and British request for a Security Council resolution in support of a war with Iraq. He virtually summoned the envoys of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia — to Geneva to attend this weekend session.

American officials say they are hopeful that another confrontation can be avoided, in part because this time Germany and Russia seem to be trying hard to bridge the differences between France and the United States. But they say they do not expect any breakthroughs this weekend.

A sign of the difficulty came in today`s Le Monde, the leading French newspaper, in which the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, wrote that it was "urgent to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people themselves." The transfer, he said, must be carried out under United Nations and not American auspices.

France has said several times that the United States must move beyond "the logic of occupation" if it is to win support from the international community for a multinational troop presence and, even more, for the billions of dollars that Washington seeks for Iraq`s reconstruction.

Such talk is clearly exasperating to Mr. Powell and other American officials. Before leaving for Europe on this trip, Mr. Powell gave interviews to French, Russian and German media in which he all but ridiculed the idea that somehow the United States was wedded to being an occupier.

"Nobody wants to turn sovereignty back to the Iraqi people as fast as the United States does, President Bush does and I do," Mr. Powell told France 2, a television network. But he said that the American occupation under "can`t suddenly just step aside and turn it over — to whom?"

He said that "since the United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women — and we have a large force there now — we can`t be expected to suddenly just step aside."

At another point, Mr. Powell said: "We can`t simply cede all responsibility and authority to the U.N. The U.N. isn`t ready to handle it. The U.N. has not asked for it."

Aboard his plane, Mr. Powell told reporters that despite the deep differences with France, it might be possible to find language on which all sides could agree. He suggested that France was talking about abstract notions of sovereignty, whereas Washington would be willing to make some practical compromises.

"It`s easy to toss out nice theories about sovereignty, occupation and liberation and all that," he said. But he said that "as a practical matter" the United Nations was not "properly staffed" to handle the transition to self-government in Iraq.

"We will work to see if there is not language that can bridge this," Mr. Powell said, adding that "any language that would buy into what Minister de Villepin has been saying" was not acceptable.

American officials said that they remained hopeful that they could avoid a nasty dispute that would lead to a veto by France or any other of the permanent members of the Security Council. In addition, Mr. Powell said the United States could probably get at least nine countries on the Council to support its basic approach, enough to have the resolution approved if there is no veto.

"If there is anything that worried me, it would be a veto," Mr. Powell said.

"We need to get out of some of the rhetorical arguments we`re having," he told French television. "One I hear is that the United States believes in the logic of occupation. Nonsense. Every European should know that the United States of America has always believed in the logic of liberation."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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September 13, 2003
U.S. Soldiers Kill 8 Iraqi Policemen, Townspeople Say
By ALEX BERENSON


FALLUJA, Iraq, Sept. 12 — American soldiers killed at least eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian security guard early this morning in a gun battle outside the Jordanian Hospital here, residents and town officials said. Falluja lies at the heart of Iraqi resistance to the occupation, and the killings will further incite the city, residents said.

At another Falluja hospital where two wounded police officers lay in spartan beds, witnesses to the fight described a mounting chaos that ended with American tanks and soldiers firing on the hospital and the police officers, as an Iraqi doctor tried to persuade the soldiers to allow him to evacuate the wounded. In addition, one of the wounded officers said American soldiers had continued shooting at them from very close range even after the Iraqis shouted that they were policemen.

"I asked the Americans to let me in, and they said, `No, you have to stop,` " said the doctor, Dhia Mahmoud. He said that when he was allowed to approach, he found a horrifying scene, with bodies torn apart from large-caliber weapons fired at close range. The dead were taken to a morgue in the nearby city of Ramadi, local officials said.

In a statement, a military spokesman said the American soldiers had been fired upon first with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in the vicinity of the Jordanian Hospital, The Associated Press reported. One soldier was wounded in the attack, the statement said.

In Washington, Pentagon officials confirmed that military authorities were investigating whether allied forces might have been killed accidentally by American troops in the incident today. "That`s one of the possibilities they`re looking at, but it`s still very early," one defense official said.

The firefight in Falluja, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, began long after curfew, when policemen chasing a stolen BMW intersected the path of a military patrol that included at least two tanks, according to Abdul Jalil, a local police officer who was wounded in the shootout.

The tanks opened fire, Mr. Jalil said, and they forced the police vehicles off the road near the Jordanian Hospital, a 100-bed military field hospital built in April about one mile east of the center of the city. The BMW apparently was not caught.

Hearing the shots, guards inside the hospital opened fire on the road, prompting the tanks to attack the hospital, residents and hospital security guards said. Soldiers and tanks then fired for nearly an hour on both the hospital and the police vehicles, the residents and guards said.

Mr. Jalil contended that American soldiers had killed at least one Iraqi policeman from less than 20 feet away, even after he repeatedly identified himself as an officer. His account could not be independently corroborated. The position of weapons cartridges, tank treads and human remains at the scene of the battle showed that, at some point in the fight, American soldiers could have been no more than 50 feet from the wounded and dead police officers.

Police officers in Iraq wear patches reading "IP," for Iraqi police, and the English words "police" and "policeman" are used widely by Arabic speakers.

Two more United States soldiers were killed in a separate raid early this morning in Ramadi, another center of Iraqi resistance, a military spokesman said. No further details were available. Since the beginning of the Iraq war, 292 soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Kuwait, including 152 since President Bush declared on May 1 that major American combat operations had ended.

The attack severely damaged one of the hospital`s buildings, which had large holes and soot in its concrete facade. By afternoon, most of the damage had been removed from the building, which sits about 200 feet back from a major road that connects Falluja and Baghdad.

Bloodied scraps of clothing and skin remained on the gravel beside the road where the Iraqi vehicles had stopped. About 50 feet away, hundreds of spent cartridges littered the ground, apparently where United States soldiers had positioned machine guns to rake the hospital. Many from larger-caliber munitions, including 1.5-inch-wide rounds fired by tanks and armored vehicles, could also be seen. Taha Abboud, a hospital security guard, said tanks had also destroyed the hospital`s generator.

The deaths seem sure to further poison the relationship between American soldiers and the residents of Falluja, where troops already face grenade or small-arms attacks almost daily. The city is part of the Sunni Triangle, an area north and west of Baghdad that has been a stronghold of support for Saddam Hussein. Sunni Muslim Arabs make up one-fifth of the population of Iraq but have long dominated the country`s political and economic life, and many Sunnis fear that the American occupation may end that primacy.

"This is supposed to be a cemetery for the Americans," said Yassir Abd, the brother of Mr. Jalil, the wounded policeman. "We will shoot any artillery or armored vehicles." As if to prove his point, a United States military convoy was fired on in the late afternoon on a major road just over a mile from Falluja Hospital and was trapped for more than an hour.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 13, 2003
Molière, Corneille, Rumsfeld
By DANIEL MENDELSOHN


Last week`s revelation by a French scholar that all of the masterpieces attributed to the great comic playwright Molière, including classics like "Tartuffe" and "Le Misanthrope," were actually written by his rival, Pierre Corneille, has provoked shock and dismay throughout the world of letters. Now, a tortured conscience and a desire to further clear the literary air compel me to reveal that nearly all of my own published writings — including, but by no means limited to, my 1999 memoir about gay culture and my recent monograph on the role of gender in Euripidean drama — were, in fact, written by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

At first glance, the gap that separates Mr. Rumsfeld and myself seems even vaster than the one that sets the comedian Molière apart from the tragedian Corneille. The secretary, for instance, attended Princeton for a mere four years as an undergraduate, whereas I spent eight years there as a graduate student; and whereas he was a famous wrestler during college, impressing fans with his determination on the mats, my own wrestling matches with Old Nassau`s varsity athletes took place under other circumstances. Moreover, I shave my head, whereas Mr. Rumsfeld favors a more natural, softer look.

Yet despite differences in temperament and outlook that to some might make the idea of the longtime literary collaboration between Mr. Rumsfeld and myself seem improbable, our respective audiences — in his case, the millions who read his words as reported in newspapers around the globe; in mine, the regular readers of Die Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik — are likely to be persuaded by the techniques of literary sleuthing recently used in Paris. Dominique Labbé, the statistician responsible for this latest tussle over the authorship of canonical works, came to his conclusion after finding that certain works by Molière and Corneille share 75 percent of their vocabulary. Even a cursory comparison of the public utterances of Donald Rumsfeld with those of "Daniel Mendelsohn" suggests that the percentage is, if anything, higher in our case. Of particular note is a suspicious shared tendency to use "with," "the" and "my upcoming trip to Israel."

The implications are plain: the same distinctive intellect is responsible for the rhetoric of both "Rumsfeld" and "Mendelsohn." Indeed, both the defense secretary and the classicist-cum-freelance-writer have been heard repeatedly using certain other key words and phrases — "American military presence in Iraq," "war of liberation," "Bush" — lately, although, with dramatically different tones of authorial voice, depending on whether the secretary is speaking in his public persona or as "Mendelsohn."

Why would the secretary want to perpetrate such a hoax, one so easily exposed? The same question has been asked of Corneille — and the same answer applies. The popular Molière was, we now know, merely a front for the highbrow Corneille, who was hungry for the money generated by the vulgar genre of comedy. Without betraying certain confidences, I can say that Mr. Rumsfeld has long eyed my tax returns — particularly the fiscal year in which my article about the role of maternal anxiety in the Achilleid of P. Papinius Statius was published. Furthermore, it is known that Molière reveled in "cuckolded husbands and lascivious priests," while Corneille admired "historical heroes and high-strung sentiment." Here, one need only to consult F. Z., a psychotherapist on the Upper West Side, and to attend Mr. Rumsfeld`s news conferences, to make the obvious connections.

Mr. Labbé`s claims about the authorship of Molière`s work has been seen by some as tantamount to debunking national myth: as one American expert pointed out, "Molière is the so-called greatest author of the French tradition, so there are significant stakes if you undermine that." Modesty prevents me from remarking on the obvious similarities between my 17th-century predecessor and myself. Suffice it to say that, however irreparable the damage to my literary reputation, the benefits to my collaborator — and to my country — will render the sacrifice I am making today worthwhile. No longer will Donald Rumsfeld have to hide, for reasons of privacy and pecuniary need, in my shadow.


Daniel Mendelsohn, a lecturer in classics at Princeton, is author of the memoir "The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity.``



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 13, 2003
The Perfect Army for Iraq: NATO
By ROBERT E. HUNTER


Let NATO do it."

This admonition has become a standard response to military challenges, from Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan. It should now be applied to Iraq.

President Bush`s address on Sunday acknowledged that America needs help from other countries. American and British casualties continue, postwar costs have prompted Mr. Bush to seek more than $70 billion from Congress, and occupation troops are increasingly required to carry out police work and other tasks they are not trained to perform. This comes after Secretary of State Colin Powell praised NATO for taking on "new responsibilities it must meet in parts of the world that could never have been contemplated" when it was formed.

So what are we waiting for?

First, there are still some doubts in Washington that key allies will be prepared to take part, and also concern that some might use their veto power within NATO to thwart effective action. But these fears have more to do with the bitter prewar debate than with current reality. In fact, much of French, German and popular European opposition to the war stemmed precisely from concern that postwar Iraq would pose the challenges it does now. Proved right, many Europeans are sympathetic to the Iraqis` plight.

And whatever our NATO allies thought of the war, they know that the old security system in the Middle East has been shattered. They — and every other country with a stake in oil, global stability, Israel-Palestine peace, ending terrorism and stopping weapons of mass destruction — have no choice but to support the thrust of American policy. Furthermore, several allied states have more experience than America does with "nation building" — for instance, France in West Africa, the Scandinavians in the Balkans and elsewhere — and they can deploy their well-trained paramilitary forces.

Yes, France could always play dog-in-the-manger. But President Jacques Chirac has sketched out terms under which it will be involved — the direction of France`s policy is decided; only the price is in doubt. And, as the American ambassador to NATO during operations in Bosnia, I know that France performs militarily as well and as faithfully as any other ally, even when NATO runs the operation.

The administration is also concerned that NATO will become involved only under a broad United Nations mandate, which could cause America to lose control and be replaced by United Nations bureaucrats. Yes, if Washington simply turned matters over to the United Nations, that fear could be realized. But almost no one suggests that the United Nations would take operational control.

Rather, we have plenty of precedents for an effective NATO intervention that starts from a far-reaching United Nations mandate. In 1995, the Security Council created a force to go into Bosnia but made clear it would be run "through the NATO chain of command." NATO thus acted as the United Nations` agent, and the arrangement worked. Something similar was done in Kosovo, with equal military success.

It is also clear that when NATO is formally in charge, America dominates operations under the organization`s supreme allied commander, now a Marine general, James Jones. For half a century, every ally has accepted this — including France, which has deployed forces under our leadership even in engagements falling outside the organization`s charter.

For several weeks, the administration has debated whether it should modify the view that as sole superpower, it can do whatever it wants wherever it wants. To get needed help in Iraq, including major financial support from European Union countries, returning to the last half-century`s commitment to working with others seems the obvious choice. NATO is the answer, and the sooner the better.


Robert E. Hunter, a fellow at the RAND Corporation, was United States ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 13, 2003
Baked Alaska on the Menu?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


KAKTOVIK, Alaska

Skeptics of global warming should come to this Eskimo village on the Arctic Ocean, roughly 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It`s hard to be complacent about climate change when you`re in an area that normally is home to animals like polar bears and wolverines, but is now attracting robins.

A robin even built its nest in town this year (there is no word in the local Inupiat Eskimo language for robins). And last year a (presumably shivering) porcupine arrived.

The Okpilak River valley was historically too cold and dry for willows, and in the Inupiat language "Okpilak" means "river with no willows." Yet a warmer, wetter climate means that now it`s crowded with willows.

The warming ocean is also bringing salmon, three kinds now, to waters here. The Eskimos say there were almost no salmon a generation ago.

"The weather is different, really different," said 92-year-old Nora Agiak, speaking in the Inupiat language and wearing moose-skin moccasins and a jacket with wolverine fur. "We`re not getting as many icebergs as we used to. Maybe the world moved because it`s getting warmer."

In the past, I`ve been skeptical about costly steps (like those in the Kyoto accord) to confront climate change. But I`m changing my mind. The evidence, while still somewhat incomplete, is steadily mounting that our carbon emissions are causing an accelerating global warming that amounts to a major threat to the world in which we live.

Alaska has warmed by eight degrees, on average, in the winter, over the last three decades, according to meteorological records. The U.S. Arctic Research Commission says that today`s Arctic temperatures are the highest in the last 400 years, and perhaps much longer.

The U.S. Navy reports that in areas traversed by its submarines, Arctic ice volume decreased 42 percent over the last 35 years, and the average thickness of ice below water declined 4.3 feet. The Office of Naval Research warns that "one plausible outcome" is that the summer Arctic ice cap will disappear completely by 2050.

"We`ve got climate change," Robert Thompson, a native guide, says flatly. He notes that pack ice, which always used to hover offshore, providing a home for polar bears, now sometimes retreats hundreds of miles north of Kaktovik. That has caused some bears to drown and leaves others stranded on land.

(After a polar bear was spotted outside Kaktovik`s post office one snowy morning, the locals explained what to do if you bump into a famished polar bear: Yell and throw stones, and above all, don`t run!)

For hundreds of years, the Eskimos here used ice cellars in the permafrost. But now the permafrost is melting, and these ice cellars are filling with water and becoming useless.

Kaktovik`s airstrip, 50 years old, has begun to flood because of higher seas, so it may be moved upland. Another native village, Shishmaref, has voted to abandon its location entirely because of rising seas.

In the hamlet of Deadhorse, I ran into an Arctic native named Jackson Snyder, who said that winters were getting "a lot warmer — doesn`t get much below 50 below anymore."

That may not seem so bad. But while there will be benefits to a warmer Alaska (a longer growing season, ice-free ports), climate change can also lead to crop failures, spread tropical diseases and turn Bangladesh into tidal pools. The pace of warming may be far too fast for animals, humans or ecosystems to adjust. My advice is that if you`re planning a dream home in New Orleans or on the Chesapeake, put it on stilts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reflecting a consensus of scientists, concluded that human activity had probably caused most global warming in recent decades. It predicted that in this century, the seas will rise 4 to 35 inches.

Some 14,000 years ago, a warming trend apparently raised the sea level by 70 feet in just a few hundred years. Today`s computer models don`t foresee a repeat of that, but they also can`t explain why it happened then.

That`s why I`m changing my mind about the need for major steps to address carbon emissions. Global warming is still an uncertain threat, but it may well become one of the major challenges of this century. Certainly our government should do more about it than censor discussions of climate change in E.P.A. reports.

Unless we act soon, we may find waves lapping the beaches of Ohio.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute wieder 131 frische Cartoons. Alles das, was gestern in US-Zeitungen zu sehen war.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030912__131toons.htm

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Published on Friday, September 12, 2003 by the Miami Herald
Declare Victory and Leave
by Helen Thomas

President Bush should take advice from a Vietnam-era Republican senator: Declare a victory in Iraq and get out.The late Sen. George Aiken, R-Vt., gave that counsel to both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon when things were going from bad to worse in the Vietnam War, but they ignored him.

Both presidents would have looked better in the history books had they listened to the venerable senator. But, alas, neither wanted to be seen as retreating or losing a war.

Bush is just beginning to come to terms with the high human and financial cost of fulfilling his obsession -- the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The loss of life among American soldiers and the bleeding of the U.S. economy are beginning to hit home with the public. The result: There is a new defensiveness among Bush and his top advisors.

The president also may have to give up the grand design of his neo-conservative hawkish advisors for establishing a new American foothold in the Middle East and ridding it of despotic leaders.

In his stilted address to the nation Sunday night, Bush said that he would ask Congress for approval to spend $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is in addition to the $79 billion already approved for the war.

``In Iraq,`` Bush said, ``we are helping a long-suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East.``

But somehow Bush seemed to have forgotten the primary reasons he gave earlier this year to justify invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and the threat of an imminent attack by Hussein.

An 1,800-member U.S. task force scouring Iraq has yet to find those elusive weapons.

Asked on NBC`s Today show why Bush avoided the topic of weapons in his Sunday-night speech, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice responded that the weapons were not much of a concern anymore.

``Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, and Saddam Hussein was the problem with weapons of mass destruction,`` Rice replied. ``Removing Saddam Hussein removes the threat of weapons of mass destruction.``

Last Friday, Wisconsin Rep. David Obey -- the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, which will be handling the multibillion-dollar request -- sent a letter to Bush suggesting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, be allowed ``to return to the private sector.``

Obey accused the two top Pentagon officials of making ``repeated serious miscalculations that have been extremely costly in lives . . . degradation of the military, isolation from allies and unexpected demands on the budget that is crowding our other priorities.``

Obey did not recommend pulling out of Iraq but said that U.S. foreign policy had to have new faces.

Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, wrote in the Financial Times on Monday that Bush should ask for the resignations of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice.

They are ``the people who got us into this mess,`` Walt said. ``The architects of this war have been proven wrong on almost every count.``

Bush said that Iraq has become ``the central front`` in the campaign against terrorism. He mentioned the words terror or terrorism some 20 times in his 18-minute speech.

U.S. intelligence agencies have found no link between Iraq, a solidly secular nation, and Osama bin Laden`s fanatic al Qaeda.

L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, wrote in The Washington Post Monday that ``occupation is unpopular with the occupier and the occupied alike.`` The Iraqis should be given responsibility for their own security and economic development and political system ``as soon as possible,`` he said.

The president has not decided on a timetable to exit Iraq. But with the reelection campaign looming, he has to make some tough decisions soon. The first will be to share more authority in Iraq with the United Nations. He has apparently learned the hard way that even a military superpower has limits.

Copyright 1996-2003 Knight Ridder

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washingtonpost.com
Liberty Bushwhacked




Saturday, September 13, 2003; Page A20


PRESIDENT BUSH asked Congress this week to "untie the hands of our law enforcement officials" by passing three new counterterrorism proposals. Two of these are relatively insignificant, but one is dramatically dangerous -- and it has received little attention. Mr. Bush wants Congress to give federal investigators the power to compel witnesses to submit to secret interrogations without the traditional protections of the grand jury.

In more technical terms, Mr. Bush wants to give the Justice Department the power to issue "administrative subpoenas" instead of grand jury subpoenas to compel documents or testimony from reluctant witnesses. The administration argues that grand jury subpoenas can be too slow in emergency situations. The administrative approach, Mr. Bush said, is faster and already "used in a wide range of criminal and civil matters. . . . If we can use these subpoenas to catch crooked doctors, the Congress should allow law enforcement officials to use them in catching terrorists."

That may sound reasonable, and current law does permit investigators in certain types of cases to use administrative subpoenas, which FBI agents can issue with far less oversight. But until now there have been important limits to administrative subpoena power. While investigators can use an administrative subpoena to obtain documents, they cannot normally compel testimony in criminal cases. The exception is a provision of federal drug law on which the Bush proposal, contained in a bill introduced this week by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), is modeled. Yet even there, prosecutors generally use the power to obtain records, not testimony, law enforcement experts say. In this country, in other words, if you don`t want to talk to the FBI, you don`t have to -- and the only way the Justice Department can force you to talk is to put you in front of 23 of your fellow citizens with a court stenographer making a detailed transcript. All of this significantly deters abuse.

Under Mr. Feeney`s bill, the bureau in terrorism cases could subpoena a witness and, if that person balks, get the courts to "compel compliance" on pain of contempt. So, absent an assertion of a privilege, you could no longer refuse to talk to investigators without the protections of a grand jury. Moreover, the bill would give the department the authority, if it certifies that "a danger to national security" would result from disclosure of the subpoena, to slap a gag order on the witness. This is entirely at odds with traditional grand jury procedure, in which witnesses are specifically exempted from the secrecy that surrounds proceedings. And unlike in the drug context, there`s reason to fear that this authority would be used routinely in the context of terrorism.

This radical new power is unnecessary as well as dangerous. It`s not as though seeking grand jury subpoenas is especially burdensome. Prosecutors don`t need to seek a grand jury`s approval for each subpoena they issue; rather, they often issue them on behalf of the grand juries. Federal rules allow them to keep signed and sealed blank subpoenas for use when necessary. While it is probably true that getting grand jury subpoenas out the door is more cumbersome in certain jurisdictions than in others, that would at most suggest tinkering with some local rules and practices. Mr. Feeney`s bill would do a lot more than tinker.

Asked to account for the extraordinary power proposed in the bill, a department spokeswoman initially suggested that Mr. Feeney may have drafted it badly. Only when it was pointed out that similar language had appeared in the so-called "Patriot II" draft bill the Justice Department prepared and leaked early this year did the department even acknowledge that it supports this bill as written. We hope Congress will take a different view.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Sacrilegious Spinning


By Ellen Goodman

Saturday, September 13, 2003; Page A21


There are dates that simply won`t stay put. They leap off the calendar like a headline in the agate type of time. Dec. 7, 1941, is like that. So is Nov. 22, 1963. And of course, Sept. 11, 2001.

It`s two years since we counted planes -- one, two, three, four -- as they crashed into one tower and then another, and then the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania soil. Two years since we stopped in our daily tracks, gasps replacing the ordinary hum of a back-to-school morning, shock trumping every other emotion except horror. And fear.

The other morning, watching a 767 cross the city skyline, I remembered my own raw, first impression tapped out within hours of this catastrophe: The world had changed. Our sense of safety evaporated; our vulnerability ratcheted up to new levels. Terror had become the new reality show. We knew we had enemies who did indeed hate America more than they loved life.

Of course, everything did not change. Eventually, we used up the duct tape, put away the gas masks and ate the emergency supply of granola bars. But we retained that muscle memory of the world as a dangerous place in which we are high-risk patients.

Last year, on the first anniversary, when 9/11 ran 24/7, I thought the media had turned a disaster into an industry. I worried that our emotions had been marketed into movies and books and T-shirts. Now, on the second anniversary, I am watching politicians take Sept. 11 out for a spin.

The day, with its emotional scars and lessons, is being manipulated, handcuffed to the "war on terrorism." Nearly every battle, every action, every foreign policy, every call to follow the leader, is justified -- no, sanctified -- in the name of Sept. 11.

Sunday night we saw a sober president admitting that the scenario of swift victory in Iraq was far too rosy. This was no flight deck photo op. The "Mission Accomplished" speech of May has become the "Mission Prolonged" speech of September -- with an $87 billion price tag.

But repeatedly, deliberately, the president connected the dots between Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq. Since "those deadly attacks on our country," he said, "we have carried the fight to the enemy." "For America," he said, "there will be no going back to the era before Sept. 11 -- to false comfort in a dangerous world." And finally, he told Americans that we are fighting the enemy today, "so that we do not meet him again on our own streets in our own cities."

The trouble is that the dots he connected are cartoon bubbles drawn by the White House and its speechmakers.

Nevertheless, Americans have followed them. A Washington Post poll recently showed that 69 percent of Americans still believe it`s likely or very likely Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11.

The emotional link -- bad guys do bad things, Saddam is bad, 9/11 is bad -- has become a successful political link. Fifteen of 19 hijackers were suicidal Saudis, all were members of al Qaeda. There was no connection. Osama and Saddam, the religious fanatic and secular despot, are brethren only in brutality.

Nevertheless the Taliban and the Baath Party are portrayed as allies in terrorism. The war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq are conflated into a war on "terror."

Did you read the story about a young Florida woman who was determined to sew a quilt for the family of every American soldier who died in the Iraq War? As the death toll rose to over 300, she remained committed to her kindness and to the war. "We have to stay there as long as it takes and take care of it once and for all," she explained. "No one wants another Sept. 11."

When does the small, repeated exploitation of this belief become the big lie? What do we make of a patriotism of fear?

In my Cold War childhood, "godless communism" was the unifying all-purpose enemy that justified everything from an overkill arsenal of nuclear weapons to a host of unsavory allies. Sept. 11 not only ended the end of the Cold War, it ushered in a new all-purpose enemy: terrorism.

So this is how we commemorate Sept. 11, 2001, two years later. The preemptive, preventive war with Iraq has not made us safer. North Korea and Iran lurk in the nuclear imagination. Patriotism is calibrated by a willingness to follow the dots of propaganda.

On the calendar a sacred space has become a sacrilege. The White House has sent Sept. 11 spinning.

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© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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POLL ANALYSES
September 12, 2003


Bush Job Approval Tumbles to 52%
Fifty-one percent of Americans oppose Bush request for $87 billion in funding for Iraq

http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030912.asp
by Frank Newport
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- President George W. Bush`s job approval rating has dropped significantly over the last two weeks, and now, at 52%, is at its lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and within one point of the lowest rating during his presidency. The percentage of Americans who disapprove of Bush`s performance, 43%, is the highest measured since he took office. Bush`s job approval rating on his handling of the situation in Iraq has dropped from 57% to 51%, and a slight majority of Americans say Congress should not authorize Bush`s request for $87 billion in additional funding for Iraq and the war on terrorism.

Bush Job Approval Drops Seven Points in Two Weeks

The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Monday through Wednesday night of this week. The president`s 52% job approval rating in the poll is seven points lower than the 59% he received in Gallup`s previous poll conducted two weeks ago.

George W. Bush’s Job Approval Rating




Bush received approval ratings in the 50% range through most of the seven months between his inauguration in late January 2001 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Sept. 7-10, 2001, Bush`s rating was at 51% (still the lowest approval rating of his term) and his disapproval rating was 39%.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush`s job ratings jumped as high as 90% as part of a general rally effect in which the public gave extremely high ratings to many government entities. Bush`s ratings gradually dropped in the months after Sept 11. By the first months of this year, his ratings were in the high 50% range.

The beginning of the Iraq war pushed his ratings upward to 71%, but they began to fall again shortly thereafter. Most recently, Bush`s job ratings were in a narrow 58%-to-60% range across four Gallup Polls conducted between mid-July and late August. The current 52% approval, 43% disapproval rating is the most negative of the administration. This marks the first time that his disapproval rating has been above the 40% level.

Bush Holds On to Slim Lead Over Democratic Challenger in Presidential Race

An incumbent president`s job approval rating is usually correlated with his standing in pre-election horse race polls. Consistent with this pattern, the current poll shows that Bush`s re-elect numbers have fallen concomitantly with his approval rating. Bush was leading the "Democratic candidate" by 12 points among registered voters in late August. His lead now has shrunk to only four points, 47% to 43%:

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-airp…
THE WORLD



Plan to Reopen Basra`s Airport Hits Turbulence
Coalition leaders envision it as a symbol of a new Iraq. But concerns about security and lack of demand have dimmed those hopes.
By David Streitfeld
Times Staff Writer

September 13, 2003

BASRA, Iraq — For years, Basra International Airport has been on a nonstop to nowhere, a gleaming edifice in the middle of the desert that had offered only one departure and one arrival a week.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, this nation`s U.S.-led occupation administration, wants to take this massive white elephant and turn it into a symbol of the new Iraq — a land that attracts many visitors, even tourists, where an arriving businessperson`s biggest concern is what aperitif to order in first class.

There are just a couple of problems with introducing the first regular commercial passenger flights to Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The biggest is that there`s still an armed resistance. The guerrillas keep shooting missiles at military planes in Basra and elsewhere. Although reopening the airport here would send a very positive message, the downing of a commercial airliner would set back U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.

Another issue is terrorism on the ground. The Basra and Baghdad airports each have only one main access road. No one can figure out how to safely ferry passengers in and out without leaving them prey to the improvised explosive devices that bedevil military patrols.

A third question is demand. Iraq is a long way from being stable enough to attract business travelers, let alone tourists. That is particularly true in this southern city of 2 million, a desperately poor area that had long been oppressed by ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

Physically, the airport is ready. The terminal floor, a stretch of imported Italian marble two football fields long, has been cleaned and polished. American contractors have repainted the runway stripes, reassembled the staff and brought in up-to-date avionics equipment.

The occupation authority had scheduled a late August opening, with speeches and dignitaries and media galore. A confidential memo issued by the British military, which controls Basra and its airport, said the event would provide "a symbol of reconstruction, a catalyst for economic growth, an opportunity for local employment, the rebirth of the [Civil Aviation Administration] in Iraq, a great reason to celebrate `Iraq for the Iraqis` and possibly one of the first opportunities to display some national pride."

The opening of the airport would provide a point of entry into Iraq other than Baghdad, a six-hour drive from Basra. For those without access to humanitarian flights into Baghdad`s international airport, the only other method has been long drives from Kuwait or Jordan that leave them vulnerable to bandits.

LOT Polish Airlines, one of the six carriers to win landing rights in Basra, was to be the first, arriving from Warsaw at 5:35 a.m. on Aug. 27. Gulf Air, based in Bahrain, announced its first flight would land Sept. 1.

Nothing happened.

"We got the impression there weren`t many takers" for tickets, said Capt. Hisham Halawi, a spokesman for the British military. "We wanted to give the airlines more of a chance to generate more business — to line up hotels, taxis, buses."

A spokesman for the U.S.-led administration, who spoke on condition that he neither be named nor quoted directly, gave a different reason. The cancellations, he said, were due to the need to have adequate security, customs and immigration procedures in place.

The most recent missile attacks, he added, would be factored into the overall security question. If security is the main reason for the delay, it`s another example of how the U.S. authority`s rebuilding plans have been sidetracked by the threat of attacks.

Surface-to-air missile launches against military planes are a common occurrence in Iraq. According to security reports, on Aug. 22 a missile was fired at a U.S. C-130 cargo plane climbing from the airport in the northern city of Mosul. On Aug. 30, a missile was fired at a C-130 at Baghdad`s international airport, exploding about half a mile behind the plane.

About that same time, a missile was fired at a C-130 in Basra, according to a British aviation specialist at the base.

The most recent incident took place Sept. 6, when two missiles were fired at a C-141 cargo plane about 15 miles north of the Baghdad airport. According to a security report, the missiles detonated "well below" the plane.

To lessen the chances of being a target, military planes often sharply bank and roll while landing or taking off anywhere in Iraq. In Baghdad, smaller planes on humanitarian flights fly directly over the airport and then corkscrew in, keeping a tightly circumscribed flight zone.

Airlines have been taking the threat of missiles very seriously since November, when a charter flight full of vacationing Israelis was fired upon while taking off from the Kenyan resort city of Mombasa.

The attack, which was blamed on the Al Qaeda terrorist network, transformed the risk to commercial planes from theoretical to urgent. Congress has proposed equipping U.S. planes with antimissile systems; Israel reportedly is testing such a device.

Aside from LOT and Gulf Air, the airlines with landing rights in Basra are the Scandinavian carrier SAS, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Qatar Airways and Emirates Airlines. According to Capt. Halawi, they`re all "quite keen to get going."

LOT is promoting Basra on its Web site, noting that the trip is a good way to earn frequent flier miles. "Of course there are dangers, but the British army there guarantees the safety of civilian flights," said spokesman Leszek Chorzewski.

During the war, U.S. and allied troops tried to spare the airports from damage. In Basra, they were almost completely successful — one radar station was destroyed, but that was about it. Nor was there much looting. Some of the airport`s 343 employees barricaded themselves on the second floor, where they discouraged marauders.

Baghdad airport was the scene of more intense fighting, but the damage was rapidly repaired. Both military and humanitarian flights land frequently, and there`s even a duty-free shop. But there`s no way an ordinary traveler can gain access to the airport, let alone fly into or out of it.

There`s much greater demand for commercial flights into Baghdad than Basra. But landing safely in the capital is only part of the problem. The stretch from the airport exit to the first military checkpoint is only about three miles, but it`s earned the nickname "Ambush Alley."

Much of the road is surrounded by dense brush that offers good cover for guerrillas. On Sept. 3, a vanload of Polish journalists was heading downtown under military protection when an improvised explosive device was set off. Moments later, a hand grenade was tossed from the bushes. One soldier was wounded.

Basra airport, out in the desert with no surrounding habitation or vegetation, is safer in this regard. Built in 1982 for $155 million, it is capable of handling about 160,000 passengers a month — about half as many as Burbank Airport.

Yet even before the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions limited flights from other countries, the airport had hardly any business. It has 23 check-in counters and four gates but never needed more than one of each. It has the feel of something that has never been used.

It will remain that way, according to a source close to the process, until the question of passenger security is resolved. The British military, which will continue using the airport as a base, doesn`t want people driving up to the terminal to pick up or leave passengers — providing perfect cover for a car bomber.

Instead, the new plan is to pick up passengers in the city and bus them in. But Basra, the scene of riots last month as well as numerous attacks on aid workers and U.S. contractors, isn`t the most secure zone. The airlines, military and administration authorities are still wrangling over who would be responsible for the safety of the bus.

Marshall Adame, an employee of SkyLink Air and Logistic Support Inc., the U.S. contractor brought in to restore and manage the airport, is looking to a more distant — and improbably hopeful — future.

"Some years from now, you`ll see the full capacity of this airport being used for the first time," Adame said. "This place will be kicking."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special correspondent Ela Kasprzycka in Warsaw contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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September 13, 2003
Robert Fisk: A hail of bullets, a trail of dead, and a mystery the US is in no hurry to resolve
By Robert Fisk
13 September 2003

A human brain lay beside the highway. It was scattered in the sand, blasted from its owner`s head when the Americans ambushed their own Iraqi policemen.

A few inches away were a policeman`s teeth, broken but clean dentures, the teeth of a young man. "I don`t know if they are the teeth of my brother - I don`t even know if my brother is alive or dead," Ahmed Mohamed shouted at me. "The Americans took the dead and the wounded away - they won`t tell us anything."

Ahmed Mohamed was telling the truth. He is also, I should add, an Iraqi policeman working for the Americans. United States forces in Iraq officially stated - incredibly - that they had "no information" about the killing of the 10 cops and the wounding of five others early yesterday morning. Unfortunately, the Americans are not telling the truth.

Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division fired thousands of bullets in the ambush, hundreds of them smashing into the wall of a building in the neighbouring Jordanian Hospital compound, setting several rooms on fire.

And if they really need "information", they have only to look at the 40mm grenade cartridges scattered in the sand near the brains and teeth.

On each is printed the coding "AMM LOT MA-92A170-024". This is a US code for grenades belt-fired from an American M-19 gun.

And out in Fallujah, where infuriated Iraqi civilians roamed the streets after morning prayers looking for US patrols to stone, it wasn`t difficult to put the story together. The local American-trained and American-paid police chief, Qahtan Adnan Hamad - who confirmed that 10 died - described how, not long after midnight yesterday morning, gunmen in a BMW car had opened fire on the Mayor`s office in Fallujah.

Two squads of the American-trained and American-paid police force - from the local Fallujah constabulary established by US forces last month and the newly constituted Iraqi national police - set off in pursuit.

Since the Americans will not reveal the truth, let Ahmed Mohamed, whose 28-year-old brother, Walid, was one of the policemen who gave chase, tell his story.

"We have been told that the BMW opened fire on the mayor`s office at 12.30 am. The police chased them in two vehicles, a Nissan pick-up and a Honda car and they set off down the old Kandar roads towards Baghdad.

"But the Americans were there in the darkness, outside the Jordanian Hospital, to ambush cars on the road. They let the BMW through, then fired at the police cars."

One of the policemen who was wounded in the second vehicle said the Americans suddenly appeared on the darkened road. "When they shouted at us, we stopped immediately," he said. "We tried to tell them we were police. They just kept on shooting."

The latter is true. I found thousands of brass cartridge cases at the scene, piles of them like autumn leaves glimmering in the sun, along with the dark green grenade cartridges. There were several hundred unfired bullets but - far more disturbing - was the evidence on the walls of a building at the Jordanian Hospital. At least 150 rounds had hit the breeze- block wall and two rooms had burned out, the flames blackening the outside of the building.

And therein lies another mystery that the Americans were yesterday in no hurry to resolve. Several Iraqis said that a Jordanian doctor in the hospital had been killed and five nurses wounded. Yet when I approached the hospital gate, I was confronted by three armed men who said they were Jordanian. To enter hospitals here now, you must obtain permission from the occupation authorities in Baghdad - which is rarely, if ever, forthcoming.

No-one wants journalists prowling round dismal mortuaries in "liberated" Iraq. Who knows what they might find?

"The doctors have gone to prayer so you cannot come in," an unsmiling Jordanian gunman at the gate told me. On the roof of the shattered hospital building, two armed and helmeted guards watched us. They looked to me very like Jordanian troops. And their hospital is opposite a US 3rd Infantry Division base. Are the Jordanians here for the Americans? Or are the Americans guarding the Jordanian Hospital? When I asked if the bodies of the dead policemen were here, the armed man at the gate shrugged his shoulders.

So what happened? Did the Americans shoot down their Iraqi policemen under the mistaken impression that they were "terrorists" - Saddamite or al-Qa`ida, depending on their faith in President George Bush - and then, once their bullets had smashed into the hospital, come under attack from the Jordanian guards on the roof?

In any other land, the Americans would surely have acknowledged some of the truth.

But all they would speak of yesterday were their own casualties. Two US soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a raid in the neighbouring town of Ramadi when the occupants of a house fired back at them.

It gave the impression, of course, that American lives were infinitely more valuable than Iraqi lives. And had the brains and teeth beside the road outside Fallujah been American brains and teeth, of course, they would have been removed. There were other things beside the highway yesterday. A torn, blood-stained fragment of an American-supplied Iraqi policeman`s shirt, a primitive tourniquet and medical gauze and lots and lots of dried, blackened blood. The 3rd Infantry Division are tired, so the story goes here. They invaded Iraq in March and haven`t been home since. Their morale is low. Or so they say in Fallujah and Baghdad. But already the cancer of rumour is beginning to turn this massacre into something far more dangerous. Here are the words of Ahmed, whose brother Sabah was a policeman caught in the ambush and taken away by the Americans - alive or dead, he doesn`t know - and who turned up to examine the blood and cartridge cases yesterday. "The Americans were forced to leave Fallujah after much fighting following their killing of 16 demonstrators in April. They were forced to hire a Fallujah police force. But they wanted to return to Fallujah so they arranged the ambush. The BMW gunmen` were Americans who were supposed to show there was no security in Fallujah - so the Americans could return. Our police kept crying out: We are the police - we are the police`. And the Americans went on shooting." In vain did I try to explain that the last thing Americans wanted to do was return to the Sunni Muslim Saddamite town of Fallujah. Already they have paid "blood money" to the families of local, innocent Iraqis shot down at their checkpoints. They will have to do the same to the tribal leader whose two sons they also killed at another checkpoint near Fallujah on Thursday night. But why did the Americans kill so many of their own Iraqi policemen? Had they not heard the radio appeals of the dying men? Why - and here the story of the Jordanian Hospital guards and the policemen`s relatives were the same - did the Americans go on shooting for an hour and a half? And why did the Americans say that they had "no information" about the slaughter 18 hours after they had gunned down 10 of the very men whom President Bush needs most if he wishes to extricate his army from the Iraqi death trap?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=442…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=442…

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Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria:

The U.S. Administration Is Exaggerating The Involvement Of Al-Qaeda In Iraq
ABC TV AUSTRALIA

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4695.htm



Broadcast: 11/09/2003
Newsweek International editor discusses war on terrorism
Joining us now from New York is one of America`s most influential journalists and commentators, the editor of Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria.


---------
Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Tony Jones



TONY JONES: Well joining us now from New York is one of America`s most influential journalists and commentators, the editor of Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria.

Thanks for joining us Mr Zakaria.

FAREED ZAKARIA, `NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL`: My pleasure, Tony.

TONY JONES: Despite all the blows against it in the so-called war on terrorism, Al Qaeda`s key leadership still appears to be functioning.

Indeed in the latest tape message from Al-Zawahiri we hear him say what you`ve seen so far are just the first skirmishes.

How do you interpret what he`s saying there?

FAREED ZAKARIA: There are two very interesting things.

First, let`s remember they`re functioning well enough after one year provide a videotape with an audio track dubbed on to it.

That does not strike me as evidence of a deadly organisation.

I think there`s no question they`re on the run.

Yes, they can produce videos and audio tapes but they are not producing major terror attacks and that`s something to be grateful for.

I don`t doubt there is significant difficulty in tracking them down and they do exist and are trying things.

But let`s look at it objectively and point out there hasn`t been another big attack in a long while, really since Bali.

Secondly, from those who are --

TONY JONES: Can I interrupt you there, that is if you discount any possibility they may have had any involvement in some of the large-scale bombings recently in Iraq.

FAREED ZAKARIA: True, which we can get to talk about later.

But my own sense and the reporting we`ve got on the ground is a lot of that is actually the former Baathist-Sunni extremists, by and large it`s very difficult to imagine that Saudi radicals, Al Qaeda recruits, come into Iraq and in one day or two days figure out where the home of some governing council member`s brother is or which is the main water pipeline in Baghdad.

In other words, these are attacks that required enormous specific knowledge.

So my sense is that those are not Al Qaeda.

The administration is in my view irresponsibly exaggerating the degree of Al Qaeda involvement because they`re trying to turn Iraq into the central front in the war on terror.

TONY JONES: Let`s stick with Al Qaeda for a minute.

You`ve written that were it not for weapons of mass destruction in a past age movements like Al Qaeda would simply be an irritant.

Of course, that is the key to this, isn`t it?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Absolutely. The real fear here, which the administration has very rightly pointed to from the start, is that you have these extremist radicals who are existentially opposed to the West and the United States in particular.

If they get some kind of weapons of mass destruction, you have a cataclysmic possibility and the race is on, if you will, is to stop that from happening.

One more thing about the message, you remember the original footway of Osama bin Laden was about America getting out of Saudi Arabia, American troops in Saudi Arabia.

That was the number one cause for his campaign against the United States.

He doesn`t seem to have noticed the United States is not in Saudi Arabia anymore.

American troops have withdrawn.

Now he says Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

In a strange sense he and President Bush agree.

I just want to remind viewers that people who say this is all a product of American foreign policy should note that people like Bin Laden will always find some great cause that makes them opposed to Australia, the West, and the United States of course centrally.

TONY JONES: Let`s talk about Iraq, then.

Many people before that war suggested that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, that it could create the very terrorism that George W Bush - and terrorists themselves - that George W Bush is trying to end.

So is that how you now see it because you didn`t, I think, before the war?

FAREED ZAKARIA: I always argued that the postwar was more important than the war, that the war would be relatively easy and the postwar would be very difficult.

That part of it, sadly, has been vindicated but I don`t think things are as bad as many of news the media have portrayed it.

Two-thirds of Iraq is very stable, doing pretty well.

There is a third of it, the Sunni heartland, which has a lot of the former Baathist which does not have any real security and is proving to be difficult and has attracted some of these terrorist elements.

But I think fundamentally Iraq is much better off than it was before the people there are -- it`s not just that they have political freedom, which is no small thing, they have stability, they have order, they have the beginning of the reconstruction of Iraq.

So I don`t really think that in the long run, I mean even a few months from now, the critics of the Iraq occupation are going to be right because I think things will stabilise.

Then we have a much more difficult task, which is the political restructuring of Iraq, the reordering of it and all that kind of thing.

TONY JONES: Let`s talk, if we can, because we`re reflecting back on September 11 and of course Iraq stemmed, in the end, out of September 11.

That`s what George W Bush told the world -- this is all about getting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, stopping them from getting into the hands of terrorists, the very thing we spoke about at the beginning of the interview.

Were we misled by the US administration?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Yes.

I think either consciously or unconsciously -- I would get a combination of the two.

The administration vastly exaggerated the evidence it had.

It shaded every colour dark grey or black when it was not right to do that.

It forced the CIA to shade its own intelligence.

I think part of what happened here was that the administration had a group of people in it, the so-called neo-conservatives, who were hell-bent on the invasion of Iraq, that they used any argument that was available.

I always believed that Iraq was a serious security concern but I always thought it could wait until you could build an international coalition and that would have given it greater legitimacy and support.

If we waited six or eight months, it is now clear there would have been no difference.

Iraq did not pose an imminent threat and very likely we would have had the French and Germans onboard and that would have changed very much the character of the post-war problems we`re facing.

TONY JONES: It`s intriguing, though, to find such an influential writer and thinker such as yourself having second thoughts: You wrote in April the threat from Iraq is real.

FAREED ZAKARIA: It was real.

I think that --

TONY JONES: The threat of weapons of mass destruction do you mean?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Well, here`s what I meant by it.

The containment policy toward Iraq -- which was essentially a policy of highly punitive sanctions, coupled with export embargoes which ensured it didn`t get any kind of weapons of mass destruction -- was crumbling.

If in 1996 or `97, Saddam Hussein had access to $200 million of revenues because of skimming off the embargo, cheating, smuggling, by 2002 the CIA was estimating he had access to $2.5 billion of revenue.

The sanctions had broken down.

Everyone knew that.

Washington had been trying to patch it back together and it wasn`t possible.

Secondly, you were having an enormous human tragedy taking place because of it -- you had about 65,000 Iraqis dying every year because of the sanctions.

It seemed to me that containment was unsustainable.

You had to move to something else.

I very much wanted it to be a broad international effort that did so.

But to be honest with you and answer your question, I am having second thoughts for two reasons.

One, I think we were misled about the degree of weaponisation of Iraq`s arm programs, chemical, biological -- I never believed the nuclear, if you recall.

And secondly, the incredibly poor post-war planning process, where we do not have enough troops on the ground or money initially.

That`s led me to think is it worth it at the end of the day?

I still think it is.

I still think six months from now this will look like a bad phase that will have gone through and Iraq will be in a much better place than.

One example --

TONY JONES: Go ahead.

FAREED ZAKARIA: The Arab League yesterday agreed to seat the Iraqi representative, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, who is a Kurd.

This is the first time the Arab League has ever recognised an ethnic minority in such a position of prominence.

It says something about the possibilities for a new Middle East if a Kurd can be seated at the tables of the Arab League.

TONY JONES: It doesn`t, however, tell us a lot about whether we should or should not trust the Bush Administration that even you now are having such profound second thoughts about the question, the key question on which they brought us into this war.

So I guess what I`m asking you here is have they squandered the capital, the political capital that they had after September 11?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Without question, and I`ve written that repeatedly.

What the Bush Administration has failed to recognise is there`s enormous goodwill for the United States around the world, particularly after September 11.

People want the United States to lead, they know the problems of the world won`t be solved by less American leadership.

But they want us to lead and not be the schoolyard bully.

I fear that`s what`s happened in the last few years.

TONY JONES: We thank you very much for taking the time, this September 11, to join us.

FAREED ZAKARIA: My pleasure, thank you, Tony

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:45 a.m. EDT September 13, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Crucial meetings between Secretary of State Colin Powell and members of the U.N. Security Council are marked by dissension today. France and Russia oppose a U.S.draft resolution aimed at broadening support for its occupation of Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Iraq after he completes meetings with U.N. Security Council members in Geneva. The State Department says Powell will get an update on progress in Iraq from Iraqis and members of the U.S.-led coalition.
Though it`s still not confirming details, the U.S.military has acknowledged a friendly fire incident in Iraq, issuing a statement of condolence "to the families of the deceased." But the U.S. says it`s aware of "at least one death," while Iraqi police say eight of their officers and a Jordanian security guard were killed.
The military says two U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded during a shootout that broke out during a raid early Friday west of Baghdad, Iraq. It occurred during one of the bloodiest nights of fighting since the end of major conflict on May first.
President Bush has given his highest award for valor to an army unit that stormed Baghdad, Iraq, and helped oust Saddam Hussein. Visiting its home at Fort Stewart, Georgia, he presented the Third Infantry Division with the Presidential Unit Citation, saying, "You made history. You`ve made our nation proud."
The Pentagon`s number-two man Paul Wolfowitz says he misspoke when he claimed a "great number" of al-Qaida operatives are trying to link up with remnants of Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq. He said in Nine-Eleven interviews that key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden are plotting with Saddam loyalists to kill Americans in Iraq. He now tells the A-P he misspoke because he didn`t anticipate questions about Iraq in interviews about the September eleventh anniversary.
Prime Minister Tony Blair`s government on Friday defended its decision to take military action against Iraq, despite a warning from intelligence officials that war would increase the threat of terrorism.
Japan reportedly plans to send a fact-finding mission to Iraq next week in preparation for a possible dispatch of ground troops to help with U.S-led reconstruction efforts. The team of ten officials -- who are expected to leave Tuesday -- will assess whether it`s safe to send a peacekeeping force and decide what type of humanitarian assistance is needed.
A defense ministry official says India can`t afford to send troops for peacekeeping duties in Iraq because of a surge in violence by Islamic militants in Kashmir.
The military says attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S.military convoy west of Baghdad Thursday, touching off an intense firefight that left at least one American soldier wounded. Tanks and other vehicles came under attack in Fallujah (fuh-LOO`-juh), part of the dangerous "Sunni Triangle."
Secretary of State Colin Powell warns that the wishes of some allies on post-war Iraq can`t be met. Powell says Iraq would face "total chaos" if the United States surrendered to demands for a hasty transfer of authority to Iraqi control. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, which broadcasts to Arab countries, Powell also said it`s not practical now for the U.S. to transfer control to the United Nations.
Jordan`s King Abdullah says Jordan is treating Iraq`s war wounded and providing other humanitarian help, but its support does not extend to sending peacekeepers across the border.

CASUALTIES
A total of 292 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 73 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
US UK Other Total Avg Days
293 50 2 345 1.95 177

The Wounded: US Military
Reported by Centcom As of 9/9/2003
US troops wounded in action: 1178
US troops wounded in non-hostile incidents 313
TOTAL US wounded in Iraq since March 20th: 1491
Wounded reported since 9/9/2003 20

Latest Military Fatality Date: 9/12/2003
09/12/03 Centcom: 2 Killed, 7 Wounded
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two Combined Joint Task Force 2 soldiers were killed and seven were wounded when a small arms firefight broke out while conducting a raid in Ramadi at approximately 3 a.m. on Sep. 12.
09/11/03 Yahoo: US forces were embroiled firefight
US forces were embroiled in a 90-minute firefight near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, and at least three Americans were wounded in the latest upsurge of attacks in Iraq
09/11/03 Centcom: ONE SOLDIER KILLED, TWO WOUNDED
One Coalition soldier was killed and two were injured when a tire on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck exploded while the soldiers were changing the tire in Balad
09/10/03 Department of Defense
DOD releases name of U.S. soldier injured on Aug. 30th in a vehicle accident who has subsequently died on Sept. 7th at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
09/10/03 CENTCOM
One U.S. soldier killed in Baghdad today when IED exploded prematurely during disarming process.
09/10/03 BBC:Bomb hits Iraqi Kurd region
A car bomb has exploded outside an office used by US troops near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.

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Bush: The Making of a Candidate

Texas Gov. George W. Bush. (AP photo)

A seven-part series on Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush traces the Texas governor`s lifelong effort to reconcile the expectations placed on him with the success he sought.
Heute der 5.Teil. In den letzten Tagen Teil 1-4.

Young Bush, a Political Natural, Revs Up

George W. Bush talks with workers while campaigning for Congress in the Midland oil fields, 1978.. (George Bush Presidential Library)


By Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 29, 1999; Page A1


Fifth in a series
On July 6, 1977, George W. Bush celebrated his 31st birthday with little to show in the way of a resume or significant career prospects. Since arriving in Midland, Tex., in the summer of 1975 after finishing Harvard Business School, he had worked as an entry-level land man in the oil business, spending his days in the courthouse researching titles to mineral rights and negotiating deals to lease them. He lived in a cluttered bachelor apartment above a cinder-block garage, his bed held together by one of his ratty ties.
But his birthday brought an unexpected opportunity. Rep. George Mahon, Midland`s congressman, was a conservative Democrat who had served in the House for 43 years, longer than anyone else in Congress at the time. And on July 6, he unexpectedly announced his retirement. National Republicans, seeing a chance to pick up a Democratic House seat, began lining up behind Jim Reese, a former television sportscaster and mayor of Odessa who had run against Mahon the year before and won 45 percent of the vote.

"And then out of nowhere – and I mean nowhere, even after Reese has shown so much strength – comes George Bush," remembers V. Lance Tarrance, a pollster who worked for Reese.

Less that two weeks after Mahon revealed his plans, Bush startled both the Republican and Democratic establishments by holding news conferences in Lubbock and Midland to announce that he was jumping into the race.

Bush would later say that the opportunity to run for Congress far outweighed his preparedness back then. But his quick decision to run and his willingness to challenge an established candidate suggest the pull that politics had for him as well as his ambition, which would go unfulfilled until 17 years later. He was drawn to the game, and he was not someone who wanted to get in it by starting at the bottom.

By 1977 Bush had already worked in three of his father`s campaigns. He had been on the campaign staffs of two Republican Senate candidates – Edward J. Gurney in Florida in 1968 and Winton Blount in Alabama four years later – and liked it so much that his uncle Jonathan Bush was convinced he would become a political consultant. He had also briefly considered running for the Texas legislature after he finished active duty with the National Guard. As the grandson of a senator, Prescott Bush from Connecticut, and the son of a politically ambitious father, Bush was immersed in politics as a boy. But his conservative opinions didn`t seem rooted in any particular philosophy. John Kidde, an Andover classmate, recalls his friend reading Barry Goldwater`s "The Conscience of a Conservative" in school. When Kidde asked Bush why he was reading the book, Bush told him his father had given it to him.

When Bush announced for Congress that July, he sounded conservative themes, complaining that President Jimmy Carter was trying to control natural gas prices and saying he wanted to go to Washington to halt what he called the "bureaucratic spread of federal government that is encroaching more and more on our lives."

But it was clearly more than issues that attracted him to running for office. It was the people and the competition he liked – that and the chance to be the center of attention.

"He knew how to work a crowd perfectly long before he decided to go into politics," said Doug Hannah, an old friend from Houston, who traveled Texas with him during Bush`s father`s losing 1970 Senate campaign against Lloyd Bentsen. "He loved it and he was having a great time. My shock was that he was such a good speaker. I started to notice he sounded just like his father – if you closed your eyes, you heard his father."

The experience of his ultimately losing campaign for Congress would inform Bush`s role in his father`s presidential campaigns and offer indelible lessons for his own political future. He would confront the power of the religious right long before before it was seen as a formidable political force, and he would suffer the consequences of allowing his opponents to define him as an Easterner – something he would never let happen again.

He would also experience the downside of being George Bush`s son. His father`s career, he would learn, would loom large over everything the son did for years to come.

But something else became apparent as Bush traipsed through the cotton farms around Lubbock and knocked on oil-field workers` doors in Odessa. He was a natural, and it wasn`t long before his opponents knew it.


Built-In Advantages For a Bush in Midland



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Bush started his campaign with some built-in advantages. He was the son and virtual namesake of one of Texas`s rising politicians, who was just beginning his own campaign for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. George Herbert Walker Bush`s old friends from Midland – where he had lived for nearly a decade – were all too happy to help his son make his way in politics.
George W. also had his own wide circle of friends who were willing to help, some who had known him when he was growing up in Midland in the `50s and others who had met him through the oil business. Most of them were stunned at how fast he made up his mind to run.

"I remember him sitting around our kitchen table talking about this and we were saying: Why do you want to do this?" recalled his close friend Joe O`Neill. "He looked around the table and said, `Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it?` And of course none of us wanted to. He said, `Well then, I am.` "

This was the "Bombastic Bushkin" his friends had come to love for his unpredictability and impulsiveness, the unfettered enthusiasm that brought excitement into their suburban lives. Many of his friends eagerly signed up to help.

"I don`t know that we ever got into the `whys,` " said Bob McCleskey, his friend from seventh grade. "It was just, `Were we gonna help?` It was something new. Most of us had never done anything like it before, never even made a contribution, much less be actively involved."

Within a few weeks, Bush had the core of his little team in place – most of whom worked for free, and many of them still working for him today.

Don Evans, an oil executive who is now Bush`s national finance chairman, agreed to oversee the campaign. O`Neill would be the treasurer and fund-raiser. Charlie Younger, an orthopedic surgeon, would help stuff envelopes and whatever else was necessary. McCleskey, today Bush`s accountant, found himself studying Federal Election Commission filing requirements. Bush`s brother Neil, still a college student, would head to Texas after he finished out the year at Tulane. It was also during this campaign that Bush began his long-term relationship with Karl Rove, then an aide to his father in Houston and today George W.`s chief strategist.

Everyone agreed that Bush`s father should remain on the sidelines. The name was enough of a statement. The senior Bush had already been a Texas congressman, chairman of the Republican National Committee and director of the Central Intelligence Agency – and now he was running for president.

It was lost on no one in the Bush camp that Jim Reese was tight with one of Bush`s father`s main rivals – Ronald Reagan – and that the Reagan camp would just as soon not see George W. show strength in Texas, a pivotal presidential state.

Charles Black, the Republican National Committee`s young political director, got a call in Washington one day from Bush`s father, the former party chairman. "You know George is getting in this race down here in Texas," he told him. "I hope you all will stay neutral through the primary."

"Absolutely," Black assured the senior Bush. "By all means."

Some Republican leaders in Texas worried about a fractious primary and urged Bush to wait his turn. It was Reese, after all, who had forced Mahon from Congress. But Bush was already making an impression on people as he moved around the sprawling district, people like Ruth Schiermeyer, the Lubbock Republican chairwoman.

She had met the young man briefly a year earlier when he had come through Lubbock on behalf of President Gerald R. Ford`s campaign. But they really hadn`t talked until he came to her home a few weeks after his announcement.

Like others in the district, Schiermeyer had been uneasy about Reese. In 1976 he had painted Mahon as a liberal – which he was not – and even Republicans believed Mahon had represented the district well for four decades.

Bush settled into her small living room on her blue tweed couch and made himself comfortable. He pulled out the loose pillows and propped his arms on them, then put his feet up on her coffee table. He told her that he cared about people, that he could go the long haul. He knew his name would help, but he wanted to establish himself as his own person.

Schiermeyer had to stay neutral in the primary. But by the time Bush left her little house on 25th Street, she and he knew she was with him. She even agreed to give his brother Neil her garage apartment when he came to help.


A Backyard Cookout Leads to the Altar



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Ten days after declaring his candidacy, Bush accepted an invitation from Joe and Jan O`Neill for a backyard cookout at their Midland home on the last weekend in July.
For years the O`Neills had tried to set Bush up with their childhood friend, Laura Welch, a 30-year-old librarian who was as quiet and introspective as Bush was loud and blustery. In truth the O`Neills never really thought it would work.

Welch was a self-contained only child, who was at her happiest immersed in a good book. Bush loved crowds – especially when he was at the center of attention, making people laugh. It was Welch who had put the O`Neills off. She had grown up in Midland, knew Bush from grade school, knew the family name and knew she had little interest in politics.

Bush hadn`t been ready to settle down – but neither was he considered any kind of ladies` man. In fact, his friends saw him as a bit of a reclamation case, a tad eccentric and a slob. The wives of his friends took pity on him and did his laundry.

"I didn`t think he was really shopping around," said Joe O`Neill. "He was at the age where it was getting awkward to be a bachelor, but I don`t think he thought about it." Bush, he recalled with a laugh, "wasn`t exactly presidential timber yet. It took some coaching for us to get the girls to go out with him."

Welch was living in Austin at the time and was in Midland visiting her parents when she finally agreed to meet Bush. It wasn`t until a few weeks after the cookout that the O`Neills found out their friends were still in touch. "I was not just surprised. I was shocked," said Jan O`Neill. "They really seemed to be the two most unlikely people to get together."

Welch found they had more in common than they expected – particularly their friends. Three months later, on Nov. 5, 1977, they were married. "In a lot of ways I guess I felt like I`d known him all my life without really having known him that well," Laura Bush recalls.

It was a good thing too, because she had much to contend with during their first year of marriage. They delayed the honeymoon and hit the campaign trail in Bush`s white Bonneville. He promised her she would never make a speech, a promise their friends still laugh about. "Yeah, he lied," jokes Don Evans.


A Relentless Drive In a Sprawling District



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Bush never missed a chili supper and knocked on more than 60 doors a day in the windswept district, flat and treeless as far as the eye could see. He would often start his week in Midland, drive the 20 miles to Odessa, and then hit the 115-mile stretch north to the farms of Lubbock, rolling into every strip mall along the way.
"The way he focused on what he had to do was extraordinary," Reese recalled. "He didn`t relax. He worked all the time."

J. Michael Weiss remembers meeting Bush in a men`s clothing store in Lubbock when Bush walked up to a group of men hanging out in the back and started talking. Before Weiss knew it, Bush was inviting himself to Weiss`s law office the next day. He knew the family name and he was flattered – but he never thought he`d see him again. The next morning, there was Bush standing in front of his desk.

"I was just a fella here in Lubbock," Weiss said. "I was honored that he would allocate all that time to the conversation. I agreed to work as his [county] chairman."

On the issues, there was little difference among Bush, Reese and a third candidate in the primary, Joe Hickox, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. They were conservatives opposed to big government, inflation and anything that would harm the oil patch. Asked once whether he was too closely aligned with the oil industry, Bush replied: "There`s no such thing as being too closely aligned with the oil industry in West Texas."

By early 1978, Reese had made Bush`s background the main issue. He repeatedly referred to Bush "Junior" (he isn`t because he doesn`t have Herbert in his middle name) and called him a "liberal Northeast Republican." And he spent considerable time discussing the senior Bush`s affiliation with the controversial Trilateral Commission, a group of international political and corporate leaders viewed by many conservatives then as sinister elitists plotting to establish a world government.

In April, one month before the primary, Reagan took the unusual step of writing a letter of endorsement for Reese. His political action committee gave the Reese campaign $1,000. Before long, the race was being portrayed as an early Bush-Reagan presidential showdown in the state.

Clay Johnson, Bush`s old friend from Andover and Yale who came out to Midland to be with his buddy the night of the May 6 primary, couldn`t believe the endless accusations against Bush and his father.

"How can you stand it?" Johnson asked his friend, but got no response.

When the votes were counted, Bush had forced Reese into a runoff. At his Midland campaign headquarters, Bush jumped up on a folding chair to thank his cheering supporters. As he stepped down, he spotted Johnson.

"That`s how I stand it," he said. "There are some benefits – to have ... people excited about what you`re trying to do."

Four days before the runoff, Reese produced a copy of Bush`s birth certificate and accused Bush of omitting the fact that he was born in New Haven. A Bush aide insisted it was an error of "punctuation" – not deliberate deception. The brochure had said: "Born July 6, 1946 and raised in Midland, Texas."

In a last-minute letter, Reese again accused "George Jr." of being a liberal Rockefeller-type Republican. And Reagan`s PAC plowed another $2,000 into Reese`s campaign, prompting his father to tell The Washington Post the day before the runoff: "I`m not interested in getting into an argument with Reagan. But I am surprised about what he is doing here, in my state. ... They are making a real effort to defeat George."

Lyn Nofziger, a longtime aide to Reagan, said Bush`s father complained directly to the California governor about the endorsement. Nofziger said he told Reagan, " `Governor, we`re supporting a guy who supported you.` ... We didn`t owe George W. anything. We didn`t owe [George H.W.] Bush anything." On June 3, Bush carried only one of the district`s 17 counties, Midland, but that was enough to defeat Reese by 1,400 votes. That night, Bush said he and Laura were looking for an apartment in Lubbock, where he had been soundly beaten.


Carpetbagging Charges Dog the Yale-Harvard Grad



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State Sen. Kent Hance, winner of the Democratic primary, had grown up in Lubbock and gone to college there at Texas Tech University. He picked up right where Reese left off, accusing Bush of being an "outsider" and a dilettante "riding his daddy`s coattails."
"George Bush hasn`t earned the living he enjoys," Hance said. "I`m on my own two feet and I make my own living."

Bush didn`t help himself in his first television ad, which showed him jogging around a track. No one jogs in Muleshoe, Hance and his supporters joked, not unless you`re trying to get away from someone.

With the help of friends and his father`s contacts, Bush raised $400,000 – a nice sum for 1978. But his list of contributors – names like that of former president Ford, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and film producer Jerry Weintraub – made Bush vulnerable to Hance`s charges that outside money was trying to buy the election.

Hance was making headway, and Bush`s advisers begged him to go on the attack.

"George ran a nice-guy campaign," recalled Ernest Angelo, who was then a Republican national committeeman as well as the mayor of Midland. "I told him toward the end that you couldn`t run a nice-guy campaign. He said, `That`s what Kent is doing too.` Well, sure enough, in the last 10 days Kent Hance unloaded with everything but the kitchen sink."

In a series of radio ads in those final days, Hance contrasted his local roots with Bush`s eastern education. While Hance was attending Dimmit High School, Bush was at Andover; while Hance was at Texas Tech, Bush was at Yale. And on it went.

During a debate 10 days before the election, Hance drawled that his "daddy and granddad were farmers. They didn`t have anything do with the mess we`re in right now, and Bush`s father has been in politics his whole life."

Washington is the way it is, said Hance, precisely because of all those Yale fellas running the place.

In rural corners, talk about the Trilateral Commission and its purported evils wouldn`t go away, Evans recalled. "It was everywhere." And it frustrated Bush.

At a Jaycees luncheon in Odessa, Mel Turner, a well-known radio personality, asked Bush whether he or any member of his family was involved in the commission or one-world government. Bush, Turner recalls, turned red and never directly answered.

After the lunch was over, Turner positioned himself by the door to say his goodbyes to the candidates and guests. Bush, he said, refused to shake his hand. "You [expletive]," Bush said as he brushed by.

Turner was a conservative Republican at the time but voted for Hance.

The Bush team tried to counter with its own five-minute paid TV biography. But it was too late. "Once the cat was out of the bag, it was too hard to counter," said Evans.

Bush`s undoing came in the final days of the campaign at the hands of one of his own volunteers. A Texas Tech student working for Bush ran an ad in the school paper, inviting students to a "Bush Bash" with free beer.

Hance seized on it. His law partner mailed a "Dear Fellow Christian" letter to 4,000 members of the Church of Christ, accusing Bush of "using tactics to secure votes which do not indicate" good character.

"Mr. Bush has used some of his vast sums of money in an attempt, evidently, to persuade young college students to vote for ... him by offering free alcohol to them," the letter said.

"Maybe it`s a cool thing to do at Harvard or Yale," Hance said to a reporter.

Bush had his own information that Hance owned a piece of property near Texas Tech that he leased to a bar patronized by students. His staff begged him to expose Hance as a hypocrite, but Bush refused.

"Kent lives here," Bush told them. "If I win he has to come back to live. I`m not going to ruin the guy in his home town. He`s not a bad person."

In a recent interview, Bush said he now believes he made a mistake in not counterattacking. "I think in retrospect I would have done it differently," Bush said. "I chose not to do it because I thought at the time that people would see the hypocrisy miscalculated, I thought more people knew [about the bar]."

Ten years later, when he became his father`s liaison with Christian conservatives, he concluded that he could have just as effectively communicated with those 4,000 church members in Lubbock. By then Bush had undergone his own religious experience.

"He realized he had been ambushed in 1978," said Doug Wead, who worked closely with George W. as an evangelical adviser to the 1988 presidential campaign.

Bush carried only one county, Midland, but in a congressional district that had never elected a Republican, managed to win 47 percent of the vote. He blamed his defeat on "provincialism" – the voters of the district had simply decided they wanted someone from Lubbock. Hance, who became a Republican in the mid-`80s, is now a lawyer in Austin.

After the congressional race, Bush`s friends decided that he was ill-suited for the minutiae and tedium of Congress. They began to see him as someone who would thrive in a broader management position. Like CEO of a company. Or governor of a state.

Two years after Bush`s defeat, however, his father was elected vice president, and eight years later he became president. Bush decided that he could not run again until his father was out of public office.

Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Margot Williams contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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Cowboy and country
Opinion

by Kip Bordelon
From the Left
September 12, 2003

"That character in the White House" (as radio personality Cliff Kelley often refers to President George W. Bush) said last Sunday in his televised speech to the nation that he wants the United Nations to join in building a multinational force in Iraq. Bush did not say what we already know: Iraq has turned into a disaster and the United States needs help NOW! After effectively telling the U.N. to "get lost," our incredibly arrogant and deceitful president is crawling back to the U.N., desperately wanting it to bail him out of the corner that his bankrupt Iraq policy has painted him into.

This is what George W. Bush`s presidency has consisted of, making ill-advised decisions without adequate thought and without regard to the differing, but constructive, views of others. I am still trying to ascertain how his administration virtually classified the U.N. as a useless debating society, but now asks it to quickly embrace his pleas for assistance because the U.N. has a "responsibility to the Iraqi people."

One of Dubya`s biggest problems is his irresponsible, gung-ho, cowboy attitude. I am not sure if he wants to sound tough, or if he is living out some kind of John Wayne fantasy. Let`s see, there were the "Wanted dead or alive" and "We`re gonna smoke `em out!" remarks. I`d be remiss not to include my favorite: when asked about the violent aggressors targeting U.S. troops in Iraq, our leader said, "Bring `em on." Well, they have "brought it" and there now have been more soldiers killed after the war than during. Plus, our media does not tell us how many troops have been injured in these attacks. (Someone should tell Mr. Bush that even The Duke took responsibility for his actions.)

During the course of the War on Terror, Bush routinely talks about liberty, democracy, and preserving freedom. But, he simultaneously endorses and signs legislation that diminishes our freedoms (U.S. Patriot Act). The administration tells the world about the dangers that weapons of mass destruction pose to innocent people, but audaciously bragged about planned "shock and awe" air strikes. They behaved as though they were promoting an action flick as opposed to preparing for the invasion of a country where thousands of innocent people stood to die.

Bush`s predictions regarding his economic stimulus policies, all the way to the notion that U.S. troops would be welcomed and praised throughout Iraq, have proven to be mere fantasy, begging the question "What crystal ball was he looking in?"

It completely mystifies me that most Americans buy into the Bush rhetoric and illusion. How is it that people cannot see that all President Bush and his croonies do, is sell fear, anger, and panic? It seems like all Bush has to do is mention the word "democracy," or utter the phrases, "civilized society" and "freedom-loving people", and people think what he says is gospel. In reality, he is full of contradictions, lies, and deceit.

This is not leadership; this is exploitation. Bush is capitalizing on the fears of Americans who continue to grapple with the realities of terrorism. In doing so, Bush has been allowed to do all sorts of ridiculous things that any other politician would be maligned for, such as exaggerating facts and using half-truths about evidence as a rationale for going to war. (Shouldn`t that be an impeachable offense?)

Bush`s "kiss my ass" philosophy has seemingly only gone unnoticed by neo-conservatives and manipulated Americans. According to one source, just before Bush declared war on Iraq, he set a record for most people worldwide to publicly protest his policies (15 million people), thus rendering the position of the U.N. and the world community at-large irrelevant.

But that is not the only verity our "leader" has to his (dis)credit. He withdrew the U.S. from the International Criminal Court, he is the first U.S. president to have the U.N. remove the United States from the Human Rights Commission, he refused to participate in the World Conference Against Racism, he has ignored the regulations set forth by the Geneva Convention, he has withdrawn the country from the Kyoto Treaty and he has lost an astonishing amount of international credibility. I could go on and on and on...

The Bush administration`s record on domestic policy issues, such as the environment, the economy, education, taxes, race-relations, etc. are just as appalling. He depends on Americans to feed into the incorrect notion that America can solve any problem by itself. Such a belief is not only asinine and irresponsible, but it is potentially more dangerous than perhaps most Americans realize. This is because the depth of his alienation towards our traditional allies and weaker nations is destined to have a long-lasting impact on this country`s future role in the international community.

Plainly put, the Bush Administration "pisses in our faces and tells us it`s raining" as the saying goes. That is, Bush has taken a carte blanche approach to governing the country. The Bush Administration operates as though the U.S. is more of an empire than a democracy.

Mr. Bush was hell bent on going to war, even though it was not a war of necessity. He has put the U.S. in this predicament, and now, has the gall to ask the very countries he alienated to make financial, political, and human sacrifices to resolve it. Translation: "Support sending foreign soldiers to Iraq to share in the uncontrollable bloodshed, so that some of the heat will be taken off of me at home!" In the meantime, no accountability nor acceptance of responsibility for this crisis from the "cowboy"- just more worthless innuendo.

http://www.uictoday.net/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/12/3f621…

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IRAQ:
Experts Warn of Radioactive Battlefields

Katherine Stapp

Concerns are growing about the presence of depleted uranium and other toxins in Iraq following a rash of illnesses among U.S. troops and the discovery by a reporter that radiation levels in parts of Baghdad are extremely elevated.

NEW YORK, Sep 12 (IPS) - So far, according to figures obtained by the `Washington Post`, more than 6,000 soldiers have been pulled out of Iraq for medical reasons since the start of the war. About 1,400 of them were injured in combat or non-combat incidents, such as vehicle accidents, meaning the majority were evacuated for various physical or psychological illnesses.

No further breakdown has been released. In July, the U.S. Army announced that two soldiers had died of severe pneumonia and more than 100 were hospitalised for the illness. The deaths are still being investigated.

While experts discount a single cause for these illnesses, some remain concerned that neither the troops stationed in Iraq nor the civilian population is being adequately protected from toxic residues left over from the war.

These fears were heightened when a correspondent for the `Christian Science Monitor` took a Geiger counter to parts of Baghdad that had been subjected to heavy shelling by U.S. troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal in residential areas where children were playing nearby.

One explanation is the presence of depleted uranium (DU), the trace element left over when uranium is enriched and the most radioactive types have been removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. DU munitions vaporise on contact, dispersing particles over wide areas, where they settle as dust that can be inhaled or ingested.

The Pentagon has portrayed DU munitions as indispensable in giving U.S. soldiers an edge on the battlefield. The high density of DU shells allows them to punch through walls and armoured vehicles.

But some see a more cynical reason for their popularity: the United States is the largest generator of DU in the world, with a stockpile of 700,000 tonnes and growing. Since the supply is controlled by the Department of Energy, it is readily available and free of charge. Transforming DU into weaponry has the added advantage of easing the DOE`s burden to safely store the spent nuclear fuel.

DU munitions made their debut in the 1991 Gulf War, and were later deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is almost certain that DU was used in Afghanistan in 2001, but information on the exact amount remains unavailable.

Precise data is similarly hard to come by for the most recent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but based on preliminary reports, experts estimate that at least 200 tonnes of DU were released during combat.

While some studies on the effects of DU have been inconclusive, others determined that it raises the risk of childhood cancers, birth defects and other long-term health damage.

``The Pentagon`s own published studies have shown adverse health effects,`` said Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which published an analysis of the available scientific research on DU in July.

``That`s what so bizarre about their stance on this.``

NPRI and other groups are now calling on Washington to immediately halt the use of DU, initiate a plan for cleaning up contaminated areas, and to support further studies.

``The research that`s been done -- the little and flawed research that`s been done -- has focused on adults,`` Sheehan-Miles added in an interview. ``No one today has ever done any study on children that are exposed to it. We know from other research that children are much more sensitive to toxicity..``

His concerns appear to be well founded. Two Iraqi doctors visiting Japan recently reported a ten-fold increase in the number of cancer cases diagnosed in and around the southern region of Basra since 1988.

Dr. Janan Ghalib Hassan, a neo-natalogist at the Women and Children`s Hospital in Basra, said that in 2001, 611 babies were born with no limbs, no eyes or other birth defects, compared with 37 such cases in 1990. The area where the children were born was subjected to heavy shelling with DU munitions in the first Gulf War.

A recent analysis of already available data by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded the latest invasion has ``undoubtedly`` worsened the serious environmental problems that have accumulated in Iraq over the past two decades, dating back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

``Given the overall environmental concerns during the conflict, and the fact that the environment of Iraq was already a cause for serious concern prior to the current war, UNEP believes early field studies should be carried out,`` said UNEP administrator Klaus Toepfer in a statement.

``This is especially important to protect human health in a post-conflict situation.``

A spokesperson for UNEP told IPS that, ``we will conduct a full on-the-ground study once the security situation allows, but there`s no telling when that might be.``

The White House and Pentagon have repeatedly denied that DU munitions pose any threat to human health. One recent State Department report titled `Apparatus of Lies` has a section called ``The Depleted Uranium Scare``, which accuses the Iraqi government of exaggerating the toxicity of DU in order to generate international sympathy.

``In recent years, the Iraqi regime has made substantial efforts to promote the false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq. Iraq has distributed horrifying pictures of children with birth defects and linked them to depleted uranium,`` the report says.

``But scientists working for the World Health Organisation (WHO), the U.N. Environmental (sic) Programme, and the European Union could find no health effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium,`` it concludes.

However, according to a WHO monograph issued in 2001, ``DU munitions were used in conflicts only relatively recently and the science has not yet thoroughly addressed this exposure situation``.

``What we need is a credible, independent assessment of what the actual effects are,`` says Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Centre.

``Obviously, the U.S. military needs to allow civilian health agencies and monitoring teams into the war zone to conduct a large-scale epidemiological survey and rule it in or rule it out,`` he told IPS.

``If these weapons have a so-called ``after-killing`` effect, that is clearly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.” (END/2003)
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20113

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US data hit Bush`s hopes

Retail sales, consumer confidence, inflation - all lower than forecast

David Teather in New York
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian

The United States economy stumbled again yesterday with the release of crucial retail sales, consumer confidence and inflation data that were uniformly worse than analysts had been expecting.
According to the US commerce department, retail sales rose by 0.6% in August, well below Wall Street forecasts of 1.4%. In July, retail sales grew at a far brisker rate of 1.3%.

The figures will be a blow to the White House - consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of US economic activity and the Bush administration hoped that tax cuts and rebate cheques arriving in the post would give the limping economy the boost it needed.

Consumer sentiment dipped in early September as the nascent recovery continued to fail in creating jobs.

A separate report on US wholesale prices, an indicator of inflation, showed an increase of 0.4% last month, higher than most analysts had hoped for; the growth, however, was largely due to volatile food and energy prices.

The reports combined to weigh on Wall Street in early trading. The Dow Jones index of leading shares fell by as much as 70 points shortly after the open of trading but rallied in the late morning. It was 50 points lower at 9,408 approaching noon.

The data, suggesting that the US economy had still not begun a sustained recovery, pushed the dollar lower against the euro. The euro, already trading at a four-week high, was up by a further 0.4% in early trade on Friday at $1.1253. Sterling hit a month high against the dollar, climbing half a percentage point to $1.6035.

Some analysts, however, said the negative reaction had been overdone. "Six tenths of a per centage point is good healthy rate of increase, no matter how you look at it," said Doug Lee, of consulting firm Economics.

Sentiment was not helped by Oracle, the world`s second largest software firm, which reported disappointing sales. Oracle reported a 28% leap in first-quarter profits to $342.7m, but the improvement was largely due to cost cutting. Revenues were just 2% higher and sales of new software licences, a closely watched measure of business momentum, actually fell by 7%.

Shares in the company were trading 5.6% lower, at $12.25.

The economic data will be closely examined by US Federal Reserve policymakers, who meet next Tuesday to review interest rates.

There have been increasing doubts about the sustainability of the economic recovery in the US as recent employment data have shown a lack of new jobs being created. A weak labour market could put further pressure on confidence and spending.

The closely observed University of Michigan`s consumer sentiment index showed a drop to 88.2 from 89.3 in August, defying expectations for a rise to 90.

Excluding sales of motor vehicles and parts, demand for retail goods rose 0.7% last month. Car dealerships saw sales rise 0.5% after soaring 2.4% in July.

Car sales have been sustained by large incentives and discounting, introduced in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the US two years ago as a means of kickstarting sales.

Analysts have regularly argued that demand will eventually run out of steam, leaving the car industry with falling sales while being saddled with margin-eating incentives.

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Die Rumsfeld-Story mit einem nicht erwarteten Ausgang. Ein Flash-Video vom Bestem


http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/rumsfeld.htm

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Iraqis celebrate next to a burning U.S. Army Humvee after an attack near Fallujah on Friday. Three Americans were wounded, witnesses said

The Only Way Out Is Forward
By Col. Mike Turner, Newsweek Web Exclusive
http://www.msnbc.com/news/965921.asp?0cv=KA01

The other day, the Bush administration warned that U.S. troops in Iraq may have to endure consecutive overseas deployments. If the change takes place, it would mark the first time since the end of the Vietnam War that troops would be required to serve back-to-back one-year tours.

IT WAS YET ANOTHER in the growing series of comparisons between Vietnam and today`s war in Iraq.
Some of the similarities between the two wars are obvious. The Vietnam War began when senior White House officials used overblown and distorted threat assessments as an excuse to commit U.S. troops to an action they`d already decided upon months before. The operation was a unilateral, conventional, U.S. military operation against a Third World power which, in the final analysis, posed only an indirect and peripheral threat to U.S. vital interests. The operation lacked formal United Nations backing and broad international support, two factors that eventually sapped U.S. will and drained our resources. Mission success was ill-defined, and administration officials, assuming a quick victory, adopted and stubbornly adhered to a tragically simplistic and naive view of the both the military forces required to achieve military victory and the level of societal change necessary to win and sustain the peace.

It`s hard to overstate how profoundly the Vietnam War shaped America`s political and military thinking for decades after that conflict ended. I spent my entire military career living and working within its shadow. Vietnam`s aftermath changed our tactics, our command-and-force structure and our understanding of the significant analysis and planning, both military and political, that must precede every major, modern military operation. In Vietnam, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and Gen. Colin Powell experienced firsthand the colossal hubris of our political leaders and watched their mistakes kill tens of thousands of American troops. The so-called Powell Doctrine was born in those jungles, in the crucible of that nightmare, and it wasn`t until Operation Desert Storm that these two remarkably gifted Americans, as much statesmen as warriors, were able to demand from our political leadership the kind of prudent restraint, fact-based analysis and broad international support upon which any modern global military action must be based. Without this kind of due diligence, it is extremely difficult to truly win the war, but it is impossible to win the peace.

The point is, though it took all of us 20 years to fully absorb the lessons of Vietnam, we learned them. The stunning and absolute victory of Desert Storm was no accident. It was based squarely on the lessons of Vietnam: before you commit U.S. troops, know and isolate your enemy, precisely define military success, precisely define how and when you will disengage U.S. troops and, most importantly, whenever possible obtain U.N. sanction and long-term, multinational, multiorganizational support to share the burden. It was this comprehensive analysis before the war that led to our decision not to cross the Euphrates River in Desert Storm, a decision unanimously supported by every political and military leader involved, most especially former president Bush. That decision was as correct then as it is today, fanciful, revisionist history of the past ten years notwithstanding.

All that is why what is now occurring in Iraq is so profoundly and viscerally offensive to those of us who thought we had moved past this point in American history. It is simply inconceivable to me that a U.S. administration could have made so many of the same mistakes made by the Johnson-McNamara group of thirty years ago. In a word, I`m outraged. This is the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. And this Administration should be held responsible for its conduct in the next election. Once again, the politicians have handed the military the nightmare scenario.

So where do we go from here? Rehashing the administration`s unforgivably shortsighted mistakes is, at this point, a fruitless exercise. Up until two weeks ago, I just wanted the troops out. Screw the politicians. The foreign-policy disaster had already occurred, let`s just try to save some lives. Then I watched a documentary during which the U.S. soldiers of the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Somalia were interviewed. To a man, each of them said their biggest regret was not being allowed to finish the job. Each of them felt betrayed by their civilian leadership for lacking the will and character to stay the course despite the enormity of the setback. They were echoing the sentiments of our military troops sent to Haiti, Somalia, Lebanon, and yes, Vietnam. In fact, with the exception of Desert Storm and Bosnia, they were voicing their frustration with what has become an American paradigm. Our civilian leadership commits U.S. troops when it`s politically expedient and withdraws them when the operation becomes a political liability.

And suddenly I realized, as angry as I was with the Bush Administration`s obsession with "getting Saddam," the real reason for the invasion, it is now too late to turn back. We`ve crossed the Rubicon. It is time, therefore, finally and forever, to break the paradigm of Vietnam. There is only one possible way out, and that way is forward. The administration has simply burned too many bridges for us to withdraw. And though I believe long-term victory in Iraq is, at very best, a long shot, we have a sacred responsibility to the military men and women who have been and will be lost to finish the job. Indeed, the enduring lesson of Vietnam was not, "Never engage," it was "Engage responsibly." What does that mean? It means winning this time. It means returning to the U.N. and obtaining U.N. backing at any price. It means going to the allies we have arrogantly disregarded and asking for help. It means dramatically internationalizing the force and, more importantly, the reconstruction of Iraq. This is, quite simply, the only way we will ever get our troops home. Our greatest strength is our capacity to spend and build. We must coordinate a vast international effort to do just that in Iraq. And though we have not seen a shred of compelling evidence suggesting Iraq was ever a serious player in the terror war before our invasion, it has become just such a player now. We have significantly strengthened the very monster we seek to defeat, and, even worse, handed our enemies home-court advantage. This war will test America`s character and resolve as nothing has in modern times. Ultimately, the war will cost hundreds, possibly thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and take years to win. But win we must.

The Marine Corps has a wonderful motto--Semper Fi--always faithful. This war is going to get very, very ugly. Yet the president and the war`s principal, civilian architects in the Defense Department promise us they will see it through to the end. I believe they mean that. I sincerely hope so, because those of us in uniform have heard these kinds of hollow assurances many times during the past 30 years. They`d better mean it this time. Because the ghosts of the several hundred American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq as well as about a million veterans in and out of uniform are watching very closely.

Retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner was a personal assistant to Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and served as the air operations briefing officer in the war room in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during Desert Storm. From 1993-1997, Colonel Turner worked as a Middle East/Africa politico-military policy planner on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, working for two years for then Lt. Gen. Wesley Clark. He is currently a consultant at TheSynerGGroup in Colorado Springs, Colo.



© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

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No sexing up, please
To justify war, the Prime Minister had only to convey the true barbarism of Saddam

Nick Cohen
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer

The BBC story which began the hysterical confrontations which led to the suicide of David Kelly was a story in the pure meaning of the word. Even after it has been discredited, you can feel its emotional force. Tony Blair arrives at Downing Street promising to clean up the corruption of the old Conservative regime and bring in a new politics. At the beginning, only a few cynics notice that Blair achieved power by the use of spin.

As the years pass, the ranks of the doubters grow. But Blair has a winning formula and is constitutionally incapable of changing it. He determines to commit an act of breathtaking audacity and spin Britain into a war. Honest spies warn him that he mustn`t mislead Parliament and the public, but, blinded by his past success, he orders his sinister henchman, Alastair Campbell, to instruct the intelligence services to `sex-up` the dossier on Saddam Hussein`s arsenal. When the BBC blows the whistle, Blair`s government falls apart. The Prime Minister`s reputation is destroyed by the spin which created him.

The story had a classical appeal. What the Today programme offered was a Shakespearean narrative. The tragic hero has a fatal flaw. His vaulting ambition produces hubris and then, with a satisfyingly inevitability, nemesis. The intelligence services are cast in the role of Cordelia: they tell the truth to a man who must listen if he is to avoid calamity, but refuses to listen because he can`t escape his fate.

All sides now accept that the story was compelling but false. John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, had `ownership` of the dossier and denies absolutely that Campbell forced him to exaggerate the threat. No one has unearthed evidence to contradict him. If you doubt me, note how John Humphrys no longer tries to defend Today`s reporting but instead shouts down Ministers who point out his programme`s mistake.

Unless there is a sensational twist, Lord Hutton will conclude that neither Campbell nor any other political appointee forced the intelligence services to include the claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes in its dossier. But the fact remains that Iraq didn`t have chemical or biological weapons to launch in 45 minutes or 45 hours or 45 days. It seems very unlikely that it had them at all, other than in penny packets.

One of the most murderous tyrants on the planet wouldn`t have accepted defeat without firing everything he had at his enemies. Saddam went down without the coalition troops catching a whiff of mustard gas. He couldn`t own up to his weakness and readmit UN weapons inspectors before an invading army arrived on his borders, because the fear of being poisoned was one of many gruesome reasons to think again he could offer to Iraqis who dreamed of a revolution.

The Hutton inquiry and last week`s report by Parliament`s Intelligence Committee show that the role of the intelligence services was more like that of Iago or the witches in Macbeth. Far from restraining the fatally flawed PM, they egged him on.

That last sentence needs to be qualified a little. There were many in junior- and middle-ranking positions in the intelligence services who were uneasy with the dossier. Brian Jones, the retired analyst from the Defence Intelligence Staff, told Hutton that he and his colleagues had concluded that `there was no evidence that significant production had taken place either of chemical warfare agents or chemical weapons`.

Whatever the controversies about what he did or didn`t say to journalists, it`s clear that Dr Kelly held a broadly similar view. Meanwhile, the Intelligence Committee found that Scarlett and his colleagues were prepared to tell the Prime Minister that an invasion of Iraq would increase the danger of an Islamic fundamentalist attack, news he didn`t want to hear.

But on the question of Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction, the senior civil servants and Blair`s political advisers were as one. The Hutton inquiry has shown that the old distinctions between the two become meaningless when you get to the top of the Blair administration. If you were to black out the names on the documents Hutton has posted on the inquiry website, readers would be hard-pressed to know whether they were from civil servants or New Labour advisers.

Take the warning written a week before the dossier`s publication that `we will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he [Saddam] is an imminent threat`. It reads as if it`s from a sober civil servant who was anxious to restrain political appointees from going too far. In fact, it was delivered by Jonathan Powell, Blair`s political appointee.

The round-robin email sent which implored the espionage bureaucracy to look under sofas and behind filing cabinets for any scrap of information which might bolster the government`s case reads as if it has been sent by a political appointee anxious to prod cautious civil servants into doing their utmost to help the Prime Minister. With an air of jovial desperation, the author accepts that the recipients have `been around at least some of these buoys before` but none the less is making `a last call for any items of intelligence` on the Iraqi nuclear and chemical programmes. As it turns out, the plea for one last heave wasn`t from Campbell or Powell but an intelligence bureaucrat determined to pull out all the stops to help Number 10.

The men around Blair share another characteristic - they weren`t elected by anyone. At no point has Hutton found evidence of Blair calling in his senior Cabinet colleagues and inviting them to tell him frankly if he was making the right decision in releasing the dossier or going for a bare-knuckle fight with the BBC.

With the exception of Geoff Hoon, who was little more than a messenger boy, and Jack Straw, who has nimbly skipped away from the débcle, decisions were taken by men whose position depended entirely on the favour of the King.

As for Parliament, there were no sadder sights at the first round of the Hutton inquiry`s hearings than Donald Anderson and Andrew MacKinlay from the Foreign Affairs Committee. Both described how they couldn`t call the witnesses Hutton was calling or see the documents he was reading.

In the overflow tent for reporters who couldn`t find a seat in court, journalists giggled when Anderson appeared on the screen and spoke of his frustration. It took me a few moments to work out why they were laughing. He wasn`t cracking jokes or making a fool of himself. The penny dropped when I realised they were displaying the pack`s traditional contempt for weakness. If nothing else, Hutton has shown that power in Britain lies with unelected advisers, unelected media grandees and unelected judges. MPs, even if members of the Cabinet, don`t get a look in.

From Blair`s point of view, the court politics brought by unelected advisers has been a disaster. Instead of confronting his opponents by saying that Britain has been at war with Iraq since 1991, and rubbing home the point that the UN-authorised status quo which allowed sanctions and bombing raids but kept Saddam in power was intolerable, he and his courtiers chose to highlight dubious intelligence.

I`ve argued in these columns before that the Iraq war marked a moment of deep moral ambiguity for the liberal-Left in Britain and across the world. Otherwise decent people were saying in effect that George W. Bush was worse than Saddam Hussein, and refusing to give a hearing to former comrades in Iraq who said they were talking nonsense and seeking to deny Iraqis the only chance they had to remove the Baath Party dictatorship.

We`re now in the ludicrous position where even the Iraqi Communist Party, which hasn`t previously been regarded as a tool of the CIA, is saying that the priority for its members is to confront `those criminal elements [from Saddam`s regime] who attempt to obstruct the reconstruction of our country and the restoration of its sovereignty and independence`. From the Kurds in the north to the Shia in the south, there isn`t a reputable political group which thanks Blair`s opponents for presuming to speak on behalf of Iraqis.

Yet the reality of the terror the Baath Party imposed, a terror so thorough- going it can make communists temporary allies of Bush`s Republicans until the remnants of the old regime have been suppressed, barely intrudes on the debate in Britain. The Government is paying the price for failing miserably to present the evidence of Saddam`s barbarism. It was there in abundance and it didn`t need sexing up.


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The damaging questions keep coming
The Prime Minister is being punished over Iraq not because he did the wrong thing, but because he did it the wrong way

Andrew Rawnsley, political journalist of the year
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer

During an earlier crisis of credibility for a government, Kenneth Clarke called the process `dipping our hands in the blood.` He was talking about Black Wednesday when John Major called together his most senior Cabinet Ministers to share the pain of the humiliating implosion of the Government`s central economic policy.

For a politician in trouble, responsibility is something he wants to spread as widely - and thus, he hopes, as thinly - as possible. Mr Major took care to implicate all his plausible replacements as Prime Minister in the fateful decisions made that day.

The blood on that occasion was merely metaphorical. The red stuff was flowing on the computer screens monitoring the tumbling value of Sterling. In the case of the war in Iraq, the blood into which Tony Blair dipped his senior Ministers` hands was much more literal.

In what is almost certainly the most potentially damaging revelation yet about the build-up to the conflict, we now know that on 10 February this year, the Prime Minister was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that al-Qaeda and its lethal fellow travellers `continued to represent by far the greatest threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq.`

Downing Street was initially a bit slow to see the significance of this disclosure and the danger it poses to the Prime Minister. Number 10 only began to respond when the remorseless Robin Cook, that one-man precision weapon, launched himself on the airwaves to say that this warning that war would not curb terror but aggravate the threat had not been shared with the Cabinet, never mind Parliament and the public.

Number 10 countered that the assessment was circulated to all of Mr Blair`s senior colleagues, among them the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, and not forgetting - Number 10 would be very sure not to neglect to put his name on the list - the Chancellor. In other words, if withholding this information comes to be regarded as a deception, all of Mr Blair`s most plausible replacements were party to it as well.

It is easy to envisage the Prime Minister`s predicament at this late stage on the road to war against Saddam. One can also imagine his exasperation when he received that JIC assessment so close to the midnight hour. For months - in fact, for years before George W. Bush arrived at the White House - the intelligence services had been warning him that Saddam was scary. But when it came to detailing precisely what degree of menace, the intelligence transpires to be murky, flimsy, inaccurate, out of date and, as we now know, often plain wrong.

Then, right on the eve of war, the senior spooks officially advise that military action will magnify the risk of chemical and biological weapons getting into the hands of terrorists.

What does Blair do? If you were always against using force to remove one of the vilest dictators on the planet, you will say he should never have followed Bush to the brink in the first place. If you were Blair, you thought Saddam was some level of threat, even if not imminently, at some point in the future. It was your passionate conviction that ridding the world of one its most sadistic tyrants was a progressive act, `the right thing to do`. And since the Americans were determined on war, it would be better to be alongside them than not.

Three hundred thousand allied troops are mobilising in the desert. You have staked your reputation on dealing with Saddam. When you receive this JIC report, are you going to trot down to the House of Commons and announce that you are calling the whole thing off? Blair would have resigned rather than do that. And had he done that, he would probably have had to resign.

You did not need a PhD in spookery to appreciate the peril that war might exacerbate the terrorist threat. That JIC report was saying secretly what opponents of the war were shouting very loudly. Interviewed in private session by the MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee, Mr Blair acknowledged the `danger that in attacking Iraq you ended up provoking the very thing you were trying to avoid.`

His judgment was that the risks of inaction were greater than the risk of action. `You had to ask the question, "Could you really, as a result of that fear, leave the possibility that in time this developed into a nexus between terrorism and WMD in any event?"`

As the politician elected to make these grave calls, Mr Blair is entitled to override his most senior intelligence committee. The big problem for him is that he chose to keep the warning from MPs before the House of Commons passed its own judgment on war. The Prime Minister can scarcely contend that this advice had to be kept secret when he had been so free in using other intelligence assessments from the same committee to make his case for war.

Like all of his post-war grief over Iraq, this is the penalty for how he pursued the prewar propaganda campaign. He always had cogent and powerful arguments for acting against Saddam. Here is a vicious tyrant who has been in defiance for many years of countless UN resolutions. Sanctions and sporadic bombing have hurt the people of Iraq rather than their slavemaster. Military action was the only means to free Iraq and conclusively deal with Saddam.

Had Tony Blair argued that, he would not be in the mire he is in today. The fundamental error was to subordinate his moral case for dealing with Saddam to a `threat` argument which now looks so threadbare.

How he must rue the day that he got into the game of publishing dossiers, the cause of so much dissension within the Government at the time, and subsequently the provider of so much ammunition to opponents of the war.

No dossiers and Dr David Kelly would be alive, probably working as the leading British expert in the Iraq Survey Group. No dossiers and no Hutton inquiry dissecting the inner manoeuvres and frenzies of this government. No dossiers and no plunge in public faith in the Prime Minister`s word.

The error came from underestimating the British public. He didn`t think the moral case for dealing with Saddam would convince them to support war. He felt the need - the desperation of that need is illuminated by many of the documents unearthed by the Hutton inquiry - to portray Saddam as a clear and present danger. From that decision, all his postwar troubles have flowed.

And for what? Did the dossiers crucially influence the parliamentary vote? The notorious 45-minute claim - the cause of so much controversy - did not even feature in his speech to the Commons that day. The Conservatives say that, knowing what they know now, they would still have supported military action. Some wavering Labour MPs might have voted differently, but my best reckoning is that Mr Blair would have, none the less, secured his parliamentary mandate for war.

As for the public, there is little evidence that the dossiers changed the minds of all that many people. The moment when opinion decisively switched was when the war began. The most recent polls tend to bear this out. They suggest that a majority of people with an opinion think Mr Blair misled them about the threat posed by Saddam and weapons of mass destruction.

And yet the polls also indicate that, despite the months of relentless damage done to the Government`s reputation since the conflict, despite all the difficulties in occupied Iraq, a majority of those with an opinion believe military action was nevertheless justified.

Mr Blair is being punished not because he did the wrong thing, but because he went about it the wrong way. The Prime Minister didn`t trust the British people to follow the moral argument for dealing with Saddam. This mistrust in them they now reciprocate back to him. For that, Tony Blair has only himself to blame.

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US renews French feud over Iraq
Row over ceding control to Iraqis threatens UN agreement to share military burden

Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer

Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, sought to put an optimistic gloss on discussions between the foreign Ministers of the five states who sit on the UN security council yesterday despite a public spat between France and America over plans for international involvement in Iraq.

The talks, in Geneva, focused on plans to increase international assistance to the Americans. Washington is finding the cost of the occupation of Iraq, in men and material, increasingly troublesome. Annan said that consensus between the Big Five powers on the future of the country was `essential and achievable`.

However, the continuing row between France and the United States appeared to be jeopardising Washington`s hopes of swiftly sharing the burden of occupation.

Although there has been a relatively positive response to requests for assistance, the international community is still seriously divided over how soon the US should hand power to local politicians in Iraq.

Late on Friday, Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, said Paris wanted a resolution that would hand executive powers to Iraqis, possibly within a month, and provides for general elections by next spring. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, called the plan `totally unrealistic`.

`It would be delightful if one could do that but one can`t do that. I cannot anticipate us agreeing to any language that would buy into what Minister De Villepin has been saying,` he said. Later, however, the two men had informal conversations that aides said were productive.

Washington, which has de facto control in Baghdad as the main occupying power, needs cash and troops from other nations but says it does not believe Iraqis can take power as quickly as many European governments are proposing.

However, many experts believe that time is running out. There is evidence that opposition to the US presence is steadily growing. Yesterday crowds in Falluja chanted `America is the enemy of God` as they began burying 10 police and security guards shot mistakenly by US troops. Local police fired warning shots in the air to disperse demonstrators as the first coffin was carried to a cemetery.

The US military has apologised for what it called an `unfortunate incident`.

`We wish to express our deepest regrets to the families who have lost loved ones,` a military spokesman said.

Witnesses said a joint patrol of local police and a US-trained security force were chasing thieves in a car shortly after midnight on Friday when American soldiers opened fire on them for about an hour.

The US military said its soldiers were responding to an initial attack when the guards were caught in confused fighting that lasted for three hours. Such incidents have turned many Iraqis against the US occupation.

The call for a swift transfer of power has been backed by members of the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad, all 25 of whom have been appointed by the Americans. `We are anxious to expedite the political process so that we can have a constitution and elections as soon as possible,` said Adnan Pachachi, one member of the council.

The dispute between the Big Five powers - the permanent members of the UN Security Council - is a replay of transatlantic wrangling earlier this year over UN approval for the US-led invasion of Iraq in March. The Security Council`s talks on Iraq earlier this year ended in acrimony when the US decided it could act alone after France threatened to veto a war resolution.

Joining the US and France in Geneva for the talks yesterday were Russia and China - both of whom are taking a low-key position - and Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary. The official British position is currently unclear.



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The right to voice strong views
An American newspaper recently labelled the Observer Judeophobic. It is not

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer

When Israel was born in 1948, David Ben Gurion said that the Jewish people had become `like other nations`. That was the great dream of Zionism, intended by Theodor Herzl to `answer the Jewish question`, to `normalise` the Jews so that they could become as obscure as the Danes or the Dutch; a nation like all others.

The outcome is painfully clear every time you switch on the television or open a newspaper, where that tiny patch of territory called the Holy Land is covered at more length than all of Africa or India. So far from obscure, this Jewish state is surrounded by bitter argument and recrimination.

Last week, the International Herald Tribune published an article by Barry Kosmin and Paul Iganski under the headline `Crossing the line from criticism to bigotry`. The writers went further than the familiar accusation against western news media - even against the New York Times - of hostile bias towards Israel.

They claimed that Judeophobia, `hatred or fear of Jews`, had `infected elements of the British news media`, and that The Observer was `a serial offender when it comes to bigotry against Jews`. That is a very serious accusation indeed, and would be devastating if true.

Several pieces were adduced as evidence. One was a verse by Tom Paulin, published in February 2001, describing the `Zionist SS` killing `little Palestinian boys`, the other was a recent column by Richard Ingrams in which he said that when he saw letters in the paper about Israel his practice was `to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it`.

Personally, I thought both effusions grotesque (perhaps the most offensive word in Paulin`s offering was `poem`; has the Trades Descriptions Act no literary application?) and if either had been an expression of editorial policy, this paper would stand condemned. But there must be a presumption in favour of freedom of expression and variety of opinion, even if it`s easier to suppress everything unseemly or outrageous in the interests of good taste, or a quiet life.

An intemperate and vulgar press is always better than a licensed or self-censored press. The American journalist Michael Kinsley, a Jewish liberal, has said how much he admires the London papers (even Ingrams`s Private Eye, with what Kosmin and Iganski call its long history `of sarcasm and vitriol vis-a-vis the Jews`) by comparison with journalism in the US, `paralysed by gentility`.

It is certainly arguable that reporters covering the conflict in the Holy Land hunt in a pack, just as they did in Ulster and the Balkans, as the self-appointed friends of Israel say (Israelis themselves, in my experience, are less thin-skinned, echoing the Millwall fans: `Everybody hates us, we don`t care.`)

But does The Observer have a tradition of `bigotry against Jews`? Over the years this paper has been a by-word for supporting progressive causes, fighting racism, and employing Jewish writers (to the late Lady Pamela Berry, The Observer was `a lot of central Europeans writing about a lot of central Africans`) and for long it echoed the fondness once felt for Israel on the liberal Left. Twenty years ago when Conor Cruise O`Brien was editor-in-chief and a scintillating columnist, he used The Observer as a platform for his passionate Zionism.

Everyone knows that the Left and Israel have fallen out of love, for reasons it would take a book to explain. But can the alienation of so many former emotional Zionists simply be ascribed to `hatred or fear of Jews`? For Kosmin and Iganski, who have edited a book called A new Anti-Semitism?, it evidently can. They distinguish this new species from `old Nazi-style anti-Semitism`, but they could have looked further back than that.

Zionism was born in response to the seeming failure of Jewish emancipation and assimilation. Herzl published The Jewish State in 1896 amid a tide rising throughout Europe, a new species of racist Jew-hatred from the France of the Dreyfus Affair to the Vienna of Dr Lueger.

What Kosmin and Iganski call the new Judeophobia is indeed nothing like the anti-Semitism of the Anti-Dreyfusards. It is entirely to do with the Jewish state of which Herzl dreamt. It relates not to the causes of Zionism but to its consequences. That is the problem. If criticism of Israel, however brutal or unfair, is construed as anti-Semitism, then this must represent a grave failure for Zionism. No one cries `racist` at the fiercest critics of Ireland or Pakistan. Why is Israel different?

Other British Jews have talked of their pain and estrangement in the face of mounting hostility towards Israel. This was precisely what the Jewish critics of Zionism once foresaw. David Alexander and Claude Montefiore, respectively President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, wrote in the Times in 1917, shortly before - and in the unfulfilled hope of forestalling - the Balfour Declaration which favoured `the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people`.

The idea, they wrote, of investing the Jews with `rights in excess of those enjoyed by the rest of the population` of Palestine was deplorable. It would `prove a veritable calamity for the Jewish people`, for whom, wherever they lived, the principle of equal rights was vital. To create `a Jewish nationality in Palestine ... must have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands, and of undermining their hard-won position as citizens and nationals of those lands`. Their words sometimes look very prescient.

In other words, a Jewish state might not `answer the "Jewish question"`, but rather complicate it.

Whatever else is said about Israel, it quite obviously is not a nation like all others, or these very controversies would not be taking place. And although Kosmin and Iganski may not realise it, they come close to confirming that old foreboding that a Jewish state would compromise the position of western Jews in their own countries.


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US and Britain isolated as Iraq angrily buries its dead
Tensions rise in Iraq over massacre of policemen
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington, Andy McSmith and Jo Dillon in London
14 September 2003


Bitter divisions re-emerged yesterday among the world`s five most powerful countries about how soon America is prepared to return power to the Iraqi people.

The United States slapped down as unacceptable a French plan to end its occupation within a month, although Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, talked down the differences after the Geneva meeting of the United Nation`s big five.

The failure to reach agreement on a new Security Council resolution that would pave the way for tens of thousands of international troops to go to Iraq under a UN flag, came as the situation on the ground grew yet more perilous.

Wild gunfire and anger erupted across the city of Fallujah yesterday during the burial of the US-trained paramilitary police shot by mistake in an hour-long gun battle on Friday. The latest tragedy comes on top of a rising death toll of ordinary Iraqis from lawlessness, banditry and American guns, which, according to an investigation by The Independent on Sunday`s Robert Fisk, could be as high as 1,000 civilians a week.

The failure of the occupying forces to bring law and order to the country and the ability of the Iraqi resistance to strike with near-impunity are also galvanising international opinion against America and Britain.

If a new resolution is not agreed during further talks in New York this week, George Bush and Tony Blair can expect a month of public humiliation over the Iraq crisis. Washington and London had hoped the meeting of the veto-wielding members of the council would begin to draw the UN into the task of reconstructing Iraq. Instead, it produced a virtual replay of the pre-war rift.

President Bush is to address the UN General Assembly in nine days, where a majority can be expected to be loud and vocal in their opposition. Despite yesterday`s failure, Mr Powell put the best gloss on the talks, saying he was encouraged, while adding: "Of course, there are differences of opinion on certain aspects."

But yesterday the very Iraqis that the occupying forces have enlisted as their allies angrily buried their dead. "America is the enemy of God," the crowds chanted as eight flag-draped coffins were carried into the town`s Sunni mosque in Fallujah. The imam, Fawzi Namiq, called for an end to the random shooting that crackled from every corner of the city. "Save your bullets for the chests of the enemy," he said through loudspeakers.

Mr Powell rejected as "totally unrealistic" the French call for a timetable that would install a provisional government within a month, followed by a draft constitution and elections next spring.

"It would be delightful if one could do that, but one can`t," was his scornful response.

UN involvement in peace- keeping and reconstruction would be a relief to Mr Blair, not only for political reasons, but because of the rising cost to the Exchequer of the British presence in Iraq. In his autumn statement on future spending plans, Mr Brown is expected to acknowledge that the £3bn set aside to fund military action against Saddam has proved insufficient to meet the dual tasks of fighting and maintaining a military presence in Iraq. He is expected to provide an extra £1bn.

"There will be a shortfall - and that will have to be met from the public finances," a government source said. "But the sums we are dealing with here are not huge in the wider scale of things. There is no way we are going to dump our responsibilities of rebuilding the place and improving the lives of people living there. It would be morally indefensible to shirk from that."

In addition to the cost to the public purse, Mr Blair has to count the growing political cost. Opposition to the war is expected to damage Labour`s support in Thursday`s by-election in the normally safe Labour seat of Brent East.

The Hutton inquiry into the suicide of Dr David Kelly will resume tomorrow, throwing more light on relations between the Government and the intelligence services, and how vital decisions are reached. Witnesses called tomorrow will include Air-Marshal Sir Joe French, a former chief of defence intelligence, and Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC.

Mr Blair is also facing the embarrassment of having the Labour Party`s conference condemn him for going to war without UN support. Many local Labour parties have written to the head office asking for Iraq to be on the agenda. One resolutioncalls for "an end to Britain`s participation in the US-led occupation of Iraq".

Diplomats are doubtful that any resolution on Iraq can be agreed before Mr Bush`s speech to the UN General Assembly on 23 September. The best Washington can expect is for France to abstain, along with Russia and Germany, which has a non-permanent seat on the council. The sole crumb of comfort is that none of those who disagree with the US wants to provoke a showdown like the one that led to the March debacle, as Britain and the US simply by-passed the UN to launch the invasion.

Mr Bush, however, is unabashed by either criticism from abroad or his tumbling popularity at home. Far from stilling disquiet, his televised address last Sunday saw his approval rates drop from 59 per cent beforehand to 52 per cent afterwards, according to a CNN-Gallup poll. Six out of 10 Americans believe the administration does not have a coherent plan for Iraq.
14 September 2003 10:27


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Democrats` dark horse will declare his hand this week
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
14 September 2003


The waiting is almost over. By the end of the week General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of Nato, and potential dark horse of the Democratic presidential field, will reveal whether he will challenge President Bush for the White House in 2004.

For months now, the subject of Gen Clark`s future has been one of the more intriguing sub-plots of American politics. Intense, telegenic and indisputably clever, the general, 58, has stalked TV studios, business conventions and the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, making weighty speeches on America`s future, but refusing to say even whether he was a Democrat or a Republican.

That veil has now been lifted. But with the media already half-bored with the nine declared runners, Gen Clark`s performance has been masterly. He has left his options open, yet ensured coverage that his putative rivals - with the single exception of Howard Dean - could not but envy.

Now the procrastination is about to end. Unless the collective political wisdom here is very much mistaken, the Arkansas-born former Rhodes scholar will throw his hat into the ring when he addresses the University of Iowa on Friday. Given America`s propensity for electing soldiers, he has some reason to hope.

True, it is extremely late in the day to start a campaign, when the pick of the donors and campaign operatives have already been snapped up by existing candidates. But Gen Clark has some formidable assets - as the attention paid to him by Mr Dean attests.

In the past few weeks, the former Vermont governor - clear front runner and the sole Democrat in the field to have created a real buzz - has met Gen Clark several times for what the latter calls "a full tour of the horizon". The bottom line is clear: if the general does not run, Mr Dean would like him on board, perhaps even as his vice-presidential running mate, should he win the nomination.

It`s easy to see why. Gen Clark is most things that Mr Dean is not. He comes from the South, like the last three Democrats to win the White House. He has been publicly praised by Bill Clinton, that other famous Rhodes scholar from Arkansas and still the most popular Democrat in the land. He has a mix of gravitas, charm and good looks that made him a natural as an analyst for CNN in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Long before it took place, Gen Clark was, like Mr Dean, an opponent of the war. Unlike Mr Dean, however, he has a glittering military résumé; whatever else, Republicans will find it hard to depict a decorated Vietnam veteran, who led the war to drive Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo, as an unpatriotic liberal waffler. His politics are of the sensible New Democrat variety likely to appeal to undecided swing voters.

But a little critical scrutiny could expose another and less appealing Wes Clark. He is famously thin-skinned, drummed out early from his job as Nato supreme commander after personality and policy clashes with the then Defence Secretary, William Cohen, and much of the top Pentagon brass.

In the aftermath of Kosovo, he ordered General Sir Michael Jackson to prevent Russian troops from taking Pristina airport - to which the British K-For commander responded: "Sir, I`m not going to be the man who started World War III." That episode is bound to be used against Gen Clark to cast doubt on his image of rock-solid military judgement.

One blunt-spoken former US officer, Colonel David Hackworth, has gone so far as to describe Gen Clark as the "ultimate perfumed prince", more comfortable theorising about strategy and playing bureaucratic politics than hunkering down in the trenches with his men. That may be unkind. But if Gen Clark does enter the race, that is exactly where he will be: in the trenches, with enemy fire pouring in from all sides.
14 September 2003 10:30



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September 14, 2003
Talks by U.N. Fail to Break Impasse on Iraq Self-Rule
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN


GENEVA, Sept. 13 — The United States and other leading nations on the Security Council held intensive discussions over the future governance of Iraq today but failed to break the impasse over France`s insistence that Iraq`s transition to self-rule be overseen by the United Nations rather than the American occupation.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who arrived here early this morning, met with his counterparts from other nations and with Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who serves on the Iraqi Governing Council, which was appointed by the American-led occupation.

The State Department announced today that Mr. Powell would travel to Kuwait and Iraq on Sunday "to see firsthand the progress being made by the international community and by the Iraqi people in rebuilding their nation and society from 30 years of Saddam Hussein`s destructive rule."

The secretary`s visit to Iraq had been kept secret for security reasons. His itinerary was not disclosed, but it was apparent that Mr. Powell was hoping that, with his first visit there, he could report that progress was being made toward Iraqi self-government under the timetable established in Washington.

France is seeking the immediate establishment of an Iraqi interim government that would report to the Security Council, not to the occupation authority, and it also wants the Security Council to oversee a process of writing a constitution by the end of this year and holding elections next spring.

Mr. Powell said the American proposal to have the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council report back to the Security Council on its own timetable for self-government had "received positive responses from everyone."

He said an afternoon of discussion with French, Russian, Chinese and British envoys, and with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, had managed to narrow some differences, but to a limited degree.

"Of course there are differences of opinion on certain aspects of our draft resolution," Mr. Powell said. "The important thing is that we spent our time today looking for points of convergence, and there are many."

Mr. Annan called the meeting today and said it had been constructive. He characterized the session as "a very good meeting" that would lead eventually to a unified approach on Iraq. He said it was not a matter of getting the United Nations to exercise sovereignty in Iraq but of the United Nations helping Iraq exercise its own sovereignty.

Mr. Powell and Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, said the discussion would resume in New York next week when the United Nations General Assembly convenes.

Mr. Powell said pointedly that it was not just a matter of the five permanent members of the Security Council that met here today coming to an agreement. All 15 members must work out wording on a resolution that would expand United Nations authority over Iraq, clearing the way for greater international efforts to secure and rebuild it.

Those comments appeared to reflect the American strategy of lining up as many votes as possible, to press France, the main opponent on the issue, not to veto a resolution that was perhaps less than completely to its liking.

Last spring, in the period before the Iraq war, the United States failed to get the nine votes necessary for a resolution authorizing war. Even with the votes, any permanent member can veto a measure.

"I will leave this meeting encouraged with the points of convergence, but also recognizing that there are still some differences to be worked out," Mr. Powell said, adding that "Dominique and I had excellent discussions" that would form "a basis for our representatives in New York to undertake discussions next week to see if we can find consensus."

Mr. de Villepin, for his part, also expressed hope that something could be worked out. "We are here in Geneva," he said, "in order to try and find solutions, not to create new problems." He added that, "We are all pursuing the same objective." He declined to answer a question about whether France might consider vetoing a new resolution.

Mr. Powell appeared serious and sober, and he was not seen in any especially friendly conversations with Mr. de Villepin, who spent a fair amount of time talking with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain.

Mr. Pachachi, in an interview, said after meeting with Mr. Powell that the differences among Security Council members could be bridged. But he said the French demand that an Iraqi interim government take over sovereignty in a month "is a little too optimistic."

Mr. Powell, during the flight here Friday night, said the French demands were unrealistic. Because the United States had invested lives and resources in the war, he said, the United States should take the lead in returning Iraq to self-government.

Today, Mr. Powell expanded on that comment, saying the reason he found the timetable unrealistic was that it could not be met by the existing Iraqi Governing Council.

American officials are openly irritated with Mr. de Villepin, who wrote up his proposals in a sweeping article in Le Monde on Friday, which was not considered diplomatically adroit as a prelude for meetings that were supposed to be confidential.

Diplomats involved in the negotiations today said there might be some way of bridging the difference between France and the United States. They said that, in contrast to the dispute before the war in Iraq, Germany and Russia were trying to serve as mediators.

Mr. Pachachi also said he hoped to play a role in recommending a compromise, but was vague about whether he or other members of the Governing Council — a group picked by the United States — favored keeping the Americans in control or having United Nations officials in charge.

Mr. Pachachi said he expected that the Governing Council would soon select a constitution-writing conference, and that the process could be finished in time for a constitution to be approved in a referendum by next June.

Before the talks today, diplomats close to the negotiations here said they did not expect any specific resolution to come out of today`s session.

"What we`re hoping for is a breakthrough in attitude, because that`s where the problem is," one diplomat said. On one hand, he said, Mr. Bremer of the American occupation was widely seen as having assumed too much of the authority over Iraq.

But on the other, he said, there was an emerging consensus that France`s demand for a United Nations takeover was unrealistic — in part because the United Nations was not eager to assume the job.

Powell Arrives in Kuwait

KUWAIT CITY, Sunday, Sept. 14 — Mr. Powell arrived here early today for a brief stop on the way to Baghdad, where he will spend Sunday and Monday meeting with American occupation leaders and military forces, and Iraqi interim government officials.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 14, 2003
DOMESTIC SECURITY
Bush Seeks to Expand Access to Private Data
By ERIC LICHTBLAU


WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 — For months, President Bush`s advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge`s sign-off.

But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents — without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor — to demand private records and compel testimony.

Mr. Bush also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in crimes like terrorist financing, and he wants to make it tougher for defendants in such cases to be freed on bail before trial. These proposals are also sure to prompt sharp debate, even among Republicans.

Opponents say that the proposal to allow federal agents to issue subpoenas without the approval of a judge or grand jury will significantly expand the law enforcement powers granted by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And they say it will also allow the Justice Department — after months of growing friction with some judges — to limit the role of the judiciary still further in terrorism cases.

Indeed, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is sponsoring the measure to broaden the death penalty, said in an interview that he was troubled by the other elements of Mr. Bush`s plan. He said he wanted to hold hearings on the president`s call for strengthening the Justice Department`s subpoena power "because I`m concerned that it may be too sweeping." The no-bail proposal concerns him too, the senator said, because "the Justice Department has gone too far. You have to have a reason to detain."

But administration officials defended Mr. Bush`s plan. Even though the administration is confident that the United States is winning the war on terrorism, they said, they have run into legal obstacles that need to be addressed.

"We don`t want to tie the hands of prosecutors behind their backs," said Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, "and it`s our responsibility when we find weaknesses in the law to make suggestions to Congress on how to fix them."

In announcing his plan on Wednesday, Mr. Bush said one way to give authorities stronger tools to fight terrorists was to let agents demand records through what are known as administrative subpoenas, in order to move more quickly without waiting for a judge.

The president noted that the government already had the power to use such subpoenas without a judge`s consent to catch "crooked doctors" in health care fraud cases and other investigations.

The analogy was accurate as far as it went, but what Mr. Bush did not mention, legal experts said, was that administrative subpoenas are authorized in health care investigations because they often begin as civil cases, where grand jury subpoenas cannot be issued.

The Justice Department used administrative subpoenas more than 3,900 times in a variety of cases in 2001, the last year for which data was available. The subpoenas are already authorized in more than 300 kinds of investigations, Mr. Corallo said.

"It`s just common sense that we should be able to use this tool against terrorists too," he said. "It`s not a matter of more power. It`s the fact that time is of the essence and we may need to act quickly when a judge or a grand jury may not be available."

Officials could not cite specific examples in which difficulties in obtaining a subpoena had slowed a terrorism investigation.

But Mr. Corallo gave a hypothetical example in which the F.B.I. received a tip in the middle of the night that an unidentified terrorist had traveled to Boston. Under Mr. Bush`s plan, the F.B.I., rather than waiting for a judicial order, could subpoena all the Boston hotels to get registries for each of their guests, then run those names against a terrorist database for a match, he said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior officials, defending the Patriot Act in recent speeches and interviews, have emphasized that judges must sign off on the investigative tools that have caused the most public protest, like searching library records or executing warrants without immediately notifying the target.

One section of the Justice Department`s new Patriot Act Web site, lifeandliberty.gov, for instance, says the law "allows federal agents to ask a court for an order to obtain business records in national security terrorism cases."

The administration sought to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in the original Patriot Act in 2001, but Democrats protested and succeeded in killing it.

Civil rights lawyers, defense advocates and some former prosecutors say they see no need to broaden the Justice Department`s powers so markedly. Under current law, they say, terrorism investigators can typically get a subpoena in a matter of hours or minutes by going through a judge or a grand jury.

"The fundamental issue here," Nicholas M. Gess, a former federal prosecutor and a senior aide to the former attorney general Janet Reno, said, "is that at a time of such concern over civil liberties, there`s good reason to have a judge looking over the government`s shoulder."

Mr. Bush`s proposal, he said, "means that there are no effective checks and balances. It`s very worrisome."

A second proposal by Mr. Bush would strengthen the government`s hand in keeping defendants charged with terrorism-related crimes in jail pending trial.

But critics like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said they believed the idea also posed risks of limiting the discretion of federal judges and giving the Justice Department too much power.

Mr. Bush`s proposal would require judges to presume that defendants in terrorism-related offenses should not be allowed out on bail, unless the defense can persuade the judge otherwise. The proposal defines terrorism to mean acts like murder, kidnapping or computer attacks intended to "influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct."

Such no-bail restrictions, which effectively shift the burden of proof from prosecutors to the defense in determining whether a defendant should be locked up, are already in place for certain narcotics trafficking offenses and other charges.

"A suspected terrorist could be released, free to leave the country, or worse, before the trial," Mr. Bush said. "This disparity in the law makes no sense. If dangerous drug dealers can be held without bail in this way, Congress should allow for the same treatment for accused terrorists."

Justice Department officials were angered this summer when judges in Alexandria, Va., freed on bail four men who were charged with supporting Kashmir terrorists. The judges said they were not persuaded the men posed a clear danger or a flight risk.

Despite Mr. Bush`s concerns, Justice Department officials said they knew of no specific instances in which a person charged in a terrorism case had fled after being granted bail. And critics said they were unconvinced the current laws needed fixing.

The third element of Mr. Bush`s plan would expand the list of terrorism-related crimes eligible for death.

Suspects like Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of taking part in the 9/11 conspiracy, already face the prospect of the death penalty for the most serious terrorist offenses.

But Mr. Specter, who said he had worked on the issue for months before the White House asked him to sponsor legislation, said his measure would allow execution for "gateway" crimes like terrorist financing, even if the defendant does not carry out the attack.

"The financiers are really the principal culprits," he said.

The proposal would also extend the death penalty to a number of other criminal activities, including sabotage of a defense installation or a nuclear facility.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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September 14, 2003
An Unsustainable Policy on Iraq

After a summer of worsening news from Iraq, it is time to rethink America`s postwar strategy.

President Bush is right to refuse to be pushed by guerrilla violence and political pressure into leaving Iraq prematurely. But avoiding that will require more than proclaiming victory over a tyrant who remains at large and asking Americans to remain resolute against terrorism, as Mr. Bush did most recently in a campaign commercial of a speech on Friday at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

Mr. Bush has so far failed to explain satisfactorily how he plans to secure Iraq without a crippling, indefinite American military commitment; speedily achieve Iraqi self-government; and share the burden of rebuilding Iraq`s industries and society so the United States can leave on its own terms. And his maneuvering room may soon shrink, since the Democratic challengers are desperate to break out of the herd on Iraq. If Mr. Bush does not demonstrate a clear and convincing strategy soon, he may face political pressure to bring home American troops under conditions that would be embarrassing for America and perilous for the Middle East. Of all the possible scenarios, the most important one to avoid is a poll-driven scramble to bring the troops home that suffers the same lack of preparation the administration showed at the end of major combat.

Moving forward will require new thinking from an administration that has shown little inclination to learn from its mistakes. The United States needs help from its allies in Europe, but those countries are unlikely to provide it unless Mr. Bush abandons his "my way or the highway" approach. Simply saying it`s time to pay up, as Mr. Bush did last Sunday, does not begin to address the concerns of economically stressed allies who felt trampled before the war. The lingering strains were evident on Friday in Geneva, where Secretary of State Colin Powell quickly rejected France`s proposal for an unrealistically rapid buildup to Iraqi elections in the spring.

The administration is going to have to tackle the controversy over security. The arithmetic on this point is disturbing. There are now roughly 180,000 American troops in Iraq and Kuwait, some 20,000 of them from Army Reserve and National Guard units. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insists no more American troops are needed. The violence makes us wonder about that, but it`s not clear how long the American military can sustain even the present strains of occupying Iraq. Sixteen of the Army`s 33 combat brigades are now there and five more are on other foreign assignments. The remaining 12 are needed for rotation in Iraq or standby duty related to North Korea. The Army is considering back-to-back combat tours for the first time since Vietnam.

The reserves are stretched to the breaking point. Some units have been mobilized since shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Last week, tens of thousands of reservists learned that their tours were being extended into next year.

Yet it is hard to see relief. Mr. Rumsfeld places great hope in an Iraqi takeover of security. That would indeed be the best option, but it`s tough to imagine that he can quickly orchestrate the leap from what is little more than about 40,000 newly minted policemen to the kind of modern army needed to fight terrorism. And Washington will need to do something about its intelligence to weed out old-regime loyalists and other unreliable elements.

In the shorter run, if Washington softens its stubborn resistance to broader U.N. involvement, peacekeeping troops from countries like Pakistan, India, Turkey and Egypt could be useful. Unfortunately, that shift cannot really get under way until things become a lot less dangerous than they are right now. Besides the American military, the only other forces potent enough to help make that happen are those of some Western European countries. The most optimistic assessment of what the United States could expect from these modest-sized militaries, many of them with commitments elsewhere, is probably about 30,000 additional troops.

The other critical key to an exit strategy is to adopt a faster timetable for restoring Iraqi self-government. That will require the United States, which lacks Middle East experts and Arabic speakers in its policy-making ranks, to win support from Iraq`s majority Shiite Muslim population, some of whose leaders have already denounced Mr. Bush`s democratization vision. Washington must do so without alienating the minority Sunni Muslims, who represent a major security threat to the occupation forces. To accomplish this delicate feat, the administration should consider working quietly with Iraq`s neighbors, like Iran and Syria.

Finally, getting help with the huge cost of rebuilding Iraq will mean sharing lucrative reconstruction and oil contracts with foreign companies, even though that means less of the pie for well-connected American companies, like Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

One wild card is that while administration officials like to refer to the "post-Saddam era," Saddam Hussein apparently is still alive and still a political threat. Capturing or killing Mr. Hussein would be a major victory for the president. But we hope that he would not use it as a distraction from the bigger picture. The American people will face up to their responsibilities not to leave Iraq a broken and dangerous mess, but only if Mr. Bush presents a workable plan, with its full financial and human costs honestly acknowledged.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 14, 2003
FRANK RICH
Top Gun vs. Total Recall

Only in America could a guy who struts in an action-hero`s Hollywood costume and barks macho lines from a script pass for a plausible political leader. But if George W. Bush can get away with it, why should Arnold Schwarzenegger be pilloried for the same antics?

At least Mr. Schwarzenegger is a show-biz pro. He never would have signed on for a remake of "Top Gun" without first ensuring that it would have the same happy ending as the original. He never would have allowed himself to look as scared as the abandoned kid in "Home Alone" while begging the nation for cash and patience last Sunday night. He would have dismissed B-movie dialogue like "dead or alive" and "bring `em on" with a curt "hasta la vista, baby!"

And while both men have signed on to the same Hollywood fantasy for fixing an economy spiraling into billions of dollars of debt — cut taxes, spend more — the foreign-born Mr. Schwarzenegger comes by his fiscal pipe dreams the old-fashioned American way. He earned his multi-millions himself rather than through sweetheart deals available exclusively to the well-pedigreed.

This is why the hypocrisy attending the Arnold phenomenon from all sides — Republicans, Democrats, the media — is an entertainment in itself. Decades after John Kennedy embraced the Rat Pack and Ronald Reagan conflated the heroism of World War II movies with his actual (noncombat, stateside) war experience, voters are inured to the reality that show-business tricks are in the arsenal of every would-be national politician. Only Washington remains shocked, shocked that there could be a "circus" in which our political culture becomes indistinguishable from "Extra" (on which Rob Lowe came out for Arnold).

The fun in watching Mr. Schwarzenegger is that, unlike Mr. Bush and most of his other political peers, he doesn`t pretend to be above Hollywood stunts; he flaunts his showmanship and policy ignorance as flagrantly as those gaudy rings he wears. Rather than wait a few weeks to trade quips with a late-night TV comic, as Mr. Bush and Al Gore did in the 2000 campaign, he just cut to the chase and announced his candidacy to Jay Leno. The political press then pooh-poohed his decision to give his first interview to Pat O`Brien of "Access Hollywood" instead of, say, Tim Russert. But Mr. O`Brien, who began his career working for David Brinkley at NBC News in Washington, points out that most of his supposedly more serious colleagues were condescending to Mr. Schwarzenegger as a show-biz joke anyway, with their dim wordplays on the titles of his movies. "Everybody ought to take a deep breath and realize the guy is a candidate now, not the Terminator," Mr. O`Brien says. "There aren`t enough of those metaphors to last until the election."

When Ronald Reagan was asked to predict what kind of governor of California he`d make, he famously answered: "I don`t know. I`ve never played a governor." As his biographer, Lou Cannon, has written, Reagan ran for that office not knowing how bills were passed or budgets were prepared. In this sense, Mr. Schwarzenegger has admitted to being somewhat Reaganesque. His ideology, though, is way to the left of his party, despite all the lip service he pays to being a fiscal conservative. (Howard Dean is a fiscal conservative, too.) Mr. Schwarzenegger is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-green. He has said that the Clinton impeachment made him "ashamed" to call himself a Republican.

It is hilarious to watch conservatives — the same conservatives who often decry phony Hollywood liberals and their followers — betray their own inviolate principles to bask in Arnold`s hulking movie-star aura so that they might possibly gain a nominal Republican victory in the bargain. Even the 1977 Oui magazine interview in which Mr. Schwarzenegger bragged about participating in orgies — not to mention his repeated admissions of drug use — can`t frighten them away.

Arnold may have ducked questions about affirmative action, but that hasn`t stopped Fox`s star-struck Sean Hannity from gushing that he`s "as forthright as any politician I`ve ever interviewed in my life." As for the Oui confessional, Bill O`Reilly said: "So what? He`s a new guy." Rush Limbaugh at first questioned Mr. Schwarzenegger`s conservative bona fides, but of late has been hedging, praising Arnold for "the charisma, the star power, the stage presence . . . the likability, the personality" and saying that he never meant to imply that he "is not worthy." No less a religious conservative than Pat Robertson came out for La-La-Land`s pro-gay, pro-choice Republican as well: "I`m a body-builder. . . . So I think the weight lifters of the world need to unite."

Ann Coulter has a term for conservatives who wimp out like this — "girly boys." But she`s gone all girly herself over Arnold, telling Larry King that "I`m impressed enough that he`s in Hollywood, he`s married to a Kennedy and he still calls himself a Republican — that`s good enough for me." Perhaps. Her friend, Bill Maher, has taken a somewhat darker view of these unlikely political conversions. "If his father wasn`t a Nazi," he has said of Arnold, "he wouldn`t have any credibility with conservatives at all."

In the glitz arena, Mr. Schwarzenegger`s opponents have a deficit as large as the dollar shortfall in the state`s budget. Desperate bit players will do desperate things to grab a spotlight. Cruz Bustamante, the Democratic lieutenant governor, has had to liken himself to Danny DeVito, Arnold`s co-star in "Twins." Arianna Huffington has lured extras to a rally by promising them the chance to be on television — as if her nonstarting campaign might be confused with "American Idol." Tom McClintock, the conservative Republican state senator, has compared himself to the eponymous hero of "Seabiscuit." (This sad analogy has also been trotted out in the fledgling 2004 presidential race, by Dennis Kucinich.) Poor Governor Davis: the closest he`s come to Hollywood glamour is an interview Cybill Shepherd gave to The San Francisco Chronicle testifying that he was "a good kisser." Or at least he was 36 years ago, which she pinpointed as the occasion of their last lip lock.

Serious politicians try to pretend that they won`t go in for contrived sets and props, but of course they do. Even Dr. Dean, the least show-biz of presidential candidates (so far), felt compelled to appear at a New York City rally in front of a backdrop commissioned from a graffiti artist, as if to plant the subliminal visual cue he had an urban hip-hop following. (In fact, he has scant discernible black support, hip-hop or otherwise.) John Kerry — after posing in a wet suit in Vogue and on a Harley-Davidson in Time — made the "official" announcement of his candidacy in front of a retired aircraft carrier in South Carolina, about as much a sweet spot on the map for him as Woody Allen`s Manhattan would have been for Strom Thurmond.

Washington commentators see through these theatrics when the special effects are ham-fisted enough (as in Mr. Kerry`s case) or when they literally have Hollywood written all over them (as in Mr. Schwarzenegger`s). But since 9/11, too many journalists have been all too willing to look the other way when the Bush administration engages in Hollywood showmanship to cover up its failings. Some have gone so far as to help foment the fictions. Showtime, the cable network, boasts that no fewer than three journalists, including the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, were involved in assuring the accuracy and balance of the docudrama "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," first shown last Sunday while the actual George W. Bush was addressing the nation. But this film, made with full Bush administration cooperation (including that of the president himself), is propaganda so untroubled by reality that it`s best viewed as a fitting memorial to Leni Riefenstahl. The script vouched for by Mr. Krauthammer and a couple of other Beltway boys presents Dick Cheney as a mere supplicant to the all-knowing Mr. Bush and somehow lets the administration (though not its predecessor) off the hook for letting Osama bin Laden and his Saudi enablers slip away.

New polls reveal that Americans increasingly realize that they have been had. Reruns are not kind to this White House`s scripted costume drama of May 1; the seams show. More and more viewers recognize that the banner reading "Mission Accomplished" in the "Top Gun" spectacle was idle set decoration, especially given that the number of American casualties in that mission has more than doubled since then. They know, too, that the president`s uniform was from stock, and perhaps by now have heard how his speech was deliberately delayed almost three hours after his tailhook landing so that it would fall into that magical twilight hour that cinematographers find most romantic. Some may even realize that the president`s breezy dialogue upon deplaning — "I miss flying, I can tell you that" — was too ironic by half, given that he had actually missed some of his required flights during his stay-at-home stint for the Texas Air National Guard while others fought the Vietnam War.

There was only one bit of unadorned realism in the White House`s slick "Top Gun." The servicemen and women on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln were not dress extras; they were actual troops whose deployment at sea had been extended from 6 months to nearly 10, the longest by a carrier in 30 years, to help fill the maw of an understaffed war. According to the Navy`s press office, members of the Lincoln`s crew photographed with the president on that day may have already been redeployed on another carrier. It is the real-life terminators on the prowl in Iraq, not the sentimental White House screenwriters responsible for "Mission Accomplished," who are poised to write the ending for that crew and all their fellow troops now.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 14, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Martyr Complex
By EDEN NABY and RICHARD N. FRYE


BRIMFIELD, Mass.

Who is a martyr? In the West, "martyr" is mainly reserved for Christian victims of Roman lions, or used facetiously for those who let others know of their self-sacrificing ways. But in the Muslim Middle East, where religious terminology permeates the culture, it seems as if almost everyone is a martyr. Realizing this is a small but crucial step in understanding a major cultural gap between the West and the Muslim Middle East, a gap that becomes more obvious with every audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden.

In editing the rough translation of the memoir of an opponent of Saddam Hussein, for instance, we kept running into martyrs. Originally, both "martyr" and the Arab equivalent, "shahid," connoted someone who witnessed for the faith, but the words have taken on different meanings in their respective languages.

Iraqi opposition groups viewed Saddam Hussein as not a particularly good Muslim. Still, the memoirist`s use of "martyr" for anyone who died at his hands indirectly or directly — but not because of religion — seems inappropriate to Western ears.

After all, the war memorials in Europe and North America don`t list martyrs, but those "killed in battle." In the Middle East, however, whether in Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Pashto Muslim society, shahid is today used for any man who falls in battle.

Does this mean that in the Muslim world, wars must be justified in religious terms? Yes. In popular perception, shaped by state-financed school textbooks and proclamations by religious leaders, all wars are against infidels. That`s easy when war is waged against non-Muslims. But even when the enemy is Muslim, he must be painted as infidel, something both sides did in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Arabic term shahid has been borrowed by other Muslim cultures regardless of language. It has an equivalent in another Semitic language, Aramaic, once the lingua franca of the Middle East and today spoken almost exclusively by the region`s Assyrian Christians. The term "sahda" was used originally for those who died for their religion, but more recently has been used to describe Christians like Nadam Yonadam, an interpreter for American troops in Tikrit, who was killed on Aug. 19.

But only in Muslim cultures is religion-infused war terminology so widely employed as a handmaiden of zealotry. Other widely used words that fall into this category are "jihad," meaning righteous war; "mujahidin," those who fight non-Muslims or heretics; and "muhajirin," applied to religious refugees.

The widespread use of a religiously loaded word like shahid in popular Muslim culture is a hint of a mindset that also makes it almost inevitable that Muslims in the Middle East will see the West`s actions in their region in religious terms. And it is subtle cultural gaps like these that make it harder for us to live peaceably in a world that gets ever smaller — unless we make an effort to understand one another.


Eden Naby is co-author of ‘‘Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx and Mujahid.’’ Richard N. Frye is emeritus professor of Iranian at Harvard.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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September 14, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Gunsmoke and Mirrors
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

This is how bad things are for George W. Bush: He`s back in a dead heat with Al Gore.

(And this is how bad things are for Al Gore: He`s back in a dead heat with George W. Bush.)

One terrorist attack, two wars, three tax cuts, four months of guerrilla mayhem in Iraq, five silly colors on a terror alert chart, nine nattering Democratic candidates, 10 Iraqi cops killed by Americans, $87 billion in Pentagon illusions, a gazillion boastful Osama tapes, zero Saddam and zilch W.M.D. have left America split evenly between the president and former vice president.

"More than two and a half years after the 2000 election and we are back where we started," marveled John Zogby, who conducted the poll.

It`s plus ça change all over again. We are learning once more, as we did on 9/11, that all the fantastic technology in the world will not save us. The undigitalized human will is able to frustrate our most elaborate schemes and lofty policies.

What unleashed Shock and Awe and the most extravagant display of American military prowess ever was a bunch of theologically deranged Arabs with box cutters.

The Bush administration thought it could use scientific superiority to impose its will on alien tribal cultures. But we`re spending hundreds of billions subduing two backward countries without subduing them.

After the president celebrated victory in our high-tech war in Iraq, our enemies came back to rattle us with a diabolically ingenious low-tech war, a homemade bomb in a truck obliterating the U.N. offices, and improvised explosive devices hidden in soda cans, plastic bags and dead animals blowing up our soldiers. Afghanistan has mirror chaos, with reconstruction sabotaged by Taliban assaults on American forces, the Afghan police and aid workers.

The Pentagon blithely says that we have 56,000 Iraqi police and security officers and that we will soon have more. But it may be hard to keep and recruit Iraqi cops; the job pays O.K. but it might end very suddenly, given the rate at which Americans and guerrillas are mowing them down.

"This shows the Americans are completely out of control," First Lt. Mazen Hamid, an Iraqi policeman, said Friday after angry demonstrators gathered in Falluja to demand the victims` bodies.

Secretary Pangloss at Defense and Wolfie the Naif are terminally enchanted by their own descriptions of the world. They know how to use their minds, but it`s not clear they know how to use their eyes.

"They are like people in Plato`s cave," observed one military analyst. "They`ve been staring at the shadows on the wall for so long, they think they`re forms."

Our high-tech impotence is making our low-tech colony sullen.

"It`s 125 degrees there and they have no electricity and no water and it doesn`t make for a very happy population," said Senator John McCain, who recently toured Iraq. "We`re in a race to provide the services and security for people so the Iraqis will support us rather than turn against us. It`s up for grabs."

Senator McCain says that "the bad guys" are reminding Iraqis that America "propped up Saddam Hussein in the 80`s, sided with Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war, told the people in Basra in `91 we`d help them get rid of Saddam and didn`t, and put economic sanctions on them in the 90`s."

He says we have to woo them, even though we are pouring $87 billion — double the amount designated for homeland security — into the Iraqi infrastructure when our own electrical grid, and port and airport security, need upgrading.

"If anyone thinks the French and Germans are going to help us readily and rapidly," he says, "they`re smoking something very strong."

Mocking all our high-priced, know-nothing intelligence, Osama is back in the studio making his rock videos.

The cadaverous caveman has gone more primitive to avoid electronic detection, operating via notes passed by couriers.

We haven`t forgotten all Mr. Bush`s bullhorn, dead-or-alive pledges.

But he`s like a kid singing with fingers in his ears, avoiding mentioning Saddam or bin Laden, or pressing the Pakistanis who must be protecting Osama up in no man`s land and letting the Taliban reconstitute (even though we bribed Pakistan with a billion in aid). He doesn`t dwell on nailing Saddam either.

His gunsmoke has gone up in smoke.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Public Says $87 Billion Too Much


By Richard Morin and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page A01

Die Daten:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/st…

A majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush`s request to Congress for an additional $87 billion to fund military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year, amid growing doubts about the administration`s policies at home and abroad, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Six in 10 Americans said they do not support the proposal, which the president announced in his nationally televised address last Sunday night. That marks the most significant public rejection of a Bush initiative on national security or terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a second rebuff to the administration, more Americans said that, if Congress decides to approve the additional money, lawmakers should roll back the president`s tax cuts to pay for the increased spending, rather than add to the federal budget deficit or cut government spending.

The survey findings send a clear signal that many Americans are unwilling to give the administration a blank check on peacekeeping efforts in Iraq, despite continued strong backing for Bush`s decision to go to war and public support for staying there to help stabilize and rebuild that nation.

The president`s overall job approval rating remains stable and relatively strong, a reflection of broad confidence in his leadership despite increasing concerns about his policies. Fifty-eight percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 40 percent disapprove.

Bush`s approval ratings on the war against terrorism and homeland security also remain strong. But on many domestic issues, he has fallen to the lowest point of his presidency, from his handling of the economy and health care to the federal budget.

Declining approval ratings on important issues suggest that the president may be vulnerable in his bid for reelection next year. Matched against a generic Democrat, the poll found Bush at 49 percent and a Democratic nominee at 44 percent.

However, when pitted against any of several Democratic candidates running for their party`s nomination, Bush is the clear choice. None of the Democratic candidates has emerged as a significant challenger and, according to the poll, Bush comfortably leads all four tested, generally by a margin of about 15 percentage points. At this early stage of the campaign, few of these candidates` positions are widely known to the public.

A total of 1,104 randomly selected adults were interviewed between Sept. 10 and Sept. 13 for this survey. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

A majority of Republicans -- 57 percent -- said they support Bush`s $87 billion spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan; but 81 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents said they are opposed. Still, leading congressional Democrats and many of the presidential candidates say they are likely to support the funding. On the question of how to pay for the request, a majority of Democrats said roll back some of the tax cuts while a plurality of Republicans said cut other spending.

The partisan divide on Iraq spending is nearly matched by a gender gap. While seven in 10 women oppose Bush`s $87 billion request, a slim majority of men -- 53 percent -- rejects it.

The public`s judgment of the way Bush is handling international affairs has never been lower, the Post-ABC News poll found. Slightly more than half -- 53 percent -- approve of the president`s policies abroad, a precipitous fall from 67 percent barely two months ago.

That finding comes amid growing criticism, particularly from Democrats, that despite U.S. success in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan and driving Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power, Bush has damaged relations with many allies and has caused the United States to lose the respect of countries around the world.

Declining support for Bush`s policies in Iraq also has contributed to the overall erosion of support for his foreign policy. Barely half -- 52 percent -- said they approved of the way the president is handling the situation in Iraq, down slightly from a month ago and a 23-point decline since the war ended in April.

The overwhelming majority of Americans believe the United States should stay in Iraq, even if it means suffering continued military casualties, but the proportion who favor getting out has increased from 27 percent to 32 percent since late August.

At the same time, a 55 percent majority doubts Bush has a clear plan about what to do in Iraq, and more than eight in 10 -- 85 percent -- now fear the United States will get bogged down in a long and costly peacekeeping effort there, up from 76 percent in less than three weeks.

The latest round of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and growing political instability in the area, have further soured public perceptions of Bush`s foreign policy. Just 46 percent of the public now approve of the way Bush is handling the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, an 8-point drop since April and the first time Bush`s rating on this measure has fallen below 50 percent.

Bush faces growing disquiet at home, as well. Despite recent good news on the economic front, 56 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing handling the economy -- the highest negative rating on this key measure since he took office.

Nearly six in 10 disapprove of his handling of the federal budget, which will post a record deficit next year of at least $480 billion, according to forecasts, and half the country believes most Americans are worse off now than they were when Bush took office. Still, less than a third say that they personally are not doing as well as they were two years ago.

More than six in 10 are critical of the way Bush is dealing with the health care issue, again a new high in disapproval. For the first time, more than half of the public -- 54 percent -- said they disapproved of the job Bush is doing handling prescription drugs for the elderly. That could be a galvanizing issue for seniors as the presidential election year approaches, with Republicans in Congress still stymied from completing work on a Medicare drug bill by differences among themselves, despite the desire of White House officials to win passage heading into 2004.

As the election year approaches, no single issue clearly dominates the public`s agenda.

The economy, education, federal spending, homeland security, and health care top the list, a mix of concerns that offers hope to the president and to his Democratic challengers.

When asked which is more important, jobs and the economy or the war on terrorism, roughly six in 10 say jobs and the economy. At the time of the 2002 midterm elections, in which Republicans scored significant victories, voters judged the economy as only marginally more important than terrorism.

Looking at the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Post-ABC News poll found that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, continues to lead the field of candidates, with 22 percent support among self-described Democrats.

Lieberman`s nearest challengers were bunched together with 14 percent each: Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who leads in several polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the race is more developed. Support was in single digits for all other candidates, including retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who is expected to decide this week whether to join the race.

Interest in the Democratic race has increased substantially since the spring, and there appears to be general satisfaction among Democrats with the field of candidates.

Assistant director of polling Claudia Deane contributed to this report.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Iraq`s Security Weakened by Fear
U.S.-Trained Police Are Accused of Being Collaborators and Spies

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page A01


KHALDIYA, Iraq, Sept. 13 -- The convoy of U.S. military engineers had just entered this rough-and-tumble town when disaster struck. They had a flat tire, stopping the convoy along a ribbon of desert asphalt some Iraqis have nicknamed "the highway of death."

Soon after, masked guerrillas fired two rocket-propelled grenades. Machine guns crackled across the late afternoon sky. When it ended an hour later, witnesses said, homes were gouged with large holes, two U.S. vehicles were burning, and the soldiers had beat a retreat.

On the sidelines throughout the clash Thursday were Khaldiya`s police, who are supposed to be the allies of the U.S.-led occupation in restoring order to Iraq. Not only was it not their fight, several said this week, but the guerrillas fighting U.S. soldiers had their blessing.

"In my heart, deep inside, we are with them against the occupation," said Lt. Ahmed Khalaf Hamed, an officer with the 100-man force trained, equipped and financed by U.S. authorities. "This is my country, and I encourage them."

From President Bush to U.S. soldiers in the field, the United States is putting a growing emphasis on transferring the purview of security and stability to tens of thousands of Iraqis now under arms. The bulk of them -- more than 30,000 -- are police. The restive town of Khaldiya offers a small but significant example of the challenges this policy faces in a country shaken by car bombings and rampant lawlessness and filled with anxiety about the future.

While this town of 15,000 residents may not be typical of all Iraq, it reflects some of the fissures and strains that are undermining security across the country. A key to that tension is the relationship between U.S. forces and police, shaken badly on Friday in Fallujah, when American soldiers mistakenly killed 10 Iraqi security officers who were chasing suspected criminals along a desert road.

By their own account, Khaldiya`s finest are a besieged and embittered force -- uneasy about their American patrons, despised by their community and demoralized about their work. At least three have quit, and others contend the safest place for them is at home. They have become targets of tribal vendettas and blood feuds for arresting or wounding suspects, and in an hour-long standoff outside their police station this week, they had to face down an angry and better-armed mob.

Most troublesome, some said, are accusations of serving as America`s lackeys and spies, charges that were once whispered and now declared loudly in this town that hugs the Euphrates River. The officers contended that residents have it all wrong.

When asked whether the resistance would succeed in the Sunni Muslim city, part of an arc of territory where former president Saddam Hussein`s government drew most of its support, Thaer Abdullah Saleh was blunt. "God willing," the 27-year-old officer said.

The other officers in the room hesitated, then nodded their heads in agreement. "It`s our right," said Dhiaa Din Rajoub, a 38-year-old colleague sitting on a tattered mattress. "This is our country, this is an occupation, and we don`t accept it."

For six weeks, this farming city on a sun-baked plain 45 miles west of Baghdad has emerged as one of the rare locales in Iraq where attacks on U.S. forces and the support the attackers appear to enjoy resemble a guerrilla war in the fullest sense of the term.

On Aug. 4, after U.S. forces in the city came under fire, crowds attacked the mayor`s office, where they believed U.S. troops were meeting informers behind closed doors. In the ensuing chaos after the Americans withdrew, a throng threw rocks at the police chief`s pickup, then burned it. Others threw grenades into the newly painted and furnished mayor`s office before ransacking it. They tore doors and windows from their frames, made off with furniture, carpets and floor tiles, and hauled away a sink.

Since then, residents say, U.S. forces have rarely ventured into the city, except to travel the road that traverses a turbulent 30-mile stretch from Fallujah, 32 miles west of Baghdad, to Ramadi. Khudheir Mikhlif Ali, who replaced the former police chief, meets his U.S. counterparts at the base outside town, police said. For their three-day training, police go there rather than have American soldiers come to them.

"Everybody`s upset at the Americans here," said Capt. Khalil Daham, a gaunt and weary 31-year-old officer, with 12 years on the job. He was jumpy on this day. When a car blows a tire on the street outside, he said, residents think the police station has come under attack from angry residents. Outside his window sits the charred frame of the police chief`s pickup, propped on its axle on a pile of sand. If he had the money, he declared, he would quit.

"We`re sitting here," Daham said, pointing to the window behind him, "and I expect someone to shoot us any minute."

"It`s chaos," added Rajoub.

Their complaints are similar to those heard from police across Iraq. They now have uniforms, but they still lack communications gear. For a force of 100, they said, they have three cars and two motorcycles. Their station is a shell of the intimidating, even terrifying, post it was in Hussein`s days. Looted soon after the fall of his government in April, the office lacks many of its windows and doors and a borrowed light bulb illuminates the hallway. Wires ripped from the wall left scars next to a slogan in Arabic that reads, "Police in the service of the people." A lone telephone sits at the entrance on a tattered iron cot. "It doesn`t work," said Mahmoud Ismail, a 35-year-old perched on the bed with an AK-47 assault rifle at his side.

The isolation of the police in Khaldiya is intense, given the hostility toward U.S. forces and anger at the very idea of occupation in a community that remains fiercely conservative and bound by tribal traditions.

In interviews today, several residents asserted that the police should be fighting with the guerrillas and against the Americans. A U.S. military spokesman in neighboring Ramadi, Capt. Michael Calvert, contended that the police should arrest guerrillas or at least notify U.S. forces about their activities, as a first step toward assuming complete control for security.

"We are scapegoats here," Rajoub said. "How do we satisfy the tribes? How do we satisfy the Americans?" He shook his head. "We`re sitting here between two fires," he said.

Rajoub and others said they have heard insults from residents dozens of times in the streets, when they`re willing to go outside. They`ve been called collaborators, lackeys and spies. While not accused of corruption as the police are in Baghdad, the police here have their credibility questioned, and even worse, they are accused of betraying their countrymen and fellow Muslims.

"The people tell us we`re selling our country for dollars," Saleh said. "Even our families call us collaborators."

In the aftermath of Thursday`s attack against the U.S. troops, crowds in the streets celebrated, shooting AK-47 assault rifles into the air, witnesses said. To some, it was a victory of sorts. No Iraqis were killed, and the Americans left behind the burning wrecks of two trucks when they withdrew. Youths chanted, "The Army of Muhammad will return" and "I swear on the Koran the Americans must leave."

The next day, youths blocked the road with parts of charred trucks. They stopped vehicles, forcing drivers to kiss an Iraqi flag. Two carried iron bars, and one had blackened his face with ash from the trucks.

At a nearby barber shop, men warned that police should not do anything to stop them. On the window was a leaflet bearing the portrait of a bearded Adnan Fahdawi, who it said was a "martyr," killed in an attack on the Americans on July 15.

"If the policemen work with the Americans, we consider them enemies," said Hakim Talib, 24, a barber. His customer, 27-year-old Mehdi Saleh, interrupted him. "We would attack them just as we attack the Americans," he said.

Grim and resigned, the police officers said they have taken the message to heart.

"When there`s a bombing, an attack or a shooting, we do nothing," Daham said. "We just watch."

Some contended they tacitly supported the guerrillas. Like the fighters, they reject the occupation, and some expressed nostalgia for Hussein`s rule, when the police were respected and often feared, when residents offered them rides and no one dared stare too long at them.

Other officers said if they try to arrest someone with weapons, the suspect will frequently contend the arms are for use against the Americans. They call themselves mujaheddin, a religiously resonant term for a fighter that police say they cannot contest.

"They claim they are fighting the Americans. If I capture him, he says you`re a spy, you`re working for the Americans," Saleh said. "The next morning you wouldn`t find any of us. We`ll all be slaughtered."

"We`re afraid of them," he added. "I swear to God, we`re afraid of them."

On Monday night, after police seized two Eastern European-made trucks that were unlicensed, about 12 people showed up at the police station in a pickup, a sedan and an orange-and-white taxi. The men had red-and-white kaffiyehs wrapped around their faces and carried rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, police said. They demanded the trucks back.

"They told us to leave or we`ll shoot you," recalled Ammar Ibrahim Hammadi, a 22-year-old officer who stood with the other police on the roof that night. "We said, `We`re not leaving. Either we`ll kill you or you`ll kill us.` "

The masked men left, returned again a half-hour later, then left for good, he said.

"They probably would have won," Hammadi said. "They have RPGs, and we have Kalashnikovs, and we don`t even know if they`ll work." He lifted his rifle, a gesture at once flippant and discouraged. "This is nothing," he said.

U.S. officials have acknowledged what they call setbacks in Khaldiya and have noted an increase in attacks against U.S. forces in the area. Calvert, the U.S. military spokesman, said the changes in the police force would come over the long term and that the institution itself still suffers from being on one of the lowest rungs of Hussein`s chain of security services, where internal intelligence and informers enforced the suffocating fear that translated into order.

"We`re not going to see an enormous change overnight. It`s a building process, like a lot of things in this country," Calvert said. But, he added, "we`re seeing that they`re starting to act more like what we consider police officers."

The lack of respect is what police officers say bedevils their work.

On Friday, Mohammed Thamer came into Daham`s office. An owner of an ice cream store, he wanted to file a complaint over damage to his house in Thursday`s clash. His windows were broken, and bullet holes zigzagged across his kitchen wall.

"I have no authority," Daham said, shaking his head. "What do you want from me?"

Compensation from the Americans, the 32-year-old Thamer answered. Daham told him to come back the next day.

"What can I tell them?" Daham said after he left. "I have nothing to say. All they can do is ask for God`s help."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Iraq Takes A Toll on Rumsfeld
Criticism Mounts With Costs, Casualties

By Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page A01


Since he returned to the Pentagon three years ago, Donald H. Rumsfeld has been one of the most activist secretaries of defense in a generation, challenging the uniformed brass to modernize the nation`s military into a 21st century fighting force and leading the armed services through two major wars in 18 months.

Along the way, Rumsfeld has rankled many in the military with his aggressive style and far-reaching agenda for "transforming" the military, even as he has won acclaim for his leadership of the Pentagon through the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the building and ensuing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war on terrorism. Now, less than five months after he helped formulate and execute a bold plan in which a U.S. invasion force drove to Baghdad and toppled the Iraqi government in 21 days, Rumsfeld is facing his greatest challenge yet.

Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S. casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.

Whatever else Rumsfeld achieves at the Pentagon, the outcome of the Iraq occupation will go a long way toward determining his legacy in this, his second stint as secretary of defense. It also will affect the political fortunes of President Bush, whose reelection bid could hinge on events in Iraq.

Rumsfeld`s ability to weather his largest crisis will depend to a degree on his standing with three key constituencies: the White House, Congress and the military`s officer corps. How he does with them will be shaped largely by whether security improves in Iraq, according to officials in the administration, Congress and the Pentagon.

At the moment, at least, Rumsfeld`s standing among all three is mixed. White House officials said that Rumsfeld retains the full confidence of the president. But after a long winning streak, the Pentagon chief has begun to lose some policy battles, most notably when Bush decided to seek a new United Nations resolution on Iraq -- a course about which Rumsfeld has expressed reservations.

Rumsfeld`s relations with the military have been strained since he returned to office. This is particularly true within the Army, which felt threatened by his modernization plans before the Sept. 11 attacks and where concern runs deep about the damage the Iraq occupation could do the service in the long run.

Rumsfeld appears to be losing ground most dramatically on Capitol Hill, where even some conservative Republicans are expressing concern about his handling of Iraq. "Winning the peace is a lot different than winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who counts himself as a strong Rumsfeld supporter but notes that not all his colleagues feel the same. "His bluntness comes across as arrogance, and he`s made some enemies on Capitol Hill, probably because of style differences," said Graham, an Air Force veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the panel`s chairman, struck a decidedly cool note when asked how Rumsfeld is doing. "Understandably we have some differences," he said Friday in a written response. "However, I consistently work with Secretary Rumsfeld to support the president and the men and women of the armed forces, and have a high regard for his integrity and forcefulness."

`Rummy Is a Survivor`


On Capitol Hill and elsewhere, Rumsfeld`s assertive self-confidence and brash style -- seared into the public`s memory during televised news conferences during the Afghanistan war -- for many months seemed to fuel the secretary`s popularity. Now, those same qualities strike many inside and outside of government as a vulnerability that leads them to question whether Rumsfeld has the flexibility to make the changes and compromises they see as necessary to fixing the situation in Iraq.

"Robert McNamara for four years of Vietnam going down the toilet was absolutely convinced with a religious zeal that what he was doing was the right thing," said Thomas E. White, a retired Army general who was fired as Army secretary this year by Rumsfeld. "It wasn`t until 30 years later that it dawned on him that he was dead wrong. And I think you have the same thing with Don Rumsfeld."

McNamara served as secretary of defense in the 1960s under Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Most analysts said they believe it is far too early to count Rumsfeld out, and many supporters said they are convinced he will rise and prove his critics wrong once again. His backers note that the secretary continues to have a close relationship with Vice President Cheney, who worked under Rumsfeld in the Gerald Ford White House.

As a longtime aide to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Rumsfeld`s principal rival in the national security arena, F. William Smullen might be expected to revel in Rumsfeld`s difficulties. To the contrary, Smullen argues that it is grossly unfair to hang the problems of postwar Iraq on the defense secretary. "I think there is plenty of blame to go around, far and wide, to include Congress and the mass media, and people are going to be hard-pressed to dump it all on Rumsfeld," said Smullen, who was Powell`s chief of staff until last fall, when he became director of national security studies at Syracuse University.

"Every time Rumsfeld goes through one of these episodes, people think it`s the end for him," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst and consultant at the Lexington Institute with ties to the Pentagon and defense contractors. "But he always ends up looking vindicated. What we`re really facing in Iraq is a mop-up operation, and as the mop-up continues and as we gradually sharpen our intelligence and train Iraqi security forces, Rumsfeld is going to look better and better. In the end, it will look like he understood the occupation of Iraq better than most of his critics did."

As one Army general put it: "Rummy is a survivor."

Rumsfeld declined to be interviewed for this article, and his spokesman declined to provide any comment.

Speaking for Bush, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Friday, "The president ignores the Washington pastime of armchair quarterbacking with perfect hindsight. The president has all the faith and confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld that he did on the day he announced him for the position."

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the difficulties of postwar Iraq have not led to a reduction in the role played by Rumsfeld and the Defense Department. "Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon had the lead and have the lead in postwar reconstruction because . . . we wanted a way to unify the command of the forces and the civilian reconstruction effort," Rice said in an interview Friday. "It`s a very, very tough job, but he`s managed it well, the president believes he`s done it well, and when problems have come up, he`s moved to fix them."

Nor, she said, has the White House been taken aback by the cost and difficulty of the Iraq occupation. "Yes, this is really challenging, it`s really challenging for all of us, and Don has got a heavy part of the burden," she said. "But everybody knows what it is we`re trying to do, and everybody knows how important this is, and everybody knows this is a chance to change history."

Yet, the difficulties in Iraq have diminished Rumsfeld`s standing within the administration, according to people familiar with its inner workings, with a reduction in Rumsfeld`s operating latitude. Unhappiness with Rumsfeld`s freewheeling style -- he has been known to interject himself in issues usually considered beyond the purview of a secretary of defense -- had been building within parts of the administration, officials said.

But it was the Pentagon`s handling of postwar Iraq that really hurt Rumsfeld`s position, according to some administration officials. Asked about this, a senior White House official said it was "patently false" that Rumsfeld had somehow been ordered by the White House to better coordinate his policy initiatives with other parts of the administration.

`He`s Very Defensive`


Unhappiness with Rumsfeld flared on Capitol Hill months before the invasion of Iraq, when Warner stood up at a meeting of Republican senators with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and complained that Rumsfeld was neither cooperating nor consulting with the Senate. Warner told Card that he had never seen anything like it in 25 years in the Senate.

Now, with casualties in Iraq mounting and lawmakers growing agitated about the costs of occupation and reconstruction, the strains have become more pronounced, even as the administration continues to hold strong Republican support on Capitol Hill for its overall policy goals in Iraq.

Even Rumsfeld`s GOP backers chafe at the way he interacts with Congress. "I think his legislative affairs shop is awful," said one Republican senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It serves him so poorly. Don Rumsfeld can`t be personally blamed for all of that. But the combination of his personality, which some people find condescending and prickly and a little offensive -- Rumsfeld himself doesn`t have any time for criticism -- and the fact that the groundwork hasn`t been laid by a good legislative affairs staff, has created some problems."

Graham, the South Carolina Republican, said that among his colleagues, "there`s some belief that he`s reluctant to admit that things are off-track when they seem to be off-track. He`s very defensive."

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate and former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, said Rumsfeld was "critically important to a spectacular conventional military victory in Iraq." But Reed said the real question now is whether Rumsfeld is committed to reaching out to other countries "in a way that encourages allies to join us" in managing the occupation.

While the administration says it wants a U.N. resolution aimed at winning more foreign troops and money, Reed said, "The rhetoric is not matched by the body language and all the things that have to go into getting people to cooperate with you."

Others on Capitol Hill are not as pessimistic. Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), an Air Force veteran who later served on the staff of the National Security Council in George H.W. Bush`s administration, said that "over the last 10 days, I`ve seen the administration make the changes and commitments they need to make in order to be successful in the long term."

Wilson adds that her old comrades in the Air Force tend to like Rumsfeld`s direct style, a sentiment that others in Congress second. Graham said, "I find him refreshing in a stiff-collared town. . . . He`s the right guy at the right time."

Likewise, said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), "I have immense regard for Don Rumsfeld and his staff."

`A Bloodletting`


Iraq has raised new doubts about Rumsfeld among some officers from the Army and Marines, the two services still operating there.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who also served the Bush administration as Middle East envoy, sharply criticized the Pentagon`s handling of postwar Iraq in a speech before the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association 10 days ago. He received an enthusiastic response from hundreds of military officers present.

In the Army, there are deep worries that the Iraq occupation could do long-term damage to the service. Of the 10 active-duty Army divisions, nine will have all or parts deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan this year or next.

"The Army is strained and stressed," Gen. John Keane, the service`s number two officer, said Thursday.

The major worry, according to some in the Army, is that repeated deployments to Iraq will persuade the backbone of the service -- seasoned sergeants and younger officers -- to leave in mid-career instead of serving a full 20 years. There already is talk that some of those now serving in Iraq will come home, only to be sent back in 2005.

"The last time we had people doing combat tours every other year was Vietnam," one defense expert said. "The impact on soldiers and families was great. A lot of good junior officers and mid-grade NCOs [noncommissioned officers] walked. This decimated the rising leadership and broke the force."

The state of the Army reserves is a special worry, and the reserves are adept at conveying that concern to Congress.

"Unless there`s adaptation in the reserves, there`s going to be a bloodletting," with thousands of reservists declining to reenlist, said Graham, who serves as an officer in the Air Force Reserve. He said he is introducing legislation -- along with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) -- to radically improve the health benefits for reservists, and to reduce the costs to civilian employers of reservists deployed overseas.

Rumsfeld`s critics acknowledge that if conditions in Iraq improve in six months -- with a constitution signed, an election plan underway, U.S. casualties drastically reduced, and thousands of troops returning home -- Rumsfeld`s legacy is probably secure. But they say that he has a track record of sticking too long with incorrect assumptions about the speed of recovery and brushing aside problems such as looting. Rumsfeld has resisted adding troops to the forces in Iraq on grounds they are not needed and that more responsibility must be turned over to the Iraqis.

So if parts of Iraq are still combat zones next spring, with the Army apparently mired in a seemingly never-ending fight, then Rumsfeld may wind up remembered as a principal architect of a foreign policy disaster, according to some military experts and lawmakers.

"He is absolutely convinced that he is right, that his view is correct, so all the rest of this stuff that is floating around is kind of noise, a lot of which he just dismisses out of hand, or he rationalizes somehow as consistent with this plan of his," White said.

Robert S. Gelbard, a former U.S. diplomat with experience in several peacekeeping operations, said he is puzzled by Rumsfeld`s insistence that no additional troops are needed to improve security in Iraq. "What`s hard to figure out is the continued adamant statements that there`s no need for additional troops," he said. "That is utterly perplexing, given the security situation there."

The view among many in the administration, Congress and military interviewed for this article was that Iraq likely would simmer down in the coming months and that security conditions would improve, in part, they said, because of the extraordinary efforts by the 122,000 troops deployed there.

"I suspect he will be saved by the strong backs and the creativity of the Army soldiers in Iraq," one White House aide said. "And that`s an incredible irony."



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Paying the Price




Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page B06


NOW THAT THE administration has submitted a bill for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, the question becomes how to pay it. And not just for 2004: The administration`s $87 billion request comes on top of an extra $79 billion in emergency spending this year and an unknown but undoubtedly significant amount in 2005 and beyond. The administration has requested $20 billion in reconstruction funds, but rebuilding costs are expected to rise to between $50 billion and $75 billion. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told lawmakers at a closed briefing last week that Canada has promised $300 million and European countries have pledged additional "hundreds of millions." Even assuming more will be forthcoming, that`s some shortfall. After adding in continued military costs, expect serious sticker shock in 2005 as well.

That`s not an argument against this commitment. To the contrary, the biggest risks lie in skimping on what`s required to do the operation in Iraq right. There will be a lot of talk about the need for money to fix the infrastructure here as well as in Iraq. But lawmakers must resist the temptation either to pile on additional spending back home or to cut corners there. Congress also needs to resist the administration`s peremptory demands for cash without accountability. Reconstruction contracts should be as open to competitive bidding as possible.

More fundamentally, neither the Bush administration nor Congress can pretend that these costs don`t matter to the nation`s fiscal well-being. They do. They add to a deficit that was already spinning out of control before U.S. troops set foot in Baghdad. They keep on adding every year, with the extra interest costs that must be paid on the national debt. And they pile on top of other bills to pay (prescription drug coverage) and coming due (tackling Social Security and Medicare.) Yet the administration stays fixed on its irresponsible course -- not only maintaining that its tax cuts were affordable but pressing to worsen the damage by making them permanent.

Indeed, two days before he unloaded the $87 billion figure on the American public, President Bush made the jaw-dropping argument that we shouldn`t let "a quirk in Senate rules" stand in the way of permanent cuts. "When we threw out the old taxes, Americans didn`t expect to see them sneaking in through the back door," the president said -- as if this wasn`t precisely the deal he agreed to at the time. At a time when the administration`s own projections show a $562 billion deficit next year, including the emergency spending, Mr. Bush is asking for another $1.1 trillion in tax cuts through 2013. Meanwhile, the administration blithely pretends that its already unrealistic vow to cut the deficit in half by 2008 will remain somehow unaffected by these additional costs.

Congress needs to restore some sanity to this process. At the very least, it should make clear that there can be no new tax cuts while costs are mounting in Iraq. It may not be politically viable in a Congress still gripped by tax-cut fever, but lawmakers ought to consider whether the existing cuts are sustainable in light of the grim new budgetary realities. In 2004 alone, Mr. Bush`s tax cuts will cost $275 billion -- three times what he`s seeking for Iraq. Two-thirds of the cuts go to changes that primarily benefit upper-income taxpayers or businesses; only one-third to "middle-class" provisions such as the new 10 percent bracket, the increase in the child tax credit and the elimination of the marriage penalty.

Mr. Bush told the country the other night that winning the war on terror "will require sacrifice." The only people Mr. Bush is asking sacrifice of now are the troops overseas, their anxious and grieving families back home -- and the future generations who will ultimately have to pay the price for his fiscal irresponsibility.



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Our War`s Mistaken Premise


By Benjamin R. Barber

Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page B07


The president is changing tactics. Forget weapons of mass destruction, the war in Iraq is about terrorism; time to go back to the United Nations to get some help with the military occupation and with paying the $87 billion reckoning for staying in Afghanistan and Iraq that is now being acknowledged. But he has reaffirmed his strategic vision: It is America`s strategy of preventive war against rogue states, the very concept that has been the source of America`s inability so far to defeat terrorism or establish anything resembling democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That is the powerful lesson that can be drawn from the carnage at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, from the emerging insurrectionary alliance between Baathists and radical Muslim groups, the reemergence of the Taliban and its politics of assassination in Afghanistan, and the renewed rise of sectarian militia forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

To fully understand America`s failure, we have to back up to 9/11. Preventive war, the novel national-security doctrine announced after 9/11, exempted the United States from the obligation to justify war on grounds of self-defense or imminent threat. It promulgated a new right "to act against emerging threats before they are fully formed," to "act preemptively" against states that harbor or support terrorism. It is this strategic doctrine, and not tactics or policies on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is now failing so catastrophically.

The war on terrorism remains the Bush administration`s ultimate rationale. The administration continues to insist that "in Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror" (Vice President Cheney), that "military and rehabilitation efforts now under way in Iraq are an essential part of the war on terror" (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz), that Saddam Hussein`s Iraq was a "terror regime" and that the ongoing war there today must be understood as part of the war on terror (President Bush).

Yet terrorism is flourishing -- not just in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kenya and Indonesia but in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were supposedly defeated, and in Iraq, where, prior to the war, there was no sponsored international terrorism at all.

The harrowing truth is that preventive attacks on "rogue states" and "those who sponsor or harbor terrorism" fail because they are premised on a fatal misunderstanding of what terrorism is and how it operates. In operational terms, terrorists are not cancers on the body of a weakened nation-state that die when the state dies. Rather, they are migrating parasites that temporarily occupy hosts (rogue states, weak governments, even transparent democracies). When a given host is destroyed or rendered immune to such parasites, they opportunistically move on to another host -- ever ready to reoccupy the earlier host if it is revived as a "friendly" regime. With their Taliban host eliminated, al Qaeda cadres moved on -- to the Afghan hinterland, to Pakistan, to Morocco, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the Philippines, maybe back to Hamburg and to those places identified early on as harboring the terrorists of 9/11, Florida and New Jersey, and now back to Baghdad and Kabul.

Terrorists are not states, they use states. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself said after 9/11, in words he has apparently forgotten, "the people who do this don`t lose, don`t have high-value targets. They have networks and fanaticism." Because they are "stateless martyrs," as happy to die as to kill, terrorists cannot be defeated through preventive military victories over countries that may share their agendas or harbor their agents. They have neither an address to which complaints and troops can be sent nor conventional "interests" that can be negotiated or penalized. Al Qaeda is in effect a malevolent NGO.

Terrorists are, in the president`s words, "enemies of the civilized world." But what makes the world civilized is its adherence to the rule of law, its insistence that it will not attack adversaries, however evil, unless first attacked by them, its reliance on multilateral cooperation and international courts rather than unilateral military force and the right of the strongest.

The president`s policies meet fear with fear, trying to "shock and awe" adversaries into submission. But fear is terrorism`s medium, not ours. Democracies that respect the rule of law cannot win wars unilaterally and in defiance of international law -- not when the enemy has no policy but chaos, no end but annihilation (including its own).

Harry Truman once said that all war prevents is peace. Preventive war has neither created peace nor preempted terrorism. The intelligence and police cooperation that the Bush administration has quietly been engaged in has, to the contrary, had more success. But it is directed at terrorists, not rogue states, and it has succeeded through the very cooperation and multilateralism that unilateral preventive war undermines.

Pursuing preventive war at a growing cost in American lives and money against regimes the Bush administration doesn`t like or countries that brutalize their own people may appeal to American virtue, but it undermines American security.

The only proper way the United States can honor both its national interests and those who have died in this war and its aftermath is to abandon its failed preventive war doctrine and rejoin the world it has tried in vain to pacify through unilateral preemptive force.

The writer is Kekst professor of civil society at the University of Maryland and the author of "Fear`s Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy."



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Giving Iraqis a Stake


By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page B07


Iraq has endured a brutal summer of deadly car bomb attacks, of isolated but steady assassinations of U.S. troops and those who work with them, and of sabotage of electricity, water and oil installations. And yet the country has not plunged into chaos or the bloody civil war that experts have long predicted. Iraq still stands.

It is far too early to say that the U.S.-led reconstruction effort has shaken off the worst punches its enemies can throw. Saddam Hussein`s dead-enders and the Islamic jihadists who have poured into the country since the end of the spring invasion are certain to test America`s strategic patience and Iraq`s social cohesion again and again. Chaos that forces a U.S. withdrawal is their objective.

But there are signs that after each new horror inflicted by these forces of destabilization, which appear to be coordinating their deadly work, a fragile equilibrium of order returns in a country that has known only war and tyranny for the past three decades.

There has been relative calm, for example, in Najaf since the barbaric bombing there on Aug. 29 of the Shiite central mosque and shrine of Ali. Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim and 124 others died in that blast, which seemed planned by their killers to foment sectarian strife between the country`s Shiite majority and the Sunni minority that was Saddam`s base of support. But the Shiites have not sought bloody revenge nor taken to the streets in sustained protest.

Why is a matter of speculation. "Our conversations with moderate Shiite leaders since Aug. 29 have been extraordinarily free of bitterness and rancor. They would never say so directly, but perhaps this tragedy has emphasized for them the reality that the occupation is not the biggest problem they face," a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Baghdad says.

That does not mean the occupation authority will not be criticized by those same leaders publicly for failing to protect Hakim -- even though the CPA provided weapons, funds for training and hiring guards and other logistical help to the governor of Najaf weeks before the explosion. Shiite leaders had asked that U.S. troops not be stationed near the mosque, according to CPA officials.

In a related development, FBI explosive experts have turned up evidence linking the Najaf explosion to the suicide bombing of the United Nations compound on Aug. 19 and to the Aug. 7 attack on the Jordanian embassy, both in Baghdad, according to one U.S. official. "They think they see the signature of one bomb maker in the three attacks," this official told me.

That raises serious questions about the extent of support for the insurrection, which could be dealt a severe blow by the capture of a lone bomb maker. The occupation authorities also see hope in a new effort to give tribes in the Sunni heartland a stake in protecting oil pipelines and other facilities from sabotage.

These authorities now understand much better the system of rewards and punishments that the Baathist regime used to keep these tribes loyal. For one thing, the tribes were given regular payments if the pipelines in their territories encountered no problems. Sabotage or other security problems in a tribe`s area brought an immediate cutoff of those payments from Baghdad.

The protection funds ceased with the invasion -- and sabotage suddenly erupted. Now payments to the tribes are being restored by CPA officials, who are silently testing the theory that Sunni sheiks looking for a renewal of their customary meal ticket may have been negligent about, if not responsible for, damage to the national pipeline system. Paid town councils are also being established in Sunni areas and warned that salaries will stop if there are security problems in their jurisdictions.

Shocked at this accommodation of a protection racket? I`m prepared to hold the outrage. The biggest problem of the occupation has been the inability to find Sunni leaders who saw a stake for themselves in the occupation`s success and who would protect that stake by joining the fight against the forces of destabilization. The tragic killing of Iraqi civilians in Fallujah on Friday may set back this effort, at least momentarily.

U.S. forces operating in a distant land of a seemingly unending nightmare need all the help they can get in isolating and eliminating the Iraqi dead-enders and the Wahhabi extremists moving into the country from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Help begins at home in this case. The sang-froid that Iraq`s Shiites and Kurds have shown in responding to the killers` provocations and the new U.S. thinking on engaging the Sunnis at the local level will hardly guarantee success. They do suggest, however, that the struggle to rebuild Iraq has certainly not been lost.

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Their Eyes on Iraq, Egyptian Villagers Mourn Loss of Old World Order
By Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writer

September 14, 2003

MIT YAEESH, Egypt — With night approaching, the farmers squatted against their barns in the shade of grape arbors, drinking black tea and complaining about the occupation of Iraq.

They`re hundreds of miles from Baghdad, but the people of this tiny village have tracked every wrinkle of the war in Iraq with keen attention. And as their water buffaloes gnawed on corn husks and the air flickered with dragonflies, their talk turned yet again to politics.

How would the scandal over weapons expert David Kelly`s suicide play out in Britain, one of them wondered. Might it tarnish Prime Minister Tony Blair, and could George W. Bush face a similar political threat?

"Now, really, I want to know — are the sons of Saddam Hussein really dead? We hear different stories, so what`s the truth?" 18-year-old farmer Sadik Mohammed pressed an American. "We didn`t expect this occupation. So what`s the real reason? Where`s Saddam Hussein? Where are the weapons? What`s going on?"

It`s a languid summer on the ancient farmlands of the Nile Delta. The mangoes are ripe in the grove near the old cemetery. The heat of day is thick and soft as butter in the fields. On the banks of the canal, men loiter with fishing poles, indifferent to the trash and sewage afloat in the green waters.

The Times first visited Mit Yaeesh in February, during the long months of anxiety that led up to the invasion. Then, the villagers dreaded an attack on Iraq, and fretted especially about the economic damage it might unleash. Now the panic is gone, and the village is calmer, because a threat that was looming has at least taken form. But helplessness and anger are deeper than ever, for the villagers sense that their fears have come true. These impoverished families dread what may come next in what many interpret as the loss of their old world order.

Hunched in the hot shadows of his family`s sitting room and picking his words carefully, Mohammed Sezziq, a recent engineering school graduate, said it was not the American people or culture he deplored, but the U.S. government.

His mother nodded in agreement. "They`re a bunch of fundamentalists," his father called from across the sitting room.

In this poor, proud land, as in much of the Arab world, the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq have played out as a personal affront. In Mit Yaeesh, a primitive farming village less than two hours by car from Cairo, the outrage and bewilderment are palpable. Anti-American anger has swelled. The people see Arabs fighting occupation on two fronts: Iraq and the Palestinian territories. There is more talk of pan-Arab nationalism.

"There is anger, genuine anger, and hatred for the Americans and the British," said Ahmed Lachine, head of the village. "Even in private gatherings, even in weddings, we talk only about the war. It is a very bad feeling."

Before the invasion, the farmers predicted that war would deepen their poverty and raise prices. Indeed, since the bombs began falling in Iraq in late March, costs have swelled throughout Egypt. The price of fertilizer and farming supplies has more than doubled since February; foodstuffs also are more expensive. Economists say the price hikes have more to do with the Egyptian government`s decision to float the pound than with the war, but in Mit Yaeesh the events are mingled in popular interpretation.

"From the first day of the war, the prices have gone up and up some more," farmer Alaa Himdan said. "Rice, flour, even the cost of gold has gone up."

On a dusky August evening in Mit Yaeesh, the old women sat on stone stoops to cool themselves. With a glass of sweet boiled milk, Lachine rested from a day in the fields, and complained about the Americans. They`re like the Roman Empire, he said angrily, conquering land from Afghanistan to Iraq.

"The Americans know what they`re doing," he said. "And we know what they want — they want the entire world to follow their rules and obey them."

Villager after villager spoke the same phrase: The United States wants to "redraw the map of the Middle East," they said. They believe Americans want to build an empire, protect Israel and win oil. It is hard to find a single villager who believes anything else, even though Saddam Hussein is reviled here.

"Everybody is angry," said Magda Lachine, the mother of two grown children and an administrator at one of the village schools. "Everybody is saying it`s an invasion, and the country is falling to pieces. People are sad and upset, like there`s this nightmare, and for what?"

America has long been unpopular around here, particularly because of its political and financial support for Israel, a nation many of the men here were sent to fight in the 1960s and 1970s. But when the United States bombed Baghdad, fear and resentment found a new vessel. "It`s solidified, it`s taken form," Ahmed Lachine, the village chief, said.

"The dream of Arab youth is still to go to America," Sezziq said. "America is a fantasy. This place — look at it, it stinks. There`s nothing for the young, absolutely no work opportunities."

In a few days, Sezziq would leave his village. It would be a dramatic rite for a man who in his 20 years has spent exactly one week away from home. That was for a summer course, and Sezziq couldn`t concentrate — he was too homesick for Mit Yaeesh.

Still, he`s grateful for the chance to travel to the southern Egyptian desert, where he`s found a job on a government irrigation project. Among his high school class, he alone finished university and drummed up employment.

"I`m very lucky — I got the job through contacts," he said. "Most people have no contacts, and they have no work."

Most of the men here are tenant farmers, scratching a living from dirt they don`t own. They grow clover and rice, corn and peanuts. They eat what they need, then take the leftovers to market. Now they are waiting for the rice to ripen, and the work is lighter. The boys play soccer when the heat lets up.

It`s a meager living, and sometimes it`s not enough. Many fathers and husbands join the army to get extra pay and benefits. Other families migrate to the Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, to find jobs, earn a nest egg and eventually travel home again. Those households are easy to spot along the dark dirt roads — the homecoming migrants smear cement over their mud houses, and wash the walls in purples, pinks and limes.

In these politically charged times, the village is hungry for information. Radio news scratches at sundown from a mosque minaret. Women slip quietly under the droning speakers, baskets balanced on their heads. Children veer past on rusty bicycles. Some families have invested in satellite dishes, and the Al Jazeera station is a favorite. Newspapers are eagerly devoured and shared.

"Just the other day we saw a picture of an American soldier and a little kid who was injured, and it hurt us so much," Ahmed Omara said. Cataracts cloud the eyes of the 65-year-old farmer, but still he walks the fields in a smeared smock and tattered moccasins.

"All of the people are depressed," he said.

The village has an isolated air, but modern Egypt is creeping in. There are several Internet connections in Mit Yaeesh. And in a dim slab house by the canal, children clump around to do mythical battles against flashing electronic figures — the family owns a PlayStation.

But time moves to a slower meter here. Families still refer to the lands their ancestors left to migrate to this lush, fertile run of earth 300 years ago. They say that once upon a time, six sisters married into six different families, binding the entire village in blood. "Everyone, even the Christians, we`re all related," said Ahmad Sazziq, a retired soldier.

On a recent evening the singsong chant of the Koran rang over the town. There was a funeral that day, and also a wedding. Mourning men sat glumly before the mosque, staring over the canal with empty eyes. Nearby, the trees were strung with tiny lights for a wedding dance.

Islam exists quietly alongside the Christianity practiced by hundreds of the village`s households. From the vibrant green washes of rice paddies, the mosque minaret and the church spire rise on the horizon like bookends.

British occupation is still discussed as a recent phenomenon, and in this light the American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded as an untenable piece of Western folly. The Americans don`t understand the Iraqi character, the villagers say.

"The Egyptian people are kind," Sazziq said. "If the economy is good, we forget. But the Iraqi people won`t forget. When we were all colonized, they were the only ones that weren`t colonized. They are a very stubborn people."

Villagers here have long defined the enemy as the village across the canal. It is in a way the story, old as the Bible, of the feuding brothers — the clumps of mud and brick houses could be mirror images. But fistfights tend to erupt between the two villages, and the opposite bank is discussed in ominous mutterings.

These days, though, the threat has drifted to a more distant place, and to what end it leads, nobody here can be sure. As the sun slid lower in the sky, Alaa Himdan sighed.

"We don`t even know what the end of the war means," he said. "In a way we want to fight. But what are we going to fight? Where will we fight?"


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THE WORLD



Some Iraqis Say They Need Less Foreign Involvement, Not More
U.S. request for troops prompts worries of increased instability and delayed self-rule.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writer

September 14, 2003

BAGHDAD — Iraqis say they are concerned that moves by the United States to bring other countries into the military and reconstruction efforts here are likely to create more problems than they solve and may prolong the occupation of Iraq by foreigners.

There is broad agreement that including soldiers from any of the neighboring states — especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Iran — would run the risk of creating more instability because all three have highly charged relationships with some Iraqi groups. The Kurds, for instance, are extremely wary of the Turks, whom they see as oppressors. And many Iraqis are uncomfortable with the United Nations, which they see as a heavily bureaucratic organization that is unable or even unwilling to spend enough money to put the country back on its feet.

"Generally speaking, we would not want other foreign forces to enter Iraq The point is that Iraqis should take control, not foreigners, as soon as possible," said Nasir Chaderchi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and president of the National Democratic Party.

Mohammed Tawfik, a leading Kurdish politician from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who now serves as the minister of minerals and industry, was blunt about the prospect of soldiers arriving from neighboring countries.

"It is very important to us that none of the neighbors are involved," he said.

Kurds live primarily in three countries — Turkey, Iraq and Iran. They have long struggled for an independent state, which the Turks view as a threat to their territorial integrity.

Habib Jabber, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, said any benefit to Iraq was not the primary reason the United States was seeking broader international involvement.

"This is being done for your own internal reasons — political reasons, economic reasons," he said. "This isn`t for the Iraqi people."

Jabber, like many Iraqis, rattled off an array of explanations of why internationalization made little sense to Iraqis. The Iraqis` biggest complaint is that the U.S.-led occupation force has failed to bring security and stability, both of which are prerequisites for a vigorous rebuilding effort. They say it is doubtful that international troops will do any better, and might even worsen the situation because of language and cultural barriers.

"If they sent 500,000 Iraqis to Jordan to police the country, do you think they would do a good job?" he asked. "And in that case, they speak the language and share traditions, but still, wouldn`t Jordanians do a better job themselves?"

If foreign troops do come in, they should be under American control to prevent coordination problems, Tawfik said.

The Iraqi view of the United Nations seems anything but sanguine, in part because of the organization`s role in imposing and enforcing sanctions against the country during former President Saddam Hussein`s rule. The U.N. is viewed as an agent of the United States, but a more difficult one to manage because of the multilateral interests that govern it.

Policymakers regard the United Nations as underfinanced for the rebuilding job facing the country.

"Iraq needs a lot of money, the infrastructure is destroyed; Iraq needs to recover in every aspect of life," said Tawfik, adding that when he worked with the U.N. in Kurdistan, he found the bureaucracy overwhelming. In Iraq, the biggest need is for adequate financing of the ministries so that they can do their job, Tawfik said.

Jabber, the political scientist, agreed: "We know the bureaucracy of the U.N. is huge and they will not spend the money necessary to reconstruct Iraq."



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ISLAM



Terrorists Betray Our Values
When Americans and Arabs unite, the enemies of peace will be defeated.
By King Abdullah II
Abdullah II is king of Jordan.

September 14, 2003



AMMAN, Jordan — This year, Jordanians, like Americans, have been killed and injured in devastating terror bombings in Saudi Arabia and Baghdad. The dead include a 5-year-old boy, Yazan Abassi, and his 10-year-old sister, Zeina. The faces of these victims and their grieving families are in my mind whenever I read terrorists` claims to speak for the Arab and Muslim people. In fact, my people have been among the first to suffer from those who preach the culture of terror and seek power through violence. And their claim that Islam justifies their actions is, pure and simple, a lie.

The evil that occurred Sept. 11 two years ago left scars on the whole world, but none as great as the false idea that Islam encourages violence. Yet according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, this is what a growing number of Americans think. That`s a misunderstanding that threatens to divide the friends of peace, Arab and American, just when we most need to stand together.

The truth is that from its very earliest days, Islam has called on its believers to lead lives of peace and tolerance. The very name of Islam is rooted in the word for peace, al salaam. Far from sanctioning the killing of innocents, our faith prohibits it. Jihad, so often translated as "holy war," actually means struggle. And the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, taught that the greater holy war is the war inside ourselves, against our own weaknesses and failings.

When extremists commit atrocities, they are also doing violence to Islamic teachings. Long before the 20th century`s Geneva Conventions on war, Muslim soldiers were given strict rules of conduct to protect civilians. Even today, schoolchildren learn a famous speech by the Prophet`s first successor, Abu Bakr. He commands integrity, forbids the killing of innocents of any faith and bans wanton destruction: "Do not betray, do not deceive, do not bludgeon and maim, do not kill a child, nor a woman, nor an old man," he instructed. "Do not burn; do not cut down a fruit tree If you come across communities who have consecrated themselves to the [Christian church], leave them."

It is also untrue that Islam forbids its believers from engaging constructively in the modern world. The Koran and Hadith — the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him — support a dynamic faith of discourse and interpretation. From the earliest times, believers were called on to discuss, reason and apply the principles of their faith to the real world around them.

The resulting golden age of Islam, beginning in the 9th century, was driven by the work of enlightened Muslim thinkers. They pioneered a rationalist, liberal tradition and a thriving, multiethnic civilization. Islamic scholars set milestones in medicine, astronomy, science and social justice, ideas that paved the way for the European Renaissance. Great Arab cities provided refuge and new ideas to travelers from around the world. Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars, like the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, worked together in the royal courts.

In the 14th century, a new kind of orthodoxy came to power, which closed the door on debate and discovery. Yet the age-old, positive traditions of Islam provide another path, a path that respects diversity, pioneers new ideas and empowers people throughout society. As an Islamic nation for the 21st century, Jordan is inspired by these values as we shape an open, democratic and free civil society.

In 2003 there are more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide, and the vast majority are people of peace. Since September 2001, this moderate, silent majority of Muslims has begun to speak up about the true Islam. Jordan is leading the way. For us, this is a historic responsibility. Our soil, the Levant, is after all the ancient home of all three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Here at the home of faith, we are determined to spread Islam`s promise of tolerance, justice and progress — both within our own country and as a model for peacemaking and democratic reform in our region.

It is also important for the true Islam to be understood in the West. Ours is a critical moment in history, a time of genuine possibilities for progress — in the war on terror, in the peace process in the Middle East, in the reconstruction of Iraq. The enemies of peace would like nothing better than to discourage and divide us. We must not let it happen.

This week I will be in Washington, D.C., to talk with President Bush and Congress about our shared goals for peace, and how to achieve them. Jordan and the United States have a significant strategic alliance that is contributing to the success of the global war on terror. In the Middle East, we have worked closely together to bring peace to the homeland of faith — to end the conflict and occupation that have caused so much suffering to Palestinians and Israelis alike. The "road map" to peace has been sanctioned by the international community. It offers Israelis collective security guaranteed by all Arabs; a peace treaty and normal relations with Arab states; and an end to the conflict. It offers Palestinians an end to the occupation; a viable, independent state by 2005; and the promise to live as a free and prospering people.

The road map can take us to a lasting peace, peace that is an essential requirement for development and reform throughout the Middle East, peace that will end the festering despair that terrorism and hatred have fed on. But success will require our full commitment, our resources and, most important, our unity.

The only people who win when Americans feel divided from their Arab and Muslim friends are the extremists and haters. Let`s not allow these enemies of peace to do any more violence than they already have. Now, more than ever, we need to stand together, as allies, partners and friends.

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RELIGION



God Help the Democrats
By John H. Bunzel
John H. Bunzel is a past president of San Jose State University, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a senior research fellow at Stanford`s Hoover Institution.

September 14, 2003

STANFORD — Millions of Americans do not believe in God. They do not invest moral authority in a transcendent source such as the Bible, or deal in absolutes of right and wrong, or divide the world into simplistic categories of good and evil.

Such people, and I include myself among them, have tended to find themselves more comfortable in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party, where a marked strain of Christian fundamentalism runs strong.

I sometimes wonder, though, whether we nonbelievers are good for the party.

As political analyst Michael Barone has noted, Americans "increasingly vote as they pray, or don`t pray." By a wide margin (87% in a 2002 survey), U.S. voters say religion is important to them.

The Democrats, therefore, cannot afford to be perceived as the party of irreligion or as inhospitable to committed persons of faith. We should remember that the only Democrats who became president in the last 35 years were Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both of whom spoke openly about their strong religious beliefs without compromising the principle of church-state separation.

A 2001 study by political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio confirmed a significant religious division in the electorate, with secularists and religious modernists attracted to the Democratic Party and religious traditionalists more likely to be Republican. Among their other findings:

• In 2000, for the first time, white Catholics gave a larger share of their votes to a Republican presidential candidate than did white mainline Protestants.

• A deep cultural and religious divide among Americans has its roots in "the increased prominence of secularists within the Democratic Party, and the party`s resulting antagonism toward traditional values." Secularists first appeared as a political force within the party at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, when the party was captured by a faction whose cultural reform agenda was resoundingly rejected by an electorate that preferred Richard Nixon to George McGovern.

• Since the election in 1992, secularists and traditionalists have voiced "mirror-opposite `likes` and `dislikes` " about the stances of both major parties toward religious people, the Christian right, abortion, gay rights, school prayer and other cultural concerns.

• Democratic opposition to Christian fundamentalism appears disproportionately among secularists, liberal-left party activists and college graduates. This hostility is not shared by rank-and-file Democrats or the broader segment of the voting public. Furthermore, twice as many voters expressed unfavorable feelings toward "nonbelievers" than they did toward the Christian conservative movement.

Secularist Democrats and even many religious voters are particularly hot and bothered by President Bush`s regular religious references. But presidents have always talked about God. In speaking about the interrelatedness of all humans, President Clinton said in 1997: "It is not enough to say we are all equal in the eyes of God. We are also all connected in the eyes of God." Secularist Democrats are much more annoyed by Bush`s invocation of the Almighty (with its undertone of "America has God on its side") because they feel his religious convictions do not influence his policies on such issues as health care, the needs of the poor and the environment. But they attack his religious views at their peril.

Fully aware that the Republicans have become the party of religious conservatives and seeking to put Democrats on the defensive, the president understands that if religion becomes a wedge issue in the U.S., it`s the Republicans who will benefit. He has brought issues to the fore that will accentuate the rift, as when he declared his opposition to gay marriage. "Marriage is between a man and a woman," he told a White House press conference in July, "and we ought to codify that" in law.

Although not an issue likely to determine the outcome of the 2004 election, Democrats would be foolish to think the issue is unimportant. Gay marriage has become a controversial metaphor for a range of other politically sensitive questions. Any Democrat hoping to be president must be prepared to provide answers that will satisfy a majority of the voters, beginning with firm support for the "sanctity of marriage" between a man and a woman, which most Americans believe is the best family structure in which to raise children.

Democrats have many good reasons to oppose Bush in 2004. But they must be careful not to lose touch with the majority of voters. Yes, they must energize the party`s liberal base. But at a time when Republicans are attracting an increasing number of voters, Democrats must also recognize that this effort will not be enough to win the presidency.

Just because Bush seems obligated "to campaign with Jesus," Democrats should not feel precluded from reaching out to Catholic and other religious moderates whose loyalties are neither fixed nor certain and who are motivated by politics as well as faith. As author Amy Sullivan observed in the Washington Monthly, "They`re not looking for a tent revival" at next year`s Democratic convention. "They`re just looking for a little respect."

Traditionally, Democrats have been a coalition party of many groups. In their efforts to become once again the country`s majority party, they should speak to voters of all faiths — believers, half-believers and nonbelievers — in a language that lets them know they have a home in a party that values diverse opinions, prefers a government that allows people choices in their private lives and, above all, prizes its long record of looking forward for solutions to our most difficult problems.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 9:59 a.m. EDT September 14, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Secretary of State Colin Powell is in Baghdad, Iraq, where he has met with leaders, including members of the Coalition Provisional Authority. He tells "Fox News Sunday" there`s still a security problem in the capital and elsewhere. But he says one has "to get away from Washington" to see the good things happening in Iraq.
The military says a U.S. soldier has been killed in a roadside bomb attack on an American convoy in the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah (fuh-LOO`-juh). Fallujah has again become especially dangerous after a friendly fire incident involving an American patrol that killed at least eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard Friday.
Angry Iraqis have been lashing out at Americans, following the deaths of eight Iraqi policemen killed by friendly fire involving U.S. troops. A Jordanian security guard was also killed. In Fallujah (fuh-LOO`-juh), mourners shouted "America is the enemy of Allah." The U.S. military has issued a statement of condolence for Friday`s incident.
President Bush has moved to reassure the nation about progress in Iraq during his weekly radio address. Bush said the U.S. is "following a clear strategy" to fight terrorism and further democracy in Iraq.
After meeting with U.N. Security Council members in Geneva, Secretary of State Colin Powell says there`s a basis for finding a consensus on Iraq, but major differences remain. The U.S. is seeking a resolution to get more international help in the post-war effort there.
The U.S. commander who led the raid that found Saddam Hussein`s two sons says he`d rather see Saddam dead -- but the former Iraqi dictator will get a chance to give up if he`s ever found. Colonel Joe Anderson also says American forces won`t hold their fire if the 14 or so bodyguards supposedly with Saddam shoot at soldiers.
Japan is sending a fact-finding mission to Iraq in preparation for a possible dispatch of ground troops to help with U.S-led reconstruction efforts. The team of ten officials -- who are expected to leave Tuesday -- will assess whether it`s safe to send a peacekeeping force and decide what type of humanitarian assistance is needed.

CASUALTIES
U.S. casualties reported today: One soldier is dead and three others wounded after their convoy was attacked on the outskirts of Fallujah, Iraq.
A total of 293 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 74 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. The war itself took 138 American lives.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
US UK Other* Total Avg Days
294 50 2 346 1.94 178

Latest Military Fatality Date: 9/14/2003

09/14/03 CENTCOM
One US soldier killed, three wounded, in IED attack in Fallujah on Sept. 14th.
09/14/03 New York Times
A roadside bomb attack on a convoy in the troubled city of Fallujah killed one U.S. soldier and injured three others
09/12/03 Centcom: 2 Killed, 7 Wounded
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two Combined Joint Task Force 2 soldiers were killed and seven were wounded when a small arms firefight broke out while conducting a raid in Ramadi at approximately 3 a.m. on Sep. 12.
09/11/03 Yahoo: US forces were embroiled firefight
US forces were embroiled in a 90-minute firefight near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, and at least three Americans were wounded in the latest upsurge of attacks in Iraq
09/11/03 Centcom: ONE SOLDIER KILLED, TWO WOUNDED
One Coalition soldier was killed and two were injured when a tire on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck exploded while the soldiers were changing the tire in Balad

[Joerver]

Bush: The Making of a Candidate

Texas Gov. George W. Bush. (AP photo)


A seven-part series on Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush traces the Texas governor`s lifelong effort to reconcile the expectations placed on him with the success he sought.

Heute der sechste Teil. In den letzten Tagen teil 1-5.

Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings

The old Petroleum Building in Midland, where George W. Bush had his oil company offices.
(By Susan Biddle – The Post)


By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 30, 1999; Page A1


Sixth of seven articles
As world oil prices plummeted in the winter of 1985-86, George W. Bush faced the most serious crisis of his 11-year career as a West Texas oilman.
Spectrum 7, his exploration and development company, had reported a net loss of $1.6 million in 1985, due to the fast-deteriorating value of its holdings. As the price of oil fell from $25 to $9 a barrel, the firm was on its way to losing another $402,000 by mid-1986. Bush`s company owed more than $3 million in bank loans and other debts with no hope of paying them off in time. His investors had disappeared.

On the cusp of his 40th birthday, Bush had two choices: Cut his staff to the bone, hunker down and pray for oil prices to climb before the banks foreclosed; or find a bigger company that was willing to scoop him up, debts and all. "I`m all name and no money," the son of the then-vice president used to say.

Bush`s name, however, was to help rescue him, just as it had attracted investors and helped revive his flagging fortunes throughout his years in the dusty plains city of Midland. A big Dallas-based firm, Harken Oil and Gas, was looking to buy up troubled oil companies. After finding Spectrum, Harken`s executives saw a bonus in their target`s CEO, despite his spotty track record.

By the end of September 1986, the deal was done. Harken assumed $3.1 million in debts and swapped $2.2 million of its stock for a company that was hemorrhaging money, though it had oil and gas reserves projected to produce $4 million in future net revenue. Harken, a firm that liked to attach itself to stars, had also acquired Bush, whom it used not as an operating manager but as a high-profile board member.

"One of the reasons Harken was so interested in merging was because of George," said Paul Rea, a geologist who had been president of Spectrum 7. "They believed having George`s name there would be a big help to them. They wanted him on their board."

The buyout not only rescued Bush financially but gave him the collateral for an investment a few years later in the Texas Rangers baseball team that eventually made him a millionaire. In addition to the seat on the board, he received more than $300,000 of Harken stock, options to buy more, and a consulting contract that paid him as much as $120,000 a year in the late `80s, when he was working full time on his father`s presidential campaign.

It was one of the biggest breaks of Bush`s life. Still, the Harken deal completed a disappointing reprise of what was becoming a familiar pattern. As an oilman, Bush always worked hard, winning a reputation as a straight-shooter and a good boss who was witty, warm and immensely likable. Even the investors who lost money in his ventures remained admirers, and some of them are now raising money for his presidential campaign.

But the story of Bush`s career in oil, which began following his graduation from Harvard Business School in the summer of 1975 and ended when he sold out to Harken and headed for Washington, is mostly about his failure to succeed, despite the sterling connections his lineage and Ivy League education brought him.

Thanks to his and his family`s ties to wealthy investors around the country, including prominent Republicans, Bush was repeatedly able to raise money to invest in oil drilling, especially when prices were booming and tax breaks were inviting in the late 1970s. But connections could not help with the tricky business of picking profitable holes to drill, and Bush never made a big score.

In fact, Bush lost money for most of his well-connected investors. At the same time, the management fees and other expenses he collected from them kept him in business and enabled him to buy oil reserves for his company`s own account, including the reserves that eventually attracted Harken`s attention.

Three times during his years in Midland, Bush was saved from financial trouble or stagnation by the appearance of new partners or financial angels who gave him a fresh start. One was a Princeton classmate and friend of James A. Baker III, who was to serve as his father`s secretary of state; another was a fellow Yale man who shared Bush`s love for baseball.

The third was Harken, which was to save Bush from humiliating failure but also create a target for later criticism. Reporters would scrutinize the deal as early as 1990. Led by then-Texas Gov. Ann Richards, Bush`s opponent in the 1994 gubernatorial election, his political critics have asked whether Harken used Bush`s name to obtain oil business. Even now, questions linger about a 1990 sale of Harken stock by Bush that was the subject of a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

When it was over, Bush`s oil career had merely perpetuated the nagging pattern that marked his life until past the age of 40: Once again, he had followed his father`s path but failed to achieve his father`s success.

Fresh Out of Harvard, Into the Oil Business



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The idea to move back to Midland came from Jimmy Allison, a family friend and publisher of the Midland paper who had run Bush`s father`s first congressional race. On the way to Arizona during spring break in his last year at Harvard Business School, Bush stopped off in Midland and his childhood friend Joe O`Neill met him at the airport. O`Neill himself had just moved back to Midland to be in the oil business, and it didn`t take Bush long to decide that was where he wanted to be too.
"I was unencumbered in the sense of I was single and didn`t have any possessions," recalled Bush, "and I wasn`t tied to any plan that somebody had outlined for me. I got out there and it was clear this is the place I wanted to go."

That he would be imitating – or trying to imitate – his father, who had become a near- millionaire in Midland in the 1950s, never consciously occurred to him, Bush says. He says he saw it simply as an opportunity that caught his imagination after years of shuffling from one temporary job to another. To others, it was clear. "George was following in his father`s footsteps," said Paul Rea, who befriended Bush early on and later teamed up with him.

His resources were minimal – about $13,000, he said – the remainder of a Bush trust fund that paid his way through Yale and Harvard. He started out as a free-lance "landman," someone who tries to turn a buck by researching the titles to mineral rights at county courthouses and then going door to door as a front man for an oil company interested in leasing those rights.

"Geologists decide where to buy the leases," Rea said. "Landmen deal with people. George was ideal for that."

One of the first people Bush contacted was Martin Allday, a local oil and gas attorney and family friend who promptly took George under his wing. Allday sent him to county records offices to learn the ropes with young lawyer-landmen in Allday`s firm.

Bush organized his first company, Arbusto Energy Inc. ("Ar-boo-stow" is Spanish for Bush) in 1977 on the eve of a run for Congress and quickly put it to use as a credential for the political contest. But according to records on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arbusto didn`t start active operations until March 1979, months after Bush lost the race to Democrat Kent Hance. Bush opened a small office in Midland`s aging Petroleum Building, the same structure where his father started out in 1950.

From there, Bush began looking for investors to launch the annual drilling funds that he proposed to set up for oil and gas exploration and drilling activities. The Bush name, family ties and friendships, Ivy League credentials and Wall Street connections proved invaluable. Most of the recruiting was done by his uncle Jonathan Bush, a prominent investment manager and broker who was also active in Republican politics and fund-raising.

Jonathan Bush said he offered to help. He`d been busy raising money as a one-man show for his brother George`s presidential explorations under the name of the Fund for Limited Government and then became national finance co-chairman when the older Bush announced his candidacy on May 1, 1979. Not surprisingly, some of the father`s contributors also wound up on Bush`s list of investors.

"George was an easy sale," says Jonathan Bush. "I mean, the people that met him would say, right away, `I`d like to drill with this guy.` ... He had run for Congress. He was an upstanding guy. They figured he knew what he was doing, but mostly they figured they`d get a fair shake with him. There were a lot of people bilking investors in the oil business in those days."

Fast-rising oil prices were another drawing card, jumping from about $13 a barrel when Arbusto got going that spring to $30 by the end of the year. Oil exploration companies and their investors were always hoping for a big strike – an "elephant" or big field that would make them immensely rich – but failing that, Jonathan suggested, they could still console themselves with a modest income from less-risky drillings in proven areas, in which Arbusto participated, along with the big tax write-offs then available.

"The only people who go into it are people that aren`t going to miss the money," Jonathan Bush said with a laugh. If they could have "a shot" at a big payoff and still take "a huge write-off," they considered it a gamble worth taking.

Russell E. Reynolds (Yale `54), a prominent executive headhunter who was selected for the elite Whiffenpoofs ensemble by Jonathan (Yale `53), remembers Jonathan calling him up one day and saying, "I`ve got this nephew who lives in Texas. He`s terrific, he`s in the oil and gas business and he`s looking for investors. Would you like to meet him?" Reynolds said yes and shortly thereafter, Bush stopped by Reynolds`s Park Avenue office. "I thought he was one of the most attractive people I`d ever met – very classy, very smart," Reynolds said.

Reynolds put up $23,250 for Arbusto`s 1980 drilling program and a similar amount in a later partnership. He doesn`t invest in oil and gas ventures anymore. "I think I ended up getting back 20 cents on the dollar," Reynolds recalled, though the write-offs he got "mitigated the pain."

The roster of prominent partners in Bush`s oil ventures could have been extracted from a business world`s who`s who: drugstore magnate and onetime New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lewis Lehrman and Lehrman family trusts ($140,500 over a three-year period); George L. Ball, then head of E.F. Hutton Inc., a New York stock brokerage ($100,000); George L. Ohrstrom, head of a New York investment management company and scion of one of Virginia`s richest families ($100,000); California venture capitalist William H. Draper III ($93,000); and John D. Macomber, chief executive of the Celanese Corp. and an old Yale friend of Jonathan`s ($79,500). Draper became president of the Export-Import Bank under President Ronald Reagan and Macomber held the same post under President George Bush.

Not all were recruited by Jonathan Bush, who was paid commissions for his work. Ball, for instance, was enlisted by Barbara Bush`s brother-in-law Scott Pierce, an associate at E. F. Hutton. Ohrstrom, who doesn`t give interviews, said through his wife that he and Bush`s father went to school together (they were four years apart at Greenwich Country Day). And Bush lined up others on his own, like Stephen Kass, a friend and classmate from Harvard Business School.

Kass said he knew oil investments were risky but recommended his stepfather put up $25,000 on behalf of the family. "It was money that was not essential for our family`s well-being," he said. "We wrote the money off the minute we invested."

Great Access to Investors Despite Middling Performance



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Access to the rich and famous, of course, isn`t available to everyone. But Bush and his father see no reason to apologize for it.
"My father`s name helped me attract early investors for my business," the former president said in response to written questions submitted by The Washington Post. "If my name did the same for `W,` great! To keep political backers and investors happy, you have to perform. `W` has."

In fact, Bush`s performance was about average, at best. By 1985, Arbusto had drilled, or had taken part in drilling, 99 wells, hitting oil or gas about 50 percent of the time. "There`s a lot of luck and a lot of science to oil drilling," Rea said. "Drilling is hit or miss. He didn`t have the luck."

Most who invested lost money. By the end of 1984, securities filings show, Bush`s limited partners had invested $4.66 million in Bush`s various drilling programs but they had received cash distributions of only $1.54 million.

They also got $3.89 million in tax deductions thanks to generous federal laws covering the oil industry. If the investors were in the highest tax bracket (70 percent in 1979, sliding down to 50 percent in 1982), those deductions would have given them tax savings of $2.91 million.

Bush`s company, 80 percent owned by Bush before a 1984 merger, did better than the investors. It put a total of $102,000 into the drilling funds and got back cash distributions of $362,000. From what the investors put up, it also took $216,000 off the top for management fees. With the addition of $100,000 in general and administrative fees (used to pay for travel, in-house legal fees, secretarial services and the like), Bush`s company collected $678,000 in fees and cash distributions on an investment of only $102,000.

Bush has a more upbeat recollection than the balance sheets suggest. Before oil prices collapsed, he said, "I [was] slowly but surely building a solid, small producing company and I thought we`d developed a reputation as honest operators who worked hard [and], who gave people a fair shake.

" ... I`m not going to pretend it was any huge success at the time," Bush said. But "the story not told [by the balance sheets] is what prospects were being developed or what potential we had. ... I had some good leases in our inventory."

A Straight-Shooter Who Made Contacts



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Despite frequent disappointments, Bush gained a reputation for straight-dealing, dogged effort and unshakable good humor. "There are people who live in $4 million homes, and have a yacht and then drill dry wells. That wasn`t the case with George," said Kass, who visited Bush in Midland. "If you saw how George lived in Midland, no one could think he was living off their money."
Bush would hit the local bars and country clubs at night, but colleagues say his having fun was good business too. In Midland back then, "a lot of people liked to go out and play," said Mark Owen, a geologist who worked for Bush from 1980 to 1984 as vice president in charge of exploration. "That`s how you make contacts. That`s one of the reasons George got to know everybody in town."

Bush has acknowledged he drank too much in those days, but people who worked for him say that it didn`t keep him from showing up at the office each morning at 8 and staying till 5 p.m. or often later.

Even though he wasn`t a geologist, Bush "had a pretty good intuitive sense about the business," Owen said. "He had a real good feel for it. And he was great at raising money, putting deals together." Bush would travel around the country, sometimes with Owen, sometimes by himself, looking for partners. "That, in my mind, was George`s strength," Owen said. "He knew a lot of people."

James McAninch, who joined Arbusto in 1982 to take charge of production, said Bush at that point was operating about 15 wells in the Midland area in which he had a majority interest.

"George was a good operator – very honest and straightforward," McAninch said. "He hired you for what you were qualified to do. He didn`t interfere. He turned you loose. He`d say, `Man, it`s your responsibility. You do your job, no problem.` ... He could make quick decisions too. ... He had enough savvy to ask almost all the right questions. And [months later] he`d remember what the answers were. He was very savvy about the oil fields."

Million-Dollar Transfusion for a Troubled Operation



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That, of course, didn`t save Bush from dry holes, and the constant search for new investors.
In 1982, he decided to raise more money by going public. But first, in January 1982, he got a generous $1 million transfusion from Philip A. Uzielli, a New York investor who paid that much for 10 percent of Arbusto`s far less valuable stock.

It was a badly needed boost. Arbusto`s balance sheets showed that at the end of 1981, it had little more than $48,000 in the bank and more than half of all its assets consisted of "accounts receivable," money owed to it by others. At the same time, the company owed almost $300,000 in bank loans and close to $120,000 to other creditors.

Bush said in interviews that he met Uzielli through Ohrstrom, though he can`t remember how he met Ohrstrom. A partner in Ohrstrom`s investment management company, Uzielli earlier had put up $50,000 for Arbusto`s 1980 program in the name of Executive Resources Corp., a company then headquartered in the Dutch West Indies. Bush said he didn`t know at first that Uzielli was also a Princeton classmate and friend of Baker, the manager of George H.W. Bush`s 1980 presidential primary campaign, but was aware of it by 1982 when Executive Resources, now headquartered in Panama, produced the $1 million.

While it might seem that Uzielli was putting in more than the company was worth, Bush said the balance sheets didn`t reflect "the unexplored potential ... all the reserves or all the leases we had."

"He`s a sophisticated investor," Bush said. Uzielli, who could not be contacted, told an interviewer in 1991 that he "lost a lot of money. ... Things were terrible."

Bush`s public drilling partnership made its debut in April 1982 under the name of Arbusto, but the "Bust" label the company had taken on may have hampered it. In what he has described as a "marketing" move, the vice president`s son changed the name to Bush Exploration and in June issued a new prospectus.

The offering was still a flop. Bush sought to raise $6 million but he drummed up just $1,141,000, less than he`d raised privately in each of the previous two years. He said oil prices had been sliding a bit and drilling funds were losing their appeal. Tax deductions weren`t as generous. (In 1985, the investors who did get in were offered 10 cents on the dollar to bail out.)

By 1984, the outlook was bleak. "We didn`t find much oil and gas," said Michael Conaway, Bush`s chief financial officer. "We weren`t raising any money."

Then, as Bush`s father was headed for reelection as Ronald Reagan`s vice president, two investors from Cincinnati, William O. DeWitt Jr. (Yale `63) and Mercer Reynolds III, stepped in. Heads of an oil exploration company called Spectrum 7, they`d met Bush earlier, around 1982, at a luncheon arranged by Rea, their man in Midland. DeWitt`s father, whose baseball career stretched back to 1916, had been owner of the St. Louis Browns and later the Cincinnati Reds and his love of baseball infected Bill Jr. Knowing what "a great baseball fan" Bush was, Rea decided the two should meet, and a lunch was arranged at the Midland Club atop the First National Bank Building.

DeWitt and Reynolds say they had never met Bush`s father and were "not involved in politics in any significant way" at the time.

DeWitt said they stayed in touch with Bush in the months that followed and eventually decided a merger would be a good idea. They joined up on Feb. 29, 1984, in a stock exchange that left DeWitt and Reynolds with 20.1 percent each of Spectrum 7 and Bush with 16.3 percent (1,166,400 shares). Bush was named Spectrum 7`s chairman and CEO with a $75,000-a-year salary and Rea was named president with $85,000.

"Arbusto and Bush Exploration were fairly unsuccessful," Rea said, but the Bush name was "definitely a drawing card."

"We wanted [Bush`s] leadership abilities, and his operational ability which we didn`t have," DeWitt said. "And he actually operated wells. We took parts of wells, we never operated wells."

Asked whether the fact that Bush was the vice president`s son was an attraction, DeWitt said he did not think it helped them raise any more money than before.

"There was obviously some notoriety because of who [Bush] was, but it didn`t open any doors for us," DeWitt said. "I mean our doors were already opened."

Rea remembers it somewhat differently. Bush`s name "was definitely a drawing card" as they traveled around the country, talking to stockbrokers, looking for investors. "Sometimes 30 to 40 people would come," Rea says. "He would never mention his dad but there was always the possibility that he [the senior Bush] would become president. People wanted to come and see what young George looked like."

The merger with Spectrum carried Bush only another two years. Then, the stunning price collapse in 1986 "just dried up all exploration money," the lifeline of small independent companies. "We couldn`t afford to continue doing what we were doing," Conaway said. "No one wanted to invest. ... Business as usual was not an option."

The only hope seemed to be finding another angel. Bush, Rea and Conaway started looking for small or medium-sized companies they might approach. Rea remembers they contacted at least one, in Pennsylvania, and were turned down.

Harken ended the search for them. The company had been taken over in 1983 by a group headed by a New York lawyer and management expert, Alan G. Quasha, who seems to have had a penchant for stars on his board. Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros was one; he was listed as the company`s biggest stockholder (46.8 percent) in 1986. Representatives of Harvard University`s endowment fund and a wealthy Saudi real estate magnate were given seats on the board in 1987.

Bush`s name was one of Spectrum`s obvious assets, but, according to Jeffrey Laikind, who was on Harken`s board at the time, not the most valuable one.

Laikind said that in Spectrum, "we saw an opportunity to buy a company at an attractive price" for its leases and potential. He said Bush`s name drew attention "much more" for the fact that he was "somebody who had been in the oil patch, somebody who had experience," although his status as the vice president`s son was "not a fact you could ignore." He said the deal was all the more attractive because "we were able to do it for stock." No money changed hands.

The merger became final in September 1986, with Harken handing over one share of its publicly traded stock in return for roughly five shares of Spectrum.

Bush doesn`t dispute the notion that his name may have been a factor, but he said, "It was really a reserve play ... an economic investment as well. ... I think you`re going to find that a publicly traded company must have a better rationale than to be able to acquire just a person`s name."

Full-Time Oil Days Over, Son Turns to Dad`s Campaign



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With the sale complete, Bush`s days as a full-time oilman were over. He spent most of his time in the next two years working for his father`s election campaign. He remained on the Harken board, and former board member Stuart Watson describes him as "a straight-arrow type ... very able and capable."
But four years later, his sale of his Harken stock prompted an SEC probe into whether he had engaged in insider trading. The probe centered on Bush`s sale of all of his 212,140 shares of Harken stock for $4 a share on June 22, 1990, just before the conclusion of a second quarter that produced huge losses. The transaction was to net Bush $835,307, according to the "notice of proposed sale," signed and dated June 22, that Bush was required to send to the SEC as a member of Harken`s board.

Bush said he made the move because he wanted to pay off a $500,000 bank loan he had obtained in 1989 to buy his slice of the Texas Rangers. "I didn`t need to pay it off," he said in an interview. "I did it because I just don`t like to carry debt."

Eight days after Bush`s stock sale, Harken wound up its second quarter with operating losses from day-to-day activities of $6.7 million, almost three times the losses it reported for the second quarter of 1989.

The public didn`t learn of this until Aug. 20, when the company, now known as Harken Energy, announced in a press release that its overall losses for the quarter, including non-recurring expenses as well as operating losses, totaled $23.2 million. Harken`s stock had slipped to $3 a share earlier that month when Iraq`s invasion of Kuwait stirred fears that it would endanger a potentially lucrative offshore drilling contract with Bahrain. On Aug. 20, the stock dropped to $2.37.

Did Bush know of the impending losses when he sold his stock in June? Federal securities law prohibits corporate "insiders" from trading "on the basis of" material information that is not publicly known.

Bush says he did not know, even though he had a seat on Harken`s three-member audit committee as well as its eight-member board of directors. He said he had no idea Harken was going to get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he had made the sale.

"I wouldn`t have sold if I had," Bush said. "I got clearance by the lawyer [Harken general counsel Larry E. Cummings] to sell this stock. I was mindful that this transaction would be completely scrutinized. I knew the law and I sold at a time that I was cleared to sell."

Bush said he didn`t seek a buyer, but was approached by a Los Angeles broker, Ralph D. Smith. Now retired, Smith said he had an institutional client who wanted a large bloc of Harken stock. Smith said he called other Harken officials before calling Bush on June 9, 1990.

"I had no takers until I got to him," Smith said. "It was just like a shot out of the blue."

Bush`s lawyer, Robert Jordan, who also represented Harken in the SEC inquiry, said Bush and other board members were not informed until July 13, 1990, in a communication from Harken president Mikel Faulkner that "operating losses were incurred in the second quarter, which will be further quantified and explained." Even then, Jordan said, Faulkner did not provide details. Many companies project and announce expected profits and losses before the end of a quarter, but Jordan said this was not done at Harken.

Asked for a copy of the July 13 communique, or permission to inspect it, Jordan checked with company officials and said they would not allow it. He said Harken has "a policy of keeping internal documents private."

Before Bush`s stock sale, Harken`s audit committee – Bush, Watson and another Harken director, Talat Othman – met on June 11 with Faulkner and auditors from Arthur Andersen & Co., Harken`s accountants. Jordan, however, said the committee "did not discuss operating losses that might be coming up, because that would be in the realm of conjecture and speculation." The minutes of the meeting, Jordan said, "show that."

Asked for a copy of the June 11 minutes or permission to inspect them, the company, through Jordan, again declined to make the records available. Jordan said company officials felt that granting the requests would put them on "a slippery slope."

Before giving Bush clearance to sell his stock, Jordan said that company counsel Cummings "checked with Mr. Faulkner at least and maybe others" to see if there was "any material, undisclosed information out there that would prevent the sale." The answer was no, Jordan said.

Faulkner, a certified public accountant who used to work at Arthur Andersen and who has spoken frequently with reporters over the years, declined through Jordan to be interviewed. So did Cummings.

The SEC investigation was launched in April 1991 when it found that Bush apparently failed to submit notice of actual sale of the stock (as distinct from the separate "notice of proposed sale") until eight months after the deadline. Bush said he is sure he did, but the filing couldn`t be found.

The inquiry became an issue in the 1994 governor`s race when Richards, the incumbent Democrat, challenged its thoroughness, calling it "at best, incomplete, and at worst, a coverup."

Bush was prepared, having obtained a letter from a top SEC official, associate director for enforcement Bruce A. Hiler, a year earlier.

Dated Oct. 18, 1993, three weeks before Bush announced his candidacy for governor, the carefully worded letter was addressed to Jordan and said that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him."

Bush took that as vindication. "The SEC fully investigated the stock deal," he said in October 1994. "I was exonerated." Supporting Bush, the head of the SEC`s enforcement division, William McLucas, went beyond the letter and stated publicly that "there was no case there."

Hiler, however, was more cautious. His statement said it "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff`s investigation."

How thorough the SEC inquiry was remains unclear. Jordan said Harken provided investigators with "thousands of pages" of documents, including the June 11 minutes and Faulkner`s July 13 communique. Investigators interviewed Cummings, stockbroker Smith and a member of the Arthur Andersen auditing team, but they did not talk to Faulkner or any other officers or directors of Harken.

In an interview, McLucas said the investigation was handled "the same way we would handle any inquiry as to [insider] trading or delinquency in reports," but such matters are usually not accorded high priority.

Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Margot Williams contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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Published on Saturday, September 13, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
A Citizen`s Appeal to a General in a Time of War (at Home)
by Michael Moore

Dear General Wesley Clark,

I`ve been meaning to write to you for some time. Two days after the Oscars, when I felt very alone and somewhat frightened by the level of hatred toward me for daring to suggest that we were being led into war for "fictitious reasons," one person stuck his neck out and came to my defense on national television.

And that person was you.

Aaron Brown had just finished interviewing me by satellite on CNN, and I had made a crack about me being "the only non-general allowed on CNN all week." He ended the interview and then turned to you, as you were sitting at the desk with him. He asked you what you thought of this crazy guy, Michael Moore. And, although we were still in Week One of the war, you boldly said that my dissent was necessary and welcome, and you pointed out that I was against Bush and his "policies," not the kids in the service. I sat in Flint with the earpiece still in my ear and I was floored -- a GENERAL standing up for me and, in effect, for all the millions who were opposed to the war but had been bullied into silence.

Since that night, I have spent a lot of time checking you out. And what I`ve learned about you corresponds to my experience with you back in March. You seem to be a man of integrity. You seem not afraid to speak the truth. I liked your answer when you were asked your position on gun control: "If you are the type of person who likes assault weapons, there is a place for you -- the United States Army. We have them."

In addition to being first in your class at West Point, a four star general from Arkansas, and the former Supreme Commander of NATO -- enough right there that should give pause to any peace-loving person -- I have discovered that...

1. You oppose the Patriot Act and would fight the expansion of its powers.

2. You are firmly pro-choice.

3. You filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan`s affirmative action case.

4. You would get rid of the Bush tax "cut" and make the rich pay their fair share.

5. You respect the views of our allies and want to work with them and with the rest of the international community.

6. And you oppose war. You have said that war should always be the "last resort" and that it is military men such as yourself who are the most for peace because it is YOU and your soldiers who have to do the dying. You find something unsettling about a commander-in-chief who dons a flight suit and pretends to be Top Gun, a stunt that dishonored those who have died in that flight suit in the service of their country.

General Clark, last night I finally got to meet you in person. I would like to share with others what I said to you privately: You may be the person who can defeat George W. Bush in next year`s election.

This is not an endorsement. For me, it`s too early for that. I have liked Howard Dean (in spite of his flawed positions in support of some capital punishment, his grade "A" rating from the NRA, and his opposition to cutting the Pentagon budget). And Dennis Kucinich is so committed to all the right stuff. We need candidates in this race who will say the things that need to be said, to push the pathetically lame Democratic Party into have a backbone -- or get out of the way and let us have a REAL second party on the ballot.

But right now, for the sake and survival of our very country, we need someone who is going to get The Job done, period. And that job, no matter whom I speak to across America -- be they leftie Green or conservative Democrat, and even many disgusted Republicans -- EVERYONE is of one mind as to what that job is:

Bush Must Go.

This is war, General, and it`s Bush & Co.`s war on us. It`s their war on the middle class, the poor, the environment, their war on women and their war against anyone around the world who doesn`t accept total American domination. Yes, it`s a war -- and we, the people, need a general to beat back those who have abused our Constitution and our basic sense of decency.

The General vs. the Texas Air National Guard deserter! I want to see that debate, and I know who the winner is going to be.

The other night, when you were on Bill Maher`s show, he began by reading to you a quote from Howard Dean where he (Dean) tried to run away from the word "liberal." Maher said to you, so, General, do you want to run away from that word? Without missing a beat, you said "No!" and you reminded everyone that America was founded as a "liberal democracy." The audience went wild with applause.

That is what we have needed for a long time on our side -- guts. I am sure there are things you and I don`t see eye to eye on, but now is the time for all good people from the far left to the middle of the road to bury the damn hatchet and get together behind someone who is not only good on the issues but can beat George W. Bush. And where I come from in the Midwest, General, I know you are the kind of candidate that the average American will vote for.

Michael Moore likes a general? I never thought I`d write these words. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I want to know more about you. I want your voice heard. I would like to see you in these debates. Then let the chips fall where they may -- and we`ll all have a better idea of what to do. If you sit it out, then I think we all know what we are left with.

I am asking everyone I know to send an email to you now to encourage you to run, even if they aren`t sure they would vote for you. (Wesley Clark`s email address is: mailto:[e-mail]). None of us truly know how we will vote five months from now or a year from now. But we do know that this race needs a jolt -- and Bush needs to know that there is one person he won`t be able to Dukakisize.

Take the plunge, General Clark. At the very least, the nation needs to hear what you know about what was really behind this invasion of Iraq and your fresh ideas of how we can live in a more peaceful world. Yes, your country needs you to perform one more act of brave service -- to help defeat an enemy from within, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, an address that used to belong to "we, the people."

Yours,

Michael Moore
Lottery # 275, U.S. military draft, 1972
Conscientious Objector applicant
mailto:[e-mail]

http://www.michaelmoore.com

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Costs Escalate
For Iraq Contracts
Of Halliburton
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB106331966211003400-…
By JOHN M. BIERS
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

HOUSTON -- Halliburton Corp.`s U.S. government contracts to restore Iraqi oil production and provide support services to troops will cost taxpayers an estimated $2 billion and are expected to rise, Army spokesmen said.

An Army Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate the country`s oil fields, controversial because it wasn`t competitively bid, now is valued at $948 million, more than $200 million above the level projected last month. One particularly expensive item: importing fuel to the oil-rich country, at a cost of as much as $6 million a day.

Halliburton`s separate Army Field Support Command contract, which it won in 2001, now is estimated to cost $1 billion in Iraq alone. That is up more than $400 million from the level in late May.

In the Army Corps contract, fees for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root could range from 2% to 7% of the total contract cost, depending on whether the company receives a performance reward of as much as 5% on top of its 2% base fee. In the field-support contract, that percentage is lower -- a 1% base fee, with a performance reward that could increase it to 3%.

The rising price tags could renew challenges for the Bush administration because Vice President Dick Cheney previously was the company`s chief executive. Halliburton`s work in Iraq has become a focus of attacks from Democrats criticizing the expense of the reconstruction plans. "These costs are rocketing up, and I will be examining them closely," Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) said.

In a debate among Democratic presidential candidates this week, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida said he might support the administration`s request for $87 billion in new funds for Iraq, but added: "I will not support a dime to protect the profits of Halliburton in Iraq."

A White House spokeswoman referred questions to Army contracting staff.

As with the cost of the overall U.S. effort in Iraq, the Halliburton contracts have escalated as Iraqi infrastructure continues to be plagued by looting and sabotage. "We keep adding task orders, so the likelihood of them going up is probably fairly legitimate," Field Support Command spokesman Dan Carlson said.

The Army Corps also expects the value of its contract to rise. "It`s going up pretty fast," said Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. "The big increases are due to imports of products, and it`s largely due to looting and sabotage."

The Army Corps, with the task of restoring Iraqi oil production to prewar levels, last month projected the cost of work to be completed by Sept. 30 at $716 million. But Mr. Saunders said the Halliburton unit had billed for $948 million of work as of Sept. 8. The agency has yet to adjust the project`s $1.14 billion estimated cost, he said.

The Army Corps is evaluating bids for two contracts that could replace the no-bid contract. Kellogg Brown & Root is among the bidders for the new contracts, which would be expected to begin in November or early December. The Army Corps has yet to evaluate whether the company merits a performance reward for its work, Mr. Saunders said.

For the field-support contract, a contracting team is evaluating Halliburton`s performance, Mr. Carlson said. Although that contract so far has generated more revenue for Halliburton than the oil-field award, it has garnered less scrutiny because it was competitively bid.

In 2001, the Army selected Halliburton to provide support services world-wide as military needs arise. The one-year contract, which has nine one-year renewal options, has no price limit. Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said the company also has deployed staff in Afghanistan.

Halliburton reported $292 million in Iraq-related revenue for the quarter ended June 30. Analysts said the Iraq work added two or three cents a share. Halliburton reported second-quarter net income of $26 million, or six cents a share.

Write to John M. Biers at [e-mail]

Updated September 12, 2003

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Imperium oder Hegemon?
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/kolumnen/mar/15628/1.html
Rudolf Maresch 14.09.2003
Um diese Semantik wird in den USA weiter gestritten

Befriedung und Wiederaufbau in Afghanistan und im Irak laufen alles andere als geschmiert. Statt Jubel, Dankbarkeit und Begeisterung schlagen den Befreiern Misstrauen und Hass entgegen. Das hatten sich die Bushies wahrlich leichter vorgestellt. Das Gute würde dem Bösen schon bald und von alleine folgen. So glaubte und hoffte man am Potomac. Doch am heimischen Schreibtisch sortiert sich die Welt bekanntlich anders als vor Ort. Auf dem realen Schlachtfeld, wo Klima, Kultur und Menschenkörper die Planspiele der Militärs verderben, lässt sich mit Figuren, Zahlen und Truppenverbänden nicht so locker operieren. Da hilft auch kein Denken in "Schwärmen". Und auch mit mehr Geld, mehr Truppen und mehr Personal, wie US-Falken gerade von der Regierung fordern ( Do What It Takes In Iraq), wird sich das Problem so schnell nicht lösen lassen. Der Weltmacht wird nichts anderes übrig bleiben, als die Kriegsgegner mit ins Boot zu holen und der UN ein "gewisses Mitspracherecht" im Irak einzuräumen.

Zum Frohlocken besteht auf Seiten der Liliputaner allerdings kein Anlass. Wenn der Koloss jetzt mit sich handeln lässt, dann bedeutet das keinesfalls ein Einlenken der Weltmacht. Sie greift vielmehr zu Möglichkeit Zwei, die da heißt: Schaffen wir es nicht allein, laden wir die Lasten und Pflichten eben auf viele Schultern. Multilateralismus ist, das hat auch Shahsi Tharoor, rechte Hand von Kofi Annan, soeben in der jüngsten Ausgabe der "Foreign Affairs" klar gestellt, für die Weltmacht nur ein Mittel, nicht aber bereits das Ziel.


The United States `making the dinner` and the Europeans `doing the dishes`.


Diese Arbeitsverteilung gilt nach wie vor. Sie sollten die "Umfaller" in Moskau und Paris, Berlin und New York im Ohr haben, wenn sie sich, geschmeichelt von Gullivers Lockversuchen, bald an den Wiederaufbaukosten im Irak finanziell und personell beteiligen.

Anders als ein ehemaliger Strippenzieher im Bundeskanzleramt, bin ich nicht der Meinung, dass Alteuropa derzeit und überhaupt "ein strategisches Interesse an der Stabilität des Irak" hat. Seine Freiheit steht weder in Bagdad auf dem Spiel, noch wird sie am Hindukusch oder am Horn von Afrika verteidigt. Diesen Unsinn hat man sich von Gulliver aufschwatzen lassen. Mit dem Balkan und dem Pulverfass "Albanien-Mazedonien-Kosovo", mit der Osterweiterung und dem Drängen der Türkei nach Aufnahme in die EU ist Alteuropa auf Jahre hin beschäftigt. Will es diese Probleme einigermaßen meistern, dann kann es sich kaum leisten, Handlangerdienste für andere zu erfüllen. Die Konzentration und Bündelung von Kräften, nicht deren Zersplitterung, mehr Moderne als Postmoderne, muss darum die Devise sein. Sonst wird es dem alten Kontinent niemals gelingen, sich aus dem Windschatten des Kolosses zu lösen und eine nachhaltige Rolle in der Welt zu spielen. Das zähe Klammern an überholten Bündnissen, das manche Transatlantiker in diesen Monaten zeigen, ist Teil dieses Problems, nicht aber dessen Lösung.

Nach dem Angriff vom 11. September haben die USA ihren Kurs nicht grundlegend geändert, sondern nur modifiziert und das Tempo erhöht.
Robert Kagan

Die Haltung Gullivers hat sich im Prinzip nicht verändert. Da liegt Herr Bertram völlig falsch. Gewiss ist der Riese nervöser, dünnhäutiger und verwundbarer geworden. Im Bewusstsein, dass die Meere ihn nicht mehr schützen, reagiert er zunehmend gereizt und paranoid und versucht durch Kraftmeierei, Säbelrasseln und symbolträchtige Bilder von seiner inneren Schwäche abzulenken.

Darum verstehe ich auch nicht, warum ausgerechnet Deutschland mit "Amerika Analyse und Strategie teilen" soll und Europa nur an der Seite der USA Statur und Gewicht gewinnen kann ( Apokalypse und Analyse). Vielmehr sollte man Gulliver die Suppe, die er so dumm war, sich selbst einzubrocken, auch selbst auslöffeln lassen. Der Misserfolg wird ihn nicht nur wieder zur Räson bringen, er wird danach auch eine kleine Erholungskur nötig haben. Die Chancen Alteuropas, zur Weltmacht ökonomisch, machtpolitisch und kulturell aufzuschließen, würden drastisch erhöht.

Die Debatte

Doch nicht um die Stupidität neurotischer Riesen oder das Auslöffeln von Suppen soll es an dieser Stelle gehen; auch nicht um das diplomatische Tauziehen um neue Resolutionen, Beteiligungen und Lastenverteilungen. Das verfolgt der interessierte Beobachter besser in der Tagesschau, in Spiegel Online oder in der FAZ. Worauf ich den Blick nochmals lenken möchte, ist vielmehr eine Debatte, die in den USA vor über einem Jahr begonnen hat und immer noch die klügsten Köpfe des Landes elektrisiert.

Losgetreten hatte sie einst, vor über einem Jahr, als die Planungen zum Irak-Feldzug gerade auf Hochtouren liefen, der Bostoner Politikprofessor Andrew Bacevich in der Sommerausgabe des "Wilson Quaterly" mit dem Essay "New Rome, New Jerusalem" und dem Buch "American Empire". Seitdem köchelt diese Debatte munter vor sich hin. Im Kern kreist sie um die Frage, welchen Rang die USA im internationalen Staatensystem einnehmen und wie ihre Position darin zu beurteilen ist.


Wir sind gekommen, um die Welt zu erlösen
Woodrow Wilson

Ist die Weltmacht wirklich ein Imperium und damit Erbe vergangener Imperien? Ist dieser "einzigartige" Nationalstaat vielleicht sogar ein "Imperium neuen Typs"? Oder gehen solche Einschätzungen an der Realität vorbei? Ist Amerika nicht doch nur ein globaler Hegemon, einer, der zwar Anspruch auf globale Führerschaft erhebt und die "künftige Weltordnung" nach gewissen Prinzipien (Demokratie, Menschenwürde, Freihandel ...) gestalten will, aber seine Getreuen nicht wie Vasallen oder Untertanen behandelt?

Die Kommentare und Stellungnahmen dazu sind inzwischen ins Unüberschaubare gewachsen. Kaum ein Friedensmeeting das sich nicht dieses Themas annimmt. Mitte Juli diesen Jahres hat das American Enterprise Institute (AEI), ein Think Tank der Neocons, nochmals nachgelegt, und den britischen Historiker Niall Ferguson und dem US-Falken Robert Kagan zum Schlagabtausch gebeten. In der Wochenendausgabe der außenpolitischen Theoriezeitschrift "The National Interest" ist sie in ihren Grundlinien dokumentiert.

Auf den ersten Blick mag ein solcher Streit wie einer um des Kaisers Bart erscheinen. Wie man das Kind tauft, ist für die Sache selbst ziemlich egal. Beleuchtet man die Argumente hingegen näher, dann liefern die unterschiedlichen Standpunkte höchst interessante Einblicke in das Denken zweier andersartig gelagerter politischer Kulturen. Sie zeigen, trotz der getauschten Höflichkeiten und betonten Gemeinsamkeiten, wie breit der Atlantik eigentlich ist, und zwar auch zwischen Personen und Völkern, die ein "special relationship" pflegen.


Imperium wider Willen


Für Niall Ferguson, britischer Historiker an der University of New York und Autor des im April dieses Jahres erschienenen Buches "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power", der, nach eigenem Bekunden, "nicht vom Planeten Venus stammt", sind die USA längst ein Imperium. Auf nahezu 750 Militärbasen in 130 Staaten (die UN hat etwas mehr als 190 Mitglieder) habe das Land Verbände und Gerät stationiert. Fast ein Drittel des weltweiten Wirtschaftsausstoßes komme aus den USA, was dreimal größer sei als jener, den das britische Imperium zu seiner Glanzzeit hatte. Schließlich scharten Individuen und Völker sich um ihre Symbole und adaptierten ihre Lebensstile freiwillig.

Amerika ist ein Koloss auf tönernen Füßen.
Niall Ferguson

Doch nicht dieser Tatbestand ist für den Alteuropäer mit Wohnsitz in New York das Problem, sondern vielmehr der Umstand, dass die Weltmacht sich diesen Realitäten nicht stellt. Gerade diese Verweigerungshaltung beschwört in den Augen des Briten jenen Ärger für das Land und die Welt herauf, den die Weltmacht eigentlich vermeiden will. An drei Punkten macht er diese Widerwilligkeit fest:

Da sei zum einen die amerikanische Haltung, kurzatmige Politik zu betreiben.
Man interveniere sehr schnell militärisch, ziehe sich dann aber nach kurzer Zeit wieder auf seine Insel zurück, weil man die Kosten und Pflichten einer mehrjährigen Besatzung scheut. Diese Behauptung stellt auch Michael Ignatieff, Professor für Menschenrechtspolitik an der Kennedy School of Government in Harvard, in seinem soeben bei EVA erschienenen Buch "Empire lite" auf. Danach sind die USA nur die "Billigversion" eines Imperiums, das durch sein Verhalten die Welt unsicher macht. Für das eroberte oder befreite Land sei eine solche Politik jedoch verheerend, weil es nach Abzug der Besatzungstruppen dem Schicksal widerstreitender Kräfte überlassen werde. Als Kenner des Britischen Empires müsste Ferguson aber wissen, dass solche Verhaltensweisen nichts Ungewöhnliches sind. Sie sind geradezu typisch für Seemächte.
Da sei zum anderen die Neigung des Imperiums zum "Wal-Mart Prinzip".
Militäroperationen dürfen möglichst wenig kosten. Den zweiten Golfkrieg finanzierten größtenteils Saudis und Kuwaitis, aber auch Japaner und Deutsche. Und auch der Irak-Krieg wurde mit einer, wie manche meinen, viel zu geringen Truppenzahl geführt. Zum Nulltarif seien Nation Building und Peacekeeping aber nicht zu haben. Dafür hat das Imperium aber auch willfährige Staaten und Nationen, die zum Beispiel in Kabul und Umgebung die "Drecksarbeit" erledigen.
Trotzdem findet Ferguson es beschämend, dass die US-Regierung in eineinhalb Jahren nur fünf Millionen Dollar zur Stützung der Regierung Karsai zur Verfügung gestellt hat. Besorgt über anhaltende Kämpfe im Süden des Landes zwischen Taliban-Gruppen und US-Verbänden hat Donald Rumsfeld bei seinem Besuch in Kabul nun allerdings angekündigt, dass sich die Weltmacht dort stärker finanziell beteiligen will. Um welche Beträge es sich da handelt, darüber schwieg der Kriegsherr sich allerdings aus.

Und da sei schließlich das Missverständnis, was ein Imperium zum Imperium mache.
Ein Imperium definiert sich nicht ausschließlich durch den Besitz von Kolonien, die es kontrolliert und dann ausbeutet. Ein Imperium hat noch mehr Aufgaben. Es besitzt Verantwortlichkeiten für die Welt, beispielsweise die Verpflichtung, für Ordnung und Recht, Stabilität und Sicherheit in der Welt zu sorgen. Um dieser Rolle gerecht zu werden, aber auch, um seine Interessen durchzusetzen, brauche ein Imperium Verbündete und Partner. Weder mit Alleingängen noch durch Zwang seien solche Aufgaben zu meistern. Weshalb Imperien dauerhaft nur funktioniert hätten, wenn sie im Einvernehmen mit anderen gehandelt hätten.
Den Historiker verwundert es nicht, dass die Liste der historischen Fehlschläge der USA äußerst lang ist. In über hundert Jahren hätten die USA mindestens sechzehn Mal militärisch interveniert. Aber nur in vier Ländern (Deutschland, Japan, Panama und Grenada) dies mit der Installierung demokratischer Regimes erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Alle anderen Missionen hätten sich im Laufe der Zeit ins Gegenteil verkehrt oder sich gar zu Tragödien entwickelt, siehe Korea, Cuba, Vietnam und Nicaragua oder wie jetzt der Kosovo oder der Irak. Zwar pumpt die US-Regierung anders als früher weiter Milliarden von Dollars in den Irak. Doch muss es für den Irak ein Damoklesschwert sein, wenn die Bushies, wie angekündigt, ihre Truppen aus dem Irak abziehen, nachdem "freie Wahlen" stattgefunden haben.

Um nicht ähnliche Fehler wie andere Imperien zu begehen, sollten die USA von deren Erfahrungen lernen. Auch die Briten kamen einst nach Bagdad als Befreier. Und auch sie verstanden sich als Abgesandte der Zivilisation, die in bester Absicht Völker erziehen und zum Licht führen wollten. Viel von dieser Arroganz gegenüber anderen Kulturen, die Ferguson mit dem Begriff "imperialistischer Altruismus" etwas ungelenk beschreibt, ist auch der amerikanischen Kultur eigen. So reizend diese "aufopfernde Selbstlosigkeit" auch ist und so sehr diese Haltung der angelsächsischen Kultur auch entsprechen mag - nach Ansicht des Historikers steckt gerade in dieser Haltung möglicherweise auch sein Fall und Untergang.


Wovon man nicht sprechen sollte


Es überrascht nicht, dass Robert Kagan, Autor des Bestsellers "Macht und Ohnmacht", da interveniert. Nach Meinung des derzeit "sexiest transatlantic intellectual" (Radek Sikorsy) sind die USA nur der erfolgreichste "globale Hegemon", den die Welt bislang gesehen hat. Nicht an Herrschaft und Dominanz über andere Völker und Regionen seien die USA interessiert, sondern an der Politik der "offenen Tür". Auch Leninisten haben das immer wieder betont. Gewiss hätten sich die USA in der Vergangenheit wie Imperialisten verhalten. Besonders in der Zeit, als sie den eigenen Kontinent "ordneten" und den Sprung über die Meere wagten. Da handelten sie häufig wie das alte Rom, das Eroberte und Befreite durch Geld, Zwang oder Erpressung flugs zu ihren Vasallen, Untertanen und Bürgern machte.


Man sollte den Amerikanern eher erzählen, dass sie ein Mittleres Königreich sind als ein Imperium
Robert Kagan


Seit dem "Manifest Destiny", das Amerikanern zur gottergebenen Pflicht macht, die Menschheit zu republikanischen Idealen zu bekehren, und der Besetzung der Philippinen habe die US-Außenpolitik aber eine grundlegende Wende vollzogen. Im Mittelpunkt stünde jetzt eine Politik der "guten Werte". Sie gründe in dem Glauben, dass jede konzentrische Machterweiterung der USA ("embrace and extend") gut für Amerika und deshalb auch gut für die Welt sei.

Gerade weil die Weltmacht auf Herrschaft, Kolonien und Unterwerfung verzichte und sich nach kurzer Zeit wieder auf seine Insel zurückziehe, sei Amerikas Macht, Einfluss und Ansehen in der Welt gewachsen. "Freiwillige Bindung" bzw. "informelle Kontrolle" von Staaten und Regionen nennt man das in Washington gelegentlich. Dieser "moderne Imperialismus", wie das seinerzeit Carl Schmitt nicht ohne Bewunderung genannt hat, erlaubt den Ländern zwar souveräne Entscheidungen und eigenständiges Regieren, garantiert der Weltmacht aber ein Interventionsrecht, sollte eine ihr nicht genehme Regierung ans Ruder kommen. Auch beute die USA andere Völker und Nationen nicht aus. Im Gegenteil, sie mache all jene Länder, die sie befreit, demokratisiert und an den Weltmarkt angeschlossen hätten, reicher.

Darum würden die USA global auch akzeptiert, und nicht, wie einst die Sowjetunion, gefürchtet. Schließlich gehöre das Zeitalter der Imperien längst der Vergangenheit an. Zur Lösung der drängendsten Probleme der Welt trage die Bezeichnung "Imperium" nichts bei, weder zur Bekämpfung des Terrors noch für die Verhinderung der Proliferation von MVW. Besser wäre es, darum zu streiten, warum die Welt die USA brauchen und eine herausragende Rolle in der Welt einnehmen müssen.

Zum Schluss lässt Kagan dann doch die Katze aus dem Sack. Amerika sei traditionell ein isolationistisches Land, eine Insel der Seligen, deren Bürger kein Interesse an Außenpolitik haben. Der Begriff Imperium verschrecke US-Bürger und treibe sie ins Lager der Isolationisten. Weil sie weder Geld dafür locker machten noch hinter diesem Banner hermarschierten, sei es besser, davon zu schweigen statt sie mit dem Gerede vom "Imperium" zu verunsichern.

Wer will, kann hier etwas von jenem exoterisch-esoterischen Wissen vernehmen, das Leo Strauss gelehrt hat und dessen aufmerksamer und gelehriger Schüler Robert Kagan gewesen ist. Bittere Wahrheiten vertragen nur die Eingeweihten, zum Beispiel solche wie die edlen und treuherzigen Geldgeber vom AEI. Ihnen kann man solche Realitäten jederzeit zumuten. Dem Normalbürger dagegen nicht. Ihm bleiben CNN oder FOX News, die das Land auf Heldentum und Opferbereitschaft einschwören.

Einig sind sich Kagan und Ferguson allerdings, dass die Außenpolitik der USA mehr Beständigkeit braucht. Mit der jahrzehntelang gepflegten Sprunghaftigkeit und Ad-hoc Politik ist den weltpolitischen Problemen nicht beizukommen.

Diesen Streit zu schlichten, fällt schon deswegen schwer, weil diese Fremdbeobachtung im Lichte unterschiedlicher Enkulturation erfolgt. Hier der Brite, der in New York lebt, aber mit alteuropäischem Wissen auf Amerika blickt; dort der Amerikaner, der wiederum in Brüssel arbeitet, aber vom Feldherrnhügel aus auf Alteuropa herabschaut. Natürlich kann man das amerikanische Empire mit früheren Weltreichen vergleichen, die auf Kolonien, Eroberungen oder der Bürde des Weißen Mannes aufgebaut waren. Sicher ist aber auch, dass wir es hier mit einem "Imperium neuen Typs" zu tun haben, einem "Imperium ohne Kolonien" (M. Ignatieff), dessen Ornamente freie Märkte, Menschenrechte und Demokratie sind, und durch die furchtbarste militärische Macht erzwungen werden, die die Welt jemals gekannt hat.


Zentraleuropa diskutiert


Längst hat dieser Diskurs auch Alteuropa erreicht und den dortigen Büchermarkt überschwemmt. Die Bücherläden quellen förmlich über mit Büchern, die sich mit diesem Thema beschäftigen. Die Spreu vom Weizen zu trennen, fällt da nicht immer leicht. Soeben ist bei DVA ein Reader ("Empire Amerika", hg. von Ulrich Speck und Natan Snzaider) erschienen, der deswegen erwähnenswert ist, weil er den Austausch zwischen Mars- und Venusbewohnern sucht. Diskurse dieser Art gibt es noch viel zu wenige. Jedoch vermisst man darin die Stimmen jener, die das transatlantische Verhältnis für gescheitert halten und bereits nach neuen oder dritten Wegen suchen. Auf Schloss Elmau soll dazu im Herbst ein begleitendes Symposion stattfinden.


Amerika wird zum neuen Rom, weil es die Zivilisation des Abendlandes schützt und gemeinsam mit Europa bewahrt.
Peter Bender

Schließlich ist vor ein paar Wochen bei Klett-Cotta Peter Benders Vergleich "Weltmacht Amerika. Das Neue Rom" erschienen. In seinem kurzweiligen Parforceritt durch über zweitausendjährige Geschichte pickt sich der achtzigjährige Historiker und Publizist jeweils jenes Jahrhundert heraus, das den Aufstieg Roms und Amerikas zur Weltmacht markiert: die Punischen Kriege einerseits sowie die Zeit der Weltkriege andererseits.

Bei seiner Parallelerzählung kann der Autor viele treffende und überraschende Analogien zwischen beiden Imperien ausfindig machen. Beispielsweise wie die Geografie (insuläre Lage) auf die Mentalitäten Einfluss nimmt und das Handeln beeinflusst. Sodann die konsequente Politik, mit der jeder Gegner vom eigenem Territorium ferngehalten wird, oder die Widerwilligkeit, mit der Rom und Washington in diese Rolle gedrängt werden. Schließlich auch das überzogene Sicherheitsbedürfnis, mit dem Kriege an die Peripherie getragen werden.

Trotz mancher hübscher Vergleiche: der Angriff auf Pearl Harbour mit Hannibals Zerstörung der spanischen Stadt Sagunt; die Zerstörung Karthagos mit dem Angriff auf Bagdad; das Verhältnis zwischen Römern und Griechen mit dem zwischen Amerikanern und Europäern, bleibt der Leser nach der Lektüre irgendwie unbefriedigt zurück. Nicht nur, weil viele Schilderungen ihm bekannt vorkommen und nicht über das Niveau hinausreichen, das er vom Geschichtsunterricht der gymnasialen Mittel- und Oberstufe her kennt. Sondern auch, weil die Ereignisse häufig plakativ aneinandergereiht oder nebeneinander aufgelistet werden.

Zwar versucht der Autor beim parallelen Erzählen immer wieder innezuhalten und auf Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Imperien hinzuweisen. Einen Strukturvergleich in Sachen Kultur, Moral und Mentalität stellt er jedoch nicht an, sodass der Leser eine Antwort, worin denn nun die Eigenart und das Neue am "Neuen Rom" bestehen soll, nicht erhält. Andererseits fehlt häufig der Platz und der Mut zum Detail bzw. zur genauen Recherche und Analyse.

Der Kellogg-Pakt, durch den der Krieg auf Druck der USA zwar international geächtet, aber als internationaler Konflikt weiter erlaubt bleibt, findet nur in einer Fußnote Erwähnung. Auf dieser Internationalisierung von Konflikten, die in humanitäre Interventionen münden, gründet aber zum Großteil die Außenpolitik des US-Imperiums im letzten Jahrhundert. Washington kann das tun, weil es ihre nationalen Anliegen für Angelegenheiten der ganzen Welt hält. Das eigene Interesse zu universalisieren und zur Herzensangelegenheit aller zu machen, ist wirklich neu und dem alten Rom fremd.

Obwohl der Historiker Wertungen tunlichst vermeidet, hat man mitunter doch den Eindruck, dass die Darstellung jenen moralischen Korrektheiten westdeutscher Geschichtsbetrachtung folgt, deren normative Grundlagen Karl-Heinz Bohrer in seinen Gadamer-Vorlesungen attackiert hat. Auch dieser Mitschnitt ("Exstasen der Zeit") ist soeben in Buchform bei Hanser erschienen.

Der Teufel mag wissen, warum das Buch auf Platz drei der September Sachbuch-Bestenliste des SWF und der SZ gelandet ist. Das Buch ist durchaus zu empfehlen, es liest sich ganz flott und eignet sich auch, wie ich versichern kann, als Strandlektüre. Diesen Rang hat es aber gewiss nicht verdient. Vielleicht hat der Titel und das schöne Cover Eindruck auf den einen oder anderen Juroren gemacht. Gelesen haben sie es jedenfalls nicht. Aber da sind sie bekanntlich nicht allein. Das machen gelegentlich auch Weltphilosophen, die Verlagen Bücher empfehlen, die sie nur vom Hörensagen kennen.

[Joerver]

Secret slaughter by night, lies and blind eyes by day
In the suburbs of Baghdad and the Sunni cities to the north the American military policy of `recon-by-fire` and the breakdown of law and order is exacting a heavy toll on a war-torn people.

Robert Fisk

14 September 2003: (The Independent. UK)

In the Pentagon, they`ve been re-showing Gillo Pontecorvo`s terrifying 1965 film of the French war in Algeria. The Battle of Algiers, in black and white, showed what happened to both the guerrillas of the FLN and the French army when their war turned dirty. Torture, assassination, booby-trap bombs, secret executions. As the New York Times revealed, the fliers sent out to the Pentagon brass to watch this magnificent, painful film began with the words: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas..." But the Americans didn`t need to watch The Battle of Algiers.

They`ve already committed many of the French mistakes in Iraq, and the guerrillas of Iraq are well into the blood tide of the old FLN. Sixteen demonstrators killed in Fallujah? Forget it. Twelve gunned down by the Americans in Mosul? Old news. Ten Iraqi policemen shot by US troops outside Fallujah? "No information," the occupation authorities told us last week. No information? The Jordanian embassy bombing? The bombing of the UN headquarters? Or Najaf with its 126 dead? Forget it. Things are improving in Iraq. There`s been 24-hour electricity for three days now and - until two US
soldiers were killed on Friday - there had been five days without an American death.

That`s how the French used to report the news from Algeria. What you don`t know doesn`t worry you. Which is why, in Iraq, there are thousands of incidents of violence that never get reported; attacks on Americans that cost civilian lives are not even recorded by the occupation authority press officers unless they involve loss of life among "coalition forces". Go to
the mortuaries of Iraq`s cities and it`s clear that a slaughter occurs each night. Occupation powers insist that journalists obtain clearance to visit hospitals - it can take a week to get the right papers, if at all, so goodbye to statistics - but the figures coming from senior doctors tell their own story.

In Baghdad, up to 70 corpses - of Iraqis killed by gunfire - are brought to the mortuaries each day. In Najaf, for example, the cemetery authorities record the arrival of the bodies of up to 20 victims of violence a day. Some of the dead were killed in family feuds, in looting, or revenge killings. Others have been gunned down by US troops at checkpoints or in the
increasingly vicious "raids" carried out by American forces in the suburbs of Baghdad and the Sunni cities to the north. Only last week, reporters covering the killing of the Fallujah policemen were astonished to see badly wounded children suddenly arriving at the hospital, all shot - according to their families - by an American tank which had opened up at a palm grove outside the town. As usual, the occupation authorities had "no information" on the incident.

But if you count the Najaf dead as typical of just two or three other major cities, and if you add on the daily Baghdad death toll and multiply by seven, almost 1,000 Iraqi civilians are being killed every week - and that may well be a conservative figure. Somewhere in the cavernous marble halls of proconsul Paul Bremer`s palace on the Tigris, someone must be calculating these awful statistics. But of course, the Americans are not telling us.

It`s like listening to Iraq`s American-run radio station. Death - unless it`s on a spectacular scale like the Jordanian or UN or Najaf bombings - simply doesn`t get on the air. Even the killing of American troops isn`t reported for 24 hours. Driving the highways of Iraq, I`ve been reduced to listening to the only radio station with up-to-date news on the guerrilla war in Iraq: Iran`s "Alam Radio", broadcasting in Arabic from Tehran.

It`s as if the denizens of Mr Bremer`s chandeliered chambers do not regard Iraq as a real country, a place of tragedy and despair whose "liberated" people increasingly blame their "liberators" for their misery. Even when US troops on a raid in Mansour six weeks ago ran amok and gunned down up to eight civilians - including a 14-year-old boy - the best the Americans could do was to say that they were "enquiring" into the incident. Not, as one US colonel quickly pointed out to us, that this meant a formal enquiry. Just a few questions here and there. And of course the killings were soon forgotten.

What is happening inside the US occupation army is almost as much a mystery as the nightly cull of civilians. My old friend Tom Friedman, in a break from his role as messianic commentator for the New York Times, put his finger on the problem when - arranging a meeting with an occupation official -- he reported asking an American soldier at a bridge checkpoint for his location. "The enemy side of the bridge," came the reply.

Enemy. That`s how the French came to see every native Algerian. Talk to the soldiers in the streets here in Baghdad and they use obscene language - in between heartfelt demands to "go home" - about the people they were supposedly rescuing from Saddam Hussein. A Polish journalist in Karbala saw just how easily human contact can break down. "The American guards are greeting passers-by with a loud `Salaam aleikum` [peace be with you]. Some young Iraqi boys with a donkey and cart say something in Arabic and suddenly, together, they run their fingers across their throats.

"`Motherfucker!" shout the Marines, before their translator explains to them that the boys are just expressing their happiness at the death of Saddam Hussein`s sons ..." Though light years from the atrocities of Saddam`s security forces, the US military here is turning out to be as badly disciplined and brutal as the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its "recon-by-fire", its lethal raids into civilian homes, its shooting of demonstrators and children during fire-fights, its destruction of houses, its imprisonment of thousands of Iraqis without trial or contact with their families, its refusal to investigate killings, its harassment - and killing - of journalists, its constant refrain that it has "no information" about bloody incidents which it must know all too much about, are sounding like an echo-chamber of the Israeli army.

Worse still, their intelligence information is still as warped by ideology as was the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Having failed to receive the welcome deserved of "liberators", the Americans have to convince themselves that their tormentors - save for the famous Saddam "remnants" - cannot be Iraqis at all. They must be members of "al-Qa`ida", Islamists arriving from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan ... Among its 1,000 "security" prisoners at Baghdad airport - the total number of detainees held without trial in Iraq is around 5,500 - about 200 are said to be "foreigners". But in many cases, US intelligence cannot even discover their nationalities and some may well have been in Iraq since Saddam invited Arabs to defend Baghdad before the invasion.

In reality, no one has produced a shred of evidence al-Qa`ida men are streaming into the country. Not a single sighting has been reported of these mysterious men, save for the presence of armed Iranians outside the shrines of Najaf after last month`s bombing. Yet President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have talked up their supposed presence to the point where the usual right-wing columnists in the US press and then reporters in general write of them as a proven fact. With powerful irony, Osama bin Laden`s ominous 11 September tape suggests that he is as anxious to get his men into Iraq as the Americans are to believe that they are already there.

In practice, fantasy takes over from reality. Thus while the Americans can claim they are being assaulted by "foreigners" - the infamous men of evil against whom Mr Bush is fighting his "war on terror" - they can equally suggest that the suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad was the work of the Iraqi security guards whom the UN had kept on from the Saddam regime. Whatever the truth of this - and the suicidal expertise of the UN attack might suggest a combination of both Baathists and Islamists - the message was simple enough: Americans are attacked by "international terrorists" but the wimps of the UN are attacked by the same Iraqi killers they helped to protect through so many years of sanction-busting.

There are foreign men and women aplenty in Baghdad - Americans and Britons prominent among them - who work hard to bring about the false promises uttered by Messrs Bush and Blair to create a decent, democratic Iraqi society. One of them is Chris Woolford, whose account of life in Bremer`s marble palace appeared only in the internal newsletter of the UK regulatory Office of Telecommunications, for whom he normally works. Mr Woolford insists that there are signs of hope in Iraq - the payment of emergency salaries to civil servants, for example, and the reopening of schools and administrative offices.

But it`s worth recording at length his revealing description of life under Bremer. "Life in Baghdad can only be described as bizarre," he writes. "We are based within a huge compound... in Sadam (sic) Hussein`s former Presidential Palace. The place is awash with vast marble ballrooms, conference rooms (now used as a dining room), a chapel (with murals of Scud
missiles) and hundreds of function rooms with ornate chandeliers which were probably great for entertaining but which function less well as offices and dormitories ... I work in the `Ministries` wing of the palace in the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Within this wing, each door along the corridor represents a separate ministry; next door to us, for example, is the Ministry of Health and directly across the corridor is the Finance Ministry. Behind each door military and civilian coalition members (mainly American with the odd Brit dotted about) are beavering away trying to sort out the economic, social and political issues currently facing Iraq. The work is undoubtedly for a good cause but it cannot but help feel strange as our contact with the outside world - the real Iraq - is so limited." Mr Woolford describes how meetings with his Iraqi counterparts are difficult to arrange and, besides, "key decisions are still very much taken behind the
closed doors of the CPA (the Coalition Provisional Authority), or for the most significant decisions, back in Washington DC". So much, then, for the interim council and the appointed Iraqi "government" that supposedly represents the forthcoming "democracy" of Iraq. As for contacting his Iraqi counterparts, Mr Woolford admits that Iraqi officials are sometimes asked to "stand outside in their garden between 7pm and 8pm so that we can ring them on satellite phones" - a process that is followed by the departure of CPA staff for their meeting with "bullet-proof vests and machine-gun mounted Humvees (a sort of beefed-up American Jeep) both in front and behind our own four-wheel drive..." Thus are America and Britain attempting to "reconstruct" a broken land that is now the scene of an increasingly cruel guerrilla war. But there is a pervading feeling - among Iraqis as well as journalists covering this conflict - that something is wrong with our Western response to New Iraq. Our lives are more valuable than their lives. The "terrible toll" of the summer months - a phrase from a New York Times news report last week - referred only to the deaths of Western soldiers.

What is becoming apparent is that we don`t really care about the Iraqis. We may think we want to bring them democracy but, on an individual level, we don`t care very much about them or their lives. We liberated them. They should be grateful to us. If they die now, well, no one said democracy was easy.

Donald Rumsfeld - who raged away about weapons of mass destruction before the invasion - now admits he didn`t even discuss WMD with David Kay, the head of the US-led team looking for these mythical weapons, on his recent visit to Baghdad. Of course not. Because they don`t exist. Mr Rumsfeld is equally silent about the civilian death toll here. It`s the followers of his nemesis Bin Laden that now have to be publicised.

Bin Laden must be grateful. So must the Palestinians. In the refugee camps of Lebanon last week, they were talking of the events in Iraq as a form of encouragement. "If Israel`s superpower ally can be humbled by Arabs," a Palestinian official explained to me in one of the Beirut camps, "why should we give up our struggle against the Israelis who cannot be as efficient soldiers as the Americans?" That`s the lesson the Algerians drew when they saw France`s mighty army reduced to surrender at Dien Bien Phu. The French, like the Americans, had succeeded in murdering or "liquidating" many of the
Algerians who might have negotiated a ceasefire with them. The search for an interlocuteur valable was one of de Gaulle`s most difficult tasks when he decided to leave Algeria. But what will the Americans do? Their interlocuteur valable might have been the United Nations. But now the UN has been struck off as a negotiator by the suicide bombing in Baghdad. And the Bin Ladens and the adherents of the Wahabi sect are not interested in negotiations of any kind. Mr Bush declared "war without end". And it looks as though Iraqis - along with ourselves -- are going to be its principal

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/

[Joerver]

Powell flies in to Iraqi anger at deaths
Rory McCarthy, Baghdad
Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, flew into Baghdad yesterday to meet Iraqi politicians as another American soldier was killed and three others wounded in a roadside attack near Falluja, the town where 10 Iraqi police officers died in a "friendly fire" incident on Friday.

Yesterday`s death and injuries were caused by a homemade bomb planted on the road outside the town, north-west of Baghdad.

It detonated as a US military Humvee passed over it at about 8am.

Witnesses reported seeing a soldier lying motionless on the ground after the attack, next to the burned-out vehicle.

The blast may have been revenge for US troops accidentally killing the Iraqi police officers.

At their funerals on Saturday, hundreds of furious people vowed to make the Americans pay for the deaths.

Several men in the crowd were armed, some with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and they fired shots into the air during the ceremony, and warned that reprisal attacks would follow.

Friday`s killings were one of the most serious blows to the American military`s limited efforts to win the sympathies of the Sunni minority in central Iraq.

Government offices were closed in Falluja yesterday for a one-day strike to protest at the killings. The American military expressed "deep regret and apologies" for the deaths.

Yesterday`s death brought to 72 the number of American soldiers killed in attacks since George Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1.

Mr Powell, who was making his first visit to Iraq since the war, yesterday met some of the Iraqis who have been appointed to the governing council, intended to be the forerunner of a government.

Hoshiyar Zebari, the foreign minister appointed by the council, told Mr Powell that he wanted an elected government for the country by the end of next year.

Mr Powell will have heard repeatedly the council members` most important demand: that the Americans hand over responsibility for security to the Iraqis.

The secretary of state admitted yesterday that the current security situation in Iraq "remains challenging".

But he said: "I am confident that our commanders understand the environment that we are operating in and will be able to deal with it in due course."

Like other senior figures in the US administration, Mr Powell said the principle threat in Iraq was foreign militants entering into the country to disrupt reconstruction efforts.

"The major new threats are the terrorists who are trying to infiltrate into the country for the purpose of disrupting this very hopeful process and we will not allow that to happen," he said.

US military commanders have said Islamist fighters are crossing into Iraq from Iran and Syria through poorly policed borders.

Mr Powell said there were up to 2,000 foreign militants now in Iraq.

The secretary of state had arrived from talks in Geneva, where he had spent several hours trying to convince other western governments to send their troops into Iraq to support the 140,000 American soldiers who are already on the ground.

Although the talks appeared to founder almost immediately over the political process in Iraq, more discussions will be held at the United Nations in New York in the coming days.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Civil libertarians prepare to fight Bush over tougher anti-terror laws
David Teather in New York
Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian

American civil liberties groups are steeling for a fight against proposals for a beefed up patriot act, including the expanded application of the death penalty, put forward by President George Bush last week.

The president used a speech on the eve of the second anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks to call for a significant increase in law enforcement powers to tackle terrorism.

The three-point plan would give federal agents broad new powers to subpoena information and private records without first getting approval from a judge.

Mr Bush also wants to make it tougher for suspected terrorists to be freed on bail and to introduce the death penalty for crimes such as terrorist fundraising. In a speech to the FBI training academy at Quantico, Virginia, he said that "unreasonable obstacles" in the law were impeding the war against terrorism.

Critics have dubbed the plan the patriot act II, a sequel to the act giving new powers to investigators that was introduced shortly after the 2001 attacks.

But the Bush administration faces a tough time selling the enhanced powers to Congress, which is in a different mood to the one that hung over Washington in the autumn of 2001.

The proposals, which the attorney general, John Ashcroft, has been pushing in a roadshow across the country, have met with opposition from both Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic representative John Conyers Jr from Michigan said: "Removing judges from providing any check or balance on John Aschcroft`s subpoenas does not make us safer, it only makes us less free.

"Of course terrorists should not be released on bail, but this administration has a shameful record of deeming law-abiding citizens as terrorists and taking away their rights."

A Pennsylvania Republican senator, Arlen Specter, told the New York Times that he supported the expanded threat of the death penalty, but was unsettled by the other elements of the plan. He said he wanted hearings on the strengthening of subpoena powers "because I`m concerned that it may be too sweeping". On the presumption against allowing bail for suspected terrorists, he said: "The justice department has gone too far. You have to have a reason to detain."

Mr Bush was also accused of exploiting the emotions of the second anniversary of the attacks. "It is unfortunate that President Bush would use this tragic date to endorse the increasingly unpopular anti-civil-liberties policies" of the justice department, said Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Strike exposes poverty behind scenes at Yale
One of America`s richest universities is pitted against one of its poorest towns

Gary Younge in New Haven
Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian

On the first day for incoming students at Yale University, the first lesson for the Ivy League institution was labour relations. About 100 police officers in riot gear lined the streets of New Haven, where the university is situated, as hundreds of Yale`s clerical and technical workers sat in circles at three major intersections, calling for improved pay and conditions.

Parents dropping their children off at one of America`s finest universities were stuck in traffic for close to an hour.

For weeks now, Yale`s colonial architecture has provided the backdrop for striking workers wearing sandwich boards demanding a living wage at the alma mater of the past three US presidents.

The dispute has seen mostly privileged students wearing university sweatshirts and carrying literary classics making their way to class through impromptu rallies, and strike leaders taking supporters to "sing to some scabs" in the Woolsey concert hall.

With more than 200 professors moving their classes off campus at the unions` request, lectures for the past fortnight have taken place in restaurants, front rooms, church halls and the city hall.

The dispute highlights America`s ever growing economic divide, with one of the wealthiest academic institutions pitted against the residents of one of the US`s poorest towns.

"It`s supposed to be a place of learning", said Karl Mcellya, a university cook. "But they`re acting like they`re a big corporation that doesn`t care about its workers."

Yale is the largest employer in a predominantly black town, where more than a third of families with children under five live in poverty.

New Haven has a higher infant mortality rate than Costa Rica; With its £6.9bn ($11bn) tax exempt endowment, Yale could cover Costa Rica`s public health budget until 2015 and still have change left over to build a couple more hospitals.

Only 10 minutes` walk from the university lie increasingly decrepit homes, urban decay and deprivation.

On one side are restaurants called Educated Burgher and Ivy Noodle; on the other is Popeye`s Fried Chicken and shops advertising a welcome for food stamps.

"The university for a long part of its history has insulted and patronised working class New Haven," Professor Douglas Rae, author of a soon-to-be published book about New Haven, called City: Urbanism and its End, told the New York Times.

Judging by the hoots of support from passing cars, the strikers have strong local support, although most students appear ambivalent - more eager for the inconvenience to be over than for the strike to be won or lost by either side.

But the dispute, now entering its third week, is becoming increasingly bitter. On Saturday the leader of America`s largest trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO, was arrested when 10,000 workers from the north-east converged on the town to show solidarity. Two weeks ago, the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was arrested.

Local Latino ministers last week accused the university of fomenting ethnic confrontation, after two cleaning firms brought 40 to 50 Latino cleaners past a picket line of mostly black strikers. Agustin Rojas of St Rose of Lima church, said the "university needs to focus on enriching people`s lives rather than abusing those who, by ignorance, are being given scraps." The university insisted it was a routine case of subcontracting, needed to keep the place running.

The two unions that called the strike are seeking a six-year deal with pay rises ranging from 3% in the first year to 7% in the final year, as well as improved pensions and job security. Yale is offering an eight-year contract offering pay rises of between 3% and 5% and a signing bonus.

Powerful allies


Union members earn between £18,800 ($30,000) and £20,700 a year, less than their counterparts at Yale`s principal competitor, Harvard. Union officials say the average worker with 20 years` experience retires with a pension of £390 a month, forcing them to take extra jobs.

Although the university claims that it offers a generous package, given the country`s economic climate, it is no stranger to labour disputes. This is Yale`s ninth strike in 38 years. But this time, the unions have some powerful allies.

Among the parents saying goodbye to their children was the leading Democratic presidential contender, Howard Dean, whose daughter studies there. As a student, Mr Dean tried to shut down the university`s power plant in a previous strike.

"The struggle was the same then as it is now," said Mr Dean, who graduated in 1971. "What is needed in this country more than anything is economic justice."

Two other Yale alumni standing for the Democratic nomination, Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman, also side with the strikers.

Barbara Bush, daughter of the president, is also at the university, but her father has yet to comment on the strike.

Several attempts at negotiation have broken down, but the two sides have gradually moved closer on a number of key points. Nonetheless, the unions say they are in for the long haul. "We`re prepared to sit down with the university and start a new relationship, but they`re not interested," said Mike Schoen, a chef and union negotiator.

"The reason we`ve got the rights we have is because we fought for them, and we`ll carry on fighting for them for as long as it takes."

The university appears willing to withstand the bad publicity and disruption. Referring to the media attention on this weekend`s protest, a Yale spokesman, Tom Conroy, said: "Yale is just serving as a good backdrop."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

September 15, 2003
Across the U.S., Concern Grows About the Course of War in Iraq
By ADAM NAGOURNEY


OMAHA, Sept. 14 — Becky Bunting, a 45-year-old job recruiter, was a big supporter of the invasion of Iraq and applauded the fall of Baghdad and President Bush`s execution of the war. But these days, Mrs. Bunting is growing concerned about what is taking place there, unhappy with the mounting costs, disturbed by the casualties and, most of all, wondering how it is all going to end.

"I am very worried about it," Mrs. Bunting, a Republican, said today as she lounged in the crisp September sun in the Old Market district here. "I have two brothers in the Navy. I think there are going to be a lot more casualties. I think we are in there for the long haul.

"I believe we did the right thing," she said. "But I don`t see a winning situation here for anybody."

The sentiments expressed by Mrs. Bunting today were hardly unusual.

A week after President Bush`s speech seeking to rally support for the campaign in Iraq, the nation appears increasingly anxious about the war effort and worried that the United States may be trapped in an adventure from which there is no evident exit, according to interviews during the last five days with Americans across the nation, historians, social scientists and pollsters.

Some people went so far as to suggest a comparison with an earlier military action that had an unhappy history: the war in Vietnam.

There is no sign that Americans have turned from their original support of what many describe as the object of the invasion: removing Saddam Hussein from power and lessening the threat of terrorist attacks at home. And support for Mr. Bush remains relatively strong, if not as strong as it was even a month ago, according to pollsters.

But there is, by many measures, a gnawing unease about the course of this mission and a realization that the conflict will be deadlier, more expensive and longer-lasting than Mr. Bush signaled when he landed on an aircraft carrier off San Diego on May 1 to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein. In the most recent evidence of that, a Washington Post/ABC News poll published today found a nine-point jump in the last three weeks, to 46 percent, in the number of Americans who disapprove of Mr. Bush`s Iraq policy, while the number who expressed support for the policy slipped to 52 percent from 56 percent.

"I think it`s going to go on forever," said Mike Gallagher, 34, an independent voter from Chicago. "The U.S. opened a can of worms that should have never been opened in the first place."

In Pensacola, Fla., Betty Enfinger, 59, a Republican, said: "I knew it was not going to be easy. Bush seemed to have a good game plan for the war. But things have gone very, very poorly after the war."

Here in Omaha, Paul McGill, 39, an independent, said he supported the war, but added tersely: "I`d like to see the reins handed over. I would like to see an exit strategy — mapped out in detail."

At that, his wife, Virginia, who did not support the war, sighed. "I think we are locked in, and I don`t see any way out," she said.

Several pollsters said that shifts in public mood could prove to be transitory in an era of abrupt swings in opinion and might have been accelerated by Mr. Bush`s call last Sunday for $87 billion to finance the war effort. Indeed, the mood could certainly change again if, say, images of random shootings in Baghdad are overtaken by the capture of Saddam Hussein or the recovery of unconventional weapons.

Despite any signs of apprehension, support for the war still remains solid. Sandra Johnson, 50, of Oak Creek, Colo., an independent who voted for Bush, said she was not surprised by how long it was taking. "Things just don`t happen that quickly," she said. "They can`t get in and accomplish all that and get out, as history has dictated in other wars."

Still, the pollsters said these recent indications of concern could be the leading edge of a reassessment of a war that once enjoyed major support and of a new round of questioning whether it was worth the cost and casualties. Such a development could prove problematic for President Bush going into an election year.

"It`s my impression that the public is in the midst of a change of mind," said Andrew M. Greeley, a prominent Catholic sociologist with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "They still support in general the Iraqi war. But they don`t believe the Iraqi war is central to the war on terror, and they are finally really not sure that they are ever going to get out of Iraq."

Richard N. Smith, a Republican political historian and director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, said of the Bush administration: "My sense is that they may be paying a price, short term or not, about not being more explicit about the possible costs and long-term commitments that, quote, rebuilding, unquote, Iraq would necessarily require. They needed to do a much better job of explaining what the $87 billion is for. I think it shocked people."

Against this backdrop, there is evidence that the steps Mr. Bush took a week ago to try to arrest any decline in support for the war — delivering a prime-time speech and requesting $87 billion to pay for its aftermath — might not have had the desired effect. The Post/ABC News poll also found that 6 out of 10 Americans did not support the proposal. The poll surveyed 1,104 adults from Sept. 10 through Sept. 13, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who gathered new data after Mr. Bush`s speech, said this might prove to be the first time a major address by Mr. Bush had not turned the public`s mood toward him.

"People are very disturbed," Mr. Greenberg said. "This was not a confidence-building speech."

The developments have clear implications for the presidential race. The candidates have been attacking the war effort with language that would have been unthinkable even two weeks ago.

In Indianola, Iowa, on Saturday night, at a steak fry attended by most of the Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Bob Graham of Florida invoked the image of Vietnam by using a word, quagmire, that has become synonymous with that long and ultimately losing struggle.

"What we have is a quagmire which today is costing every American $1 billion a week," he said to cheers.

Historians and sociologists said comparisons with Vietnam were overblown, at least for now. For one thing, that conflict was far longer and deadlier: the Iraq war has produced fewer than a hundredth of the combat deaths of Vietnam. For another, there has been no evidence of the breakdown of confidence in the government that was intertwined with opposition to Vietnam.

"You hear a lot of sentiments that this could turn into Vietnam if not handled correctly," said Mark Penn, who was a pollster for Bill Clinton in the White House and is now working for the presidential campaign of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. "But we`re not in the same mood as we were in the 60`s. Now, most people are more oriented to terrorism; most people want to win the war on terrorism."

Allan J. Lichtman, a historian at American University, said: "The American people are nervous. There are substantial numbers who thought that things are not going well, that this was not planned well. But I don`t see that this is front and center yet. It`s tragic what is going on, but the casualties are not large enough yet."

Still, the comparison was raised frequently in interviews.

"It`s a disaster — it will get worse and worse and we will leave the same way we left Vietnam: with our tail between our legs," Frank Jessoe, 60, a former Marine who served in Vietnam and voted for Ross Perot in 1992 and Ralph Nader in 2000, said in Laguna Beach.

Gary Sambrowski, 54, a Democrat and an investment counselor in Denver, said: "I get the feeling it`s another Vietnam over there. We just can`t walk away — we`re stuck now."

Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, said that concern was not the same as opposition to the war or criticism of Mr. Bush. He said there had been no change over the summer in the number of people in his polls who said the war was a good idea: just over 60 percent.

"America should be concerned, they ought to be worried," he said. "But what is important is that you can be worried and concerned and a little shaky about what`s going on over there, but understand, the exact same percentage of people say it`s a good idea as three or four months ago."

Several analysts suggested that Mr. Bush`s call for more money had turned into a catalyst, fortifying existing opposition while stirring concern among supporters of the war.

"I think it`s a real big waste of money," said Hele Spivack, 53, a Democrat and jewelry designer who was having brunch at the French Café in Omaha. "We should be taking care of our own people, we are not the policemen of the world."

But at this point, supporters and opponents of the war said that spending the money was the unavoidable cost of putting an end to the conflict.

"Bush obviously made a mistake in coming back and saying the war is over and underestimating Saddam and his loyalists over there," said Phillip Ruland, 46, of Laguna Beach. "I think that we`re going through a rough patch over there, but we`ve got to stay the course. I don`t think it`s going to be a Vietnam-type situation. It`s totally different. It was a necessary war."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 15, 2003
Powell Cautious on Iraq Timetable
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 14 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, pressed by France and by some Iraqis to agree to a speedier timetable toward self-government in Iraq, cautioned here today that the process of restoring sovereignty had to be carried out in stages and that it might not be seen as legitimate if it went too rapidly.

Speaking after meetings with leaders of the American-led occupation and with the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, which was handpicked by American authorities, Mr. Powell also said he had found that more progress was being made in securing and rebuilding Iraq than had been emphasized in news reports, mentioning for example new parent-teacher groups at local schools.

He said he was impressed by the determination of council members to gain control of their country as quickly as possible, and he said the United States fully supported them. "This is how you build a government," he said, describing a process in which Iraqis take on "more and more responsibilities" over time.

Refusing to set an exact time frame for the process, Mr. Powell said it was important not to turn over responsibility to Iraqis — as demanded by France at the United Nations Security Council — until such a turnover is seen as legitimate as a result of a new constitution and elections, which could take place well into next year.

"We`re not hanging on for the sake of hanging on," Mr. Powell said, adding that too much speed would lead to failure. "The worst thing that could happen is for us to push this process too quickly." In Washington, others in the Bush administration defended its Iraq policy.

It was a long day for Mr. Powell, beginning before dawn in Kuwait and continuing with a noisy flight aboard an Air Force transport plane to the Baghdad airport and then a helicopter ride to the Presidential Palace that sits on a bend in the Tigris River and serves as occupation headquarters. Everywhere, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was greeted with enthusiasm and cheers by servicemen and servicewomen who seemed to regard him as one of their own.

One American soldier died and three others were wounded today when a convoy was attacked with an improvised bomb outside the city of Falluja, about 30 miles west of here, the military said.

Mr. Powell traveled through a hot, dusty and brown capital that has been returning to normal in part, but one in which American compounds are walled off and isolated because of the bombing attacks since midsummer.

He arrived in the region from Geneva, where he met with his counterparts from France, Russia, China and Britain, and the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan. The group failed to resolve the impasse over the insistence of France for a faster turnover. Some other Security Council members are also seeking to speed things up in order to get France`s assent to a resolution widening the United Nations` role over security forces and reconstruction in Iraq.

In one version of what is possible, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator, has said it would be realistic to expect sovereignty to be restored by the middle of next year. Today, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said after meeting with Mr. Powell that he thought it would be possible to hold elections and restore sovereignty by the second half of the year.

Though Mr. Powell was addressing Iraqis in his comments, it was obvious that his words were also directed at the debate at the United Nations over France`s demand that a new interim government be established in a month, and that the entire transition to democracy be overseen by the United Nations rather than the American-led occupation.

France, he said, "believes that we ought to do this as quickly as possible," perhaps in a month. "The only real problem with that is that there is not yet a functioning government that you can turn authority over to," he asserted.

According to an aide, Mr. Powell was more blunt at a meeting with Iraqi Governing Council members when one member raised the subject of France`s objection, with the secretary noting that France had opposed the invasion.

"We were right, they were wrong, and I am here," he was quoted as saying, a clear indication of the bitter tone the argument is taking.

Mr. Powell, after arriving from Kuwait, spent the day in meetings surrounded by extremely tight security. The overriding message the secretary said he had heard from Iraqis at the Governing Council and at the Baghdad City Council was gratitude for what the United States had done in taking over Iraq.

"It`s really quite astounding how much has happened over the last few weeks," the secretary said at a news conference this evening with Mr. Bremer. "It`s really quite astounding how much has happened."

The secretary met with Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior military commander in Iraq. This evening, he dined with the senior Shiite cleric in Baghdad, Hussein al-Sadr, a member of a prominent family, some of whom opposed Saddam Hussein and others who oppose the American occupation.

But Mr. Powell did not leave his highly secure environment. Echoing occupation officials, Mr. Powell said, "The security situation remains challenging, but after the briefings I have had this morning I am confident that our new commanders understand the environment they are operating in, and they will be able to deal with it in due course."

Administration officials say those carrying out attacks on the occupation are divided into three categories: common criminals, disgruntled members and allies of the old government and — a relatively new element — terrorists who have come in from other countries. Mr. Powell said intelligence reports he had seen put the estimate of outside terrorists in the hundreds and perhaps 1,000.

He told reporters at an appearance with Mr. Zebari that the positive things happening in Iraqi "really don`t get out widely enough into the press."

Asked later whether that view was based simply on the official briefings he got, Mr. Powell sounded a somewhat defensive note. "I don`t know if I will have the opportunity to go around town and ask people if they are unhappy, so come forward," he said. "But I think I`ve been around long enough to understand the things I`m being told and to see behind the things I`m being told."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 12, 2003
Q&A: Max Boot on Iraq

From the Council on Foreign Relations, September 12, 2003


Max Boot, a senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, participated in a Council-sponsored conference call on September 9, 2003, to brief editorial-page editors at U.S. newspapers. The topic was Boot`s late-August tour of Iraq. Following is an edited transcript of the call:

Briefly describe your trip and give us your general impressions of conditions on the ground.

I spent 10 days in Iraq, and returned about a week ago. First I went out with the First Marine Division, which was headquartered in Babylon. And then I went up to Mosul, in northern Iraq, with the Army`s 101st Airborne Division. I came back with a fairly optimistic impression of the progress that is being made, despite the fact that I went over there the day after the [August 19] bombing in Baghdad that destroyed the United Nations building. And the day before I came back, there was a huge bombing in Najaf [on August 29], which killed 100 people, including a leading cleric. Despite all of that, I was struck by the progress that the troops are making with the various projects they`re undertaking to win hearts and minds. To rebuild schools, to train police, to stand up Iraqi city councils, mayors, and governors, and do all these other things that are necessary in order to get Iraq back on track. I generally got a sense of optimism from the troops, and felt they felt they were doing important work and making progress.

There were also, of course, a lot of problems. The big one I found was with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA, which tries to run things from Baghdad. Some of the troops joke CPA stands for "can`t provide anything." It hasn`t done a very good job of supporting the work the military is doing. And, of course, there are a lot of problems with lack of electricity, lack of employment, lack of fuel--all sorts of woes that are plaguing the country. But, as I said, I came back with a generally positive impression that despite all those [difficulties], things are moving in a positive direction.

I think that President Bush`s $87 billion request is appropriate and overdue. And I think that money is needed in Iraq, and will help achieve some of the goals of the occupation--repairing Iraqi infrastructure and putting more Iraqi police and security forces on the street, which I think has to be the top priority.

What should be the criteria for deciding when the United States should intervene in a country that may or may not be a terrorist threat to us?

American use of force is most successful when it marries national security interests with high moral purpose. And there is no question that, in the long run, both are very present in Iraq. The moral purpose should be obvious, which is that we are replacing a brutal dictatorship. And we have a chance to create the first democracy in the Middle East other than Israel, which would be a tremendous achievement.

The strategic purpose right now is also pretty clear. Whatever you may have thought about the intervention in the first place, I refer you to a story on the front page of The Washington Post on September 7 about how al Qaeda is trying to open a front against the United States in Iraq. Clearly, we have a huge stake in defeating these jihadists flooding into Iraq hoping to kill Americans. And likewise, if we were to pull out now, our enemies would see that as a victory. We would suffer catastrophic consequences, because it would reinforce this sense that was fostered by Beirut, Somalia, and Vietnam that we`re this paper tiger, as Osama bin Laden said, and can be attacked with impunity. For all those reasons, I think President Bush was right to say [in his September 7 speech] that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism.

In an article you wrote before you went to Iraq, you made a pragmatic case for the United States to get more international help in Iraq. Did your trip change your opinions, or do you still feel that way? And what kind of help specifically are you interested in?

I still feel that way. In fact, in some ways, my trip strengthened that view. As I mentioned, I heard a lot of complaints about how the Coalition Provisional Authority is not doing a tremendous job. It doesn`t have a lot of presence in the provinces. It hasn`t been able to create an Iraqi satellite TV channel. So in places--huge blocs of the country, in northern Iraq, for example--we`re completely ceding the media war to Al Jazeera and other anti-American media outlets. The CPA has had a lot of other problems with various programs. So getting more U.N. involvement in the civilian side of the occupation wouldn`t be a bad thing. It would be fine if the CPA were to cede some responsibility, if [CPA head L. Paul] Bremer [III] were to get a U.N. deputy, or if Bremer himself were to become the deputy to a U.N. administrator. If we could inject some more personnel and some more money into the CPA in particular, that would be a good thing.

The only thing I saw in Iraq that would make me at all concerned about getting the United Nations involved has to do with the security side. I was in southern Iraq when the Marines were turning over responsibility to coalition troops--Poles, Ukrainians, Spaniards, and various others. I think some of them will do fine. But with others, I got the clear sense they were just not up to the quality of the U.S. Marines, and probably would not do as good a job there. And I think that would be even more true with other foreign troops that you might bring in. You have to be careful about which foreign troops you bring in, and what responsibilities you give them. But if we can get at least another division out of India, that would be great. Not because I think we need to beef up the number of foreign troops so much, but to allow army units to rotate out of Iraq within a year`s time. Our own military is over-stretched right now.

Still, we have to realize the responsibility is ultimately on our shoulders. We`re not going to get more than 10,000 or 20,000 troops out of the United Nations. I think money would be the big thing we can get out of Western Europe and Japan. It would be great if they paid some of the bill of the occupation so we don`t have to shoulder the entire cost ourselves. But, realistically, we are going to be in the leading role for Iraq until it`s turned over to Iraqis. And that should be our goal. We have to realize it`s our responsibility and step up to the plate, which President Bush is now doing. A lot of people, including me, were saying months ago that we needed to put more money into reconstruction in Iraq.

Did you get any sense of how long it will take to turn the country over to the Iraqis?

It`s hard to say. Part of the difficulty is in defining what you mean by turning it over to Iraqis. I can easily foresee within a year`s time that there would be an Iraqi president of Iraq, possibly even an elected Iraqi president. But the question is, how much of a presence would we still need to have in Iraq in order to provide security and other assistance? I suspect it would have to be substantial. In my mind, the analogy is Afghanistan, where there is a president, Hamid Karzai. He hasn`t been elected formally, although he was selected at the loya jirga. Nevertheless, there are something like 15,000 foreign troops helping his government try to keep the security situation under control. And of course, the United States is providing a lot of reconstruction assistance as well to his government. I suspect we would have to do something very similar in Iraq, probably on a bigger scale, even after there is an Iraqi leadership. And even after Iraqis are in control of the country, we`re going to have to provide assistance to the democratic government. Because the jihadists and Baath Party remnants and so forth are not just fighting now to defeat Americans. They also don`t want a democracy in Iraq.

Do you think the invasion of Iraq has provoked more recruitment for jihadists?

I don`t think anybody knows how many jihadists are out there in the world now, as opposed to three months ago. The figure probably is in flux all the time. There`s no question that probably some people were inflamed to journey to Iraq for the sole purpose of killing Americans, who might not have done that if we hadn`t been in Iraq. When I was there, one of the officers I talked with showed me some passports that they had seized from foreign fighters. These were Syrian passports, Jordanian, and other Arab nationalities. On the visa application, stating the reason why they wanted to come to Iraq, they would list "pursuing jihad." That would be their reason for coming to Iraq. They were very up front about it. And that`s why they got in. These [papers] were taken off of killed or captured fighters.

There is something to the notion that there are a lot of people out there who want to kill Americans, no matter what. And if we`re in the neighborhood, they`re going to go out and target our troops in Iraq, instead of trying to infiltrate the United States. I`m sure there are a number of people who are in that position, because getting into the United States is much more difficult than getting into Iraq. And there is something to the argument that we want them targeting 130,000 well-armed American troops, wearing flak vests and Kevlar helmets, instead of targeting civilians in New York or Los Angeles. But what the overall balance is, it`s hard to say. I will say that I think that if we can prevail in Iraq, if we can install a stable constitutional government, that will be a huge setback for the jihadists, for al Qaeda, for the anti-American forces out there. And conversely, if we fail, if we pull out, and disorder takes over in Iraq, that will be a huge blow to us. It will be seen as another Vietnam, or Somalia, or Beirut, and that will be a huge boost for the terrorists and a huge blow for the United States.

If the war did provoke more fighters, and considering that we haven`t found weapons of mass destruction, isn`t there a risk that we are more vulnerable than before the war?

I don`t think it`s going to leave us more vulnerable than before the war. I don`t think that the fact that we`re in Iraq itself is vastly increasing the number of fighters against us. Certainly the Iraqi people are not being inflamed into violence. I was down in the southern region, and the Marines have excellent relations with the people in Karbala and Najaf, and all these other places where the holiest Shiite shrines are located. And they have good links with the imams. We`re definitely making friends overall in Iraq.

What the balance is in the rest of the Arab world, it`s hard to say right now. Because clearly, there are some people who are saying, "Oh my God, the infidels are in possession of the land of the Muslims. So we have to go and blow them up." Clearly, there`s some of that. But I think a lot of these people are going to hate us no matter what, and try to kill Americans no matter what. And I think long term, we have an opportunity. If we can turn Iraq around, we can undo some of the causes of the violence in the Middle East. We can show that America is not only backing despotic regimes, as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but also is actually doing something positive for the people of the Arab world. I think that will be a tremendous opportunity, and one that will lead Arabs in neighboring states to ask, "Well, if the Iraqis are getting democracy, why aren`t we?"

Are you confident that, if the situation in Iraq remains unsettled and U.S. casualties continue, President Bush will be able to sustain his argument to the American people and to Congress that we need to stay the course?

It`s hard to say. It generally depends on whether there are signs that we`re making progress. If there`s palpable progress being made on the ground in Iraq, then I think the American people will tolerate casualties. This notion that Americans want to pull out every time a soldier gets killed is, I think, just wrong as a matter of historical fact. In Vietnam, even as late as 1968, after we`d suffered tens of thousands of casualties, more Americans in opinion polls wanted to escalate than wanted to withdraw. And if you look at the Cold War, we stayed the course for decades, with a huge commitment of money and resources, in order to fight the Soviet Union. The American people are capable of making these long-term sacrifices. But they`re going to get pretty fed up if they`re not seeing signs of progress. The only thing that in the long run can really defeat us is a sense back home that we`re losing the war. That`s the only thing I think that would lead the American people to want to pull out.

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washingtonpost.com
Iraq Museum Is Slowly Recovering Artifacts


By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page A10


Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos breathed evenly and tried to keep his voice from rising. Yes, he told his informant, some of that stuff looks as though it came from the museum. He handed the photographs back. Why not bring it around, so the staff can look it over?

The next day the informant drove to the museum and opened the trunk of his car. Inside -- in pieces -- was the exquisitely carved, 5,000-year-old Sacred Vase of Warka, the oldest known depiction of a ritual in the world, and one of the priceless centerpieces of Iraq`s National Museum.

Last week Bogdanos, a reservist who works as a Manhattan prosecutor in civilian life, briefed reporters on his recently concluded stay in Baghdad as head of the U.S. Central Command`s investigation into the looting and theft of artifacts from the National Museum, the central repository for the heritage of Mesopotamia since the dawn of human civilization.

He said more than 10,000 items are still missing, but 3,411 have been recovered -- seized in raids or searches or received, no questions asked, under an amnesty program that yielded 1,731 items, including the Warka Vase, one of the most famous artifacts in the world.

In a telephone interview, Bogdanos cautioned that loss estimates change daily as staffers plod through reams of printed records that were ruined, damaged or strewn about the museum`s corridors: "The reality is that we still do not have a complete inventory of precisely what is missing," he told reporters at the briefing.

Still at large are 30 objects from the display collection, among them the world`s earliest known representational sculpture, the so-called Warka Mask, of a Sumerian goddess, dated at 3,500 B.C.

Also missing is the Akkadian Bassetki Statue, dated at 2,300 B.C., a copper casting weighing 330 pounds. Looters dragged it across the display hall and down the museum`s main staircase, deeply gouging the floor, Bogdanos said.

Besides the looters, Bogdanos said, thieves with inside knowledge of the museum broke into a basement storeroom and stole more than 10,000 pieces of jewelry and cylinder seals, carved cylindrical bits of stone that imprint a scene or symbol when rolled across a flat surface.

"The majority of the work remaining, that of tracking down the missing pieces, will likely take years," Bogdanos said. "It will require the cooperative efforts of all nations." Already , he said, 750 stolen objects have been recovered in Great Britain, Italy, Jordan and the United States.

Mobs ransacked the downtown museum between April 9 and April 12 as U.S. forces entered Baghdad in the waning days of the war against the government of Saddam Hussein. The looting was a public relations disaster for the United States, which was sharply criticized for ignoring the pillagers as they charged through the museum.

Bogdanos, however, defended U.S. actions, saying the soldiers were being attacked even as mobs breached the museum`s gates. He said his team found an Iraqi sniper position in a second-floor museum storeroom, as well as two firing positions in the front and back of the main building and a rocket mount -- along with two boxes of unexpended rocket-propelled grenades -- atop the nearby children`s museum.

"This was combat," Bogdanos said in an interview. "It`s remarkable that 19-, 20- and 21-year-old young men exercised such restraint in not returning fire."

Critics of U.S. handling of the looting as well as reporters who covered it at the time, however, have said that the museum area was clearly under U.S. control when the looting took place. "Absolutely, they could have stopped it," said McGuire Gibson, an Iraq specialist at the University of Chicago`s Oriental Institute, who visited Baghdad in early May to help with the investigation.

Gibson did not fault the soldiers, however, but the high command, which had been warned before the war that the museum would probably be a prime looting target. "The people doing the fighting had another task," Gibson said. "They didn`t know about the museum."

Bogdanos`s team, composed of four military members and nine U.S. Customs agents, arrived in Baghdad on April 21. Museum staff members, still incensed at the initial military response to the looting, were standoffish, he said.

"There wasn`t antagonism; there was a lack of trust," he said. "You have to let people know you`re conducting an investigation and you`re in control, but you have to do it slowly, because this isn`t your culture."

Gibson said that by the time he arrived, the staffers knew Bogdanos "was an honest guy," and they had started to come clean. It was not as bad as it looked, they said. Weeks before the war, the staff had emptied the display cases of 8,366 mostly priceless artifacts and had taken them to a "secret place."

It took the staff another month to tell Bogdanos where the cache was and take him for a visit. The material was intact. Instead of thousands of items missing from the display collection, there were 40. Also intact were the museum`s 39,453 manuscripts, stashed in a bomb shelter in western Baghdad.

Bogdanos and the team got all the information they could from the staff and visiting volunteers such as Gibson, but the rest was police work. The Warka Vase was returned after step-by-step negotiations with a "friend of a friend" of its possessor, Bogdanos said.

"You`re sitting there, trying not to let on that you know what he`s got, and you can hear the museum folks breathing next to you," he said. Although the vase was returned in pieces -- as it had been discovered in the 1880s -- Bogdanos said it can be fully restored.

Ninety items were recovered when "an informant told us he knew a house where a guy`s selling antiquities along with weapons," Bogdanos said. "We did a drive-by, checked it out, picked a time when there was nobody on the street and hit the building from all four sides."

The greatest piece of luck, and the greatest misfortune, occurred when thieves with knowledge of the museum`s catacombs broke into a basement storeroom during the looting and went straight to a line of cabinets filled with cylinder seals and the world`s finest collection of Greek, Roman, Islamic and Arabic gold and silver coins.

They had a set of keys they had stolen from elsewhere in the museum, "but they dropped them" in the dark , Bogdanos said: "It`s the Keystone Cops. Boxes are thrown in every direction. They lit the foam padding so they could see. Can`t you imagine two or three of them screaming at each other, `Where are the keys?` "

The cabinets were intact, but the thieves emptied 103 plastic boxes containing beads, pieces of jewelry, cylinder seals and glass bottles worth a fortune -- and, unlike the world-famous artifacts from upstairs, almost impossible to trace.

"It would all fit in a large backpack," Bogdanos said.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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A U.S. soldier stands guard as Iraqi girls arrive for classes at a secondary school in Baghdad, where there are widespread fears of kidnapping, especially the abduction of young people. An uncle of a kidnapped child explained: "This is business for the kidnappers. It`s just money."

washingtonpost.com
Kidnappers Prosper in Baghdad
Families Pay Ransom Rather Than Seek Police Help

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page A18


BAGHDAD -- When the kidnappers told Dina Karim, 17, to come out of the dark room where they had kept her for five days, all she could think about was whether they would kill her with a gun or with a knife.

But they did not kill her. Instead, they took her blindfolded on a half-hour drive and dumped her in a Baghdad neighborhood, where she found a store owner and asked to call home so her mother could pick her up.

When her mother, Tissam Karim, a schoolteacher, arrived, Dina burst into tears. She wept partly from relief and partly from the memory of a 5-year-old boy she left behind, a child who was in the kidnappers` lair when she arrived and, for all she knows, is still there. "He cried all the time. I still think of him. He was so scared," Dina said.

Kidnapping has become so common in Baghdad that it is hard to go to any neighborhood in the city without hearing about someone who knows someone who was a victim. In some places, residents know of multiple cases. When Tissam Karim was trying to figure out whether and how to pay a ransom for her daughter, she sought advice from a family in her neighborhood that had gone through a similar experience.

In the Armenian district of the city last week, residents fearfully recounted three ongoing cases. In one, a teenage victim was sold by one gang to another for $1,000, a relative of his said, and his new captors want $5,000 for his release. At the Khadra district police station, U.S. military police have posted a list of the 10 most wanted criminals in the area. The top two are leaders of kidnapping gangs. Iraqi newspapers have reported stories about victims being moved from safe house to safe house, some filled with other victims pleading to be released.

Although Baghdad`s police force has grown to about one-half full strength, few officers are visible on patrols. The city lacks any kind of emergency 911 number, so people with complaints must walk into police stations.

In conversations with four families that have paid ransom or are trying to negotiate the release of their relatives, none considered going to the police for help. "First, it might be dangerous," Tissam Karim said. "Second, the police do nothing."

An uncle of a kidnapped child explained: "This is business for the kidnappers. It`s just money. If you pay, you get the person back. To go to the police, you will get nothing."

Dina`s kidnappers struck swiftly one afternoon last month as she was walking from her house to a music store. They drove up in a sedan, she said, pulled a gun, slapped her and told her to get in. They blindfolded her and pushed her onto the floor of the back seat. They drove for more than an hour, Dina estimated, but she said she thinks they did not travel far from her home. "Many of the roads were bumpy," she said. "I think they just wandered in circles."

She was kept blindfolded until she was pushed into a room with one small window. They slapped her again and asked for her home telephone number. Three of the kidnappers had identical crescent scars on their left cheeks. The Karims said they thought it was the mark of a criminal gang.

The kidnappers shaved her head. Dina said she thought it was to avoid lice, in case of a long captivity. There was no bathroom; she and the small boy relieved themselves in a corner. They slept on a dingy cloth, using a sandbag as a pillow.

"The kidnappers called the house. I told them we didn`t have money. They said they would call back," said Tissam, whose husband, a soldier, was killed in 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war.

While in captivity, Dina heard her captors argue about whether the Tissam family had money. One noted that the family owned a large SUV used to taxi passengers between Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, and a sedan. "This meant they had been watching the house," Tissam said. "What they didn`t understand is that the jeep is not ours. It belongs to a company. My brother just drives it, he doesn`t own it."

The amount of ransom varies greatly, said Iraqis who have fallen prey, with demands as high as $250,000. The kidnappers are generally open to bargaining. Originally, the price for Dina`s release was $10,000, but the kidnappers settled for $5,000.

All through her ordeal, Dina masqueraded as a boy. She had habitually worn her hair short. She is an athlete and has the slender figure of a marathoner. Her family had nicknamed her Adel, a boy`s name, and that was the name she gave to the kidnappers. "When they said they had Adel, I knew she was in trouble," Tissam said.

The abductors kept calling, but Tissam`s brother told them the family would not pay. "He said that they could kill the boy if they wanted," Tissam said.

Secretly, the mother went around to friends to beg for money. By the fourth day, she had collected the $5,000. The abductors called, and she told them she had the money. They instructed her to go to a school the next morning. There a boy sent to collect the ransom approached her and said, "I am Adel." Tissam gave him the money.

At 9 p.m. that day, Tissam got another phone call. The kidnappers told her to go to the Mahdiya neighborhood. They said they would be observing her, in case she brought police.

That is where she found Dina. The store owner who let the girl use his phone was sitting on the street cradling an AK-47 assault rifle. "He told me he would protect me," Dina said.

These days, Tissam keeps a close watch on Dina and her two other daughters. She lets them go only to the homes of close friends. Mina, the oldest, is scheduled to begin college this fall. Money is a problem. So is fear of another kidnapping. "The people who lent me the $5,000 want it back. I can`t tell my family anything. This is the way Iraq is. No one wanted to pay. I have only God to help. If only I had something to sell," Tissam said. "And now Mina wants to go to school. I will worry every day."

Dina worries about the 5-year-old hostage. "He wouldn`t tell me his name. He cried and cried and was sick. He was so scared," she said. "Maybe his family will never pay. What will happen to him?"



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Die Woche fängt gut an. 101mal frische Toon-Ware.
http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030914__101toons.htm

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October 2003 Issue
http://www.progressive.org/oct03/zinn1003.html
It Seems to Me Howard Zinn

An Occupied Country



It has become clear, very quickly, that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with the term "occupied country" during World War II. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied other countries.

Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the United States established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. U.S. corporations moved in to Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The United States was deciding what kind of constitution Cuba would have, just as our government is now forming a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation, an occupation.

And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7, The New York Times reported that U.S. General Ricardo Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about Iraqi reaction to the occupation. Iraqi leaders who were pro-American were giving him a message, as he put it: "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." (That`s very perceptive.)

CBS News reported on July 19 that Amnesty International is looking into a number of cases of suspected torture in Iraq by American authorities. One such case involves Khraisan al-Aballi, CBS said. "When American soldiers raided the al-Aballi house, they came in shooting. . . . They shot and wounded his brother Dureid." U.S. soldiers took Khraisan, his 80-year-old father, and his brother away. "Khraisan says his interrogators stripped him naked and kept him awake for more than a week, either standing or on his knees, bound hand and foot, with a bag over his head," CBS reported. Khraisan told CBS he informed his captors, "I don`t know what you want. I don`t know what you want. I have nothing." At one point, "I asked them to kill me," Khraisan said. After eight days, they let him and his father go. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, responded, "We are, in fact, carrying out our international obligations."

On June 17, two reporters for the Knight Ridder chain wrote about the Falluja area: "In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area said there was no Ba`athist or Sunni conspiracy against U.S. soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops." One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home because of empty wooden crates, which they had bought for firewood, that the United States is guilty of terrorism. "If I find any American soldiers, I will cut their heads off," she said. According to the reporters, "Residents in At Agilia--a village north of Baghdad--said two of their farmers and five others from another village were killed when U.S. soldiers shot them while they were watering their fields of sunflowers, tomatoes, and cucumbers."

Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they would be welcomed as liberators only to find they are surrounded by a hostile population become fearful, trigger-happy, and unhappy. We`ve been reading the reports of GIs angry at their being kept in Iraq. In mid-July, an ABC News reporter in Iraq told of being pulled aside by a sergeant who said to him: "I`ve got my own `Most Wanted List.` " He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime. "The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz," the sergeant said.

Such sentiments are becoming known to the American public. In May, a Gallup Poll reported that only 13 percent of the American public thought the war was going badly. By July 4, the figure was 42 percent. By late August, it was 49 percent.

Then there is the occupation of the United States. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. Those Mexican workers trying to cross the border--dying in the attempt to evade immigration officials (ironically, trying to cross into land taken from Mexico by the United States in 1848)--those Mexican workers are not alien to me. Those millions of people in this country who are not citizens and therefore, by the Patriot Act, are subject to being pulled out of their homes and held indefinitely by the FBI, with no constitutional rights--those people are not alien to me. But this small group of men who have taken power in Washington, they are alien to me.

I wake up thinking this country is in the grip of a President who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air. And I wonder what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit. More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong, that this is not what we want our country to be.

More and more every day, the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie: that everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism." This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people`s homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security.

You get some sense of what this government means by the "war on terrorism" when you examine what Rumsfeld said a year ago when he was addressing the NATO ministers in Brussels. "There are things that we know," he said. "And then there are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know that we don`t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don`t know. . . . That is, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. . . . Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn`t exist."

Well, Rumsfeld has clarified things for us.

That explains why this government, not knowing exactly where to find the criminals of September 11, will just go ahead and invade and bomb Afghanistan, killing thousands of people, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, and still not know where the criminals are.

That explains why the government, not really knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein is hiding, will invade and bomb Iraq, to the horror of most of the world, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorizing the population.

That explains why the government, not knowing who are terrorists and who are not, will put hundreds of people in confinement at Guantanamo under such conditions that twenty have tried to commit suicide.

That explains why, not knowing which noncitizens are terrorists, the Attorney General will take away the constitutional rights of twenty million of them.

The so-called war on terrorism is not only a war on innocent people in other countries, but it is also a war on the people of the United States: a war on our liberties, a war on our standard of living. The wealth of the country is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of our young are being stolen. And the thieves are in the White House.

It`s interesting to me that polls taken among African Americans have shown consistently 60 percent opposition to the war in Iraq. Shortly after Colin Powell made his report to the United Nations on "Weapons of Mass Destruction," I did a phone interview with an African American radio station in Washington, D.C., a program called "GW on the Hill." After I talked with the host there were eight call-ins. I took notes on what the callers said:

John: "What Powell said was political garbage."

Another caller: "Powell was just playing the game. That`s what happens when people get into high office."

Robert: "If we go to war, innocent people will die for no good reason."

Kareen: "What Powell said was hogwash. War will not be good for this country."

Susan: "What is so good about being a powerful country?"

Terry: "It`s all about oil."

Another caller: "The U.S. is in search of an empire and it will fall as the Romans did. Remember when Ali fought Foreman. He seemed asleep but when he woke up he was ferocious. So will the people wake up."

It is often said that this Administration can get away with war because unlike Vietnam, the casualties are few. True, only a few hundred battle casualties, unlike Vietnam. But battle casualties are not all. When wars end, the casualties keep mounting up--sickness, trauma. After the Vietnam War, veterans reported birth defects in their families due to the Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam. In the first Gulf War there were only a few hundred battle casualties, but the Veterans Administration reported recently that in the ten years following the Gulf War, 8,000 veterans died. About 200,000 of the 600,000 veterans of the Gulf War filed complaints about illnesses incurred from the weapons our government used in the war. In the current war, how many young men and women sent by Bush to liberate Iraq will come home with related illnesses?

What is our job? To point all this out.

Human beings do not naturally support violence and terror. They do so only when they believe their lives or country are at stake. These were not at stake in the Iraq War. Bush lied to the American people about Saddam and his weapons. And when people learn the truth--as happened in the course of the Vietnam War--they will turn against the government. We who are for peace have the support of the rest of the world. The United States cannot indefinitely ignore the ten million people who protested around the world on February 15. The power of government--whatever weapons it possesses, whatever money it has at its disposal--is fragile. When it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, its days are numbered.

We need to engage in whatever nonviolent actions appeal to us. There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress. We find ourselves today at one of those critical points.


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Howard Zinn, the author of "A People`s History of the United States," is a columnist for The Progressive.

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The crusade against ` terrorism`

Bush and his handlers are not protecting Americans by pursuing the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, they are protecting their own political skins

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

09/14/03: (Toronto Sun) NEW YORK -- "If at first you don`t succeed, lie and lie again" seems to be the watchword of the floundering Bush administration.

First, it was the ultimate evils, bin Laden and Mullah Omar. When they couldn`t be found, evil forces "that hate our freedoms." Then Saddam`s nuclear weapons, anthrax, mustard, and nerve gas, "drones of death," mobile germ labs, and links to al-Qaida, etc.

Now, in the latest change of sales pitch, the president insists his war on terrorism equals Iraq.

According to Bushthink, any Iraqi opposing U.S. occupying forces is a "terrorist." Ergo, growing Iraqi nationalist resistance will inevitably mean Bush`s signature "war on terrorism" will be a growth industry.

Like the gigantic Enron swindle, it`s a huge bubble, inflated by false claims and calculated deception.

Straining credulity even farther, the president claimed that waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan would spare America from another 9/11 that might otherwise happen at any moment - though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

It was the duty of the world community, Bush proclaimed, to "share the burden of occupation" of Iraq and Afghanistan - which the White House finally admitted will total at least $166 billion US for this year and next, an astronomical sum that could buy 39 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. By the end of 2004, Bush`s wars could amount to 30% of the total cost of the equally misbegotten 17-year Vietnam War.

Clever rebranding

By cleverly rebranding the invasion of Iraq as the essential part of his crusade against terrorism, Bush and his handlers were clearly counting on their core supporters in middle America to have short memories and a weak grasp of foreign geography and nomenclature.

They are probably right: recent polls confirm 2/3 of confused Americans still believe the nonsense, promoted by the White House and neo-conservatives, that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks.

This example of how the White House shamelessly exploited the confusion and ignorance of many Americans about world affairs recalls another famous quote.

Reich Marshall Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trial: "The people can always be brought to the bidding of leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Indeed.

In an astounding about-face, the Bush administration is now begging "old" Europe, led by those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - as Bush`s know-nothing supporters called France - and the "irrelevant" UN to send troops and money to Iraq. In Europe, so long abused and slandered by Bush and his supporters, the plaintive request was greeted by sneers.

France`s conservative Le Figaro headlined White House pleas for help as "Saving Private Bush."

Congress, terrified of being branded "unpatriotic," will go along with this monumental political and economic folly. While America`s economy sags and its states plunge deep in the red, George Bush plans to spend in short order almost as much to wage a hugely expensive colonial war in chaotic Iraq, as the cost of the post-WWII Marshall Plan.

Bush and his handlers are not protecting Americans by pursuing the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, they are protecting their own political skins.

These twin foreign misadventures are a historic geopolitical, military and economic blunder. Europeans repeatedly warned against invading Iraq. So did genuine Mideast experts, who were dismissed as pro-Arab or, like this writer, as "friends of Saddam." The mushrooming disaster was totally predictable and avoidable.

Absurd claims

It defies understanding how the many intelligent men and women in the Bush administration believed their own absurd claims about the danger posed by Iraq, and stuck America in the worst mess since Vietnam. Mind you, chief "whiz kid" Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam disaster, was also noted for his intellect, as is his heir, Donald Rumsfeld. "Brilliant" VP Dick Cheney actually claimed last spring that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. In Washington, arrogance and ignorance too often combined.

Shockingly, Congress`s budget office just reported the U.S. will run short of troops in Iraq by spring. Almost half of U.S. Army combat units are tied down in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. That`s why Bush is trying to bribe or browbeat nations like Turkey, India and Pakistan into sending cannon-fodder troops to Iraq, and force rich Europe to pay part of the bill.

Grand chutzpah

But asking other nations to "share the burden" of an unprovoked invasion of another country takes grand chutzpah.

Aggression is not a burden, it`s a crime under the UN Charter. The Bush administration did not invade Iraq to perform social work but to grab its vast oil reserves.

Bush`s demand that Third World UN troops serve under orders of American officers is a further insult to the United Nations and will reinforce the belief of those who attacked its Baghdad HQ that the organization is merely a cat`s paw of Washington. What Bush should do is declare victory and bring U.S. troops home. Now. Save $166 billion and many, many lives. It`s still not too late to climb out of the swamp.

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Eric can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].

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Um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen: Dieser Cartoon kommt aus Sacramento, dem Wunschziel Ahhnolds.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-najaf15…
THE WORLD



Killings of Shiite Clerics Set Holy City of Najaf on Edge
Insecurity grows along with rumors of intrigue involving rival religious factions, Hussein loyalists, Arab radicals and Iranian spies.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

September 15, 2003

NAJAF, Iraq — Shiite clerics still make their rounds, pilgrims continue to pay homage, and street stalls conduct a vigorous business in Koranic pamphlets and posters of ayatollahs past.

But the veneer of tranquillity in this spiritual capital of the Shiite Muslim world is deceiving: A sense of insecurity and apprehension is prevalent in the wake of the car bombing outside the shrine of Imam Ali that killed 121 people, including esteemed cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim.

"Certainly, Najaf is targeted," said Mayor Haydar Mayali, a 36-year-old civil engineer deeply immersed in rebuilding tasks when the bombing on Aug. 29 shifted his focus almost completely to security. "Our clerics must be protected."

In fact, Hakim`s assassination was only the latest in a string of attacks against religious figures since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. At least one other prominent cleric has been killed and several others targeted. Bodyguards with Kalashnikovs and walkie-talkies now cluster around well-known holy men, whose mobility has been severely limited.

Hussein loyalists are widely blamed in what some call a conspiracy to create bedlam in a city where religion is paramount. Such a plan, some theorize, is aimed at sowing dissension and chaos across Iraq and to pay back the Shiite leadership for cooperating with occupying U.S. forces. Hakim, who returned here following Hussein`s fall after more than 20 years in exile in Iran, was seen as a leading moderate inclined to work with the U.S.-led coalition.

"Many people have lost their privileges and are angry about it," noted Mayor Mayali. "They do not want progress in Najaf."

But, in the serpentine alleyways and smoky souks of this city 90 miles south of Baghdad there are also whispers of conspiracy and intrigue involving rival Shiite factions, Iranian spies, Arab radicals, saboteurs-for-hire and other potential culprits.

"People are nervous, and they wonder what might happen next," said Saad Fakhir Deen, who runs a bookstore a block from the gold-domed shrine to Imam Ali, spiritual founder of the Shiite sect. "We have lived through a lot in Najaf, but the killing of our clerics is something we cannot tolerate."

For U.S. authorities, the stakes could hardly be higher: A stable Najaf is essential to winning broad cooperation from Iraq`s Shiite majority, about 60% of the population. People here have grumbled about blackouts, water shortages and other problems that plague postwar Iraq. But things seemed to be progressing relatively smoothly in Najaf — certainly compared with troubled cities like Fallouja and Ramadi in Iraq`s Sunni Triangle region, where attacks on U.S. troops are daily occurrences.

Najafis long repressed by the Hussein regime rejoiced over the strongman`s ouster and largely welcomed U.S. forces as liberators. Still fresh in the memories of many was the way Hussein`s Republican Guard ruthlessly put down the rebellion here after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Extraordinarily, Marines here have not registered a single attack specifically targeting U.S. forces since arriving in April, said Marine Maj. Rick Hall. One military policeman was killed, the major noted, but he was working with Iraqi police to break up a carjacking ring when firing broke out.

"One of our biggest problems is trying to combat complacency among our Marines because the people have been so good to us," Hall said. "We have to keep in mind that there is a threat out there."

Underscoring that threat, Hall said, was the arrest here last week of a 21-member cell of Baath Party loyalists planning attacks on coalition forces. Also detained last week was a Najaf police lieutenant allegedly tied to illegal sales of grenades and other weapons — another troubling indication of corruption and possible split loyalties among an Iraqi police force that U.S. officials are relying on more and more to provide security.

The Marines were planning to turn over a stable Najaf to a Spanish-led force of Honduran and Salvadoran troops by Sept. 3. But then came the bombing.

"It would be wrong for the United States to leave Najaf so soon after a tragedy like that," said Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, who heads the Marine battalion here.

Instead, U.S. and Iraqi authorities are working jointly to bolster a security apparatus that, in retrospect, was appallingly weak.

The bomb that took the lives of Hakim and 120 others was placed in a vehicle that was parked overnight outside the shrine`s ornately tiled southern portico, authorities say. Police noticed the car but never searched it — even though Hakim, previously the target of death threats, was known to use that exit after presiding over Friday prayers. (A week earlier, a grand ayatollah related to Hakim survived a bomb attack that killed three bodyguards at his office near the shrine.)

While seeming a textbook terror attack, the bombing may actually have been an assassination timed at one of the few moments when the heavily guarded Hakim was vulnerable. Someone set off the remote- control bomb, fashioned with Soviet-era munitions, from a nearby hotel room, investigators theorize. The scores of worshipers and bystanders killed were probably collateral victims whose fate didn`t concern the conspirators, they said.

"This may have been something like a Mafia-type hit," said one U.S. official familiar with the case, which is being investigated by the FBI. "A lot of innocent people got in the way, but the real target was Hakim."

In the aftermath, Iraqi police and others harshly criticized occupation forces for shoddy security. Marines responded that they had kept clear of the shrine area at the insistence of clerics. That has changed.

U.S. and coalition forces now mount regular patrols near the shrine. A new, 400-member Iraqi police force has begun patrolling the shrine area. Law enforcement authorities have put up checkpoints on the main routes leading to and from the city and have closed streets near the shrine to vehicular traffic. Wary police are even conducting spot searches of the many coffins that arrive here daily as families seek to inter their loved ones in Najaf`s sacred ground.

"There is too much instability now: We must put an end to it," Brig. Maithar Qaragholi, the Najaf police commander who heads the new force, said as he surveyed the shrine area from his white sedan a few hours before Friday prayers. "The people of Najaf cannot live with this sense of uncertainty."

Officials here were quick to recite a laundry list of suspected groups: Hussein loyalists, foreign terrorists, fanatical Sunni Muslims who view the Shiite sect as heretical, among others. Officials have since downplayed reports that some suspects had ties to Al Qaeda.

Operatives from neighboring Iran are said to be another possible culprit. Infiltrators are widely believed to be entering Najaf with the many Iranian pilgrims flooding the city since Hussein`s downfall. The previous regime, ever wary of its longtime rival Iran, strictly limited the numbers of Iranian visitors and assigned secret police operatives to monitor them, residents say.

The Iranian regime, long a patron of Hakim, may have soured on his cooperative stance with the U.S. occupiers, according to this widely circulated theory. But no proof has emerged of Iranian complicity, and Tehran has condemned the attack.

A less repeated theory, and one usually mentioned only in hushed tones, is that the bombing and other attacks may have been the result of deep divisions within the secretive world of Shiite politics. This line of conjecture stems from an ongoing power struggle pitting a generation of younger, militant clerics against the aging, grand ayatollahs of Shiite learning — imposing spiritual figures said to spend their days praying, studying the Koran and greeting occasional visitors to their spartan quarters.

The militants are said to resent the patient approach of their elders, and favor a quick transition to a theocratic state — though they generally refrain from saying so publicly.

Leading the younger, more assertive clerics is Muqtader Sadr, the heavyset, perpetually scowling, black-turbaned progeny of a grand Shiite dynasty. Sadr, who says he is 30 but is widely believed to be in his 20s, has assailed the U.S. occupation and openly criticized Hakim before his death for not coming to the aid of Shiite rebels after the Gulf War. He has also dismissed as a puppet the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, whose members include Hakim`s brother.

The Najaf-based Sadr has attracted a large following, mostly of young men in the major Shiite quarter of Baghdad, which residents renamed for his father in the wake of Hussein`s fall. In April, acolytes of the younger Sadr laid siege to the Najaf home of Iraq`s supreme Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and demanded he leave the country. That episode was soon defused.

This summer, Sadr accused U.S. authorities of surrounding his home and trying to arrest him — an allegation denied by the Marines, who say the additional security was on hand because of a nearby visit by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy secretary of defense.

Sadr`s upstart personality and provocative opinions have infuriated U.S. officials and have rocked a reclusive Shiite establishment that views him with thinly veiled disdain.

"He`s trying to make a name for himself with his constituency, which is young, disenfranchised, unemployed Shiites," Woodbridge said. "He rants this extremist propaganda against this triad of evil — the United States, Great Britain and Israel."

Sadr was quick to denounce the killing of Hakim, and no one has accused him publicly of any involvement. Most observers here insist it is inconceivable that any Shiite faction would sanction an attack alongside one of the holiest Shiite shrines.

Still, Sadr was forced to deny publicly any connection with the killing of another cleric, Abdel Majid Khoei, who was slain in April inside the grounds of the shrine. Khoei, also the scion of a revered Shiite line, had just returned from exile in London.

Sadr has defied U.S. orders to disarm his personal militia, which he says is needed to guard holy places and clerics. During his Friday sermon to 5,000 worshipers at the ancient mosque in the neighboring suburb of Kufa, Sadr disparaged any reliance on U.S. forces for protection.

"The security issue is not to be left in the hands of the occupiers," Sadr said, using an Arabic proverb akin to the old adage of not allowing the fox to guard the henhouse. "How can we rely on the enemy to protect us?"

As Sadr`s followers left the mosque and filed through the narrow streets of Kufa, Muiz Ali Maitham lamented the inability of the U.S. to stabilize Najaf and the rest of Iraq.

"Not long ago, I wanted to make a statue here of President Bush — even bigger than Saddam`s statue," said Maitham, 54, a retired city planner. "But now there`s no chance of that. Things had better improve soon."

*


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Raheem Salman of The Times` Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report from Najaf.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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THE WORLD
a d v e r t i s e m e n t




Cleric`s Militia Sees U.S. as Enemy
`The Americans were liberators at first, but now they are terrorists,` says one member of the recently formed Army of the Mahdi.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

September 15, 2003

BAGHDAD — "Will you disarm for the Americans?" the animated preacher at the microphone asks a thousand wound-up young men seated on a city street turned outdoor assembly hall.

"No, no to America!" the listeners respond in unison, pumping their fists toward the heavens in utter rejection of such a notion. "Yes, yes to Islam!"

This was the well-choreographed inaugural gathering of the Army of the Mahdi, a volunteer militia composed of followers of a militant young Najaf-based Shiite cleric, Muqtader Sadr.

The eager volunteers had arrived by bus, car and on foot in the sprawling Shiite ghetto of Madinat al Thawra, or Revolution City, hastily built in the 1960s as a kind of urban-renewal project to house impoverished migrants from the south.

The old regime renamed it Saddam City and then proceeded to neglect it — while brutally suppressing any political dissenters.

Young Sadr`s late father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, launched mosque-based social-welfare projects in this insular community and achieved revered status. But Saddam Hussein was famously wary of potential rivals. Assassins believed linked to the old regime killed the elder Sadr and two of his sons in 1999.

People now call the place Sadr City, a throbbing neighborhood said to be home to about 2 million inhabitants, 8% of the entire Iraqi population.

Its streets dispatch a steady stream of recruits to Muqtader Sadr-organized demonstrations and rallies. Likenesses of the "martyr" elder Sadr are everywhere, his snow-white beard bestowing upon him a kind of Father Christmas appearance, despite the black turban.

Sadr City is also the primary recruiting ground for the Army of the Mahdi. The force is named after a 9th century descendant of the prophet Muhammad who, Shiites believe, will return one day, Messiah-like.

The militia`s ostensible purpose?

To defend holy places, clerics, Shiite neighborhoods; enforce good Islamic behavior — and, U.S. officials suspect — serve as a revolutionary brigade in Sadr`s drive to become the preeminent figure among the nation`s Shiite majority.

Commanders publicly dismiss any threat, but privately voice concern about formations of angry young men infused with a combustible mixture of religious zeal and anti-U.S. fervor.

Officially, Muqtader Sadr says, the army is an unarmed force dedicated to peacemaking. Volunteers carried no weapons during the organizational session last week. But vast stores of AK-47s and heavier arms are widely available here. And the preacher`s references to disarming implied that these enthusiastic legions do not lack firepower.

"We want to protect Iraqi citizens from all threats inside and outside the country," said Laith Khazali, a 28-year-old cleric who was among the organizers.

The volunteers were divided into regiments, battalions and companies. The recruits appeared deadly serious. Most were unemployed young men itching for action. Their enemy: the foreign "occupiers" who, they say, have neglected the city`s many needs — more jobs, reliable electricity and water supplies, and security, among others.

"The Americans were liberators at first, but now they are terrorists," said Ammar Fadhil, an affable 26-year-old who said he was gladly willing to give his life in the coming fight. "We are only awaiting word from our clerics."

The Army of the Mahdi may turn out to be nothing more than another of the ultimately irrelevant sideshows of postwar Iraq. U.S. troops could certainly crush any uprising in Sadr City — though the Army is anxious to avoid any sort of civilian bloodbath that could galvanize Shiites nationwide.

Moreover, the militants who exercise great influence upon the youth of Sadr City have proved themselves to be well-organized and influential adversaries. That was evident in the now-infamous helicopter episode.

A near-riot ensued last month after a U.S. helicopter crew deliberately knocked down a religious banner flying from a communications tower in Sadr City. A U.S. patrol responding to the disturbance was attacked and returned fire, the Army said, killing one person and injuring several others.

The U.S. commander in the zone, Lt. Col. Christopher K. Hoffman, took the unusual step of issuing a written apology for the helicopter provocation. The Army also promised to scale back patrols and flyovers. The organizers of the Army of the Mahdi clearly view what they call a capitulation as proof positive that the Goliath in their midst can be overcome.

"The Americans never apologize to anyone: They didn`t apologize for the atomic bomb that killed so many people," said Abdul Hadi Darraji, who unleashes fiery sermons each Friday in Sadr City.

"But they apologized to us! The Americans are looking after their interests. The Army of the Mahdi will be there for our interests."


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RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOK



Post-Sept. 11 Sense of Solidarity Crumbles Over the War in Iraq
Ronald Brownstein

September 15, 2003

Bells rang, flags bowed to half-staff and survivors achingly intoned the names of the dead on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks last week. Children observed a moment of silence in school. Baseball fans choked back a tear when they heard "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch.

The ceremonies weren`t as dramatic as those a year ago, but the sentiments were the same. Speakers everywhere invoked shared sorrow and common resolve. In Washington, one radio station played all of "The Rising," the haunting album Bruce Springsteen wrote to commemorate the tragedy. "Stand strong," the deejay counseled during a break in the songs. "Stand together."

For a few hours, it seemed as if the nation had stepped back to the days after the attacks, right down to the impossibly perfect blue skies over New York and Washington. Yet the exquisite feelings of national solidarity that welled up last week were, in fact, a reminder of how much the sense of unity has frayed since that terrible day.

In 2001, the war against terrorism was a cause that united not only virtually all Americans but most of the world. Today, that cause, as redefined and expanded by President Bush, has become bitterly divisive at home and abroad.

Just two days before the anniversary, the nine Democrats seeking Bush`s job in 2004 took turns blasting him during a debate in Baltimore, denouncing his policies for defending the country as a "miserable failure" and an "abomination." At the United Nations, the U.S. was at sword`s point with Germany and France. And in England — America`s staunchest ally since Sept. 11 — the attacks` second anniversary was marked by the release of a parliamentary investigation of Prime Minister Tony Blair that underscored the tensions in that nation over the way the struggle against terrorism has evolved.

In domestic politics and international diplomacy, the climate today bears little resemblance to the one that last week`s commemorations briefly recalled. More division on both fronts was perhaps inevitable as the attack receded in time and parochial interests resurfaced. But the principal dividing line between the unity of 2001 and the discord of 2003 has been Bush`s decision, with Blair`s support, to identify Iraq as the next front in the war against terrorism and launch an invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein.

History may yet record that Bush`s decision produced a safer world. But today, even the war`s supporters have fewer illusions about its costs. Some of those costs are measured in the steady drumbeat of U.S. casualties and the jaw-dropping $87 billion Bush requested to fund security and reconstruction in Iraq during the next year alone. But the most profound cost has been the fracturing, at home and abroad, of the common purpose that rose from the rubble of the fallen World Trade Center.

The war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan drew overwhelming approval from Americans and governments around the world. The pursuit of Al Qaeda abroad, by virtually any means necessary, has drawn almost no quarrel. But the war in Iraq, and the occupation, shows every sign of becoming the most divisive use of American arms since Vietnam.

Most Americans rallied to the cause while U.S. troops were in active combat against the Iraqi army. But since the fall of Baghdad, opposition to the war has revived. In an ABC survey released last week, 54% of Americans said the war was worth fighting, down from 70% in April.

Far more than Afghanistan, the war in Iraq is dividing Americans along partisan lines. Three-fifths or more of Democrats now consistently say they believe the United States never should have gone to war in Iraq at all, while at least three-quarters of Republicans still believe it was the right decision. Nearly half of Democrats in the latest ABC poll say they oppose any ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq.

This hostility toward the war from the party faithful is shaping the Democratic presidential race more than any other factor. It has turbocharged the campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the most prominent contender who opposed the war. And it has encouraged all of the candidates who supported it to escalate their criticism of both Bush`s planning for the postwar challenge and his overall vision of preemptive attack as a centerpiece of U.S. security. Far from the unifying force it was initially after the 2001 attacks, Bush`s approach to the war on terrorism now promises to be one of the greatest sources of conflict in next year`s campaign.

The Iraq war has opened deeper fissures abroad. Polls around the world show the war has taken a heavy toll on America`s image; even in nations that sided with the U.S., such as England and Spain, the public is saying they want their leaders to pursue a foreign policy more independent of U.S. interests.

The resistance at the U.N. to Bush`s requests for more troops and aid for Iraq suggests that the war has at least temporarily reversed the polarity of America`s interaction with the world. After Sept. 11, most countries were looking for ways to align with the United States. Today, many are searching for ways to restrain the United States.

As Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, foreign policy analysts at the Brookings Institution, write in their upcoming book, "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy": "America`s friends and allies might not be able to stop Washington from doing as it wished, but neither would they necessarily be willing to come to its aid when their help was most needed."

None of this guarantees that future generations will judge the war in Iraq a mistake. The war`s benefits are difficult to quantify, because they will always be measured primarily in things that don`t happen. No one will ever know whether Hussein might have developed nuclear weapons someday or allied with Al Qaeda if America hadn`t deposed him.

Yet it may be equally difficult to say whether America would be more secure in the years ahead if Bush had pursued a course in Iraq that preserved more of the international solidarity that followed Sept. 11.

The one thing certain is the war in Iraq looms ever more clearly as the end of the brief moment of united purpose, at home and abroad, that emerged from the loss America mourned again last week.

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


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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The luckiest man in the world
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, September 15, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/



Quiz time. Who is the luckiest man in the world?

No, not the guy who won the Power Ball drawing, and certainly not Ben Affleck (unless the postponement becomes a cancellation). But the answer is easy. The luckiest man in the world is Osama bin Laden.

Like our very own George W. Bush, Osama was born into wealth and never had to support himself. But even without that good luck, the man could have made an easy living for himself by working as a Jesus model. With his handsome Semitic good looks and his dreamy, faraway smile, he was a natural for the job. The Old Masters would have drooled.

But what really makes bin Laden the luckiest man in the world is his surprise ally. When bin Laden ordered the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (assuming he did), he wanted to do more than kill thousands of infidels. He wanted to change the world, disrupt American society, and destroy an American culture that was slowly overtaking the entire planet.

When bin Laden made his move, there was no way he could have predicted that his greatest ally would be the current American president, the Honorable George W. Bush.

Now, that`s luck!

America, whatever its faults, has always been a beacon of hope for people around the world. Although many nations have surpassed our standard of living, we are still the land of economic opportunity, virtually unfettered free speech, religious freedom and, to a large extent, tolerance of nonconformity.

People elsewhere looked to us with hope, even after the events of the year 2000, when the presidential candidate who was clearly the people`s choice and the most competent for the job lost to a previously ne`er-do-well whose main qualification was that he was the scion of a rich and politically prominent family.

So when the Saudi hijackers and their helpers committed their terrible crimes on Sept. 11, 2001, the world wept for America. Never, never before in our history, not even on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, did the rest of the world bleed for America the way it did on that Sept. 11 and the days following.

So the combined tragedies of Sept. 11 became a kind of opportunity for America. We could have turned the tables on our tormentors by proving that we were what most people of the world believed we were, a good and kind and generous nation, truly the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But we didn`t do that. We did just the opposite. Under the leadership of the Honorable George W. Bush, we showed how petty we could be, how mean-spirited, and even how cowardly. We truly disgraced ourselves in the eyes of the world as, under Bush, we started the methodical destruction of our wonderful freedoms in the name of self-protection.

We cringed, we cowered and, when the opportunity to do so arose, we bullied. And, when the chance came for George W. Bush to settle an old personal score with Iraq`s Saddam Hussein, we thumbed our nose at the rest of the world and insulted it. "Old Europe," our leaders said, disdainfully.

We invented "freedom fries" to show our contempt for the nation that made America possible in the 18th century.

We took a page from the despots of the world and started making people disappear. We rediscovered torture of prisoners to make them talk, either through surrogates ("The Saudis know how to deal with these kinds of problems") or using modern, scientific, non-touching methods.

We pushed through the USA Patriot Act, an unreadable mess of legalistic mumbo jumbo, without a single senator or representative knowing exactly what was in it. It turned out to be such a bad piece of legislation that communities around the nation passed resolutions vowing to not cooperate with it. Even librarians united to defy its unwarranted snooping terms.

The Honorable Mr. Bush and his trusty cohorts created the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, a mishmash of departments that were already so big as to become dysfunctional. "Big government is never so big that it can`t become bigger and more impersonal" -- that seemed to be the logic behind "homeland" security.

("Homeland," incidentally, has never been defined. Is it everything American? Just the North American part? Just the Lower 48? Does it include Hawaii, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa? How about Puerto Rico? Kingman Reef? Does anybody know?)

In short, Mr. Bush has set about finishing the job that Osama bin Laden started. Even his economic policy -- take from the poor, give to the rich -- is designed to increase monetary discrepancies between Americans, just like in bin Laden`s native land.

Nor is Mr. Bush above religious fundamentalist superstition. In what might have been a signal to bin Laden as to what kind of leadership America now has, Mr. Bush in 2001 put the clamps on stem cell research (while pretending to maintain it at low levels). His murky "logic" cramping scientific study defies rational explanation. It is Middle Ages stuff, right out of the Osama bin Laden playbook. Osama had to be pleased.

It seems quite possible that the absence of follow-up attacks on America can be explained by a lack of necessity for them. From bin Laden`s point of view, everything in America is happening just the way he likes it. We are becoming more and more like a Middle Eastern emirate and less and less like the world`s foremost democracy.

Why should bin Laden attack us again and rock the boat? Mr. Bush is doing his work for him.

Will there ever be another terrorist attack here? The experts say yes, and they`re most likely right. When will it be? My guess: sometime next year, timed to draw the fearful closer to Mr. Bush and assure his re-election.

The best the lucky bin Laden could possibly hope for is four more years of George W. Bush.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

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Ein Rätsel - und die USA beeilen sich nicht mit der Auflösung
von Robert Fisk
Independent / ZNet 14.09.2003


Ein menschliches Gehirn neben der Schnellstraße, seinem Besitzer aus dem Kopf gesprengt, als die Amerikaner ihre eigenen irakischen Polizisten aus dem Hinterhalt angriffen. Jetzt liegt es verteilt im Sand. Ein paar Zentimeter daneben die Zähne eines Polizisten - ein zerbrochenes aber sauberes Gebiss - die Zähne eines jungen Mannes. “Ich weiß nicht, ob es die Zähne meines Bruders sind - ich weiß nicht einmal, ob mein Bruder lebt oder tot ist”, schreit mich Ahmed Mohamed an. “Die Amerikaner haben die Toten und Verletzten weggebracht - sie sagen uns nichts”. Ahmed Mohamed sagt die Wahrheit. Ich muss hinzufügen, auch er ist irakischer Polizist in Diensten der Amerikaner. Offiziell hieß es vonseiten der US-Streitkräfte im Irak - einfach unglaublich - sie hätten “keine Information” bezüglich des Tods der 10 Polizisten, 5 weitere wurden verletzt - gestern früh. Aber leider sagen die Amerikaner nicht die Wahrheit. Soldaten der Dritten Infanterie-Division hatten bei dem Hinterhalt tausende Kugeln abgefeuert, hunderte schlugen in die Wand eines Gebäudes ein, das auf dem, benachbarten, Grundstück des jordanischen Hospitals liegt. Mehrere Räume gingen in Flammen auf. Wenn sie wirklich an “Information” interessiert sind, brauchen sie sich nur die 40mm Granat-Kartuschen anzusehen, die im Sand neben den Zähnen und den Gehirnteilen verstreut liegen. Auf allen ist die Codierung “AMM LOT MA-92A170-024" zu lesen - ein US-Code für Granaten, die mit Granatengürteln abgefeuert werden - aus einem amerikanischen M-19-Gewehr.

In Falludschah durchkämmten nach dem Morgengebet wütende irakische Zivilisten die Straßen auf der Suche nach US-Patrouillen, die sie steinigen konnten. Hier fällt es nicht schwer, die Story zusammenzusetzen. Der lokale Polizei-Chef - von Amerika ausgebildet und bezahlt -, sein Name ist Qahtan Adnan Hamad, bestätigt den Tod der 10. Er schildert, wie gestern, kurz nach Mitternacht, Bewaffnete in einem BMW das Feuer auf das Bürgermeisteramt in Falludschah eröffnet hätten. Zwei Einheiten - die eine bestehend aus Angehörigen der Polizeitruppe Falludschah (letzten Monat von US-Kräften gegründet), das andere eine Einheit der neugeschaffenen irakischen Nationalpolizei - und beide Einheiten gehören einer Polizei an, die von Amerika ausgebildet und bezahlt wird -, nahmen die Verfolgung auf. Da die Amerikaner sich weigern, die Wahrheit zu offenbaren, gebe ich das Wort an Ahmed Mohamed. Sein 28-jähriger Bruder Walid war einer der Polizisten, die die Verfolgung aufnahmen. “Uns wurde mitgeteilt, der BMW habe das Feuer auf das Büro des Bürgermeisters um 00 Uhr 30 eröffnet. Die Polizei verfolgte ihn mit zwei Wagen, das eine ein Nissan-Pickup, das andere ein Auto, ein Honda, und sie fuhren auf alten Kandar-Straßen Richtung Bagdad hinab. Aber die Amerikaner waren dort in der Dunkelheit, außerhalb des jordanischen Hospitals, um Autos auf der Straße aus dem Hinterhalt anzugreifen. Den BMW ließen sie durch, dann feuerten sie auf die Polizeiautos. Einer der Polizisten, er wurde im zweiten Fahrzeug verwundet, sagt, die Amerikaner seien plötzlich auf der dunklen Straße aufgetaucht. “Als sie uns anschrien, stoppten wir sofort”, sagt er. “Wir versuchten, ihnen zu sagen, wir seien Polizisten. Sie haben einfach weitergeschossen”.

Letzteres stimmt. Am Tatort habe ich tausende Patronenhülsen aus Messing gefunden; sie glitzerten aufgehäuft in der Sonne - wie Herbstlaub - daneben die dunkelgrünen Kartuschen der Granaten. Auch mehrere hundert unabgefeuerte Kugeln fanden sich - aber was viel irritierender war: der sichtbare Beweis in den Wänden jenes Gebäudes des jordanischen Krankenhauses. Mindestens 150 Salven hatten dessen Ytong-Mauer getroffen, zwei Räume waren ausgebrannt. Die Flammen haben das Gebäude an der Außenseite verrußt. Auch das Innere birgt ein Rätsel, das die Amerikaner gestern noch nicht lösen wollten. Laut Aussage mehrerer Iraker kam im Hospital ein jordanischer Arzt zu Tode, 5 Schwestern seien verletzt worden. Als ich mich dem Krankenhaustor nähere, stellen sich mir 3 Bewaffnete in den Weg. Sie sagen, sie seien Jordanier. Wer hier momentan ins Innere eines Krankenhauses will, muss zuvor die Genehmigung der Besatzungsbehörden in Bagdad einholen - die selten, wenn überhaupt, erteilt wird. Keiner will, dass Journalisten in düsteren Leichenhallen herumschnüffeln - im “befreiten” Irak. Wer kann schon wissen, was sie dort finden? “Die Ärzte sind zum Gebet gegangen, Sie können nicht herein”, sagt mir einer der jordanischen Bewaffneten am Tor; er lächelt nicht. Vom Dach des kaputten Hospitalgebäudes werden wir von zwei bewaffneten Wächtern, die Helme tragen, beobachtet. Für mich sehen sie sehr nach jordanischen Soldaten aus. Ihr Hospital befindet sich gegenüber der Basis der Dritten US-Infanterie- Division. Sind die Jordanier also für die Amerikaner da, oder bewachen die Amerikaner das jordanische Hospital? Ich frage, ob die Leichname der getöteten Polizisten hier seien, der Bewaffnete am Tor zuckt die Schultern.

Was ist hier passiert? Haben die Amerikaner ihre irakischen Polizisten niedergemäht, weil sie sie irrtümlich für “Terroristen” hielten - Saddamiten oder Al-Quaidas, je nachdem, was die Soldaten ihrem Präsidenten George Bush glauben? Und als ihre Kugeln ins Hospital einschlugen, waren sie da womöglich unter Beschuss durch die jordanischen Wächter auf dem Dach gekommen? In jedem anderen Land würden die Amerikaner sicher zumindest einen Teil der Wahrheit eingestehen. Gestern waren sie lediglich bereit, über die Opfer in den eigenen Reihen zu sprechen. Bei einem Überfall in der benachbarten Kleinstadt Ramadi waren 2 US- Soldaten getötet worden, 7 wurden verletzt. Die Bewohner eines Hauses hatten zurückgeschossen. Natürlich bekommt man den Eindruck, amerikanisches Leben sei wesentlich wertvoller als irakisches. Und hätten die Gehirnteile, die Zähne, auf der Straße außerhalb Falludschahs zu Amerikanern gehört, man hätte sie selbstverständlich weggeräumt. Aber es fanden sich noch andere Dinge, gestern, neben der Schnellstraße - ein blutbeflecktes, zerrissenes Stück eines irakischen Polizeihemds, von den Amerikanern bereitgestellt sowie ein primitiver Schlauch zum Abbinden, medizinische Gaze und sehr, sehr viel eingetrocknetes, schwarzes Blut.

Die Dritte Infanterie-Division sei müde, sagt man hier. Im März marschierten sie im Irak ein, seither sind sie nicht mehr nach Hause gekommen. Ihre Moral sei mies - so heißt es jedenfalls in Falludschah und Bagdad. Und schon beginnt das Krebsgeschwür des Gerüchts das Massaker in noch etwas weit Gefährlicheres zu verwandeln. Hier, was Ahmed zu sagen hat. Sein Bruder Sabah ist einer der in den Hinterhalt geratenen Polizisten. Die Amerikaner haben ihn weggebracht - ob tot oder lebendig, Ahmed weiß es nicht. Gestern kam er hierher, um sich das Blut und die Patronenhülsen anzusehen. “Die Amerikaner mussten Falludschah verlassen - nach heftigen Kämpfen, nachdem sie im April 16 Demonstranten getötet haben. Daher waren sie gezwungen, sich eine Falludschaher Polizeitruppe anzumieten. Aber sie wollten nach Falludschah zurück, also arrangierten sie den Hinterhalt. Die Bewaffneten im BMW waren in Wirklichkeit Amerikaner. Sie sollten beweisen, Falludschah ist nicht sicher - damit die Amerikaner zurückkehren können. Unsere Polizisten haben die ganze Zeit geschrien: “Wir sind die Polizei - wir sind die Polizei”. Und die Amerikaner haben einfach weitergeschossen.”

Es gelang mir nicht, ihn davon zu überzeugen, dass das Letzte, was die Amerikaner wollen, ihre Rückkehr ins sunnitisch-saddamistische Falludschah ist. Schon jetzt haben sie “Blutgeld” bezahlt - an die Familien unschuldiger Iraker hier am Ort, niedergeschossen an ihren Checkpoints. Und sie werden noch mehr bezahlen müssen - an jenen Stammeschef, dessen beide Söhne sie erschossen -, an einem anderen Checkpoint nahe Falludschah. Das war Donnerstagnacht. Aber warum haben die Amerikaner soviele ihrer eigenen irakischen Polizisten getötet? Haben sie das Flehen der sterbenden Männer denn nicht über Radio gehört? Warum haben die Amerikaner 1 1/2 Stunden weiter geschossen - denn darin stimmen die Aussagen der jordanischen Wächter am Krankenhaus und der Angehörigen der Polizisten überein? Und warum behaupten die Amerikaner 18 Stunden nach dem Gemetzel immer noch, sie hätten “keine Information” - 18 Stunden, nachdem sie 10 jener Männer niedergemäht haben, die Präsident Bush so dringend braucht, wenn er seine Armee aus der Todesfalle Irak abziehen will?





[ Übersetzt von: Andrea Noll | Orginalartikel: "A Mystery the US is in No Hurry to Resolve" ]

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Consistent with findings from previous years, roughly 4 in 10 Americans consider the news media too liberal.
http://www.gallup.com/


In general, do you think the news media is -- too liberal, just about right, or too conservative?

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$1 billion international image campaign isn`t enough to buy U.S. love
By Carl Weiser, Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration spends $1 billion a year trying to polish the United States` image around the world, yet polls show anti-Americanism rising to record levels, especially in Muslim and Arab nations where the government is concentrating its efforts.
Now, a new report from Congress` General Accounting Office explains why the federal government`s efforts at "public diplomacy" have been such a failure.

The report, released Sept. 4, concluded that the State Department`s efforts have been scattershot and uncoordinated, foreign service officers charged with promoting the nation`s image too often get stuck filling out paperwork, and one in five foreign service officers who are supposed to be helping America`s image aren`t fluent enough in the language of the country in which they`re stationed.

Most damning, the report said the government isn`t even trying to scientifically measure whether its public relations efforts are having any effect on foreign hearts and minds. Instead, it gauges success through anecdotes or even by how many speeches a local ambassador gives.

Public diplomacy spending has risen 9% in the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks — and more than 50% in the Middle East and South Asia. But a comprehensive poll in foreign countries this spring showed that in Muslim nations from Morocco to Indonesia the United States has never been more loathed. In many places Osama bin Laden gets more favorable ratings than President Bush.

"Americans are brilliant at communication. Why in the world we are all thumbs in this particular area just strikes me as one of the anomalies of history. But it`s an important one to solve pretty fast," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It`s so important because the Bush administration believes public relations is a key part of the war on terror.

Public diplomacy, the government`s effort to sway regular folks as opposed to government elites, became a top priority after the terrorist attacks. The Bush administration pledged to dispel mistaken impressions of America, challenge anti-American views, and tout the United States` good deeds around the world.

But report after report has criticized the government`s public diplomacy efforts.

Charlotte Beers, the Bush administration`s first undersecretary for public diplomacy, resigned earlier this year for health reasons and has not been replaced. The State Department itself said it largely concurred with the GAO`s report.

Congress was so dismayed at public diplomacy results that it created a special commission to recommend how to reach the Arab and Muslim world better. That commission, headed by the State Department`s former Middle East expert, Edward Djerejian, is supposed to report its findings Oct. 1.

One of the report`s top criticisms: Unlike private companies, the federal government spends little on polling or focus groups abroad. Marketing and public relations experts the GAO interviewed said the $3.5 million the State Department spends on overseas opinion research is about a tenth of what it needs to spend.

"The people in the marketing department at Colgate, they`re doing lots of research," said Charles "Tre" Evers III, president of an Orlando communications firm and since May a member of the U.S. Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy.

Private and business groups aren`t waiting for the government to solve its public diplomacy problems. A group of Kuwaiti and American citizens last week launched the American-Kuwait Alliance.

"Homeland security is too important to leave to the government alone," said Kenneth Minihan, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who helped organize the group.

Yousef H. Al-Ebraheem, a Kuwait University professor helping organize the alliance, said he believed perceptions of the United States among Arabs would improve if the United States makes good on its word to turn Iraq into a democracy.

"They want to see some results," he said. At the very least, they`d like to see the United States set some dates for elections or transition.

Earlier this summer, Keith Reinhard, chairman of advertising giant DDB Worldwide, organized business leaders — their names have not been released — to launch their own public diplomacy campaign.

Without government`s bureaucracy, stifling mandates or money problems, business has more freedom to influence public opinion abroad.

"Anti-Americanism is indeed a business problem," Reinhard said. "And one that U.S. business is uniquely positioned to solve."

The United States has had some successes. A government-financed station broadcasting in the Middle East, called Radio Sawa, has proved hugely popular among Arab youth. Some question whether its news snippets are helping in the public relations battle — its songs are what draw listeners — but the government is sufficiently encouraged that it plans an Arabic-language satellite TV station later this year.

The $1 billion taxpayers spend is about evenly split between State Department efforts like exchange programs and talking to reporters, and broadcasting efforts, like Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Sawa.

Barbara Barrett, a Phoenix lawyer who chairs the public diplomacy advisory commission for Public Diplomacy, said the government is still "retooling" its efforts after being geared toward fighting communism. Following the Soviet Union`s collapse, public diplomacy all but disappeared from government priorities.

Evers, as well as the GAO, noted figuring out the exact impact of any public relations campaign can be hard. Some U.S. policies, no matter how well explained, will never be popular.

"The end result won`t be perfect affection for America," Bennett said. "We will, however, keep working to have an honest and fair perception of America encouraged around the world."


Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-14-prawar-gn…

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Powell`s Baghdad Briefing Ignores High Price Of Failure

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad

15 September 2003: (The Independent: UK) We had to walk through a quarter of a mile of barbed wire to reach Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, last night. We had to pass through four checkpoints, including three body searches. Apache helicopters circled the conference centre and Bradley fighting vehicles sat in the darkness outside.

But inside was air conditioning, brightness, optimism and Secretary Powell. He had just had a "very exciting meeting" with the new "Governing Council". He was "deeply impressed" by what he saw in Baghdad - "people hard at work rebuilding a nation, rebuilding a society". So forget the $87bn (£55bn) President George Bush needs to run Iraq for the next year, forget the dead Americans and the far greater number of dead Iraqis who pay the price each day for the folly of this occupation. Forget the American soldier killed near Fallujah yesterday when a bomb blew up beneath his Humvee, wounding seven of his colleagues. He didn`t rate a mention from ex-General Powell. It was the Coalition of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sure, there was the briefest of mentions of the latest catastrophe - the killing of nine Iraqi policemen by US forces outside Fallujah - and of the compensation that might be paid to their families. It was, as America`s proconsul, Paul Bremer, put it mildly "a very regrettable incident" which "is still under investigation by our military". Tell that to the people of Fallujah who want revenge.

And so we got the same old story. There would be a "free, democratic Iraq that will be a friend and partner of the United States ... and a responsible player on the world stage". It will be "some time" before a new Iraqi government can take over, Mr Powell told us - so much for the message from the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, to Mr Powell in Geneva - and there was still "instability" in the country. He could say that again.

"But in many parts of the country, things are quite secure and stable." Unfortunately for Mr Powell, however, the Americans happen to be running the unstable bit; and even the Secretary of State was forced to admit - though no one has actually produced any proof of this - that "we have acknowledged that some terrorists have started to come into the country".

Mr Bremer, who is regarded as an "anti-terrorist" expert back in Washington, kept to the local scene, enjoying the precision of his economic statistics.

On Saturday, he announced that Iraq had produced 1,624,000 barrels of oil, 95 per cent of the revenue of which goes to the Iraqi Development Fund and 5 per cent for the 1991 Kuwaiti reparations. No mention, of course, of the amount Iraq is supposed to pay for its own invasion. Mr Powell talked about the $20bn Mr Bush plans to spend on Iraq. The far more frightful figure of $87bn that the US taxpayer is supposed to doll out for this occupation didn`t rate a mention.

It was, in fact, the same story the Americans have stuck to since they arrived in Baghdad. Or more or less the same story. There would have to be a constitution. It would have to be ratified. There would have to be free elections. There would be a "leadership dedicated to democratic principles". Mr Powell - who never ventured outside the barbed wire and checkpoints yesterday - had apparently noticed "a vibrancy [in Iraq] that I attribute to the understanding of freedom ... through this land". America had "liberated" Iraq, he said several times. The word "occupation" didn`t cross his lips.

He wanted good news, not the stories that were "more visual [sic] and more negative in nature". He wanted "a little more time, attention and energy" directed at "the more positive stories". And so say all of us. Which is presumably why the occupation authorities no longer even distribute their overnight security warnings to humanitarian organisations in Baghdad. If they did, the reports would show that US forces are now being attacked up to 50 times every night, that missiles are being fired at US planes almost every day, that neither Baghdad nor Basra airports are safe enough to open.

There wasn`t even a word about Mr Powell`s disastrous meeting in Geneva, which has left the Americans - for now - with no hope of seeing foreign armies riding to their rescue in Iraq. There was just lots of good news, along with one memorable soundbite, which all occupying powers announce. "We don`t want to stay here a day longer," Mr Powell said. "We are hanging on because it`s necessary to stay with the task. We came as liberators ... we`ve liberated a number of countries and we don`t own a square foot of one of them except where we bury our dead."

These days the dead go back to the US and while Mr Powell was in Baghdad, the comrades of the soldier blown up in Fallujah yesterday were preparing his last journey home.

Copyright: The Independent

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Dialectics of Terror

“If you kill one person, it is murder. If you kill a hundred thousand, it is foreign policy.” Anonymous

by M. Shahid Alam

I doubt if I have come across a more pithy statement exposing the hypocrisy of America’s war against terrorism; but this is what I read, well before September 11, 2001, on a car-sticker in the commuter parking lot in Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA.

States are founded on a monopoly over violence, which has nearly always included the right to kill. In fact, that is the very essence of the state. States seek to enforce this monopoly by amassing instruments of violence; but that is scarcely enough. They also use religion, ideology and laws to deligitimize and root out violence stemming from non-state agents.

This monopoly over violence creates its own problem. Unchallenged, the state can turn the instruments of violence against its own population. This leads to state tyranny. The state can also wage wars to enrich one or more sectional interests. This defines the dual challenge before all organized societies: restraining state tyranny and limiting its war-making powers.

Often, there has existed a tradeoff between tyranny and wars. Arguably, such a tradeoff was at work during the period of European expansion since the sixteenth century, when Europeans slowly secured political rights even as they engaged in growing, even genocidal, violence, especially against non-Europeans. As Western states gradually conceded rights to their own populations, they intensified the murder and enslavement of Americans and Africans, founding white colonies on lands stolen from them. Few Westerners were troubled by this inverse connection: this was the essence of racism.

The United States is only the most successful of the colonial creations, a fact that has left its indelible mark on American thinking. It is a country that was founded on violence against its native inhabitants; this led, over three centuries of expansion, to the near extermination of Indians, with the few survivors relocated to inhospitable reservations. Its history also includes the violence – on a nearly equal scale – perpetrated against the Africans who were torn from their continent to create wealth for the new Republic. Such a genesis, steeped in violence against others races, convinced most Americans that they had the divine right – like the ancient Israelites – to build their prosperity on the ruin of other, ‘inferior’ races.

In addition to the manipulations of a corporate media, this ethos explains why so many Americans support the actions of their government abroad – in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, Iran, Palestine or Iraq, to name only a few. It is unnecessary to look too closely into these interventions since they are undertaken to secure ‘our’ interests. Even if they result in deaths – the deaths of more than three-quarters of a million children, as in Iraq – to borrow a felicitous phrase from Madeline Albright, “the price is worth it.”

Of course, few Americans understand that their country has long stood at the apex – and, therefore, is the chief beneficiary – of a global system that produces poverty for the greater part of humanity, including within the United States itself; that this system subordinates all social, cultural, environmental and human values to the imperatives of corporate capital; a system that now kills people by the millions merely by setting the rules that devastate their economies, deprive them of their livelihood, their dignity and, eventually, their lives. The corporate media, the school curricula, and the Congress ensure that most Americans never see past the web of deceit – about a free, just, tolerant and caring United States – that covers up the human carnage and environmental wreckage this system produces.

The wretched of the earth are not so easily duped. They can see – and quite clearly, through the lens of their dark days – how corporate capital, with United States in the lead, produces their home-based tyrannies; how their economies have been devastated to enrich transnational corporations and their local collaborators; how the two stifle indigenous movements for human rights, women’s rights, and worker’s rights; how they devalue indigenous traditions and languages; how corporate capital uses their countries as markets, as sources of cheap labor, as fields for testing new, deadlier weapons, and as sites for dumping toxic wastes; how their men and women sell body parts because the markets place little value on their labor.

The world – outside the dominant West – has watched how the Zionists, with the support of Britain and the United States, imposed a historical anachronism, a colonial-settler state in Palestine, a throw-back to a sanguinary past, when indigenous populations in the Americas could be cleansed with impunity to make room for Europe’s superior races. In horror, they watch daily how a racist Israel destroys the lives of millions of Palestinians through US-financed weaponry and fresh-contrived acts of malice; how it attacks its neighbors at will; how it has destabilized, distorted and derailed the historical process in an entire region; and how, in a final but foreordained twist, American men and women have now been drawn into this conflict, to make the Middle East safe for Israeli hegemony.

In Iraq, over the past thirteen years, the world has watched the United States showcase the methods it will use to crush challenges to the new imperialism – the New World Order – that was launched after the end of the Cold War. This new imperialism commands more capital and more lethal weapons than the old imperialisms of Britain, France or Germany. It is imperialism without rivals and, therefore, it dares to pursue its schemes, its wars, and its genocidal campaigns, under the cover of international legitimacy: through the United Nations, the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization. In brief, it is a deadlier, more pernicious imperialism.

Under the cover of the Security Council, the United States has waged a total war against Iraq – a war that went well beyond the means that would be needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait. The aerial bombing of Iraq, in the months preceding the ground action in January 1991, sought the destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure, a genocidal act under international law; it destroyed power plants, water-purification plants, sewage facilities, bridges and bomb shelters. It was the official (though unstated) aim of these bombings to sting the Iraqis into overthrowing their rulers. Worse, the war was followed by a never-relenting campaign of aerial bombings and the most complete sanctions in recorded history. According to a UN study, the sanctions had killed half a million Iraqi children by 1995; the deaths were the result of a five-fold increase in child mortality rates. It would have taken five Hiroshima bombs to produce this grisly toll.

Then came September 11, 2001, a riposte from the black holes of global capitalism to the New World Order. Nineteen hijackers took control of passenger airplanes in Boston, Newark and Virginia, and rammed them, one after another, into the twin towers of the Word Trade Center and the Pentagon; the fourth missed its target, possibly the White House. Following a script that had been carefully rehearsed, the nineteen hijackers enacted a macabre ritual, taking their own lives even as they took the lives of nearly three thousand Americans. The hijackers did not wear uniforms; they were not flying stealth bombers; they carried nothing more lethal (so we are told) than box cutters and plastic knives; they had not been dispatched or financed by any government. And yet, using the principles of jujitsu, they had turned the civilian technology of the world’s greatest power against its own civilians. As Arundhati Roy put it, the hijackers had delivered “a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong.”

The terrorist attacks of 9-11 shocked, perhaps traumatized, a whole nation. Yet the same Americans expressed little concern – in fact, most could profess total ignorance – about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians caused by daily bombings and crippling sanctions over a period of thirteen years. Of course, the dollar and the dinar are not the same. American deaths could not be equated on a one-to-one basis with Iraqi deaths. If indeed so many Iraqis had been killed by the United States, those were deaths they deserved for harboring ill-will towards this country. They were after all evil. And evil people should never be given a chance to repent or change their evil-doing propensities. Senator John McCain said it succinctly: “We’re coming after you. God may have mercy on you, but we won’t.”

There are some who were impressed and alarmed – in equal measure – by the grisly efficiency with which the terrorists had executed their operation. (On this ground, some even argued that it could not have been the work of “incompetent” Arabs.) However, it would appear that there is greater political cunning at work in the conception of these attacks. Al-Qaida gave the Bush hawks what they wanted, a terrorist attack that would inflame Americans into supporting war against the Third world; and the Bush hawks gave al-Qaida what they wanted, a war that would plant tens of thousands of Americans in the cities and towns of the Islamic world.

An act of terror is nearly always attributed to a failure of intelligence, security, or both. In a country that, annually, spends tens of billions of dollars on intelligence gathering and trillions more on its military, the attacks of 9-11 amounted to massive failures on two fronts: intelligence and security. This should have led immediately to a Congressional inquiry to identify and remedy these failures. However, due to obstructions from the Bush administration, the Congress could not start an official inquiry into these failures until more than a year after 9-11. Instead, the Bush administration claimed falsely, as it turns out – with hardly a murmur from the Congress or the US corporate media – that 9-11 was unforeseen, it could not have been imagined, and there had been no advance warnings. Instantly, President Bush declared that 9-11 was an act of war (making it the first act of war perpetrated by nineteen civilians), and proceeded to declare unlimited war against terrorists (also the first time that war had been declared against elusive non-state actors). In the name of a bogus war against terrorism, the United States claimed for itself the right to wage preemptive wars against any country suspected of harboring terrorists or possessing weapons of mass destruction (what are weapons for if not mass destruction?) with an intent (US would be the judge of that) to use them against the United States.

Osama bin Laden had the victory that he had hoped for: he had the world’s only superpower running mad after him and his cohorts. Al-Qaida had now taken the place vacated by the Soviet Union. It had to be a worthy opponent to have succeeded in monopolizing the hostile attention of United States; the actions of al-Qaida now threatened the world’s only superpower. No terrorist group could have asked for greater prestige, a distinction that was almost certain to help in its recruitment drive. Secondly, by declaring war against al-Qaida, the United States had tied its own prestige to the daily outcome of this war. Every terrorist strike – the softer the target the better – would be counted by Americans and the rest of the world as a battle lost in the war against terrorism. It should come as no surprise that the frequency of large-scale terrorist strikes has increased markedly since 9-11 – from Baghdad to Bali and Bombay. Thirdly, President Bush’s pre-emptive wars have already placed 160,000 American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, not counting additional thousands in other Islamic countries. President Bush’s wars against terrorism had made American troops the daily target of dozens of attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it would appear that al-Qaida is seizing the opportunity to open a broad front against the United States on its home turf.

Although the onslaughts of the Crusaders against the Muslims in the Levant, starting in the 1090s, lasted for nearly two centuries; and although their conquests at their peak embraced much of old Syria, it is quite remarkable that this did not alarm the Islamic world into waging Jihad against the ‘Infidels.’ On several occasion, one Muslim prince allied himself with the Crusaders to contain the ambitions of another Muslim prince. It was only in 1187, after Salahuddin united Syria and Egypt, that the Muslims took back Jerusalem. But they did not pursue this war to its bitter end; the Crusaders retained control of parts of coastal Syria for another hundred years. In fact, several years later, Salahuddin’s successors even returned Jerusalem to the Cruaders provided they would not fortify it. In other words, the Crusades which loom so large in European imagination were not regarded by the Muslims as a civilizational war.

Of course that was then, when Islamic societies were cultured, refined, tolerant, self-confident and strong, and though the Crusades threw the combined might of Western Europe – that region’s first united enterprise – to regain the Christian holy lands, the Muslims took the invasions in their stride. Eventually, the resources of a relatively small part of the Muslim world were sufficient to end this European adventure, which left few lasting effects on the region. In the more recent past, Islamic societies have been divided, fragmented, backward, outstripped by their European adversaries, their states embedded in the periphery of global capitalism, and their rulers allied with Western powers against their own people. These divisions are not a natural state in the historical consciousness of Muslims.

More ominously, since 1917 the Arabs have faced settler-colonialism in their very heartland, an open-ended imperialist project successively supported by Britain and the United States. This Zionist insertion in the Middle East, self-consciously promoted as the outpost of the West in the Islamic world, produced its own twisted dialectics. An exclusive Jewish state founded on fundamentalist claims (and nothing gets more fundamentalist than a twentieth-century imperialism founded on ‘divine’ promises about real estate made three thousand years back) was bound to evoke its alter ego in the Islamic world. When Israel inflicted a humiliating defeat on Egypt and Syria in 1967 – two countries that were the leading embodiments of Arab nationalism – this opened up a political space in the Arab world for the insertion of Islamists into the region’s political landscape. One fundamentalism would now be pitted against another.

This contest may now be reaching its climax – with United States entering the war directly. It is an end that could have been foretold – this did not require prophetic insight. In part at least, it is the unfolding of the logic of the Zionist insertion in the Arab world. On the one hand, this has provoked and facilitated the growth of a broad spectrum of Islamist movements in the Islamic world, some of which were forced by US-supported repression in their home countries to target the United States directly. On the other hand, the Zionist occupation of one-time Biblical lands has given encouragement to Christian Zionism in the United States, the belief that Israel prepares the ground for the second coming of Christ. At the same time, several Zionist propagandists – based in America’s think tanks, media and academia – have worked tirelessly to arouse old Western fears about Islam, giving it new forms. They paint Islam as a violent religion, perennially at war against infidels, opposed to democracy, fearful of women’s rights, unable to modernize, and raging at the West for its freedoms and prosperity. They never tire of repeating that the Arabs ‘hate’ Israel because it is the only ‘democracy’ in the Middle East.

There are some who are saying that the United States has already lost the war in Iraq; though admission of this defeat will not come soon. One can see that there has been a retreat from plans to bring about regime changes in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There is still talk of bringing democracy to Iraq and the Arab world, but it carries little conviction even to the American public. There is new-fangled talk now of fighting the “terrorists” in Baghdad and Basra rather than in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. And now after two years of bristling unilateralism, after starting an illegal war which sidelined the Security Council, the United States is courting the Security Council, seeking its help to internationalize the financial and human costs of their occupation of Iraq. It is doubtful if Indian, Polish, Pakistani, Egyptian, Fijian, Japanese or French mercenaries of the United States will receive a warmer welcome in Iraq than American troops. This ‘internationalization’ is only likely to broaden the conflict, possibly in unpredictable ways.

What can be the outcome of all this? During their long rampage through history, starting in 1492, the Western powers have shown little respect for the peoples they encountered in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. Many of them are not around to recount the gory history of their extermination through imported diseases, warfare, and forced labor in mines and plantations. Others, their numbers diminished, were forced into peonage, or consigned to mutilated lives on reservations. Many tens of millions were bought and sold into slavery. Proud empires were dismembered. Great civilizations were denigrated. All this had happened before, but not on this scale. In part, perhaps, the extraordinary scale of these depredations might be attributed to what William McNeill calls the “bloody-mindedness” of Europeans. Much of this, however, is due to historical accidents which elevated West Europeans – and not the Chinese, Turks, or Indians – to great power based on their exploitation of inorganic sources of energy. If we are to apportion blame, we might as well award the prize to Britain’s rich coal deposits.

In the period since the Second World War, some of the massive historical disequilibria created by Western powers have been corrected. China and India are on their feet; so are Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. These countries are on their feet and advancing. But the wounds of imperialism in Africa run deeper. The colonial legacies of fragmented societies, deskilled populations, arbitrary boundaries, and economies tied to failing primary production continue to produce wars, civil wars, corruption, massacres, and diseases. But Africa can be ignored; the deaths of a million Africans in the Congo do not merit the attention given to one suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Africa can be ignored because its troubles do not affect vital Western interests; at least not yet.

Then there is the failure of the Islamic world to reconstitute itself. As late as 1700, the Muslims commanded three major empires – the Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid – that together controlled the greater part of the Islamic world, stretching in a continuous line from the borders of Morocco to the eastern borders of India. After a period of rivalry among indigenous successor states and European interlopers, all of India was firmly in British control by the 1860s. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated more slowly, losing its European territories in the nineteenth century and its Arab territories during the First World War, when they were divvied up amongst the British, French, Zionists, Maronites and a clutch of oil-rich protectorates. Only the Iranians held on to most of the territories acquired by the Safavids. As a result, when the Islamic world emerged out of the colonial era, it had been politically fragmented, divided into some forty states, none with the potential to serve as a core state; this fragmentation was most striking in Islam’s Arab heartland. In addition, significant Muslim populations now lived in states with non-Muslim majorities.

Why did the Muslims fail to reconstitute their power? Most importantly, this was because Muslim power lacked a demographic base. The Mughal and Ottoman Empires – the Ottoman Empire in Europe – were not sustainable because they ruled over non-Muslim majorities. More recently, the Muslims have been the victims of geological ‘luck,’ containing the richest deposits of the fuel that drives the global economy. The great powers could not let the Muslims control ‘their lifeblood.’ They suffered a third setback from a historical accident: the impetus that Hitler gave to the Zionist movement. Now there had emerged a powerful new interest – a specifically Jewish interest – in keeping the Arabs divided and dispossessed.

It does not appear, however, that the Islamic societies have accepted their fragmentation, or their subjugation by neocolonial/comprador regimes who work for the United States, Britain and France. We have watched the resilience of the Muslims, their determination to fight for their dignity, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Palestine, Chechnya and Mindanao – among other places. In the meanwhile, their demographic weakness is being reversed. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Muslims constituted barely a tenth of the world’s population; today that share exceeds one fifth, and continues to rise. Moreover, unlike the Chinese or Hindus, the Muslims occupy a broad swathe of territory from Nigeria, Senegal and Morocco in the west to Sinjiang and the Indonesian Archipelago in the east. It would be hard to corral a population of this size that spans half the globe. More likely the US-British-Israeli siege of the Islamic world, now underway in the name of the war against terrorism, will lead to a broadening conflict with unforeseen consequences that could easily turn very costly for either or both parties.

Can the situation yet be saved? In the weeks preceding the launch of the war against Iraq, when tens of millions of people – mostly in Western cities – were marching in protest against the war, it appeared that there was hope; that the ideologies of hatred and the tactics of fear-mongering would be defeated; that these massive movements would result in civil disobedience if the carnage in Iraq were launched despite these protests. But once the war began, the protesters melted away like picnicking crowds when a sunny day is marred by rains. In retrospect, the protests lacked the depth to graduate into a political movement, to work for lasting changes. America does not easily stomach anti-war protestors once it starts a war. War is serious business: and it must have the undivided support of the whole country once the killing begins.

The anti-war protests may yet regroup, but that will not be before many more body bags arrive in the continental United States, before many more young Americans are mutilated for life, before many tens of thousands of Iraqis are dispatched to early deaths. Attempts are already underway to invent new lies to keep Americans deluded about the war; to tighten the noose around Iran; to hide the growing casualties of war; to lure poor Mexicans and Guatemalans to die for America; to substitute Indian and Pakistani body bags for American ones. This war-mongering by the United States cannot be stopped unless more Americans can be taught to separate their government from their country, their leaders from their national interests, their tribal affiliations from their common humanity. But that means getting past the media, the political establishment, the social scientists, the schools, and native prejudices. It is arguable that the nineteen hijackers would not have had to deliver the “monstrous calling card” if some of us had done a better job of getting past these hurdles in time. Still, the hijackers chose the wrong way to deliver their message, since it played right into the game plan of the Bush hawks. The result has been more profits for favored US corporations, greater freedom of action for Israel, and more lives and liberties lost everywhere.

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He may be reached at [e-mail]. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
© M. Shahid Alam

Published on Saturday, September 13, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0913-05.htm

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Amanpour: CNN practiced self-censorship
CNN`s top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship."
As criticism of the war and its aftermath intensifies, Amanpour joins a chorus of journalists and pundits who charge that the media largely toed the Bush administrationline in covering the war and, by doing so, failed to aggressively question the motives behind the invasion.

On last week`s Topic A With Tina Brown on CNBC, Brown, the former Talk magazine editor, asked comedian Al Franken, former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke and Amanpour if "we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the war."

Said Amanpour: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I`m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

Brown then asked Amanpour if there was any story during the war that she couldn`t report.

"It`s not a question of couldn`t do it, it`s a question of tone," Amanpour said. "It`s a question of being rigorous. It`s really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it`s the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels."

Clarke called the disinformation charge "categorically untrue" and added, "In my experience, a little over two years at the Pentagon, I never saw them (the media) holding back. I saw them reporting the good, the bad and the in between."

Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour`s comments: "Given the choice, it`s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

CNN had no comment.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2003-09-14-m…

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:32 a.m. EDT September 15, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
A rocket-propelled grenade attack launched by guerrillas killed a U.S. soldier in central Baghdad. The military said a soldier from the 1st Armored Division died early Monday morning at a field hospital.
Secretary of State Colin Powell visited a mass grave Monday to highlight perhaps the single biggest human-rights abuse of Saddam Hussein`s brutal regime -- the chemical weapons murder of some 5,000 people in March 1988. Powell took part in the formal dedication of a memorial and museum to commemorate those who lost their lives 15 years ago.
South Korea is studying a U.S. request to send thousands of light infantry troops to Iraq in what could become the country`s largest overseas troops dispatch since the Vietnam War.
Dozens of U.S. troops raided homes in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit Monday, and arrested five men suspected of helping to bankroll attacks against American troops.
A new poll shows Americans are uncomfortable with President George W. Bush`s request for an additional $87 billion in spending for Iraq. The ABC News-Washington Post poll finds 6 in 10 people oppose the increased spending.

CASUALTIES
U.S. casualties reported Monday: 1
A total of 293 U-S soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 156 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

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. Appeals Court Halts Oct. 7 Calif. Recall Vote
Mon September 15, 2003 02:44 PM ET


By Gina Keating
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a political bombshell, a federal appeals court on Monday halted California`s Oct. 7 recall election to replace Gov. Gray Davis, saying the obsolete punch card voting machines still used in six counties had an unconstitutionally high rate of error.

"The Secretary of State is enjoined from conducting an election on any issue on October 7, 2003," a three-member panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its 66-page opinion that sent immediate shockwaves through the state.

The court stayed its order for seven days to allow the parties to either appeal its ruling to a full 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Republican-led recall election has galvanized the state as few political contests with Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton and Davis, claiming that Republicans are trying to steal elections they cannot win in the heavily Democratic state.

Republicans, led by actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, have called for change.

Dave Gilliard, whose group Rescue California spearheaded the recall drive against Davis, said they will appeal the decision "immediately."

He added, "We think we`ll be going to the Supreme Court. Because of the timing there is no reason to mess with the Ninth circuit."

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, in San Francisco, appeared surprised by the decision, but declined to comment in detail. "I have to continue to prepare for this election," he said.

But a spokesman for embattled Gov. Davis, who has long sought a delay of the vote, welcomed the decision. "Anything that leads to greater enfranchisement in California is something we support," spokesman Peter Ragone said.

"The Ninth Circuit panel has ruled and delayed the election due to voting rights concerns, but its word is not final. We will continue to campaign for the Oct. 7 elections until the issue is resolved in the courts," he added.

Attorney Charles Diamond, who represents Sacramento recall leader Ted Costa, called the decision "wrong headed" and said Costa has not yet decided on his next move.

"The fight has just begun," Diamond told Reuters. "If (punch cards) were good enough to elect our president we don`t see why not they`re not good enough to elect our Governor."

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which brought the lawsuit over the punch cards on behalf of several civil rights groups, had no immediate comment. The ACLU planned a news conference in Los Angeles for later in the day.

PROBLEMS CITED

The three-judge panel found fault with the punch card system, used by 44 percent of the state`s electorate, saying that because of "technological defects" with the machines some 40,000 votes would effectively not be counted.

Punch cards were invented in the late 19th century, but it was not until 1964 that they were first used in elections.

After hearing arguments last week from lawyers for the ACLU, Shelley and Costa, the court agreed with the plaintiffs that the punch card system is "so flawed that the Secretary of State has officially deemed it `unacceptable` and banned its use in all future elections."

Compounding the problem, the court said, was the fact that election officials could only ready about a quarter of the state`s polling places in time for the special election.

The panel said the recall election should be put off until March when new voting machines will be in place throughout the state.

"We would be remiss if we did not observe that this is a critical time in our nation`s history when we are attempting to persuade the people of other nations of the value of free and open elections," the court wrote.

It added: "Thus we are especially mindful of the need to demonstrate our commitment to elections held fairly, free of chaos, with each citizen assured that his or her vote will be counted and with each vote entitled to equal weight. A short postponement of the election will accomplish those aims and reinforce our national commitment to democracy.

"In sum, in assessing the public interest the balance falls heavily in favor of postponing the election for a few months."



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[Joerver]

Bush: The Making of a Candidate

Texas Gov. George W. Bush. (AP photo)


A seven-part series on Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush traces the Texas governor`s lifelong effort to reconcile the expectations placed on him with the success he sought.

Heute der siebte und letzte Teil. Die vorhergehenden Teile sind in den letzten Tagen zu finden.
Der Link mit weiteren Artikeln:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh20…

Bush`s Move Up to the Majors


By Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 31, 1999; Page A1


Last of a series
George W. Bush was going to be without a job the day after his father was elected president in 1988, but he knew one thing for sure: He had to get out of Washington.
"He wanted to do something on his own," recalls Roland Betts, Bush`s Yale fraternity brother and friend of 35 years. "It was time."

But time for what?

Serving as a paid campaign adviser to his father for 18 months had given Bush new confidence in his own political acumen. He had helped get a president elected. His father had relied on his advice.

Joe O`Neill had visited the Bushes and heard his friend`s complaints about Washington, but he noticed something else. "He loved the arena," he said. "He liked the action, the game . . . being in on it."

With the governor`s race in Texas only two years away, Bush was tempted to become a candidate himself. But he hadn`t come close to laying the groundwork – politically or personally – for such a big leap. There was, for one thing, the question of personal resources. He had made a nice deal for himself when he sold out his small oil business to Harken Energy a few years earlier, but did he have enough of a nest egg to turn his life over to public service?

More important, he was aware that, at 42, he had yet to establish an identity separate from his father`s, that he had not answered the question – as he later put it – of "what`s the boy ever done?"

So when a former business partner phoned Bush shortly before the 1988 election to gauge his interest in putting together a group to buy the Texas Rangers, the Major League Baseball team that played in the Dallas suburbs, Bush`s response was enthusiastic. It was a prospect that could give him the financial security he sought and the stature and visibility he needed if he ever hoped to launch a political career.

For the first time in his life, Bush had a career plan. And to carry it out, he could draw on the self-discipline he had developed after giving up drinking in 1986 and the spark and enthusiasm his father`s winning campaign had instilled in him.

"He`s always possessed an amazing amount of energy," said his younger brother Marvin, "but today I think he`s learned how to channel that energy in positive ways."

At the same time, Bush was following a familiar pattern. Once again, his name and his family connections would provide him with an unusual opportunity. But this time, he seized it and made it his own. The baseball team would propel him to the Texas governor`s office and onto the national stage.

At 48, George W. Bush finally reconciled the expectations the world had placed on him with the success he had long sought.

Cutting His Teeth
On Dad`s Campaign

For years Bush had played a minor role in his father`s political career, available to campaign sporadically, on hand for election nights. But when the oil industry collapsed in 1986, just as his father was beginning another run for president, the timing seemed right to do something more ambitious. The idea had come the year before, not from his father but from one of his father`s aides.

The Bush family had gathered at Camp David in April 1985 to hear from Lee Atwater, the talented but self-promoting strategist who would run the 1988 presidential campaign. The siblings had reservations about Atwater because his consulting firm was also working for a presidential rival, Jack Kemp – and they told him so.

"How can we trust you?" George W. asked Atwater.

"If you think it`s a problem, why don`t one of you come to Washington and watch me?" Atwater dared. "If I`m disloyal, you can run me off."

His father, Bush said in an interview, never directly asked for his assistance, because "he`s the kind of person who is real mindful about, you know, not, kind of overly influencing people. . . . He didn`t want me to disrupt my life for him, when in fact I was looking for, you know, the invitation to come and go to battle with him."

In 1986, as Bush was working out the details of selling Spectrum 7, his oil exploration and development company, to Harken Energy, he talked to his father about coming to Washington, and asked him what his title would be on the campaign.

"You don`t need a title," the vice president told his son. "Everyone will know who you are."

His father was right – his role became clear. One of his first duties that December was to confront Atwater over a story about him in Esquire magazine in which the writer described interviewing Atwater while the vice president`s chief political adviser was in his underwear and in the bathroom. "You`re representing a great man," Bush told Atwater, who lost no time writing a note of apology to Barbara Bush.

"Junior" was hard to miss. In April 1987, after moving his family to a town house on Massachusetts Avenue, a mile from the vice president`s residence, he showed up at campaign headquarters in a jogging suit, dipping snuff and spitting the tobacco in waste cans.

Bush had a direct, sometimes confrontational style, and he turned himself into a self-appointed "loyalty enforcer, never hesitating to let aides and reporters know when they hadn`t shown due respect for his father. Bush even had a name for the tongue-lashings: "Feisting out."

And when rumors of his father`s infidelity swirled around Washington, it was Bush who was chosen to put them to rest, telling Newsweek in June 1987, "The answer to the big `A` question is N-O."

Laura Bush believes it was a critical time for her husband in coming to terms with his father, "an opportunity to be an adult with an adult parent."

"I think working with his dad, like George got to do in 1988 . . . if there was any sort of leftover competition with being named George Bush and being the eldest, that it really at that point was resolved," Laura Bush said.

By 1988, the vice president`s campaign staff began openly musing about Bush running for governor, and George W. didn`t discourage the talk. After his father was elected president and as Bush was mulling over his next move, his friends and advisers immediately saw the political advantages of becoming a high-profile managing partner of a sports franchise.

"You need to do something on your own, need to get your own name out there and develop your own reputation," Betts, the fraternity brother, told his friend. "With this thing, you`re going to be in newspapers all the time. . . . It will have a positive effect on the community. You will be establishing yourself.`‚"

Karl Rove, then as now Bush`s chief political adviser, was also pushing Bush to become involved. Months before the baseball deal was even done, Rove was telling reporters that ownership of the Rangers "anchors him clearly as a Texas businessman."

"It gives him . . . exposure and gives him something that will be easily recalled by people," Rove said.

The feeler about the Rangers had come from William O. DeWitt Jr., a friend who in 1984 had merged Bush`s small company with his own oil exploration operation, Spectrum 7. The team`s owner, Eddie Chiles, an old friend of the Bushes`, was in financial trouble and was eager to sell. The task for Bush and DeWitt was to line up investors.

The van showed up in Washington on Dec. 1 to move the Bushes back to Texas, this time to Dallas. Laura Bush went ahead to meet the truck at their new home, while Bush and their 7-year-old twins, Jenna and Barbara, stayed for another week with the president-elect and future first lady. He flew to Dallas with the girls on Dec. 8 to a still-uncertain future – and no job.

Baseball Provides
A Public Platform

Within weeks, Bush was working two fronts: politics and baseball.

Negotiations with Chiles went forward in early winter, with Bush and DeWitt rounding up investors, virtually all from the East. Bush`s investment was to be relatively small – a half-million dollars, obtained in a loan in which he put up his stock in Harken Energy as collateral.

Bush, like his father, adored baseball and played it in school, and had a formidable capacity for trivia. He and DeWitt – whose father had owned the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-`60s – had often dreamed about buying a franchise. The Rangers were a second-string ballclub, financially and on the field, but the team clearly had potential. With a larger, fancier stadium, the club could generate the revenue to attract first-rate players.

But Bush still hadn`t put to rest his political ambitions. That winter and spring, he met with GOP leaders and fund-raisers and traveled around the state. There was plenty of evidence suggesting he should not run then, if ever.

He was personable enough; like his father, he had a multitude of friends. But he was still known to be a bundle of nervous energy, brash and loud, and wont to speak his mind. Rumors of a quick temper reached potential opponents. He had the natural instincts for strategy and politics, but he seemed to lack patience for the details of policy.

In his only try for office – an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1978 – he had shown remarkable stamina and presence for a novice, managing to win 47 percent of the vote. But the election left him burned out. His father had been a significant issue in the congressional race, and now, as president, he would cast an even larger shadow. Running while his father was in office could pose problems for both of them.

Bush spent hours thinking and talking about the 1990 race, but the advice from those closest to him was ultimately summed up by his mother, who sent a very public signal that she thought her son should do one thing at a time. "When you make a major commitment like that [to baseball]," she told reporters during a White House lunch, "I think maybe you won`t be running for governor."

Barbara Bush also was Jim Francis, a former aide to his father with whom he consulted, delivered the verdict to him bluntly one day at lunch. "He needed to spend some time . . . becoming his own person with his own credentials, as opposed to the son of a president," Francis said.

Even Betts, while assuring Bush that becoming managing partner of the Rangers would pave the way for a political future, expressed concerns about Bush`s timing. "I don`t want to make the investment, if you plan to run in two years," said Betts, a New York entertainment mogul, who became the largest single investor in the Rangers.

In early August, Bush made it official: He would pass on the 1990 governor`s race.

By then he was already a part-owner of the Rangers, a deal signed on April 21. His team of investors had purchased 86 percent of the team for about $75 million. He and DeWitt raised half of the money, with Betts being the main investor; the other half came from a group led by Texas financiers Richard Rainwater and Edward "Rusty" Rose III. Rainwater and Rose had joined with Bush after Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth concluded that Bush and DeWitt hadn`t raised enough Texas money.

Bush and Rose, it was agreed, would have joint power in running the franchise, with Rose behind the scenes and Bush serving as the ownership`s public face. Bush`s total investment eventually would reach $606,302. For putting the deal together and running the club, Bush would receive an additional 10 percent return when the team was sold.

Baseball experts say the new ownership team enhanced the value of the franchise. Gross revenue more than doubled from $28 million to $62 million in a few years, and after the new stadium opened in 1994, it nearly doubled again – to $116 million last year. The club went from a mom-and-pop operation with 30 front-office employees and a consistently mediocre record on the field since moving to Texas from Washington in 1971 to a major corporation that now has 170 employees. In 1996, the Rangers made it to the playoffs for the first time, ultimately losing to the New York Yankees.

And for Bush, Rove and Betts`s predictions proved accurate. For the first time, he became a public figure in his own right, attending ownership meetings, speaking at the Rotary Club, sitting in the stands at all the games and handing out baseball cards with his picture on them. Fans by the dozens would line up by his seat for autographs, just as they would for the team`s superstar pitcher, Nolan Ryan.

Having a father in the White House didn`t hurt, and Bush made the most of his opportunity. "The name brought a celebrity element," said Tom Schieffer, former president of the franchise and an investor. "But it wasn`t the only thing he brought to the franchise. He brought his ability to speak to people and tell them why it was fun to come to baseball games. The public persona of the franchise was greatly enhanced because of George Bush."

Other team owners and former Ranger employees say Bush brought an instinctive feel and passion for the sport to his job, and managed to garner loyalty from players as well as hot dog vendors – all of whom he knew by name.

"You know, this guy fired me," said Bobby Valentine, a former Ranger manager now managing the New York Mets. "The honest truth is that I would campaign barefoot for him today."

The key to the franchise`s new revenue stream was the $190 million Ballpark in Arlington, which replaced the team`s dowdy converted minor league park in the same city. Under a controversial public-private financing deal, Arlington was to provide $135 million to build the park, raised by imposing a half-penny sales tax. The Rangers were to put up in the neighborhood of $50 million, generated in part from a $1 surcharge on ticket sales.

Critics savaged the project as "local socialism" because the public would pay for most of the stadium, while the Rangers could buy it back at a vastly reduced price and count the rent it paid toward the purchase.

A major marketing effort was launched to sell the plan to residents – the only time Bush kept a decidedly low public profile. In the end, Arlington residents resoundingly approved the sales tax in a referendum in January 1991.

Fielding a Team
To Take On the Governor

By 1993, the conditions that had persuaded Bush not to reenter politics had begun to change. With the new stadium scheduled to open the next year, it was virtually guaranteed the Rangers would appreciate substantially in value, eventually providing him the financial security he had long sought. And with his father`s defeat in 1992, Bush was finally out of his shadow.

Bush once again began thinking of running for governor against Ann Richards, a Democrat who four years earlier had won in an upset over Republican Clayton Williams.

Laura Bush was not enthusiastic about the idea, and she pressed her husband to examine his motives. She knew that when Bush wanted to do something, he liked to act fast. But while she found his instincts to be good, she was always the one who got him to take a deep breath, to think through the "why."

"She wanted to make sure this was something I really wanted to do and that I wasn`t being drug in as a result of friends or `Well, you`re supposed to do it in order to prove yourself, vis-a-vis your father,`‚" Bush told an interviewer. "That`s why she was the last person to sign on."

Strategically, Bush`s advisers saw Laura Bush as playing a critical role in the campaign because her famous in-laws were going to stay far in the background. When the Richards campaign started harping that Bush was running on his father`s name and resume, the message had to be clear that he was his own person.

In the spring of 1993, Bush and Rove started setting up meetings around the state. Bush invited Francis to go fishing with him at his vacation home at Rainbo Lake, an exclusive retreat in East Texas.

"We had both reached the conclusion that people liked Governor Richards in the personal sense, but that they disagreed with a lot of her policies," recalled Francis, who agreed to become general chairman of his fledgling campaign.

"He worked the politics of the situation very quickly – his dad was out of the White House, he got the Rangers deal done – fewer people were saying he was running because of his dad," said Rove. "But there was two other questions he had to answer for himself: `Why would I want to do this, and is the reason going to matter to someone? Is it big enough?`‚"

Bush was indeed determined to have a clear agenda before he would even consider running. "My father let Bill Clinton decide what issues the two of them were going to talk about," he once said, "and I wasn`t going to let that happen to me."

As Bush was weighing the run, Texas school financing was in crisis, dominating the daily news. On May 1, voters roundly defeated a measure that would have allowed the state to balance school funding by shifting property tax revenue from wealthy districts to poorer districts. Opponents had argued that the measure shifted wealth but did nothing to improve the quality of education.

It was a major defeat for Richards, who had pushed the measure, and Bush saw his opportunity.

Bush consulted with legislators and educators, and came up with his own proposal. He would promote decentralizing public education to give local jurisdictions more control, and he would promise more funding. With similar intensity, he began fashioning a plan to overhaul the state`s juvenile justice system – more facilities, tougher sentencing guidelines. Welfare and tort reform were hot national issues at the time. They also became part of his agenda.

That June, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison won a special election for the Senate seat vacated by Lloyd Bentsen when he joined the Clinton Cabinet. Bush was roaming through the ballroom of the Dallas hotel where Hutchison`s victory party was taking place when he ran into Brian Berry, her campaign manager and a longtime Bush political ally.

"Hey, buddy, are you ready for another one?" Bush asked Berry.

Bush began looking around for his own team that summer. He wanted to avoid the Washington types closely identified with his father`s defeat. He also wanted to find people who were loyal to him, not driven by their own career advancement.

At one meeting in his conference room at the Rangers offices, Bush told Rove that they had to run an active campaign that relied on a message.

"We`re never going to attack her because she would be a fabulous victim," he told Rove. "We`re going to treat her with respect and dignity. This is how we`re going to win."

By late August, it was clear to state party leaders that Bush was in – and that he would be a formidable candidate. One by one, potential rivals opted not to challenge Bush, until he was left with one unknown primary opponent.

Meanwhile, Bush had settled on Berry as his campaign manager, telling him that he never wanted Richards to be able to accuse him of "not being ready for prime time." He also made it clear that he was in charge but that he had no interest in micro-managing.

"I run a baseball team," Bush told his new aide that fall. "I don`t pick up a phone and criticize the players when they screw up in the outfield. That`s my manager`s job. I`ll let you and Jim Francis run the campaign. But I`m in charge."

Berry stayed only six months, resigning over differences with Francis. Bush turned to Joe Allbaugh, who had run Republican Henry Bellmon`s 1986 successful gubernatorial race in Oklahoma. The two had met in 1988 when Bush came through Oklahoma as a surrogate for his father. Bush asked him to come down and meet with him, Laura and Francis in late February. Two weeks later Allbaugh was ensconced in Austin – where he has been ever since, today running the presidential effort.

Allbaugh immediately saw the need for a tighter structure.effectively executed by the campaign. It didn`t take him long to understand that Bush was action oriented, not one to agonize over 30-page strategy memos. He wanted the one-page executive summary and a decision. Cut to the chase.

At Last, an Office
To Call His Own

Richards knew she had trouble. Although the stories about Bush`s temper and thin political resume raised eyebrows about his candidacy, the poll numbers told another story.

A year before the election, the benchmark Texas Poll showed that although a majority of voters liked Richards personally, they weren`t impressed with her job performance. In addition, 45 percent of potential Texas voters had a "favorable" view of Bush.

"There was no other tougher candidate in the GOP galaxy in our view," said Kirk Adams, Richards`s son-in-law and a senior campaign aide.

As state treasurer, Richards had been catapulted onto the national scene in 1988 when she ridiculed Bush`s father with the most memorable line of the Democratic National Convention. "Poor George," she drawled in her Waco twang, "he can`t help it – he was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

But the Bush family saw the speech as a personal attack. Some of George W.`s friends to this day believe it is one of the reasons he challenged Richards.

"That`s a perfect example of George`s growth as a human being," said brother Marvin. "Fifteen years ago, his emotions related to Ann Richards`s statements about my father would have been transparent. It may have gotten to him. He may have publicly said something that he would regret. By the time the election rolled around in 1994, he was a different guy. He was disciplined. I think he surprised a lot of people who didn`t know him."

He certainly surprised the Richards campaign, which was banking on a strategy that had worked beautifully for her in the 1990 race against Williams. Richards had played off of a string of Williams gaffes, including a tasteless joke about rape, his refusal to shake Richards`s hand and his vow to voters that he would "head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt."

Richards had also successfully raised questions about Williams`s business dealings. Williams, favored to win up until a month before the election, lost by 100,000 votes.

Bush seemed ripe for similar mishaps. The Richards camp figured he eventually would lose his cool publicly. And there were persistent rumors about his past drinking and partying, in part fueled by Bush himself, who for the first time made reference to his "irresponsible" youth.

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn`t. What`s the relevance?" he replied to the Houston Chronicle in May 1994 when asked about illegal drug use. "How I behaved as an irresponsible youth is irrelevant to this campaign."

The Richards campaign also was convinced that Bush had engaged in questionable business practices and had benefited from a sweetheart deal from the Rangers ownership group after making only a small personal investment in the franchise. In all, the campaign ended up spending more than $200,000 on "opposition research."

But sources close to Richards said that although questions were raised, there was no smoking gun. "People came to us with [personal] stuff, but it was a lot of rumors and hearsay," said a former senior Richards aide. As for his business dealings, the aide said, "It was all too complicated to convey."

A recovering alcoholic who had worked her way up in government, Richards believed that the voters ultimately would see Bush as she did – as someone who had never accomplished anything on his own and who was riding on his father`s coattails. She dismissively referred to him as "shrub."

The more Bush stayed on message, the more Richards seemed to show her disdain. Minutes before their only debate, she told her younger opponent, "Oh, I`m sorry this night`s going to be tough on you, George."

But Bush never responded.

"We tried to get under his skin and he kept his powder dry," said Chuck McDonald, a media consultant who was Richards`s spokesman.

Instead, he deferentially called her "governor" and never strayed from his three or four issues. A former teacher who had presented herself as the "education governor," Richards found herself reacting to his agenda.

"Well, it wasn`t, as I recall, much of a debate in reality," Richards said on "Larry King Live" this week. "And I don`t mean that snidely or unkindly. I think that the talent that George Bush has – and I say this with real respect – is that rather than tell you the intricacies of what he knows or what he intends to do, he is very good at saying things that are rather all-encompassing. You know, if you said to George, `What time is it?` he would say, `We must teach our children to read.`‚"

In the end, even her allies say Richards may have been defeated in part by her own pride. "It bothered her that she had to go through a race where they were viewed as equals for the job," said McDonald. "In her view, here she was governor and he had never run for statewide office and never done much in private life."

In mid-August, Richards, who declined to be interviewed for this story, may have delivered her own death blow. At a rally in Texarkana, she told a group of teachers, "You just work like a dog, you do well . . . and all of a sudden you`ve got some jerk who`s running for public office telling everybody it`s all a sham."

Joe Allbaugh called his wife and told her it was all over.

"It showed that she was consumed with him . . . her focus was on trying to prod him and so we knew that we had her," said Rove. "As long as we kept our discipline not to be provoked, then we were in great shape."

Bush won the election 53 percent to 46 percent. Exit polls indicated he made a strong showing with white men. But Bush also showed he could attract women, younger voters and Hispanics.

After the election, Bush withdrew from the day-to-day operations of the Rangers and put his interest in a trust. With a presidential bid looming, the partners eventually decided to sell the team. A year ago, Dallas businessman Thomas O. Hicks purchased the Rangers for $250 million. Bush received a check for $14.9 million and could receive an addition $1 million to $2 million when all the accounts are settled.

The day the sale was announced, his childhood friend, Joe O`Neill, called and told him his financial future was set, he would never have to give speeches to pay the bills.

"Congratulations," O`Neill told Bush. "You hit the long ball. Now you can run for president and you`ll never have to depend on the rubber chicken circuit. You`re free."

Staff researchers Richard Drezen, Madonna Lebling and Margot Williams contributed to this report.


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Iraqi fighters reject label of terrorist

By HANNAH ALLAM

09/14/03: (Knight Ridder Newspapers)

BAQUBA, Iraq - A mournful voice singing of dreary days and disappointing harvests drifted across a canal and onto the hidden grounds where Abu Abdullah teaches his recruits to kill.

Faded Iraqi army uniforms dried on pomegranate trees, and combat boots lined a dirt path leading into the camp. Young Iraqis picked ripe grapes and offered them to visitors. And waited for orders to attack another American convoy.

From this farm hidden among tangled grapevines and tall date palms an hour north of Baghdad, guerrilla fighters, both Iraqis and foreigners, have set out on some of the raids that have killed 70 U.S. soldiers in the past four months. The farmer`s song is a code from a lookout, to assure commanders that passing boaters can`t see the band of guerrillas preparing for their next attack on American soldiers.

The men here, armed with grenades and rifles, seem a ludicrous match for U.S. forces, whose superior weaponry is evident at every checkpoint in the country.

But two leaders of guerrilla cells told a Knight Ridder reporter and photographer in separate interviews that they would fight until the last vestige of the American presence in Iraq is gone. Their fate, one said, is "victory or martyrdom."

The interviews, conducted nine days apart in late August and early September, were the most extensive to date granted by the fighters who are killing Americans, and the visit to the camp was the first by journalists covering the war here.

The first interview, with an Iraqi who identified himself as Abu Mohammed, took place in an abandoned building in Mansour, Baghdad`s most exclusive neighborhood. The second, with a Jordanian who called himself Abu Abdullah, was at the encampment near Baquba.

The two cell leaders said their fighters primarily were former Iraqi army officers and young Iraqis who had joined because they were angry over the deaths or arrests of family members during U.S. raids in the hunt for Saddam Hussein and his supporters.

The group also shelters remnants of a non-Iraqi Arab unit of Saddam`s elite Fedayeen militia force as well as foreigners who slipped across the country`s long and porous borders to battle American troops, they said. Abu Abdullah, who directs the camp near Baquba, said he came to Iraq shortly before the United States invaded it last spring.

The anti-American forces appear to be more organized than some U.S. intelligence and military officials thought. Cells receive orders and intelligence from Diyala, which lies within the northern "Sunni Triangle" of danger. According to the fighters, the Diyala leadership oversees about 100 guerrillas, including an all-women`s unit, and is backed by private donations as well as Syrian funding, according to the two cell leaders. Both said they had been told by superiors not to contact members of other cells for fear of infiltrators.

Abu Mohammed seemed confident that Saddam is directing at least some of the activity. He said he`d heard that leaders many levels above him had met recently with the fallen Iraqi leader.

Still, he said, the dictator has no chance of returning to power because of the shame of losing Baghdad and because of relatives who turned in his sons and other key figures for rewards.

"We love Saddam Hussein for one thing - he has a big mind," Abu Mohammed said. "He knows how to think and how to plan. He made our hearts as strong as steel."

Knight Ridder sought the interviews through Iraqi acquaintances, who spent weeks contacting other acquaintances, searching for someone with inroads to the group. The interviews themselves were arranged through an intermediary, who accompanied a Knight Ridder reporter and photographer to both, but disappeared without explanation the day an aborted third meeting was to have taken place in a new location.

In neither instance did the fighters attempt to prevent the journalists, an accompanying translator or their driver from seeing the route along which they were taken. But during the trip to the camp, the journalists` satellite telephones were confiscated and turned off, out of concern, the intermediary said, that U.S. forces would trace the phones` signals to pinpoint the camp`s location.

Both cell leaders said they were willing to talk because they didn`t want the story of what was going on in Iraq to be told only from the American military`s standpoint. Abu Abdullah said he wanted to tell people he didn`t consider himself a terrorist, but the enemy of "U.S. imperialism."

American officials have said they know little of the exact makeup of the Iraqi fighters. They have linked the guerrillas both to Saddam`s Baath Party and to foreigners linked to Osama bin Laden`s al Qaida terrorist network.

The cell leaders themselves said they were guided by a blend of Islamist teachings and pan-Arab nationalism. Both spoke disdainfully of "Wahabbis," as hard-line Sunni Muslim followers are called. Abu Mohammed said there was no contact with members of al Qaida at his level; Abu Abdullah broke off the interview before the question could be asked. But he said his fighters were too valuable to participate in suicide missions, a hallmark of al Qaida, and he rejected the label of terrorist.

"Can you describe a man who defends his country as a terrorist?" asked Abu Abdullah, who said he was 31. "Iraq is the land of prophets and the birthplace of civilization. We will fight until we shed the last drop of our blood for this country."

It is impossible to verify the claims of the two men. But Abu Mohammed described two fatal ambushes of U.S. convoys that matched times, dates and locations of recent incidents recorded in American military accounts. And an explosion nearby lent credibility to Abu Abdullah`s claims after he hurriedly broke off an interview, saying his men had been ordered to ambush a U.S. convoy that had moved within range. A security report by international agencies later listed an attack on U.S. troops at about the same time and place as the explosion. One American soldier was reported injured.

Abu Mohammed, who said he was 19, called the American victory in April a humiliating defeat for his family, which has roots in Saddam`s hometown of Tikrit and includes several officers in the former army.

A friend of Abu Mohammed`s said the young man had an uncle among the U.S.-led coalition`s 55 most-wanted figures from the former regime, though he declined to divulge the uncle`s name or whether he is still missing.

Family connections to the Baath Party brought raids and arrests of several relatives, Abu Mohammed said. In June, a cousin confided that he had joined the anti-American forces. Abu Mohammed said he accepted his cousin`s invitation to watch an attack and was seduced instantly by the thrill of revenge.

Nearly three months later, his loyalty and family reputation had earned him a position as the leader of a 20-member cell that scouts the highways in and around Baghdad for passing American convoys, which he said made easy targets for rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs.

Superiors sent Abu Mohammed to meet with Knight Ridder one evening in late August to provide basic information on the Diyala umbrella group and to vet the journalists before a second meeting.

A middleman named Ahmed accompanied a reporter and photographer to the Mansour building. Ahmed paid a child standing outside a handful of Iraqi dinars, presumably to act as a lookout during the hour-long interview. Ahmed then led the way to a dim, first-floor office where Abu Mohammed sat behind a desk, wearing a tightly wrapped head scarf that revealed only his eyes.

His thin frame slumped under the weight of a Kalashnikov and a military-style vest packed with hand grenades and ammunition. His hands shook, and he explained that he was nervous because U.S. raids were growing closer to the Diyala leadership. Raids in recent weeks had resulted in the arrest of one member, he said, and two others had narrowly escaped capture.

Fear of informants restricts recruiting to family members, close neighborhood friends and military buddies, he said.

"We are Islamist in that we are protecting our religion. We are nationalist in that we are protecting our country," Abu Mohammed said. "We don`t care about our lives. We care about the lives of our fellow Iraqis."

Abu Mohammed`s cell relies on the Baghdad branch for information on convoy routes, checkpoints with the least security and areas with high American soldier traffic. Baghdad leaders arrange each attack and sometimes send members afterward to stand at the scene posing as onlookers to count casualties. A report then goes to the Diyala leaders, Abu Mohammed said.

One attack, he said, was scrapped at the last minute because a van carrying an Iraqi family pulled next to the targeted convoy and could have been hit by mistake. Typically, however, most attacks are carried out, and Iraqis who happen to be around are "sacrificed," he said.

The day before an Aug. 12 attack near Taji, home to a U.S. military base just north of Baghdad, Abu Mohammed said, he and six other men scouted the area, plotting the operation and mapping the quickest escape routes. They planned to have two men on an overpass fire a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and other weapons. Two others, one at each end of the overpass, would serve as lookouts, another as the getaway driver and two more would guard alternate escape routes farther from the scene. Abu Mohammed said he was one of the latter two.

The day of the attack, one member recited protective verses from the Quran and the others repeated each line in unison. They drove to the site, took their positions and waited for the convoy, which the Baghdad cell told them would be carrying an important American military figure.

At about 6 p.m., Abu Mohammed said, they fired on the convoy and escaped as planned. "I don`t know how many were injured," he said. "I saw two soldiers who looked dead."

On Aug. 13, the U.S. military announced that one 4th Infantry Division soldier had been killed and two others had been wounded around 6:15 p.m. the previous day when their convoy was attacked "in the vicinity of al Taji." Though the records match Abu Mohammed`s account, there`s no way to guarantee that the attack was the one he described.

Even if the U.S.-led military coalition leaves Iraq, Abu Mohammed said, his group will turn to the U.S.-appointed Governing Council as a new target. The men harbor particular disdain for Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile who helped spur the war with information he gave to key players in the Bush administration and to American newspaper reporters. Abu Mohammed said no exile would be safe as president; his group would accept only an Iraqi leader who "suffered like us, who was with the people" during wars and sanctions.

"I promise you," he said. "The first day Chalabi is president, we will bomb his house no matter who is inside."

Nine days passed before Knight Ridder was offered a second meeting, this time with a higher-ranking cell leader. The middleman from the first meeting and an unidentified member of the Baghdad cell took the same reporter and photographer down a maze of country roads an hour north of Baghdad. At one point, the car traveled directly behind an American convoy, stirring laughter and shrugs from the middleman and the Baghdad cell member.

The car stopped outside a remote, overgrown farm surrounded by a high wall. The group entered through a padlocked side door and the men warned of snakes as they walked down a dirt path strewn with military boots, charred metal parts and tubs of freshly picked dates from the tall palm trees that cast shadows over the campgrounds. Stockpiles of canned food could be seen from the path.

At the end of the trail, a narrow canal sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. The escort from the Baghdad cell said the camp gave him a feeling of "brotherhood," with members swimming together in the canal or racing to pick the ripest grapes. The man, who looked to be in his early 30s, offered the visitors seats on a neglected patio about 20 feet from the banks of the canal.

After a 20-minute wait, noise from the path signaled the arrival of Abu Abdullah and three other men, one of whom sported a Saddam Fedayeen logo - a winged heart - tattooed on his hand. Abu Abdullah, who wore track pants and a T-shirt, had covered his face with a black-and-white scarf, though the other men weren`t disguised.

He said he left Jordan for Iraq just before the war, when volunteers from neighboring Arab countries lined up at the borders to show their willingness to help Iraqi soldiers. He was drawn not by religious beliefs, he said, but by fear that war in Iraq would lead to Western rule of the Middle East.

He said he since had met like-minded Syrians, Egyptians and Afghans from other cells.

"I saw what the Zionists did to Palestine, how they destroyed Palestinian homes," he said. "I told myself I could never let this happen to another Arab country. The Americans are only coming to occupy Iraq, to drain this land of its natural resources."

At the camp, he continued, he trains recruits to operate heavy weapons and small arms such as machine guns and hand grenades. He said the recruits, who were increasing daily "from inside and outside Iraq," were quick students because most already had military experience. The leader of the anti-American network sometimes visits the camp to encourage new recruits to fight with courage.

The men are taught to seek only military targets, and to spare civilian lives when possible. For this reason, he said, he condemns the car bombs that killed dozens of innocents recently at the Jordanian Embassy, the United Nations base in Baghdad and the Imam Ali shrine in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf. Abu Abdullah said he thought U.S. forces orchestrated the Najaf bombing to divide Sunni and Shiite Muslims by assassinating Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al Hakim, the leading Shiite cleric who died in the blast.

"Americans want to split us," he said. "Those heretical people want to finish Islam, to kill our religion. But we know Muslims, and in our holy book it says to fight together against those who threaten Islam. So, we will fight."

The promised hour-long interview ended after just 15 minutes, when another member whispered something in his ear. Abu Abdullah apologized profusely and excused himself. Information had arrived on a convoy that would be an easy hit as long as the fighters acted immediately, he said.

"This is from someone coming to tell us we have a mission now," Abu Abdullah said. "We are ready to go and attack our target." He left, and the visitors were led back to the car by Ahmed and the same escort from Baghdad.

On the way back to the main road into Baquba, an explosion so powerful it rattled the car was heard in the distance.

The men in the front seat turned to each other and smiled.

(Allam reports for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.)
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Under Blair, Britain has ceased to be a sovereign state
At last we see the consequences of our country`s abject thrall to the US

Hugo Young
Tuesday September 16, 2003
The Guardian

Secret intelligence, we have certainly learned, is not a science. For some people this is a grave disillusionment. Brought up on fictionalised versions of an impenetrable world, they perhaps imagined it had access to super-secret stuff that quite transcended the vague banalities they could read in the press. It came from deep within, couched with an exactitude the rest of us were not meant to know about. New prime ministers, first entering this secret world, have attested to their fascination and, in the beginning, their ready credulity. I suspect that Tony Blair was one of these.

I`m prepared to believe that he published September`s dossier of claims against Saddam Hussein for good reasons. He wanted to admit the voters to some of the secret intelligence. The trouble is that it had lost its magic. He deprived it of such precision as it ever had. From being the ice-cold product of cautious analysts, it became political. Mr Blair became his own chief intelligence analyst. And his attitude became the opposite of cool. It was meant to serve a wholly political purpose.

On the one hand, we now know that senior intelligence people were categorically advising in February that their assessment pointed towards more terrorism not less if we went to war in Iraq. Blair simply rejected it. On the other hand, when remonstrating with sceptics in private he pleads the mind-blowing evidence that crosses his desk from many intelligence people at home and abroad as if it were raw gospel truth. If you could only see it, he says. If you knew what I do, you would never dream of challenging the need to go to war to stop weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists.

Intelligence, in other words, has become a flexible friend, a political instrument. Its chief agent, John Scarlett, moreover, has become a crony of No 10 rather than a distant and detached truth-teller. Among the many corruptions this war has brought about, we can therefore say, is the degradation of what was once advertised, and globally agreed, to be a jewel in the Whitehall apparatus.

This happened for a prior reason, which is not new but deserves frequent repetition. The intelligence, culminating in the dossier, had to fit a prior decision. This has been the great over-arching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny. He was committed to war months before he said he was. Of course, he wanted it buttered up. He wanted a UN sanction. He fought might and main to push Bush in that direction. But he was prepared to go to war without it.

He needed this skewed intelligence to make the case, and he didn`t really mind what he had to say to get it. He had made his commitment to Bush, stating among other extraordinary things that it was Britain`s national task to prevent the US being isolated. But he was also in thrall to the mystic chords of history. He could not contemplate breaking free of ties and rituals that began with Churchill, and that both Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence - the Foreign Office is somewhat wiser - have cultivated, out of fear and expectation, for decades.

He was driven by something else, which none of his predecessors, not even Margaret Thatcher, has succumbed to. Without exception they all kept their eye on the British ball. They could all make a kind of case for a profitable connection between the hard British national interest and occasional benefits from the special relationship. For Blair, in his Bush-Iraq mode, this has been a lot more theoretical: the theory of pre-emptive intervention in a third country`s affairs, for moral purposes, at the instigation of the power whose hyperdom he cannot resist.

What does this mean? That we have ceased to be a sovereign nation. There`s been a tremendous amount of talk about sovereignty in recent years. It became, and remains, the keynote issue at the heart of our European debate. Something to do with sovereignty was clearly operative in the Swedes` decisive rejection of the euro: more, many observers suspect, than the minutiae of economic policy - important, in the Swedish case, though those were. What it means to be an independent nation is a question that touches the wellsprings of a people`s being. Yet it is one that our leader, as regards this war, has simply disguised from his people, egged on by sufficient numbers of North American papers and journalists who seem to be wholly delighted at the prospect of surrendering it.

I do not believe this obtuseness can last for ever. If there is one virtue in the unfinished history of the Iraq war, it is that the British may finally wake up to what the special relationship is doing to their existence. Do I have to qualify that with assertions of my decades of affection for America, my sense that very many Americans detest this war as much as I do, even my optimism that if George Bush can be forced from office a certain sanity will return to the world? Probably it has to be said. Meanwhile, though, Mr Blair has to live with a bond he has willingly created, which Jack Straw, we now learn, thanks to John Kampfner`s revelatory research, apparently made a hopeless attempt to save him from at the eleventh hour.

The episode tells you once again that this is Blair`s war and, except for Bush, hardly anybody else`s. There are two ways to see him.

The first is as the great deceiver. Driven by his own juices, compelled by moral imperatives obliterating pragmatism, forced by those compulsions to avoid levelling with his people, in the grip of a high belief in the need for the intervention of good guys against bad guys in this new world where the enemy is to be found everywhere and nowhere. Throttled by a history he refuses to relinquish. This could yet, in certain circumstances, be the end of him, if our one-man intelligence chief is found to have twisted truth, for whatever good motive, too far.

There is another person emerging from this mist, though. This is a great tragic figure. Tony Blair had such potential. He was a strong leader, a visionary in his way, a figure surpassing all around him at home and on the continent. His rhetorical power was unsurpassed, as was the readiness of people to listen to him. He had their trust. He brought credibility back to the political art.

It is now vanishing, though not before our open eyes. All this seems to be happening below the radar screen of opinion polls. The country carries on at least as semi-normal. Our boys are out there dying in a futile war, to which there is no apparent end, certainly not one that we control. The leader goes about his business, awaiting without too much trepidation, we may suppose, a suitably ambiguous Hutton report. Yet something big is happening. This concerns not merely him and whether he survives, but our country and what becomes of it in abject thrall to Bush and his gang.

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Was the Iraq war illegal?
In a landmark case, two peace activists who tried to stop B-52 bombers taking off will argue that the conflict breached international law

Alex Wade
Tuesday September 16, 2003
The Guardian

Was the war in Iraq legal or not? Lord Hutton won`t tell us: that ultimate question does not come within the terms of his inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly. The high court was asked to decide but demurred, declaring it had no jurisdiction to interpret UN resolution 1441, the basis on which Britain went to war.

But the question persists, becoming, if anything, more insistent as any sign of the weapons of mass destruction with which we were threatened continues to prove elusive four and a half months after the end of the war. We learned at the weekend that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, had urged the prime minister in a private memo just four days before the hostilities broke out to keep Britain out of the conflict.

This week the question will take centre stage again in a court of law. On Friday, in the unlikely setting of Gloucester crown court, a hearing will take place in a criminal case that could mean that 12 ordinary citizens - an English jury - will get to decide whether or not the conflict was legal.

Last December, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament sought a high court declaration that the war was not authorised by international law. The judges, describing CND`s claim as "novel and ambitious", held that the courts had no jurisdiction to interpret UN resolution 1441 as it was not part of domestic law. The court also said it was unwilling to consider the issue if it would damage the public interest in the field of international relations, national security or defence. CND`s claim was "non-justiciable".

Now, two peace activists, Margaret Jones and Paul Milling, will make a fresh attempt to question the legality of the conflict before a court. This time, the issue arises as part of their defence to criminal charges. The pair, who were arrested on March 13 inside the airbase at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, are charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to a refuelling truck and tractor units used for loading bombs on to B-52s. Jones and Milling will argue that their actions were justified given the "illegality" of the Iraq war. On Friday, Judge Jamie Tabor will decide at a preliminary hearing the procedure for putting the defence forward. Will the judge hear the argument and decide himself, or will the question of the war`s legality or illegality be left to the jury?

One defence to a criminal charge is that the accused was acting to prevent a crime. Hugo Charlton, the barrister defending Jones and Milling, concedes that his clients` arguments are rarely used. They will say they were acting to prevent the commission of a crime because the B-52s were about to take off from RAF Fairford to take part in an illegal armed conflict, the result of which would be large-scale loss of life and destruction of property in Iraq.

Louise James, their solicitor, says: "We are struggling to find any precedents. It`s a bit of an uncharted territory for us and the judge."

Her clients will be putting forward testimony from an expert in international law. "We have retained Professor Nick Grief from Bournemouth University, who has a track record in this area, and will be using expert evidence to show that the bombing campaign against Iraq systematically targeted water and power supplies, was disproportionate and amounted to a crime under international law. We hope that Judge Tabor will allow these questions to be determined during the trial, before the jury."

Judge Tabor has some unusual arguments to consider. Jones and Milling are relying on three defences: necessity, which is founded on precedents set by earlier cases; the defence of lawful excuse under the Criminal Damage Act 1971; and the defence of acting to prevent a crime, under the Criminal Law Act 1967. These are seldom visited waters of the criminal law, though the defence of necessity has come before the courts in recent years in other incidents where protesters have damaged military installations and equipment.

Necessity can be relied upon as a defence to all criminal charges other than murder, and often arises as duress, defined in a 1989 case as "pressure upon an accused`s will from the wrongful threats or violence of another". The classic example would be where a person is forced to commit a crime at gunpoint. But equally, if more unusually, it can be used as a defence where the accused reasonably apprehended a danger threatening others, and acted - in a way that is proportionate to that perceived danger - to avoid the possibility of death or serious injury.

For those who have called upon it in recent years, necessity has proved a mixed bag. In a case in 2000 at Newbury magistrates court, the accused had damaged the perimeter fence of the atomic weapons establishment at Aldermaston. The court decided that the lack of any immediate threat meant that the defence did not apply. In 1999 in Greenock, Sheriff Margaret Gimblett accepted the argument of three women peace activists that nuclear weapons were illegal under international law and that they had a right to commit crimes to prevent their use. The women were acquitted of criminal damage to a laboratory at Coulport, part of the Trident nuclear submarine installation at Faslane naval base on the Clyde. But the court of session in Edinburgh overturned the ruling in March 2001, deciding that Britain`s nuclear deterrent was not illegal.

Jones and Milling say that at the time of their actions, there were objective dangers threatening the lives and physical safety of the Iraqi people. The coalition`s bombing campaign started on March 20, five days after the two were arrested. Jones, a former senior lecturer in American literature, says: "I often think of a person in Baghdad trying to escape the city. Our actions were intended to cut the line of support for the B-52s and give that person a little more time to get away. Perhaps we saved a few lives by causing delays."

They also argue that they had a lawful excuse, a defence available where a person destroys or damages property in order to protect property belonging to another. Jones puts it vividly: "No one would accuse a firefighter breaking down a door with an axe to rescue someone trapped in a burning house of criminal damage. We acted as we did because we believed the impending war in Iraq was illegal, and we acted to prevent a greater crime being committed. The real criminals aren`t us - they`re in Whitehall and Washington."

The outcome will hinge on the success of their argument that they were acting to prevent a crime - the use of force against Iraq, contrary to international and English law. So the wording of resolution 1441 - relied upon by the government as justifying aggression against Iraq - is about to come back to haunt Blair and his government. Its language, so the defence will go, required the question of further action to revert to the UN security council once the weapons inspectors found that Iraq had made false statements or omissions in its own declaration under the resolution. But, the defendants claim, government rhetoric and their work as peace activists made it clear that the commission of a criminal offence was imminent.

It is difficult to predict how Gloucester crown court will treat the defendants` arguments. As Owen Davies QC, an expert in judicial review and human rights law, says: "The verdict of the jury - if the judge lets the matter go to them - is not determinative of the legality or otherwise of the conflict. But an acquittal could cause a great deal of embarrassment for the government, with anti-war campaigners saying it is a ringing endorsement of their condemnation of the war."

Meanwhile, perhaps, we should recall the words of Martin Luther King on civil disobedience: "In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law - that would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks the law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."


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A coffin waits at the Baghdad morgue for one of the hundreds of victims of street violence who are brought in each month. The Arabic sign warns relatives not to pay the clerk more than the official amount, 10,000 dinars, to reclaim a body, a warning intended to discourage requests for bribes.
September 16, 2003
Open War Over, Iraqis Focus on Crime and a Hunt for Jobs
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 15 — The judge sits in his chambers, waiting.

He is waiting for the United States military to deliver the first batch of prisoners for trial in the newly refurbished criminal court in Kharkh District.

The judge, Nawar Mohammed Nasser, the court`s chief justice, has grown accustomed to waiting. He was promised prisoners on Aug. 16. No one showed up. It happened again on Aug. 23, then on Sept. 6 and once more on Sept. 9.

"It`s not a problem with the judicial system," said the 53-year-old judge, nattily dressed in a gray suit and a deep gray tie with white polka dots. "It`s a problem with the coalition forces.

"If they cannot get prisoners to court at the right time, how can we expect them to run the entire administration, the entire state — to establish a new order in Iraq?"

The question of whether the Americans can transform Iraq is asked with increasing frequency.

Iraqis, in general thrilled to be freed from the long, sinister rule of Saddam Hussein, had high expectations that the arrival of the Americans would utterly transform their lives.

As the occupation enters its sixth month, however, they are looking for something, anything, they can hold in their hands that assures them that the future will be better — and they cannot find it.

The residents of Baghdad, more than in any other part of the country, object to living with rampant crime, terrorist bombings, constant power cuts, an ill-defined political process, sluggish reconstruction and a mostly American administration that remains largely inaccessible in its bunkered palaces.

"We have no idea how to follow our proposals through the system," said Adel Abdel Mahdi, a senior official with the main Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which sits on the Iraqi Governing Council.

"They tell us our ideas are good, but we have no idea whether they are discussed, whether there is a decision. It`s very frustrating."

The Americans tend to counsel patience and promise that things will improve. Iraqis say they could be patient if someone explained the plan to them in a coherent way.

"When they came to Iraq, they didn`t really have a plan for what happens next," said Ali Sahib al-Qamoosi, a 33-year-old businessman who celebrated his newfound freedom by opening an Internet cafe. "I say I`m optimistic, but it`s only because things were so bad before, that they could never get worse."

At Baghdad Central Morgue

Dr. Faiq Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad Central Morgue for the past 13 years, reels off the grim statistics that confirm to Iraqis that they have entered what they see as a terrifyingly lawless twilight zone: 462 people dead under suspicious circumstances or in automobile accidents in May, some 70 percent from gunshot wounds; 626 in June; 751 in July; 872 in August. By comparison, last year there were 237 deaths in July, one of the highest months, with just 21 from gunfire.

Dozens of Iraqis mill around outside, their dead relatives a cross-section of ill-fated lives.

A police officer arrives with an ambulance bearing the body of an unidentified man, roughly 21 years old, shot dead in the street, probably the victim of a carjacking.

One family is collecting the body of their 25-year-old cousin, killed by a bullet in the neck, probably a burst of celebratory gunfire during a wedding.

A second family is collecting the body of a 30-year-old night watchman at a large state-owned factory, shot dead by looters.

Several families from Abu Ghraib are there to gather some of the four victims, including an 8-year-old girl, who they said were shot dead by American soldiers in the market after a grenade was thrown at an armored personnel carrier.

An American military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed that one soldier was wounded in a grenade attack but denied that the soldiers, from the First Armored Division, fired back.

"The American soldiers are so panicky that if a tire bursts in the street, they start shooting," said Nabil Saleh Al-ani, a cousin of victim.

Dr. Bakr, the morgue`s director, said he had never seen street crime like this.

"When you see your people are killed every day," he said, "you imagine the amount of crime in the country, you imagine how much insecurity there is."

At the Police Station

Lt. Hussein al-Saedi, a former army officer now assigned to Al Nasr Police Station in the sprawling slum called Thawra, harbors nostalgia for the old ways.

"Before, we used to bring the guy, we beat him, hung him by a hook on the ceiling, and he would confess every single criminal act he committed since he was a toddler," he said. "Before, it was much better. Before, we used to solve these cases in one night."

Cpl. Zuhair Mudthafir argues otherwise. He recently completed a three-week American course to retrain officers in work like interrogation, note-taking and human rights. "You know, the Americans have genius officers who find ways to extract confessions from defendants without beating them," he says.

At the police academy, where the courses are taught, Capt. Jason Brandt, a reservist from San Diego, explains that it is going to take some time to train an estimated 5,500 officers, given that they can handle only about 230 at a time.

"They have a lot of pride; they think they are perfect," said Specialist Corey Mann, a 20-year-old college student serving with the 18th Military Police Brigade. "When they first come in here, they say `We don`t have drugs, we don`t have domestic violence and the Koran says we can hit our women, anyway.` "

There are frequent discussions about where to draw the line between cultural traditions and police work. The Iraqi police generally like the course. It makes them feel part of the world. Some critics say the United States is putting the cart before the horse, teaching human rights rather than training new police, just as they talk about privatizing universities at a time when most Iraqis can barely afford books.

Those who have had frequent dealings with the police appreciate the difference, though.

"When the big dictator toppled, all the little dictators changed," said Adnan Jabar al-Saidi, a 31-year-old lawyer who helps run the Iraqi Human Rights Association. "It`s as if they were taking their cue from the big dictator."

The main problem with the police, senior officials admit, is that there are just not enough and they remain ill equipped. Three weeks ago, the 60 officers at Al Nasr shared seven guns, two cars and no radios. They told a visitor to leave the area before nightfall because it was too dangerous even for them to venture out.

This week they have 44 guns — mostly rifles — and three radios. They can only use the radios every other day, however, because they have to take them to headquarters to recharge the batteries.

They also lost their two cars to an emergency police unit. When they arrest someone now, they hail a cab.

There are some 30,000 police officers throughout the country, including about 14,000 in Baghdad.

Ayad Alawi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council whose senior aide was appointed minister of the interior, said that he expected 40,000 officers would be deployed by the end of October, and that that should help turn the tide. In addition, the first 1,200-member brigade of the Iraqi Civil Defense Force, a kind of paramilitary unit, are due to complete their training.

Once there are more police officers and more jobs for everyone, he believes, the number of people willing to carry out attacks will dwindle. He recalled a recent interrogation in which suspects involved in a grenade attack on American military vehicles said they did it for $200.

The Reconstruction Scene

Adnan Janabi, the part owner of a construction company, believes the solution to the rampant crime will be to distribute contracts to an array of Iraqi companies to refurbish the forest of burned government buildings in Baghdad. That would get the unemployed off the streets.

The Baghdad City Council recently hired 11,000 men at $3 a day for a month to clean the streets. That helped spread around a little money, one councilman said, but it is seen as too limited.

Mr. Janabi has been either unable to reach the officials involved or has hit the Iraq reconstruction "Catch-22."

He has been told that American government regulations require numerous studies before any reconstruction can get started — and that the people needed to conduct the studies do not want to come to Iraq because of the dire security conditions.

He points at the sidewalks bursting with electronic equipment and other consumer items; despite the frequent hijackings and thievery on the road from Amman, Jordan, the demands of the booming market are such that the traders absorb the losses.

Private Iraqi construction firms would take similar risks, working under the danger of attack just to get the business, Mr. Janabi says.

"They tell us there is no security, that they cannot rehabilitate the oil sector, that we cannot rehabilitate hospitals, because there is nobody to guard them," he said. "We are fed up with being told to wait because there is no security. We can make our own security."

He filled out a complicated, 10-page form in May to try to bid for some of the $215 million in subcontracts that the Bechtel Corporation says it will hand out from the $680 contract it was given.

At that time, Bechtel had an office in the Sheraton, which they closed on Aug. 1 due to security concerns.

Now their two offices lie behind the barbed wire and multiple barricades that the military maintains around all government offices. The mood of the American soldiers often determines who gets in and who does not.

Mr. Janabi has tried to reach Bechtel and other major contractors via the Internet, but gets no response, and yet he can see on the Web sites that contracts are being awarded.

"A liberal economy is an open economy, a competitive economy," he said, his remarks echoed by a banker who works with similar small- and medium-size companies. "That does not exist here; we don`t even see the birth signs."

Gregory F. Huger, the Bechtel manager in charge of major reconstruction projects, said the timetable involved did not allow for open bidding. Instead, the company screened those who attended its early conferences about contracting work and asks 15 to 20 selected companies to bid on specific jobs.

Mr. Huger also said Bechtel was not involved in the restoration of ministry buildings.

Of the 123 subcontracts given out by Sept. 7, 89 went to Iraqi companies, said Francis M. Canavan, Bechtel`s public affairs manager in Iraq. He could not give a dollar value for those contracts.

If Mr. Qamoosi, the Internet cafe owner, is to be believed, the Americans share a problem with Saddam Hussein: they have promised a lot, and Iraqis are waiting for a sign they are going to get it.

"Saddam used to tell us that we would cross the river to the other bank," he recalled.

"It was a famous saying of his. You could just refer to it as The Crossing and people knew what you meant. It`s the same thing now. The Americans keep saying this will happen and this will happen and this will happen, but nothing happens."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 16, 2003
Veiled and Worried in Baghdad
By LAUREN SANDLER


BAGHDAD, Iraq

A single word is on the tight, pencil-lined lips of women here. You`ll hear it spoken over lunch at a women`s leadership conference in a restaurant off busy Al Nidal Street, in a shade-darkened beauty shop in upscale Mansour, in the ramshackle ghettos of Sadr City. The word is "himaya," or security. With an intensity reminiscent of how they feared Saddam Hussein, women now fear the abduction, rape and murder that have become rampant here since his regime fell. Life for Iraqi women has been reduced to one need that must be met before anything else can happen.

"Under Saddam we could drive, we could walk down the street until two in the morning," a young designer told me as she bounced her 4-year-old daughter on her lap. "Who would have thought the Americans could have made it worse for women? This is liberation?"

In their palace surrounded by armed soldiers, officials from the occupying forces talk about democracy. But in the same cool marble rooms, when one mentions the fears of the majority of Iraq`s population, one can hear a representative of the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, say, "We don`t do women." What they don`t seem to realize is that you can`t do democracy if you don`t do women.

In Afghanistan, women threw off their burqas when American forces arrived. In Baghdad the veils have multiplied, and most women are hiding at home instead of working, studying or playing a role in reconstructing Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, crimes against women — or at least ones his son Uday, Iraq`s vicious Caligula, did not commit — were relatively rare (though solid statistics for such crimes don`t exist). Last October, the regime opened the doors to the prisons. Kidnappers, rapists and murderers were allowed to blend back into society, but they were kept in check by the police state. When the Americans arrived and the police force disappeared, however, these old predators re-emerged alongside new ones. And in a country that essentially relies on rumor as its national news, word of sadistic abduction quickly began to spread.

A young Iraqi woman I met represents the reality of these rumors, sitting in her darkened living room surrounded by female relatives. She leans forward to show the sutures running the length of her scalp. She and her fiancé were carjacked by a gang of thieves in July, and when one tried to rape her she threw herself out of the speeding car. She says that was the last time she left the house. She hasn`t heard a word from her fiancé since he went to the police station to file a report, not about the attempted rape, but about his missing Toyota RAV-4.

"What`s important isn`t a woman`s life here, but a nice car," she said with a blade-sharp laugh.

Two sisters, 13 and 18, weren`t as lucky. A neighbor — a kidnapper and murderer who had been released in the general amnesty — led a gang of heavily armed friends to their home one night a few weeks ago. The girls were beaten and raped. When the police finally arrived, the attackers fled with the 13-year-old. She was taken to an abandoned house and left there, blindfolded, for a couple of weeks before she was dropped at her door upon threat of death if anyone learned of what had happened. Now she hides out with her sister, young brother and mother in an abandoned office building in a seedy neighborhood.

"What do you expect?" said the 18-year-old. "They let out the criminals. They got rid of the law. Here we are."

Even these brutalized sisters are luckier than many women in Iraq. They have no adult male relatives, and thus are not at risk for the honor killings that claim the lives of many Muslim women here. Tribal custom demands that a designated male kill a female relative who has been raped, and the law allows only a maximum of three years in prison for such a killing, which Iraqis call "washing the scandal."

"We never investigate these cases anyway — someone has to come and confess the killing, which they almost never do," said an investigator who looked into the case and then dismissed it because the sisters "knew one of the men, so it must not be kidnapping."

This violence has made postwar Iraq a prison of fear for women. "This issue of security is the immediate issue for women now — this horrible time that was triggered the very first day of the invasion," said Yanar Mohammed, the founder of the Organization of Women`s Freedom in Iraq.

Ms. Mohammed organized a demonstration against the violence last month. She also sent a letter to the occupation administrator, Paul Bremer, demanding his attention. Weeks later, with no reply from Mr. Bremer, she shook her head in the shadowy light of her office, darkened by one of frequent blackouts here. "We want to be able to talk about other issues, like the separation of mosque and state and the development of a civil law based on equality between men and women, but when women can`t even leave their homes to discuss such things, our work is quite hard," she said.

Baghdadi women were used to a cosmopolitan city in which doctorates, debating and dancing into the wee hours were ordinary parts of life. That Baghdad now seems as ancient as this country`s Mesopotamian history. College students are staying home; lawyers are avoiding their offices. A formerly first-world capital has become a city where the women have largely vanished.

To support their basic liberties will no doubt require the deeply complicated task of disentangling the threads of tribal, Islamic and civil law that have made the misogyny in each systemic. This is a matter of culture, not just policy.

But to understand the culture of women in Iraq, coalition officials must venture beyond their razor-wired checkpoints and step down from their convoys of Land Cruisers so they can talk to the nation they occupy. On the streets and in the markets, they`ll receive warm invitations to share enormous lunches in welcoming homes, as is the Iraqi custom. And there they`ll hear this notion repeated frankly and frequently: without himaya for women, there will be no place for democracy to grow in Iraq.


Lauren Sandler, a journalist, is investigating issues of women and culture in Iraq for the Carr Foundation.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 16, 2003
Republicans for Dean
By DAVID BROOKS


The results of the highly prestigious Poll of the Pollsters are in! I called eight of the best G.O.P. pollsters and strategists and asked them, on a not-for-attribution basis, if they thought Howard Dean would be easier to beat than the other major Democratic presidential candidates. Here, and I`m paraphrasing, are the results:

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

You would have thought I had asked them if Danny DeVito would be easier to beat in a one-on-one basketball game than Shaquille O`Neal. They all thought Dean would be easier to beat, notwithstanding his impressive rise. Some feared John Kerry, others John Edwards, because his personality wears well over time, and others even Bob Graham, because he can carry Florida, more than Dean. As their colleague Bill McInturff put it atop a memo on the Dean surge: "Happy Days Are Here Again (for Republicans)."

I think the pollsters are probably right, but I`d feel a lot more confident if I could find somebody who really understood the forces that are reshaping the American electorate.

Over the past few decades, the electorate has become much better educated. In 1960, only 22 percent of voters had been to college; now more than 52 percent have. As voters become more educated, they are more likely to be ideological and support the party that embraces their ideological label. As a result, the parties have polarized. There used to be many conservatives in the Democratic Party and many liberals in the Republican Party, groups that kept their parties from drifting too far off-center.

Now, there is a Democratic liberal mountain and a Republican conservative mountain. Democrats and Republicans don`t just disagree on policies — they don`t see the same reality, and they rarely cross over and support individual candidates from the other side. As Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has shown, split-ticket voting has declined steadily.

The question is whether this evolution changes the way we should think about elections. The strategists in the Intensity School say yes. They argue that it no longer makes sense to worry overmuch about the swing voters who supposedly exist in the political center because the electorate`s polarization has hollowed out the center. The number of actual swing voters — people who actually switch back and forth between parties — is down to about 7 percent of the electorate. Moreover, the people in this 7 percent group have nothing in common with one another. It doesn`t make sense to try to win their support because there is no coherent set of messages that will do it.

Instead, it`s better to play to the people on your own mountain and get them so excited they show up at the polls. According to this line of reasoning, Dean, Mr. Intensity, is an ideal Democratic candidate.

The members of the Inclusiveness School disagree. They argue that there still are many truly independent voters, with estimates ranging from 10 to 33 percent of the electorate. Moreover, the Inclusiveness folks continue, true independents do have a coherent approach to politics. Anti-ideological, the true independents do not even listen to candidates who are partisan, strident and negative. They are what the pollster David Winston calls "solutionists"; they respond to upbeat candidates who can deliver concrete benefits: the Family and Medical Leave Act, more cops in their neighborhoods, tax rebate checks.

By this line of thinking, Dean is a terrible candidate. His partisan style drives off the persuadable folks who rarely bother to vote in primaries but who do show up once every four years for general elections.

The weight of the data, it seems to me, supports the Inclusiveness side. And the chief result of polarization is that the Democrats have become detached from antipolitical independent voters. George Bush makes many liberal Democrats froth at the mouth, but he does not have this effect on most independents. Democrats are behaving suicidally by not embracing what you might, even after yesterday`s court decision, call the Schwarzenegger Option: supporting a candidate so ideologically amorphous that he can appeal to these swingers.

Which is why so many Republicans are quietly gleeful over Dean`s continued momentum. It is only the dark cloud of Wesley Clark, looming on the horizon, that keeps their happiness from being complete.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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One More Round For Bush v. Gore


By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A01


Just last February, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a dissenter in the historic 2000 election case that handed victory to President Bush, told a law school audience in San Diego that Bush v. Gore was a "one of a kind case," adding: "I doubt it will ever be cited as precedent by the court on anything."

But yesterday, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit essentially declared that the legal fallout of the 2000 case is not so easily contained.

In a 66-page unsigned opinion, the panel, made up of Judges Harry Pregerson, Sidney Thomas and Richard Paez, cited Bush v. Gore repeatedly to support the view that California`s Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election would be unconstitutional if the state, as planned, used outmoded punch-card ballot machines like those that contributed to the deadlock in Florida in 2000. The punch-card technology would deny millions of Californians their constitutional right to have their ballots counted fairly, the court ruled.

"In this case, Plaintiffs` Equal Protection Clause claim mirrors the one recently analyzed by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore," the 9th Circuit observed.

If the panel ruling is not reversed by a larger 9th Circuit body, the Supreme Court justices, for whom the stress and strain -- both personal and institutional -- of 2000 are still a fresh memory, will face a choice. They can stay out of the California case and risk permitting what they may view as a debatable interpretation of Bush v. Gore to stand, or they can plunge in and assume the risk that they will once again be criticized for partisanship no matter what they decide.

Bush v. Gore held for the first time that the Constitution`s equal protection clause, which protects citizens from arbitrarily disparate treatment at the hands of state authorities, can be applied to the methods states use to tally votes. Previously, election methods had been thought to be mostly the province of state officials.

The court ruled that a statewide manual recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court to account for uncounted punch-card ballots, many of which were marred by "hanging chads" and the like, would be conducted according to wildly varying rules, making it impossible for the state to treat everyone equally within the short time available.

For the liberal interest groups and lawyers who have been fighting California`s recall, Bush v. Gore has mutated from reviled electoral coup to legitimate legal weapon.

If the case means anything, they argue, it means that the Constitution forbids states from arbitrarily counting different voters` ballots differently. That includes setting up an election in which one technology, the punch-card machines, would subject a sizeable percentage of voters -- among whom are a disproportionate number of minorities -- to a greater risk of having their ballots discounted than other voters.

Indeed, yesterday`s ruling flowed from earlier litigation, since settled, in which groups used Bush v. Gore to win a promise from the state that all its punch-card machines would be replaced by March 2004, when the state will hold Republican and Democratic primaries.

The 9th Circuit noted that, according to experts, about 40,000 out of the several million expected to vote in the recall election would lose out because of the normal 2.23 percent error rate in the punch-card technology. Those voters would tend to come from six heavily minority counties containing 44 percent of the state`s voters, whereas 56 percent of the state`s voting population would get the benefit of machines with an error rate of no more than 0.89 percent.

Such discrepancies would probably not have risen to the level of a federal issue in the past, but 2000 changed all that, the 9th Circuit ruled.

"If we had brought the punch-card case to court before Bush v. Gore, you`d likely see the courts say, `No, states have to have some leeway,` " said Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who aided the American Civil Liberties Union in the case. "But if it doesn`t apply here, it doesn`t apply anywhere."

But others say both the recall`s opponents and the 9th Circuit panel -- made up of three of that left-leaning court`s most liberal members -- have misinterpreted Bush v. Gore.

For all its conclusive impact on the Florida recount, the Supreme Court`s majority opinion ended on a note of ambivalence.

Protesting that their involvement was an "unsought responsibility," the majority -- made up of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O`Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas -- said the decision was "limited to the present circumstances."

The 9th Circuit panel just blew by that admonition, some legal analysts say.

"It over-read Bush v. Gore a little bit," said Vikram Amar, a professor of law at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. "You can`t say it`s quite identical, because Bush v. Gore involved manual recounts, not machine mistakes. In 2000, the Supreme Court was worried that standardless criteria allowed individuals to manipulate results, and that may be worse constitutionally than machine errors skewing the result."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Bush Lauds Mich. Power Plant As Model of Clean Air Policy
But Opponents Say It`s a Polluter Excused by `Clear Skies` Plan

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A03


MONROE, Mich., Sept. 15 -- Everyone agrees the Detroit Edison power plant here, which President Bush visited today, is a model -- but of what?

Bush came to demonstrate how, under his policies, power plants could be expanded and upgraded without any increase in air pollution. He said Monroe is a "living example" of why the administration this summer eased clean-air rules for the nation`s oldest, coal-fired power plants -- allowing the plant to modernize and "continue doing a good job of protecting the quality of the air."

"You`re good stewards of the quality of the air," the president told the Detroit Edison workers and executives.

Environmentalists and a number of Democratic lawmakers see Bush`s visit here as a symbol of something entirely different. They say the Monroe plant is one of the nation`s dirtiest polluters and, under Bush`s plan, would not have to reduce pollution for the next 17 years. According to projections by Bush`s Environmental Protection Agency, the plant is predicted to continue pouring its current annual level of 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air each year through 2020.

"It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Bush administration would hold an event to tout an initiative called `Clear Skies` at a facility that will actually maintain its current levels of pollution over the next two decades," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who is vying to challenge Bush in next year`s election.

At issue are two major Bush policies regarding energy production and the environment. One is Bush`s "Clear Skies" initiative now awaiting congressional action. The plan aims to cut power plant emissions by 70 percent beginning in the year 2018, reducing the largest pollutant, sulfur dioxide, to 3 million tons that year from 11 million now. Heavy polluters could purchase pollution rights from clean plants. The second policy, Bush`s decision this summer to roll back "new source review" rules, means old power plants can make improvements and boost production without automatically adding expensive pollution-control equipment.

Bush, in his remarks at the plant after a tour of the facilities, invoked last month`s Northeast blackout in his pitch for his environmental policies. "Lights went out last month -- you know that," Bush said to laughter. "It recognizes that we`ve got an issue with our electricity grid, and we need to modernize it." He added: "The quicker we put modern equipment into our power plants, the quicker people are going to get more reliable electricity."

A senior Bush aide said later that Bush was not asserting that the old clean-air rules led to the blackouts. "We are unable to draw any connection" without further study, he said.

The president, citing an EPA finding, released yesterday, that emissions of six major pollutants are down 48 percent over three decades as the economy grew 164 percent, said Monroe is a "good example" because its emissions have dropped 81 percent as its production increased 22 percent. "You work hard in this company to put energy on the grid, and at the same time you`re protecting the environment," he said.

The Monroe plant, Bush said, delayed modernizations for five years because of previous clean-air rules and the threat of lawsuits and bureaucratic delays. "That`s inefficient -- that doesn`t make sense," Bush said as a company executive behind him smiled in agreement.

Environmental groups said Monroe is an example, but not a good one. They cited a 2000 study by Abt Associates, a group the EPA has used to gauge health effects of pollution, showing that the amount of pollution from the plant is responsible for 293 premature deaths, 5,740 asthma attacks and 50,298 lost workdays each year. They also cited an EPA model of Bush`s initiative that showed the plant was not forecast to cut its sulfur dioxide.

The plant also produces 45,900 tons of nitrogen oxide and 810 pounds of mercury, the other two pollutants covered under Bush`s initiative, and 17.6 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is not capped under Bush`s plan.

"I`m amazed that the president would choose this plant to highlight, given how dirty it is, and how much dirtier it could become because of the administration`s rollbacks of clean-air rules," said Becky Stanfield, a lawyer with U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Brian McLean, director of EPA`s atmospherics programs, acknowledged that the Monroe plant would not be required under Bush`s plan to make further cuts in sulfur dioxide emissions by 2020, but noted that the plant has reduced such emissions by half since the 1980s by investing in new technology and switching to a higher grade of coal.

Gerard Anderson, Detroit Edison`s president, said the company plans voluntarily to add sulfur dioxide "scrubbers" to all four of the plant`s turbines by 2020, which would reduce emissions by 90 percent.

Bush`s plan faces a difficult course in Congress. Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement today that Bush "has chosen to push a divisive agenda that puts politics before public health."

Bush will continue his push for the "Clear Skies" proposal at the White House on Tuesday by hosting a roundtable discussion of the topic. And officials said Bush`s "new source review" rule, though not subject to congressional approval, needs defending.

"I think it`s important to literally clear the air on this rule," acting EPA administrator Marianne Horinko said in a briefing on Air Force One this morning. "It`s been much misreported that this rule is going to somehow cause increased hospitalization and increases in emissions, and in fact, it will increase reliability without affecting emissions."

After his speech in Michigan, Bush flew to Philadelphia for a fundraiser that brought in $1.4 million for his reelection effort.

Staff writer Eric Pianin in Washington contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Job Losses Unsettle Republicans
GOP Lawmakers Don`t Want Voters` Blame for Economy

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A03


Congressional Republicans are watching warily as President Bush`s approval ratings slide on two major issues -- the economy and Iraq -- and wondering if voter anxiety might cost them seats in next year`s election.

Of the two, the question of the economy is particularly worrying GOP lawmakers, who fear they could be blamed for the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been lost under the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress. The ongoing conflict in Iraq, and voters` reluctance to keep pouring billions of dollars into that country, also are causing discomfort in GOP circles. But Republicans said they remain confident that the public, which tends to trust the GOP on questions of national security, would back the president and his party on Iraq in the end.

Some Republican analysts, in fact, say they would welcome a debate that focuses more on Iraq -- even with ongoing U.S. deaths and other problems -- rather than jobs.

"I`d love to have Democrats throw us into the briar patch of Iraq and terrorism," said GOP pollster Glen Bolger.

Republican lawmakers see Bush as their party`s unquestioned leader and have been reluctant to complain about his handling of domestic or international matters. But recent independent and GOP polls, coupled with extensive conversations with constituents, have some of them worried about a potential voter backlash 14 months from now.

A recent Washington Post poll found that 42 percent of Americans approve of Bush`s handling of the economy, down from 45 percent a month ago. The president has suffered a similar slip in public approval of his handling of the Iraq situation: 52 percent, compared with 56 percent a month ago.

Recent interviews with Republican lawmakers found considerably less angst about Iraq than about the economy, which has shed 2.6 million jobs since Bush took office. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said voters see the steady exodus of manufacturing jobs, particularly in the South, as "happening on our watch. . . . Obviously that bothers me in terms of the political outcome in `04."

In a memo to House members last week, GOP Conference Chairman Deborah Pryce (Ohio) said Republicans face a "rough communications terrain," especially concerning the economy. "The issue of the economy is more important than ever," she wrote, "and because voters tend to define the economy in the context of jobs, our central message must remained focused on jobs. It is not possible for you to talk about jobs too much!"

But several Republicans complained in a closed-door meeting last week that party leaders had yet to offer concrete legislative solutions to the country`s economic distress.

Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) recounted recently meeting a man from his district who had just lost his job at TRW Inc. "What am I going to tell people about jobs?" Jones said in an interview. "People are hurting, and people don`t see any leadership or direction." He said he cannot simply "say `jobs, jobs, jobs` and sound like a parrot."

The president`s recent request for an additional $87 billion to fund operations in Iraq has exacerbated these concerns, several lawmakers said. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) summoned White House communications director Dan Bartlett to the Capitol last week for help in devising a communications strategy for the spending proposal.

Republicans are acutely aware of what happened to Bush`s father, the president who won the Persian Gulf War only to lose his reelection bid to Bill Clinton as the economy sagged. They find it frustrating that some economic indicators have improved recently without an accompanying uptick in new jobs.

"It`s not panic yet, but it`s just short of that," said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "It`s a concern that real conditions on the ground, both in the economy and in Iraq, have raised serious questions about the performance of the Bush administration and the Republican majority."

A recent poll by David Winston for House Republicans found that 37 percent of Americans feel the country is moving in the right direction and 51 percent say it is headed in the wrong direction. Winston emphasized that the president has plenty of time to nurture the nation`s economy in the coming year. But for now, he said, voters are "unsettled" on the issue and looking for solutions.

"The thing that is driving people right now is jobs and the economy," he said, noting that 33 percent of respondents identified it as their top concern. Fourteen percent ranked defense and terrorism as No. 1.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Robert T. Matsui (Calif.) said voter unrest over the economy is proving a boon for his party and could have "profound" implications for the upcoming election.

"We`re getting more and more candidates interested in running against Republican incumbents," Matsui said.

Bush`s $87 billion request for Iraq -- and particularly the $20 billion of it earmarked for reconstruction -- is generating some GOP resistance in Congress. Jones said he would vote against the reconstruction money if it were separated from the rest of the funding request.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) said she wants to make sure the reconstruction funds are "a loan, not a gift" to Iraq. "We didn`t cause the decaying infrastructure," she said. "It was Saddam Hussein who caused the decaying infrastructure."



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Rahmatullah, an army officer, and several of his children stand outside the ruins of their mud brick home, which was bulldozed by Kabul city police.
washingtonpost.com
Afghans Protest Homes` Destruction
Two Reports Say Neighborhood Razed to Provide Land for Officials` Houses

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A13


KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 15 -- Sayed Ahmad`s mud-brick house looks like it was struck by an earthquake. The main wall has toppled into his yard, where the family cow is tethered to an apple tree. Half the roof has collapsed, and his wife is sweeping rubble into piles.

But this destruction was not an act of God. It was the work of city bulldozers that were sent in last week to force Ahmad and 20 of his neighbors out of the rudimentary homes they had built two decades ago. Once cleared, the army-owned land was slated to be distributed to senior government officials and former militia commanders to build their own houses.

"The police came in and beat me with their guns when I refused to leave," said Ahmad, 56, an army officer and father of six who earns $80 a month. "The machines pushed down the wall and a wardrobe fell on my little girl. Our holy Korans were buried under the earth. I have worked for the army for 26 years, but now the powerful people with guns have humiliated my family and destroyed our home."

A growing scandal over the tiny community known as Sherpur, spurred by two sharply critical reports from a U.N. housing expert and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, has deeply embarrassed the U.S.-backed government. According to the reports, seven cabinet ministers and Kabul`s mayor received plots in Sherpur, which abuts the capital`s most exclusive neighborhood, for nominal fees.

The dispute has thrown a spotlight on the widely rumored but previously undocumented practices of high-level land grabbing, corrupt municipal real estate dealings and forcible occupation of properties in the capital, where half the population of 3.2 million does not have adequate housing.

"What happened in Sherpur is a microcosm of what has been happening all over the city and the country," said Miloon Kothari, a U.N. special rapporteur on housing and land rights, who spent several weeks here. His final report accused several senior Afghan officials, including the powerful defense minister, of active collusion in official land grabs, and flatly recommended that they be fired.

In his report, Kothari described a "culture of impunity" in which Afghan officials and other powerful individuals can seize homes and refuse to leave them or appropriate valuable public land for their own profit. "There is a crisis of housing and a freeze on land allocation, but that doesn`t apply to the wealthy, the well-connected, the commanders or the drug lords," he said in an interview.

Separately, the human rights commission released a report Sunday that described a widespread problem of forcible land occupation and profiteering by "warlords and strong governmental officials." In the Sherpur case, it listed 29 senior officials and other powerful individuals who had received plots for nominal fees, including six cabinet ministers, the mayor, the Central Bank governor and two former militia commanders.

Aides to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said he was "infuriated" and "extremely upset" about the charges. At the weekly cabinet meeting today, aides said, he ordered a commission appointed to investigate the Sherpur case and upbraided his ministers on their responsibility to help the poor rather than enrich themselves.

But two of the senior officials who received plots in Sherpur called a news conference today, during which they denied any wrongdoing. The officials denounced Kothari for interfering in Afghan affairs and challenged the work of the human rights commission, whose chairwoman sat in the audience.

"I believe in human rights. I support human rights. This is political terrorism," said Anwar Ahady, the governor of the central bank, who was listed in one of the reports as receiving one plot of land. Like another official, Education Minister Yonus Qanooni, Ahady did not deny receiving the land, but said it had been legally transferred to him on Karzai`s orders and that he had done nothing wrong.

Qanooni said there was a difference between "taking land by force and being given land by the current rulers." He demanded an apology from the human rights commission and handed out copies of a letter from Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, reproving Kothari for some of his public comments.

But Brahimi, in a hastily called meeting today with several journalists, said he had "absolutely no disagreement" with the substance of Kothari`s findings. He condemned the destruction of the Sherpur houses as "totally unacceptable" and said he had complained to Afghan officials about the problem of official land grabs and illegal occupation of homes.

The disclosures of high-level land deals came as the Afghan capital is suffering from a shelter crisis of catastrophic proportions. According to officials, the capital`s population has nearly doubled in the past two years, largely because of returning refugees, and about half the population lives in "informal" homes without electricity or water, such as tents and abandoned ruins.

City planners have designed blueprints of low-cost housing projects but have no funds to build them. The Kabul municipality has turned away thousands of returned refugees who say they have old deeds to public land plots.

"The housing supply in Kabul does not meet even 10 percent of the demand," said Nasir Saberi, the deputy minister for housing and urban development. It remains unclear how the situation in Sherpur escalated to such a dramatic confrontation and who ordered the land to be distributed to the senior officials. Ahady, Qanooni and others have said the order came from Karzai, but the president`s spokesman strongly denied that.

The spokesman, Jawad Luddin, said Karzai had "spoken very clearly" to the cabinet, declaring that no official had the right to individually bestow, sell or occupy city land.

The Sherpur houses were built on land belonging to the Defense Ministry that surrounds an old army base. Some officials said the residents were asked to leave several months ago but refused. Gen. Bashir Salangi, the city police commander whose troops bulldozed the houses, said he would not have given the order without authority from municipal officials.

"Those people [in Sherpur] are liars," he said.




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The War and the Economy
Will Iraq Put Pressure on the Bush Tax Cut?

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page E01


In 1966, with spending in Vietnam on the rise, social programs growing and interest rates edging dangerously higher, Georgia`s venerable Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. asked "whether this nation, for all its wealth and resources, can fight a war . . . and carry on a broad range of domestic spending -- without a tax increase or a dangerous deficit."

"The president apparently believes that we can," the Democrat told his state`s legislature. "For the sake of the country, . . . I hope and pray that he is right."

Within two years, inflation was galloping, the federal deficit was climbing, and Lyndon Baines Johnson was forced to slam on the brakes with an unpopular tax hike to finance the war and slow the economy.

In Johnson`s experience, some see a cautionary tale for President Bush. Again, a president is pursuing his domestic priorities -- in this case, tax cuts -- even as he tries to finance a war that he insists will be limited and affordable. Administration officials say neither the amount of war spending nor the size of the budget deficit is enough to damage an economy they are still trying to push into high gear. But some economists and historians see enough of a parallel between the "guns and butter" debate of the 1960s and the nascent "guns and tax cuts" debate of today to raise the question of whether the administration is right.

"Right now we`re in our unrealism phase," said historian Robert Dallek, author of the Johnson biography "Flawed Giant." "But they`re going to have to face reality. There is the Lyndon Johnson moment coming down the road."

The economic backdrop of the Vietnam War is very different from the economy backstopping the fighting in Iraq. Back then, with unemployment at rock bottom, the economic engines were already revving hot when Vietnam spending slammed on the accelerator. Now, the engine is just coming out of idle, with plenty of room for acceleration.

Most economists say that under these conditions, the extra war spending probably will have an overall positive effect on the economy in the coming year. But whether the impact turns sour over time will depend on how long the war in Iraq lasts and how much it costs, they say.

No one knows just how much slack is in the economy or how quickly it could give way to a blown gasket.

"Economists are notoriously bad at predicting turning points," said Lee Price, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "We can tell you the underlying factors that will push the change, but we can`t say when it`s going to happen."

War spending has already become a driver of the economy, most economists agree, although they disagree over its relative importance. Defense expenditures surged in the April-to-June quarter of 2003 by 45.9 percent over the first quarter, to an annualized rate of $519 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The economy expanded at a surprisingly brisk 3.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter, of which 1.75 percentage points were attributed to defense spending.

Bush`s $87 billion request to fund the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere will push defense spending near $500 billion in the fiscal year that begins next month, well over the height of Ronald Reagan-era defense buildup, in today`s dollars, and considerably higher than the inflation-adjusted $433 billion spent at the peak of the Vietnam War.

Although employers shed 93,000 jobs in August, it may well have been worse but for the war. The military`s mobilization currently has called into active duty 174,403 National Guardsmen and reservists, 20,000 of them in Iraq and Kuwait. Those troops are guaranteed their jobs when they return, but while they are on duty, someone else may be filling their post who otherwise would be jobless.

"It`s fair to say what [growth] we`ve seen to date is largely defense driven," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The theoretical fear is that once the economy is growing at a healthier pace, large, sustained increases in defense spending would exacerbate federal budget deficits already in record territory, drive up interest rates, rekindle inflation and distort the economy by directing investment to defense industries, which are inherently less productive than civilian ones.

During Reagan`s defense buildup of the 1980s, "scientists took jobs at General Dynamics instead of General Electric," Price said. "I think we paid a price in technology, and government deficits crowded out private investment."

Economists also note that this extra defense spending comes just five years before the first of the baby boomers start receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits, further straining the government`s resources.

A small minority of economists are already sounding warnings that interest rates and inflation will rise to unacceptable levels by the end of next year or early 2005.

"And when it all unravels, it will unravel fast," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Bank One Corp.

When economics forecasters at Macroeconomic Advisers recently crunched the numbers, they indicated economic growth above a 6 percent annual rate for the second half of this year, a number not seen since the boom months of 1999. Spooked by the number, Chris Varvaras, president of the prominent St. Louis firm, said they simply lowered their growth forecast and "banked the upside risk."

If growth rates like that continue, economic problems are inevitable, some economists say. The only question is when.

"We almost always overheat," said Laurence H. Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Board governor who has been studying the Iraq war`s potential impact on the economy for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It`s one of the charms of the U.S. economy."

The political parallels between the Johnson era and today are striking, Dallek said. Like Bush, Johnson enacted a large tax cut as one of his first acts as president, then oversaw significant increases in federal spending.

In January 1966, Johnson proposed spending $10.5 billion to fight the war in Vietnam, $59.6 billion in today`s dollars, but he assured Congress the war would be over by June 1967. The federal budget deficit would be only $1.8 billion, or $10 billion in inflation adjusted terms, he promised, hardly enough to raise interest rates or inflation.

But defense spending kept climbing, and it came on top of already enacted "Great Society" anti-poverty programs. By 1967, federal deficit forecasts for the coming year had reached $29 billion for fiscal year 1968, or $153 billion in today`s dollars. The "guns and butter" debate had come to dominate Washington by then.

Jump 36 years into the future, and "this time, the butter is tax cuts," said Edward McKelvey, an economist at Goldman Sachs Group.

After three tax cuts and discretionary spending increases of 27 percent since he took office, Bush is seeking $87 billion more in wartime spending. The budget deficit is likely to exceed $500 billion in the fiscal year that begins next month.

Like Johnson in 1966, Bush has steadfastly denied any conflict between his defense spending and his tax cuts.

"I heard somebody say, well, what we need to do is have a tax increase to pay for this; that`s an absurd notion," Bush said Wednesday. "You don`t raise taxes when an economy is recovering. Matter of fact, lower taxes will help enhance economic recovery."

But the analogy breaks down when the analysis shifts from political parallels to economic ones.

In terms of the economy, said Charles Schultze, Johnson`s budget director in the late 1960s, "that was a different world."

For one thing, the economy is far larger and therefore can more easily absorb defense increases. In 1968, defense spending equaled 9.4 percent of the economy. The second-quarter surge of defense spending this year notched it up to just 4.8 percent of the economy today, considerably higher than the 3 percent of 2001 but well below the Vietnam era. The true wartime economy of World War II saw defense spending closer to 38 percent of the economy.

Johnson had no room to maneuver, while for now, any defense spending can only be positive. By 1968, unemployment had slid to 3.6 percent, compared with 6.1 percent today. The economy was growing at a rate of 4.8 percent in 1968, compared with this year`s rate, expected to be around 2.6 percent.

"The economy is just so weak," Baker said. The war "has been a source of stimulus, and at this point, it`s not obviously pulling anything away from anything else."

White House officials say they are not worried because by the time the economy is again running on all cylinders, wartime spending will not be an issue. A senior administration official said last week that next year`s war expenditures will be "overwhelmingly one-time spending" and not a long-term drain on the federal budget or the economy.

Many economists agree. Iraq war spending is likely to consume 1.5 percent of the nation`s total economic output over the next four years, said William D. Nordhaus, a Yale University economist and wartime economy expert, or half the take of Vietnam or the Reagan buildup.

"My sense is what`s going on right now will not have a very big effect," he said.

Others are not so sure. Meyer warned that the economy would soon adjust to the level of war spending and lower tax cuts, which will then lose their stimulative effect. "Looking out into next year, we`re going to see a stunning decline in fiscal stimulus that the economy is going to have to deal with," he said.

If the economy hasn`t kicked into gear on its own, a major hangover is inevitable, he said.

McKelvey said long-term deficits are inevitable without a change of course. Goldman Sachs warned clients on Friday, "The deficit issue is now on the radar screen of bond investors. They will be looking to see whether the policy of `guns and butter` will persist or whether the Bush administration is now prepared to make some tough choices."

Although administration economists have downplayed the link between deficits and interest rates, many others believe the link is real. McKelvey expressed no doubt that higher interest rates and more government borrowing will push aside some private-sector investment. The question is only how much.

"The government is going to be in a position where it`s borrowing $400 billion and $500 billion a year," McKelvey said. "It`s first in line for borrowing. The notion that that guy can get first in line without shoving out the guy in the back of the line just doesn`t pass the smell test. You don`t have to be an economist to understand that."



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Timing Iraq`s Transition




Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A18


OPPONENTS of the U.S. mission in Iraq like to portray themselves as striving to "end the occupation." It`s a popular stand; the only problem is that no one opposes it -- neither President Bush nor anyone else in his administration. So let`s be clear: The current Iraq debate is not about ending the postwar regime -- which everyone favors -- but about what will replace it, and how. Many Arab governments find the U.S. plan for fostering an Iraqi democracy unsettling, either because they object to the prospect of a government led by Iraq`s majority Shiites or because the free election of an Arab ruler might raise questions about their own autocracies. Some Democrats argue that domestic needs should come before a costly reconstruction program. France hopes to score points with Muslim opinion at U.S. expense and to prove that the president`s vision of a Middle Eastern transformation beginning in Iraq is false. All these parties can advance their aims by pressuring the administration to transfer full governing power within weeks to an appointed Iraqi council or the United Nations. It`s a demand Mr. Bush is right to resist.

A quicker political transition would not shorten the deployments of U.S. troops in Iraq, as those depend on the course of the war against remnants of Saddam Hussein`s regime and the foreign militants who may have joined them. It could, however, destroy the prospects for a transition to democracy. It would require that a new constitution, political parties and an electoral process all be created under an unelected, inexperienced and fractious group of Iraqis who would also be charged with overseeing the economy and government services. The United Nations is not prepared to take on the burden of ruling Iraq, U.N. officials have made clear. So the beneficiaries would likely be the small group of former Iraqi exiles who all along have sought to seize power. The Bush administration once leaned toward backing them but wisely abandoned the option several weeks after the war. Though they are mostly pro-Western, most of the exiles do not have a strong following in Iraq, nor have they been able to work effectively with one another.

The transition plan envisioned by the administration is hardly dilatory. The American occupation chief, L. Paul Bremer, speaks of a seven-step process that includes the drafting of a constitution and its ratification by popular vote, followed by the staging of elections -- which he says could be completed by next summer or fall. That is an ambitious and risky timetable, which, if realized, would amount to one of the quickest transitions from dictatorship to democracy ever accomplished. But if combined with a well-funded program of reconstruction, it could make possible the selection of a new government supported by most Iraqis, thus creating the stability needed for a U.S. withdrawal.

To insist that Iraq`s transition be given adequate time does not mean that the United States must continue to dominate it. On the contrary, precisely because more time is needed, the Bush administration ought to be more flexible in negotiating the mandate that will be given the United Nations in a new Security Council resolution. Though U.N. technocrats cannot run the country, formal U.N. supervision of a political transition would raise the chances that it would be accepted by Iraqis and other governments. By making the transition a multilateral project, the administration can build a coalition to support a genuine transformation of Iraq -- and outmaneuver those who, in the name of ending the occupation, would abort that mission.



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Don`t Rush to Disaster


By Fareed Zakaria

Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A19


Finally everyone seems to agree on Iraq. The French and German governments have proposed that Iraq should be handed back to Iraqis as soon as possible. The Governing Council should become the government of Iraq and elections should be held by the end of the year. Some prominent Iraqis have spoken in favor of this proposal. U.N. officials have made statements supporting an accelerated transfer of power. Even some American politicians see this as a useful exit strategy. There`s only one problem. The notion of a quick transfer of power to Iraqis is impractical, unwise and dangerous.

It is strange that U.N. officials argue that we must quickly move, in Kofi Annan`s phrase, from "the logic of occupation" to that of Iraqi sovereignty. The United Nations has blessed and assisted in the occupation of Bosnia, where it took seven years to transfer power to the locals. It boasts of "the logic of occupation" in Kosovo, which has gone smoothly for the past four years, with no prospect of ending anytime soon. It administered tiny East Timor for two years before handing over power. Does Kofi Annan really think that what took seven years in Bosnia can take one year in Iraq, with six times as many people?

It is touching to learn of the French faith in the Governing Council. When the council was set up, the French government (as well as the Germans) refused to endorse it, privately disparaging the group as American puppets. It took a month for the United States to get France to vote in the Security Council simply to welcome the formation of the Governing Council. France`s newfound love for the council is simply an attempt to get the United States out as soon as possible.

The Governing Council is a vital part of the new Iraq. But there is simply no way it could become the government right now. It is a group of 25 disparate people, chosen to fulfill ethnic, religious and other quotas, that has never worked together. When asked to choose a chairman, it chose nine. Even if it functions well, the council will function best as a legislative body, not as an executive. You cannot have Iraq run by 25 coequal chiefs, especially during this crucial period of reform and restructuring.

When it needs anything -- money, security -- the council has to turn to the coalition. After the recent bomb blast in Najaf, the Coalition Provisional Authority condemned the attack but then stepped back, explaining that the Governing Council was in charge. Several hours later, the council had not even issued a statement. "I think someone is writing up a statement, somebody, I`m not sure," a council member explained. "We don`t have satellite. . . . The Americans should give us a satellite."

Iraq may not be a failed state, but it is a highly dysfunctional one. It has been through three decades of totalitarian rule, three wars, 13 years of economic sanctions and massive internal repression. Its ministries are organized along Stalinist lines. Its people have been cowed into submission for decades. It will take some time to reform the Iraqi state and heal Iraq`s political culture. An immediate transfer of power would retard and perhaps even reverse this process of reform. New political leaders would seek to use the Iraqi state to consolidate their power, not limit its reach. That is what happened in Bosnia. Once elected, ethnic thugs didn`t want to build the rule of law; they wanted to use the law to stay in office.

A quick transfer to locals would also mean the end of American aid. The United States is planning to put at least $20 billion into Iraq this year -- half the GDP of the country. Iraq has not had a published budget since 1979. Its ministries cannot spend $20 billion, let alone spend it well. There is no chance that the United States would keep the aid flowing if it went directly into such a system.

And yet the United States must agree to some change in the political structure of the occupation or else it will not get help it sorely needs. Even if a U.N. resolution passes, unless it is a strong resolution backed by important countries, it will not translate into troops and money. The solution might be to turn Paul Bremer into a U.N. official reporting to the Security Council. This would share control of Iraq, yet maintain the structure of authority and the momentum for reform that has begun.

Beyond troops and money, internationalization gives the occupation time. Bremer has outlined a seven-step process that would lead to the ratification of a constitution and then elections, probably in two years. During that period, Iraq`s courts, police, army and administration would be remade. This is a sensible path; indeed, it may itself be too rushed.

Popular sovereignty is a great thing, but a constitutional process is greater still. The French know this. The French Revolution emphasized popular sovereignty with little regard to limitations on state power. The American founding, by contrast, was obsessed with constitution-making. Both countries got to genuine democracy. But in France it took two centuries, five republics, two empires and one dictatorship to get there. Surely we want to do it better in Iraq.

The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek.




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The Turkish Card


By David Ignatius

Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A19


ISTANBUL -- One hidden casualty of the Iraq war has been the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey. Like so many other things, it was a victim partly of the Bush administration`s overconfidence and wishful thinking.

Now the two countries are near agreement on a plan to send up to 10,000 Turkish troops into the savage battleground northwest of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle, where U.S. forces are facing almost daily attacks. It`s a bold plan that could bolster the American occupation -- and also revive the battered Turkish-American relationship.

But playing the Turkish card in Iraq is dangerous, too, for both the United States and Turkey. The widespread concern among Turkish analysts is that the two countries, in their rush to solve short-term problems, may be creating long-term ones that haunt them for years.

The old U.S.-Turkey relationship went off the tracks March 1. That was the day the Turkish parliament voted against allowing U.S. ground troops to cross Turkey on their way into Iraq. That decision shocked the Bush administration, which had assumed that whatever political objections they might raise, the Turks would come around in the end.

It was a costly mistake. Without Turkish approval, the United States couldn`t send heavy armored units in from the north. And without this northern front, it could not crush pro-Hussein forces in the Sunni triangle. That`s where the troubles began for the U.S. occupation.

"The March 1 vote was a catastrophe, and it could have been avoided," says Sedat Ergin, the Ankara bureau chief for the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, who has written a history of the affair. "It was a constellation of mistakes, blunders and miscalculations."

The initial mistake, according to Ergin, was the administration`s attempt to cut a deal last year with the government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit at a time when his party was disintegrating. The negotiations were handled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who visited Ecevit in July 2002 and thought he was near agreement for about 90,000 U.S. troops to transit Turkey.

But in Nov. 3 elections, Ecevit`s party lost in a landslide to the Justice and Development Party, which has Islamist roots. Despite that political shift, Wolfowitz returned to Turkey in early December and won tentative agreement for the military to begin surveying roads and bridges that would be used by U.S. forces.

By February the two sides were dickering over the price of Turkish support. Ankara reportedly asked for $92 billion; the administration finally offered $24 billion in loans. The Americans also agreed to let the Turkish army enter Iraq to prevent any breakaway move by Kurdish rebels. The haggling left both sides feeling used, but the administration assumed things would work out.

But when the vote finally came, even the Turkish military was getting cold feet. The generals feared that the Americans were quietly tilting toward the Kurds, because of disputes over the rules of engagement for Turkish troops if they encountered Kurdish terrorists, and over whether the United States should give the Kurds heavy weapons.

A sign of how frayed relations had become was that some Turks thought Pentagon officials were bluffing when they began moving troop ships away from the Turkish coast in mid-March and sending them toward Kuwait.

"If [Secretary of State Colin] Powell had come, it might have made a difference," argues Soli Ozel, a professor of politics at Bilgi University and a columnist for an Istanbul newspaper. He says the administration didn`t understand how widespread antiwar feeling had become in Turkey.

Now, seven months later, the two sides are finally close to a deal. But the old issues and anxieties remain. The Turks are still demanding a free hand to deal with Kurdish terrorists, the Kurds are still wary of having Turkish troops inside Iraq, and America is still caught in the middle. Some analysts fear that the administration, in its eagerness to get a multinational force in Iraq, may be overlooking warning signs once again.

"There`s an idea that we should just get Turkish troops on the ground and see what happens, but that`s a mistake," says Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He argues that any troop deployment should be part of a broader strategic pact that makes Turkey a partner in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq. Otherwise, he says, "once the bodies start coming back to Turkey, the public won`t understand."

The old Turkish-American relationship was a leftover of the Cold War, and it effectively died on March 1. With their decisions on Iraq, the two countries are now writing the rules for a new relationship. Let`s hope it will be solid enough to outlive America`s current troubles.

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The Future of America under the American-led Empire: A Realistic "Sense of it."

Americans will see no benefits and neither share in its triumphs nor its vision, its wealth nor its prosperity. You will share, many of you worse than others, minorities, the poor, the weak, only in this regime’s cruelty and wrath.

By Craig B Hulet

09/15/03: (Information Clearing House) I was asked recently to make a short, or not so short, statement of what I thought realistically may come about over the next, say, five plus years here on my native soil, America. Actually I am asked this all the time by a specific group of people, call them my circle of interested parties. I have always restricted such comments to very private segments of society as the mass of people, the masses if you will, simply are not ever ready for "reality," in any form.

My take, for over thirty years, on where my country is headed consists of a two-fold approach: the first approach is to put forward sufficient data, factual information, empirical evidence all in a specific format whereby an individual will understand what may happen, has already happened though they may be unaware, and what ultimately they might do in the face of it; call this my optimistic approach. Or call it my public approach because the public, whenever they hear something never before heard, it sends the herd stampeding if one tells them too much "like it is." Call it, if you must, not telling all-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-God! (Or feeding them pap, for those not ready for meat) It is something always practiced by most when speaking (or writing) to the petrified herd.

The other approach is more metaphysical I suppose, conjectural or suppositional. When asked to write about where my personal sense of it truly resides and "tell it like it is," it is another question altogether. Nobody wants to hear this, believe it’s true and most cannot stomach it. Publicly it just isn’t done. Written? it is literary suicide; spoken? It is verbalcidal. The Question? What is this Empire we speak off? What will America and Americans face under its rule? What will it be, this imperial project? This is what I hope to address here.

"There is Tranquility in Ignorance, but Servitude is its Partner."


The reasons why few will say what they know, are obvious to those who have been involved in the major corporate atmosphere, the U.S. military, intelligence and security fields and even some specialized academia. To speak of what you really know about this regime over the past fifty-five years is to risk your career, your job, your reputation, marriage, family and friends; in its severest reaction to something you might reveal about this newest form of Empire is to be smeared, slandered, banned, your client base asked to cease supporting your work, advertisers are harangued to drop their ads, and yes, even worse: you might actually end up dead. The public will not care that some or all of these things happen to you or anyone else. The progressive-Left will not care unless it is one of their own (and there are only some one million Leftists total in America); the radical-Right will not care unless it is, as well, one of their own (there are some three to five million of these on American soil, and they are largely harmless). The general public will never care what happens to anyone because they’re way too busy having fun, from dawn’s light to setting sun. Indeed, the "public" will not even know you existed. Why?

In America we are dealing with a level of illiteracy downright frightening. Political literacy, on foreign affairs, war and peace issues, we are absolutely a stupefied muddle of illiterate dopes. The entire world holds Americans in, well, shock & awe, if you will: shocked by our stupidity -- awed by our own disbelief in that fact. Americans arrogantly believe they are the smartest, best and most moral people on earth. They are arrogant "because" they are ignorant; the greater the ignorance the more stupid the more stupid the more arrogant. That is why they are arrogant don’t you see. The first implies the other. Don’t believe me, listen to shock-radio, hot-talk, hate-talk, Pacifica Radio Network and Fox-blarney for but a week, and you too "ought" to be in awe (if you’re not we know why don’t we?)!

Sad to admit, we are a hateful bigoted nation, still. A nation of money-grubbing, manna worshipping, personality cult voyeuristic overweight slobs. Bill Clinton represented the general masses more than any president to date. To put it all in context. The eighty to 100 million which claim to attend church every Sunday, are the same that stare numbly at pornography daily (whether hard-core Internet [still the Internet’s No.#1 viewed $ item] or the highly professionally produced, written, edited Hollywood fanfare called R-rated movies and television programming). They are, as well, the very same ones getting others, or having their own, abortions in the largest (Christian) numbers (do the math for heaven’s sake, it ain’t Lesbian Thespians having abortions!).

That is not the worst part. It is these Volk that will believe everything, anything, no matter how absurdly untrue, George Bush the Smaller says. Many if not most on the Christian right think what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan have biblical overtones. Some, let us guess about half that figure, even believe "this is the END TIMES" and they will come out of all this secular war-making sitting to the right, that would be the very far-right, hand of God. The most hypocritical of these choose to believe they will remain here on the present planet justified in righteousness, with all their stuff, homes, cars and toys, in what they call "Stewardship" of the earth (meaning their stuff).

Given I am no prude, no fundamentalist church-going dispensationalist Christian, and in fact a bit of an anarchist about most things cultural and social, I‘ll not be tolerated long by that crowd. (Put another way: I don’t give a damn what you do on your own time, in your own home, it is none of my business, period.) Politically I am quite neutral about everything except what "is." Not what ought to be, as I do have my personal philosophical notions; ideas which I keep to myself. About what may just have happened politically, I understand the why of it, and the whom it happened to, and all that too was always predictable given sufficient data. Thus regarding what will happen, I do have a sense of it all, but you likely won’t like it one bit. It isn’t pessimistic though it seems so. It is realistic, if you are without dogma: set-in-stone Left-leaning or Right-reeling; both really reeling from listening to their own intoxicated blather. And the two extremes do so love to hear themselves go on. And then, of course, I may simply be dead wrong, making a fool of myself, something I do quite naturally.

My sense of it, this Empire: The Strategy of Interdependence

Right then, that out of the way, I will spell out what I get from my 55-some years of adult participation in the great American political delusion. While it is all a shame, and I am ashamed often to admit being an American these days, I know America’s light must not go out: so goes America, as the foundation of liberty, so shall go the world. If democracy (not the lunatic-Left’s version) disappears here, it is lost to the world in a matter of time; if the idea of freedom which founded America (not the rabid-Right’s version) disappears here, it shall be lost for at least a full generation, if not two; if the hope for world peace in some section of the world, like the Middle East (not the radical-Rabbinical version in Israel) is lost on the world, it shall not return until the newest high-tech dark-ages have run its course.

And this I fear is my sense of it. I only speak to my fellow country-men, Americans and those which have chosen to emigrate to this soil and try to live free for maybe the first time. That is how almost every single one of us, or our forefathers, came to abide on this section of global landscape. In the hope of finding freedom; the hope of ensnaring that intangible, justifiable joke called justice; the hope for a future.

Instead we are, nearly every man, woman and child, throwing it all away. Affluence, money, both in-and-of-itself and the incessant dream of more of it, has obliterated the soul of nearly each and every one of us. Including the children. Since 9/11, our leader has lied to everyone regularly; not to mistaken him for a "truly" elected president, (not the nonsense that the Republicans stole the last Presidential election, that is just stupid) instead meaning that, by and large, absolutely nobody even voted, with the exception of those dogmatic Republicans and Democrats voting for their long-held jobs in federal, state and local government (do the math). This funny little fantastic Fuhrer has pursued policies, passed executive orders and Kowtowed both Houses of Congress into obscene obedience; he has, in short, set course for a level of tyranny not seen since our last four "leaders," Clinton, Carter, Reagan and Bush the Larger (not one so pernicious as this present presence in our midst) when each obediently served the very same masters!

Empire isn’t built in a day, they, each in their own way, their own rhetoric, their own methods built upon each other’s site. From foundation, mortar, frame and roof, they all built this global regime. Using blueprints laid forth in the immediate aftermath of World War II, refined and redrawn as technology evolved, they used a strategic foil, the strategy of "interdependence." That is what it was called for many decades: a global regime of economic interdependence: a strategy of interdependence. The blueprints drawn-up in the smoke-filled rooms of the secretive citadels of non-governmental organizations (NGO) where future leaders are trained-up, tuned-up and their thoughts molded and shaped to serve the interests of this emerging regime: Empire.

But not a Roman Empire, as the Roman people shared in its booty; its triumphs were their triumphs. This newest regime, is global, this newest regime is authoritarian, but this newest regime is not American. Thus, it will only serve its masters as all Empire’s do, but Americans will see no benefits and neither share in its triumphs nor its vision, its wealth nor its prosperity. You will share, many of you worse than others, minorities, the poor, the weak, only in this regime’s cruelty and wrath. This newest metamorphosis and evolution to Empire and imperial vision is a corporate regime, American-led, but really Western-led; elite ruled and Western/Northern in its corporate reach. The global regime is Corporazioni. Corporatism is its ideology. Materialism its power and wealth; money its God: The "U.S. Dollar," but in its coming conversion to raw electronic funds transfer at the point of sale (EFT/POS) in real time. As former CEO of CitiBank, Winston Lord once wrote a decade ago, "under this new financial regime, there is no place to hide."

When I say it is a corporate regime I mean just that: i.e., corporations, multinational and conglomerate, monopoly and cartelized in an ever-shrinking merger of one after another multinational firm into a centralized monolithic structure which will dominate every aspect of everyone’s lives. And there is nothing more totalitarian than a monopoly corporation. It is these masters of industries, who have grown from mere Captains to Rulers of kingdoms, the size of which old Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan did not even dream of. Of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are corporations. Did I call these corporate cretins "masters?" I must be an obscure right-wing conspiracy theorist to have suggested this. Well, only to the disingenuous faux progressive-Leftists whose operations are regularly financed by these very same masters’ trusts and foundations.

Yes, there are masters. There is an elite. Since the dawn of time there has always been an elite for Christ’s sake, where have you been? Stuck over there with your itching ears plugged into Pacifica Radio’s rabid racists on the Left? The phony academics that tell you to ignore the persons that personify their office of power and instead, supposedly wisely, "understand the ‘problematic’ of the ‘institutional dynamics’ which evolve within the vast ‘methodological substratum’ of ‘empirical research.’" (And why have a method when you can have a methodology?) All this supposedly understandable only within this great noesphere of professorial wisdom. And of course only this wise and chaste vanguard can supply you with "The Truth," -- i.e., Chomskyism’s select. (Sounds like a Safeway brand of big fat sausages.)

Or have you rushed to judgment of those such as myself, following along with Rush Limbaugh’s mimicked Hannityism, in your joyful judgmental bias against everyone not a cigar-smoking Republican gerbil? Or are you so desperately foolish to factor O’Reilly in?

The Empire: State within a State: Imperium in Imperio

Although I shall never give-up the good fight, I was born to it, and shall continue to spew forth my richly textured empirical analysis in some forum far or near, I must give up the truth if asked. America must go the way of all regimes, all governments, specifically all democracies, all empires and all imperial projects. We too shall pass into darkness and hell. Our shabby democracy has not been put through a shredder by enemies of liberty, so much as we did it to ourselves. Whether you are the one-issue orientated voter that never sees the bigger picture, or the apathetic, non-issue, could give a damn about anything but yourself, non-voter, or the "I always vote" Republican, Green or Democrat, no matter who is running and how foul their stench (often literally), ... we all have lost the race. The elite, who may pose as this or that, R) or D) after the state from which they hail, masked and veiled as liberals or conservatives, it is they who have won. And now known to all what I have argued for over twenty years, "they are the very same men that rotate in and out of government and return to the real power, the multinational monopoly corporate system. Bush Senior has been our best example, who returned to real power for these past ten years. But so too were the Clintons masked and veiled, vile to the core; and now comes a White House Cabinet of elitists so vicious and dangerous as to defy the very foundation of liberty. The key to understanding these new and ruthless demigods is one word: monopoly.

Monopoly, for the dogmatic howlers on the Left, repudiates free enterprise right along with you Leftists!... Corporatists, and its ideology Corporatism, for the self-righteous on the right, repudiates both full socialism and true free enterprise, while you still, amazingly, think GE is for free enterprise and Bush the Smaller is an American patriot! With this much blind stupidity of "activists," insufferable insanity of the masses, democracy had no chance. Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.

Look out at what we have: A corporate state that will send every job worth having, blue-collar and white, overseas as the corporate leaders successfully formulate their personal financial objectives through their government policy making appointed positions. They are, in nearly every administration now, the same guys by name. Left-fascists "used" to call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist for stating this baldly some 15 years ago; they are quite silent on the point now because of the clear truth of the matter, that is to say, its obviousness. This goes on whether R)s or D)s are holding office. This will go on whether it be Lady Hillary of WalMart or Little King George, Lord Kerry or Sir Gore. How desperate have the Democrats become? They would place an American Four Star General on this throne just to remove any Republican! Amazingly, the Democrats are even blinder now than before Clinton! Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.

Look at where we presently are: Patriot Act I & II, Homeland Security under the newly positioned cabinet level office, stamped almost 100% approved by both Houses of Congress. DARPA, and the global surveillance system already operational with both the CIA and NSA operating domestically: Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 historiography. The U.S. Department of Defense merely Empire’s foreign legions for foreign occupation of select foreigner’s lands for commercial acquisitions. And every Empire is commercial! Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.



Look at who we are: In every corner of America nearly everyone is on some drug, something to make them happy,...no happier, just to get by. They think they are heroes because they suffer a little stress. The film industry shoves their peculiar dishonest and defiled culture down everyone’s throat then wonders in stupefaction that they are both held in worshipful esteem (by those who share their malignant narcissism) as little Princesses and simultaneously hated (by those who disagree with it, but they too still stare numbly at the damn tube). Never mind that nobody gets to vote on this "programming" of the masses.

You cannot have Empire without nihilism

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

You ask what we can do about it? Part and parcel of Empire is that the masses must be ignorant, naive and or stupid. It is a given by the elite that "we the people" are a combination of all three. "Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people." -- John Adams (August 1765)


Try to understand this newest form of Empire. Take a map of the world, lay it out flat on the table. Circle each major city, each major port, each major airport, all in red. Now circle each region where strategic raw materials rest: oil, natural gas, chromium, phosphate, coal, iron ore, magnesium and the major bodies of water, each in blue. Now overlay this map with a clear acetate film. Mark in black every major monopoly corporation’s significant operations except retail: manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration, and major overseas expansions like in China. Now in purple (the color of Royalty) mark the flow of foreign direct investment globally from the richest western nation’s headquarters of the monopoly merchant bankers: the now (for the first time) China’s entrance into the new world at the top of foreign direct investment will reveal itself. But understand this, America as America has no part in any of this. America as America is merely one political tool of this regime, a commercial banking and industrial regime which needs America only as government to build the new order in its legal apparatuses. The new global regimes of power and governance are the World Trade Organization, NAFTA and GATT; The World Bank; The Bank for International Settlements; the UN, NATO, Group of Eight, International Monetary Fund, and on and on ad nauseam. It is these regimes of power and governance that, so it is intended, will govern all that matters in the world of finance, manufacturing and production. These organs are made-up of the same corporate elite that negotiate and orchestrate the rules that shall govern all that matters.

Remember the map you set out on your table. If you look closely, squint your eyes a bit, you will see that the names of nations disappear. Only the names of cities, areas of resources, waterways and the regimes of governance named above remain. It is these that are set to become but city-states in a borderless world. There is no America, China, Great Britain or France; there is no Iraq or Afghanistan, but regions where the people must be brought to heal. Just as the Los Angeles Police Department has its headquarters and decentralized precincts, whereby they send in their troops to quell a riot in a disgruntled part of its fiefdom, so too shall Empire settle matters in its regions where Empire needs peace. Peace, so as to exploit the resources of the region in its behalf. Not in America’s American’s behalf (as Rome did for Roman’s). But to quell a region and control its people and things (resources, rivers and waterways, airports, roads and financial institutions). I have called this process worldwide Global Triage (Triage: from the French term for choosing who in emergency room treatment gets treated and who is allowed to die); it applies quite well: this regime will decide who lives and dies globally in every region that matters. And for precisely the reasons outlined:

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. (Source: From "Parameters" "http://carlisle-www.army.mil" , Summer 1997, pp. 4-14: US Army War College)

Each and every area of life, of commerce, modified and synthesized, organized according to western GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Procedures) methods by the WTO, IMF, the World Bank, ExIm Bank and the host of hosts, Empire’s foreign legions, the Pentagon. Just as the LAPD, supported by the U.S. Marines, silenced dissent during the L.A. Riots, so too does Empire police these small cities of unruly ruffians in Baghdad and Kabul. Soon enough, Damascus and Jerusalem. But you get the point, wherever Empire needs to exert itself for control of resources, waterways, whether there be diamonds or iron ore, rice and beans, trees or bamboo...if it matters to Empire, all will succumb: triage.

Americans, do dare to understand this, America doesn’t matter anymore to Empire. America is a mere cog in the wheel whose subject’s living standards must come down. Jobs Americans thought were theirs will be theirs only if they speak Farsi, Hindi, etc.; accept living in India, Pakistan or Malaysia. Soon, very soon indeed, companies like Boeing will not just move their headquarters to Chicago from Seattle and Everett, Washington State, previously known as one of the fifty states of America, but to Beijing, in what was famously known in the past as the Peoples Republic of China. These feudalistic monopoly corporations will, one and all, go where the wages are very low and the local Junta will enforce a non-union labor force receiving little or no benefits.

I recently heard an argument that India was sending its surplus population to America and they were filling American high-tech jobs at three times less pay. The wrong thinking here is this: There are no more Americans nor Indians, so there is no surplus Indian population doing anything. In a borderless world we are, every single one of us, global workers; therefore the Indians that follow ITT from America today on to Malaysia next, going where the jobs are going, are fulfilling their destiny under Empire. If Americans will not learn the language of foreign lands and take the jobs offered therein, they will remain here in what was once called America and live in a steadily declining job market, a steadily declining standard of living. I guarantee Bush the Smaller (or Lady Hillary of WalMart) will not stop steadily spending your earnings! I did not state above "citizens" either; citizens of Empire are either serfs or subjects, subject to Empire’s dictate, that is why they are called subjects. Serfs are the ones that cannot or will not adjust to Empire’s new demands. Their kingdom destined to be serfdom. A hi-tech feudalism is implied in global Empire; it is especially applicable when Empire’s masters, our rulers, are of Corporazioni’s ilk.

This is the future. Borders already do not matter, you just have not felt the weight of what this means. When borders no longer matter, then being American doesn’t either, as what was known as America simply no longer exists. Put plainly -- when borders no longer matter neither do you.

It is certainly not just myself, deluding myself, that what we have here is Empire in its rawest form, its religious form, as all Empire‘s tend towards a sense of the divine. 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.)

Understand this as well. It doesn’t matter that all Empires fall, every imperial vision comes to an end. This will be cold comfort when it is pressed forward at your expense, your children’s expense, if not their lives, your future. It never matters that the Empire will fail, it is always that "it will try." Bush the Smaller, a Four Star General, or Lady Hillary of WalMart, will, each of them in their own way, their own speed of endeavor, their own stratagems will continue to try. Try as you might, face nothing else, but face this fundamental fact. It is in their trying that your future holds such bleakness.



Therefore, what can we do about America evolving, and now evolving very rapidly indeed, into Empire? Well, exactly nothing. Nobody can do anything about this; nothing, nada, nyet. One can join the elite (though the doors are mostly closed now), work for them (though they need fewer and fewer every year), or try as you might to "become" one of their minions, monopoly corporate dupes, lobbyists, or elected D)s or R)s. Or you will either learn to live with it, or die; live within it, and survive (and only those which truly understand all this will have any chance at all for that). And survive meaning just that and no more, scratching out a living as your standard of living slides ever closer to the rawest form of poverty. Or live on Empire’s fringe, outside of affluence, in a moderate poverty, outside of the system, outside of its laws... "outlaws," that is to say. That is what Homeland Security is really for. To protect the homeland, the Empire’s roots, its body politic from the likes of you.

What must happen

Look at what will have to happen, eventually, for the Empire to succeed. This future is clear to some. Empire and the imperial ambitions that go along with it mean specific things: Greater governmental spending, higher taxes, lowered standard of living for the masses, greater burdens on the working man and woman. Universal service and sacrifice of all the subjects of Empire. Everyone must pull their weight, tote that barge...the youth will see imperial service selectively; drafted...if not a year or so after the next election is won by Sir George the Smaller then certainly soon enough thereafter. It would go down easier with a Democrat in the White House of course, and should that miraculously take place (which the odds are something like winning the lotto) the designated white Democrat in the White House will act even more swiftly to enact this selective service for the country. It would go down so much easier with Lady Hillary of WalMart signing-off on it. Why? Because liberals and D)s cannot find the courage it takes to take on one of their, supposedly, own. What if this decision were taken by a Four Star General? You know the Democrats could not then bring themselves to even a furrowed brow, a frown.

One thing that always amazes me is how pragmatic Democrats can be; they will endorse anything, anyone, that might defeat a Republican in the White House. For decades the Democrats have led the anti-war movements (often late in the game); they have been the leaders in denouncing the military. Now, because their line-up to take on Mr. Bush is so weak and the nation’s masses have war-fever, they are considering a man whose sole credentials are his four stars and his vast array of contacts with defense firms. Defense contractors, the bugbear of every liberal for decades. Now that the regime has Homeland Security, Patriot Acts I & II, the CIA and NSA can operate domestically and all this vast centralization is under direct control of the White House with its new cabinet post...give it over to a Four Star General...there’s some bright thinking.

It’s inescapable. One way or another you are going to support this Empire. Whether through capitulation and submission, or through raw cowardice; the latter revealing itself more each day in more and more subjects as Lord Bush passes imperial decree after executive decree and our leaders fall silent in a cowardly spectacle. Watch Bush the Smaller as he ratchets-up the fear-mongering so effectively with the silly colored terrorist alerts: yellow, red, etc.; what blarney, bullocks, what hubris this child of an elitist carries in his breast!

Muslims persecuted by the thousands, mild-mannered peace activists barred from flying on the airlines, individuals arrested at airports for joking they have "a bomb in their wallet," as others, even the elderly, are strip-searched while in a wheelchair, still others declared "illegal combatants" (a term not even found in American jurisprudence, another indication America is no more). Because they once upon a time traveled to a far off land? America has become a nation of cowards. But we have seen all this before:

"Finally, the German nationalists, the right-wing conservatives, who venerated "honor" and "heroism" as the central characteristics of their program. Oh God, what infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward! One might at least have expected that, once their claim in January proved illusory--that they had "tamed" the Nazis and "rendered them harmless"-- they would act as a "brake" and "prevent the worst." Not a bit of it. They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews, the persecution of Christians. They were not even bothered when their own party was prohibited, and their own members were arrested." (Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, FSG, p.131)

We cannot see what Mr. Bush and his most vile crop of neo-conservatives plan and execute before our befuddled eyes. Lord Bush the Smaller is already thinking what Bill Clinton had already proposed during early 2003: running for a third (and fourth?) term in office after his second term begins to wind-down. He can simply claim national emergency (it has precedent). Only after the election is won will Bush contemplate the already proposed universal draft of the youth for reasons never spoken. We will be told we have to "go it alone," the great nation that we are, to bring justice and democracy to Iraq, to set the course for liberty in the Middle East, to end the death of American soldiers beleaguered in war zones afar. This is why Lord Bush is brow-beating an unwieldy United Nations to throw their troops in the fray. He knows full well Germany, France, China and Russia (and a hundred others) opposed the war resolution at the same UN, oppose it still. Why would they (then) bail out an arrogant U.S. president who has lied all along, along with Tony Blair, to get "US" in the war in the first place? They will not, and Bush knows this. But with their refusal he can later berate them one and all to the American people as "the reason" we must go it alone. And we love it so to hate the French and Germans. And along with his cohort of media whores at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox "factors this in" he can convince American mothers to send their children to die. And this can be so easily accomplished, all so easily, legally. We have seen all this before:

"Constitutional lawyers define it as a change of constitution by means not foreseen therein. By this definition the Nazi revolution of March 1933 was not a revolution. Everything went strictly "by the book," using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there were "emergency decrees" by the president of the Reich, and later a bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with the rules for changing the constitution." (Haffner, Ibid., p. 124)

Americans have made their politics their religion

The truly ignorant or naive American may be forgiven if they think, along with their historical counterparts of Germany, circa, 1933, that, "All this was still something one only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had gone before. There were brown SA uniforms on the streets...but otherwise it was "business as usual." (Ibid., p. 109) They could not see the brown shirts who were the "media representatives" of the 1933 Reich, then pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once browbeating, then slandering opponents, shouting them down, then beating them for real if need be. We have our own regime enforcers as "media representatives," of Amerika, "Media Brown Shirts,"... pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once browbeating, then slandering opponents, shouting them down, then beating them for real if need be. The beatings some critics have taken have utterly silenced them, and we have seen many a critic banned, fired, ruined financially. Is it less an act of violence to ban, silence and slander than to whack ‘em over the head with a black-jack or night-stick? Isn’t it interesting that in Amerika the night-stick is called a baton, as though wielded by a short-skirted adolescent in a parade? Just as Mr. Bush Junior did at Yale as head cheerleader.

it did not begin with Empire acting in its divine capacity that Empire took on religious overtones. Americans have long made their politics religion rather than a secular act primed to escort our means of governance. All sides have made politics their religion which is why it has the flavor of carnival, a spectacle, just as it was in the Germany Haffner witnessed. The feminist dominated Greens, the corporate Democrats and certainly the symbiotic relationship of the present crop of Republicans with fundamentalism’s dispensationalists bears witness once again that yet another democracy has lost its way. And this one lost its way to evolve into an American-led corporate empire. Not a spoken of, thousand-year Reich; not spoken of that is, and that’s all.

And if the term Empire still doesn’t sit well with the present reader, the reader needs to grow-up. And Americans hate to grow-up these days. 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)

The fact that a man with so little political sense, a total lack of every intellectual attribute needed for secular political governance was endorsed by the "gray men" for Governor of California on the sole basis of "name recognition," and the bizarre truth is that Californians, (being a bit odd themselves according to some) might just vote for him to win, is a shame on us the U.S. We know "who" by "name" will rule California even if Noam cannot bring himself to "personalize the problematic." What, then is our future?



High Tech Corporate Feudalism

Of course, one can always argue differently. I shall make my own point, as I said, "my sense of it." The major U.S. monopoly multinationals with their ongoing mergers and acquisitions globally will continue apace. Not even Arnold can stop the economic attrition in California wearing out the workers, blue collar and white; jobs sent overseas following entire operations already operating, moved to markets more amenable to profit and fewer benefits. Not even Arnold can address the sheer enormity of tax dollars slipped into the hands of GE, Bechtel and Halliburton, Brown & Root. Not even the Terminator can rid the planet of the high-tech feudalism this monopolistic oligarchy brings to the land. Indeed, they own Arnold. Why else would a Captain of industries (Bechtel, Boeing, etc.), Herr Schultz, endorse this bad-actor for the position, the input, unless he can control the output?

What democrat could alter the landscape, even if he or she would, when each and every one is bought and paid for by precisely the same Corporatism which presently owns both Houses of Congress, the White House and white presidents? Lady Hillary of WalMart? Please!

Empire may mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Again, it may even be difficult to define today (so I’ve been told) for some. But I may have less of a problem with it than most and not because I am so darn smart. Simply because I have little allegiance to anything except liberty and I concern myself only about what "is."

Where we will be in a few years is just not that difficult to imagine, not that hard to figure. The debt and deficits alone are staggering; never has the trade deficit and the federal monetary deficit been as high as a percentage of GDP, and nearly equal. Total obligations of the enormous federal crime families is a robust 44 trillion dollars. My calculator doesn’t have that many zeros! Never has personal individual debt been quite so enormous, nearly every working man, woman and child is presently bankrupt by any rational mathematical standard applied, which of course logically explains record personal bankruptcies. Corporate debt is at record levels, which of course logically explains record business bankruptcies. Unemployment figures have never been so manipulated by a system of mathematical make-believe to make us believe we have a recovery in progress without the productive participation of some 30 to 40 million workers. Workers not looking for work is why they are not counted. As though the fact that they have given-up looking for that job, where there are 700 applicants for every meager-paying service job, makes them less jobless! Workers working only part time and often only a few hours a week are not unemployed by the reckoning of our masters, they are simply "marginal."

GDP means Gross Domestic Product and it is indeed gross to claim we have any worthwhile products produced domestically any longer. The only thing America can be said to actually produce is more debt. That is the future story one day writ large. Made in America my a posteriori.

What of the stock market one naively asks, thinking "it" has some relationship to the domestic economy being prosperous or in a recovery for the many? The reality? An ever growing process of overseas investment in unproductive acquisitions. The very same process that little dark magician and his crew performed on the world stage for the Clinton myth is in for a repeat performance, a slick kind of ... "come on Alan, take a bow!" One more time we print the cash to pay the diabolical debts and raise taxes to re-collect what was spent on defense and foreign infrastructures where empire wants to expand. We are to rebuild Iraq but we cannot fix the roads in America? We can bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan as it slips away here in America and America’s children cannot find a decent education? And the little dark magician keeps conjuring-up his mystical magical manna.

This is done to the glee of the raw speculator in stocks; stocks again so overpriced as to defy even the little magician. Yet another day of reckoning is in the future. Another round of false millionaires, each as logically mathematically bankrupt as the former, each shall find their dreams dashed in the coming market "correction." Don’t you love the language we are taught to use... a "correction." Sort of like a typo -- just a little white-out in the old days, replaced now by Microsoft "Works" program spell checker -- and what a hoot, it wasn’t that bad.

Except for those that cannot find a job after they have lost everything, and at fifty-five years old find themselves working non-union in the Garden Center at Lady Hillary’s WalMart. But this may not happen for a few more years, certainly interest rates will not rise significantly "before" Bush the Smaller gets re-elected! Bush the Senior will not have it. And again, Bush the Larger has been back in power for ten years, not, like so many democrats wrongly hoped and believed, sidelined like some aging running back for the Dallas Cowboys. No, the "must happen" correction, must be held off until after that little stage play the mad magician performs is in curtain call. Nobody the wiser still.

And what will we hear in the very near term? "Nothing any different from what has gone before." But what will in fact happen must happen. More smaller business failures as the trickle-down from Corporatism’s domestic economic attrition in affect effects one and all; more unemployment not less. The IRS has targeted small businesses as the audit of choice. Of course they have, the smaller large companies and the smaller small businessmen cannot afford the Big Eight to do battle with this manna collecting monstrosity. An evil so great some few Libertarians have called it the "eternal revenue system." That sucking sound wasn’t just jobs going overseas Ross, it is the whooshing sound of the collective toilet flushing individual taxpayers into the general system’s septic-tank where the biggest curds float to the top, the rest sink quietly out of site. "All this [was] still something one only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had gone before."

What are we to do with the aging demographic in America? Soon enough those retired, or the older unemployed or, unemployable is the new term, those on the many doles will simply out number the youth working and being taxed to pay for the retired Volk. Given everything else noted above, add even greater unemployment among minorities and young people, add further domestic economic attrition through corporate expansion overseas, what is a tyrant to do? Draft the little buggers is but the only real world solution; none too few other analysts have suggested this as one such future solution. When we see adults, between twenty-three to thirty-five scooting about on mountain bikes, decked-out in childish garb, out having fun like the nine year-olds the bikes were originally meant for, how can an honest broker of thought not endorse another military draft? We have a nation of grown men acting as children, with no thought of the future with the sole exception of "having more time off," having "more fun," and escaping further into a neurotic festival of mutual exhibitionism. The worst? the ones strutting about like John Wayne, sunglasses perched on their proboscis, acting bad-to-the-bone...for attention, over the fact that he has a new shiny truck with a still newer ATV in the back! Draft the buggers does come to mind if there is to be any hope for this state of affairs whose affairs are in a terrible state. While I cannot say I approve of this solution, because I do not approve of just about anything the American-led Empire is doing, it is a solution I can state categorically "they" are looking at.

Alas, what I sense is not going to affect me too much with the exception of my beleaguered compassionate-side; this darkness coming over the land shall be the ruin of so many an innocent. Those enlightened self-interested greedy little malevolent monkeys, the nihilistic narcissists and dead-beat creatures that personally gain by all this, the politicians, the monopoly corporate cretins, the mob lined-up at the various troughs, bleeding one and all, every "other," well, I don’t much care for them. But you could have guessed that right off. The fact that this coming corporate feudalism will bear little resemblance to tyrannies of the past is little comfort. That it is high-tech, well lighted, air conditioned and instantly gratifying in such a gratuitous fashion, will make it seem, to many, a benign kind of tyranny. A kind of benevolent beast. These four horsemen will seemingly come bearing new gifts for all, SUVs and home mortgages with little or no interest rates "for sixteen months with no payments until September." We’ve all heard the call. It is the stuff which imprisons the soul.

The Things That Matter

The only way Empire, even American-led as it is, can and will mend its profligate ways domestically? Taxes must be raised; therefore the masses must be razed, put to work and taxed too. Oil and gas must be raised, from mother earth; therefore the Middle East must be razed to protect American interests. Whose interests? Not mine. Not most of you. But we know whose interests are being looked after, explored and protected. Don’t we? Interest rates must be raised, to protect that flimsy piece of medium we exchange for things; things whose cost continues to rise effortlessly, ah, the almighty dollar, and inflation is the most secretive of all the razing to come.

No, the charade must come to an end, the correction must happen, the wars will not end, the expansion overseas and the global military "footprint" will enlarge to encompass everything "that matters." And everything that matters will come under an absolutist feudal corporate control. Things that "don’t matter," like what you watch on TV; your desperate need for yet another new pair of shoes; the need to strut before your crowd with your stuff exposed; the need to "get ahead" of your neighbor, your sibling, yourself. That invisible treadmill so many cannot bring themselves to get off because "it is all they are," all they have. Things that "don’t matter," like who you have sex with and for heaven’s sake "why"... all will be allowed you, as these things don’t matter to Empire. Indeed, it is the "stuff of Empire" which is meant to enslave! If you learn no other expression learn these two: The "things that matter" (Empire will control absolutely) "things that don’t matter," (you know) are yours to keep. Even your life is yours to fritter away as so many have in America before you.

What matters to Empire? You will work. You will pay. And pay until it hurts, you will pay and you will obey. The future is clear to some. Ignore it at your own risk. What can you do? You? You actually mean "you?" I haven’t got a clue. That is, well, up to you isn’t it?

End 09/15/03

Mr. Craig B Hulet: Security, Military Affairs & International Relations Expert (Author: The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law: An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. Available @ www.kcandassociates.org); Hulet was Special Assistant for Special projects to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Ret.) www.craigbhulet.com Hulet can be reached at: [e-mail]

Copyright 2003 The Artful Nuance and Craig B Hulet

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute 36 Toons.

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030915__036toons.htm

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Florida all over again?
Partisan infighting, a crucial election, dubious voting machines -- now it`s California, and the Rehnquist gang may decide this one, too.

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By Tim Grieve



Sept. 16, 2003 | The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco picked a fight with the Supreme Court Monday, and Gov. Gray Davis may prove to be the winner.

In a classic case of "what goes around comes around," three Democratic judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held Monday that the Supreme Court`s 2000 decision in Bush vs. Gore compelled them to postpone the Oct. 7 recall election. The reason: Punch-card voting machines -- like those that produced the hanging chads of Florida fame -- are so prone to error that voters in the six California counties that still use the machines are 2.5 times more likely to have their votes thrown out than are voters in counties with more modern balloting equipment.

The ruling appears to be a victory for Gray Davis. If it survives, Davis gets more time to repair his image -- and a shot at having the election on March 2, 2004, the day that California Democrats will likely turn out in large numbers to vote in the state`s presidential primary. If the ruling is reversed, the specter of Florida 2000 will be all over the recall race, reinforcing every argument that Davis has already made about the recall being a right-wing power grab in the tradition of Bush vs. Gore.

Democrats jumped on that theme immediately Monday. Ripping right into the raw wounds of 2000, Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman issued a statement Monday afternoon predicting the future machinations of White House strategist Karl Rove and conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. "If Karl Rove wants the election to take place on October 7, Scalia will redefine the doctrines announced in Bush v. Gore to read as he always wanted them to read: Voters have an equal protection right to have their votes counted accurately and the federal courts should intervene to enforce these rights when, and only when, court action is consistent with the needs of the Republican party."

Republicans were just as quick to use the decision as a way to appeal to their base. Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, who is running third behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and body-building actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the race to replace Davis, called the Ninth Circuit`s decision a "distraction" from a liberal appellate court that has become the "laughingstock" of the nation. "I want to remind people that the Ninth Circuit is the most reversed court -- the same court that banned the words `under God` in the Pledge of Allegiance," McClintock said in a statement.

If Monday`s decision puts the judiciary -- both the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court -- uncomfortably in the middle of electoral politics, the judges involved have only themselves to blame.

In the process of handing the White House to George W. Bush in 2000, the conservatives on the Supreme Court had to embrace voting-rights arguments under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution that they likely never would have considered otherwise. And in postponing the recall Monday, the three liberal Ninth Circuit judges slammed those arguments right back in the Supreme Court`s face.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court "walked right into this," said Georgetown University law professor Mark Tushnet. By inserting themselves into the presidential election -- and by doing it using a doctrine they normally would not have embraced -- the justices opened themselves up to questions about their political motivations, he said.

And by slavishly following the Bush vs. Gore decision, the Ninth Circuit judges may have forced the Supreme Court justices into an awkward dance of explaining why Bush vs. Gore doesn`t really mean what it says. "The Ninth Circuit is sometimes most controversial not when it flaunts Supreme Court authority but when it takes the Supreme Court`s words and starts running with them in ways that five justices don`t want them to go," said Hasting law professor Vikram Amar.

The Ninth Circuit judges seemed to do a bit of that Monday. They quoted frequently and at length from Bush vs. Gore, and they threw in other taunts at the Republicans as well. In a nod to other Florida 2000 controversies, they noted that the rushed nature of the California recall will make it difficult for voters serving in the military to have their ballots back in California in time to be counted. And in what appeared to be a fairly gratuitous reference to the war in Iraq, the judges noted the importance of modeling good democratic behavior for citizens of foreign lands at this "critical time" in history.

It all seemed like an intentional effort to pick a fight with the Supreme Court`s conservatives. And on some level, at least, legal experts predicted that the Supreme Court will take the bait. Richard Epstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago and a fellow at Stanford`s Hoover Institution, said he thinks it is likely that Supreme Court will reverse the Ninth Circuit decision almost immediately. While he is no fan of Bush vs. Gore, he said the Ninth Circuit`s decision is even worse. "This is a case of judges taking a bad decision and extending it in a grotesque fashion," Epstein said.

While Epstein believes that the Equal Protection rationale behind Bush vs. Gore was dubious at best, the right way to apply that rationale, he said, is after the fact (as the Supreme Court did in Florida) and then, only if it matters. In the Ninth Circuit`s decision Monday, the court accepted the argument that approximately 40,000 voters would have their votes thrown out if punch-card ballots are used. Epstein`s solution: Hold the election, and if the result turns on 40,000 votes or fewer, wade into the Bush vs. Gore morass then.

Tushnet predicted that the Supreme Court will take just such an approach, but in a slightly more oblique way. Rather than reversing the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court could simply stay the effect of the Ninth Circuit`s order until after the recall election. "They could say, `We can figure out ways to sequester the challenged ballots, and let`s see if it makes a difference.`"

Whatever the Supreme Court does, though, the Ninth Circuit`s decision brings the specter of Florida to California. Democrats are already eager to nationalize the California debate. Bill Clinton campaigned with Gray Davis in Los Angeles Sunday, and other major national Democrats -- including, possibly, Al Gore -- are expected to appear in the state in the coming weeks. If the Supreme Court is seen as intervening in California, the "recall as right-wing power grab" argument becomes a much easier sell for Davis.

In the meantime, however, both Davis and the candidates to replace him seem committed to campaigning as if the Ninth Circuit decision never happened. With an eye toward the judicial politics of it all -- and aware that the Ninth Circuit is indeed the most-reversed of all of the federal appellate courts -- Davis and his challengers continued to campaign Monday with the assumption that there will be an election on Oct. 7.

The most recent polls show the recall race drawing ever closer: A Los Angeles Times poll shows voters favoring the recall just 50-45, a significant slide from earlier numbers. Bolstered by the poll, Davis made buoyant campaign stops in Southern California Sunday and Monday. Schwarzenegger, who was unable to shake McClintock`s conservative challenge at the Republican state convention in Los Angeles over the weekend, appeared Monday on Oprah Winfrey`s show with his wife, Kennedy cousin Maria Shriver, who had to put her hand over the candidate`s mouth to stop him from dipping into the lewd and crude language that has drawn criticism from women`s groups and conservatives alike.

Meanwhile, independent candidate Arianna Huffington expressed hope that a delay in the voting could give her -- and other lesser-known candidates -- time to make inroads on the lead held by Bustamante and Schwarzenegger. In a statement issued Monday afternoon, Huffington said the Ninth Circuit`s decision, if upheld, "will give voters more time to get to scrutinize all the recall candidates -- which is good news for democracy but bad news for those candidates hoping to win based on name recognition and celebrity or the fact that they happen to be the next guy in line."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/16/court/index.htm…

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Question: Recently, based on what turned out to be false intelligence reports, I ordered the invasion of another country, resulting in thousands of deaths and widespread hardship. Did I do something wrong?
Answer: At the time you first saw the reports you thought they were true, and therefore you did nothing wrong. You can’t help it if you get bad advice.

Question: I have a friend who formed his country’s energy policy in secret meetings with people who had given him millions of dollars. Do you think he should have disclosed what went on in those meetings?
Answer: In an open society like ours, yes. But you`re talking about some backwater banana republic, I assume. That kind of stuff hasn`t gone on here since the days of the Robber Barons.

Question: My religious views are sometimes at odds with my obligations as the chief legal officer of a large Western democracy. For example, can I arrest and deport anyone who disagrees with me and needs a shave?
Answer: No, unless you have some sort of gut feeling about them.

(Mr. Ethics is National Spokesperson for the American Association of Used Car Salesmen)
http://www.ironictimes.com/index.html

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-morgue16s… a d v


Baghdad`s Packed Morgue Marks a City`s Descent Into Lawlessness
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer

September 16, 2003

BAGHDAD — A sourness stings the morning air as men with wooden coffins tied on taxis come to collect the murdered: a boy shot in the face during a carjacking, a ruffian stabbed in a neighborhood fight, a sheik ambushed by his rivals, a son with a bullet through the heart.

U.S.-led coalition forces insist that stability is returning to Iraq. The ledger in the Baghdad morgue tells a different tale.

The number of reported gun-related killings in Baghdad has increased 25-fold since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. Before the war began, the morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. Moreover, the overall number of suspicious deaths jumped from about 250 a month last year to 872 in August.

The Baghdad morgue is beyond full. Refrigeration boxes that usually hold six bodies are crammed with 18. An unidentified corpse is dragged across the floor beneath the blue glow of an insect-repelling light. Five others — two pocked with gunshot wounds — lie on steel tables. With quiet determination, pathologists lift their scalpels, chart their findings and fill the waiting coffins.

Most of the dead here are not casualties of military actions or terrorist attacks, such as last month`s bombing of the United Nations headquarters, which killed at least 20 people. Nor are they American soldiers.

Instead, they are everyday civilians, victims of the violence that has become a fact of life in a city that wakes and sleeps to the cadence of gunfire and unrelenting crime. The coalition forces and the new Iraqi police have been unable to stop the torrent of mayhem springing from robberies, carjackings and just plain anger.

Many killings, according to police and pathologists, are rooted in revenge. Saddam Hussein`s ousted regime murdered tens of thousands in its ongoing terror campaign, but its omnipresent security force limited animosities among tribes and clans.

With that shackle broken, the slights and anger that accumulated over the years are being settled with a sort of frontier justice, especially against Baath Party loyalists and other remnants of Hussein`s regime.

The equation is further complicated by the thousands of criminals Hussein released from prison in the months before the March invasion by U.S.-led coalition forces. And by the tens of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles and pistols that make every neighborhood an arsenal. Coalition troops confiscated heavy weapons in July but allowed Iraqis to keep some light arms for self-defense. These guns often lead to murder.

The rash of bloodshed provides a stark indication that Iraqi society is careening out of control and that Hussein`s aftermath carries its own incomprehensible brutality.

Bodies are fished out of the muddy-green Tigris. They are pulled from alleys, gathered from rooftops and lifted from garbage piles. Some are left on the roadside, like that of Bashar Khammas Mohammed, a 26-year-old taxi driver who was strangled with his own headdress. They are then brought to the morgue, where a meticulous man wearing rubber gloves ties strings around their wrists and assigns each of them a number.

"We are a people not yet suitable for democracy," said Sattar Mohammed, who waited the other day with an open coffin to pick up his slain neighbor. "We need to be strictly handled. We need a tight fist over us. We lived like that for 30 years under Saddam Hussein, but now people are free, and they`re acting on their will. It is dangerous."

That grim assessment is echoed often.

"I`ve been working in this morgue for 29 years," said pathologist Abdul Razzaq Ubaidi. Each of his pale blue folders holds a sheet of paper describing a body. "It used to be accidents and natural deaths. Now there are too many weapons in society. We used to dissect six or seven bodies a day, but now we do 25 to 35 a day, and 80% of them are bullet injuries. We have more freedom, but with the absence of security there is more freedom for murder."

A state of lawlessness has resulted as Iraqi society veers between the end of tyranny and unfulfilled promises of stability from an embryonic U.S.-backed government struggling to bring a new form of administration to the country. The police force is understaffed at 38,000 officers nationwide, although it is expected to grow to 65,000. Baghdad has more than 5,000 officers, down from 17,000 before the war.

The death of Sheik Abdul Jabar Farhan Salman, according to authorities, appears to have been caused by a mix of revenge and opportunism. A member of the powerful Bu-Issa tribe in the city of Fallouja, the sheik controlled much of the region`s cigarette market. Rich enough to escape the turmoil of postwar Iraq, Salman moved his family to Amman, Jordan. He visited Iraq frequently to check on his business.

On Sept. 1 at 10:20 p.m., the sheik was driving his white Nissan near a Baghdad crossroads when two cars appeared beside him and gunmen firing 9-millimeter automatic pistols shot him in the heart and shoulder.

He died not much more than a quarter-mile from the Khadra district police station, where U.S. military police stand lookout from sandbag bunkers.

"It seems to be a case of revenge," said Lt. Col. Sabah Majeed Latif, an Iraqi police commander. "Those who killed him stole nothing. Only a few members of his tribe knew he was back in town.... There was hostility toward him, and it looks as if his cigarette rivals wanted to get rid of him."

Silver-rimmed glasses riding low on his nose, Dr. Faik Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad Forensics Institute, sat at his desk staring at the statistics. They were daunting. In July 2002, he said, suspicious deaths in Baghdad were already high at 237 — a figure not taking into account those who disappeared at the hands of Hussein`s security forces. A year later, with U.S. troops on the ground, the figure had more than tripled to 751.

"When you see people killed every day, you imagine the insecure situation in the country," Bakr said. "It is difficult to blame somebody," he added later. "Something should be done by the coalition forces.... It is their job and duty."

The morgue itself was a victim of crime during the war. Looters stole steel gurneys and electric autopsy saws. Some of the doctors today — who earn $180 a month — must now cut by hand. Like the rest of Baghdad, the morgue faces sporadic shortages of electricity, water and gas. There is also a lack of needles, sutures and other supplies. Bodies appear constantly, as if from a tide. They are photographed, and some — including 21 last Friday — go to the grave in anonymity. "Something should be done," Bakr said.

The scent of death outside the autopsy room intensified in the desert heat of a recent afternoon. With wooden coffins borrowed from neighborhood mosques across the vast city, families arrived in the alley to collect their dead. Some coffins were communal and stained with the blood of earlier victims.

Wrapped in carpets and lowered from the roofs of taxis and minibuses, the coffins were placed by the morgue door until names were called and bodies carried into the sunlight and loaded for the 110-mile journey to the holy city of Najaf for burial.

Men spoke of revenge while they were waiting. Some fidgeted with the pistols hidden beneath their shirts. The men were mostly quiet, but the women, dressed in black robes that billowed through the alley, beat their chests and wailed.

"My tragedy is greater than yours!" yelled one woman. "They killed my boy!"

A pickup truck pulled up. A man got out. His son, who had refused to give his car to a thief, lay in the back with a bullet through his face. Another boy crouched and cried. The morgue door opened and the father bowed his head. Two more coffins arrived, and by midmorning the alley was full.

Fadhil Abbas Jasim had his brother`s blood on his shirt. Khudhayr, 23, had been stabbed, then shot after a marketplace quarrel with a drug addict named Adil.

"My brother had a skirmish with him," said Fadhil, who sat at the morgue with a coffin. "Adil stabbed him in the wrist. My brother wrestled the knife from him and came home. I was going to the marketplace to see what happened. I told Khudhayr to stay at home. But he ran out to buy a pack of cigarettes and when he stepped outside, Adil shot him with a Kalashnikov. He shot 12 bullets and hit my brother six times.

"I dragged my brother into the house. He was dying.... Adil shot him because he had lost face in the marketplace after my brother took the knife from him. The neighbors fetched me a jeep and I drove Khudhayr to the hospital, but the doctor said he had been dead for some minutes.... I brought him here to get a death certificate so he can be buried. I paid $7 for it. They gave my brother a number on his wrist. I`m waiting to pick him up."

Dr. Ubaidi, seeing patients at a nearby clinic, must hurry to the morgue.

The pathologist says he collects bullets and traces the path of death. He takes X-rays, draws diagrams. He seldom talks of justice. A murder`s motive has little meaning for him. Science, he says, is where he prefers to dwell.

On this day, he was delayed, swarmed by his patients with their sick babies, stiff legs and fevers.

One woman had an eye injury. Ubaidi put down his pale blue folders and set about examining her.

"I should be in the autopsy room," he said, "but as you can see, the living are interfering with my work on the dead."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-xenia16…
THE NATION



In a Bush Stronghold, Some Are Losing Heart
In Xenia, Ohio, the war and the economy are eroding people`s faith in the president.
By Faye Fiore
Times Staff Writer

September 16, 2003

XENIA, Ohio — When the price of stamps went up another penny awhile back, it was more than one man could stand. Waiting in line at the post office here, he spotted the nearest politician — who happened to be the mayor of this friendly little town known as the City of Hospitality — and took a swing at him.

"People don`t always understand what`s going on 5,000 miles away, but they know what`s happening in their own hometown," said Mayor John Saraga, who ducked the punch that day. "And if things aren`t good for them, they are going to hold somebody responsible, whether it`s the mayor, the governor or the president."

Today, there is a lot more on the minds of the people of Xenia than the price of postage. The downturn in the economy has hammered Ohio, costing it 185,000 jobs over the last 2 1/2 years. Ninety-four of them are here at the Hooven Allison rope factory, set to shut down this month after 134 years in business.

The citizens will be asked to approve three local tax increases this fall to fend off cuts in school, city and hospital services.

And President Bush has attached an $87-billion price tag to an Iraq mission some here believe was well-intentioned but badly conceived.

"If things don`t improve it could be a disaster for him," said Saraga, a Republican who supports Bush. "He`s going to pay the price, unfortunately."

Concern about the war in Iraq — and the Bush administration`s rationale for the open-ended U.S. presence there — has rippled across the country, nowhere more than through this city of 24,000 outside Dayton. For many here, that concern is inextricably linked with worries about the economy.

Bush won by less than 4% in Ohio, one of roughly a dozen "swing" states that will be hotly contested in next year`s presidential election. Ohio is seen as crucial to his hopes for winning a second term — no Republican has ever claimed the White House without it.

But there are signs that support for the president is eroding, with a recent statewide poll showing his approval rating down 11 points since shortly after the war began.

Even here in Republican-dominated Greene County — where an obstetrician put a "Support President Bush and Our Troops" sign in his waiting room last spring and got requests for 100 like it — there are growing misgivings about the costs of lives and dollars in Iraq.

"I won`t vote for Bush again," said Penny Fox, 47, who opened Fox`s Antiques and Such off Main Street in May but kept her part-time job at Kmart just in case. "He just came on too powerful, too gung-ho, too cocky."

Like many in Xenia, Fox backed the war at first. But now she is suspicious because no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and she is disturbed by the stream of body bags coming home — more since Bush declared the major combat over.

Just about everyone here knows of a soldier overseas. The City of Xenia paid $300,000 in overtime to plug vacancies from employees called to reserve service. Eighteen photos of soldiers in Iraq hang in the lobby of the Xenia Daily Gazette.

Pictures of two of Fox`s friends from Kmart are there. Their unhappiness is evident from their letters.

"At first they were excited and pumped up," Fox said. "Now they`re depressed and want to come home. I`m upset for them. I don`t think they need to be there any longer."

To be sure, plenty of Xenians remain solidly behind the war and the president. Bush may have squeaked to victory in the state of Ohio, but he carried Greene County handily.

Here, conservative values run deep. There are more churches — 47 at last count — than bars. Crime is low. High school football games fill the stands, and NASCAR fans will race anything on wheels, including school buses.

Edged by farmland, 200-year-old Xenia is anchored by a stone courthouse that has survived decades of tornadoes. The worst one, in 1974, tossed railroad cars through grocery store windows. Half the town was blown away, 10,000 people were left homeless and 33 were killed, many at the local root beer stand.

But Xenia always recovers and rebuilds. Lately, though, it has suffered from economic malaise, as some people worked six-day weeks to keep up.

"These Colors Don`t Run," intones the patriotic window display at Xenia Archery, owned for 31 years by Stan Freelan, 65. His sign supports the mission in Iraq, but his more pressing concern is the duplex he and his wife can`t afford. A loan application for the property lies facedown on the counter. The interest rates crept up and out of their reach. Business has been slow most of the summer. And if the city thinks it`s getting his vote on a tax increase, it can think again.

"Xenia wastes more money than it needs," he declared, a line of crossbows and arrows behind him, photographs of slain deer dotting his glass countertop.

He has problems of his own. "Business took a drastic dive — I mean drastic — since the first of August. Nobody`s doing good."

He doesn`t blame Bush, though. "One man can`t change the economy, hon," he tells his visitor. He says he believes Bush embodies American strength and is on the right track.

"I don`t believe in killin`," he said. "But if it has to be done, I believe we have to get it done."

Next door, Xenia`s mixed views on the war are writ small this Saturday morning inside Fast Fashions on Main Street, a men`s clothing store that offers a rack of $75 "zoot suits" in every color and an assortment of derbies to match.

Bob Pry, 62, is working the counter. He endorsed the war and still does, and thinks we should "eradicate" Saddam Hussein, though he`d like to see a little more help from the United Nations. America`s image sometimes gives him pause.

"We need to quit looking like the bully," Pry said. "Sometimes I don`t think President Bush realizes he comes off arrogant." But that wouldn`t sway his support for the president. "Not at this point," he said.

Jesus Delossantos, 71, stood by quietly. A retired haberdasher, he`s here helping out his friend, looking sharp in a shirt the color of papaya and a tie of unforgettable geometry.

"I know for a fact I won`t vote for Bush," he softly confided when asked, another war supporter turned skeptic. "I think the weapons thing was a farce. They just wanted to go in there."

A retired Air Force dietician and lifelong Democrat, Delossantos worked in Vietnam`s largest hospital, putting together special diets for wounded GIs. "They`re sitting ducks now," he said of the troops abroad. "And they`re just kids. Either get them some support or get them out. I don`t want to see a Vietnam again."

In walked Bill McDavid, 66, in the market for a new blue suit for church. An Air Force veteran of the Korean War, he doesn`t like what he`s seen. "I think Bush lied to the troops, I really do. They lied about the weapons of mass destruction. They said the war was over and the troops are still dying — that`s what upsets me," he said, helping himself to a squirt of cologne from the tester on the counter.

Here, the war and the economy seem inextricably linked, and many believe one is making the other worse. The military has always lifted up this town. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — a think tank where the next generation of American jets exists on paper — is just 15 minutes away, and Xenia is not ungrateful for the 15,000 jobs or the strong defense it provides.

But $87 billion sounds like a lot of money to a state that ranks third in the nation in manufacturing jobs lost since 2001. Many of the troops trying to maintain order in Iraq are native sons and daughters — only five other states send more troops to the U.S. armed forces than Ohio.

Here, they are already feeling the fallout from budget deficits swelling in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, the state capital. Revenue from the state to local governments like Xenia has fallen 8% in the last 18 months.

The school district has been told it will not receive $1.5 million in funds the state promised through next March — which could mean larger classes and fewer teachers and supplies. At the same time, the district must meet the "No Child Left Behind" mandate that is a centerpiece of Bush`s education policy, requiring student testing each year, annual progress reports and better-qualified teachers.

"The idea sounds good but it`s unrealistic," said Robert P. Dillaplain, 54, a Xenia obstetrician who is also a member of the school board. The district desperately needs the emergency tax levy on the ballot this fall or cuts will be inevitable. But higher taxes are a hard sell, particularly in times like these. A similar increase failed seven times in the early 1990s. "We almost had to have a bake sale to pay teachers," he recalled.

While Dillaplain takes exception to Bush`s education policy, he supports his Iraq strategy. As a doctor, he knows what it is to be second-guessed when things don`t go as planned, and he says he believes Bush critics are doing just that.

"George Bush can`t tell everybody what he knows," Dillaplain said, sitting in the backyard of his small horse farm with a cup of coffee, a "Support Bush" sign still standing at the end of the driveway. "His biggest strength is he doesn`t waffle. He`s very smart because he doesn`t waste any time explaining his decisions and his mistakes. He`s decisive."

He predicts the people of Greene County will stick by the president through the long haul. "There`s a big difference between disagreeing with the captain of the ship and changing the captain of the ship," he said.

But from where Darla Parrish sits, behind her desk at the dying Hooven Allison plant, a new captain might not look like such a bad idea. She came to the brick building with its looming smokestack when she was 23, a single mother trying to support a 6-year-old son. She started as a machine operator and worked her way up; seven years ago they made her plant manager.

Co-workers at Hooven Allison have become a second family, one that is unraveling as surely as the spools of yellow rope moving around on forklifts. A core group of about 20 have been there as long as 30 years. One of them, Gary Shook, left this month to take a new job. Parrish gave him a surprise party with balloons and cake at 7:30 in the morning. Shook`s eyes filled up. A week later, he was back to say hello.

Now, there are night-school applications on Parrish`s desk. At 43, she is going to learn real estate and home inspections. She`s looking forward to a new life, but is sad to watch the old place wind down. There are just 65 of the original 94 people left; the Saturday work has dried up and she`s the only manager.

"It`s a chance for a new career, a new beginning," she said, but conceded, "It`s a bad time to go out there. If we went out when things were booming, we would have all felt better."

Parrish sat in her living room recliner and watched the television as Bush addressed the nation Sept. 7, asking for $87 billion for Iraq. The war is not on her mind as much as the economy is, she said, but she follows the news.

"I do not believe it was a mistake, but it wasn`t planned well-enough ahead. We should have gone in there, but with other countries. We were too alone in it. I think he just chose to go."

She voted for Bush and liked his no-nonsense image. But as she watched, his words about fighting terrorism there to make streets safer here, his vision of giving Iraq back to the Iraqis, sounded sort of far-fetched, she said.

"I think he means very well by what he`s doing. He`s painting a pretty picture. But I believe reality and a dream are two different things."

Mayor Saraga didn`t see the speech. His 3-week-old son was crying through the whole thing, so he read about it the next day in the Dayton Daily News. He has said for some time that the president needs to talk to the American people more and help them understand.

Saraga, 49, knows about bad government intelligence firsthand. He spent 22 years in the Marines, serving in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Once, when 2,000 Marines were dispatched to rescue a spy ship from an island off Cambodia, intelligence officers said the east side of the island was heavily fortified so they should go in from the west. The trouble was, the aerial photograph was sent backward, so west was really east. Thirty-eight Marines died.

"Ever since then, when intel told me it was going to rain, I left my umbrella at home," he said.

He thinks Bush got similarly bad advice. Now the war and the economy are putting people in a bad way. And although there are a lot of loyal Republicans in Ohio, there are a lot of independents too — more than half of the 85,000 registered voters in Greene County, by his numbers. And if things don`t improve in the next year, they are likely to take their anger into the voting booth.

"What`s bothering people is they believe they are losing jobs because of the war," he said. "We`re a manufacturing state. The recession is hurting. That`s causing people to ask questions. Whether or not they understand why they are mad, they are just mad, and they want to blame somebody."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-me-mach…
THE RECALL CAMPAIGN



Voting Machines Now a Symbol of Polls in Disarray
By Mitchell Landsberg and Tim Reiterman
Times Staff Writers

September 16, 2003

It was once the very symbol of modern, efficient, impersonal technology — not to be folded, spindled or mutilated. But in the last three years, the humble punch card has become synonymous with something else altogether:

Electoral glitches.

In ruling Monday to postpone California`s recall election, a federal appeals court revisited some of the same concerns about punch-card ballots that threw the 2000 presidential election into disarray.

This time, the court said there was no excuse for using an archaic, 19th century technology when more modern means of voting exist.

"Just as the black-and-white fava-bean voting system of revolutionary times was replaced by paper balloting, and the paper ballot replaced by mechanical lever machine, newer technologies have emerged to replace the punch-card," the court wrote.

Punch-card ballots have their advocates, and election officials in several California counties said they were confident they could run a fair election using the old machines.

"We`ve never had a problem with these machines," Jill LaVine, Sacramento County`s interim registrar of voters, said Monday. "We did a lot of testing after the Florida election and we had one of the lowest residual rates around."

Residual rates — one of those terms, like hanging chad, that entered the popular vocabulary after the 2000 presidential vote in Florida — measure the percentage of votes that can`t be counted for various reasons.

The appeals court based its decision, in part, on testimony from experts who said that punch-card systems are responsible for substantially more uncounted ballots than any of several more modern methods.

The ruling included a lively history of the punch card, which was invented in the late 19th century by Herman Hollerith and used to tabulate the 1890 census. It was first used in Votomatic voting machines in 1964, initially in Georgia and then in San Joaquin and Monterey counties.

"No voting system is foolproof," the court said, "and the Constitution does not demand the use of the best available technology." What it does demand, the court said, is that votes be treated equally — and thus that different systems have similar rates of error.

Henry Brady, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case, estimated that punch-card systems are at least 2.5 times more prone to error than other systems and could be responsible for 40,000 uncounted votes in the recall election. He based that projection on the assumption that turnout would be 40%, less than most election officials predict.

"It`s as if you went to your ATM, and it stole $1.50 from you every time you took out $100," Brady said in an interview Monday. Banks could never get away with that, he said, adding, "Why do we allow voting systems to do that?"

Election officials and other experts insist that, although some of California`s punch-card systems had been decertified by the secretary of state because they had been deemed obsolete, they are not as prone to problems as Florida`s were in the 2000 presidential election. They say that California registrars have done a better job of maintaining the machines to avoid hanging, pregnant or dimpled chads — perforations that fail to fall out when punched. And they said that if those anomalies occur, there are detailed guidelines from the secretary of state for determining a voter`s intent.

"It is offensive to me that people compare California`s voting process to Florida," said Kim Alexander, president of the non-partisan California Voting Foundation in Sacramento. "We used punch cards for almost four decades without any major problems."

Alexander said that ballots using optical scanning — the system that Los Angeles County intends to employ, beginning in March — have some advantages over punch-card systems, but that the touch-screen computer systems being deployed in many counties could create more problems than punch cards because there is no voter-verified paper trail to be used in a recount.

R. Michael Alvarez, a Caltech professor of political science and co-leader of a voting machine study, said punch-card systems have two major problems. One is that they are prone to more frequent "overvotes" and "undervotes," in which voters either fail to successfully cast a vote or vote for more candidates than they are allowed.

The other is that members of minority groups, the disabled and those whose first language is not English seem to have higher rates of voting problems with the punch-card systems than with other types. This concern was a basis for the suit the appellate judges ruled on Monday.

Alvarez, like a number of other elections experts, said that, no matter what technology is employed, the 135-candidate gubernatorial ballot will present challenges for voters, election workers and registrars — and probably will lead to more court challenges.

*

Times staff writers Allison Hoffman and Sue Fox contributed to this report.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cheney1…
EDITORIAL



Cheney in Wonderland

September 16, 2003

Vice President Dick Cheney has long acted as though the best defense is a good offense, no matter what the damage to truth or common sense. It was Cheney who CIA analysts say personally pressured them to deliver worst-case estimates about Iraqi capabilities and then declared in July that "it would have been irresponsible in the extreme" not to have acted on those very CIA estimates. Even so, Cheney, in commenting about Iraq on Sunday during a rare television appearance, broke new ground. He not only defended the Bush administration`s record in rebuilding Iraq but he upheld sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein`s connections to terrorism.

On Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney announced to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," and in mid-March he declared that U.S. troops would be "greeted as liberators." Since then, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and American troops face up to 17 attacks a day. Administration officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, have retreated from many of their prewar assertions. Rumsfeld declared in a March 30 interview about weapons of mass destruction that "they`re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat," but on May 27, before the Council on Foreign Relations, he said, "I don`t know the answer." Similarly, Wolfowitz was humbled before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week when Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) confronted him over his declaration in March that Iraqi oil would allow economic recovery to finance itself. The best that Wolfowitz could do was: "as large as these costs are, they`re still small compared to just the economic price that the attacks of Sept. 11 inflicted. "

Cheney seems stuck in a time warp. He asserted "major success, major progress" in Iraq, and that Americans were being welcomed as "liberators." He claimed that the Iraqi government "had a relationship with Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the `90s," a more sweeping time frame than others in the administration have ventured. Those in the administration who seek help from Europe and elsewhere can only hope that Cheney`s speech is seen as something for domestic consumption, a pep talk for the public that is footing the bill.

But voters can be touchy. The longer that top officials peddle rosy scenarios, the more resentful the audience will be when the pep talks no longer work.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrlich…
COMMENTARY


Beijing Boogeyman
Don`t pin the rap on China for job losses in the U.S.
By Everett Ehrlich
Everett Ehrlich, an undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, is director of research of the Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan economic policy think tank.

September 16, 2003

If it`s sympathy you`re after, there`s no better time to be unemployed than during the opening rounds of a presidential election season. Having presided over the loss of 3 million jobs during its tenure so far (but, in fairness, not responsible for many of them), the Bush administration recently announced new steps to make real its sympathy and concern over job losses in general and manufacturing job losses in particular.

For one, it exported Treasury Secretary John W. Snow to China to hector the Chinese about their $100-billion-plus trade surplus with the U.S. and encourage them to let their currency gain in value, which would make their exports more expensive and their imports cheaper.

The administration also announced it would create a "jobs czar," with the rank of undersecretary of Commerce. Having been an undersecretary of Commerce (in Clinton I), I view this with some suspicion. Czars should have better titles than "undersecretary," shouldn`t they? But, then again, wasn`t Deng Xiaoping`s official title deputy premier or some such when he remade China? So who knows what an earnest underling can accomplish.

But all of this new talk about China, its exchange rate and the loss of manufacturing jobs is somewhere between incoherent and absurd.

First, trade is not the driving force behind manufacturing job losses. The real culprits are far more benign: technology-driven productivity gains and structural change in the economy.

Manufacturing has sustained productivity growth rates of 4% annually for 10 years, meaning the same amount of goods can be made with 4% fewer people each year. Or put it this way: If the demand for manufactured goods (from cars to computers) doesn`t grow by 4% each year, the manufacturing labor force is going to shrink. Recent slow growth assures that result.

And then there`s structural change, particularly that old devil outsourcing. When a manufacturing company gets rid of its marketing researchers and maintenance workers and hires outside firms to do those jobs, "manufacturing" shrinks and "services" grow, even though nothing`s really changed.

So it`s not right to pin the rap for disappearing jobs on trade, and it`s beyond the pale to pin it on China. China doesn`t make stuff cheap; it makes cheap stuff. That is, China`s products generally don`t underprice and compete with American ones. Instead, the countries that China is pushing aside are Mexico, Malaysia and the like — the folks who were already making cheap clothing, shoes and toys.

It`s almost surreal to imply, as the administration did when Snow made his Asian rounds, that our trade position would be affected by the Chinese letting their currency appreciate. All that would change is the name of the country printed on the sticker on the bottom of your flip-flops. But the worst fallacy of all might be that there is some magic level of manufacturing employment below which our economy falls into the abyss. If we were here 100 years ago and someone told us that we would one day need only 1% of our labor force to grow not only our own food but much of a hungry world`s as well, we would have thought them daft. But they would have been right.

Why is it surprising, then, that it takes an ever-smaller share of the population to make our things, just as it does to grow our food? If someone could invent a way to throw a bunch of parts off a roof and they landed as a finished car, would you think it bad? Well, that`s what productivity growth does — albeit a little more slowly.

There is no denying that economic change — whether new technologies, foreign competition or structural change — means displacement or hardship for some. But you can`t stop change any more than King Canute could command the tide to recede. Instead, we need to reorient our policies around helping workers adapt. Training and relocation aid and other such programs may cost something, but they are cheaper than a policy that inhibits the very forces — productivity, trade — that raise our standard of living.

The image of a billion Chinese workers is daunting. But rather than a threat, the Chinese are an opportunity, the market of the future. Fear of economic change can certainly be unnerving. Perhaps we should have a special undersecretary of Commerce to deal with that.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…
COMMENTARY



White House`s Cynical Iraq Ploy: `Misspeak` First, `Correct` It Later
Robert Scheer

September 16, 2003



It`s hard to believe that it was just a slip of the tongue rather than a calculated lie when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sullied the memory of those who died on 9/11 by exploiting their deaths for propaganda purposes. The brainwashing of Americans, two-thirds of whom believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, is too effective a political ploy for the Bush regime to suddenly let the truth get in the way.

"We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular and we know a great many of [Osama] bin Laden`s key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime " Wolfowitz told ABC on this year`s 9/11 anniversary.

We know nothing of the sort, of course, and the next day Wolfowitz was forced to admit it. He told Associated Press that his remarks referred not to a "great many" of Bin Laden`s lieutenants but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. " should have been more precise," Wolfowitz admitted.

Even if the leaders of the Bush team were half as smart as they think they are, it would be amazing that they "misspoke" as often as they have. As happened Sunday when Tim Russert challenged Vice President Dick Cheney to defend his claim, made on "Meet the Press" before the war, that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. "Yeah, I did misspeak," Cheney admitted. "We never had any evidence that [Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon."

The pattern is clear: Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar. It is really quite ingenious in its cynical effectiveness, and Wolfowitz`s latest performance is a classic example — even his correction needs correcting.

The Zarqawi connection has been a red herring since Colin Powell emphasized it in his prewar presentation to the United Nations Security Council, telling the world how Zarqawi was running a chemical weapons lab. Problem was, the site was not in Iraqi control but was in the U.S.-patrolled no-fly zone, and when reporters visited it in the days immediately after Powell`s speech they found nothing that indicated anything like a chemical weapons lab.

The fundamentalist militia known as Ansar al Islam that controlled the area, meanwhile, was supported by Hussein`s enemies in Iran.

Nor has any evidence of connections between Ansar al Islam and Hussein`s regime surfaced since the U.S invasion, as Wolfowitz conceded in congressional testimony last Tuesday.

At that same Senate hearing, Vincent Cannistraro, formerly the CIA`s director of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, testified: "There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war. Now we`ve created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."

So, Wolfowitz and the administration might prove to be right after all. Not about Iraq`s ties with Bin Laden before the invasion. Nor about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction the president used to scare up support for war. But by turning its claim that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terrorism into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Without this claim, the president`s men would be revealed as imperial adventurers who wasted the lives and resources of this country to redraw the map of the world. That scheme, including "preemptive military intervention," can be traced to a "Defense Planning Guidance" document prepared by Wolfowitz in 1992 when he was Cheney`s undersecretary of Defense for policy.

Thus, it was not too surprising that the bodies recovered after the 9/11 attacks were barely in the ground before Cheney and Wolfowitz were arguing that a proper response to 9/11 was to go after Iraq — whether or not it had anything to do with the plot. They were willing to say anything to convince us they were right, even trying to sell this as a war without cost.

In March, one week into the war, Wolfowitz told Congress, "We`re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." Now we find that Iraq can`t pay for its own reconstruction and since we went to war unilaterally, defying world opinion, we are unlikely to convince anybody else to chip in.

Last week, a Washington Post poll showed that 60% of the American people opposed the president`s plan to throw $87 billion more into this quagmire, on top of the $79 billion budgeted already. Perhaps, like people blinking in the sun after a long hibernation, Americans are finally awakening to the stupid and craven things being done in the name of protecting us.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Prisoners Earn Perks in Guantanamo Reward Plan
Mon September 15, 2003 10:57 AM ET




By Jane Sutton
U.S. NAVAL BASE, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Reuters) - Military officials at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba have introduced a reward program that lets Afghanistan war prisoners earn perks and more comfortable quarters by dishing out intelligence and following camp rules.

Behave and they get checkerboards, decks of cards or the right to choose a book from a carefully screened library cart. Throw water on a guard or ignore orders to leave the exercise yard on schedule and prisoners forfeit a game or book.

Establish a consistent record of good behavior and a select few prisoners -- up to 40 -- can move from the isolation of the single-celled maximum-security units into medium-security units where they live, read and pray in groups.

"What this has done is dramatically increased our cooperation," said Brig. Gen. Jim Payne, deputy commander for the prison operation.

During a recent visit to the base, military officials led reporters on a limited tour inside Camp Delta, where the 660 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are held. Reporters were not allowed to speak to prisoners, seen only in shadow through small screened windows, but toured empty cellblocks.

Prisoners in the maximum-security blocks live alone in small metal-mesh cells with shelf-style beds, floor toilets and low basins for washing.

They get the basic package of "comfort items" -- a thin mattress, blanket, sheet, gray foam prayer mat, towel, washcloth, prayer cap, prayer beads, toiletries, orange uniforms, rubber flip-flop shoes and a Koran.

Meals are delivered in foam containers by guards wearing rubber gloves. Prisoners are shackled at the hands and legs when they are taken two at a time to the showers or to the exercise yard for 30-minute recreation periods twice a week.

Every 30 days, camp officials review detailed computerized records on each prisoner and decide who has earned a spot in the medium-security blocks completed in March. Detainees there live in four dormitory-style rooms with 10 beds.

They get white uniforms, thicker mattresses and dine together at an outdoor picnic table under a concrete shade. Exercise increases to an hour a day, in groups big enough for team sports like soccer and volleyball.

They get red Oriental rugs for prayer mats, an extra pair of canvas shoes, and more puzzles, books and games.

"We never take away the Koran. We never take away anything that would be a health item -- blankets or food," Payne said.

REWARD FOR INFORMATION

The reward system also recognizes cooperation during interrogations. Camp officials won`t discuss specifics.

But they said that although some prisoners have been at Guantanamo for 20 months and have no current information about pending attacks, they provide information about terrorist organizations, financing and recruiting.

"Tactical intelligence decays very rapidly but operational and strategic intelligence is viable, valid and enormously useful," Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commands the prisoner operation, told Reuters. "We knit together golden threads as we come to be able to understand what terrorism is all about."

The ultimate reward is release from Guantanamo and 68 prisoners have been returned to their home countries since the prison operation began in January 2002.

To earn that, prisoners must convince military officials that they have no more useful information to give and that they are not a threat to the United States.

Miller recommends which prisoners should be released, recognizing those who "understand the consequences of their actions, this unspeakable action that they have taken."

"Many of them were duped into terrorism or sometimes kidnapped into being, supporting terrorism. So when taken out of these despicable people then they are cooperative."

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Gaffe casts doubts on electronic voting

SAN JOSE, California (AP) --The strange case of an election tally that appears to have popped up on the Internet hours before polls closed is casting new doubts about the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines.

During San Luis Obispo County`s March 2002 primary, absentee vote tallies were apparently sent to an Internet site operated by Diebold Election Systems Inc., the maker of the voting machines used in the election.

At least that`s what timestamps on digital records showed.

County election officials say the unexplained gaffe probably didn`t influence the vote, and Diebold executives -- who only recently acknowledged the lapse -- say voters should have confidence in the election process.

Further evidence of problems
But computer programmers say the incident is further evidence that electronic voting technology could allow a politically connected computer hacker to monitor balloting and, if the vote was going the wrong way, mobilize voters to swing the election.

"If you`re at the state party headquarters and you know how the vote is going in a county, you can allocate scarce resources to the county where you`re losing by a close margin," said Jim March, a computer system administrator from Milpitas who examined ballot results that ended up on a Diebold site without password protection. "This data is incredibly valuable to a campaign manager."

Silicon Valley computer experts have long criticized touch-screen voting machines, which do not normally provide a paper receipt and which send digital votes directly to a computer server. Programmers say software bugs, power outages or clever hackers could easily delete or alter data -- and recounts would prove impossible without paper backups.

Problems with optical scan
San Luis Obispo County relies on the more popular "optical scan" system used in 34 of California`s 58 counties.

Programmers say the March 2002 incident casts suspicion on any election system that depends on computers -- even the relatively low-tech optical scan, which relies on paper ballots and uses computers only to store and send data.

Voters who cast optical scan ballots typically use a pencil to fill in a bubble near their candidate`s name on a sheet of paper, similar to standardized tests. Poll workers feed the ballots into a scanner, which records results on a precinct computer.

After polls close, results are sent to a central server via modem. Anytime modems are involved, hackers get an opportunity to intercept data, computer security experts say.

March said he found absentee ballot totals from 57 of 164 San Luis Obispo County precincts in an easily accessible File Transfer Protocol site operated by North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold. The votes were time-stamped at 3:31 p.m. on March 5, 2002 -- more than four hours before polls closed.

By law, election officials cannot release tallies until voting is finished -- typically 8 p.m. on election day. Activists discovered the data in January.

Investigation continues
Diebold, which won`t say when the data showed up on the site, acknowledged the incident and says it is investigating how the data ended up on a public Internet site.

Deborah Seiler, Diebold`s West Coast sales representative, said Diebold engineers may have published the results as part of a test -- possibly days, weeks or months after the county primary, regardless of the time stamp. She said a system of checks and balances safeguards Diebold`s 33,000 voting machines nationwide from fraud.

"These activists don`t understand what they`re looking at," Seiler said.

County election officials insist the primary was fair. No one has called for a criminal investigation or recount. Most local supervisors were running unopposed, and the winning candidates and proposals enjoyed large margins.

County clerk-recorder Julie L. Rodewald said she was "concerned" about the results winding up online, but she has no plans to get rid of Diebold equipment.

Complicating poll jobs
March questioned why San Luis Obispo County`s server connected to a Diebold server at all -- particularly if it dialed out while polls were open. He said the "phone home" incident could have been the work of an incompetent or malicious Diebold insider, or an outside hacker. Any astute campaign manager could have profited, he said.

Kim Alexander, president of the Davis, California-based nonprofit California Voter Foundation, said computers have benefited the election process by speeding vote counts. But technology has complicated poll workers` jobs, and the San Luis Obispo County incident and other mysterious errors have raised alarming security concerns.

"In our quest to deliver faster, more accurate election results, we`ve left the voting process wide open to new forms of attack and mismanagement," Alexander said.



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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


Find this article at:
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[Joerver]

30 Years Of U.S. UN Vetoes.
How the U.S. has Voted // Vetoed- See any bias - See any pattern ?

by rp 3:38pm Sat Mar 8 `03


1972-2002 Vetoes from the USA
---
Year -----Resolution Vetoed by the USA
1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.
1973 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.
1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.
1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.
1976 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians.
1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure United Nations decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security.
1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.
1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.
1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.
1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa.
1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa.
1979 Offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement.
1979 Concerns negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race.
1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel.
1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.
1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries.
1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people.
1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories.
1979 Calls for protection of developing counties` exports.
1979 Calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
1979 Opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs of states.
1979 For a United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 To include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 Safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations.
1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons.
1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people.
1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories. 3 resolutions.
1980 Afirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians.
1980 Offers assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement.
1980 Attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co-operation.
1980 Endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of United Nations Decade for Women.
1980 Declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
1980 Emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right.
1980 Calls for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions.
1980 Calls for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
1981 Promotes co-operative movements in developing countries.
1981 Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes.
1981 Condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories.
1981 Calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons.
1981 Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament.
1981 Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.
1981 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights.
1981 Condemns South Africa for attacks on neighbouring states, condemns apartheid and attempts to strengthen sanctions. 7 resolutions.
1981 Condemns an attempted coup by South Africa on the Seychelles.
1981 Condemns Israel`s treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq. 18 resolutions.
1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 6 resolutions (1982 to 1983).
1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier.
1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.
1982 Condemns apartheid and calls for the cessation of economic aid to South Africa. 4 resolutions.
1982 Calls for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology.
1982 Sets up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives and debts.
1982 Nuclear test bans and negotiations and nuclear free outer space. 3 resolutions.
1982 Supports a new world information and communications order.
1982 Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons.
1982 Development of international law.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment .
1982 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment.
1982 Development of the energy resources of developing countries.
1983 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 15 resolutions.
1984 Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies.
1984 International action to eliminate apartheid.
1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1984 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 18 resolutions.
1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories.
1985 Resolutions about cooperation, human rights, trade and development. 3 resolutions.
1985 Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist and neo-Fascist activities .
1986 Calls on all governments (including the USA) to observe international law.
1986 Imposes economic and military sanctions against South Africa.
1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians.
1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.
1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner.
1986 Resolutions about cooperation, security, human rights, trade, media bias, the environment and development.
8 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians.
1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians.
1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon. 2 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
1987 Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States.
1987 Calls for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua and a call to end the trade embargo against Nicaragua. 2 resolutions.
1987 Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation.
1987 Resolutions concerning journalism, international debt and trade. 3 resolutions.
1987 Opposition to the build up of weapons in space.
1987 Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction.
1987 Opposition to nuclear testing. 2 resolutions.
1987 Proposal to set up South Atlantic "Zone of Peace".
1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989).
1989 Condemns USA invasion of Panama.
1989 Condemns USA troops for ransacking the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama.
1989 Condemns USA support for the Contra army in Nicaragua.
1989 Condemns illegal USA embargo of Nicaragua.
1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force.
1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resoltions.
1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories.
1995 Afirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory.
1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories. 2 resolutions.
1999 Calls on the USA to end its trade embargo on Cuba. 8 resolutions (1992 to 1999).
2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
2001 To set up the International Criminal Court.
2002 To renew the peace keeping mission in Bosnia.

[Joerver]

Ex-Gen. Wesley Clark to Seek White House
7 minutes ago Add Politics - AP to My Yahoo!


By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wesley Clark, the retired general with a four-star military resume but no political experience, decided Tuesday to become the 10th Democratic presidential candidate, officials close to him said.

"We`ll make an announcement in Little Rock tomorrow," Clark told The Associated Press. He didn`t reveal his decision but said with a smile, "We`re tremendously excited."


Officials close to the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Clark planned to announce his entry at 1 p.m. EDT in the Arkansas capital.


Clark`s decision came as Democratic operatives from around the country gathered at his small, low-slung brick headquarters on the banks of the Arkansas river to discuss strategy for mounting a late-starting presidential campaign.


One hurdle will be his lack of political experience. Asked if he was ready to start telling Americans his positions on domestic policy, few of which he`s ever revealed, Clark said, "I`ll do my best, but there will be a lot of things that I don`t know right away."


"I want to learn," he said outside his headquarters between meetings. "I`ve got a whole period of time. I`ve got to go around America. I want to talk to people about the issues."


Clark`s decision stole some limelight from John Edwards, the North Carolina senator who formally announced his presidential candidacy after months of campaigning. The timing underscored Clark`s potential to shake up the tight Democratic campaign.


Clark`s fledgling political team is drawn heavily from the political networks of former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. The advisers include Mark Fabiani, who served as spokesman for former Vice President Al Gore`s 2000 campaign; Ron Klain, a strategist in Al Gore`s 2000 campaign; Washington lawyer Bill Oldaker; Vanessa Weaver, a Clinton appointee; Skip Rutherford, a Clinton fund-raiser who lives here; George Bruno, a New Hampshire activist; and Peter Knight, a Washington lobbyist and longtime Gore fund-raiser. Bruce Lindsey, former White House aide and now an Arkansas lawyer, also backs Clark.


Clinton had urged Clark to enter the race, but neither he nor Gore is expected to take sides in the primary fight.


Clark`s team was exploring several venues in Little Rock for an announcement, including a park named for World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a Little Rock native. This site would underscore what Clark`s advisers consider his greatest strength: his longtime military background.


Clark greeted reporters with a "good morning," as he climbed into a two-seat sports car and left his headquarters. Some of his aides had already gathered for the meeting, including Fabiani and Rutherford. Others, including Klain and Bruno, were still making their way to the Arkansas capital.


Clark, 58, believes his four-star military service would counter Bush`s political advantage as a wartime commander in chief, friends say. The retired general has been critical of the Iraq war and Bush`s postwar efforts, positions that would put him alongside announced candidates Howard Dean, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio as the most vocal anti-war candidates.


It would be a long-shot bid.


Just four months before voting begins, Clark would be competing against candidates who have had months to raise money, build organizations in key states and recruit the party`s top political talent. He has no political experience, and a spotty voting record.


County records show that Clark registered to vote here in 2002, casting a ballot in the Democratic primary then voted in the general election. Before 2002, Clark said he was registered in nearby Saline County while serving in the military but acknowledged "sometimes I didn`t make it" to vote.


"I remember a couple of tomes in the military when the ballot either got there late or I wasn`t there when the ballot arrived," he said.


Clark said there`s still room and time for another White House campaign.


"It`s not too late to get in the race if I decide to run," he said.

The strategists assembled in Little Rock on Tuesday are among the party`s best. An Internet-fueled draft-Clark movement has developed the seeds of a campaign organization and more than $1 million in pledges.

Clark`s team urged supporters from the draft Clark committees to travel to Little Rock for the announcement.

Clark`s resume is formidable — Rhodes scholar, first in his 1966 class at West Point, White House fellow, head of the U.S. Southern Command and NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo.

Clark`s local office said no announcement was planned for Monday or Tuesday but it was noncommittal about the rest of the week as supporters anxiously awaited his decision.

Nearly 12 years after Clinton announced his first campaign, Arkansans were excited at the prospect of backing another favorite son.

Jean Wallace, a classmate of Clark`s from grammar school, has organized Warriors for Wes, a group of Clark classmates named after the mascot at their alma mater, Hall High School. She said the supporters were ready to travel the country to tout Clark`s candidacy the way "Friends of Bill" organizations crisscrossed the country campaigning for Clinton.

"We are eagerly awaiting an announcement very shortly. There are thousands of people across the country doing the same thing, people who have put their hearts and time and resources into this effort," Jeff Dailey, spokesman for Draft Clark for President 2004, said.

The group, one of several Draft Clark groups, boasts of 166 coordinators in 50 states.

"In New Hampshire, there are many people ready to move out if they`re given the green light," said Bruno, one of Clinton`s earlier backers in the key primary voting state.

Clark is scheduled to deliver a speech at the University of Iowa on Sept. 19.

___

Associated Press Writers James Jefferson and Caryn Rousseau contributed to this report

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:32 a.m. EDT September 15, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
A rocket-propelled grenade attack launched by guerrillas killed a U.S. soldier in central Baghdad. The military said a soldier from the 1st Armored Division died early Monday morning at a field hospital.
Secretary of State Colin Powell visited a mass grave Monday to highlight perhaps the single biggest human-rights abuse of Saddam Hussein`s brutal regime -- the chemical weapons murder of some 5,000 people in March 1988. Powell took part in the formal dedication of a memorial and museum to commemorate those who lost their lives 15 years ago.
South Korea is studying a U.S. request to send thousands of light infantry troops to Iraq in what could become the country`s largest overseas troops dispatch since the Vietnam War.
Dozens of U.S. troops raided homes in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit Monday, and arrested five men suspected of helping to bankroll attacks against American troops.
A new poll shows Americans are uncomfortable with President George W. Bush`s request for an additional $87 billion in spending for Iraq. The ABC News-Washington Post poll finds 6 in 10 people oppose the increased spending.

CASUALTIES
U.S. casualties reported Monday: 1
A total of 293 U-S soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began. Of those, 156 have died in combat since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Summary
US UK Other* Total Avg Days

295 50 2 347 1.93 180

Latest Military Fatality Date: 9/15/2003
Accident: 138
Friendly Fire: 15
Homicide: 2
Hostile fire: 167
Illness: 21
Non-combat related: 1
Possible suicide: 3
09/16/03 Yahoo (Reuters): Three American soldiers wounded
Three American soldiers wounded when Humvee attacked on Sept. 16/2003 south of Baghdag and Albanian soldier as well wounded in an grenade attack in Mosul along with 13 Iraqi people.
09/16/03 Reuters
Grenade attack in Mosul on Monday wounds at least one Albanian coalition soldier and 13 Iraqi bystanders.
09/15/03 The Guardian: Gunmen Assassinate Iraq Police Chief
KHALDIYA, Iraq (AP) -- Three gunmen, their faces covered with red and white Arab headdresses, assassinated the police chief of this Sunni Triangle town Monday in an ambush at a traffic circle.
09/15/03 Centcom: ONE SOLDIER KILLED IN RPG ATTACK
BAGHDAD, Iraq –One 1st Armored Division soldier was killed Sept. 15 when the soldier’s patrol was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade round in central Baghdad.
09/14/03 CENTCOM
One US soldier killed, three wounded, in IED attack in Fallujah on Sept. 14th.
09/14/03 New York Times
A roadside bomb attack on a convoy in the troubled city of Fallujah killed one U.S. soldier and injured three others

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Transcript - David Brancaccio interviews George Soros

SOROS: The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists… People who maintain that markets will take care of everything, that you leave it to the markets and the markets know best. Therefore, you need no government, no interference with business. Let everybody pursue his own interests. And that will serve the common interest. Now, there is a good foundation for this. But it`s a half-truth.
BRANCACCIO: George Soros says he`s convinced the Bush administration is pursuing policies both foreign and economic that in Soros`s experience, will be catastrophic.

Soros has been hailed as a international financial genius: "the world`s greatest money manager" said the INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR; one of the most influential philanthropists, according to TIME.

So he`s not the kind of man you`d expect to be arguing that when it comes to free market capitalism, it`s possible to have `too much of a good thing,` that unchecked capitalism fails to provide for certain fundamental needs.

SOROS: We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity.

The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That`s a political process. And the market fundamentalists have managed to reduce providing those public goods.

BRANCACCIO: Providing those public goods has long been at the top of his agenda for making the world a better place.

He`s not only called for more regulation of the global economy but he`s also been an outspoken advocate of democracy throughout the world. In fact, he`s been described as the only American citizen with his own foreign policy.

SOROS: I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It`s their work that I`m supporting. So it`s not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.

BRANCACCIO: Indeed, over the past 20 years, Soros has given away more than $4 billion of his personal fortune.

He`s built a philanthropic network that spans more than fifty countries, promoting what he calls "open societies" with the goal of establishing democratically elected governments that respect human rights, the rule of law and market economies.

SOROS: And as long as there is enough support for it, then actually you can make a difference in the world. And I think we are succeeding in many of our efforts in making a difference.

BRANCACCIO: His foundations have sponsored thousands of development projects…everything from low-income housing construction in Africa to medical clinics in Russia to political movements worldwide.

As early as the 1970s, Soros gave money to dissident groups in the old eastern bloc, helping bring down those communist regimes.

Since 1987, he`s pumped more than $1 billion dollars into Russia alone … including his donation of $500 million to fund health and education programs there.

And in 1993, when Sarajevo was under siege, his foundation built utilities to supply desperately needed water and electricity.

All that made possible by the staggering profits he earned directing his "Quantum" hedge fund. His personal fortune is estimated as high as $7 billion and he pledges to give most of it away.

But his success in business has not been without controversy.

SOROS: I`ve been called as a man who broke the Bank of England when I attacked the sterling.

BRANCACCIO: In 1992, Soros made a spectacular bet, taking in a billion dollars on a hunch the British pound would be devalued. Many blamed Soros for forcing the pound`s fall.

But it was in France that Soros got into trouble with the authorities. In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of a French bank. He declined, but he did buy the bank`s stock. Last year, a French court ruled that was insider trading.

BRANCACCIO: Why should I believe you, when I`ve read, you say you did not conduct insider trading, instead of a French judge?

SOROS: Well, that`s up to you. I was found guilty. I think, in a miscarriage of justice, frankly. And I`m fighting it. I`m appealing it, and I`ll continue fighting it.

BRANCACCIO: Soros denies any wrongdoing and says news of the takeover was public knowledge. Nevertheless, he was fined more than $2 million…roughly the amount French authorities say he made from the trades.

More than a dozen other people were investigated in the incident. All except Soros were either acquitted or pardoned.

SOROS: It is something that troubles me a great deal. And I`ll fight it with all I`ve got. But the French judicial system is not perfect, either.

BRANCACCIO: Does it worry you, for instance, that maybe some of your actions in the past would have hurt some people, when you withdrew capital from certain countries?

SOROS: Yes. No, you see you can`t… as a market participant, if you want to be successful, I think you just have to look out for your own interests.

BRANCACCIO: It sounds amoral.

SOROS: Pardon?

BRANCACCIO: It sounds amoral.

SOROS: It is amoral. Now, it`s very often understood and understood as immoral. And that is a very different, being immoral. If you hurt people deliberately or you know, that`s immoral. If you break the law, that`s immoral. If you play by the rules, that is the market itself is amoral.

If you impose morality on it, it means that you are actually with your hands tied behind your back and you`re not going to be successful. It`s extremely hard to be successful.

BRANCACCIO: Do you think, on balance, that your philanthropic work counteracts the more ruthless decisions that you had to make when you were a financier?

SOROS: It is no connection whatsoever. I`m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I`m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

BRANCACCIO: Now retired from his job of making money, Soros is spending his time giving it away. And how he spends his money, he says, has a lot to do with his experiences growing up…surviving one of history`s darkest periods.

George Soros was born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Budapest. When the Nazis invaded, Soros`s father hid the children with sympathetic families.

BRANCACCIO: Do you see a thread that links your childhood experience with your career as a financier, with your philanthropy, and now political activist?

SOROS: Oh, it`s a very strong thread, that leads right through. You know, I learned at a very early age that what kind of social system or political system prevails is very important. Not just for your well-being, but for your very survival.

Because, you know, I could have been killed by the Nazis. I could have wasted my life under the Communists. So, that`s what led me to this idea of an open society. And that is the idea that is motivating me.

BRANCACCIO: At the London School of Economics after the war, he was exposed to the philosophy of the "open society."

That`s been the basis of his philanthropy throughout the world. But the political struggle for an open society, says Soros, now has to be fought right here in the United States.

SOROS: The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it`s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

BRANCACCIO: And says Soros, the biggest obstacle to an open society is the Bush administration`s philosophy that on both the domestic and international fronts, either you`re with us or against us.

SOROS: You know, it`s a distortion of what this country stands for.

BRANCACCIO: And that offends you?

SOROS: It offends me because I think it`s a misinterpretation of what America`s role in the world ought to be. We are the dominant power. And that imposes on us a responsibility to be actually concerned with the well being of the world. Because we set the agenda.

And there are a lot of problems, including terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, that can only be tackled by collective action. And we ought to be leading that collective action, instead of riding roughshod over other people`s opinions and interests.

BRANCACCIO: It`s just so hard, Mr. Soros. I mean two years ago, a few blocks from where we`re speaking right now, the World Trade Center came down. The notion that we should have harnessed our response to make nice with the world may be too much to ask.

SOROS: Maybe. Certainly, being nice to the world won`t stop terrorism. So, we`ve got to fight terrorism. But how do you fight it?

If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it`s much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems.

BRANCACCIO: Problems in places like Iraq, where, says Soros, the Bush administration`s actions have alienated traditional allies and fueled anti-American sentiment.

SOROS: Now that we did not find weapons and there was no known connection with al-Qaeda, they say, "Well, we came to liberate Iraq, to introduce democracy, nation-building." But that`s exactly what President Bush was opposed to in the elections. And it`s a business that I am engaged in.

BRANCACCIO: You have wide credentials in this whole field of nation building.

SOROS: You know, with all my experience, Iraq would have been the last place on earth that I would have chosen for introducing democracy.

I mean, democracy has to be built painstakingly and very slowly. And, you know, I`ve been engaged in that now for the last 15 years.

BRANCACCIO: This is a place with bitter religious rivalries, with even recent history as terrible animosity between groups in society.

SOROS: Right. So, it was a horrendous naiveté, actually, to think that you can go into Iraq and you can introduce democracy by military force.

BRANCACCIO: Could you share with me three concrete ideas of things we should be doing in Iraq now?

SOROS: I think just one. We`ve got to get the United Nations involved. We have to transfer enough authority to the United Nations, to internationalize the issue. Because we cannot do it, and we should not do it alone. It was a mistake to do it alone. We have made the mistake. And the sooner we correct it, the better.

BRANCACCIO: So, you argue certainly don`t withdraw our military forces from Iraq. It`s gonna require more money.

SOROS: That`s right. We have made a terrible mistake. And we have to pay the price. We have to pay the price. But we have to recognize that we`ve been very badly misled.

BRANCACCIO: And says Soros, we`ve been badly misled by the Bush administration at home as well from its lack of regulation on Wall Street … to the curtailment of civil liberties under the Patriot Act.

SOROS: I mean, you know, you pass the USA Patriot Act without proper discussion. And anybody who opposed it was accused of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. So I think we`ve gone off the rail in this country.

BRANCACCIO: Yet the Patriot Act was passed with a lot of democratic support. There was debate, but not proper discussion you don`t believe?

SOROS: Yeah, I mean, it was done in six weeks. Lawmakers didn`t even get a copy of the bill. They couldn`t even read it before it was passed.

Now, the Democrats caved in. I`m very critical of the Democrats. But of course, it was a moment of, I suppose, national calamity. It was a tragedy and people were very emotional. It`s a traumatic event.

But there was a group of people who took advantage of it and who`s been leading us in the wrong direction.

BRANCACCIO: All this has led Soros to conclude the most important thing he can do is stop George Bush.

SOROS: I think he`s a man of good intentions. I don`t doubt it. But I think he`s leading us in the wrong direction.

BRANCACCIO: So just last month, Soros put his money where his mouth is one more time. He gave $10 million to America Coming Together, a liberal coalition pledged to defeat the President in 2004.

SOROS: By putting up $10 million and getting other people engaged, there`s enough there to get the show going. In other words, to get the organizing going. Half of it still needs funding.

BRANCACCIO: What is the show? It`s a get out the vote effort.

GEORGE SOROS: Get out the vote and get people engaged on issues.

This is the same kind of grassroots organizing that we did or we helped in Slovakia when Mechar was defeated, in Croatia when Tudjman was defeated and in Yugoslavia when Milosevic.

BRANCACCIO: But gee whiz, Tudjman, Milosevic, George Bush, almost in the same phrase? Those are fighting words?

SOROS: But I do think that our leaders…If you take John Ashcroft, I don`t think he`s an Open Society person, Donald Rumsfeld…I do think that we have an extremist element in the government. I think that President Bush has been captured by these people as a result of September 11.

BRANCACCIO: But you really think that if it`s true that the current administration has been hijacked by extremists, that the American public, which by and large and history doesn`t tolerate extremism all that well, resents extremism, that the American public by and large wouldn`t notice?

SOROS: I think that they are noticing it. It think that it`s happening. And this is exactly why I think that people are about, may I say that, coming to their senses.

SOROS: And I think the moment of truth has come in Iraq. Because we really got into a terrible, terrible mess, into a quagmire. And our soldiers are at risk. But it`s worse. Because our armed forces, the Army is at risk. In other words, our capacity to project power that it has greatly diminished because we have misused our power. And I think that people will wake up.

BRANCACCIO: Misuse of power, quagmire, a wake up call for reform: these are heavy assessments of the current state of American policy in Iraq. As for how it will turn out, even George Soros, who has gambled on the future so often and so well, ventures no specific prediction.

But Soros is very clear on what he believes should happen next:

SOROS: If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it`s a very scary spectacle to me.

If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can`t get out of that. We mustn`t get out of it.

But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place.



© Public Affairs Television. All rights reserved.

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September 16, 2003 | home

COMMENT
REAL REASONS
by Nicholas Lemann
Issue of 2003-09-22
Posted 2003-09-15
The war in Iraq was a long time coming—so long that it was obvious in Washington that war was certain even before the diplomatic drama that preceded it began to unfold. President Bush and Secretary of State Powell went to the United Nations, made their charges against Saddam Hussein, forced the weapons inspectors to return, presented evidence of their own when the inspectors found none, and, finally, concluded that Iraq would not disarm and war could not be postponed, no matter what the Security Council thought—and all that, evidently, came after the decision was made to invade. Disarmament may have been a sincere (if, it now appears, unwarranted) reason for war, but it wasn’t dispositive. It was the plot device that powered a preordained procession.

The President’s television speech about Iraq last week had the feeling of something real being revealed after a thick, obscuring outer layer has been stripped away. Called upon to justify the war anew (because things haven’t been going well in Iraq), and deprived of his main prewar argument (because no forbidden weapons have been found), Bush gave us something that seemed much closer to what his true thinking was when he made the decision for war. The news in his speech was the request for eighty-seven billion dollars and the decision to ask for international troops, but the greater significance lay in what Bush told us about his own beliefs and, therefore, about what the country is committed to while he is President.

Bush’s speech was not limited to Iraq; he gave us a general argument about the Middle East, terrorism, and democracy. The first link in his chain of logic was the idea that, as he put it, “for a generation leading up to September the 11th, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response.” (This formulation is notable for its implicit indictment of the first President Bush for pusillanimity, and for putting the son in the position of correcting the father’s mistake.) So just about any forceful response to terrorism, or to the “radical allies” of terrorism (a group that included Saddam, evidently), would cause terrorism to decrease. As Bush said, “We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

This doesn’t quite parse—it doesn’t allow for the terrorist attacks that have followed the use of force in Iraq, or for the evident immunity of most of the world’s weaklings to terrorist attacks. Terrorists, unfortunately, appear to target qualities more specific than mere meekness. But Bush’s statement does claim that reducing terrorism justifies virtually any use of American force. If you believe this, as Bush seems to do with every fibre of his being, how could you in good conscience not go to war in the region from which the worst terrorism emanates? Back in June, Thomas Friedman, of the Times, wrote breezily, “The ‘real reason’ for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world.” Well, now Bush has as much as stated it. Friedman went on, “Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it, and because he was right in the heart of that world.”

Bush’s second point was that, like the use of strength, freedom and democracy inevitably reduce terrorism, too. The choice is simple: “The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations.” This, again, is impressive in its clarity and certainty, but counter-examples fairly leap to mind. What about Pakistan—a quasi-democracy, but also one of the world’s leading terrorist sanctuaries? What about Saddam’s Iraq—the Middle East’s most oppressive regime, but one that left little maneuvering room for terrorists? What about the supranational Al Qaeda, the most dangerous of the terrorist organizations, whose survival apparently requires less the help of “tyrants” than of chaotic conditions in weak states—such as Iraq and Afghanistan now? As Bush makes the case, all such troublesome particulars must yield to an ironclad general rule: “Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.” Therefore, every American military attack on a Middle Eastern tyrant—a term that plausibly encompasses most of the region’s heads of state—reduces the risk of terrorist attacks on the United States. It’s hard to imagine a broader charter than the one Bush grants himself through this set of assumptions.

Goals as morally grand as defeating terrorism and ending tyranny make any objection to the program for reasons of logic or practicality look puny, niggling, and cynical. The President’s rhetoric divides the world into those who have passion and courage and those who believe in nothing except a self-defeating caution. The willingness to make the gesture overwhelms whatever difficulties there are on the ground. This is not just a habit of thought that Bush conveniently seized upon after the war. The understaffing of the reconstruction and the lack of post-combat planning wasn’t the result merely of Donald Rumsfeld’s bullheadedness. It stemmed from the President’s soaring conviction that courageous intentions must inevitably produce pleasing results.

As we are finding out in Iraq, military boldness does not always decrease terrorism. It can, in fact, inspire it—witness the terrorists swarming into Iraq, including members of Al Qaeda, who weren’t there before. Toppling tyrants does not automatically decrease terrorism, either, and in the short run it isn’t even guaranteed to make life better for people in the countries the tyrants ruled. Even the most powerful nation in history does not have an infinitely large army or infinite funds, and must live in the realm of calculations about what is possible and what will be effective. Consequences are not, alas, inevitably the product of intentions; they are determined by the collision of intentions and reality. It isn’t cowardly to be (dread word) realistic. It isn’t amoral to think through what will follow from particular actions. Quite the opposite. Bush’s desire to end terrorism and spread democracy can’t be gainsaid. But if, using the almost unlimited license he has given himself, he winds up making brave-seeming lunges at those goals without actually attaining them, then confronting evil, his proudest purpose, will soon become a luxury he can no longer afford. That is about the worst outcome imaginable, and not just for Bush personally

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POLL ANALYSES
September 16, 2003


Will Consumers Spend Even as Their Confidence Declines?
Consumers assess economic conditions at levels seen just before the war with Iraq


by Dennis Jacobe
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

New Gallup Poll economic data show the public`s confidence in the economy falling back to levels seen in early March, when the "major action" in Iraq was just beginning. At the same time, most economic forecasters are talking about the economy having its best performance since 1999 during the last half of this year. And, when the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets today to discuss these contradictory economic trends, the markets expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged. That`s because so-called productivity gains are expected to keep inflationary pressures at bay even as the U.S. economy expands at a healthy rate.

So why is consumer confidence declining as the economy builds positive momentum? More importantly, why aren`t economic forecasters worried about consumer spending falling as consumer confidence declines? Will consumers continue to spend even if their confidence in the economy continues to tumble?

More Consumers Rate Current Economic Conditions as Poor

In September, more consumers rate current economic conditions as "poor" (30%) than say they are "good" or "excellent" (21%) -- a differential of –9 percentage points. This is down from a differential of +2 percentage points in August, when 25% of consumers rated current economic conditions as "good" or "excellent" and 23% rated them as "poor."

As a result, consumer perceptions of the current economy are now where they were just prior to the major combat in Iraq. In early March, this differential was –10 percentage points. Consumer perceptions improved immediately following the beginning of the war, with 33% of the public rating economic conditions as good or excellent and 20% saying they were poor, for a differential of +13 percentage points in Gallup`s March 24-25 poll. During early April, this differential declined to +5 percentage points as Baghdad fell. By early May, it was –6 percentage points before declining to –10 percentage points in mid-May. During the summer, consumers` assessments of the economy improved, as the differential ranged between +2 and –2 percentage points.



A Majority Also Says Things Are Getting Worse

Currently, more consumers are saying economic conditions are getting worse (50%) than say they are getting better (40%) -- a differential of –10 percentage points. This means consumers are less optimistic about future economic conditions than they were this summer, when the differential ranged between +2 and –4. Still, consumer expectations are nowhere near as bad as they were just prior to the war, when this differential


http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030916.asp

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Last Update: Wednesday, September 17, 2003. 0:21am (AEST)
US admits holding 10,000 Iraqi prisoners

US officials have admitted they are holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported, including six claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British.

"They didn`t fit into any category," said Brigadier General Janis Karpinski of the 3,800 extra people who have now been classified as "security detainees."

"We got an order from the Secretary of Defence (Donald Rumsfeld) to categorise them" about a month ago, she said, but gave few details about who these detainees were.

"We were securing them. We didn`t want people to be confused" about their status, she said.

Asked if they had any rights or had access to their families or legal help while they were being "secured", she said: "It`s not that they don`t have rights ... they have fewer rights than EPWs (enemy prisoners of war)."

There were previously some 600 people classified as security detainees, so that category now numbers about 4,400, said General Karpinski.

There are 300 enemy prisoners of war, and about 5,300 criminals or suspected criminals in detention, making a rough total of 10,000, she added.

General Karpinski said that "several hundred third-country nationals" were among the prisoners held on security grounds since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April by US and British forces.

"Six are claiming to be Americans and two are claiming to be from the UK," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s947282.htm

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September 16, 2003
Senate Votes to Repeal New Media Ownership Rules
By KENNETH N. GILPIN


The Republican-controlled Senate dealt a blow to the Bush Administration today, voting to rescind new Federal Communications Commission rules that would allow large media companies to get even bigger.

By a vote of 55 to 40, the Senate approved a resolution that would roll back the F.C.C. regulations allowing television networks to own more local stations and that would have permitted conglomerates to own newspaper, television and radio stations in a single metropolitan market.

Based on the initial reaction in the Senate to the F.C.C. rule changes, today`s resolution, which was introduced by Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, had been expected to pass.

Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican, co-sponsored the legislation that was approved this morning.

The measure faces a tougher battle in the House of Representatives. And President Bush, who has yet to veto a single piece of legislation, has threatened to veto this bill if it reaches his desk.

"We think the rules that the F.C.C. came up with more accurately reflect the changing media landscape and the current state of network station ownership, while guarding against concentration in the marketplace," Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush`s spokesman, said at his daily news briefing today.

He added: "And I did notice the Senate action today. I think that the vote appears to show that there would not be enough votes there to overturn a possible veto."

On Monday, the commission`s chairman, Michael Powell, warned that the Senate bill would "create a legal morass that will unsettle media regulation for years to come."

Earlier this month a Federal appeals court in Philadelphia blocked the commission from imposing the new rules while it considered a challenge to them by a group of small radio stations. That court`s surprise order could keep the rules from taking effect for many months.

In June, the Republican-dominated F.C.C. voted, 3-2, along party lines to ease decades-old ownership restrictions. The changes included allowing a single company to own television stations reaching nearly half the nation`s viewers and combinations of newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same area.

Specifically, the new regulations would enable a company to own as many as three television stations, eight radio stations and a cable operator in one market. They would also permit a television network to own stations reaching as much as 45 percent of the nation`s viewers, an increase from 35 percent.

Major media companies said the changes were needed because the old regulations, many on the books since the late 1940`s, hindered their ability to grow and compete in a market altered by cable television, satellite broadcasting and the Internet.

Supporters of the Senate resolution said the new F.C.C. rules would lead to what they called an orgy of consolidation that would rob television viewers and newspaper readers of diversity of voices, eliminate competition in the marketplace and reduce the coverage of local issues.

The legislation has provoked one of the fiercest lobbying fights of the current Congressional session.

In recent weeks, television networks and the Newspaper Association of America have lobbied to preserve the rules.

Another powerful interest group, the National Association of Broadcasters, has come out in the middle of the debate — favoring repealing one of the rules, which would let the biggest television networks buy more television stations and against efforts to repeal the other new rules.

All of the new rules are being opposed by a broad coalition of liberal and conservative organizations, labor groups and civil rights organizations, ranging from the National Organization for Women and the National Writers Guild to the National Rifle Association, the Parents Television Council and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Reacting to the vote, Gene Kimmelman, senior policy director for the Consumers Union, which opposes the new rules, said the Senate "clearly re-established the principle that separate ownership of dominant local newspapers and broadcasters is essential to preserve the checks and balances against media bias that our democracy relies upon. It`s now time for federal regulators to listen to Congress and the public and revamp its rules to promote more competition and diversity in local news and information."



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Schröder and Bush meet after Iraq row
German chancellor likely to discuss UN draft resolution with Blair and French president

Luke Harding in Berlin and Ewen MacAskill
Wednesday September 17, 2003
The Guardian

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, will put an end to his country`s smouldering row with America next week, by meeting the US president, George Bush, for the first time since the war in Iraq.

German officials last night confirmed that the two leaders would meet in New York, when Mr Schröder flies to the US to address the UN security council. The German chancellor will also meet Tony Blair and the French president, Jacques Chirac, on Saturday in Berlin, in an apparent attempt to heal the deep divisions within Europe over Iraq.

The leaders are likely to discuss whether they can agree a new UN draft resolution on Iraq proposed by Washington.

The resolution, which could be agreed in the next few weeks, will see the UN given an increased role in the Iraq political process and the US hopes UN involvement will be enough to get other countries to provide troops for Iraq.

The text is being circulated at the UN headquarters in New York. There is increasing confidence on the US and British side that, unlike the stand-off earlier this year over war with Iraq, France and Russia will come aboard.

France is demanding that the US and Britain agree to a quicker hand-over of power to an Iraqi provisional government than the transfer planned for next summer. The US and British say that a compromise is possible.

The resolution is also regarded as essential for a donor conference to be held in Madrid next month. Without agreement at the UN, the US and Britain fear other countries will be unwilling to contribute to the huge cost of reconstruction of Iraq.

Germany is on the security council but is not a permanent member. The encounter between President Bush and Mr Schröder follows more than a year of hostility between the German government and the Bush administration, which began when Mr Schröder ruled out supporting US military action in Iraq during last September`s German election campaign. Mr Bush failed to congratulate Mr Schröder after his narrow victory. The two have not spoken since.

Relations deteriorated further earlier this year when the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, dubbed Germany and France "old Europe" because of their refusal to endorse the US-led invasion of Iraq - and lumped Germany with Libya and Cuba.

In recent weeks, however, both sides have shown signs that they want to patch up their differences. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, last week praised Germany`s peace-keeping role in Afghanistan and appeared to accept Mr Schröder`s repeated refusal to send German troops to Iraq. Germany has agreed to send more soldiers to northern Afghanistan. It has also offered to train Iraqi police officers. Berlin points out that it has already extended the US full support in the war on terrorism. Karsten Voigt, the German official in charge of Washington-Berlin relations, yesterday admitted to the Guardian that the last months had been "full of tensions".

Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, described things as being icy. "Now, after heavy winter storms, I see some sunshine across the Atlantic," he said. Mr Voigt said it was inevitable Germany would have to build a new kind of relationship with Washington after the end of the cold war.

German officials last night expressed optimism that a compromise UN resolution on Iraq could be found that would be acceptable to the US, and to Germany and France. Both countries want the US to hand over power as soon as possible to an interim Iraqi authority, and for the UN to play a leading role in Iraq - a position Washington has dismissed as unrealistic.

Gary Smith, director of the American Academy, a Berlin-based think tank, said the Bush administration had concluded that its "stare-off" with Germany had become counter-productive. "With Iraq in danger of imploding, and while Bush is losing popularity going into an election campaign, at some point there has to be a rapprochement."


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Caught in his shadow
Blair may want to focus on domestic policy, but the poison of war threatens to contaminate everything he touches

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday September 17, 2003
The Guardian

The statue of Saddam fell on April 9. George Bush declared "major combat operations" over on May 1. Whichever date you choose, the war on Iraq was supposed to have ended months ago. But for the conflict`s major players, it`s not quite working out that way.

Saddam Hussein is still at large: his war goes on. For Bush, Operation Iraqi Freedom is the backdrop to a re-election campaign that has just begun. And for Tony Blair, the war is the shadow that looms over everything else - the event which threatens to limit and define the rest of his premiership.

The prime minister insists he wants to focus now on domestic policy: after 12 months on the world stage, he`s keen to come back home. To highlight the shift, when all the Chiracs and Schröders gather for the UN general assembly later this month, Blair will not be among them. Instead he will be right here - doubtless visiting primary schools and hospitals, just to ram home the point.

But it will take more than a change in travel plans to escape the fallout of the Iraq war. For one thing, Blair may just not sound that convincing on matters domestic. The country will suspect that his heart is not really in it; that he is a big world player now, uninterested in the mundanities of waiting times and rail repairs. That is what happened to George Bush`s father: even when he tried to talk about the home front, it didn`t ring true. Voters thought his mind was elsewhere.

Even if Blair overcomes that, Iraq has left other obstacles in his way. Take a signature policy like tuition fees, just the kind of bread-and-butter question that is supposed to dominate the new, postwar political season. Labour MPs are once again restless, disaffected with a policy that they say offends both old and New Labour constituencies - putting poor children off university and hitting middle-class parents in their pockets.

Those MPs will want to rebel, even if No 10 offers the tweak to the policy now in the pipeline. Labour whips will try to dissuade them, and the best argument the arm-twisters will have will be the leader himself. They will arrange a private chat with the prime minister, who will deploy all his formidable powers of persuasion. Except this time they might not work. The wobbling backbencher will remember the last time he got the full Blair treatment - back in February when he was close to voting against the war. The nearly rebel will remember how convincing Blair was then, explaining the immediate threat posed by Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction. Our backbencher will remember that moment and kick himself for not following his gut. He`ll be damned if he`s going to make the same mistake again.

Or the Conservatives will beat the drum hard for a referendum on the new European Union constitution. The PM will roll his eyes at the thought of paralysing the government for six months with such an exercise, urging the country to take his word for it that no plebiscite is necessary. But that line will not work the old magic: "trust me" will only remind a sceptical nation of the last time they did.

For that reason, one of the projects that was supposed to energise a second term is on almost indefinite hold. Blairites once promised British entry into the single currency would be their man`s great gift to history. Yet democratic politics only allows a leader one go at defying the majority of public opinion: Blair`s used up his voucher already, by fighting an unpopular war in Iraq. He cannot plausibly take on a hostile electorate and try to make them love the euro, not any time soon. "You never know," say the most senior Blairites enigmatically, but not without a smile.

Or, to strain credulity, what if Blair suddenly saw a need to make another foreign intervention? What if he genuinely believed Iranian WMDs endangered Britons` security? Alternatively, an urgent, humanitarian case might arise, another Sierra Leone or Kosovo. Blair has dispatched troops six times in four years, but could he do it again now? After Iraq, and the lack of public consent that that war enjoyed, is the option of military force still available to this prime minister?

The PM has the sharpest political instincts; he surely knows there is a problem. The way Downing Street sees it, it`s midterm and these are just the kind of sticky patches governments get into: it only feels so shocking and so new to Labour because Labour has never governed this long before. Yes, people wonder if they were told the truth on Iraq: the best the prime minister can do is persuade them that what he did was right and that he did it for the right reasons. If those pesky WMDs came to light, that would help. If daily life in Iraq visibly improved that would help, too. Right now, those at the top concede there is a trust problem hanging over from Iraq and, sure, it could leak over into everything else the government does. But give it six months, give it a year. Things might look very different.

No 10 has two other cures for the Iraq hangover, besides waiting for things to get better. The first is to regard domestic disappointment with the improvement of public services as a separate problem, and tackle it. Elections in Britain have never been decided on foreign policy and, if people believe the government is doing its job on crime, asylum, health and education, they will let the war on Saddam recede into history.

Second, the PM will do his best to convince people that he and his government have changed their ways. Cabinet discussion is back - apparently, and brace yourself for this, they had a real conversation last week, on ID cards - and those affected by social policies will now be brought in to air their views before some new plan is launched (though not necessarily before it has been decided). He will no longer try to steamroller change through, but to take people with him. Later this month he will tell the Labour party both it and the government are more mature than they were, and so they can be allowed more of a say (though hopefully he won`t put it quite as condescendingly as that). Still, none of this is to be confused with retreat. For No 10, to back off from the New Labour vision now would be to commit suicide. No, Blair has been elected to lead and that`s what he plans to do: he just wants to make sure more people follow.

Will it work? Surveying the current landscape, one suspects it might. It`s not often a PM in the depths of midterm doldrums remains ahead in the polls, but this one is. With a comically weak opposition, and with Iraq a land far away from Britons` daily lives, Blair can probably survive the fallout of his war. But to prevent its poison contaminating the rest of his tenure, or just limiting his room for manoeuvre - that will be much tougher.

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Not a lot like Chicago
Bombing, sanctions, looting and sabotage have kept Iraq in the dark. It will take at least $10bn and three years to restore the power supply

Rory McCarthy
Wednesday September 17, 2003
The Guardian

It has become one of the most serious hurdles in America`s project to reshape Iraq: how can a force that spent billions sending its troops to war still not manage to keep the lights on?

Restoring electrical power is the cornerstone of the west`s reconstruction efforts. With electricity comes air-conditioning in the summer, heating in winter, water purification facilities, revived oil and gas production, functioning hospitals and industrial plants back on line. All this will do more than any number of troops to restore security and halt the frustration behind the continued wave of guerrilla attacks.

Given the scale of the task, the architects of America`s war appear remarkably untroubled. "For a city that`s not supposed to have power, there`s lights all over the place. It`s like Chicago," Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month after a night-time Blackhawk helicopter tour over Baghdad. Unfortunately, Chicago it is not. Iraq`s current total power output is 3,362 megawatts. That may not be far off the 4,000MW being produced just before the war but it falls a long way short of today`s demand, estimated at between 7,000 and 20,000MW.

There is no quick fix, and no one understands why better than Zyad al-Azzawi. He is one of Iraq`s most respected power engineers. After the first Gulf war, the British-educated engineer was seconded to join the emergency reconstruction committee set up by Saddam Hussein to rebuild Iraq as quickly as possible. The task was colossal. Power stations and water plants had been destroyed. Yet within a few months al-Azzawi and his fellow engineers rebuilt the stations, patched up the water plants and got the electricity back on line and oil pumping again.

What happened next lies at the heart of America`s current troubles: largely because of UN sanctions there followed 12 years of maintenance shortcuts, spare-part shortages, crude patchwork repairs and pressure to squeeze as much power as possible from an ageing grid. Few major power stations were built over the decade, even though demand increased. This legacy of crippled infrastructure remains perhaps the biggest hurdle to the reconstruction efforts.

"Now you need to completely rehabilitate the power system," says al-Azzawi. This means that it will not be weeks or months but several years before a consistent power supply is established - and before other vital services, like healthcare and water purification, can be restored to their pre-1991 condition. Washington is at last experiencing for itself the impact of a decade of sanctions.

Many of today`s most serious problems have the smallest origins. A barely noticeable increase in water impurities, because of inefficient treatment plants, meant a growing problem of scaling in power station boiler plants . That means more frequent repairs, which reduce output.

Al-Azzawi and his colleagues were under pressure to increase the power supply after the first Gulf war and so Iraq`s power frequency was reduced from 50 hertz to 49; this made little difference in people`s homes but it meant that turbines were operating under dangerous conditions. Other parts of the system are so old they simply can no longer take the strain. A fire in the Hartha power station in southern Iraq this month was blamed on a burned-out copper cable that was at least 25 years old. That one fire was enough to reduce by two-thirds the power that will be supplied in the province of Basra for at least a month.

But all cannot be blamed on poor infrastructure. During the 1991 rebuilding programme there was little looting. This time around, illicit street markets are filled with wires, cables, pipes, light bulbs, sockets, doors, brass fittings - anything looters could strip away. So much copper wire has been stolen and sold that it has dented world prices.

Corruption has plagued the oil industry, and sabotage continues to be a problem. Power lines, particularly in the troubled Sunni regions north and north-west of Baghdad, are still frequently knocked down to disrupt supply. Iraqi engineers are wary of rushing out to repair fallen pylons for fear of guerrilla attacks. Oil pipelines have been hit, and water pipes have also been targeted by sabateurs. Protecting the power lines and pipelines would require vast security operations. The same security concerns are also keeping many western contractors and much-needed expatriate Iraqi businessmen away.

The US and Britain were culpably slow to realise the scale of the project. Initially, the task was given to military men: America`s Jay Garner, and Britain`s Tim Cross. Only in mid-June did Washington and London wake up to the need to increase the power of what became the Coalition Provisional Authority, as well as its size and its experience.

Cross was replaced by Andy Bearpark, a British development expert who spent three years heading reconstruction efforts in Kosovo for the EU. From his unassuming office (a walk-in closet off a guest bedroom in Saddam`s main Baghdad palace) Bearpark is leading the reconstruction efforts. He insists it is unfolding at a faster pace than in any other post-conflict situation. Across Iraq thousands of small-scale, quick projects are under way, while the longer-term deals to repair power stations or build new ones are being negotiated.

Al-Azzawi and other Iraqi engineers believe the best solution would be to import enough generators to temporarily produce the hundreds of megawatts needed to fill the shortfall. Indeed, dozens of back-up generators have been installed at hospitals, water plants and telecoms exchanges. But to rely any more heavily on generators would require such a large supply of diesel fuel, Bearpark argues, as to be inefficient and impractical. Already there are serious diesel shortages. Some electricity is being imported from Syria and Turkey, but the restrictions of Iraq`s infrastructure limit how much can be absorbed.

In the end, there is no better alternative than simply to repair and strengthen the existing power grid, however long it takes (at least three years) and however much it costs (at least $10bn). "People wanted it to be better straight away," Bearpark says, "but that is simply unachieveable." Regardless of Rumsfeld`s bravado, it will be years before the lights stay on in Iraq.

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US economic folly should worry us all
Think before gloating over Bush`s spectacular fiscal incompetence

Joseph Stiglitz
Wednesday September 17, 2003
The Guardian

In 2001, President Bush misled the American people. He said that a tax cut that was not designed to stimulate the economy would stimulate it. But it did not. He told Americans that the large surpluses that were part of President Clinton`s legacy meant the US could afford to cut taxes massively. Wrong again. He did not warn Americans how dubious such estimates can be.

This year President Bush again misled the American people about the economy. Weeks after persuading Congress to pass another tax cut - in some ways even more inequitable than the first - his administration revealed how bad the fiscal position had become. The $230bn surplus inherited from Clinton had turned into a $450bn deficit.

Now, after handing billions to rich Americans through tax cuts, the Bush administration is passing the hat around, asking for contributions from other countries to help to pay for the Iraq war. Even setting aside other dubious aspects of Bush`s Iraq policy, the conjunction of misguided giveaways to America`s richest people with an international US begging bowl is hardly likely to evoke an outpouring of sympathy.

Meanwhile, the US trade deficit is mounting. America, the world`s richest country, evidently can`t live within its means, borrowing more than a billion dollars a day. As the US thrashes around for someone to blame, it is inevitable that it will focus on China, with its large trade surplus, just as the deficits of the Reagan era led to a focus on Japan two decades ago.

But this is blame shifting, nothing more. America`s fiscal and trade deficits are intimately linked. If a country saves less than it invests, it must borrow the difference from abroad, and foreign borrowing and trade deficits are two sides of the same coin.

National saving has two components - private and public. Reagan`s irresponsible tax cuts, combined with America`s paltry savings, meant the US had no choice but to borrow abroad. Now America is repeating that folly. Matters may get even worse once investment is rekindled, unless private savings increase in a way the US has not seen.

Some people abroad now tend to gloat at America`s problems. For many, it is another reason to question America`s ability to provide effective leadership. It took America a dozen years to work its way out of Reagan`s fiscal mess. It may take just as long to clean up the mess Bush has created.

But the schadenfreude of non-Americans is misguided. Globalisation means that mistakes in one country - especially the world`s largest economy - have powerful repercussions elsewhere.

Three things are worth noting here. First, America`s deficits are certain to sop up vast amounts of the world`s pool of savings. But the world will eventually recover from the current slowdown, and that shortage of savings will become important. It will mean higher real interest rates, lower investment and lower growth, all of which will be particularly costly for developing countries.

Second, America`s huge trade deficit may be a source of global instability. Will the world continue to finance this deficit willingly, to put its money into a country with a demonstrable lack of competence in macroeconomic management (to say nothing of the corporate, banking and accounting scandals)?

What happens if global investors decide to change their portfolio mix, shifting slightly from US assets? A weak Europe and skittishness about emerging markets have been American strengths, but how long can the US rely on the weakness of others?

Third, in searching for others to blame, America may again enter an era of protectionism, as it did under Reagan. Bush may trumpet free markets, just as Reagan did, but just as he may exceed Reagan in fiscal irresponsibility, so he may outflank Reagan in trade hypocrisy.

By one reckoning, close to a quarter of American imports were covered by some form of trade restriction at the peak of Reagan protectionism. Expect no less from Bush. Last year he showed little reluctance in imposing steel tariffs, in clear violation of WTO rules. The good news is that the world is beginning to see a rule of law in trade - a legal framework that, although not totally fair to developing countries with economic power still counting for a great deal, may circumscribe America`s ability to revert to the protectionism of the past.

Europe has committed itself to fiscal responsibility - with almost too much zeal, failing to recognise that a well-designed deficit in times of recession may yield high returns. The Bush administration has pushed forward tax cuts that lead to deficits while providing only a modest amount of stimulus.

Equally worrying - for America and the world - is the path on which it has embarked: deficits as far as the eye can see. In the long run, this policy bodes ill for the US - and hence for the world.

· Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, is a Nobel Prize winner and author of Globalisation and Its Discontents

© Project Syndicate www.project-syndicate.org


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September 17, 2003
6 Held in Iraq by U.S. Claim to Be American
By IAN FISHER


KHALDIYA, Iraq, Sept. 16 — Six people identifying themselves as Americans, and two others saying they are British, are being held prisoner in connection with guerrilla attacks in Iraq, a United States general said today.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who is in charge of prisoners in Iraq, provided no details on the men, except to say they are among 4,400 "security detainees," a category distinct from prisoners of war or common criminals. She said the "security detainees" were suspected of carrying out or planning attacks on American or other troops in Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported.

Her reference to the men, the first mention of possible Westerners among some 10,000 prisoners, was made during a tour of Abu Ghraib prison, where they are being held. American forces took over the prison, just west of Baghdad, which was notorious during the Saddam Hussein government.

Law enforcement officials in Washington said today that there was little certainty about the men`s identities, nationalities or even what they were doing in Iraq, questions that are being investigated in Iraq and the United States. But they said there was no obviously American figure among them like John Walker Lindh, the Californian who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"The truth is that the folks that we`ve scooped up have, on a number of occasions, multiple identifications from different countries," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today at a briefing in Washington. "They`re quite skilled at confusing people as to what their real nationality is or where they came from or what they`re doing."

Agence France-Presse quoted General Karpinski as saying the detainees "didn`t fit into any category" and that Secretary Rumsfeld had ordered her to "categorize" them about a month ago. She said classifying the prisoners as security detainees gave the military a right to interview them that it did not have with prisoners of war, according to Agence France-Presse.

"It`s not that they don`t have rights," General Karpinski said. "They have fewer rights" than prisoners of war.

Mr. Rumsfeld said he could not explain what she meant by "security detainees." He said the prisoners generally fell into two categories, those arrested for ordinary crimes and those being detained because of their roles as members of Mr. Hussein`s government or as combatants against American forces.

A Pentagon official said the prisoners the general spoke of were being questioned to assess whether they were fedayeen, Baathist, foreign terrorists or some other category that could be a threat to United States interests and to those of the new Iraqi government.

During the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon sent "enemy combatants" suspected of having ties to the Taliban or Al Qaeda to a prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for questioning and possible trial before military tribunals.

On a day of comparative quiet in Iraq, the military reported scattered attacks against the occupying forces, but no soldiers` deaths. In the northern city of Mosul, the military said, one Albanian soldier, part of a contingent of 70 Albanians in Iraq, was wounded on Monday along with 13 Iraqis in a grenade attack in front of the city hall building. Later on Monday, officials said, two American soldiers were also wounded in separate attacks there.

Amid dozens of raids around Tikrit, the hometown of Mr. Hussein, the military also reported it had killed two Iraqis in a firefight overnight near an ammunition dump.

Here in Khaldiya, 45 miles west of Baghdad, the small and beleaguered police department vowed to stay on duty despite the slaying the day before of its new chief, Col. Khudheir Mikhlif Ali, who was shot as he drove to his home in the restive Sunni city of Falluja. Even before the killing, the work of the new police officers here had been stymied by accusations that they were collaborating with the American military.

"This is our place," said Maj. Mohammad Farhan, 36, sitting in a police station nearly empty because of looting. "We will stay no matter what."

The death of Colonel Ali was seen as a blow to the American efforts to create a functional police force and establish a stronger sense of order north and west of Baghdad. It is there, in the so-called Sunni Triangle, that loyalty to Mr. Hussein runs deep and that most of the attacks against American soldiers have taken place. Sentiment against Americans has run high from the time the occupation began last spring, a feeling that spiked four days ago, when soldiers killed 10 new police officers in Falluja in an incident that American officials later apologized for.

Still unsettled today was the question of whether the killing of Colonel Ali, a former army officer who took the job of police chief less than two months ago, was an act of common criminals or those who considered themselves anti-American resisters.

"We bless the guy who killed this colonel," said Said Ibrahim, 33, a resident of Khaldiya. He and several other men complained that Colonel Ali had been confiscating vehicles from residents and had passed along the names of townspeople to the American soldiers, who had provided the police with weapons.

"We consider it collaborating with the Americans," said one man who would give his name only as Samar.

Strongly denying that Colonel Ali was a collaborator, Major Farhan and friends and members of the police chief`s family said he had confiscated two cars, but ones that had been looted by criminals. Major Farhan said, however, that Colonel Ali had made no arrests in his short tenure — in part because, even with the weapons given by the Americans, the police were still badly outgunned by the criminals.

A funeral for Colonel Ali was held in Falluja today, although he was buried on Monday night, in accordance with Muslim tradition, as soon as possible after his death. During the ceremony, Sheik Khalf Tarmoz Al Sharqi, a tribal leader, suggested that Colonel Ali would not be dead but for his association with the Americans. The only solution, he said, was for American troops to withdraw from the area and let Iraqis sort out their problems alone.

"They didn`t restore security to the city," he said. "They failed. So they better leave."



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September 17, 2003
OCCUPATION FOES
Iraqis` Bitterness Is Called Bigger Threat Than Terror
By DOUGLAS JEHL with DAVID E. SANGER


WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States` most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.

That picture, shared with American military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once again today listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of the American occupation.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were concerned about retribution for straying from the official line. They said it was a mistake for the administration to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Mr. Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the American presence appears to be kindling some sympathy for those attacking American forces.

Other United States government officials said some of the concerns had been prompted by recent polling in Iraq by the State Department`s intelligence branch. The findings, which remain classified, include significant levels of hostility to the American presence. The officials said indications of that hostility extended well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq, which has been the main setting for attacks on American forces, to include the Shiite-dominated south, whose citizens have been more supportive of the American military presence but have also protested loudly about raids and other American actions.

As reasons for Iraqi hostility, the defense officials cited not just disaffection over a lack of electricity and other essential services in the months since the war, but cultural factors that magnify anger about the foreign military presence.

"To a lot of Iraqis, we`re no longer the guys who threw out Saddam, but the ones who are busting down doors and barging in on their wives and daughters," one defense official said.

However, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush`s national security adviser, took issue with the assertion of broad Iraqi dissatisfaction with the presence of American troops, declaring that the United States was making headway in the places like Baghdad and Tikrit, where much of the resistance is centered.

"But there is, even in that part of the country, progress," she said in an interview. "People finished their university exams, the Iraqi symphony orchestra performed and took a tour up to the north. Kids went to school."

Some American officials said the intelligence assessments underscored that opposition to American forces in Iraq was likely to get worse before it got better. Others cautioned that it was risky to make such forecasts, and some cited what they called indicators of recent improvements in the security situation.

But while President Bush and other senior administration officials have described the conflict in Iraq primarily as a battleground in the war on terrorism, the officials said, the recent intelligence assessments tend to cast it mainly as an insurgency in which the key variable will be the role played by ordinary Iraqis.

"As time goes on, if the infrastructure doesn`t improve, and American troops are still out there front and center, it`s hard to see the public mood getting any better," one United States government official said.

A military official who acknowledged the existence of the pessimistic intelligence assessments said he took issue with some of the conclusions. He said the bounties being offered in Iraq for attacks on Americans had increased recently, to as much as $5,000, in what he called an indication that those opposed to the American occupation were having a harder time enlisting support.

The official also declared that the number of intelligence tips and other useful information provided to American forces in Iraq was generally on the increase, a sign, he said, of increasing cooperation by large segments of the Iraqi public.

To help blunt the anger directed at the American-led occupying force, Mr. Rumsfeld said again today, the United States hopes to accelerate the hand-over of security responsibilities in Iraq to Iraqi police officers, border guards, civil defense forces and soldiers trained by the United States. Nearly 60,000 Iraqis are now in uniform, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing, and the administration hopes to increase that number to about 70,000 soon, to include more than 10,000 former Iraqi soldiers who are being trained to join the new civil defense force.

But the assassination of a high-ranking Iraqi police official on Monday has highlighted the difficulty involved in the effort, including the danger that Iraqis working with American forces will become targets as collaborators, the defense officials said.

Today, some Defense Department officials said the role played by foreign extremists, including members of the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, remained a source of increasing concern.

The largest recent indicator of foreign involvement came last week, they said, when American military forces detained some 80 foreign fighters, including Saudis, Jordanians and Sudanese, who were rounded up along with money and weapons in two separate raids conducted by the 101st Air Assault Division near the Saudi border.

But they said the degree to which such fighters, along with loyalists to the former Iraqi leader, were finding support within the Iraqi population was making it difficult for American forces to track them down and root them out.

Ms. Rice said that it was "simply naïve" to believe that Iraq today was more of a haven for terrorists than it was before Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.

"There is almost a sense that they were sitting someplace minding their own business — drinking tea, having meetings" and then decided to come to Iraq only after the American military rolled into Baghdad.

"These are fighters, they are jihadists," she said. "They would be fighting someplace. Maybe they would be fighting in the Gulf. Maybe they would be fighting in Southeast Asia. Maybe they would be fighting, or trying to fight, in the United States."

For much of the summer, as attacks on American forces in Iraq continued, Mr. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials disputed the idea that the United States was facing a guerrilla war in Iraq. They stopped objecting to that label only after Gen. John P. Abizaid, the new commander of American forces in the region, publicly called the conflict a "classical guerrilla-type campaign."

With American forces making up a vast majority of the coalition now occupying Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Abizaid have publicly acknowledged that the overwhelmingly American flavor of the effort poses a military problem because it makes the United States the target of ordinary Iraqis` resentment.

But barring a speedy withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, which the administration has ruled out, the recent intelligence assessments give little reason to expect that the resistance will calm down soon, the defense officials said. "It`s going to be a hard slog, and it`s hard to see when or if the picture is going to get any brighter," one official said.

More than 70 American military personnel have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq since May 1, when the administration declared an end to major combat operations.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 17, 2003
Bush Links Pollution Measure to His Effort to Create Jobs
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON


WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — President Bush made a pitch today for his plan to reduce air pollution, and while he outlined the environmental benefits, his focus was just as much on the issues that his advisers say are more likely than any others to determine his chances at re-election: jobs and the economy.

In a 21-minute speech in the East Garden of the White House, Mr. Bush mentioned jobs or the economy at least 21 times, saying his plan for reducing emissions from power plants and other major polluters would clean the air without driving up costs to business so much that it would kill employment.

Mr. Bush`s proposal, which he calls the Clear Skies initiative, has been stalled in Congress, and his appearance today with a group of state and local government officials, business executives and other supporters was intended in part to put pressure on Congress to act.

It also underscored how Mr. Bush was casting many of the issues likely to come up in the presidential campaign as economic questions that would help determine whether the economy could again begin creating jobs after losing millions of them during his presidency.

"People in this country must understand that we can have a pro-growth agenda, a pro-job agenda and a pro-environment agenda at the same time," he said, "and Clear Skies legislation is just that."

Most environmental groups have criticized the legislation as too weak in its initial goal of reducing acid rain emissions from sources like power plants, and largely silent on the potentially bigger long-term issue of global warming.

In the Senate, at least four Republicans have signed on as sponsors or co-sponsors to what they describe as tougher proposals, and Senate leaders have resisted White House pressure to attach the bill to the energy legislation currently being considered by a House-Senate conference committee.

"Under the president`s plan, acid rain emissions caps come too late and cut too little," Senator James M. Jeffords, the independent from Vermont who is the ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. "Their plan will continue the rapid decline in the health of lakes and forests in the Northeast and across the country. There are other, much better bipartisan proposals before Congress that have greater support."

Mr. Bush`s plan calls for substantial reductions in emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury over the next 15 years. It would allow utilities and other polluters to choose on their own how to meet the goals. Plants that cut emissions below the required level could sell credits to other companies that do not reach the goal, giving them a financial incentive to cut emissions.

His environmental policies, the president said, would allow communities "to meet national standards without sacrificing good jobs."

Environmental advocates have challenged the assumption that strict standards will eliminate jobs, saying that investment in new technology to clean the air, for example, will create jobs.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 17, 2003
The Senate Says No
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


ow are a majority of Americans, standing with a bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress, going to stop the Federal Communications Commission from making the biggest mistake in its existence?

A handful of media giants want to further concentrate their power by gobbling up more local TV and radio stations, beyond the 35-percent-of-penetration limit. The F.C.C. chairman has called arguments for local diversity "garbage" and this week branded the proposed Senate resolution disapproving of his anything-goes ruling as "bordering on the absurd."

The Senate answered this arrogance yesterday by voting, 55 to 40, for Senator Byron Dorgan`s resolution to disapprove the F.C.C.`s green light for power-grabbing. Though a House majority would agree, the G.O.P. leadership there declared the Senate bill "dead on arrival" and will block a vote. Therefore, the Senate`s expression becomes a dramatic gesture, but not law.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has put a hold on the F.C.C.`s ruling. When administration lawyers tried to yank the case over to a D.C. appeals court — more likely to rubber-stamp the order — the Philadelphia judges said nothing doing. That gives Congress time to pass legislation directing the F.C.C. to hold the line against the Disney-G.E.-Fox-Viacom takeovers.

The F.C.C. chairman, Michael Powell, sensing that not even his friendship with Senator John McCain nor his backing by Big Media is stopping the popular groundswell, has resorted to a fear appeal: that stopping more gobbling up of local stations by the broadcast networks will be the ruination of "free TV."

That`s the ludicrous party line being peddled by G.E., which owns NBC. But four-fifths of broadcast network TV is now delivered to homes by cable or satellite — not free — and NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are making money hand over fist. "Powell`s Last Stand" on this false argument has become an embarrassment to the Bush White House, which has been foolishly threatening to veto any disapproval of the F.C.C.`s abdication of the public interest. (The G.O.P. leader Tom DeLay still can`t get 148 signatures on a letter promising to sustain what would be Bush`s first veto.)

How do we break out of this impasse, with the mediopoly and its political trained seals on the merger side, and with the most diverse coalition of lefties and righties ever assembled on the other?

Senator Trent Lott, a Republican, knows how these things work; I crosshatched his analysis with that of a savvy Democratic mole in the House.

Yesterday`s Senate expression of disapproval was a good sign, but will die in the House. The bill already passed by McCain`s Senate Commerce Committee detailing what the F.C.C. must do to protect diversity in TV as well as radio, and to restrict new cross-ownership of TV and newspapers, will not soon get a floor vote as the majority leader, Bill Frist, goes along with White House wishes.

But thanks to the canny Alaskan Ted Stevens, the rollback of the Powell abomination will appear in the Senate appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice and State Departments. It is already in the House bill funding those departments, and Democrats will not let it be stripped out behind closed doors in conference. Thus even restraint of cross-ownership of newspapers and TV — which those of us in diversity`s ranks thought a lost cause — may be carried along in the wave of resentment against the 45-percent-of-TV-audience penetrators.

"Today`s victory — and don`t kid yourself, it stunned `em — is just one step in the process," says Lott. "The final step will be even harder for the president or the leadership to stop. An appropriations bill for Commerce-Justice-State — that would be hard to veto over the issue of a regulatory review."

Why would the president want to bring the financing of the war on terror to a grinding halt to rescue an appointee aching to resign? Or to curry favor with a tight bunch of media biggies who might use their ever-greater power to turn on him when he least expects it? The first Bush veto should advance a principle, not be wasted on a bow to a muscular Mickey Mouse.

Libertarians of the left and right are resisting the concentration of power and insisting on the preservation of competition. This strange bedfellowship will not equivocate, and we will be heard.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Diplomats Say U.N. Pact Still Is Feasible
Authority for Allies, Iraqis Is a Factor

By Peter Slevin and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page A22


U.N. Security Council approval of a multilateral force in Iraq under American command appears to be within reach of the Bush administration, but details of political arrangements in Baghdad remain undecided, diplomats and U.S. officials said yesterday.

Although a number of governments want the White House to give more power sooner to the United Nations and the Iraqi authorities, there is a reluctance to replay the bitter prewar battles that could end in a stalemate or a veto of a U.S.-sponsored resolution.

A larger doubt, if the administration prevails, is that the result might not deliver the troops, civilian experts or financial contributions sought by President Bush to bolster the Iraq rebuilding operation and relieve the burden on U.S. forces and taxpayers.

"There`s a worry that it won`t produce a fast dividend," said one U.S. official who described the talks with Pakistan, India and Turkey, which have declined to contribute troops without a U.N. mandate. "There`s just an incredible amount of pressure to get those countries to deliver."

As Britain, France and Germany announced a bridge-building meeting to be held in Berlin this weekend, U.S. officials debated language to be circulated at the United Nations and tried to lower expectations. One senior U.S. official said the upcoming resolution would not be the last.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said last night on ABC`s "Nightline" that a successful U.N. resolution would bring troops in "small numbers." She said it could be months before those forces arrive.

Several European diplomats said a veto is unlikely, despite sharp words traded in recent days by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. U.S. and European officials continue to differ over the shape and schedule of the U.S.-led occupation, but they would prefer a common denominator that prevents trouble.

A danger is that such a solution would only delay a confrontation, with the rivals continuing to spar over how Iraq should be governed. As a senior European diplomat put it, "What purpose does it serve if the resolution is adopted, and afterward nothing happens?"

Administration officials are working on language to replace a U.S. draft resolution that a number of council members found unsatisfactory, particularly Germany and veto-wielding members France and Russia. The critics believe the role of the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer should shrink in favor of a stronger position for the United Nations and the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.

U.S. officials, however, consider unrealistic a timetable for a transfer of power proposed by de Villepin. They also believe an approach that quickly transfers full authority to the untested Iraqi council would jeopardize the postwar mission.

"The Iraqis ought to be responsible for the timetable and the definition of their sovereignty in conjunction with Jerry Bremer and the U.N. secretary general`s representative," a senior administration official said last night. "We say nobody should be the president of Iraq who was not elected by the Iraqis."

U.S. officials see benefits in a U.N. resolution, even if it does not entice large international contributions right away. They believe it will strengthen their negotiating position when they return to potential contributors of troops and could open the door to international financial institutions.

The government of Pakistan -- whose president, Pervez Musharraf, is scheduled to discuss the issue with Bush next week in New York -- and the leaders of several other key countries have asked for a clear U.N. mandate and assurances of welcome by the Iraqi people. They cite domestic opposition to the U.S.-led war and occupation, as well as fears for the security of their forces.

Senior U.N. diplomats said this week that a lasting Security Council solution would require a U.S. agreement to yield greater authority to the Iraqi council, dominated by former exiles and leaders from Kurdish northern Iraq.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who summoned the foreign ministers of the five permanent council members to Geneva on Saturday, has quietly promoted the swift creation of a transitional government with sovereign authority, making it easier for potential contributors to participate in a multinational force.

Ahmed Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite who is serving as the governing council`s rotating president this month, has asked permission to address the U.N. General Assembly before his term ends.

Lynch reported from New York.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Senate Retains Nuclear Research Funds
Democrats Warn of Renewed Arms Race; House Bill Had Cut Most Spending

By Helen Dewar and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page A06


The Senate turned back yesterday a Democratic effort to eliminate funding for research on a new generation of nuclear weapons, rejecting arguments that the White House-backed project could trigger a new arms race and raise the risk of nuclear war.

Voting 53 to 41, the Republican-led Senate rejected a proposal by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to drop $21 million for research on "mini-nukes" and "bunker-busters" from a $27.3 billion spending bill for energy and water projects, including the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Feinstein-Kennedy proposal would also have blocked a proposal to reduce the time needed to resume underground nuclear testing and to construct a new plant to build "pits," or core devices, for nuclear weapons.

Later, Republicans accepted a proposal by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to bar anything but research on the two new weapons, meaning the administration would have to come back to Congress for approval before actual development could begin.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is exploring the idea of a new intercontinental ballistic missile system that could carry a low-yield nuclear warhead capable of loitering over targets like an unmanned drone or being redirected in flight, according to a document produced by the Air Force Space Command, which oversees the country`s nuclear weapons delivery systems.

Yesterday`s vote was the Senate Democrats` second failure this year to block the administration`s nuclear initiatives. In May, the Senate voted 51 to 43 to repeal the decade-old ban on research dealing with low-yield nuclear weapons, paving the way for the spending proposals approved yesterday.

But the GOP-led House, defying its reputation as more reliable in its support of the administration, voted in July to cut most of the funding for the nuclear projects. Differences will have to be worked out in negotiations between the two houses. The Senate vote makes it more likely that the administration will get at least some of the money it wants.

The Senate vote to go ahead with research work on the new weapons followed a sometimes emotional debate in which Democrats charged -- and Republicans denied -- that the administration`s nuclear initiatives could rekindle the arms race and undermine nonproliferation efforts.

"There should be no doubt in anyone`s mind that this administration is reopening the nuclear door," Feinstein told the Senate. "They are doing this to develop essentially a new generation of nuclear weapons," Feinstein told the Senate.

"The last thing the world needs is to have the United States start playing Lone Ranger with nuclear weapons," Kennedy told a news conference. "How can we demand that North Korea and Iran abandon their nuclear weapons programs while we develop a new generation of those weapons ourselves?"

Republicans said no weapons could be built without further congressional action and that it would be irresponsible not to conduct research on weapons capable of dealing with post-Cold War threats, such as terrorists armed with chemical or biological weapons.

"There is nothing in this law that says we will build one additional nuclear weapon," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), whose state includes major nuclear laboratory complexes.

"One of the pillars of our security is our nuclear deterrent," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). "It must be safe and it must be workable. It must be relevant to the new threats we face."

The Senate action leaves intact administration requests for $15 million for research on an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers and $6 million to study the development of "low-yield" weapons with a yield of 5 kilotons or less, or about one-third the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II. The "bunker-buster" would have a force of about 10 times the Hiroshima blast.

Yesterday`s vote was generally along party lines, with Virginia`s senators favoring the funding and Maryland`s senators opposing it. The four Democrats who are running for president were absent and did not vote. The Senate later approved the energy and water spending bill, which will go to a conference with the House.

The document on the Air Force plans lays out concepts for a new missile system, which the Air Force this month made available to potential contractors. It said the Air Force anticipates an acquisition plan beginning in 2005 or 2006.

The new missile would have a precise guidance system that could deliver a sub-kiloton nuclear explosion on mobile or fixed targets, the document said. It would carry the equivalent of several thousand tons of TNT but with significantly less explosive power and radiation than current strategic nuclear weapons, developed during the Cold War to knock out hardened Soviet targets.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Fast Climber Who Has Made Some Enemies


By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page A01


From his plebe year at West Point, Wesley K. Clark was always first in his class, a step ahead of his peers. His rise to the top of the U.S. military seemed almost preordained, given his drive, intellect and burning will to win.

But Clark, 58, who was awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star in Vietnam in 1970 and commanded NATO`s air war in Kosovo 29 years later, remains a highly controversial figure within the U.S. military, disliked and mistrusted by many fellow officers.

Supporters and detractors agree on this much: The retired general is immensely talented, possessed of a keen strategic sensibility and the kind of gold-plated military credentials that could make him a formidable candidate in the Democratic race for president.

Clark`s intense, emotional personality and his aggressive -- some say abrasive -- command style are likely to be the focus of intense scrutiny as he takes on the biggest challenge of a peripatetic career almost defined by the pursuit of challenge -- a run for the presidency in which his national security credentials will figure large in his potential appeal.

Raised in Little Rock, Clark was the only member of his West Point class selected as a Rhodes scholar to attend Oxford University in England, where he was two years ahead of Bill Clinton. While some of his detractors in the military came to demean him as one of "Clinton`s generals," Clark and Clinton were only casual acquaintances when Clark rose to prominence at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration.

As director of policy and plans for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clark helped negotiate the Dayton peace accords in 1995 that ended the conflict in Bosnia. He led a team the same year that wrote a new national military strategy.

Four years later, having risen to command the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as supreme allied commander Europe, Clark held the fractious, 19-member military alliance together through 78 days of bombing and led NATO to victory, driving Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his Serb forces from the province of Kosovo.

But Clark`s hard-charging style, his penchant for dealing directly with the White House and his ceaseless agitation for ground forces during the Kosovo conflict -- over the wishes of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen -- caught up with him a month after the end of the war. In July 2000, while dining with the president of Lithuania in London, Clark was called by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who curtly informed him that Cohen had decided to ease him out of his NATO command. The call stunned Clark. It meant he would have to leave his NATO post three months earlier than scheduled and without a year`s extension, which he had expected.

Clark had clashes outside the administration as well. In the war`s immediate aftermath, when a contingent of Russian troops moved quickly into Kosovo and occupied the airfield at Pristina, the provincial capital, a British officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, refused a direct order from Clark to block the runway so the Russians could not fly in reinforcements.

Clark, who believed additional Russian troops could have led to a confrontation with NATO and possibly jeopardized the nascent allied peacekeeping mission, insisted. But Jackson stood firm, believing the Russians were isolated at the airfield and did not represent a threat. "Sir, I`m not starting World War III for you," Jackson replied.

"I saw the problem in strategic terms," Clark wrote in his 2001 memoir, "Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat," noting that he had approval to issue the order from the Pentagon and NATO. "This could be a defining moment for the future of NATO. Would we not be able to conduct our own peacekeeping missions? Would Russia be co-equal with NATO in this operation? Would Russia get its way by deception and bluff or by negotiation and compromise? Would we have an effective operation or another weak U.N.-type force?"

Much later, after retiring from active duty in 2000, Clark allowed as how he had had only two bad days in 38 years of service: the day he was shot in the hand, shoulder, leg and hip on patrol north of Saigon, and the day Shelton called him to say he would have to retire early.

"For me the [Kosovo] war was professional, but it was also personal," Clark wrote. "It drew on the experience and insights of my full 37 years of military service; it placed heavy demands on character and stamina, and it strained my relations with some American colleagues."

Clark saw Cohen and the Joint Chiefs as overly cautious in their opposition to the use of ground troops or Apache helicopters in Kosovo, which he advocated as options to force Milosevic to capitulate as his Serb forces proved skilled at surviving NATO bombing from 15,000 feet. At least one member of the Joint Chiefs, Clark wrote, "was almost looking for reasons why the ground attack in Kosovo would not work rather than how to make it work."

And his ease at interacting directly with civilians "across the river" at the White House only made things worse. "Some in the Pentagon had worked for two years to restrict my interactions within the broader U.S. government for reasons that were never entirely clear," he wrote.

One retired four-star general, who knows Clark well and represents a sentiment expressed by a number of his peers, said he fully understood Clark`s ultimate clash with Cohen, Shelton and, particularly, the leadership of the Army.

"The guy is brilliant," said the general, who agreed to speak candidly about Clark only if his name were not used. "He`s very articulate, he`s extremely charming, he has the best strategic sense of anybody I have ever met. But the simple fact is, a lot of people just don`t trust his ability" as a commander.

While his strategic analysis is "almost infallible," his command solutions tended to be problematic, even "goofy," the general said, "and he pushed them even when they weren`t going to work."

The general said Clark "needs to win, right down to the core of his fiber," which tends to make him "highly manipulative."

"There are an awful lot of people," added another retired four-star, who also requested anonymity, "who believe Wes will tell anybody what they want to hear and tell somebody the exact opposite five minutes later. The people who have worked closely with him are the least complimentary, because he can be very abrasive, very domineering. And part of what you saw when he was relieved of command was all of the broken glass and broken china within the European alliance and the [U.S.] European Command."

Clark`s many supporters inside and outside the military dispute the contention voiced by critics that his ambition and drive to come out on top made him untrustworthy in the eyes of his peers.

"I have watched him at close range for 35 years, in which I have looked at the allegation, and I found it totally unsupported," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who taught with Clark at West Point in the 1970s. "That`s not to say he isn`t ambitious and quick. He is probably among the top five most talented I`ve met in my life. I think he is a national treasure who has a lot to offer the country."

McCaffrey acknowledges that Clark was not the most popular four-star general in the Army leadership. "This is no insult to Army culture, a culture I love and admire," McCaffrey said, "but he was way too bright, way too articulate, way too good looking and perceived to be way too wired to fit in with our culture. He was not one of the good ol` boys."

One fellow cadet at West Point said there is a photograph on the credenza behind the sofa in Clark`s living room. It shows Clark, as a West Point cadet, standing next to retired Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President John F. Kennedy, and peering out across the academy`s storied campus.

"It gives you a sense of where Wes saw himself going," recalled the classmate, who is also retired from the Army. "There are people who are put off by the silver spoon in his mouth, which he uses, and those who say it was unavoidable, because the big guys couldn`t resist him."

One was William J. Perry, who as deputy defense secretary first encountered Clark in 1994 when he was a three-star general on the Joint Staff. "I was enormously impressed by him," said Perry, a mathematician and legendary Pentagon technologist who later served as secretary of defense under Clinton.

Perry was so impressed, in fact, that with Clark facing retirement unless a four-star job could be found for him, Perry overrode the Army and insisted that Clark be appointed head of the U.S. Southern Command, one of the military`s powerful regional commanders in chief, or CINCs. "I was never sorry for that appointment," Perry said.

A year later, Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs who held a similar view of Clark, overrode the Army once again and made sure Clark became supreme allied commander Europe, traditionally the most powerful CINC, with command of all U.S. and NATO forces on the continent.

Army Col. Douglas Macgregor is thankful he did. An author and strategist who has also had his fights with the Army brass, Macgregor said he will forever be indebted to Clark for taking a chance and naming him as director of planning at NATO headquarters in Belgium in 1997.

"There is this aspect of his character -- he is loyal to people he knows are capable and competent," Macgregor said. "As for his peers, it`s a function of jealousy and envy, and it`s a case of misunderstanding. General Clark is an intense person, he`s passionate, and certainly the military is suspicious of people who are intense and passionate. He is a complex man who does not lend himself to simplistic formulations. But he is very competent, and devoted to the country."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

___ Wesley Clark Bio ___

Hometown: Little Rock, Ark.
Born: Dec. 23, 1944 in Little Rock, Ark.
Religion: Catholic
Family: Wife, Gert; one child.
Education: West Point Military Academy, 1966; Oxford U., masters in philosophy, politics and economics, 1968
Career Highlights: Retired Four-Star General; NATO Supreme Allied Commander, 1997-2000; Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1994-1996.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/elections/2004…

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washingtonpost.com
Enter Wesley Clark




Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page A26


AND NOW THERE are 10. Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general who`s never held political office, appears ready today -- after months of teasing -- to announce his entry into the Democratic presidential race. Mr. Clark brings to the race an impressive résumé heavy on the national security credentials lacking in some of his fellow Democrats (now that he`s decided he`s a Democrat): first in his class at West Point, Vietnam veteran, head of the U.S. Southern Command and NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo. This expertise -- deployed either as the party`s nominee or, if his bid for the top spot falls short, as a vice presidential choice -- could help the Democrats allay concern among some voters about whether they can be entrusted with the presidency in a post-9/11 world. Mr. Clark is an eloquent critic of the Bush administration`s alienation of allies and a proven internationalist -- though we believe he was wrong in his judgment that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was unjustified. Mr. Clark said he believed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction in defiance of the United Nations; if his intention is to offer himself as a Democrat who is strong on national security, he will need to explain how he would effectively counter such threats.

As he enters the race, some questions about Mr. Clark are mechanical but significant -- for example, whether he can begin this late (as strange as that may sound) and still build an organization and raise enough money. Only this month did Mr. Clark announce that he is a Democrat. He told us in an interview the other day that he is new to the party -- it`s not that he`d been a Democrat all along and kept his affiliation private for reasons of propriety. Asked whether he had voted for Republicans along the way, Mr. Clark said, "I don`t even remember." Had he voted for a Republican for president? "I imagine that I voted for Reagan at one time or another," he said. It will be interesting to see how that plays with Democratic Party activists.

The more fundamental concern centers on Mr. Clark`s inexperience in elective politics and domestic policies. In the interview, Mr. Clark cited his "broad background beyond national security," but voters will have to decide whether it`s broad enough: He cited a stint as a camp counselor in addition to a mid-career tour as White House fellow and post-Army experience as an investment banker. On a number of key issues, he sounds like a work in progress. On Social Security, for example: "I`m not prepared at this point to address a specific proposal" but "I`m not particularly in favor of raising the retirement age." On school vouchers: "We`ve got to protect public education," but "there may be times and circumstances on an exceptional basis where vouchering makes sense." On capital punishment: "In exceptional cases you might use the death penalty."

Mr. Clark doesn`t pretend to be an instant expert on these matters. Asked by the Associated Press yesterday whether he was ready to start telling the American people his positions on domestic policy, Mr. Clark said, "I`ll do my best, but there will be a lot of things that I don`t know right away." His supporters are counting on his proving to be a quick study.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute gibt es 142 frische Cartoons. Bei dieser Menge ist mal wieder die I.Q.-Warnung für Nannsen, Schill und Co angebracht.

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/20030916__142toons.htm

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Bush Would Use Mini-nukes, Prof Warns

by Dave Zweifel

09/16/03: (Madison Capital Times - Wisconsin) Is George Bush the most dangerous president in U.S. history? If you ask Professor John Swomley, he is.

Swomley, who teaches Christian ethics at the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, has authored an indictment of the Bush administration`s foreign policy that includes actual plans to use nuclear bombs as pre-emptive weapons.

It is essential, he says in a magazine article, for Americans to understand that the administration has directed the military to prepare plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries - China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Libya and Iraq.

Presumably, had Iraq had those so-called weapons of mass destruction and had used them when we invaded the country this spring, we were prepared to drop a weapon of mass destruction of our own.

And Swomley warns that we shouldn`t buy the argument that these nukes are small and won`t be all that horrific.

"Nuclear weapons, even if they are smaller than those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, will not only kill on impact, but raise immense radioactive dust, with the terrible results of slow, agonizing death from radiation," he writes.

"Some people make the assumption that using smaller nuclear weapons will allow accurate precision bombing, such as was claimed for the bombing of Iraq," he adds. "What was not reported by officials is that although the Iraq `smart` bombs rarely missed a target by more than 13 feet, when a bomb blew up it sent high-speed shrapnel flying as far as a mile, causing many civilian casualties. The additional power of a nuclear bomb, together with its dispersal of radioactivity , is sure to produce infinitely more harm."

Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate has already approved Bush`s request to lift a 10-year ban on research, development and production of nuclear weapons of less than 5 kilotons.

Swomley quotes defense budget analyst Bill Donahue, who says that the United States is spending roughly $5.8 billion on nuclear weapons this year and that the Los Alamos National Laboratories have been told to begin developing "earth penetrator" mini-nukes even before seeking permission from Congress.

The professor insists that Bush is hell-bent on building an American empire as envisioned by the likes of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield, his underlings Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney and State Department hawks Richard Armitage and John Bolton. The philosophy is pre-emptive war, unilateral action and world domination.

"The problem we face today is one that Al Gore described as a new doctrine that destroys the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, in favor of the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the president of the United States," Swomley insists.

Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times.

Copyright ©, Capital Newspapers

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September 17, 2003
The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
from Al Franken and Don Simpson

Read "The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus" and then see Al on the "Fair and Balanced Tour"

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Bush Admits He Doesn`t Know Why We Invaded Iraq
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MONROE, MI (IWR Satire) -- President Bush today admitted he couldn`t remember why the US attacked Iraq, but he was sure Cheney or somebody knew why.
Under relentless questioning by reporters from the Monroe Evening News about the reasons for going to war with Iraq, a clearly frustrated George Bush said:

"The hell if I know.

I mean, come on.

The reason has changed so many friggin` times. I can`t keep it straight anymore. Nobody can.

Anyway, I`m just a pin boy in all of this.

Everybody must have figured out by now that I`m only a cheerleader for the Neocon Illuminati who control this country.

I mean, there ain`t no nucular yellow cake, WMD or 9/11 connection for Christ sakes.

In other words, your guess is as good as mine."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-poor17se…


Poor`s Hopes Take Root Under Chavez
But critics say recent reforms are merely the president`s hedge against a recall effort.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

September 17, 2003

CARACAS, Venezuela — You can see two worlds from this shambles of misery that creeps up the mountain.

The first is the neighborhood itself. Crude cinder-block houses lurch up the slope. The streets are tight — some no wider than the span of a man`s arms. Contaminated water courses down homemade canals. It`s loud, dirty and cramped here.

The second lies in the valley below. Skyscrapers owned by multinationals soar in neat bundles. The colonial-era Congress building gleams white. The broad avenues of the rich in the east chug with traffic — symbols of power and wealth throbbing in the distance.

The first world belongs to Maria Lopez. The second, to her dreams.

"I`m planning to make a lot of money and leave here," Lopez, 48, said one recent afternoon as she sat on a worn couch in her cramped living room. "I have hope."

Lopez`s plans to escape poverty are not as farfetched as they once were. While the economy is still suffering badly, President Hugo Chavez`s promised revolution to improve the lives of Venezuela`s millions of poor is finally beginning to take off.

In the past few months, more than half a million illiterate Venezuelans have received basic reading and writing instruction. Hundreds of thousands of poor children have begun attending school for the first time in their lives. Doctors imported from Cuba as part of a petroleum deal are paying house calls to poor neighborhoods.

Perhaps most important, tens of thousands of people like Lopez have been given title to land that their families have been squatting on for generations, both in poor urban slums like this one and in vast rural tracts. Using new government credits, poor families are planting crops, organizing businesses, fixing up their homes and redesigning their neighborhoods.

"There is an incredible flowering of activity in the communities that are participating," said Gregory Wilpert, an American sociologist and freelance journalist living in Venezuela who is studying the effect of Chavez`s reforms. The impact of the government`s efforts is still haphazard and limited. But the measures have had a ripple effect that has left many of the poor feeling that for the first time in their lives the government is actually interested in aiding them.

This helps to explain a Venezuelan political phenomenon — Chavez`s unwavering support in polls from about 35% of voters, most of them poor.

By nearly any measurable standard, the poor are worse off today than they were when Chavez first took office five years ago. There are fewer jobs and higher prices. Nor is it hard to find poor people who dismiss the idea that Chavez has improved their lives in any way, pointing to tougher times since he took office.

But in neighborhoods like this one, Chavez commands unswerving loyalty. Women sleep with Chavez posters over their beds. Men vow to defend him to the death, tucking pistols into the belts of dirty jeans. In many poor homes, his portrait hangs alongside that of Jesus Christ.

It is not that Chavez, a strident leftist who has promised a war on poverty, has solved all their problems. But he is the only one who has promised to.

"I have lived through lots of different governments," Lopez said as she looked around the living room that she now owns after three decades of squatting. "This is the first time in my life that the government has done something for me."

Chavez`s Rise

Venezuela in the 1970s and 1980s was in many ways the crown jewel of Latin America. Booming oil prices created a vibrant and stable middle class and wealth that trickled down even to the poorest barrios.

But a drop in oil prices and a banking crisis in the 1990s spelled the end of the good times and the demise of the country`s two main political parties, which had long shared power.

Chavez, a military officer whose rise to power began with an attempted coup in 1992, swept into the political vacuum in 1998 and trounced opponents backed by the main parties.

One of the main planks of his platform was the promise of a "Bolivarian revolution." The plan, named after South American liberator Simon Bolivar, called for an all-out attack on the poverty that engulfed 80% of Venezuelans.

Instead of battling poverty, however, Chavez spent the next several years fighting a list of political opponents that seemed to grow longer by the day. First businesses turned against him, then unions, then the media. Former allies also abandoned him. Even Communists joined the opposition, claiming Chavez wasn`t leftist enough.

The different groups banded together to form a movement that, though disorganized, soon proved itself determined to get rid of Chavez.

The trigger was a series of decrees that Chavez enacted without consulting Congress. Among them was a land reform that allowed the government to seize unproductive cropland and turn it over to poor farmers. The decrees, as well as Chavez`s go-for-the-jugular rhetoric and erratic behavior, led to civil unrest.

The first salvo was general strikes in December 2001 protesting the dictatorial nature of the reforms. The strikes led to a coup attempt in April 2002, but Chavez was returned to power 48 hours later by his supporters.

After a brief hiatus, a massive general strike last December and January cost the economy an estimated $6 billion. This year, the Venezuelan economy is expected to contract by as much as 20%, following a 9% contraction last year.

Now the opposition has mounted a recall effort, seeking to vote Chavez out of office this year or early next year. That effort suffered a setback last week when the country`s highest electoral body tossed out a recall petition signed in February by 2.8 million people, ruling the signatures were gathered too early.

Opposition leaders announced plans to make a new such effort in October.

"We are now closer than ever to victory," said Miranda state Gov. Enrique Mendoza, one of the main opposition leaders.

For cynics, Chavez`s recent focus on the poor is explained by the looming recall. He is simply building up support to stop the opposition from winning the votes it needs to defeat him under Venezuela`s law, they say.

But for others, the burst of government concern is the logical result of the battles waged over the past few years.

Chavez won, they say. Now the revolution can begin.

"The people have awakened. We will never go back to the past," said Josefina Corranil, 40, who works as a maid by day and a community organizer by night.

Squatters Move In

To see how Chavez`s revolution has slowly begun to take effect, you need only visit Lopez`s neighborhood in a poor section of Caracas named January 23, after the date of the overthrow of a Venezuelan dictator.

The neighborhood began as a housing project. Enormous Soviet-style apartment buildings were built in clusters with green fields between them to hold soccer fields and parks.

Instead, as the oil boom attracted more and more people from the countryside, the green spaces began to fill with shacks.

Within a few decades, tens of thousands of people lived in January 23, nearly all of them in substandard housing.

National police tried repeatedly to expel the squatters, who either rebelled or simply returned in greater numbers. Eventually, politicians who recognized the votes to be gained among the squatters brought in some electricity, water and other municipal services such as schools and health clinics.

Still, the area remained underserved and dangerously beyond government control. Every summer brought rains that would send poorly built shacks crashing down the steep hillsides. Many neighborhoods hooked up electricity illegally. Water was brought from other neighborhoods using long hoses.

Lopez was one of the first to build in the neighborhood, in 1971 as a 16-year-old pregnant with her first child. She and her husband took over some vacant land and built a small house that over the years grew to be a three-story home, with one 300-square-foot room per floor. They raised four children, and today 18 relatives live in the house.

Lopez had never considered trying to improve the tumble-down community around her until one day last year, when she watched Chavez announce his plan to give out land titles to those who participated in a government program.

Lopez is a small woman, with high cheekbones, brown hair bunched in a ponytail and a constant smile. She exudes a confidence born of a life spent making do with not much at hand. Though the program turned out to be complicated, she decided she had to become active.

"My neighborhood didn`t appear on any maps. Nobody knew who we were. Nobody cared about us. We were just here, illegal," she said.

To get the title, Lopez went from door to door, gathering a band of about 200 homeowners. They elected Lopez and several other women — the neighborhood is mostly single mothers — as their representatives.

Over the next several months with the help of Chavez`s program, the women took classes in surveying and mapped their land. They wrote a community history. And they developed plans to improve the neighborhood, dubbed Santa Rosa.

They visited the local mayor`s office and demanded services: running water, basketball courts, even a health clinic, which is being built 100 yards from Lopez`s house.

"Through this, we got to know our own community," said Miriam Mora, 47, another of the committee members. "I knew many of them before, of course, but now I know them better."

In the end, Lopez was the first person in Venezuela to gain title to her home through the program. About 30,000 other property owners throughout Venezuela have followed suit, and an additional 310,000 are in the process. The titles come with one restriction: The homes can be sold only in case of emergency, with permission from the government — to prevent speculators from buying up large chunks of land from the poor.

The titles have allowed the women in the neighborhood access to government home-improvement credits. Lopez installed a new roof. Another woman surfaced the bare walls of her home with brick finishing.

Lopez plans to use her home as collateral for a loan to create a taxi business with her family and some other relatives.

For the first time, she has begun to look beyond the rough streets of her barrio, and at the bright lights of the city below.

"As many years as I had lived here, I never worked for the community," Lopez said. "Now I feel important. I can hardly believe it."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-opec…
THE WORLD



Iraqis Are to Attend OPEC Meeting
The oil minister`s appearance would be a boost for a government hungry for recognition.
From Associated Press

September 17, 2003

LONDON — An Iraqi delegation is to attend next week`s meeting of OPEC members for the first time since U.S.-led forces deposed Saddam Hussein — a significant boost for a new government hungry for global recognition.

Re-integration into the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is one of Iraq`s biggest steps so far on its path toward normalized international relations, given the importance of oil exports to its economy and the success of its interim government.

Already, representatives of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council have been welcomed this month at an Arab League meeting in Cairo and a Conference on Disarmament session in Geneva.

However, some doors remain closed. Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said last week that the Governing Council would not be allowed to participate at the annual meeting in Malaysia of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He cited the U.S. military occupation of Iraq as the reason.

OPEC Secretary-General Alvaro Silva told senior members of the Iraqi Oil Ministry in a telephone conversation that Iraq`s oil minister would be welcome at the meeting next Wednesday in Vienna, OPEC spokesman Omar Ibrahim said Tuesday.

In Baghdad, Iraq`s oil minister, Ibrahim Mohammed Bahr Uloum, confirmed that he would attend.

Iraq, one of OPEC`s five founding members, has the world`s second-largest proven crude reserves, at 112 billion barrels.

OPEC members supply about a third of the world`s oil, and they plan to reassess their production quotas and output at next week`s meeting.

Iraq`s postwar crude production has lagged far behind expectations, largely a result of looting, sabotage and problems with the electricity supply.

Iraqi officials last week estimated the country`s output at about 1.6 million barrels a day, well below the 2.1 million it was pumping before the ouster of Hussein.

However, as Iraq gradually increases its output, other OPEC members may come under pressure to pump less crude to keep oil prices from falling. Saudi Arabia, OPEC`s biggest producer and most influential member, will probably face the loudest calls to curtail its output to help make room for a revived Iraq.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-rumm…
THE WORLD



No Proof Linking 9/11 to Hussein, Officials Say
From Associated Press

September 17, 2003

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that they had no evidence that Saddam Hussein had a direct hand in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The two officials` rejection of a direct connection between Hussein and the attacks comes on the heels of a Washington Post poll showing that nearly 70% of respondents believed the ex-Iraqi leader was probably involved in the plot.

The Bush administration has asserted that Hussein`s government had links to Al Qaeda, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. And in various public statements over the last year or so, administration officials have suggested close links.

Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, said Sunday that success in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq would strike a major blow at the "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

But asked at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday about the widespread belief that Hussein was personally involved in the attacks, Rumsfeld said, "I`ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

"We know he was giving $25,000 a family for anyone who would go out and kill innocent men, women and children," Rumsfeld said, referring to payments Hussein made to relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers. "And we know of various other activities. But on that specific one, no, not to my knowledge."

Meanwhile, in an interview on ABC`s "Nightline," Rice said that one of the reasons President Bush went to war against Hussein was because the Iraqi leader posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."

But asked about the poll, she said, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

"What we have said," she added, "is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them, but most importantly that this is someone who, with his animus toward the United States, with his penchant for and capability to gain weapons of mass destruction, and his obvious willingness to use them, was a threat in this region."

On NBC`s "Meet the Press," Cheney was asked whether he was surprised that more than two-thirds of Americans in the poll expressed a belief that Iraq was behind the attacks.

"No, I think it`s not surprising that people make that connection," he replied.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-predmor…
COMMENTARY



Paths of Glory Lead to a Soldier`s Doubt
An American carrying out his duty in Iraq wonders aloud why he`s there.
By Tim Predmore
Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. A version of this essay appeared in the Peoria (Ill.) Star Journal.

September 17, 2003

For the last six months I have participated in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, and throughout the battle in Afghanistan, the groundwork was being laid for the invasion of Iraq. "Shock and awe" was the term used to describe the display of power the world was to view upon the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was to be a dramatic show of strength and advanced technology from within the arsenals of the American and British militaries.

But as a soldier preparing to take part in the invasion of Iraq, the words "shock and awe" rang deep within my psyche. Even as we prepared to depart, it seemed that these two great superpowers were about to break the very rules they demanded that others obey. Without the consent of the United Nations, and ignoring the pleas of their own citizens, the U.S. and Britain invaded Iraq. "Shock and awe"? Yes, the words correctly described the emotional impact I felt as we embarked on an act not of justice but of hypocrisy.

From the moment the first shot was fired in this so-called war of liberation and freedom, hypocrisy reigned. After the broadcasting of recorded images of captured and dead U.S. soldiers over Arab television, American and British leaders vowed revenge while verbally assaulting the networks for displaying such vivid images. Yet within hours of the deaths of Saddam Hussein`s two sons, the U.S. released horrific photographs of the two dead brothers for the world to view. Again, a "do as we say and not as we do" scenario.

As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose here is to help the people of Iraq by providing them the necessary assistance militarily as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity was in the recent Stars and Stripes account of two children taken to a U.S. military camp by their mother, in search of medical care. The children had been unknowingly playing with explosive ordnance they had found and as a result were severely burned. The account tells how they, after an hourlong wait, were denied care by two U.S. military doctors. A soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" he had witnessed on the part of the U.S. military.

Thankfully I have not been a personal witness to any atrocities, unless of course you consider, as I do, this war to be the ultimate atrocity.

So then, what is our purpose here?

Was this invasion because of weapons of mass destruction, as we so often have heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime because they were closely associated with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof? Or is it that our incursion is a result of our own economic advantage? Iraq`s oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. Coincidence?

This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination but a crusade to control another nation`s natural resource. At least to me, oil seems to be the reason for our presence.

There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are 10 to 14 attacks on our servicemen and -women daily in Iraq, and it would appear that there is no end in sight.

I once believed that I served for a cause: "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.

With age comes wisdom, and at 36 years old I am no longer so blindly led as to believe without question. From my arrival at Ft. Campbell, Ky., last November, talk of deployment was heard, and as that talk turned to actual preparation my heart sank and my doubts grew. My doubts have never faded; instead my resolve and commitment have.

My time is almost done, as well as that of many others with whom I serve. We have all faced death in Iraq without reason or justification. How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader`s interest?


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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POLL ANALYSES
September 17, 2003


Mood of Country Returns to Pre-9/11 Levels
Three in five Americans dissatisfied with way things are going


by David W. Moore
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- The mood of the country today has returned to pre-9/11 levels, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. In January 2001, Americans began the Bush presidency in a mostly optimistic frame of mind. But by the following September, amid a falling stock market and other signs of declining economic fortunes, the mood had soured considerably. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks rallied the country to a determinedly more optimistic mood, but that began to falter several months after major fighting had ended in Afghanistan. The public`s mood rallied again during the war against Iraq, but now has regressed about to the level it was in a Sept. 7-10, 2001, Gallup Poll.

The latest poll, conducted Sept. 8-10, finds 58% of Americans dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, while just 40% are satisfied.


This level of dissatisfaction is similar to that measured by Gallup in February and March of this year, prior to the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Current opinion is slightly more negative than what Gallup found in the days leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, when 55% of Americans were dissatisfied and 43% were satisfied.

Lower Approval Levels of President, Congress, and Supreme Court

General dissatisfaction is highly related to how Americans rate their political leaders. At 52%, Bush`s job approval is just a point better than his pre-9/11 rating, and is down seven points from a late August poll.

Approval of Congress has dropped even lower than the pre-9/11 level. Currently, 53% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, and just 40% approve -- compared with the 44% who disapproved and 42% who approved Sept. 7-10, 2001.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030917.asp

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DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Cheney`s misspeaking streak
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 9/17/2003

DICK CHENEY has lived off his press clippings far too long. In 2000, Cheney was the stealth vice presidential candidate whose image obliterated his radical associations with the far right and oil. Next to presidential candidate George W. Bush, who had little foreign experience. Cheney, a former defense secretary, White House chief of staff, and congressman, was described by both Republicans and Democrats as adding "gravitas," "weight," "heft," and "integrity" to the ticket.

His balding dome, round body, and soft voice led many to describe him as "grandfatherly." He was described by political analysts and journalists as a safe and even boring addition to the ticket who would "do no harm" to Bush`s bid for the White House.

Three years later, the stealth grandfather is the hired gun. His harm to America`s integrity is now incalculable.

On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Cheney claimed that the White House has "learned more and more that there was a relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of his pieces of "evidence" was the old report of a meeting in Prague in early 2001 between Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 airplane hijackers, and what Cheney described as "a senior Iraqi intelligence official."

The Czech government began backing away from the claim almost as soon as it was made. American and British intelligence agencies never found any hard evidence of a meeting. The claim became a dubious if not a dead issue in intelligence circles more than a year ago. The more likely possibility, according to intelligence records, was that Atta was in Virginia Beach, casing naval facilities.

Yet Cheney on his own brought it back up Sunday as if the meeting remains a real possibility, with an investigation still in progress. "With respect to 9/11, of course, we`ve had the story that`s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we`ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don`t know."

Cheney also made the claim that Al Qaeda "sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained" on biological and chemical weapons and bomb making. No such training sessions have ever been confirmed. Cheney offered no new evidence to substantiate his claim. The Globe, in a story yesterday, quoted a senior defense official as saying, "There isn`t any new intelligence."

Cheney`s claim that we have learned more when we have learned nothing more is one more lie in the chain of deception that convinced a critical number of Americans to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- at the loss of nearly 300 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. The fact that he dredged up the thinnest of alleged links between Iraq and Al Qaeda shocked his own intelligence officials. The fact that his own senior defense officials say there is no new intelligence is a dead giveaway that there never was a justification for this invasion.

It is fitting that Cheney is the man showing the White House`s empty hand. It was he who said during the buildup:

"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

"We know he`s reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War."

"We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

The string of claims has finally reached the point where the media are challenging dear old granddad. On Sunday`s "Meet the Press," NBC`s Tim Russert replayed the quote about Saddam currently having reconstituted nuclear weapons. Russert said to Cheney, "You misspoke."

Cheney responded, "Yeah, I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show `weapons capability.` We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."

Misspeak? In March, Russert asked Cheney, "What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?" Cheney responded, "Well, I think I`ve just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons."

With no proof that Saddam had any of those weapons at the time of the invasion, Cheney`s claim that he misspoke becomes yet another lie. Cheney once wowed the Washington elite with his gravitas. With so many soldiers and civilians dead, his gravitas now leads to the grave.

Derrick Z. Jackson`s e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Democrats Question Cheney`s Halliburton Payments
Tue September 16, 2003 04:30 PM ET
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of Halliburton Co., has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company since taking office while asserting he has no financial interest in the company, Senate Democrats said on Tuesday.

The Democrats demanded to know why Cheney claimed to have cut ties with the oil services company, involved in a large no-bid contract for oil reconstruction work in Iraq, when he was still receiving large deferred salary payments.

Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg said the revelations reinforced the need for hearings about the no-bid contracts Halliburton received from the Bush administration.

"The vice president needs to explain how he reconciles the claim that he has `no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind,` with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred salary payments he receives from Halliburton," Daschle said in a statement.

On NBC`s "Meet the Press" program last Sunday, Cheney, who was Halliburton`s CEO from 1995 to 2000, said he had severed all ties with the Houston-based company.

"I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven`t had now for over three years," he said.

Cathie Martin, a Cheney spokeswoman, confirmed that the vice president has been receiving the deferred compensation payments from Halliburton, but she disputed that his statements on "Meet the Press" had been misleading.

Cheney had already earned the salary that was now being paid, Martin said, adding that once he became a nominee for vice president, he purchased an insurance policy to guarantee that the deferred salary would be paid to him whether or not Halliburton survived as a company.

"So he has no financial interest in the company," she said.

But Sen. Lautenberg said that Cheney`s financial disclosure filings with the Office of Government Ethics listed $205,298 in deferred salary payments made to him by Halliburton in 2001, and another $162,393 in 2002. The filings indicated that he was scheduled to receive more payments in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

"In 2001 and 2002, Vice President Cheney was paid almost as much in salary from Halliburton as he made as vice president," Lautenberg said.

The U.S. vice president`s salary is $198,600 annually.

The financial disclosure forms also said that Cheney continued to hold 433,333 unexercised Halliburton stock options, with exercise prices below the company`s current stock market price.

Cheney`s spokeswoman said he had placed these options in a charitable trust, and no longer had control over them.

On "Meet the Press," Cheney also said he had no involvement in the awarding of U.S. government contracts to Halliburton.

"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," he said.

In March, Halliburton was granted, without competition, a contract by the Army Corps of Engineers to repair and restore Iraq`s oil fields. The ACE says the cost of this contract to taxpayers is about $1 billion.

But under a second military support contract, Halliburton`s Kellogg Brown & Root unit has racked up over $1 billion in expenses in Iraq, according to the U.S. Army Field Support Command.

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Mystery pneumonia toll may be much higher
By Mark Benjamin
UPI Investigations Editor
Published 9/16/2003 2:45 PM
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030915-014545-8114r
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Mysterious pneumonia-like illnesses and breathing problems appear to be striking U.S. troops in greater numbers than the military has identified in an investigation -- including more deaths, according to soldiers and their families.

Some of the soldiers were deployed to Iraq and died but are not part of the Pentagon`s investigation. Others who got ill told United Press International they suffered a pneumonia-like illness after being given vaccines, particularly the anthrax shot.

The Pentagon said it is committed to the health of military personnel and that some dead or ill soldiers do not meet criteria for the investigation. Pentagon health officials said a statistical analysis essentially has ruled out vaccines and that the role of smoking has emerged as a leading factor instead.

One Air Force staff sergeant who was deployed to Turkey for Operation Iraqi Freedom told UPI he was hospitalized in Incerlik in March with a pneumonia-like illness, 10 days after his fourth anthrax shot. He got his next anthrax shot in August, and 10 days later was hospitalized in California with what he said was the same pneumonia-like illness.

"They said I had considerable inflammation of the lungs," said Staff Sgt. Neal B. Erickson Sr., 43, in a telephone interview from Moffett Field south of San Francisco. "I had severe chest pains, dizziness and shortness of breath."

He said he does not smoke and that doctors thought he had blood clots or a heart attack. Tests for viruses or bacteria "came back clean," Erickson said. "They basically labeled it as a type of pneumonia."

He said the military is not recognizing that the shots made him sick and that he is afraid of getting the next anthrax shot, scheduled in five months.

"I`m real touchy here. Come a few more months, I`m in line to get another. It`s not like we have a choice in the matter." Military personnel are required to take the shots and can be court-martialed if they refuse.

Erickson said there are at least four similar cases in his squadron, including one hospitalization.

The Pentagon is investigating what it says is a mysterious pneumonia cluster that has sickened around 100 soldiers deployed across Southwest Asia. "I`ll bet I`m not in (the Pentagon`s) numbers," Erickson said.

Pentagon health officials repeatedly have emphasized that the number of sick soldiers in their investigation show there is no "epidemic" among U.S. troops. They are concentrating on 19 service members who have gotten so sick they needed ventilators to breathe; two of those died.

"We do not have an epidemic," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder Jr. told reporters last week. "The rates of pneumonia among personnel deployed to Southwest Asia in the past six months are consistent with what we would have expected, and we have data that strongly supports that."

The Pentagon has identified two deaths in its investigation: the July 12 death of Army Spc. Joshua M. Neusche, 20; and the June 17 death of Army Sgt. Michael L. Tosto, 24. Neusche`s family wrote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last month seeking an independent investigation of his death. Tosto`s wife, Stephanie, told UPI last month she was frustrated at the lack of information on her husband`s death, but said she thinks vaccines played a role.

At least two more soldiers deployed to Iraq died with fluid in their lungs, according to their families; one of those was found dead in his cot. The Pentagon has not released any information on two more soldiers found dead in Iraq under similar circumstances. In a fifth case, a 20-year-old died after what the Pentagon said were "breathing difficulties" and his mother has said she wants more information.

At least two more soldiers died after experiencing chest pain, including the Aug. 27 death of 43-year-old Lt. Col Anthony L. Sherman, who competed in triathlons and marathons. "The only thing they had to tell me was severe myocardial infarction," said his wife, Lisa Ann, from Pottstown, Pa. "In my heart of hearts, I believe there was more to it than just a heart attack. He was in too good of shape."

All of those deaths appear on the Pentagon list of non-combat related fatalities but were not included in the pneumonia investigation.

The Pentagon said that in its investigation, it has focused on a specific group of ill soldiers. "Other cases are medically reviewed separately because it would be scientifically inappropriate to combine the reviews," Pentagon medical officials told UPI in a written statement.

The investigation is focused on serious cases of illness that occurred between March 1 and Aug. 31 among military personnel who were deployed and who report to the United States Central Command, which includes the Horn of Africa, South and Central Asia and the Northern Red Sea regions, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq. Pentagon investigators are focusing on soldiers who developed pneumonia in both lungs and were placed on ventilators to breathe.

Some civilian doctors said those parameters are too narrow and ignore cases that could help identify the cause.

"I think the military is making a scientific mistake by restricting the region from which they are collecting these cases," said Dr. Meryl Nass, a doctor who treats soldiers who say they were harmed by vaccines. "There is no scientific reason to limit the geographical envelope from which cases are identified," Nass said. "You want to capture as many cases as possible to investigate, in order to get a broad outline of all the features of the disease."

Pentagon officials said their statistical analysis shows that vaccinated military personnel are no more likely to develop pneumonia than unvaccinated soldiers. Nor are they more likely to develop it soon after getting vaccinated.

"We knew beforehand that the rate of pneumonia in anthrax-vaccinated people and in anthrax-unvaccinated people were essentially the same, so our starting point was that this was unlikely," Col. John Grabenstein, deputy director of the Military Vaccine Office, told reporters.

Pentagon health officials said 10 of the 19 cases they are studying had eosinophilia, or the presence of a large number of a specific kind of white blood cell that can indicate an allergic response. Doctors have been unable to detect any virus or bacteria that might have caused the illness in those cases.

A reaction to a drug might cause eosinophilia, according to the Centers for Disease Control doctor assisting the military in the investigation, Dr. Steve Ostroff.

"Obviously, one can have an allergy to a particular type of medication ... and that is certainly a line of investigation we can`t entirely exclude," Ostroff told reporters. "There doesn`t seem to be any particular type of unifying treatment that was given to these individuals."

A civilian doctor questioned that logic.

"They keep saying there is no common exposure, but every one of those soldiers got vaccinated," said Dr. Jeffrey Sartin, an infectious diseases doctor at the Gundersen Clinic in La Crosse, Wis. "That is one definite common exposure that should not be dismissed out of hand."

"Statistics by themselves only give you part of the story," said Sartin, a former Air Force doctor. "They are getting a bird`s eye view of the forest but they are not getting down and looking at the trees."

This spring, Sartin treated Army Spc. Rachel Lacy of Lynwood, Ill., who died April 4 after a pneumonia-like illness. He and a coroner linked that soldier`s death to either the anthrax or smallpox vaccines she had received March 2, before falling ill.

Lacy`s June 3 death certificate lists vaccines as a possible cause for her lung damage, heart inflammation "with eosinophils," and "lupus-like autoimmune disease."

The military, which did not treat her or perform the autopsy, said her death was likely not due to vaccines.

A number of soldiers who were not deployed said the anthrax vaccine made them sick.

Army Pvt. Dennis W. Drew, 27, got his first anthrax shot April 24 at Fort Hood, Texas, in preparation for going to Iraq. He started feeling ill April 27.

"I started getting a real sharp pain in my chest. I had a hard time breathing and every time I moved, my chest hurt." Drew said. "I checked into a hospital and I found out I had pneumonia in my left lung and myocarditis, a swelling of the heart. Basically, my health has been going down hill ever since."

Drew says he quit smoking four years ago and was in good shape. In addition to his pneumonia, he said he has since suffered from severe headaches, loss of peripheral vision and constant colds. "It is like my immune system does not work anymore," he said. "When I first got to Fort Hood, the doctor there thought the myocarditis might have been caused by the vaccine."

Drew wrote to Congress about his belief that the vaccine has ruined his life with his wife and two small children.

"I would invite anyone who doesn`t believe in the adverse reaction of the anthrax vaccine to come spend a day in my home to see first hand what my family and I go through," Drew wrote to House National Security Subcommittee Chairman Chris Shays, R-Conn., on Aug. 31. "We are just victims of wanting to serve our country."

Drew said he knows of three other similar cases at Fort Hood.

Among deaths of soldiers with pneumonia-like symptoms and breathing problems who served in operation Iraqi Freedom, and are not included in the Pentagon investigation:

-- Army Spc. Zeferino E. Colunga, 20, of Bellville, Texas. Colunga died on Aug. 6 after being evacuated from Iraq to Germany. Colunga`s family wrote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last month seeking an independent analysis of his death from "this `so-called` mystery illness." The family said Colunga "died at a hospital in Germany after a battle with pneumonia and a subsequent diagnosis of acute leukemia. We deserve to know why a healthy young man who was supposedly screened and determined fit for deployment would suddenly die," the letter says. The military specifically ruled out Colunga`s death as part of the pneumonia cluster.

-- Army Spc. Cory A. Hubbell, 20, of Urbana, Ill. Hubbel died June 26 from what has been reported as "breathing difficulties," and listed by the Pentagon as a "non-combat related cause." He died after being hospitalized at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Hubbel`s mother, Connie Bickers, told the Champaign News-Gazette that the Army is not giving her many answers on the death.

-- Army Spc. Levi B. Kinchen, 21, of Tickfaw, La. Tickfaw died Aug. 9 in Baghdad. A fellow soldier tried to wake him and noticed he was not breathing, according to the Pentagon. He was assigned to 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Polk, La.

-- Army Staff Sergeant Richard S. Eaton Jr., 37, of Guilford, Conn. Eaton was found dead on the morning of Aug. 12. The military has told the family that Eaton died of pulmonary edema, or fluid in his lungs, that might have been heat-related. Eaton`s father Richard told UPI he has no reason to doubt the Army`s explanation, but he said he has not received a final report on his son.

-- Army Pvt. Matthew D. Bush, 20, of East Alton, Ill. Bush died Aug. 8 in Camp Caldwell, Iraq. A fellow soldier tried to wake him and noticed he was not breathing, according to the Pentagon. Pentagon officials have indicated that his death might have been heat-related.

-- Army Staff Sgt. David L. Loyd, 44, of Jackson, Tenn. Loyd died Aug. 5 in a Kuwaiti hospital after he experienced severe chest pains while on a mission. He was assigned to the 1175th Transportation Company, Army National Guard, Brownsville, Tenn.

-- Lt. Col. Anthony L. Sherman, 43, of Pottstown, Pa. Sherman died on Aug. 27 in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. The Pentagon said Sherman died "as a result of non-combat related injury (medical)." His wife, Lisa Ann, said the Army told her Sherman died of "a severe myocardial infarction." She said she was suspicious because he was a marathon runner. Sherman was assigned to the 304th Civil Affairs Brigade, U.S. Army Reserves, based in Philadelphia, Pa.

-- Army Spc. William A. Jeffries, 39, of Evansville, Ind. Jeffries died March 31 at a hospital in Spain after becoming sick in Kuwait. A military official reportedly told Jeffries` family that he suffered a blood clot in his lung and acute pancreatitis.

[Joerver]

“The Crazies Are Back”: Bush Sr.’s CIA Briefer Recalls How the First Bush Administration Referred to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney
Former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and David MacMichael accuse President Bush of waging the Iraq war based on a series of lies, discuss the unprecedented pressure that VP Dick Cheney put on the CIA before the invasion and call on CIA analysts and agents to come forward with information that will reveal the lies of the Bush administration.


Audio:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demno…
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http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2003/sept/128/…
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former CIA analyst.
David MacMichael, former CIA analyst.


To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 [phone].

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215

TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: A number of senators including New York Senator Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Congress Member Harry Waxman and others have called for an investigation into who outed Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, who blew her cover. We called the White House to see if they were conducting an investigation. They said to call the FBI. We called the FBI. They said they’re looking into it but that they would not yet classify it as an investigation. Well today we turn to an interview that I did with two former CIA analysts to talk about just what it means for an analyst or agent to have their cover blown. While we had them in the studio, we talked about many other issues as well to shed some light on the way intelligence or lack of it has been used over the years. We began with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who worked closely with George Bush senior when he was Director of Central Intelligence right through his presidency. And the law was passed under Bush’s watch that made the blowing of a covert operative a felony. We’re going to turn now to that interview.

Let’s go back in time to something former President Bush, this is George Bush senior, said. Langley, Virginia, he is at the Central Intelligence Agency – I’m reading from an Associated Press report:

“Former President Bush, helping the CIA celebrate its 50th birthday, called agency critics “nuts”. He singled out for criticism Philip Agee, a former CIA agent and later critic of the agency. “Remember Philip Agee, who I consider a traitor to our country?`` Bush asked, referring to Agee`s efforts to expose CIA operations and identify spies. Bush said some of the criticism of the Directorate of Operations ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries and, in one instance, blew the cover of CIA station chief in Greece, Richard Welch, who was assassinated outside his residence in Greece in the mid-1970s. Bush was careful not to directly link Agee to Welch`s death. Agee dropped a defamation suit against former first lady Barbara Bush earlier this year after Mrs. Bush acknowledged that the first edition of her memoir was erroneous in saying that Agee had exposed Welch`s identity.`` David MacMichael, explain this.

DAVID MACMICHAEL: Well after the Mrs. Bush’s memoir came out with that statement which charged Phillip Agee effectively with commission of a felony, that is, violation of exposing this - exposing Richard Welch – ok, that’s a libel per se, as they say in law. Phillip Agee filed a suit some months after the book came out in Washington DC charging libel and seeking damages for that. He did not drop the suit. The case was dismissed by the presiding judge on grounds that Phillip’s place of residence at the time did not give him standing to sue in US courts on this, and the case went away. The subsequent, as I think the article indicates and you said, the subsequent additions of Mrs. Bush’s book did not contain this erroneous charge, but it serves to indicate that this is a very serious matter. If former President Bush could define Philip Agee as a traitor for exposing the identities of serving intelligence officers, if his son’s political advisor has done the same, while it has not come under the heading of treason, believe me, it is a very serious felony under the current Act.

AMY GOODMAN:Ray McGovern you worked for George Bush in the CIA when he was director of Central Intelligence. It was right at the time of the Richard Welch assassination. Were you at this 50th anniversary party?

RAY MCGOVERN: I was. They invited a whole bunch of alumni and alumnae back, so I was witness to those events. I would like to add that I do not condone what Phillip Agee did, nor does Dave. However, I think that ..

AMY GOODMAN: Though he says he did not expose Richard Welch as a CIA man.

RAY MCGOVERN: Well not Richard Welch, but he did expose many operations and many identities and that is really unconscionable. But what I would say is that the law came in, if I’m not mistaken, Dave, in direct reaction to what Agee had done. This was the Intelligence Identities law and it was made draconian, it was made very, very specific, automatic penalties that would accrue to both officials and non-officials - anyone who knowingly disclosed the identity of a CIA agent or officer under cover. And so with that kind of background, you get an idea of for how critical it was, it was judged to be, that agency operations which depend on concealed identities needed to be protected and needed to be protected in such a way that those violating those confidences would be prosecuted and extremely penalized.

What this indicates, I mean, this is all sort of in the weeds until you step back and you say why is all this happening? It is all happening because there are lies upon lies, deceit upon deceit that have been used to justify this illegal war on against an unprovoked enemy, or an enemy that does not provoke us. Once the lies start unraveling, and people see they can speak out, that is going to be real trouble for the administration, and so what do you do? You do all you can to intimidate them. And how you intimidate them is to try to hurt them in a personal way. Going after somebody’s wife, I mean, not even Richard Nixon stooped to that.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Ray McGovern and David MacMichael, two former CIA analysts with the agency for more than a quarter of a century. We’ll be right back with that in a minute. (MUSIC BREAK) You are listening to Democracy Now! Ray McGovern, our guest, former CIA analyst. You were with the CIA for…

RAY MCGOVERN: 27 years.

AMY GOODMAN: And you worked directly under George Bush

RAY MCGOVERN: I did when he was director for CIA and later I saw him every other morning for a couple of years in the 80’s when he was Vice President.

AMY GOODMAN: Doing what?

RAY MCGOVERN: I was one of the briefers who prepared the President’s daily brief and delivered it and briefed people one on one with the senior officials downtown.

AMY GOODMAN:Now one of the things we are talking about a lot and seeing a lot is that the same people that were there during the Reagan-Bush years and even before, the Wolfowitzes the Rumsfelds, Cheneys were there then. What was George Bush’s view of these people then?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, you know it’s really interesting. When we saw these people coming back in town, all of us said who were around in those days said, oh my god, ‘the crazies’ are back – ‘the crazies’ – that’s how we referred to these people.

AMY GOODMAN: Did George Bush refer to them that way?

RAY MCGOVERN: That’s the way everyone referred to them.

AMY GOODMAN: Including George Bush?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, when Wolfowitz prepared that defense posture statement in 1991, where he elucidated the strategic vision that has now been implemented, Jim Baker, Secretary of State, Brent Scowcroft, security advisor to George Bush, and George Bush said hey, that thing goes right into the circular file. Suppress that thing, get rid of it. Somebody had the presence of mind to leak it and so that was suppressed. But now to see that arise out of the ashes and be implemented. while we start a war against Iraq, I wonder what Bush the first is really thinking. Because these were the same guys that all of us referred to as ‘the crazies’.

AMY GOODMAN: Including George Bush

RAY MCGOVERN: I don’t want to…There is a certain delicacy to all this. The last thing I want to do is to do anything to impede the access of honest analysts who are willing to speak truth to power on these mornings briefings, and so I am not going to quote anything the Vice President said to me directly.

AMY GOODMAN: But on that issue, when you say when Wolfowitz for example, brought forward the defense posture, explain what that was, what he was promoting.

RAY MCGOVERN: Well he was promoting the idea that has now been implemented that we are the single superpower in the world and that we should act like it. We’ve got a lot of weight to throw around, we should throw it around. We should assert ourselves in critical areas, like the Middle East and over the next few years the Project for New American Century documents very much elucidate this kind of strategic vision and strategic plan. It’s very much like Mein Kampf. It’s the ideological strategic justification for what has been happening here. It’s empire, it’s how to increase our influence and not coincidentally, it dovetails expressly with the strategic objectives of Israel in the Middle East. We mean to be the sole superpower, dominant superpower in the world and Israel is determined to remain the superpower in the Middle East. And of course if you talk about weapons of mass destruction, well, check out how many Israel has. And ask yourself when was the last national intelligence estimate on Israeli weapons of mass destruction?

AMY GOODMAN: Are these views common, David MacMichael, in the the intelligence agency, in the CIA for years among analysts?

DAVID MACMICHAEL:I can only speak to those two years that I served on the National Intelligence Council as a Senior Estimates Officer.

AMY GOODMAN:Those years were…?

DAVID MACMICHAEL:Those were 1981-1983 under Reagan and under William Casey. In fact I embarked on that job the day Casey came in. I can assure you that the way in which the National Intelligence Council and the National Intelligence officers, the directing officers in there were stacked during the Casey years, meant that intelligence was designed, and I focused principally on Central America, the whole Iran Contra thing later, truthful analysis was not the highest priority there. The determination was to produce analyses that would support the previously decided upon policy so for me, getting back involved with Ray McGovern here and VIPS dealing with this current situation, its kind of like déjà vu all over again. It’s a familiar process.

AMY GOODMAN: VIPS being Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

DAVID MACMICHAEL:Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And you have put out a call now?

RAY MCGOVERN: We have indeed. There have been a few courageous people who have stood on principle at some personal cost. Ironically, we intelligence professionals, we, unfairly, we tend to dismiss foreign service officers as knee-jerk mouthpieces for the administration. Well, three such foreign service officers have stood on principle and have quit, some of them before the war ever started, and they have issued eloquent statements as to how their conscience would not permit them to have to tell these lies to folks, to try to rally support for an unjust US policy. There is Andrew Wilke in Australia, an incredible person whom Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity had to this country. We all chipped in and paid for his fare. He spoke in Congress at one of the congressional hearings. Andrew quit the Office of National Assessments in Australia, which is the CIA counterpart, eight days before the war, because he could no longer countenance his country going into a war on the basis of intelligence that he saw to be bogus. And he spoke out immediately, and over the last few weeks, although you won’t see it in the US press, he and Prime Minister Howard in Australia have been having a personal argument in the press as to how the intelligence was over-egged as the British say, exaggerated, sexed-up, as some of the other British and Australians say. So there is precedent for people speaking out.

I guess the most prominent American example of that is Daniel Ellsberg. And the interesting thing there is, you know, I asked Daniel Ellsberg, do you have any regrets about outing the Pentagon Papers, which he gave to the NY Times and the Washington Post about Vietnam which showed all the lies and deceit about that policy. He said yes, Ray, I do have one major regret. I said, what’s that? He said I did it in 1971, and I should have done it in 1964 or ‘65 where it could have prevented this war or at least retarded it. And I said Dan, why didn’t you do it? And he said, Ray, it’s hard to believe but it never occurred to me. You know how it is when you get immeshed in this culture and your loyalties get a little perverted, and they become the loyalty to the little group, and it’s beyond the pale to rise above that and to release information that you know the public should have. Well, that was my mind frame, so it never occurred to me.

And so our latest appeal to intelligence professionals still working on the inside is, well let it occur to you now. There are more important things. And we are not suggesting that they release classified information. All they have to do is tell what happened in months before this war. Tell how bogus information was used, like forgeries, to deceive Congress. This is a constitutional crisis to deceive the other branch of government.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the forgeries.

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, the forgery we referred to before with respect to alleged Iraqi attempts to seek uranium in Niger.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we always refer to that, but most people don’t know what the fraud was that was perpetrated. Explain what actually happened.

RAY MCGOVERN: What happened was this: in early 2002, Vice President Cheney learned that there was a report floating around that the government of Iraq was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in the African country of Niger. He was so interested in that for obvious reasons, that he and his staff went to the Central Intelligence Agency and said tell me more about this. The CIA in response found out the best person to send down there, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who knew Africa like the palm of his hand, who had served in Niger as ambassador to other countries.

DAVID MACMICHAEL:Just to intrude here. Joe Wilson was particularly important for that. He had been the Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad just prior to the 1991 Iraq war and actually had been serving as effectively the US ambassador there, so he knew Iraq and he knew Africa.

AMY GOODMAN: He was Bush’s ambassador to Iraq at that time.

RAY MCGOVERN: Exactly, with high commendations from President Bush the first. So Joe went down there, spent eight days down there checking it out, with the ambassador down there and everybody else who knew this situation. He came back and said it was ‘highly dubious’. Number one: The government of Niger cannot, even if it wanted to, give uranium or sell uranium to Iraq. Why? Because it doesn’t control it. Who controls it? An international consortium led by the French. Every ounce of the uranium is accounted for. There is no way they could do that. Number 2: Iraq already has several, 50 tons of this yellow cake uranium it doesn’t know what to do with.

DAVID MACMICHAEL:And again, to intrude, all of which was under control of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency

AMY GOODMAN: The yellow cake uranium that Saddam Hussein had.

DAVID MACMICHAEL:The existing uranium ore that they had.

RAY MCGOVERN: So on the strength of that, the ambassadors report was that, forget it, this is really bogus, this report. It just can’t…the first thing you do as an intelligence analyst or any kind of analyst is look at the substance of the report. If it makes no sense, it hardly matters what kind of source was behind it. But in this case it really did matter because later, it was discovered, that this report came from deliberate forgeries, and crude forgeries at that. And so, what I am reminded of is…

AMY GOODMAN: By whom?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, it’s not clear. One asks themselves, Qui bono? Who would profit from this kind of thing? And a lot of people suggest it was the Israeli service, Mussad.

AMY GOODMAN: What evidence was there for that?

RAY MCGOVERN: As I say, just speculation on who would profit from this.

DAVID MACMICHAEL:And it I may again intrude, because you are interested in the detail of this, the apparent conduit was through Italian intelligence service. Ray is referring to the forgeries here, the documents that were passed forward. They may have been passed forward by agents, of one or another intelligence agency, who are under pressure to provide information to their control officers. The crude forgeries were purported to be Niger government documents. They were signed by a foreign minister, who had been out of office for many years. They referred to constitutional provisions, which no longer existed in Niger. And this is the reason I would tend to excuse Mussad because they are too good to put forward such blatantly and easily detectable pieces of paper trash. But, go on, Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN: The real conspiratorial thing would be, of course that Mussad would do it in a sloppy way precisely so that folks like David MacMichael would rule them out as the author of that.

AMY GOODMAN: But at this point you don’t know the evidence?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well we don’t know and it doesn’t matter, because the information was false on its face. Why this is important is the following: this time last year, the decision had already been made to go to war. Dick Cheney led off the charge on the 26th of August of last year, when he said among other things that Iraq was starting to reconstitute its nuclear program. Now the next thing they needed to do was persuade Congress that the situation was serious enough so that Congress would cede its war making powers to the executive. What evidence did they have? Well, they looked around. Zippo. Well we have the aluminum tubes. The aluminum tubes had already been discounted by all nuclear scientists and engineers.

AMY GOODMAN: The story that was on the front page of the NY Times the Sunday of Labor Day last year when they rolled out their new product, Judith Miller’s piece.

RAY MCGOVERN: Exactly right, these were tubes that were alleged to be essential to nuclear processing, the thing that would produce nuclear weapons material. If they checked with the Department of Energy specialists, they would have known right off the bat that these were not suitable for that purpose. And now everybody accepts that that was bogus, but it worked. For those months, it was used in Congress as evidence they were pursuing a nuclear program.

But since there was a lot of controversy there, they looked for what else was around. And somebody said, well, how about those reports that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger? We can use that for sure. And they said, well, the CIA has poured cold water on that. Yeah, but who is going to know about these doubts? Well, nobody unless we tell them. Do we have to tell anyone about this? The UN wants to know about these reports because they’ve got word of them, and we have been putting them off. Well how long can we put them off? Oh, probably, another couple of months. What’s the problem? We use this, we raise the prospect of a mushroom cloud, our first evidence that Saddam has his hands on nuclear weapons might be a mushroom cloud, used by the President on the 7th of October, used by Condeleezza Rice on the 8th of October, used by Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokesman on the 9th of October, on the 11th of October, Congress votes to give its war making power to the President.

This was effectively used, and I’m sure they said, what if people find out that people find out that this was bogus information and indeed based on a forgery? And the answer had to have been, well look, we’ll get Congress to approve it, we’ll have our war, well win it handly, the people in Baghdad will welcome us with open arms, and then who is going to care at that point? Who is going to care if the case was built on a forgery?

AMY GOODMAN: Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as well as former CIA analyst David MacMichael. We’ll come back to their interview. They are two former CIA analysts, who are calling on others to come forward to speak out about what is happening today in the United States. You are listening to Democracy Now! Back with them, in a minute.

(MUSIC BREAK)

Hum Bomb! – Allen Ginsburg, here on Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to the interview with two former CIA analysts, Ray McGovern, who worked under George Bush as Director of Central Intelligence and then was part of his daily briefing as President of the United States, this is President Bush senior, as well as David MacMichael, former CIA analyst as well.

You talk about October, and this was before the war. George Tenet has the suggestion taken out of George Bush’s speech, a major address he gave at that time. But then the famous 16-word statement in the State of the Union address, which brings us to one of the people who is leaving Intelligence. Can you talk about him and the role that he played?

RAY MCGOVERN: Alan Foley? Alan announced just three days ago that he was leaving, and he was head of the analytic section that had purview over weapons of mass destruction. It was he who suggested that those sixteen offending words not be included in the president’s State of the Union address. He was finally arm twisted into condoning that, with the assurance that it would be blamed on the British.

AMY GOODMAN: Well explain that. He says, and he testifies before Congress…

RAY MCGOVERN: Yes, he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that in discussions with a Mr. Joseph of the NSC, he suggested that since the agency didn’t vouch for the business about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger, that it ought not to be used in the President’s Sate of the Union address, and indeed they had managed to get it out of previous presidential speeches. So why did they want to put it back in there? Well, finally he was persuaded that well, let’s blame it on the British. Let’s say, according to a British report. And Foley said, I suppose that would be alright to blame it on the British. Now, they didn’t even say ‘according to a British report’. What the President said was ‘the British have learned’. That’s a lot different. We are pretty careful with words in the intelligence community, but that is what the President said, ‘the British have learned that Iraq was seeking uranium from an African country..

Now, Foley took the fall with that, along with Tenet, but it was really sort of Tenet saying ‘I confess, she did it’. Because Tenet doesn’t write these speeches. Condeleezza Rice is responsible for that. So what is Tenet was confessing? He’s confessing to being a lousy proofreader. He didn’t read the final draft, and there it was.

AMY GOODMAN: But Alan Foley said ‘we know this not to be true’. And they said well, why don’t we just leave that part out and say that the British say it’s true?

RAY MCGOVERN: We’ll use it anyway and we’ll pin it on the British report. I watched the speech. We all watched the speech. When the President says the British have learned something, the presumption is the President is telling the truth. But the President was not telling the truth and everyone knew that.

AMY GOODMAN: So Alan Foley is leaving. How significant is that, David MacMichael?

DAVID MACMICHAEL:I think it’s significant. The man cannot continue to identified, whether he supports the policy or not, as an intelligence professional. He can’ continue to be identified with a process that had been and is being corrupted. I don’t like to use these terms but this is an ethical dilemma that officers in these institutions frequently face. You may recall the official state dept report following Iran-Contra on El Salvador. The language is indicative. State Department officers were torn between their desire to tell the truth and their need to support the policy. So these things do come up, and it’s very difficult for people pursuing careers in these bureaucracies to stand up and be counted at the cost of their careers. And that is just a fact of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Which brings us to Cheney’s visits to the CIA. When people hear that they might say, well, he’s the Vice President, he can go to the agencies that are under him.

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, people have asked me in my 27 years, has this had happened before, whether it was unusual? And I tell them, this is not unusual, this is unprecedented. The Vice President of the United States never during those 27 years came out to the CIA headquarters for a working visit. Not even George Bush the first came out under those circumstances. He did come out once to supervise or to be in attendance at an awards ceremony, but never on a working visit. That is not how it works.

How it works is we go down in the early morning, and we brief these senior officials, five of them: Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Assistant to the President for the Security of National Affairs and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. That is how we did business. If there were questions, and they needed more expertise, we would bring down the specialists. But we wouldn’t invite them to down to headquarters. This is like inviting money-changers into the temple. It’s the inner sanctum, you don’t have policy makers sitting at the table as you are, Amy, helping us come up with the correct conclusions, and that is the only explanation as to why Dick Cheney would be making multiple visits out there. ‘Are you sure you thought about this? What about this uranium? Send somebody down there to find all this stuff out.’ It’s very clear. You’re a mid-level official, and you’re trying to be a professional, and your boss is sitting behind you. There is a lot of pressure there.

And let me add just one other thing, and that is, Colin Powell brags to this day, very recently he said, and I quote: ‘I spent four days and four nights at CIA headquarters before I made that speech on Feb the 5th, pouring over the evidence, making sure that..’ Well, to anyone who knows how the system works, that is bizarre. The Secretary of State shouldn’t be going out to CIA headquarters to analyze the evidence and make sure the… the evidence by that time, by god, should have been well analyzed, should have been presented in a document to which most people agree and footnotes for those who don’t agree, and presented to the Secretary of State in his office on the 7th floor of the State Department, and if he had questions, analysts would come down and see him. The prospect of the Secretary of State and Condeleezza Rice who joined that group, coming out to the agency and saying. OK, where are we at now, five days before his major speech to the UN, is bizarre in the extreme.

Of course we know how that speech came out. All the evidence that was deduced. Where are the 25,000 liters of anthrax? None of that information has been borne out in reality. And soo we have a Secretary of State who picked what he thought was the best evidence, and who said some really interesting things, if you look at that speech.

Let me just say one other thing about that speech. Among the things he said was that we have learned that Qusay, Saddam Hussein’s son has ordered the removal of prohibited weapons from the presidential palaces. OK? Interesting. OK, so we’ve learned, that’s pretty solid information, it sounds like solid information. Well, a couple of months later, we find Qusay, right? Now, if we are interested in finding out where those weapons of mass destruction are, it would seem to me that someone would have thought, for god’s sake, capture this guy. He knows where they are. He ordered their removal. Instead what did they do? They fired ten anti-tank missiles into Qusay and his brother and a nephew of Qusay. Not my idea of how you get to the bottom of the story on weapons of mass destruction.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Ray McGovern and David MacMichael. They are both former CIA analysts. Ray McGovern worked under George Bush when he was Director of Central Intelligence and then briefed him when he was Vice President, for how long?

RAY MCGOVERN: For about 2-1/2 years. I did the briefings for four years, but my account in the first two years was the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to get to two other issues. One is the David Kaye report and then 9/11 and the intelligence commission for both of you. The David Kaye report that is supposed to come out, that is supposed to, they stopped saying whether they found weapons of mass destruction every day, that was looking very bad. But they said they would give a final report on this, David Kaye, the former UN weapons inspector. What is happening?

RAY MCGOVERN: It has hit the fan now. Let me just backtrack a little bit. On the 5th of December, Ari Fleischer, the President’s spokesman was quizzed about all these statement about weapons of mass destruction. He ended up saying, look Secretary of Defense and the President are not going to make statements that there are weapons of mass destruction there unless they have solid evidence to support it.

Later in March after the war had begun, Ari Fleischer said weapons of mass destruction is what this war is about, and we have high confidence that we will find them. So, there is no de-emphasizing the fact that that was the casus belli that the administration introduced. So to suggest now that we are not talking about weapons of mass destruction, but we are talking about papers of mass destruction, let me explain. We don’t say weapons of mass destruction anymore. We say weapons of mass destruction programs. What does that mean? That means, in a very sinister way, as David is inclined to point out, Iraq still has nuclear scientists capable of reconstituting this program. That means that we will find, or that we will fabricate, documents showing that they have these plans to start making these weapons again as soon as the UN inspectors leave.

That is all they have, and to think that the “solid evidence” that Ari Fleischer cited, and the fact that weapons of mass destruction is what this thing was all about, not papers of mass destruction. This is going to come back to haunt them if, and it’s a big if, if the mainstream press still has the guts to say ‘hey we were taken in, and we don’t like to be lied to and on behalf of the American people, we are going to tell the real story here.’ And the story is that the ostensible justification for this war was bogus, contrived, it was a lie.

DAVID MACMICHAEL: I think one thing that has to be added about David Kaye, who is identified as a former member of UNSCOM, that is the United Nations weapons inspection team, prior to the 1998 bombing and the departure of the weapons inspectors and prior to their reinitiation under UN resolution 1441, David Kaye in fact, and this is not revealing the identity of an intelligence officer was in fact a CIA officer at that time. One of the reasons the initial inspections process broke down was because the United States and other member states of the inspections team began introducing their intelligence officers into this and in fact as it’s been documented, planting listening devices in the places they were going for intelligence purposes, not for weapons inspections purposes.

A second point to remember is the primary task of the intelligence officer is to recruit agents. In other words, one could reasonably assume that, using their cover as weapons inspectors, they were attempting to recruit Iraqi nationals to serve as intelligence agents. Naturally the counterintelligence of any country attempts to block this and it did serve to discredit the initial inspection process. So that is one thing that is important to remember about David Kaye’s background.

And as Ray has pointed out, the emphasis is on the programs. I joke a lot about these things, unfortunately I have a bad sense of humor, and they will certainly find that Iraqi universities and even high school have courses in physics and chemistry. You can draw your obvious conclusions from that. This has been pretty well flagged in advance that this is the way the Kaye report will pass on.

When Mr. Rumsfeld made his recent swing through Iraq and the Middle East, he essentially dismissed questions about the Kaye report. He said, ‘Well, we’ll know when it comes out.’ It’s very disturbing, but it gets back to the question that was raised earlier, about how the United States press, media and the United States public will react when it can be sufficiently demonstrated that the rationale for going to war with Iraq was, at best, shakily founded in the truth. My reaction to this, again going back since I have been working on this for the last 20 years, going thorough with Iran Contra and on, is that the general feeling in the United States, is that our ends are good always, so who worries about the means. In one anecdote that I think is illustrative, in 1985 during the first elections in Nicaragua following the revolution down there, the United States began to out forth reports that Nicaragua had acquired MIG fighters from the Soviet Union, you may recall this incident.

This was big buzz, the United States Fleet units were moved off the coast of Nicaragua, and the fever was going. I happened to attend the news conference that the Nicaragua Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto was giving on this subject, and he was pointing out that this was entirely unfounded, that there were none, that it was being accepted. The correspondent for the Washington Post was there, Bob McCartney, and he got up and said, ‘Mr. Foreign Minister, I accept what you are saying, but suppose it were true that Nicaragua was getting this sort of weaponry, wouldn’t it be logical for the United States to respond like this?’ And Father D’Escoto looked at him a long time and said ‘Mr. McCartney, we are not talking logical, we are talking pathological”.

AMY GOODMAN: David MacMichael, former CIA analyst, and Ray McGovern, fomer CIA analyst. Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for almost 30 years. From 1981-1985, he conducted daily briefings for George Bush as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. That does it for today’s program.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 [phone].

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Saddam`s old terror cells fail squeaky-clean test despite US facelift

By ROBERT FISK

09/17/03: ABU GHRAIB PRISON - We could see them beyond the dirt yard, standing in the heat beside their sand-brown tents, the razor wire wrapped in sheaths around their compound.
No pictures of the prisoners, we were told. Do not enter the compound. Do not go inside the wire.

Of the up to 800 Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib Prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad, only a handful are "security detainees" - the rest are "criminal detainees" - but until now almost all of them have lived out here in the heat and dust and muck.

Which is why the Americans were so pleased to see us at Saddam Hussein`s vile old jail yesterday: things are getting better.

So first, the good news. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the US 800th Military Police Brigade, has cleaned up the burned and looted cells for hundreds of prisoners.

A new medical section with stocks of medicines, x-ray machines and even a heart fibrillator has been installed. There is even a kindly Iraqi doctor called Hussain Majid who praises the new Iraqi Ministry of Health and the occupation authorities for sending him - and paying for - "all the medicines we need".

In the newly painted cells, there are blankets and toothpaste, toothbrush, soap and shampoo for every man, neatly placed for them - and for us, I suspect - on top of their prison blankets.

Crisis-tourism is a pastime in New Iraq but yesterday`s little trip around Abu Ghraib was, well, odd.

Karpinski is obviously a tough lady - she was an intelligence officer in 7th Special Forces at Fort Bragg and served as a "targeting officer" in Saudi Arabia after Saddam invaded Kuwait - but she had a little difficulty at first in recalling that there was a riot at the jail in May in which US troops used "lethal force" when protesting prisoners threw stones and tent-legs at American military policemen. The troops killed a teenage inmate.

But Karpinski was remarkably frank about other events, such as the fact that the Americans in Abu Ghraib are attacked four out of every seven nights with mortars, small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.

That`s 16 times a month. And that`s a lot of attacks.

Then came the head doctor of the prison, Majid. When I asked him what his job was when Saddam used the place as a torture and execution centre, he replied that he was, um, the head doctor of Abu Ghraib Prison.

Indeed, half his staff were running the medical centre at the jail under the Saddam regime.

"No, I didn`t ever attend the executions," he said. "I couldn`t stand that. I sent my junior doctors to do the death certificates."

Except at night, of course, when the security services brought in political prisoners for hanging. Then Majid would receive an instruction saying "no death certificates".

The politicals were hanged at night. During the day, the doctor said, it was the "killers" who were hanged. Killers? Of course, there was a statutory visit to Abu Ghraib`s old death chamber, the double hanging room in which thousands of Iraqis were put to death. Karpinski gave the lever a tug and the great iron trap-doors clanged open, their echo vibrating through the walls.

Majid said he had never heard them before; that he was never even a member of the Baath Party.

So let this be written in history: the chief medical officer at Saddam`s nastiest prison - who is now the chief medical officer at America`s cleanest Iraqi prison - was never a member of the Baath Party and never saw an execution.

Of course, there are things which only those with a heart of stone cannot be moved by - the last words written and carved on the walls of the filthy death-row cells, just a few metres from the gallows.

"Ahmed Qambal, 8/9/2000", "Ahmed Aziz from Al-Najaf governorate, with Jabah, 2/9/01", "Abbad Abu Mohamed".

Sometimes they had added verses from the Koran.

"Death is better than shame. Death is life for a believer and a high honour."

What courage it must have taken to write such words, their very last on earth.

But there was something just a little too neat about all this. Against Saddam`s cruelty, any institution looks squeaky-clean.

Yet there`s a lot about Abu Ghraib that doesn`t look as clean as the new kitchens.

There is still no clear judicial process for the supposed killers, thieves and looters behind the razor wire. There was no mention - until we brought it up - of the mortar attack that killed six prisoners in their tents last month.

The Americans sent psychologists to talk to the inmates afterwards and found that they believed - surprise, surprise - the Americans were using them as human shields.

And you can just imagine what those same prisoners feel in their tents on four out of every seven nights when the mortars explode again around the old jail. Which is one reason, of course, why Karpinski wants to get her prisoners into their new cells.

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Focus Iraq: At A Glance

UPDATED: 10:51 a.m. EDT September 17, 2003

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Another audiotape has surfaced in which the speaker claims to be Saddam Hussein. Played on Arab TV, it urges Iraqis to step up attacks against Americans. Former weapons inspector Hans Blix, meanwhile, believes Iraq destroyed weapons of mass destruction years ago but kept up the appearance to deter a military attack.
The U.S. military says it has no evidence that eight people being held for alleged involvement in guerrilla attacks against coalition troops are American and British, the suspects are claiming. On Wednesday, the military in Baghdad said: "There is no firm evidence that we are holding American or British detainees."
The commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq says it`s not just insurgents who are waging attacks against coalition soldiers. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told The Times newspaper in London that troops are also facing revenge attacks from ordinary Iraqi citizens.
Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction ten years ago, but kept up the appearance that it had nuclear arms to deter a military attack. He tells an Australian radio station he doubts coalition inspectors will find anything more than documents.
A reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation has apologized for indirectly naming his source for a report that accused the government of exaggerating an intelligence dossier on Iraq. After being identified as the source, government weapons adviser David Kelly apparently committed suicide.
South Korea`s Foreign Minister says a fact-finding team is being sent to Iraq to weigh a U.S. request for infantry troops to assist with postwar security. He says officials in Seoul will decide on a response the U.S. request in the near future.
A gunbattle this week involving U.S. soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division killed two Iraqis and wounded two others. The skirmish was outside an munitions dump in Tikrit. Another man was captured and two others fled after trying to loot the depot.
A senior Bush administration official says Syria is allowing militants to cross its border into Iraq to kill U.S. soldiers and is aggressively seeking to acquire and develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The official also says Syria continues to support organizations the United States lists as terrorist groups.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he has no reason to link Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Asked about a recent Washington Post poll that found 69 percent believe the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved, Rumsfeld says he has no indication of that. The most he could say is that Saddam did offer $25,000 to those who take part in terror attacks on innocent civilians.
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice says one of the reasons President Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9-11 threat emerged." And she told ABC`s "Nightline" "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."
The Bush administration`s claims of ties between Saddam Hussein`s regime and al-Qaida terrorists are being tested in federal court, where the family of the FBI`s late counterterrorism chief has sued Iraq over the Sept. 11 hijackings. The suit accuses Iraq of complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks by providing support to terrorists, and seeks $1 billion in damages.
The U.S. may be offering Saddam Hussein`s former defense chief a deal. The 101st Airborne Division`s commander apparently has sent a letter to the fugitive minister, promising to treat him with "utmost dignity and respect" if he turns himself in. The offer is believed to have been made in response to a request from the official`s family and tribal chiefs, who want his name taken off a list of most-wanted Iraqis.
House Democrats are calling on President Bush to fire the advisers who helped form U.S. policy in Iraq. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says the advisers should be fired because their miscalculations have led to American deaths.
Iraq plans to send a delegation to next week`s meeting of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna. That`s the word from the cartel`s leadership. The attendance of Iraq`s oil minister at the meeting is an important step in the nation`s rehabilitation as an oil producer. Iraq hasn`t attended OPEC meetings since the U.S.-led invasion in the spring.
Government officials say the leaders of Germany, France and Britain will meet in Berlin this weekend to try to smooth rifts over the Iraq war. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will host the talks with French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his offices on Saturday.
U.N. diplomats say the United States will likely circulate a revised resolution on Iraq by week`s end. The United States has been studying proposed amendments by Security Council members. The United States wants a resolution to get more peacekeeping troops and money into Iraq. But the behind-the-scenes debate has focused more on the future U.N. role in Iraq and the restoration of the country`s sovereignty.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seems optimistic about a U.N. agreement on a new resolution on Iraq. But even if the U.N. Security Council should approve a new resolution, Rumsfeld predicts the result would be only about 10,000 to 15,000 new multinational troops flowing into the country.
Col. Khedeir Mekhalef Ali, the police chief of a town in Iraq`s "Sunni Triangle," was killed in an ambush. His driver says Ali was shot at least 25 times by three gunmen whose faces were covered with red and white Arab headdresses. The driver and a bodyguard were wounded in the attack, which happened at a traffic circle in Khaldiya.

CASUALTIES

U.S. casualties reported today: none
Number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since May first, when President Bush declared an end to major combat: 159.
Number of U.S. soldiers killed during the war with Iraq: 138.
Total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began: 297.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Keine Änderung
09/17/03 Yahoo (AP): Three separate attacks on U.S. forces
North of Baghdad, there were at least three separate attacks on U.S. forces with roadside bombs in less than 1 1/2 hours Wednesday morning.
09/17/03 Centcom: Soldier dies from non-hostile incident.
BAGHDAD, Iraq – A soldier located in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) area of operations died Sept. 15 from a non-hostile gunshot incident.
09/16/03 Yahoo (Reuters): Three American soldiers wounded
Three American soldiers wounded when Humvee attacked on Sept. 16/2003 south of Baghdag and Albanian soldier as well wounded in an grenade attack in Mosul along with 13 Iraqi people.
09/16/03 AU News Interactive
An Albanian coalition soldier has been killed and 11 Iraqis wounded in a grenade attack in the northern city of Mosul, the US army said today
09/15/03 The Guardian: Gunmen Assassinate Iraq Police Chief
KHALDIYA, Iraq (AP) -- Three gunmen, their faces covered with red and white Arab headdresses, assassinated the police chief of this Sunni Triangle town Monday in an ambush at a traffic circle.
09/15/03 Centcom: ONE SOLDIER KILLED IN RPG ATTACK
BAGHDAD, Iraq –One 1st Armored Division soldier was killed Sept. 15 when the soldier’s patrol was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade round in central Baghdad.
09/14/03 CENTCOM
One US soldier killed, three wounded, in IED attack in Fallujah on Sept. 14th.
09/14/03 New York Times
A roadside bomb attack on a convoy in the troubled city of Fallujah killed one U.S. soldier and injured three others

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Iraq dumped WMDs years ago, says Blix
No evidence to link Saddam with September 11 attacks, Bush admits

Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian

The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, according to an interview broadcast yesterday.

The claim came on the same day that President George Bush stated more bluntly than ever that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 - despite 69% of Americans believing Saddam had a personal role, according to a recent Washington Post opinion poll.

Mr Blix, who spent three years hunting for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq as head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation listeners: "I`m certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed all, almost, of what they had in the summer of 1991. The more time that has passed, the more I think it`s unlikely that anything will be found."

Saddam kept up the appearance that he had the weapons to deter a military attack, Mr Blix added. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, `Beware of the dog,` without having a dog," he said, speaking from his home in Sweden.

Investigators with the US-led Iraq survey group would be unlikely to find anything more than some "documents of interest", he predicted.

Mr Blix had previously declared himself "agnostic" on the issue of if or when Saddam destroyed such weapons, and has never dismissed so forcefully the arguments of Mr Bush and Mr Blair.

"Time will tell," the prime minister`s official spokesman responded in London. "We have to exercise a bit of patience and recognise the survey group has been operational for a matter of some weeks. And clearly there is a lot of work to get through."

Mr Bush`s remarks, made to reporters as he met members of Congress at the White House, place him at odds with his vice-president, Dick Cheney, who sought conspicuously to leave the question of Saddam`s links with September 11 open in a TV appearance at the weekend.

"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 [attacks]," Mr Bush said, though he said there was "no question" that the Iraqi dictator "had al-Qaida ties".

On Sunday, by contrast, Mr Cheney said the popular belief in a link was "not surprising ... we don`t know." Victory in Iraq, he went on, would strike at "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Mr Cheney also returned in the interview to an allegation, attributed to Czech intelligence, that the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001 in Prague. According to numerous reports, the FBI and CIA found no evidence of such a meeting, and Vaclav Havel, the then Czech president, told the White House that there was none.

But Mr Cheney told NBC`s Meet The Press: "We`ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don`t know."

Democrats have accused the Bush administration of deliberately seeking to convey a false impression about the relationship between the terrorist network and Saddam.

Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush`s national security adviser, told a US television interviewer on Tuesday that Saddam was targeted because he posed a danger in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged".

Asked about Saddam`s weapons, Mr Cheney referred only to the Iraqi leader`s "capabilities" and "aspirations", not to weapons themselves.

"To suggest that there is no evidence there that [Hussein] had no aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons I don`t think is valid," he said.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Saudis consider nuclear bomb
Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor in Vienna
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian

Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned.

This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran`s alleged nuclear programme.

A strategy paper being considered at the highest levels in Riyadh sets out three options:

· To acquire a nuclear capability as a deterrent;

· To maintain or enter into an alliance with an existing nuclear power that would offer protection;

· To try to reach a regional agreement on having a nuclear-free Middle East.

Until now, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the US nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US has steadily worsened since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington: 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi.

It is not known whether Saudi Arabia has taken a decision on any of the three options. But the fact that it is prepared to contemplate the nuclear option is a worrying development.

United Nations officials and nuclear arms analysts said the Saudi review reflected profound insecurities generated by the volatility in the Middle East, Riyadh`s estrangement with Washington and the weakening of its reliance on the US nuclear umbrella.

They pointed to the Saudi worries about an Iranian prog-ramme and to the absence of any international pressure on Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear devices.

"Our antennae are up," said a senior UN official watching worldwide nuclear proliferation efforts. "The international community can rest assured we do keep track of such events if they go beyond talk."

Saudi Arabia does not regard Iran, a past adversary with which Riyadh has restored relations, as a direct threat. But it is unnerved by the possibility of Iran and Israel having nuclear weapons.

Riyadh is also worried about a string of apparent leaks in American papers from the US administration critical of Saudi Arabia.

David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington thinktank, said he doubted whether the Saudis would try to build a nuclear bomb, preferring instead to try to buy a nuclear warhead. They would be the first of the world`s eight or nine nuclear powers to have bought rather than built the bomb.

"There has always been worries that the Saudis would go down this path if provoked," said Mr Albright. "There is growing US hostility which could lead to the removal of the US umbrella and will the Saudis be intimidated by Iran? They`ve got to be nervous."

UN officials said there have been rumours going back 20 years that the Saudis wanted to pay Pakistan to do the research and development on nuclear weapons.

In 1988, Saudi bought from China intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any part of the Middle East with a nuclear warhead.

Four years ago, Saudi Arabia sent a defence team to Pakistan to tour its secret nuclear facilities and to be briefed by Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan`s nuclear bomb.

A UN official said: "There`s obviously a lot of restlessness in the Middle East. Regional insecurity tends to produce a quest for a nuclear umbrella. The Saudis have the money and could provide it to Pakistan."

Mr Albright said the Saudis would face a long haul if they were determined to acquire nuclear weapons. He doubted whether anyone would sell.

Arab countries yesterday urged the International Atomic Energy Authority, the UN nuclear watchdog, to get tough with Israel to let inspectors assess its nuclear programme in line with similar pressure on Iran.

Oman`s ambassador to the IAEA, Salim al-Riyami, speaking on behalf of the Arab League, which represents Arab states, said it was time to get tough with Israel. "I think it`s time to deal with this issue more substantively than before," he said.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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`I would have given up my career to save my marriage`
There are some remarkable revelations in Madeleine Albright`s new memoirs. Sharon Krum reports

Sharon Krum
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian

Madeleine Half-Bright. That`s what select reporters covering the UN in the early 90s used to call Madeleine Albright behind her back. Then US ambassador to the United Nations, Albright had been dismissed by the predominantly male press corps as hardly in the league of her testosterone-charged predecessors.

"She doesn`t have the intellect to handle the nitty-gritty of foreign affairs," I remember a reporter who delighted in tossing around the Half-Bright moniker, sniping. "Women are just too emotional to do the job," he added. When Bill Clinton appointed Albright the first female secretary of state in the history of US politics in 1997, the same critic dismissed the appointment as leftwing political correctness. "Window dressing for the Clinton administration."

At least former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made an attempt to polite when he learned a woman was filling his old shoes. "Welcome to the fraternity," he said to the newly minted madame secretary. "Henry, I hate to tell you, but it`s not a fraternity any more," she shot back. Indeed it wasn`t. And yet, as Albright, 66, writes in her autobiography, Madame Secretary, published this week in the US and next month in Britain, despite the daily grind of high-level meetings with kings and presidents, overseeing treaties, no matter how much she operated like a man in a man`s world, she could not separate her gender from the job.

Consider a to-do list she jotted down on January 28 1998: "1) Call Senator Helms. 2) Call King Hussein. 3) Call Foreign Minister Moussa. 4) Congressional calls. 5) Prepare for China meeting. 6) Buy non-fat yogurt."

She knows this is not a list likely to be found anywhere on Colin Powell`s desk, and can laugh about it now. But during her tenure she was infuriated by men who underestimated and belittled her just because she was a woman. Interestingly, she writes, the problem was worse at home.

"I am often asked whether I was condescended to by men as I travelled around the world to Arab countries and other places with highly traditional cultures. I replied, "No, because when I arrived somewhere, it was in a large plane with "United States of America emblazoned on the side. Foreign officials respected that. I had more problems with some of the men in my own government."

Mobbed once by young girls on a train from Washington to New York asking for her autograph, Albright was proud to be a role model for women, and there is little question that without her, the American public would hardly be so accepting of Condoleezza Rice.

But for all her success, politically and as a feminist, the most telling moment in Albright`s book is her questioning of whether a married woman with full domestic responsibilities could ever be the player she was on the world stage.

"When I became secretary of state, I realised that, though others might, I would never have climbed that high had I still been married. Yet I am deeply saddened to have been divorced. I know that, at the time, I would have given up any thought of a career if it would have made Joe (who left her for another woman) change his mind."

This the crux of Albright`s story, a woman born to believe that the roles of "mother" and "wife" were her career, only to throw off her apron in middle age to manage Middle East peace negotiations, yet always divided and exhausted by the tradeoff required. Not to mention frustrated by the double standards applied to her job performance.

"From my graduation day until the graduation of my last child, I had to deal with the age-old problem of balancing the demands of family with academic and professional interests," she writes. "As I began to climb the ladder, I had to cope with the different vocabulary used to describe similar qualities in men (confident, take-charge, committed) and women (bossy, aggressive, emotional). It took years, but over time I developed enough faith in my judgment to do my job in my own way and style, worrying at least a little less about what others thought. Albright was born in Prague in 1937. Her father, Joseph Korbel, a diplomat, fled the Gestapo for England, and some of Albright`s earliest memories are of a flat in Notting Hill Gate, west London. The family returned to Czechoslovakia only to leave again as communism took root, this time for the US, where Joseph Korbel became a professor of foreign affairs at the University of Denver.

Though Albright`s grandparents were Jewish and died in the Holocaust, her family hid the truth from her, and she believes now it was to spare her the pain. Learning of her family history in 1997, Albright pronounced the discovery riveting.

She attended Wellesley College and, after a whirlwind romance, married journalist Joseph Albright. She writes of feeling like Cinderella when her ambition to be married was realised. In quick succession, she had three children: premature twins, Alice and Anne, a second daughter who probably suffered brain damage as a result of her mother contracting German measles and died at birth, and then a third daughter, Katherine.

As her girls grew up, Albright earned a doctorate in law and public policy, began raising money for Democratic political candidates, taught international relations, and eventually began working in the Carter administration for her old professor, national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

But, she writes, this gilded life, which had been on an endless upward trajectory, fell apart in January 1982. Her husband announced he was leaving her for a younger woman, every middle-aged woman`s nightmare, the ultimate cliche. Despite her professional achievements, Albright concedes that her identity was so tightly wrapped around the twin personas of wife and mother, that she grieved for the one she lost.

Worse, her husband was so torn apart by their situation that he called every day to complain that he could not choose between Madeleine and his lover. He then announced that his final decision would be determined by whether or not he won the Pulitzer prize. "If he got the Pulitzer, he would stay with me. If not, he would leave and we would get a divorce." He lost the prize and with it, dissolved the marriage.

Years later, after a private dinner with Hillary Clinton and the recently widowed Queen Noor of Jordan, Albright would calculate the impact of their marriages on each woman.

"In different ways and at various times," she writes, "we had each been left to explore the boundaries of our own inner strength by a husband who had deceived, deserted, or died."

Suddenly single, Albright was in a state of shock. "I had no confidence thanks to Joe`s departing comments about my looks [he told her she had become too old-looking and that his new lover was considerably younger and beautiful], and I was a prude. My last date had been in the 50s. This was the 80s. With no idea what the new rules were, I felt like a 45-year-old virgin."

Although she found refuge working as a professor and in politics, the insinuation that her pursuit of a career caused her marriage to break down always hovered.

"Did my career cause my divorce? I have always resented the question. I consider it insulting to women who want a career, and I reject the implication that I was selfish. I also resent the question because I don`t know the answer. There are many contradictions in the way I feel."

One thing that divorce did do for Albright was to free her up to conquer the world stage of foreign policy. Motivated by her family`s experience of both fascism and communism, she believed America`s role was to safeguard the world against repeat attempts at ethnic cleansing, while aiding countries making the transition to democracy. But with one caveat. "As secretary, I was determined to make efforts to improve the lives of women and girls part of the mainstream US foreign policy. One of America`s core goals was the promotion of democracy, but democracy wasn`t possible if women were treated as second-class citizens and victimised discrimination or abuse."

She singles out her greatest achievement as pushing the Clinton administration to act against the Serbian slaughter in Kosovo. Her regrets include being unable to effectively stem the violence in the Balkans, Rwanda and Somalia. Her frustration after another round of failed peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians is palpable, and provides a perspective into foreign affairs only a woman could give."If women leaders had acted the way Arafat and Barak did during Camp David," she writes, "they would have been dismissed as menopausal."

Today, two years out of office, watching world affairs from the sidelines, Albright teaches at Georgetown University and owns a global consulting firm. She wrote her story, she told an American interviewer recently, to remake the image she had cultivated as a woman who had to act like a man to get the job done.

"People who only saw me in this severe, `Why are you pushing the US agenda` mode will understand that I`m a real woman. I have a lot of female friends. I like to get dressed up. We all have this other side. We all like to let our hair down and not always be `on`."


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Our role in the terror
Karen Armstrong
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian

Since the second anniversary of September 11, we have had sober reminders that military force alone cannot eliminate the threat of religiously inspired terrorism. There has been the dramatic, if disputed, reappearance of Osama bin Laden; new reports that Islamist extremism is again gaining ground in Afghanistan; and in the wake of horrific attacks by Hamas, the Israeli right has called for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat - a move that would almost certainly provoke a new spate of suicide bombings.

How do we account for the rise of this religious violence in the post-Enlightenment world? Ever since 9/11, President Bush has repeatedly condemned Islamist terror as an atavistic rejection of American freedom, while Tony Blair recently called it a virus, as though, like Aids, its origins are inexplicable. They are wrong, on both counts. The terrorists` methods are appalling, but they regard themselves as freedom fighters, and there is nothing mysterious about the source of these extremist groups: to a significant degree, they are the result of our own policies.

History can tell us a great deal about the profile of these movements. Over the centuries people have often resisted colonial domination or oppressive governments by evolving millennial visions that amounted to a systematic repudiation of the mainstream culture. These millennial groups usually developed after a crisis or disaster had in some sense destroyed the world they had known. Inspired by a corrosive sense of political helplessness, they fought for a new world order, in which the first should be last and the last first.

The "fundamentalist" movements that emerged in every major faith tradition during the 20th century conform to this pattern. Wherever a western-style, secularist society has been established, a religious counterculture has developed alongside it. The persistence of this militant piety shows a disturbing and worldwide alienation from western modernity. Every group that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has experienced secularism as destructive, and is engaged in a battle designed to push God and religion back to centre stage. All are convinced that the secularist liberal establishment is determined, in one way or another, to wipe them out.

Only a small minority of fundamentalists take part in acts of terror, but when people feel that their backs are to the wall, they can lash out violently. In the past, any attempt to suppress a fundamentalist group has usually made it more extreme, because it has simply confirmed this deep-rooted fear of annihilation. Far from quelling Islamist terror, Israel`s assassination of its leaders has only inspired Hamas to further atrocities, and the invasion of Iraq, which had no links with al-Qaida, has predictably opened a new terror front, convincing some Muslims that the west is truly engaged in a new crusade against the Islamic world.

Yet even though they have given us terrifying demonstrations of their power, those brought up in the secular tradition find it difficult to assess these move ments. "Whoever cared about religion?" cried an exasperated official in the US state department after the Iranian revolution. People seem to assume that Muslim extremists are mechanistically driven by a fanatical strain inherent in Islam itself, which is patently not the case, since the terrorism that currently concerns us is chiefly confined to the Arab world, which makes up only 20% of the Islamic population. It is widely believed that the terrorists are simply inspired by a fanatical yearning for paradise and martyrdom that has fuelled both Hamas and the Iranian revolution in exactly the same way.

These reductionist theories are dangerous. Iranians who exposed themselves to the shah`s bullets were engaged in a distinctively Shia battle against a cruel dictatorship, while Hamas has been influenced by Zionism. Apart from the cult of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, there has been little veneration of land in Islam, but in their struggle with the Israelis, Palestinians have introduced the characteristically Jewish themes of exile, nostalgia for the sacred homeland and restoration into their Islamist resistance.

Ironically, we tend to become like our enemies. In describing his war against terror as a battle between good and evil, President Bush has unwittingly reproduced the rhetoric of Bin Laden, who subscribes to a form of Sunni fundamentalism that divides the world into two diametrically opposed camps in just the same way. The last thing the Israelis intended was to create "Palestinian Zionism", and yet in the early days Israel aided and abetted Hamas, which virulently opposed the secularist ideology of the PLO, in order to undermine Arafat. They should have learned from the tragic fate of Egypt`s Anwar Sadat, who, at the beginning of his presidency, sought to create an independent power base by courting the Islamists who eventually killed him.

The west has also cultivated its future enemies, by arming Bin Laden and other Arab mujahedin in Afghanistan during the cold war and by giving initial support to the Taliban. These exploitative policies reflect a thinly veiled contempt; the religious ideas of these groups were dismissed as beneath serious consideration. Yet to those who had studied these movements it was clear long before 9/11 that fundamentalists all over the world were expressing fears and anxieties that no government could safely ignore.

We have also nurtured extremism by allowing conflicts to fester beyond the point where a secular, pragmatic solution was possible. In the past, millennial movements often became more religious when conventional politics failed. So too in the Middle East. After the six-day war of 1967, when nationalism and socialism seemed to have brought only humiliation and defeat, there was a revival of religious politics in the Arab world. Palestinians long held out against this trend, but despairing of the ordinary political process, the Islamist parties finally emerged in 1987. Once God is brought into the conflict, positions become absolute, sacred and far more difficult to negotiate.

The west has contributed to the growth of radical Islam in the region by repeatedly supporting undemocratic regimes, which allow little effective opposition. As a result, the only place where the people have been able to express their anger and discontent has been the mosque. Iran is the classic case. After the Mossadeq government deposed the shah in 1953, British intelligence and the CIA organised a coup that put him back on the throne. The US continued to support the shah, even though he denied Iranians human rights that most Americans take for granted. The result was the Islamist revolution of 1978-79.

Had its intelligence taken the trouble to learn more about the dynamics of Shiism, the US could have avoided bad mistakes in Iran. We can no longer dismiss religious movements with secularist disdain, but must study them as seriously as other ideologies. In particular, we must educate ourselves to see the distress, helplessness, fear and, latterly, rage that underly the various fundamentalisms, if only because these groups now have powers of destruction that were formerly only the prerogative of nation states.

Terrorism is wicked and abhorrent, but it has not come out of the blue. If we simply write off these movements as irrational and inexplicable, we will feel no need to examine our own policies and behaviour. The shocking nihilism of the suicide killers shows they feel they have nothing to lose. Millennial or fundamentalist extremism has risen in nearly every cultural tradition where there are pronounced inequalities of wealth, power and status. The only way to create a safer world is to ensure that it is more just.

Karen Armstrong is the author of The Battle for God: a History of Fundamentalism

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The BBC`s bullies can dish it out, but they can`t take it
Events in the US suggest that the time is ripe for a liberal media rebellion

Joe Conason
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian

To an American, there is much that sounds awfully familiar about Beebwatch - the series launched last week by the Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore to root out "soft left" bias in the BBC. Moore`s determination to inflict daily humiliation on the network coincides neatly with efforts by Rupert Murdoch and the Tory opposition to deprive Britain`s great broadcasting institution of its licence fee, just as its charter is coming up for renewal.

At the very least, this campaign aims to intimidate the BBC`s management from broadcasting anything that might offend reactionary sensibilities; but its ultimate goal is the crippling, or even the abolition, of the BBC itself.

Moore`s tone echoes the American right`s incessant whining about "liberal media bias". And while British broadcasting is structurally (and qualitatively) very different from its US counterpart, the conservative agenda in both countries is identical: to stigmatise dissent and to dominate discourse.

Once upon a time, there were "liberal media" in America - or at least there were major media outlets unafraid of being called liberal. Liberal television correspondents dared to expose the depredations of Joe McCarthy, the awful conditions of migrant farm labourers and the killing effects of tobacco. Liberal newspapers reported hidden truths about the Vietnam war, despite threats and lawsuits from the Nixon White House.

By exposing Nixon`s corruption, the American media establishment ultimately forced his resignation. But before he relinquished power, Nixon set the machinery of his revenge in motion. It was the old redbaiter who began a shrill crusade against the "liberal media", using Spiro Agnew, his vice-president.

Three decades on, their crusade has spawned a political environment that Nixon could scarcely have imagined. From Rupert Murdoch`s Fox News Channel to Sun Myung Moon`s Washington Times, from Clear Channel`s nationwide radio network to the Wall Street Journal`s editorial page, the machinery churns throughout the 24-hour news cycle.

Its leverage over public debate in America is profound. Conservatives still complain about the "liberal media", but their ideas (and ideologues) command opinion-making airtime and newsprint. No rightwing extremist is judged too rancid to be awarded his own cable TV show.

Bolstering the right`s successful assault on mainstream news organisations are four well-financed institutions that "monitor" all major media, with special attention given to the television networks.

The oldest is Accuracy in Media, created in the 70s by Reed Irvine, a former Treasury employee, as an instrument of Nixon`s vendetta against the Washington Post. Irvine still thrives with subventions from Richard Mellon Scaife, the conspiracy-minded billionaire notorious for his determination to ruin the Clintons.

Along with other rightwing donors, Scaife also supports the Media Research Centre, a Washington outfit overseen by Brent Bozell (nephew of the conservative commentator William Buckley), who barely conceals his role as a PR man for the Republican leadership.

With an annual budget of £10m and more than 60 full-time staff, Bozell`s centre bills itself as "the nation`s largest and most sophisticated television and radio monitoring operation". Smaller and less openly partisan is the Centre for Media and Public Affairs, which specialises in studies "proving" that most journalists are liberal and "biased" against corporations.

Conservative donors also finance a California-based organisation known as the Centre for the Study of Popular Culture, which serves as the HQ of the ex-radical David Horowitz. In his spare time, he raises funds for the Bush campaign and instructs Republicans in the fine art of "political warfare" against liberals.

His main media target over the past 20 years has been America`s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), whose meagre government subsidy drew criticism from conservatives outraged by any deviation from rightwing orthodoxy. As the PBS gradually adopted more conventional and business-oriented programming, those attacks decreased in frequency and ferocity. On those rare occasions when the PBS programmers still venture to air anything adventurous or critical, the attacks flare up again.

Such are the well-tested models that Beebwatch, on a more modest scale, appears intent on imitating. The irony is that Moore launched his campaign at precisely the moment when the American right`s style of intimidation is at last being mocked and discredited. America`s best-selling non-fiction book today is Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, in which the author Al Franken comically savages Murdoch`s minions at Fox (and other conservative media icons).

At the insistence of one of Fox`s humourless hosts, whose scowling mug adorns the book`s cover, News Corporation sued Franken for purloining the network`s "Fair and Balanced" slogan in his title. Although Fox insisted that the cause of action was "trademark infringement," its attempt to stop the book`s distribution was universally denounced as a violation of free speech.

When the Fox attorneys tried to explain why Franken`s satire should be suppressed, they were literally laughed out of court and the book shot up the bestseller lists - a symbol of an unexpected popular rebellion against Murdoch.

Now Franken is the toast of the American media. In almost every interview he slyly suggests that Fox replace its slogan with a new one taken from the judge`s verdict on its lawsuit - "Wholly Without Merit". (Full disclosure: I gave him that joke.)

Unfortunately, the fair and balanced Fox folks seem to have learned nothing from their public spanking. When the CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour said that she felt her network`s Iraq coverage had been muted by "intimidation" from the Bush administration "and its footsoldiers at Fox News", a Fox spokeswoman responded: "It`s better to be viewed as a footsoldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaida."

Such feeble swipes are unlikely to faze the fearless Amanpour. As a war correspondent she has faced threats considerably more daunting than a nasty press release. But the attempt to smear her displayed the methodology of rightwing "media criticism" at its worst. The corporate practitioners of those ugly tactics are similarly seeking to demonise the BBC; already, Beebwatch has managed to elicit a defensive response from network management.

The Beeb`s enemies will fail if its defenders have the wit and will to respond in the spirit of Al Franken: put the Moores and Murdochs under the microscope, expose their self-serving agendas and lampoon their self-righteous indignation. They have already proved, as we say in New York, that they love to dish it out, but they can`t take it.

· Joe Conason is a columnist for the New York Observer and the author of Big Lies: the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth

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Gilligan admits mistakes but still stands by his story
By Kim Sengupta, Paul Waugh and Ben Russell
18 September 2003


Andrew Gilligan admitted yesterday that he had made mistakes in his reports on the Iraq arms dossier.

But the BBC reporter stood by his claim that the weapons scientist Dr David Kelly had accused the Government of "sexing up" the document.

In cross-examination by Jonathan Sumption, counsel for the Government, at the Hutton inquiry, Mr Gilligan admitted he had made a serious error in his initial report for the Today programme.

He accepted he was mistaken to state, in a broadcast at 6.07am on 29 May, that the Government had inserted the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes despite knowing it was "probably wrong".

But Mr Gilligan maintained that Dr Kelly, found dead in July, had told him there was widespread disquiet within the intelligence community about inserting the claim, which had come from a single source and was "unreliable".

The inquiry, into the circumstances of Dr Kelly`s apparent suicide, has heard extensive testimony from intelligence officials who suggested there was unhappiness about evidence used in the September dossier, including the 45-minute claim.

Formal letters of complaint were sent by Dr Brian Jones, the head of the Scientific wing of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff, and an unnamed official described as the country`s foremost expert on chemical warfare, and there was disquiet across the membership of the Defence Intelligence Service. Mr Gilligan said: "The error I made here was in expressing the understanding I had that the views had been conveyed to the Government as something Dr Kelly had told me. It was not intentional, a kind of slip of the tongue. It is something that does happen in live broadcasts."

Questioned by Heather Rogers, his counsel, Mr Gilligan also apologised for sending an e-mail to the Intelligence and Security Committee appearing to name Dr Kelly as a source of his fellow BBC journalist Susan Watts, of Newsnight. He said: "I was quite wrong to send it. Quite wrong. I did not even know Dr Kelly was Susan Watts` source. I was under an enormous amount of pressure at the time and I simply was not thinking straight."

In a twist towards the close of the proceedings, Richard Hatfield, the Ministry of Defence`s director of personnel, told Lord Hutton that he had not sought Dr Kelly`s consent in making his name public, and declared the scientist did not have a "veto" on the matter.

The Government has previously steadfastly maintained that Dr Kelly had been made aware that his identity might become public.
18 September 2003 10:28



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Soldiers in the new Iraqi army trained this week at a base in Kirkush. The United States wants to speed up plans to get the army ready for action.
September 18, 2003
U.S. Is Speeding Up Plan for Creating a New Iraqi Army
By THOM SHANKER


WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — A senior official said today that the United States had stepped up the timetable for creating a new Iraqi army, with plans for 40,000 troops in the field by next year in a program that brings back and retrains midlevel officers from the old army to run boot camps for recruits.

Walter B. Slocombe, in charge of rebuilding Iraqi security institutions, said the new goal is 27 battalions organized in three divisions within 12 months, twice as fast as in initial plans. The projected total of 40,000 is less than one-10th of the former Iraqi armed forces.

The speeding up of plans to deploy an Iraqi army that might relieve some of the pressure on American forces comes against a backdrop of mounting difficulties in Iraq for the Bush administration. Attempts to raise billions of dollars for reconstruction, to secure more foreign troops to deploy there, and to stamp out resistance to the American-led occupation have met with mixed results.

Pledges of international funds have been scant. Today, in meetings with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, Saudi leaders declined to make any firm commitment to contribute funds to Iraqi reconstruction. But they did make a pledge to fight terrorism.

The United States is pushing hard to raise as much as $10 billion for Iraq at a donors` conference in Madrid next month.

But the European Union, which accounts for 20 percent of the world`s wealth, has offered only $250 million, European and American officials say, adding that the United States may get no more than $1 billion at the conference.

International money and troops are needed to ease some of the burden on America as it seeks to stabilize and rebuild Iraq. But nations that felt spurned in the lead-up to the war now appear wary of providing assistance, in part, the officials said, because bitterness lingers and in part because they seek greater control over political and business decisions in Iraq than the Bush administration seems ready to concede.

In addition, the countries being asked for money say they do not know where the funds would go and are demanding more details, they said.

The more rapid deployment of an Iraqi army will not spare American forces arduous tasks like the patrolling of Baghdad or the conducting of raids to fend off attacks. But it should help give Iraqis a sense that they are retaking control of their country, and so ease resentment, American officials say.

Mr. Slocombe said that the old Iraqi Army "did a perfectly competent job of basic training," and that approved Iraqi military personnel, from noncommissioned officers through lieutenant colonels, would train the new force.

Mr. Slocombe, who served as an under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, conceded that the freshly minted troops would not be up to American military standards, and would not be expected initially to join missions against high-priority targets like former Iraqi government leaders. "They will not be U.S. standard," he said. "No one is claiming that they`re going to have the level of technology or the level of equipment."

He acknowledged the challenge of preventing former Baath Party officials, intelligence service officers and members of the Special Republican Guard, from infiltrating the new Iraqi military.

Each recruit, he said, will be interviewed extensively. Pentagon officials said the American military and intelligence agencies had compiled a list of those barred from service.

To prevent any return by senior officers, the names of recruits will be compared with a manifest of the former military. "We have the pay records of the old Iraqi Army," Mr. Slocombe said during a Pentagon news briefing.

Still, it appeared clear that in the interest of forming an army more quickly, the American authorities had decided to take a more flexible approach to former Iraqi officers. Saddam Hussein`s army was disbanded in May by L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American-led occupation authority. At the time, the idea of re-employing Iraqi officers was rejected.

Mr. Slocombe said today that the new troops would be prepared for "convoy security, running checkpoints, standing guard over facilities" to relieve American and foreign forces of those duties.

"The question always comes up," Mr. Slocombe said. "Do we expect Iraq to defend itself with three light infantry divisions? And the answer is no."

"We understand that in the long run, Iraq will in all probability choose to make additional investments in a larger force," he said. "But those decisions, we believe, are best left to a new Iraqi government."

Also left for future discussions with the emerging Iraqi government, he said, are such complex questions as "what kind of international relations they want to have, to what degree do they want to enter into mutual security arrangements, either with us, if we were willing, or with other countries in the region, if other countries in the region are willing."

Mr. Slocombe described a significant difficulty facing the effort as one of infrastructure, since military installations and warehouses have been looted.

"They didn`t just steal stuff that was not nailed down; they stole the toilet fixtures, and they stole the pipes and the tile in the latrines," he said.

Pentagon officials said late today that $2 billion of the $87 billion request by the administration was for the new Iraqi army.

Although the United States government officially disbanded the former army, some Pentagon officials have said in subsequent private conversations that it might have been prudent to keep some units in place to provide security for postwar Iraq. In addition, some looting and other anti-American violence was attributed to the anger of idled former soldiers.

"The Iraqi army disbanded itself, with a little help, little encouragement from the coalition military," Mr. Slocombe said. "When the war was over, when the major maneuver fighting was over, there were simply no units still in existence. Everybody had gone home."

Officials are prepared to offer financial incentives for the recruits. New Iraqi privates will be paid $70 a month, he said, compared with their previous military salaries of $2 a month.

Recruits are to receive six weeks of basic training, shorter than originally planned. In contrast, American soldiers take nine weeks of basic training, before going on to training in their specialties.

Mr. Slocombe said senior Baath Party officials, intelligence service officers and members of the Special Republican Guard would be banned from military service. He said that "only a very small percentage" of former senior officers in the Iraqi army "are going to have military careers."



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September 18, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS: THE OUTLOOK
Rocky Path for Bush: Effort to Remake Iraq Hits Roadblocks
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN


WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — Everywhere he turns — from the United Nations and Congress to allied capitals and the warrens of Baghdad and Tikrit — President Bush is finding major obstacles to his effort to secure and rebuild Iraq.

The problems, ranging from money to troops to moral support, are complicating White House efforts to assure the American public that the situation in Iraq will actually improve with time.

On the ground, there has been a pause in the sort of major bombing attacks that shook the administration`s confidence and forced troops to dig more trenches and put up more barricades, isolating themselves from the country they are occupying.

But now some defense officials are saying the occupation force`s state of siege, combined with continuing difficulties in restoring services in Baghdad, is making Iraqis increasingly hostile toward those who are supposed to be their liberators. And today, the eighth tape purporting to be from the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, surfaced, urging yet more attacks.

In addition, administration officials are acknowledging there may be an embarrassing lack of foreign donations to rebuild Iraq. European diplomats said today that the United States would be lucky to get $1 billion in pledges at a donors` conference in Madrid next month — about 10 percent of what the United States wanted, according to these officials.

The donor disappointment is, in turn, stirring resentment in Congress over Mr. Bush`s request for $87 billion in military and economic assistance to Iraq in 2004. Some lawmakers are saying one big chunk of the huge package, the $15 billion earmarked for non-military activities, may be especially scrutinized, especially if donations from other countries are only a fraction of that sum.

Finally, the United States is having difficulties negotiating a new United Nations Security Council resolution to give the United Nations broader authority over Iraq. Such a resolution would make it easier to entice foreign donations and foreign peacekeepers.

France remains adamant that the resolution must transfer much of the authority now held by the American-led occupation to the United Nations itself, and that an Iraqi interim government be placed in charge quickly — so quickly, in fact, that American officials say they doubt one could be ready.

Progress toward accommodation is slow, administration officials say.

"We`ve taken suggestions on board, and we`re trying to integrate them in a way that makes sense," said an administration official. "But we haven`t even finalized language within our own councils. It`s still within the Washington clearance process. We`re not yet ready for prime time."

The campaign to get foreign troops is still struggling to get traction. The administration says all it wants is about 15,000 troops so that an American division can rotate out on schedule in February or March.

American officials have looked mainly to Turkey, India and Pakistan. But when a top American envoy visited India recently, a senior Indian military officer publicly expressed concern that sending troops to Iraq could leave India vulnerable in the disputed state of Kashmir.

And on the economic aid front, the European Union, which accounts for 20 percent of the world`s wealth, has offered only $250 million for Iraq next year, European and American officials say. American officials have been taken aback by what they view as a minuscule amount. But the political fact of life in Europe is that the Iraq war remains unpopular, and Mr. Bush himself is widely disliked.

Administration officials and international aide officials say the money is not flowing for many reasons. One of the biggest is that the country remains too dangerous for aid workers to go in.

Another is that there have been no solid budget numbers on what Iraq needs — apart from an unreleased 13-page laundry list ranging from soccer stadiums to health clinics created by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the administration of the occupation forces.

"This is a wild estimate, a wish list," said a top international economic policy maker. "The Americans have gone to different Iraqi ministries and asked, `What do you need?` But it`s all back-of-the-envelope stuff."

The United States has made its best headway on getting recognition for the Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-member body handpicked by the American-led occupation. A month or two ago, Arab and European diplomats openly ridiculed this group as puppets for the United States. But, after strenuous American lobbying, the Arab League has recognized the council. Now the United States is trying to get the European Union to deal directly with the council. From there they hope to seat it officially at the United Nations.

If that happens, Washington feels it can then call on the council to set the timetable for returning to self-government at a year — and fend off French demands that it be faster.

Officials close to the Coalition Provision Authority say the hope now is for the respite from violent attacks to continue, for some foreign troops to be introduced and for a crash effort to bring in more Iraqis to handle security.

Speeding up the creation of a new Iraqi army and training police units and self-defense militias would free American and British forces to focus on chasing suspected terrorists and attackers, whether they are common criminals, forces still loyal to Mr. Hussein or groups infiltrating from other countries since the end of the war.

The Bush team does not like to change policy drastically. Its plan now seems to be to continue on the present course, get incremental amounts of help on the security side and hope that a more stable situation will open the aid spigots from abroad.



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September 18, 2003
Clark`s Timing Is Seen as a Handicap
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM


WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — Gen. Wesley K. Clark will be seriously handicapped in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his late start, many political strategists in both parties and students of elections said today.

"The problem you have getting in this late is you have no field troops, you have no ground operation," said Bill Dal Col, who ran Steve Forbes`s campaign for the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000. "Without the troops, it doesn`t matter how good your logistics and planning are."

Tony Coelho, who was Al Gore`s campaign chairman during the 2000 primaries, said, "What people don`t understand is that it takes a long time to develop an operation and relationships and a finely tuned staff. It takes months to do that."

Mr. Dal Col said that when Mr. Forbes finally decided to run in September 1995, he quickly learned that people he needed as supporters were already committed to other candidates. "In Iowa, there was no one left for me to go get," Mr. Dal Col said. "In New Hampshire, almost everyone had already picked sides."

The problem is worse now than it used to be because the filing deadlines and primaries and caucuses are earlier than ever before. About one-third of the states will pick their Democratic delegates next January and February, and another third will vote on March 2.

The deadlines and rules for getting on the ballot vary widely by state and mastering the laws can be a daunting task.

Mr. Dal Col said Mr. Forbes had to spend $2 million to gather enough signatures for a place on the New York ballot in 1996 and was left off the ballot in Rhode Island that year because of mistakes by his staff.

William G. Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston who edits a book of essays every four years on the race for the White House, said that 20 or 25 years ago a candidate like Jimmy Carter could raise enough money to campaign successfully in Iowa and New Hampshire and then use those successes to raise enough for the rest of the primary season.

Now, he said, candidates like General Clark must raise almost all they need for the primaries, at least $20 million, before the voting begins.

"Between setting up an organization and raising money and dealing with the legal challenges of getting on all the ballots, it`s an enormous challenge for him to take on in a very short time, and he`s going to be hard-pressed to accomplish that," Mr. Mayer said.

Rhodes Cook, an independent political analyst with a book, "The Presidential Nominating Process," being published next month, said, "At this point, you need a 50-hour day to have a presence in all the states that are voting early."

Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on campaigns and elections, said it was possible that General Clark would "catch on fire immediately" and attract the money, talented staff and endorsements needed for a victorious race.

If the general does not become an "instant phenomenon," Mr. Mann said, "it will be a real slog for him."

The one candidate in recent elections who started late and won the nomination was Bill Clinton, who did not commit himself definitely to running in 1992 until the late summer of 1991. But that was "an aberrational election cycle," Mr. Cook said, because the Persian Gulf war and President George Bush`s popularity in the aftermath kept many Democrats from getting in the race early.

Other seemingly attractive candidates were left in the dust because of their late starts, including Senator Frank Church of Idaho, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 1976, and Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, who sought the Republican nomination in 1980.

"By the time Howard Baker got in," Mr. Mayer said, "he found that people who might have gone with him six months before were already committed to someone else."

Mr. Mayer said the eight candidates for the Republican nomination in 1996 made their formal announcements an average of 16 months before their August convention.

Anita Dunn, a Democratic consultant who worked on Bill Bradley`s 2000 campaign, said new political tools might mean that the lessons of previous elections would not apply this year. For example, she said, the Internet might enable General Clark to raise money and organize supporters more quickly and efficiently than candidates could in the past.

Except for Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., who ran for the Republican nomination in 1988 but withdrew early, General Clark will be the first general to run a full-scale presidential campaign since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956.



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September 18, 2003
A Chink in the Armor
By ANDREW KOHUT


WASHINGTON — Two years after 9/11 and one year before the presidential election, concern about terrorism continues to dominate American politics. For President Bush no less than his Democratic challengers, it is an unpredictable issue.

The president now faces at least two problems politically. The first is the effect of the war in Iraq on the fight against terrorism. The second is the declining importance of terrorism on the public agenda as the attacks recede and the election approaches.

With Americans increasingly critical of the situation in Iraq, opinion is now shifting on how the war has affected the likelihood of another terrorist attack in the United States. In April, an ABC News survey found, 58 percent thought the war reduced the chances of an attack, while only 29 percent thought it made domestic terrorism more likely. Now those figures are 40 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

Obviously, events could change these perceptions, like the capture or killing of Saddam Hussein or a marked improvement in the situation in Iraq. What`s more, the president — especially a Republican president — almost always enjoys the benefit of the doubt on national security issues.

As the public turns its attention to other issues, however, Mr. Bush`s position weakens. According to a Newsweek poll this month, his approval ratings on domestic issues are dismal: 32 percent on the budget, 38 percent on health care, 41 percent on the economy, 42 percent on energy policy.

These issues are becoming more prominent as terrorism loses some relative standing on the public agenda. In a Gallup poll last month, just 12 percent cited terrorism as the country`s foremost problem, compared with 48 percent who named an economic issue. Also in August, a Pew survey found that 57 percent of Americans said it was more important for Mr. Bush to focus on the economy than on terrorism.

Of course, the president still benefits from the transformation of his image that occurred after 9/11. Three-quarters of the public see him as a decisive and forceful leader, according to a recent Gallup poll, compared with only 55 percent before the attacks. And public worry about the threat of terrorism remains substantial: that August Pew survey found 75 percent of respondents saying the world is a more dangerous place than it was a decade ago, compared with 53 percent two years earlier.

Even if the economy does not improve, concern over terrorism will play a significant role in the campaign. On this issue, President Bush remains a formidable candidate, and the task for the Democrats will be to nominate a challenger whom voters see as a strong leader. If the Democrats do, and the war in Iraq continues to create controversy, then they might find that the debate over America`s response to terrorism isn`t so lopsided after all.


Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.



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September 18, 2003
Our War With France
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


It`s time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.

If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq`s transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.

France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America`s equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.

Yes, the Bush team`s arrogance has sharpened French hostility. Had President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld not been so full of themselves right after America`s military victory in Iraq — and instead used that moment, when the French were feeling that maybe they should have taken part, to magnanimously reach out to Paris to join in reconstruction — it might have softened French attitudes. But even that I have doubts about.

What I have no doubts about, though, is that there is no coherent, legitimate Iraqi authority able to assume power in the near term, and trying to force one now would lead to a dangerous internal struggle and delay the building of the democratic institutions Iraq so badly needs. Iraqis know this. France knows this, which is why its original proposal (which it now seems to be backtracking on a bit) could only be malicious.

What is so amazing to me about the French campaign — "Operation America Must Fail" — is that France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France. Let me spell it out in simple English: if America is defeated in Iraq by a coalition of Saddamists and Islamists, radical Muslim groups — from Baghdad to the Muslim slums of Paris — will all be energized, and the forces of modernism and tolerance within these Muslim communities will be on the run. To think that France, with its large Muslim minority, where radicals are already gaining strength, would not see its own social fabric affected by this is fanciful.

If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we`re sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.

But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam`s one-man rule — is so patently cynical.

Clearly, not all E.U. countries are comfortable with this French mischief, yet many are going along for the ride. It`s stunning to me that the E.U., misled by France, could let itself be written out of the most important political development project in modern Middle East history. The whole tone and direction of the Arab-Muslim world, which is right on Europe`s doorstep, will be affected by the outcome in Iraq. It would be as if America said it did not care what happened in Mexico because it was mad at Spain.

Says John Chipman, director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: "What the Europeans are saying about Iraq is that this is our backyard, we`re not going to let you meddle in it, but we`re not going to tend it ourselves."

But what`s most sad is that France is right — America will not be as effective or legitimate in its efforts to rebuild Iraq without French help. Having France working with us in Iraq, rather than against us in the world, would be so beneficial for both nations and for the Arabs` future. Too bad this French government has other priorities.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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September 18, 2003
Gray in the Pink
By MAUREEN DOWD


LOS ANGELES — Gray Davis was ecstatic.

You couldn`t tell from his stance; beside Senator Bob Graham on a podium in the Century Plaza Hotel, the governor held his arms as stiffly as a butler awaiting an order.

You couldn`t tell from his hair, which didn`t move even when he did. You couldn`t tell from his remarks, as leaden as ever.

But there was something — a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth — that passes for joy in the Gray Zone. A ghost of a smirk. "He went from angry to smarmy without ever stopping at happy," said Dan Schnur, a G.O.P. strategist who ran the Peter Ueberroth campaign, now defunct.

Certainly, Mr. Davis was happy that Arnold Schwarzenegger had seemed to be off his stride. "All we see is `Terminate-terminate-hasta-la-vista,` " one Davis supporter said. "He needs a new script."

And the governor was happy about the decision of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, one Carter appointee and two Clinton appointees, to postpone the recall election until March — a decision that may itself be recalled by the full court or the Supreme Court.

The liberal California judges took the arguments on equal-protection guarantees used by the conservative Supreme Court justices in Bush v. Gore and lobbed them back, irony blazing, pre-empting the use of the infamous punch-card machines still in action in six counties.

"It was beyond delicious — it was cosmically, karmically determined that the Supreme Court be hoisted on its own petard," one movie star`s political consultant crowed.

Just when the vertiginous recall race was getting more normal — with Mr. Schwarzenegger actually talking about workers` compensation and water policy — the Ninth Circuit cranked up the wacky quotient again.

The unappetizing Mr. Davis has managed to take the edge off the appetite for a recall by tapping into the eternal torch of Democratic anger over the 2000 election, the belief that the Republicans hijacked Florida, allowing the neocons to hijack foreign policy and the rich to enrich the rich.

It is the same anger that propelled Howard Dean out of the heap, and that Wesley Clark plans to stoke. General Clark`s first stop today will be Fort Lauderdale, where he can remind Democrats that the world might look a lot different if the Supremes had not snuffed the Florida recount.

As the general told CNN in Little Rock, Ark.: "It must be $150, $160 billion of the American people`s money that`s being taken from us, from these children on this playground. It`s being put into Iraq."

Mr. Clark made his rounds in Hollywood last week and, like the other Democratic Rhodes scholar from Little Rock, took the town "by storm," as one Democratic powerhouse said. "A Renaissance mind in general`s clothing," she bubbled, adding that passion for the general had superseded a flirtation with the former Vermont governor. "Dean may be too ideologically pinned to the crunchy granola set."

By surrounding himself with a former president, former presidential candidates and current presidential candidates, all of them invoking the specter of hanging chads, Mr. Davis has succeeded in keeping the focus off his own transgressions. "This is way bigger than him," Bill Clinton told worshipers at an African-American church in South Central on Sunday, where the congregation weirdly included the actor and accused murderer Robert Blake. (In the antirecall TV ads, the words "Gray Davis" are not even mentioned; a tiny little picture of his gray head pops up at the end.)

"People can`t stand the guy," a top Democratic player here said. "It`s truly a remarkable feat to spend your whole life in public service and engender no personal loyalty. But it`s no longer about Gray Davis. Now it`s about Florida and the last election and the feeling that the other party is exploiting you."

Bill Carrick, the Democratic consultant, agreed: "Davis is doing better simply because he`s like a kid flying on an airplane alone, when the flight attendants carefully pass him along from one attendant to the next. First Clinton takes Davis to the black church, then he`s handed off to Bob Graham, who gives him to Jesse Jackson, who turns him over to escort John Kerry, who puts him in the custody of Al Gore."

Mr. Davis does not seem to care if no one likes him. His entire political career is based on being less repulsive than the other guy. That`s what makes this choice so tough — because in essence, the governor is running against himself.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Iraqi Minister Assembling Security Force
Paramilitary Group Would Hunt Resistance Fighters

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 -- Iraq`s newly appointed interior minister is assembling a paramilitary force composed of former employees of the country`s security services and members of political party militias to pursue resistance fighters who have eluded U.S. troops and Iraqi police officers, according to Iraqi officials.

In an acknowledgement that Iraq`s municipal police departments are too weak to combat Baathist insurgents and foreign terrorists, leaders of the country`s Governing Council want the force to include a domestic intelligence-gathering unit and be deputized with broad powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects, the officials said. The force, as outlined by the officials, would be the most powerful security apparatus in Iraq and would give five political organizations headed by former opposition leaders an unrivaled role in the country`s internal security.

Some independent members of the council, as well as diplomats in Iraq who have been informed of the plans to form the domestic paramilitary force, fear that it could be used as a tool by a future government to suppress political dissent or target enemies -- as similar forces have been used in many other Arab nations.

But Ayad Alawi, the chairman of the Governing Council`s security committee, said the new force was necessary because Iraq`s regular police are "not sufficient at all." He said the committee asked Interior Minister Nouri Badran to form a special force that would be "a cross between the military and the police" and would be "deployed to areas of hot confrontation."

In an interview today, Alawi said the Governing Council had reached a "general agreement" with the U.S. occupation authority on setting up the force. Although the U.S. civil administrator here, L. Paul Bremer, wants Iraqis to take more responsibility for internal security, U.S. officials here said a final decision on the force had not been made.

"The coalition authority has been informed in general terms about this proposal," said Daniel Senor, a senior adviser to Bremer. "We are looking forward to the details before we agree to it."

While the council has been given responsibility for many day-to-day governance issues, Bremer has the final say, particularly on security matters. But a senior U.S. official here said Bremer is "open-minded on proposed solutions to security issues, especially when they are proposed by Iraqis who have a substantial operations responsibility for security, like the minister of the interior."

Despite the lack of formal approval, Badran has been moving forward with building the force, Alawi said. "We gave him the okay," Alawi said. "This falls within the sphere of his specialty."

Alawi, the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, a former opposition party that has long been supported by the CIA, said the newly reconstituted Interior Ministry already has begun screening more than 3,000 applicants.

"We have asked certain levels of ex-police and ex-military to come forward if they are interested in serving their country," he said.

The first units of the force, about 1,500 men, should be assembled, trained and deployed by the end of the year, he said. Ultimately, he said, the force could grow to between 7,000 and 9,000 members and could employ helicopters and speedboats.

He said former members of Saddam Hussein`s four principal intelligence services and senior members of the Baath Party would not be hired but could be retained as "freelancers" to provide information. All recruits would be vetted for past human rights abuses, he added. It remained unclear, however, whether U.S. authorities would also participate in the screening process.

Alawi said the force would be drawn primarily from two groups: former members of the military and police, and members of the security and intelligence wings of five political organizations: the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Shiite Muslim Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and two large Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The creation of an Iraqi-run paramilitary unit would be a significant step toward giving Iraqis more power to tackle the escalating insurgent activity and rampant crime that have shaken the faith of many Iraqis in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct their country and form a democratic government. Members of the Governing Council said they believed the force also would address the difficulties U.S. authorities have faced in drafting police officers to assume more public security functions.

Although more than 35,000 police officers have returned to work across the country, many lack training and equipment. In cities, officers have been unable to crack large criminal gangs; in small towns, they have been afraid that aggressive action against resistance fighters will prompt retribution attacks.

Iraqi officials said the same fear of vengeance is affecting Iraqis who are being incorporated into U.S. military units to participate in patrols and man checkpoints. Those Iraqis, members of a new civil defense corps, spend the night in their homes instead of on military bases.

"How can you expect someone to raid a house and then go sleep in the same town?" said an official with the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmed Chalabi, is this month`s Governing Council president. "You need a national unit that can deploy to places quickly, take action and then leave."

Members of the civil defense corps are being recruited by U.S. troops and will work under their command. Previous reports indicated the corps would report to the Interior Ministry.

The Iraqi National Congress official likened the new paramilitary force to the Italy`s carabiniere. "We`re up against terrorist and mafia-like organizations," the official said. "We need this type of force to counter this type of threat."

Alawi said it "makes sense for Iraqis to take a more active role in restoring security."

"We understand the culture, the geography, the customs and the habits of our people," he said.

Adel Murad, a senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said giving Iraqis the authority to act on intelligence they gather would improve the chances of catching Baathist fighters and foreign terrorists. "We need to speed up the process," he said. "Right now, it can take days for the coalition to act on information we give them."

But some independent members of the Governing Council are particularly concerned that militiamen and intelligence operatives from five former opposition parties will be a part of the new unit, warning that their inclusion will politicize the force.

"It will give the parties an unfair advantage," said one independent council member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "In a country like Iraq, if you control the police -- or something even stronger than the police -- you have the power."

Alawi said the new force would include adequate safeguards to ensure it would not abuse its mandate. As a first step, he said, the Interior Ministry will ask the U.S. military to provide liaison officers to each platoon-size unit on the force.

"We want to ensure maximum coordination with the coalition," he said.

Eventually, he said, the ministry will have a civilian undersecretary and an oversight committee.

Members of the Governing Council`s security committee and their aides insisted, however, that aggressive measures were necessary in the face of rampant crime and insurgent activity. "There are bad guys out there," an adviser to Chalabi said. "There is a big difference between internal dissent and Baathist terror."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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$87 Billion War Request Details Spending
Democrats Challenge Policy of Higher Funding for Iraqis Than for Americans

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A04


President Bush formally shipped his $87 billion war spending request to Congress last night, offering new details about the burgeoning costs of reconstructing Iraq and drawing criticism from Democrats that the White House is willing to spend more on Iraqis than on U.S. citizens.

The spending bill`s fine print offers a glimpse of the task the administration faces in rebuilding Iraq. Of the president`s request, nearly $5.8 billion would go toward rebuilding Iraq`s electricity system. An additional $2.1 billion is earmarked for its oil infrastructure, $3.7 billion for water and sewer building, $800 million for telecommunications and transportation improvements, and $900 million to upgrade hospitals and health care.

U.S. taxpayers will construct two prisons in Iraq, build houses and finance the importation of $900 million worth of fuel to a country with the world`s second-largest oil reserves. All that is to be done by the end of 2004, administration officials said.

"These funds are necessary to win the war on terrorism and support our troops," an administration official said to reporters during a conference call that was conducted on condition of anonymity. "And that`s for Americans. The faster Iraq is fully stabilized and secure, the faster Americans can leave."

There is little doubt Congress will give Bush what he seeks, but Democrats have signaled they will try to extract a political price.

Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, issued a report showing how much the administration would pay to meet Iraqis` needs compared with Americans`. The budget proposal allocates $157 per Iraqi for sewage improvements, compared with $14 per American, for example. The administration is devoting $38 per Iraqi for hospitals, compared with $3.30 per American.

Bush`s "vision for Iraq is precisely opposite his vision for the United States," Obey said. "We also need to have a balance in the budgets between what we`re doing abroad and what we`re doing here at home."

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has said he will draft legislative language demanding equal financial treatment for Iraqis and Americans.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, introduced legislation yesterday to finance the $87 billion package by reducing the size of Bush`s tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. The proposal, cosponsored by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential aspirant, would increase the top tax rates from 2005 through 2010 for those with taxable incomes of more than $312,000 a year.

Even Democrats concede such gambits have little chance of passing, but they are meant to hammer home their contention that Bush has gotten the country into financial and military quicksand.

"The Bush administration, in a scant 21/2 years, has imperiled our country in the gravest of ways, and set us up for a possible crisis of mammoth proportions," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (W. Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, charged.

The Treasury Department reported yesterday that the federal deficit had blown through the $400 billion mark for the first time in history. With the added war costs, White House officials say the deficit could reach $535 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The war request offers not much hope of a quick resolution. Administration officials say the request envisions no change from the 200,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Kuwait. Indeed, the president is seeking $2.2 billion to finance additional military reserve and National Guard mobilizations.

The $20.3 billion sought for Iraqi relief and reconstruction is only part of the $50 billion to $75 billion that will be needed to do the job, administration officials concede. They hope some of the shortfall will be made up at the end of October, when an international donors` conference is to convene in Madrid, although senior administration officials have publicly said they do not expect much help.

Some of the shortfall is also to be covered by Iraqi oil sales. But for now, one official said, the $12 billion in oil exports anticipated next year will cover only the cost of oil industry operations. Of the oil industry request, $1.2 billion would go to rapid pipeline repair equipment and operations in anticipation of continued sabotage.

"The problem is the sabotage and terrorism," one official said. "If we did not have the sabotage and terrorism, Iraq would produce the products we are now having to import."

The White House will also try to free up about $1.3 billion by canceling some United Nations contracts under the U.N. oil-for-food program that the administration says are not needed.

Administration officials made it clear they are girding for a congressional fight, not just with Democrats but also with Republicans. Some GOP conservatives have proposed separating the funding for Iraq`s reconstruction and declaring it a loan to be repaid eventually. The White House was having none of that. One official said the reconstruction funds were "inextricably entwined with the military request" and explicitly deemed a grant to Iraq.

Officials said they would insist on funding flexibility that congressional members of the appropriations committees have long resisted. The White House wants $1.9 billion for its flexible Iraqi Freedom Fund, which the Pentagon could spend as it chooses. Bush is also seeking authority to shift $5 billion of the request wherever the military chooses.

Staff writers Juliet Eilperin and Helen Dewar contributed to this report.



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For General`s Rivals, Varying Cause to Worry


By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A06


Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark is a candidate in search of a constituency, and depending on where he might find it, almost any of his major rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination has something to fear.

Too little is known about Clark, Democratic and Republican strategists said yesterday, to know whether his attractive résumé and grass-roots following will translate into political success. At a minimum, the Arkansan has launched one of the most unusual candidacies in the recent history of presidential campaigns -- that of an antiwar general.

His impact already has been felt. Over the past week, he has soaked up valuable television time and columns of newsprint at the expense of his nine Democratic rivals. At a time when all the Democrats are trying to raise their profiles, Clark`s arrival in the race makes it more difficult.

"I think there will be a lot of noise for a while, and it will take a while to settle in," said David Axelrod, media adviser to Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). "We know what the potential and the power is. I expect he will get quite a bit of attention the next few weeks. They don`t call it news for nothing, and he`s new."

For Howard Dean, the intense news media interest in Clark may have been propitious, given that it has temporarily diverted attention from what was intensifying scrutiny and criticism of a series of statements the former Vermont governor has made.

But that is a short-term effect. Clark`s candidacy, several strategists said privately, may serve to flatten the entire Democratic field, as if to underscore that there are enough questions about each of the candidates among undecided Democrats to make it possible for a novice candidate to attract significant attention. Republican strategists in particular said Clark`s entry diminished the rest of the candidates, although they have a political interest in saying so.

Clark`s impact also could be felt quickly in fundraising. Between now and Sept. 30, all the candidates will be pushing to raise as much money as possible to increase their totals for the third quarter. July and August are traditionally slow fundraising months, but the last weeks of September are normally some of the best weeks of the year.

Gina Glantz, who was Democrat Bill Bradley`s campaign manager in 2000 and now is with the Service Employees International Union, said the other candidates will be able to tell quickly whether Clark is drying up contributions. She said Clark`s ability to draw money that might have gone elsewhere will be a better quick indicator of his drawing power than the polls.

Clark starts the campaign with limited support among Democratic voters. A Washington Post-ABC News Poll released over the weekend showed Clark at 6 percent, running behind Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Dean. The other five candidates were all in single digits below Clark.

Several Republican strategists said they did not see Clark as a strong candidate. "I don`t go to bed worrying that we`re going to face General Clark," GOP pollster Bill McInturff said on CNBC`s "Capital Report."

Because the Democratic contest remains so unsettled, however, any growth by Clark will come at the expense of one of the other candidates, and Democratic and Republican strategists have been busy attempting to measure Clark`s potential impact on the field.

The most popular assumption is that he could hurt Dean and Kerry most. "I think he`s going to compete in the Dean-Kerry space as a critic of the war and a critic of Bush`s foreign policy," said Bill Carrick, an adviser to Gephardt. "He`s going to be in there competing with the same universe of voters that Dean has been dominating so far, and Kerry obviously has shown an inclination to compete there."

Dean`s campaign advisers understand better than the others the potential power of a grass-roots-based candidacy, and several strategists said the combination of Clark`s opposition to Bush on foreign policy, his posture as a candidate not bred in Washington and the apparent strength of the draft-Clark constituency could combine to halt Dean`s rise or even cut into his support.

Kerry likes to say he is the only candidate in the race who has seen combat. Clark`s entry makes it more difficult for Kerry to play that card, although Kerry advisers say their candidate can link his military service to the fights he`s taken on as a politician, fights that are important to Democratic constituencies. "I think we can win that competition," a Kerry adviser said.

Edwards and Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.) now have another southern-based candidate to deal with. Lieberman, who has promoted himself as the Democratic candidate who can best neutralize Bush`s advantages on national security issues because of his pro-defense record, now has a career military officer who can make the same claim.

Gephardt may be the least directly affected because his campaign is economically based and aimed at blue-collar and union Democrats. But even he could feel the impact of Clark`s entry if the retired general helps to reduce Gephardt`s chances of winning the AFL-CIO endorsement next month.

All that depends on Clark and how well he makes the transition to being a candidate. As the adviser to one of the other Democrats said, "He is a theory now. He`s not proven anything as a candidate. He doesn`t have the infrastructure, and he has to raise an enormous amount of money. That`s challenging, and anyone involved in any of these campaigns knows how challenging it is."



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Bush Disavows Hussein-Sept. 11 Link
Administration Has Been Vague on Issue, but President Says No Evidence Found

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A18


President Bush said there has been no evidence that Iraq`s Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disavowing a link that had been hinted at previously by his administration.

"No, we`ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," the president said yesterday after a meeting at the White House with lawmakers.

In stating that position, Bush clarified an issue that has long been left vague by his administration. On Sunday, Vice President Cheney said on NBC`s "Meet the Press" that success in Iraq means "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

A Washington Post poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans thought it at least likely that Hussein had a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Polling experts said Americans held that view mostly because of an instinctive suspicion of Hussein, but Democrats and some public opinion experts said Bush and his aides exploited that impression by implying a link.

In his May 1 speech announcing the end of major combat in Iraq, Bush said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001." He added: "With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."

Bush, while seeing no link between Hussein and the attacks, said yesterday that Iraq was linked to Osama bin Laden`s terror organization. "There`s no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties," he said. Some terrorism experts dispute the extent of those ties, but the ties are not disputed as vigorously as the link between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday said he had no reason to believe that Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Sunday, Cheney revived the possibility that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer five months before the attacks, saying, "We just don`t know" whether the allegation is true. But an FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place.

Cheney, speaking to a meeting of the Air Force Association here yesterday, delivered an impassioned defense of the Bush administration`s actions in Iraq, and especially of its strategy of acting preemptively against perceived threats.

"Some people, both in this nation and abroad, have questions about that strategy," Cheney said. "Make no mistake: President Bush is acting to protect the American people against further attacks, even when that means moving aggressively against would-be attackers."

Some analysts have concluded that the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the March invasion has made future preventive actions unlikely.

In a talk to congressional staff members earlier this week, Andrew Krepinevich Jr., the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the discovery that "there was no imminent danger" from Iraq made it unlikely that Americans would again support such a preventive action.

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Can Anything Change The Saudi Syndrome?


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A23


LONDON -- Saudi Arabia`s royal family has habitually confounded pessimists and optimists alike. For those who predict sudden collapse and revolution, or breakthroughs in reform and enlightenment, the kingdom is a serial disappointer.

Not even 9/11, which was inspired and largely carried out by Saudi nationals, or the furious U.S. reaction to that day of horror seems to have changed the Saudi syndrome.

After a period of tension and uncertainty, the family of more than 5,000 "princes" who form the governing political and commercial elite of a country that bears their name has once again regrouped and stabilized around its desire to hang on to power. The family will carefully adjust the limits of change, inch by inch.

That is particularly true in religion. The rulers see an urgent need to reform the perception of Islam in the United States and the West, but none to reform the Saudi-based religious practices and propagation that influenced Osama bin Laden and the other zealots of al Qaeda. The Saudis treat bin Laden`s band as criminal deviants -- not the products of religious, social or other root causes.

Those at least are the impressions left by some prominent Saudis and foreign experts on the kingdom who gathered at Ditchley Park near Oxford last weekend for spirited but informal discussions about a country that is the world`s leading oil exporter, the site of Islam`s holiest shrines and a vital but extremely difficult U.S. partner in the war on terrorism.

There are few major global questions in the post-Cold War world that do not directly influence Saudi Arabia -- or that are not directly influenced by it. It is easy to overlook the centrality of a land that has been isolated and closed to Westerners for so much of its 80-year history.

A BOGSAT (a conference that amounts to a Bunch of Guys Sitting Around a Table) does not necessarily reveal a lot about the chosen subject. But it should provide a glimpse of conventional wisdom forming in a given expert community, with its intellectual, diplomatic, commercial or other interests. That in itself is useful to those of us who remain agnostic on Saudi Arabia`s fate.

The royal family emerges in the majority expert view as far more resilient and tenacious than is the popular Western perception, shaped by highly visible cases of fecklessness and corruption among prominent princes. In moments of crisis, "worker princes" have moved with surprising determination to enforce family unity as the paramount value and tool of survival for the nation.

That reflex seems to have kicked in since the May 13 bombings in Riyadh by al Qaeda. These attacks demonstrated conclusively that the 20-year-old Saudi policy of keeping bin Laden`s nihilistic violence outside his native land had failed. Instead, strong domestic counterterrorist and police actions have become the kingdom`s first line of defense.

The Bush administration also reports a new Saudi willingness to curb financial support for terrorism and to let the FBI operate in the kingdom. But neither the experts nor Washington should get carried away. There is still evidence that the Saudis will try to have it at least both ways for as long as they can, even in the war on terror.

U.S. authorities in Baghdad have provided the Saudis with a list of more than 12,000 religious extremists they would like prevented from infiltrating Iraq, I am told by non-conference sources. They add that the Saudis have done nothing about the list or about the continuing steady flow of jihadis across the border. "They talk up cooperation and wait for the Americans to go back to sleep," says a U.S. source.

Before Ditchley Park, two related things seemed difficult for me to imagine: One is that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states do not face overwhelming pressures to reform dramatically or perish. The other unlikelihood is that things can get much worse in the Arab world than they are today, in terms of stagnating or declining personal income, standards of living, opportunities for education, misogyny and social and religious turmoil.

But the Saudis as portrayed by the experts may be telling us that both things are possible: that these failing governments can do just enough to hang on to power and cause their citizens to miss the major global trends in political, economic and personal liberalization for the next 50 years too.

You don`t have to be an expert to understand how truly scary that prospect is for them -- and for all of the rest of us.

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© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The Real Wesley Clark


By Richard Cohen

Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A23


All around Washington last week -- and before and after on the phone -- I`ve been busy asking people about Wesley Clark. I talked with people who worked with him, some of them very closely, asking over and over again a variation of the same question: Is Wesley Clark too weird for prime time?

Let me first tell you why I asked the question: It`s because Clark in effect got fired from the Pentagon. Not to put too fine a point on it, then-Defense Secretary Bill Cohen, joined by many of Clark`s colleagues, came to just plain dislike him.

Some of this had to do with policy -- the Kosovo campaign -- and some with their suspicion that Clark went over their heads to the White House. But some of it was deeply personal. Clark is sometimes compared to Eisenhower, another general who went into politics. But Ike was beloved. That`s a word that never comes up when Clark is discussed.

Something about Clark makes people bristle. He is undoubtedly brilliant -- a Rhodes scholar and first in his class at West Point. He is a fine athlete and a Vietnam combat veteran who was decorated for bravery. He won the respect, even the awe, of his colleagues, but too much of the time he did not win their friendship.

The rap on Clark is that he lacks precisely those qualities that define a politician, particularly warmth and affability. David Halberstam, in his book "War in a Time of Peace," writes of Clark that even his most steadfast champion in the army, Gen. John Shalikashvili, recognized that Clark was too brash, too cocky, too driven, too self-absorbed, too hard on subordinates, too dismissive of critics and criticism -- but also too brilliant and talented to be overlooked. Shali promoted him.

Shalikashvili`s bottom line is precisely what I kept finding in the people I talked to. To a person, they acknowledged Clark`s flaws but said they were minor compared with his assets. One former Clinton administration official described Clark as "a little arrogant . . . not beloved by his colleagues . . . self-centered . . . high-maintenance" but said he would support him in a heartbeat.

Clearly, some of the palpable excitement about Clark in Democratic circles comes from an equally palpable yawn about the rest of the Democratic field. The only candidate who has so far generated any excitement is Howard Dean. But if the Bush team could digitally create the perfect patsy candidate it would be Dean. He`s gaffe-prone, defensive when criticized and, fairly or not (mostly not), will be characterized as an elitist liberal. Besides, he is the governor of a virtual quilt -- a state (Vermont) with 114 covered bridges and fewer minorities than the DAR.

Clark is a different story altogether. Like Dean, he opposed the war in Iraq -- but it`s hard to hang a peacenik label on someone with a Silver Star. His "state," the Army, is far bigger than Dean`s and far more diversified. Still, it`s a reach to say Clark has any experience with domestic issues -- schools, welfare or, in Iowa, ethanol.

That is bound to matter. What will matter more is whether the American people feel at ease with Clark. In a television era, sheer likability is essential. This is why the spectacularly qualified Al Gore lost to (or tied) George Bush, who was ill prepared for the job and has since repudiated just about everything he said during the campaign about foreign affairs. People liked Bush. The rest is commentary.

Much about Clark is both intriguing and exciting. On paper he is almost a perfect general election candidate for the Democrats -- a southerner (Arkansas), moderate, pro-choice, smart as a whip and inoculated against talk-radio demagoguery that equates thought with treason. The man, as it happens, has taken a bullet.

Nonetheless, Clark warrants special scrutiny. It`s not that I don`t trust those who know him best -- although some boost his candidacy out of self-interest -- but rather that the personal qualities that bothered his critics would be intolerable in a president. We like our presidents as we like our morning TV hosts -- comfy.

"He can run, but he can`t hide," Joe Louis once said about an upcoming opponent -- and a bit of that is true about a presidential campaign as well. The wearying nature of the slog to the White House, the quaint intimacy of campaign events in New Hampshire and Iowa and especially the omnipresence of television will ultimately tell the American people what they want to know about Wes Clark. It will not be, as some would have it, whether he knows much about domestic policy but whether he knows much about himself.

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© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Poll: Bush Iraq Rating At New Low
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/17/opinion/polls/main…
NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2003

(CBS) President Bush`s approval rating on handling Iraq has fallen to its lowest level ever, and his overall approval rating is the lowest it has been since the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to a CBS News poll.

The poll also finds that a declining number of Americans think the U.S. is in control of the situation in Iraq, and only 22% think the Bush administration has a clear plan for rebuilding the former dictatorship.

Americans also question whether a successful rebuilding of Iraq would ultimately pay dividends for them back at home: most do not think the United States will be any safer from terrorism even if Iraq does become a stable democracy. But many Americans do believe the rebuilding process in Iraq will force tough financial tradeoffs back at home - tradeoffs they would be unwilling to make.


THE PRESIDENT AND IRAQ

In this poll, President Bush receives his lowest rating on his handling of the situation in Iraq since CBS News began asking the question in February. American opinion is now evenly divided on this measure, with 46% approving and 47% disapproving.

Bush`s approval rating on Iraq has dropped 11 points since last month and 33 points since April, when he received his highest rating on this question.

BUSH`S HANDLING OF IRAQ

Now++ Approve 46%
Disapprove 47%

8/03Approve 57%
Disapprove 33%

4/03Approve 79%
Disapprove 17%

2/03Approve 53%
Disapprove 42%

Not only are Americans more critical of the president`s performance on Iraq today, but nearly two-thirds of them now say the Bush administration does NOT have a clear plan for rebuilding Iraq; just over one in five (22%) say it does have a plan. In April, the public was divided; 42% thought the Bush administration had a clear plan for rebuilding Iraq, while 45% thought it did not.

DOES BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAVE A PLAN FOR REBUILDING IRAQ?

Now++Yes++ 22%
No 64%

4/03Yes 42%
No 45%


THE CURRENT SITUATION IN IRAQ

The percentage that thinks the U.S. is in control of events in Iraq is at its lowest point since CBS News began asking the question, having dropped more than 30 percentage points since active military combat ended in April. Only 38% now think the U.S. is in control in Iraq, while more -- 48% -- think the U.S. is not in control.

IS U.S. IN CONTROL IN IRAQ?

NowYes 38%
No 48%

8/03Yes 42%
No 47%

4/03Yes 71%
No 20%

Many Americans see the U.S. becoming bogged down in a situation that is not going well. Fewer than half think things are going well in Iraq for the U.S., and about as many think things are going badly.

HOW ARE THINGS GOING FOR U.S. IN IRAQ?

NowWell 49%
Badly 47%

8/03Well 51%
Badly 47%

7/03Well 60%
Badly 36%

5/03Well 72%
Badly 24%

Americans are now less convinced that the outcome of the war in Iraq was worth its costs. Few see evidence that the war has resulted in a decrease in the threat of terrorism against the U.S. or an increase in stability in the region.

Fewer than half of Americans (43%) think the war was worth the loss of life and other costs, the lowest number yet in CBS News polls, while more (47%) think it was not worth the costs. Last month, the public was evenly split on this question.

Almost two-thirds think the U.S. underestimated the resistance it would face in Iraq, and only one in four believe the U.S. was correct in its estimation of Iraqi resistance.

U.S. ESTIMATION OF IRAQI RESISTANCE?

Underestimated 64%
Overestimated 3%
Correctly estimated 26%

However, few Americans would like to see the number of troops in Iraq increased now: only 15% would prefer this option, down from 22% who thought it was the right course of action last month. 40% would like to see the current troop levels remain, and 36% of Americans would like them decreased - up from 31% who expressed this desire last month.

Americans strongly favor having the United Nations, not the United States, take over primary responsibility for setting up a new government in Iraq.


PAYING TO REBUILD IRAQ

Americans disapprove of financial trade-offs such as increasing the U.S. federal deficit, or cutting domestic programs, in order to finance the rebuilding of Iraq. Nearly three-quarters would object to raising the deficit, and 82% would reject cuts in domestic spending to offset the costs of rebuilding. Most - 53% - would also disapprove of eliminating the recent tax cuts, though that tradeoff does meet with relatively more favor: 38% would give up those reductions.

Back in March, as the war was beginning, Americans were somewhat more willing to accept cuts in domestic programs to pay for the war than they are to pay for rebuilding in its aftermath. Then, 38% said they would be willing to accept cuts and 47% said they would not.

Yet today many Americans believe at least one of these tradeoffs may be inevitable: about half - 48% - think the U.S. will be forced to cut domestic spending in order to pay for the efforts in Iraq, while just 37% are optimistic that the government can pay for both domestic programs and rebuilding Iraq at the same time.

Most Americans - 66% -- think President Bush`s price tag of $87 billion for the rebuilding and military efforts in Iraq for the coming year is too much to spend.

SHOULD THE U.S. SPEND $87 BILLION TO REBUILD IRAQ?

Yes 26%
No 66%

There is one tradeoff Americans are willing to make: most would give U.S. allies a major role in deciding the course of action in rebuilding Iraq, as long as those allies would make a major contribution to the financial costs of that effort.

IRAQ AND TERRORISM

President Bush presented U.S. action in Iraq as an important tool in the war on terrorism. Over half of Americans agree with him and describe the war with Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. But 43% think it was separate; this is the lowest association of military action against Iraq with the war on terror since combat began last March.

Fewer Americans associate the current rebuilding of Iraq with the war on terror; 44% think it is part of that war, while most - 51% - think it is separate.

And most don`t think that removing Saddam Hussein will mean the terrorism threat against the U.S. will subside. Less than one in five thinks the threat of terrorism against the U.S. will decrease as a result of U.S. action against Iraq, while 25% think terrorism will increase. Most think the war will have no impact on the threat of terror against the U.S. <BR>
There is a somewhat more positive reaction to what the administration hopes the end result in Iraq will be - a democratic government. A majority - 56% - still thinks that a democratic government in Iraq will have no effect on terrorism aimed at the U.S., but 36% think that instituting a stable democracy in Iraq will make the U.S. safer from terrorism.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ WILL MAKE U.S.:

More safe 36%
Less safe 5%
No difference 56%

40% think the U.S. presence in Iraq will lead to greater stability in the Middle East in general; 30% think it will make no difference.

U.S. action in Iraq has had little effect on one other aspect of the war against terrorism -- public confidence that the U.S. will be able to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. 52% are still very or somewhat confident the U.S. will do that, while 45% are not confident. Those views have changed little since last November, before the war in Iraq began.


THE PRESIDENT`S JOB APPROVAL

Overall, 52% of Americans approve of Bush`s job as president, down from 55% in late August. His current job rating is about what it was prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. In late August of that year, 50% approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president, while 38% disapproved.

BUSH`S OVERALL JOB RATING

NowApprove 52%
Disapprove 39%

8/03Approve 55%
Disapprove 37%

9/01Approve 89%
Disapprove 7%

8/01Approve 50%
Disapprove 38%

But while Bush`s approval rating on his handling of Iraq has declined, his ratings on handling foreign policy and the economy haven`t changed much from a few weeks ago. 47% of Americans approve of the way Bush is handling foreign policy and 41% approve of his handling the economy.

BUSH`S JOB APPROVAL RATINGS

NowOverall 52%
Handling foreign policy 47%
Handling Iraq 46%
Handling the economy 41%

8/03Overall 55%
Handling foreign policy 50%
Handling Iraq 57%
Handling the economy 39%

Most Americans do not accuse the current president of spending too much time on foreign affairs, a charge that dogged his father, George H.W. Bush, after the Persian Gulf War. While 44% say the current president is spending too much time on foreign policy problems, 40% say he is spending about the right amount of time on both foreign and domestic problems. In October 1991, 58% thought George H.W. Bush was spending too much time on foreign policy problems.



For detailed information on how CBS News conducts public opinion surveys, click here.

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Losing Dollars and Sense in Iraq

by US Senator Robert C. Byrd
Floor Remarks - US Senate September 17, 2003

I rise today to voice my concern about the disastrous turn which the fortunes of this nation have taken. The Bush Administration, in a scant 2 1/2 years, has imperiled our country in the gravest of ways, and set us up for a possible crisis of mammoth proportions.

I urge my colleagues to think long and hard about the growing quagmire in Iraq. I urge members of the President`s own party to warn him about the quicksand he asks America to wade in.

Instead of linking arms with a world which offered its heart in sympathy after the brutality of the terrorist attack in September of 2001, this White House, through hubris and false bravado, has slapped away the hand of assistance. This Administration has insulted our allies and friends with its bullying, and go-it-alone frenzy to attack the nation of Iraq. In order to justify such an attack, it was decided somewhere in the White House to blur the images of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Blurred images notwithstanding, what is becoming increasingly clear to many Americans is that they are going to be asked to carry a heavy, heavy load for a long, long time.

Let me be clear. We are presently engaged in not one, but two wars. There is the war begun by Osama Bin Laden who attacked this nation on the 11th of September, 2001. Then there is the war begun by George W. Bush when he directed U.S. forces to attack the city of Baghdad on March 19, 2003. The first war was thrust upon us. The bombing of Afghanistan was a just retaliation against that attack. The second war was a war of our choosing. It was an unnecessary attack upon a sovereign nation. This President and this Administration have tried mightily to convince the people of America that attacking Iraq was critical to protecting them from terrorism. The case they make is false, flimsy, and, the war, I believe, was unwise.

The war against Iraq has crippled the global effort to counter terrorism. The war in Iraq has made a peace agreement between Israel and its adversaries harder to obtain. The obsession with Iraq has served to downplay the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The focus on Saddam Hussein has diverted attention from Bin Laden, who is apparently still on the loose and threatening to attack again. The war in Iraq has alienated our traditional allies and fractured the cohesive alliance against terrorism which existed after 9-11. It has made the United States appear to the world to be a bellicose invader. It has called our motives into question. It has galvanized the worldwide terrorism movement against us. The war in Iraq has cost us lives and treasure. Yet, this President will shortly request $87 billion more for his ill-fated adventure. He says we will spend whatever it takes.

Prudence dictates that we consider the risks. This nation has suffered massive job losses amounting to 93,000 in August alone and approximately 600,000 since January of this year. Job loss of this magnitude means less money coming into the treasury and more money going out. U.S. manufacturing jobs continue to disappear overseas as companies relocate operations on other shores. There seems no end to the job hemorrhage. The manufacturing sector has lost jobs for 37 months in a row. The weak job market threatens to sap strength from our domestic economy. Should inflation begin to creep up, as some worry it will, higher energy costs and lower consumer confidence may slow the economy further. Suppose another massive al Quaeda attack were to occur here at home, killing thousands and delivering another devastating blow to the U.S. economy? Could we still afford to continue to send billions to Iraq? At best our future economic growth is uncertain. There are too many unknowns.

Our deficit is growing. When the $87 billion 2004 Iraq Supplemental is included, the deficit for 2004 alone is expected to total $535 billion. That number will only grow if we continue to experience massive job loss and the economy takes a turn for the worse. We can ill afford to finance the rebuilding of Iraq alone. Yet, President Bush steadfastly resists doing what it takes to involve the international community.

It should be obvious that we need assistance. The United States cannot even continue to supply the troops to secure Iraq without more help. A recent CBO study which I requested makes it clear that to maintain the level of troops we now have in Iraq will stretch us very thin, should something happen in Korea or elsewhere on this troubled globe. Our National Guard is being asked to stay longer and longer in Iraq to help backfill the shortage in regular troops. These are men and women with jobs and families and key roles to play in their own communities. We cannot continue to utilize their skills in Iraq without suffering the consequences at home. Even now, as a hurricane lurks off of our shores, there are worries about shortages of emergency personnel because so many national guardsmen and women are serving in Iraq.

But, the Bush Administration continues to spend our treasure and our troop strength in a single-focused obsession with the fiasco in Iraq. Are we to mortgage the future of our nation to years of financing this adventure? Surely we cannot ask American families for sacrifice indefinitely. We must come to grips with our limits. We must acknowledge risks and realities.

Yet, on last Sunday, Vice President Cheney dug his heels in at the suggestion of rethinking our policy in Iraq. In a television interview, Cheney said that he saw no reason to "think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed."

He went on to try to convince the American public that Iraq was "the geographic base" for the perpetrators of 9-11 - - a claim that this humble Senator has never heard before, and that flies in the face of U.S. intelligence agencies which repeatedly have said that they have found no links between the 9-11 attacks and Saddam Hussein or Iraq. We may come to rue the day when we took our eye off of Bin Laden and sapped our energies and our credibility in this quagmire in Iraq. Yet, there seems to be no soul searching in this White House about the consequences of this war.

While Bush`s aides talk of "generational commitments" and the President talks of "sacrifice," I wonder if the American people fully comprehend what they are being urged to forego. They have already sacrificed loved ones with 158 troops killed and 856 wounded just since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1. How many more families must "sacrifice" while we occupy Iraq?

A generation of "sacrifice" may also mean a slow sapping of key national priorities, including repairing the infrastructure which fuels our economic engine and funding the institutions and programs which benefit all Americans. Compare the latest request for the Iraq Supplemental with the commitment in dollars to other vital programs and the picture becomes clear. President Bush is asking for $87 billion for Iraq, but only $34.6 billion for Homeland Security. He wants $87 billion for Iraq, but only $66.2 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services. The President seeks $87 billion to secure Iraq, but only $52.1 billion for the Department of Education. He wants $87 billion to shore up Iraq but only $29.3 billion for America`s highways and road construction.

For the State Department and foreign aid for the entire world, President Bush sees a need for only $27.4 billion, yet Iraq is worth over three times that much to this White House.

Remember that that $87 billion is just for 2004 alone. Does anyone really believe that it will be the last request for Iraq?

The President asked America for a generation of "sacrifice," but that noble sounding word does not reveal the true nature of what this President demands from the American people. He asks them to supply the fighting men and women to prosecute his war. He implores our people to sacrifice adequate health care; he asks them to settle for less than the best education for their children; he asks them to sacrifice medical research that could prolong and save lives; he asks them to put up with unsafe highways and dangerous bridges; he asks them to live with substandard housing and foul water; he asks them to forego better public transportation, and not just for now, for generations, and all of it for his folly in Iraq. Most puzzling to this Senator is this President`s stubborn refusal to guard against the terror threat here at home by adequately funding Homeland Security. Is he asking us all to risk the safety of our homeland, too?

And to further insult the hard working people of this nation, George Walker Bush proposes to lay this sacrifice not only on the adult population of this great country, but on their children, by increasing the deficit with nary a thought to the consequences.

Yet not a peep can be heard from this White House about paying for some of this "sacrifice" by foregoing a portion of future tax cuts - - tax cuts that mainly benefit those citizens who don`t need so many of the services government provides.

Our reputation around the globe has already been seriously damaged by this Administration. Are the dreams and hopes of millions of Americans to be "sacrificed" as well on the altar of Iraq? I urge my colleagues to think long and hard about the growing quagmire in Iraq. I urge members of the President`s own party to warn him about the quicksand he asks America to wade in. We need a long and thorough debate about the future of this country. We need a serious discussion about the kind of America we will leave to our children. We need to renew our efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Are we fighting a war in Iraq when pushing the peace might better serve our cause? We must think again about worldwide terrorism and the best ways to combat it. Let us not continue to simply wage the wrong war in Iraq.

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October 2003 Issue

COMMENT


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Making Terrorists



The Bush Administration claims that the Iraq campaign, far from being an illegal war and a botched occupation, is actually a defense of the United States.

Even though Bush has overthrown Saddam, the alleged threat incarnate, Administration officials are still repeating the same mantra. Only now it`s not Saddam who threatens the United States from Iraq; it`s the terrorists who have flowed into Iraq. But whose fault is that?

"Every American needs to believe this: that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America," said General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq. Paul Bremer, de facto king of Iraq, has said virtually the same thing. As has Bush, who told the American Legion, "Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq . . . so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York, or St. Louis, or Los Angeles."

Again on September 7, in his speech to the nation, Bush said U.S. troops were fighting the enemy in Iraq today "so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities." Yet it is Bush`s Iraq War that has made such encounters more likely.

Bush`s Iraq folly has made the United States less safe in at least three ways: It has bred the very terrorism it ostensibly set out to vanquish, it has diverted resources from the fight against Al Qaeda, and it has alienated people and countries that were providing crucial help in that fight.

Back in July, General Sanchez described Iraq as a "terrorist magnet." While such a designation may be partially a propaganda ploy, there is evidence that terrorists from outside Iraq have been swarming in to take on the U.S. occupiers.

The Financial Times warned that "increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq, in preparation for jihad, or holy war, against U.S. and U.K. forces." And The New York Times reported that Iraq is becoming the place to go if you want to take on the United States. "In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslim militants 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," wrote Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times. He interviewed Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, who said, "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. . . . 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."

For radical Muslims, "the imperative to free Iraq is profound," Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, authors of The Age of Sacred Terror, wrote in Time magazine. "The country is in the heartland of Dar al-Islam, the true realm of the faith, not some backwater like Afghanistan. For 500 years, Baghdad was home to the Caliph, the leader of all Muslims, the equivalent of both Pope and King. For them, the U.S. occupation of this land is an existential affront. . . . That requires the radicals to bloody the Americans--the more savagely the better."

But even if not a single foreign terrorist had entered Iraq, the U.S. occupation would be breeding terrorists there. With Iraqi citizens suffering more in material ways now than they did before the war, with the U.S. military`s often heavy-handed treatment of Iraqi civilians, and with the failure of the U.S. military to provide adequate safety in places like Baghdad and Najaf, it can hardly be a surprise that some in Iraq view the United States as an illegitimate occupying force. A fraction of those people will be susceptible to calls for a nationalist uprising or a jihad against the United States.

In his September 7 speech, Bush said U.S. troops were facing resistance from only two groups: "former members of the old Saddam regime" and "foreign terrorists." By omitting reference to anyone else who may be resisting, Bush was dodging his own responsibility for creating terrorists.

"We`re making terrorists faster than we`re killing them," says Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. "The Iraq War is a disaster in terms of our security needs."

More than the war in Afghanistan, more even than the ongoing U.S. support for Israel`s occupation of Palestine, it is the U.S. war in Iraq that has sparked the new flames of terror, says Zunes.

"U.S.-Israeli policy has been there a while, and Afghanistan is remote and non-Arab, while Iraq is right in the Arab heartland and there are actual American troops on the ground," he says. Bush`s Iraq War and occupation have "reinforced the worst images and stereotypes of America in that part of the world."

The Iraq War also has diverted resources away from rooting out Al Qaeda, which represents the real and announced and proven threat to U.S. lives.

It`s undeniable that by pouring so much military and intelligence effort into conquering and occupying Iraq (as well as into the manhunt for Saddam), the Bush Administration has handicapped its efforts to go after Al Qaeda.

"Strategic analysts, military commanders, and intelligence officers have been distracted by the Iraq War," Zunes says. "Iraq has been the single biggest setback as far as the resources we need to fight terrorism."

Consequently, Al Qaeda has been able to regroup around the world, and even the Taliban have come out of their caves with ferocity in Afghanistan.

The U.S. ability to round up Al Qaeda forces depended, in no small part, on the willingness of people in the Muslim world to cooperate with Washington. Today, much of the Muslim world is in no mood to cooperate.

"In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the United States enjoyed unprecedented sympathy and support in the Muslim world," Zunes says. "Now Bush has turned that into unprecedented hostility." As a result, says Zunes, "people are less willing to be supportive of efforts to track down and root out these terrorist cells."

And it`s not just people. It`s countries, too. Take the case of Syria. "After September 11, the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States," Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker back on July 28. "The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated--and others who wanted to participate--in the September 11 attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to CIA and FBI operatives."

With such cooperation, Syria was hoping to ingratiate itself with Washington. But Assad would not back Bush`s Iraq War effort, and this infuriated hardliners like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who in late March went after Damascus, accusing it of supplying Iraq with military items like night vision goggles and of possibly harboring Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "Members of the intelligence community I spoke to characterized the evidence against Syria as highly questionable," Hersh reported.

But the damage had been done, and the flow of helpful information from Damascus to Washington dried up. Some officials were angry that the Administration decided to "choose confrontation with Syria over day-to-day help against Al Qaeda," Hersh notes. "In a sense, the issue was not so much Syria itself as a competition between ideology and practicality--and between the drive to go to war in Iraq and the need to fight terrorism."

That Bush subordinated the need to fight terrorism to his own Iraq obsession should appall American citizens across the spectrum.

As his wont, Bush, in his speech to the nation, wrapped his Iraq campaign in the shroud of September 11. Three times, he explicitly mentioned that date, and he alluded to it several other times, including right at the top. Cynically, Bush has fueled a mass misconception. While there is no credible evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to September 11, 69 percent of Americans still believe he was involved in the attacks, according to a recent Washington Post poll.

In his speech, Bush plumbed new depths when he called his war against Iraq one of the "most humane" military campaigns in history. According to Iraqbodycount.net, between 6,118 and 7,836 Iraqi civilians have died so far. What`s so "humane" about that?

The only proper thing for Bush to do now is to cede control of Iraq to the United Nations or directly to the Iraqi people. He had no right to invade. He has no right to occupy.

It`s a sin to spend most of his requested $87 billion for this low cause. And it`s a sin to keep 130,000 U.S. soldiers there, daily in harm`s way. No one should die for Halliburton and ExxonMobil and Bechtel--or for George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

http://www.progressive.org/oct03/comm1003.html

[Joerver]

The Cartoon Graveyard
Just the Cartoons Without the Commentary
Heute 102 frisch geerntete Cartoons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20030917__102toons.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 18. September 2003, 12:06
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,265296,00.html


Angriff auf den Irak

Chronik eines angekündigten Krieges

Vier Monate nach dem 11. September 2001 zählte George W. Bush den Irak neben Iran und Nord-Korea wegen angeblicher Massenvernichtungswaffen in ihrem Besitz zu einer "Achse des Bösen". Spätestens damit begann eine Eskalation, die am Ende auch von der Uno nicht mehr zu stoppen war. Die Ereignisse im Überblick.

3. April 1991: Der Uno-Sicherheitsrat verpflichtet den Irak zur Zerstörung aller chemischen und biologischen Waffen und ruft mit der Resolution 687 die Waffenkontrollkommission UNSCOM ins Leben, deren Arbeit in den Folgejahren massiv behindert wird.

11. April 1991: Die Uno erklärt den Waffenstillstand im Golf-Krieg, nachdem Irak die Resolution 687 akzeptiert hat. Diese verlangt von Irak die Vernichtung seiner Massenvernichtungswaffen.

27. August 1992: Einrichtung einer Flugverbotszone über dem Süd-Irak durch die USA, Großbritannien und Frankreich zum Schutz der schiitischen Minderheit. Seit 1991 werden auch die Kurden im Norden geschützt.

27. Juni 1993: US-Kriegsschiffe feuern 23 Marschflugkörper auf das Hauptquartier des irakischen Geheimdienstes. Begründet wird dies mit einem angeblich vom Irak geplanten Attentat auf den ehemaligen US-Präsident George Bush in Kuwait.

Oktober 1994: Saddam Hussein lässt Soldaten Richtung Kuwait marschieren und fordert die Aufhebung aller 1990 von der Uno verhängten Wirtschaftssanktionen. Unter internationalem Druck ziehen die Truppen wieder ab.

10. November 1994: Der Irak erkennt Kuwait in seinen derzeitigen Grenzen an.

1. Juli 1995: Irak gibt erstmals den Besitz von biologischen Waffen zu.

25. November 1996: Der Irak stimmt der Uno-Resolution 986 "Öl gegen Nahrungsmittel" vom April 1995 zu. Zur Einfuhr dringend benötigter Lebensmittel und Medikamente darf er Erdöl exportieren.

23. Februar 1998: Unter dem Druck eines drohenden Militärschlags unterzeichnet der Irak in letzter Minute eine Vereinbarung mit der Uno, die die Kontrolle der Präsidentenpaläste Saddams erlaubt.

9. August 1998: Die Uno-Waffeninspektoren unterbrechen ihre Arbeit, nachdem Irak die Kooperation mit der Uno beendet hat.

31. Oktober 1998: Der Irak erklärt seine Zusammenarbeit mit der UNSCOM für beendet.

16. Dezember 1998: Die Uno-Inspektoren verlassen Bagdad.

17. Dezember 1998: Die USA und Großbritannien beginnen mehrtägige Luftangriffe gegen Irak. Die Waffenkontrollkommission UNMOVIC wird als UNSCOM-Nachfolgerin ins Leben gerufen.

11. September 2001: Bei Terroranschlägen mit vier Passagierflugzeugen in New York und Washington werden mehr als 3000 Menschen getötet. Die USA machen das islamisch-fundamentalistische Untergrundnetzwerk al-Qaida dafür verantwortlich.

12. Oktober 2001: US-Präsident George W. Bush erklärt, dass sich der Krieg gegen den Terrorismus nicht auf Afghanistan beschränke. Saddam Hussein bezeichnet er als "bösen Menschen".

12. Dezember 2001: Der außenpolitische Ausschuss des US-Repräsentantenhauses erklärt, dass von Irak eine wachsende Bedrohung für die Vereinigten Staaten ausgehe.

24. Januar 2002: Bush nennt eine Militäraktion der USA gegen Irak als eine mögliche Option.

29. Januar 2002: Bush bezeichnet Irak, Iran und Nordkorea als "Achse des Bösen" und wirft den Ländern vor, nach Massenvernichtungswaffen zu streben.

4. Februar 2002: Die irakische Regierung erklärt sich bereit, nach einjähriger Unterbrechung den Dialog mit den Vereinten Nationen wieder aufzunehmen.

7. März 2002: Irak und die Vereinten Nationen nehmen Gespräche über eine Rückkehr der Uno-Waffeninspekteure auf.

18. März 2002: Irak erklärt sich zu einer Rückkehr der Uno-Waffeninspekteure unter bestimmten Bedingungen bereit.

6. April 2002: Bush erklärt bei einem Treffen mit dem britischen Premier Tony Blair: "Unsere Politik ist es, Saddam Hussein zu entfernen. Die Welt wäre besser ohne ihn."

27. April 2002: Blair bezeichnet Irak als "Bedrohung für die ganze Welt". Er habe "eine Menge Beweise" dafür, dass Irak über Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügt.

5. Juli 2002: Die "New York Times" veröffentlicht einen Bericht über die Planungen des Pentagon für einen Irak-Krieg. Unterstützt von Luft- und Seestreitkräften soll der Angriff mit bis zu 250.000 Mann von drei Seiten geführt werden. Uno-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan kann den Irak nicht dazu bewegen, wieder Waffeninspektoren in das Land zu lassen.

20. Juli 2002: Bush warnt den Irak, die USA würden einer Bedrohung durch Massenvernichtungswaffen nicht tatenlos zusehen. "Wir werden Diplomatie anwenden, wenn es möglich ist, und Gewalt, wenn es nötig ist. "

23. Juli 2002: US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld sagt, ein Angriff auf den Irak wäre ein Akt der Selbstverteidigung.

30. Juli 2002: Beim deutsch-französischen Gipfeltreffen erklären der französische Präsident Jacques Chirac und Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder übereinstimmend, jedes militärische Vorgehen gegen Irak bedürfe einer Legitimierung durch die Uno.

1. August 2002: Bagdad bietet eine Rückkehr der Uno-Inspektoren unter Bedingungen an.

3. August 2002: Schröder lehnt eine deutsche Beteiligung an einem militärischen Vorgehen ab. Er sagt: "Für Abenteuer stehen wir nicht zur Verfügung."

8. August 2002: Saddam warnt in einer Fernsehrede zum 14. Jahrestag des Endes des Iran-Krieges vor einer militärischen Konfrontation, die für Aggressoren in einer schmachvollen Niederlage enden würde.

17. August 2002: US-Botschafter Daniel Coats wird im Bundeskanzleramt vorstellig, um der deutschen Regierung das Missfallen des US-Präsidenten über die kritische Haltung Berlins zur amerikanischen Irak-Politik mitzuteilen.

26. August 2002: US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney spricht sich in Nashville für einen möglichst baldige Entmachtung von Saddam aus. Ein Präventivschlag gegen den Irak sei "zwingend notwendig". Eine Rückkehr der Waffeninspektoren der Uno spiele keine Rolle. "Präventives Handeln" sei angesichts der "tödlichen Bedrohung" unbedingt erforderlich. Schröder kritisiert dies als einen Strategiewechsel und spricht von einem Fehler.

31.8./1.9.2002: Bei einem Treffen im dänischen Helsingör wenden sich die EU-Außenminister gegen die US-Kriegspläne. Es besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass eine Militäraktion ein neues Mandat des Uno-Sicherheitsrates erfordert.

1. September 2002: US-Außenminister Colin Powell legt sich mit den Falken in seiner Regierung an. Er fordert als "ersten Schritt" die Rückkehr der Uno-Waffeninspekteure in den Irak.

3. September 2002: Blair kündigt an, den USA bei einem Irak-Krieg auch zur Seite zu stehen, wenn es kein Uno-Mandat dafür gäbe.

6. September 2002: Britische und US-Kampfflugzeuge bombardieren im Westen des Irak Luftabwehrstellungen. Es ist der schwerste Angriff seit vier Jahren.

7. September 2002: Bush sagt nach einem Treffen mit Blair in Camp David, die Welt schulde künftigen Generationen den Angriff auf Irak. Nach deutsch-französischen Konsultationen in Hannover sind sich Chirac und Schröder einig in ihrer Ablehnung einer isolierten Aktion der USA.

11. September 2002: Am Jahrestag der Terrorattentate erklären die USA, sie würden notfalls einen Alleingang gegen den Irak starten.

12. September 2002: Bush stellt in einer Rede vor der Uno-Vollversammlung klar, dass die Uno den Irak in einer neuen Resolution ultimativ zum Verzicht auf alle Massenvernichtungswaffen auffordern solle. Widersetze sich Bagdad dem Beschluss, dann sei "Handeln" unvermeidlich.

16. September 2002: Iraks Außenminister Sabri erklärt, Bagdad sei bereit, Uno-Waffeninspekteure ohne Bedingungen ins Land zu lassen, um "jegliche Zweifel daran auszuräumen, dass Irak nicht mehr über Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügt". Verhandlungen beginnen.

20. September: Das Weiße Haus veröffentlicht ein Grundsatzpapier zur Sicherheitspolitik der USA. Das später als "Bush-Doktrin" bezeichnete Konzept sieht erstmals Präventivschläge gegen potenzielle Gefahrenquellen vor.

23. September 2002: Einen Tag nach seinem Wahlsieg betont Schröder, dass die Regierung an der Ablehnung eines Irak-Krieges festhält. Bush gratuliert ihm nicht zu seinem Wahlsieg.

24. September 2002: Die irakische Regierung bietet den Uno-Inspektoren uneingeschränkten Zugang an, um ein britisches Dossier über den Besitz verbotener Waffen zu widerlegen.

1. Oktober 2002: Die irakische Regierung und die Vereinten Nationen vereinbaren in Wien die Wiederaufnahme von Rüstungsinspektionen.



4. Oktober 2002 London und Washington legen eine Uno-Resolution vor, in der dem Irak mit militärischen Schritten gedroht wird. Frankreich, China und Russland äußern Vorbehalte. Das Uno-Flüchtlingshilfswerk beginnt mit den Planungen für den Kriegsfall.

10. Oktober 2002: Das Repräsentantenhaus in Washington verabschiedet mit großer Mehrheit eine Entschließung, die Bush freie Hand für ein militärisches Vorgehen gegen Irak gibt. Am 11. stimmt auch der Senat zu.

16. Oktober 2002: Die Iraker bestätigen mit 100 Prozent der Stimmen Saddam Hussein im Amt.

17. Oktober 2002: Nach Kritik legen die Amerikaner einen neuen Uno-Resolutionsentwurf vor, in dem eine ausdrückliche Androhung militärischer Gewalt nicht mehr enthalten ist.

25. Oktober 2002: Russland und Frankreich legen überraschend eigene Resolutionsentwürfe zur Irak-Frage vor. Danach sollen bei Zuwiderhandlung der irakischen Regierung gegen die Waffenkontrollen militärische Maßnahmen erst nach einer zweiten Uno-Resolution ermöglicht werden.

5. November 2002: Bei den Zwischenwahlen zum US-Kongress gewinnt Bushs Republikanische Partei die Mehrheit in beiden Parlamentskammern.

8. November 2002: Der Uno-Sicherheitsrat verabschiedet einstimmig Resolution 1441, die Irak eine letzte Chance einräumt, seine Massenvernichtungswaffen zu zerstören. Andernfalls müsse Bagdad mit ernsthaften Konsequenzen rechnen. Dem Irak wurden "schwerwiegende Verstöße" bescheinigt.

11. November 2002: Das irakische Parlament votiert einstimmig gegen die Uno-Resolution 1441. Die Abgeordneten ermächtigen jedoch Saddam, "die angemessene Entscheidung zu treffen".

13. November 2002:Irak akzeptiert die Uno-Resolution 1441 nun doch bedingungslos.

15. November 2002: Der Bundestag beschließt die Verlängerung des Bundeswehreinsatzes "Enduring Freedom" um ein weiteres Jahr. Damit bleiben deutsche Marineverbände und die Spürpanzer "Fuchs" weiter vor der Küste Afrikas und in Kuwait.

18. November 2002: Uno-Chefinspektor Hans Blix trifft in Bagdad ein, um die Waffeninspektionen vorzubereiten. Am 27. November beginnt deren Arbeit.

21. November 2002: Schröder erklärt zur Frage einer Beteiligung am Irak-Krieg, es sei selbstverständlich, dass Bewegungsfreiheit und Überflugrechte der Alliierten nicht eingeschränkt werden könnten. Es gehe nicht um eine militärische Beteiligung Deutschlands.

25. November 2002: Das britische Unterhaus gibt der Regierung freie Hand für einen Kriegseinsatz gegen Irak.

26. November 2002: Die Bundesregierung ist bereit, einem israelischen Ersuchen nach Lieferung von deutschen "Patriot"-Raketenabwehrsystemen nachzukommen. Von Mitte Januar 2003 an werden zwei Systeme ausgeliefert.

27. November 2002: Die Uno-Inspektoren setzen ihre Arbeit im Irak nach vierjähriger Unterbrechung fort. Die deutsche Bundesregierung gewährt den USA Überflug- und Transitrechte auch für den Kriegsfall. US-Anfragen nach regionalen Raketenabwehrsystemen, ABC-Abwehr, Militärpolizei und Hilfe beim Aufbau des Irak nach einem Krieg will sie nicht nachkommen.

4. Dezember 2002: Der irakische Vizepräsident Taha Jassin Ramadan wirft den Uno-Inspektoren Spionage im Auftrag der USA und Israel vor.

5. Dezember 2002: Das Programm "Öl gegen Lebensmittel" wird um weitere sechs Monate verlängert, beschließt der Uno-Sicherheitsrat. Der US-Flugzeugträger "Harry S. Truman" läuft mit acht Begleitschiffen in Richtung Mittelmeer und Persischer Golf aus.

7. Dezember 2002: Irak legt der Uno fristgerecht einen 12.000 Seiten starken Bericht über seine Waffenprogramme vor. London und Washington bezeichnen ihn als unzulänglich.

9. Dezember 2002: Die US-Streitkräfte beginnen mit einem Manöver in der Golfregion. Es dient dazu, die Einsatzfähigkeit des neuen mobilen High-Tech-Kommandozentrums in Katar zu testen. Der Stab selbst wird von Anfang Januar 2003 an nach Katar verlegt.

11. Dezember 2002: Die USA drohen im Falle von Angriffen mit Massenvernichtungswaffen mit Gegenschlägen bis hin zur atomarer Vergeltung. Als Adressaten dieser Warnung werden in einem geheimen Zusatz neben Irak, Iran, auch Syrien, Nordkorea und Libyen genannt.

15. Dezember 2002: Nach neuen Angriffen in einer Flugverbotszone wirft der Irak den USA und Großbritannien vor, bereits jetzt einen "unerklärten Krieg" gegen das Land zu führen. Innerhalb von vier Wochen sei der Luftraum mehr als 1100 Mal verletzt worden, kritisiert der Irak.

17. Dezember 2002: Die von den USA mit 92 Millionen Dollar unterstützte irakische Opposition einigt sich in London auf die Bildung eines gemeinsamen Führungsgremiums und eine Strategie für die Zeit nach einen Sturz Saddams.

19. Dezember 2002: Die USA werfen Irak einen schwerwiegenden Verstoß gegen die Uno-Resolution 1441 vor, weil das Waffendossier Lücken aufweise.

24. Dezember 2002: Rumsfeld erteilt den ersten Marschbefehl für 25.000 Soldaten in die Golfregion. Am Ende der schon vor Wochen begonnenen Verlegung von Verbänden sollen etwa Mitte Februar 2003 rund 150.000 US-Soldaten in der Region sein.



1. Januar 2003: Deutschland ist erstmals seit sechs Jahren wieder Mitglied im Uno-Sicherheitsrat.

4. Januar 2003: Nachbarländer des Iraks beginnen eine diplomatische Initiative für eine friedliche Lösung - ohne Erfolg. Die US-kritische Haltung der großen europäischen Länder führt zu Spannungen in der Nato sowie frostigen Worten.

7. Januar 2003: In Washington wird bekannt, dass das Pentagon große Teile des Stabes für die Planung eines Angriffs auf den Irak auf einen Stützpunkt am Persischen Golf verlegt hat.

8. Januar 2003: Das US-Zentralkommando in Florida schickt einen militärischen Planungsstab nach Katar.

9. Januar 2003: Blix informiert den Weltsicherheitsrat, dass bislang keine Beweise für illegale Waffen im Irak gefunden wurden. Er kritisiert aber den Waffenbericht als unzureichend und fordert vom Irak Beweise für die Vernichtung von Waffenarsenalen. Chirac bekräftigt die grundsätzliche Ablehnung seines Landes für eine Militäraktion im Irak. Nur wenn alle anderen Möglichkeiten nicht zum Ziel gegenüber dem Irak führten, dürfe eine Militärintervention ins Auge gefasst werden, sagt Chirac.

11. Januar 2003: Donald Rumsfeld unterzeichnet einen Marschbefehl für weitere 62.000 Soldaten zur Stationierung in der Golfregion. Bislang befinden sich dort 60.000 US-Soldaten. Der größte britische Flugzeugträger "Ark Royal" verlässt den Heimathafen Richtung Golf.

12. Januar 2003: Die Bundesregierung erklärt, dass sie Israel zwei Flugabwehrsysteme vom Typ "Patriot" liefern werde.

13. Januar 2003: Papst Johannes Paul II. spricht sich in seiner bisher schärfsten Stellungnahme zum Irak-Konflikt gegen einen Krieg aus. Blair fordert Saddam erneut zur Aufgabe seiner Massenvernichtungswaffen auf und sagt: "Wenn er es nicht freiwillig tut, wird er mit Gewalt entwaffnet werden".

14. Januar 2003: Blix berichtet über die Entdeckung großer Mengen in den Irak geschmuggelter waffenfähiger Güter. Annan erklärt, es sei zu früh, an einen Militärschlag gegen Irak zu denken. Schröder bekräftigt sein Nein zu einer deutschen Beteiligung an einem Militärschlag. Bush sagt: "Die Zeit läuft ab."

16. Januar 2003: Die Inspekteure entdecken in einem Munitionsdepot leere Chemiewaffen-Sprengköpfe.

21. Januar 2003: Schröder legt sich auf einer SPD-Wahlveranstaltung darauf fest, dass es im Sicherheitsrat kein deutsches Ja zu einer den Krieg legitimierenden Uno-Resolution geben wird.


22. Januar 2003:Chirac sagt beim gemeinsamen Festakt zum 40-jährigen Jubiläum des Elysée-Vertrags, seine Regierung habe eine ähnliche Haltung wie Berlin. Rumsfeld kritisiert daraufhin in scharfer Form die deutsche und französische Haltung: "Ich glaube, das ist das alte Europa."

24. Januar 2003: 2600 Bundeswehrsoldaten übernehmen Wachdienste und andere Schutzmaßnahmen für die 95 Liegenschaften der US-Armee in Deutschland.

27. Januar 2003: In ihrem Zwischenbericht an den Sicherheitsrat erklären die Chefinspektoren Blix und Mohamed al-Baradei, Irak habe nicht nachgewiesen, dass es alle Massenvernichtungswaffen zerstört habe. Es lägen aber auch keine Beweise dafür vor, dass es solche Waffen besitze. Die Außenminister der 15 EU-Staaten plädieren in einer Erklärung für mehr Zeit für die Inspektionen.

28. Januar 2003: In seiner Rede zur Lage der Nation schwört Bush die Bevölkerung auf einen Krieg gegen Irak ein. Notfalls werde ein Angriff auch ohne Unterstützung der Vereinten Nationen geführt werden.

30. Januar 2003: Die Staats- und Regierungschefs von acht europäischen Ländern - Dänemark, Großbritannien, Italien, Polen, Portugal, Spanien, Tschechien und Ungarn - rufen zur Unterstützung der USA auf und stellen sich damit demonstrativ gegen Deutschland und Frankreich.



5. Februar 2003: Powell legt dem Uno-Sicherheitsrat Tonbänder, Satellitenaufnahmen und Berichte vor, die beweisen sollen, dass Irak Massenvernichtungswaffen besitzt. Zudem unterstütze das Regime al-Qaida.


6. Februar 2003: Auch nach der Präsentation der angeblichen Beweise bleibt die Bundesregierung bei ihrem Nein zum Krieg. Rumsfeld stellt Deutschland deswegen auf eine Stufe mit Libyen und Kuba. Bush befürwortet im Weißen Haus eine zweite Uno-Resolution. Deutschland, Russland und Frankreich lehnen das ab. Das türkische Parlament stimmt dem Ausbau von Militärstützpunkten und Häfen für einen Irak-Krieg zu und billigt die Einreise von US-Militärexperten.

10. Februar 2003: Deutschland, Frankreich und Belgien legen im Nato-Rat ihr Veto gegen Maßnahmen zum militärischen Schutz der Türkei im Fall eines Irak-Kriegs ein. Der Irak genehmigt die von der Uno geforderten Überflüge mit US-Spionageflugzeugen vom Typ "U 2" "ohne Bedingungen". Gleichzeitig kündigt Bagdad Gesetze zum Verbot aller Massenvernichtungswaffen an. Der Irak kommt damit zwei zentralen Forderungen des Sicherheitsrates nach.

12. Februar 2003: Uno-Experten stellen fest, dass die irakischen Raketen des Typs "al-Samud 2" die erlaubte Reichweite von 150 Kilometern überschreiten.

14. Februar 2003: Bei der Vorlage eines neuen Berichts im Sicherheitsrat sagt Blix, Bagdad habe über zahlreiche verbotene Materialien noch keine zufrieden stellende Auskunft gegeben. Der Irak könne aber in kurzer Zeit friedlich entwaffnet werden, wenn er voll mit den Inspekteuren zusammenarbeite.

15. Februar 2003: Mehr als zehn Millionen Demonstranten gehen weltweit gegen einen drohenden Irak-Krieg auf die Straße. Die größten Kundgebungen finden in Rom, London und Berlin statt.

17. Februar 2003: Der Verteidigungsausschuss der Nato beschließt Planungen zur Unterstützung der Türkei im Falle eines Irak-Krieges. Die deutsche Bundesregierung, die sich bis zuletzt mit einigen anderen Nato-Ländern wie Frankreich und Belgien gegen diesen Beschluss gesperrt hatte, begrüßt den Entschluss. Von den rein defensiven Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Türkei könne kein negatives Signal für die friedliche Lösung des Irak-Konflikts ausgehen.

Die Staats- und Regierungschefs der EU verabschieden in Brüssel auf einem Sondergipfel zum Irak-Konflikt eine gemeinsame Erklärung, die das Ziel einer vollständigen Entwaffnung des Irak mit friedlichen Mitteln erklärt. Zugleich enthält die Erklärung die Aussage, Gewalt sollte nur als letztes Mittel eingesetzt werden. Schröder erklärt nach dem Gipfel, es sei ein großes Maß an Gemeinsamkeit erreicht worden. Die Forderung einer zeitlichen Befristung der Inspektionen sei für Deutschland nicht akzeptabel gewesen.

18. Februar 2003: Die Uno-Waffeninspekteure in Irak setzen erstmals ein amerikanisches Aufklärungsflugzeug vom Typ U-2 ein.

19. Februar 2003: Die Nato beschließt die Stationierung von Awacs-Flugzeugen und Patriot-Raketen in der Türkei.

20. Februar 2003: Nach Rumsfelds Angaben sind die US-Truppen am Persischen Golf angriffsbereit. Jetzt warte man nur noch auf die Entscheidung des US-Präsidenten. Etwa 150.000 britische und US-Soldaten sind in der Region.

21. Februar 2003: Blix fordert Irak ultimativ auf, bis zum 1. März mit der Zerstörung von Raketen zu begonnen, die eine größere Reichweite haben als die zugelassenen 150 Kilometer.



24. Februar 2003: Frankreich, Russland und Deutschland legen dem Sicherheitsrat ein Memorandum vor, dem sich auch China anschließt. Das Memorandum stellt fest, dass die Bedingungen für den Einsatz von Gewalt gegen den Irak nicht erfüllt seien.

Zur Begründung heißt es, bislang gebe es keine Beweise dafür, dass Irak noch immer Massenvernichtungswaffen besitze. Die Zusammenarbeit der Inspekteure mit Irak habe sich verbessert. Um eine friedliche Lösung zu ermöglichen, sollten die Inspekteure die notwendige Zeit und die notwendigen Ressourcen bekommen. Die Inspektionen könnten jedoch nicht unbegrenzt fortgesetzt werden.

26. Februar 2003: Die Nato stellt an alle Mitglieder eine Anfrage nach militärischer Unterstützung zum Schutz der Türkei. Die Bundesregierung beschließt, dass sie vor dem Hintergrund der bereits zugesagten Unterstützung der Türkei mit Patriot-Raketen und Awacs-Flugzeugbesatzungen ihre Bündnisverpflichtungen bereits erfüllt habe. Bush bezeichnet vor Politikwissenschaftlern einen durch Krieg erzwungenen Machtwechsel in Irak als Chance zur Demokratisierung des gesamten Nahen Ostens.

27. Februar 2003: In Moskau bekräftigen Schröder und der russische Präsident Wladimir Putin ihre Hoffnung, dass es zu einer friedlichen Entwaffnung Iraks kommen müsse.

1. März 2003: Das türkische Parlament lehnt den Wunsch Washingtons nach Stationierung von 62.000 US-Soldaten in der Türkei ab. Irak beginnt - wie von der Uno gefordert - mit der Zerstörung der "Al-Samud-2"-Raketen.

5. März 2003: Die Außenminister Deutschlands, Frankreichs und Russlands erklären in Paris, dass sie keiner Uno-Resolution zustimmen werden, die einen Krieg gegen Irak legitimiert.

6. März 2003: China unterstützt die gemeinsame Erklärung von Deutschland, Russland und Frankreich. Bush kündigt eine entscheidende Abstimmung im Sicherheitsrat an: "Es ist an der Zeit, dass die Leute ihre Karten auf den Tisch legen."

7. März 2003: Die USA, Großbritannien und Spanien legen einen überarbeiteten Resolutionsentwurf vor, in dem Saddam aufgefordert wird, bis zum 17. März abzurüsten. Andernfalls drohe Krieg. Frankreich lehnt den Entwurf ab. Blix sagt vor dem Uno-Sicherheitsrat, die Inspektionen seien nicht reibungsfrei, aber man sei in der Lage, professionelle Ortsinspektionen durchzuführen. Man werde noch weitere Zeit brauchen, nicht Jahre, aber Monate.



10. März 2003: Russland und Frankreich kündigen ihr Veto gegen den britisch-amerikanischen Resolutionsentwurf an.

11. März 2003: Die Amerikaner demonstrieren in Florida die Zerstörungskraft einer neuen Waffe. Mit fast 8200 kg Sprengstoff ist die "Superbombe" weltweit die größte konventionelle Bombe. MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) übertrifft in ihrer verheerenden Wirkung bei weitem die BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" ("Gänseblümchenschneider") mit einer Sprengkraft von 5700 kg.

Die MOAB, auch "Mother of all Bombs" ("Mutter aller Bomben") genannt, wurde für den Einsatz gegen große Truppenansammlungen und Bunkeranlagen entwickelt. Ob die Amerikaner die Bombe einsetzen wollen, ist unklar. Als mögliche Ziele gelten Paläste des irakischen Präsidenten Saddam Hussein oder dessen Elitetruppe "Republikanische Garde".

14. März 2003: In seiner Regierungserklärung "Mut zum Frieden und Mut zur Verantwortung" appelliert Schröder daran, die Hoffnung auf eine friedliche Lösung im Irak-Konflikt nicht aufzugeben. Die Bundesregierung bleibe bei ihren Bemühungen, eine solche Lösung noch zu erreichen, erklärt Schröder.

15. März 2003: Irak legt den Vereinten Nationen einen neuen Bericht über den Verbleib von Beständen des Nervengases VX vor und lädt die Chefinspekteure zu einem dringlichen Besuch nach Bagdad ein.

16. März 2003: Bei einem Gipfeltreffen auf den Azoren beraten die USA, Großbritannien und Spanien über das weitere Vorgehen in der Irak-Frage.

17. März 2003: Die USA, Großbritannien und Spanien stellen ihre diplomatischen Bemühungen um eine Uno-Mandat für einen Militärschlag ein. Bush gibt Saddam 48 Stunden Zeit, Irak zu verlassen und so einen Krieg noch zu vermeiden.

18. März 2003: Die irakische Führung lehnt das Ultimatum Bushs ab. Australien kündigt nach einer Bitte der USA seine Mitwirkung an einem Krieg gegen Irak an. Powell erklärt, der "Koalition der Willigen" für einen Krieg gegen Irak gehörten 30 Staaten an.

Der irakische Außenminister Nadschi Sabri kritisiert den Abzug der Inspekteure und den Abzug der Uno-Beobachter an der kuwaitischen Grenze. Damit hätten die Vereinten Nationen den Weg zur Aggression frei gemacht.

Das britische Unterhaus beschließt mit 412 gegen 149 Stimmen die Unterstützung der Regierung für ihre Haltung, "alle erforderlichen Mittel" zur Entwaffnung Iraks einzusetzen.

Schröder erklärt in einer Fernsehansprache, das Ausmaß der irakischen Bedrohung rechtfertige keinen Krieg.


19. März 2003: Bush unterrichtet den Kongress formell von den Vorbereitungen auf den bevorstehenden Krieg. In Kuwait werden 16.000 Infanteriesoldaten und 10.000 Panzer unmittelbar an die Grenze zu Irak verlegt.

Schröder erklärt vor dem Bundestag, dass der Awacs-Einsatz in der Türkei keines neuen Beschlusses des Bundestages bedürfe. Die Oppositionsparteien sind der gegenteiligen Ansicht.

Außenminister Fischer reist nach New York zur Sitzung des Weltsicherheitsrates auf Ministerebene. Powell bleibt der Sitzung fern.

20. März 2003: Das 48-stündige Ultimatum Bushs läuft ab. Eineinhalb Stunden später greifen die USA ein Ziel bei Bagdad an.

An dem Angriff gegen einen kleineren Gebäudekomplex bei Bagdad waren gegen 3.34 Uhr MEZ zwei Tarnkappenbomber des Typs F-117 beteiligt, die vier 900-Kilogramm-Bomben ("Joint Direct Attack Munition") abwarfen, welche über Satellitensignale gesteuert werden.

Außerdem wurden nach Informationen aus dem Pentagon mehr als 30 Marschflugkörper des Typs "Tomahawk" von Kriegsschiffen im Persischen Golf und im Roten Meer abgeschossen. Ein Regierungsbeamter sagte, der Angriff habe sich gegen Saddam gerichtet.

Bush erklärt in einer Fernsehansprache, die militärische Operation zur "Entwaffnung Iraks und zur Befreiung seines Volkes" habe begonnen. Er fügt hinzu: "Dies wird kein Feldzug halber Maßnahmen, und wir werden keinen anderen Ausgang akzeptieren als den Sieg." Der Krieg könnte "länger dauern und schwieriger werden, als einige voraussagen".

Auch Saddam äußert sich in einer Fernsehansprache. Er bezeichnet den Krieg mit den USA und deren Verbündeten als einen "Heiligen Krieg".

"Lang lebe der Heilige Krieg und Irak", sagt Saddam wenige Stunden nach den ersten US-Luftangriffen. Das Land werde die Invasoren bekämpfen, bis sie ihre Geduld verloren hätten. In Anspielung auf den Vater von US-Präsident, der 1991 Krieg gegen Irak geführt hatte, sagte Saddam: "Der kriminelle kleine Bush hat ein Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit begangen."

Wenige Stunden nach dem ersten US-Militärschlag gegen Bagdad antwortet der Irak mit einem Raketenangriff auf den Norden von Kuwait. Dort sind fast 200.000 amerikanische und britische Soldaten stationiert. Ziele waren der amerikanische Stützpunkt Camp New Jersey und die kuwaitische Hauptstadt. Über die Zahl der abgeschossenen Flugkörper gibt es unterschiedliche Berichte.



21. März 2003: Alliierte Truppen bringen die Stadt Umm Kasr, den einzigen Tiefwasserhafen des Irak, und die strategisch wichtige Halbinsel Fau weitgehend unter ihre Kontrolle. In Nord-Kuwait sterben acht britische und vier amerikanische Soldaten beim Absturz ihres Hubschraubers. Massive Luftangriffe auf Bagdad beginnen am Nachmittag. Zeitgleich bombardieren Flugzeuge die Städte Kirkuk und Mosul im Norden. Weltweit demonstrieren erneut Hunderttausende gegen den Krieg.

22. März 2003: Alliierte Truppen erobern zwei Flugfelder im Westen. Die Briten beginnen im Süden ihre Offensive gegen die Stadt Basra.

25. März 2003: Schwere Sandstürme behindern den zuvor durch heftige irakische Gegenwehr bei Nasirija und Kerbela ins Stocken geratenen Vormarsch alliierter Bodentruppen. Bush beantragt für den Krieg 75 Milliarden Dollar und dämpft Hoffnungen auf einen schnellen Sieg.

26. März 2003: Bei Explosionen in einem Wohnbezirk von Bagdad sterben mindestens 15 Zivilisten.

28. März 2003: US-Fallschirmjäger besetzen im Kurdengebiet Nord-Iraks einen Flugplatz und beginnen mit dem Aufbau einer Nord-Front.

30. März 2003: Das Pentagon weist Berichte über Nachschubprobleme zurück. Kritiker werfen Rumsfeld vor, aus Kostengründen die falsche Taktik gewählt zu haben.

31. März 2003: In der Nähe von Bagdad finden erste Gefechte von US-Truppen mit der Republikanischen Garde statt.

2. April 2003: Die USA leiten die entscheidende Phase zum Sturm auf Bagdad ein. Die Truppen stehen 30 Kilometer vor der Stadt.

3. April 2003: US-Truppen rücken zum Saddam International Airport vor.

5. April 2003: Die USA stoßen erstmals zeitweise in das Zentrum Bagdads vor.

6. April 2003: Bagdad ist nach US-Angaben vollständig von US-Truppen eingeschlossen. Die Städte Basra und Kerbela sollen sich in der Hand der Alliierten befinden.

7. April 2003: US-Soldaten dringen erstmals in Saddams Paläste in Bagdad ein. "Focus"-Redakteur Christian Liebig wird als erster deutscher Journalist bei einem Raketenangriff bei Bagdad getötet.

8. April 2003: Durch US-Beschuss sterben drei weitere Reporter, zwei von ihnen im Bagdader Journalistenhotel "Palestine". Bush und Blair räumen den Vereinten Nationen eine "vitale Rolle" in der Nachkriegszeit ein.

9. April 2003: Am Ende der dritten Kriegswoche hat das Regime des untergetauchten Saddam in Bagdad die Kontrolle verloren. Aus den Vororten kommen Meldungen über Plünderungen und Racheakte unter Irakern.

10. April 2003: Die nordirakischen Städte Kirkuk und - einen Tag später - Mossul werden eingenommen. Massive Plünderungen in Bagdad, darunter im Nationalmuseum und in Krankenhäusern.

14. April 2003: Bei geringem Widerstand besetzen Amerikaner mit Tikrit die letzte größere Stadt des Iraks und Heimatort Saddams. Das Regime ist damit endgültig am Ende. Von Saddam und seinen engsten Vertrauten fehlt jedoch jede Spur.

21. April 2003: Der ehemalige US-General Jay Garner trifft in Bagdad ein. Er soll eine zivile Übergangsverwaltung aufbauen und leiten. Er wird nach kurzer Zeit durch Paul Bremer ersetzt.

22. April 2003: Powell kritisiert Frankreich für seinen Widerstand gegen den Irak-Krieg und droht Konsequenzen an.

24. April 2003: Bush räumt ein, dass im Irak bislang keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden wurden. Der vermeintliche Besitz galt als Hauptgrund für den Krieg.

1. Mai 2003: Bush erklärt die "größeren Kampfhandlungen" im Irak für beendet. Seither sind auf Seiten der Alliierten mehr Soldaten gestorben, als während des Krieges.




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The Emperor is losing his clothes, methinks.

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THE WORLD



Report on U.S. Search for Iraqi Weapons Possible Next Week
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer

September 18, 2003

WASHINGTON — David Kay, the CIA special advisor leading the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, headed home to Washington from Baghdad on Wednesday and is expected to deliver a long-awaited progress report as early as next week, a senior U.S. intelligence official said.

The interim report by Kay, a former United Nations nuclear inspector, will be the first summary of efforts that he and his investigators have made to substantiate the Bush administra- tion`s repeated claims that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, before the war, had secretly produced as much as 500 tons of chemical weapons and thousands of gallons of deadly biowarfare agents.

No such stockpiles have been found in the nearly six months since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. U.S. officials said the Iraq Survey Group`s findings are more likely to highlight evidence of planning to reconstitute unconventional weapons programs on short notice, as well as long-range plans to develop and build such weapons if U.N. sanctions on the sale of dual-use items to Iraq were lifted.

In a radio interview broadcast Wednesday, Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, gave one possible explanation for the failure to find chemical or biological weapons. Blix said he was increasingly convinced that Saddam Hussein secretly destroyed most of his poison gas and germ weapons shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"I`m certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991," Blix told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Blix, who headed the U.N. inspection and disarmament effort in Iraq for three years until his retirement last summer, said he now thinks "it`s unlikely that anything will be found by the 1,400 U.S.-led weapons hunters in Iraq. Maybe they`ll find some documents of interest," he said.

Blix said he believed that Hussein may have sought to convince the U.N. that he had retained weapons of mass destruction, even if he had destroyed his stockpiles, in an effort to deter a potential attack. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, `Beware of the dog,` without having a dog," Blix said.

Former U.N. weapons inspectors and other experts had a mixed response to Blix`s suggestion that Hussein destroyed his chemical and biological weapons more than a decade ago. Last spring, Blix told the U.N. Security Council he "presumed" that Iraq still maintained illicit weapons.

"It`s logical because these things have a limited shelf life," said Jonathan Tucker, a former bioweapons inspector who now is a senior researcher at the Monterey Institute`s nonproliferation center. Tucker said Iraqi scientists were unable to produce stabilized forms of most nerve gases or germ weapons.

"I don`t think anyone questions that Iraq was maintaining a capability to produce these weapons," Tucker added. "The question is whether they maintained a strategic reserve of these weapons."

Greg Theilmann, former head of proliferation and military affairs at the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said Blix`s shift "seems very significant" because U.S. officials assumed that Iraq was keeping illicit weapons "because of our inability to verify their destruction. Maybe they [the Iraqis] didn`t want to let us prove they had been destroyed."

Bob Baer, a former CIA operative who worked in northern Iraq in the 1990s, said he also believed U.S. intelligence misread Hussein`s intentions. "There was no real evidence of these arms," he said. "No defector came out who could prove anything. Nothing was ever picked up by satellite photography. It was just assumed that he kept this stuff."

But another former U.N. inspector, who asked not to be identified, said Blix`s comment "makes no sense" because U.N. inspectors repeatedly sought in the 1990s to confirm Iraq`s claims that it had unilaterally destroyed various weapons and equipment.

"Most of these claims couldn`t be verified," he said. "It wasn`t just about a lack of information. There was usually an unresolvable conflict between what we were told and what we knew."

Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said Blix was engaging in "pure speculation." But he said Kay`s initial report would not settle the issue.

"There are likely to be major gaps that we will never account for because so many records were never kept or destroyed," he said.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY


Eighth Pillar of Wisdom? Iraq Is a Deep Morass
By Michael Keane
Michael Keane, a lecturer on strategy at the USC`s Marshall School of Business, is also a fellow of the U.S. Department of Defense`s National Security Education Program.

September 18, 2003

That Iraq would become a troublesome source of guerrilla tactics should come as no surprise to any student of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is considered by many strategists to be the father of guerrilla warfare. He articulated a powerful treatise on the topic in his classic book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom."

During World War I, Lawrence`s guerrilla victories against the Turkish forces occupying the Arabian peninsula provided a stunning contrast to the simultaneous slaughter occurring in the trenches of Europe. Although Lawrence claimed that his vision of warfare came to him as he lay dazed in a feverish state, he was actually formalizing a form of war practiced by Arab tribes for centuries.

Lawrence`s thesis was that a successful rebellion required three elements. First, the rebels must have an unassailable base, not merely a physical base of operations but also a psychological fortress in the mind of every soldier willing to die for his convictions.

Second, in what he called the "doctrine of acreage" (what strategists now call the force-to-space ratio), Lawrence stated that an insurgent victory required that the size of the occupying force must be insufficient to pacify the contested area.

Finally, the guerrillas must have a friendly population. Although the population need not be actively friendly, it must not be hostile to the point of betraying the insurgents. This support can be generated either from fear of retaliation or sympathy for the guerrilla cause or both.

The application of Lawrence`s theory to the current military situation in Iraq is not comforting. First, the rebels seem to possess an unassailable base in both physical and psychological terms.

Within Iraq, hostile forces have demonstrated an ongoing ability to launch numerous daily attacks. The continuing inability to capture Saddam Hussein is the most significant evidence of this problem. Externally, there is a base of bordering states like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran that are failing to stop volunteers from infiltrating Iraq. American troops have found foreign passports on the bodies of enemy forces killed. Perhaps more troubling, however, is the psychological "base" — the mind of the enemy. When religious extremism is mixed with nationalistic fervor, it cements to form the bricks of unshakeable conviction. As Lawrence himself noted, "An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot."

Then there is the force-to-space ratio of coalition forces, which is clearly inadequate. The Americans have only about 130,000 soldiers in Iraq. To match the number of soldiers per inhabitant as the United States has in Kosovo would require 526,000 troops in Iraq.

Finally, guerrilla victories can work to slowly undermine U.S. credibility while simultaneously building support and gaining recruits for the insurgents. Over time, guerrilla tactics tend to frustrate conventional troops, which are increasingly likely to overreact by humiliating men and offending women and thereby alienating the local population. Though Iraqi guerrillas lack the necessary firepower and manpower to forcibly remove the Americans, Lawrence would argue that should not be their proper objective. Even while suffering tactical defeats, the guerrillas could erode the will of the Americans and thereby achieve a strategic victory. As Henry Kissinger succinctly stated: "The guerrilla wins by not losing. The army loses by not winning."

After liberating the region from the Turks in World War I, Britain ruled the newly formed country of Iraq under a mandate from the League of Nations. The population`s gratitude for having been freed from 400 years of Ottoman oppression was short-lived. There were uprisings and assassinations of British soldiers and civilian administrators.

Lawrence was sent back to Baghdad to report on conditions there. He wrote these haunting words: "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY



Barking Mad
It`s enough to drive you nuts -- Bush and those other busybodies
By Adam B. Summers
Adam B. Summers is a visiting policy analyst with the Reason Foundation.

September 18, 2003

I saw a story on one of the cable news channels the other night that caught my attention. It was meant to be a puff piece, one of those human-interest stories that make the news anchors chuckle, but I think it revealed something deeper.

A little girl, who happens to be the daughter of Washington state Sen. Dino Rossi, recently went on a tour of the White House and was able to get the tour guide to deliver a letter she wrote to President Bush. It seems she and her three siblings have been nagging their father to buy a dog for the last six months. Not willing to cave in, but also not wanting to upset his children with a flat no, Rossi told them, "The only way I`ll get you a dog is if the president tells me I should."

So 12-year-old Juliauna decided to take her dad up on his offer and write to President Bush. In her letter, Juliauna wrote, "I know you`re very busy, but please call my dad and ask him if we can get a dog."

So far, so good. Last week, Juliauna received a handwritten response from President Bush. It is Bush`s reply that is interesting. "Dear Juliauna," the president wrote, "I agree that dogs are good friends. I love Spot and Barney. So, please tell your dad, I think you should have a dog." Notice that Bush did not stop at relating his personal affection for dogs. He did not defer to the child`s parents in deciding what was best for their family. Instead, he presumed to tell a little girl, whom he did not know, how her parents should behave.

Though this may be a harmless and amusing example, I believe it is a symptom of a larger disease among politicians, and the public at large for that matter: sticking your nose in someone else`s business. The affliction is much more dangerous when it infects politicians, however, because they have the power to actually affect our life decisions, by government force if necessary.

President Bush has shown his willingness to impose his personal beliefs on hundreds of millions of Americans time and time again. He has trampled upon civil liberties and sacrificed privacy to Big Brother through the Patriot Act. He has allowed the federal government to intrude upon local charitable activities and organizations through his faith-based initiative. He has confiscated more taxpayer money for such purposes as bailing out the airline industry and increasing farm subsidies. He has granted even more control over our children`s education to the federal government by dramatically increasing public education spending through the sickeningly warm-and-fuzzy-sounding No Child Left Behind Act. He has adopted protectionist policies that have increased the costs of goods as disparate as pharmaceuticals, steel, lumber, computer chips and even Vietnamese catfish. He has indicated his desire to spend millions of dollars to influence marital habits and teenage sexual behavior.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg, however. State and local governments heap on still more copious busybody regulations, affecting whether you will be able to drive an SUV 10 years from now, what your children may be allowed to eat at school, what wages you may or may not be allowed to agree to work for, and whether you must install a low-flush toilet in your home.

It is time liberty-loving Americans stood up to the busybodies both within and outside of government. It is time to demand that others simply let us be. So don`t tell me with whom you think I should associate. Don`t tell me how much money I should be giving to the government or to charity. Don`t tell me what I can and cannot do in the privacy of my own home. Don`t tell me how you think I should live my life. And, for God`s sake, don`t tell me to go buy a dog!

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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JOAN VENNOCHI
Is Clark the `package` Democrats seek?
By Joan Vennochi, 9/18/2003

WANTED, for Democratic presidential nominee: a candidate the country can buy in 2004 as a "complete package."

Wesley K. Clark, a retired Army general and former CNN commentator, is now officially the 10th Democrat to enter the 2004 presidential race. A basic unknown to the average citizen, his military credentials and media contacts serve as springboard for his finally launched, much-predicted candidacy.

The Clark pitch goes like this: He is combat tested but against the Iraq war. That makes him Howard Dean with military experience or John F. Kerry without a vote authorizing George W. Bush to wage war against Saddam Hussein.

But Clark, 58, could also turn out to be one very big surprise package. And, as anyone who has ever opened up a birthday present knows, there are good surprises and bad ones. Place Clark in the heat of a political campaign rather than the heat of combat, and there is opportunity for more than the usual good, bad, and ugly.

Asked about Clark`s chances, Bill Clinton said it best: "Whether he can get elected president, I just don`t have a clue, because once you`ve been a four-star general, it`s kind of hard to have people talk to you the way they talk to you when you`re running."

Clark might be a great candidate -- even the eventual nominee. But whatever enthusiasm there is for his entrance into the race is mostly testament to the failure of the other nine to sell themselves as the complete package the Democratic presidential nominee must be to beat Bush.

At this moment, polls are not Bush`s friend. Forty-eight percent of Americans say Bush is "in over his head," according to a new poll by James Carville`s Democracy Corps. While any data from the Clinton-Carville axis hardly count as unbiased public opinion, the numbers are credible enough in light of other polls showing the president`s approval ratings down on the economy and Iraq. However, domestic and foreign affairs could both improve by November 2004. In the end, voters will be taking the measure of the economy, the war, and the president against a still-undetermined opponent.

Clark`s late entrance gives the rest of the field a sorely needed chance to regroup and broaden their campaigns and messages.

Right now, Dean is the antiwar, finger-waggling ex-governor of a tiny, nondiverse state. Kerry is the Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts liberal who wants to be defined only as a Vietnam veteran. Richard Gephardt wants to be the candidate of jobs and labor but is mostly a captive of the congressional establishment and a very stiff head of hair. Senator Joseph Lieberman is a remnant of Al Gore`s failed effort to prove he could be exciting by picking the first Jewish candidate for vice president. John Edwards has dimples and a Southern accent. Florida Senator Bob Graham has a Southern accent. Al Sharpton is black and humorous in more ways than one. Carol Moseley Braun is a black woman and former rising star, since crashed. Dennis Kucinich is a true believer whose beliefs are far too left to be nationally palatable.

And now there is Clark, rallying supporters around battlefield credentials and promises to restore jobs and economic opportunity. In doing so, he is trying to hijack the role of "complete package." Clark is battle-seasoned enough to be antiwar in Iraq, especially up against Bush and his National Guard service. But he has much to prove in terms of comfort level on the domestic and diplomatic fronts.

Being accepted as a "complete package" requires more than pushing the correct ideological buttons, although that is always the starting point in American politics. In every presidential face-off, voters ultimately consider intelligence, maturity, life experience, and that great intangible, likeability. Do they want to have a beer with the candidate (or, with liberals, a glass of chardonnay)? In 2000, Bush passed the likeability test with half the country, which gave him the benefit of the doubt on intelligence and maturity. In 2004, voters will be less inclined to like him enough to reelect him if Americans are still losing their jobs at home and their lives in Iraq.

Bush will be an even tougher sell if the candidate running against him is a better buy and a more complete package.

Joan Vennochi`s e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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focus-online meldet 8 tote GI`s

washingtonpost.com
Guerrillas Ambush U.S. Convoy in Iraq


By TAREK AL-ISSAWI
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 18, 2003; 11:45 AM


KHALDIYAH, Iraq - Guerrillas ambushed a U.S. military convoy Thursday with a remote-controlled bomb, sparking a heavy gunbattle in which a 3-year-old boy was wounded in the chest and two trucks were destroyed.

Two American soldiers were wounded, the U.S. military said in Baghdad, although it was not immediately known if the casualties were from the ambush or a later attack several miles away.

In the nearby town of Fallujah, witnesses said an American patrol opened fire on a wedding, killing a 14-year-old boy, after mistaking celebratory gunfire for an attack.

North of Baghdad, fire raged at an oil pipeline following an explosion at the site, the U.S. military said, raising concerns that it was the latest in a series of sabotage attacks. The pipeline carries crude oil from fields near Kirkuk to Iraq`s largest refinery at Beiji.

The violence involving U.S. troops heightened tensions in the "Sunni Triangle," a belt of central Iraq that has been the heart of support for Saddam Hussein loyalists against the American-led occupation. U.S. soldiers in the region are extremely jumpy, caught in what has become a guerrilla war.

The ambush took place in Khaldiyah. The town`s police chief, Col. Khedeir Mekhalef Ali, was assassinated Monday in a brazen shooting - the latest attack on Iraqis working with coalition forces. Ali was shot at a traffic circle on the outskirts of nearby Fallujah as he was returning to his home there.

Al-Arabiya television reported eight Americans were killed and one wounded in Thursday`s ambush. The U.S. military did not confirm any deaths.

An Associated Press driver said a 3-year-old boy was shot in the chest. His condition was not known.

Five U.S. tanks, two Bradley fighting vehicles and 40 troops surrounded the neighborhood from which gunmen opened fire after the roadside bomb exploded, an AP reporter in Khaldiyah said. Helicopters hovered above.

Initially as U.S. forces took fire from unknown positions, the soldiers shot back with no obvious targets in an apparent effort to protect themselves until reinforcements arrived, a witness said.

The AP reporter was fired on by one of the tanks with three rounds from its 50-caliber machine gun. An AP photographer said his car was shot up by American troops, the windshield blown out and all the tires flattened. The photographer and his driver were not injured.

Shortly afterward and nine miles to the west, a second roadside bomb hit a military convoy of three Humvees and a truck. One Humvee was engulfed in flames.

It was not clear if the military casualty report included the second attack.

Hours later, soldiers pointed tank cannons at reporters every time they tried to approach to find out what had happen.

As it grew dark, the Americans pulled out, removing the burned truck with a crane.

About 100 Iraqis danced in the streets and carried a large photo of Saddam dressed in military fatigues. There was celebratory gunfire and the people chanted: "With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam."

Wednesday night`s shooting at the wedding in Fallujah came after American soldiers mistakenly killed eight U.S.-allied Iraqi police officers outside the town in a friendly fire incident. The military has apologized for the incident and opened an investigation.

Witnesses said guests at the wedding shot guns into the air in celebration, and passing American troops in Humvees, believing they were under attack, opened fire, killing the teen and wounding six other people.

A resident, Adel Hmood, said the Americans had opened fire 360 degrees around themselves. The dead boy, Sufyan Daoud al-Kubaisi, was on his way to buy cigarettes when he was killed, Hmood said.

Bullet holes in homes and buildings in the area, about two blocks off the main street in Fallujah, suggested heavy firing by the Americans.

A policeman who spoke on condition of anonymity said he had heard identical reports. No U.S. forces could be seen in the city Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition forces, said the military was investigating and could not confirm that a boy was killed.

The military said the pipeline fire north of Baghdad was so fierce that investigators could not get close to determine its cause. Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit, 120 miles north of Baghdad, said valves on the pipeline were being closed to shut off fuel to the fire.

"The fire won`t affect oil production or the timetable for resuming exports," Aberle said.

Another pipeline, to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, has been hit by a string of sabotage attacks. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said the line`s closure was costing the country $7 million each day. The military says the line should resume operation in about a month.

In Baghdad, police backed by U.S. soldiers and helicopters sealed a large part of the center of the city Thursday in a raid to capture car thieves. Two men were arrested at an auto repair shop on suspicion of having stolen a police vehicle.

In an audiotape broadcast Wednesday by al-Arabiya, a speaker purporting to be Saddam urged Iraqis to escalate attacks on Americans and called on U.S.-led forces to leave the country "as soon as possible and without any conditions."

The speaker, who sounded like the ousted Iraqi leader, also urged Washington`s international partners not to "fall prey in the traps of American foreign policy" and reject any plan for Iraq`s future which legitimizes military occupation.

News editor Aymen Gaballah said the 14-minute tape was obtained Wednesday after a caller to the station`s Baghdad office told employees where to find it.

Also Thursday, Sanchez said no Americans or Britons were currently being held by coalition forces in Iraq.

On Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who is in charge of coalition detention centers in Iraq, said six people claiming to be Americans and two who said they were British are among those held for suspicion of involvement in attacks against coalition forces. She said the claims had not been confirmed and "the details become sketchy and their story changes."


© 2003 The Associated Press

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consortiumnews.com

Will the Media Let Bush Lose?
By Sam Parry
September 16, 2003

The U.S. news media may soon face a dilemma: Can pundits keep calling George W. Bush "the popular war-time president" – a favorite stock phrase – if his poll numbers sink much further? For two years, the phrase has been a media cliché for Bush often delivered with a pleasing smile from an agreeable talking head. Or it’s used like a club against some critic who is out of step with the American people.
ABC Evening News used the phase to describe Bush both when Howard Dean announced his Democratic candidacy in June and when John Kerry announced his in September. To a degree, the "popular war-time president" repetition has created a self-fulfilling reality, especially when reinforced by generally fawning news coverage, laudatory books like "The Right Man," an action-figure doll in a flight suit, and even a hero-worshipful Sept. 11 docu-drama (which put brave words into Bush’s mouth though he spent most of that awful day sitting frozen in a Florida classroom or fleeing to Louisiana and Nebraska).

Similarly, the U.S. news media has framed next year’s election around the repeated question, "Is Bush Unbeatable?" – again suggesting that Bush is next to invincible. But the latest polls suggest that Bush’s voter support is fading fast in the face of job losses, a worsening deficit and continuing violence in Iraq.

Though the poll results have varied in their details, the overall trend lines are ominous for Bush and his political advisers. The declines have tracked with the continuing death toll in Iraq more than four months after Bush donned the flight suit, landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and posed before a banner pronouncing "Mission Accomplished."

Red Ink

The need to spend $87 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lack of a credible exit strategy from Iraq have connected the wars with Bush’s record budget deficits, now estimated to exceed $500 billion. Americans are beginning to worry that Bush was, as described by his critics, a shallow n’er-do-well whose temperament was a hazardous mix of cockiness, inexperience and incompetence.

The polls also suggest that Election 2004 has changed from an easy political glide path toward an inevitable Bush second term to a turbulent flight that could divert to any number of unexpected destinations. While it is conceivable that Bush and his lavishly financed campaign will win the previously expected landslide, it also is possible that his campaign could encounter a political disaster unthinkable a few months ago.

Privately, some Republican strategists are discussing the possible need of a drastic mid-course correction, possibly easing Dick Cheney off the ticket to be replaced by Secretary of State Colin Powell or some other political figure who could give the Bush ticket a friendlier appearance.

But it may be that the electorate’s assessment of Bush is growing so negative that cosmetic political adjustments won’t help. With Bush’s tax cuts opening up an artery of red ink while simultaneously failing to stanch the bleeding of U.S. jobs, many Americans appear to be growing nostalgic for the up-beat economic days of the Clinton-Gore administration.

A recent Zogby poll found the electorate almost evenly split when offered a chance to re-run Election 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush, with Gore getting 46 percent and Bush 48 percent, a difference within the poll`s margin of error. That almost half the voters still favor Gore, who has rarely been in the public eye, is not good news for Bush, especially after two years of rally-round-the-president, united-we-stand political rhetoric.

Between the gaping hole in the federal budget and the record job losses, key battleground states such as Ohio could be ripe for the picking if a Democrat can credibly describe a return to Clinton-Gore economics. Ohio, a state that Bush carried in 2000, has lost more than 160,000 factory jobs, about one-sixth of its total. Nationwide, about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared in three years. [NYT, Sept. 13, 2003]

For now, most polls show Bush still leading a generic Democrat in the presidential race, but the numbers suggest that many Americans are looking for a Bush exit ramp.

A CBS News poll taken before Labor Day found that only 33 percent of registered voters would "probably vote" to reelect Bush while 27 percent preferred an unnamed Democrat and 36 percent were undecided. A Zogby poll in September reported that 52 percent said it`s time for someone new in the White House, while 40 percent said Bush deserves a second term.

Many analysts now expect Election 2004 to be another tight race. The electoral battlefield could again be the blocs of red and blue states of Election 2000 when Gore defeated Bush in the national popular vote but lost when five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida giving Bush those 25 electoral votes and a narrow victory in the Electoral College.

Green Party candidate Ralph Nader also could influence the outcome of 2004 as he did in 2000. Some Democrats have noted bitterly that Bush carried New Hampshire and its four electoral votes by just 7,211 votes while Nader garnered more than 22,000 votes. That meant that if one out of three Nader voters had gone for Gore, the Democrat would have won New Hampshire and the White House by getting 271 electoral votes, a majority in the Electoral College. The Florida recount would have been irrelevant.

Looking Ahead

In 2004, however, it won’t be so simple for a Democrat to simply hold Gore’s states and pick up New Hampshire to win. The redistricting that followed the 2000 census has eroded the Democratic position by shifting seven electoral votes into Bush’s red states from Gore’s blue states.

So, today, Gore’s blue states plus New Hampshire would leave a Democrat six electoral votes short. That means a Democrat will not only have to surmount Bush’s advantages in campaign cash and friendly news media coverage, but the nominee will have to turn at least one other state that was counted among Bush’s red states three years ago.

A county-by-county analysis comparing presidential vote totals for 1996 and 2000, and factoring in other recent voting patterns, suggests the most likely Democratic targets are Florida, Ohio, West Virginia and New Hampshire. A second tier of possible pickups includes Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada, Louisiana and Arizona.

These states plus two others, Kentucky and Tennessee, were carried by Bill Clinton in 1996 and by Bush four years later. Combined, these states represent 116 electoral votes.

Of these possible Democratic pickups, five alone have enough electoral votes to put a Democrat over the top, assuming Gore`s red states stay in line. Florida now has 27 electoral votes, Ohio 20, Missouri 11, Tennessee 11, and Arizona 10. The Democrats would need more than one of the other target states to secure a majority in the Electoral College. Louisiana has nine votes, Kentucky eight, Arkansas six, Nevada five, West Virginia five and New Hampshire four.

Besides the census-driven shift in electoral votes to Bush`s red states, there is other encouraging news for Republicans. Based on the results in 2000, Bush was closer to picking up extra states than Gore was. Of the five states won by less than one percent in 2000, Bush only snared Florida. But he was very close in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon.

Together, these four states, representing 29 electoral votes, will be top targets for the Bush campaign. Depending on how the campaign shapes up, Bush also might look to add Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, and Washington – all states Gore won by six percent or less. If Bush holds his red states and adds these Gore states, he would win in a landslide.

Media Spin

As in 2000, the attitude of the national news media could prove decisive. A critical point that is often overlooked in assessing the 2000 election is the extent to which Bush’s campaign – with the media`s help – depressed Democratic voter turnout for Gore by smearing him as untrustworthy and prone to exaggerations.

According to a post-election survey conducted by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, the top reason voters cited for not voting for Gore was his perceived exaggerations, a supposed problem that was identified by 29 percent of those surveyed. [For more on the media`s handling of Campaign 2000, see Consortiumnews.com`s "Protecting Bush-Cheney."]

In the swing states in particular, given their demographics and political leanings, Gore’s inability to turn out Democratic voters cost him. Out of the 721 counties in 11 states won by Clinton in 1996 but lost by Gore in 2000, Gore’s turnout was lower than Clinton’s in 442 counties.

Gore lost 354 of these 442 counties, and in total Gore lost these 442 counties by more than 760,000 votes. Had Gore simply matched Clinton’s vote total in these 442 counties, he would have won 139 additional counties. This would have been enough to give Gore Arkansas and Florida, and he would have come within just a few hundred votes of winning Louisiana and West Virginia.

By contrast, Bush succeeded in turning out the Republican base in 2000, increasing GOP vote totals in 714 out of the 721 counties in these 11 states. Bush improved over Bob Dole’s 1996 vote total by 2.7 million votes in these states.

Taken together, the 11 battleground states also present the Democrats with complicated political calculations. To start with, the states are spread across the map, from New Hampshire to Nevada and from Ohio to Florida. So there is no simple geographic formula for Democrats to address.

Another challenge for Democrats is that these swing states are either traditionally Republican or they have trended Republican in recent years. In the three national elections in the 1980s, for instance, Democrats only won West Virginia, which they did twice in 1980 and 1988.

The states also have trended Republican for different reasons, meaning no single strategic shift will suffice for the Democrats. Western states like traditionally-Democratic Nevada and traditionally-Republican Arizona represent a form of Western Conservatism where voters are skeptical of Washington, particularly as it relates to the regulation of federal lands.

With issues like strengthening environmental standards and promoting gun safety near the top of the national Democratic agenda, Democrats will be challenged to compete in these two states in 2004. Political strategists predict that these states could trend Democratic in future elections as their Hispanic populations grow. But today, they are more Goldwater-Reagan than Clinton-Gore.

On the other hand, states like Tennessee and Kentucky, once thought to be pillars of the New South and traditionally in the conservative Democratic camp, have become part of the Christian Conservative South and appear if anything to be trending more Republican with each election. Last year, for instance, the Democratic Senate challenger to incumbent Republican McConnell lost by 28 points. Bush won Kentucky by 15 points in 2000.

To Gore’s embarrassment, Tennessee went against its native son in 2000, giving Bush a four-point margin. In 2002, Tennessee elected Democrat Phil Bredesen to the governor’s mansion, but the state has conversely elected Republicans to the U.S. Senate in six straight elections by wide margins.

Deficit Conscious

In contrast to Tennessee and Kentucky, a thousand miles to the north New Hampshire finds itself tucked between liberal and mostly Democratic New England states Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine.

But New Hampshire’s aversion to taxes and its traditional Republican streak hold the state in the Republican column in most statewide elections. Republicans won back the governor’s seat in 2002, control both houses of the state legislature by better than two-to-one, and hold the two U.S. Senate seats and the two U.S. House seats.

Still, the Granite State has been tough on Bush candidates in the past. Bush’s father had to fight back stiff competition in the New Hampshire primaries of 1988 and 1992, from Robert Dole and Patrick Buchanan respectively. The younger Bush lost the New Hampshire primary to John McCain in 2000 by 19 percentage points.

Also, since New Hampshire is traditionally a fiscally conservative state, the prospect of historic and structural national deficits as far as forecasts can measure, coupled with the tough economy, could turn New Hampshire voters against Bush again.

Traditionally-Republican Ohio and traditionally-Democratic West Virginia favored Clinton in 1992 and 1996 by wide margins. But, in 2000, Bush improved GOP performance in all of the 143 counties in the two states to win both states by relatively narrow margins. Despite of the 2000 outcome, voting trends suggest that both West Virginia and Ohio should remain at the top of the target list for Democrats.

West Virginia was one of 14 states where Gore’s voter turnout was lower than Clinton’s. In fact, Gore was the first Democratic candidate since 1928 to earn fewer than 300,000 votes in West Virginia. Merely improving Democratic turnout in West Virginia could win it back in 2004.

Prospects in Ohio are potentially even better for Democrats. Ohio’s 20 electoral votes also make it the most lucrative battleground state outside of Florida.

Ohio demographics suggest it should be competitive for Democrats. The state boasts several large metropolitan areas, from Cleveland and Toledo in the north to Cincinnati in the south to the capital of Columbus in the center of the state. Based on voter turnout in the counties that comprise these metropolitan areas, Bush’s gains in the state over 1996 GOP performance were almost entirely centered in these counties. Democrats could, therefore, win Ohio back by simply focusing voter turnout efforts in these urban and suburban areas.

Also, Ohio’s traditional Republican streak is not as ideologically driven as it might seem on paper. Ohio is not like the Bible Belt of the South nor does it have the strong anti-Washington sentiments of the Rocky Mountain states. Even though Ohio Republicans control the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, only 19 percent of registered voters in Ohio are registered Republicans, compared with 14 percent who are registered Democrats. A surprising 66 percent of registered voters, more than 4.6 million people, are unaffiliated.

A large Democratic turnout among these unaffiliated voters, particularly in the counties comprising the major metropolitan areas of Ohio, could swing Ohio back to the Democrats. Targeting Ohio would have the added benefit of helping in Ohio border states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. All will be targets for both parties in 2004.

Southern Strategies

The Mississippi River states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana could be in play in 2004, but probably only if Bush`s fortunes continue to worsen. Bush carried these states by 3.34, 5.45, and 7.67 percent respectively in 2000.

Arkansas and Louisiana are traditionally Southern Democratic states, while Missouri is the quintessential swing state. Judging by recent elections, all three states are swing states, but with conservative streaks, particularly on social issues.

Then there’s the Sunshine State. Of the battleground states, Florida obviously stands out as the biggest prize and, given the 2000 fiasco, represents a real target for Democrats.

Historically, Florida has been a swing state and has tracked closely with the national elections. With the exception of going for George Bush I in 1992 over Clinton, Florida has gone with the winner in every election since 1960. It has also tracked closely with the national election voting trends, giving Carter a five-point margin in 1976 and Reagan a 31-point margin in 1984.

Clinton carried Florida in 1996 by just over 300,000 votes to earn a 48% to 42% margin over Dole compared with Clinton’s 49 to 41 percent margin nationwide. Though Gore improved Democratic turnout by more than 365,000 votes in 2000, Bush was able to increase GOP turnout by nearly 670,000 votes over Dole’s support from 1996.

With Nader earning 97,488 votes statewide and with Pat Buchanan scoring an unlikely 3,400 votes in heavily-Democratic Palm Beach Country due to the confusing butterfly ballot (triple the number of votes Buchanan earned in any other Florida county), the vote was close enough for Republicans in the U.S. Supreme Court to hand Florida to Bush. His artificial victory margin of 537 votes represented less than one hundredth of one percent of the total vote in the state.

While Democrats will have their eyes set on a Florida breakthrough in 2004, there is a great deal of work to do. To start with, Florida is a state that has drifted Republican over time. In 1976, 67 percent of Florida voters were registered Democrats. Today that figure is down to 42.6 percent with 38.7 percent listed as registered Republicans and 18.8 percent unaffiliated.

In the 2002 race for governor, Bush’s brother Jeb easily put down a challenge from Democratic hopeful Bill McBride, winning by a 56-43 margin. Bush’s victory came after the Democrats pulled out the stops to support McBride’s campaign, which showed early signs of threatening Bush before falling out of contention a couple of weeks before Election Day.

Early 2004 presidential polls show George Bush ahead of every Democratic candidate in the state, including Florida’s most popular elected official Bob Graham, whose presidential campaign has been struggling to gain traction outside of Florida. Graham has never lost an election in Florida and after five statewide races, two for governor in 1978 and 1982, and three for senator in 1986, 1992, and 1998, he is well known in the state. Graham’s failure to out-poll Bush might be a warning signal for Democrats.

At the same time, Florida is a diverse and rapidly growing state, which makes its politics unpredictable and volatile. Recently, solidly-Republican Cubans in South Florida have expressed dissatisfaction with Bush’s Cuba policy, which could cause Bush serious problems if the dissent grows.

Many political analysts predict that as the non-Cuban Hispanic and Caribbean populations of Florida grow, the state will shift into the Democratic column. Whether that shift will begin in 2004 is hard to say. But Democrats still have every reason to pour resources into the state.

Media Power

The bigger question relevant to the national election is whether the Republicans, with their powerful media machinery ranging from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, can smear the Democratic nominee as effectively as it did Al Gore in 2000. There is no telling what tactics the Republicans will use to denigrate the Democratic "fresh face" in 2004. But there is no doubt Bush`s supporters will try.

Already, the conservative Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader has poked fun at former Vermont Gov. Dean for warning about the dangers of sparklers, a mocking theme that has been picked up in the national press, including the Washington Post. [Sept. 14, 2003]

As Democrats learned in the 1990s and in 2000, these "joke themes" are crucial for reaching millions of Americans who have only a modest interest in politics. One of the most effective disinformation themes about Al Gore was his supposed claim to have "invented the Internet" – a quote that was widely ridiculed by major news outlets including the New York Times but was never actually spoken by Gore.

Still, given Bush’s shaky record and his growing reputation as a sneaky politician, it is possible that it will be Bush, not the Democrat, whose credibility and character will on the line. If violence continues in Iraq and Iraq`s supposed weapons of mass destruction don`t materialize, Bush could find himself and his exaggerations on the defensive.

Much will depend on whether the national news media holds Bush accountable for his lengthening pattern of deceptions – or whether the press corps continues to present Bush to the American people as "the popular war-time president" no matter what the polls may show.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/091603.html

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Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Robert Fisk: “What is Happening Is An Absolute Slaughter Every Night of Iraqi People”
1 Stunde audio:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demno…
Das Interview mit Fisk, zu Wesley Clark und Kosovo, dann zu den Opfern in Baghdad und der Situation der GI`s inm Irak 37`:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demno…

As the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq approaches 300, we go to Baghdad to hear from London Independent reporter Robert Fisk on the virtually unreported number of Iraqis killed in feuds, looting, revenge killings and raids by U.S. troops. [Includes transcript]

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq stands close to 300. While figures of U.S. troops killed or wounded in Iraq are widely disclosed, the number of Iraqis killed or wounded are unknown.
In an article last Sunday, Robert Fisk of the London Independent writes:

“In Iraq there are thousands of incidents of violence that never get reported; attacks on Americans that cost civilian lives are not even recorded by the occupation authority press officers unless they involve loss of life among "coalition forces". Go to the mortuaries of Iraq`s cities and it`s clear that a slaughter occurs each night. Occupation powers insist that journalists obtain clearance to visit hospitals - it can take a week to get the right papers, if at all, so goodbye to statistics - but the figures coming from senior doctors tell their own story.

“In Baghdad, up to 70 corpses - of Iraqis killed by gunfire - are brought to the mortuaries each day. In Najaf, for example, the cemetery authorities record the arrival of the bodies of up to 20 victims of violence a day. Some of the dead were killed in family feuds, in looting, or revenge killings. Others have been gunned down by US troops at checkpoints or in the increasingly vicious "raids" carried out by American forces in the suburbs of Baghdad and the Sunni cities to the north.”

Fisk continues:

“If you count the Najaf dead as typical of just two or three other major cities, and if you add on the daily Baghdad death toll and multiply by seven, almost 1,000 Iraqi civilians are being killed every week - and that may well be a conservative figure.”


Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. Speaking from Baghdad.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18/1757243
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TRANSCRIPT
JUAN GONZALEZ: Robert Fisk, this is Juan Gonzales here with Amy. In speaking about civilian casualties, you`ve been doing several articles now on the story that is not being covered at all, especially here in the United States, which is the civilian toll, the lives being lost every day in Iraq as result of the U.S. occupation. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

ROBERT FISK: Yes. I started doing this story here because, I`m doing series of articles, because I was very struck by an article that appeared in the New York Times last week that talked about the terrible toll of casualties over the summer months. It was paragraph three before I realized that the terrible toll applied only to 72 American soldiers in this country. And thousands of Iraqis civilians are dying by gunfire and other forms of violence in this country since April 9th, because of the anarchy and chaos let loose after the `liberation` of Baghdad.

Again we don`t need to be romantic about Saddam. It was his government that committed the crimes before the war. It`s now Iraqis who are committing the crimes after the war, but the real problem is that there is no security, and what is happening is an absolute slaughter every night of Iraqi people, either murdered in revenge killings by thieves, gunned down at American checkpoints by trigger-happy U.S. soldiers, involved in family feuds.

I`ve just come, I speak to you now from a mortuary in Baghdad. They`ve just taken in 21 gunshot victims dead. I spoke to five of the bereaved families, all shot down with people trying to steal their cars or killed by thieves in the night, or killed in killings which were by persons unknown.

Weaponry is flourishing here. You hear the shooting every night. The whole of Baghdad is full of gunfire. I went to one hospital where the mortuary attendant told me that almost 40% of the total dead that come in to their mortuary are killed at U.S. checkpoints by soldiers, either because the cars approached too quickly to the checkpoints or because American troops come under fire and fire back at the civilians in the area without making direct contact with whoever is their aggressor.

One occasion recently for example, four days ago a woman and her child were brought dead to the hospital after they were killed by U.S. forces who opened fire at people who were shooting in the air at a wedding party.

Over and over again this happens. We had case about six weeks ago which I personally investigated, in which two men got too close, drove up to a U.S. checkpoint, it wasn`t a usual check point, just a piece of barbed wire thrown across the road in a very poor suburb of Baghdad. The Americans opened fire at the car. When the car was burned out, I counted around 23 bullet holes in it. The bullets caught fire to the petrol, and I don`t know if they were still alive or not, but the two passengers, both males were burned alive. They were burned to death anyway. I assume one of them or two may have survived as the car was burning.

As the car was on fire, according to those who saw it happen, the Americans packed up and abandoned their checkpoint. I went to the mortuary again afterwards and found these two skeletons with burned flesh, their identity papers long ago consumed by the fire. The car itself, and the registration plate had melted into the road. So again, two Iraqis families were waiting that night for loved ones who would never come home.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In one of your articles, Robert, you estimate that as many as perhaps 1,000 Iraqis a week are dying across the country, but that also you have trouble getting to the hospitals, the occupation are not allowing journalists or making it difficult for journalists to get to hospitals?

ROBERT FISK: Absolutely. The coalition provisional authorities, the occupational authorities call themselves that, have told through the Ministry of Health, the new Ministry of Health under the C.P.A. here who, of course works for the occupational authorities, that journalists are not allowed to go to hospitals unless they have official permission from the new ministers, who of course work for the occupation authorities.

This means we`re not in theory supposed to find out the figures. In fact we can get into the hospitals, because we know many of the doctors or there are other ways in, and usually the security guards are very sympathetic towards us. They`re Iraqi. They want us to tell the story of this great tragedy for the Iraqis.

Yesterday, for example, the Baghdad city morgue which I just spent six hours in, yesterday they had 21 dead of whom 12 were killed by gunfire. This morning they had another five by 10:00 a.m., Baghdad time. If you add that up, and you turn into it a month of killings, you remember that there`s 20 dead a day of gunfire being brought even to the Najaf cemetery, which is about 200 miles south of Baghdad who are killed by violence, not just of course by the Americans but family revenge killings, shootings by thieves, people trying to stop looters and get killed by accident caught in crossfire, you`re talking at least 1,000 Iraqis dying every week.

But of course it`s impossible, not just because of the restrictions placed on journalists going to the hospitals, but it`s impossible to go to every hospital an every city of Iraq every morning and put together the death toll. But it`s extraordinary.

I had one case this morning, a young man, only son of a Shiite from the very poorest area of Baghdad had been killed in his door, no one knew why. Four very, very angry Shiites arrived with his body at the mortuary, one of them in militia uniforms, I think he was a member of the so called Badr brigade. `This is because there is no security. America doesn`t want us to have security. It wants to divide our society. We won`t allow it. We will explode ourselves against the Americans,` he said, he was talking about suicide bombers, This is a Shiite, not a Sunni from the Sunni Triangle.

So what is happening is that there is a growing feeling among Iraqis, at least those who are politically inclined, that the Americans do not want to stop the insecurity. Among those Iraqis who don`t take such a conspiratorial view, there is a milder, but in my opinion, quite devastating view or attitude, that the Americans don`t really care very much about the Iraqis. They might talk about bringing democracy, liberating them. But they care only about western soldiers who are killed. They don`t really care about the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

And over and over again, we`ve had examples of people shot by the Americans at checkpoints, and the Americans have not even bothered to find out who they shot down, who they killed, who they wounded. They`re not on the streets at night. We had one very sad case the other day of man whose family I spoke to, who did survive, he was a night watchman of a building, his factory was attacked by looters. He fired back at the looters, and the Americans turned up and shot him in the chest. He`s now just undergone two days ago his second operation to save his life. But he hasn`t once been visited by American forces. No one said, sorry. No one says, would you like some compensation, we can help you.

In some cases we do know, especially in outlying and very tough areas, the Americans and other western forces have offered and given money, compensation to families of those they killed. I think the Americans were doing that to the policeman, at least eight of whom were killed by U.S. third infantry division near Fallujah on Friday of last week, Thursday of last week.

Outrageously for a long time the Americans just said they had no information about the killings. Long after we`d gone there and established that it was all U.S. ammunition from an infantry unit that was used to kill the policeman. At one point I found a policeman`s teeth and brains beside the road. Had they been American brains and teeth, I don`t think they wouldn`t have been left there.

It`s this overall feeling not so much, and I don`t go along with conspiracy theories that the U.S. wants a civil war, wants to divide people, wants violence, no. Because they also become victims on it there on an infinitesimally smaller scale than Iraqis. But Americans just don`t really care about Iraqis. And that is the cancer that is eating into this society now.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 [phone].

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#6994
Interview mit Fisk zu Wesley Clark 1.Teil des Interviews. 2.Teil und Audio in #6994
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18/1755219
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Today we`re going to be taking a look at the USA Patriot Act, we`re going to be talking about John Ashcroft`s comments that people who criticized USA Patriot Act are hysterical. We`ll speak with the former head of the American Library Association and we`re also going to be looking at the candidacy of General Wesley Clark.

But first, we`re going to go to Robert Fisk. Robert Fisk, in Iraq. We`re trying to get him on the phone now we just had him, we lost him, we can have some trouble on the satellite phones. I believe instead we`re going to start with general Wesley Clark and his candidacy.

We`re going to begin by listening to an excerpt of the speech of General Wesley Clark that he gave yesterday in Arkansas. General Wesley Clark is the first four-star general to run for president as a democrat. This is general Wesley Clark.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Now I warn you, we`ll ask the tough questions as we move forward and we`ll hold this administration accountable.

Why has America lost 2.7 million jobs? Why has America lost the prospect of a five trillion dollar surplus and turned it into a $5 trillion deficit that deepens every day? Why has our country lost our sense of security and feels the shadow of fear? Why has America lost the respect of so many people around the world?

That`s the questions we`re going to be asking and one more, why are so many here in America hesitant to speak out and ask questions?

AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark announcing yesterday in Arkansas, the former supreme Allied Commander of NATO and the man who led the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

He announces his candidacy yesterday bringing to ten the number of democratic contenders hoping to unseat President Bush in next year`s election. Again Clark the first four-star general in history to run for president as a democrat.

The question is, is he an antiwar warrior, as he has been billed. We are going to talk to Robert Fisk in Baghdad about this, also member of the founder of the Draft Wesley Clark for President committee and Steve Rendall, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. We`re going to begin Steve Rendall in the studio.

I was surprised hear not that Wesley Clark was running, Steve, but that he is being cast as antiwar. Because in the lead up to war, in the lead up to the invasion and during I listened to Wesley Clark every day, watched him on CNN, and I did not get that feeling.

STEVE RENDALL: Well, Amy, I had to study the transcripts we did. Some of the listeners may know that we did study of the first three weeks of the war and we looked at six nightly newscasts including CNN. As you know, Wesley Clark was a hired analyst on CNN. And when we started hearing him in this sort of furious speculation about whether or not he was going to run, especially in the last few weeks we kept hearing him cast as antiwar candidate. Well, I hadn`t seen much of that.

If I could give you couple of sites here the Boston Globe described him as a `former NATO commander who also happens to have opposed the war`.

Michael Wolf writing a in New York magazine said `Face it, the only antiwar candidate America is ever going to elect is one who is a four-star general.` Which I guess means the only legitimate antiwar person is a four-star general.

Newsweek`s Howard Fineman said, Clark `is as anti-war as Dean`. Washington Post described Clark and Dean, `both opposed to the war in Iraq, and both are generating excitement on the Internet with grassroots activists`.

Now a couple of months ago, still well after the war, in an interview with Paula Zahn on CNN, some people might have mistaken Clark as having opposed the war when he said `from the beginning I have had my doubts about this mission, Paula, and I have shared them previously on CNN`.

But a review of his statements during, before and after shows that he never made any definitive statement against the war at any time. What criticisms he had were criticisms of the logistics, tactics, criticisms meant to increase the effectiveness of the fighting force there. What we were able to find I think..

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the claims that he was at least espousing the United States not act without United Nations.

STEVE RENDALL: This was another sort of tactical thing. If we can get all our ducks in a war that`s fine.

AMY GOODMAN: Let`s turn to John Hlinko, who the cofounder of the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign. Can you talk about Wesley Clark for president? JOHN

JOHN HLINKO: Yeah, sure, I can tell what you we saw from the draft movement`s perspective, that we saw someone that we felt could be not only president in a wartime but president in peace.

What we saw in General Clark was someone who looked at making our nation a safer place and didn`t equate with it the number of bombs we dropped but equated it with steps designed to make our nation a safer place. It seems logical, but unfortunately I don`t think it`s something that we have in the current administration.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about this portrayal of him in the last few weeks as an antiwar alternative to President Bush.

JOHN HLINKO: I think a lot of what we saw, and it could just be from the draft movement`s perspective, is we saw someone who seemed to have a more sensible approach to Iraq. He described the operation as, `elective surgery`, in other words, this is something that, yeah, perhaps there were reasons but when you had Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, there were more pressing priorities.

I can`t speak specifically for the general, I can just tell what you we saw from the draft movement`s perspective, but it certainly seemed to be a much more enlightened and sensible approach than what we were seeing in the current administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response.

STEVE RENDALL: Well, I`m here as sort of like the correcting-the-record guy, I`m not here to debate what somebody from what Wesley Clark`s campaign. But to point out at a time, back in January, when millions of people leading up to one of the biggest demonstrations worldwide that`s ever happened, Clark said on CNN `I probably wouldn`t have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we`re here at this point, then I think that the President is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations.`

A little later, this was in early February, remember the huge demonstrations around the world, and I believe that was on February 12th, Clark said on CNN `the credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has the weapons, and so you know we`re going to go ahead and do this, and the rest of the world has got to get with us. The U.N. has got to come in and belly up to the bar on this.`

These are hardly the words, when millions of people just week later would be in the streets demonstrating against the war, these are hardly the words of an antiwar candidate.

AMY GOODMAN: John Hlinko?

JOHN HLINKO: Well, that doesn`t seem inconsistent at all to me. What the general was saying, again I can speak only from the draft movement`s perspective, that in al lot of what we saw was a pretty reasoned approach. The idea that well, no, this is not something that made sense to do.

But once you`re there, once you`re on the verge of battle or engaged in battle, then becomes a different matter. Once you have no choice and the President has already moved ahead, then at a certain point the question doesn`t become `are we going to be engaged or not`. We already are engaged, what do you do at that point to minimize the damage.

AMY GOODMAN: Zoltan Grossman is on the phone as well. He`s professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. You followed extensively the bombing of Yugoslavia. Your response to the announcement of the 10th democrat to enter the presidential race, General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the bombing.

ZOLTAN GROSSMAN: Well, I think General Clark rightly criticized President Bush for being unprepared for the postwar for the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

But if you look at his record in the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, you see four different aspects of the general being completely unprepared for the event that spiraled out of control once NATO bombs started dropping on Serbia.

There are actually four different aspects to this. One is, there was a civil war prior to the NATO bombing in which about 2,000 civilians died. The C.I.A. had actually warned General Clark that NATO bombing could provoke even worse ethnic cleansing by the government of Slobodan Milosevic.

And that`s exactly what happened -- massive ethnic cleansing that took place after the bombing started, not before the bombing started. And afterwards General Clark had to admit that this was entirely predictable but defended the war as coercive diplomacy.

Second aspect was alienation of Serbian civilians who hated Slobodan Milosevic, much like many Iraqis who oppose both Saddam and U.S. occupation. Many Serbs in cities that voted against Milosevic were bombed, not just bombed by NATO but with cluster bombs with trains, with depleted uranium munitions, civilian infrastructure, trains, buses, TV stations, hospitals, power plants, water plants were all hit.

The third aspect is what happened after the NATO troops entered Kosovo, after the Russians put pressure on Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo. There immediately started a reverse ethnic cleansing by the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian ethnic militia, against any non-Albanians, Serbs, Romas, gypsies, Jews, who were expelled from Kosovo, many of them killed - not to the same numerical level as what had happened to them. But I think in the end, Kosovo was actually more ethnically pure, and I think this is the goal of all of these ethnic militias in Bosnia or Kosovo, the purity of their territory.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Zoltan Grossman, speaking to us from Eau Claire, Wisconsin University there. John Hlinko, I`ll just get your response of the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign.

JOHN HLINKO: I can just tell what you we saw from our perspective. War is a terrible thing, no two ways about it. I guess when we looked at what had happened in Kosovo, we looked what was going on now in the two wars of the Bush administration. Slobodan Milosevic right now is on trial. The ethnic cleansing has for all practical purposes has ceased, as much as possible.

You can try to compare that to what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is any policy perfect, no. of course not. But when you say, which one had a better outcome, and who would you trust more if such a war is forced upon us in the future, we look at General Clark, and the choice was clear as to what the more capable commander-in-chief would be.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, John Hlinko, we have just reached Robert Fisk in Baghdad. We want to thank you for being with us, cofounder of the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign. Zoltan Grossman, thanks for being with us from the University of Wisconsin.

We`re going not to the break right now, which we usually do, but because we have Robert Fisk on his satellite phone at this moment. we want to go directly to him.

Robert Fisk, we`ll get your comment at the beginning, hearing that Wesley Clark is now running for president as the antiwar warrior. Then we`d like to get your observations of what`s happening right now on the ground in Iraq.

ROBERT FISK: I have to say first of all about General Clark, that I was on the ground in Serbia in Kosovo when he ran the war there. He didn`t seem to be very antiwar at the time. I had as one of my tasks to go out over and over again to look at the civilian casualties of that have war.

At one point NATO bombed the hospital in which Yugoslav soldiers, against the rules of war, were hiding along with the patients and almost all the patients were killed.

This was the war, remember, where the first attack was made on a radio station, the Serb Radio and Television building. Since then we`ve had attacks twice on the Al Jazeera television station. First of all in Afghanistan in 2001, then killing their chief correspondent, and again in Baghdad, this year.

This was a general who I remember bombed series of bridges, in one of which an aircraft bombed the train and after, he`d seen the train and had come to a stop, the pilot bombed the bridge again.

I saw one occasion when a plane came in, bombed a bridge over a river in Serbia proper, as we like to call it, and after about 12 minutes when rescuers arrived, a bridge too narrow even for tanks, bombed the rescuers.

I remember General Clark telling us that more than 100 Yugoslav tanks had been destroyed in the weeks of that war. And when the war came to an end, we discovered number of Yugoslav tanks destroyed were 11. 100 indeed.

So this was not a man, frankly whom, if I were an American, would vote for, but not being an American, I don`t have to.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk speaking to us in Iraq. And then you have the time that the British general, Michael Jackson, Wesley Clark had told him to get his British troops to the airport before the Russians got there, so it wouldn`t be perceived that the Russians were liberating and General Michael Jackson responded to him, `I`m not going to start World War III`.

ROBERT FISK: Yes. Jackson did indeed say that. One member of Jackson`s staff confirmed to me that the quote is true. I think the words--I think the verb is wrong, but World War III is correct.

It was a very strange atmosphere to that war, over and over again when NATO has bombed the target, it was clearly illegitimate. Or when they killed large number of civilians, they were either silenced, or they lied.

We had the very famous occasion, infamous occasion when American aircraft bombed an Albanian refugee convoy in Kosovo, claimed later or NATO claimed later it was probably Serb aircraft. It was only when we got there and found the NATO markings on the bomb, that NATO fessed up admitted that they had done it themselves and had been confused.

When I went to the scene months later and tracked down the survivors, it turned out that although they were confused, NATO aircraft had gone on bombing that convoy for 35 minutes even though there were civilians there, because mixed in among them, most cruelly, this was an act of Milosevic`s regime, were military vehicles as well.

We shouldn`t be romantic about the Serb military or the Serb security police they were killers and murderers. But NATO, in its war against the Serbs, committed a number of acts which I think are very close to war crimes, and General Clark was the commander. So this is a man who wants to be the president, democratic president of the United States of America. Well I don`t interest myself in what he thinks about the last war in Iraq. I watched it first hand and had my own opinions. But I sure as hell know what it was like to be under the bombs of his war in Serbia.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to ask you about General Powell`s visit, Secretary of State General Powell`s visit to Baghdad. But we still have Steve Rendall in the studio who is leaving in one minute as we listen to this description of what`s happening in Iraq. We were wrapping up the discussion of Wesley Clark whether or not he was for this war. Your final comments, Steve?

STEVE RENDALL: I`d like to just say that politicians would like to be all things to all people. Our problem is not with Wesley Clark`s campaign, it`s with the media`s portrayal of him.

One point I`d like to say, your listeners should go look at the daily column that Clark wrote for the Times of London, right around the time of the fall of Baghdad. He wrote there, for instance, the day after the fall of Baghdad he wrote "Liberation is at hand. Liberation, the powerful bomb that justifies painful sacrifices, erases lingering doubts and reinforces bold actions." He also wrote that George W. Bush and prime minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt".

This is the day after, this is on April 10, the day after the so called fall of Baghdad. He was cheering this event, and it`s very hard for us to see reporters casting him as antiwar candidate.

AMY GOODMAN: Steve Rendall, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Robert Fisk, nothing succeeds like success. It sounds like people who didn`t know how it was going to turn out wanted to make sure they were on the side of the winning forces, which makes me think of the piece you wrote where you said that Thomas Friedman was in Iraq, he asked a U.S. soldier, he was looking for something, for directions and they said to him, `that`s on the enemy side of the bridge`.

ROBERT FISK: You have to be reality wise, Amy. Here in Baghdad, American troops are attacked I`m told up to 60 times a day, just in Baghdad, and they`re losing an average of a man a day. If you`re an American soldier, you`re 20 years old, you didn`t think it was going to work out like this, you were conned into believing the war was a great thing for democracy and liberation, and you`re being shot every day, you regard an Iraqi as a potential enemy. So of course the guy said `enemy side of the bridge`. That`s a very telltale remark, because it shows how terribly wrong everything has gone for military, for the U.S. administration, our own prime minister Tony Blair.

But individually you find American soldiers here who can be very sympathetic and who realize it`s gone wrong. I talked to U.S. troops in the streets of Baghdad, and they do not want to vote for the Republican party, if they ever did before in the next election in the United States.

You also find soldiers who behaving very badly with lack of fire discipline, lack of discipline of every kind. I was town in Fallujah a few weeks ago where American soldiers saw a man sitting in a chair in the street said, `you get up and I`ll break your fucking neck`. Well, that is not the kind of language that is going to win hearts and minds. When I complained to his sergeant about the way he had spoken, he made excuses and said `well the guy got up at 3:00 this morning, he`s been shot at every day, he`s been here since March or whatever`. So I said well, you know, I understand all that. One has to have sympathy as a human being for another human being in a predicament. But it was your country that wanted to invade this place. You were desperate to come in, you didn`t want the arms inspectors, you haven`t found any weapons of mass destruction. Now you`re here, and you don`t like it.

And this is the big problem over and over again, I`m finding soldiers who say, `yes, we believe we can help the Iraqi people`. Then you find many, many officers below that who say, `I want to go home`. And this is an Army that is tired, low morale, low fire discipline, low discipline all around. The number of shootings of civilians is skyrocketing. I`ve just been talking to you about today. If you go into the hospitals here in the afternoon..

JUAN GONZALEZ: Robert, I want to ask you about the issue of low morale. Those of us who remember the Vietnam War understand that the major turning point was when those soldiers there realized that they were not engaged in a war of liberation, they gradually began to build up resistance and enormous morale problems with soldiers going AWOL and shooting their own officers at times. Are you seeing any signs that this demoralization among the troops may possibly even lead to resistance within the ranks of the soldiers?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I`d say we haven`t reached Vietnam stage yet. No one is fragging their own officers. There was one incident, I think it was in Kuwait, where a grenade was thrown by a U.S. soldier at other U.S. soldiers.

We haven`t reached the Vietnam point, and after all America was losing thousands of troops in Vietnam. And it`s only in the hundreds in Iraq since the war began. As I say when I talk to ordinary soldiers, there`s a great difference, for example, between units that were here during the war and haven`t left and actually fought in the war, lost quite a few people for them anyway, and are still here and feel that they have been lied to because they were supposed to have gone home after the victorious, wonderful war in which they were liberating people.

And the newly arrived troops, for example the 101st Airborne up in Mosul whose morale seems to be a lot higher, although frankly, their attitude to house raids, breaking down doors and screaming at people doesn`t seem to be much better than say, the Third Infantry division, who clearly don`t have the same morale problems. But we`re not at the Vietnam stage, and we shouldn`t pretend that we are. What we should compare it to is Lebanon in 1982, when it was six months before anyone threw a stone at an American soldier. But now within six months they killed scores of American soldiers here in Iraq. And what has happened is that there is a real guerilla army working increasingly sophisticated. I was very interested to note, when I met the U.S. general who was in charge of prisoners of war at the former prison outside Baghdad three days ago, she actually referred to a resistance force. She didn`t talk about terrorists. not once did it cross her lips.

What you find is that the real soldiers, I`m talking about non-reservists, full time U.S. soldiers, they know they`re involved in a guerilla war. They know it`s not working. They know the place is falling to bits. What they tell me is when it gets up to the generals on your side of the lake, they don`t want to admit it.

I have colleague of mine on the State Department Press Corps, which arrived with Colin Powell, I was present at Powell`s very strange press conference here. And my colleague told me they still don`t realize in Washington how bad it is. That`s the impression I get on the ground here.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was it strange? We only have 30 seconds, your phone probably has less, but I just want to get to Fallujah, to the U.S. soldiers who apparently came a day before, who killed something like eight Iraqi policeman and a Jordanian guard this month.

ROBERT FISK: I went down there. What obviously happened is the policemen, once they were on under fire screamed `we are the police, we`re the police`, and the shooting went on. They then fled into the Jordanian Army hospital compound, and the Americans then opened fire at the compound for up to 30 minutes, setting several of the buildings on fire. This is a hospital run by America`s Jordanian allies. These were soldiers without fire discipline.

You told me for the first time, I haven`t learned this here, that they just arrived in Iraq. Well clearly have a lot to learn, don`t they.

AMY GOODMAN: The report is American soldiers just arrived in Fallujah, the day before. But finally, the Powell press conference.

ROBERT FISK: The extraordinary thing was, Powell presented everything as upbeat. He suggested that journalists were concentrating on negative things. He wasn`t trying, he said, to persuade us how we should tell our stories or what our agenda should be, but we should concentrate on all the goodwill towards the occupation forces or the C.P.A., the coalition.

Ambassador Bremer, the pro-counsel here, the American pro-counsel stepped forward to say there were more than 1,600,000 barrels of oil produced the previous day. That doesn`t change the fact that Iraqi is still importing oil, even though it`s one of the richest oil countries in the world. But you simply couldn`t get Powell in any question to talk about the fact that so many things are going wrong. You wondered had he brought the fantasy from Washington, or was he being fed the fantasy here in Baghdad by Bremer and his staff at the C.P.A.

A fact is that months after the war was officially supposed to be over, there were hundreds of people dying in this country every week by violence. I`m just watching two Apache helicopters as I speak to you now just flying over the buildings in front of me, on `antiterrorist patrol`, as it`s called. There is a real guerilla war underway here, and when you are on the ground you realize it`s moving out of control. Washington is still trying to present this as a success story and it`s not, anymore than Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank I very much, Robert Fisk for being with us. Robert Fisk is correspondent for the Independent newspaper based in Beirut right now in Iraq. returning as he has so many times.

Thank you for joining us. You are listening to Democracy Now!

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Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Headlines for September 18, 2003
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Thursday, September 18th, 2003
General Wesley Clark: The Anti War Warrior?
( edit )
General Wesley Clark -- the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and the man who led the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 -- announced his candidacy for president yesterday, bringing to 10 the number of Democratic candidates. Clark is the first four-star general in history to run for President as a Democrat. [Includes transcript]



Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Robert Fisk: “What is Happening Is An Absolute Slaughter Every Night of Iraqi People”
( edit )
As the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq approaches 300, we go to Baghdad to hear from London Independent reporter Robert Fisk on the virtually unreported number of Iraqis killed in feuds, looting, revenge killings and raids by U.S. troops.



Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Ashcroft Declassifies Number of Records Sought Under Patriot Act After Calling Critics “Hysterical”
( edit )
In a telephone call to the American Library Association, Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to disclose previously classified information on how many requests law enforcement officials have made for records from libraries and businesses under the Patriot Act. He did not indicate how soon information would be released.



Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Gov`t Sets Up Massive Watchlist of “Known and Suspected Terrorists”
( edit )
The watch list of over 100,000 names will be widely accessible to law enforcement agents, border police, airport workers as well as some private industries. It will contain the names of both international and domestic “suspects.”



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