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washingtonpost.com
Texan on the Thames: President Bush Treated Royally


By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2003; Page C01


LONDON, Nov. 19 -- On a day when some vulgar Britons stomped on a cutout likeness of him and burned its dismembered head, President Bush compared his experience here to that of stuntman David Blaine, who suspended himself above the River Thames for six weeks without food.

"It was pointed out to me that the last noted American to visit London stayed in a glass box dangling over the Thames," Bush said Wednesday in the hall where another head of state, Charles I, was beheaded in 1649. "A few might have been happy to provide similar arrangements for me." When the laughter ended, he added: "I thank Her Majesty the Queen for interceding."

Queen Elizabeth did indeed provide the president and his entourage with superior accommodations at Buckingham Palace. But although the royal hospitality gave Bush a comfortable distance from the madding crowd, it introduced a new problem: Bush, a man with little patience for ceremony, had to endure the very pinnacle of pomp and pageantry -- a state visit to the United Kingdom.

Wednesday night`s state dinner alone presented numerous quandaries for Bush. As did the 168 other guests, Bush had seven different 50-year-old crystal wine glasses before him -- and he doesn`t even drink. Then there were his three forks, three knives and two spoons, not counting the two itty-bitty spoons for the mustard and the salt (or is it sugar?). How was a man whose own official menus feature comfort food such as brisket and cornbread to know that a menu of "Delice de Fletan Roti aux Herbes" is nothing more dangerous than halibut?

In two interviews with British journalists before the trip, Bush joked that he rented his tails for the white-tie dinner. In one interview, he recalled with fondness his pub-crawling days in London before he gave up the drink.

But here he was, seated next to the Queen of England, amid Corinthian columns and gold-enriched pilasters, before a red velvet throne used for the coronation of King Edward VII. The Yeomen of the Guard, with their red robes and long spears, stood at attention. The Puligny-Montrachet `96 was flowing. And the president was having trouble with the toasts.

The queen gave her toast, noting that, unlike presidents, she was not term-limited. The president smiled, Prince Charles did not. When the queen finished, the president raised his glass, but Her Majesty did not return the gesture, instead waiting for the American national anthem to begin. Hearing the music, Bush put down his glass and placed his hand on his heart, then took it off, then put it on again. "The Star-Spangled Banner" over, he clinked glasses with the queen, then turned to clink glasses with Princess Anne, who was already sipping from hers.

The awkwardness continued after Bush`s toast, when he again picked up his glass to clink with the queen, who stood motionless, waiting for her own national anthem. Bush put his glass back down and, as the orchestra played "God Save the Queen," winked at somebody in the audience. Finally, the anthem finished, president and queen consummated their clinks.

Back at the White House, the ceremony-averse president has had only four state dinners, preferring to invite jeans-wearing sovereigns to his ranch for a tour in his pickup truck. But denim was expressly forbidden in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace Wednesday morning, where seemingly all the queen`s horses and all the queen`s men assembled in full regalia for Bush`s review. There was a 41-gun salute from a World War I cannon battery, an inspection of the Grenadier Guards, the Queen`s Household Cavalry and the King`s Troop mounted royal artillery company.

Then it was inside to inspect works by Rembrandt, Zuccarelli and Brugghen, and off to Whitehall Palace, where Bush delivered a speech under the watchful eyes of fleshy Rubens cherubs staring down at him from the ceiling. But Bush had limits to how much folderol he could stand. Eschewing the side of the room with the velvet throne canopy and royal Dieu et Mon Droit crest with the unicorn and lion, he opted for the other side of the hall, with a White House-generated backdrop that said "United Kingdom" dozens of times.

Extra security measures prevented other customs from being observed, such as a procession on the Mall with the queen. Security also kept Bush from more modern observances, such as his plan to place a wreath Wednesday at a memorial for victims of Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the protests were small and mostly weak, although a bullhorn-wielding man disrupted Bush`s formal welcome at the palace Wednesday morning by singing, "If you think Bush is a moron, yell `retard.` "

As it happens, the only known threat to Bush`s security came from the palace itself. The Daily Mirror reported Wednesday that an undercover reporter for the British tabloid, using phony references, worked as a palace footman for two months. The interloper "was still in the palace last night as Mr. Bush arrived," the Mirror reported. "He watched unchallenged as the president and his wife Laura were met by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in the palace garden at around 8 p.m. . . . Had he been a terrorist hell bent on assassinating the royals or Mr. Bush, nothing could have stopped him." The interloper, who had been scheduled to serve breakfast to top White House officials Wednesday morning, gave himself up before the state dinner.

And despite all the elaborate rituals and customs the president had to observe, the palace made certain accommodations to suit his tastes. The orchestra played "King Cotton," a Sousa march, and "My Heart Will Go On," the theme song from the movie "Titanic." And, just before the guests arrived, the palace butlers placed bottles of Coca-Cola alongside decanters of the queen`s port.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Members of the new Iraqi army guard a checkpoint in Nasiriyah. Sixty percent of the soldiers in the new Iraqi army served in the old Iraqi army.
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Scrambles to Rebuild Iraqi Army
Decision to Disband Force Seen by Some as a Major Postwar Mistake

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2003; Page A01


Seven months after the fall of Baghdad, a single Iraqi army battalion exists to reinforce overstretched U.S.-led occupation troops. As casualties climb and large foreign armies remain on the sidelines, U.S. authorities are racing to recruit a credible Iraqi force to bolster the authority of a future Baghdad government.

Before the war, President Bush approved a plan that would have put several hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers on the U.S. payroll and kept them available to provide security, repair roads and prepare for unforeseen postwar tasks. But that project was stopped abruptly in late May by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, who ordered the demobilization of Iraq`s entire army, including largely apolitical conscripts.

Bremer reversed himself a month later, but by then the occupation had lost not merely time and momentum but also credibility among former soldiers and their families, an important segment of Iraq`s population.

Now, the Americans are trying to recover -- including rehiring some of the same soldiers they demobilized -- at what one top Defense Department official called "warp speed." And while the administration`s handling of the Iraqi army has been widely viewed as a fundamental decision of the occupation, a number of U.S. officials and analysts are saying it was fundamentally wrong.

"This was a mistake, to dissolve the army and the police," said Ayad Alawi, head of the security committee of the Iraqi Governing Council. "We absolutely not only lost time. The vacuum allowed our enemies to regroup and to infiltrate the country."

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a vocal opponent of the war, calls the move the Bush administration`s "worst mistake" in postwar Iraq.

Supporters of the decision counter that the army posed a potential threat to a fledgling Iraqi governing authority and U.S. forces -- and that it was so second-rate and so infiltrated with Baath Party figures that it could not be salvaged.

"The Iraqi army was a pretty sick organization in a lot of respects," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who played a role in the demobilization decision. "There was quite a bit of cruelty -- abuse by the senior officers of the junior people -- and there was quite a bit of corruption."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said the army effectively disbanded itself in the face of the U.S.-led invasion. "They just disbanded and went home," he told NBC television recently. "There were conscripts, and they weren`t paid very well, and they just left."

A former intelligence officer who recently returned from Iraq said more could have been done.

"How about announcing that we wanted them to reassemble? They could go out on the border. They could do static security. They could help against drive-by shootings," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You`ve got one battalion after seven months of occupation. You could have several divisions by now."

The question of what to do with the Iraqi army arose before the war. In January, two months before the battle in Iraq began, Bush assigned planning for the war and its aftermath to the Pentagon. Rumsfeld recruited Jay M. Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, to pull together competing administration plans and to govern Baghdad after the presumed overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Garner and his top aides, including retired Gens. Jared Bates and Ron Adams, proposed paying 300,000 to 400,000 members of the Iraqi regular army at war`s end. Also, Iraqi soldiers who surrendered to advancing U.S. forces would be formed into work units. Private contractors were recruited to help make that happen.

Military planners inside the government assumed, based on prewar intelligence, that some Iraqi units would switch sides during the war, while others would remain in their garrisons awaiting instructions from the U.S. postwar leadership. U.S. aircraft had been dropping leaflets for weeks calling on Iraqi forces to prepare for a brighter future by laying down their arms.

Looking ahead, members of the State Department`s Future of Iraq working group on defense had developed a similar plan, concluding that former soldiers could provide valuable intelligence while performing reconnaissance and security missions.

Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, offered a practical solution to Bush administration war planners. Arguing that the question did not demand an all-or-nothing approach, he favored purging the army of its most disreputable leaders and distilling the remaining forces into usable units. He also said soldiers should be paid, to minimize the chances that they would fight the occupation forces.

Garner consulted with Rumsfeld several times on the issue and briefed national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a knowledgeable official said. He won approval for his plans at a Feb. 28 White House meeting with Bush and principal national security aides.

On March 11, the Pentagon announced its intention to pay several hundred thousand members of the regular Iraqi army. The elite and politicized Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, loyal to Hussein, would not be included.

The designs were in place as Garner arrived in Baghdad on April 21, a dozen days after Hussein`s government fell, but even supporters concede pieces were missing. Details did not extend much beyond paying soldiers to keep out of trouble, several officials said. Paying them was "step one of something that was probably not very well fleshed out," said Bates, Garner`s chief of staff.

"The first idea was paying them just to get them to stand by, with more to follow. Just to keep everything calm in the first days and weeks of the occupation. It was not `Okay, we`re going to organize 10 or 15 battalions,` " Bates recalled. "The decision on standing up the new Iraqi army had not been made."

As Garner was developing the policy amid the unexpected lawlessness in Baghdad, the White House replaced him with Bremer, a terrorism specialist with high-level State Department experience. He arrived May 12 with a mandate from Bush to take firm control of the U.S. occupation.

By that time, the prewar intelligence had proved inaccurate. No Iraqi units changed sides, and the number of surrendering forces was small. Iraqis had sacked Army garrisons, and entire divisions had melted away.

Bremer soon declared in internal meetings that no Iraqi units would be reconstituted and that soldiers would not be paid. On May 23, he issued a formal order that dismissed the army and canceled pensions. The order covered many categories of Iraqis, among them war widows and disabled veterans who were senior party members, defined as any officers at the rank of colonel or above.

U.S. officials in Baghdad, including Garner and Bates, were startled.

"It came with formidable force and decisiveness, as the president`s policy. Nobody was supposed to challenge it and that was that," said one U.S. official in Baghdad at the time. Another said: "There was never a discussion that I was involved in where we would disband the military. It caught me completely by surprise."

The second official, recalling violent crime in the Iraqi capital, said Iraqi commanders had offered to gather soldiers, who would be paid for their work. The Americans could easily have pulled together "a couple of thousand military police in the Baghdad region," he said. "Many of the soldiers had taken their weapons home. Some had armored vehicles."

The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

"This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed," Slocombe said. "The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn`t do this."

Slocombe recalled discussing the issue with Wolfowitz on May 8 and with Feith several times, including on May 22, the night before Bremer issued the formal order. Trying to put the army back together at that point, he said, "would`ve been a practical disaster."

Beyond the practical difficulties of outfitting destroyed military bases, Slocombe said, an announcement that Hussein`s Sunni Muslim-dominated army would retain considerable power would have produced "huge problems immediately" among the country`s Shiite majority. Some at the Pentagon feared that the army could become an organized opposition to the U.S. military.

Senior U.S. military officers in the Persian Gulf region said they had advised Slocombe that the dissolution of the army -- recognized as an institution more loyal to Iraq than to Hussein -- would harm U.S. strategy. Demobilization was "a very basic mistake," said W. Patrick Lang, a retired chief analyst for Middle Eastern affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"In fact, most of the Iraqi army officers were nationalists, and they don`t want to see the country break up," Lang said. He said carefully screened Iraqi units under U.S. control "would do much better against this enemy than we can."

Beyond the operational questions, opponents were disturbed that Garner`s plans to pay soldiers to win their support had been abandoned. One former U.S. official in Baghdad put it this way: "Magnanimity in victory is an American trait. I`m surprised we blew it off this time."

An estimated 2,000 Iraqi soldiers protested the policy outside the U.S. compound in Baghdad on June 18, some of them hurling rocks, others carrying signs that said "Please Keep Your Promises." U.S. military police fired on the crowd, killing two.

On June 25, five weeks after Bremer`s order, U.S. authorities reversed course again. Bremer ordered payments to about 370,000 conscripts and more than 250,000 officers, said a Pentagon official, who put the bill at $250 million for one year. The U.S. administration hopes to phase out the payments by mid-2004.

Hurrying to put together security forces -- including army, police and civil defense units -- the U.S. occupation has been recruiting former Iraqi soldiers. Slocombe said 60 percent of the enlisted soldiers in the new Iraqi army served in the old Iraqi army and all but two officers have prior service.

One battalion, with slightly fewer than 700 soldiers, is ready for duty. A second battalion is being trained. The administration hopes to put 35,000 Iraqis in army uniform, on a speeded-up timetable, as well as tens of thousands of police officers and civil defense paramilitaries.

"In terms of the actual reality," Wolfowitz said, "the thing is to get these guys hired back into an organization that we can actually use. That`s what we`re trying to do at warp speed -- but with careful vetting of the people we`re bringing on."

Staff writers Bradley Graham and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Cycling to 2004


By Robert J. Samuelson

Thursday, November 20, 2003; Page A41


The U.S. economy seems to have just voted for George Bush. Almost all recent indicators favor the president`s reelection: economic growth, rising at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter; jobs, increasing 286,000 since August; productivity, advancing at roughly a 5 percent rate since late 2001. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for the forecasting firm Global Insight, has one of those equations that predict election results based on the economy and various political factors (incumbency, party affiliation). By the latest reports, Bush wins 56.6 percent of the 2004 vote.

Behravesh admits that these equations aren`t infallible and that even if the economy stays strong, other factors -- Iraq, terrorism -- could doom Bush. But the business cycle is moving in his direction. It`s psychology as much as numbers. Behravesh talks regularly with corporate executives who, until recently, "had retreated into their shells. They stopped capital spending. They stopped hiring. They became extremely risk-averse. Now, they`re coming out of their shells." Capital spending (aka business investment) and hiring have both revived. In the third quarter, business equipment and software spending rose at a 15 percent annual rate.

Government policy and the enormous resilience of the U.S. economy explain the turnaround. Critics can gripe about Bush`s big budget deficits and tax cuts, but they`ve obviously juiced the economy. The tax cuts alone provided $61 billion in fiscal 2003 and will add another $149 billion in fiscal 2004, estimates the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Next year`s tax refunds are expected to rise 27 percent, says USA Today. (Cynics may suspect Bush of trying to buy the election.) Similarly, the Federal Reserve`s low interest rate policy encouraged massive mortgage refinancings -- boosting consumers` purchasing power -- and aided the economy in countless ways.

Consider car dealers. They borrow to buy vehicles from manufacturers. Typically, interest costs amount to $70 to $120 a car, says economist Paul Taylor of the National Automobile Dealers Association. In 2003 these costs are $11; last year they were less.

But this business cycle has also followed its own peculiar logic, deeply rooted in popular psychology and the nature of American capitalism -- which often seemed at war with each other.

On the one hand, stubborn public optimism kept the economy from collapsing. Generally, Americans refused to submit to gloom even though gloom was amply justified by the stock market bubble, Sept. 11, rising unemployment and corporate scandals. But when mortgage rates dropped, millions of families bought homes. When automakers offered tempting "incentives," millions bought new vehicles. Sales of 17.1 million in 2001 were the industry`s second-best year (after 2000). The fourth- and fifth-best years were 2002 (16.8 million units) and 2003 (16.3 million, estimated).

Since World War II, weak consumer spending has typically worsened recessions. Here, consumers were the economy`s prop. Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser to President Clinton, argues that the 1990s boom left a strong underlying optimism that to some extent defied the onslaught of bad news. If so, Bush -- ironically -- may be the chief beneficiary.

By contrast, corporate America retrenched relentlessly. Once the boom imploded, companies discovered they had too much debt and too much capacity. Price competition in industries with surplus capacity -- car manufacturers, retailers and telecommunications firms, among others -- further squeezed profits. Driven to restore profits, companies closed factories, warehouses and offices. The weakest firms vanished. Layoffs spread.

The explosion in productivity -- meaning that fewer people accomplish the same or more work -- is commonly said to reflect the triumph of new technologies. This has surely occurred. The 5 percent productivity gains are double the increases of the late 1990s and triple those of the 1970s and `80s. But what may really account for this surge is a Darwinian process of elimination, as efficient firms displaced the less efficient. From 1999 to 2002, Wal-Mart expanded from 3,993 to 4,694 locations, says Stores magazine; meanwhile, Sears cut back from 2,960 to 2,192 and Kmart (in bankruptcy) from 2,172 to 1,831.

This business cycle pitted the irrational optimism of the U.S. consumer against the rational ruthlessness of the U.S. corporation. Would companies stop firing before consumers stopped buying, or vice versa? The good news -- for most Americans and probably Bush -- is that the issue seems to have been settled. Corporate Darwinism is subsiding, because it`s succeeding. Costs have dropped. Sales have concentrated at stronger firms. In 2003, pretax corporate profits will rise about 22 percent from 2002, to $957 billion, estimates Nigel Gault of Global Insight. It will be the first time that 1997`s record profits ($834 billion, pretax) have been exceeded.

What we have is a cyclical recovery. The same thing is occurring in Europe and Japan. Of course, long-term problems remain: American consumers are heavily indebted; the big U.S. budget and current account deficits will someday have to be curbed; the mortgage refinancing boom is ebbing; worldwide surplus capacity is still widespread; and China represents a huge unknown. Any of these problems might undermine economic and -- Bush`s greatest vulnerability -- job growth. Could the recovery falter in a few months or, possibly, just after next year`s election? Well, yes.

But for now, economists are raising their forecasts for 2004, and assuming they`re right, the politics are plain. Democrats` economic criticisms will resonate less, and Bush`s bragging will resonate more. At the White House, they may not be dancing over the economic news, but they must be smiling. Unlike his father, Bush may have beaten the business cycle.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons

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NEW VIDEO FEATURES SADDAM, PRINCE CHARLES, PARIS HILTON

Together for the First Time, CIA Says


The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed today that a new video has surfaced featuring Saddam Hussein, Prince Charles and Paris Hilton.

The video, seized during a raid late Tuesday night on a house in Tikrit, has confounded many in the intelligence agency who are attempting to determine what the former Iraqi strongman was doing with the scandal-shrouded Prince of Wales and the party-mad New York hotel heiress.

CIA spokesman Charles Harbaugh acknowledged today that the video, while potentially a treasure-trove of information, "may raise more questions than it answers."

While it was hoped that the video might help pinpoint the location of the Iraqi strongman, the fact that Ms. Hilton is in the video complicates the search since, in Mr. Harbaugh`s words, "she has been everywhere."

In addition, Prince Charles` appearance seems likely to thicken, rather than diffuse, the storm clouds of controversy lingering over the heir to the British throne.

"Ordinarily, being seen in a video with Paris Hilton would be a helpful thing for Prince Charles," royal-watcher Anthony Winslow-Trent said today. "But the fact that Saddam Hussein is in there, too, tends to make the whole matter a bit murky."

Meanwhile, in Britain, President Bush defended the decision to go to war in Iraq, saying that Vice-President Dick Cheney had found new intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to obesity.

The President`s visit has generally gone well, except for a brief stumble on Wednesday when Mr. Bush accidentally addressed Camilla Parker Bowles as "Prince Philip."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-na-poll20nov…
THE TIMES POLL


Doubts Create a Voter Split Over Bush
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
http://images.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2003-11/10297442.pdf
November 20, 2003

WASHINGTON — While most Americans view President Bush as a strong leader and say they like him personally, doubts about his performance and agenda have produced an electorate divided almost in half on whether he deserves a second term, a Times Poll has found.

The survey, coming less than one year before the 2004 election, shows that Americans remain split over Bush along many of the same lines of gender, race and cultural values that separated the country during his razor-thin victory over Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

When the poll asked registered voters whether Bush deserved reelection, 42% said yes and 46% said no, a difference within the survey`s margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. When asked whether they were more likely to support Bush or the Democratic nominee in 2004, voters again lined up in almost equal camps, with the president trailing, 38% to 42%, also within the margin of error.

The survey suggests two distinct tensions in public opinion could shape Bush`s political fate.

On one axis, voters appear to be weighing generally positive assessments of his personal characteristics — from likability and leadership to honesty — against a more ambivalent view of his policies and their impact on the country.

Along another axis, the poll indicates voters are balancing the first flickers of optimism about the economy against growing anxiety over America`s progress in Iraq.

Together, these forces have left Bush in an unstable, though not precarious, position for 2004. His showing against a generic Democrat for 2004 is the same as that of his father, President George H. W. Bush, when the Times asked that question in January 1992. Ten months later, Bill Clinton ousted the elder Bush from the White House.

This Bush, the poll shows, enjoys advantages his father lacked, particularly overwhelming support from his base, traditionally a key to presidential reelection. Eighty-six percent of Republicans say they approve of Bush`s performance.

But the poll also shows he has alienated a clear majority of Democrats and raised enough doubts among independents to return the country close to the 50-50 divide that marked the 2000 election.

The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, surveyed 1,345 adults from Nov. 15 through 18; included in the survey were 1,144 registered voters. The margin of error for both groups is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll finds that Americans have established nuanced judgments of Bush`s strengths and weaknesses.

On several personal qualities, Bush scores well. Just over three-fifths of Americans consider him a strong leader; just under three-fifths say they consider him honest and trustworthy.

Those qualities clearly remain central to Bush`s appeal for his supporters. "He is impressive; he is a man of integrity," said Christa Snyder, a housewife in Loveland, Ohio, who responded to the poll.

Likewise, Lyle Young, a retired mechanical engineer from Waldport, Ore., emphasized integrity when explaining why he intended to support Bush in 2004. "It seems to me he doesn`t play up to the polls. He does what he thinks is best," Young said.

Two-thirds of Americans said they find Bush likable — including just under three-fifths of Democrats.

But on other personal measures, Bush doesn`t fare as well. Asked if Bush understands the problems of people like them, 51% said no and 42% said yes.

Similarly, 51% of Americans said they believed Bush cared mostly about the rich, while 7% said the middle class was his principal concern. (Thirty-seven percent believed he was equally concerned about all income groups.) And the percentage of Americans who believe Bush has a clear idea of where he wants to lead the country fell from 56% in a Times Poll in March to 45% today.

"If he has a plan, it does not include the poor people," said Morene Westfall, an independent from Pearcy, Ark. "We need schools, we need highways, we need all kinds of things. He does not have a plan for that."

The verdict on Bush`s performance and policies is equally divided. In contrast to the 68% of respondents who said they liked Bush personally, 46% said they liked his policies; 48% said they disliked those policies.

On the poll`s broadest measures of performance, Bush received mixed results. Half of those responding said the country was moving on the wrong track — a level of discontent that usually signals trouble for the party holding the White House.

Bush`s overall approval rating, though, was healthier: 54% of those polled said they approved of his performance as president; 41% disapproved. That`s the lowest positive rating he has received in a Times Poll during his presidency, but slightly higher than in recent surveys by other news organizations.

Yet, following the pattern of responses on Bush`s personal qualities, the poll shows Americans reaching disparate conclusions about his performance from issue to issue.

Bush continues to be buoyed by high marks from the public for his response to the threat of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks. Of those polled, 59% (including 42% of Democrats and 63% of independents) said they approved of how he is handling the war on terrorism. Likewise, 57% said they believed Bush`s policies have made the country more secure.

"On homeland security, I think he got right on it after 9/11 and pushed it through," said Young, the retired mechanical engineer. "And, yes, we`ve got a [federal budget] deficit for it. But [the terrorists] are not bombing over here, are they?"

But 45% of Americans gave Bush positive marks for his handling of the war in Iraq, while 51% disapproved.

Thirty percent said he is doing a good job handling health-care problems in the U.S.

And although the poll found signs of economic optimism that could help Bush — 35% believed the economy will look better in six months, compared to 15% who thought it would turn down — the verdict on his economic management remained negative.

Forty-four percent approved of his management of the economy, while 50% disapproved. Forty-three percent of Americans said they believed Bush`s policies had weakened the economy, while 24% thought his approach had strengthened it.

Amid these conflicting, ambiguous judgments, the poll found attitudes toward Bush`s reelection developing in ways reminiscent of the 2000 election.

Overall, voters said they prefer a Democrat over Bush in 2004 by 42% to 38%, with 6% saying their choice depended on the eventual Democratic nominee and 12% saying they didn`t know. The poll did not match Bush against a specific Democratic candidate, almost all of whom lack widespread name recognition across the nation.

But just as in 2000, there`s a sharp gender gap in early attitudes about 2004. Men prefer Bush over a Democrat by 8 percentage points, while women prefer a Democrat by 16 points. Whites give Bush an 11-point lead; minorities prefer a Democrat by 41 percentage points. Among white men, Bush`s lead swells to 51% to 28%, while white women split evenly.

Many of the most important divisions in the electorate, as in 2000, follow lines of lifestyle and values rather than economic interests.

Single voters give the Democrat a 20-point edge, while married voters narrowly prefer Bush.

Church attendance, a critical predictor of support in 2000, remains telling: Bush leads by 13 points among voters who attend church at least once a week, while trailing narrowly among those who attend monthly, and running 15 points behind among those who rarely or never attend.

Urban voters prefer the Democrat by 2 to 1, while rural voters back Bush by more than 2 to 1.

Voters who think abortion should be illegal, gay marriage banned and gun control laws loosened all strongly prefer Bush; those on the opposite side of those issues bend even more sharply toward the Democrats.

"I kind of believe like [Bush] does about abortion, and about gun control," said Lonnie McDonald of Dumas, Texas. "He`s just more my kind of person than any of the people that are trying to unseat him.... To me, they`re too darn liberal."

By contrast, the poll showed that voters no longer fit as reliably into the old economic pattern that saw Republicans strongest among the affluent and Democrats relying primarily on those below the median income.

Democrats lead Bush both among Americans earning less than $40,000 annually and families earning $60,000 to $100,000, the poll found. Bush leads strongly among families clustered right around the median income — those earning between $40,000 to just under $60,000 — and those who earn more than $100,000 a year.

In another measure of the evolving social structure of U.S. politics, those who drink wine with dinner prefer a Democrat over Bush for 2004 by 7 percentage points. Those who drink beer back Bush over a Democrat by 23 percentage points.

As for the Democratic race itself, the poll suggested it remains largely unfocused for voters outside the early states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where the candidates are concentrating their time and advertising. Half of voters who said they intend to vote in the Democratic primaries indicated they were following the race closely.

Those voters expressed markedly different preferences than those Democrats who aren`t yet tuned in. Among those following the race closely, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean leads with 20%, followed by retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark with 14% and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry with 10%.

Among those not closely following the race, the leaders are Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore`s 2000 running mate, with 13% and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the former House Democratic leader, with 10%; Dean draws 4%.

Times staff writer Susannah Rosenblatt contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq20no…
THE WORLD


U.S. Drops `Smart` Bombs in Baghdad Show of Force
Military destroys vacant buildings that it says were used by insurgents. It offers a $10-million reward for the second- most-wanted Iraqi.
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

November 20, 2003

BAGHDAD — American military leaders continued their get-tough campaign Wednesday by dropping some of their most powerful bombs on vacant buildings in Baghdad and offering a $10-million reward for the capture of former Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, the top remaining Iraqi fugitive after Saddam Hussein.

The campaign, which began this week and is described by U.S. military officials as a "show of force," follows a series of attacks in which insurgents have frustrated coalition soldiers by mounting attacks and then melting into the landscape.

The bombings and raids follow meetings in Washington last week in which coalition civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III was called in to discuss ways to restore security in Iraq and speed up reconstruction efforts.

In Washington, senior Army officials said Wednesday that heavily armored vehicles that field commanders say could significantly increase protection for troops probably won`t be ready for deployment to Iraq until mid-2005.

Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told the Senate Armed Services Committee that all troops in Iraq should have improved body armor by the end of the year and that the Army is reequipping helicopters with new missile alert systems.

But he said it could take until the summer of 2005 for the Army to have enough "up-armored" Humvees capable of resisting 7.62 millimeter bullets. He said the Army is examining options for putting armor on existing vehicles to speed up the process.

The announcement Wednesday of the $10-million reward for Ibrahim`s capture, dead or alive, marked the latest twist in the coalition`s efforts to seize the initiative in a war that is both a struggle over public perception and an armed confrontation.

Coalition officials described Ibrahim as a "mastermind" of recent attacks but acknowledged that they had little information on whether he was consulting with Hussein or even which attacks he had directed. The focus on the former Iraqi general comes as apparently emboldened insurgents have doubled their daily attacks to about 30, even as officials added 101 detainees Wednesday to the 7,400 they held previously.

The coalition has begun using massive and expensive "smart" bombs, ground-strafing AC-130 gunships and heavily armed Apache helicopters for the first time since the springtime march to Baghdad. The display of force is intended to intimidate insurgents, U.S. officials said, but it also has frightened some civilians and surprised some military analysts.

"If your intent is only to blow up the building, then why don`t you send in some engineers and blow up the buildings?" said Dana Robert Dillon, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-area think tank.

One reason, he said, may be to remind Iraqis "of the massive strength of American military."

"They might be dropping those bombs purely for public perception reasons."

In Baghdad and elsewhere, U.S. aircraft and other artillery pounded four sites that military officials said had been used for anti-coalition strikes.

"I heard several explosions. The house started shaking," Hani Ali, a 35-year-old squatter living in a stucco former police outpost along the Euphrates River in Baghdad, said of a barrage that echoed throughout his neighborhood Tuesday night.

"It was very intense," said Mahmoud Jabbar Ali, 30, who was guarding a building for the National Monarchy Party down the street. "The Americans were shelling. They also attacked them with aircraft."

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition`s deputy chief of operations, said the use of $1-million satellite-guided bombs in urban areas was justified.

"I would say that if I were an Iraqi citizen living in Baghdad and I knew that there were terrorists living across the street and I knew that those terrorists were making bombs, shooting Iraqi forces, shooting Iraqi civilians, shooting coalition forces, I would feel less secure," Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad. "If I saw that house go away, if I saw those anti-coalition forces being taken out, taken to jail, I`d feel more secure."

In each case, he said, the buildings were attacked after "strong intelligence" suggested that they had been used to harbor attackers who fired mortars, constructed roadside bombs or allowed former Iraqi regime officials a place to monitor coalition troops and plan attacks.

In Washington, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the use of large bombs, saying commanders on the ground "are very sensitive to the balance between appropriate military action and not trying to turn the average Iraqi against the coalition. They work this very hard. They have taken great steps to minimize collateral damage."

Meanwhile, coalition troops conducted 1,588 patrols and 19 raids during a 24-hour period. Some Iraqis said the stepped-up efforts were necessary.

"Nobody`s really scared, because they`ve been through a long war. Most people are against the opposition to the Americans. Many, many innocent people have died" because of attacks by insurgents, said 22-year-old Nasir Ismal, an AK-47-toting private guard protecting a building in Baghdad`s Jaderia neighborhood.

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-contract…
THE WORLD



U.S. Promises Fast, Transparent Process for Iraq Contracts
Officials say 25 projects worth $18.7 billion will be awarded by February. Data on work proposals and bidders will be available online.
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

November 20, 2003

WASHINGTON — Under pressure to be faster and fairer, U.S. officials Wednesday unveiled a new system for reconstruction work in Iraq that would award up to $18.7 billion in 25 contracts over the next 10 weeks.

Speaking outside Washington to a conference of potential bidders, retired Rear Adm. David Nash, head of the office overseeing the contracts process, said U.S. authorities would answer critics` charges of cronyism by offering regular public disclosures and would hire six private project managers to help ensure efficiency in the rebuilding effort.

Despite the breakneck pace of awarding contracts, "we will have maximum transparency from beginning to end," Nash said, as he formally kicked off the new program.

With so much money at stake, the sold-out session at a northern Virginia hotel had the fevered atmosphere of a land rush. About 1,300 representatives of more than 650 U.S. and foreign companies attended the daylong session. Among them were executives of large companies and individual entrepreneurs, some of them Iraqi Americans.

The contracts are for building schools, police and fire stations, power and water facilities and other infrastructure, projects that may take four years to complete, Nash said. Last year, the federal foreign assistance budget — excluding special aid for Iraq — totaled $17 billion.

Nash`s Program Management Office has been scrambling to respond to White House pressure to show quick progress in Iraq. Congress has been prodding the office to assure the fairness of the process, while Iraqis and America`s allies in the war have been demanding that their companies be allowed to share in the lucrative rebuilding.

Nash said contractors would be chosen in two steps. Companies would first submit information showing their qualifications, and contracting officers would recommend three of the bidders, from which the winner would be picked.

To answer complaints about the lack of openness, information about the contract proposals and bidders would be posted on the office`s Web site.

Yet contractors and procurement specialists at the session said the system would still strongly favor large, experienced government contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel Group, which won large contracts last spring. Thousands of smaller and less established companies that are clamoring for a piece of the business could be at a disadvantage.

Jessica Abrahams, a government contracts specialist at the Washington law firm of Powell, Goldstein, said that the two-step process "seemed to support the idea of open and transparent competition. But ultimately, given everything I`m hearing … I`m not sure that everyone out there will have an equal opportunity to compete."

Nash said the authorities expected that only companies from the U.S., coalition countries and Iraq would be allowed to bid for prime contracts. However, he acknowledged that top administration officials, despite months of studying the issue, had not made a final decision.

It was unclear, he acknowledged, whether they would exclude from prime contract bids, for example, a French or German company with a wholly-owned subsidiary based in the United States. Once contracts are awarded, however, foreign companies will be able to bid for subcontracts, Nash noted.

There has even been uncertainty about the contracting organization`s name. Authorities had recently changed it from the Program Management Office to the Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Office. But Nash said the name had been changed back, because the other version was deemed too unwieldy.

The new approach drew criticism from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), a critic of early contracts awarded by the administration.

Waxman said in a statement that he was pleased that "the administration is attempting to inject competition into the process" but that he had "serious reservations" about the new contracting strategy. Dividing the effort among 24 umbrella contracts would "give a company a monopoly over a large sector" of the rebuilding, Waxman said. The "cost plus incentive" contracts that would be used in the process "are the most susceptible to inflated costs."

Security in Iraq was a subject of intense interest at the meeting.

U.S. and British troops were providing much of the security for private companies after the first reconstruction contracts were awarded last spring. But increasingly, the winning bidders have had to rely on their own security forces, driving costs up sharply and increasing worries about accidental and "friendly fire" injuries.

Nash said that coalition authorities were trying to keep tabs on contractors` security forces, so that the armed men would not be mistaken for insurgents and fired on accidentally. Close communication was needed, he said, "so we don`t have an unfortunate accident."

Capt. Sam Dickson, an Air Force reservist working on security in Iraq, told contractors that they should provide their security forces with more than just pistols, and he warned them to be cautious in hiring Iraqis.

"Not everyone you hire may be on your side," Dickson said.

*

Times staff writer Edmund Sanders contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY

President Reaps the Wages of Arrogance
By Matthew Miller
Matthew Miller writes a syndicated column.

November 20, 2003

He waits until now to go to London to make a speech.

President Bush`s visit to "fortress London" to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair and speak to the British public on why war against Iraq was justified comes a year too late.

Today, Bush will be met by thousands of protesters in the streets; the wittiest of them plan to topple a statue of Bush in effigy in Trafalgar Square. The spectacle of such public disgust from citizens of our chief ally in the Iraq war is depressing. The need for security in London that rivals what Bush would need if he visited Baghdad is stunning.

Yet imagine if Bush had gone to European capitals last fall, rather than this fall. Imagine if he and Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had made a fraction of the effort that Bush`s father`s team made in 1991, when members shuttled to Europe constantly in advance of Desert Storm to assemble the bona fide coalition that made that conflict a triumph of diplomacy as well as military might.

I raise these points as a "Tony Blair Democrat" — one who supported taking Saddam Hussein out but who couldn`t understand why Bush didn`t go the last mile to pull together the coalition that was always plainly necessary for the post-Hussein environment. Indeed, Bush didn`t even go the first mile.

Yes, he made that speech in September 2002 to the United Nations. But the key blind spot in Bush`s global outlook was that public opinion in Europe mattered — not for toppling Hussein but for rebuilding Iraq in ways that wouldn`t have left the effort an exclusive U.S. responsibility and easily cast as an imperialist adventure.

We`ll never know whether strenuous efforts to persuade the European public would have worked. We only know they weren`t tried.

Why didn`t Bush fly to Paris and make a major public address on the reasons the U.S. viewed military force as necessary, in order that the resolutions of the U.N. and the free world were not mocked and exposed as hollow? Why didn`t he say he understood that Europe`s bloody history and newly integrating political culture gave the Continent a different view of the legitimacy of force as a way to solve international problems? And that although he empathized with that history, he nonetheless felt that his duty to protect the United States impelled him to view the risk of inaction as greater than the risk of acting?

Why didn`t Powell and Rumsfeld fan out to Berlin and London and Istanbul with similar messages — generating coverage and debate in which American officials would have been seen respectfully making the case to allies whose views were deemed relevant and worthy of persuasion? Why instead did Rumsfeld simply dismiss "Old Europe" in macho fashion and assert (wrongly, in the long run) that we could go it alone?

Why, in a word, didn`t Bush lead?

When I raise such "what ifs" with die-hard Bushies, they say quietly that it might have been a good idea. But in the next breath they add that it might not have changed the result — that France and Germany in particular would still have stonewalled.

Even so, the difference in the way Bush and the U.S. were viewed would have been great. Bush wisely spoke in his 2000 campaign about the need for humility in foreign policy. Going to war after such a high-profile European tour aimed explicitly at persuading Europeans would have left Bush in a very different position. He could have said, justly, that we had made every effort to have you to join us — and though we disagreed, we respected you enough to try to persuade you and to make sure you understood why we felt it so important to act.

My suspicion is that Bush and his team would have perceived this course as a sign of weakness. In truth it would have been a sign of strength.

Now, as we see on our TV screens this week, Bush is reaping the wages of arrogance. That deposing a brutal tyrant like Hussein could be cause for global revulsion against the U.S. will surely go down as one of the most profound diplomatic failures in history.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Die USA liebt(leider)Cowboys.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcwilli…
COMMENTARY


Plain Old Cowboy`s Winning Ways
By James McWilliams
James E. McWilliams is an assistant professor of history at Texas State University-San Marcos and a contributing writer at Texas Observer.

November 20, 2003

Call the man dim, call him corrupt, but call him president until 2008. George W. Bush certainly has vulnerabilities, but he`s been smart enough to model himself on a man who pioneered the fine art of political image-making: Andrew Jackson. Democrats, as a result, are doomed.

In 1819, as the dust settled from his bloodthirsty and blatantly unconstitutional attack on the Seminole Indians, Jackson, then one of the nation`s most revered generals, found himself on the congressional hot seat. Didn`t he know, John Quincy Adams lectured with great pomposity, that his usurpation of military authority would have been better explained on the high ground of national and international law — laws codified for the ages by the like of Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattell?

Jackson, a man of dubious literacy, paused for a moment and then remarked for the ages, "Damn Grotius! Damn Pufendorf! Damn Vattell!"

It was a strategic retort, designed to show that he was not the kind of man who would let the law get in the way of a war. He was a man who acted first and thought later. Here was a man for America.

Sure enough, Adams notwithstanding, the United States couldn`t have identified more with Jackson`s instinctual, as opposed to reasoned, justification for slaughtering the Seminoles — and it helped ensure his election.

We haven`t matured much. There`s something eerily Jacksonian about our current commander in chief, a man who also favors instinct over principle.

Bush embroiled the country in a war based on a series of false assumptions. His genius has been to recognize that, politically, it doesn`t matter. Saddam Hussein has been ousted and if anyone is still nagging us about those pesky weapons of mass destruction, it`s just sour grapes.

Of course, thoughtful (if elaborate) justifications against the war have been articulated. But we don`t necessarily want our leaders to be thoughtful. Bush has had the finest education a man can buy or inherit, but the only time he mentions it is when he brags that he was a C student at Yale. He`s more likely to be photographed holding an ax than a book.

He plays up his Texas heritage (we`re all kinda slow in Texas) at the expense of his Connecticut connections (people there, of course, are smarter). Hacking away at mesquite grub on his Crawford ranchette, he convincingly puts forth the image of a rugged individualist, a doer, a true frontiersman, a man who`s never quoted a law in his life but has made laws to suit his base urges, a plowman rather than a professor.

Who knows why we lap it up, but lap it up we do. Those of us so bold as to call ourselves intellectuals read the journals, write the books, construct the carefully detailed and, yes, objective arguments against the war in Iraq. We know, deep in our principled hearts, that we are right in both a rational and moral sense. But so what?

The nation has no patience for long-winded justifications. In fact, it is suspicious of them. Until someone figures out that the house of cards the administration has built must be crumbled by a yeoman with a sledgehammer and not a smarty-pants with a book, King George`s manifest destiny will be to reign as the favored son of King Andrew.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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CIA will examine raw data on Iraq Probe into quality of intelligence expanded
By John Diamond
USA TODAY


WASHINGTON -- CIA Director George Tenet has ordered investigators to substantially widen their internal probe of Iraq intelligence to consider whether the agency missed telltale signs that Iraq had gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion last March.

The probe, which has been conducted by a four-member team of former senior CIA analysts since early this year, was broadened this week. It will now extend into 20 volumes of raw intelligence reports, such as electronic intercepts, spy satellite photos and reports from human sources. Until now, the team had limited its work to a far smaller volume of finished intelligence reports and assessments.

In a probe that parallels investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees, the team is examining the quality of prewar intelligence that said Saddam Hussein`s regime had chemical and biological weapons and a resurgent nuclear weapons program. The alleged weapons were the Bush administration`s key stated reason for invading Iraq, but U.S. searchers have failed to find such weapons there since U.S. forces entered Iraq.

The expanded probe was disclosed by two intelligence officials who asked not be named, and was confirmed by Richard Kerr, former CIA deputy director and head of the four-member team. Kerr said in a telephone interview Wednesday, ``It`s important to figure out, from an intelligence point of view, if we didn`t do it well, how could we have done better.``

Although Kerr would like to wait until chief U.S. weapons searcher David Kay finishes his work in Iraq sometime next spring or summer, the team has already concluded that no matter how long Kay`s teams look, they are unlikely to turn up the vast arsenal U.S. intelligence said was in Iraq before the war. And meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the House and Senate investigations, which are expected to be sharply critical of the CIA and could issue findings long before Kay wraps up his work.

Tenet, who ordered the expanded investigation last week, also wants Kerr`s team to see what he regards as an enormous volume of solid information the CIA assembled over the past decade indicating that Iraq had illegal weapons.

The two intelligence officials said a key aim is to look for raw prewar reports indicating that Iraq may have, as it claimed, dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs. The concern is that CIA analysts discounted or overlooked those reports because of an overriding assumption that Saddam was secretly hoarding an arsenal of banned weapons.

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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Gene Lyons: `The `New American Century` ends prematurely`
Posted on Thursday, November 20 @ 10:11:54 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Gene Lyons

It`s beginning to look as if the "New American Century" could be over as early as June 2004. That`s when the Bush administration plans to turn Iraq`s sovereignty back to as many of its hand-picked Governing Council as manage to survive until that heralded day. See, for those inclined to follow President Bush`s practice of averting his eyes from the bad news out of Baghdad, it`s crucial to understand that it`s not just American soldiers who are targets of the brutal Iraqi insurgency. It`s anybody and everybody who looks like an accomplice of the U.S. occupation.

So does the impending turnover mean that Bush has decided to heed the kind of advice given to our last Texas president by Vermont Sen. George Aiken back in 1966? "President Johnson," Aiken said famously "should declare victory in Vietnam and get out." Probably not. Nevertheless, it`s apt to happen anyway. There`s a growing likelihood that Bush`s intentions--particularly given White House political advisor Karl Rove`s wish to see him returned to office in 2004--will end up having little to do with the ultimate outcome in Iraq. Events appear to be spiralling out of control.



According to a top secret CIA report leaked to the Philadelphia Inquirer last week, "growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding the U.S.-led coalition can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents." The report`s bleak tone, the newspaper emphasized, was shared by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. official in charge of the occupation, who "unexpectedly" returned to Washington in a seeming effort to get Bush`s attention. The CIA findings were leaked, wrote the Inquirer`s John S. Landay, because "senior policymakers" have become frustrated by their inability "to provide Bush with more somber analyses of the situation in Iraq than the optimistic views presented by Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and other hard-liners."

For "senior policymakers," it`s probably fair to read Bremer himself and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Given Bush`s stated disinclination to read newspapers or watch TV news, preferring instead to rely upon the honeyed words of his trusted advisors, the leakers real hope may have been to get the Machiavellian Mr. Rove`s attention.

Last week`s new "Iraqification" plan--the U.S. would retain military control--made many suspect that real idea is to prop up a make-believe government in Iraq, call it a democracy, proclaim victory during the Republican National Convention, then pray that sheer chaos and open civil war among the country`s three main ethnic groups--Sunni, Shiites and Kurds--don`t break out before election day 2004.

Even as the U.S. command`s Hollywood-sounding "Operation Iron Hammer" began bombing empty warehouses and shooting up villages deemed loyal to Saddam Hussein, Bush felt compelled to deny that the U.S. planned to "cut and run." Doubters came from almost every point on the political compass: "My greatest fear is that this administration, having made all the wrong choices, is going to conclude they have to bring Johnny and Jane home by the next election in order to survive," Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware told the New York Times.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona was customarily blunt: "To announce withdrawals when the number of attacks and deaths of American military are going up is not reasonable or logical," he said. "If the American military can`t do it, then certainly half-trained Iraqis cannot."

McCain`s fellow Vietnam vet and Republican colleage from Nebraska, Sen. Chuck Hagel, sounded equally dubious in the Washington Post: "We so underestimated and underplanned and underthought about a post-Saddam Iraq that we`ve been woefully unprepared...Now we have a security problem. We have a reality problem. And we have a governance problem....And time is not on our side."

Even William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and cheerleader for the clique of neoconservative chickenhawks who conceived this visionary scheme and sold it to a feckless, easily bamboozled president, sounded uncertain for once: "Too many people for my comfort are looking for an exit strategy," he admitted, "and this administration is making too many noises that sound like an exit strategy. But I believe that, at the end of the day, Bush is not pursuing and will not pursue an exit strategy."

Dream on, pal. "The Project for a New American Century," Kristol and his fellow visionaries called their plan. (The late Gov. George Wallace might have called them "pointy-headed intellectuals.") Turning Iraq into a kind of Arab Switzerland was supposed to be only the first step in creating a benign American empire encompassing most of the Middle East and Southern Asia.

But the problem isn`t simply that they oversold Iraq`s non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and underestimated its resentment of foreign invaders. They also misunderstood their own country. Americans, see, will fight fiercely in what they see as self-defense. But they have no real appetite for empire.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=13848&mode=nest…

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Thursday, November 20, 2003
War News for November 20, 2003 draft

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Car bomb at pro-US political office in Kirkuk kills five, wounds 30.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb near Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Insurgents attack convoy near Samarra. Ten insurgents killed in firefight.

Bring `em on: Iraqi policeman killed in attack on Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Pro-US politician assassinated in Basra.

Bring `em on: Three US soldiers wounded in roadside bomb attack in central Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Car bomb attack on home of US-appointed councilman in Ramadi kills two.

Bring `em on: Roadside bomb wounds guard near Basra. "Four or five incendiary devices are detonated near coalition forces in the Basra area every week, but yesterday`s incident was the first for two weeks in which anyone was wounded."





# posted by yankeedoodle : 11:15 AM

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Robert Fisk: Under U.S. control, press freedom falls short in Iraq

By Robert Fisk

November 20, 2003: BAGHDAD - Freedom of the press is beginning to smell a little rotten in the new Iraq. A couple of weeks ago, the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel received a phone call from one of U.S. Proconsul Paul Bremer`s flunkies at the presidential palace compound. The station had to answer a series of questions in 24 hours, its reporters were told.

"They insisted that if we didn`t go to them, they`d come for us," one of Al-Jazeera`s reporters told The Independent. And come they did - to drive the station`s employees to the palace, where they were handed a sheet of paper asking if they had been given advance notice of "terrorist attacks" or had paid "terrorists" for information.

Al-Jazeera - along with its rival channel, Al-Arabiya - had already been denounced by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, currently led by the convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, and punished for allegedly provocative programs by being banned from the council`s press conferences for two weeks.

Then the same council - obviously on Bremer`s instructions - listed a series of "do`s" and "don`ts" for all the media, ranging from a prohibition on inciting violence all the way to a ban on reporting on the rebirth of the Baath Party or speeches by Saddam. As columnist Hassan Fattah remarked about the council`s punishment of the two Arab channels, "the council and the interim council will be silent for two weeks, throughout much of the Arab world, including Iraq itself. The resistance and the terrorists, meanwhile, will still be able to say what they want. What a perfect opportunity to pour their footage onto the airwaves and capture the hearts and minds of Iraqis desperate for stability and some leadership."

Things are no better in the American-run television and radio stations in Baghdad. The 357 journalists working from the Bremer palace grounds have twice gone on strike for more pay and have complained of censorship. According to one of the reporters, they were told by John Sandrock - head of the private American company SAIC, which runs the television station - that "either you accept what we offer or you resign; there are plenty of candidates for your jobs."

Needless to say, the television "news" is a miserable affair that often fails to make any mention of the growing violence and anti-American attacks in Iraq that every foreign journalist - and most Iraqi newspapers - report.

When a bomb blew up in part of a mosque in Fallujah last month, for example - killing at least three men - local residents claimed the building had been hit by a rocket from an American jet. The Americans denied this. But no mention of the incident was made on the American-controlled media in Baghdad. Asked for an explanation, newsreader Fadl Hatta Al-Timini replied: "I don`t know the answer to that - I`m here to read the news that`s brought to me from the Convention Palace (the American headquarters that also houses the station`s offices), that`s all."

As Patrice Claude of Le Monde noted in his paper, all the American-run media refer to the authorities as "the forces of liberation," even though the foreign press - including the New York Times - refer to them as "occupation forces." The United States has supposedly already spent just over 21 million pounds sterling on Iraq`s new audiovisual output, but the Iraqi staff say they`ve not seen the money. When Le Monde`s man in Baghdad asked Sandrock for an explanation, he declined to respond.

On the surface, of course, Bremer`s publicity men can boast of a thriving new free press - at least 106 new newspapers in Baghdad alone, many of them sponsored by political parties or by men who want to become politicians. Some have called for a jihad against the Americans - and have been visited by American officers asking why. Others have carried blatantly untruthful stories about the occupation army, claiming that U.S. soldiers have been involved in distributing pornographic pictures to schoolgirls or taking Iraqi women to the bedrooms of the Palestine Hotel. One problem is that many journalists for the Iraqi papers are either converts from the old regime or new writers who have no journalistic training in fairness or fact checking.

The most professionally produced paper - and the stress must be on the word "produced" - is Az-Zaman, which, roughly translated, means The Age and is run by Saad Al-Bazaz, the former Iraqi diplomat who fell out with Saddam and published his paper from London through the long last years of Baathist rule. Bazaz was himself the former editor of Saddam`s Al-Jumhouriya newspaper, and one of his former colleagues on the old Baathist rag, Nada Shawqat, is now the editorial supervisor for Az-Zaman in Baghdad. "We have a circulation of 50,000 in Baghdad, another 15,000 in Basra, each edition carrying 12 pages of foreign and Arab news and eight of local news," she says. "It`s good to feel like a real journalist at last."

But all news decisions are made in Az-Zaman`s London offices, and the paper never refers to the "occupation," only to the "coalition," America`s own favored expression for the armies of the United States and its allies in Iraq. Bazaz still lives in London, where Az-Zaman was printed for years in exile. Two other papers - the Iraqi National Congress` Al-Moutamar and the Kurdish Al-Ittihad - have also come out of foreign exile to print in Baghdad.

Shawqat stayed at her post at the Saddamite Al Jumouriyah until the very last day of the war, April 9, when its offices were looted and burned and when its archives - which included the paper`s own reports of the 1983 meeting between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam - were destroyed.

Shawqat said that under Saddam, she had some freedom to write - until his two sons, Udai and Qusai, took an interest in the press. "Then we started getting instructions every day from the minister of information, telling us what to write and what not to write - it just got worse and worse over the last 13 years."

No one suggests that journalism under the Americans bears any relation to those days. But Iraqi writers feel that the Bremer "code of conduct" - forbidding "intemperate (sic) speech that could incite violence" - is an example of "selective democracy," similar in spirit if not in effect to the censorship under Saddam.

According to journalist Khadhim Achrash, "the decision doesn`t fit with the U.S. announcement that they came here to liberate Iraq and set up a democratic system."

Many of the new papers carry a menu of gossip and entertainment and stories of the old regime. One of the first, terrible reports of Saddam`s atrocities told of his treatment of soldiers accused of cowardice in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Two chilling photographs - taken by Saddam`s own military intelligence officers - showed a firing party executing a line of soldiers and an officer giving the coup de grace to a still-living man as he lay on the ground.

Many Iraqi journalists believe the semi-legal "press syndicate" taking shape in Baghdad is still Baathist at root although others say it could be used to enact a new press law that would take censorship out of Bremer`s hands. Jalal Al-Mashta, the editor of An-Nahda, blames much of the problem on the speed of transition.

"The long-muzzled Iraqi press was nonprofessional and tightly controlled, then suddenly it became free," he said.

For now, at least.

Robert Fisk`s reports on the Middle East and world affairs can be found at www.independent.co.uk. Many of his articles are archived at www.robert-fisk.com

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The dubious link between Iraq and al Qaeda
http://www.thehill.com/marshall/111903.aspx
To great fanfare last week The Weekly Standard published “Case Closed,” an article that claimed to provide definitive proof of collaboration between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Fred Barnes, the Standard’s executive editor, was near apoplectic with praise. “There [were] repeated meetings that went on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government. It’s clear that there was a strong connection.”

“You cannot call that report ‘speculative,’” he challenged fellow panelist Juan Williams. “It is filled with details. It doesn’t speculate at all. … These are hard facts, and I’d like to see you refute any one of them.”

So is Barnes, the Standard, and the article’s author Stephen F. Hayes right? Is it really Case Closed?

Hardly.

At best, it’s more like case restated.

And the case is actually pretty weak.

Allow me to explain.

After Sept. 11, the neocons at the Pentagon were frustrated with the consensus assessment within the intelligence community that there were no substantial ties or cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. So they set up their own intelligence analysis shop under Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, that had access to all the raw intelligence streaming through the U.S. government’s various intelligence agencies — the CIA, the DIA, the works.

When the whole manipulated intelligence story started to blow up this summer, Feith coyly told a gaggle of reporters at the Pentagon that his group had come up “some interesting observations about the linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

But the real analysts didn’t share his enthusiasm.

In August 2002, on instructions from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the folks from Feith’s shop went out to Langley to brief the CIA on what they’d come up with. And the professional analysts at CIA (and subsequently those in other branches of the intelligence community) didn’t think their work passed the laugh-test.

Feith’s shop’s findings turned out to a classic example of what Intel professionals call “cherry-picking” — culling through the sheaves of raw data to find the bits and pieces that confirm the desired conclusion while ignoring everything that tends to refute it and all the while turning a credulous eye to unreliable sources.

“If anybody doubted that there was such a thing as intelligence with a [predetermined] purpose, this is a case study,” says retired CIA intelligence analyst Larry Johnson. “Just because someone says something and it gets ‘classified’ stamped on it, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”

Now, let’s go back and ask: What’s the background of this memo on which the Standard piece is based? As the article reports, the memo, dated Oct. 27, was sent from Feith to Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) The article further says it was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration.

In other words, the committee asked Feith to back up his outlandish claims about connections between Saddam and al Qaeda and he forwarded them a copy of his shop’s dossier — pretty much the same one the professional analysts in the intelligence community decided more than a year ago was barely worth the paper it was written on.

Of course, Feith and company argue that it’s the analysts at the CIA and the DIA who don’t know what they’re talking about, that they too are just doing their own version of cherry-picking.

But at this point we have a track record. Feith’s name has all but become synonymous with finding what you want to find through the looking glass of raw intelligence. He said he had hard evidence about Iraqi WMD too, and that evidence hasn’t exactly panned out, has it?

Other material in the dossier either appears unsubstantiated or — like the claims regarding Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta — has already been discredited. Peter Bergen, the al Qaeda expert who interviewed bin Laden in March 1997 and presumably has a pretty good handle on the security precautions bin Laden was keeping at the time, doesn’t buy the idea that the terror chief would have shown up for a meet-and-greet in Baghdad less than a year later, as the Feith dossier alleges.

“It’s just not plausible,” Bergen writes on his website, “that bin Laden would have slipped into Iraq unnoticed in January 1998. He was already a very wanted man and a widely recognized person.”

I could run through all the allegations in the Feith memo, but the bottom line is that on this question, the case really is closed. Just not in the way the Standard article suggests.

What we have here are some allegations that the analysts who had access to all the information either didn’t find credible or didn’t find meaningful. The leak of this dossier now is just an effort by the usual suspects at the Pentagon to push the already-discredited al Qaeda link because so much else that they’ve been involved with has gone so badly.


Josh Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each Wednesday. Email: [e-mail]

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Published on Thursday, November 20, 2003 by Reuters
Over 100,000 March Against Bush in London
by Janet McBride and Kate Holton

LONDON - Around 100,000 protesters marched through London and tore down a mock statue of visiting President Bush Thursday, many of them convinced his policies were to blame for anti-British bombs in Turkey.


TOPPLED
An effigy of President George W. Bush is pulled down in Trafalgar Square, London, as part of a large protest over his state visit November 20, 2003. The protestors were mimicking the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad by U.S. troops during the war on Iraq.


Demonstrators of all ages beat drums and blew whistles along a 3-mile route that took them past parliament and the end of Downing Street, where crowds paused to jeer toward Prime Minister Tony Blair`s office.

When they reached Trafalgar Square, protesters felled a 20-foot papier mache statue of Bush in a parody of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein when U.S. troops swept into Baghdad. In its top pocket was a puppet with a grinning Blair face.

"Bush and Blair said they were fighting a war against terror to make the world a safer place for people," said Paul Burrows, 38, a university lecturer. "They haven`t done that. Going out bombing people just gives them more reason to hate the West."

Hours earlier, suspected Islamist suicide car bombers had attacked the British consulate and the offices of Britain`s HSBC bank in Istanbul, killing at least 27 and wounding hundreds.

At a joint news conference, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared their determination to wipe out terrorism wherever it occurred.

That stance won little backing among demonstrators angry at the U.S.-led war in Iraq and suspicious of American motives.

"The terrorist attacks are exactly the sort of thing we predicted would happen if they went into Iraq. They`ve proved us right," said Martin Smith, 64, a documentary film maker from Bristol, England.

Alex Pummell, 28, said invading Iraq had greatly increased the risk of attack "and not just for us but for any country supporting British countries and organizations."

KIDS SKIP SCHOOL

Organizers estimated as many as 300,000 people had taken part in the demonstration. A police crowd control officer on the ground put the turn-out at above 120,000, while Scotland Yard`s press office said there were 70,000 protesters.

A group of London schoolchildren skipped class to join the demonstration. "We don`t want Bush here," said Dyana, 14.

She and her friends marched shoulder to shoulder with pensioners, office workers and students banging drums and blowing whistles. Some protesters wore Bush masks, others were dressed as Ronald McDonald.

Philip Miller, 79, said he had flown over from the United States especially for the march: "I was in World War II and I`ve seen some of the horrors of war, the distress of the civilian population, the hunger and homes destroyed."

Touring Buckingham Palace`s collection of jeweled Faberge eggs, first lady Laura Bush told reporters she had barely noticed the opposition to her husband`s state visit to Britain.

"We`ve seen plenty of American flags. We`ve seen plenty of people waving to us -- many, many more people in fact than protesters," she said.

All police leave was canceled for the duration of Bush`s visit and over 5,000 officers were on the streets. Police said they had made 46 arrests since Bush`s arrival Tuesday evening, all for minor offenses such as drunkenness.

Additional reporting by Meg Clothier, Sabina Zawadzki, Nicola Scevola and Bernhard Warner

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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Crimes Against Nature
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/feature…

Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America`s environment for more than thirty years

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

George W. Bush will go down in history as America`s worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America`s environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country`s air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation`s most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they`re comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.

When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.

The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush`s chief of staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.

Bush`s Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.

This onslaught is being coordinated through the White House Office of Management and Budget -- or, more precisely, OMB`s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, under the direction of John Graham, the engine-room mechanic of the Bush stealth strategy. Graham`s specialty is promoting changes in scientific and economic assumptions that underlie government regulations -- such as recalculating cost-benefit analyses to favor polluters. Before coming to the White House, Graham was the founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, where he received funding from America`s champion corporate polluters: Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, Alcoa, Exxon, General Electric and General Motors.

Under the White House`s guidance, the very agencies entrusted to protect Americans from polluters are laboring to destroy environmental laws. Or they`ve simply stopped enforcing them. Penalties imposed for environmental violations have plummeted under Bush. The EPA has proposed eliminating 270 enforcement staffers, which would drop staff levels to the lowest level ever. Inspections of polluting businesses have dipped fifteen percent. Criminal cases referred for federal prosecution have dropped forty percent. The EPA measures its success by the amount of pollution reduced or prevented as a result of its own actions. Last year, the EPA`s two most senior career enforcement officials resigned after decades of service. They cited the administration`s refusal to carry out environmental laws.

The White House has masked its attacks with euphemisms that would have embarrassed George Orwell. George W. Bush`s "Healthy Forests" initiative promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests. His "Clear Skies" program, which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allows more emissions. The administration uses misleading code words such as streamlining or reforming instead of weakening, and thinning instead of logging.

In a March 2003 memo to Republican leadership, pollster Frank Luntz frankly outlined the White House strategy on energy and the environment: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," he wrote, cautioning that the public views Republicans as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun and profit." Luntz warned, "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." He recommended that Republicans don the sheep`s clothing of environmental rhetoric while dismantling environmental laws.

I prosecute polluters on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance. As George W. Bush began his presidency, I was involved in litigation against the factory-pork industry, which is a large source of air and water pollution in America. Corporate pork factories cannot produce more efficiently than traditional family farmers without violating several federal environmental statutes. Industrial farms illegally dump millions of tons of untreated fecal and toxic waste onto land and into the air and water. Factory farms have contaminated hundreds of miles of waterways, put tens of thousands of family farmers and fishermen out of work, killed billions of fish, sickened consumers and subjected millions of farm animals to unspeakable cruelty.

On behalf of several farm groups and fishermen, we sued Smithfield Foods and won a decision that suggested that almost all of American factory farms were violating the Clean Water Act. The Clinton EPA had also brought its own parallel suits addressing chronic air and water violations by hog factories. But almost immediately after taking office, the Bush administration ordered the EPA to halt its Clean Air Act investigations of animal factories and weaken the water rules to allow them to continue polluting indefinitely.

Several of my other national cases were similarly derailed. Eleven years ago, I sued the EPA to stop massive fish kills at power plants. Using antiquated technology, power plants often suck up the entire fresh water volume of large rivers, killing obscene numbers of fish. Just one facility, the Salem nuclear plant in New Jersey, kills more than 3 billion Delaware River fish each year, according to Martin Marietta, the plant`s own consultant. These fish kills are illegal, and in 2001 we finally won our case. A federal judge ordered the EPA to issue regulations restricting power-plant fish kills. But soon after President Bush`s inauguration, the administration replaced the proposed new rule with clever regulations designed to allow the slaughter to continue unabated. The new administration also trumped court decisions that would have enforced greater degrees of wetlands protection and forbidden coal moguls from blasting off whole mountaintops to get at the coal beneath.

The fishermen I represent are traditionally Republican. But, without exception, they see this administration as the largest threat not just to their livelihoods but to their values and their idea of what it means to be American. "Why," they`ll ask, "is the president allowing coal, oil, power and automotive interests to fix the game?"

Back to the Dark Ages

George w. Bush seems to be trying to take us all the way back to the Dark Ages by undermining the very principles of our environmental rights, which civilized nations have always recognized. Ancient Rome`s Code of Justinian guaranteed the use to all citizens of the "public trust" or commons -- those shared resources that cannot be reduced to private property -- the air, flowing water, public lands, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

When Roman law broke down in Europe during the Dark Ages, feudal kings began to privatize the commons. In the early thirteenth century, when King John also attempted to sell off England`s fisheries and erect navigational tolls on the Thames, his subjects rose up and confronted him at Runnymede, forcing him to sign the Magna Carta, which includes provisions guaranteeing the rights of free access to fisheries and waters.

Clean-air laws in England, passed in the fourteenth century, made it a capital offense to burn coal in London, and violators were executed for the crime. These "public trust" rights to unspoiled air, water and wildlife descended to the people of the United States following the American Revolution. Until 1870, a factory releasing even small amounts of smoke onto public or private property was operating illegally.

But during the Gilded Age, when the corporate robber barons captured the political and judicial systems, those rights were stolen from the American people. As the Industrial Revolution morphed into the postwar industrial boom, Americans found themselves paying a high price for the resulting pollution. The wake-up call came in the late Sixties, when Lake Erie was declared dead and Cleveland`s Cuyahoga River exploded in colossal infernos.

In 1970, more than 20 million Americans took to the streets protesting the state of the environment on the first Earth Day. Whether they knew it or not, they were demanding a return of ancient rights.

During the next few years, Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, and it created the Environmental Protection Agency to apply and enforce these new laws. Polluters would be held accountable; those planning to use the commons would have to compile environmental-impact statements and hold public hearings; citizens were given the power to prosecute environmental crimes. Right-to-know and toxic-inventory laws made government and industry more transparent on the local level and our nation more democratic. Even the most vulnerable Americans could now participate in the dialogue that determines the destinies of their communities.

Earth Day caught polluters off guard. But in the next thirty years, they mounted an increasingly sophisticated and aggressive counterattack to undermine these laws. The Bush administration is a culmination of their three-decade campaign.

Strangling the Environment

In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan declared, "I am a Sagebrush Rebel," marking a major turning point of the modern anti-environmental movement. In the early 1980s, the Western extractive industries, led by one of Colorado`s worst polluters, brewer Joseph Coors, organized the Sagebrush Rebellion, a coalition of industry money and right-wing ideologues that helped elect Reagan president. The big polluters who started the Sagebrush Rebellion were successful because they managed to broaden their constituency with anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-environmental rhetoric that had great appeal both among Christian fundamentalist leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and in certain Western communities where hostility to government is deeply rooted. Big polluters found that they could organize this discontent into a potent political force that possessed the two ingredients of power in American democracy: money and intensity. Meanwhile, innovations in direct-mail and computer technologies gave this alliance of dark populists and polluters a deafening voice in American government.

Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976 to bring lawsuits designed to enrich giant corporations, limit civil rights and attack unions, homosexuals and minorities. He also founded the right-wing Heritage Foundation, to provide a philosophical underpinning for the anti-environmental movement. While the foundation and its imitators -- the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute and others -- claim to advocate free markets and property rights, their agenda is more pro-pollution than anything else. From its conception, the Heritage Foundation and its neoconservative cronies urged followers to "strangle the environmental movement," which Heritage named "the greatest single threat to the American economy." Ronald Reagan`s victory gave Heritage Foundation and the Mountain States Legal Foundation immeasurable clout. Heritage became known as Reagan`s "shadow government," and its 2,000-page manifesto, "Mandate for Change," became a blueprint for his administration. Coors handpicked his Colorado associates: Anne Gorsuch became the EPA administrator; her husband, Robert Burford, a cattle baron who had vowed to destroy the Bureau of Land Management, was selected to head that very agency. Most notorious, Coors chose James Watt, president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, as the secretary of the interior. Watt was a proponent of "dominion theology," an authoritarian Christian heresy that advocates man`s duty to "subdue" nature. His deep faith in laissez-faire capitalism and apocalyptic Christianity led Secretary Watt to set about dismantling his department and distributing its assets rather than managing them for future generations. During a Senate hearing, he cited the approaching Apocalypse to explain why he was giving away America`s sacred places at fire-sale prices: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."

Meanwhile, Anne Gorsuch enthusiastically gutted EPA`s budget by sixty percent, crippling its ability to write regulations or enforce the law. She appointed lobbyists fresh from their hitches with the paper, asbestos, chemical and oil companies to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief counsel was an Exxon lawyer; her head of enforcement was from General Motors.

These attacks on the environment precipitated a public revolt. By 1983, more than a million Americans and all 125 American-Indian tribes had signed a petition demanding Watt`s removal. After being forced out of office, Watt was indicted on twenty-five felony counts of influence-pedaling. Gorsuch and twenty-three of her cronies were forced to resign following a congressional investigation of sweetheart deals with polluters, including Coors. Her first deputy, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for perjury.

The indictments and resignations put a temporary damper on the Sagebrush Rebels, but they quickly regrouped as the "Wise Use" movement. Wise Use founder, the timber-industry flack Ron Arnold, said, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."

By 1994, Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the speaker`s chair of the U.S. House of Representatives and turn his anti-environmental manifesto, "The Contract With America," into law. Gingrich`s chief of environmental policy was Rep. Tom DeLay, the one-time Houston exterminator who was determined to rid the world of pesky pesticide regulations and to promote a biblical worldview. He targeted the Endangered Species Act as the second-greatest threat to Texas after illegal aliens. He also wanted to legalize the deadly pesticide DDT, and he routinely referred to the EPA as "the Gestapo of government." In January 1995, DeLay invited a group of 350 lobbyists representing some of America`s biggest polluters to collaborate in drafting legislation to dismantle federal health, safety and environmental laws.

Gingrich and DeLay had learned from the James Watt debacle that they had to conceal their radical agenda. Carefully eschewing public debates on their initiatives, they mounted a stealth attack on America`s environmental laws. Rather than pursue a frontal assault against popular statutes such as the Endangered Species, Clean Water and Clean Air acts, they tried to undermine these laws by attaching silent riders to must-pass budget bills.

But the public got wise. Moderate Republicans teamed up with the Clinton administration to block the worst of it. My group, the NRDC, as well as the Sierra Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, generated more than 1 million letters to Congress. When President Clinton shut down the government in December 1995 rather than pass a budget bill spangled with anti-environmental riders, the tide turned against Gingrich and DeLay. By the end of that month, even conservatives disavowed the attack. "We lost the battle on the environment," DeLay conceded.

Undermining the Scientists

Today, with the presidency and both houses of Congress under the anti-environmentalists` control, they are set to eviscerate the despised laws. White House strategy is to promote its unpopular policies by lying about its agenda, cheating on the science and stealing the language and rhetoric of the environmental movement.

Even as Republican pollster Luntz acknowledged that the scientific evidence is against the Republicans on issues like global warming, he advised them to find scientists willing to hoodwink the public. "You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue," he told Republicans, "by becoming even more active in recruiting experts sympathetic to your view."

In the meantime, he urged them to change their rhetoric. " `Climate change,` " he said, "is less threatening than `global warming.` While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge."

The EPA`s inspector general received broad attention for his August 21st, 2003, finding that the White House pressured the agency to conceal the public-health risks from poisoned air following the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. But this 2001 deception is only one example of the administration`s pattern of strategic distortion. Earlier this year, it suppressed an EPA report warning that millions of Americans, especially children, are being poisoned by mercury from industrial sources.

This behavior is consistent throughout the Bush government. Consider the story of James Zahn, a scientist at the Department of Agriculture who resigned after the Bush administration suppressed his taxpayer-funded study proving that billions of antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be carried daily across property lines from meat factories into neighboring homes and farms. In March 2002, Zahn accepted my invitation to present his findings to a convention of family-farm advocates in Iowa. Several weeks before the April conference, pork-industry lobbyists learned of his appearance and persuaded the Department of Agriculture to forbid him from appearing. Zahn told me he had been ordered to cancel a dozen appearances at county health departments and similar venues.

In May, the White House blocked the EPA staff from publicly discussing contamination by the chemical perchlorate -- the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel. The administration froze federal regulations on perchlorate, even as new research reveals alarmingly high levels of the chemical in the nation`s drinking water and food supply, including many grocery-store lettuces. Perchlorate pollution has been linked to neurological problems, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in some twenty states. The Pentagon and several defense contractors face billions of dollars in potential cleanup liability.

The administration`s leading expert in manipulating scientific data is Interior Secretary Gale Norton. During her nomination hearings, Norton promised not to ideologically slant agency science. But as her friend Thomas Sansonetti, a coal- industry lobbyist who is now assistant attorney general, predicted, "There won`t be any biologists or botanists to come in and pull the wool over her eyes."

In autumn 2001, Secretary Norton provided the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with her agency`s scientific assessment that Arctic oil drilling would not harm hundreds of thousands of caribou. Not long afterward, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists contacted the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which defends scientists and other professionals working in state and federal environmental agencies. "The scientists provided us the science that they had submitted to Norton and the altered version that she had given to Congress a week later," said the group`s executive director, Jeff Ruch. There were seventeen major substantive changes, all of them minimizing the reported impacts. When Norton was asked about the alterations in October 2001, she dismissed them as typographical errors.

Later, she and White House political adviser Karl Rove forced National Marine Fisheries scientists to alter findings on the amount of water required for the survival of salmon in Oregon`s Klamath River, to ensure that large corporate farms got a bigger share of the river water. As a result, more than 33,000 chinook and coho salmon died -- the largest fish kill in the history of America. Mike Kelly, the biologist who drafted the original opinion (and who has since been awarded federal whistle-blower status), told me that the coho salmon is probably headed for extinction. "Morale is low among scientists here," Kelly says. "We are under pressure to get the right results. This administration is putting the species at risk for political gain -- and not just in the Klamath."

Norton has also ordered the rewriting of an exhaustive twelve-year study by federal biologists detailing the effects that Arctic drilling would have on populations of musk oxen and snow geese. She reissued the biologists` report two weeks later as a two-page paper showing no negative impact to wildlife. She also ordered suppression of two studies by the Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that the drilling would threaten polar-bear populations and violate the international treaty protecting bears. She then instructed the Fish and Wildlife Service to redo the report to "reflect the Interior Department`s position." She suppressed findings that mountaintop mining would cause "tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitat" and a Park Service report that found that snowmobiles were hurting Yellowstone`s air quality, wildlife and the health of its visitors and employees.

Norton`s Fish and Wildlife Service is the first ever not to voluntarily list a single species as endangered or threatened. Her officials have blackballed scientists and savaged studies to avoid listing the trumpeter swan, revoke the listing of the grizzly bear and shrink the remnant habitat for the Florida panther. She disbanded the service`s oldest scientific advisory committee in order to halt protection of desert fish in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are headed for extinction. Interior career staffers and scientists say they are monitored by Norton`s industry appointees to ensure that future studies do not conflict with industry profit-making.

Cooking the Books on Global Warming

There is no scientific debate in which the White House has cooked the books more than that of global warming. In the past two years the Bush administration has altered, suppressed or attempted to discredit close to a dozen major reports on the subject. These include a ten-year peer-reviewed study by the International Panel on Climate Change, commissioned by the president`s father in 1993 in his own efforts to dodge what was already a virtual scientific consensus blaming industrial emissions for global warming.

After disavowing the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration commissioned the federal government`s National Academy of Sciences to find holes in the IPCC analysis. But this ploy backfired. The NAS not only confirmed the existence of global warming and its connection to industrial greenhouse gases, it also predicted that the effects of climate change would be worse than previously believed, estimating that global temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees by 2100.

A May 2002 report by scientists from the EPA, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, approved by Bush appointees at the Council on Environmental Quality and submitted to the United Nations by the U.S., predicted similarly catastrophic impacts. When confronted with the findings, Bush dismissed it with his smirking condemnation: "I`ve read the report put out by the bureaucracy. . . ."

Afterward, the White House acknowledged that, in fact, he hadn`t. Having failed to discredit the report with this untruth, George W. did what his father had done: He promised to study the problem some more. Last fall, the White House announced the creation of the Climate Research Initiative to study global warming. The earliest results are due next fall. But the White House`s draft plan for CRI was derided by the NAS in February as a rehash of old studies and established science lacking "most elements of a strategic plan."

In September 2002, administration censors released the annual EPA report on air pollution without the agency`s usual update on global warming, that section having been deleted by Bush appointees at the White House. On June 19th, 2003, a "State of the Environment" report commissioned by the EPA in 2001 was released after language about global warming was excised by flat-earthers in the White House. The redacted studies had included a 2001 report by the National Research Council, commissioned by the White House. In their place was a piece of propaganda financed by the American Petroleum Institute challenging these conclusions.

This past July, EPA scientists leaked a study, which the agency had ordered suppressed in May, showing that a Senate plan -- co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain -- to reduce the pollution that causes global warming could achieve its goal at very small cost. Bush reacted by launching a $100 million ten-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact, occurred naturally, another delay tactic for the fossil-fuel barons at taxpayer expense. Princeton geo-scientist Michael Oppenheimer told me, "This administration likes to emphasize what we don`t know while ignoring or minimizing what we do know, which is a prescription for paralysis on policy. It`s hard to imagine what kind of scientific evidence would suffice to convince the White House to take firm action on global warming."

Across the board, the administration yields to Big Energy. At the request of ExxonMobil, and with the help of a lobbying group working for coal-burning utility Southern Co., the Bush administration orchestrated the removal of U.S. scientist Robert Watson, the world-renowned former NASA atmospheric chemist who headed the United Nations` IPCC. He was replaced by a little-known scientist from New Delhi, India, who would be generally unavailable for congressional hearings.

The Bush administration now plans to contract out thousands of environmental-science jobs to compliant industry consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support corporate profit-taking, effectively making federal science an arm of Karl Rove`s political machine. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America`s federal agencies. "At its worst," Oppenheimer says, "this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a democracy deals with science."

Inside the Cheney Task Force

There is no better example of the corporate cronyism now hijacking American democracy than the White House`s cozy relationship with the energy industry. It`s hard to find anyone on Bush`s staff who does not have extensive corporate connections, but fossil-fuel executives rule the roost. The energy industry contributed more than $48.3 million to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle, with $3 million to Bush. Now the investment has matured. Both Bush and Cheney came out of the oil patch. Thirty-one of the Bush transition team`s forty-eight members had energy-industry ties. Bush`s cabinet and White House staff is an energy-industry dream team -- four cabinet secretaries, the six most powerful White House officials and more than twenty high-level appointees are alumni of the industry and its allies (see "Bush`s Energy-Industry All-Stars," on Page 183).

The potential for corruption is staggering. Take the case of J. Steven Griles, deputy secretary of the Interior Department. During the first Reagan administration, Griles worked directly under James Watt at Interior, where he helped the coal industry evade prohibitions against mountaintop-removal strip mining. In 1989, Griles left government to work as a mining executive and then as a lobbyist with National Environmental Strategies, a Washington, D.C., firm that represented the National Mining Association and Dominion Resources, one of the nation`s largest power producers. When Griles got his new job at Interior, the National Mining Association hailed him as "an ally of the industry." It`s bad enough that a former mining lobbyist was put in charge of regulating mining on public land. But it turns out that Griles is still on the industry`s payroll. In 2001, he sold his client base to his partner Marc Himmelstein for four annual payments of $284,000, making Griles, in effect, a continuing partner in the firm.

Because Griles was an oil and mining lobbyist, the Senate made him agree in writing that he would avoid contact with his former clients as a condition of his confirmation. Griles has nevertheless repeatedly met with former coal clients to discuss new rules allowing mountaintop mining in Appalachia and destructive coal-bed methane drilling in Wyoming. He also met with his former oil clients about offshore leases. These meetings prompted Sen. Joseph Lieberman to ask the Interior Department to investigate Griles. With Republicans in control of congressional committees, no subpoenas have interrupted the Griles scandals.

With its operatives in place, the Bush energy plan became an orgy of industry plunder. Days after his inauguration, Bush launched the National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Cheney. For three months, the task force held closed-door meetings with energy-industry representatives - then refused to disclose the names of the participants.

For the first time in history, the nonpartisan General Accounting Office sued the executive branch, for access to these records. NRDC put in a Freedom of Information Act request, and when Cheney did not respond, we also sued. On February 21st, 2002, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and other agency officials to turn over the records relating to their participation in the work of the energy task force. Under this court order, NRDC has obtained some 20,000 documents. Although none of the logs on the vice president`s meetings have been released yet and the pages were heavily redacted to prevent disclosure of useful information, the documents still allow glimpses of the process.

The task force comprised Cabinet secretaries and other high-level administration officials with energy-industry pedigrees. The undisputed leader was Cheney, who hails from Wyoming, the nation`s largest coal producer, and who, for six previous years, was CEO of Halliburton, the oil-service company. Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill was chairman of the Aluminum Company of America for thirteen years. Aluminum-industry profits are directly related to energy prices. O`Neill promised to immediately sell his extensive stock holdings in his former company (worth more than $100 million) to avoid conflicts of interest, but he delayed the sale until after the energy plan was released. By then, thanks partly to the administration`s energy policies, Alcoa`s stock had risen thirty percent. Energy Secretary Abraham, a former one-term senator from Michigan, received $700,000 from the auto industry in his losing 2000 campaign, more than any other Senate candidate. At Energy, Abraham led the administration effort to scuttle fuel-economy standards, allow SUVs to escape fuel-efficiency minimums and create obscene tax incentives for Americans to buy the largest gas guzzlers.

Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sat next to Abraham on the task force. Allbaugh`s wife, Diane, is an energy-industry lobbyist and represents three firms -- Reliant Energy, Entergy and TXU, each of which paid her $20,000 in the three months of the task force`s deliberation. Joe Allbaugh participated in task-force meetings on issues directly affecting those companies, including debates about environmental rules for power plants and -- his wife`s specialty -- electricity deregulation.

Commerce Secretary Don Evans, an old friend of the president from their early days in the oil business, was CEO of Tom Brown Inc., a Denver oil-and-gas company, and a trustee of another drilling firm. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a mining-industry lawyer, accepted nearly $800,000 from the energy industry during her 1996 run in Colorado for the U.S. Senate.

In the winter and spring of 2001, executives and lobbyists from the oil, coal, electric-utility and nuclear industries tramped in and out of the Cabinet room and Cheney`s office. Many of the lobbyists had just left posts inside Bush`s presidential campaign to work for companies that had donated lavishly to that effort. Companies that made large contributions were given special access. Executives from Enron Corp., which contributed $2.5 million to the GOP from 1999 to 2002, had contact with the task force at least ten times, including six face-to-face meetings between top officials and Cheney.

After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov. Gray Davis` request to cap the state`s energy prices. That denial would enrich Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state`s energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested "utilizing" the crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Energy companies that had not ponied up remained under pressure to give to Republicans. When Westar Energy`s chief executive was indicted for fraud, investigators found an e-mail written by Westar executives describing solicitations by Republican politicians for a political action committee controlled by Tom DeLay as the price for a "seat at the table" with the task force.

Task-force members began each meeting with industry lobbyists by announcing that the session was off the record and that participants were to share no documents. A National Mining Association official told reporters that the industry managed to control the energy plan by keeping the process secret. "We`ve probably had as much input as anybody else in town," he said. "I have to take my hat off to them -- they`ve been able to keep a lid on it."

When it was suggested that access to the administration was for sale, Cheney hardly apologized. "Just because somebody makes a campaign contribution doesn`t mean that they should be denied the opportunity to express their view to government officials," he said. Although they met with hundreds of industry officials, Cheney and Abraham refused to meet with any environmental groups. Cheney made one exception to the secrecy policy: On May 15th, 2001, the day before the task force sent its plan to the president, CEOs from wind-, solar- and geothermal-energy companies were granted a short meeting with Cheney. Afterward, they were led into the Rose Garden for a press conference and a photo op.

While peddling influence to energy tycoons, the White House quietly dropped criminal and civil charges against Koch Industries, America`s largest privately held oil company. Koch faced a ninety-seven-count federal felony indictment and $357 million in fines for knowingly releasing ninety metric tons of carcinogenic benzene and concealing the releases from federal regulators. Koch executives contributed $800,000 to Bush`s presidential campaign and to other top Republicans.

Last March, the Federal Trade Commission dropped a Clinton-era investigation of price gouging by the oil and gas industries, even as Duke Energy, a principal target of the probe, admitted to selling electricity in California for more than double the highest previously reported price. The Bush administration said that the industry deserved a "gentler approach." Administration officials also winked at a scam involving a half-dozen oil companies cheating the government out of $100 million per year in royalty payments.

Southern Co. was among the most adept advocates for its own self-interest. The company, which contributed $1.6 million to Republicans from 1999 to 2002, met with Cheney`s task force seven times. Faced with a series of EPA prosecutions at power plants violating air-quality standards, the company retained Haley Barbour, former Republican National Committee chairman and now governor-elect of Mississippi, to lobby the administration to ignore Southern`s violations. The White House then forced the Justice Department to drop the prosecution. Justice lawyers were "astounded" that the administration would interfere in a law-enforcement matter that was "supposed to be out of bounds from politics." The EPA`s chief enforcement officer, Eric Schaeffer, resigned. "With the Bush administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know," Schaeffer told me. "If you`ve got a good lobbyist, you can just buy your way out of trouble."

Along with Barbour, Southern retained current Republican National Committee chairman and former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. Barbour and Racicot repeatedly conferred with Abraham and Cheney, urging them to ease limits on carbon-dioxide pollution from power plants and to gut the Clean Air Act. On May 17th, 2001, the White House released its energy plan. Among the recommendations were exempting old power plants from Clean Air Act compliance and adopting Barbour`s arguments about carbon-dioxide restrictions. Barbour repaid the favor that week by raising $250,000 at a May 21st GOP gala honoring Bush. Southern donated $150,000 to the effort.

Cheney`s task force had at least nineteen contacts with officials from the nuclear-energy industry -- whose trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, donated $100,000 to the Bush inauguration gala and $437,000 to Republicans from 1999 to 2002. The report recommended loosening environmental controls on the industry, reducing public participation in the siting of nuclear plants and adding billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear industry. Cheney wasn`t embarrassed to reward his old cronies at Halliburton, either. The final draft of the task-force report praises a gas-recovery technique controlled by Halliburton - even though an earlier draft had criticized the technology. The technique, which has been linked to the contamination of aquifers, is currently being investigated by the EPA. Somehow, that got edited out of the report.

Big Coal and the Destruction of Appalachia

Coal companies enjoyed perhaps the biggest payoff. At the West Virginia Coal Association`s annual conference in May 2002, president William D. Raney assured 150 industry moguls, "You did everything you could to elect a Republican president." Now, he said, "you are already seeing in his actions the payback."

Peabody Energy, the world`s largest coal company and a major contributor to the Bush campaign, was one of the first to cash in. Immediately after his inauguration, Bush appointed two executives from Peabody and one from its Black Beauty subsidiary to his energy advisory team.

When the task force released its final report, it recommended accelerating coal production and spending $2 billion in federal subsidies for research to make coal-fired electricity cleaner. Five days later, Peabody issued a public-stock offering, raising $60 million more than analysts had predicted. Company vice president Fred Palmer credited the Bush administration. "I am sure it affected the valuation of the stock," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Peabody also wanted to build the largest coal-fired power plant in thirty years upwind of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site and International Biosphere Reserve. With arm-twisting from Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and another $450,000 in GOP contributions, Peabody got what it wanted. A study on the air impacts was suppressed, and park scientists who feared that several endangered

At the Senate`s request, Griles had signed a "statement of disqualification" on August 1st, 2001, committing himself to avoiding issues affecting his former clients. Three days later, he nevertheless appeared before the West Virginia Coal Association and promised executives that "we will fix the federal rules very soon on water and soil placement." That was fancy language for pushing whole mountaintops into valleys, a practice worth billions to the industry. As a Reagan official, Griles helped devise the practice, which a federal court declared illegal in 2002, after 1,200 miles of streambeds had been filled and

Now Griles was promising his former coal clients he would fix these rules. In May 2002, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers adopted the language recommended by his former client, the National Mining Association. Had Griles not intervened, the practice of mountaintop-removal mining would have been severely restricted. Griles also pushed EPA deputy administrator Linda Fisher to overrule career personnel in the agency`s Denver office who had given a devastating assessment to a proposal to produce coal-bed methane gas in the Powder River basin in Wyoming. Although Griles had recused himself from any discussion of this subject because it would directly enrich his former clients, he worked aggressively behind the scenes on behalf of a proposal to build 51,000 wells. The project will require 26,000 miles of new roads and 48,000 miles of pipeline, and will foul pristine landscapes with trillions of gallons of toxic wastewater.

Blueprint for Plunder

The energy-task-force plan is a $20 billion subsidy to the oil, coal and nuclear industries, which are already swimming in record revenues. In May 2003, as the House passed the plan and as the rest of the nation stagnated in a recession abetted by high oil prices, Exxon announced that its profits had tripled from the previous quarter`s record earnings. The energy plan recommends opening protected lands and waters to oil and gas drilling and building up to 1,900 electric-power plants. National treasures such as the California and Florida coasts, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the areas around Yellowstone Park will be opened for plunder for the trivial amounts of fossil fuels that they contain. While increasing reliance on oil, coal and nuclear power, the plan cuts the budget for research into energy efficiency and alternative power sources by nearly a third. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney explained, but it should not be the basis of "comprehensive energy policy."

As if to prove that point, Republicans simultaneously eliminated the tax credit that had encouraged Americans to buy gas-saving hybrid cars, and weakened efficiency standards for everything from air conditioners to automobiles. They also created an obscene $100,000 tax break for Hummers and the thirty-eight biggest gas guzzlers. Then, adding insult to injury, the Energy Department robbed $135,615 from the anemic solar, renewables and energy-conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House`s energy plan.

To lobby for the plan, more than 400 industry groups enlisted in the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, a coalition created by oil, mining and nuclear interests and guided by the White House. It cost $5,000 to join, "a very low price," according to Republican lobbyist Wayne Valis. The prerequisite for joining, he wrote in a memo, was that members "must agree to support the Bush energy proposal in its entirety and not lobby for changes." Within two months, members had contributed more than $1 million. The price for disloyalty was expulsion from the coalition and possible reprisal by the administration. "I have been advised," wrote Valis, "that this White House `will have a long memory.` "

The plan represents a massive transfer of wealth from the public to the energy sector. Indeed, Bush views his massive tax cuts as a way of helping Americans pay for inflated energy bills. "If I had my way," he declared, "I`d have [the tax cuts] in place tomorrow so that people would have money in their pockets to deal with high energy prices."

Looting the Commons

Although congress will have its final vote on the plan in November, the White House has already devised ways to implement most of its worst provisions without congressional interference. In October 2001, the administration removed the Interior Department`s power to veto mining permits, even if the mining would cause "substantial and irreparable harm" to the environment. That December, Bush and congressional Republicans passed an "economic-stimulus package" that proposed $2.4 billion worth of tax breaks, credits and loopholes for Chevron, Texaco, Enron and General Electric. The following February, the White House announced it would abandon regulations for three major pollutants -- mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

Early in the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney had solicited an industry wish list from the United States Energy Association, the lobbying arm for trade associations including the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Edison Institute. The USEA responded by providing 105 specific recommendations from its members for plundering our natural resources and polluting America`s air and water. In a speech to the group in June 2002, Energy Secretary Abraham reported that the administration had already implemented three-quarters of the industry`s recommendations and predicted the rest would pass through Congress shortly.

On August 27th, 2002 - while most of America was heading off for a Labor Day weekend -- the administration announced that it would redefine carbon dioxide, the primary cause of global warming, so that it would no longer be considered a pollutant and would therefore not be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The next day, the White House repealed the act`s "new source review" provision, which requires companies to modernize pollution control when they modify their plants.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, the White House rollback will cause 30,000 Americans to die prematurely each year. Although the regulation will probably be reversed in the courts, the damage will have been done, and power utilities such as Southern Co. will escape criminal prosecution. As soon as the new regulations were announced, John Pemberton, chief of staff to the EPA`s assistant administrator for air, left the agency to work for Southern. The EPA`s congressional office chief also left, to join Southern`s lobbying shop, Bracewell, Patterson.

By summer 2003, the White House had become a virtual pi-ata for energy moguls. In August, the administration proposed limiting the authority of states to object to offshore-drilling decisions, and it ordered federal land managers across the West to ease environmental restrictions for oil and gas drilling in national forests. The White House also proposed removing federal protections for most American wetlands and streams. As an astounded Republican, Rep. Christopher Shays, told me, "It`s almost like they want to alienate people who care about the environment, as if they believe that this will help them with their core."

EPA: From Bad to Worse

On August 30th, president bush nominated Utah`s three-term Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt to replace his beleaguered EPA head, Christine Todd Whitman, who was driven from office, humiliated in even her paltry efforts to moderate the pillage. In October, Leavitt was confirmed by the Senate.

Like Gale Norton, Leavitt has a winning personality and a disastrous environmental record. Under his leadership, Utah tied for last as the state with the worst environmental enforcement record and ranked second-worst (behind Texas) for both air quality and toxic releases. As governor, Leavitt displayed the same contempt for science that has characterized the Bush administration. He fired more than seventy scientists employed by state agencies for producing studies that challenged his political agenda. He fired a state enforcement officer who penalized one of Leavitt`s family fish farms for introducing whirling disease into Utah, devastating the state`s wild-trout populations.

Leavitt has a penchant for backdoor deals to please corporate polluters. Last year he resurrected a frivolous and moribund Utah lawsuit against the Interior Department and then settled the suit behind closed doors without public involvement, stripping 6 million acres of wilderness protections. This track record does not reflect the independence, sense of stewardship and respect for science and law that most Americans have the right to expect in our nation`s chief environmental guardian.

The Threat to Democracy

Generations of Americans will pay the Republican campaign debt to the energy industry with global instability, depleted national coffers and increased vulnerability to price shocks in the oil market.

They will also pay with reduced prosperity and quality of life at home. Pollution from power plants and traffic smog will continue to skyrocket. Carbon-dioxide emissions will aggravate global warming. Acid rain from Midwestern coal plants has already sterilized half the lakes in the Adirondacks and destroyed the forest cover in the high peaks of the Appalachian range up into Canada. The administration`s attacks on science and the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and to our democracy.

Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism to democracy. But as we`ve seen from the the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

America`s most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power."

Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.

Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930s offers many informative lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy. In Spain, Germany and Italy, industrialists allied themselves with right-wing leaders who used the provocation of terrorist attacks, continual wars, and invocations of patriotism and homeland security to tame the press, muzzle criticism by opponents and turn government over to corporate control. Those governments tapped industrial executives to run ministries and poured government money into corporate coffers with lucrative contracts to prosecute wars and build infrastructure. They encouraged friendly corporations to swallow media outlets, and they enriched the wealthiest classes, privatized the commons and pared down constitutional rights, creating short-term prosperity through pollution-based profits and constant wars. Benito Mussolini`s inside view of this process led him to complain that "fascism should really be called `corporatism.` "

While the European democracies unraveled into fascism, America confronted the same devastating Depression by reaffirming its democracy. It enacted minimum-wage and Social Security laws to foster a middle class, passed income taxes and anti-trust legislation to limit the power of corporations and the wealthy, and commissioned parks, public lands and museums to create employment and safeguard the commons.

The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?

Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories. If they knew the truth, most Americans would share my fury that this president is allowing his corporate cronies to steal America from our children.

(From RS 937, December 11, 2003)


For more information on the Bush administration`s environmental actions, see The Bush Record from NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/default.asp

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The Other 9/11: The United States and Chile, 1973
By Kenneth Maxwell
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20031101fareviewessay82615/ken…
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The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. edited by Peter Kornbluh. New York: New Press, 2003, 528$29.95

There are two types of what Theodore Draper called "present history." The first is based on documents and testimony accessible to all historians: assertions and interpretations can be checked, verified, and contested on the basis of fact rather than speculation. Both Draper and, in his own way, I. F. Stone were brilliant practitioners of this kind of history and demonstrated that, despite the best (or worst) intentions of bureaucrats to hide or distort the record, much could be found in the public domain if diligently sought after. The second approach to writing about contemporary history is based on anonymous "sources" and self-interested "leaks." Here, much depends on the credibility of the authors; but in the right political climate, such writing can be powerful enough to bring down a president, as it did with Watergate. And over the past two decades, heavily redacted, "secret" government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have been added to its menu.

Both approaches have their weaknesses, and neither is as new as might first appear. The Draper method -- by abjuring the fragments exhumed from a government`s dark places -- risks underestimating the role of the clandestine actions that were often at the center of the ideological and geostrategic struggles of the Cold War. History by self-interested leaking of documents or the use of anonymous sources, however, tends to produce narratives that are self-justifying, on the one hand, or indictments, on the other, and to exaggerate the importance of covert operations. Again, there is a long history of both genres: Winston Churchill the historian was a master over many volumes at preempting the assessment of Winston Churchill the statesman, and Henry Kissinger is doing what Churchill did for his own epoch and his own historical place within it by releasing weighty tomes on his White House years and other topics.

But, as Isaac Newton taught us, actions produce reactions. So it is entirely within the established pattern that 30 years after the Yom Kippur War and the bloody coup in Chile -- at just the moment when Kissinger himself publishes a book about his unquestionable diplomatic skill in confronting grave crises in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, grand stages where issues of war and peace and nuclear confrontation were handled -- Kissinger`s critics have revived the case against him over U.S. actions in Chile on his watch, doggedly seeking out forensic linkages to establish his role, as national security adviser, and that of his president, Richard Nixon, in undermining and engineering the overthrow of a democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Peter Kornbluh, in his troubling dossier, sets out to piece together this less elevated story.


THE CASE AGAINST KISSINGER

The crux of the case made against Kissinger rests on three events in particular: the assassination of Chile`s chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, in 1970; the extent of U.S. complicity and active involvement in the September 11, 1973, coup against Allende; and the assassination in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister, in 1976. The first and last cases, according to the record Kornbluh has uncovered, have odd similarities. Schneider`s elimination three years before the coup was regarded as essential by the Nixon administration, since Schneider was a strict constitutionalist and therefore an obstacle to U.S. efforts to promote a military intervention before Allende could take office. The general was killed in a kidnapping attempt that the United States knew about, approved of, and had even assisted in planning. A week before the kidnapping was to take place, however, Kissinger discouraged the plot. As he told Nixon at the time, he had "turned it off."

The killing of Schneider, it seems fair to say, was not what the Americans wanted (although the CIA had warned of such an outcome), but was, as the saying now goes, "collateral damage." The planned assassination of Pinochet`s critics living abroad under Operation Condor -- an international state-sponsored terror network set up by the Pinochet regime (in consort with Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and, later, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador) to track and eliminate opponents -- was also known to U.S. intelligence operatives and reported to the White House. Policymakers even knew that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States. Kissinger intervened a month before the killing of Letelier, ordering that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the "assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem." This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator. The U.S. ambassador to Chile, David Popper, wrote to Washington, "In my judgement, given Pinochet`s sensitivity regarding pressures by the usg [U.S. government], he might well take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such assassination plots." On September 20, 1976, the State Department instructed the ambassadors "to take no further action" with regard to the Condor scheme. Letelier and his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt, were killed the following morning.

As for the coup itself, there is no doubt that the United States did all that it could to create the conditions for the failure of Allende and his government. But, as in most such cases, it was the locals who made the coup itself. And although the United States did little to reign in Pinochet thereafter and certainly, as these documents make clear, knew much more about the atrocities committed in Chile than was admitted to at the time or later, the causes of the violence in Chilean society are to be found more in Chilean circumstances than in the intent of manipulators in Washington. What is truly remarkable is the effort -- the resources committed, the risks taken, and the skullduggery employed -- to bring a Latin American democracy down, and the meager efforts since to build democracy back up. Left to their own devices, the Chileans might just have found the good sense to resolve their own deep-seated problems. Allende might have fallen by his own weight, victim of his own incompetence, and not become a tragic martyr to a lost cause.

Kornbluh, who has put together several collections of declassified documents on key U.S. foreign policy crises, led the campaign to declassify more than 25,000 closely held records on U.S.-Chilean relations through the National Security Archives, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization that he helped establish with the support of several U.S. foundations. This effort, he says, is part of an ongoing international campaign "to hold Pinochet and his military responsible for the murder, torture and terrorism committed during his regime."

These are not, of course, just matters of historical curiosity. Pinochet, after all, was held under house arrest in London in 1998 under just such charges filed by the Spanish investigating judge Baltasar Garzón. In fact, the release of the documents in this book resulted from that watershed event, a high point in the campaign by human rights activists and victims` families to hold repressive leaders responsible for their actions. Now, lawsuits are pending or threatened against Kissinger himself for complicity or foreknowledge of the plots that led to the assassination of Schneider in Santiago in 1970 and, closer to home, the shocking car bombing in 1976 that killed Letelier and Moffitt 14 blocks from the White House.

Kornbluh`s bill of particulars and the supporting documents he has uncovered confirm the deep involvement of the U.S. intelligence services in Chile prior to and after the coup. In outline, this story has been known for many years and will be no surprise to Chileans. The extent of the involvement was originally hinted at during the Senate hearings conducted by the late Frank Church in the mid-1970s. The scope and nature of these clandestine activities are significantly amplified by the documents released in the extensive declassification ordered by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and 2000 and reprinted in Kornbluh`s book. These documents include: transcripts of top-secret discussions among President Nixon, Kissinger, and other cabinet members on how "to bring Allende down"; minutes of secret meetings chaired by Kissinger to plan covert operations in Chile; new documentation of the notorious case of Charles Horman, an American murdered by the Chilean military and subject of the movie Missing; comprehensive documentation of the Letelier case and the extensive CIA, National Security Council, and State Department reports surrounding it; and U.S. intelligence reporting on Operation Condor. All these sources, however, are extensively redacted -- that is, sensitive parts of them, especially those from the CIA, have been blacked out.


WHAT THE BOSS WANTED

Kissinger`s response to Kornbluh`s charges will undoubtedly be twofold. On the general level, he will argue that Chile and its problems were marginal to the larger concerns the Nixon administration was facing in the Middle East and South Vietnam, not to mention Watergate: Nixon and his would-be Metternich were fully engaged elsewhere with "big" events. On the narrow, legalistic level, the claim will be that the dots in the Schneider and Letelier cases cannot be joined because of the undelivered demarche, in the case of Letelier, and Kissinger`s counterorder, in the case of Schneider. These are arguments best left to lawyers, not historians. On the question of the impact of "larger" concerns, however, there is one inconvenient detail: chronology. War broke out in the Middle East on October 6, 1973, almost a month after the overthrow of Allende on September 11. As late as October 5, as Kissinger points out in his new book, Crisis, the CIA had reported to Nixon: "The military preparations that have occurred do not indicate that any party intends to initiate hostilities." So it can hardly be argued that Allende`s downfall came as a surprise to policymakers in Washington because their attention at that particular moment was focused elsewhere.

On Kornbluh`s side, what is lacking in the forensic approach (and it is a weakness of much writing on U.S. diplomatic history) is location in time and space. We see only the U.S. side of a story that is at least two-sided, if not multifaceted. The pursuit of declassified documents tends to exaggerate this tendency, so that intramural bureaucratic paperwork takes on a life of its own. Very little of the complex political and social history of Chile in the 1970s enters here; nor do we see the roles of many other actors beyond the Chilean military, U.S. clandestine operatives, and their political masters. Chilean society was at the time highly mobilized on the left as well as the right. All the Chilean political parties -- from Communist to Christian Democrat -- received and welcomed outside support, much of it clandestine. The Soviets and the Cubans had their own involvements, and the international left held Chile as a potential model. So it was not only Nixon and Kissinger who looked into the Chilean mirror and saw what they wanted to see; others did too, and from different angles.

If anything, both sides were guilty of knee-jerk reactions prompted by Cold War phobias. U.S. methodology in Chile was not that different from the tactics used to remove regimes from Guatemala City to Tehran deemed dangerous to the geopolitical status quo. Kissinger defenders may be right in asserting that this was not high on his agenda. But the outcome might have been better if he had paid greater attention to the details instead of leaving them to "old hands." In the end, what have persisted through the decades to haunt him are the "marginal" cases: Timor, Angola, and Chile; the old triumphs against the Soviet Union are barely remembered by a generation for whom the days of Cold War threats are long gone.

But what is very clear in all of this is that the coup in Chile is exactly what Kissinger`s boss wanted. As Nixon put it in his ineffable style, "It`s that son of a bitch Allende. We`re going to smash him." As early as October of 1970, the CIA had warned of possible consequences: "you have asked us to provoke chaos in Chile. ... We provide you with a formula for chaos which is unlikely to be bloodless. To dissimulate the U.S. involvement will be clearly impossible." The Pinochet dictatorship lasted 17 long and brutal years. According to the Chilean Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, its victims numbered 3,197. Thirty years after its initiation, the coup of 1973 remains deeply etched in collective memory. It is unlikely that this book will be the end of the story.



Copyright 2003 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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War der Typ schon einmal wieder auf zum Brezelnessen eingeladen?

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And down comes the statue... but this time it`s Trafalgar Square
Mass turnout of young and old watches overturn of US president`s effigy

Jamie Wilson and Matthew Taylor
Friday November 21, 2003
The Guardian

At first George Bush gently rocked, then he began to sway, before finally the figure started toppling, slowly but inexorably on to the pavement below.

The symbolic end of the five-metre (17ft) tall effigy - a riposte to the pulling down of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad - brought the biggest cheer of the day: louder than the boos when the seemingly never ending procession made its way past Downing Street; bigger even than the shouts and whistles that rang out when Britain`s sixth anti-war demonstration in a year began its snaking path through London to Trafalgar Square.

Yesterday was by far the biggest turnout since the million-plus march in February; along with the crowds, the anger and conviction were back with a vengeance.

The hope of making a difference on that February day, before war had begun, was superseded by a sense of frustration on subsequent marches.

Yesterday the demonstrators had a target, something tangible to shout at, even if he was hidden behind an impenetrable wall of security.

By mid-morning people were coming together in Bloomsbury for the start of the march, everyone from schoolchildren playing truant to pensioners carrying placards reading "Go Home" and "World`s Number 1 Terrorist".

Young and old, doctors, and teachers, students and the unemployed, representing every religion and every colour. They had come on foot and on bikes, by train and in cars.

Twenty coaches made their way down the M6 from Manchester, while at least four more came from Exeter. All were assembling to make up the diverse mix that in two years has seen the Stop the War Coalition become the fastest growing political movement in Britain.

By 2.45pm, with Bloomsbury a seething mass of whistles and chanting, the march was led off by a disabled Vietnam veteran-turned peace protester, Ron Kovic, behind the banner "Proud of My Country, Ashamed of my President".

The Stop the War Coalition, the Muslim Association of Great Britain and CND had predicted that more than 100,000 people would turn out to protest at the state visit of the president of the United States.

Yesterday the organisations claimed that more than 200,000 took part, and it was difficult to argue that they were wrong. Scotland Yard, however, gave an estimate of 70,000.

As the procession made its way down Holborn and over Waterloo bridge, the road was filled with banners and flags as far as the eye could see.

More than 5,000 police officers, standing out in their Day-Glo yellow coats, mingled with the protesters and lined the route as the march snaked its way past Westminster.

The next stop, Whitehall, was guarded like Fort Knox. But it did not matter to the marchers, and especially not to the organisers, who had negotiated hard with the authorities to be able to march past the seat of government.

As the march swung past Number 10 there was a cacophony of whistles, boos, jeers and insults. But it was as close as the protesters got to Tony Blair or Mr Bush.

A little further on, at the Foreign Office, hours earlier the prime minister and the president had held a joint press conference - but by the time of the march the president was safely ensconced back in Buckingham Palace.

When the front of the march arrived in Trafalgar Square there seemed to be several thousand protesters waiting to greet them. And, as the speeches started, the organisers claimed that the tail of the march was only just leaving the starting point in Malet Street.

"This is probably one of the largest demonstrations that London has ever seen on a weekday, it is massive," said Lindsay German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition.

The marchers were still arriving as two men in white boiler suits hung ropes around the neck of the effigy of the president and Mr Kovic led the countdown that ended with the toppling of the statue.

The £5m security operation surround ing the president had done its job of keeping him out of sight and sound of the protesters, and it had an added edge after yesterday`s bombings in Istanbul.

"Everyone involved should remember terrorists are no respecters of anyone else," warned Scotland Yard`s deputy assistant commissioner Andy Trotter. "They would think nothing about launching an attack which injured demonstrators and innocent bystanders.".

But Ms German said that the attacks in Istanbul were an inevitable consequence of the war. "I hate to say we told you so, but we have been saying from the beginning that the war with Iraq would inevitably lead to more terrorist attacks.

"If it does turn out to be al-Qaida, I don`t think it can be any coincidence that these attacks have come against British targets on the day that George Bush is visiting London."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Blair`s black day
Bombs, demos and serious mid-term drift - and all the direct result of the prime minister`s own decisions

Polly Toynbee
Friday November 21, 2003
The Guardian

The prime minister has waited for months now with a deadly certainty that the terror attacks would come. "When, not if," he warned spine-chillingly about the threat to Britain. Once he had decided to take the country to war, terrorist retaliation was certain and if ever there was a prime time to expect it, then it was now, during George Bush`s state visit. The wonder is only that Britain has escaped for so long. London was fortified beyond endurance this week, but there will always be soft underbellies exposed to Islamist extremist fury. There is no defence against terror.

So now Turkey has become another case of collateral damage in the spreading calamity of the Iraq war. It is tragic that it should be Turkey of all places to take the brunt of this revenge; Turkey, the actual existing model of moderate Islam. In their game of fantasy Middle East politics, how often Bush and Blair boasted they would turn Iraq into a "beacon" of democracy that would shine its light into every dark, feudal, corrupt and theocratic state across the region. What an irony if, instead, the Iraq war has dragged Turkey, a true beacon of modern Islam, down.

Turkey tried to protect itself from contamination with the war by denying US troops access through its land to northern Iraq. But it was a natural target for al-Qaida fundamentalists attempting to turn back the clock to an Islamic dark age. To them, Turkey`s ever strengthening democracy is a western abomination.

Visiting Istanbul this year to interview all parties and religious groups united in Turkey`s determination to qualify for EU membership, I walked through the gates of the British consulate and met the consul general, Roger Short, who was, sadly, among the dead yesterday. It was well guarded but relaxed, without any sense that Istanbul was a dangerous place.

Tayyip Erdogan`s new government aims to take the country into Europe as a "synthesis" between east and west. With threatening neighbours - Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia - it is hardly surprising Turkey seeks to turn towards Europe. So these bombs in Istanbul serve a sinister dual purpose for the Islamist fundamentalists - to attack Britain, but also to blow up Turkey`s ever-closer European ties and haul it back into the morass of Islamist extremism.

These bombs made yesterday one of the darkest days of Tony Blair`s prime ministership. As if that horror were not enough, too many other disparate pigeons came fluttering home to roost at once. Whichever way he turned, things looked black. They were no mere accidents, for everything that happened came as a direct result of his own decisions, all of them taken against the better instincts of most of his party.

While the colossal anti-Bush demonstration swirled through the capital, and central London ground to a halt due to the visit of this unpopular president, inside beleaguered Westminster two bills ricocheted between the Lords and the Commons in a near-meaningless battle. The unimportant substance of these bills had long become irrelevant.

That a handful of complex fraud trials might be conducted without juries was, frankly, nothing that mattered much despite great protestations on both sides. Nor was the watered-down foundation hospital bill critical to either improving or destroying the NHS. But these issues had become totemic simply because Tony Blair wrongly attached too much symbolism to them, forcing them through without listening. The trouncing he got in the Commons was deserved. Although the Lords finally gave way to the superior right of the Commons on foundation hospitals, it was nonetheless a sharp reminder both of disquiet within his party and the constitutional mess in which he has left the House of Lords.

Bombs in Istanbul are the only outcome from this presidential visit. George Bush brought no gifts to thank his ally for taking so much damage to support this politically alien president. Nothing has been gained on US illegal trade tariffs: a promise to obey the WTO might have given Blair something to show the Europeans the value of engaging with America. No sign was given of serious intent to intervene in the Israel/Palestine conflict. The president leaves unabated alarm that the US will cut and run from Iraq to suit the presidential election timetable and not the needs of Iraqis. This visit has been all downside for our prime minister.

All these woes were avoidable. But there is something in the set of Tony Blair`s jaw these days that suggests he feels most sure of his own convictions when facing down the fainthearts on his own side, instead of stopping to listen to them. No turning back. Sounds faintly familiar? There`s a hint of Thatcherite hubris after six-and-half years in office.

Yet, curiously, the other blow to strike him leaves him dumbstruck and devoid of defiance. This week Rupert Murdoch menacingly rattled the prime minister`s cage with a bullying warning that he might shift the allegiance of his mighty newspapers to Michael Howard - and disgracefully Tony Blair said nothing. If ever there was a time for all that jaw-jutting pugnacity, this was it. But he said not a word in protest at the arrogance of the man. Here is a clear and present threat to democracy itself, when one magnate controlling 40% of Britain`s newspaper readership and an ever greater slice of television plays cat-and-mouse with our elected government. He is a terrorist, too, operating by striking terror into the heart of politicians, forcing them all into craven subservience to his whims.

Another unsavoury media rogue tumbles, caught in financially questionable circumstances after we have endured his aggressive free-market sermonising all these years. Conrad Black`s ignominy should have prompted the prime minister to get brave with these strutting brigands. Downing Street worries about public cynicism and how to get its message out beyond the distorting megaphones of the Tory press. But they never consider the valiant David and Goliath path. If he dared risk his political life by standing up to media baron bullies, that would reach the ears of the voters as a moment of truthfulness and bravery. But no. It will be backroom sycophancy again.

Ahead lies nothing but more trouble. Tony Blair has little to look forward to in the Hutton report. If the centrepiece of the Queen`s speech is only university top-up fees, that is another fight that may not be worth the candle by the time it has been softened round the edges. Even if technically the right approach, it is well-nigh impossible to sell to those it affects most, raising not enough to make much difference to the universities.

So where is the lantern to light us through the mid-term winter? Where has the vision thing gone? Alas, the sense of drift is yet more collateral damage from the Iraq war which seems to sap too much energy and strength from the government. Bombers must be defied, but who is tackling the global causes of bombing? And will the agenda for the next session set a new course with some clarity of purpose? No sign of that yet.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Donkey cart rockets attack Baghdad hotels
By Bassem Mroue, AP
21 November 2003


Two heavily-defended hotels in Baghdad, used by US officials and journalists, came under attack today from rockets launched from a donkey cart today.

Rockets also slammed into Iraq`s oil ministry setting the building on fire. There were no serious injuries

In two nearly simulataneous attacks just after 7am, attackers led donkey carts carrying rocket launchers up to a street near the hotels and another outside the Oil Ministry.

Eight rockets hit the Oil Ministry, although only two of them detonated, one hit the Palestine Hotel and another hit the next-door Sheraton.

But at least three rocket impacts could be seen at the Palestine Hotel, on the eighth, 15th and 16th floors of the 18-storey building. One man was carried out on a stretcher, bleeding from his head.

On Saadoun Street, which runs alongside the Palestine Hotel, police and soldiers discovered a rocket-launcher on a donkey cart with a capacity to fire 30 rockets. Iraqi police Lieutenant Amar Arshad said at least three rockets were fired, and five more sat unfired in the rocket-launcher.

Another rocket-launcher, also on a donkey cart, was found near the oil ministry.

Witnesses reported hearing five explosions at about 7.30am, and thick black smoke poured from the heavily guarded compound.

At the Palestine Hotel, one of the rockets left a hole in the wall of the 16th floor, and a 15th-floor room appeared to have been hit as well. Another impact was on the eighth floor.

"My neighbour`s room was hit pretty bad," said Steven Akana, aged 49, a contractor with an American company who is staying on the 15th floor.

Several windows were shattered in the 18-floor building.

There were also broken windows on the top floors of the Sheraton across the street. An elevator appeared to have been damaged.

The Sheraton once belonged to the US chain, but is operated by Iraqis, like the Palestine, which was formerly part of the Meridian hotel chain.

The hotels are among the best-protected in Baghdad, with several security checkpoints on the approaches, blast barriers on surrounding streets and US armoured personnel carriers stationed outside. They stand in front of Firdaus Square, where Iraqis and American soldiers famously toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein on 9 April.
21 November 2003 08:40



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 21, 2003
G.O.P. to Run an Ad for Bush on Terror Issue
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — After months of sustained attacks against President Bush in Democratic primary debates and commercials, the Republican Party is responding this week with its first advertisement of the presidential race, portraying Mr. Bush as fighting terrorism while his potential challengers try to undermine him with their sniping.

The new commercial gives the first hint of the themes Mr. Bush`s campaign is likely to press in its early days. It shows Mr. Bush, during the last State of the Union address, warning of continued threats to the nation: "Our war against terror is a contest of will, in which perseverance is power," he says after the screen flashes the words, "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists."

By indirectly invoking the Sept. 11 attacks, the commercial plays to what White House officials have long contended is Mr. Bush`s biggest political advantage: his initial handling of the aftermath of the attacks.

Republican Party officials said that television stations in Iowa were to begin broadcasting the commercial on Sunday, the day before a televised Democratic debate there. The commercial is to continue running through Tuesday and will also probably be broadcast in New Hampshire about the time of the next debate, which is scheduled to take place there two weeks later. The party said it was spending roughly $100,000 for the initial broadcast of the advertisement, which seemed intended for voters in the states with the first contests, as well as for the journalists who cover the race.

The Bush campaign has sought to keep a low profile and put off overt electioneering for as long as possible. But some Republicans are worried about Mr. Bush`s popularity, and, officials acknowledge, some Bush supporters have pressed for a response to the avalanche of Democratic critiques of his performance in office, which have been extensively covered on television.

Still, the White House has sought to keep distance from this first commercial. It is not a product of the president`s campaign committee, but was paid for and produced by the Republican National Committee.

The party has acted as a proxy for Mr. Bush while he tries to maintain the appearance of being above the political fray.

Bush campaign officials have been reluctant to discuss when they intend to broadcast their own commercials, but suggest they will come in mid-March, when they expect the Democrats to settle on their nominee.

Jim Dyke, the Republican National Committee`s communications director, said the party did not believe that the Democrats` attacks were hurting Mr. Bush. Even so, he said, the time seemed right to provide a contrast to what Mr. Dyke called the negativism of the Democratic field — which he said had rallied around policies that are in sharp contrast with Mr. Bush`s and, he argued, out of step with mainstream America.

"It`s fine to say Iraq`s wrong, Afghanistan`s wrong," Mr. Dyke said. "But what we`re talking about is the safety of the American people and who`s putting forth the policies to address it."

Mr. Dyke added, "What we`re going to start doing is point to the positive policies of this president and this party and present the sharp contrast in approach and also in tone."

The 30-second advertisement gives the first sampling of the powerful array of images Mr. Bush`s campaign team will have at its disposal when it begins what is expected to be a formidable advertising campaign.

With somber strings playing in the background, the commercial flashes the words "Strong and Principled Leadership" before cutting to Mr. Bush standing before members of Congress. Intended to call out the Democrats for their opposition to Mr. Bush`s military strategy of pre-emptively striking those who pose threats to the nation, the screen flashes "Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others," then urges viewers to tell Congress "to support the president`s policy of pre-emptive self defense."

As the Democrats have seized on Mr. Bush`s tenure as a rallying cry for the party`s primary voters, some analysts and political scientists have questioned why Republicans have not responded more strongly.

According to the Wisconsin University Advertising Project, which has access to a computer system owned by a media research firm called TNS/CMAG that tracks political advertisements shown on television, many of the roughly $10 million worth of Democratic candidate and issue ads that have run so far have been either directly or indirectly critical of Mr. Bush.

A new commercial for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts superimposes Mr. Bush`s likeness over images of toxic clean-up crews and smog-spewing smokestacks while a narrator says the president "sided with polluters, not taxpayers," and "let corporate lobbyists rewrite our environmental laws."

In one ad, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri says, "I want to stop George Bush and fight for America`s middle class" after speaking with a man and woman who discuss financial problems.

It is unclear whether these commercials have hurt Mr. Bush much at this point. Democrats can point to poll numbers that show his support has fallen since the primary season began. For instance, the latest Los Angeles Times poll found a drop of 11 points in the number of people who said they believed the president had a clear notion of where he wanted to lead the country since March, falling to 45 percent from 56 percent.

"It is clear that the cumulative weight of it all has inflicted a fair amount of damage," Jim Mulhall, a communications strategist for the Democratic National Committee, said of the candidates` critiques. "The fact that the president is going on television a year out from the election is a reflection of nervousness on their part about his continued political deterioration."

He also said use of the State of the Union address ran the risk of reminding people of the disputed intelligence Mr. Bush relied on to claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

But in a recent memorandum to Republican Party and Bush campaign officials, Matthew Dowd, a chief Bush adviser, noted that several polls showed his approval rating as steady or moving slightly higher.

Still, some experts warned that the Republican Party would ignore the Democratic attacks at its own peril.

"Advertising matters when there`s a one-sided flow of information," said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin advertising project. "Clearly the R.N.C. and the Bush campaign were beginning to believe that the drum beat of Democratic advertising, in addition to the attention the Democrats were getting in the free media, created a one-sided drum beat against the president."

Compared with the last time a sitting president ran for re-election without a primary opponent, the Republicans are behind the advertising curve.

President Bill Clinton presented his first advertisements in June 1995, an extraordinarily early campaign that some of his strategists credited with having an important role in preparing the way for his re-election.

Bill Dal Col, a Republican consultant who ran Steve Forbes`s primary campaigns in 1996 and 2000, argued that Mr. Clinton was a far weaker candidate then than Mr. Bush is now, and was under even greater political fire when he started his campaign.

Still, he said, the new Republican commercial was a smart bid to shape the Democratic debate from the sidelines. "In this case you balance the harsh attacks coming, but you also suck up resources they`re raising and force them to spend money now," he said.

Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University, called the commercial a "clever strategy."

"It gives Republicans one more means to defend the president," Mr. West said. "If they stay silent, the next six months are going to be filled with Bush bashing. It`s never good to leave an information vacuum."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 21, 2003
A Bad Day in Europe

Two devastating terror bombings against British targets in Turkey yesterday compounded the sense of siege already surrounding President Bush`s cocooned state visit to Britain. Hours after the Istanbul explosions, which killed at least 27 people and injured 450, one of the largest weekday demonstrations in modern British history wound its way through Trafalgar Square in London to protest Mr. Bush`s policies in Iraq and Prime Minister Tony Blair`s down-the-line support for Washington.

The Istanbul terror and the London protests pose profoundly different challenges. Yet both point to growing problems in two of America`s main European allies. Defusing them will require more than the spirited defenses of current administration policies Mr. Bush offered in his well-written speech on Wednesday and his joint news conference with Mr. Blair yesterday. Unflinching defiance of terrorism is proper. But it is not enough as long as Mr. Bush persists in a failed unilateralism in Iraq.

Turkey has now endured two days of terrorist outrages in a single week. Such mass murders of innocent people deliver no coherent messages and advance no intelligible causes. These hate crimes occurred in Turkey, a rapidly maturing democracy governed by a reformist party with Islamic roots. But the targets, two Jewish synagogues last Saturday and a British diplomatic mission and a British-owned bank yesterday, were clearly not chosen at random, adding to strong suspicions that Al Qaeda may be involved.

Turkey has had a difficult time since Washington opted for war with its neighbor, Iraq. America is Turkey`s most important ally. Yet most Turks strongly opposed this war. With good reason, they feared that it could disrupt regional trade, increase Kurdish separatism in Turkey as well as in Iraq and lead to more terrorism and instability across the region. Ham-handed administration pressure to win transit rights for American troops through Turkey to northern Iraq before the war backfired badly. Still, Turkish leaders have braved public opinion and tried to repair the resulting breach.

Washington should reciprocate and make amends for its past insensitivity. In particular, it should strengthen the democratic government against military pressures and help resolve the diplomatic impasse over Cyprus that threatens to hold up Turkey`s admission to the European Union. If Mr. Bush is serious about his new democracy initiative in the Middle East, Turkey`s continued political progress is a priority. A secure democracy in Turkey is essential to the establishment of democratic governance in Iraq.

In Britain, yesterday`s protests were directed as much at Tony Blair as they were at George Bush. While Britons are divided in their feelings about America`s role in the world, they are increasingly critical of Mr. Blair`s management of the relationship. Mr. Bush has benefited enormously from Mr. Blair`s strong support on Iraq. Yet it is less clear what benefits Mr. Blair has reaped in return. Mr. Bush exacerbated Mr. Blair`s political problems this week by spurning London`s requests for the release of nine British citizens still being held in Guantánamo and for lifting steel tariffs ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.

Every American president must do what is necessary to defend the security of the United States, even when close allies disagree. Mr. Bush, however, has embraced unilateralism not as an extraordinary policy option, but as his dominant international theme. Compounding that error could leave America increasingly alone and increasingly endangered.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons

Cartoon Archive
123 New Cartoons Today, obwohl es nicht viel zu lachen gibt, heute 123 frische Cartoons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20031121__123toons.htm

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washingtonpost.com
Terrorism Inc.
Al Qaeda Franchises Brand of Violence to Groups Across World

By Douglas Farah and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 21, 2003; Page A33


Leaders of the al Qaeda terrorist network have franchised their organization`s brand of synchronized, devastating violence to homegrown terrorist groups across the world, posing a formidable new challenge to counterterrorism forces, according to intelligence analysts and experts in the United States, Europe and the Arab world.

The recent attacks in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya and Iraq show that the smaller organizations, most of whose leaders were trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, have fanned out, imbued with radical ideology and the means to create or revitalize local terrorist groups. They also are expanding the horizons of groups that had focused on regional issues.

With most of its senior leadership killed or captured and its financial structure under increasing scrutiny, Osama bin Laden`s network, now run largely by midlevel operatives, relies increasingly on these groups to carry out the jihad, or holy war, against the United States and its allies. Al Qaeda has turned to inspiring and instigating such attacks.

One senior U.S. official said al Qaeda`s children were "growing up and moving out into the world, loyal to their parents but no longer reliant on them."

Intelligence officials and analysts said the evolution posed new challenges to efforts to combat terror, because rather than facing a few defined, recognized targets, counterterror forces had to confront dozens of small groups that were much more difficult to trace and attack. And, they said, knocking out one small group does not have the same crippling effect as taking down a major leader of a large organization.

"The threat has moved beyond al Qaeda," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the Singapore-based Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "While al Qaeda was the instigator of recent attacks, very few have actually been carried out by al Qaeda."

While two of the highest-profile attacks -- the May 12 and Nov. 9 suicide bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- appear to be the work of al Qaeda, few other recent strikes appear to be the direct work of that organization.

A new group, the Islamic Great East Raiders Front, took responsibility for Thursday`s car bombing in Istanbul. Jemaah Islamiah, one of the more well-known al Qaeda affiliates, took responsibility for a suicide bombing Aug. 5 that killed 12 people at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. On June 5, a female suicide bomber killed at least 17 people in Chechnya. And within 48 hours of the May 12 attack in Riyadh, four other significant attacks were carried out by obscure groups in Pakistan, Morocco and the Philippines, killing scores of people.

A senior FBI official said the main link among the groups appears to be their shared experiences in the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Approximately 20,000 people from 47 countries passed through the camps from the mid-1990s until the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, officials estimate. The camps served as sites to train and indoctrinate fighters, keys to building the future network as they returned to their homelands.

Gunaratna described the al Qaeda camps as "a terrorist Disneyland, where you could meet anyone from any Islamist group."

U.S. and European intelligence officials said the creation of terror franchises was in part the result of successes in capturing or killing al Qaeda`s senior leadership and pressuring individuals and institutions that funded the movement.

Paul Pillar, a CIA analyst and terror expert, said that the growth in communication among terrorist groups was partly "a matter of the groups maturing" and partly because "we were able to hammer al Qaeda, which pushed the locus of activity elsewhere."

One of bin Laden`s major contributions to the spread of terrorism, Pillar said, was "putting the anti-American perspective at the forefront. It has been so successful that it has thoroughly affected even these groups that are more regionally focused. . . . Anti-Americanism sells, particularly in the Middle East."

Another CIA official said, however, that "making an enemy of the United States is not a wise career move," and that the United States had prevented some groups from executing terrorist attacks through intimidation.

Most terrorism experts, including U.S. and European intelligence analysts, said they also were seeing new similarities in the groups` communication techniques and the use of explosives.

For example, officials said, al Qaeda members have taught individuals from other groups how to use the Internet to send messages and how to encrypt those communications to avoid detection. Bomb and chemical-making techniques have been passed around. Investigators have found the same kind of fuse being used on different continents.

"People noticed a flow of ideas," said one government terrorism expert. "One group will pioneer a certain kind of fuse and transfer it around."

The financial structure of terrorism also has shifted, officials said. "There is no pool of money now that everyone can draw on," said a senior U.S. official. "There is no longer a fairly knowable group of large donors or entities. Now, groups in Indonesia raise money there. Groups in Malaysia raise money there. There are many more targets, and much harder to find."

Many of the local groups, unable to draw on the web of organizations and donors that have supported al Qaeda, rely on petty crime, drug trafficking and extortion to pay the bills, intelligence officials said. Because the groups are hitting softer targets in attacks that require less sophistication to carry out, money is not a major obstacle, the officials said.

"You don`t need a lot of money for most of what we are seeing now," one official said. "Many of these cells don`t appear to be very well-funded, but what is more important than money is human capital. And human capital doesn`t seem to be in short supply."

There is also growing concern over the possible role of al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. In recent weeks, insurgent forces there have attacked several high-profile targets, including the U.N. headquarters, the Jordanian embassy and a compound occupied by Italian forces. U.S. officials have said that up to 2,000 fighters have entered Iraq to fight American troops.

"Al Qaeda is as much an ideology as a structure," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. "Iraq is now the center of gravity, but I think they are seeking out soft targets and hitting from every flank imaginable by any means. This is an ongoing, raging war with all the gloves off."

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon terrorism consultant, argued that the evolution of the terrorist groups is analogous to a process of corporate merger and acquisition. At a terrorism conference earlier this year at St. Andrews College, Pillsbury said regionally focused terrorism groups with their own particular agendas join with al Qaeda to learn their operational techniques or benefit from their contacts, but are not subordinate to al Qaeda.

For example, he said, Jemaah Islamiah seeks to create a pan-Islamic state in Asia, an agenda that has little to do with driving U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia or other goals of bin Laden`s. "They like to get advice and equipment from al Qaeda but still have their own political agenda," Pillsbury argued.

The evolution of terror methods has prompted a debate within the intelligence community over the best tactics to pursue, knowledgeable officials said. One option would be to focus on destroying al Qaeda in an effort to wither the franchises. The other would be to devote almost equal attention to destroying the smaller, regional groups, a strategy Pillsbury said would be more politically sensitive and would require broader intelligence.

"If they can make an instrument of local groups, it will make up for the losses al Qaeda has suffered," said Margret Johannsen, a political scientist who studies terrorism at Hamburg University. "They won`t need international financing, they won`t need a base as in Afghanistan. [Al Qaeda becomes] an idea, a banner, and that is very dangerous."

Finn reported from Berlin. Staff writers Dana Priest and Dan Eggen and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Anti-War Demonstrators Vent at Bush


By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
Friday, November 21, 2003; 3:06 AM


LONDON - Protesters came from every corner of Britain to vent their fury at President Bush, deriding him as everything from a terrorist to a pretzel-munching chimp.

But police and protesters agreed that Thursday`s march through London, though laced with anger toward Bush and his major ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was generally a model of peaceful behavior. Police said between 100,000 and 110,000 people took part.

"We`ve had a very good-tempered march, and there have been no particular problems," said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter, who oversaw the Metropolitan Police`s deployment of more than 5,100 officers along the parade route to Trafalgar Square.

As night fell, police struggled to contain a few hundred demonstrators who broke away from the Trafalgar Square rally and darted down a nearby street. Officers linked arms surrounding the protesters and arrested several who refused to move off the road.

At least 67 people had been arrested so far during the president`s visit for offenses including public disorder, drunkenness and writing graffiti, officials said.

The Stop the War Coalition, which organized the main demonstration and several other smaller protests since Bush`s arrival on Tuesday, claimed their efforts had forced the president to restrict his movements around the British capital. They concluded their show of force by knocking over an effigy of Bush - mocking the toppling of Saddam Hussein statues by U.S. forces in Iraq.

"We occupied central London for the day and put George Bush under house arrest," said march leader Chris Nineham. "He came to London hoping for a big welcome. Well, only two people welcomed him: Tony Blair and the queen."

Bush and Blair said at a joint news conference they respected the protesters` rights, but suggested they were hypocritical.

"Freedom is beautiful," Bush said. "All I know is that people in Baghdad weren`t allowed to do this until recent history."

The crowds included many students and critics of Israel. Many waved handwritten placards and banners with hostile messages for Bush that included the crudest of slurs.

"Choke on it, monkey-boy," said one placard that pictured a jug-eared Bush eating a pretzel. "Bush off to hell Zionist dog," demanded another.

As marchers chanting "George Bush, terrorist" made their way through a business district, a few scuffled with three Bush supporters holding U.S. flags and a sign saying "support America." Police quickly intervened and hustled the three counter-demonstrators into a nearby building.

Some demonstrators proffered overtly anti-American and anti-Jewish messages, such as upside-down U.S. flags covered in Nazi swastikas or Stars of David. The march`s vanguard also featured a group of about 50 Americans living abroad. One of their banners read "Proud of my country, ashamed of my president."

"I just felt I had to protest against Bush`s policies and not sit at home fuming," said Therese Munn, who before moving to London lived in Jersey City, N.J.

Munn said many of her American friends had lost jobs during the U.S. economic downturn or were struggling to pay medical bills. "I don`t understand how Bush can justify spending billions extra on defense when these more basic needs of employment and medical care aren`t being met," she said.

Many in the crowd said Thursday`s bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, which killed more than two dozen people, strengthened their resolve to oppose U.S.-British policy in Iraq.

"There have been more and more bombings since the action in Iraq and more terrorism," said Mischa Gorris, a 37-year-old London lawyer. "You will never change the hearts and minds of terrorists by bombing them. This is what you will get."


© 2003 The Associated Press

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Placating the Bush-Haters (a Little)


By David Ignatius

Friday, November 21, 2003; Page A45


LONDON -- With a few self-mocking phrases and an eloquence that disarmed some critics, President Bush signaled this week that he gets it: He understands how unpopular he is in Europe and he knows that he must explain himself and his policies to Europeans who regard him as a menace.

The state visit here was originally meant to be a victory lap for Bush and his British ally, Tony Blair. In the neoconservative rhetoric of a year ago, the U.S. president was from Mars, while his caviling European critics were from Venus. But this week, in the bloody and disorienting aftermath of the Iraq war, the man from Mars seemed to be trying hard to communicate with the Venusians.

Bush gave a forceful keynote speech Wednesday at London`s Banqueting House; the best thing about it was the tone of self-deprecating humor. He began by comparing himself to the American magician David Blaine, who was suspended over the Thames in a glass box. "A few might have been happy to provide similar arrangements for me," said Bush.

The speech continued with a cogent explanation of how Bush views the world, its dangers and American responsibilities. He courted European sensibilities by re-pledging allegiance to the United Nations, and he explained the moral imperative in Iraq in a way even Jacques Chirac could appreciate: "Whatever has come before, we now have only two options: to keep our word, or to break our word."

It wasn`t Churchill, but it was among Bush`s best speeches, and it drew praise from hostile commentators in the British press. It was the self-mocking jokes that appealed to several British people I queried.

"I think the boy did well," said Fitzroy Edwards, a 45-year-old immigrant from Jamaica who listened to the speech on the radio and found himself surprised. "I used to see him as a cold, stone-faced, arrogant man who looked like he was slinging a .45," Edwards said in a lilting Jamaican accent. "Now I do see a warmth in the man."

Bush was right, of course, to imagine that many Europeans would like to cage him in a glass box. The fact is that Europeans really don`t like George Bush. In Germany and the Czech Republic this month, I heard the same comments as in London: Critics see in Bush all the things they don`t like about America -- arrogance, belligerence, boorishness, self-absorption.

Many European Bush-haters would endorse the sentiments of Felicity Lee, a 23-year-old protester I encountered in Trafalgar Square carrying a hand-lettered poster portraying Bush as the devil. Lee described Bush as "ignorant, stupid, war-happy and disgraceful" and said he was "just as bad as dictators in other countries."

That view of Bush as a threat to world peace may seem crazy to most Americans, but it`s surprisingly widespread in Europe. I spoke last week to a foreign policy gathering in Munich and found the intensity of anti-Bush sentiment chilling. The audience was a mix of liberals and conservatives, but they were united in their loathing of the U.S. president. Anti-Bush comments from German speakers brought roars of applause.

Anti-Bush feeling was evident even in Prague, a city that was liberated from communist rule little more than a decade ago. Any residual gratitude toward America is being washed away in the anti-Bush tide. After a meeting in Prague, someone actually asserted that King Abdullah of Jordan speaks better English than Bush.

New Europe or old, they`re all Europeans, and part of what makes them angry is a sense that Bush sneers at their ideals, such as environmentalism. The night of Bush`s state dinner at Buckingham Palace, I sat in on a discussion of global warming at a London church. "How does one discuss global politics with the rancher from Texas?" asked a London professor named Michael Grubb. "Frankly, he doesn`t care much about what the rest of the world thinks."

Thus the importance of Bush`s London speech. It was his chance to show Europeans that he is not the truculent cowboy they imagine -- and that he cares enough about their views to try to change his image.

To judge by the British press, his tone impressed even those who oppose his policies. The left-wing Guardian said the speech made Bush`s message "palatable, even attractive." Another critical paper, the Independent, editorialized that the speech was "delivered with a degree of verve, eloquence and even humor that defied his reputation as the least articulate American president since the silent Calvin Coolidge."

It will be a long road back for a president who acted for much of his first three years as if the rest of the world didn`t matter. But Bush has at least begun that journey with his trip to London.

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Working on Overtime




Friday, November 21, 2003; Page A44


MAJORITIES IN BOTH houses of Congress oppose a Bush administration plan that would eliminate the right to overtime pay for what could turn out to be millions of white-collar workers. Both chambers have voted in favor of blocking the new overtime rules from taking effect. But congressional leaders are doing their best not to heed their members` wishes: They`ve said they don`t plan to include the overtime provision in the omnibus 2004 spending bill that they`re racing to finish in time for Thanksgiving.

The lawmakers may be thankful to get out of town -- and to enjoy a break that will stretch through the new year -- but workers in their districts may not be quite so appreciative. The Labor Department rules would give employers too much power to avoid paying overtime to workers who are deemed to hold executive, administrative and professional positions. The new rules would particularly affect workers who earn between $22,100 and $65,000. Now such workers are entitled to an hour-and-a-half`s pay for every extra hour worked beyond the standard 40-hour workweek. But if they are found to be exempt from overtime protections under the new, looser rules proposed by the Bush administration, they could be required to work more than 40 hours without receiving an additional penny in their paychecks. It`s not that they wouldn`t be entitled to the ordinary time-and-a-half pay -- it`s that they wouldn`t have to be paid anything extra at all for doing extra work.

The overtime rules need updating -- but not in this mean-spirited way. "A tremendous number of people are going to lose overtime pay. That is a bad thing to do with the economy in its current condition," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who is part of the conference committee hammering out the omnibus measure and who has threatened to derail it unless the overtime rules are blocked. Mr. Specter has proposed an intriguing compromise: having a commission look at the overtime rules and report back to Congress, which would then have an up-or-down vote. But any such provision must make clear that the Labor Department can`t simply jam through its changes in the meantime.



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Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

John O. Edwards

Friday, Nov. 21, 2003: (NewsMax) Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.

Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.

Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:

President Bush: “As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he’s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he’s very, very bright. And I suspect that he’ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we’ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.”

On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

“I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.

“If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country?”

The Pentagon’s deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, “it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, ‘Aha, this will be the ace of spades.’”

Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden.

“The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won’t say that’ll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.”

Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”

Copyright: Newsmax.com

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http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-na-iraqpoll2…
THE TIMES POLL
Gestern den ersten Teil.


U.S. Future in Iraq a Growing Concern
By Doyle McManus
Times Staff Writer

November 21, 2003

WASHINGTON — Americans of every stripe are worried that the U.S. occupation of Iraq could turn into a quagmire, and most are unconvinced that President Bush has a clear plan to handle the problem, the Los Angeles Times Poll has found.

But voters` concerns about the war do not necessarily translate into support for Bush`s Democratic rivals in the 2004 presidential campaign, the poll found. Despite their misgivings, a narrow majority of respondents said they still trusted Bush to make the right decisions on Iraq, and a solid majority gave him high marks for his conduct of the war on terrorism.

Overall, most appear deeply unhappy about Iraq and uncertain that Bush`s strategy is succeeding — but they also are willing to give him more time to try.

"My biggest fear is: Is this thing going to end up being like Vietnam?" said Alan Geleske, 50, of Michigan City, Ind., one of 1,345 adults questioned in the nationwide poll. "It doesn`t seem like there are any clear-cut objectives ... and the casualty list is growing. It`s a concern. I have a son and a son-in-law in the Army."

On the other hand, Geleske said, "I haven`t seen any Democratic candidate I can get behind ... and I do admire what Bush did when 9/11 occurred." He said he hadn`t decided how he would vote next year; "it`s too early."

The distress over casualties has driven many who supported the invasion of Iraq in the spring to question whether it was worth the cost. Only about a third of the public now believes it was worth the loss of so many military lives, the poll found.

Still, a large majority said they supported keeping U.S. troops in Iraq at least until order is restored; only about a fifth said they favored an unconditional withdrawal.

"Nobody likes to see all those servicemen being killed," said Stephanie Weber, 88, a retired railroad employee in Ingleside, Ill. "I don`t think [Bush] has a clear plan.... But under the circumstances, he`s doing the best he can." Weber, who said she voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, now plans to vote for Bush in 2004 — "because he`s been so dogged about getting after the terrorists."

The president said Thursday he was determined to keep U.S. troops in Iraq — and to increase their number, if necessary — until his goals are met. "We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops in Iraq, we could have more troops in Iraq, what is ever necessary to secure Iraq," Bush told reporters in London.

In April, as U.S. forces swept into Iraq, the Times Poll found 77% of the public said they supported the decision to go to war.

But this week, when asked whether it had been worth going to war, only 48% said yes; 43% said no. Underlying that relatively even split is a marked partisan divide: Only 30% of Democrats now say the war was worthwhile, compared with 76% of Republicans.

The fear of a long military entanglement cuts across political boundaries, but with a partisan gap as well. Asked how they felt about the possibility that the United States could become "bogged down" in Iraq, 86% of all respondents said they were concerned, and most said they were "very concerned." But Democrats expressed more concern than Republicans.

Opinions of Bush`s handling of the Iraq issue are even more closely divided and polarized along partisan lines, the poll found. A narrow majority of all respondents, 53%, said they trusted Bush and his advisors to make the right decisions on Iraq, as opposed to 41% who said they did not. But among Republicans, 86% said they trusted Bush to make the right decisions; only 27% of Democrats agreed.

Likewise, about half of all respondents, 52%, said they did not believe Bush had a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq, while 39% said he did have a clear plan. But underneath those numbers is another deep partisan divide: 73% of Republicans say Bush has a clear plan, but only 19% of Democrats agree.

In that sense, only seven months after U.S. troops seized Baghdad in a war that won broad support, the toll of combat has redivided the public.

On one side is Paul Evans, a retired garage owner in Bradenton, Fla.: "You can`t walk in, destroy a government and say, `See you later.` ... I believe he`s trying to do a good job."

On the other side is Rose Petri of St. Louis, who voted for Bush but regrets it: "We have no strategy, we have no plan, we have no allies, and we have no time limit to bring our kids home. I`ll vote for whoever the Democrat is [in 2004]. If it`s a frog, I`ll vote for him."

Bush has retained broader support for his leadership in the global campaign against terrorism. Among all respondents, 59% said they approve of the way the president is handling the war on terrorism and 35% disapprove. Among Democrats, 42% approve and 50% disapprove — Bush`s best showing among Democrats on any major issue.

As for the future in Iraq, the public appears divided and uncertain.

Asked whether Bush should increase or decrease the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, respondents split three ways: 35% favored a reduction in troops and a faster transfer of authority to Iraqis, 29% said the current troop level should be maintained, and 24% said the number of troops should be increased to shore up the country`s stability.

Asked whether the U.S. military should stay in Iraq until democracy is established or only long enough to restore order, the public split again: 41% favored staying just long enough to secure order, 33% were willing to stay longer to establish democracy — even if that means continued casualties — and only 19% favored withdrawing before either objective is met.

The poll suggests that Bush has not yet convinced most Americans that spreading democracy in the Arab and Muslim world is worth taking risks for.

Half of respondents said they agreed with Bush`s goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East, but not if it required using military force. Only 14% said they would support using force to help bring democracy to Arab countries; 29% said they didn`t believe the United States should be promoting democracy at all.

Those sentiments were held relatively evenly among Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Despite continuing controversy, most Americans don`t believe Bush and his advisors deliberately exaggerated reports that Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons before the war.

A third of respondents said they expected the weapons of mass destruction would be found eventually, as Bush has forecast. About three in 10 said they believed that weapons didn`t exist, but that the administration was misled by inaccurate intelligence reports before the war. Only 26% of respondents said they believed Bush deliberately exaggerated reports about the weapons.

The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, surveyed 1,345 adults from Nov. 15 through 18; included in the survey were 1,144 registered voters. The margin of sampling error for both groups is plus or minus 3 percentage points.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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TIMES POLL
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-na-iraqpoll2…

Poll Analysis: Americans Say Outcome in Iraq Not Worth Costs
… but give Bush high ratings for his handling of the war on terror.
Analysis by Jill Darling Richardson
Times Poll Assoc. Director

November 21, 2003

American enthusiasm for U.S. intervention in Iraq has waned, according to the latest Times poll. While nearly half of Americans said the situation in Iraq has been worth going to war over, a large minority disagreed, splitting along political and gender lines. The survey also uncovered widespread concern that the U.S. could get bogged down in Iraq, as well as little public taste for further military intervention in the region. While most see the action in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, the president was given much higher marks for making the nation safe from terrorism than he was for his handling of Iraq.

Bush and Iraq

The persistent attacks against allied troops by anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq and the other events of the last few months have taken their toll on the public’s view of George W. Bush’s Iraqi policy. More Americans disapprove than approve of the way the president is handling the situation in Iraq, a reversal from when it was measured last April. Bush’s job approval on Iraq dropped to 45% in the current survey from a high of 74% last April while disapproval more than doubled over that same period, climbing from 24% to 51%. Last April, a majority (54%) strongly approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraqi situation, but only 24% expressed such keenly positive feelings about it today.

While just over half (53%) said they trust the president and those who advise him to make the right decisions about handling the situation in Iraq, the April survey found three out of four trusting Bush and his advisors to make the right decisions in the handling of military action against Iraq. While the two questions cannot be compared directly, they do serve to illustrate the survey’s overall finding that the American public’s admiration of Bush’s Iraqi policy has cooled since last spring.

When it comes to the still-elusive Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the public continues to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. A third said they remain convinced that WMD are hidden in Iraq and will be found eventually, while 29% said that while they believe that there are no WMD to be found, the president was misled by inaccurate intelligence. Just 26% think that Bush exaggerated the threat in order to build support for the war. Most of those who think he exaggerated the threat expressed condemnation of him for doing so, saying that it was not justified.

While three in five said they think of the situation in Iraq as part of the overall war against terrorism, Americans gave Bush much higher marks for his handling of terrorism in general than they handed out for his handling of Iraq. Nearly three in five said they approved of what he’d done to make the nation more secure from terrorist attack, including 35% who characterized their approval as “strong.” Another 35% disapproved of his job in this area. Similarly, about three in five said that Bush’s policies on terrorism and national security have made the country more secure, compared to 12% who said it is now less secure and 27% who said it has made no difference one way or the other.

War and Reconstruction

Most Americans (86%) expressed concern that the U.S. could get bogged down in a long and costly effort in Iraq. Even three out of four Republicans and 82% of conservatives said they were concerned. They also aren’t holding out much hope that the lethal toll Iraqi insurgents are taking on American troops will decrease in the near future. More than one in four said they foresee that a lot more troops will be killed in the coming six months than were lost since last April when the president declared the cessation of major hostilities. Two in 10 said they think that the number of casualties will increase some over that period, while only 15% predicted casualties will decrease.

Four in ten say that they think Bush and his advisors have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq but 52% see confusion at the top when it comes to Iraq. Democrats (70%) and independents (55%) are particularly concerned. However, Bush’s party base of Republicans disagree, with nearly three out of four saying that the president’s plan is clear.

There was no public consensus on how long troops should stay in Iraq, on how many should be committed or what the goals should be for an extended stay. A plurality of 41% supported keeping troops in Iraq long enough to restore order, but not necessarily until a democracy is established if it means continued U.S. casualties. A third said that establishing a free government is a goal worth the continued loss of U.S. lives, while 19% would like to see the U.S. bring its troops on home whether order is restored to Iraq or not.

Similarly, opinion was spread over whether a troop build up or removal would do more toward accomplishing U.S. goals in Iraq, although a majority would like to see the U.N. take the lead. One in four wanted more troops sent to Iraq in order to speed up reconstruction and help insure stability. Just over a third wanted the number of troops decreased in an effort to more quickly hand over to the Iraqis the running of their own country. Three in ten thought the size of the U.S. commitment of troops should stay about the same as it is today. A majority (53%) now said that they’d like to see the U.N. take over reconstruction tasks in Iraq, compared to 38% who thought the U.S. should retain control.

Americans have come to see the ongoing conflict in Iraq as costing too much for what the country is getting in return. Only three in 10 considered the establishment of an Iraqi democracy to be a goal worth the expense of U.S. lives, 59% said that the outcome of the war in Iraq was not worth the U.S. military lives lost, and 57% said that it was not worth the financial expense. More than half (53%) said that they don’t approve of the $87 billion appropriation for reconstruction costs in Iraq requested by Bush and passed by Congress last month, compared to 42% who approved of that allocation of funds.

While the survey found that two-thirds of Americans do see the promotion of democracy in the Middle East as a worthy goal, there was not a great deal of support for backing up that objective with U.S. military might. Exactly half of those polled said they only supported promotion of democracy in the region if it did not include the use of military force while just fourteen percent said they view it as a goal worth U.S. military intervention. Just under three in 10 said the country should not be engaged in promotion of democracy in the Middle East at all and 7% weren’t sure.

In fact, the Iraqi situation may be pushing Americans toward a less interventionist stance in general. Only 21% said that they would support sending U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia if that country’s government should ask the U.S. for help in overcoming the recent attacks against the Saudi government by internal opposition groups. About three in 10 thought it would be okay to send civilian advisors, 7% said we should send both military and civilian help and three in ten said the U.S. should provide no help at all in that situation.

Iraq As A Political Issue

When Democratic primary voters were asked if they preferred a candidate who opposed the U.S. war with Iraq or one who favored it, by 46% to 39% they said their ideal candidate would be one who had had opposed the war.

Note: Democratic primary voters includes registered Democrats and, in some states, independents and other voters who are permitted to vote in the Democratic primary or caucus in that state. It is a more centrist group than those who feel most closely aligned with the Democrats no matter how — or if — they are registered to vote. Four in ten of the Democratic primary voters self identify as moderate, 34% liberal and 25% conservative. By comparison, 28% of those who identify with the Democrats say they are moderate, compared with 42% liberal and 29% conservative.

When asked if they would still vote for a candidate who agreed with them on every other issue but disagreed about Iraq, 24% of Democrat primary voters said they would, 20% said they would not and 47% said that it made no difference to their vote one way or the other.

Western and Southern voters were evenly split on this issue, while those in the East preferred an anti-war candidate by 10 percentage points and Midwesterners by twice that margin.

Gender Gap

There is a definite gender divide in Americans viewpoint on Iraq.

Men divided 50% to 47% over Bush’s handling of Iraq while women were more likely to rate Bush negatively by seventeen points. More than half of men said they thought that the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over compared to 39% who said it wasn’t, while women were more closely divided, 48% who thought it wasn’t to 42% who thought it was. Six in 10 men trust Bush and his administration to make the right decisions in Iraq, while only 47% of women do. Ninety-two percent of women worry about getting bogged down in Iraq and 79% of men share their concern.

Along the same lines, 42% of women would like to decrease the U.S. military presence in Iraq, compared to 28% of men. Fifty-eight percent of women disapprove of spending another $87 billion on reconstruction of Iraq while men split 49% for to 48% against.

Nearly half (49%) of male Democratic primary voters preferred a pro-war candidate compared to 55% of females who expressed a preference for a candidate who had taken a stand against the war.

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 1,345 adults nationwide, including 1,144 registered voters and 662 Democratic primary and caucus voters, by telephone Nov. 15–18. Democratic primary and caucus voters are defined as registered Democrats and, in some states, independents and other voters who are permitted to vote in the Democratic primary or caucus in their respective states. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the nation. Random digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The entire sample of adults was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age and education. The margin of sampling error for all adults and registered voters is 3 percentage points in either direction; among Democratic primary/caucus voters it is 4 points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-terror21…
THE WORLD

Twin Attacks Appear Timed to Deliver a Message
By Sebastian Rotella
Times Staff Writer

November 21, 2003

PARIS — The twin bombings Thursday in Istanbul sent a pointed message to the United States and a wide array of allies that a resurgent terrorist network retains the power to strike despite tight local security and an ongoing international crackdown.

By bombing the British Consulate and the headquarters of a Britain-based bank, the attackers served notice on Washington`s chief ally in Iraq and other members of its coalition, as well as moderate Islamic countries, that cooperating with the Bush administration is risky — and that the danger extends to the business as well as the diplomatic community.

By pulling off the attacks only five days after twin synagogue bombings in Istanbul, they also demonstrated an audacious tactical prowess. British and Turkish authorities said Thursday`s attacks, designed to steal the limelight from President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda or its affiliates in an increasingly decentralized terror network.

"This is very much an attack designed to have maximum public relations impact," said Charles Heyman, a terrorism expert and editor of Jane`s World Armies in Britain. "It happened just as Blair and Bush were having their press conference. The terrorists have managed to grab the headlines. They did it very cleverly. It shows they are very aware of media operations. It may have neutralized any positive press in the war on terror that Bush could have had during his visit."

Every Al Qaeda strike resonates with symbolism: target, timing, setting. Thursday`s bombings revealed expert planning and multiple layers of meaning.

By hitting the consulate and local headquarters of the HSBC bank, the terrorists struck not only at Britain but at the international financial and diplomatic communities that spread Western influence in the world. Just two or three years ago, Britain seemed an unlikely Al Qaeda target because many Islamic extremists were based in London. However, that was before the Blair government became the United States` most important ally in the invasion of Iraq, analysts said.

"With the attack on Britain, one sees how Iraq now plays a central role in the mentality of terrorism," said Olivier Roy, a senior researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.

The attackers appeared to be taunting the U.S. and anyone else who proclaims progress in Bush`s declared war on terror.

The choice of cosmopolitan, westernized Istanbul drove home the message that an international terrorism campaign, which has escalated in the last two weeks with bombings in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, is closing in on Europe, experts said.

"They look for weak points," a Belgian investigator said. "It`s more difficult to carry out an attack in London or Paris or Brussels than in Turkey. So they hit Europe in Turkey."

The two twin bombings in less than a week also hammered more directly at Turkey, a strategic NATO country that aspires to membership in the European Union. Reviled by extremists for its secularism and good relations with Israel, Turkey is high on the list of pro-Western Muslim regimes that Islamic terrorist networks have vowed to overthrow.

"Two attacks in such a short time in the same place, this is new," said a Spanish police official who has investigated Al Qaeda suspects operating in Turkey. "Either they are very confident or they are demonstrating a very strong capacity in Turkey. I think they are hitting wherever they can."

The precision and effectiveness of the attacks in Turkey surprised European investigators. They said Al Qaeda had once again displayed an ability to develop an infrastructure in a country with aggressive security forces that had managed to avoid such attacks. Turkish leaders blamed Saturday`s synagogue bombings on Turkish extremists who were allegedly trained by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iran. In general, however, Turks have been notably scarce among Al Qaeda`s broadly multiethnic ranks. But Turkey has become an increasingly active transit hub for Arab and North African terrorists.

Follow-up strikes are a perennial danger, and a British counter-terrorism official said British authorities believed that the threat persisted.

"We are concerned about more, about what else they might do in Turkey," the official said.

After twin suicide attacks killed 45 people, including the 12 bombers, in Casablanca in May, Moroccan police rounded up hundreds of extremists, dismantling a network that had stockpiled weapons and explosives and was planning more strikes.

In Turkey, police quickly identified the suicide bombers and made many arrests after Saturday`s bombings. Nonetheless, Al Qaeda has decentralized its operations, using autonomous local cells that require little direct supervision from the network`s fugitive leaders and are hard to detect, experts say.

"They are small groups that are difficult to penetrate and to detect preventively," said French expert Roy. "It`s hard to say to what extent Al Qaeda`s center directs such a campaign of attacks around the world. Clearly, the leaders give a general order. They function through intermediaries."

As Al Qaeda spread globally before the Sept. 11 attacks, Turkey`s location as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East made it a hide-out and logistics base.

Arabs and Europeans flowed back and forth to the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya to fight the Russians, stopping in Turkey to obtain fraudulent papers or get hospital treatment for combat wounds, the Belgian investigator said. Turks also fought in Chechnya.

Foreign extremists have taken advantage of Turkey`s long and porous borders, liberal visa policies and busy networks dedicated to smuggling immigrants into Europe, investigators say.

In the late 1990s, U.S. and Spanish investigators detected frequent travel to Turkey by Syrian-born leaders of a Madrid Al Qaeda cell who are charged as accomplices in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Police identified one of their associates as a Syrian operative based in Turkey who, posing as an exporter, shuttled between Europe and Afghanistan as a courier for Osama bin Laden, according to Spanish court documents. After the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in late 2001, thousands of Al Qaeda fighters fled to Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, European police say.

Last year, operatives dispatched by Abu Musab Zarqawi — an Al Qaeda chief who has moved between Iran and Iraq — traveled through Turkey intent on launching attacks in Western Europe with primitive chemical and biological weapons, according to the British official.

"I`m not surprised by the attacks in Istanbul because Al Qaeda has had a presence in Turkey and they have taken advantage of it," the Spanish police official said. "But in all the cases we saw, there were no Turks. They were mostly Arabs living in Turkey or passing through."

Turkey has spawned several extremist groups, and European analysts say Turkish intelligence must find out quickly the extent to which Al Qaeda has infiltrated them.

"The Turks have lost the intelligence picture on this organization," British terrorism expert Heyman said. "The problem is you may have one or two well-trained terrorists who move into a local group and add value. It isn`t easy to detect."

Thursday`s message from the terrorists to the West is clear, according to Heyman.

"The message is: You can put 14,000 police around Bush and Blair, but we can still damage you," he said. "It`s almost as if the drumbeat of the attacks is getting louder. I would suspect because the tempo is increasing that we might see something else somewhere in the world in the next couple of days."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iran21n…
EDITORIAL




Don`t Jump the Gun in Iran
The U.S. needs to let weapons inspectors do their work before pressing for action.

November 21, 2003

The Bush administration demands that a Middle East country admit it has a program to develop weapons of mass destruction. European foreign ministers argue against taking needless, provocative actions. Sound familiar?

Now it`s Iran — not Iraq — being pressured to disclose any secret work on a nuclear program.

At the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting this week, which is expected to conclude today or Saturday, the administration has pushed for a resolution to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council for nuclear violations. The Europeans, including Britain, President Bush`s closest ally, rightly warn against assuming the worst before inspectors investigate. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has persuaded only Canada, Australia and Japan — of 35 agency members — of the need to censure Iran.

There is reason to worry about Iran`s nuclear ambitions. It has acknowledged concealing for two decades its atomic research, apparently including uranium enrichment — the key to building a nuclear bomb. U.N. investigators have found traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium in some Iranian equipment. Tehran said this was just residue on imported machinery. But it also promised to suspend all uranium enrichment.

Moderate Iranian leaders, like President Mohammad Khatami, want to avoid a confrontation with Western powers; they`re eager to outflank religious hard-liners who want to defy the United States. In an important agreement worked out in October with the British, German and French foreign ministers, Iran assented to unannounced inspections of suspected nuclear sites. The documents have yet to be signed, but IAEA head Mohammed Baradei is working as if they were. He also is investigating Russia, China and Pakistan as likely suppliers of technology that Iran employed to enrich uranium.

The U.S. should give Baradei room to work. Instead of insisting on sending the Iranian case to the Security Council, Washington should wait for his findings. He says it`s unclear whether a nuclear program exists, adding there is "no evidence" yet to support U.S. allegations. But he would investigate further. Baradei is no weakling: Though France, Germany and Britain wanted to just chide Iran, he insists that any U.N. resolution deplore Iran`s past breaches. This, coupled with U.S. pressure, helps to ensure that any Iran resolution has teeth. A resolution noting Iran`s lapses but also acknowledging its present cooperation would strike the right balance.

The U.S. must avoid undermining the U.N once again before it finishes inspections. Had the U.S. found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Washington would have greater credibility and global backing to press its case for action on Iran. Instead of widening the transatlantic rift, the Bush administration should compromise with Europe on Iran and avoid premature action that could end cooperation before it has a chance to begin.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Giant Floating Purple Pills
Are those creepy prescription-drug commercials on TV trying to kill you?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 21, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2003/11/21/notes112103.DTL




Cut to picture of healthy-looking yuppie guy emerging from swimming pool and smiling.

Cut to picture of mother twirling her child in the park in slo-mo. Cut to picture of woman taking deep whiffs of fresh-cut lilies at the florist and grinning warmly as if the world was one big gob of perky happy fluffy bunny joy. Yay. Drugs. Yay.

Celebrex can make you feel like you again. Celebrex is a revolutionary new breakthrough in medicine technology. Celebrex is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if Celebrex is right for you.

Side effects may include nausea diarrhea anxiety sleeplessness headaches projectile vomiting genital warts narcolepsy halitosis death bed wetting pained nightmares involving angry bloodsucking poodles and the mad uncontrollable desire to smash your head into a brick wall over and over again until you stop screaming.

Do not use Celebrex if you are recently deceased. Do not use Celebrex if you are already experiencing heart palpitations or night sweats or screaming terrified wolf howls or if you take any other medication that begins with the letter C.

Pregnant or nursing mothers should not use Celebrex, unless you want your child to become a mutant deformed pygmy three-armed libertarian with 17 toes and the IQ of a small canned ham.

If you are absolutely certain nothing is wrong with you and you feel fine and hence you do not need Celebrex, this is actually the first troubling sign that Celebrex is exactly what you need. Contact your doctor immediately, if not sooner.

If you are right now watching this TV commercial for Celebrex and have no idea what the hell Celebrex is because we don`t ever actually tell you what the hell it is, and, hence, if you feel the pharmaceutical industry is this freakish mega-powerful mind-control cult fully bent on convincing as much of the human population as possible that wildly expensive prescription meds are the answer to all your problems, this, too, means you should take our medication, pronto.

And if you go so far as to dare to think that maybe, just maybe, alternative medicine or homeopathy or just becoming much, much more aware of your life and what you eat and how you live might, in fact, negate the need for a great many of the drugs we manufacture, and if you believe that we might actually invent bogus ailments and drill a fear of them into the cultural consciousness, all in order to supply you with the narcotics to treat them, well, have we got a nice pill for you.

Sound familiar? It should. It was in 1997 that the FDA finally loosened the rules on DTCA (direct-to-consumer advertising), finally let them loose upon the unsuspecting and completely unprepared populace, and thus were major pharmaceutical companies given the right to advertise like savage and shameless maniacs on national television.

And they were allowed to hawk extremely expensive and often toxic drugs designed to relieve you of various debilitating ailments, but not even really tell you what those products actually do, or why, or how much they cost, or anything at all except for a quick charming listing of possible side effects, each of which seems to involve some sort of stomach recoil and skin eruption and painful bowel shift.

But there was a study. There is always a study. By the Kaiser Family Foundation. A couple years ago. It said that one in eight people who saw a drug commercial on TV did, in fact, ask their doctor about it, and 44 percent of those actually got themselves a prescription for that drug.

Sadly enough, drug ads work. In 1997, pharmcos spent $791 million on TV ads. Today that figure is well over $3 billion. This is why you can`t turn on the TV without seeing some inexplicable commercial for some bizarre-sounding drug that features as its active ingredient siflintrate oxygtoralnyzincotim but which they call Happium or maybe Numbium. Drugs have become just another everyday consumer good, like Campbell`s soup or Windex or a new Toyota Camry.

A swarm of giant purple pills gently fall from the azure sky, rotating slowly as they fall, like a rain of Skittles, like manna from the gods of Merck. A well-drugged housewife happily bakes cookies with her children as a bird sings on the windowsill. Happy narcotized citizens of America go about their business, usually in slow motion, always grinning calmly, the colors of the world oversaturated and utopian and creepy.

Lipitor. Nexium. Singulair. Vioxx. Vanceril. Xenical. Zyrtec. Allegra. Avandia. Claritin. Zoloft. Ritalin. Valtrex. Viagra. Flonase. Prinivil. Meridia. Prilosec. Provocal. Ditropan. All on TV. All aimed straight at consumers. All sounding like a new model from Acura.

Many of these drugs are, of course, beneficial to a great many people, but every single one crosses over that modest boundary of limited need and is heavily overmarketed and overprescribed and wickedly expensive, its promised results misleading and even dangerous.

And many of these drugs are, in the long haul, quite likely more toxic and destructive to the mind and body than pot or cocaine or ecstasy. But, hey, as every major oil CEO and BushCo warmonger and Wal-Mart exec knows, education and common sense are the true enemies of profit.

Simply put, it is in the vested interest of every pharmco in the world to convince as many doctors as possible to prescribe their drugs, wining and dining them and sending them elaborate gifts and buying them hookers and booze and cars and lost weekends during ridiculously lavish weeklong drug symposiums at the Bellagio in Vegas. Hey, just ask any M.D. -- this happens far, far more than you think. And, by the way, you have not seen the very embodiment of slick smarm until you`ve met a professionally groomed and carefully hatched drug rep from a major pharmaceutical corporation. Beware.


But now, much to their overall sinister glee, pharmcos no longer have to market solely to doctors. And they can also pass right over your neighborhood pharmacist, the specialist who`s actually specifically trained in this sort of thing, who actually knows more than almost any doctor about prescription meds and what chemical does what to whom and why.

After all, why try to convince the wary professionals and experts when you can market straight to the gullible and the trusting and the easily duped? America is sick sick sick, besotted by a hundred thousand ailments, each one more icky and ravaging than the last. This is what they are selling. This is the underlying message. This is why you need their drugs.

And this is why television is their ultimate medium, allowing them to convince as many consumers as possible that they must demand a prescription for that neat-o pretty purple pill they saw on TV because, as we all know, if it`s on television, it must be good.

We have become a nation completely inured to seeing giant pretty pills floating across our TV screens like they were just another can of Cheez-Whiz. Hell, even the FDA says many of these ads are seriously misleading, and has issued numerous warning letters to countless pharmcos for intentionally lying to consumers about the efficacy of their chemicals.

No matter. Few are demanding any drastic change to the ads, as Bush-backed corporations have more power than they`ve had since the industrial revolution, and, hence, nuanced awareness of corporate calculation, of what is being sold to us -- from war to jingoist ideology to the mountain of legal drugs we happily pump into our bodies -- seems to be at an all-time low.

But it`s OK. That sadness and bitterness and overall disgust you might feel about all this? That sense that you are losing control, that they have far too much power and reach and you have too few defenses and they will soon be marketing Ritalin and kiddie Prozac straight to your child during "Spongebob" commercial breaks? Fear not. Just relax. They have a pill for that, too.


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Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

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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Photo Proves Saddam 9/11 Connection!
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Case Closed!!!
(IWR Satire) - This top secret photo proves once and for all, that Saddam Hussein is linked to 9/11. This image was obtained from the same reliable neocon CIA contacts, who told us about Iraq`s huge stockpile of WMD.


Now, I know some of you liberal traitors out there will say this picture is doctored, but hey, you wouldn`t say that if it were George Bush in the photo, now would you?
Well maybe not, but hell, neocons like us don`t get paid to report facts anyway.

We get paid by the oligarchs, who control the Bush Administration, to glorify their imperialist crusades into the Middle East and whatnot.

Remember, if any liberal should try to tell you that this photo is fake, you just tell them that Fred Barnes says it`s the real McCoy. Fred knows more about these things then almost anybody else in the whole universe. That`s what he tells everybody here at The Weekly anyway.

A little bird tells me that next week, the CIA will provide me of some secret enhanced photos showing Saddam standing next to giant caches of nuclear weapons, which will further justify Bush`s preemptive tryst in Iraq.

[Joerver]

The writer is a member of several falconry and ornithological clubs and organizations. He contributed this article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from California, USA.

Send feedback
Question: How Stupid Can An American President Be?
by Stan Moore
(Wednesday 19 November 2003)

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

"Answer: As stupid as the American people will tolerate! The next election
will define the answer."



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Evidence:

George W. Bush says Iraqi`s want "freedom", but he is too stupid to understand that Iraqi`s want freedom from American hegemony, occupation, and control of their fiscal and economic affairs. Bush` behavior actually makes some Iraqis nostalgic for Saddam Hussein.

George W. Bush says Iraqi`s want "democracy", but his version of democracy is an appointed council, similar to the non-democratic process that installed Bush rather than electing him.

George W. Bush says Iraqi`s need a new constitution, and he insists that the new "interim" constitution reflect "American values". How stupid is it to install a value system of an upstart power (whose primary "wisdom" is "might makes right") over one of the world`s oldest civilizations?

George W. Bush decries "foreign fighters" in Iraq, although American/Britain have placed about 150,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and are trying to recruit more! Apparently, Bush thinks Iraq is a colony of America!

George W. Bush thinks the more American soldiers are killed by Iraqis, the better the situation is for American interests, because it means the Iraqi freedom fighters are "desperate". In contrast, the American military thinks the situation means Iraqis are increasingly organized and acting in a rational insurgency against a foreign occupier.

George W. Bush thinks American fatalities are "bad". He does not express any opinion at all on Iraqi fatalities, even of innocent victims of American misconduct. This is a stupid way of looking at Iraqi suffering.

George W. Bush does not attend funerals of American servicemen, does not concern himself with quality of treatment of wounded American servicemen, and does not want the American people to see visual images of American wounded or dead as they are buried or brought home to America. This is a stupid way of dealing with American suffering.

George W. Bush thinks military attacks by Iraqis on America`s occupying military are "terrorism". This is a stupid way of looking at insurgency or guerilla warfare.

George W Bush thinks that attacking Iraqis in Iraq will make the resistance to American occupation go away. It is questionable whether this is evidence of stupidity or delusion.

Bush placed a viceroy in Iraq who does not speak Arabic, does not meet with the Iraqi citizens, and who walls himself off in a secure fortress to keep his ass from getting blown up with rocket-propelled grenades each and every day. Yet, Bush is stupid enough to think his system meets the needs of Iraqis.

If the situation were reversed, and Saddam Hussein was in power in the U.S. and offering $25 Million for the head of George W. Bush, how long would it take for some American citizen to deliver up "W." and claim the prize? You don`t have to be stupid to figure that one out!


Source:



by courtesy & © 2003 Stan Moore

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An Early Assessment by Leading Presidential Scholars of George W. Bush`s Presidency
Part Two
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20031121.html

By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Presidential scholars` preliminary views of the current Bush Presidency. -- Ed.

In late April of this year, presidential experts gathered at Princeton`s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to assess President`s Bush`s first two years in office. There, they presented their papers on this subject which they later revised and updated to be collected in book form.

The book that resulted is the invaluable volume The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment. It is one of the first scholarly examinations of the Bush presidency that is based on sufficient information to be a meaningful assessment.

In addition to political scientists who study the president, the conference invited a broad cross-section of journalists who cover the White House. While not included in the book, the thoughts and comments of these seasoned Washington correspondents, which included former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry, during their roundtable discussion, were highly informative.

Panel of Washington Correspondents


The journalists included Dan Balz of The Washington Post, Carl Cannon of the National Journal, Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal, and Todd Purdum of The New York Times. I`ve summarized, as follows, a few of the salient points that emerged during their discussion:

Dan Balz interviewed Bush with Bob Woodward following 9/11 The interview resulted in material which was reported in The Washington Post, and then in Woodward`s Bush at War. Balz endorses the Daalder and Linday finding (discussed in Part One) that Bush did not really change his foreign policy because of 9/11; rather, others merely began noticing his policy subsequent to 9/11.

Balz says Bush is difficult to interview (and he has been doing it since 1994) because Bush usually doesn`t want to say anything. Bush thinks the press is trying "to trick" him, and that they are always testing him. Balz also agrees with Hugh Heclo (see Part One for more on Heclo`s view) that Karl Rove is not Bush`s "brain," as has widely been rumored.

Carl Cannon, while acknowledging Bush`s malaprops (and he has his own collection of favorites), finds that there is a "kind of simple eloquence … when Bush speaks … [so] we are starting to take him seriously." Others, in contrast, find an unscripted Bush painful to listen to.

Jeanne Cummings, who has traveled with Bush abroad (as she did with Clinton) finds that when home, "he doesn`t socialize a lot," and when abroad, "he`s very lofty." He has no interaction with everyday people (as so many presidents have). Instead, he visits kings, queens, prime ministers, and ambassadors. Others have noted that Bush`s visits with common people are staged. Bush`s state visit to London certainly confirms Ms. Cummings`s observations.

Todd Purdum, who reports for America`s newspaper of record, finds it very difficult to get calls returned from the Bush White House. "And I do find," Purdum comments, "that the Bush administration is quite willing at a brass tacks level to sort of threaten reporters with lack of access, with reprisals in a very overt way, that I can hardly ever remember happening in the Clinton administration."

Purdum provides the best explanation I have heard as to why Bush has been given a pass by the American media: "[T]he plain truth of it is the press takes its lead from the public." He adds, "[T]he reality is when a president is popular and riding high and the President`s storyline is fundamentally one of success, it`s very difficult to create a counter-narrative to that storyline. … [But] that could change, and if it changes, it will change with a vengeance, because that`s how the cycle works."

Mike McCurry concludes that the press simply likes Bush better than Clinton. They expected little from Bush, and he has produced more than was anticipated. They expected much from Clinton, and he disappointed. So they were on Clinton`s case, but have given Bush much more leeway.

Bush`s Legislative Strategy

During the Bush Administration, the House was initially, and has remained safely, in Republican control. However, the Senate was initially divided equally between the Democrats and Republicans, with the vote of Vice President Cheney giving nominal control to Republicans. Then, when Senator James Jeffords left the Republican ranks, the Democrats regained control of the Senate. After the 2002 mid-term elections, however, the balance shifted, and Republicans gained full control of both the House and the Senate, which they continue to enjoy today.

In the essay collection, two American Enterprise Institute scholars, John Fortier and Norman Ornstein, address Bush`s strategy with the divided Congress. They note that his strategy has shifted depending on which party controlled the Senate. But at the same time, they note an overall Bush approach which has been consistent. To get what he wants, he typically goes first to the compliant, Republican House. After that, he gets the best he can from the Senate. Much Bush legislation has been worked out behind closed doors during the House and Senate conference. It is difficult to recall a time of so much secret lawmaking.

I wish Fortier and Ornstein had discussed at greater length the surprising amount of lawmaking being conducted behind closed doors in this Administration. Provisions are slipped into legislation despite the fact that they have not been through committees and hearings -- and, indeed, most members are not even aware of the provisions. Nevertheless, by agreement of a handful of House and Senate members, such provisions become law.

Finally, needless to say, no legislative strategy was really needed after 9/11, when the President, in effect, had a mandate from Congress to address terrorism -- as he saw fit. And this was a situation Bush used to his full advantage, to press measures that had been on his agenda long before 9/11, and would not likely have otherwise become law.


Despite A Tied Election, Bush Has Been Able to Use His Position to Govern

In another essay in the collection, Charles O. Jones, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and a senior fellow with the Brookings Institute, analyzes how Bush dealt with an election that was a tie. Jones explains that Bush`s strategy was to use the only thing he had going for him -- the simple fact that he, rather than Al Gore, got the job. Jones argues, in other words, that Bush used his "position" as president, both before and after 9/11, to govern -- and was effective in doing so.


How exactly did Bush use his position as President to its full advantage? According to Jones, Bush sought to control the agenda, to be first in offering solutions to a problem, to press his advantages, to remember not to start where he wanted to end (but rather to take a more extreme position and then compromise), to win where and when he could, to be alert to cross-party support, compromise if necessary, but to take a good deal when it was there, to remember agreements are victories, and to never forget that the "Constitution provides for just one commander in chief."

Jones feels Bush has succeeded largely because he has relied on his position as commander in chief. But as to whether this reliance is sustainable (and will get him reelected), Jones is not sure. And Jones cautions Bush and his staff to remember that those who "believe that the president is the presidency, the presidency is the government, and ours is a presidential system … will be proven to be wrong."

Bush`s Standing With The Electorate, and In Public Opinion Polls

President Bush, in the aftermath of 9/11, enjoyed astounding public popularity. Indeed, Gary Jacobson reported to the conference that Bush had "the longest stretch of approval ratings above 60 percent of any president in forty years."

Jacobson is a professor at University of California, San Diego, who specializes in elections. In his essay, he addresses the question of whether 9/11, and Bush`s handling of it, "have had any lasting effect on partisan attitudes, the partisan balance, or the degree of polarization of the electorate."

His answer is no. Jacobson takes into account Bush`s improved image of competence, and his two military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he nevertheless concludes that Bush has "left the electorate, like the Congress, as divided and polarized as when he entered the White House." And Jacobson`s conclusions have continued to be borne out by the numbers in subsequent polls, to this day.

In a separate essay in the collection, Richard Brody, an emeritus professor in political science from Stanford University, provides an explanation of the patterns of Bush`s public support -- with highly graphic and revealing charts. Of note in this study is Brody`s point that unlike many presidents, "Bush is quite explicit about what he expects from his policy initiatives." For example, Bush claims that his tax cuts will create jobs, and that removing Saddam will usher in democracy in the Middle East.

Brody says by making claims such as these, Bush has provided a mark against which opinion leaders and the public can judge him. Indeed, it is certain that will occur in spades during the forthcoming election.

A View From Within The Bush White House

To date, there has been only one book providing any sort of extended peek inside the Bush White House from a staff member. That was the work by the conservative journalist David Frum, who served for about a year as a junior speechwriter.

I understand that former senior Bush aide Karen Hughes, and former press secretary Ari Fleischer, have signed contracts to write books. But even when those books are published, it is anticipated they, too, will talk about all that went right, and heap praise, as did Frum, on their president.

John DiIulio, Jr., however, has offered another perspective. DiIulio is a criminologist and political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a centrist Democrat, with broad knowledge of the Presidency. He was asked by the Bush 2000 campaign to assist them with their faith-based initiative programs, and then was recruited for a senior position at the White House, as an assistant to the president, and as director of the White House`s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. DiIulio remains a supporter of the president. But he has also spoken critically of the Bush White House since his departure.

DiIulio had agreed to only a six-month assignment at the White House, but in the end, he spent eight months there, departing on August 20, 2001. After departing he told Esquire magazine, "What you got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It`s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." But DiIulio quickly apologized, and told the conference he was back in good graces at the Bush White House.

That was apparent, since his remarks about Bush & Company were generally laudatory (and thus, unlike his prior, controversial comments, did not make news). But DiIulio did provide a number of insights.

One of them was this: DiIulio says he had always been skeptical of political scientists who analyze the presidency through the character of the president. Yet he left the Bush White House a convert to this theory, believing presidential character is largely determinative of a presidency.

After DiIulio`s flap over the "Mayberry Machiavellis" comment, and other criticism, I spoke with an insider who was particularly peeved at DiIulio. He was upset at DiIulio`s harsh comments in part because Bush had gone out of his way to charm the professor, even visiting "Big John" in his office in the Executive Office Building on his birthday (an event that DiIulio reports in his paper for the conference).

But when DiIulio later apologized, insiders accepted his apology as sincere, for he is a well-meaning man who was venting his frustration.

As DiIulio reported to the conference, he is "very much a true believer in the president`s moral character and generous heart." In light of this belief, he says he does not know why the Bush administration has "made few major social policy efforts on behalf of the needy and neglected."

Like others, DiIulio can only speculate. But his insights to the Bush White House are informative, particularly those earlier remarks that he apologized for -- but did not retract.


The Conclusions This Early Assessment Suggests

For me, the most striking feature of the Bush presidency is its disquieting secrecy. If anything is apparent in the work of this conference, it is how little information its participants possessed about the true inner workings of the Bush White House. Even Professor DiIulio, a putative insider, was compartmentalized in his work on domestic policy. Moreover, he was not there long enough to observe the White House from the inside after the 9/11 attacks, which redefined the Bush Presidency.

To study the work of this conference, however, leaves two clear impressions: On one hand, Bush is going to effectively use his incumbency to get himself reelected, and he is going to be very hard to beat. But on the other hand, it is also clear from this assessment that he will be vulnerable to an effective challenger -- or to a public that meters whether he has truly made good on the concrete promises of his term.

[Joerver]

An Early Assessment By Leading Presidential Scholars
of George W. Bush`s Presidency: Part One


http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20031107.html
2. Teil nächstes Posting.

By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Nov. 07, 2003

Part One

How is Dubya doing as president? Obviously, that`s not an unimportant question as the countdown toward Election Day (November 2, 2004) has started.

Most people judge presidents by their own partisan predisposition, assessing presidents along party lines, and then rationalizing their conclusion afterward. Respected presidential scholars, however, typically try to understand the facts before they make their judgment. While they doubtless have partisan feelings, they recognize their bias, and seek to deal with it in making their judgments (somewhat in the way good judges do).

Earlier this year, a conference organized by Princeton`s Woodrow Wilson School to review the first two and half years of the Bush presidency aimed to make just this kind of impartial assessment. The papers presented and panel discussions, later posted online, speak for themselves.

This work has been further updated and revised as a book: The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment. This book doubtless will be studied closely by the Democrats who want to send Bush back to Texas in January 2005. And it will be read by Republicans, including Bush`s aides, advisors, supporters, not merely to get a sense of how history may treat this presidency, but also to garner insights for a second term.


If you don`t like Bush, this material won`t change your mind, but it will correct some of your thinking. If you`re a Bush supporter, you will be disappointed to learn that in the eyes of professionals, and for good reasons, this president is making some potentially dangerous mistakes.

These two dozen presidential experts have placed the Bush II presidency in a nutshell, with its strengths and weaknesses laid bare. Absent another terror attack in the United States, this assessment will likely still be reasonably accurate at the time of the next Presidential election. In this two-part series of columns, I will discuss the conference and the book.

The Leadership Style of George W. Bush

Fred I. Greenstein, who heads Princeton`s leadership studies program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, organized the conference and is the book`s editor. Greenstein has pioneered and refined the use of political psychology in analyzing presidential leadership and decision making. He applies his well-honed criteria to Bush. (He introduced the criteria in his earlier work The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton.)

Greenstein applies six "job requirements" essential for all modern presidents: the personal qualities of "emotional intelligence" and "cognitive style," along with the leadership qualities of "public communication," "organizational capacity," "political skills," and "policy vision."

Greenstein gives Bush high grades on emotional intelligence, given the fact that Bush could be (based on his years of alcohol abuse) "an emotional tinderbox." Yet as Texas governor, presidential candidate and now as president, Greenstein finds him in good control of his emotions.

Bush, however, does not score particularly well for his "cognitive style." While he does not find Bush lacking in intelligence, Greenstein also does not find him particularly "well equipped to reason clearly about the complex tradeoffs presidents typically have to make."

Our first MBA president gets high marks for his organizational abilities, but Greenstein says his lack of tolerance for staff disputes during meetings results in "Bush`s deliberative processing" leaving "something to be desired." Bush`s "congenitally gregarious" nature, Greenstein believes, puts him in a league of political masters like Lyndon Johnson. Nevertheless, Greenstein suggests Bush has not lived up to his potential as president because "there has been a hard edge to his administration`s partisanship in Washington that was not evident in Texas."

When comparing Bush with his father, Greenstein finds that Dubya does have the "vision thing" -- not because he is interested in policy matters, rather because the younger Bush knows "that if a leader does not set his own goals, others will set them for him." In fact, Greenstein concludes, that while his father didn`t have vision and lost, "the junior Bush may prove to suffer because of his policy vision."

The Political Ethos of George W. Bush

In a fascinating presentation, Hugh Heclo, an accomplished political scientist now teaching at George Mason University, searches for "the distinguishing character of and guiding beliefs behind George W. Bush`s approach to politics." In doing so, Heclo dispels the myth that Karl Rove is Bush`s political brain -- the "utterly indispensable `boy genius` who made a hapless George Bush into a political winner."

With "two generations of businessmen-politicians in his life from birth," Heclo says (referring to Bush`s grandfather U.S. Senator Prescott Bush and his father), Dubya grew up in a family with an ethos for public service. Dubya apprenticed, and received a remarkable education in real world national politics, by working on his father`s unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate (1964 and 1970), his successful run for House of Representative (1969), and his runs for the presidency or as vice president (1980, 1984 and 1988, and 1992). In addition, Dubya worked as a political consultant on several U.S. Senate campaigns in Florida and Alabama. In sum, Dubya is no rookie; rather, he is an experienced professional.

However, although Bush is an accomplished campaigner, and has made campaigning a permanent condition of his presidency, campaigning is not synonymous with governing. "While campaigning seeks to defeat enemies to win an unshared prize," Helco writes, "governing demands collaboration to bring others along on various paths of action. Campaigning is about selling a product. Governing is about judging how to use the terrible powers of the modern states."

Professor Helco does not find Bush very good at governing.

Bush`s White House In Comparative Perspective

Another contributor is political scientist and Virginia Polytechnic Institute professor Karen Hult. Hult contends that, with the exception of a few minor changes, the Bush White House`s structure and operations are not unlike those of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton White Houses. Her expertise includes study of all these prior White House operations.

Professor Hult served as an advisor to the White House 2001 Project, which sought to assist incoming White House staff in governing. The White House has no institutional memory, since each president takes his files and staff with him when he departs. The Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation known for its nonpartisan work, has sought to address this void by developing comparative White House studies, which can benefit all incoming presidents and their staffs.

In comparing Bush II with his predecessors, Hult notes the "discipline" and "secrecy" of his White House, but generally Bush runs a very traditional operation. Dubya was familiar from his father`s tenure with chief of staff problems (for Dubya had to give the word to his father`s chief of staff that it was time to move on). Thus, the Bush II White House has a powerful chief of staff (Andy Card), but not an all-powerful one. Instead, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes (while she was there), and Dick Cheney also have significant access to the president.

Clearly, the most distinctive feature of the Bush II White House is the enormous power of the vice president. While this is a trend that began with vice president Fritz Mondale, Hult finds that Cheney is more powerful than all his predecessors.

To make this point, Hult cites a little known but telling fact: Cheney "chairs the President`s Budget Review Board, which rules on appeals of OMB decisions regarding proposed funding for executive branch departments; no other vice president has held this position." In addition, Cheney`s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, is on the president`s staff as well, carrying a title equal to that of Bush`s chief of staff, assistant to the president.

Professor Hult`s essay is filled with interesting nuggets. I confess I was not aware of Cheney`s chairing the budget review board. Like many, I suspect, I find the budgetary process rather dull. Yet I also know that budget decisions define the executive branch. Without money, nothing happens. So I thank Hult for pointing out further evidence of the enormous power of Bush`s vice president.


Bush`s Budget Problem

Recognizing the importance of budgetary matters, the conference had a particularly lucid expert address the subject: University of Maryland professor, Brooking`s Institute visiting fellow, and federal budget expert Allen Schick -- who contributed a must read paper. Schick`s effort opens the door on Bush`s budgetary tomfoolery (my word, not his).

Mincing no words, Schick explains exactly what Bush is doing with the staggering deficits he has run up with his aggressive military spending and massive tax cuts for upper income taxpayers:

[Bush is] aware of the doomsday projections that if current policy continues, a generation from now Social Security and Medicare will claim all of the federal revenue, leaving very little for the rest of the government. He wants to strip the government of future revenue, not in spite of these dire scenarios but because of them. He sees revenue privation as the only or best way to change the course of budgetary history….

As Schick puts it, "If Bush has his way, during his presidency many programs will be scaled back simply because there will not be enough money to go around, not because he has launched a frontal attack on government."

In other words, to shrink the federal government, Bush and the conservatives dare not try to repeal popular programs, for to repeal them would offend voters (and Congress would not likely have the courage to cut such programs). Instead, they plan to starve the programs to death.

Shrinking the federal government by putting it in hock will never be announced as their policy, but actions say it all. Nor has Bush told Americans the crapshoot (again my word, not Schick) he is taking with massive deficits.

As the professor explains: "Critics see chronic deficits as jeopardizing the future economic well-being of the United States; Bush sees them as irrelevant." No one will know the answer, however, until it may be too late.

"This is an area where taking the wrong turn may seriously damage America`s economic health," Schick says. "Prudence dictates that we not pave the way to the future with trillions of dollars of additional debt."

Bush`s Foreign Policy Revolution

The team that assessed the Bush foreign policy for the conference, and contributed a piece on this subject to the collection (another must read), was so cogent, and impartial, that I ordered their book on the subject: America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. These authors are Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and James M. Lindsay, vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Both have served on the National Security Council.

Daalder and Lindsay trace Bush`s foreign policy to its roots. When preparing to run for president, Bush acknowledged, "Nobody needs to tell me what to believe. But I do need somebody to tell me where Kosovo is." He assembled a group of eight GOP experts as tutors. They came to call themselves the "Vulcans" (after the Roman blacksmith god, of fire and metalworking) in working to harden Dubya.

The Head Vulcan was Condoleezza Rice. She was joined by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, Stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Dov Zakheim, and Robert Zoellick. While these authors don`t mention it, Dick Cheney was instrumental in gathering this group as well.

With the Vulcans as tutors, Bush was in effect, declaring his foreign policy posture -- whether he knew it or not. He was rejecting Republicans who were what the authors call "sovereigntists" -- those suspicious of all foreign entanglements and international institution. Rather, the Vulcans "supported international engagement and free trade."

The Vulcans also subscribed to a worldview often called "hegemonist." (This is a coined word based on hegemony, meaning "to control or influence," but as it is now being used in foreign policy discussions, it is shorthand for the idea that "American primacy in the world is the key to securing America`s interest.") In other words, since we have unrivalled powers, we can have it our way, and kick ass when we don`t get it.

In this brief series of columns, I cannot begin to address the insights Daalder and Lindsay provide. But their demolition of one myth seems a good place to start: September 11 did not produce Bush`s radical foreign policy. Rather, it gave him reason to implement it.

Bush`s foreign policy today -- from his "axis of evil" approach to focusing on rogue states as part of his war on terrorism -- emanates directly from his Vulcan tutors` thinking. He hinted where he was headed during the campaign, for those who looked closely.

Daalder and Lindsay trace every action Bush has taken, and why he had taken it, but in the end, they conclude that Bush has got it wrong: "Removing tyrants, while perhaps helpful, is not a guarantee that terrorists will be significantly weakened." To the contrary, as we now see in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we may be creating endless new generations of terrorists, potential and actual.

In my next column, I will discuss the remaining essays from the conference and collection assessing the Bush Presidency, and offer my own views as to how, in light of all this information, that Presidency -- so far -- should be assessed.

What Do You Think? Message Boards


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

John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.

[Joerver]

Straight talk
It`s not anti-Americanism, it`s anti-Republicanism
Zafar Sobhan
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/21/d31121020326.htm
Der Time-Artikel siehe weiter unten:

I don`t often find myself in agreement with much that pop stars have to say about the state of the world, but British singer Elton John`s words at a benefit concert last month hit the nail right on the head.

Dennis Miller the one-time comedian from Saturday Night Live who has bizarrely chosen to reincarnate himself as the Bush administration`s court jester had just finished one of his typical sets in which he denigrated liberals, Arabs, Muslims, and non-Americans in general.


Before he sat down to perform, John remarked, "This night is about charity -- not washing your dirty political laundry. I love America, but if you want to know why the world hates America, I can give you two words: Dennis Miller."

To which I would like to add two more: Charles Krauthammer.


Krauthammer is the reliably conservative commentator whose screeds against liberalism and tolerance regularly darken the back page of Time magazine. His latest turn is a relentlessly ill tempered and bile-filled outpouring in this week`s Time entitled: The US Gets No Sympathy. Should It Care?


Krauthammer`s piece is a classic of unintended irony. It is filled with arrogance and contempt and condescension and is an unwittingly brilliant illustration of what it is about America that the rest of the world dislikes. Krauthammer is ostensibly writing a piece on why everyone hates Americans, all the while remaining utterly unaware of his own healthy contribution to this phenomenon.

Ever since 9/11 Americans have been asking themselves why so many people around the world seem to hate them. But for the likes of Krauthammer, the answer is simple:


"The fact is that the world hates the US for its wealth, its success, its power. They hate the US into incoherence. The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing -- by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity`s great exemplar."

That`s it. That`s his analysis. That`s his considered judgment on the subject. I don`t need to embellish a thing -- his words speak for itself. Krauthammer quite simply oozes arrogance and contempt for the rest of the world.


He dismisses out of hand the notion that anyone could conceivably have a legitimate grievance against the US or have a problem with the way it conducts its foreign policy. The only possible reasons he can see for dislike of the US are the envy and self-loathing of all those losers in the world who are just sick with jealousy that they have failed where the US has succeeded.

Let me reiterate: this is why people dislike Americans.


But let`s get one thing straight. Most people are able to draw a distinction between Charles Krauthammer and all Americans. We realise that thankfully he doesn`t represent the whole country. We realise that the US is filled with people of good conscience and generosity who do not share Krauthammer`s smug certitude or intemperate xenophobia.


It`s not really America that we dislike. It is a certain conception of America personified by the likes of Dennis Miller and Charles Krauthammer that we dislike.


The America that most people dislike is the America that is arrogant and xenophobic and says to hell with the rest of the world.

It is the America that conducts its foreign policy in a tone that seems calculated to offend and has nothing but disdain for world opinion.


It is the America that dismisses all criticism of America as the product of envy and self-loathing.


In short, what most people dislike is not Americans so much as it is the attitude that is embodied by a certain kind of American. And this certain kind of American has found a home for the past half century in the Republican party.

Now, this is not to say that all Republicans are rabidly anti-foreigner. But the party does pander to the electorate`s basest instincts and just as it is home to the bigots and racists and homophobes so it has also opened its arms to the arrogant and intolerant xenophobic America-firsters who despise anything non-American and feel that the US should do as it pleases and not be constrained by opinion beyond its borders.


It is this kind of American that most people around the world have a problem with.


Most people have no grievance against the US as a country per se or Americans as people in general. Bill Clinton was hugely popular around the world because he embodied a face of the US that people found reassuring, and, not coincidentally, America`s stature in the world was never higher than during his presidency.

Under Clinton people felt that the US saw itself as a part of the world community. Under Clinton people felt that the US respected world opinion and that it could potentially use its massive power for the common good.

But the kind of American I am writing about wants nothing to do with what Krauthammer contemptuously dismisses as "the Clinton administration`s hyperapologetic, good citizen internationalism."

And it is this attitude -- not being American per se -- that people around the world don`t like. It is the Republican mind-set that pours scorns on multilateralism and sensitivity to world opinion and takes comfort from the bullying and the bluster of the Bush administration.


It is important to make this distinction between anti-Americanism and anti-Republicanism. If the sole problem the US faced in the world today were the anti-Americanism of those who are filled with envy and self-loathing, as Krauthammer imagines, then he would be correct in his belief that there isn`t much Americans can or should do about it.

But that`s not the only problem. The US is facing a huge problem of lack of support in the twin wars it is waging against al-Qaeda and in Iraq, and if it wants to win these wars then it needs as many people on its side as it can possibly muster. If it takes the attitude that people who are opposed to it are opposed to it through blind hatred then it will never make the adjustments necessary to win people over.

To win hearts and minds, the US must understand that many of the people who oppose it are not anti-American but merely anti-Republican, and that it would not be difficult at all to enlist their help. All that is necessary is little less hubris and a little more respect.


It must be nice to live in as simplistic a world as Krauthammer`s. It must be nice to be able to determine that if no one likes you then it is their fault not yours. It must be nice to be so certain of your own rectitude and so contemptuous of others that you never have to question yourself or your own actions.

But the problem with this attitude is that it precludes the possibility of anything ever changing and is ultimately self-defeating. It isn`t a particularly helpful or illuminating perspective to take if one is truly serious about addressing so-called anti-Americanism.


The search for logic in what he calls anti-Americanism is far from fruitless, and for Krauthammer it should be easier than most to locate. He can find it every morning looking back at him from his bathroom mirror.


Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.


Monday, Nov. 17, 2003
To Hell With Sympathy
The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031117-…
No one likes us. And the democrats know why: the world loved us just two years ago, and then this President, cowboy arrogant and rudely unilateral, blew it. "When America was savagely attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9-11, virtually all the world was with us," writes Democratic elder statesman Theodore Sorensen. "But that moment of universal goodwill was squandered." He writes that in the current issue of The American Prospect, but he is speaking for just about every Democratic candidate, potentate, deep thinker and critic, and not a few foreign commentators as well. The formulation is near universal: "The president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of Sept. 11" (Al Gore). "He has squandered the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11" (John Kerry).

The ur-text for this myth is the famous Le Monde editorial of Sept. 12, 2001, titled "We Are All Americans." But as Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami points out, not only did that very editorial speak of America`s paying for its cynicism, but also, within months, that same Le Monde publisher was back with a small book ("All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001"--note the question mark) filled with the usual belligerence toward and disapproval of America.


What happened in those intervening few months? Is not the core Democratic complaint that it was overreaching in Iraq that caused the world to turn against us? And yet barely had we buried our 9/11 dead — long before we entered Baghdad — when the French, and the rest of the world, decided that they were not really Americans after all and were back to vilifying American arrogance, unilateralism, hegemony and so on.

It is pure fiction that this pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration`s hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism.

Moreover, it is unseemly, even pathetic, for the would-be leaders of a great power to pine for the pity gleaned on the day America lay bleeding and wounded. This is to carry into foreign policy a pathology of our domestic politics — the glorification of victimhood and the lust for its privileges, such as they are. It is not surprising that having set up at home a spoils system that encourages every ethnic group to claim even greater victimization than the next, the Democrats should lament the fact that we did not seize and institutionalize our collective victimhood of Sept. 11.

The world apparently likes the U.S. when it is on its knees. From that the Democrats deduce a foreign policy — remain on our knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the world.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool`s bargain--3,000 dead for a day`s worth of nice words and a few empty U.N. resolutions. The Democrats would forfeit American freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another nice French editorial? To be retracted as soon as the U.S. stops playing victim?

Sympathy is fine. But if we "squander" it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy. The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence. The Europeans, Ajami astutely observes, disdain us for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990s we engaged three times in combat — in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans — to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all. And in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.; it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order.

The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing — by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity`s great exemplar.

On Sept. 11, they gave it a rest for a day. Big deal.

[Joerver]

40 Jahre nach dem Tod von Kennedy.

POLL ANALYSES
November 21, 2003


Americans: Kennedy Assassination a Conspiracy
No consensus about who was involved


by Lydia Saad
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are skeptical of the official conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he assassinated President John F. Kennedy 40 years ago, but there is no consensus about which conspiracy theory to believe.

Three-quarters of Americans recently told Gallup that they think more than one man was involved in Kennedy`s assassination. Only 19% of Americans think it was the work of one individual. When asked who else might have been behind the assassination, no more than 37% of the public believes any single entity or individual was involved.

The most commonly believed theory is that the Mafia was involved (37%), followed closely by speculation that the CIA was involved (34%). Only 18% of Americans think that Kennedy`s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was involved -- a theory advanced in a History Channel film on Monday, and sharply rebuked by former Johnson aides as a "smear." Even fewer, 15% each, think the Cubans or the Soviet Union were involved.

Involved in the Assassination of JFK?
[/url]

Overall, 63% of Americans believe at least one of the five theories tested, while 37% do not believe any of them.

A Popular Figure

Kennedy is well regarded by Americans today. The public is equally likely to mention Kennedy as Abraham Lincoln (17% each) when asked to name the greatest U.S. president. In fact, Kennedy has ranked first or second on this question in the five times Gallup has asked it since 1999. Kennedy exceeds all of the recent U.S. presidents on this measure today, although with 13%, Ronald Reagan comes close, ranking third. Nine percent mention Bill Clinton; George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter each receive 3%.

Who do you regard as the greatest United States President?

Nov 10-12, 2003 %

John Kennedy 17

Abraham Lincoln 17

Ronald Reagan 13

Franklin Roosevelt 11

Bill Clinton 9

George Washington 7

George W. Bush 3

Harry Truman 3

Thomas Jefferson 3

Theodore Roosevelt 3

Jimmy Carter 3

Dwight Eisenhower 2

George Bush (the elder) 2

Richard Nixon 1


Other 2

None *

No opinion 4
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031121.asp

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Friday, November 21, 2003
War News for November 21, 2003

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Multiple rocket attacks at Oil Ministry, Palestine Hotel and Sheraton Hotel in central Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Another rocket launcher discovered near Italian embassy in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: US troops continue Operation Iron Hammer.

Bring `em on: Thai military base near Karbala mortared.

More police needed to prevent insurgent attacks.

Perle admits Iraq invasion violated international law.

Profiteers cash in at sold-out Pentagon contracts conference. "`There is just so much money that we can tap into. It`s just wonderful to have this opportunity,` one prospective bidder gushed to the Defense Department`s director of procurement, Deidre Lee."

US troops shoot Hungarian contractor at checkpoint.

Oil facility sabotage continues.

Korean National Assembly members were staying in rocketed Baghdad hotel.

Commentary

Editorial: When soldiers go without paychecks.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Washington State soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier wounded in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 8:35 AM
Thursday, November 20, 2003
War News for November 20, 2003

Bring `em on: Car bomb at pro-US political office in Kirkuk kills five, wounds 30.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb near Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Insurgents attack convoy near Samarra. Ten insurgents killed in firefight.

Bring `em on: Iraqi policeman killed in attack on Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Pro-US politician assassinated in Basra.

Bring `em on: Three US soldiers wounded in roadside bomb attack in central Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Car bomb attack on home of US-appointed councilman in Ramadi kills two.

Bring `em on: Roadside bomb wounds guard near Basra. "Four or five incendiary devices are detonated near coalition forces in the Basra area every week, but yesterday`s incident was the first for two weeks in which anyone was wounded."

Bring `em on: US positions near Khaldiyah attacked with RPG and mortar fire. (Last paragraph of this story.)

[Joerver]

Schroeder Says Stronger Dollar Would Benefit European and U.S. Economies Listen
Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said a rebound in the dollar, which dropped to a record low against the euro this week, would benefit Europe and the U.S. by boosting European exports and curbing American deficits.

``Both sides have an interest in more favorable exchange rates,`` Schroeder said in a televised interview with Bloomberg News in New York. ``Nobody has an interest in a weak dollar.``

The dollar has declined 12 percent against the euro this year. The U.S. currency fell to $1.1980 on Thursday in New York, the lowest since the euro was introduced in 1999. The dollar has also dropped against 14 of 16 major currencies including the Swiss franc and the British pound.

Germany`s $2.3 trillion economy, Europe`s largest, emerged from recession in the third quarter as an increase in exports compensated for a slump in domestic demand. The dependence on sales overseas raised concern that the euro`s increase to a record may stifle the recovery in coming months.

The euro`s gains against the U.S. currency make it harder for European exporters such as BASF AG and Volkswagen AG to compete on price in markets outside the 12-nation currency region. The U.S., whose exporters benefit from the dollar`s decline, is becoming increasingly reliant on foreign investors to finance widening budget and current account deficits.

Euro Falls

The dollar rose against the euro after Schroeder`s remarks. The euro fell as low as $1.1860, or 0.4 percent from $1.1911 late yesterday in New York. The European currency later rose, to $1.1929 at 4:20 p.m. in Frankfurt.

``Schroeder`s comments were important,`` said Aziz McMahon, a strategist at ABN Amro Holding NV in London. ``The last time the euro went near the $1.20 level we had a range of comments from European policy makers. This hasn`t happened until today.``

Schroeder said he doesn`t think the U.S. is seeking to keep the dollar low to bolster exports and boost growth. A nation`s currency reflects the strength of its economy, he said.

``The U.S. can`t have an interest in that, at the very least because they have a twin deficit on their current account and trade balance and are dependent on capital inflows,`` Schroeder said. ``I don`t believe there is an intentional policy of a weak dollar.``

The U.S. federal budget shortfall reached a record $374 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The current account deficit, the broadest measure of trade and investment, reached a record $138.7 billion in the second quarter, or 5.1 percent of gross domestic product on an annualized basis. Exports account for 10 percent of the U.S. economy.

U.S. Deficit

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday foreigners bought a net $4.19 billion in September, down from $49.9 billion in August. The U.S. has had to borrow more money overseas to satisfy demand for imported goods and services to finance investment not covered by U.S. savings.

A drop in the amount of securities bought by international investors makes it harder for the U.S. to finance its current- account deficit.

The U.S. also benefits from a falling dollar because machine tools, autos, chemicals and other exports become cheaper in other countries. Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc., the world`s largest package-delivery company, said that currency-related gains boosted its revenue by $79 million in the third-quarter and its profit by $18 million compared with the year-ago period.

Global Growth

For European exporters, the currency moves have the opposite effect. The rising euro slashed pretax profit at Volkswagen, Europe`s largest carmaker, by 1.2 billion euros in the first nine months. French rival PSA Peugeot-Citroen SA lowered its full-year profit forecast last month, partly because of the euro.

Schroeder`s comments are ``a signal he felt the euro has gained too fast and too much recently,`` said Kenichiro Ikezawa, who helps manage $1 billion in overseas debt at Tokyo`s Daiwa SB Investments Ltd., a unit of Japan`s second-largest brokerage.

The acceleration in global growth has helped compensate for the euro`s increase. The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 7.2 percent in the third quarter, the fastest pace in almost two decades. Growth in China accelerated to 9.1 percent from 6.7 percent in the previous quarter. And Japan`s economy grew for a seventh quarter, the longest expansion since 1997.

French Finance Minister Francis Mer told the LCI television channel yesterday that the falling dollar ``is of secondary importance compared with the economic recovery.`` If the euro stays above $1.20, ``that would start causing a number of problems,`` Mer told reporters in Paris on Wednesday.

A 1 percent increase in U.S. industrial production boosts German exports to the world`s largest economy by 1.7 percent, the German IWH economic research institute said last month. By comparison, a 1 percent gain in the euro cuts U.S. demand for German goods by only 1 percent, the study showed.

``Given what I know and what has been said by business representatives, an acute threat to German exports is not to be feared,`` Schroeder said.

Last Updated: November 21, 2003 10:25 EST

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We asked you to come up with a caption for this picture of the US president inspecting the Guard of Honour at Buckingham Palace.

Thanks to the hundreds of Guardian Unlimited readers who emailed in their suggestions.

A copy of Still More Bushisms is on the way to each of our winners, in no particular order:

"That guy behind me with the knife - is he with us or against us?"
Jean Leyland of Cambridge, UK

"Dang! That`s some road kill!"
Carolyn L Zaremba of San Francisco, USA

"When do they let you have a gun?"
Denis Reid of Calgary, Canada

"Uh-oh, better keep my mouth shut among these giant microphones"
Martin Sahlén of Cambridge, UK

"Look, they`ve even Bushificatified their hats in my honour!"
Anna-Marie Hill of Ashburton, UK

Lots of the captions included references to Marge Simpson, cowboy hats, and or Bush telling the soldier to "get a haircut" or asking whether he had weapons of mass destruction/Osama bin Laden/Saddam Hussein under his bearskin. Here are a selection of captions that recveived honourable mentions from our judges:

"I heard you Brits were a pet-loving nation - but that`s just sick"
Jillian Platt of Manchester, UK

"So, did you shoot that yourself?"
Tony Grist of Oldham, UK

"Is that weapon there to distract me?"
Dirk can Heck of London, UK

"Don`t tell me, you`re from the Sun"
Dave Griffin of Southend-on-Sea, UK

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America`s new game plan for domination rests on success in Iraq

Owen Harries

November 21, 2003 (SMH) With the attack of September 11, 2001, America`s alleged "holiday from history" came to an abrupt end. In an instant the terrorists had given the country the clear purpose, the central organising principle, that it had previously lacked and that some had been strenuously demanding.

One effect of September 11 was that it shifted the balance in favour of those in Washington`s foreign policy establishment who saw things in sweeping terms - away from prudence and moderation towards conceptual boldness and an ambitious, assertive use of US power. Within a year the "war on terrorism" had metastasised into something much grander and more radical; something that would give full expression to one of the strongest strands in the history of the American people: the profound belief, that is, that they and their country are destined to reshape the world.

In the aftermath of September 11 those who thought in these terms came into their own. The result became evident with the publication a year later of a 31-page statement by the President titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2320.htm In my judgement, this document is without a doubt the most important statement about US foreign policy, not just since the attacks, and not just since the end of the Cold War, but since the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947. For in it is spelt out how the US intends to use its hegemonic power.

What can we say about this strategic doctrine? The first thing is its breathtaking scope, its huge ambition to do no less than to effect a transformation of the political universe - according to some of its language, to stamp out evil and war between states, to create a benign world. Students of international politics who belong to the realist school - as I do - tend to see such goals as utopian, beyond even the reach of a country with the enormous power of the US.

Second, in emphasising and insisting upon the dominant role of the US and the assertive use of US power, the doctrine makes questionable assumptions about what the other states will accept and live with. They are asked to take its good intentions and respect for their interests on trust. States have never been prepared to do this in the past with other would-be hegemonies.

Will the US be the exception? Does the fact that it is a democratic and liberal state make a decisive difference? Will other states accept the concept of a benign hegemony or regard it as a contradiction in terms? Do they have a choice?

The thrust and tone of the doctrine reject the advice given by most pundits on the best way to play a hegemonic role in order to prolong its duration - which is to be restrained and prudent in the use of its power, to disguise it, to strive to act as far as possible by persuasion and consensus to co-opt others.

In the 1940s, when the US was the dominant power in the Western Alliance, it acted on this advice. It went out of its way to act multilaterally, to create a network of rule-making institutions - the UN system, IMF, World Bank, GATT - that allowed it to act co-operatively with others, as the first among equals. There is little of this in the Bush doctrine; no talk of creating institutions to run the new order.

The Bush doctrine should be taken very seriously and any inclination to treat it as rhetoric would be a serious error. It has already been put into effect in Iraq. All four of the features that I have drawn attention to have been evident there: the use of US military force as the main instrument; pre-emptive action; a clear indication that the US was prepared to act without a great power consensus, and unilaterally if necessary; and the avowed intention to replace a tyrannical regime with a liberal representative government.

That is why the Iraq commitment has an importance that goes way beyond the fate of Iraq. If, in the end, it turns out successfully, it is likely that the mishaps that have occurred since the end of the heavy fighting will be seen as part of a learning experience.

If it fails at the first hurdle - if, that is, the US finds that bringing about security, stability, a decent political order, and an improvement in the living standards of Iraqis, is beyond its capacity; if the whole thing becomes a "quagmire", or if it has to internationalise the project by giving the UN a pre-eminent role - then not only will there have to be a reconsideration of the whole global strategy, but the limits of US capacity will have been made evident, and the inclination to resist it greatly strengthened.

All this is understood by the advocates and supporters of the policy. The influential neo-conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, for example, insists that "the future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the US hopes to accomplish, and must accomplish, in the decades ahead."

As for sceptics and critics, some will conclude that having committed itself so far, the US now has no option but to see it through - an argument that prevailed for a long time in Vietnam. Others will argue that even at this late stage, it is preferable to cut one`s losses than to proceed further with a deeply flawed policy, citing the old saw, "If you`re in a hole, stop digging".

Owen Harries is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is an edited extract of the second of the ABC`s 2003 Boyer lectures.

Copyright: Sydney Morning Herald

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A war that can never be won
Terrorism is a technique, not an enemy state that can be defeated

Jonathan Steele
Saturday November 22, 2003
The Guardian

The bombast has increased with the bombs. We saw two disturbing escalations this week. The explosions that devastated the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul mark a significant widening in the choice of targets by those Islamist radicals who use terror to express their hatred of British and US policy in Iraq and the Middle East. The Blair/Bush response reached an equally alarming new level of ferocity.

At their swaggering joint press conference on Thursday, the two men repeatedly made the risible claim that they could win their war on terror. The prime minister was the worse. While Bush gave himself a global carte blanche to intervene anywhere, by speaking of his "determination to fight and defeat this evil, wherever it is found", Blair put the issue in terms of a finite goal. He talked of defeating terrorism "utterly" and "ridding our world of this evil once and for all".

The hyperbole of the religious pulpit allows for all-embracing and eschatological language, but these men are meant to be practical political leaders. When Blair, in his opposition days, invented the phrase "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", he knew that crime could never be totally eliminated. The task is to reduce and restrain it by a variety of methods. Violence and terrorism are no different. Like poverty, they will always be with us. At best they can only be diminished and contained. Yet now, with the arrogance of power, we have the Bush/Blair roadshow promising in sub-Churchillian tones to vanquish terrorism as though it were a clearly defined enemy like Nazi Germany.

Terrorism is a technique. It is not an ideology or a political philosophy, let alone an enemy state. Our leaders` failure to understand that point emerged immediately after September 11 2001 when they reacted to the attacks in New York and Washington by confusing the hunt for the perpetrators with the Afghan "state" that allegedly "harboured" them. The Taliban ran avicious regime, but Afghanistan was a disastrously failed state and its nominal leader, Mullah Omar, had no control over al-Qaida.

By the same token the "war" on terror should have remained what it initially was, a metaphor like the "war" on drugs. But instead of being harmless linguistic exaggeration to describe a broad campaign encompassing a range of political, economic and police counter-measures, it was narrowed down to real war and nothing else. The slippery slope that began with Afghanistan quickly led to the invasion of Iraq, a symbolic and political enormity whose psychological impact Bush and Blair have not yet grasped.

When Ariel Sharon, then a middle-aged general, wanted to send Israeli tanks into Cairo in October 1973, it was the arch-realist Henry Kissinger who realised how devastating the emotional effect would be in the Arab world, and stopped him. For a new generation of Arabs, the sight of American tanks in Baghdad is just as humiliating. Osama bin Laden`s claim that having US forces at airbases close to the Islamic holy places in Saudi Arabia is a desecration appealed only to a few Muslims, but the daily television pictures of US troops in the heart of an Arab capital, and not just patrolling but using lethal force to back up an administration of occupiers, inflames a much larger audience.

Jack Straw argues that terrorism preceded the war on Iraq and it is therefore wrong to blame the US and Britain for increasing the danger. This is a non-sequitur, which also flies in the face of the evidence, admitted by US officials themselves, that non-Iraqi Arabs have been infiltrating Iraq to commit acts of terror because of the US presence.

Sharon, similarly, says suicide bombings in Israel started before he took office. Does that mean he shares no blame? That is not the view of four former Israeli intelligence chiefs, who argued last week that Sharon`s exclusive reliance on hardline responses has weakened Israel`s security and increased the number of attacks on Israelis.

Before the war on Iraq several of Britain`s intelligence experts, including senior officials, warned that it would increase the risk of terrorism and make British interests potential targets - a view shared by most critics of the war. To suggest they were wrong runs against common sense.

Coming after the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq has made al-Qaida`s grisly work easier. Dispersed by American bombing from their remote mountain lairs, they have shifted to the much easier terrain of an urban Arab environment where they can be more readily hidden and helped. Resistance to US forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan as well as terrorist attacks on aid workers and other western soft targets are on the increase, but they appear to come from Afghan supporters of the former Taliban as well as other Pashtun radicals from Pakistan. Most Arabs who were in Afghanistan have moved to Iraq. There they have been joined by new Arab recruits, eager to add their energy to Iraq`s local resistance.

In the long history of terrorism, al-Qaida has provided two novelties. One is its global reach, marked by willingness to strike targets in many countries. The other is its use of suicide attacks as a weapon of first, rather than last, resort. Under the broad heading of terrorism as a political and military instrument, suicide bombing is a sub-category, a technique within a technique.

In the post-colonial world its first proponents had nothing to do with the anti-Islamic myth that martyrs are motivated by the hope of being greeted by dozens of virgins waiting in heaven. It began with Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka, an act of martial self-sacrifice by angry women as well as men. When it spread to Palestine over the past decade, it was an act of last-resort desperation by frustrated people who saw no other way to counter Israel`s disparity of power, as Cherie Blair once publicly pointed out. Al-Qaida has merely taken an old technique and made it the weapon of choice.

The shock this week is that Bush and Blair not only still believe that war is the way to deal with terrorists but that even when faced by the escalation of Istanbul they think victory is possible. The real issue is how to control risk. Anti-western extremism will never be eradicated, but it can be reduced by a combination of measures, primarily political.

The first is an early transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and the withdrawal of foreign forces. An arrangement whereby the new Iraqi government "requests" US troops to stay on will convince few in the Middle East. Second is firm and sustained pressure on Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians, presumably on the lines of the recent accord worked out in Geneva by Israeli and Palestinian dissidents.

There is no guaranteed defence against a suicide attack on a soft target. "Hardening" targets by turning every US or British building, at home or abroad, into a fortress makes little sense. It is better to try to reduce the motivations (hatred, revenge, or an overwhelming sense of injustice) that make people turn themselves into bombs. That endeavour will also never produce complete success. In Blair`s misguided words, it cannot be done "utterly" or "once and for all". But it is the more productive way to go.

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Jackson saga and gay marriages turn US media focus from visit
Gary Younge in New York
Saturday November 22, 2003
The Guardian

On a day when thousands of demonstrators protested at the US president`s visit to Britain, and rescuers sifted through the the rubble in Turkey, looking for bodies, Americans were both outraged and intrigued.

But their fury and interest was directed not at London or Istanbul, but Santa Barbara, where Michael Jackson turned himself in to police on charges of child molestation.

George Bush`s visit to Britain was the subject of considerable attention, but provoked little interest when pitted against celebrity warrants and the Massachusetts court ruling endorsing gay marriages.

"Even [Dan] Rather and [Peter] Jennings [two of America`s most respected anchors] led with Jackson, bumping Bush`s London speech to second place," wrote the Washington Post`s media commentator, Howard Kurtz, on the paper`s website.

At the beginning of the week those who did focus on the visit were perplexed by Mr Bush`s decision to go, given the huge protests that would greet him. By the end they were wondering why Tony Blair had invited him in the first place.

"While Britons are divided in their feelings about America`s role in the world, they are increasingly critical of Mr Blair`s management of the relationship," said an editorial in the New York Times. "Bush has benefited enormously from Blair`s support on Iraq. Yet it is less clear what benefits Blair has reaped."

If it was the photo opportunity Mr Bush was after, he got it. Americans are suckers for pageantry and the media was happy to show shots of him surveying a row of busby`s or chatting with the Queen.

But each picture caption came with warnings of demonstrations and unflattering descriptions of his "cocooned state visit". And the level of antipathy towards the president`s visit shocked some.

"No Dorothy, we`re not in Kansas any more," wrote the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, after scanning the papers when he arrived in London. "If this is how some of our best friends are talking, imagine how difficult it is going to be to win over more ambivalent allies."

Talk of the anti-war protesters being al-Qaida supporters, which dominated the beginning of the week, had subsided by Wednesday. "There is a whole constituency in Europe and the Middle East who are upset with Mr Bush because of what he does, not who he is," wrote Friedman.

Referring to Mr Bush`s scarcely veiled call, during Wednesday`s speech at Banqueting House, to withdraw support from the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, the Washington Post wrote: "The silence that greeted one of his most forceful lines said much about the limits of the support he can expect from Europeans worried about his approach."

If the visit served any purpose it was probably to reinforce, even among those who support the war, the degree of America`s isolation.

"Right now we are operating in a context of global animosity," wrote Friedman. "We are dancing alone. We can`t just ignore it all, especially when it comes from our friends. There is no country in the world that we can`t smash alone, and there is no country in the world we can rebuild alone."

Whether this realisation would have any effect was, however, a different matter.

"What do you think the effects of the protest in Britain will be on Bush?" a caller from Virginia asked the Washington Post`s political correspondent, Terry Neal, in an online session. "Politically speaking, I can`t see they`ll have much of an effect," Neal replied.

"Most Americans know that Bush is strongly opposed throughout most of Europe, and that he has a good deal of opposition even in Britain, America`s closest ally. [But] the most important single Brit, Tony Blair, is still standing beside him and that`s what`s most important to Bush."


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The price of Bush`s re-election
Edmond Warner
Saturday November 22, 2003
The Guardian

In the wake of George Bush`s contentious hop over the Atlantic and the latest bombings in Istanbul, global politics and their implications loom large once more for investors. At the same time, the United States dollar is taking a beating on the foreign exchanges for largely unrelated reasons. The result is considerable confusion and consequent volatility.

It is easy to overestimate the financial significance of major geopolitical events at the point of their occurrence. Emotions run high and perspective is difficult to sustain. Often, though, it is just as easy to become too dismissive of their impact with the benefit of hindsight, when immediate concerns are "proved" to have been exaggerated by subsequent events. Risk may actually have been less than initially perceived but greater than a complacent backwards glance may suggest.

It is important, then, to step back from this week`s television images of shattered bodies and buildings, from claim and counterclaim about the attitude of the public towards the presidential visit and, for Londoners, the personal frustrations of a week of probably unnecessary commuting misery - although again, of course, we`ll never know what might otherwise have been.

This week`s events tell investors little that they did not already know but they certainly reminded them that they knew them. As reports of the exploding bombs appeared on TV monitors in the world`s dealing rooms, share prices fell and traditional "safe haven" assets rose in price - most notably gold and the Swiss franc.

The knee-jerk movement in prices was minor by comparison with reactions to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Of course, this is partly about scale - heartless though this may sound - but more importantly because geopolitical risk has been factored into prices to varying degrees for more than two years now. Gold`s move up towards $400 an ounce was in itself a minor rise because it has been heading steadily in that direction for some time. Indeed, the early success for the coalition in Iraq caused only a minor blip in its upward path.

The immediate economic effect of the attacks in 2001 was a dislocation in economic activity. It was followed by a slump in consumer and industrial confidence which, aided by the "victory" in Iraq, has only recently been convincingly consigned to the past.

The combination of prolonged guerrilla warfare in Iraq and increasingly frequent terrorist attacks on Americans and their allies will doubtless chafe at economic confidence. However, only if terror returns to the US itself is there likely to be any material impact on economic activity. Next year is presidential election year, hence likely to be one of strong growth as the incumbent primes the pump to bring electors to the polls. President Bush, bedevilled by the elusiveness of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, will have his managers pumping for all they are worth.

The US economic recovery has thus far, created few new jobs. Productivity growth, the "miracle" of the late 1990s, is back on track. Now the Republicans will hope that increasing activity starts to eat into the jobless total and that a combination of domestic economic comfort and the afterglow of nationalistic fervour are sufficient to overcome doubts about the success of the war on terror and memories of the contentiousness of Bush`s original election victory.

The recent sogginess of the dollar should be viewed in the context of the election. While a strong currency is conventionally viewed as a totem of a strong economy and thus something to be cherished, a burst of weakness can provide an adrenaline rush to activity. Right now, Bush`s advisers may conclude that the stimulus from dollar weakness will more than outweigh the negative political connotations.

The markets have been blaming the dollar`s decline on America`s huge trading deficit with the rest of the world - a normal function of its vastly superior growth, sucking in imports and struggling to export to weak trading partners.

But this is not news, nor is the thought that international investors might at any time decide that the attractions of American investment assets are insufficient for them to keep ploughing capital into America, thus counterbalancing the trade gap.

The Japanese authorities, alarmed at the effect of the yen`s strength on their country`s fragile economy, have repeatedly intervened in the foreign exchange markets in an attempt to shore up the dollar. Minor victories have been won at reportedly great expense. American assistance in these efforts has been slim. This suggests that the dollar`s decline is privately welcomed in Washington, just so long as it doesn`t turn into a rout.

A weak dollar, and hence strong euro, threaten also to throttle the feeble recovery in mainland European economies. Trade barrier tensions can only rise as a result. The prospect is for American economic hegemony to be extended further through to next year`s election and beyond. Small wonder that it provokes such strong dissent in many quarters - with dismaying consequences.

· Edmond Warner is chief executive of IFX Group

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An `authentic` day out: fish and chips at the Dun Cow, for a very reasonable £1m
By Cahal Milmo
22 November 2003


The last time a fervent Christian leader clapped eyes on a Dun Cow in the rural depths of Co Durham, it led to sainthood for a man seen by all his contemporaries as deeply wise. Yesterday, for a famously God-fearing President it led to the most expensive alcohol-free lager in history and shouts from protesters of: "Go home Bush, you useless ornament."

The bishop St Cuthbert prophesied in the seventh century that his burial spot would be where his followers found a brown bovine. The Dun Cow for George Bush was the less spiritual surroundings of Tony Blair`s favourite pub in his Sedgefield constituency.

Downing Street had billed the final hours of the American President`s four-day state visit as an opportunity for him to relax in private and see a more "authentic" side of British life after an unrelenting schedule of banquets, military marchpasts and mutual transatlantic back-slapping in London.

What followed was what one protester, Jane Harmason, 37, from nearby Bishop Auckland, called: "Another painstakingly choreographed picture opportunity for American television audiences, culminating in a £1m lunch. All that was missing was Inspector Morse stepping out of his red Jaguar to share a very English pint."

For the Most Powerful Man in the World, an "authentic and private" trip to rural England was always going to be difficult when you travel with a 100-strong media entourage and your hosts lay on 1,300 police officers to ensure the good behaviour of a quiet rural community of 5,000 people and 300 protesters.

Durham Constabulary, one of the country`s smallest forces, confirmed the security bill for the President`s four-hour tour would reach £1m.

Mr Bush and his wife, Laura, arrived at 1.02pm in the freshly scrubbed surroundings of the Dun Cow, which sat behind a consignment of ornamental plants delivered at 8am yesterday to obscure sealed manhole covers and blocked drains. The couple were greeted by a carefully selected group of "regulars", mainly local Labour Party members.

Geoff Rayne, the landlord, who had been sworn to silence for weeks about the 60-minute meal, said afterwards: "Mr Bush just seemed thrilled with it. They talked for about 10 minutes to people, then they went in to eat. They were very appreciative."

So, after 72 hours of the highest of haute cuisine, it was time for the Texan ranch-living President to get down to wholesome fare. At a secluded table decorated with white linen and white hyacinths, the group ate cream of leek soup, fish and chips and mushy peas. After Mr Bush`s alcohol-free Bitburger lager had been added, the bill came to £13.22. Critics said that, expressed as a share of the policing costs, the soup was £247,000, with £670,000 more for the fish and chips and £83,000 for the beer. The peas, not normally on the Dun Cow menu, came free, and, a witness said, were duly left on at least one of the plates in the presidential party.

Some 300 yards away on Sedgefield`s picturesque village green, behind three ranks of crowd barriers and several dozen police, those who had come to protest against Mr Bush were doing their best to offer an alternative regional welcome.

Two 6ft-tall speaker systems were used to deliver some choice phrases, such as "Daft beggar Bush" and, confusingly, "Blair go home". No one, apart from a small number of children who rushed forward to tell Mr Bush he was "a really wonderful man", was allowed to get past the police cordons.

For Joan Smith, 81, a Labour Party member for 65 years and a Sedgefield resident since the early 1980s, it was a day of sadness. After haranguing Mr Blair and Mr Bush on the public address system from the comfort of a velvet-covered seat borrowed from a pub, she said: "I am absolutely heartbroken that Tony has joined forces with this man to prosecute a war without reason or justification. I used to be on kissing terms with the Prime Minister. Now I can`t look at him."

The four-hour visit to Sedgefield had begun at 11.53am when the presidential helicopter, Marine One, landed on a football pitch in Trimdon Colliery, the former pit village six miles from Sedgefield where the Blairs have their constituency home. They were greeted by Mr Blair in an open-sleeved shirt, and his wife, Cherie, walking with a stick after twisting her ankle.

Anxious for Mr Bush and the first lady to meet their first "ordinary" Britons, Mrs Blair ushered over a young woman, 26-year-old Jemma Grieves, with the phrase: "Come and meet the neighbours." The encounter seemed to cause some confusion for the President, whose secret service chiefs had betrayed a lack of knowledge by asking how many acres of land were occupied by Myrobella, the Blair`s modest detached home, which has a small back garden and some shrubs.

After spending so much time in the previous three days surrounded by royal footservants in Buckingham Palace, Mr Bush appeared to assume Ms Grieves formed part of the Blairs` domestic staff by hugging her and saying: "Thank you for your hospitality."

Before the Bushes climbed back into Marine One to head for the flight home on Air Force One, Mr Bush said at an impromptu press briefing in Sedgefield Community College, the local secondary school: "It is lovely to be here. The schoolkids here remind us of our solemn responsibility to protect people and create the conditions for peace ... I look forward to our weekly phone calls to stay on the offensive."

REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE VISIT

TONY BENN: "All the emphasis has been on the personal side of the visit, the pageantry, the ceremony, the Trimdon Labour Club, but the real story is the collapse following the Iraq invasion ...The visit has exposed the vacuum of thinking and the crisis created by the invasion of Iraq. I don`t think we should concentrate too much on Blair and Bush because if they disappeared there would still be a problem."

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND, FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY: "Given the controversy I think the visit has turned out as well as could have been hoped. It was never going to be a normal visit because of the huge security required. The fact that the President of the United States has said that the United Kingdom is the closest friend of the United States in the world is a pretty powerful statement and it`s useful that we are close to the country that has more influence than any other in the world."

LORD HEALEY, FORMER CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: "I hope President Bush got the message that there is a lot of unhappiness at his Iraq policy. He must have got that message ... and he would have seen pictures of his statue being toppled. I think he was unwise to come because he has made himself the focus of the opposition. It has also made Blair that bit less popular.

ROGER LLOYD PACK, ACTOR: I`m really upset and offended by his visit. I don`t see why he should have been the only American president to have had a state visit when it is just an attempt to bolster his election campaign. It is quite clear that the world is so much more a dangerous place and the war in Iraq has just destabilised the situation. I suppose the bombing in Istanbul ... made Bush and Blair look extremely foolish - all those empty words about winning the war on terror. His visit has just highlighted the invidious situation that Britain has put itself in due to our support for American policies in Iraq and the Middle East."

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, DIRECTOR OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS PRESSURE GROUP LIBERTY: "If Tony Blair has persuaded George Bush to agree that the British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay can be tried in Britain then the visit will have been worthwhile."

MARTHA LANE FOX, OF LASTMINUTE.COM: "What amazes me is that the man who claims to be the leader of the democratic and free world spent the week kowtowing to the Royal Family, who couldn`t be further removed from the principles of democracy and freedom. Whatever you think about the state visit nothing can justify what is happening in Guantanamo Bay."

ANITA RODDICK, FOUNDER OF THE BODY SHOP: "The good thing was that people divided their outrage at the Bush administration from their affection for America as a people. The protests were brilliant, exactly as they should be, there was joy in dissent. It cemented people?s feeling that this man and his right-wing administration are dangerous."
22 November 2003 11:33


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How al-Qa`ida has split into dozens of autonomous, hard-to-find `franchises`
By Kim Sengupta
22 November 2003


The Afghan war was meant to deprive al-Qa`ida of the protection of its Taliban allies and destroy it as a fighting force. But the Istanbul bombings are the latest example of how the organisation has reinvented itself to continue its jihad.

Al-Qai`da has proved to be a many-headed hydra. One was decapitated in Afghanistan, with many of Osama bin Laden`s senior lieutenants killed or captured, and much of its financial resources uncovered and blocked. But the organisation has now sprung up again in a number of countries in a franchised form. The recent attacks in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya and, possibly, Iraq show that smaller organisations, often with fighters trained in al-Qa`ida camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are able to carry out operations without overt help from Bin Laden.

According to Western and Arab intelligence sources, the pattern emerging is of the remnants of the al-Qa`ida leadership, in their bases in the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, requesting missions to be carried out, at suggested times and regions, and leaving the details of the attacks to local bodies.

The evolution poses a difficult challenge for the West. Instead of facing a few defined, recognised targets, they have to cope with dozens of small groups that are much more difficult to trace and attack.

While two attacks - the 12 May and 9 November suicide bombings in Riyadh - appear to be the work of al-Qa`ida, other operations show different terror groups at work.

A new group, the Islamic Great East Raiders Front, claimed responsibility for Thursday`s car bombing in Istanbul. Jemaah Islamiah, a better known al-Qai`da affiliate, took responsibility for a suicide bombing in August at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, in which 12 died. And within 48 hours of the May attack in Riyadh, four other missions were carried out by little-known groups in Pakistan, Morocco and the Philippines, killing scores of people.

Rohan Gunaratna, of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, described the al-Qa`ida camps as "a terrorist Disneyland, where you could meet anyone from any Islamist group". British and US security sources say around 20,000 people from 47 countries passed through the al-Qa`ida camps from the mid-1990s until the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

Western security agencies say they are seeing new similarities in the groups` communication techniques and the use of explosives. For example, al-Qa`ida members are believed to have taught have taught individuals from other groups how to use the internet to send encrypted messages to avoid detection. Bomb and chemical-making techniques also appear to have been passed around, with investigators finding the same kind of fuse being used on different continents.

The financial structure of terrorism also has shifted, with many of the local groups rely on petty crime, drug trafficking and extortion, unable to draw on the web of organisations and donors that have supported al-Qa`ida. Because the groups are hitting softer targets in less sophisticated attacks, money is less of an obstacle.

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon terrorism consultant, argued that the evolution of the terrorist groups is analogous to a process of corporate merger and acquisition. Regionally focused groups with their own agendas join with al-Qa`ida to learn their operational techniques or use their contacts, but are not subordinate to it.

For example, Jemaah Islamiah seeks to create a pan-Islamic state in Asia, an agenda that has little to do with driving US forces out of Saudi Arabia or other goals of Bin Laden`s. "They like to get advice and equipment from al-Qa`ida but still have their own political agenda," Mr Pillsbury argued.
22 November 2003 11:36



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Faith & Reason: George Bush, the street protestors and the missing link
The motives of those who demonstrated this week varied. But the fact that many joined the Ramadan fast of Muslims on the march was significant
Shagufta Yaqub
22 November 2003


By taking to the streets of central London, the 100,000 anti-war protestors this week became the missing link between Buckingham Palace and Baghdad. The pomp and flummery that received George Bush was a world away from the devastation and instability that now reigns in Iraq. It was this contradiction that the British people could not stomach, least of all the nation`s two million-strong Muslim community.

It is, of course, presumptuous to make suppositions about the motives of those who took to the streets. The diversity of political opinion is so vast that one would be at a loss to try and define public opposition in any coherent way. Some demonstrators were clearly manifesting a naked anti-Americanism. Others were veterans of previous anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism demonstrations. Yet others, like Lindis Percy, the woman who scaled the gates of the palace with her inverted Stars and Stripes flag, were stalwart peace campaigners who object to military force in all its manifestations.

But many were undoubtedly moved to object to President Bush`s presence from motives of humanitarianism after a war which inflicted significant suffering on innocent people - and which they feel was launched not as a last resort but before all other alternatives had been exhausted. This sense of compassion was manifested in the way that many non-Muslims at the rally chose to observe a day-long fast as a mark of solidarity with the Muslims there for whom the protest against Mr Bush`s visit coincided with the last days of Ramadan. By abstaining from food and drink, they too were able to partake in the Islamic custom of empathising with the hungry and needy.

What is clear is that many people who would not ordinarily see eye to eye on very much at all this week stood together, speaking with a unified voice against a common outrage. The situation in Iraq is a terrible mess, they seemed to say. While millions suffer in that country, the man who played the greatest role in their present misery ought not now to be honoured by Queen and state.

For a start there was the cost of the exercise. The colossal amount of money spent on this visit could have turned around the lives of thousands of people in a developing country. The £5m or so spent by Scotland Yard on Bush`s security alone could have protected 12,000 vulnerable Iraqi orphans for a whole year, giving them food, clothes, shelter, education and health care.

But there is a more profound objection than that. Earlier this week, I spoke to an aid worker who has been working in Iraq and asked him what the atmosphere was like amongst the people. I expected that, as a Muslim who speaks fluent Arabic, he might have some insight into the average Iraqi`s true sentiments. "Tragedy, tragedy, tragedy!" he told me. "They have become desensitised to everything. They are sick of promises of freedom and democracy. They have lost everything they once owned and yet they are told they are free." He added, "The biggest worry on their minds is security and the sanctity of life. They feel that America has failed them. The Iraqis I speak to tell me that life was hell under Saddam Hussein but, they say, compared to now, it was a hell of a lot better."

With such sentiments, it is no surprise that anyone suspected of collaborating with America has come to represent the enemy. Even the genuine work of humanitarian aid agencies is viewed with suspicion. As this aid worker told me, "The Iraqi people have lost all credibility for anyone who makes promises and does not deliver. With a very few exceptions, they view the humanitarian aid sector with the same sceptism."

The precedent of Afghanistan does not augur well for Iraq. There, despite all the fine words of George Bush and Tony Blair, the job of picking up the pieces after the US-led action has been left largely to the humanitarian sector. This will not work in Iraq. For a start the oil-for-food programme, which helped prevent millions of Iraqis from starving in the past, has now been scrapped. With half of Iraq`s 26 million population dependent on public food rations and only four out of every 10 Iraqis in employment, the scale of the problem facing the country is daunting. And that is without taking into consideration all the business of rebuilding social infrastructures, restoring law and order, and building a new political legitimacy.

Yet what have we seen this week? More missiles destroying more buildings leaving more people homeless. The decent response of Mr Bush would, at the very least, have been to postpone this celebratory state visit until more progress had been made in the task of restoring a semblance of normality on the ground in Iraq. To have waited might not have been good timing in his need to create a victory photo-opportunity for his re-election campaign. But it would have been deemed far more seemly by many of those who took to the streets in protest this week. The harsh truth is that, when it comes to making the world a better place for the ordinary people of Iraq, all the pomp and circumstance of a state visit like this one will make not one jot of difference. That Mr Bush cannot see this shows how deep the problem runs.
22 November 2003 11:38


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Short blames Bush and Blair for Istanbul bomb
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
22 November 2003


Clare Short blamed the bombings in Istanbul on mistakes made by George Bush and Tony Blair and attacked the Prime Minister as "messianic," right-wing and shallow.

As Downing Street dismissed the idea that the atrocities in Turkey were a revenge attack for Britain`s role in the Iraq war, Ms Short said yesterday the bombings were part of "an unfolding and accumulating tragedy ... that was predicted by many, many serious people before the Iraq war, if the problem of Iraq was mishandled."

In an interview for GMTV`s Sunday programme to be screened tomorrow, she accused Mr Blair and Mr Bush of "bad leadership" and "terrible errors". She said: "The sooner we can correct and come back to justice for the Middle East, settle Israel-Palestine, let Iraqi people lead the rebuilding of their country and stop trying to control and manipulate them to get the democratic outcome you want, we`ll be able to pull back from the ever-growing confrontation that otherwise is going to hurt people right across the world."

Ms Short, who resigned from the Cabinet after the Iraq war, said Mr Blair had "swallowed the whole argument" of the American neo-Conservatives. "He wants to be sort of messianic, and say everything`s about moral principle. He likes to be sort of right-wing, and he`s quite shallow ... He`s just taken this in, hook, line and sinker."

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, dismissed as "utter and palpable nonsense" the suggestion that Britain was paying the price for invading Iraq. And Mr Blair`s official spokesman said: "We suffered significant casualties on September 11, so this country was already under attack way before the Iraq war and the Afghan war from al-Qa`ida."

The Government faced further criticism yesterday after Denis MacShane, the minister for Europe, said Britain`s Muslim leaders had to choose between terrorism and the "British way" of political dialogue. Muslim groups condemned the minister. Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "We do not need lectures from a representative of a Government that has conducted an unlawful war against Iraq. The Muslim community has consistently condemned terrorism and we condemn this latest attack on the British consulate and HSBC in Turkey."
22 November 2003 11:41

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We Are Paying The Price For An Infantile Attempt To Reshape The Middle East

By Robert Fisk

November 21, 2003: (The Independent) It`s the price of joining George Bush`s "war on terror". They couldn`t hit Britain while Bush was on his triumphalist state visit to London, so they went for the jugular in Turkey. The British consulate, the British-headquartered HSBC bank. London-abroad. And of course, no one -- least of all the Turks -- imagined they would strike twice in the same place. Turkey had already had its dose of attacks,
hadn`t it?

"They" must mean "al-Qa`ida". And of course, merely to point out that we -- the British -- are now paying the price for George Bush`s infantile attempt to reshape the Middle East in Israel`s favour will attract the usual venom. To tell the brutal truth about the human cost of Tony Blair`s alliance with the Bush administration is to "do the terrorists` work for them", to be their "propagandist". Thus, as usual, will all discussion of yesterday`s
atrocities be closed down.

But the American and British administrations know very well what this means. The Australians paid the price for John Howard`s alliance with Bush in Bali. The Italians paid the price for Silvio Berlusconi`s alliance with Bush in Nasiriyah. Now it is our turn. Al-Qa`ida was quite specific. The Saudis would pay. The Australians would pay. The Italians would pay. The British would pay. They have. Canada is still on the list. Until, I suppose, it is our turn again. Even in 1997, Osama bin Laden would repeat to me that Britain would only escape Islamic "anger" if it pulled out of the Gulf. Nor do these mass murders have just one purpose. Turkey is allied to Israel. Ariel Sharon has visited Ankara. Turkey is hated in Iraq and much of the Arab world, partly for its Ottoman antecedents.

And if the Saudis are attacked because their Islamic regime is led by a corrupt monarchy, Turkey is attacked because it isn`t Islamic enough. Break up Turkey. Break up the relations between Muslims and Jews in Istanbul -- the purpose of last Saturday`s suicide bombings -- and break up the compromise "Islamist" overnment that now rules Turkey. All must have formed a part of al-Qaida`s thinking.

Nor should we fool ourselves about what I always call "the brain". We have a habit of thinking that the bombers don`t understand the outside world. If they are "against democracy", they wouldn`t understand us, would they? But they do. They knew exactly what they were doing when they attacked the Australians in Bali -- they knew the Iraqi invasion was unpopular in Australia, that Howard might ultimately be blamed. They knew the invasion was unpopular in Italy. So Italy would be punished for Berlusconi`s hubris.

They knew, too, of the demonstrations that awaited George Bush in London. So why not distract attention from the whole panjandrum by assaulting Britain in Turkey. Who would care about Bush`s visit to Sedgefield when Britons are lying dead in the grounds of their consulate in Istanbul? Just so in Iraq. The Iraqi insurgents are well aware of George Bush`s falling opinion polls in the United States. They know how desperate he is to extract himself from Iraq before next year`s presidential elections. Thus are they increasing their assaults on American forces and their Iraqi supporters, provoking the US army to ever more ferocious
retaliation?

We have a kind of fatal incomprehension about those against whom we have gone to war; that they are living in caves, cut off from reality, striking blindly -- "desperately" as Mr Bush would have us believe -- as they realise that the free world is resolved to destroy them. Just now, I suspect they are resolved to destroy Mr. Bush -- politically if not physically. Mr Blair too. In a war in which we go all out to crush the leadership of our antagonists, we can only expect them to adopt the same policy.

But we go on misunderstanding. Take those tiresome speeches by Osama bin Laden. When his audio-tapes are aired, we journalists always take the same line. Is it really him? Is he alive? That becomes our only story. But the Arab response is quite different. They know it`s him. And they listen to what he says. So should we.

But alas, we still pedal the old myths, as George Bush did in London on Wednesday. His speech contained the usual untruths. Note, for example, the list of attacks he gave us: "Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa, Najaf, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Baghdad and Istanbul". Najaf may well have nothing to do with al-Qa`ida but the suicide bombings in Jerusalem, vicious though they are, have absolutely nothing to do with our "war on terror". They are part of a brutal anti-colonial struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the inclusion of Jerusalem allows Ariel Sharon to join his war against the Palestinians to Bush`s war against al-Qa`ida. This mendacity continued. Israel, said Bush, had to "freeze" settlements on Palestinian land
-- not close them down -- and only dismantle what he artfully called "unauthorised outposts".

"Outposts" is Israel`s word for the most recent land seizures in the West Bank and the word "unauthorised"
suggests that there is some legality to the massive settlements already built on Palestinian land. According to
Bush, the "heart of the matter" in the Middle East is "a viable Palestinian democracy." Not once did Bush mention "occupation". Why not? Is he so frightened of Israel`s lobby before next year`s US presidential election that even this most salient fact of the Middle East experience has to be censored from his narrative of events?

There was, too, the familiar distortion of the historical narrative. He said that America and Britain would do "all in their power to prevent the United Nations from solemnly choosing its own irrelevance." Come again? Who was it who wouldn`t let the UN inspectors finish their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last year? Who was it who wouldn`t accept a UN stewardship of the Iraq crisis?

Bush claimed yet again that we "tolerated" the dictatorships of the Middle East. Rubbish. We created them, Saddam`s regime being the most obvious example. Who doubts, Mr Bush asked us, "that Afghanistan is a more just society and less dangerous without Mullah Omar playing host to terrorists from around the world?" Could this be the same Afghanistan which once more cringes under the warlords of the old Northern Alliance, the Afghanistan where the opium poppy is once again the country`s prime export, where aid workers are
being cut down by the Taliban?

And in Iraq, where the occupying powers now face an Iraqi insurgency of fearful proportions, Mr Bush still thinks he is fighting "Ba`athist holdouts and jihadists". Even his military officers are repeating that it is a growing Iraqi guerrilla army they are fighting -- not "foreign fighters" or "jihadis". At the end, of course, we came back to the Second World War and Churchill -- the "leader who did not waver", with whom Bush last year compared himself and with whom he on Wednesday compared Tony Blair -- a "leader of good judgement and blunt counsel and backbone."

Where, oh where are we going? How much longer must we suffer this false account of history? How much longer must we willfully misread what we are doing and what is being done to us?

Copyright: The Independent

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The Bubble of American Supremacy

A prominent financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here

by George Soros

December Issue: The Atlantic Monthly

It is generally agreed that September 11, 2001, changed the course of history. But we must ask ourselves why that should be so. How could a single event, even one involving 3,000 civilian casualties, have such a far-reaching effect? The answer lies not so much in the event itself as in the way the United States, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, responded to it.

Admittedly, the terrorist attack was historic in its own right. Hijacking fully fueled airliners and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and its execution could not have been more spectacular. The destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center made a symbolic statement that reverberated around the world, and the fact that people could watch the event on their television sets endowed it with an emotional impact that no terrorist act had ever achieved before. The aim of terrorism is to terrorize, and the attack of September 11 fully accomplished this objective.

Even so, September 11 could not have changed the course of history to the extent that it has if President Bush had not responded to it the way he did. He declared war on terrorism, and under that guise implemented a radical foreign-policy agenda whose underlying principles predated the tragedy. Those principles can be summed up as follows: International relations are relations of power, not law; power prevails and law legitimizes what prevails. The United States is unquestionably the dominant power in the post-Cold War world; it is therefore in a position to impose its views, interests, and values. The world would benefit from adopting those values, because the American model has demonstrated its superiority. The Clinton and first Bush Administrations failed to use the full potential of American power. This must be corrected; the United States must find a way to assert its supremacy in the world.

This foreign policy is part of a comprehensive ideology customarily referred to as neoconservatism, though I prefer to describe it as a crude form of social Darwinism. I call it crude because it ignores the role of cooperation in the survival of the fittest, and puts all the emphasis on competition. In economic matters the competition is between firms; in international relations it is between states. In economic matters social Darwinism takes the form of market fundamentalism; in international relations it is now leading to the pursuit of American supremacy.

Not all the members of the Bush Administration subscribe to this ideology, but neoconservatives form an influential group within it. They publicly called for the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998. Their ideas originated in the Cold War and were further elaborated in the post-Cold War era. Before September 11 the ideologues were hindered in implementing their strategy by two considerations: George W. Bush did not have a clear mandate (he became President by virtue of a single vote in the Supreme Court), and America did not have a clearly defined enemy that would have justified a dramatic increase in military spending.

September 11 removed both obstacles. President Bush declared war on terrorism, and the nation lined up behind its President. Then the Bush Administration proceeded to exploit the terrorist attack for its own purposes. It fostered the fear that has gripped the country in order to keep the nation united behind the President, and it used the war on terrorism to execute an agenda of American supremacy. That is how September 11 changed the course of history.

Exploiting an event to further an agenda is not in itself reprehensible. It is the task of the President to provide leadership, and it is only natural for politicians to exploit or manipulate events so as to promote their policies. The cause for concern lies in the policies that Bush is promoting, and in the way he is going about imposing them on the United States and the world. He is leading us in a very dangerous direction.

The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President`s annual laying out to Congress of the country`s security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."

The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.

The Bush doctrine, first enunciated in a presidential speech at West Point in June of 2002, and incorporated into the National Security Strategy three months later, is built on two pillars: the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and the United States arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. In effect, the doctrine establishes two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the will of the United States. This is reminiscent of George Orwell`s Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated so starkly; it is shrouded in doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because of the contradiction between the Bush Administration`s concept of freedom and democracy and the actual principles and requirements of freedom and democracy. Talk of spreading democracy looms large in the National Security Strategy. But when President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America`s lead. The contradiction is especially apparent in the case of Iraq, and the occupation of Iraq has brought the issue home. We came as liberators, bringing freedom and democracy, but that is not how we are perceived by a large part of the population.

It is ironic that the government of the most successful open society in the world should have fallen into the hands of people who ignore the first principles of open society. At home Attorney General John Ashcroft has used the war on terrorism to curtail civil liberties. Abroad the United States is trying to impose its views and interests through the use of military force. The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine, and it has turned out to be counterproductive. A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world.

The size of the chasm is impressive. On September 12, 2001, a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty for the first time in the alliance`s history, calling on all member states to treat the terrorist attack on the United States as an attack upon their own soil. The United Nations promptly endorsed punitive U.S. action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. A little more than a year later the United States could not secure a UN resolution to endorse the invasion of Iraq. Gerhard Schröder won re-election in Germany by refusing to cooperate with the United States. In South Korea an underdog candidate was elected to the presidency because he was considered the least friendly to the United States; many South Koreans regard the United States as a greater danger to their security than North Korea. A large majority throughout the world opposed the war on Iraq.

September 11 introduced a discontinuity into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been redefined as normal. The advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since.

To explain the significance of the transition, I should like to draw on my experience in the financial markets. Stock markets often give rise to a boom-bust process, or bubble. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a basis in reality—but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes, it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in 2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.

The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position.

Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce the trend.

Whatever the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over the opinions of our allies. The gap between the Administration`s expectations and the actual state of affairs could not be wider. It is difficult to think of a recent military operation that has gone so wrong. Our soldiers have been forced to do police duty in combat gear, and they continue to be killed. We have put at risk not only our soldiers` lives but the combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might have legitimate need to project that power. North Korea is openly building nuclear weapons, and Iran is clandestinely doing so. The Taliban is regrouping in Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war are weighing heavily on our economy, and we are failing to address many festering problems—domestic and global. If we ever needed proof that the dream of American supremacy is misconceived, the occupation of Iraq has provided it. If we fail to heed the evidence, we will have to pay a heavier price in the future.

Meanwhile, largely as a result of our preoccupation with supremacy, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the war on terrorism. Indeed, war is a false metaphor in this context. Terrorists do pose a threat to our national and personal security, and we must protect ourselves. Many of the measures we have taken are necessary and proper. It can even be argued that not enough has been done to prevent future attacks. But the war being waged has little to do with ending terrorism or enhancing homeland security; on the contrary, it endangers our security by engendering a vicious circle of escalating violence.

The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. Protection against terrorism requires precautionary measures, awareness, and intelligence gathering—all of which ultimately depend on the support of the populations among which the terrorists operate. Imagine for a moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded Iraq, and we would not have our military struggling to perform police work and getting shot at.

Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush Administration, because it invoked military might; but this is the wrong way to deal with the problem. Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are often sponsored by states.

The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy. That pursuit, in turn, will continue to generate resistance. Further, by turning the hunt for terrorists into a war, we are bound to create innocent victims. The more innocent victims there are, the greater the resentment and the better the chances that some victims will turn into perpetrators.

The terrorist threat must be seen in proper perspective. Terrorism is not new. It was an important factor in nineteenth-century Russia, and it had a great influence on the character of the czarist regime, enhancing the importance of secret police and justifying authoritarianism. More recently several European countries—Italy, Germany, Great Britain—had to contend with terrorist gangs, and it took those countries a decade or more to root them out. But those countries did not live under the spell of terrorism during all that time. Granted, using hijacked planes for suicide attacks is something new, and so is the prospect of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. To come to terms with these threats will take some adjustment; but the threats cannot be allowed to dominate our existence. Exaggerating them will only make them worse. The most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists` hands. They are setting our priorities.

A recent Council on Foreign Relations publication sketches out three alternative national-security strategies. The first calls for the pursuit of American supremacy through the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action. It is advocated by neoconservatives. The second seeks the continuation of our earlier policy of deterrence and containment. It is advocated by Colin Powell and other moderates, who may be associated with either political party. The third would have the United States lead a cooperative effort to improve the world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip service to it. That is the policy I stand for.

The evidence shows the first option to be extremely dangerous, and I believe that the second is no longer practical. The Bush Administration has done too much damage to our standing in the world to permit a return to the status quo. Moreover, the policies pursued before September 11 were clearly inadequate for dealing with the problems of globalization. Those problems require collective action. The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the effort. We cannot just do anything we want, as the Iraqi situation demonstrates, but nothing much can be done in the way of international cooperation without the leadership—or at least the participation—of the United States.

Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states. What goes on within individual states can be of vital interest to the rest of the world, but the principle of sovereignty militates against interfering in their internal affairs. How to deal with failed states and oppressive, corrupt, and inept regimes? How to get rid of the likes of Saddam? There are too many such regimes to wage war against every one. This is the great unresolved problem confronting us today.

I propose replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action with preventive action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign aid or better and fairer trade rules, for example, would not violate the sovereignty of the recipients. Military action should remain a last resort. The United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so. But the framework within which to think about security is collective security. Neither nuclear proliferation nor international terrorism can be successfully addressed without international cooperation. The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.

George Soros is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations active in more than fifty countries. This essay is drawn from his book of the same name, to be published in January by PublicAffairs.
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Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; December 2003; The Bubble of American Supremacy; Volume 292, No. 5; 63-66.

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November 22, 2003
Army Is Planning for 100,000 G.I.`s in Iraq Till 2006
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 — Army planning for Iraq currently assumes keeping about 100,000 United States troops there through early 2006, a senior Army officer said Friday. The plans reflect the concerns of some Army officials that stabilizing Iraq could be more difficult than originally planned.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned that maintaining a force of that size in Iraq beyond then would cause the Army to "really start to feel the pain" from stresses on overtaxed active-duty, Reserve and National Guard troops.

The officer was offering a senior-level Army view on the issue, but the size of any future American force in Iraq will ultimately be decided by President Bush and a new provisional Iraqi government that is expected to assume control from an American administrator by June. The Army plans nevertheless give a view of top-level Pentagon thinking about the size of the American force that may be needed in Iraq well beyond the time next year when Washington expects to turn political control of Iraq back to Iraqi leaders.

Mr. Bush has said he will be guided by the military`s judgment in deciding troop levels. Military officials have said they will base their recommendations largely on security conditions in Iraq and the extent Iraqis are trained to fill missions now carried out by American troops.

Another senior military official cautioned that while the senior Army officer`s comments reflected prudent planning, it "has nothing to do with what the security situation on the ground might be in 18 months."

The Pentagon has said it will reduce the American military presence in Iraq to 105,000 by May from 130,000 now. While some defense officials have raised the possibility of shrinking the force even more next year, if circumstances allow, the senior Army officer said Army planners were assuming that the number of American forces in Iraq would probably stay the same when the military begins its third one-year troop rotation in March 2005.

"What we`re looking at doing is making some assumptions with the Marines about sustaining the type of force we`re going to need," said the officer, who spoke to a small group of military reporters. "As you look at this, it wouldn`t seem prudent right now to plan on using a force of less than what is there now, for March `05." That force would presumably remain in Iraq until March 2006, although its size could fluctuate, depending on conditions on the ground.

A third senior military official said that, while planning for the force to enter Iraq in early 2005 was under way, it was far too early to predict how many American troops would be needed for that rotation.

White House and Defense Department officials have insisted political considerations played no role in the Pentagon`s decision to reduce the force that is rotating into Iraq next spring to replace troops that have been there a year. On Thursday, Mr. Bush even suggested he was open to rethinking the Pentagon`s plan to cut troop levels in Iraq next year.

Many military planners are looking at future troop levels in Iraq, for different reasons. Army and Marine Corps officials must plan for worst-case scenarios, since their services will provide the vast majority of forces in future rotations. Planners on the military`s Joint Staff in Washington examine how forces are allocated for hot spots around the world.

Planners at the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which has responsibility for military operations in Iraq, closely watch the specific troop requirements in Iraq. For that reason, Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, who heads the Central Command, will probably have the most influential voice in deciding future troop levels in Iraq.

"John Abizaid is the one who`s going to tell us at several points down the road over the next couple of years what he thinks he`s going to need," the senior Army officer said.

Even so, the views of senior Army and Marine Corps officers involved in the planning in Washington are important because they track and respond to what ground commanders in Iraq say they require.

Just how large the American military presence in Iraq will be in the future depends not only on negotiations with Iraqi political leaders but also on the level of violence in Iraq and how quickly newly trained Iraqis can take over security, American officials say.

Teams of Army Special Forces are now training Iraqis in an accelerated program to fill out the ranks of a civil defense corps, the equivalent of a militia.

The Iraqi militiamen are already conducting joint patrols with American forces, and General Abizaid has said he envisions the militia over time assuming a more prominent and independent role in attacking Baath Party supporters, foreign fighters and other insurgents who carry out ambushes and roadside bombings against American forces.

To combat the insurgents in Iraq, General Abizaid and his subordinate commanders have said they need better intelligence.

To that end, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, said Friday that the Defense Department had instructed the military services to beef up their human intelligence capacities to address unmet needs in Iraq.

"We`re a little short on the human side, there`s no denying that, so we`re in the process of adding to the number of people who may be involved," he said at a breakfast with defense writers. He did not give specifics, but indicated that the changes were part of a broader effort to reinforce American intelligence capacity in Iraq to support the campaign against insurgents.

Dr. Cambone said that the lack of sufficient human intelligence capabilities in the military services had become apparent during operations in Iraq, but that it dated from cuts made during the early 1990`s. He said the main focus of the American military effort in Iraq would continue to be primarily on "former regime loyalists who are trying to drive out the coalition."

Exactly what kind of relationship the American military has with a new Iraqi provisional government was discussed on Thursday at a meeting of General Abizaid, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior military officials.

One official involved that said that the internal discussions were at a preliminary stage, and that General Abizaid would make recommendations in coming weeks. "We`re looking at lots of different possible arrangements," the official said.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Wie nennt man das? Pfeifen im Wald oder so ähnlich.

November 22, 2003
INTELLIGENCE
Analysts See Terrorism Paradox: A Weaker Al Qaeda Despite Attacks
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 — The recent surge in terrorist strikes on "soft targets" like consulates, banks and synagogues in places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia is worrying, but paradoxically reflects progress by the United States and Europe in disrupting Al Qaeda, especially its leadership structure, American and European intelligence officials said Friday.

"We continue to disrupt Al Qaeda`s activities and capture more of their leaders, but the attacks are escalating," a senior counterterrorism official in Europe said. "This is a very bad sign. There are fewer leaders but more followers."

The officials said they regard Al Qaeda as less capable than before of striking at American embassies, military targets and landmarks that were the hallmarks of its campaign before the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the terrorist threat has evolved, they said, into a much broader, more diffuse phenomenon than before, with a new strategy of attacks by loosely affiliated groups against highly vulnerable targets.

The shift to softer targets does not make Al Qaeda and its followers any less dangerous, the officials cautioned. They said there is deep concern here and in Europe that the United States and its allies are facing more — not fewer — terrorist foes than before. The killing and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders is failing, they said, to keep pace with the number of angry young Muslim men and women willing to participate in suicide attacks.

"It`s inevitable that when you step on the anthill, there are going to be plenty of ants coming out the side," a senior American official said.

In a classified warning to law enforcement agencies late Thursday, the United States reiterated its concern about Al Qaeda`s "continued desire to plot or plan terrorist attacks with an emphasis on U.S. interests abroad," federal officials said.

The State Department issued a new global terror warning Friday, saying that it saw "increasing indications" that Al Qaeda is planning to strike American interests abroad. It also said that it could not rule out another Qaeda attack within the United States, one "more devastating" than the Sept. 11 attacks.

Intelligence and counterterrorism officials in Europe said Friday that several recent attacks, in Istanbul and Jakarta, were engineered by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, not by Al Qaeda itself. Several officials said this suggests that Al Qaeda might no longer have the capacity to organize attacks and has instead become an inspiration to new and existing groups with similar goals and ideology.

"Al Qaeda, as such, is too busy trying to survive right now," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. "Al Qaeda is more or less brain dead. I don`t think they are extremely efficient at planning and coordinating new attacks."

Despite that cause for optimism, the intelligence officials said they are troubled by evidence suggesting that more young militant men are becoming terrorists than ever before. The men are joining groups inspired by the occupation of Iraq and the exhortations to fight by Osama bin Laden, who is seen as a hero to many disaffected Muslims.

"These people have found a new motivation with the aggression of the United States against the brethren in an Arab country," one official said. "If you follow what is being said on the Web sites and by other groups with similar goals to Al Qaeda, they are all trying to ride the wave and trying to raise new recruits through this motivation. And it`s working."

In a private memorandum to associates last month, in which he warned of a "long, hard slog" ahead in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised similar concerns. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front, also known as IBDA-C, is the Turkish terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for Thursday`s attacks against the British Consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul. The group, founded in the mid-70`s, is a violent opponent of Turkey`s secular government and its ties to the European Union and the West.

Several senior counterterrorism officials in Europe, however, said that they are uncertain that the group has strong ties to Al Qaeda. One intelligence chief said that Al Qaeda does not usually time its attacks to coincide with political events, as the suicide bombers on Thursday seemed to do in striking British targets during President Bush`s state visit to Britain.

But a senior counterterrorism official took exception to that assessment, saying that the coordinated nature of the suicide bombings, occurring within five minutes and a few miles of each other in Istanbul on Thursday, was the hallmark of an Qaeda terrorist operation.

Senior counterterrorism officials in Europe and the Middle East have grown increasingly concerned that smaller, harder-to-detect groups with loose ties to Al Qaeda, or even independent of it, have struck soft targets all over Europe. The trend was first seen in the early months of 2002, with attacks by local groups with loose Al Qaeda affiliations in Pakistan and Tunisia. The authorities also broke up attacks planned against United States military and diplomatic targets in Bosnia, Italy and Morocco.

Several officials have insisted that they are much more concerned with new terrorist groups in North Africa and Western Europe than with the leadership of Al Qaeda. The groups are actively recruiting young men, who were not necessarily trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the officials said.

"Al Qaeda is not my main headache," a senior official said. "The spontaneous groups that are sprouting up from the northern African community based in Europe, and going down the path of jihad, are what I`m most worried about. They are inspired by bin Laden, but this is not Al Qaeda. They are not there yet — they are not necessarily even ready to launch attacks — but these groups are raising the next generation of terrorists."


Douglas Jehl reported for this article from Washington and Don Van Natta Jr. from London.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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November 21, 2003
Q&A: The New Iraq Plan

From the Council on Foreign Relations, November 21, 2003


What is the makeup of the Iraqi Governing Council?

The original council had 25 members--including returned exiles, tribal leaders, women, religious Muslim conservatives, and secular political leaders. Shiites, who account for 60 percent of the Iraqi population, held 13 seats on the U.S.-appointed council. One Shiite member, Akila al-Hashimi, was assassinated in September and has not been replaced. Twelve seats are divided among Iraq`s main minorities: Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkmen.

Who is not represented on the council?

Powerful and, in some cases, stridently anti-U.S. Shiite religious leaders, such as Imam Muqtada al-Sadr, who have been organizing followers through mosques and local religious networks. Also excluded are former members of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party, many of whom were Sunni Muslims. U.S. officials hold ex-Baathists and others responsible for continuing attacks against American forces.

How were members selected?

They were appointed by the occupation authorities, who consulted with the major anti-Saddam groups that had worked with Washington before the Iraq war. The U.N. representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, also advised on the council`s makeup. Vieira de Mello and 22 others were killed August 19 when a truck bomb exploded outside the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

Is the council representative of the views of the Iraqi people?

Its ethnic and religious makeup is far more representative than any previous Iraqi government, and the Shiite majority, for the first time in Iraqi history, has a leading voice in politics. The council also includes representatives not closely aligned with American views--including a communist and at least one Shiite representative whose group has ties with Iran. On the other hand, returned Iraqi exiles are disproportionately represented, and there is limited representation of tribal leaders, who represent a potent force in traditional Iraqi society, experts say. The council`s legitimacy has been a key question: while members often disagree with U.S. views, some Iraqis have accused them of being puppets of the U.S. authority.

How many council members are returned Iraqi exiles?

Nine--six of the 12 Shiite representatives and three of the Arab Sunnis. In addition, five Kurdish representatives and at least one other Iraqi on the council have lived in northern Iraqi areas that had been outside of Saddam`s control since the 1991 Gulf War.

What powers does the council have?

It can appoint interim diplomats and ministers, approve budgets, and propose policies, but the coalition authorities can veto any of its decisions. It will also play a major role in the coalition`s new plan for Iraq`s political future.

What has the council achieved?

Since taking office July 13, it has appointed interim ministers to Iraq`s 25 ministries. But it has had trouble reaching consensus on key matters, many observers say. Unable to decide on a single president, it created a system in which a weak presidency rotates on a monthly basis among nine members--five Shiites, two Sunnis, and two Kurds. Its constitutional committee folded in late September without arriving at a method for writing the document. Some U.S. officials have criticized the council for working too slowly and failing to reach out to ordinary Iraqis. Council members have defended themselves by pointing out that the issues they debate are complex and divisive. "We need to negotiate and have a dialogue to reach a decision," member Mowaffak al-Rubaie told the Associated Press. "And when we do that, then we shall have to talk with our [coalition] partners, differ, negotiate, and compromise with them."

What is the council`s biggest test?

Whether it can improve security, stability, and the delivery of basic services to the country, experts say. Its fate has thus been closely intertwined with that of the U.S.-led occupiers, who have been struggling to improve security and services to Iraq since Baghdad fell to coalition forces April 9.

What difficulties does the council face?

The diverse group may have trouble reaching consensus on aspects of the new U.S. plan announced November 15 to return sovereignty to Iraq by June. "It`s going to be difficult to agree on everything--it`s a rainbow coalition that does include major diversity. But they have to fight it out; this is something that has to happen in Iraq," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert. On a practical level, council members have been targeted for assassination by insurgents opposed to the U.S.-led occupation.

How long will the council serve?

Until May, when an Iraqi transitional assembly is seated, according to the new timetable. That assembly will appoint government ministers by June 30, 2004, when Iraq will fully regain its sovereignty. The Coalition Provisional Authority--the formal name for the civilian occupation government--will be dissolved.

Who is the highest-ranking Shiite religious figure on the council?

An 80-year-old former exile, Sayyed Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum. Experts consider him a moderate Shiite cleric; broadly speaking, means that he wants Iraq to be a tolerant, but religiously based, state. After Saddam`s regime killed some of his family, Uloum fled Iraq in 1991 to London, where he headed the Ahl al-Bayt charitable center. Though a respected religious leader, Uloum does not have the rank of ayatollah or the authority of Iraq`s top Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (who shuns direct involvement in secular politics). Uloum`s tenure on the council has not been smooth: he was almost killed November 12 when coalition forces inadvertently fired on his car, and he temporarily stepped down from the council in September to protest the lack of security that led to the assassination of another important cleric, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

Who are the other Shiite exiles on the council?

Ahmad Chalabi, 58, head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization of political groups that opposed Saddam`s government from exile. A favorite of the Pentagon civilian leadership, he was flown into Iraq with 700 of the INC`s "Free Iraqi Fighters" during the war and has played an important role on the council. In the 1990s, he was found guilty of embezzlement by a Jordanian court, but he says the charges were politically motivated.
Iyad Alawi, 57, head of the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a London-based opposition group of former Iraqi army officers who staged an unsuccessful 1996 coup d`etat against Saddam with CIA assistance. Alawi is a doctor and a former Iraqi intelligence officer.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the political leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Based in Tehran since 1980, al-Hakim is the brother of Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who was killed in Najaf on August 29. Both men objected to the U.S.-led occupation, but they also had cooperated with Washington--and Tehran--to oppose Saddam. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim`s decision to participate on the council, which had been in doubt, could help confer wider legitimacy on the body among Shiites, some experts say.
Ibrahim Jafari, a spokesman of the Islamic Da`wa Party, a radical Shiite movement active in Iraq since the 1960s that sought Saddam`s overthrow and was brutally rooted out by his regime. Surviving Da`wa members fled to London, Syria, and Tehran; the group`s current political leanings are unclear. Jafari left Iraq in 1980.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a former Da`wa spokesman in Britain, neurologist, and human rights activist.

Who are the main Shiites on the council from inside the country?

Wael Abdul Latif, a judge in Basra since 1982 who was named interim governor of the city earlier this month. During Saddam`s reign, he spent a year in prison.
Hamid Majeed Mousa, 62, an economist and the head of the Iraqi Communist Party since 1993. Originally from Babylon, south of Baghdad, he lived for several years in the 1990s in Iraqi Kurdistan. The party was an important force in Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s.
Shiekh Ahmad Shyaa al-Barak, the leader of the Al-Bu Sultan tribe and a lawyer who runs an Iraqi human rights association. He reportedly worked with the Iraqi foreign ministry as a liaison with the United Nations in the 1990s.
Raja Habib Khuzai, a female doctor who heads a maternity hospital in the southern city of Diwaniyah. She lived in London from the late 1960s until 1977, when she returned to Iraq.
Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, 46, a member of an important southern tribe who led guerrilla attacks against Saddam`s government for 17 years from Iraq`s southern marshes, earning him the nickname "Prince of the Marshes." He now reportedly heads the Iraqi Party of God (Hezbollah), which some experts say is a newcomer to the Iraqi political scene. The relationship between the organization and Lebanese Hezbollah is not clear.
Akila al-Hashimi, an original member of the council, died September 25 from gunshot wounds. An Iraqi diplomat in the Saddam regime, she worked on U.N. issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as a French translator for Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

Who are the main Sunni exiles on the council?

Adnan Pachachi, 80, who served as foreign minister before the Baath Party came to power in 1968. He founded the Independent Democratic Movement in February to provide a platform for Iraqis who back a secular, democratic government, and returned to Iraq in May after 32 years in exile. Experts say he is respected as the most senior political figure on the council and will play an important role.
Samir Shakir Mahmoud al-Sumaidy, who owns a construction company in China and represents the Sumaidy clan. He is a writer and was a prominent opposition figure in the Saddam era.
Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, 45, a businessman originally from Mosul in the north. He`s the nephew of Sheikh Mohsen Adil al-Yawar, head of the powerful Shamar tribe. He lived for 15 years in Saudi Arabia, where he worked in business, returning to Iraq in June.

Who are the Sunni members from inside the country?

Naseer Kamel Chaderchi, 70, a lawyer and businessman who leads the National Democratic Party of Iraq (NDP). His father, Kamel, was a leading democratic political thinker in Iraq during the 1950s and 1960s and a founder of the NDP. Chaderchi himself was an important political figure until the Baathists seized power in 1968.
Moshen Abdul Hameed, a professor at Baghdad University and head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, about which little is known. He is the author of more than 30 books on the interpretation of the Koran.

Who are the main Kurdish leaders on the council?

Massoud Barzani, 56, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two largest Kurdish political parties. He became a resistance fighter--a peshmerga--in 1963, taking over the party helm on his father`s death in 1979. He has shared power in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq since 1991 with rival Jalal Talabani.
Jalal Talabani, 70, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the other of the two largest Kurdish political parties. He was born near Erbil and during the 1960s was a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party under Barzani`s control. He split from the party in 1975 to form the PUK, which controls the southeast of Kurdistan; the KDP controls the northwest.

Who are the other Kurdish leaders?

Salahaddin Mohammed Bahaddin, 53, secretary general of the Kurdistan Islamic Union since 1994. The religiously based Sunni party is reportedly the third most powerful Kurdish grouping after the PUK and the KDP.
Dara Nor al-Din, a judge on the Court of Appeals who served eight months in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison after ruling that an edict from Saddam was unconstitutional. He is originally from the northern oil city of Kirkuk.
Mahmoud Othman, 60, originally from Sulamaniyah. He held various posts in the KDP before leaving the group and moving to London, where he founded the Kurdish Socialist Party in 1975. He later moved to Erbil in northern Iraq.

Who represents Iraq`s other minorities?

Songul Chapouk, 35, a teacher of fine arts in the northern city of Mosul and head of the grassroots Iraqi Women`s Organization, represents the small Turkmen minority. She survived an assassination attempt in early November, according to press reports.
Yonadem Kanna, 50, secretary general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, representing the Christian minority, which is mostly made up of ethnic Assyrians and Chaldeans. He was in charge of transportation in the first Kurdish regional assembly set up in the 1990s.

--by Sharon Otterman, staff writer, cfr.org

Sources: Associated Press; Agence France Presse; The Washington Post; The New York Times; interviews with Phebe Marr, author of "The Modern History of Iraq," Yitzhak Nakash, author of "The Shi`is of Iraq," and Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.



Copyright 2003

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November 22, 2003
DIPLOMACY
Germany, France and Russia Ask U.N. to Call International Meeting on Iraq`s Future
By KIRK SEMPLE

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 21 — Germany, France and Russia, three of the most vocal opponents of the war in Iraq, reunited in the Security Council on Friday to urge an international conference for the country, much like the conference for Afghanistan in 2001.

The three countries also demanded that the United States and Britain ensure that the political transition in Iraq involve all nonviolent elements of Iraqi society, as well as neighboring countries, and that the United Nations be involved throughout.

As they spoke publicly with one voice today, the antiwar trio on the Security Council appeared emboldened by the recent American decision to speed up the transfer of power to the Iraqis, a strategy they have long championed.

The proposal, which echoes the Bonn meeting that produced a transitional administration for Afghanistan, was first floated earlier this week by Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia. The ambassadors of Russia, Germany and France said Friday that such an event could bring together a spectrum of Iraqi groups, along with Iraq`s neighbors and other international participants.

The American envoy, John D. Negroponte, said that the Americans and British would study the proposal, and insisted that "efforts are going to be made to ensure the largest possible degree of inclusiveness" in the political process.

He and his British colleague, Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, urged the other Council members to await instructions from the Iraqi Governing Council. That group is to send a letter to the Security Council by Dec. 15 detailing its plans for drafting a constitution and holding elections.

Security Council diplomats say they expect the letter to provide guidelines for international involvement, including for the United Nations. Still, a common theme sounded at the meeting on Friday was a need to involve all aspects of Iraqi society, as well as Iraq`s neighbors.

Gunter Pleuger, Germany`s ambassador to the United Nations, said that considering the terrorist violence in Iraq and elsewhere, "it is imperative to create an international order based on cooperation and inclusiveness with the United Nations as its center, and I think that is the way to a stable Iraq."

Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested privately to Council members on Thursday that they form a group of neighboring countries to accompany the process. The group would include the six countries bordering Iraq, as well as Egypt and the five permanent Security Council members, officials here said.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Das ist ein Satz der sehr bezeichnend ist für das USA-britische Verhältnis. Ist es wirklich so, dass GB den verflossenen Großmachtsträumen nachhängt.
Here, once again, is the classically asymmetrical expression of the "special relationship": America wants friends; Britain wants influence.

November 22, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Special Relationship, or an Abusive One?
By DAVID CANNADINE

oward the end of the 19th century, Rudyard Kipling wrote two prescient poems that should be required reading for any student of the latter-day British-American "special relationship," which has just been so effusively reaffirmed — albeit amid protests — by George W. Bush and Tony Blair across the Atlantic. The first poem, published to coincide with Queen Victoria`s Diamond Jubilee of 1897, was titled "Recessional." But instead of celebrating, as might have been expected, the greatness of the far-flung British Empire, Kipling drew attention to the transience of earthly power, and the ephemerality of global dominion: "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre."

Shortly after, he produced "The White Man`s Burden," a more upbeat poem intended for a very different audience. Addressed to Americans, and sent directly to Theodore Roosevelt, the poem urged the United States to take unabashed advantage of its recent conquest of the Philippines. It was, Roosevelt opined, "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist viewpoint."

During the 20th century, the respective histories of the United Kingdom and the United States followed precisely the trajectories that Kipling had sketched out. The British Empire, after a final expansionist fling in the aftermath of the First World War, went into recessional mode, beginning with the independence of India in 1947 and ending with the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese 50 years later. Meanwhile, Uncle Sam succeeded John Bull as the greatest power in the West: in part through his intervention in the First World War and more sustained involvement in the Second; in part because of his increasing military, economic and cultural dominance; and in part through a host of global agencies that he controlled.

Thus were Kipling`s poetic predictions borne out as the 20th century unfolded. But there was no historical precedent for one great power superseding another in a non-antagonistic way. The United Kingdom and the United States have not gone to war with each other since 1812. Instead, they have confronted common enemies, from Germany to Japan to Russia — to Iraq. They are also united by the same language, laws and literature, and by a shared history. Hence the "special relationship" between the two countries, so much on display in London this week — a rich and unique amalgam of sentiment and nostalgia, but also of realism and realpolitik, which reached its apogee in the wartime alliance of Roosevelt and Churchill, but which has been regularly refreshed and renewed, by Macmillan and Kennedy, Thatcher and Reagan, and now by Blair and Bush.

Yet this is by no means the whole of the story. In 20th-century Britain, there was (and perhaps still is) resentment at the ruthlessness and completeness with which the United States replaced the United Kingdom as a great power. Churchill`s relations with Roosevelt were far more fraught than is suggested by the popular image of the two as comrades in arms, and it took the British years to recover from what they saw as America`s betrayal over Suez. Nor were these trans-Atlantic irritations confined to the British side. Roosevelt had no intention of fighting the Second World War to preserve the British Empire, which he deeply detested. And Lyndon Johnson never forgave Harold Wilson for refusing to send British troops to fight alongside Americans in Vietnam.

Of course, it can be argued that, like any marriage, this relationship has had its inevitable share of ups and downs. But unlike most modern marriages, the British-American alliance has always been intrinsically asymmetrical, and it has become more so year by year. For as America`s global role has expanded, while Britain`s has diminished, the allure of trans-Atlantic camaraderie has usually been much greater in London than in Washington.

Since the Second World War, the State Department has pointedly refused to employ the term "special relationship," and has urged Britain to integrate itself more closely with continental Europe instead of hankering after privileged and outdated trans-Atlantic treatment. But from Churchill to Blair, successive prime ministers have sought just such treatment, and have repeatedly insisted that Britain possesses disproportionate influence in American foreign policy-making — and thus in world affairs — as a result.

How, from this perspective, do matters now stand with Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush, and thus between the governments (but not necessarily between the people) of the United Kingdom and the United States? In terms of their rhetoric, it is all very familiar. According to the president, "America has always found strong partners in London, leaders of good judgment and blunt counsel." For, he says, "the British people are the sort of partners you want when serious work needs doing." According to the prime minister, "we should remain the closest ally of the U.S., and as allies influence them to continue broadening their agenda."

"The price of influence," Mr. Blair has also observed, "is that we do not leave the U.S. to face the tricky issues alone." Here, once again, is the classically asymmetrical expression of the "special relationship": America wants friends; Britain wants influence. Only by standing by him in public could Mr. Blair hope to influence Mr. Bush in private — for the benefit of America (which should therefore behave more prudently), for the benefit of Britain (which will thereby exercise disproportionate influence), and for the benefit of the world (which will be a better place because of the vitality of the "special relationship").

Was this ever true after 1945? Is it true now? In general, British prime ministers have claimed greater influence in Washington than has usually been the case: the relationship has been more special to them than to America — a way for Britain to inflate its dwindling global influence by trying to play Greece to America`s Rome. But this historical analogy has usually turned out to be misleading. Most of the time, America`s Rome has managed perfectly well without significant input from Britain`s Greece.

Only occasionally have American presidents sought British support, not because of its military significance, nor out of any special fondness for the "special relationship," but rather as a cover for what might otherwise appear unacceptably unilateralist American action. That was why Lyndon Johnson requested British troops for Vietnam, and why both Bushes wanted British troops in Iraq. Harold Wilson said no, and he was right. Tony Blair said yes, and many Britons do not like it. That is a very special form of the "special relationship." Perhaps, indeed, it is now on the way to becoming a recessional relationship.


David Cannadine, professor of history at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, is author of "In Churchill`s Shadow.``



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bomb Blasts at Two Iraqi Police Stations


By Michael Georgy
Reuters
Saturday, November 22, 2003; 6:04 AM


BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers blew up cars packed with explosives outside two police stations north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the latest deadly strikes on Iraq`s U.S.-backed police force.

In Baghdad, a civilian plane operated by global cargo company DHL made an emergency landing after one of its engines caught fire. Airport officials said the plane may have been hit by a missile and the U.S. Army said it was investigating.

In the town of Khan Bani Saad, a car sped toward a police station and detonated as Iraqi police opened fire on it, U.S. soldiers at the scene said. Captain Ryan McCormack said six police and three civilians were killed, along with the bomber.

Another suicide bomber targeted the main police headquarters in the nearby town of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.

At least four policemen and two civilians were killed, hospital officials said. The town`s hospital was filled with seriously wounded Iraqis, and blood was pooled on the floor. Trucks brought in several mutilated bodies.

"I was trying to resuscitate a four-year-old girl whose legs were blown off but she didn`t make it," Dr Sharif Saleh said.

A huge crater was blown into the road outside the police headquarters. Nearby, a packet of cigarettes lay in a pool of blood, close to a shoe torn apart by the blast.

"I found a severed hand 500 meters (yards) from the police station," policeman Abid Rahim said. "I brought it back here."

Shards of glass were strewn inside the police station. Part of an air-conditioning unit had been blown across one room, with a police armband stuck to it. Drops of blood could be seen.

"We were in front of the police station and we heard a huge explosion," said school principal Jamal Numaan, who witnessed the blast. "Blood came out of my ears and nose."

BOMB THREATS

The mayor of Khan Bani Saad said guerrillas had made numerous threats to Iraqis cooperating with the Americans.

"We received threats every day that there would be bombings," Nayef al-Zaydi told Reuters. "They even threatened to blow up the primary school."

Suicide attackers have struck several times at Iraqi police. On October 27, coordinated car bomb attacks on three Baghdad police stations and the International Committee of the Red Cross killed at least 35 people. Earlier that month, two suicide bombers killed eight Iraqis at another Baghdad police station.

At Baghdad international airport, officials said initial reports suggested the DHL plane had been hit by a missile.

DHL officials said the Airbus A300 had taken off from Baghdad airport and returned to make an emergency landing after an engine fire which was being investigated. No one was hurt.

Guerrillas have attempted several times to hit planes near Baghdad`s airport, but until Saturday no fixed-wing aircraft had been reported hit. Helicopters have been much more vulnerable targets -- over the past month, guerrilla attacks have brought down five, killing 49 soldiers.

DEADLY ATTACKS

The United States blames diehard Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign Muslim militants for attacks on U.S. troops, foreign organizations and Iraqis cooperating with occupying forces.

Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1, 182 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq.

American commanders say guerrillas are becoming increasingly inventive and attacks are showing signs of greater coordination.

On Friday, guerrillas used donkey carts to launch Katyusha rockets at Iraq`s Oil Ministry building and two fortified hotels used by Western contractors and journalists.

A third donkey cart loaded with 21 rockets was stopped by U.S. troops and Iraqi police near the Italian and Turkish embassies and close to the offices of one of Iraq`s main Kurdish parties. A fourth cart -- with the donkey wired up with explosives -- was found and defused.

Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, a member of Iraq`s U.S.-appointed Governing Council and head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a leading Shi`ite party, was also targeted in a rocket attack on Friday, his son said.

"It was a terrorist attack on his life by remnants of Saddam`s regime," Mohsen al-Hakim told Reuters in Tehran. He said a rocket was fired from a nearby garden as his father was in a mosque but failed to explode.

Facing a mounting death toll in Iraq, the United States has unveiled a faster timetable for handing over power to Iraqis. A sovereign Iraqi government is due to be in place by the end of June next year, with elections to follow by the end of 2005.

But The New York Times quoted U.S. Army officials on Saturday as saying Washington plans to keep 100,000 troops in Iraq through early 2006.


© 2003 Reuters

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A unit from the 4th Infantry Division fired mortars in Tikrit earlier this week. U.S. forces have destroyed homes of suspected insurgents in the area.

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Military Returns to War Tactics
Resumed Use of Heavy Munitions Part of Intensified Counterinsurgency

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- The U.S. military is using 2,000-pound bombs and precision-guided missiles in Iraq for the first time since April as part of a tactical shift designed in part to intimidate resistance fighters.

The powerful munitions -- some of which have been dropped by Air Force and Navy fighter jets that had not flown bombing runs over Iraq for six months -- have been used to flatten houses, factories and training camps that military commanders say have been used by insurgents to assemble bombs, stage ambushes and coordinate attacks on American troops. The bone-jarring explosions and drumbeat of cannon fire that echoed across Baghdad this week evoked memories of the intense campaign that preceded the fall of Saddam Hussein`s government.

Three Army generals here said the use of high-intensity weapons and strike aircraft is part of a new, nationwide campaign to intensify counterinsurgency operations in the wake of escalating attacks on U.S. forces, including the downing of two helicopters this month in which more than 20 soldiers were killed. The operations have included scores of raids, block-by-block searches for weapons and patrols that have resulted in the detention of more than 500 suspected insurgents.

Despite the intensity of the bomb and artillery strikes, Iraqis living near the target areas and even some U.S. officers say they consider the offensive more symbolic than substantial. They contend most of targeted structures -- some of which were unremarkable, single-story brick buildings -- were empty when they were hit. And they insist that the new tactics, which have featured deafening nighttime strafing runs by AC-130 Spectre gunships and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, have frightened ordinary people more than insurgents.

Although commanders acknowledge that the destroyed structures have been unoccupied in most cases -- in some cases, soldiers have used loudspeakers to warn occupants to flee -- they maintain that the strikes are throwing resistance fighters off guard, raising the possibility that their redoubts will be destroyed while they are inside. Until now, almost all U.S. counterinsurgency operations have involved raids aimed at capturing suspects; shooting typically only broke out when insurgents were fleeing or attacking American forces.

"If one night an aircraft that they couldn`t see or hear lobs a couple of rounds into the ground and turns the ground into a pile of dirt, it`s got to cause you pause the next time you decide to go out and shoot your rockets," said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the commander of the Army`s 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. "And that`s what I`m looking for. I want the enemy to know that although I`m on his home turf, he is not going to use that to his advantage."

In Baghdad, Dempsey`s division commenced an operation dubbed Iron Hammer late last week that resulted in the most significant military strikes in the capital since Hussein`s government was toppled. Over the past week, the operation has involved 20 missions by AH-64 Apache gunships, 7 missions by AC-130s and A-10s and 26 artillery and mortar attacks, Dempsey said. Most of those strikes have occurred to the south and west of the city, away from densely populated areas but close enough to the city for residents to hear reverberations from the blasts.

Raids under Iron Hammer netted 522 artillery and mortar rounds, 25 rocket-propelled grenades, 4 completed roadside bombs and 2 surface-to-air missiles, he said. The operation also disrupted three insurgent cells, with 14 resistance fighters killed and 104 captured, he said.

Speaking on Thursday, a day before more than 10 rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraqi Oil Ministry headquarters and two large hotels, Dempsey boasted that Iron Hammer had reduced attacks on U.S. forces in the capital by about 70 percent.

In one airstrike last week, he said, an Apache helicopter attacked a pickup truck, killing two men who had just fired mortars at an American military base and wounding three. In a demonstration of another new military campaign -- a public relations push to highlight what it deems to be successes in Iraq -- he showed a picture at a news conference on Thursday of the shot-up truck next to two bodies covered by black shrouds. In the past, U.S. military officials had generally refrained from commenting on specific numbers of Iraqis killed in engagements with American soldiers.

Aerial and artillery bombardment also have been employed to the north of Baghdad, in parts of the Sunni Triangle. The area is home to many members of Iraq`s Sunni Muslim minority who received disproportionate power and compensation under Hussein`s government. Fighter jets have dropped 500-pound bombs in the cities of Samarra, Baiji, Balad and Baqubah, the military said. The Army`s 4th Infantry Division, which controls the northern and western parts of the triangle, also has employed at least two satellite-guided missiles to attack what the military called "terrorist infrastructure targets."

In several parts of the 4th Infantry`s area of operations, including Hussein`s home town of Tikrit, soldiers have used tank and artillery rounds to destroy the homes of suspected insurgents. A spokesman for the division said the attacks were designed to "send a message" to resistance fighters.

The decision to demolish houses suspected of sheltering insurgents resembles a tactic long in use by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to punish the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Like the Israelis, troops with the 4th Infantry have also flattened wide swaths on roadsides to inhibit the laying of bombs.

The Israeli-Palestinian analogy was much on the minds of the newly homeless in Hawijat Ali, a rural hamlet near Tikrit. Earlier this week, U.S. tanks and a helicopter gunship flattened one house and heavily damaged three others after an unsuccessful search for a pair of suspected insurgents. "The Americans want to follow the Israeli plan," said Hamed Hassan, an elderly resident of Hawijat Ali. "It doesn`t work there. Why will it work here?"

Although the human-rights group Amnesty International said on Friday that the demolitions appeared to violate the Geneva Conventions, U.S. commanders have made no apologies for their tougher tactics.

"This is war," Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is responsible for the western part of the triangle, said this week. "And we`re going to prosecute the war not holding one hand behind our back. When we identify positively an enemy target, we`re going to go ahead and take it out with every means we have available."

Borrowing a phrase from Viscount William Joseph Slim, the British field marshal who evicted Japanese troops from Burma during World War II, Swannack said the U.S. military intended to "use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut."

For instance, in Baqubah, a city about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, a pair of F-16 jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on abandoned buildings in the countryside north of the city and the Army used mortars to pepper trees near the village of Salah. Inspection of the tree-lined area revealed some tattered branches and bark scarred by shrapnel and indistinct craters among scrub and brownish dirt.

Military officers in Baqubah said the aim was to stop rocket-propelled grenade attacks along roads dubbed "RPG alley," as well as to hit areas suspected as launch sites for mortars. "It`s to let the bad guys know we are around and to hit places we know they fire from," said Lt. Robert Small of the 200th Engineer Company, which is attached to the 4th Infantry.

While the Americans have a vast array of weaponry, targets are not easy to come by, Small acknowledged. At this stage in resistance activity, the guerrillas hold no swaths of territory, operate in small groups and continue to organize so loosely that finding someone or something to hit is difficult, U.S. officers say.

The insurgents, on the other hand, have no trouble finding objectives to attack. In Baqubah, the insurgents have tried to assassinate the mayor, placed bombs under the cars of Iraqis who cooperate with the Americans and recently lobbed mortar shells into the city`s central square while aiming for the U.S. military civil affairs office.

"When we were on the march into Iraq, we had the advantage of targets," Small said. "Now it`s the other way around. The odds are with them."

But American generals insist the recent bomb and artillery strikes are driven by new intelligence indicating where insurgents are meeting, building bombs and staging attacks. Dempsey said Iron Hammer missions around Baghdad were the "result of several weeks of intelligence gains."

Among the targets his officers identified as worthy of strikes has been a former textile factory on the city`s southern fringe. Military officials said the factory, located in an industrial area near a highway, was used as a "meeting, planning and rendezvous point" for resistance fighters who had fired mortars at a nearby U.S. base at least twice.

"That factory had been used on countless occasions . . . to attack us," Dempsey said.

On four nights over the past week, American forces have either fired artillery shells at the factory or strafed the building with an AC-130 gunship, which carries a 25mm Gatling gun capable of firing 1,800 rounds per minute. The structure now resembles a giant block of Swiss cheese, with large holes in its brick walls and metal roof.

Nearby residents said they have been perplexed and scared by the decision to fire at the factory again and again. Jassim Nussaif, a former guard at the factory who lives about a half a mile away, said he saw insurgents fire mortar shells at the American base from an intersection near the factory, but not inside the building.

"It was abandoned," said Nussaif, a short, bearded man. The insurgents, he said, "would just drive up and shoot and leave. They never stayed in the factory."

He said the repeated strikes have spooked his family. "We thought the Americans were here to help us," he said. "This is only hurting innocent people. It will not scare the fighters. It will only terrorize the people."

But Dempsey said he was convinced the building had been used by insurgents. He said it had been hit night after night because the military wanted to prevent them from returning to the site.

"What I want to make sure the enemy knows is there is no sanctuary," he said.

Williams reported from Baqubah and Tikrit.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Free Iraqi Media Called a Worthy Onus


By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A15


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that new media freedoms in Iraq are making the occupation harder for the U.S.-led authority, "but in the last analysis, I think the benefits vastly outweigh the burdens of it."

Speaking before a Pentagon town meeting yesterday, Rumsfeld said, "We`ve seen the free press abused in this country and other countries, and it`s not a surprise that it can be abused there." He noted that the two most popular television satellite stations in Iraq, Dubai-based al-Arabiya and Qatar-based al-Jazeera, are "violently anti-coalition" and that "it will take some time to persuade people to watch different programming."

Rumsfeld`s remarks came at a time when the Coalition Provisional Authority is seeking bids for a $100 million contract to run Iraq`s former government-controlled television and radio networks and national newspaper, which used to be edited by Saddam Hussein`s late son, Uday.

Now called the Iraq Media Network, the operation has come under criticism for carrying television and radio programming that features primarily occupation authority officials and announcements along with a weekly broadcast by L. Paul Bremer, head of the occupation authority.

"Many Iraqis and outside Arabs feel the coalition is an occupying force that does not serve Iraq`s needs effectively, distrusts what the coalition says and relies on other media," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who has just returned from a two-week visit to Iraq. In a report on his trip, Cordesman said it was not clear that the media network was being fixed, but he noted, "Information operations are absolutely critical to U.S. success."

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Pentagon meeting that Bremer`s media team had begun offering new programming "that we hope will attract the average Iraqi citizen`s attention."

One communications expert familiar with the Iraq situation said yesterday that the occupation authority`s television channel, run by Pentagon contractor Science International Applications Corp., will have changed its format three times by the end of the month. "Each time you change, you have trouble getting audiences back to sample it again," he said.

The U.S. Broadcast Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America and created Radio Sawa, a relatively new broadcasting effort in the Middle East, is also planning to establish a television presence in Iraq. It will air 12 hours of television programming out of Baghdad beginning early next year.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons

Cartoon Archive
85 New Cartoons Today, es ist zu merken, dass Wochenende ist, nur 85 frische Cartoons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20031122__085toons.htm

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George W trapped in a hell of his own making

The bombers dance a jig while Bush just gets shriller

Paul McGeough in New York.

November 22, 2003: (SMH) George Bush sold war against Iraq as a king-hit in the war on terrorism. But just as he and Tony Blair began to strut for the cameras in London this week, the bombers capped off a bloody series of Ramadan attacks with two devastating strikes in Istanbul.

In a flash, what was to have been a self-congratulatory tango became another sombre session of "we will not flinch; we will not compromise", this time a bit shriller than the last.

In that swaggering way of his, Bush often relishes having taken the fight to Iraq, rather than having to fight terrorists in America. But despite his refusal to hear critics who cautioned that Iraq should not have been a part of the war on terrorism, the bombers now dance a jig around the President. He has 130,000 highly trained men and the best high-tech machines and weapons in Iraq. But foreign embassies, the United Nations and even the Red Cross are being targeted with ease and his Black Hawks drop like flies.

Yesterday in Baghdad rockets hit the Iraqi Oil Ministry building and the Sheraton and Palestine hotels. No casualties were reported among the large number of Westerners who live in the Palestine, but at least two wounded people were reported carried from the Sheraton.

Struggling in the intelligence war, Bush is being suckered into escalating cycles of violence in Iraq - lashing out with a resumption of high-powered aerial strikes - and at home he seems to be losing the political war.

His polling is appalling and now he wants to flick control of the Iraq quagmire to the locals. Last week all the talk was about bringing thousands of troops home before next year`s election but yesterday he said that he might have to send more.

But it is bombings and the loss life outside Iraq that are more of a taunt for this Top Gun president - Istanbul on Thursday and last weekend; Saudi Arabia in May and this month; Jakarta in August; Chechnya in June, and attacks earlier in the year in Pakistan, Morocco and the Philippines.

Since the September 11 attacks the US has lashed at the head and shoulders of al-Qaeda. But the consensus among experts yesterday was that al-Qaeda`s middle management has taken over and is franchising its logistic and weapons expertise to previously obscure terrorist groups in the nations where the latest bombings are taking place.

These are low-cost attacks on soft targets, but that is not the point.

Istanbul was as much the long-expected payback to Blair`s Britain for its "closest ally" support for Bush as it was a strike on Turkey for a string of offences against terrorist sensibilities - it is the only Muslim country in NATO, it wants to be in the EU, it is too close to Israel, and it is a secular state.

It was a slap against a Muslim nation that is too cozy with Washington and which caused great offence in the Muslim world by offering to send troops to help the Americans in Iraq.

Just as in the many other recent attacks, the high death and injury rate for Muslims is designed to stir tension between US-friendly regimes and fundamentalist elements in their communities, in the hope that the regimes will weaken or collapse.

And despite the necessary Western attempts to deal directly with terrorism, little has been done to defuse the festering issues that are grist for the terrorist mill.

Bush refuses to use the considerable weight of his office to push the Israelis and the Palestinians towards a settlement; the Chechens are still at Moscow`s mercy; and a global failure to right trade inequities stokes the poverty that breeds terrorists.

To many in the Muslim world, the Western world`s violent response to the terrorist violence serves only to legitimise the next round of reciprocal violence.

Al-Qaeda has lost some of its key leaders - though not Osama bin Laden - and much of its fund-raising has been shut down.

But if, as experts say, it is involved in the big attacks in Iraq and the likes of those in Istanbul, it might well be that al-Qaeda has morphed into a formidable new challenge for the anti-terrorism forces, with its ideology intact.

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was right to worry that the war on terrorism was not being won.

Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald

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The very secret service
David Kelly referred obliquely to Operation Rockingham. What role did this mysterious cell play in justifying the Iraq war?

Michael Meacher
Friday November 21, 2003
The Guardian

David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister`s intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: "Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell." Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed.

What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone in doing so, that almost all of Iraq`s WMD had been destroyed as a result of inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable source.

In an interview in the Scottish Sunday Herald in June, Ritter said: "Operation Rockingham [a unit set up by defence intelligence staff within the MoD in 1991] cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom was showing the opposite."

Rockingham was, in fact, a clearing house for intelligence, but one with a predetermined political purpose. According to Ritter, "Britain and America were involved [in the 1990s and up to 2003] in a programme of joint exploitation of intelligence from Iraqi defectors. There were mountains of information coming from these defectors, and Rockingham staff were receiving it and then selectively culling [picking out] reports that sustained the [WMD] claims. They ignored the vast majority of the data which mitigated against such claims."

Only one other official reference to Operation Rockingham is on record, in an aside by Brigadier Richard Holmes when giving evidence to the defence select committee in 1998. He linked it to Unscom inspections, but it was clear that the Rockingham staff included military officers and intelligence services representatives together with civilian MoD personnel. Within, therefore, the UK intelligence establishment - MI6, MI5, GCHQ and defence intelligence - Rockingham clearly had a central, though covert, role in seeking to prove an active Iraqi WMD programme.

One of its tactics, which Ritter cites, is its leaking of false information to weapons inspectors, and then, when the search is fruitless, using that as "proof" of the weapons` existence. He quotes a case in 1993 when "Rockingham was the source of some very controversial information which led to inspections of a suspected ballistic missile site. We ... found nothing. However, our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles existed."

A parallel exercise was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US, named the Office of Special Plans. The purpose of this intelligence agency was the provision of selective intelligence which met the demands of its political masters. Similarly, in the case of the UK, Ritter insists that Rockingham officers were acting on political orders "from the very highest levels".

Both Ritter and British intelligence sources have said that the selective intelligence gathered by Operation Rockingham would have been passed to the joint intelligence committee (JIC), which was behind the dossiers published by the UK government claiming Iraq had WMDs.

The significance of this is highlighted by Tony Blair`s statement: "The intelligence that formed the basis of what we put out last September... came from the JIC assessment." So Rockingham was an important tributary flowing into the government`s rationale for the war.

This shoehorning of intelligence data to fit pre-fixed political goals, both in the US and the UK, throws new light on the two most controversial elements of the government`s dossier of September 2002. One was that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes. Was this "sexed up" on the orders of No 10 or - derived allegedly from an Iraqi brigadier via an informant - did Rockingham put a gloss on it to please its political masters? The other highly contentious item in the dossier was that Saddam tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Africa. How did material that the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded on February 4 was a blatant forgery come to be included in President Bush`s January 28 State of the Union address? And, since the British were named as the source, why did MI6 not spot this outlandish forgery? In fact, they alleged that the Niger claim came from another independent source, which has never been identified. Could this be because this disinformation served the Rockingham purpose only too well?

It is not only the massaging of intelligence that seems to have gone on, but also the suppression of the most reliable assessment of the facts. David Kelly, we now know, had been advising privately prior to the war about the likelihood of Iraqi WMD. He told the foreign affairs select committee: "I have no idea whether there were weapons or not at that time [of the September 2002 dossier]". And to the intelligence and security committee the next day he added: "The 30% probability is what I have been saying all the way through ... I said that to many people ... it was a statement I would have probably made for the last six months." Yet this view from the leading expert within government never saw the light of day. Why not?

If the tabloid headlines the day after the September dossier was published had read: "Blair says only 30% chance Iraq has WMDs" rather than "Brits 45 mins from doom" (the Sun), would the Commons vote still have backed the war? Rarely can the selective use of information have had such drastic consequences. If there is one conclusion which must flow from the Hutton revelations, it must surely be the demand for a full-scale independent inquiry into the operation of the intelligence services around the top of their command and their interface with the political system.

· Michael Meacher was environment minister, 1997-2003.



Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Hier das ultimative Bush Quiz. Bitte Link anklicken und einlochen. Traut Euch es ist nicht so schwer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5961,1088715,00.h…

Know your Bushisms: part three
As a new collection of strange and incoherent ramblings by
George Bush is published, we invite you again to test your knowledge of Dubya`s balls. Which of the following bizarre phrases did the US president actually utter?

• Still More George W Bushisms, Pocket Books, £5.99
Buy Still More George W Bushisms on Amazon

See, we love freedom. That`s what they don`t understand. They hate things; we love things

True
False

People say, how can I help on this war on terror? You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in`s house and say I love you

True
False

I`ve got an additional responsibility to hug and that`s me - and I know what it`s like

True
False

There`s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it`s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can`t get fooled again

True
False

There`s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide

True
False

It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber

True
False

There`s no doubt in my mind that we should allow the world`s worst leaders to hold America hostage

True
False

I`m the master of low expectations

True
False

These people don`t have tanks. They don`t have ships. They hide in caves. They send suiciders out

True
False

First, let me make it very clear - poor people aren`t necessarily killers

True
False

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usisrael…
THE WORLD



U.S. Seeks Advice From Israel on Iraq
As the occupation grows bloodier, officials draw on an ally`s experience with insurgents.
By Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writers

November 22, 2003

WASHINGTON — Facing a bloody insurgency by guerrillas who label it an "occupier," the U.S. military has quietly turned to an ally experienced with occupation and uprisings: Israel.

In the last six months, U.S. Army commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have sought advice from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything from how to set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla hide-outs in an urban area.

"Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can," Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, said Friday at a defense writers breakfast here.

The contacts between the two governments on military tactics and strategies in Iraq are mostly classified, and officials are reluctant to give the impression that the U.S. is brainstorming with Israel on the best way to occupy Iraq. Cambone said there is no formal dialogue between the two allies on Iraq, but they are working together.

Indeed, the U.S. is loath to draw any comparison between what it says is its liberation of Iraq and what the international community has condemned as Israel`s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But Israeli and American officials confirm that with extremists carrying out suicide bombings and firing rocket-propelled grenades and missiles on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Pentagon is increasingly seeking advice from the Israeli military on how to defeat the sort of insurgency that Israel has long experience confronting.

The Israelis "certainly have a wealth of experience from a military standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban terror, military operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of intelligence and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes sense," a senior U.S. Army official said on condition of anonymity. "We are certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do in these kinds of situations."

Many of the tactics recently adopted by the U.S. in Iraq — increased use of airpower, aerial surveillance by unmanned aircraft of suspected sites, increased use of pinpoint search and seizure operations, the leveling of buildings used by suspected insurgents — bear striking similarities to those regularly employed by Israel.

Two Israeli officials — one from the Jerusalem police force and a second from the Israel Defense Forces — confirmed on condition of anonymity that U.S. officials had visited Israel to gain insight into police and military tactics. They also said Israeli officials have visited Washington to discuss the issues.

U.S. officials were particularly interested in the "balancing act" that Israeli officials say they have tried to pursue between fighting armed groups and trying to spare civilians during decades of patrolling the occupied territories.

"There are routine channels that have been there for years, and those channels have been energized," an Israeli official said of the communications. "The American military has been very interested in our lessons … in how do you do surgical strikes in an urban zone, how do you hit the bad guy with minimum collateral damage."

Some U.S. officials acknowledge that they blanch at the idea of the Pentagon adopting tactics from Israel, a nation regularly criticized for security tactics it employs to battle armed groups it has never managed to quell. And even Israeli officials acknowledge that they are somewhat reluctant to give advice.

"After all," one Israeli official said, "we`ve made plenty of mistakes ourselves."

Indeed, criticism of the Israeli army`s tactics against Palestinians has been mounting within Israel. The current chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, along with a group of retired heads of the Shin Bet internal security service and even some active-duty soldiers say the methods have been unduly harsh and threaten to destroy Israeli and Palestinian society if no solution is found to the conflict.

But such concerns have not slowed the flow of information between Washington and Jerusalem.

When Iraqi insurgents began firing from vehicles on U.S. troops at checkpoints, U.S. officials were prompted to reinforce their ties to the Israeli military and glean tips on how to prevent such attacks, Israeli officials said.

Now, in frequent meetings with their American counterparts, Israeli army officials share ideas on how to protect soldiers from attacks and booby traps, Israeli officials said.

U.S. military officials also have reviewed a common Israeli tactic of conducting house-by-house searches for armed fighters by knocking down interior walls with a portable battering ram. The tactic eliminates the need to pass through doors and windows — one of the most dangerous aspects of urban combat, because of possible booby traps.

In the last week, U.S. soldiers began leveling houses and buildings used by suspected guerrillas, a tactic long employed by the Israeli military in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where they use bulldozers to knock down the homes of militants or their families.

"The Americans learned a lot from the Israelis` use of them [bulldozers] in urban combat," a former Israeli official said. "Israelis learned that if you have fighting in an urban area, you just take down the house."

This spring, U.S. soldiers, anticipating that they could be fighting on the streets of Iraqi cities, traveled to Israel to train in a mock Arab town that the Israeli army uses to simulate the urban battlefields of the West Bank and Gaza, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

That training was an extension of the growing use of Israeli military ranges by the U.S. over the last decade. During that time, said Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Washington, Israeli military ranges have been increasingly used by American helicopter pilots for training, because they could not fly at night in places like Germany.

"There are bases in Israel that for the last couple of years would be turned over to a foreign army for a few days, a week or so. The Israelis would be hosts. The U.S. is one of them," said Ben-David, now a private security consultant. "They could use equipment, they could use facilities, use the ranges. You`d get a mix of pilots and they would sit and talk tactics."

After years of working closely together at all levels, the Israeli and U.S. militaries in some respects think increasingly alike, said Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a nonprofit group in Washington interested in links between U.S. and Israeli defense tactics and policy.

"Part of what`s going on here is the culmination of years of picking each other`s brains," Bryen said. "There is no sudden alliance, but what you end up with over the long term is a lot of guys from both countries who think and look at things the same way. After 9/11 they discovered they had more things to talk about."

For generations the Israeli military has enjoyed close relations with the Pentagon, which prides itself on its ability to learn from, not just preach to, the armed forces of its allies. At any time, dozens of Israeli officers are studying at Pentagon-run war colleges and training centers.

American special forces regularly train with their Israeli counterparts, both in the U.S. and in Israel. After the Israelis used unmanned drones in battlefield situations in Lebanon in 1982, the Pentagon studied the tactic. Some of the sensor technology that the United States military uses to protect the perimeters of its bases was pioneered by Israel.

Much of the information shared with the U.S. involves the defensive tactics and training that Israel has constantly updated for its troops and police in the occupied territories, where they are familiar not only with the most current tactics and code of ethics but the international laws that apply as well, the two Israeli officials said.

This month, for example, Lt. Col. Amos Guiora, the commandant of the Israeli army`s School of Military Law, was in Washington to demonstrate some new software developed by the Israelis to train commanders how to conduct themselves in the occupied territories. During his visit, he showed the software to a group of American officials, he said.

"I`ll say only this," he said. "They saw it, and they were impressed."

Israel`s defense minister typically visits the Pentagon three to four times a year. The current defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, met Nov. 10 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Officials privy to the meeting said the subject of Iraq came up, but declined to elaborate.

The two nations also compare notes on battle operations and equipment, particularly if something goes wrong.

"After some incidents, if there is a failure in the system — an F-16 goes down — there is discussion, cooperation among the armies that use these and the United States," Ben-David said.

"It used to be that generals and admirals would come by in almost state-like visits," said Ben-David, who in his consulting works with Israeli and U.S. officials. "But the relationship is such that you now get line-type soldiers coming here to meet with their counterparts."


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Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.sunspot.net/news/custom/attack/bal-te.qaida22nov2…
Iraq war providing a boost to al-Qaida
Terror network is using clash as propaganda tool in holy war against West

By Mark Matthews
Sun National Staff

November 22, 2003

WASHINGTON - The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has provided al-Qaida with a powerful propaganda tool in its holy war against the West, injecting new energy into the worldwide network even though many of its key operatives are in jail or dead, its top leadership is on the run and its sources of money are shrinking, according to international security analysts.

While exhorting Muslims to turn Iraq into a new anti-American battleground, the network has staged spectacularly bloody bombings in neighboring Turkey and Saudi Arabia in hopes of undermining their pro-U.S. governments and demonstrating that it remains a dangerous force, analysts say.

Meanwhile, al-Qaida and related groups have used Web sites, videos and publications throughout the Muslim world to seek new warriors, proclaiming its message that Islam is under threat from the United States and that the region`s governments are powerless to defend it.

"Iraq is a rallying cause for al-Qaida - it`s allowed them to attract new recruits," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the think tank for the House and Senate. "This was an organization that was under enormous pressure. Iraq has put new wind in its sails, definitely."

Indeed, the period since the buildup to the war in Iraq might mark a new stage in the life of this adaptable network, which is showing an ability to regroup and reinvent itself even as it comes under fierce attack.

"We think we can decapitate them by going after leaders," said Zachary Abuza, a specialist on militant Islamic groups in Southeast Asia. But instead the groups "are going to morph and be able to reorganize with the same principles but with different organizations and leaders."

President Bush has frequently described the invasion of Iraq as part of the nation`s overall war on terror launched after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While the president`s justification for the Iraq invasion remains a focus of worldwide debate, the conflict`s role in energizing al-Qaida raises new doubts about whether it can be seen as a successful milestone in the war on terrorism, at least in the short term.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, played down the impact of the war on al-Qaida`s strength. While saying it had served as a rallying cry, he had seen "no real evidence" that the war had boosted recruitment for the network.

As officials explain the phases in the American anti-terror strategy, the invasion of Afghanistan eliminated al-Qaida`s haven. The war in Iraq eliminated a dictatorial regime with what National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has called "broad and deep" links to terrorism and the intent to amass an arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that might fall into the hands of militants.

Separately, a worldwide assault on al-Qaida proceeded, drawing on intelligence and law-enforcement agencies of many nations, in addition to military forces. Al-Qaida has been badly damaged. Its bases and training camps in Afghanistan were wiped out. Nearly half its leadership has been killed or captured, and tens of millions of dollars have been seized.

Decentralizing

Throughout the world, al-Qaida suspects are under watch or in hiding. The two top leaders, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, are widely believed to be holed up somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

This heavy pressure has forced the network to become much less centralized. As top leaders worry about their survival, like-minded affiliate groups are exercising more autonomy, analysts said. No attacks approaching the scale, audacity and sophistication of Sept. 11`s have occurred since, although al-Qaida`s hand has been seen in bombings that have cumulatively resulted in hundreds of casualties in Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and, many analysts believe, in Iraq.

"Rather than a global network, [al-Qaida] is a series of regional networks. There is still coordination, but not as much as there once was," said Daniel Byman, an international security specialist at Georgetown University.

From an ideological standpoint, however, the American actions in Afghanistan and, more recently, in Iraq have handed bin Laden and radical Islamist holy warriors a new weapon that they are using to mobilize their ranks and attract new followers, feeding on a widespread sense of humiliation in the Muslim world because of back-to-back defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"There is a strong sense among experts who look at this that [the war in Iraq] has breathed new life into the jihadist movement," said Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "More and more groups are trying to take up the al-Qaida cause. There is a general movement toward more radical thinking in the Muslim world."

Anti-U.S. feeling grows

This appears to be true in Southeast Asia, where "anti-Americanism has never been higher," says Abuza, who teaches at Simmons College in Boston. It is found in community groups, political parties, student study groups and online communities, and is spread in mosques, journals and magazines, he said. The top-selling magazine in Indonesia promotes the anti-Western Wahhabi brand of Islam promoted by al-Qaida, Abuza said.

"It`s so much easier to recruit people because of what`s happening in Iraq," Zeyno Baran of the Nixon Center, who has studied militant groups in Turkey and Central Asia. "People ask, `How can I fight the British and American occupiers?` and they find each other."

Al-Qaida propaganda argues that the invasion proves the point bin Laden made in a now-famous 1996 statement - that the United States is the leader of an "infidel" movement bent on destroying Islam, occupying Muslim land and seizing control of Middle East oil.

RAND Corp. terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman believes that al-Qaida probably wanted the United States to invade Afghanistan, hoping U.S. forces would be "ground up and defeated" much as the Soviets were in the 1990s at the hands of Osama bin Laden and warriors drawn from throughout the Muslim world. Having failed in Afghanistan, the terror network sees Iraq as "a second bite of the apple," he said.

Magnus Ranstorp, who directs the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland, sees evidence of al-Qaida infiltrators in Iraq in the "extraordinarily sophisticated" explosive devices employed in some of the bombings, including the attack in southern Iraq on Nov. 12 that left 18 Italians dead.

Additional fronts

Iraq is not the only new front. Seeking largely unprotected "soft targets" that advance their ideological goals, groups believed to be associated with al-Qaida staged two major attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, forcing the kingdom to come to grips with a dangerous radical movement within its borders.

A blast May 12 killed 17 people and wounded 122 at a housing complex used by Westerners, including Americans. A Nov. 8 attack claimed the same number.

The second Riyadh bombing killed Arabs and Muslims, leading some analysts inside and outside the U.S. government to suggest that it would weaken al-Qaida`s appeal among Muslims in the region and turn out to be counterproductive.

"Such a bombing will actually make people question whether these groups are worth listening to," said Mary Jane Deeb, a Middle East specialist at the American University in Washington. The Nov. 8 Riyadh attack drew heavy criticism in some Arab newspapers.

Many Muslims also were killed in the bombings in Istanbul last Saturday and this past Thursday, though the principal targets were, respectively, two synagogues and a British consulate and bank.

But negative repercussions from civilian Muslim casualties are a price al-Qaida militants are prepared to pay in exchange for the headlines and momentum that the attacks bring to the network, some analysts say.

Baran said the militants are at war with mainstream Islam as it is practiced in Turkey and believe that even Muslim casualties are justified in the war to turn the Islamic world into a Muslim empire.

One aim of the attacks in Turkey was "to frighten Turks into thinking that their alliance with Israel is going to lead to further bombings," Katzman said.

To keep credibility among supporters, the extremists need to keep on the attack, a need that forces them to look for unprotected targets, Hoffman notes. "To maintain their credibility, they have to ply their stock in trade, which is terrorism," he said.

The attacks serve another purpose, that of undercutting the credibility of American allies in the Middle East by showing they are unable to protect their citizens, analysts say. For Turkey`s moderate Islamist government headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, combating the militants will be a test of his leadership, Baran said.

In the months ahead, al-Qaida`s ability to adapt to new challenges might reveal further changes in how the terror network operates, particularly in striking at Western targets. Baran said that terrorists are being trained in how to blend into Western environments, even to the point of violating their strict Muslim customs: They will shave their beards, and, in Western company, drink alcohol and dance at parties.
Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

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Religious right relishing Road Map`s collapse
Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange

11.21.03 - In the coming maelstrom that lies ahead, in the coming judgment that`s going to burst in cyclonic fury over this world, and this planet, America`s only hope -- listen to me, White House, listen to me, State Department, listen to me, Pentagon, listen to me, Mr. President -- America`s only hope is not GNP, it`s not scientific achievement, it`s not an education at Harvard or Yale, but it`s America holding on to that little, tiny state of Israel and saying, "We will stand with you," because God said, "They that bless Israel I will bless, and they that curse Israel, I will curse." -- Rev. Jimmy Lee Swaggart, March, 1985

Fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. are looking to last month`s attack on a convoy of U.S. diplomatic and CIA vehicles in the Gaza Strip -- which killed several U.S. citizens -- as a watershed event that will hopefully force the Bush Administration to re-evaluate its involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shortly after the October 15 attack the Jerusalem Prayer Team, a U.S.-based Christian fundamentalist organization, introduced an e-mail "Action Alert" with the following: "The Bush Doctrine is being challenged by Arafat`s PLO terrorist organization. If the Bush Doctrine is defeated, then the war on terrorism is lost. If Israel loses her war on terrorism, America will lose her war on terrorism. The future of America hangs in the balance."

The Jerusalem Post posed three questions about a potential U.S. response to the attack: "If Palestinian Islamic militants are now targeting Americans in their war with Israel, how should the White House respond to this dangerous escalation? Did Yasser Arafat know about the attack in advance? Did he approve it, even tacitly? What is the future of the Bush Administration`s `Road Map` since the Palestinian side staunchly refuses to crack down on terror for fear of triggering a civil war?"

Aluf Benn, the diplomatic correspondent for Ha`aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper, wrote: "In the immediate aftermath of the bomb attack... Israel is making the argument it has been trying to make since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S. and since the war in Iraq -- that it and America are facing the same enemy. That the enemy in Baghdad is the same as the enemy in Gaza."

This blow to the "Road Map" came on the heels of increased suicide bombings, Israel`s strike against terrorist camps in Syria, its ongoing West Bank "security" fence project, and the Israeli`s government`s debate over whether Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat should be exiles or assassinated.

In mid-September, in an effort to put a roadblock in the way of Bush`s "Road Map," several US fundamentalist Christian organizations sent President Bush a petition urging him to "stop his involvement in the `land for peace` process," according to Worthy News, a daily Christian-based news service. The petition, organized by Worthy News, Koenig`s International News, Bridges for Peace and the International Christian Zionist Center, "presented the Biblical foundation for supporting the nation of Israel and showed the importance of not parceling Israel`s covenant land," and serves as a reminder of how opposed to a Palestinian state many fundamentalist Christian groups are.

Religious right ramps up support for Israel

Describing the recent visit to the United States of Binyamin Elon, Israel`s Tourism minister and the head of Moledet, "one of the small right-wing parties that help keep Ariel Sharon in power," New York Magazine`s Craig Horowitz writes: While the "alliance between the Evangelicals and the Jews is not new, it has suddenly taken on a sense of urgency and an intensity that haven`t been seen before."

During his trip, Elon met with a number of fundamentalist Christian leaders including Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition, Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team and author of "Beyond Iraq: The Next Move," "a book that depicts Islam as evil and finds biblical harbingers of the end of time in the current global crisis," former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, now head of American Values, and Ed McAteer, one of the founders of the Moral Majority.

Elon`s trip began paying dividends as thousands of Christians from around the world -- including a hefty contingent from the US -- participated in the annual mid-October Jerusalem March. According to Israel Insider, the gathering of Christians was organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which since 1980 has been "the only Christian [sponsored] celebration to take place during the Feast of Tabernacles," which coincides with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The daily newsmagazine reported that "officials at Israel`s Ministry of Tourism say the festivities are Israel`s largest annual tourist event, netting the country some $15 to $18 million a year."

Prime Minister Sharon addressed the crowd during opening ceremonies and thanked the attendees "for coming... and showing solidarity. Your presence," he said, "sends a strong message to the world and your friendship is important to us. Very important."

Over the past few years, Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. have been ramping up their support by forming a number of new organizations to support Israel, sponsoring visits by right-wing Israeli officials, raising and funneling money to favored Israeli charities, and speaking out vociferously against President Bush`s "Road Map."

Fundamentalist road map

Last October, the Christian Coalition organized a pro-Israel rally -- called "Israel, You Are Not Alone" -- in Washington to "press for increased support for Israel`s fight against terror and oppose the Bush administration`s call for the establishment of a Palestinian state," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Early in 2002, one of the Religious right`s favorites, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the president of the conservative Jewish organization Toward Tradition, got together with Gary Bauer, the failed presidential candidate who is now president of American Values, and formed the American Alliance of Jews and Christians (AAJC). According to a Toward Tradition press release, the Washington, D.C.-based AAJC will be a "unique synthesis of Jewish authenticity and Christian grassroots muscle."

In late May of last year, Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), and Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and current Republican Party chairman of Georgia, launched "Stand for Israel." The Israeli newspaper Ha`aretz reported that "Stand for Israel" hopes to become a "Christian version of the pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)." According to New York`s Craig Horowitz, Rabbi Eckstein "was named the third-most-important Jew in America by The Forward," because "[h]e spent years as a kind of outcast among his peers for his efforts to foster better relations between Jews and Evangelicals; now the Jewish community has begun to see things his way."

Stand for Israel recently set aside the last Sunday in October for its annual Day of Prayer and Solidarity for Israel and the organization aimed for more than 5 million Christians to show support for Israel in churches across the country.

In July 2002, thanks to a $2 million donation by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, 400 American Jews moved lock, stock and barrel to Israel. According to the Christian news service, AgapePress, "It was the largest single U.S. group" to move to Israel in 25 years. Bishop Huey Harris, whose church, the First Pentecostal Tabernacle in Elkton, Maryland, helped raise money for the exodus, told AgapePress: "What I`m seeing is the Scriptures being fulfilled right before our very eyes." AgapePress reports: "He says what he is looking for next is for the Church to be raptured, and then Jews receiving Christ as their Messiah."

In early February of this year, a group of prominent Christian broadcasters including Dr. Jerry Rose, Dr. David Clark, Dr. Michael Little, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Belarmino "Blackie" Gonzalez joined Dr. Mike Evans, of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, at the Opry Land Hotel in Nashville, TN. to help him launch the Evangelical Israel Broadcasting Network (EIBN).

Armageddon on their minds

According to Dr. Evans, the mission of EIBN "is to guard, protect, and defend Eretz Yisrael and its people until the Messiah comes to Zion." The phrase "until the Messiah comes to Zion" is more than a little troubling, especially if you`re a Jew. Many believe that Bishop Harris` vision and Dr. Evans` dedication to the cause is motivated by belief in the "end-times," which will take place in Israel only after the Jews have returned there. "The key episode in pre-millennial theology is an event called `the rapture,`" writes author Fred Clarkson in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. "All the saved Christians, dead and alive, are brought up into the clouds with Jesus prior, during or after (depending of the school of theology) a period called `the tribulation.`"

Craig Horowitz: "Though specifics are a little sketchy, there is a generally accepted version of events leading up to Judgment Day. First, and this is key, Jews will return to Israel. A wicked world leader -- the Antichrist -- will assume power by deceiving everyone into believing he will bring peace. Soon after, the final battle, the Apocalypse, Armageddon, will be fought.

"At its conclusion, Jesus will descend from Heaven. He will come down the Mount of Olives on the east side of Jerusalem, through the Golden Gate, and into the city. (Just in case, Muslims bricked over the Golden Gate when they controlled the Old City.) There will then be a thousand-year reign of peace on Earth."

In "Armageddon Anxiety: Evil on the Way" William Cook quotes Grace Halsell, author of 14 books including "Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the US Christian Right," who says Christian Zionists believe that "Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us." In 1988, Halsell wrote that "Christian Zionism is a dangerous and growing segment of Christianity."

"These days, however, the [Religious right] movement`s agenda appears to have become our president`s vision for the country," Maureen Farrell wrote in a Buzzflash.com Reader Commentary just prior to the invasion of Iraq. "[President] Bush`s flirtation with End Times rhetoric makes some suspect that he actually perceives himself as God`s instrument," columnist and author Gene Lyons pointed out.

The first chapter of Joel Rosenberg`s new novel "The Last Days" "deals with Islamic militants targeting and attacking a U.S. diplomatic and CIA convoy heading into Gaza with a massive and deadly bombing. This morning such an event actually happened inside Gaza," Rosenberg, a well-connected conservative activist, columnist and author wrote on the morning of October 15.

"Is the West Bank and Gaza the next battleground in the global war on terror? Should Yasser Arafat be brought to justice, dead or alive, along with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?" asks Rosenberg, whose previous best-selling novel, "The Last Jihad," was a fictional account of the war against terrorism that takes America, Israel and Iraq to the brink of a nuclear conflagration. That book was published a few months before the president`s invasion of Iraq and has been recently released in paperback.

Politically savvy Christian fundamentalist leaders are wise enough to either deny or to equivocate at the suggestion that their support for Israel -- or for the war in Iraq for that matter -- is rooted in Biblical or End Times theology. In 2002, however, Gary Bauer was a bit more forthright in a conversation with a Washington Post reporter, saying that conservative Christians believe that "America has an obligation to stand by Israel" based on "readings of the Scripture, where evangelicals believe God has promised that land to the Jewish people."

(c) 2003 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved


URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16028

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Saturday, November 22, 2003
War News for November 22, 2003 Draft

Jede Meldung ein Link
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Five soldiers wounded in missile attack in Baghdad on Thursday.

Bring ‘em on: CENTCOM reports one US soldier killed by roadside bomb ambush near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb kills six Iraqi policemen in town north of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb kills 15 – 25 at Iraqi police station in central Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents strike civilian cargo aircraft with SA-7 missile at Baghdad International Airport.

Bring ‘em on: Kuwaiti sportscaster killed near Basra; Fedayeen target Kuwait.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi mosque mortared in Baghdad.

Rummy says Bush’s War will be “long and costly.” That’s what the professional soldier General Shinseki tried to tell us back in January but amateur Feldherr Rummy der Grosse shouted him down. Everything is long and costly with these clowns in charge.

Anti-US attacks increase in Mosul.

Instability in Nasiriyah causes foreign journalists to abandon city.

Rummy throws tissy-fit about Arabic TV stations. Hey, Rummy, here’s something else you screwed up. You and your neo-con buddies deliberately undercut efforts by Charlotte Beers to conduct a pro-American information campaign in the Muslim world. Instead, you focused on a pathetic attempt by fashion maven L. Paul Bremer to run an Iraqi TV station. Within two months the entire Iraqi staff resigned, saying the bullshit Bremer was trying to peddle was unbelievable. The US information campaign is a miserable failure and you’re in charge. Stop blaming others for your incompetence.

L. Paul Bremer fires 28,000 Iraqi teachers. Probably the stupidest he’s done since he fired 400,000 Iraqi soldiers.

Army plans for 100,000 US troops in Iraq until at least 2006. Why didn`t Feldherr Rummy der Grosse didn`t listen to General Shinseki back in January?

Bush’s War provides a boost to al-Qaeda. “The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has provided al-Qaida with a powerful propaganda tool in its holy war against the West, injecting new energy into the worldwide network even though many of its key operatives are in jail or dead, its top leadership is on the run and its sources of money are shrinking, according to international security analysts…’Iraq is a rallying cause for al-Qaida - it`s allowed them to attract new recruits,’ said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the think tank for the House and Senate. ‘This was an organization that was under enormous pressure. Iraq has put new wind in its sails, definitely.’”

Bush is losing the war against Al-Qaeda. “Struggling in the intelligence war, Bush is being suckered into escalating cycles of violence in Iraq - lashing out with a resumption of high-powered aerial strikes - and at home he seems to be losing the political war.”

Capturing Osama “not essential” says General Pace. What happened to Lieutenant AWOL’s “dead or alive” bullshit?

Breaking News: Republicans say Bush is a Great Leader in the war on terror.

Insurgents using deadly ingenuity.

Four days in Baghdad.

Two CPA officials under investigation by Pentagon for taking bribes. These are the same investigators who cleared Richard Perle of influence peddling.

Commentary

Editorial: Bush’s War is a distraction from the real threat. “But Bush chose instead to focus on Iraq. He presented to the world evidence that Iraq threatened the world and was linked to terrorism, and he went to war, with Britain and Spain by his side. The evidence proved untrue, and the quick conventional war he started has turned into a prolonged war of attrition. It`s now clear that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to the United States or anyone else.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: North Carolina soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Dakota soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: US Army Sergeant Major loses son in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois soldier dies of wounds.

Operation Cut and Run

Back to the drawing boards: “It`s being called ‘Plan C` for Iraq: Establish security by June or sooner, and transfer authority to a provisional Iraqi government by July.”





# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:44 AM

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Der Spectator teilt nach allen Seiten aus.
Dieser Artikel stellt eine sehr provokante Frage.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=cu…

Why not invade Israel?
If rogue nations are to be brought into line by the US, shouldn’t Israel be punished for ignoring UN resolutions? Gerald Kaufman is just asking...

The unprecedented security measures for President Bush’s visit to Britain this week prove that the war against terrorism, launched by the United States two years ago, has certainly not been won. If further proof were needed, the atrocious terrorist acts against two synagogues in Istanbul at the weekend provide blood-spattered confirmation.

But if the invasion of Iraq last spring was not about Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to international terrorism, what was its rationale and what was its justification? Tony Blair has proclaimed, with total sincerity I have no doubt, that one consideration was the danger of weapons of mass destruction.

From the outset, Bush was perfectly ready to rest his case on the need for regime change in Iraq. Both Bush and Blair have argued that Iraq is a better country for the removal of Saddam and his odious regime, and, even taking into account the continuing death toll in Iraq (nowhere near the number of deaths in the Vietnam war, to which certain cynics unjustifiably compare it), only someone either extremely naive or deliberately purblind could deny that the disappearance of that dictator is an indisputable benefit.

So, let it be accepted that, despite the death and destruction deplorably concomitant with the process, the removal of Saddam was an indubitably good thing. But, if the removal by armed force of one disagreeable regime under one objectionable head of government is a good thing, why stop there? The world is full of horrible governments. Would it not be a good idea to make a clean sweep of them?

Where, then, do we start? There is a multiplicity of horrible or incompetent governments in central and west Africa, for example, in countries where the toll of dead and tortured far exceeds even the total gassed, executed and mangled by Saddam. Their removal, and replacement by genuine democratic governments seeking to reconcile rather than repress, would be an indisputable benefit to humankind.

Even a relatively innocuous African government, that of Morocco, has been responsible for driving into squalid refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria the Sahrawi desert people, whose homeland of Western Sahara it has illegally occupied, and, through rigging the electorate by shipping in large numbers of Moroccans, has prevented a genuine referendum taking place to decide the country’s future — a referendum, moreover, to which the United Nations is fruitlessly committed.

And, if we are discussing rigged electorates, what about that in the illegal republic of Northern Cyprus, whose impoverished Turkish Cypriot inhabitants are being prevented from expressing their true will in a forthcoming general election because of the importation by the Ankara government of huge numbers of Anatolian Turks from the mainland, whose wishes and preferences are far removed from those of the Cypriot Turks themselves? While we are at it, we should take a penetrating look at Turkey itself. For nearly 30 years its regime has illegally occupied 37 per cent of the territory of Cyprus, an occupation which has resulted in looting, illegal seizure and sale of precious art objects such as Greek Orthodox icons, and the creation of refugees who despair of ever getting their homes back.

The Turkish treatment — or mistreatment — of the Kurdish people, whom at the end of the first world war they prevented from getting their own homeland, set an example which Saddam was happy to follow. Inside Turkey, there has been persistent violation of human rights. For evidence, get hold of a DVD of Alan Parker’s film Midnight Express.

South of Turkey, there is Israel. It is true that the United Nations Security Council resolutions of which Iraq was in violation for a dozen years were mandatory and carried penalties, while those criticising Israel were not. That does not excuse successive Israeli governments during the past 36 years for failing to conform to Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. They would have violated even more if the United States, otherwise so assiduous in stressing the importance of international order, had not vetoed them.

Since the present regime in Israel came to office, there has been unprecedented repression of the Palestinians who the Israelis govern. The world is rightly horrified at the cruel and bloody deaths of Israeli civilians, including babies and small children, inflicted by terrorist suicide bombers. Grievous though every one of these deaths most certainly is, it cannot be denied that during the three years of the Second Intifada the Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinians, some of them terrorists (in illegal targeted assassinations) but most of them innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women.

Now the Israelis are building an illegal security wall, reaching far into Palestinian territory, which is equally illegally annexing that territory, separating farmers from their homes, students from universities, children from schools, and which will violate the sanctity of Bethlehem. Roads into villages are being bulldozed, and the trenches which render them impassable are being filled with sewage. Some Palestinians need written permission to live in their own homes. There are 482 Israeli military checkpoints dividing Palestinian land into 300 small clusters.

It is not even as if these nasty measures are effective. Last month 20 people, including a whole family from grandmother to baby grandchild, were among those murdered by a suicide bomber at a café in Haifa. Last month, after visiting the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, which is being enclosed within a noose-like wall by the Israelis, I was driven back to Jerusalem via the Palestinian town of Tulkarm. Next day a bomber attacked an Israeli administrative post outside Tulkarm.

No wonder that only three weeks ago the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon, expressed concern about the building of the wall, said the Israeli government’s policies were ‘operating contrary to our strategic interests,’ argued that the restrictions were increasing hatred of Israel and encouraging terrorism, and lamented: ‘There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho’ (whose agricultural and horticultural economy is being ruined). No wonder that a member of the Israeli government, the infrastructure minister, Yosef Paritzky, has said recently: ‘The failure to differentiate between civilians and terrorists turns all the Palestinians into potential suicide bombers.’

Hey, wait a minute! Surely Israel does not qualify as a suitable case for invasion. Surely Israel is a democracy. Surely Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was democratically elected, and even re-elected. Such undeniable facts do not detract from the record.

Sharon was the prime mover in the only war that Israel has ever lost, the invasion of Lebanon. The Kahan commission inquiring into the Sabra-Chatilla massacre of Palestinians outside Beirut recommended that, for his connection with those events, Sharon should leave the Israeli Cabinet. It was Sharon who triggered the Second Intifada in 2000 by his provocative visit to the Temple Mount. And is it not members of the Sharon family, including the Prime Minister himself, who have been the object of investigations by the Israeli legal authorities?

And would it not be poetic justice to invade the invaders? After all, the Israelis, who illegally invaded Lebanon until they found the going too tough and got out; the Turks, who illegally invaded Cyprus and even aspire to be a member of the European Union when in illegal possession of part of a country which is due to become a member of the European Union less than six months from now; the Moroccans, who continue to thwart the will of the United Nations with every moment their troops and immigrants remain in the Western Sahara — surely they could not have the effrontery to object to invasion, which they have practised without qualm, simply because they would be at the receiving end.

If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt international standards of order, should not Israel, for example, be considered as a candidate? But, quite apart from the hard fact that even the rich and powerful US does not possess enough dollars and manpower to invade and occupy the countries I have mentioned (plus other rogue states, too many to list), is the US suited to maintaining international law?

After all, has not the United States, on the basis of dubious legality, invaded nearby countries on the American continent, such as Panama and Grenada? Has it not got a questionable human rights record, with the level of capital punishment, including the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, one of the worst in the democratic world? Is it not keeping a collection of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose detention appears to have no legal basis whatever? And does it not have a president who was never elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court after electoral finagling in the electorally clinching state which just happens to be governed by that president’s brother? Who, then, should invade the United States? The despised United Nations?

Maybe this invading business is not such a good idea. Maybe, even though Saddam was abominable and his regime nauseating, the invasion of Iraq may turn out not to have been such a good precedent after all.
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Unprecedented
The 2000 Presidential Election is the riveting story about the battle for the Presidency in Florida and the undermining of democracy in America.

"George W. Bush stole the presidency of the United States… and got away with it. "

47 min Video Stream:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article5278.htm



Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is the riveting story about the battle for the Presidency in Florida and the undermining of democracy in America. Filmmakers Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler examine modern America`s most controversial political contest: the election of George W. Bush. What emerges is a disturbing picture of an election marred by suspicious irregularities, electoral injustices, and sinister voter purges in a state governed by the winning candidate`s brother. George W. Bush stole the presidency of the United States… and got away with it. " …the movie highlights those on the front lines —from the African-Americans who were turned away from the polling booths for assorted reasons. In one memorable scene the filmmakers freeze-frame a `protest` against the ballot recount, identifying participants as staff members of Republican elected officials." --Elaine Dutka, Los Angeles Times

http://www.unprecedented.org/UnprecedentedFirstPage.html

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Bush visit: Was it worth it?
Paul Reynolds
BBC World Affairs Correspondent


As I watched protesters file past Downing Street on Thursday, I reflected that this was not exactly how the first state visit by a US President was supposed to be.

Mr Bush had just left Number 10 but had to use the back exit.

The crowd was very rude about the president but very polite to each other.

One chap behind me repeated some highly scatological remarks about Mr Blair`s visitor, then blew a whistle a bit too closely into my ear whereupon he promptly said: "So sorry."

Shortly afterwards in Trafalgar Square, an effigy of Britain`s closest ally was toppled under Nelson`s column.

This visit will be remembered for the demonstrations, for the bombs in Istanbul, which overshadowed it, and for the strength with which Tony Blair re-affirmed his solidarity with George Bush.

It is a mixed bag.

One problem of course was that the visit had been agreed in the spring of 2002, when Iraq was just a gleam in the president`s eye.

The hope was presumably that Mr Bush would be welcomed as something of a hero for his performance following 11 September 2001.

That did not happen.

Poor perception

He did not live up to the evaluation of himself, which he gave to me in an interview in his campaign bus when he was running for re-election as governor of Texas in November 1998 (just before he declared for the presidency).

"I am," he said, "a uniter not a divider."

He could hardly make that claim now. The protests were evidence of that.


So the first assessment is that the visit emphasised divisions.

On the other hand, the president did make a speech which surprised those who have not heard him speak from a text before.

He was articulate and passionate.

His weakness is that he cannot do this off the cuff. His set speeches are well-crafted, but not by him. They are written by his speechwriter Michael Gerson who was along on the trip with him.

If Tony Blair was embarrassed by his guest, he did not show it. Far from it.

He seemed to revel in the opportunity it gave him to show his determination, especially after the bombs in Istanbul.

This, he feels, adds to his strength as a leader.

And a spokesman for Tony Blair declared for the record:

"What the visit has done first and foremost is to allow us as a country to stand back and recognise the importance of the relationship with the United States."

Bonding

A second assessment is that there was a unity of purpose on display at a very critical time.

There are perhaps two nautical images of Mr Blair and his resolution towards the War on Terror and Iraq which come to mind. Only history can decide which is the more true.

One is of Captain Smith on the Titanic, charging towards the ice fields despite warnings and meeting with disaster.


The other is of Admiral Farragut in the American Civil War charging into Confederate defences in Mobile Bay with the cry "Damn the torpedoes" and meeting with triumph.

Perhaps, from Mr Bush`s point of view, what this visit lacked was the common touch which has to be a third conclusion.

He tried to find it with a pub lunch in Mr Blair`s northern English constituency but that was all a bit contrived.

And yet George Bush can disarm his critics when given the chance to meet people personally.

He was not given much chance this time.

Instead he was cooped up in a security zone which, although necessary in view of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and its supporters (witness Istanbul), was not the best environment for meeting the people.

The state banquet at Buckingham Place looked like the worst of its kind with few if any ordinary people invited but plenty of the high and mighty.


The Queen`s former finance adviser once told me that the only part of the palace he could not reform were the dining rooms and this obviously included the state banquets.

As for diplomatic business, there appeared to be no breakthroughs.

Discussions will continue over the British prisoners held in Guatanamo Bay and over steel tariffs.

But there was no tidy package of deals as there often is on these occasions.

All in all, a difficult few days.

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A series of shocking pictures revealing US soldiers tying up Iraqi women and children in their own home has provoked international outrage.

The occupying forces have now come under renewed fire for their treatment of ordinary Iraqis as shown in the pictures published by Aljazeera.net.

Sent in by Wal from Australia

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WER WOHNT WO IN DEN GROSSSTÄDTEN DER USA
Innen Schoko - außen Vanille
SCHON unter Präsident Reagan erfuhr der soziale Wohnungsbau drastische Einschnitte - eine Politik, die von den Regierungen Clinton und Bush fortgesetzt wurde. Im Department of Housing and Urban Development entließ man Personal, und der Bau von Sozialwohnungen wurde eingestellt. Zudem verschärfte sich die soziale Lage in den Großstädten, nachdem die Industrie ins Um- oder Ausland abgewandert war. Aber die Bürgermeister der Millionengemeinden ließen sich etwas einfallen, was zu einem grundlegenden Wandel der Städte führte.
Von SUDHIR ALLADI VENKATESH *
* Professor an der Columbia University New York. Autor u. a.: "American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto" (Harvard Universitiy Press, 2000).

Das traditionelle Wohlfahrtssystem der USA, das erst im 20. Jahrhundert entstanden ist, wird derzeit systematisch demontiert. Die progressiven politischen Kräfte hatten in der Zwischenkriegszeit begonnen, den Wohnungsbau zu fördern, die Armen mit Beihilfen zu unterstützen und für Rentner und Behinderte ein umfassendes System "sozialer Sicherheit" zu schaffen. Doch in den letzten 30 Jahren wurden die Ansprüche auf diverse Sozialleistungen entweder ganz abgeschafft oder stark eingeschränkt. Heute erhalten Amerikas Arme nur noch fünf Jahre lang Sozialhilfe, und auf Rechtshilfe müssen sie praktisch ganz verzichten.


Mit der Abschaffung von Mietzuschüssen für Geringverdiener wird gerade ein weiterer Grundpfeiler des Wohlfahrtsstaats eingerissen. Aber das wird kaum in der Öffentlichkeit diskutiert, denn weder das linksliberale Lager noch die Linke haben sich groß um das Thema gekümmert, geschweige denn Widerstand organisiert. Die Einschnitte im sozialen Wohnungsbau, von Präsident Reagan eingeleitet und von Clinton und Bush fortgeführt, laufen darauf hinaus, dass die Rolle des Staates als Schutzinstanz für die Armen und die Arbeiterfamilien völlig neu bestimmt wird.


Während des 20. Jahrhunderts verlief das Wachstum der Städte in den USA die meiste Zeit über nach einem Polarisierungsschema: Die Armen lebten in den "Innenstädten", also rund um das eigentliche Geschäftszentrum; die Mittel- und Oberschicht wohnte in den Vororten, der so genannten Suburbia. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gab der Bauboom auf dem Häusermarkt vielen Städtern die Chance, aus den verkommenen Innenstädten in die neu entstandenen Vororte zu ziehen. Von dort aus fuhren sie dank eines Netzes von staatlich finanzierten Autobahnen und Bahn- oder Buslinien zur Arbeit wie zum abendlichen Vergnügen in das meilenweit entfernte Stadtzentrum zurück. Mehr als 90 Prozent dieser Pendler waren Weiße, während Schwarze und Latinos in den Innenstädten wohnen blieben, da ihnen von den Banken keine Kredite gewährt wurden. Der Volksmund erfand für diese Polarisierung die Begriffe chocolate cities und vanilla suburbs.


In den 1990er-Jahren vollzog sich dann ein dramatischer Wandel. Als Industriezentren hatten die Städte keine Zukunft mehr. Im Zuge der Informationsrevolution mussten sie neue Prioritäten setzen und versuchten, höhere Angestellte und Unternehmer in die Innenstädte zurückzulocken. Pioniere dieser neuen urbanen Philosophie waren die Bürgermeister von New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland und San Francisco. Sie setzten auf die Umwandlung großer Gebiete, die einst als Gewerbezonen geplant waren, in luxuriöse Wohnviertel mit Parks, Cafés, Lofts und Apartmenthäusern für aufstrebende Freiberufler und Neureiche. Auch die "Slums" und heruntergekommenen Viertel, wo vorwiegend Schwarze und Latinos in Sozialwohnungen lebten, standen auf der Abrissliste, und es drohte ihnen die Umwandlung in gehobene Wohnviertel für die neuen weißen Retter.


Eröffnet wurde dieser Klassen- und Rassenkrieg mittels einer "Recht und Ordnung"-Strategie, um in den öffentlichen Räumen die Art von Sicherheit zu schaffen, die von den neuen Innenstadtbewohnern aus den Mittel- und Oberschichten verlangt wird. Überall in den USA erließen die Städte Verordnungen gegen das "Bandenwesen" und gegen öffentliches "Herumlungern". Mit Sperrstunden versuchte man, die "kriminelle Klasse" - vor allem junge Männer verschiedener Minderheiten - daran zu hindern, sich an den Straßenkreuzungen, in den Parks und Geschäftsvierteln breit zu machen. Besonders zweifelhaften Ruhm erlangten Rudolph Giuliani in New York und Richard M. Daley in Chicago, die auf ein hartes Durchgreifen auch gegen geringfügige Vergehen setzten und sich dabei auf die modische "Theorie der eingeschlagenen Fenster" beriefen. Mit dem Argument, dass Schwerverbrechen eingedämmt werden können, wenn man bereits die kleinsten Anzeichen gesellschaftlichen Verfalls bekämpft, schlossen sie Obdachlosenasyle und Notunterkünfte. Sie vertrieben Sexfilm-Videotheken und Pornokinos und kriminalisierten Obdachlose und Prostituierte. Vandalismus und Straßenraub wurden hart bestraft. Überall im Lande feierten die Stadtoberen diese "Bratton-Philosophie", die nach dem New Yorker Polizeipräsidenten benannt ist, der sie entwickelt hat - und der heute städtische Polizeibehörden in Südafrika, Venezuela und in ganz Europa berät.


Nur in Ausnahmefällen sind die Leute, die diese neuen Wohnviertel aufwerten, Schwarze oder Lateinamerikaner. Meistens sind sie Weiße, die nicht nur höhere Einkommen, sondern auch besseren Zugang zu Krediten und Hypothekendarlehen für den Erwerb von Wohneigentum haben.


Dagegen müssen Schwarze und Lateinamerikaner häufig auch dann noch in ärmeren Stadtteilen mit schlechterer öffentlicher Versorgung leben, wenn sie gar nicht arm sind (eine Erscheinung, die als neighbourhood gap bezeichnet wird). Bis heute sind die US-amerikanischen Städte durch ethnische und Klassengrenzen gekennzeichnet. So leben die meisten Schwarzen in Vierteln mit einem Durchschnittseinkommen, das etwa 50 Prozent unter dem der Weißen liegt. Diese Schere hat sich seit 1990 immer weiter geöffnet. Nur wenig besser ergeht es den Latinos.(1) Selbst die wenigen Glücklichen, die sich in einem besseren Viertel etablieren können, haben es damit noch nicht automatisch besser als die ärmeren Schwarzen und Lateinamerikaner, was die Gleichberechtigung beim Zugang zu öffentlichen Dienstleistungen betrifft. So gehen die allermeisten hispanischen oder schwarzen Kinder in Schulen, wo der Anteil von Mitschülern aus armen Familien bei über 65 Prozent liegt. Für die Weißen beträgt dieser Anteil nur 31 Prozent.


Gewinner- und Verliererviertel
DIE Renaissance der amerikanischen Innenstädte trägt wesentlich zu einem Mangel an bezahlbaren Wohnungen bei. Hier gibt es zu wenig Wohnraum für Arbeiterfamilien aller ethnischen Gruppen. In einem aktuellen Bericht des Department of Housing and Urban Devlopment (HUD) heißt es: "Eine Familie mit einem ganztags arbeitenden Ernährer, der den Mindestlohn verdient, kann sich nirgends in den Vereinigten Staaten eine Dreizimmerwohnung zu marktüblichen Mietpreisen leisten."(2) Fast 20 Prozent aller Familien geben heute mehr als die Hälfte ihres Einkommens für die Miete aus - nach regierungsamtlicher Auffassung sollten sie dafür höchstens ein Drittel aufwenden .


Eine der Ursachen für diese Schieflage ist der private Wohnungsbau. In den 1990er-Jahren wurden Mehrfamilienhäuser mit insgesamt 1,4 Millionen Wohnungen entweder ganz abgerissen oder in Qualitätswohnungen umgewandelt. Doch in solchen Häusern lebten früher Arbeiterfamilien. Viele von ihnen stehen heute wahrscheinlich auf einer der Wartelisten für staatliche Wohnbeihilfen. Die Wartezeit beträgt durchschnittlich zwei Jahre, in Chicago oder New York stehen heute schon über 40 000 Familien auf der Warteliste.


Auch der Staat trägt zur Verknappung von billigem Wohnraum bei, indem er tausende von Sozialwohnungen abreißen lässt und mit öffentlichen Geldern private Bauträger unterstützt, die solche Wohnungen "sanieren". Heute werden auf diese Weise pro Monat 2 000 Wohnungen von Baufirmen "auf den Markt gebracht". Die Mieten für diese Wohnungen steigen im Durchschnitt um 45 Prozent.


Wohin ziehen die Leute, wenn sie durch die Aufwertung ihrer Wohngegend und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung aus ihrem sozialen Umfeld vertrieben wurden? In manchen Fällen wandern sie in andere innerstädtische Viertel mit hoher Armutsquote und sozialer Ausgrenzung ab. Dort steigt dann die Siedlungsdichte, während der preiswerte Wohnraum immer weiter schrumpft.


Doch es gibt noch eine zweite Wanderungsbewegung: von den Innenstädten in die Vororte, die einst für gut situierte Weiße und privilegerte Minderheitengruppen reserviert waren. Der Anteil der Schwarzen in den Vororten hat seit 1990 insgesamt um fast 40 Prozent zugenommen, der Anteil der Lateinamerikaner sogar um 72 Prozent.(3) Doch die Trennung nach ethnischen und Klassenkriterien existiert nach wie vor, denn Schwarze und Lateinamerikaner aus den Innenstädten ziehen nicht etwa in die reicheren Vororte, sondern in die armen Viertel des so genannten inneren Rings. Die Weißen in ihren Vororten sind also immer noch von allen anderen Gruppen abgesondert, wogegen Schwarze und Lateinamerikaner sich untereinander, aber auch mit den neuen Einwanderern aus Asien mischen. "Wir müssen uns fragen", schreibt der Soziologe John Logan, "ob der Zuzug der Minderheiten in die Vororte nicht die Trennung zwischen Gewinner- und Verlierervierteln in den Außenbezirken der Innenstädte verschärft - ganz ähnlich, wie man es im ganzen Land auch an der Grenze zwischen dem Stadtgebiet und der Suburbia beobachten kann."(4) Die Segregation ist jedenfalls ein zählebiges Phänomen. Schwarze und Lateinamerikaner sind nach wie vor außerstande, sich in den weißen Vororten mit ihren besser ausgestatteten Schulen, Polizeireviere und anderen öffentlichen Einrichtungen zu etablieren. Sie wohnen dort, wo die öffentlichen Gelder fehlen und die Wohnsubstanz verfällt. Diese neue Stratifizierung der Städte - die Weißen und die Reichen im Zentrum, die Armen und die Minderheiten knapp außerhalb - wird zuweilen als "Europäisierung" oder "Lateinamerikanisierung" der US-Städte bezeichnet. Zu den wichtigsten Auslösern dieser Entwicklung gehört der staatlich verfügte Abriss der Viertel, die traditionell vom sozialen Wohnungsbau geprägt waren. Er begann in den 1990er-Jahren, als das HUD die lokalen Wohnungsbehörden aufforderte, den "erbärmlichen" Zustand ihrer Wohnungen unter die Lupe zu nehmen. Die Regierung behauptete, Sozialwohnungen seien die Ursache für die Misere der ethnischen Minderheiten. Die Familien in den Sozialbauten hätten dadurch ihre Arbeitsmotivation verloren und seien außerdem anfälliger für kriminelles Verhalten. Schafft man die Sozialwohnungen ab, könne man auch die Kriminalität und die konzentrierte Armut in der Stadt beseitigen.


Es gab durchaus berechtigten Anlass zur Beunruhigung. Im Jahr 1990 waren sieben der ärmsten Gegenden in den USA solche Viertel mit Sozialwohnungen - drei davon allein in Chicago. In den meisten Städten waren diese kommunalen Anlagen zu Zentren des Drogenhandels und des Verbrechens geworden. Hier lebten fast ausschließlich Schwarze, die innerhalb des politischen Systems am wenigsten Einfluss haben und schließlich auch nicht für die ethnische Segregation, die Kriminalität und Armut verantwortlich gemacht werden können. Nachdem Präsident Reagan in den 1980er-Jahren die Mittel für den öffentlichen Wohnungsbau um 87 Prozent gekürzt hatte, war es den Behörden kaum mehr möglich, die Objekte in Schuss zu halten. In den meisten Siedlungen war die Polizei kaum präsent. In Chicago erklärte der oberste Polizeichef sogar, die Viertel seien für die Polizei zu gefährlich. Und in den lokalen Wohnbehörden herrschten Chaos und Korruption.


1992 mussten alle lokalen Wohnungsämter auf Grund des Gesetzes "Hope VI" eine "Rentabilitätsstudie" für ihren Bestand an Sozialwohnungen erstellen. Danach wurde entschieden, ob es billiger war, die Bauten abzureißen und den Familien Beihilfen für den privaten Wohnungsmarkt zu zahlen oder die Bauten zu sanieren und anständig instand zu halten. Aber das Gesetz blieb so vage und dehnbar, dass es Unternehmer und Wohnbehörden nicht davon abhalten konnte, die Sozialbauten rasch zu zerstören, ohne sich groß um Sicherheit und Wohlergehen der darin lebenden armen Familien zu kümmern. "Hope VI" enthielt keine konkreten Maßnahmen, auf welche Weise man den Familien rasch neue Unterkünfte besorgen könnte. Es bestimmte schlicht, man solle die Häuser abreißen und dazu beitragen, dass die betroffenen Menschen "auf eigenen Beinen stehen". Eine Bürokratie, die weder Badezimmer reparieren noch Ratten aus den Häusern fernhalten konnte, war plötzlich mit einer gewaltigen Aufgabe befrachtet: Sie sollte die Armen aus dem Ghetto schaffen und in verantwortungsvolle, unabhängige Bürger verwandeln.


Bis heute haben die Städte der USA 4,5 Millarden Dollar an Steuermitteln ausgegeben, um mehr als 50 000 Sozialwohnungen zu vernichten. Dabei gibt die Regierung selbst zu, dass ihr der Abriss wesentlich besser gelungen sei als der Wiederaufbau des sozialen Gefüges und die Umsetzung der armen Familien. Von vielen Seiten wurde kritisiert, dass nach den Abrissen insgesamt weniger Wohnungen vorhanden sind als zuvor. In Chicago ergab eine Untersuchung, dass 80 Prozent der auf die Straße gesetzten Familien in andere Minderheiten- und Armutsviertel innerhalb und außerhalb der Stadt gezogen sind.(5) Nach einer anderen Studie wurden 10 bis 12 Prozent der Familien nach ihrem Auszug obdachlos.(6)

Offenbar trägt die Umwandlung des öffentlichen Wohnungsbauprogramms in den USA zu einer neuen Form der städtischen Armut bei. Einst waren die vertikalen Ghettos der sozialen Wohntürme ein typisches Merkmal der amerikanischen Innenstädte. An ihrer Stelle entstehen heute Ghettos, die sich in die Horizontale erstrecken. Und die Menschen, die früher im Zentrum der Städte lebten, muss man heute in den Randzonen der Innenstädte suchen.


deutsch von Herwig Engelmann


Fußnoten:
(1) "Separate and Unequal: Neighborhood Gap for Blacks and Hispanics in Metropolitan America", Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, University of Albany, 2002.
(2) "Who Needs Affordable Housing?" Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D. C., 2000.
(3) John R. Logan, "The New Ethnic Enclaves in Americas Suburbs", Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative and Urban Regional Research, 2002.
(4) Ebd.
(5) Paul Fischer, "Section 8 and the Public Housing Revolution: Where Will Families Go?", 1999.
(6) Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, "Robert Taylor Relocation Study", 2001.

Le Monde diplomatique Nr. 7208 vom 14.11.2003, Seite 23, 353 Dokumentation, SUDHIR ALLADI VENKATESH

© Contrapress media GmbH
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung des taz-Verlags

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Military Fatalities:

*US**UK**Other**Total

426**53****25****504

Latest Military Fatality Date: 11/20/2003

http://www.lunaville.com/warcasualties/summary.aspx

11/22/03 AP: Back-to-back car bombings
Suicide car bombers struck two police stations north of the capital Saturday within half an hour, killing at least 12 Iraqis and two attackers. Insurgents hit a civilian cargo plane with a surface-to-air missile as it took off from Baghdad
11/22/03 abc: Rockets fired at Iraq oil company
Three Iraqis were wounded when rockets were fired at a heavily protected building belonging to the state-owned Northern Oil Company (NOC) in Kirkuk
11/22/03 AP: U.S. troops and suicide in Iraq
At least 17 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq
11/22/03 Yaho: Two Iraqi Police Stations Bombed
Suicide car bomb attacks on two Iraqi police stations north of Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 15 people, police and U.S. soldiers said.
11/21/03 Reuters: Suicide Bomb Kills at Least Six in Iraq
A suspected suicide car bomb attack on the main police station in the restive Iraqi town of Baquba killed at least people on Saturday, police said.
11/21/03 DoD: Soldier Dies of Wounds Received on Nov. 14
Pvt. Scott M. Tyrrell, 21, of Sterling, Ill., died on Nov. 20 at Brooke Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Texas, of wounds received on Nov. 14 in Tikrit, Iraq. Tyrrell was at an ammunition point when it caught on fire.
11/21/03 BBC: US troops kill Hungarian in Iraq
A Hungarian man has been shot dead by US troops west of Baghdad, the Hungarian foreign ministry has said.
11/21/03 ABC: 4 killed in grenade attack on alcohol stall
Four people were killed and 20 injured in a grenade attack on a stall in south Baghdad selling alcohol on the Muslim day of rest during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, hospital officials said.
11/21/03 CENTCOM confirms fatailty
One 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed during a combat patrol when the soldier’s vehicle struck an improvised explosive device near Al Ghalibiyah, 15 km west of Baqubah, at approximately 10 p.m. Nov. 20.
11/21/03 Reuters: Booby-Trap Kills Soldier North of Baghdad
A U.S. soldier was killed north of Baghdad by a booby-trap on Thursday, the American military said on Friday. A spokesman said the soldier was from the 4th Infantry Division
11/21/03 Centcom: 1 soldier was killed and two wounded
BAGHDAD, Iraq – A 82nd Airborne Division soldier was killed and two wounded, when their convoy was attacked with two improvised explosive devices east of Ar Ramadi at approximately 2:40 p.m. Nov. 20.

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November 23, 2003
F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.

The initiative has won the support of some local police, who view it as a critical way to maintain order at large-scale demonstrations. Indeed, some law enforcement officials said they believed the F.B.I.`s approach had helped to ensure that nationwide antiwar demonstrations in recent months, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters, remained largely free of violence and disruption.

But some civil rights advocates and legal scholars said the monitoring program could signal a return to the abuses of the 1960`s and 1970`s, when J. Edgar Hoover was the F.B.I. director and agents routinely spied on political protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we`re going back to the days of Hoover."

Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has written about F.B.I. history, said collecting intelligence at demonstrations is probably legal.

But he added: "As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We`re going to ferret out information on demonstrations,` that deters people. People don`t want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files."

The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover`s political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities.

Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."

Mr. Ashcroft said the Sept. 11 attacks made it essential that the F.B.I. be allowed to investigate terrorism more aggressively. The bureau`s recent strategy in policing demonstrations is an outgrowth of that policy, officials said.

"We`re not concerned with individuals who are exercising their constitutional rights," one F.B.I. official said. "But it`s obvious that there are individuals capable of violence at these events. We know that there are anarchists that are actively involved in trying to sabotage and commit acts of violence at these different events, and we also know that these large gatherings would be a prime target for terrorist groups."

Civil rights advocates, relying largely on anecdotal evidence, have complained for months that federal officials have surreptitiously sought to suppress the First Amendment rights of antiwar demonstrators.

Critics of the Bush administration`s Iraq policy, for instance, have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes. Civil rights advocates have accused federal and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., of spying on antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating planning meetings. And the New York Police Department this year questioned many of those arrested at demonstrations about their political affiliations, before halting the practice and expunging the data in the face of public criticism.

The F.B.I. memorandum, however, appears to offer the first corroboration of a coordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding demonstrations.

The memorandum, circulated on Oct. 15 — just 10 days before many thousands gathered in Washington and San Francisco to protest the American occupation of Iraq — noted that the bureau "possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests" and that "most protests are peaceful events."

But it pointed to violence at protests against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as evidence of potential disruption. Law enforcement officials said in interviews that they had become particularly concerned about the ability of antigovernment groups to exploit demonstrations and promote a violent agenda.

"What a great opportunity for an act of terrorism, when all your resources are dedicated to some big event and you let your guard down," a law enforcement official involved in securing recent demonstrations said. "What would the public say if we didn`t look for criminal activity and intelligence at these events?"

The memorandum urged local law enforcement officials "to be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts" to counterterrorism task forces run by the F.B.I. It warned about an array of threats, including homemade bombs and the formation of human chains.

The memorandum discussed demonstrators` "innovative strategies," like the videotaping of arrests as a means of "intimidation" against the police. And it noted that protesters "often use the Internet to recruit, raise funds and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations."

"Activists may also make use of training camps to rehearse tactics and counter-strategies for dealing with the police and to resolve any logistical issues," the memorandum continued. It also noted that protesters may raise money to help pay for lawyers for those arrested.

F.B.I. counterterrorism officials developed the intelligence cited in the memorandum through firsthand observation, informants, public sources like the Internet and other methods, officials said.

Officials said the F.B.I. treats demonstrations no differently than other large-scale and vulnerable gatherings. The aim, they said, was not to monitor protesters but to gather intelligence.

Critics said they remained worried. "What the F.B.I. regards as potential terrorism," Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said, "strikes me as civil disobedience."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

November 23, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Scaring Up Votes
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

First came the pre-emptive military policy. Now comes the pre-emptive campaign strategy.

Before the president even knows his opponent, his first political ad is blanketing Iowa today.

"It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known," Mr. Bush says, in a State of the Union clip.

Well, that`s a comforting message from our commander in chief. Do we really need his cold, clammy hand on our spine at a time when we`re already rattled by fresh terror threats at home and abroad? When we`re chilled by the metastasizing Al Qaeda, the resurgent Taliban and Baathist thugs armed with deadly booby traps; the countless, nameless terror groups emerging in Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia and elsewhere; the vicious attacks on Americans, Brits, aid workers and their supporters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey? The latest illustration of the low-tech ingenuity of Iraqi foes impervious to our latest cascade of high-tech missiles: a hapless, singed donkey that carted rockets to a Baghdad hotel.

Yet the Bush crowd is seizing the moment to scare us even more.

Flashing the words "terrorists" and "self-defense" in crimson, the Republican National Committee spot urges Americans "to support the president`s policy of pre-emptive self-defense" — a policy Colin Powell claimed was overblown by the press.

"Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" Mr. Bush says.

With this ad, Republicans have announced their intention: to scare us stupid, hoping we won`t remember that this was the same State of the Union in which Mr. Bush made a misleading statement about the Iraq-Niger uranium connection, or remark that the imperial idyll in Iraq has created more terrorists.

Richard Clarke, the former U.S. counterterrorism chief, told Ted Koppel that Mr. Bush`s habit of putting X`s through the pictures of arrested or killed Qaeda managers was very reminiscent of a scene in the movie "The Battle of Algiers," in which the French authorities did the same to the Algerian terrorists: "Unfortunately, after all the known Algerian terrorists were arrested or killed, the French lost. And that could be the thing that`s happening here, that even though we`re getting all the known Al Qaeda leaders, we`re breeding new ones. Ones we don`t know about and will be harder to find."

This view of Al Qaeda was echoed by a European counterterrorism official in The Times: "There are fewer leaders but more followers."

The president is trying to make the campaign about guts: he has the guts to persevere in the war on terror.

But the real issue is trust: should we trust leaders who cynically manipulated intelligence, diverted 9/11 anger and lost focus on Osama so they could pursue an old cause near to neocon hearts: sacking Saddam?

The Bush war left our chief villains operating, revved up the terrorist threat, ravaged our international alliances and sparked the resentment of a world that ached for us after 9/11.

Now Mr. Bush says that poor Turkey, a critical ally in the Muslim world, is the newest front in the war on terror. "Iraq is a front," he said. "Turkey is a front. Anywhere the terrorists think they can strike is a front." Here a front, there a front, everywhere a terror front.

In his Hobbesian gloom — "Fear and I were born twins," Hobbes said — Dick Cheney thought an Iraq whupping would make surly young anti-American Arab men scuttle away. Instead, it stoked their ire.

James Goodby and Kenneth Weisbrode wrote in The Financial Times last week that the Bush crew has snuffed the optimism of F.D.R., Ronald Reagan and Bush père: "Fear has been used as a basis for curtailing freedom of expression and for questioning legal rights long taken for granted. It has crept into political discourse and been used to discredit patriotic public servants. Ronald Reagan`s favorite image, borrowed from an earlier visionary, of America as `a shining city on a hill` has been unnecessarily dimmed by another image: a nation motivated by fear and ready to lash out at any country it defines as the source of a gathering threat."

Instead of a shining city, we have a dark bunker.

But the only thing we really have to fear is fearmongering itself.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

Kifl, Iraq, is recovering from a major battle this spring. But the covered market, which was undamaged, pulses, its stalls full of cheap goods.
November 23, 2003
Iraqi Town Relishes Freedom, but Resentment Runs Beneath
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

KIFL, Iraq, Nov. 20 — The first bombs began falling unexpectedly on this village at 3:30 one morning in March. Ali Kazim Hamza was shepherding his family into what he hoped would be a safe room when one landed outside his front door.

The blast crumbled the front of the house and hurled him across the entryway. He cradled his son, Muhammad, in his beefy arms. Shrapnel or perhaps flying shards of brick sliced through the boy`s forehead, killing him. He was 2.

Eight months ago, this small, dusty village on the Euphrates became an unexpected obstacle to the American assault on Baghdad. Massed a few miles west, the Army`s Third Infantry Division ordered its forces across the river and into the village to cut off Iraqi reinforcements headed toward Najaf.

What followed was some of the most intense fighting that the division`s First Brigade encountered, and it left deep scars.

Now, Kifl is one measure of America`s halting progress since Saddam Hussein`s overthrow. Violence continued Saturday, as a missile reportedly hit a civilian plane in Baghdad and bombers killed 14 people at two police stations near the capital.

The people of Kifl — all Shiites harshly repressed under Mr. Hussein`s rule — relish their new freedom but fear the uncertainty that freedom has brought. They have rebuilt some of what was destroyed.

But they also angrily complain that their expectations — of aid and compensation, of democracy and security — remain unmet. And some of what was lost can never be restored.

"We are breathing freedom," Mr. Hamza said. For him, though, more than for most, it came at a cost — a son`s short life.

"Yes,"he said, "it was too expensive a price."

Compared with the violence and chaos of Baghdad and the triangle of seething cities to the north and west, Kifl is an oasis that fulfills much of the Bush administration`s vision for a new Iraq. Today there are no foreign forces here, no barriers of concrete and concertina wire. The covered market pulses beneath ancient brick vaults, its stalls full of trinkets and cheap goods. Its main street — eight months ago a shattered mess, strewn with charred wreckage and a gruesome trail of death — is now a cacophonic bustle of crowds, cars and carts.

Beneath the outward peace, however, runs an undercurrent of need and grievance and simmering resentment that has not boiled over but easily could.

There was no electricity for three days this week. Trash and sewage foul the streets. The bridge over the Euphrates, which Iraqi forces blew up on March 25 after the First Brigade`s troops crossed it, remains buckled and blocked to traffic, severing the city from Najaf to the south and Karbala to the north.

There have been 21 cases of cholera and smaller outbreaks of other infectious diseases, including typhoid and meningitis. The hospital has no medicine at all.

On the main street an agitated crowd quickly gathered as Sheik Aziz Izzi al-Abud explained that Kifl had welcomed the American overthrow of Mr. Hussein, only to grow wary and increasingly impatient.

The men shouted and shoved as they voiced their complaints. It is not safe to drive at night. There are no new jobs. Pensions are delayed. The prices of staples — gas, cooking oil, grains, sheep — have skyrocketed. The mayor`s friends have skimmed off what aid has come, they complained, while the rest of the village`s residents have gone wanting.

"We have had a lot of unjust treatment," Sheik Izzi said. "For 13 years we were under embargo. The Americans promised everything. All the good would come with the tanks, and it didn`t."

What becomes clear on the streets of Kifl, as in other parts of Iraq, is that a cold calculation is being made, as people tally the dinars in their pockets. Freedom and democracy, it would seem, are often beside the point. Some people have more than they did under Mr. Hussein, and others have less.

To hear Fadil Abdul Amir, a butcher who can no longer afford to buy sheep to slaughter, more and more people have less.

"They`re going to become terrorists!" he shouted over the din of the crowd, referring to those disenfranchised in the new Iraq. "They`re going to join bin Laden!"

Later, inside his cobwebbed shop, he sounded less strident. For Mr. Amir, 44 and the father of 11 children, the American promise of freedom has brought only destitution and uncertainty.

"We were hungry for change, but nothing changed," he said. "Only Saddam is gone."

An Unexpected Battlefield

Kifl, nestled among groves of date palms beside the wide, smooth waters of the Euphrates, is an ancient place. At its heart is the tomb of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, who preached to the captive Jews in Babylon and is revered by both Jews and Muslims.

Attacking Kifl was never part of the Third Infantry`s war plan, which envisioned an uninterrupted march to Baghdad. But with the division`s advance stalled and its overstretched supply lines under attack in the south, Kifl became a battlefield.

For the soldiers of the First Brigade, encountering the enemy close up for the first time, Kifl seemed apocalyptic.

Waves of lightly armed but fanatical fighters hurled themselves toward the brigade`s armored vehicles in the middle of a sandstorm that turned the sky the color of blood. Sgt. Mark N. Redmond struggled to comprehend attacks he called suicidal.

One tank commander called Kifl "a little piece of hell." It seemed that way for Kifl`s residents, too.

The fighting, they said, started without warning. In fact, the mayor, Ahmed Kabit al-Abassy, explained, the Americans tried to warn them by dropping leaflets, but the canister holding them failed to open.

Before dawn on the first day, American shells damaged several homes behind Ezekiel`s tomb, including Mr. Hamza`s. Across the village a shell landed in the courtyard of Hassun Ali, blinding the right eye of his 14-year-old daughter, Ragad.

When day broke and the fighting intensified at the bridgehead, residents fled to the countryside. Many sought sanctuary in the shrine of Iman Zaid, a few miles away. Mr. Hamza, his son dead and his own body torn, was taken to a hospital in Hilla.

There, he said, he saw Qusay Hussein, the Iraqi leader`s son, who is believed to have commanded Iraq`s defense during the war. Qusay`s presence so near Kifl might explain the intensity of the battle, which flared for four days before the Third Infantry Division resumed its attack northward.

The division`s official record said that Iraqi soldiers and even civilians were forced at gunpoint to fight in Kifl, but no one here confirmed that.

Dozens of residents served in the military, but they did so in other parts of Iraq, people like Fazil Hasan. He served with an air-defense battery in Yusufiya but cast off his uniform two days after the bombing started — not just because he felt no loyalty to Mr. Hussein but also because "the Americans started dropping cluster bombs."

Mr. Abassy, the mayor, said the Iraqi forces included two brigades of fedayeen soldiers and another from the Baath Party`s militia — perhaps 500 fighters altogether, all from outside Kifl.

Eleven people from Kifl died, along with 60 other civilians from other villages, according to the mayor`s official count. The bodies of 240 Iraqi fighters were buried in mass graves after the battle subsided — fewer than the American estimates of enemy killed but about the same magnitude.

More than a dozen homes were destroyed. Few buildings escaped damage, especially along the main street. But Kifl has recovered more quickly than many places in Iraq, in large part because it has not experienced the continuing resistance that has brought new destruction elsewhere and hampered efforts to rebuild.

There was also no frenzied looting in Kifl — mostly, the mayor noted, "because we have nothing of value."

With one incalculable exception: someone pried three of four stone tablets, inscribed in Hebrew, from the walls of Ezekiel`s tomb, as well as a menorah mosaic, historic remnants of a Jewish community that lived here for centuries until 1948. The tomb`s aged caretaker, Mahady al-Dharib, said part of the tomb`s soul was now missing.

It took two months for Jassim Jiwad, 62, to rebuild his brick factory. On the third day of the battle, with Iraqi fighters using the factory`s buildings and stacks of bricks as cover, an unseen B-52 dropped a string of 500-pound bombs. The blasts punched gaping holes in the kiln, cracked the smokestack, destroyed several outbuildings and killed 20 donkeys used to haul bricks.

There are still unexploded bombs in the stacks of bricks, and prices for fuel and parts have risen, forcing up the prices he must charge. He had to spend $3,000 to rebuild, but the factory and its 100 employees are at work again.

"It`s war," he said with a shrug, when asked about his losses. "There must be some casualties."

Adam Abud al-Budairy also rebuilt his barbershop. On the shop`s back wall hung a poster of lower Manhattan, seen from New Jersey with the towers of the World Trade Center intact.

He replaced the shattered glass storefront, but someone stole the poster, and he has been unable to find another. He bought it not as some political statement, he said, but simply because "we all love New York."

Like a barbershop anywhere, it is a forum for gossip and debate. Muhammad Habib, a clerk in the newly re-formed Justice Ministry, said the Americans should capture Mr. Hussein and then leave Iraq. One of the barbers, Raid al-Shimmari, disagreed, saying a withdrawal would plunge Iraq into chaos.

Kifl has many problems, but something profound has changed.

"Before we talked only about girls and sex," Mr. Shimmari said, speaking of Iraq`s old fears and new freedoms. "Now we talk about Saddam — and sex."

A New Mayor`s Problems

Only days after Mr. Hussein`s fall, tribal chiefs met and chose a mayor, Mr. Abassy. The legitimacy of that decision remains a matter of debate here. This much is clear: it was far from a vote of the people, many of whom remained in hiding.

Mr. Abassy, a lean man of 41, is a leader of Kifl`s predominant tribe, the Bani Hassan. Mr. Hussein`s government executed his father in 1987, a brother and an uncle four years before that. As a student, he fought in the Shiite uprising that followed the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and then after it was brutally crushed, he fled to Saudi Arabia.

He returned to Kifl and his studies, eventually becoming a lawyer. That he survived the crackdown of 1991 has aroused suspicions among his critics that he had reached an accommodation with the government.

By April 18, Kifl had a mayor and a council of five other leaders. Mr. Abassy proudly claimed that it was the first functioning administrative body in Iraq after major combat operations ended.

L. Paul Bremer III, the leader of the American occupation, visited in May and pledged $5 million for reconstruction.

The money paid for repairs at Mr. Abassy`s office, as well as the courthouse, the sewage plant, three schools and Kifl`s small athletic stadium. This last project especially angers residents who said the money would have been better spent on rebuilding their broken homes.

People stream through Mr. Abassy`s office. They complain about shortages and ask for jobs. As mayor, though, he has little power and less money. As a new politician in a new Iraq, he already sounds weary.

"People`s satisfaction," he said, "is an unattainable object."

Stirrings of Democracy

On Tuesday, the loudspeakers atop Kifl`s mosque announced that an election was being held to create an administrative council with 20 seats.

At the elementary school 10 candidates vied for six of the seats. They were chosen by the mayor`s office based on criteria that included no ties to the Baath Party.

For people here, it was their first real taste of democracy. Mr. Hussein held what he called elections, but as one voter, Kasim Mahidi, put it, "You couldn`t say no."

As a measure of Iraq`s embrace of democracy, the vote was a disappointment.

Of some 4,000 eligible voters, 117 cast ballots. An official from the mayor`s office took the ballot of one man and filled it out himself after sending the man away. Another man began angrily shouting that the candidates were all Hussein stooges.

Sheik Izzi boycotted the election, calling it a farce. Mr. Amir, the butcher, did vote, but left with a pointed warning. "If these guys are thieves just like the others," he said angrily, "then it will be a mess."

Later the mayor, oddly, agreed. In his home is a picture from 1921, showing his grandfather and other tribal chiefs sitting with a British general. The problem then, like now, Mr. Abassy said, was that each of Iraq`s major groupings — Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds — all demanded a share of power.

Like many here, he said Iraqis were not ready for democracy. Instead, they need an authoritarian ruler, perhaps a king. "I think if the Iraqis have the power to rule themselves, it will be a disaster," he said.

Then echoing a realization that has dawned on many from Iraq to Washington and fueled the debate over the Bush administration`s planning for a postwar Iraq, he said: "The politics are harder than the liberation."

Still, in a school auditorium, in a place battered by repression and then by war, here were the first stirrings of power passing through the hands of the people. After the poll closed, the votes were tallied as the candidates and others squeezed into children`s chairs. However flawed the process, it was a tentative first step to democracy.

Amir Jabir, 42, who won the most votes, became a member of an elected body, though one with no budget and ill-defined powers in a village with profound needs and an unclear future.

"It was like a nightmare under the previous regime," he said. "There is some hope for democracy now. God willing, we will succeed. Before, we didn`t have a chance."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company


Kifl, Iraq, is recovering after a major battle that took place as American forces advanced on Baghdad this spring. The town`s brick factory is one of the few thriving businesses.

[Joerver]

Jessica Lynch sofort auf eins in der NYTimes Liste von heute.

Hardcover Nonfiction

Published: November 30, 2003


1 I AM A SOLDIER, TOO: The Jessica Lynch Story, by Rick Bragg. (Knopf, $23.95.) The former P.O.W. recalls her capture, imprisonment and rescue, as well as childhood experiences in West Virginia.

[Joerver]

Soldiers to sue over new Gulf War syndrome
Mark Townsend
Sunday November 23, 2003
The Observer

Dozens of soldiers who served in Iraq are to sue the Government, claiming they are suffering from a new form of Gulf War syndrome.

Multiple vaccinations given in the run-up to the conflict are being blamed for chronic pains, stomach problems, rashes, swelling, fever, depression and anxiety.

Lawyers and medical experts say the symptoms are identical to those which affected thousands of veterans after the 1991 Gulf conflict.

The Observer has learnt that 13 soldiers have launched legal actions against the Ministry of Defence over what is being called Gulf War II syndrome. A similar number of `robust` cases are to be launched in weeks.

In addition, a former MoD employee has obtained the medical records of another 40 Iraq veterans also suffering similar symptoms. Each case could cost the Government £1 million in damages.

Mark McGhee of Manchester-based Linda Myers Solicitors, said servicemen were coming forward all the time. `Previously healthy servicemen received inoculations and suffered serious reactions. Now their jobs, livelihoods and their families are being affected,` he said.

The allegations come ahead of the inquest tomorrow into the death of Major Ian Hill, former chairman of the National Gulf Veterans` and Families` Association. Hill suffered a severe reaction to vaccinations he was given and was sent home from the Gulf. However, Army doctors were unable to determine what was wrong with him.

The father-of-four subsequently suffered from a range of illnesses including Q fever, an infection that stops the brain producing cells quickly enough to replace those that die. The MoD disputed that his illness was a result of service and he was denied a pension until shortly before his death in March 2001 at the age of 54.

At the two-day inquest in Warrington, lawyers will argue his deployment to the Gulf and subsequent illnesses contributed to his early death. More than 550 veterans have died since the first Gulf war.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said 12 servicemen from the latest conflict had signed up to a health assessment programme while 7,000 former Gulf veterans are to be screened.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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`Bring us home`: GIs flood US with war-weary emails
An unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the US is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq. Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin report on rising fears that the conflict is now a desert Vietnam

Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer

Susan Schuman is angry. Her GI son is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, at the heart of the `Sunni triangle`, where American troops are killed with grim regularity.

Breaking the traditional silence of military families during time of war, Schuman knows what she wants - and who she blames for the danger to her son, Justin. `I want them to bring our troops home. I am appalled at Bush`s policies. He has got us into a terrible mess,` she said.

Schuman may just be the tip of an iceberg. She lives in Shelburne Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, and says all her neighbours support her view. `I don`t know anyone around here who disagrees with me,` she said.

Schuman`s views are part of a growing unease back home at the rising casualty rate in Iraq, a concern coupled with deep anger at President George W. Bush`s plans to cut army benefits for many soldiers. Criticism is also coming directly from soldiers risking their lives under the guns of Saddam Hussein`s fighters, and they are using a weapon not available to troops in previous wars: the internet.

Through emails and chatrooms a picture is emerging of day-to-day gripes, coupled with ferocious criticism of the way the war has been handled. They paint a vivid picture of US army life that is a world away from the sanitised official version.

In a message posted on a website last week, one soldier was brutally frank. `Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in [Iraqi] eyes. We don`t feel like heroes any more,` said Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company.

Kindblade said morale was poor, and he attacked the leadership back home. `The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, "Bring `em on." The generals say we don`t need more troops. Well, they`re not over here,` he wrote.

One of the main outlets for the soldiers` complaints has been a website run by outspoken former soldier David Hackworth, who was the army`s youngest colonel in the Vietnam war and one of its most decorated warriors. He receives almost 500 emails a day, many of them from soldiers serving in Iraq. They have sounded off about everything from bad treatment at the hands of their officers to fears that their equipment is faulty.

The army-issue gas mask `leaks under the chin. This same mask was used during Desert Storm, which accounts for part of the health problems of the vets who fought there. My unit has again deployed to the Gulf with this loser,` ranted one army doctor.

Some veterans have begun to form organisations to campaign to bring the soldiers home and highlight their difficult conditions. Erik Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, has founded Veterans For Common Sense. `There is an anger boiling under the surface now, and I, as a veteran, have a duty to speak because I am no longer subject to military discipline,` he said.

A recent email from Iraq passed to Gustafson, signed by `the Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division`, said simply: `Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to come home. Thank you for your attention.`

Another source of anger is government plans to reverse recent increases in `imminent danger` pay and a family separation allowance. These moves have provoked several furious editorials in the Army Times, the normally conservative military newspaper. The paper said the planned cuts made `the Bush administration seem mean-spirited and hypocritical`.

Tobias Naegele, its editor-in-chief, said his senior staff agonised over the decision to attack the government, but the response to the editorials from ordinary soldiers was overwhelmingly positive.

A further critical editorial is planned for this week. `We don`t think lightly of criticising our Commander-in-Chief,` Naegele said `The army has had a rough couple of years with this administration.`

Mainstream veterans` groups too are angry about cuts being proposed at a time when politicians have heaped praise on the army`s performance in Afghanistan and Iraq and want to launch a recruitment drive.

Veterans plan protests to highlight the issue. `We are going to show them that veterans are people who know how to vote,` said Steven Robinson, a veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Centre, one of the websites where veterans` issues are raised.

Susan Schuman too is planning a protest. This week she plans to join members of a new group, Military Families Speak Out, who will travel to Washington to make their case for their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, to be brought home from Iraq.

With soldiers dying there almost daily, comparisons have already been drawn with the Vietnam war and the birth of the protest movements there that divided America in the Sixties and Seventies.

Political scientists, however, think the war will have to get much worse before anything similar happens over Iraq. `To put it crudely, I think the country can accept this current level of casualties,` said Professor Richard Stoll, of Rice University in Houston, Texas.

That is little comfort to Schuman, who says she just wants to see her son, Justin, return alive from a war she believes is unjust. `It is a quagmire and it is not going to be easy to get out,` she said. `That`s where the parallel with Vietnam is.`


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Where terror begins
The Observer`s Jason Burke, a world expert on Islamic militancy, argues that we must defeat terrorism without creating new enemies

Jason Burke
Sunday November 23, 2003
The Observer

The investigators will start with minutiae. They will comb the sites of Thursday`s attack looking for the tiny particles that will reveal the construction of the bombs. Soon they will know what was used - probably a mix of ammonium nitrate `fertiliser explosive`, plastic explosives and gas canisters. They will try hard to find shards of the detonator cap, the initial power source - probably a car battery - and the trigger switch. By the time anyone comes to trial they will be able to tell the court the exact velocity of the shrapnel the blast sent hurtling through the air.

A few chunks of twisted metal will identify the delivery vehicles, especially if the bombers forgot to file off serial numbers on the engine block. Traffic camera footage will show how the bombs reached their destination.

Then the investigators will reach further back in time, meticulously piecing together the preparation of the strike. They will find out where the terrorists were through the summer, last year, 10 years ago. Details are still sketchy but the bombers are believed to be young Turks. Most are from the east of the country and they are thought to be connected, albeit loosely, to a local Islamic group that has existed for at least a decade.

In this they are typical of so-called `al-Qaeda` attackers. Al-Qaeda is now used as a label to describe any terrorist attack by Muslims. This is a sloppy and possibly counter-productive use of the term. Al-Qaeda should be used only to describe a small group of men led by Osama bin Laden who came together in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and were dispersed by the US-led action that followed the 11 September strikes.

Their involvement in this most recent attack is likely to be tangential. They may, as the communiqué issued claiming responsibility for the blast indicates, have had some kind of overall strategic control, particularly of the timing of the attack. It is even possible that a senior adviser was on hand to organise and help the group. But the attackers themselves were all Turkish.

This should not surprise us. Exactly two years ago I found notebooks and letters indicating the presence of Turkish recruits in bin Laden`s training camps. They were written by young men who had made considerable sacrifices to get training. One notebook, written in Turkish, described all the techniques, including the construction of massive truck bombs, a recruit had learned.

Thousands of such men made their way to the camps in Afghanistan - indeed they had been doing so long before bin Laden arrived on the scene. Just because the camps were emptied, the recruits have not disappeared. Nor have the reasons underpinning their reasons for wanting to learn such appalling skills.

By the time the suspects have come to trial we will have a detailed picture of how the bombings happened. But we will not know why. And this is the crucial question if we are to defeat contemporary Islamic terrorism.

This does not mean we should condone their horrific actions but merely recognise that it is only by understanding the motivations of such men can we hope to counter them.

The militants believe they are fighting a defensive war. For them, and for much of the broader Muslim community, this legitimises their actions.

Osama bin Laden has believed this for a long time. In many ways bin Laden acts like a traditional political activist. He has recognisable goals, though they are often framed within a mythic and religious narrative. Many were listed in the claim of responsibility issued after Thursday`s bombing. In among the anti-Semitic ranting there were recognisable demands, such as the liberation of the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay and an end to US support for the `tyrannical governments` in the Middle East. Such governments, the statement said, impede the creation of an `Islamic caliphate`. This latter demand had specific relevance to Turkey, as it was there that the 1,300-year-old caliphate, the supposedly unified state of Islamic communities, was dismantled 80-odd years ago.

But the communiqué ends with an exhortation to the `Islamic nation` to `support the Mujahideen to victory`. And this is the key.

Bin Laden, like many political and religious agitators before him, has been profoundly frustrated by the failure of the masses to see things his way. He knows that to destroy the economic and military power of the West is impossible - unless he can rally the world`s 1.3 billion Muslims to his cause.

Back in the mid-Nineties bin Laden recognised the power of modern satellite media to broadcast his message to vast audiences. And he chose to do it through `propaganda by deed`, rather than just words.

He and his associates hoped that millions of Muslims would watch the men who sacrificed themselves so spectacularly and be galvanised to act themselves. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden`s partner, spoke of the need to strip Muslims of their `false consciousness`. Bin Laden himself warned his followers against `sacrificing themselves in silence`. Every act he and his aides organised had one aim: to radicalise and mobilise the world`s Muslims. The message of these dramatic attacks is aimed not at us in the West, but at the Islamic world. And there is evidence that bin Laden`s campaign is working.

All the attacks associated with `al-Qaeda` can be placed on a scale. At one end are those which were directly commissioned, organised and executed by bin Laden or his close aides. They would include the 1998 bombings in east Africa and 11 September. At the other end of the scale are those that are in the style of al-Qaeda, on an agenda set by al-Qaeda but not actually organised by them. They are `al-Qaeda-ist`. These would include the blasts in Casablanca earlier this year and all strikes involving the new wave of Islamic militants flocking to Iraq.

Though there are exceptions, and the Turkey attack may prove to be one of them, most analysts and intelligence experts recognise that the trend is towards `freelance` actions, distanced from bin Laden and people around him.

In December 2001, after escaping from Tora Bora, bin Laden said his own `life or death` was irrelevant because `the awakening has started`. Tragically, he was right. The fact that a dozen or so Turks, living in a relatively prosperous, tolerant and pluralist Muslim society, were happy to blow themselves and dozens of others into oblivion is evidence of this. So is the ambivalent response of many Turks to being in the front line of the war on terror. So is the way that many in the Middle East now are convinced that the West never gave up on the crusades. So is the tacit approbation offered to Malaysia`s President when he talks of the Jews ruling the world `by proxy`.

In a new and profoundly dangerous age, millions of people in the Islamic world believe bin Laden is right when he announces that the supposed `Zionist-crusader alliance` is dedicated to the humiliation and subordination of Islam. This was not the case three years ago.

Jack Straw was right to say last week that increased security can never make us safe against terrorists of the sort we now face. This is a battle of visions, of perceptions, for hearts and minds, as much as a battle of guns, forensic detection and intelligence. Making progress in the latter, which it is possible we are doing, is nothing without progress in the former.

Of course a `war on terror` requires a military component. But we need to eliminate our enemies without simply creating more. Last week al-Qaeda said that `the cars of death will not stop`. If we fail to counter their warped world-view then their threat will not be idle.

· Jason Burke`s Al-Qaeda: casting a shadow of terror is published by I.B. Tauris



Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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The slick man of Europe

America good, Germany bad - that`s the received opinion, but, economically, this view is no longer tenable

Will Hutton
Sunday November 23, 2003
The Observer

Britain signed a landmark enterprise agreement last week with the US to celebrate our aspiration to follow the American way. Yet this alleged enterprise capital of the world has a trade deficit equal to 5 per cent of its gross national product, has racked up international debts now close to $3 trillion and last April lost its place as number one world exporter to Germany.
This latter economy, running trade surpluses as proportionately big as the US`s trade deficits, is written off as an economic basket case whose approach we want to avoid like the plague. But perhaps, just perhaps, the story is a little more complicated than America works and Germany doesn`t.

To see any merit in the German economic and social model in Britain these days is to invite howls of derision, especially from the Treasury. And it`s true that German economic performance has not been much to write home about recently; one in 12 Germans is unemployed while economic stagnation, inflating social expenditure and an eroded tax base have meant that the German budget deficit has exceeded the eurozone rules for three successive years, rules the Germans lobbied hard for. You`d have to be a saint not to enjoy just a little Schadenfreude at Germany`s plight.

But much more is at stake. Germany stands as a proxy for European matters economic and social, and as long as it ails while America seems to prosper it blights the argument for Europe, for social democracy, for stakeholding and for the euro. The international common sense, faithfully aped by the Government, is that while the American world of `flexible` labour markets and companies that seek to do no more than maximise shareholder value may be tough, the system works in comparison with Germany`s so-called social-market economy, mired in regulation, overpowerful trade unions, an expensive welfare state and featherbedded unemployed.

And yet. While it may be true that German companies have to export because demand at home is so poor, you don`t get to be number one world exporter if everything is as useless as the country`s critics allege. When Chrysler was taken over by Daimler-Benz and Rover by BMW, the Germans were appalled at the primitive technology and low skills of their Anglo-Saxon rivals.

BMW`s relaunch of the Mini is an object lesson in how to do high-tech, design-led quality manufacturing. But Chancellor Brown is not preparing to send young British entrepreneurs to Germany to learn anything. Rather, they go to America, trailing behind Germany in industrial sector after sector.

Capitalism US-style may have its virtues, accept the Germans, but at heart it`s a financial engineering rather than a business-building culture - and in the long-term, creating great businesses and international brands will pay off. German managers are passionate about the superiority of their system which has created great wealth-creating machines, companies that are as attentive to their workers, customers, technology and supply chains as they are to their shareholders. They even believe in co-determination, where unions and managers talk about strategy, as a means of enlisting their workers` engagement and loyalty.

Talk to the more reflective British business leaders and they agree; one FTSE 100 chief executive I spoke to last week believes that Germany`s great industrial brands (Siemens, BASF, VW etc) and the system that stands behind them are huge aces in an era of globalisation.

By contrast, Britain is virtually naked. Small wonder Rolls-Royce, one of our last great international brands, is threatening to move its product development overseas, citing not just the US but Germany as examples of where the wider structure is more supportive.

Germany`s problem is not the institutions, regulations and processes that create such formidably strong companies; it is that it has allowed the social part of its celebrated social-market economy to become too expensive, in particular towards the unemployed. Too little observed outside Germany, the Germans are now prepared to act.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has bitten the bullet and for the last six months has been engaged in an epic struggle to persuade his party to vote for halving the time the unemployed get unconditional unemployment pay while insisting that they train and take up job offers where they exist. Pensions are to be frozen for two years, and token payments introduced for health treatment, a shock more fundamental to the German Left than foundation hospitals.

Last week, at a conference in Bochum, he confronted his Social Democrats (SPD) with the reality - the welfare state was too expensive and the unemployed are too little challenged to accept work. There was no alternative to change.

The shock to the SPD has been profound. Membership has haemorrhaged, the unions are in open revolt, poll support has plumbed new depths and Rudolph Scharping, its deputy leader, has resigned. Some leading party officials told me before Bochum that they feared the party might split, but Schröder was re-elected and the line held.

He is trying to sustain social-democratic values but in an affordable way to allow them to regain legitimacy. By British or US standards, the unemployed will still be well-treated. Beyond him, there are real conservatives in the German CDU, anxious to go further.

Yet even German conservatives want to sustain the essence of the German social market system. There is a long folk memory about the consequences of unemployment in the 1930s. In any case, part of Germany`s problem is not its system, but two bad decisions that would have poleaxed any economy: swapping the West German mark for the East German currency after reunification on a one-to-one basis, despite East Germany`s chronically poor productivity and then, nine years later, compounding the mistake by entering the euro at an uncompetitive rate. A lesser economy would have imploded.

Germany is not out of the woods; it still has 4.4 million unemployed. The impact of reform will be slow and it is hamstrung by being unable aggressively to reflate its economy by the euro`s self-defeating rules so in need of change. But it is fighting to modernise its social-market economy rather than Americanise it; it`s a system which has delivered Germany`s fantastic physical infrastructure, its high rates of social mobility, its superior health experience and its world-beating companies.

For ordinary people, it is as least as good a place, perhaps better, in which to live, bring up kids and have a genuine chance as Britain or America, if only it could solve its unemployment problem. Social democracy, Germany and Europe do have things going for them. Would that the Labour Party`s leaders could think so as well; all economic and social virtue does not lie in George Bush`s America.

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Democrats` general on the retreat
War hero`s campaign falters as key staff drift away

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday November 23, 2003
The Observer

When General Wesley Clark entered the race for the US presidency he was hailed as an all-conquering saviour who could provide the magic ingredients to defeat George Bush and capture the White House for the Democrats.

Not any more. As President George W. Bush arrives home from his state visit to Britain, he will have the satisfaction of seeing Clark`s campaign in crisis. It is low on funds, has lost key staff and is fizzling out in key battleground states.

Meanwhile, the campaign of Vermont governor Howard Dean has captured the public imagination, securing his place as the frontrunner in the still crowded field of nine Democrat candidates.

`There was tremendous potential in Clark as a candidate, but there have been major problems in the execution,` said John Zogby, head of polling organisation Zogby International which conducted research for Clark supporters before the general`s announcement that he was joining the race.

Clark looked great on paper. As a retired four-star general - complete with war wounds from Vietnam - he was seen as invulnerable on the Democrats` traditional weakness, national security. He was also anti-war, having appeared on TV as a pundit critical of the invasion of Iraq. And he was seen as the sort of outsider who could galvanise a Democrat race full of figures little known outside the corridors of power in Washington. It has not turned out that way, however.

Clark`s late entry left him months and, in some cases, years behind the other candidates. In the marathon contest that is a US presidential election, that was a crippling handicap. In terms of getting local campaign offices open and recruiting effective local workers Clark`s team was lagging or found that all the best organisers had already been snapped up.

That has seen Clark pull out of the first state to vote: Iowa. `You need months on the ground to even have a hope in Iowa. Clark just did not have that,` said Professor Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University, Texas.

Within three weeks of announcing his bid, Clark`s campaign manager Donnie Fowler had quit. Aides put the resignation down to `growing pains` in the campaign, but the troubles quickly got worse. Clark has come across poorly in some of the TV debates.

His positions on many domestic issues have not filtered clearly through the media, and his campaign has been marred by serious gaffes. Comments made in May 2001 surfaced, showing Clark heaping praise on Bush and his team: `I`m very glad we`ve got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well - our President George W Bush. We need them there,` he told an Arkansas Republican dinner.

That caused dismay among many supporters. `People know that if Clark wins the Democrat nomination, those quotes are just a Republican attack ad waiting to happen,` Zogby said.

Clark`s campaign has focused on winning the crucial New Hampshire primary, which has long been seen as the state which can make or break a presidential run. Dean`s campaign, however, has carved out double-figure leads over its rivals in the state, and Clark is now not even in second place there. After an initial surge when he announced his candidacy, Clark has fallen into single figures in the latest polls.

Now his staff are rebranding the general as an underdog candidate. `It is the way for us to go. We are the team coming from behind to take this,` said one aide. Such talk is a far cry from the optimism that many Clark workers showed when their man first went public.

`It not over for Clark yet: it is still early. But it just goes to show that electoral campaigning is a very different world from the military one he is used to,` Stoll said.

Analysts believe the general`s fate will be decided in South Carolina, the southern state which votes first in the wake of New Hampshire. If he does not win there, his campaign could be as good as dead by February. Though Clark leads some polls in this state, he faces a strong challenge from Senator John Edwards, who is from North Carolina.

Clark`s troubles are in sharp contrast to the performance of Dean, who has built up a fanatical following from his consistent criticism of the war in Iraq. If Dean notches up quick victories in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, he could coast to the nomination.

Dean has collected a huge pile of campaign cash from tens of thousands of people, much of it over the internet. Like Bush, Dean has pulled out of government-funded campaign finance, freeing him to raise as much as he can from private sources.

`Winning campaigns quickly suck up all the oxygen. That will give him the the three Ms: media, money and momentum,` said Zogby.

Dean will need the money. While he hopes to match the record electoral war chest of $100 million that Bush raised in 2000, the President`s latest campaign has already surpassed that and is now on its way to raising perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars.

Whoever wins, next year`s election will be the most expensive in history.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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John Gray: Chaos reigns. Just watch them cut and run
23 November 2003


George Bush`s state visit to Britain was a photo opportunity for a faltering president planning a hasty exit from Iraq in the run-up to next November`s election. With the hideous attacks in Istanbul, it turned into an opportunity to display grim resolution in the face of a ruthless enemy. Flanked by the British Prime Minister as his loyal lieutenant, the President insisted that the atrocities would in no way alter American policies.

We should take Mr Bush at his word. Al-Qa`ida-linked suicide bombers blasting British targets in Turkey will not change America`s policies. The war on terror will continue, but against a background of an escalating guerrilla conflict in Iraq. American forces will adopt a harsher stance, using air power to attack suspected terrorist sites, but they will do so as a prelude to a disorderly retreat that will leave radical Islam the single most powerful force in the country. The Iraqi state could break up, leaving the entire region desperately unstable.

The decisive factor in this unfolding catastrophe will not be al-Qa`ida but the exigencies of US politics. There may well now be a majority of American voters who have misgivings about the war, and Mr Bush is not going to risk his chances of a second term in office if he can help it. Aside from the quickening flow of body bags, America`s adventure in Iraq is hugely expensive. When it clashes with the imperatives of domestic politics, Iraq is expendable.

Invading and occupying Iraq was never justified by any clear national interest. Since the end of the first Gulf War, Saddam has posed no serious threat to the US or to Britain. No evidence has ever existed of a connection between him and al-Qa`ida - though in the chaos of post-war Iraq the remnants of the regime may be linking up with radical Islamists to attack US forces.

None of the reasons given for waging the Iraq war has ever held water. At the same time, it was always going to be counter-productive in terms of dealing with al-Qa`ida. Fighting terrorism is much more a type of police work than an exercise in conventional warfare. America`s armoury of hi-tech weapons ensured a swift victory over Saddam`s army, but they are worse than useless in a guerrilla war. By attacking Iraq, the Bush administration has created an ideal environment for terrorism.

The war has only harmed the struggle against al-Qa`ida - as was forecast time and again by diplomats, defence experts and Middle East specialists in the run-up to the war. Why then was it waged? And why did Mr Blair embroil Britain so deeply in it? As far as the Americans are concerned, the answer lies partly in geopolitical calculations linked to oil. In the Prime Minister`s case, part of the explanation is his misguided belief that by showing unstinting public support for American policies he can be privately influential in moderating their excesses. Yet I believe a more decisive factor than either of these to be the unprecedented power of neo-conservative ideology - not only in Washington, but also in No 10.

In his Banqueting Hall speech in London the President outlined the Bush doctrine, in which regime change in Iraq is a move in a larger strategy to reshape the Middle East in an American image. Bush plans to export an American version of democracy throughout the Middle East.

It is a grandiose enterprise that has an irresistible appeal for Mr Blair. The Prime Minister`s evangelical instincts find little scope in the mundane world of British politics. His role as Mr Bush`s cheerleader seems to give him an intoxicating sense of righteousness - while placing him reassuringly on the side of the big battalions. With US power backing his pretensions to world statesmanship, Mr Blair can hope to be remembered for something more than his modest achievements in the domestic arena.

The Prime Minister`s hopes are naive. Toppling dictators confers an invigorating sense of virtue, but the alternative to secular authoritarian regimes such as Saddam`s Iraq is not democracy, but a populist version of theocracy. The attempt to export democracy will condemn the Middle East to decades of instability and war, with radical Islam being the beneficiary.

As the neo-conservative publicist and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle boasted when he admitted the war in Iraq to be illegal in a recent debate in London, the Bush administration is happy to ignore international law when it stands in the way of US interests. Equally, the President will cheerfully abandon Iraq the moment it becomes an electoral liability. As is shown in his tilt to protectionism over the past year, domestic political considerations take priority over everything else.

In terms of his view of the world, Mr Blair is a neo-conservative. Like his friends in the White House, he sees America as the embodiment of human progress. Unlike them, he does not call the shots. Having followed the Bush administration into an unnecessary and unwinnable war, he must now do its bidding as it prepares to cut and run - leaving Iraq in chaos, the terrorists who struck in Istanbul stronger, and British citizens at greater risk. It will guarantee Mr Blair a place in the history books - but not, I suspect, the one he has in mind.

John Gray is the author of `Al Qaeda and What It Means To be Modern` (Faber and Faber)
23 November 2003 11:23



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Revealed: what the tearful President told the grieving relatives of Britain`s war dead
By Severin Carrell
23 November 2003


It was an unscripted moment in a morning of minutely choreographed state ceremony. It was the moment the three-year-old son of a British soldier killed in Iraq looked President George Bush in the face and said: "My daddy is up in heaven."

Mr Bush`s face crumpled, and he stuttered the reply: "Oh, I`m so sorry."

Beck Seymour had, in one short sentence, disarmed the world`s most powerful leader and caught the emotions of a room full of war widows and grieving families.

Beck was with his mother, Lianne Seymour, the widow of Commando Ian Seymour, a young soldier killed in a US special forces helicopter crash on the opening day of the Iraq war. And, alone among the 17 other parents, widows and soldiers alongside her, she challenged the President on his policies in Iraq and failure to find Saddam Hussein`s alleged stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

"He came and spoke to me, and he just said: `I`m so sorry for your loss`, and I didn`t say anything," she said. "I just looked him straight in the face. He said `it must be terrible for you`, and I just said `you have no idea how hard it is`."

The Seymours, from Poole, Dorset, were part of a carefully selected group of 19 people - the relatives of Britain`s war dead and serving soldiers - chosen to meet Mr and Mrs Bush last Thursday morning during an official visit to honour Britain`s war dead at Westminster Abbey.

Mr Bush and his wife, Laura, had arrived at the abbey for a short, sombre service to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, sign the visitors` book and receive a talk on the history of the building.

The abbey ceremony is a routine part of every state visit. But on Thursday, Mr Bush departed from protocol by arranging a private and emotion-charged meeting with the relatives of British marines, airmen, sailors and soldiers killed in Britain`s most recent war - Iraq. It was an event where the President used his home-spun personal style to great effect. He won over each family - even Mrs Seymour.

The families gathered in the 14th-century wood-panelled Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. The Bushes swept in with a small entourage, including White House officials, a senior family welfare officer from the Ministry of Defence and the President`s photographer.

Mr Bush greeted each family in turn, took their hands, grasped their shoulders, and immediately passed on his condolences. Tony Maddison, the step-father of Marine Chris Maddison, killed in a "friendly-fire" incident near Basra, had travelled with his wife Julie from Scarborough with plans to ask the President how he planned to solve the dire situation in Iraq.

Mr Maddison, however, was tongue-tied and over-awed by their three-minute chat with the President. "I would say he`s the most genuine guy I have ever met," he said. "He`s much lampooned - people take the mickey. What a genuine guy. I have a totally different opinion ... there was a tear in his eye.

"He took the initiative away, he came across so genuine. He wasn`t there for arguments or opinions. He was there to give his condolences to us. We were introduced by the welfare officer and then he spoke to us and told us that we will prevail and we wouldn`t be beaten by just thugs and terrorists, and he passed on his heartfelt condolences."

Mrs Seymour had steeled herself for the meeting and took several breaths before she began talking. She told the President: "I have a three-year-old little boy who I have to bring up completely on my own now and the papers and the press are constantly reporting that there are no weapons of mass destruction. You and Mr Blair are constantly trying to reaffirm the fact that this isn`t all in vain. I have to see that every day, on top of grieving for my husband." At this point, she said, "Beck chirped up and told him his `daddy was in heaven`, and Mr Bush`s face just like fell, and he said, `Oh, I`m so sorry`.

"I just said at the end of the day, my husband went away and his last words to his little boy were `I`m going to make this a better world for other little boys and girls`. I said [to Mr Bush] `that`s your duty now, you`ve got to make sure that happens`. And he`s like `I promise to do my best.` That was that really, he just went to talk to the others, and then came back for photos, which was very awkward."

The meeting was, she said, "very strange" and "bizarre". But the tense and sombre atmosphere was lightened by her son. "Beck was very much the ice-breaker. He lifted the spirit in the room. He was running around and looking out for helicopters and snipers up on the roof. He gave everyone something else to focus on. I don`t think the President was expecting to see any children there. It`s the true reality of the situation isn`t it?"

The meeting was ultimately unsatisfactory, she said, since even the US President could not bring her husband back. Yet even she was disarmed by him. "It`s really hard, I don`t like to say this, but I actually think he was quite genuine. He seemed genuinely quite upset and quite emotional. His wife didn`t say anything to me. I don`t think I heard her speak once, and to be honest, she looked the disengaged one.

"I only ever judge people when I meet them. And although I don`t like his politics or what he`s done, as the person I saw stood opposite me, I actually think I would get on well with him if I met him at a dinner party. I think he would be easy to get on with, he`s very personable. But that`s different from his politics."
23 November 2003 11:27



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 23, 2003
General Clark on the Hustings: Complexity and Contradiction
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Gen. Wesley K. Clark was losing his voice. He was whispering. It was also true that he was hungry and in a bakery. There was no chance he was leaving empty-handed.

This was on a public-spirited afternoon in the torpid drizzle of Nashua, N.H. He deliberated before the high-caloric options beckoning in the bakery case.

Maybe it simply suited his eye. Maybe it was the name. He selected an Everything Bar.

He paid, swiveled on his heels and walked off.

"What did you get?" one of his phalanx of handlers inquired.

"It`s called an Everything Bar," he whispered. "I`m an inclusive candidate. I want Democrats. I want Republicans. I want independents. I want people who have never voted before. I want everything."

Early on, Wesley Clark demonstrated a certainty about what he wanted to make of himself, and it was a lot. To him, stasis is intolerable. He does seem to want, and perhaps expect, everything.

His dizzying expectations come with a particular angle on reality. Dale Vesser, a retired lieutenant general who taught him philosophy at West Point, said: "He`s always been interested in exploring the limits, what are the limits to expanding one`s horizons. He thinks like an epistemologist."

Both people who admire Wesley Clark and those who do not (including a subgenre consisting of enough Army generals to conquer the world) are struck by his cerebral prowess and jumbo ambition. In judging him, people tend to diverge on his ambition: to what extent is it fired by altruism and to what extent by self-aggrandizement? Is he all about "duty," as he says, or is he all about "Wes," as some detractors say? Or some of both?

At 58, General Clark is not big, but he is lean and fit, with ramrod posture, his body seemingly steam-pressed. He exudes intensity interlaced with charm, and there is something unflinching about him. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., a West Point classmate, said: "He always looks you dead in the eye. He never blinks. I don`t think he has tear ducts."

Running largely on the oomph of a protean 34-year Army career and his condemnation of the Iraq war and its aftermath, he resists easy classification and does not cohere to any conventional political nomenclature or credo. He sums himself up by saying: "I`m a proven leader. I`m a visionary. I think a lot about the future, but I try to be pragmatic and not dogmatic about issues."

All of which is to say that General Clark is complicated. The very conjunction of general and Democrat suggests complication. Could someone who voted for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the first George Bush, Bill Clinton and Al Gore be anything but complicated? Could someone who as supreme allied commander of NATO presided over its 1999 victory in Kosovo and then summarily lost his job be anything but complicated?

A defender of civil rights, he is suspicious of the post-9/11 antiterrorism law and wants to see bookmobiles chug around the country with copies of it so people will understand its dark implications. And yet he favors a constitutional amendment to outlaw defiling the American flag. Complicated.

One more indicator: In searching for an aperture into civilian life, he sketched out three fresh careers. First he would enter business and amass $40 million (a figure he plucked out of the air to have a goal) and metamorphose into a modest version of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist. That done, he would recede into a university and teach leadership. He would also work at compressing his golf handicap (last seen stuck at 18) in preparation for Career No. 3: a teaching golf professional.

A Plato-quoting Rhodes scholar four-star Army general stationed on the practice range, reconfiguring errant swings? Correct. In golf, he finds profundity. "Golf is like life," he said. "When you learn a sport, you go through the cycle of humility. You learn about yourself."

He did not get deep into these new realms. He managed to round up roughly one-twentieth of the $40 million he sought before he detoured into Career No. 4, which he crisply introduces at each campaign stop: "I`m Wes Clark. I`m running for president."

A Toy Soldier Childhood

It was Army early for Wesley Clark. So yes, when he was a boy in Little Rock, Ark., he built the biggest toy soldier collection among his friends and had model bombers dangling from his ceiling. He lived on Valentine Street across from a family named Loveless and persuaded his playmate Wally Loveless to buy a Japanese bomber because when they played war he needed an enemy.

This was after he had left Chicago, where he was born two days before Christmas, 1944. His father was Benjamin Kanne, a lawyer; his mother, Veneta Updegraff, a bank secretary; no siblings. He was destined to see more than his share of death. Before he was even 4, his father died of a heart attack.

His mother made him the envy of his friends because she could curl her tongue and whistle as no mother could whistle. She remarried, to Victor Clark, a man who had conquered a drinking habit, who had walked out on his first wife and son, who struggled at making a living: selling mutual funds, trying a worm and cricket ranch, finally working for the revenue department. But he endeared himself to Wesley Clark, who gained a father lost by another boy. General Clark said he thought about that transference all the time, concluding only, "It was strange."

His stepfather told him to find a sport he could excel at, and he found swimming, which remains his preferred exercise. His coach taught him about manhood and courage. In practice they swam without suits and if his times were not up to snuff, he would be get whacked by the coach with a wet towel. Yes indeed, his times improved.

And of course, other forces converged on him. The cold war. The Korean War, and a neighbor who had returned from it shellshocked, who would mutter hollowly: "The Chinese, they just keep coming."

Perhaps above all, there was Sputnik. Hearing about it when he was 12 frightened him. He started launching model rockets and went to a college library to try to teach himself Russian. He figured it would allow him to better comprehend the enemy.

Intent on safeguarding the country, he first envisioned the Navy. He had a picture of his deceased father in naval attire, and a book about Annapolis. But he learned that he was nearsighted and that glasses precluded Annapolis.

A cadet from West Point came to town to speak, and afterward Wesley asked, "Can you wear glasses and go to West Point?" The cadet said yes, and right then he knew.

Can chalk fall upward?

Waiting to do a television interview in New York, General Clark said, "My physics teacher at West Point told me: `Whenever I drop a piece of chalk I always look up, because according to quantum physics there is always a small chance that it will fly up. So if it happens I want to see it.` "

He says things like that. Discount nothing. This sort of roving, restless mind made the academic side of West Point a cakewalk.

At the academy, classes shrank. Plebes dropped out — burned out, shocked out, run out. General Clark said he never considered leaving, not even during his worst moments, and everyone had worst moments.

This was his: In his plebe year, he was lined up for shower formation, and he was supposed to "brace," which meant tuck his chin in, and he could not help it, he smiled. That was bad enough, but then he did the unthinkable: he giggled.

Four superiors stuffed him into an open-faced locker. One started pounding his fist on one side, while another pounded on the opposite side and a third clambered atop the locker and banged from above. He had to stare straight ahead, because you were not supposed to move your eyeballs, and he had a bad case of swiveling eyeballs ("I was curious about things"). The hooks inside the locker were grinding against his head. And it was getting alarming until an officer ordered him released; General Clark has always thought the very best of that man.

He ceased giggling, tamed the eyeballs. He mopped up information. John Wheeler, a classmate, insists he saw him read "Darkness at Noon" in 45 minutes.

Always, he thought unconventionally. General Scales, his classmate, offered this: "They say in the military that you bring to your boss three solutions: one that`s too hot, one that`s too cold and one that`s just right. That`s called the Goldilocks solution. You have an answer and you steer him to it.

"Wes doesn`t recognize the Goldilocks solution. He`ll say: `Well maybe we shouldn`t eat any porridge. And why are there bears in here? And who is this Goldilocks character wandering around? And by the way, what is the whole purpose of fairy tales?` And this drives some people nuts."

His was the Class of 1966, a class that suffered more deaths and injuries in Vietnam than any other, one that might be expected to see the world differently.

He graduated first in this class and went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Vietnam was an inflammable subject, and he defended American involvement, often overwhelmed. Once, after a rancorous debate, a young Communist sympathizer approached him and said: "You are killing our comrades in Vietnam. Now we will kill you." There might have been a knife brandished.

"I looked at his face and I knew it wasn`t a joke," General Clark said. "I felt my ears start to burn." The man was dragged off.

Gertrude, his wife — at that point they had been married only a matter of months — shook all that night. Neither slept.

Advancement and Resentment

Hornets. That is what he thought: They had to be hornets. In Ranger school, they cautioned him about hornets in Vietnam, and when he heard a buzzing, he thought, well, sure enough. It was February 1970, and he was leading a scout patrol on an inconsequential mission. He had dropped his rifle and there was a spot on his hand, a spot on his leg. Not hornets, but AK-47 fire raking his body, four hits. But he shepherded his men to safety and received a Silver Star.

Vietnam transformed most of its combatants, eliminated their certainties. Dale Vesser, General Clark`s teacher at West Point, said of his experience: "I thought of myself as a liberal until the first person in Vietnam tried to kill me. Then I thought of myself as a conservative." The war disenchanted so many of Wesley Clark`s classmates that they fled the Army in droves.

Vietnam only made Wesley Clark more certain that he was where he ought to be. "Stephen Crane wrote a book called `The Red Badge of Courage,` " he said recently. "I think when you are wounded and you shed blood for your country, it binds you to it in a way nothing else can."

Vietnam did not even surprise him. Where Jack Wheeler saw Vietnam as a "terrible blind date," General Clark always felt he had a photo in his pocket.

"I`d done a lot of studying and a lot of thinking about it going in," he said. "What I saw there wasn`t any different from my expectations.

"I wasn`t angry. I liked the Army. I`d been treated well. I was part of the team."

But for his family, Army life was unusual. His only child, Wesley Jr., now 33 and a screenwriter, remembered men with patches over their eyes or hooks instead of hands visiting the house. Until the end, there was never much money. Wesley Jr. recalled excessive amounts of canned tuna over white rice, and said, "To this day, I don`t feel comfortable ordering appetizers."

By and large, the jobs General Clark got in the Army were fix-it jobs, turnaround jobs where he often replaced fired officers. He worked on shattered morale, on developing an all-volunteer army, on ways to reduce casualties from friendly fire. If you did jobs like these well, you bred resentment. His performance reviews were extravagant in their praise. He bred resentment.

"Wes was always looked on as too well educated, too wired, too good-looking," said Barry McCaffrey, a retired general who admires him. "He`s not a simple crunch soldier. The Rhodes scholars have always been a little suspect in the Army."

General Clark concedes that he was foolhardy in 1981, when he allowed himself to be celebrated in The Washington Post Magazine as "the perfect modern soldier." In the Army, a friend pointed out, the second-worst thing you can do is to be part of something that shames the Army, and the worst is to glorify yourself. One Army contemporary called him up and said with a chuckle, "I just wanted to pay my last respects before they lowered the casket into the ground."

The pinnacle of his career was the NATO post and Kosovo. But in maneuvering relentlessly for his strategy, he clashed with the highest echelons, including Gen. H. Hugh Shelton, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and William S. Cohen, secretary of defense, and his military career ended abruptly. Both men have commented unfavorably on General Clark`s presidential candidacy.

Indeed, since declaring his candidacy, he has been tailed by a scolding chorus of retired generals (some of whom have never met him). For instance: "He`s so ruthlessly ambitious that he always looks up and doesn`t ever look sideways or down at his peers or subordinates," said Paul Funk, a retired general who was once his boss. "I would not call him your consummate team player."

Brig. Gen. David Grange, now retired from the Army, said: "He was very mission oriented. I wasn`t sure he was always aware of the concerns of the people around him."

Then there are the officers who take the opposite view. "I`m not saying he`s the second coming of Jesus Christ or Abraham Lincoln," said Maj. Gen. David Meade, "but I think he`s a good American. If you wired up Wes to a C.I.A. lie detector, I`ll bet he`d say, `I`ve got a gift and I`m lucky and I just feel I should do my best.` I don`t think the needle would move on the meter."

At times, the churlishness rankles General Clark. On the phone recently with a friend, he said of the generals: "I`m not going to be stopped by Army gossip. We`re trying to save the country here."

An hour later, he fielded a question at a campaign stop full of jovial buzz in Bow, N.H., and there it was again: what about these generals taking him apart?

Afterward in the car, relaxing with his advisers, he said: "At least I don`t have to worry about `Seven Days in May.` I thought if I ran they might think, `The generals are taking over the country.` They`re not. They`re all voting on the other side."

Of Integrals and Axes

Aboard an airplane, Atlanta to Los Angeles, munching pistachios, he leaned forward and adopted his best Serbian accent. He was no longer Wesley Clark. He was the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic: "Please. It not problem. Please cooperate. Please General Clark. Treat with respect."

He shook his head: "Yeah, right."

He enjoys mimicry. He particularly likes to mimic the enemy. "It`s a way to get your hands around their minds," he said.

How about Howard Dean? Do a Gephardt.

He would not go there.

Not polished at self-concealment, he has been dogged by opponents` suggestions that he has vacillated on the Iraq war. In some early commentary he applauded the triumph of the troops, and he blundered by saying once that he probably would have voted to authorize war. But people who saw him in private settings before the war say he always had misgivings about it.

"I would not have wanted to see the United States go to war," he said. "Once we crossed the border, I wouldn`t have wanted to see the United States forces defeated. I wouldn`t have wanted to see the United States waver, suddenly say, `Gee, we`ve lost 10 people, turn back, let`s get out of here.` "

Complicated.

Even his religion gets murky. His father was Jewish, but General Clark did not learn that until long after his death. He was raised a Baptist but in Vietnam converted to Roman Catholicism, his wife`s religion, because he liked the structure and rigor of the church. Now he attends a Presbyterian church (though he has not formally renounced Catholicism), because he says his wife prefers the preacher and services. And then there was the matter of some "problems" at some Catholic services.

Like what? He mentioned a service in Colorado, on a Fourth of July weekend, in which the priest said the Revolutionary War was not something to be celebrated because war could not be justified under any circumstances. Fuming, General Clark walked out.

He was asked about how his mind worked.

"I always had good spatial orientation," he said. "I always saw big patterns in life and how things would move."

He offered two examples. The first was from high school. The math class was trying to figure out how to integrate x sin(x). The textbook was silent on it. "All of a sudden I realized how to integrate x sin(x)," he said. "And I was so incredibly happy."

Then he described a military exercise in Germany, a complex assignment involving penetrating woods that might be impenetrable, dealing with an enemy`s reserves, scrambling radio signals. He sketched an imaginative plan on the back of an envelope, and quickly prevailed. It was suggested he had to have been cheating to win so swiftly. It was run again. Same result.

"That`s how I think," he said.

Assess yourself, he was asked. He waved it off. "Describe myself in 10 words?" he said. "You`ve got to give me a series of axes. Lay it out on a series of dimensions."

Then he laid them out himself. He rated himself more warm than cool, more humble than arrogant, as intelligent, as intense ("if you catch me in my A quality time; if you catch me in my D quality time, I can hardly pay attention to you").

In only one dimension did he award himself a middling grade: listening.

"Sometimes I listen, sometimes I don`t," he said. "It`s an area that I constantly pay attention to, because when time is short and people start down a path that you`ve been briefed on before, sometimes you say, `Wait, I understand what you`re going to say.` I know that`s not the right thing to say, but I have said that in the past."

There was a man outside a restaurant in Nashua. He wanted to shake hands, have a word. His handlers told General Clark he did not have to, the man was maybe a little mixed up, maybe not all there.

He shook the man`s hand and locked eyes with him, and the man told him about serving in the Air Force, believing in the military, and now being a cabdriver, telling him which cab company he drove for and the number of his cab — too much information.

General Clark listened and smiled. Time ticked by, and then he thanked the man and said he needed his vote.

The man saluted. The general saluted.

The man raised his fist in the air, and pumped. The general raised his fist in the air, and pumped.


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 23, 2003
FRANK RICH
When You Got It, Flaunt It

If it`s sex you`re looking for, America`s two most widely viewed porn videos of the year, starring Paris Hilton and L. Dennis Kozlowski, are nothing if not limp. Ms. Hilton`s unimaginative exhibition, still playing on an Internet site near you, is as darkly lighted as a faded stag reel from the silent era. The hot parts of Mr. Kozlowski`s $2 million toga party in Sardinia — so risible they were edited out of the version shown to jurors at his fraud trial — include a guest "mooning" the camera, an ice sculpture of Michelangelo`s "David" urinating Stoli, and a life-size woman-shaped cake with sparklers protruding from her breasts. Low camp hasn`t had this high a budget since Bob Guccione made his movie of "Caligula."

But of course we want to see these videos anyway. Their real pull has to do with capital, not carnality. Money remains the last guilty pleasure in America. The obscenely rich engaging in conspicuous consumption or conspicuously idiotic behavior is the only excess that hasn`t lost its power to amuse, titillate and shock. People watch Paris Hilton make a fool of herself because she`s an heir to the $300 million Hilton hotel fortune, not because her wares top the thousands of competitors in this country`s overstocked erotic supermarket. We watch Mr. Kozlowski`s bacchanal not because we want to see his parade of go-go boys in Speedos but because he has been charged with helping loot Tyco of more money than the Hiltons may possess. It`s more fun to watch someone caught in the act of being rich than caught having sex. Could Koz, as he`s known in the tabs, possibly top that $6,000 shower curtain, that $15,000 umbrella stand? His bash — a San Simeon reverie as it might have been juiced up by Siegfried and Roy — did exactly that.

Our conflicted attitude about money, old and new, runs deep. There is nothing more American than piling up wealth, and yet nothing more un-American than showing it off. "When you got it, flaunt it!" roars Max Bialystock in "The Producers." But when you advertise your riches in America, you are setting yourself up as a clown. MTV`s new reality show "Rich Girls" and Fox`s coming Paris Hilton series, "The Simple Life," both bank on the premise that there`s a large audience that wants a bigger helping of what Mr. Kozlowski and Ms. Hilton have teased us with this fall: the unexpurgated spectacle of the filthy rich behaving like pigs.

In keeping with the general hypocrisy about the upper class, these shows have already whipped up some moral outrage. In "Rich Girls," Ally Hilfiger, daughter of Tommy, and a less attractive sidekick are shown doing "damage" in Prada and expressing their patronizing concern for plebian New Yorkers, notably Prada salespeople and "garbage men." In "The Simple Life," which has its premiere on Dec. 2, Ms. Hilton and her own less attractive sidekick are airlifted from 90210 to the Ozarks for a monthlong live-in with a farm family. The gags fly when they pluck chickens, drive a pick-up and tease locals who don`t know the term "threeway."

Coarse? Usually. Silly? Always. But the zeal with which all four rich girls throw themselves into their shows may be some kind of breakthrough — a step toward candor in our national nonconversation about wealth. They are not pretending to be what they`re not. They`ve got it, God knows, and no one`s going to stop them from flaunting it. This guilt-free hedonism is a refreshing break from the norm in our post-bubble culture, where faux populism has become de rigueur among the wealthy in the public eye. We are awash in ambitious rich people, from the political arena on down, who play up their humble roots and down-home habits, however few or fictional in reality, to sell us products or themselves.

This phenomenon was typified by Martha Stewart as she tried to salvage her image and business in an interview with Barbara Walters two weeks ago. The doyenne of East Hampton and, until last year, the New York Stock Exchange is now repositioning herself as a direct descendant of Ma Kettle, if not Ma Joad. We were reminded that her maiden name is Polish and that she grew up without "a silver spoon in her mouth" in a "working-class town" (Nutley, N.J.) where her household had six kids and one bathroom. Soon came the tender tableau of the present-day Ms. Stewart rising at dawn to feed her chickens. Ms. Stewart seemed unaware that she was coming off as Marie Antoinette — a humorless contrast to Ms. Hilton, who on "The Simple Life" treats her similar encounters with livestock as a joke and knows that she`s the punch line. Ms. Stewart also reminisced about riding up Madison Avenue on that celebratory day in 1999 when she rang the bell to open the stock exchange. "I could actually buy pretty much anything in these shops," she remembered thinking. "But I didn`t." Had she owned up to doing damage at Prada, or even Barneys, she might not have inspired laughter when reassuring us that the money saved on that ImClone trade amounted to a mere ".006 percent" of her net worth.

The perfect bookend to Ms. Stewart is Bill O`Reilly, another fabulously wealthy American entertainer who has burnished his humble roots to flog his product line. In his first book he wrote that he had grown up in lower middle-class Levittown, N.Y. — only to be corrected by Newsday, which reported that Mr. No Spin Zone grew up in Westbury, a middle-class suburb near Levittown. Mr. O`Reilly went ballistic over being stripped of his blue collar. He defends his original poor-mouthing by saying that his family`s house was built by Levitt and that his parents lived so modestly that they had to buy used cars. It`s touching, really.

But Ms. Stewart and Mr. O`Reilly only aspire to hustle their omnimedia. When this kind of posturing comes from politicians vying for our vote in an election year, it`s harder to laugh. At a minimum it makes one nostalgic for the day when Roosevelts and Kennedys didn`t pretend to be anything other than the fat cats they were.

The reigning bogus good ole boy in public life remains our blue-blood president, an heir to large and aristocratic American fortunes on both the Bush and Walker sides of his family. Unlike his father, he is not about to be caught asking for "a splash more coffee." On the eve of his visit to London this week, he hit a characteristically phony note when he told an interviewer, "I never dreamt when I was living in Midland, Texas, that I would be staying in Buckingham Palace." Mr. Bush, who was born in New Haven, lived in Midland until only the age of 15 before moving on to such hick venues as Andover, Yale and Harvard when not vacationing in family compounds in Kennebunkport, Me., or Jupiter Island, a tony neighbor of Palm Beach.

Rich Democrats vying to replace him are merely less effective purveyors of the same aw-shucks nonsense. John Kerry is a Boston Brahmin (Mother was a Forbes) and a multi-millionaire in his own right before marrying a half-a-billionaire. Like the president, he`s a Yalie (via St. Paul`s in his case). But in his desperation to save a campaign whose poll numbers are floundering as much as Martha Stewart`s stock price, he has taken to shooting game and playing hockey with firemen in Iowa. He has traded in his Turnbull & Asser shirts for denim and his effete Ducati motorcycle for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onstage to the Leno show just as his top campaign executives fled. "I don`t intend to challenge President Bush to a contest of who`s a more regular guy," Mr. Kerry writes in his new campaign autobiography, "A Call to Service," even as he does so. In the same book, he boasts that he`s "the son of a public employee" (in the diplomatic service) and "a charter member of one of the most selective but fastest-growing sports clubs in the world: the Nascar fans of Massachusetts."

Howard Dean is more forthright about his Yale (via St. George`s) and Park Avenue pedigree — up to a point. On his Web site, a gathering place for smaller donors, his privileged upbringing goes unmentioned, and in the recent "Rock the Vote" debate on CNN he said he had gone to "a college in New Haven, Connecticut." But in his own campaign manifesto, "Winning Back America," he does own up to privilege before moving on to describe his youthful playground of East Hampton as a veritable Levittown with "people of every background living there throughout the year." In Dr. Dean`s deft literary hands, months spent skiing in Aspen after winning a 1-Y deferment from Vietnam for a bad back becomes a "sojourn in the mountains," a quasi-spiritual quest tantamount to a stint in the Peace Corps, if not an ashram.

The sheer dishonesty of our wealthy politicians only increases my admiration for Jamie Johnson, the 24-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune whose justly praised documentary "Born Rich" has its final HBO showing tonight. Mr. Johnson did something no one had done before: he got his rich contemporaries, from families with names like Trump, Newhouse, Bloomberg, Vanderbilt and Whitney, to let a camera into their closed world, embarrassing excesses and all. There`s never been an inside look at the wealthy quite like it on screen. What drove him to do it? "Being afraid to talk about money in a wealth-driven society is a strange paradox," Mr. Johnson said in an interview. "Why not face the realities of your culture honestly and fairly?"

His movie casts our disingenuousness about wealth in a new light, but then again, so do Ms. Hilton`s misadventures in the Ozarks. Are her exhibitionist efforts to go native on an Arkansas farm any less ridiculous than those of rich men purporting to be hayseeds while campaigning for president among the livestock in Iowa? At least Paris Hilton doesn`t want to run the country — not yet, anyway.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraqi City of Mosul

Reuters
Sunday, November 23, 2003; 5:18 AM


MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Attackers slit the throats of two U.S. soldiers while their vehicle was stopped in traffic on Sunday in the center of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, witnesses said.



A spokesman for the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, based in Mosul, confirmed two soldiers had been killed in central Mosul but had no further details.

U.S. soldiers surrounded the vehicle, a white four-wheel-drive car, and interrogated Iraqis in the area, the witnesses said.

The attack brought to 184 the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in action since Washington declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

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Mourners gather at Dallas`s Dealey Plaza near the book depository, from which officials say Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots. Visitors take photos of a memorial on the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza in Dallas



Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg kneels to place flowers on her father`s grave in Arlington National Cemetery.


washingtonpost.com
A Day of Tears, Tributes for JFK
Thousands Visit Grave, 40 Years After Assassination

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page C01


Forty years later, the tears still came quickly for many of the thousands who ventured up the Arlington National Cemetery hillside yesterday to grieve and honor the memory of John F. Kennedy.

They came to the former president`s grave site, some with just-like-yesterday memories of the shock of his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. Others came with a deep affection for or curiosity about a leader they know from history books and parents` stories.

Forty white roses were strewn atop the Cape Cod granite stones that mark his grave site, left by Kennedy family members during a private morning prayer service. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, led the family -- including Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her husband and three children, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Robert F. Kennedy`s widow, Ethel -- in prayers near the eternal flame that has burned since Jacqueline Kennedy lit it the day of her husband`s funeral.

By mid-afternoon, after an estimated 5,000 people had trekked quietly up the hill -- tourists by the busload, young families, older couples and student groups -- visitors started placing flowers on top of other flowers on the grave. Kennedy is buried there with his wife, who died in 1994, and his infant son and a stillborn daughter.

About three dozen people had gathered before 8 a.m., when the public was allowed to enter, hoping to be among the first to visit. Among them was Richard Baulcomb, 43, who had traveled from Sussex, England, to pay tribute to a leader whose loss he said is still mourned worldwide. He and his wife, Lorraine, would have come twice the distance, he said, though both were toddlers when Kennedy was killed.

"There`s a longing still for someone like him to be with us again," Baulcomb said. "That`s why people are coming here in droves. Seldom today do you hear presidents say the things he did. I hope one day a person comes here, will be inspired by his words, and lead this country to greater things, as he did."

Shari Francis, a high school senior when the president was shot, paused to read Kennedy`s 1961 inaugural address, engraved near the tomb, and wiped a tear.

" . . . with a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love."

Francis said Kennedy showed her that the country was not just white, middle-class families like those in her snug St. Louis neighborhood, and that presidents did not have to be cynical people.

"With his presidency, I realized there were other people in our country who were being mistreated and discriminated against," she said. "I was just becoming aware that leadership could make a difference, that a president could be more than just a figurehead."

Tears spilled from Peter Langmore`s eyes as he stepped away from the grave. Langmore, 58, a former Kennedy campaign worker, had driven 11 hours on Friday from Stokes Bay, Ontario, to honor the person whose philosophies, he said, led him to a career in charity fundraising.

"I just believed in this president so much," Langmore said. "He believed in the equality of everybody."

Terri Bearman, 50, said she comes to the grave every five years to remind herself of the hopefulness of that era. "It was the last time I was really proud of my president and my government," she said.

One visitor left on the grave a framed picture of the smiling president and his wife in her pink suit -- taken minutes before Lee Harvey Oswald shot at the president`s convertible in a motorcade through Dallas. Others left notes, flags of different countries, and bunches of pansies, roses, lilies and carnations.

Edward Kennedy, in a statement on behalf of the Kennedy family, thanked those who keep his brother`s memory: "It means a great deal to all the members of my family to see such an enormous outpouring of respect and affection for President Kennedy on this still heartbreaking anniversary."

Yesterday evening, the senator was among the hundreds of people who attended a Mass for the slain president at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle in the District, where Kennedy`s funeral Mass was conducted.

A choir accompanied by organ and harp resounded through the recently renovated cathedral.

"It was like going back in time," said Everett Kinsman of Bethesda, who was a member of the 1963 choir that sang during the funeral Mass. He recalled looking into the audience 40 years ago and seeing a host of foreign dignitaries. The country has not has Kennedy`s caliber of leadership since, he said.

Sharon Whittle of the District said after the service that she was 14 when Kennedy died and was so moved by his idealism that she campaigned for his brother Robert. "Now I`m an educator," Whittle said, partly because of Kennedy`s call to public service. "I took that seriously."

Not all those at the grave site had personal memories of the president. At 36, Tom Burke was born after Kennedy died, but was fascinated by stories from his parents, who married the day after the assassination. Burke stopped with his wife, Kim, and their children, on a car trip from Durham, N.C., to Boston, saying he had retold the stories to their 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.

For a group of eighth-graders from rural Indiana, the visit started a seminar on what qualities make a great leader. They admitted they knew little about Kennedy other than, as Shedana Par, 13, said: "He was trying to do good things and got shot in his convertible."

Alicia Antonia, who recently moved to the United States from Colombia, said through an interpreter that Kennedy is beloved in her native country. "Yes, I like Kennedy very much," she then said, without translation. "Respect very much."

Staff writer Robin Shulman contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

On a balmy fall day, thousands of people found their way to the Kennedy grave site on an Arlington hillside.

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washingtonpost.com
Vision and Reality

Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page B06


AFTER A MASSIVE buildup of gloomy expectations -- and notwithstanding the toppling of an improvised statue in Trafalgar Square -- President Bush was reasonably well received in Britain last week. Partly this may have been due to his sense of humor in responding to the protests. Mostly, however, Mr. Bush won praise for the message he delivered. He stoutly defended the war in Iraq and offered no concessions on such sensitive issues as the detainees at the Guantanamo naval base. But in a speech at Whitehall Palace, he articulated a vision for how the United States, Britain, and other Western nations could address the world together, one that varied sharply from the common European perception of Mr. Bush as a unilateralist who would rely mainly on the preemptive use of force. The president cited "three pillars" of his policy: encouraging "the strength and effectiveness of international institutions"; using "force when necessary in the defense of freedom"; and promoting "an ideal of democracy in every part of the world."

Taken together, the president`s agenda is one that most Europeans, and most Americans, could support. For now, however, skepticism may be a common reaction. The Bush administration`s policies of the last two years couldn`t easily be described by the "three pillars." If practice is to follow vision, some significant changes will have to be made -- and the correction will need to start in Iraq.

Mr. Bush tried hard, for example, to assure his audience that he still believes "in the international institutions and alliances that America helped to form," and he promised to do everything possible to prevent the United Nations from becoming irrelevant. Yet the United Nations is at the brink of irrelevance in Iraq, in large part because the administration excludes it from any meaningful role in managing the political transition. Most other "institutions and alliances" are also missing, from the World Bank to NATO. Partly this is due to security fears after a string of deadly bombings, and it will now be difficult to coax U.N. administrators into returning. But they, like others, would be more ready to make a commitment if the United States offered a genuine partnership rather than a subordinate role.

The president`s assertion of the need for "violent restraint of violent men" resonated in a week during which terrorist bombings killed dozens of innocent people in Turkey, as did his vow not to be driven out of Iraq by "a band of thugs and assassins." But the toughness the president promises contrasts with his plans to draw down American forces in Iraq by 20 percent in the coming months and the race by his commanders to hand off responsibility for security to lightly trained and poorly equipped Iraqi recruits. When the president suggested at a press conference that he would be prepared to increase the number of U.S. forces, aides hastened to tell reporters that no such step was planned. We hope that U.S. forces fighting the Iraqi resistance will prove as steadfast as Mr. Bush says -- but for now, at least, the thugs and assassins are getting a mixed message.

The same would be true of the world`s dictators, in the Middle East and beyond. The president`s commitment to democracy will ring hollow in the nations of Central Asia, where the Bush administration has established military bases while doing little to stop violent repression -- or in Zimbabwe, which Mr. Bush named in his speech but where U.S. action is nonexistent. Even in the Middle East, the administration`s repeated announcements of a changed policy have yet to alter relationships with autocrats like Egypt`s Hosni Mubarak. Like his broader global strategy, Mr. Bush`s vision of democratic change is a good one. It will attract many supporters once he proves that he is serious about making it real.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bringing Germany Around


By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page B07


American efforts to push Arab states and the Palestinians to embrace democracy may be a case of too little too soon, suggests Joschka Fischer, the wry ex-radical given the task of stabilizing Germany`s ragged relations with the United States.

"Modernization in the Middle East is not only about politics. It is also about development and economics," the German foreign minister said the other day during his second fence-mending visit to Washington in six months. Broad political change of the kind envisioned by President Bush will come to the region only when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been resolved, he added.

Fischer sought to paint in soft hues this divide in U.S.-European official thinking about the Middle East. Understandable; his primary mission on this journey was to ease the sour mood that once again envelops Bush and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Fischer`s sophisticated demurral shows that the bold "forward strategy" of change that Bush has proposed for the Middle East has not yet commandeered the European support it deserves and needs.

Fortunately, that does not mean that Bush will -- or should -- quit trying to rally the Europeans to a more sustained and focused questioning of a collapsing status quo in the Arab world. Facing a common enemy, Americans and Europeans need a common strategy. Bush`s approach may not be sufficient to deal with the problem, as Fischer suggests, but it is a necessary starting point for a joint effort.

American presidents do not habitually condemn foreign policies of the past nine administrations as a whole, especially when one of the preceding presidents is the incumbent`s father and another -- Ronald Reagan -- his political idol.

But Bush has done so three times in the past three weeks, beginning with his ringing censure on Nov. 6 of "60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East."

He amplified that theme Wednesday in London, where he called on Europe to look honestly at the horrific results of "decades of failed policy in the Middle East" built on "a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Long-standing ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites" who in the end have offered neither democracy nor stability.

Unspoken but clearly implied was the reality that Presidents George H.W. Bush and Reagan (as well as other American leaders and officials) tolerated the state terrorism practiced by Saddam Hussein and other Arab rulers on their own citizens when it was convenient to do so. They helped plant the seeds of today`s bitter harvest of violence in the region.

The London speech will earn Bush 43 no love from the Washington careerists who preached then and still argue that getting along with dictators is the only option in the Middle East. But the president`s facing up to the failures of that approach should give his call for change in the Middle East credibility with Europe.

Fischer strongly denied that the European Union is lagging behind the United States in the quest for stability-enhancing change. He listed aid projects and money spent, and regularly scheduled discussions between European and Arab leaders, as European Union contributions to calming the region. "The roles of the United States and European Union are different, but their interests are not," he said.

Building a new transatlantic consensus on the Middle East will not be easy. Fischer`s list dealt with institutions and processes rather than the bold ideas and insistence on values voiced by Bush. Moreover, bitterness lingers at the White House over French and German opposition to U.S. policies on Iraq.

Fischer, who as a student led anti-U.S. demonstrations that frequently turned violent, has worked hard as foreign minister to turn the page on Iraq. Bush was sufficiently encouraged to reach out to Schroeder in a high-profile meeting in New York in September.

But the goodwill quickly evaporated when Germany pointedly announced it would provide neither significant financial support for Iraq`s reconstruction nor token military help there. Feeling betrayed a second time, the White House has put Schroeder back in its doghouse, American and European diplomats report.

Fischer and others are hard at work again on this personal trust deficit. They must move urgently to overcome the conceptual gap that has opened between America and Europe over change in the Arab world. Neither continent can afford to neglect any resource available to fight killers who use death as message and means in their combat against both.

[e-mail]



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
41 New Cartoons Today, Sonntag, nur 41 frische Cartoons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20031123__041toons.htm

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November 23, 2003
Three G.I.`s Killed in Separate Attacks in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 7:30 a.m. ET

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) -- Attackers slit the throats of two American soldiers who were waiting in traffic in this northern Iraqi city on Sunday, witnesses said. Another soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

Elsewhere, three American civilian contractors were wounded in an explosion in the northern oil center Kirkuk. First reports said the blast was from a mortar, but Lt. Col. Matt Croke said officials later concluded it was a bomb.

The killings occurred after U.S. helicopter gunships struck targets in central Iraq on Sunday, according to other witnesses.

The bodies of the two male soldiers could be seen lying in the street next to their vehicle in Mosul`s Ras al-Jadda district with their throats cut. The U.S. command in Baghdad said it had no information on the incident.

A 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed Sunday and two others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

In political developments, an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist, Rend Rahim Francke, was chosen as Iraq`s ambassador to the United States.

U.S. officials have warned of more attacks against coalition forces as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan nears its end Tuesday.

The blast in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, occurred overnight on the compound of the National Oil Company. Three American employees of the U.S. firm Kellogg Brown & Root suffered facial cuts from flying glass, Croke said. On Friday, insurgents rocketed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where many KBR employees as well as international journalists and others stay. One civilian was wounded.

``We all know that Americans are being threatened,`` Croke said.

In Samara, about 75 miles north of Baghdad, Iraqi police said six U.S. Apache helicopter gunships blasted marshland after four rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the American military garrison at the northern entrance to the city. One Iraqi passer-by was killed in the air attack.

Also Sunday, a spokeswoman with Iraq`s Governing Council said the body has chosen an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist as its ambassador to the United States.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced Francke`s appointment at a news conference Sunday. Francke led the Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based pro-democracy group, and has helped in post-Saddam Hussein government planning.

She was born in Baghdad but has not lived here full-time in more than 30 years. She became a U.S. citizen in 1987.

``I will sincerely express the ambitions of the Iraqi people and ... take care of the Iraqi community in the United States, which amounts to some 400,000 people,`` Francke told reporters. ``The Iraqi Embassy used to be a source of fear for this community, rather than being a place to render services.``

The appointment will renew diplomatic ties between Washington and Baghdad 13 years after they were severed in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Discussions about appointing an envoy came after an agreement between the Bush administration and the Governing Council to hand over power to a new, transitional Iraqi government by the end of June.

The council also will soon appoint a replacement for a member assassinated two months ago, council member Mahmoud Othman said. Aquila al-Hashimi, a Shiite Muslim member of the 25-seat group, was mortally wounded Sept. 20, the highest Iraqi official killed by suspected Saddam loyalists.

Her replacement is expected to be a Shiite Muslim since the Council, installed on July 13, has been divided proportionally between Iraq`s different sects and ethnic groups: 13 Shiite Arabs, five Kurds, five Sunni Arabs, one Christian and one ethnic Turk.

On Saturday, insurgents hit a civilian cargo plane with a surface-to-air missile, but the aircraft landed safely. The plane was the first civilian airliner to be hit by insurgents, who have shot down several military helicopters with shoulder-fired rockets. DHL and Royal Jordanian, the only commercial carrier flying into Baghdad, immediately suspended flights.

Suicide bombers struck two police stations northeast of Baghdad within 30 minutes on Saturday. In the market town of Khan Bani Saad, a Chevrolet Caprice sped through a guard`s gunfire Saturday morning and exploded at the station gate, police said.

The U.S. military said 10 people were killed in one and four in the other.

Elsewhere, an Iraqi police colonel in charge of protecting oil installations was assassinated in northern Iraq, part of what appeared to be an insurgent campaign against U.S.-backed security forces.

Col. Abdul-Salam Qanbar, who was in charge of a police force in the northern city of Mosul, was fatally shot Saturday evening while heading to a mosque, a spokesman said.

``It is clear that the terrorists have targeted Iraqis, the very Iraqis who are trying to improve the security in Iraq and the lives of ordinary Iraqis,`` coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said.



Copyright 2003 The Associated Press

[Joerver]

Published on Saturday, November 22, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
A War That Can Never Be Won
Terrorism is a Technique, Not an Enemy State That Can Be Defeated

by Jonathan Steele

The bombast has increased with the bombs. We saw two disturbing escalations this week. The explosions that devastated the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul mark a significant widening in the choice of targets by those Islamist radicals who use terror to express their hatred of British and US policy in Iraq and the Middle East. The Blair/Bush response reached an equally alarming new level of ferocity.

At their swaggering joint press conference on Thursday, the two men repeatedly made the risible claim that they could win their war on terror. The prime minister was the worse. While Bush gave himself a global carte blanche to intervene anywhere, by speaking of his "determination to fight and defeat this evil, wherever it is found", Blair put the issue in terms of a finite goal. He talked of defeating terrorism "utterly" and "ridding our world of this evil once and for all".

The hyperbole of the religious pulpit allows for all-embracing and eschatological language, but these men are meant to be practical political leaders. When Blair, in his opposition days, invented the phrase "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", he knew that crime could never be totally eliminated. The task is to reduce and restrain it by a variety of methods. Violence and terrorism are no different. Like poverty, they will always be with us. At best they can only be diminished and contained. Yet now, with the arrogance of power, we have the Bush/Blair roadshow promising in sub-Churchillian tones to vanquish terrorism as though it were a clearly defined enemy like Nazi Germany.

Terrorism is a technique. It is not an ideology or a political philosophy, let alone an enemy state. Our leaders` failure to understand that point emerged immediately after September 11 2001 when they reacted to the attacks in New York and Washington by confusing the hunt for the perpetrators with the Afghan "state" that allegedly "harboured" them. The Taliban ran avicious regime, but Afghanistan was a disastrously failed state and its nominal leader, Mullah Omar, had no control over al-Qaida.

By the same token the "war" on terror should have remained what it initially was, a metaphor like the "war" on drugs. But instead of being harmless linguistic exaggeration to describe a broad campaign encompassing a range of political, economic and police counter-measures, it was narrowed down to real war and nothing else. The slippery slope that began with Afghanistan quickly led to the invasion of Iraq, a symbolic and political enormity whose psychological impact Bush and Blair have not yet grasped.

When Ariel Sharon, then a middle-aged general, wanted to send Israeli tanks into Cairo in October 1973, it was the arch-realist Henry Kissinger who realised how devastating the emotional effect would be in the Arab world, and stopped him. For a new generation of Arabs, the sight of American tanks in Baghdad is just as humiliating. Osama bin Laden`s claim that having US forces at airbases close to the Islamic holy places in Saudi Arabia is a desecration appealed only to a few Muslims, but the daily television pictures of US troops in the heart of an Arab capital, and not just patrolling but using lethal force to back up an administration of occupiers, inflames a much larger audience.

Jack Straw argues that terrorism preceded the war on Iraq and it is therefore wrong to blame the US and Britain for increasing the danger. This is a non-sequitur, which also flies in the face of the evidence, admitted by US officials themselves, that non-Iraqi Arabs have been infiltrating Iraq to commit acts of terror because of the US presence.

Sharon, similarly, says suicide bombings in Israel started before he took office. Does that mean he shares no blame? That is not the view of four former Israeli intelligence chiefs, who argued last week that Sharon`s exclusive reliance on hardline responses has weakened Israel`s security and increased the number of attacks on Israelis.

Before the war on Iraq several of Britain`s intelligence experts, including senior officials, warned that it would increase the risk of terrorism and make British interests potential targets - a view shared by most critics of the war. To suggest they were wrong runs against common sense.

Coming after the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq has made al-Qaida`s grisly work easier. Dispersed by American bombing from their remote mountain lairs, they have shifted to the much easier terrain of an urban Arab environment where they can be more readily hidden and helped. Resistance to US forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan as well as terrorist attacks on aid workers and other western soft targets are on the increase, but they appear to come from Afghan supporters of the former Taliban as well as other Pashtun radicals from Pakistan. Most Arabs who were in Afghanistan have moved to Iraq. There they have been joined by new Arab recruits, eager to add their energy to Iraq`s local resistance.

In the long history of terrorism, al-Qaida has provided two novelties. One is its global reach, marked by willingness to strike targets in many countries. The other is its use of suicide attacks as a weapon of first, rather than last, resort. Under the broad heading of terrorism as a political and military instrument, suicide bombing is a sub-category, a technique within a technique.

In the post-colonial world its first proponents had nothing to do with the anti-Islamic myth that martyrs are motivated by the hope of being greeted by dozens of virgins waiting in heaven. It began with Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka, an act of martial self-sacrifice by angry women as well as men. When it spread to Palestine over the past decade, it was an act of last-resort desperation by frustrated people who saw no other way to counter Israel`s disparity of power, as Cherie Blair once publicly pointed out. Al-Qaida has merely taken an old technique and made it the weapon of choice.

The shock this week is that Bush and Blair not only still believe that war is the way to deal with terrorists but that even when faced by the escalation of Istanbul they think victory is possible. The real issue is how to control risk. Anti-western extremism will never be eradicated, but it can be reduced by a combination of measures, primarily political.

The first is an early transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and the withdrawal of foreign forces. An arrangement whereby the new Iraqi government "requests" US troops to stay on will convince few in the Middle East. Second is firm and sustained pressure on Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians, presumably on the lines of the recent accord worked out in Geneva by Israeli and Palestinian dissidents.

There is no guaranteed defence against a suicide attack on a soft target. "Hardening" targets by turning every US or British building, at home or abroad, into a fortress makes little sense. It is better to try to reduce the motivations (hatred, revenge, or an overwhelming sense of injustice) that make people turn themselves into bombs. That endeavour will also never produce complete success. In Blair`s misguided words, it cannot be done "utterly" or "once and for all". But it is the more productive way to go.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Published on Saturday, November 22, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Voting Game
by Laila Hlass
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1122-09.htm
One person, one vote? In the last presidential election, half a million more Americans picked Gore over Bush. But the one vote that really counted was the deciding Supreme Court Justice`s for Bush over Gore.

4 to 6 million is the number of voters whose votes for President were not counted in the 2000 election.

57,700 is the number of Florida voters who were purged from voter rolls for being former felons.

8,000 of these Florida "felons" - nearly 14 times Bush`s official margin of victory - were wrongly turned away. These purged voters were disproportionately Democrats of African-American and Hispanic descent.

346 is the number of days until the 2004 election.

Whether it`s Kerry riding a Harley or Dean whistling Dixie, the spotlight`s been on the latest exploits of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. However, the most important players in the 2004 Election are grassroots organizers and voting rights litigators who are battling Republican re-districting, disenfranchisement laws and public apathy. The question is how will the rules of the voting game change?

While politicos and pundits are rabidly anticipating the primaries, close to five hundred organizers, activists, students and elected officials are quietly converging on Washington DC on November 21 to "Claim Democracy." Topics of the fifty workshops range from how corporate power influences elections to what the implications of the Help America Vote Act are. But one theme remains the same: there will not be a rerun of the 2000 election debacle.

While the presidential rat pack is speculating on how to match Bush`s fundraising potential, cash is flowing into voting rights campaigns. The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Foundation are a just a couple of foundations who are rumored to have granted or plan to grant millions of dollars for upcoming voting projects.

NAACP, State PIRGS, and People for the American are only a few of big name nonprofits with voter projects. ACORN, a community organization of low- and moderate-income families, is partnering with Justice Corps and Floridians for All to gather signatures in Florida for a minimum wage ballot initiative, while registering voters at the same time. According to Justice Corps` promo, "The minimum wage initiative will increase voter turnout among low- income workers who have seen few benefits from the Bush tax cuts."

Meanwhile the ACLU is working to re-enfranchise ex-felons who have been denied the right to vote. And after a success in Washington State, the Brennan Center for Justice is challenging state laws in New York and Florida that disenfranchise felons in the first place. Nationally, thirty-five percent of all disenfranchised voters are African American men.

The Brennan Center is also litigating against political redistricting of Pennsylvania which virtually guarantees a majority of Congressional seats to Republicans for the rest of the decade, regardless of whether- they win a majority of votes.

And new organizations are joining the fray at a rousing rate, revealing innovative techniques and growing momentum. Spurred on by the successes of Moveon.Org and Meetup.com, the League of Independent Voters has created a web portal (indyvoter.org) to publish local online/offline progressive voter guides all over the country and create a national network of locally-driven, multi- issue, multi-constituency Progressive Voting Blocs. Their question to the public: "Do you want to swing this election?"

And at Columbia Law School, a new organization, IMPACT, is creating a national network of law students to educate, activate and protect voters. They are teaming up with the Brennan Center to create easy-to-understand voting guides and poll monitoring guides. IMPACT will also channel law students into existing get- out-the-vote campaigns, ex-felon re-enfranchisement projects, and poll watching efforts.

So what does all of this mean for 2004 and the elections to come? Well if these pro-democracy forces are effective, they could change the rules of the voting game, incorporating millions of voters who previously have been discouraged, disenfranchised or driven away. And more immediately, they could mean "Game Over" for President Bush.

Laila Hlass ([e-mail]) is currently a Dean`s Public Interest Law Fellow at Columbia Law School. Before starting law school, Laila worked for two years at Ralph Nader`s Citizen Works

[Joerver]

November 23, 2003
Mr. President, oil isn`t worth dying for
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
NEW YORK -- President George Bush should heed the wise old New York garment district maxim: "First loss, best loss."

Translated from New Yorkese, this means when you get into a bad deal, bail out fast. The longer you stay in and refuse to face reality, the more you will end up losing.

That, alas, is just what Bush is doing in Iraq. Better he had gone to the garment district for hard advice instead of the regal photo op in London thrown for him by Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family.

In spite of the royal welcome in a nation that increasingly resembles a giant theme park for American tourists, many Britons were appalled by the visit. They greeted Bush and his preposterously bloated entourage, worthy of Kublai Khan, with about as much warmth as they did the Spanish Armada.

Tony Blair, Bush`s de facto foreign minister, salaamed and scraped with unctuous zeal before the visiting Emperor of the West. But at least the Queen summoned up enough pride to refuse White House demands that heavily armed U.S. agents be granted full legal immunity to shoot down threatening Britons.

Back to losing. President Bush`s crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq have turned into bloody, expensive messes. These neo-colonial misadventures may soon cost $2 billion U.S. weekly, plus the deaths and wounding of growing numbers of Americans, allies dragooned into service in Iraq and Iraqi civilians.

The so-called political process in both nations is a farce. Their U.S.-installed regimes are widely viewed as quislings. In Kabul, the U.S. at least has an amiable figurehead, Hamid Karzai. No suitable Iraqi yes-man has yet been found. But the White House, seeing its pre-election popularity dropping fast, is desperately seeking some way out of the Iraqi hornet`s nest into which it so foolishly stuck its thick head.

Facade of power

Bush just announced - shades of Richard Nixon - that the Iraq war would be "Iraqized." A facade of political power will be handed over to an Iraqi government. But U.S. troops will stay on for years for "security." What happens if the "independent" Iraqi regime tells U.S. forces to leave? A speedy regime change, no doubt.

The Pentagon plans to build three major bases in Iraq from which to police the central Mideast and guard America`s new imperial oil lifeline from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan, to the West.

Anyone who remembers Vietnam, which Iraq increasingly recalls, knows "Iraqization" won`t work. Meanwhile, Iraq`s Shia majority remains quiet only because it fears Saddam Hussein may return. Ironically, if the U.S. hunts down and murders Saddam, the Shia will rise up and demand an Islamic republic - just what the White House seeks to avoid.

Any free vote in Iraq will produce the same result. Maybe that`s why Saddam has not yet been found. So take Bush`s calls for Arab democracy with much salt. The only truly free vote held in the Arab world - most of which is controlled by the U.S. - brought to power in Algeria a moderate Islamic government. It was promptly overthrown by the army, with backing from the U.S. and France.

But Bush dares not withdraw American troops from Iraq so long as the elusive Saddam stays alive. Imagine a triumphant Saddam mooning Bush from "liberated" Baghdad. The Democrats would make falafel of the president.

Neo-conservatives insist the U.S. can`t withdraw because of loss of face and prestige. Retreat will encourage terrorism, claim these sofa samurais.

Nonsense. America shrugged off retreat from Vietnam and Indochina. All good generals know when to fall back, and - unlike the neo-cons who engineered these stupid wars - always leave open a line of retreat. No one cared about Afghanistan when the Soviets killed 1.5 million of its people, nor about Iraq when it lost 500,000 soldiers fighting Iran, or 500,000 children due to the punitive U.S. blockade. Why care now?

"We just can`t cut and run," said Bush in London, trying to sound Churchillian. Why not? The best way to get the U.S. out of this quagmire is to follow France`s sage advice: bring in a UN-run government as a fig leaf, declare victory, and pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, chaos will ensue. But Iraq and Afghanistan are in chaos now, and terrorism, as we saw in Istanbul last week, still rages.

Get out now before the U.S. gets sucked ever deeper by "mission creep" into a decade-long morass in Mesopotamia. There`s still time.

Yes, Saddam or his lieutenants and Arab radicals will crow, but Israel survived similar crowing when it wisely ended its disastrous colonial adventure in Lebanon.

Immediate retreat saves $100 billion-plus. Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth the lives of one more American or Canadian soldier, nor more wear on overstretched U.S. forces. Withdrawal will damp down raging anti-Americanism around the globe.

Time to end the megalomania, paranoia and crazy biblical geopolitics that drove the U.S. into these profitless conflicts.

Mr. President, be a real mensch and a true patriot by admitting you were wrong, and just get out.

P.S. It`s cheaper to buy oil than to conquer it.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov23.html

[Joerver]

Sunday, November 23, 2003
War News for November 23, 2003 Draft

Zu jeder Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed in central Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded in bomb ambush near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers wounded in bomb ambush near Baquba. This may or may not be the same incident cited above.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police colonel assassinated in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Four American, three Iraqi KBR employees wounded in rocket attack on oil installation near Kirkuk.

US soldier drowns in vehicle accident near Baghdad. (Last paragraph of this story.)

Baghdad International Airport closed to commercial traffic.

Schools may be open in Baghdad but parents fear to allow their children out.

Bush’s Iraq economic policies will bring further instability. “Experts say the U.S. plans, which aim to upend Iraq`s closed state-run economy and convert it to one of the most open, capitalist economies in the world, would unleash new waves of unrest in an already strife-weary Iraqi population. International law forbids occupying powers from making such deep changes, they say.”

Some military families aren’t too thrilled with Bush using them as campaign props. “I don’t think (Bush) understands the true sacrifice we’re all making, and I am concerned he doesn’t know the repercussions of the decisions he has made,” said Dawn April, whose husband, Capt. Douglas April, is in Iraq.

The US media is starting to notice our wounded soldiers. Three stories:

From the Denver Post.

From the Baltimore Sun.

From the Philidelphia Inquirer.

Bush’s War is draining the military. “Perhaps the most troubling statistic is the drop in retention for the Army Reserve, first disclosed by Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday in testimony before Congress. The drop was due to the Reserve falling 9.3 percent short of its retention goal among career soldiers.”

Army MPs in Iraq; Private Broadwell decorated with Bronze Star for valor.

Commentary

Opinion: MoDo hits one out of the park: “The president is trying to make the campaign about guts: he has the guts to persevere in the war on terror. But the real issue is trust: should we trust leaders who cynically manipulated intelligence, diverted 9/11 anger and lost focus on Osama so they could pursue an old cause near to neocon hearts: sacking Saddam? The Bush war left our chief villains operating, revved up the terrorist threat, ravaged our international alliances and sparked the resentment of a world that ached for us after 9/11.”

Opinion: Stealing from dead soldiers. “If Bush is trying to hide the cost of war, as Kerry claims, by hiding the dead, he robs Schultz and Gilmore of one of the rights of soldiering.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: New York soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier wounded in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 1:54 AM

[Kreisell]

Bush hinterließ bei seinem Besuch in London hässliche Spuren
Queen sauer: Rasen verschandelt,
Pflanzen zerfetzt, Flamingos verwirrt



Queen Elizabeth II (77)



Dicke Luft im Buckingham Palast. Ihre Majestät die Queen zürnt dem mächtigsten Mann der Welt. US-Präsident George W. Bush soll bei seinem dreitägigen Besuch hässliche Spuren im Palastgarten hinterlassen haben. Das berichtet zumindest das britische Boulevard-Blatt „Sunday Mirror“.
Liest man die Story, scheint „Spuren“ eher zu milde ausgedrückt: Der Rasen versaut, die Büsche zerfleddert – und dann spinnen auch noch die Vögel der Queen. Diener wollen Elizabeth II (77) noch nie so wütend gesehen haben.

Lesen Sie mal, was der „Sunday Mirror“ so alles über den Bush-Besuch zu berichten weiß:


Info

Internetklatsch: Queen sauer, weil Bush ihr den Fernseher abschaltet
Bush-Besuch in London: Macht trifft Krone
Falscher Diener schlich sich in Buckingham Palast


• Der Englische Rasen – verschandelt. Bush schwebte mit drei Hubschraubern im Palastgarten ein – dem mächtigen „Marine Force One“ und zwei Kampfmaschinen vom Typ „Black Hawk“. Die tonnenschweren Dinger rammten ihre Kufen in das edle Grün, das Spitzenkräfte seit Generationen pflegen. Ein Palast-Insider über die tiefen Abdrücke: „So viel Schaden machen nicht einmal 30 000 Party-Gäste.“


• Bäume und Sträucher – zerfetzt. Die Rotorblätter der Hubschrauber rissen alte Äste herunter, mähten feine Büsche nieder. Kein beliebiges Grün: Die königlichen Pflanzen stammen noch aus der Epoche Königin Victorias, die von 1837 bis 1901 regierte. Chef-Gärtner Mark Lane soll geheult haben.


Selten und exotische Pflanzen – zertrampelt. Bush brachte ein Heer an Sicherheits-Männern mit. Sie kennen das: Uniform und dicke Stiefel, nicht gerade feinfühlig. Die Jungs stampften durch die Beete der Queen, zermalmten mit ihren Sohlen seltene und exotische Pflänzlein. Darunter auch Rosen, die Queen Mum gepflanzt und nach ihren liebsten Royals benannt hatte.

Die Flamingos der Queen – traumatisiert! Königin Elizabeth II ist so stolz auf ihre eigene Flamingo-Schar. Sie hatte die tropischen Vögel für die Zeit des Bush-Besuchs umsiedeln müssen – damit sie nicht in die „Black-Hawk“-Rotoren kommen. Der Umzug an einen „sicheren Platz“ war wohl zu stressig – jetzt sind die Flamingos traumatisiert, lassen sich anscheinend nicht mehr einfangen! Der „Sunday Mirror“: „Sie kommen vielleicht nie mehr nach Hause.“

Queen Elizabeth II reagierte traurig und böse – zumal der US-Präsident sie nicht das erste Mal erzürnt hat. Wir erinnern uns: Bush brachte reichlich Satelliten-Technik mit. Die allein pustete so viel Strahlung durch den Palast, dass der Fernseher der Queen tagelang gestört war. Und sie ihre Lieblings-Soap „Coronation Street“ nicht gucken konnte...


PS: Der Schaden beträgt viele tausend Euro. Bush kriegt aber keine Rechnung. Pflanzen, die der Queen gehörten, sind versichert. Das kaputte Gras zahlen die Briten mit ihren Steuern.




und bei seinem Besuch beim Papst

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Pentagon looks to families in push for fresh recruits
By Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff, 11/23/2003

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to attract new recruits, the Pentagon is running an ad campaign aimed not at would-be soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, but rather at their parents and other key adults, trying to make the military as appealing as college.

The $8 million campaign, styled "Today`s Military," marks a departure from the direct, traditional recruiting advertising that stresses pride, patriotism, and adventure, typified by such slogans as "An Army of One" and "The Few, the Proud, the Marines."

The new ads portray military service as an ideal way for young people to build character and develop talents needed for professional success. One 60-second television ad focuses on pop violinist Valerie Vigoda. While video clips show her touring the country -- rising early, driving from state to state, setting up for shows with her band, GrooveLily -- her voice-over discusses the trials of life on the road. It is not until 45 seconds into the ad that the military is mentioned, when Vigoda ascribes her personal drive to her time in the Army National Guard.

The print ads also focus on the successful civilian careers of individual veterans, including former professional football player Chad Hennings and Mark Jones, CEO of Tuft-Jones Security, who attribute their success to the skills and values they learned in the military.

"When Johnny comes home with a [military] brochure, if he hands it off or asks input from parents, we would like them to listen to him or even advocate service," said Air Force Major Joe Allegretti, chief of the Defense Department`s $18 million Joint Recruiting Advertising Program.

"It`s a longer-term sell, positioning the military as a place where they can uniquely get some life skills and competencies that you can`t get in a lot of places. And they`re qualities that are going to be important when their children are 18 and 21, but [also] when they`re 35 and 45 and 50. When we did our research, that was the compelling hook . . . These parents were solely interested in things that will help their children grow."

While parents surveyed in recent polls said they viewed military service as honorable, most saw college -- not boot camp -- as the safest route to career success for their children.

"They have a lot of fear of their kids joining" the military, said George Rogers of Mullen, the Wenham-based public relations firm handling the campaign. "Is it a four-year detour? It ends up being, `It`s not for my kid.` . . . We`re trying to position the military towards being a branded ingredient for living a successful and fulfilling life."


© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Joerver]

Nov. 23, 2003. 10:24 AM

Iraqi mob beats bodies of slain U.S. soldiers
Three American troopers killed in pair of attacks


MARIAM FAM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSUL - Gunmen killed two American soldiers driving through this northern Iraqi city today, and then a crowd swarmed the scene, looting the soldiers` vehicle and pummeling their bodies, witnesses said. Another soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

Elsewhere, three American civilian contractors were wounded in an explosion in the northern oil center of Kirkuk. First reports said the blast was from a mortar, but U.S. Lt. Col. Matt Croke said officials later concluded it was from a bomb.

The 101st Airborne Division said its soldiers in Mosul were shot while driving between U.S. garrisons. Several witnesses also said the soldiers were shot during the attack in the Ras al-Jadda district, though earlier reports by witnesses said assailants slit the soldiers` throats.

Bahaa Jassim, a teenager, said the soldiers` vehicle crashed into a wall after the shooting. Several dozen passers-by then descended on the wreckage, looting the car of weapons and the soldiers` backpacks.

After the soldiers` bodies fell into the street, the crowd pummeled them with concrete blocks, Jassim said.

A U.S. patrol then arrived and cordoned off the area, he said.

At a news conference today, a U.S. military official would not discuss the circumstances surrounding the Mosul deaths.

"It is our policy that we do not go into specific details on injuries sustained by soldiers," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations. "We`re not going to get ghoulish about this.``

Mosul has seen increasing anti-occupation violence after months of relative quiet. Iraq`s third-largest city, it lies between the so-called "Sunni Triangle" where attacks on American forces have been intense and the northern Kurdish-dominated areas where support of the U.S. is higher.

A 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed Sunday and two others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

Kimmitt also said the Iraqi chief of police in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, and two officers were killed Sunday when the car they were riding in was attacked by small-arms fire.

U.S. officials have warned of more attacks against coalition forces as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan nears its end Tuesday.

In political developments, an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist, Rend Rahim Francke, was chosen as Iraq`s ambassador to the United States.

U.S. officials have warned of more attacks against coalition forces as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan nears its end Tuesday.

The blast in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, occurred overnight on the compound of the National Oil Co. Three American employees of the U.S. firm Kellogg Brown & Root suffered facial cuts from flying glass, Croke said.

On Friday, insurgents rocketed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where many KBR employees and international journalists stay. One civilian was wounded.

"We all know that Americans are being threatened," Croke said.

But Kimmitt said the coalition was "not worried in the least`` by the continuing attacks on its forces.

"We have nothing at this point that causes us to be concerned," he said. "This is an enemy that cannot defeat us militarily.``

In Samara, about 75 miles north of Baghdad, six U.S. Apache helicopter gunships blasted marshland after four rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the American military garrison at the city`s northern entrance, Iraqi police said. One Iraqi passer-by was killed in the air attack.

Also today, a spokesperson with Iraq`s Governing Council said the body appointed Francke — an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist — as ambassador to the United States.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced the appointment Sunday. Francke led the Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based pro-democracy group, and has helped in post-Saddam Hussein government planning.

She was born in Baghdad but has not lived here full-time in more than 30 years. She became a U.S. citizen in 1987.

"I will sincerely express the ambitions of the Iraqi people and ... take care of the Iraqi community in the United States, which amounts to some 400,000 people," Francke said. "The Iraqi Embassy used to be a source of fear for this community, rather than being a place to render services.``

The appointment will renew diplomatic ties between Washington and Baghdad 13 years after they were severed in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait.

Discussions about appointing an envoy came after the Bush administration and the U.S.-appointed Governing Council agreed to hand over power to a new, transitional Iraqi government by June 30.

The council also will soon appoint a replacement for a member assassinated two months ago, council member Mahmoud Othman said. Aquila al-Hashimi, a Shiite Muslim member of the 25-seat group, was mortally wounded Sept. 20, the highest-ranking Iraqi official killed by suspected Saddam loyalists.

Her replacement is expected to be a Shiite Muslim since the council, installed July 13, has been divided proportionally between Iraq`s different sects and ethnic groups: 13 Shiite Arabs, five Kurds, five Sunni Arabs, one Christian and one ethnic Turk.

Elsewhere, an Iraqi police colonel in charge of protecting oil installations was assassinated in northern Iraq, part of what appeared to be an insurgent campaign against U.S.-backed security forces.

Col. Abdul-Salam Qanbar, who oversaw police in Mosul, was fatally shot Saturday evening while heading to a mosque, a spokesman said.

"It is clear that the terrorists have targeted Iraqis, the very Iraqis who are trying to improve the security in Iraq and the lives of ordinary Iraqis," coalition spokesperson Charles Heatly said.

[Joerver]

The President Ought to be Ashamed"
By Eric Boehlert
Salon

Friday 21 November 2003

Former Sen. Max Cleland blasts Bush`s "Nixonian" stonewalling of the 9/11 commission, his "lies" about Iraq, and his flight-suit photo op on the USS Lincoln after "hiding out" during Vietnam.

During his six years as a United States senator from the conservative state of Georgia, Max Cleland was known as a moderate Democrat. He drew the wrath of liberals in 2001 when he broke ranks with Democrats and voted for President Bush`s tax cuts, and last year he backed the resolution authorizing Bush to wage war with Iraq (though on that vote, at least, he was joined by some liberals).

Today, though, Cleland has emerged as one of the president`s harshest critics, especially about the war he voted to authorize. Today, he says, it`s a move he deeply regrets, as he scans the headlines from Baghdad. "I feel like I have been duped, I don`t mind telling you," Cleland admits. "Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we`ve got a lemon."

Cleland, perhaps known for being a triple amputee Vietnam vet, lost his Senate seat last November in a race that has gone down in history as typifying the GOP`s take-no-prisoners approach to politics. The disabled veteran was smeared as soft on terror because he didn`t back Bush`s version of homeland security legislation.

Now, outspoken and blunt, he`s furious about the White House`s handling of the war with Iraq, which he calls a disastrous "war of choice." And he mocks the administration`s claims that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were allies. "They had a plan to go to war [with Iraq], and when 9/11 happened that`s what they did; they went to war."

Meanwhile, as one of 10 commissioners serving on the independent panel created by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks, Cleland bemoans the administration`s "Nixonian" love of secrecy and its attempt to "slow walk" the commission into irrelevancy.

At the center of the secrecy debate are sensitive presidential daily briefings, or PDBs, that the commission wants to examine as part of its inquiry. Particularly important is the crucial Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, which warned of Osama bin Laden`s desire to hijack commercial planes in the United States. For months the White House resisted, and the commission hinted it might subpoena the document. A deal was finally cut last week, which Cleland opposed, allowing a handpicked subset of commissioners to be briefed on the PDBs.

"We shouldn`t be making deals," Cleland complains. "If somebody wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That`s the deal."

Republicans say the partisan flavor of Cleland`s anti-Bush broadsides are easy to explain; he`s still stinging from his surprise reelection loss last November. Cleland denies it, but if he were still bitter, it would be easy to see why, considering he was the victim of a now-infamous attack ad, which even some Republicans objected to.

Cleland`s opponent, Saxby Chambliss, who sat out Vietnam with a bad knee, aired a spot featuring unflattering pictures of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein ... and Max Cleland. Chambliss charged Cleland, the Vietnam vet amputee, was soft on national security because he`d voted against creating the Homeland Security Act. In truth, Cleland co-wrote the legislation to create the Homeland Security Department, but objected to repeated attempts by the White House to deprive future Homeland Security employees of traditional civil service protection.

It`s hard to imagine any recent Democratic senator less soft on national security than Max Cleland, a reflection on the unlikely path he took to the U.S. Senate. In 1967 he volunteered for combat duty. The next year, during the siege of Khe Sahn, Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet Cong grenade. Two years later, at the age of 28, he became the youngest person ever elected to the Georgia state Senate. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed him to head the Veterans Administration. He later became Georgia`s secretary of state. And in 1996, Georgia voters sent Cleland and his wheelchair to the Senate.

In a lengthy phone interview on Tuesday, Cleland wondered why Bob Woodward gets better access to White House documents than the 9/11 commission ("Just think about that"), blasted Bush on Iraq ("We`ve got an absolute disaster on our hands"), while constructing a viable exit strategy ("They`re trying to make Iraq the 51st state.") He also talked about the trouble Democratic politicians are having getting elected in the South.

Let`s start with the 9/11 commission. What are your concerns about how it`s dealing with the White House?

First of all, as someone who co-sponsored legislation creating the 9/11 commission, against great opposition from the White House, this independent commission should be independent and should not be making deals with anybody. I start from there. It`s been painfully obvious the administration not only fought the creation of the commission but that their objective was the war in Iraq, and one of the notions that was built on was there was a direct connection between al Qaida and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not.

So therefore they didn`t want the 9/11 commission to get going. What you have is the fear from the White House that the commission would uncover pretty quickly the fact that one of four legs that the war stood on was nonexistent. So they slow-walked it, and they continue to slow-walk it. They want to kick this can down past the elections. We should not be making any deals; we should stick to our original timetable of [completing the final report by] May. However, we`re coming up on Thanksgiving here and we`re still struggling over access issues. It should be a national scandal.

What have some of the access problems been?

In May, the commission asked the FAA to give us the documents we`re looking for. We`ve had to subpoena the FAA. We`ve now had to subpoena documents from Norad, which they have not given us. I for one think we ought to subpoena the White House for the presidential daily briefings, to know what the president knew, what the administration knew, and when they knew it so we can determine what changes ought to be made in our intelligence infrastructure, our warning system, so that we don`t go through this kind of surprise attack again.

Now, it`s not partisan; Bill Clinton has already agreed to come personally before the 9/11 commission. But a majority of the commission has agreed to a bad deal.

And what is the deal?

A minority of the commissioners will be able to see a minority of the [PDB] documents that the White House has already said is pertinent. And then a minority of the commissioners themselves will have to brief the rest of the commissioners on what the White House thinks is appropriate.

So the minority of commissioners will get a briefing on the documents?

Yes, but first they have to report to the White House what they`re going to tell the other commissioners.

9/11 commission chairman Tom Kean has suggested if you issue subpoenas on the White House and they fight it, it`s going to go to the courts and take months and months of legal wrangling.

Well, that`s up to the president, he`s made this decision. I say that decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple. Far from the commissioners being able to fulfill their obligation to the Congress and the American people, and far from getting access to all the documents we need, the president of the United States is cherry-picking what information is shown to what minority of commissioners. Now this is ridiculous. That`s not full and open access.

If you trust one commissioner you should trust them all. I don`t understand it. You can say, `I`m not going to show anything to anybody, and take me to court.` At least that`s consistent. But it`s not consistent at all to say we`re going to parse out this information and we determine how many members of the commission get to see it.

Let me read you something from AP regarding Philip Zelikow, who`s executive director of the 9/11 commission. Quote, "He said the bipartisan panel asked specifically for pieces of the daily briefings that dealt with subjects such as terrorism, Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, the Saudi-born fugitive leader of the terror network. Other sections, such as those dealing with intelligence on topics and countries not related to terror threats, intentionally were left out of the request, Zelikow said."

That`s correct, and that`s fair.

"`We asked for everything we wanted, and the White House has discovered hundreds of responsive PDB articles, and we are seeing all of them,` Zelikow said. `None of those articles are being edited. We`re seeing everything we asked to see. And our request was never the subject of negotiation.`"

Well, the request was put forward, but the president`s decision and response to the request was negotiated time and time again by Tom Kean and [vice chairman] Lee Hamilton, going over to the White House with hat in hand several times, meeting with the lawyers first, and then with [chief of staff] Andy Card.

Secondly, you determine up front there are 22 PDB`s in one stack and over 300 in a second stack. And then the White House says if you come in, and play nice and say nice things to us, then you`ll be able to report back to the commission. And then maybe we`ll take under consideration with our lawyer whether some elements of the PDB`s in the second stack can go into the first stack. I mean come on!

It`s Nixonian in the approach. The approach ought to be, "Yes, the 9/11 commission gets access to the documents, all the commissioners get access. Whatever items you request we`ll be forthcoming in giving you."

Why, in the end, do you think a majority of the commissioners agreed to the deal with the White House?

You`ll have to ask each member of the commission. A couple of weeks ago I voted to subpoena the White House and I`ll continue to vote to subpoena the documents.

Doesn`t the White House have a point though, in terms of these PDB`s, which I don`t think have ever been released before? And that if analysts writing them are concerned they could be made public one day, than they won`t be as forthright with the president?

Let me walk you through this thing here. First of all, we`re not talking about a prescription drug plan under Medicare here. We`re talking about the most serious assault on the homeland of the United States since the British invaded during the war of 1812. This is the deal. The joint inquiry made up of Democrats and Republican members of Congress, they issued a report [this summer], but they couldn`t get at the PDB`s. They kicked the can down the street so that the 9/11 commission could get at the full story. That`s the reason for this independent commission, with the time and energy and staff to get at all of this. Had the Joint Intelligence Committee been able to do its job, there wouldn`t have even been a 9/11 commission.

We`re coming down to the final [months] of the commission and we`re still messing around with access issues. This is a key item. I don`t think any independent commission can let an agency or the White House dictate to it how many commissioners see what. So this "deal," we shouldn`t be dealing. If somebody wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That`s the deal. That was the deal with the FAA, that was the deal with Norad.

And the reason is principle. Clinton has agreed to cooperate with the commission and is eager to come before it. So why doesn`t this White House, which was on the bridge when the ship got attacked, why doesn`t this White House want to know everything that happened on their watch so that it can`t happen again? Why they want to play games with this commission, to make deals, I don`t know. It`s information control. It`s not transparency.

I don`t know if they`re hiding something. But the public will never know and the 9/11 commission will never know because under the current deal, a minority of commissioners will see a small number of documents and then brief the White House on what they`re going to tell the other commissioners. Wait a minute! That doesn`t make any sense at all.

Can the commission finish its work by May?

I think it`s going to be increasingly difficult. I think the White House has made it darn near impossible to get full access to the documents by May, much less get a full report out analyzing those docs by May. This is a three- or four-year project, it really is. And to delay and deny at this point is to compromise the work of the commission from here on out. I can`t say, as a commissioner, to the Congress and the American people, that I had full access to all the documents pertaining to 9/11 and here`s the conclusion. I can`t say that.

You`ve heard the claim, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and others have made it, that you are still upset about your 2002 reelection loss and that`s why you are so critical of the White House.

This doesn`t have anything to do with the 2002 election. It has everything to do with 9/11.

So it`s not some sort of payback?

No. It`s all about 9/11. This is not a political witch hunt. This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I`m not going to be part of that. I`m not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I`m not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I`m not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I`m not going to be part of that. This is serious.

You say you think it should be a national scandal ...

It is a national scandal. Here`s the deal. The administration made a connection on Sept. 11, and you can read Bob Woodward`s book ["Bush at War"]. He`s a private citizen. He got access to documents we don`t have yet! Just think about that. He`s a great reporter and a good guy. Bless his heart. But he got documents over two years ago, handwritten notes from Rumsfeld tying the terrorism attack into Iraq. This administration had a point of view the day that happened. If you look at 9/11 separately you realize it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. Except [vice president Dick] Cheney and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz put a plan together in `92 to try to convince [president] Bush One to invade Iraq, but here`s what Bush One said about it, in his book "A World Transformed," which I think is devastating:

"I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a secretly entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war."

Now, this administration bought the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan from `92 hook line and sinker. It was all about using 9/11 as an excuse to go into Baghdad, not as a reason.

What`s the significance?

Let`s chase this rabbit into the ground here. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that`s what they did; they went to war. They pulled off their task force in Afghanistan, their Predator assets, and shifted them over to the war in Iraq. They took their eye off the 9/11 ball and transferred it to the Iraq ball. And that`s a very strategic question that ultimately has got to be answered. I`m focused on 9/11 and the administration is not focused on it. They don`t want to share information, and they didn`t agree with the commission in the first place.

For the commission`s final report, will the White House have final say over what gets released publicly?

For national security reasons, yes, it will be vetted by the CIA and the national security apparatus. Please don`t misunderstand here. We`re not talking about releasing or even seeing full presidential daily briefings. I don`t care about what the president was briefed on about China. Nobody on the commission is going to spill national secrets, nobody`s going to give away methods of recruiting agents. As a matter of fact, it was administration officials who ratted out one of their own CIA agents in order to keep guys like Joseph Wilson quiet.

What`s your take on the situation in Iraq?

One word: Disaster. And when the secretary of defense puts out a memo to his top staff and says we don`t have the metrics to determine whether we`re winning or losing the war on terrorism? If the secretary of defense does not understand that we`re losing our rear end in Iraq in order to save our face, he ought quit being secretary of defense. Because all you have to do is ask any Pfc. out there. They`re sitting ducks with targets on their backs; they`re getting blown up. The question more and more is, for what? And, when are we coming home?

The president is trying to find a reason, now that there`s no weapons of mass destruction, no yellow cake coming from Niger, no connection with al-Qaida and no immediate threat to the United States, we now have a war of choice. I`m telling you we`re in a mess. It`s a disaster.

If the pattern holds for the rest of the month, we`ll have 100 U.S. soldiers killed during November.

We`ve lost more youngsters killed in Iraq in less than a year than we lost during the first three years of the Vietnam War. And people say there`s no Vietnam analogy?

Do you regret your vote last fall in favor of the resolution authorizing war?

I do. Because I sensed it was a political ploy rather than a ploy to genuinely protect the United States. It was just an attempt to get any resolution passed so the administration could say, just like Lyndon Johnson [with Vietnam], `We got the approval of Congress.` And then, just like Lyndon Johnson, they went ahead and did whatever they wanted to do; massive buildup, putting the military on thin political ice, getting a bunch of kids killed.

You were up for reelection at the time and you felt a pressure to vote yes?

Yes. They did this purposefully. I will say to you that I did think that it was worth a shot to give the president of the United States the authority to go to the United Nations and try to put together a coalition to try to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction. And if there were weapons of mass destruction, to destroy them.

Of course what I did not know was that the White House had the 1992 Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan on the front burner. I knew they wanted regime change. But I did not know that the Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan was what they were going to do with and that they hadn`t figured out a plan B.

I know you`re a supporter of Sen. John Kerry.

I am yes, a big supporter.

Do you think his vote last fall in favor of war has hurt him?

Yes, it`s cost him. But he and I were trying to do the right thing and give the president of the United State the benefit of the doubt. After all, the vice president stood up at the VFW convention and said Iraq is building nuclear weapons. It was all part of cherry-picking the intelligence and boosting the case for war in Iraq, which they`d already decided to do. They were just looking for reasons. They kept saying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. And the president said it`s all about terrorism and the war on terrorism. Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we`ve got a lemon. Looking back, yeah, I regret that vote. I gave the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt. He took it as a blank check. I feel like I have been duped, I don`t mind telling you. But the deal with Iraq was obvious. [White House political strategist] Karl Rove and those guys knew that all of a sudden the president`s numbers shot up, so the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan fit with Karl Rove`s plan; perpetual war keeps the president`s numbers up and we`ll cover over any attack on the president and any other issue. So they put that front and center and used it as a hammer. They even put me up there with Osama bin Laden and all that kind of stuff, and said I voted against Homeland Security when I was really one of the authors of the Homeland Security bills. So you can see how they used it as a hammer over members of Congress who were running.

And now we`ve got an absolute disaster on our hands. And now the president`s numbers are falling and they don`t know what to do about it. So the ground truth has overtaken the political B.S. and now the real truth of the war, the cost of the war, is coming out. The American people, one thing I know is, they do not fight wars of attrition well. And as Thomas Paine once said, "Time makes more converts than reason." As time goes on, this war will not be resolved.

Now, how does this relate to the 9/11 commission? If you slow-walk the 9/11 commission and keep kicking this can down the road, and keep making deals and denying access, within a year they`ll have the election out of the way. So it`s election-driven.

What should the U.S. now do to improve the situation in Iraq?

You`ve got to go back and do what you didn`t do in the first place. You didn`t put together a U.N. coalition, you didn`t get the vote of the National Security Council. You didn`t bring along your NATO allies. As a matter of fact, all of Europe is laughing at us and the president is going into the teeth of 100,000 demonstrators against our transatlantic ally, the only one we`ve got left, Britain. This is a disaster.

Do we need more troops in Iraq?

No, no, no. You`ve got a have an exit strategy. You`ve got to make this a U.N protectorate with our NATO allies taking up the political and economic restoration of Iraq and we have to command our troops and withdraw our forces. We`ve got to give up our oil fields.

You`ve got to pull out. Don`t try to make it the 51st state. That`s what the White House was trying to do; they`re trying to make Iraq the 51st state. The dream of Cheney and Wolfowitz was you create a base of operations in Iraq and then you attack Syria and Iran. I`m serious. You think this is nuts. It is nuts in the case of this particular cost of blood and treasure that the American people are finding out and they`re going south on this big time.

When you were in the Senate you were known as a moderate Democrat; you voted in favor of the Bush tax cuts. It`s clear your perception of the White House has changed dramatically.

Yeah, they lied to me. I know they lied flat-out about any connection to al-Qaida. Now al-Qaida is teaming up with Saddam loyalists and are doing what? Targeting Americans. They do have a target in common now and that`s the 130,000 U.S. soldiers out there. And we lost two more yesterday.

What was your reaction when you saw President Bush landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May to give a victory speech of sorts?

I`ll tell you the truth. I thought, "Oh my God." A man who deliberately got out of going to Vietnam by hiding out in the National Guard and who did not even complete his National Guard tour of duty, now walks onto an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with helmet under his arm, as if he`s Tom Cruise in "Top Gun," and "Mission Accomplished."

What do you think now?

The president ought to be ashamed because real soldiers are out there fighting and dying for a disastrous policy that he created. I`m telling you this is serious business. And that has now all been acknowledged as a sham. We`re in a helluva mess. And the worst part is the kids are getting killed every damn day, that`s what gets me.

I want to ask you about Democrats in the South. They just won the Louisiana governor`s race, but the weeks earlier had not been good for Democrats in Mississippi and Kentucky. There`s lot of concerns in Democratic circles that the South is essentially gone, which could relegate Democrats almost to a permanent minority party. As someone who won lots of elections in the South, what do you think Democrats have to do to win statewide elections?

I think these states have their own peculiarities of local issues. In Georgia, with the president being 70 percent popular and coming in targeting me as hostile to national security, putting me up there with Osama bin Laden, and raising millions of dollars, and Karl Rove pumping in millions of dollars to [former Georgia GOP chief] Ralph Reed down there, and using Georgia as a test case for voter turnout and capturing the white male anger, the backlash at the governor for taking the Confederate banner off the state flag, that was powerful and it took out me and the governor.

When you mobilize the entire Republican apparatus and you energize it with race and the good ole boys in the South, that`s tough to beat. That`s the Nixon 1968 "Southern strategy." And the Republicans have adopted the Southern strategy.

Meanwhile, the Florida seat is open now. Bob Graham said to heck with it and I understand that. And we`ll see how Florida pans out. With Jeb Bush as governor it`d be tough to get a Democrat there. Georgia has an open seat and you`re probably looking at a Republican taking that.

Democrats in the South have to do a better job organizing themselves and not take things for granted. I think we in Georgia took for granted that our base would be organized. It`s now obvious the Republicans have set a new standard with Ralph Reed and Karl Rove in charge, they nationalize local elections.

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[Joerver]

Military Fatalities:

*US**UK**Other**Total

432**53****25****510

Latest Military Fatality Date: 11/23/2003

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


Two 1st Armored Division soldiers were killed and one was injured in a traffic accident Nov. 22.
11/23/03 Centcom: Soldier dies in in an apparent drowning
One 4th Infantry Division soldier died in an apparent drowning when the vehicle the soldier was driving slid off the road and went into an adjacent canal.
11/23/03 ABC: US soldier killed in blast north of Baghdad
One US soldier was killed and two were wounded when their convoy was hit by an explosive device in the town of Baquba just north of Baghdad on Sunday
11/23/03 AP: Attackers slit throats of 2 U.S. soldiers
Attackers slit the throats of two American soldiers who were waiting in traffic in this northern Iraqi city on Sunday
11/22/03 AP: Back-to-back car bombings
Suicide car bombers struck two police stations north of the capital Saturday within half an hour, killing at least 12 Iraqis and two attackers. Insurgents hit a civilian cargo plane with a surface-to-air missile as it took off from Baghdad
11/22/03 abc: Rockets fired at Iraq oil company
Three Iraqis were wounded when rockets were fired at a heavily protected building belonging to the state-owned Northern Oil Company (NOC) in Kirkuk
11/22/03 AP: U.S. troops and suicide in Iraq
At least 17 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq
11/22/03 Yaho: Two Iraqi Police Stations Bombed
Suicide car bomb attacks on two Iraqi police stations north of Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 15 people, police and U.S. soldiers said.

[Joerver]

Bush Recovers From `Wicked` Hangover
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
WASHINGTON (IWR Satire) - White House spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed that President Bush did indeed have a `wicked` hangover when he attended church this morning.
"The president fell off the wagon again yesterday and polished off two twelve packs of Bud while watching football games yesterday with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

The president was clearly not his usual jovial self this morning at church, and he apologizes for telling the organist to `turn that god damn futhermucking piece of shit organ down!`.

Mr. Bush also apologizes for dry heaving repeatedly and letting fly several stinking beer farts during the service," said McClellan.

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Published on Sunday, November 23, 2003 by the Toronto Star
Michael Jackson Story is a Plot
by Antonia Zerbisias

Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right after all.


Maybe they`re just wrong about the particular conspiracy.

No, U.S. president George W. Bush and his posse of world dominators did not plot and plan the 9/11 attacks so that they could unleash their dogs of war — not to mention American carpetbaggers — on Iraq`s oilfields.

But perhaps, along with their pals in the boardrooms of Big Media, they`ve hatched a scheme to dumb down the nation so that they can inflict their will upon the world while American voters are transfixed on "Bachelor Bob" burning the beef on the barbecue.

How else to explain last Thursday`s orgy of Michael Jackson coverage on CNN — hours of choppercam shots of airport runways and police station parking lots — on the day that Bush was being trashed in effigy in London, 27 people were killed and 400 injured by truck bombs in Turkey, a U.S.-Canada task force report on the causes of August`s massive blackout was released and who knows how many U.S. troops were becoming casualties in Iraq?

Was CNN merely pandering to the stupid for commercial reasons — or deliberately avoiding the news? Has last spring`s "That`s Mili-tainment!`` revue reverted to "That`s Info-tainment!`` Have the networks run so far from serious reportage on domestic, economic and international affairs that they no longer know how to do anything but scandal? Or — and here comes my conspiracy theory — is there something else afoot, and people are too catatonic to recognize it?

Consider that, still, most Americans are convinced that Saddam`s boys rammed those planes into the towers.

According to Sam Smith, founding editor of The Progressive Review (http://www.prorev.com), that misperception is just one of "the effects of living in a semio-sphere of erroneous, deliberately false or badly distorted information. For example, in the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion, the TV channels were inundated with `military experts,` despite the fact that making peace requires considerably more expertise than making war. But absent comparable time for `peace experts,` one can`t expect the public to understand the arguments or even that there are any."

We, or at least those of us who look outside the shiny, happy bubble of American Big Media, now know just how ghastly, how gory, how grotesque the effects of the Anglo-American invasion were upon the people of Iraq.

Yes, they may be "liberated" and, true, better off in the long run. But at what a cost!

Not that you saw that terrible human toll on CNN which, like most other American news services, gave us G.I. Journalism from the "embeds`` — not to mention tribute walls of pin-ups of the kids fighting over there. (With them now returning in body bags — excuse me, "transfer tubes" — where are the photos today, hmmmm?) The networks decided that the sights, sounds and smells of death were just too much, even for viewers who happily watch make-believe murder and mayhem every night in primetime.

Which brings us to Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories Of The War, a one-hour ad-free documentary on CBC Newsworld tonight at 9 and on the main channel at 10. Dozens of journalists from all over the world spill their guts, so to speak, on seeing guts being spilled and not being able to depict it. NBC cameraman Craig White comes out and says that his network would not show a G.I. being shot.

Be warned: There are some disturbing images. And there is one revolting anecdote about young Ali Abbas, the orphaned boy who came to worldwide attention after he lost his arms and his family.

But that`s the news biz.

It`s also part of the biz to risk your life covering a war, as the doc`s opening sequence reminds us. But the April 8 strike on Baghdad`s Palestine Hotel and Al-Jazeera bureau by a round from a U.S. tank, an attack that left two journalists dead, still doesn`t look like an accidental hazard of war.

In fact, last week, there were reports out of Iraq that "jumpy U.S. soldiers" are abusing the few journalists still there.

As for the White House, it recently honored four U.S. reporters, three of whom died in Iraq, plus Daniel Pearl, who was executed by abductors in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Bush gang ignored the five journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq. (Speaking of which, there`s still no explanation from the Pentagon about the shelling of the Palestine Hotel.)

In the end, Deadline Iraq offers little news to the most addicted news junkies. At least not those in Canada. In the U.S., where the coverage was USA-all-the-way, it would be an eye-opener. But you can bet CNN viewers will never see anything like it.

Nor will they likely see Danny Schecter`s WMD: Weapons Of Mass Deception, a film in progress. That`s because, judging by the 20-minute preview he sent me, his film is a surgical strike on the mainstream media coverage of the conflict, much like his daily Web log (http://www.mediachannel.org). You can be sure no network would be interested in buying or airing it.

Hardly surprising really. Why would the networks `fess up to hiding so much of the truth?

Which only helps prove that conspiracy theory of mine: Michael Jackson is a spook working for Dick Cheney.
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

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FBI uses new powers to bug anti-war groups
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday November 24, 2003
The Guardian

American civil liberties groups yesterday denounced the FBI for using new counter-terrorist powers to spy on anti-war demonstrations.

FBI officials said the surveillance of the anti-war movement was necessary to prevent protests being used as a cover by "extremist elements" or by terrorist organisations to mount an attack.

But the critics have pointed to an FBI memorandum on anti-war demonstrations distributed last month to local police forces which suggests that federal agents have also been monitoring legal organising techniques used by opponents of the war in Iraq.

"It is troubling that the FBI is advocating spying on peaceful protesters. Even protesters who engage in civil disobedience or other disruptive acts should not be treated like potential terrorists," Anthony Romero, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said yesterday.

The memorandum, quoted in yesterday`s New York Times, explained how protest organisers used "training camps" to "rehearse tactics and counter-strategies for dealing with the police" and used the internet "to recruit, raise funds and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations." The memorandum says this intelligence was gathered by first-hand observation (a possible reference to FBI agents), informants and monitoring the internet.

The FBI`s scrutiny of the protest movement is reminiscent for some Americans of the era of J Edgar Hoover, who as FBI director used the bureau to spy on a list of political enemies, including Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. After Hoover`s excesses came to light, the FBI`s powers were radically pruned but have grown back since September 11 2001, particularly as a result of the USA Patriot Act, passed 45 days after the terrorist attacks.

The law allows the FBI to conduct extensive secret surveillance of Americans suspected of links to terrorism.

Mr Romero said last month`s FBI memorandum "confirms that the federal government is targeting innocent Americans engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent. The American people deserve an explanation for what is clearly a return to the days of J Edgar Hoover`s spying tactics."

The FBI insists it is aware of the sensitive balance between civil liberties and the need to defend the country against the terrorist threat.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Decline and fall
Leader
Monday November 24, 2003
The Guardian

The world economy is clearly on a roll. US gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 7.2% in the third quarter of the year, according to provisional estimates, amid signs of a revival in Japan and Europe and continued supergrowth in China.

It all adds up to the biggest global recovery for nearly 20 years. Why then is the stock market declining, protectionism growing, the gold price rising and the dollar, already at a record low against the euro, in danger of going over the edge into free fall?

The bland answer to all this is that the financial markets have at last started doing their sums about the US trade deficit that left-of-centre economists have been doing for years - and they do not like what they see. Most international recoveries in recent years have been led by the US because the other two major regions, Europe and Japan, have not been able to get their acts together. It is the same this time.

The main source of the extra orders that are keeping factories ticking over in the west is the ravenous appetite of US consumers for imports. In the short run this is good for our economies: it feeds us with new business at a time when Europe has no strategy for engineering its own domestically led expansion.

More worrying is the fact that it is also feeding the "feelgood factor" in the US. The Bush administration is prepared to do almost anything, however imprudent, in its dash to increase jobs and growth in advance of next year`s election. This includes tax cuts for the rich, vastly increased subsidies for farmers and running up an unsustainable trade deficit of $543bn (5% of GDP).

Last week this reached new heights of folly when the US, instead of abolishing steel tariffs that had been declared illegal by the World Trade Organisation, imposed fresh controls on a range of textiles from China some of which, like brassieres, don`t even appear to be manufactured in the US. This is a particularly silly thing to do against China, a country that - unlike some other Asian economies like Japan - has made opening up its own economy one of the foundations of its long-term growth strategy. During the past year China`s imports have grown by 40% making it just about the only locomotive of growth outside the US.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration`s politically inspired dash for growth has led it to adopt a much more relaxed attitude to devaluation of the dollar. In principle this is good, because the dollar has been overvalued for years and if the US is to "trade" out of its deficit by selling more exports, it needs to have a much more competitive exchange rate. Most economists would agree that even at its current low against the euro the dollar still needs to fall further before being able to generate enough new exports to pay for burgeoning imports.

Until very recently the gargantuan US trade deficit has not been a major worry to the financial markets because non-American investors have been willing to finance the trade deficit by lending money or investing heavily in US stocks and bonds.

This is a kind of Marshall Plan in reverse as the rest of the world lends money to the US to finance its import binge. The difference is that the money can be pulled out at short notice. Although last week`s figures showing that inward investment into US stocks and bonds collapsed from $50bn in August to only $4bn in September may have been erratic, there is no doubt that the underlying trend is downwards. There are now worrying signs that the rest of the world is no longer willing to finance the US spending binge.

The danger is that the Bush administration`s ham-fisted attempts to play politics with international trade and currency markets may turn an orderly decline of the dollar into a rout as investors lose confidence. That is in nobody`s interest and least of all the eurozone`s. If euro businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the dollar at its present level (after allowing for the extra trade that US expansion is generating) then goodness knows what they will do if the dollar falls another 10% or even 20%. Of course, predictions that the US economy is about to collapse under the weight of its own debt have been made for years without - as yet - coming true.

We can only hope and pray that doomsday will continue to be postponed. From Europe`s viewpoint it would be far better to take some risks of its own - like reducing interest rates or coordinating fiscal relaxations - rather than relying on the prospect of the US economy continuing to defy gravity in election year.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Laurence Freedman: History shows that US leaders do `cut-and-run`
Beirut and Vietnam demonstrated that the US public would accept sacrifices but not for a failed policy
24 November 2003


The goal of stability in Iraq has now been set up as a race between two political processes: George Bush`s drive to avoid his father`s fate as a one-term President and the attempt to establish a credible and broadly legitimate government in Iraq in time to drain support from those currently promoting instability.

The motley collection of Ba`athists, Islamic militants (local and imported) and criminals responsible for the murder and mayhem are well aware of this political context. They are not alone in asking if Bush can be re-elected on the basis of an Iraqi policy that is now endorsed by barely half the population, down from as much as 80 per cent during an apparent moment of triumph in April.

The enemies of the American occupation in Iraq lack ideological coherence. Some are secular, some religious; some embrace martyrdom and others shy away; some target only Americans while others will go for anyone trying to bring hope to Iraq. If they have any goal in common it is to render Iraq so unsafe and ungovernable that the Americans will give up on the whole enterprise and go home.

This strategy assumes that when the going gets tough the Americans become quickly frustrated and discouraged. The White House`s sudden shift to more local solutions to the Iraqi problem, welcome as it may be to the rest of the international community, may even be taken as an indication that the strategy is working.

The most famous precedent for the interaction of military strategy and the US electoral cycle is the Tet offensive launched by the Viet Cong in February 1968. After optimistic US military claims about the war`s progress, the enemy appeared suddenly in strength in the key cities of South Vietnam. Though the offensive was a military catastrophe for the Viet Cong, politically it was a victory.

Up to this point half the American people had believed that progress was being made in the war (though casualties were about 20 times Iraq levels); after the Tet offensive this slumped to a third, with a quarter believing that the US was losing and the rest seeing only a miserable stalemate. In March, President Johnson announced that the bombing of North Vietnam would be suspended, that negotiations would be sought and that he would not seek re-election.

In the Middle East the most telling episode came almost exactly 20 years ago. Early on 23 October 1983, a suicide bomber crashed an explosive-laden truck killing 241 marines and other US personnel (not far off total combat losses in Iraq this year) as they slept in their compound at Beirut airport.

This is normally recalled as prompting the immediate abandonment of the US peacekeeping role in Beirut. Actually the story is more complex. The initial assumption was that the attack made withdrawal impossible. The marines were replaced and in early December retaliatory air strikes were launched against Syrian and Islamic militant positions.

But the Lebanese Army had just collapsed, the government was unravelling. The next day an American professor at the American University of Beirut was kidnapped by Muslim radicals - the first of many (and a tactic yet to be employed in Iraq). On 7 February, Reagan reversed himself and announced that all US Marines would shortly be "redeployed".

The conclusion drawn by America`s enemies, to be reinforced in Somalia a decade later, was that fear of casualties represents the superpower`s greatest vulnerability.

President Bush, most recently in London, has challenged this view robustly. It is worth recalling that the Americans did not actually leave Vietnam for another five years after the Tet. The scale of the US military, economic and political investment in Iraq is immense. American politicians, however regretful of the war, are aware of the consequences of walking away.

The Democratic Presidential hopefuls have good points to make about how Bush got the country into a mess but did not necessarily have any better ideas about how to get out. Senator John McCain, referring back to Vietnam, has noted that the imperatives of the electoral calendar still apply: "watch February and March if we don`t see things improve". Even on the most optimistic interpretations the revived Iraqi political process will still be at a tentative stage, and possibly extremely difficult as the different factions and groupings jockey for position and present their constitutional demands. These are circumstances which encourage demagogues, corruption and private armies. Beirut and Vietnam demonstrated that the American people would accept sacrifices but not in support of a failed policy, and also that a successful policy depends on getting the local politics right. There is some evidence that these messages have got through, although some of the implications (such as being nice to Iran) are unpalatable.

While many positive things are starting to happen in Iraq, and the main trouble is confined to the "Sunni triangle", there is no reason to suppose that over the short term the good days are going to outnumber the bad. For the next few months they will seek to panic Washington, clinging to the hope that Bush might not be the first American President to promise that his country would not "cut-and-run" and then do precisely that.

The author is Professor of War Studies at King`s College, London
24 November 2003 09:58



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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This Humvee, shown after being brought back to its base at Shkin, was damaged on Sunday by an explosion as it patrolled Afghanistan`s border with Pakistan. One soldier lost part of a leg.

November 24, 2003
The Other Conflict Continues to Take a G.I. Toll
By DAVID ROHDE

LOZANO RIDGE, Afghanistan, Nov. 23 — As Sgt. First Class Vernon Story`s column of Humvees climbed a desolate ridge a mile from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border here on Sunday morning, the sergeant got the feeling that someone was watching. The five unexploded land mines he and his men had found along this same ridge in a firefight with Taliban rebels here less than two months ago lingered in his mind.

"Hey, don`t be driving down the tracks," Sergeant Story warned his driver.

Just after he spoke, the front of his Humvee abruptly lurched into the air as a mine or remote-controlled bomb detonated under the right front tire. It severed the lower left leg of a young soldier in the front passenger seat and tossed the 6,000-pound vehicle violently on its side. Sergeant Story, seven soldiers and four journalists traveling with them in the back of vehicle were thrown to the ground.

Scrambling to his feet, his face cut, the sergeant cursed, suspected an ambush and ordered his men to fire at the surrounding hillsides.

No one shot back.

So went a typical engagement in the grinding conflict for the 10,000 American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, overshadowed by the larger conflict in Iraq.

Casualties are not as high here, but fatal clashes with a shadowy enemy continue.

"It`s aggravating," Sergeant Story, 34, said in his southern drawl, referring to guerrilla attacks that have killed five Americans and four Afghan soldiers along the border with Pakistan in the last eight weeks. "It`s very frustrating."

The risks are by no means limited to ground forces. On Sunday at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, at least five American soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed.

So far this year, 9 of the 10 American combat deaths have occurred in this area around Shkin, an isolated military base three miles from the Pakistan border.

Sunday morning`s attack on Lozano Ridge, named after an American soldier killed here in April, was the latest in a series of strikes by pro-Taliban fighters who launch missiles, plant mines and mount fierce ambushes against American forces within miles of the Pakistan border, according to American military officials. After the engagements, the gunmen are often seen retreating toward Pakistan.

Lt. Col. Michael Howard, the commanding officer of two American bases along the border, said that Pakistan`s government was trying to control the border, but that it was impossible to seal off such mountainous terrain.

"You`ve got a president who is committed; you`ve got a military who is committed," Colonel Howard said, referring to Pakistan`s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "They`ve got a lot of challenges like everybody else."

The Americans here face their own challenges. Sergeant Story and his soldiers, stationed in Shkin, are fighting on some of the bleakest terrain on earth. It is a jarring existence that mixes the primitive and the modern, intense boredom and intense fear.

By day, they inhabit a world of brown earth, brown mud-brick houses and translucent blue skies. By night, temperatures drop below freezing, and bands of stars blaze across a sky unspoiled by man-made light.

Their battleground is a swath of dozens of miles of arid plateau, 7,000 feet above sea level in eastern Afghanistan, lined by hills and mountains to the east and west. They can patrol for days without incident, but then, without warning, be ambushed by gunmen on barren hillsides covered with boulders and bushes.

The soldiers relax only when inside their base, a bubble of Americana in a sea of Afghan dust. On Sunday night, a few hours after the mine explosion, Sergeant Story and other soldiers sat in a crude mud-brick mess hall watching the Dallas Cowboys-Carolina Panthers game via satellite on a widescreen television.

The soldiers eat burgers, fries and baked beans for dinner. They have been watching "Bulletproof Monk" and other Hollywood movies on a DVD player, over and over.

The desolate terrain here aids the Americans in some ways. Unlike urban Iraq, this part of Afghanistan affords few places for guerrillas mounting ambushes to hide.

But their effort is slowed by a problem also confounding American forces in Iraq — limited intelligence on the enemy. Military officials said villagers generally provided little information about pro-Taliban fighters, who threaten to kill those who collaborate with the Americans.

"They are all afraid for their lives to give us information about who is coming over the mountains," said Sgt. Katrina Presley, 24, from New Castle, Del., who helps run weekly meetings with local villagers.

Maj. Dennis Sullivan, the base commander, said the Taliban fighters were not making military headway. But aid groups and United Nation officials contend that Taliban guerrillas are now circumventing well-armed American forces and attacking soft targets, like aid workers and Afghan policemen. They say the attacks have slowed reconstruction projects in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Villagers living around Shkin complain that they are not receiving enough aid. American military officials said two schools and a well were being built in the area with United Nations funds.

Despite the dangers, American soldiers said they were eager to come to Shkin. Sunday`s explosion occurred while Sergeant Story was escorting a new group of soldiers who will be replacing his unit. Most interviewed expressed enthusiasm. Seen as the posting with the best chance to engage in combat in Afghanistan, soldiers said coming here allowed them to "do their job."

One young soldier called Shkin a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Asked for what, he said "to kill."

But some soldiers who have served here for months admitted the experience had changed them. Sgt. Christopher McGurk, a 29-year-old native of Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, saw one of his soldiers, Pvt. First Class Evan O`Neill, 19, of Haverhill, Mass., die in battle on Sept. 29.

In an Oct. 25 battle, a wounded American slowly bled to death as Sergeant McGurk cared for him under fire. The son of a 28-year Army veteran, the sergeant feels that he has done his duty and is thinking of leaving the Army and becoming a New York City police officer. "Once you`re involved in a situation like that," he said, "you realize it`s for real."

Sergeant Story, a father of three, constantly jokes and refuses to discuss the personal risks.

"I can`t answer that question," he said. "Never thought about it. Never. Never."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 24, 2003
Hezbollah, in Iraq, Refrains From Attacks on Americans
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group, has established a significant presence in Iraq, but is not taking part in attacks on American forces inside the country, according to current and former United States officials and Arabs familiar with the organization.

Iran is believed to be restraining Hezbollah from attacking American troops, and that is prompting a debate within the Bush administration about Iran`s objectives, administration officials said.

Hezbollah`s presence has become a source of concern as it is recognized by counterterrorist experts to have some of the most dangerous operatives in the world.

Both American and Israeli intelligence have found evidence that Hezbollah operatives have established themselves in Iraq, according to current and former United States officials. Separately, Arabs in Lebanon and elsewhere who are familiar with the organization say Hezbollah has sent what they describe as a security team of up to 90 members to Iraq.

The organization has steered clear of attacks on Americans, the American officials and Arabs familiar with Hezbollah agree. United States intelligence officials said Hezbollah operatives were believed to have arrived in Iraq soon after the end of major combat operations last spring, and had refrained from attacks on Americans ever since. The Central Intelligence Agency has not seen a major influx of Hezbollah operatives since that time, officials added.

"Hezbollah has moved to establish a presence inside Iraq, but it isn`t clear from the intelligence reports what their intent is," one administration official said.

Based in Lebanon, Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamic group that is under Tehran`s control. Syria, which dominates Lebanon and controls Hezbollah`s supply lines from Iran, also plays a powerful role with the group.

Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah has taken on an increasingly political role, but it continues to pose a global threat. The United States has issued a $25 million reward for the capture of Imad Mugniyah, the longtime chief of foreign terrorist operations; he is believed to have been behind a series of attacks against Americans in the 1980`s, including hostage-taking operations in Lebanon.

More recently, Hezbollah has focused its activities on Israel, and is not believed to have launched a large attack against American interests since 1996, when, according to American government charges, it conducted the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.

In recent months, American troops have faced a deadly guerrilla campaign waged largely by the remnants of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party government in the Sunni-dominated region of central Iraq. Some foreign Arab fighters are believed to have infiltrated Iraq, but their role in attacks against American troops now appears to be less significant than United States military and intelligence officials originally believed.

American forces have faced far less violence in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq than they have in the Sunni heartland. The Shiites, though the majority of Iraq`s population, suffered severe oppression under the Sunni-dominated government of Mr. Hussein, and have so far appeared more willing to accept the American military occupation.

But Iran`s role in Iraq`s Shiite community has been a wild card for the Bush administration. Shiite-dominated Iran has a strong interest in influencing the political and religious direction of the country, particularly because some of the Shiite world`s holiest sites are in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf. Iran`s powerful clerical leaders are deeply concerned about which clerics emerge as the dominant figures in those cities, American officials say.

"We are very aware of the rivalry between Iranian Shia and Iraqi Shia for dominance in that community," one administration official said. "It`s possible that Hezbollah is there to help the Iraqis politically, to work in the Shia community," and have no plans for terrorist attacks against Americans, the official added.

Another critical concern of the Iranians is the American policy toward the People`s Mujahedeen, an anti-Iranian terrorist group that operated for years on the Iraqi side of the border under the protection of Mr. Hussein`s government.

Since the American occupation of the country, the Bush administration has been deeply divided over how to handle this group. Pentagon officials and conservatives inside and outside the administration have been open to the idea of using it against the Iranians, but State Department officials have argued that the group should be disarmed and rendered ineffective to improve relations with Iran.

Last spring, President Bush ordered that American forces disarm the group, but some administration officials say the Pentagon has purposefully been lax in its treatment of the organization. An administration official said last week that the United States military had allowed some members of the People`s Mujahedeen to enter and leave Iran, and that the group still had equipment for broadcasting its antigovernment messages into Iran.

Earlier this month, in an interview with The Washington Post, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, tried to clarify the administration`s policy toward the anti-Iranian group by insisting that Washington was treating it as terrorist.

But the Iranians remain suspicious about American intentions, and some administration officials speculated that Tehran might be trying to use Hezbollah`s presence in Iraq as a counterweight, to deter the Americans from unleashing the Mujahedeen against Iran.

American officials say they believe that Iran wants to resume the quiet dialogue with the United States that has been suspended in recent months. Earlier this year, Bush administration officials charged that operatives of Al Qaeda in Iran were behind a May 12 terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, although American officials subsequently learned that those operatives, including Saef al-Adel, a pivotal Qaeda figure, were in some form of custody in Iran.

More recently, Iran has said it has handed over some Qaeda operatives to other countries, but has been unwilling to turn them over directly to the United States. It is possible, some American officials said, that the Iranians want to resume talks, and that by keeping Hezbollah under wraps, they are quietly sending a conciliatory message to Washington.

"I think it is a little bit of the carrot and the stick," said one administration official. "They want a dialogue, and they also want to get their hands on" members of the Mujahedeen.

"I think sending Hezbollah to Iraq is about Iran`s desire for us to take them seriously, both in terms of their interests in Iraq and their broader concerns in the Middle East," observed one former American official familiar with the intelligence reports on Hezbollah`s presence in Iraq. "They want a dialogue with us, and they are signaling they can help us or hurt us."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Hope and Confusion Mark Iraq`s Democracy Lessons


By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2003; Page A01


TAJI, Iraq -- This is how democracy is being created -- with maps and flowcharts inside an abandoned warehouse with two snipers on the roof. About a dozen sheiks in headdress and an equal number of plain-clothed community leaders have come to a meeting called by the U.S.-led occupation authority.

Amal Rassam, a professor from New York who is working as a contractor for the occupation authority`s headquarters office, is leading the briefing about the formation of the new Baghdad provincial council.

There will be 15 members, she says, and this district just north of the country`s capital has been allotted one slot. No political parties will be allowed to participate. There will be no discrimination by religion. Women will be actively encouraged to seek consideration. And the group will have advisory power only -- the "only" being underlined. The deadline: Jan. 21.

The room erupts with angry questions.

For starters, the population estimate being used, 150,000, is dead wrong, one man argues. The region has significantly more people, maybe even half a million, and it deserves more representation. Can the makeup of the council be changed? What about the role of tribal and religious leaders? They are very influential and have their own governing structure. Women? This is a very traditional area and the men could not fathom the idea of letting women vote, much less hold office. What about security for people who step up to be community leaders? Previous recruits have endured kidnapping attempts on their children, death threats nailed outside their doors, and have had their cows shot.

"This is just a starting point," Rassam assures them as she takes notes. "You can correct our mistakes."

But to one question there was no answer. Is this overhaul really necessary? The Iraqi people formed their own representative councils in this region months ago, and many of those were elected, not selected, as the occupation is proposing. "We feel we are going backwards," one man protested.

"The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," President Bush declared in a Nov. 6 speech. The reality of trying to create that democracy on the ground is complicated, however.

The administration`s declaration last weekend that it intends to speed up the process of giving control of the country to Iraqis makes Rassam`s work more urgent. The councils in Iraq`s 18 provinces, formally called governorates, are to take a lead role in the caucuses that will select the national assembly outlined in the new plan. National elections are scheduled to be held by the end of 2005.

What all this means here is difficult to describe. Philosophically speaking, it is about trying to teach Western-style democracy to people who have lived under the tyranny of former president Saddam Hussein and his kin for decades -- and before that, a military dictatorship, a monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. From a practical point of view, it is about an occupying power trying to impose democracy from the top down.

Creating a Civil Society


Rassam works for the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina company full of PhDs, international relations experts and other big thinkers. The RTI is being paid $170 million by the U.S. Agency for International Development to help create civil society in Iraq.

The U.S.-led occupation authority has drawn up the rules and timetables for a new five-tier council system. With the RTI`s guidance, the military will execute the plan. It will select neighborhood councils, which in turn will select district councils, which in turn will select county councils, which in turn will select a provincial council, which, finally, will select a governor. It is a task that will require the RTI to balance the egos of local leaders with those of military and civilian occupation officials and to work within a culture that does not necessarily embrace all of the occupiers` values. The company`s advisers will also have to reconcile political boundaries drawn by Hussein`s government with religious or tribal boundaries recognized by the sheiks, clerics and other leaders, as well as military boundaries imposed by the occupation authority. Then, there will be new ideas for boundaries voiced by citizens.

The early chaos in Taji is not unusual. While some councils function efficiently, with name plates, microphones and agendas, many more are troubled.

In the southern city of Karbala, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose opinions carry the force of law among many Shiite Muslims, recently stepped down from the U.S.-appointed town council, citing its inability to be effective. In Balad, a town in the violent Sunni Triangle, the mayor accused occupation officials of holding rigged elections behind his back. In the Shamaya neighborhood of Baghdad, some two dozen sheiks gathered in front of a military base this month to demand that the local council be disbanded because it was selected without their input.

A Peace Accord


The district of Taji, about 18 miles north of Baghdad, is a desert expanse packed with military compounds and factories. The Army`s 4th Infantry Division arrived in April, and its troops have clashed periodically with insurgents ever since. In May, one U.S. soldier was killed in a convoy ambush. In late June, two more were found dead after they failed to respond to a radio check. On Nov. 11, another infantryman was killed while on night patrol, when a makeshift bomb exploded under his Humvee.

The commander in this region, Col. Kevin Stramara, decided early on that he needed help to stop the violence. One of the first stops, in July, was Asriya, a three-mile strip of one-story houses where children and sheep wander the dirt streets. It is home to about 5,600 people, almost all former Iraqi military officers or their relatives.

"We went to the village and said: `Who is in charge? You need representation. Select four to five individuals,` " recalled Lt. Col. Anthony C. Funkhouser, commander of the 5th Engineer Battalion based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

Within a week, the citizens had held an election. More than 600 men participated, and their votes were tallied on a blackboard at a nearby girls` school. It was different from elections under Hussein, when sometimes there was only one candidate and if there were more, it was clear that his Baath party would win.

This time several dozen people ran and five were elected. The villagers came back to Funkhouser with a memo listing the men and certifying that the people recognized them as their leaders.

Funkhouser went to the home of Rahman Hamarahim, 61, the former mayor and newly elected head of the neighborhood council. Over Pepsi and kebabs one summer afternoon, the two men negotiated a sort of peace accord.

The military would help the village repair its schools and clinics and find jobs. In exchange, Hamarahim and the other leaders would talk to insurgents about stopping their attacks and pass on information about hidden weapons caches.

It has worked out well so far, both sides say. The public buildings now have gleaming new fans and new desks. The electricity is back on. The area is now one of the most peaceful in the district, and soldiers freely exchange high-fives and candy with the locals.

As the months passed, similar councils popped up in other parts of Taji, some elected, some made up of self-declared community leaders. By the time of the RTI meeting on Oct. 30, there were 11 neighborhood councils in the rural areas and a larger area group that called itself the Taji City Council, consisting mostly of prominent business leaders.

Under the occupation authority`s new plan, all will have to be combined to form one district council.

Culture Clash


That Taji has had its own tentative representative system for months throws the RTI`s Rassam off; no one had told her this.

She has been working on the democracy building project since May and has found that it is often tricky to try to reorganize existing systems, especially because members of the new councils will be appointed rather than elected. Local leaders will be consulted, and some groups will actually cast votes to select neighborhood leaders. But the final decisions will be made by the military and the RTI.

The reasoning is that Iraqis need to take baby steps toward democracy before setting out on their own. Meetings are supervised by the military to avoid accusations of foul play, and council chairmen are made to rotate each month so that many people have the chance to test their leadership skills. When selections for chairman are made, occupation authorities make sure to put out a special call -- or two or three -- urging women to step up to be considered.

Rassam is worried about how to proceed in Taji and believes she needs to slow things down and learn more about the area`s makeup and the personalities before she can give advice. "There is a lot of misinformation, competing interests, and high expectations which need to be reconciled," she said.

Petite, bespectacled and blond, the 65-year-old Rassam seems like the person least likely to be in charge in a roomful of Iraqi men and armed U.S. soldiers. But she is, and it is clear from the moment she enters the room. The military commanders refer questions to her, and she manages to calm down the community leaders by assuring them that she will take their concerns to the leaders of the occupation authority. Rassam, a professor of anthropology from the City University of New York, is an Iraqi American whose family fled Hussein`s dictatorship in the early 1990s. She is one of more than 650 consultants working in the field for the RTI`s civil society project. She is not surprised that the men are confused, frustrated and angry. They question why the Americans are trying to set up a new democracy when their own democracy seems to be working just fine.

Saddam Abdul-Rahman Zaidan, a member of the Taji City Council, said the selection of a new representative body is pointless because the current group has managed to do great things, such as get fuel for the population and money to repair schools. "We will waste a whole month at least, and for what?" he asked.

There is also a culture clash between council members who are academics, doctors and other educated professionals with little experience in politics, and the tribal sheiks, who are steeped in centuries-old rules and procedures.

Several of the most powerful tribal leaders have declined seats on the U.S.-appointed council, fearing they may lose the respect of their people if they are seen as being ordered around by the occupation authority.

One who refused is Sabah Zaidaq, nicknamed the "sheik of sheiks" by U.S. soldiers and said to represent up to half the population of Taji.

The Taji City Council also wants nothing to do with the smaller neighborhood councils, including Hamarahim`s, claiming that many are led by Baathists.

Kamal Kiwan Abdul Ridha, the council president, said he also believes that the reorganization the RTI is leading is a plot by the Baathists to return to power, that Saddam`s political party has manipulated the occupation authority. "The plan was put by some betrayers connected to the former regime," he alleged.

U.S. military officials say such charges are absurd. While some of the neighborhood representatives may have served under the old government, they have renounced any ties to Hussein`s party, the officials said.

Hazards of Freedom


Being a leader in the new Iraq is a dangerous job. One member of the national Governing Council has been assassinated, as have the deputy mayor of Baghdad and judges in Najaf and Mosul.

Hamarahim had his own close call. The afternoon of Nov. 10, his car was ambushed a few miles from his home. Two men with scarves covering their noses and mouths jumped out from behind a farmhouse and opened fire. Two bullets went through the driver`s abdomen and back. Another hit the foot of Hamarahim`s 6-year-old grandson, Hakim. Hamarahim counted about 60 shots, but none hit him.

With the help of a passerby, Hamarahim carried the driver and his grandson to the gates of a nearby U.S. military base. Funkhouser met them and radioed for a helicopter that took the wounded to a military hospital in the presidential palace compound in Baghdad. Both are expected to make a full recovery.

The attack angered Funkhouser and made him more determined to help the council succeed. "Their view of freedom and ours is a little different because they are new to it," he said. "Freedom without security is anarchy. . . . Our role is to provide the police and show them freedom is bound by constitutions and by laws."

Before Rassam entered the scene, the Iraqis learned about democracy from the colonel. Once, when Hamarahim asked about constitutions, Funkhouser printed out a copy of the U.S. Constitution, highlighted it and made a presentation of the most relevant parts to the men in the neighborhood. He has also shown them how to take minutes of their meetings and gone over how to draw up eligibility requirements for various positions in government.

Abdul Hussein Hindi, 48, a former foreign affairs liaison for the Ministry of Industry, translated the meeting about the Constitution and was inspired by it. "The important part was about freedom," he remembered. "Before, they say you must choose this man. Now, I can choose a different man or I can even choose myself."

Rassam hopes to instill a more formal appreciation for democracy, bringing in professors to lecture on its history and consultants to discuss ways to vote and draft meeting agendas. But she acknowledges that many people here equate democracy with Funkhouser.

The burden of that mantle is not lost on the Army engineer. "Before the war, did I think I`d be Thomas Jefferson? No," he said. "Of course, no."

As the weeks have passed, Funkhouser has tried to hand off more responsibility for running the area to council members. But it is not an easy transition for a country where people are used to taking orders and initiative and free thinking could get a person shot in the head.

Hamarahim is among those struggling with his new role. He describes his job this way: He talks to the people, tries to organize their concerns in an efficient manner, he tells the colonel what he needs and the colonel takes care of it.

But what about when the Funkhouser leaves? When the Americans go back home? Will Hamarahim take on more responsibility? Does he have any desire to be the new leader of Taji and carry out all the projects he talks to the military about now?

Hamarahim shakes his head. "Another colonel will come."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Chalabi, center, at a news conference in September with, from left, the Iraqi Governing Council`s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; council member Adnan Pachachi; and Sen. John Warner.

Achmed der Dieb, der Liebling des Pentagon, Lieferer vieler Falschinformationen an die USA über den Irak vor dem Krieg. Ist den NeoCons zuzurechnen und ein aufrechter Ölmann.
Wird er der neue Saddam mit US-Hilfe?
Dann würde die Ausplünderung des Iraks ganz neue Dimensionen annehemen.

washingtonpost.com
The Man Who Would Succeed Saddam
Ahmed Chalabi`s First Big Political Test? Surviving Washington.

By Sally Quinn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2003; Page C01


Ahmed Chalabi, a leading candidate to head Iraq`s new government, is making the rounds on Capitol Hill. He can barely contain his glee. He is doing what he loves most and what he does best -- lobbying the U.S. government for his cause, Iraq. As rotating president of the Iraqi Governing Council this September morning, he is going for grants, not loans. He smiles a knowing smile. He`s got this baby in the bag. But then, he always does. That`s what makes his detractors crazy -- and his supporters so loyal. Never, they say, underestimate Ahmed Chalabi. It is always a mistake.

At first glance, Chalabi is an unassuming man, 59 years old, slightly overweight, balding, conservatively dressed in a dark suit. But it`s his eyes and his eyebrows that draw attention. One eyebrow seems permanently raised, as though he is sharing his secret only with you. A fellow Arab acquaintance describes him as "from the bazaar," and you can envision him, his eyes gleaming, negotiating with you. Partly it is for fun, for love of the game. But the part about the money is deadly serious.

This morning he`s already met with 50 Senate Republicans. "They applauded when I came in," he reports proudly. "Senator Santorum said that he had been defending me to the president so much that the president started calling him `Ahmed.` "

Chalabi knows he needs a defender. He has just announced at the United Nations that he`s more in agreement with France than with the United States about the timing of Iraqi sovereignty: He wants it sooner rather than later. His U.S. sponsors are not pleased -- it looks like he`s turned on them.

But maybe not. In the high-risk game Chalabi`s playing, he can`t appear to be a puppet of the United States if he is to have any credibility in Iraq. The administration knows that, too.

This afternoon he has a meeting with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. He`s a little nervous about it. "We still don`t know whether it`s going to be a scolding or `you`ve been a good boy,` " says Chalabi`s aide Zaab Sethna. "If they don`t let us have a photo of him with Condi, we`ll know they`re not happy."

And they don`t know whether they will be seeing the president. They didn`t exactly request a meeting, Chalabi says, but, according to Sethna, they did relay the message that they would "like to thank the president and tell him how grateful we are for all he`s done for us."

They know it probably won`t happen. "The president`s not too happy with us now," says Sethna.

The Constant Goal


Fast-forward to November: The Bush administration, concerned by military setbacks, has done an about-face on sovereignty. Under an agreement struck a week ago, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer will turn over control of the country to the Iraqis within eight months.

As he sees it, it`s one more goal achieved for the passionate and relentless Ahmed Chalabi. He is the founder and leader of the Iraqi National Congress, a powerful and influential exile group. He was an enabler who helped the United States justify its invasion of Iraq. He is a secular Shiite Muslim, an exile who fled Iraq as a 14-year-old with his family, which was close to the monarchy. He is a mathematician who received degrees from the University of Chicago and MIT. He is an intellectual, a banker, a diplomat, a raconteur, a gourmand. He also happens to be a convicted embezzler in Jordan with a 22-year sentence waiting for him.

In his long history in dealing with the U.S. government, Chalabi has had a string of successes. He was ruthlessly single-minded about urging the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

So far he`s gotten everything he`s wanted. He got money from the CIA. When it dumped him, he got money from the State Department. He urged Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, a policy initiative to overthrow Hussein, and it did. After the invasion, he encouraged the formation of a governing council with sovereign power. He got a seat on the council, albeit with less power than he sought, and became one of the nine rotating presidents. He requested sovereignty sooner rather than later, and that`s exactly what Bremer has just offered. Many think that he is the person most likely to be elected president under the new plan.

Yet there is a great well of animosity and suspicion toward Chalabi emanating from some quarters of the U.S. government -- primarily the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Many Democratic members of Congress also view him with mistrust. These detractors say he is corrupt and out for himself, and that in any case he would never last as president of Iraq. Various people blame him for everything from betraying a 1996 coup attempt against Hussein to orchestrating the August bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.

His patrons, who call him a courageous and dedicated fighter against Hussein who has been unfairly maligned, are mainly in the Pentagon, and he is a darling of the neoconservatives in the Republican Party. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says of Chalabi: "Some think he is a menace. Some think he is a savior. He`s a Rorschach test around this town."

"Our biggest allies and friends in Washington," says Chalabi, "are [Vice President] Cheney, [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz and [Defense Policy Board member Richard] Perle." He adds that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "was ambivalent, but now he`s negative."

Perle is Chalabi`s most vociferous supporter in Washington. His view is that "people who love Chalabi know him and people who hate him don`t know him." He contends that the CIA and the State Department continue to vilify the man but have no evidence. "It`s all whispers and innuendoes," he says.

Nobody knows how the president will finally come down on Chalabi. Right now Bush reportedly remains unconvinced that Chalabi is the one to lead Iraq into a democratic future. Jordan`s King Abdullah didn`t help matters: When he met with Bush recently, he is said to have delivered a broadside against his old nemesis, who was convicted of embezzling millions from a Jordanian bank. According to a friend of Abdullah`s, the president reacted to the information with outrage at Chalabi.

The whole notion of a democratic Iraq leaves many rolling their eyes. "It will happen eventually," says Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, "but nobody`s talking democracy in the next 90 days or nine months or even nine years."

The debate over Chalabi has divided the administration dramatically. Some people maintain that the solution for Iraq is "as simple as ABC -- Anyone But Chalabi."

"I have never seen such personalization of policy," says Richard Holbrooke, former U.N. ambassador and former assistant secretary of state. "It has created the impression of a dysfunctional family," one senior administration official admitted.

And the politics become more Byzantine every day. So intense is the division that a very senior administration official suggested that some of his colleagues had allowed their feelings to hurt the war effort: "Some people seem to be more eager to block support for Chalabi than to mobilize every possible source of opposition to Saddam," he said. "That is one of the reasons there were not more Iraqis mobilized in the free Iraqi forces when the war began."

At one point, another senior White House official told Defense Policy Board member Ken Adelman that the contretemps over Chalabi was the most distressing situation he had ever encountered in his time in government. Adelman is a close friend of both Cheney and Wolfowitz.

Chalabi responds to this story with a laugh. "If there`s harmony in Washington, you must be doing something wrong," he says.

`Kiss of Death`


Chalabi`s ultimate goal, almost everyone agrees, is to be president of Iraq. But as a politician, he has some grave liabilities. He is an extremely polarizing personality: people tend to love him or hate him. A recent poll of Iraqis showed a 35 percent unfavorable rating and a 26 percent favorable rating. Many Iraqis regard him as an outsider, someone who stayed away too long. When he returned with U.S. troops at the start of the war, he had not been to Baghdad since 1958. That`s when his family fled Iraq. He received his BS at MIT and his PhD at the University of Chicago, then moved to Lebanon, where he taught math at American University in Beirut. After a disastrous banking experience in Jordan, he moved to London and became a British subject. Even though he lived in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq for four years trying to overthrow the government, and lobbied for two years in the United States, his critics accuse him of living the good life while they were suffering under a brutal government. He knows that he is viewed as either a god or a devil, depending on whom you ask. Which is he? "Neither," he will say with a wry smile. But there is a more nuanced version of the question: Can he lead Iraq to democracy or will he be a destructive force that will send the country into further chaos? That is the question that`s dividing the administration.

Which is why he demurs when he is asked whether he wants to be president.

"No," he replies quickly, but his eyelids flutter when he says it. You can almost hear the whir inside his head as he formulates the right answer.

"I`d look ridiculous if I said yes," he says finally. "I`m not going to comment. It would be so pompous." He warms up. "People say I want to be anointed. That is the kiss of death. The U.S. ends up killing people they install."

Why so much animosity toward him? Why do so many people call him arrogant? "I stick to what I believe," he says. "Some say I`m not a team player. . . . I don`t compromise very much. . . . I have ideas about how to go about things. That makes people angry."

Many of his detractors say he`s just a stooge of the United States. "I have, through my family name, sufficient credibility not to be a stooge of the United States," he says. "Why would I need to?" He shrugs. "I stand up for Iraqi interests even if it doesn`t coincide with what Americans think. The fact is that I`m constantly attacked by the press. That`s not bad for me in Iraq. It shows I`m taking the position of an Iraqi patriot."

Chalabi, though, doesn`t want to be impolitic. It`s one thing not to look like a tool of the United States; it`s another to turn on his benefactors. Asked about his recent meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is reputed to oppose him, he chooses his words carefully. "I feel good about the meeting. He`s a smart man, very personable. He thought initially that we were taking an opportunistic stand, that we were taking the French position. But it`s our position. We`re not going to let the French get in the way of us and the U.S.

"We have allies and friends, and their agendas and constituencies are different from ours. Naturally there are differences.

"We don`t want a hasty pullout. Iraq and the U.S. are the best possible allies." Then he adds, more in sorrow than in anger: "People against us tried to make a rift. They tried to take advantage of us on the U.N. statement."

Having skirted the minefield, he grins.

A Day on the Hill


Chalabi, accompanied by two members of the Iraqi Governing Council, is meeting with the Senate leadership. His colleagues -- Adnan Pachachi and the council`s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari -- are his rivals, known to dislike him. But for the Senate today, it`s all smiles.

During coffee, Chalabi sits on the right of Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Afterward they meet a phalanx of reporters to make statements about how valuable the relationship is and how much they admire and respect each other. Chalabi thanks the American people for helping the Iraqi people.

Afterward, he raises his eyebrow knowingly. "This is Washington games," he says. "The real issue is appropriation. We persuaded them to give us grants, not loans." (In fact the Senate voted for $10 billion in loans, agreeing to grants only after the president threatened a veto.)

Chalabi is told that former representative Lee Hamilton, now head of the Woodrow Wilson Center, says only half-jokingly that Chalabi is the best lobbyist he`s ever seen in Washington except for Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti. Chalabi loves that. He nods. "Washington is the power center of the world," he says happily.

Chalabi announces that Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) will see the Iraqis privately after their leadership meeting. He is certain he will convince Biden that they should have a grant. Biden does vote for a grant but says later that it`s not because Chalabi persuaded him. "He may convince this administration to turn over the reins to him to allow them to get out of a failed policy, but I can`t imagine him being able to unite the country." Biden says that Chalabi is "a guy nobody trusts over there." He thinks Chalabi is bright, opportunistic and was committed to breaking Hussein`s grip on Iraq. "He had two loyalties. Deposing Saddam and promoting himself."

When Chalabi and Biden met in the Senate, Biden told him he was playing a dangerous game. "You guys are going to push for autonomy and [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is going to use you to get out of something we can`t win," Biden says he told him. "And you won`t get 135,000 American troops, either."

After the Biden visit there is no time for a long lunch that Chalabi had planned, so it is decided that the Senate dining room will have to do. Both Chalabi and Zebari tuck their napkins into their collars. Zebari is fat and nervous, with eyes that dart around as if he can`t believe he`s here meeting with all these important people. Pachachi, on the other hand is tall, white-haired and elegant, with Old World manners, well traveled and totally comfortable in the corridors of power. According to Sethna, they`ve been worried about whether Zebari will know how to handle himself. "We`re keeping our fingers crossed," says Sethna. "The foreign minister is new to this. He`s not good in meetings with the senators."

It is clear that Zebari is not ready for prime time. After devouring his lunch, he has so many grease spots on his suit that he looks like he`s had a head-on collision with a jar of olive oil. And this is before the White House meeting with Rice.

The conversation at the table comes around to what kind of constitution and government Iraq should have. "Should we have a government like the United States or should we have a parliamentary government?" muses Chalabi to Pachachi. "Should we have one house or two?" Pachachi questions. "I think we need two," answers Chalabi.

The waitress brings the dessert menu. Chalabi reluctantly starts to wave her away when he is told that ice cream relieves stress. "I`ll have a chocolate sundae," he says, grateful.

After the meeting with Rice, Chalabi reports that it went well but that Rice told him his "message has to be better." A senior administration official says that Wolfowitz also "read him the riot act." Clearly the White House was still irritated by his statement at the U.N. siding with the French.

And what was the message Rice wanted him to put out? He has it memorized by now. "Iraqis are happy that Saddam is gone and want to work hard for democracy and are grateful to the United States," he dutifully recites.

He does not meet with the president. And there`s no picture with Condi Rice.

The Long Road


Chalabi has been so obsessed with getting the United States to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein that he has more or less devoted the last 10 years of his life to it, leaving his wife, Leila, in London to raise his four children. He spent nearly four years living in northern Iraq, from 1992 to 1996, trying to foment an insurgency. When that failed he came to Washington and for the next two years lived with his aide Francis Brooke in a townhouse he owned in Georgetown, lobbying the U.S. government. Both of his top aides, Brooke and Sethna, are Americans whom he met when they were working for a CIA contractor in London.

He has nothing but praise for his wife, who is Lebanese and whose father was the speaker of the parliament in Lebanon. They were married there in 1972. It was a difficult time politically, and 48 hours before the wedding his wife`s brother was assassinated outside their house by political opponents of her father. Soon they moved to Jordan, then to London.

"My wife," he says, "has been a great support to me. She took care of my family." Even during the difficult times in Jordan, he says, "she was like a rock. She held it together." Of his four children, one daughter has a law degree from Georgetown, another a PhD from Harvard, one son is an artist in London and another is in boarding school in Britain.

His daughter Tamara, the Harvard graduate, is one of his closest advisers. She helped him write his U.N. speech. Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University`s School of Advanced International Studies and a close Chalabi friend, says: "Very few Arab fathers have that kind of relationship with their daughters. She is his intellectual heir. Twenty years ago, when she was a kid, he brought her to meetings to listen about politics. As far as I`m concerned, Tamara acquits him."

Chalabi admits he gets lonely and says he reads voraciously. His favorite book is "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf. He doesn`t go out much, for security reasons, and sleeps on the floor in his late sister`s house, on his father`s Oriental rug, in an upscale neighborhood in Baghdad. The house had been occupied by a division of the Baath Party, and Chalabi says he threw them out.

The morning of the interview with Chalabi in late September, he learned that his office in Baghdad had been broken into and trashed, despite what he thought was tight security. He sees this as a warning and is aware that his life is constantly in danger. He gets death threats every day. The terrorists have vowed to kill everyone on the governing council; they`ve already assassinated one. "We are the number one target," says Sethna.

These days Chalabi travels in a caravan of security cars and armed vehicles. (This is true of the others on the governing council as well.) He has reclaimed his family`s estate and plans to move in after the renovation is finished. But it is in a dangerous part of town where there are many Baathist cells. "People say I`m in danger. I don`t think of it much," he says. "It`s up to others to keep me safe. What can I do about it? I believe in fate."

The Debate


"He`s a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart," says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

"He`s a fake, one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people," says Pat Lang, the man who headed counterterrorism in the Middle East and South Asia for eight years at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"He`s a class act," says former CIA director Jim Woolsey.

"He is exasperating, frustrating and not a team player," says Whitley Bruner, a former CIA agent who worked with Chalabi in London.

"Unlike so many Iraqi oppositionists, he actually does what he says he`s going to do," says Ken Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

"If we pulled out he wouldn`t last two hours," says former CIA agent Bob Baer. "He`s like Rockefeller. He couldn`t be president. He`s a rich boy."

Contradictory views follow Chalabi into every area of his life. For every detractor, there`s a supporter, and often they`re working from the same set of facts. He has become a symbol in Washington -- depending on where you stand on the war, he`s either the good guy or the bad guy. Still, people in the administration won`t go on the record with criticism of him. And many of his supporters point out that people who blame him for the war overlook the fact that it was President Bush who made the decision.

"The question is: Who is manipulating whom?" says Tony Lake, national security adviser during the Clinton administration. "It has been a marriage of convenience."

Lang raises the question of the millions that were appropriated by Congress for the Iraqi National Congress primarily because Chalabi lobbied for it. "Where did it go?" he asks.

State Department officials have suggested that Chalabi ran off with the money, according to several sources. The State Department conducted an audit that found nothing to indicate the money had been misused, but found few receipts to show how it had been spent. But then, according to a State Department staffer, word filtered down from the White House: no more audits of Chalabi. That infuriated the people at State.

Says Perle: "I can`t get a shred of evidence from them of any wrongdoing. State has its own favorites. They are vicious about going after Ahmed."

When asked about Chalabi`s reputation as corrupt, a senior administration official says: "No one we`re going to deal with has a clean record. He gets criticized for things when others get a free pass."

Says McCain: "Is he a boy scout? I doubt it. He comes from a rough neighborhood. Is he interested in power? Of course." McCain has heard that Armitage can`t stand Chalabi. "I love that guy [Armitage], so it gives me pause."

Perle is concerned that the White House is buying the negative talk about Chalabi. "If you`re Condi Rice you depend on stuff from the Agency," he says, pointing out that the National Security Council is staffed by the CIA and State. And although Vice President Cheney has met Chalabi and formed a good impression, according to Perle, "I worry about what some people are telling Bush, things that aren`t true."

Ultimately the debate turns on whether Chalabi would make a good leader for Iraq. Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the first head of the reconstruction effort, who worked closely with Chalabi during his months overseeing Iraq, says yes. "I had great admiration for his intellect and passion," he says. "He`s a patriot. . . . If he rose to the top he`d do a credible job."

Lang says no: "A surefire way to make it certain that the government wouldn`t last is to put him in charge."

Recently, Chalabi`s supporters have appeared to be backing off. Those with a conspiratorial frame of mind have suggested that there is a concerted effort being made to pretend that he is losing ground in Washington so that he will not be seen as a U.S. puppet.

A former senior White House official now close to the State Department says that Chalabi`s support is diminishing every day in the White House. "He belongs to the Pentagon," this man says.

Haass, former director of police planning at the State Department and a confidant of Colin Powell, says: "We shouldn`t be for him or against him. If he has enough support inside, he will emerge, and if he doesn`t he won`t. And State shouldn`t oppose him or anoint him."

And the Pentagon, Wolfowitz echoes that view: "It is up to the Iraqi people to decide who their leaders will be, and I have never had a favorite. Our interest is in having Iraqi leaders who enjoy the broadest possible base of support in Iraq."

The CIA Contretemps


The worst allegations against Chalabi have to do with the CIA. But a decade ago, he was one of the agency`s favorites. At that time, according to Chalabi, his Iraqi National Congress was a CIA client raking in $326,000 a month from the agency, which wielded virtually no control over the Iraqis` operations. Their tactical approaches differed: the INC wanted to stage a popular insurrection; the CIA wanted to plan a military coup. Each thought the other was misguided. Eventually the CIA lost faith in Chalabi and severed its connection to him. Meanwhile, working with another exile group, the Iraqi National Accord, the CIA enlisted a group of generals in Hussein`s army to stage its coup. Chalabi says he learned that the attempt had been compromised and came to Washington in 1995 to warn the agency.

Perle was his messenger. "The agency did not take it seriously," Perle says today. Shortly thereafter, about 200 Iraqi officers were imprisoned, tortured and executed by Hussein`s regime.

After that, Chalabi called the CIA and "told them to go to hell." He was so outraged that he told the story to The Washington Post and ABC News. He claims the CIA never forgave him. "They looked bad. They went nuts."

"It was a disaster, and they were angry with the man who warned them," says Perle. It was then, he says, "that the CIA started circulating the rumor that Ahmed betrayed the coup." Perle says he`s talked with CIA Director George Tenet about this, and that Tenet has not provided any evidence to support the allegation.

Bob Baer, the former CIA agent who worked with Chalabi at the time, also says there is no truth to the allegation leveled by other agents that Chalabi betrayed the coup attempt. Furthermore, he says, the CIA made a mistake when it dumped Chalabi, for strategic reasons alone. The way things work in Washington, he points out, if Chalabi didn`t have the CIA to go to, he would turn to Cheney`s chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. "You don`t want that to happen if you`re the CIA," he says. "You don`t want separate channels to the White House. The CIA alienated him and that was a huge mistake."

A senior intelligence officer denied that the coup had anything to do with the CIA`s falling-out with Chalabi. He said the concern was about "effectiveness. It was a question of whether he was getting anywhere in terms of intelligence gathering. Money was being supplied, and it was not clear what the money was being used for." And, he said, the intelligence was "not significant and couldn`t be corroborated."

"We don`t have bad feelings or animosity for Mr. Chalabi. We wish him the best."

There are those who say Chalabi was the main source the United States relied on in the walk-up to the war in Iraq, but he says he played a very limited role, providing only three defectors. One, he says, was useful and is now in the witness protection program; another is the person who led the inspectors to what he said were mobile biological labs, though that has been disputed; and the third they dismissed. "We were not involved in the Niger story," he says. "We were not involved in the information Powell used in his U.N. speech."

One of the things that angered the CIA, Chalabi says, was the way it felt he manipulated the news media. He was a valued source for a number of reporters, including Judith Miller of the New York Times. In an in-house memo last year she wrote that Chalabi "has provided most of the front-page exclusives on WMD to our paper." But Miller says now that that was just shorthand. "In my reporting experience," she says, "it is not accurate that he provided most of the WMD material to the Times or to the U.S. government."

Some people have criticized Chalabi, saying that only 30 percent of his intelligence turned out to be accurate. His response: "If 30 percent of your information is useful, that`s like hitting the jackpot in intelligence."

Former CIA man Baer says: "When pressed to the wall, I find Chalabi to be extremely honest. . . . He never pulled a fast one on Washington. He really believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." Chalabi doesn`t understand the intelligence world, according to Baer. "He`s an Arab businessman," he says. "No one ever told him." Besides, says Baer, "Chalabi had a dog in this fight, and he`s an amateur. That`s a bad combination."

One senior intelligence officer declined to talk about Chalabi, saying rather bitterly, "We`re accused by other parts of the government of being mean to Mr. Chalabi."

The Jordanian Connection


In the Middle East, where family often means destiny, Chalabi started out ahead, part of the wealthiest family in the country. "We were the most prominent Shiite family in the monarchy," he says. "My grandfather was the only Shia in the cabinet."

In his office he keeps a picture of King Hussein on a visit to his grandfather in Baghdad. There was a long family history between the king and the Chalabis. "That`s why I went to Jordan," he says.

But today that good will is gone, replaced by an animosity that runs deep. The Jordanians have gone so far as to accuse Chalabi of responsibility for the car bomb that destroyed the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad in August, killing 17. Says Karim Kawar, the Jordanian ambassador to Washington: "We have reason to believe he is involved. We are awaiting an investigation to be concluded. Our intelligence tells us he might have had a hand in it."

Chalabi is outraged at this. "He is a stupid, misinformed man," he retorts. "He is perpetrating lies. They are liars. If that is the state of their intelligence, God help them."

How did it come to this? The tension stretches back to 1989, when Jordanian soldiers with armored vehicles raided the Petra Bank, which Chalabi had formed 11 years before in Amman. Chalabi barely escaped over the border.

The Jordanians charged him with embezzling about $300 million. He was tried in absentia, convicted and sentenced to 22 years` hard labor.

Chalabi`s daughter Tamara wrote a detailed piece in the Wall Street Journal last summer giving her father`s version of the bank story. The Chalabis say that Saddam Hussein, angry that Chalabi was blocking credit to the Iraqi regime, persuaded King Hussein to crack down. The king, who was dependent on Iraqi oil, complied. The plan was supposedly to capture Chalabi and turn him over to the Iraqi dictator.

"I was quite prominent," Chalabi says. "I was in charge of a good deal of the economy. Saddam became concerned about the extent of my influence in Jordan. With Saddam it was a personal vendetta." He says the Chalabi family lost millions of dollars in the incident.

He also says that being a Shiite and having such prominence in the Arab world "without a government to back me up became a big problem. It hadn`t happened before. Shiites in Arab politics have been disenfranchised, they`re always playing second fiddle. I don`t act that way. We`re uppity. My family is very socially prominent."

The Jordanian allegations have not stopped the United States from working with Chalabi. A former senior White House official says, "Nobody could ever flesh out the Jordanian thing."

Jamil Mroue, editor of the Daily Star in Lebanon, has known Chalabi for a long time and says he believes that Chalabi is guilty of bank fraud. "Corruption, nepotism and arranged deals are not unique to him," Mroue says. "It was commonplace in the `70s. It was rife."

Chalabi says that he saw King Hussein four times after he left Jordan and that the king offered him a pardon, which he refused because he had done nothing wrong. He claims the king was going to rescind the order for his arrest but died before he could do it.

He also claims he is on "good terms with Queen Noor." Those close to Queen Noor, the king`s widow, say this is not true.

He is not, on the other hand, on good terms with King Abdullah, Hussein`s son and successor. Smarting over the bombing accusation, he claims that Abdullah was a good friend of Saddam Hussein`s vicious son Uday, was in business with him and went to Baghdad many times to see him. He accuses Abdullah of having seized Iraq`s money in Jordanian banks.

In the midst of this antipathy, a close friend of Chalabi`s just back from Iraq reports that Chalabi is negotiating with the Jordanians to get several hundred million dollars in restitution for the money he lost in the Petra banking incident.

Chalabi sounds upset when he hears that this story is out. He will only say: "We are having discussions. We shouldn`t talk about it at this time. It doesn`t do anybody any good."

Ambassador Kawar is asked whether Chalabi will still be liable for arrest if he is elected president. "Once he is elected president," Kawar says, "he will be granted immunity."

What do other Arab governments think of Chalabi? "Not much," says another Arab ambassador. "He stayed away from the Arabs. He put his eggs in America`s basket."

With Gusto


Chalabi used to be fat. "I was a balloon," he admits. Now he is slimmer and trimmer, having. lost 50 pounds in seven months. In an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel, he gets right down to business. Lunch. He peruses the menu with deep concentration, finally choosing fish and vegetables. This is the low-carb diet. He looks longingly at the bread. You can see at once that this man was a gourmand. When his meal finally comes, he tucks his napkin into his collar and chows down. The interview, which was his first priority, suddenly takes a back seat to the halibut.

He is legendary in his search for good food. When he was living in the northern Iraq for four years, he became seriously tired of the local cuisine, longed for a decent risotto. So he found a pesh merga fighter to scour the countryside for an Iranian merchant who, given enough dinars, produced a large sack of arborio rice. Chalabi retired to his kitchen and happily stirred up a batch of gooey risotto.

Vindication


At midnight on Wednesday, after the U.S. reversal on the timing of sovereignty, Ahmed Chalabi was a happy man. "We made a deal," he exulted in a phone call from Baghdad, "and it was a suggestion we made several months ago, a suggestion we made even before the war. And we have come to it now."

He had just returned from a two-day trip to Mosul, where he met with the notables who will choose their members of Iraq`s new governing body. He`s been traveling the country, building alliances. "This is a difficult and complicated process," he had explained earlier. "We`re trying to get a democracy going."

This past week has been spent in intense negotiations with Bremer. (One Middle East expert says that the Pentagon forced Bremer to let Chalabi pack the governing council and has never had much affection for him.) But they`re getting along "much better," Chalabi reported. "There`s an old saying that the United States will do the right thing -- after having tried every other option."

His aide Sethna was more direct: "We`re avoiding gloating. Bremer`s a lame duck and he needs Ahmed more than Ahmed needs him. Ahmed has got about the best chance to put together a coalition and win the election."

In light of his victory, Chalabi has become even more modest about his political future. "The council`s job is finished June 30. We can participate if we want to and we will get elected like everybody else." But as Brooke, his other aide, points out, "The people chosen to come to the assemblies [who will ultimately choose the members of the new government] will be chosen by the governing council."

And Chalabi is definitely optimistic about the future of Iraq. "Where we were and where we have gotten now is 80 percent of the road. I`ve had some influence," he added, lowering his eyelids, "but it would be foolish for one person to take the credit."

The Powell Story


Chalabi loves to repeat a story that has been circulating at State and the Pentagon during the last few months. A Pentagon spokesman, asked to confirm it, says it`s "partly accurate." At first a State Department spokesman chuckles and says, "I can`t deny it," but then he calls back to report that Colin Powell says "it didn`t happen."

Chalabi tells it with relish:

Not long after Chalabi announced in New York that he was more in agreement with France than with the United States about the timing of Iraqi sovereignty, Powell and Wolfowitz were having a conversation about him.

"He`s your guy," Powell told the deputy secretary of defense. "Get him back in his cage."

"I can`t control him," replied Wolfowitz.

"Don`t [expletive] with me, Paul," said the secretary of state.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
When the Course Can`t be Stayed


By William Raspberry

Monday, November 24, 2003; Page A21



It`s hard to know which is the better analogy for our predicament in Iraq: Vietnam or Israel.

Vietnam is tempting, since it is what the word "quagmire" brings to mind -- and Iraq increasingly is looking like "a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position," which is how my Webster`s Collegiate dictionary defines quagmire.

What makes me think of Israel, though, is last week`s American bombing raid near the central Iraq town of Tikrit -- an attempt to wipe out the anti-occupation guerrillas thought to be ensconced there. It sounds for all the world like the retaliatory raids that follow virtually every suicide bomb attack in Israel. And the logic by which the decision to strike at largely civilian targets is the same.

The individuals who carry out the deadly terrorist attacks are most often dead at their own hands, and therefore beyond retaliation. The only retaliatory response that makes sense is to hit those who sent them. And since these cowards hide among civilian populations, the painful reality is that doing what is necessary involves civilian casualties.

What happens, of course, is that every such retaliatory strike spawns more terrorists and vastly increases the number of civilians who, forced to choose between the home-grown terrorists and the alien retaliators, take the side of the terrorists.

Sometimes, whether in Iraq or in Palestine, they think they don`t have a choice. The price of siding with the outsiders can be high.

For the American-led coalition forces in Iraq, the difficulties are tragically obvious. They were fine when all they had to do was win a war against a weakened and largely unresisting Iraqi military. But then they were asked to cap their military victory by establishing peace in a place whose government they had removed, whose language they didn`t speak and whose economy and civic order they had wrecked.

Even Iraqis who hated the now-deposed Saddam Hussein couldn`t be expected to love the outsiders who not only overthrew the dictator but who also killed untold numbers of their relatives in the process. There are plenty of reasons for the locals to dislike the coalition forces -- at least to the point of giving cover to those who would strike out against the invaders.

But our guys can`t just sit back and let that happen. So a week ago, in what may have been a turning point in the postwar, U.S. forces hit a Tikrit-area village with helicopter gunships, tanks, satellite-guided rockets and 500-pound bombs.

"We have to use these capabilities to take the fight to the enemy," Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, explained. "And why not?"

It`s a good question -- if your principal objective is either to protect your own forces or to wipe out guerrillas. But if your mission is to win over the Iraqi people, bringing the war to their neighborhoods works about as well as it has worked in Palestine. At least the Israelis are clear that their own security is their first priority.

The problem for the coalition is that the terrorists are not necessarily some ragtag band of malcontents that can be hunted down and taken out one by one. They may be more like a particularly aggressive virus that is spread by the very medicine prescribed to cure it.

And they may be more than that. One hears more and more some version of the theory I first heard from D.L. Cuddy, author of a book about Iraq called "Cover-Up: Government Spin or Truth?" Cuddy`s notion is that the guerrilla war we`re now flailing against is precisely the war Saddam Hussein intended to fight all along. That, he argues, is why Hussein offered only token resistance, preferring to wait for the coalition to disperse into smaller patrols, vulnerable to hit-and-run assaults. Saddam, in this scenario, doesn`t need victory; he only needs chaos, uncertainty, demoralization -- and the fervent wish by most Iraqis that the outsiders just go home.

For all the Bush administration`s brave talk about staying the course, the course they`ve chosen may become increasingly unstayable -- and not just because a presidential election looms.

Maybe all we can do is turn things over to some legitimate-appearing Iraqi authority constituted under the aegis of the United Nations and hope that it can keep it together long enough to get us more or less gracefully out of town.

[e-mail]



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
113 New Cartoons Today, es geht für einen Montag gut los, 113 frische Cartoons:

http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20031124__113toons.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Links: California Declares Paper Ballots Mandatory
Saturday, 22 November 2003, 5:12 pm
Article: The Scoop Editor

A little over four months ago, on July 8th, Scoop Media broke a significant international news story about apparent security flaws in the United States voting apparatus - see… Sludge Report #154 – Bigger Than Watergate! & Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program .
The story broke into the mainstream with a report in the New York Times on July 26th, and since then, as chronicled on Scoop`s “A Very American Coup Page”, the story has been growing in intensity by the day.

Today the Californian Secretary of State is reported in the Los Angeles Times ordering that voter verifiable paper ballots (VVPBs) will be made mandatory for the State’s elections from 2006.

While the lateness of this deadline is likely to lead to an ongoing battle for electronic voting activists first over the presidential primaries early next year, and then over the 2004 Presidential election in November, in substance this is a huge victory for the cause of resurrecting some credibility in the United States electoral system. Scoop is delighted to have been able to play a part in bringing this about.

- Scoop Co-Editor Alastair Thompson


************

E-Votes Must Leave a Paper Trail

By Kim Zetter
03:25 PM Nov. 21, 2003 PT
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61334,00.html?tw=wn_t…
SAN FRANCISCO -- California will become the first state requiring all electronic voting machines produce a voter-verifiable paper receipt.

The requirement, announced Friday by California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, applies to all electronic voting systems already in use as well as those currently being purchased. The machines must be retrofitted with printers to produce a receipt by 2006.

With a receipt, voters will be able to verify that their ballots have been properly cast. However, they will not be allowed to keep the receipts, which will be stored at voting precincts and used for a recount if any voting irregularities arise.

Beginning July 1, 2005, counties will not be able to purchase any machine that does not produce a paper trail. As of July 2006, all machines, no matter when they were purchased, must offer a voter-verifiable paper audit trail. This means machines currently in use by four counties in the state will have to be fitted with new printers to meet the requirement.

FULL STORY:
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61334,00.html?tw=wn_t…


************

State Tells Counties to Establish Paper Trail on Electronic Voting

By Allison Hoffman and Tim Reiterman, Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shelley21nov21,1,847…
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes are properly recorded.

Late Thursday evening, Shelley placed calls to county elections officials around the state to tell them that any voting system that is currently in use or that is purchased before Jan. 1, 2006, must be modified or replaced to produce a paper trail. After that date, no county will be allowed to buy machines that can`t make printouts.

None of the electronic voting systems currently in use in the state can make such a record. Voters who cast ballots using touch-screens, the most common type of electronic voting machine, are prompted to review their choices on a confirmation screen, but they have no way of knowing that those selections are recorded correctly in the microchip "ballot box."

FULL STORY:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shelley21nov21,1,847…


*****ENDS******

[Joerver]

Zur Vietnamisierung des Globus

Goedart Palm 24.11.2003
Bush und die List der Geschichte

Bush führt nun den Krieg, den sein Vater aus Gründen nicht führen wollte, die der Sohn als selbst ernannter Weltgefahrenbeauftragter ignoriert ( Der Angriff der Klonkrieger). Er führt einen Krieg, der kein Krieg sein soll, sondern eine Polizei- und Aufräumaktion, bestenfalls ein Nachkriegsscharmützel, eine lästige Durchgangsphase zur irakischen Demokratie westlichen Zuschnitts ( Politische Pädagogik oder der Befehl zur Freiheit).


US-Soldaten marschieren am 19.11. in ein Dorf in der Nähe von Qayyarah ein

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Aber sie (die amerikanische Nation) geht nicht in andere Länder, um Ungeheuer zu vernichten...Die grundlegende Maxime ihrer Politik würden sich unmerklich von Freiheit zur Gewalt verlagern. Sie würde zur Diktatorin der Welt werden. Sie würde ihren eigenen Geist verleugnen.
John Quincy Adams, 1821


Doch schon kursiert ein hässliches Wort, ein traumatisches Wort für die amerikanische Wohlstands- und Erfolgsgesellschaft: Vietnam. Vietnam steht in der Bewertung historischer Katastrophen Amerikas - vielleicht gleichberechtigt neben dem amerikanischen Sezessionskrieg - für die fürchterlichste Kriegserfahrung dieser Nation. Vietnam wurde zum Zeichen für die Unbeherrschbarkeit von Welt und Geschichte, nicht weniger aber der Torheit der Mächtigen, denen die Courage fehlte, den eigenen Irrweg zu erkennen.


Trotz gigantischer militärischer Überlegenheit, einer schier unbegrenzten Logistik, die im Zweiten Weltkrieg einen Zwei-Fronten-Krieg in Europa und im Pazifik ermöglichte, und - wie immer - der allerhöchsten Moral auf der eigenen Seite war dieser Krieg gegen das "lumpige, viertklassige Ländchen" (US-Präsident Johnson) nicht zu gewinnen. Vietnam wurde Amerikas Wunde, die bibelfesten Christen geradezu als göttliche Strafe für so viel Hybris erschienen sein mag.

Nun wurde gerade der erste amerikanische Golfkrieg von Bushs Vater als Überwindung dieses Traumas gefeiert. Der erfolgreiche Bilderbuch-Blitzkrieg von Bush I. gegen Saddam Hussein vertrieb die Horror-Ikonen der morbiden Dschungelszenarien, in denen GIs schließlich selbst die Hölle erlebten, die sie doch mit Agent Orange und Napalm allein den anderen bereiten sollten.

Heute ist in Bagdad die Hölle los. Es sind nicht nur die allfälligen Anschläge, die die Weltnachrichten aufheizen, sondern es gibt auch die Hölle der alltäglichen Unsicherheiten, in der Menschen ihre Familien mit der Kalaschnikow verteidigen müssen, weil der Mensch seinem Nachbarn wieder zum Wolf geworden ist. Weder die Besatzer noch die irakische Polizei richten bislang gegen die Anschläge und Übergriffe marodierender Banden, Erpresser und der bunt gemischten Feinde Amerikas viel aus. Was flüstert wohl eine irakische Mutter ihren Kindern zu: "Halte dich nicht in der Nähe von amerikanischen Soldaten auf."

Das ist die wahre Begrüßung der Eroberer. Bushs geschichtsseliger Vergleich des Irak mit der westdeutschen Nachkriegssituation, die so stromlinienförmig in der bundesrepublikanischen Demokratie mündete, wird durch jeden weiteren Bombenanschlag ad absurdum geführt. Paradox formuliert: "Geschichte wiederholt sich, aber eben anders, als sie sich zuvor zugetragen hat." Bush gibt sich weiter zwangsoptimistisch, weil er die Rolle, die er suchte, nicht mehr verlassen kann. Mitstreiter wie Don Rumsfeld haben inzwischen längst der Zweifel am globalen Antiterrorkampf ereilt, zudem die Oberbösewichter nicht unschädlich gemacht wurden. Mit anderen Worten: Die Kriegsziele wurden weit gehend nicht erreicht. Bushs vorgeblich unerschütterlicher Glauben an seine Mission kommt dagegen aus derselben Quelle, die ihn veranlasste, der Welt wider besseres Wissen die irakische Gefahr als unmittelbar drohende Apokalypse zu verkaufen, um völkerrechtswidrige Akte schön zu reden ( Der Wille zum Krieg triumphiert über das Recht).

Ein Gefahrenverkäufer bleibt Bush I. weiterhin: Wenn die neuen alten bösen Mächte im Irak Massenvernichtungswaffen hätten, "wäre" das eine globale Gefahr. Doch derzeit dürften die höchst konventionellen Waffen konventioneller Guerilleros, die gestern in Bagdad erschienen und heute in Istanbul zuschlagen, erheblich größere Probleme bereiten als Massenvernichtungswaffen im überquellenden Arsenal der präsidialen Möglichkeitsform.

Der Kampf gegen Schattenkrieger

Die ohnehin von großen Teilen der Irakis ungeliebten Besatzer werden mit den jetzt einsetzenden, immer drakonischeren Vergeltungsmaßnahmen auch ihre letzten fragilen Sympathien einbüßen. Doch nicht nur der Ansehensverlust quält, der Besatzer zu den Leuten macht, die sie in den Augen ihrer Widersacher ohnehin immer schon waren. Die militärischen Möglichkeiten, gegen einen unsichtbaren Feind zu kämpfen, der im Land auftaucht und verschwindet, sind - wie Bush schon von Napoleon I. und anderen vormaligen Herren der Welt hätte erfahren können - höchst begrenzt bis sinnlos.



Gerade die "Entortung" des Partisanen, die Carl Schmitt für eine herausragende Eigenschaft dieses an sich "terranen Kämpfertypus" hielt, lässt die neuesten Wutstrategien der US-Armee wie die Operation "Ivy Cyclone", Gebäude zu zerstören, so hilflos erscheinen ( Präzision mit eisernem Hammer, Feuer, Efeu und Wirbelsturm). Ein Militärsprecher begründete die nun einsetzende Offensive nach dem Sieg mit der originellen Botschaft, dass die Iraker wissen sollen, dass die alliierten Truppen keine Angriffe gegen sie dulden werden. Hat das Partisanen oder Terroristen je davon abgehalten, ihrem Handwerk nachzugehen oder nicht gerade angestachelt? Wird nicht jeder gelungene Anschlag auf die Besatzer zu einem weiteren Einberufungsbefehl für das Herr der Unzufriedenen und Feinde Amerikas? Mit der besseren Moral war Feinden noch nie beizukommen, was unter anderem dazu führte, die Lehren vom gerechten Krieg gründlich zu vergessen.

Der "Krieg der Ideen", von dem Bush zuvor kündete, ist der alten neuen Vietnam-Strategie des "search and destroy" nicht zu entnehmen. War das militärische Großreinemachen gegen eine reguläre Armee eine Art Kurzurlaub mit Gefahrenzulage, ist der Kampf gegen diese Krieger, die nun zu Partisanen mutieren, das härteste Geschäft. Der deutsche General Helmut Staedke definierte das 1956 so:
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Partisan ist der Kämpfer der...neun Zehntel einer Kriegführung, die nur das letzte Zehntel den regulären Streitkräften überlässt.


Diesmal könnte es umgekehrt sein: Die ersten zehn Zehntel hat Bush erfolgreich absolviert, nun muss er nur noch den Rest seines Krieges nach seinem Ein-Zehntel-Sieg führen. Denn er und sein Freund Blair geben sich unbeirrt: "Wir bleiben, bis der Job erledigt ist."

Wer hier bagatellisierend von "Job" redet, könnte an kognitiver Dissonanz leiden. Die Entschlossenheit der beiden Männerfreunde hat al-Qaida nun mit den Anschlägen in Istanbul kommentiert, die nicht zuletzt deutlich machen, dass diese Gruppe nicht wesentlich geschwächt ist, obwohl der aufwändige Antiterrorkampf bereits in das dritte Jahr geht. Die Mobilisierungseffekte für zum heiligen Kampf gegen den Westen Entschlossene sind auf Grund solcher spektakulären Gewalttaten kaum absehbar.

Und hier endet denn auch der historische Vergleich mit Vietnam, denn das neue Vietnam ist im globalen Maßstab der Terroristen überall. Ché Guevara forderte im guten alten Weltrevolutionspathos seiner Tage: "Schaffen wir zwei, drei, viele Vietnams." Es wird zur Ironie der Geschichte, dass seine sozialistische Botschaft im Geiste Trotzkis nun ausgerechnet bei terroristischen Fundamentalisten angelangt ist, die dieses Ziel erreichen könnten, das weiland ein leerer Appell blieb, weil es in Zeiten des Kalten Kriegs keine echte Perspektive dafür gab.

Von Bagdad nach Stambul

Die bushistische Antiterrorstrategie ist zum Scheitern verurteilt, wenn politische Lösungen nicht in greifbare Nähe rücken. Bushs amerikanischer Internationalismus stößt an die ohnehin engen Grenzen seiner Logik, die schon bald die seiner Logistik sein könnten, wenn immer neue Krisenherde weltweit hinzukommen. Die Komplexität dieses sich in diesen Tagen wieder aufheizenden Konflikts lässt sich weder mit einem hybriden Technologiekrieg und schon gar nicht mit martialischen Formeln, die Bush noch nicht ausgehen, lösen.



Dieser Präsident, der sich zum Kriegspräsidenten berufen fühlt und jüngst seine Formel der Weltbefriedung qua Krieg wiederholte ( Im Auftrag der Weltgeschichte), ist bereits recht klein geworden. Inszenierte er sich zuvor als der Herr der Welt, der selbstgerecht nur zwischen Vasallen und Widersachern unterschied, lernt er jetzt die fortgeschrittenen und quälenderen Kapitel der Macht kennen, die hinter gloriosen Auftaktveranstaltungen und regulären Kriegen zwischen ungleichen Gegnern stehen.

Terroristen werden zu Helden des Befreiungskampfes

In Amerika schwindet die Akzeptanz mit jedem gefallenen GI. Der Partisanenkrieg ist wie schleichendes Gift, das vielleicht nicht den unbeugsam auftretenden Präsidenten, aber Zivilgesellschaften lähmen kann. Außenpolitisch steht es um Bushs Kampf nicht besser. Die Vasallen sind keine, sondern entpuppen sich als Interessenwalter, die das amerikanische Selbstbereicherungsspiel im Irak nicht oder nur höchst bedingt mitmachen. Bei seinen geliebten Freunden muss sich der Präsident im Buckingham-Palace verschanzen, während der Bürgermeister von London ihn in aller Öffentlichkeit als "Bedrohung für das Leben auf diesem Planeten" beschimpft.

Die Zahl der Widersacher ist im Verlauf des bushistischen Zivilisationsrettungsprogramms noch größer geworden. Denn die Feinde im Irak sind keine Spießgesellen des globalen Terrorismus, mehrheitlich keine Gefolgsleute von al-Qaida, sondern Saddam-Getreue, Amerika-Hasser, militante Schiiten und Fundamentalisten. Hier wie in anderen Partisanenkriegen könnte sich die ironische Moral der Geschichte erfüllen, dass der Guerillero schließlich trotz fragwürdigster Motive zum Helden wird, der nationalen Boden gegen die Eroberer verteidigt.

Gerade dieser Etikettenschwindel von Terroristen wird der islamistischen Fundamentalisierung einen Auftrieb geben, der zu Zeiten der Herrschaft Saddam Husseins unter der Machtglocke des Potentaten verhindert wurde. Saddam Hussein selbst aber war für Bush nie gefährlicher als heute, als toter oder lebender Mann des Untergrunds - und der Unterschied verkümmert zur quantité négligeable. Saddam Hussein, der noch kurz vor Kriegsbeginn gewimmert haben soll, bereit war, sämtliche Forderungen des stolzen US-Präsidenten zu erfüllen, selbst einen Last-Minute-Frieden anstrebte, ist erst jetzt der Gegner geworden, der Bush so gefährlich wird, wie es der Präsident im Gegensatz zu seinen öffentlichen Verlautbarungen wohl nie zu glauben vermocht hätte.

Die Torheit der Herrschenden als höhere Vernunft der Geschichte?

Bush hat die Gefahren vermehrt, die er doch bis an das Ende der Tage der Menschheit austreiben wollte. Mit dem Antiterrorkampf ist die Welt nicht nur in dieser Region, sondern augenscheinlich auch an allen anderen Orten des Globus unsicherer geworden. Bush in London über seine Intimfeinde:
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Sie hassen freie Nationen. Ihre Grausamkeit ist ein Teil ihrer Strategie. Die Terroristen wollen uns demoralisieren.



Wenn er das doch alles weiß, sollte er nicht weiter unberechenbare Schattenkrieger mit Feuer und Schwert bekämpfen, sondern das Übel als politische Aufgabe begreifen. Stattdessen gilt heute wie damals: Morgen wird alles anders.

Das war auch die Lehre in Vietnam, solange Amerika seine Lektion nicht gelernt hatte. In Vietnam brauchte es lange Jahre zu begreifen, dass es dieses Morgen, das die Strategen auf dem Schlachtfeld mit Bomben entworfen hatten, nicht geben würde. Auch während dieses Krieges wurde die Machtausübung, mit einem unbeugsamen Feind doch endlich fertig zu werden, immer besinnungsloser:

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So wie sie diesmal bombardiert werden, sind diese Bastarde noch nie bombardiert worden.
US-Präsident Nixon, kurz vor Ende des Kriegs

Bush kann den selbst gewählten Weg des Übels aus eigener Kraft nicht mehr verlassen, weil seine Glaubwürdigkeit an den gebetsmühlenartig wiederholten Zielen der amerikanischen Weltbefriedungspolitik klebt. Auch das ist die Lehre von Vietnam, demnach die Mächtigen nicht mächtig genug waren, ihr Gesicht zu verlieren - wie es Barbara Tuchman in "Die Torheit der Regierenden" darlegte. Tuchman meinte, gegenüber der historisch perennierenden Torheit der Macht hätte es immer Alternativen der Vernunft gegeben, die nicht erkannt wurden.

Doch ist es nicht vielmehr so, dass die Geschichte die jeweiligen Herren der Welt immer mit der notwendigen Torheit ausstattet, damit die Machtkonglomerate schließlich wieder zerfallen, so wenig die Zustände oft wünschbar waren, die danach folgten? Das zumindest wäre eine plausiblere Geschichtslogik, die weniger auf menschliche Vernunft als auf menschliche Dummheit vertraut. Denn letztere hat das erheblich größere Potenzial und darin könnte eben doch wieder eine höhere Vernunft stecken.
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THE WORLD



Iraq`s Model City Starts to Get Ugly
The fatal shooting in broad daylight of two U.S. soldiers in Mosul is part of a rise in attacks.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

November 24, 2003

MOSUL, Iraq — After months of being celebrated as the model city of postwar Iraq, this ancient citadel on the Tigris is enduring a wave of attacks targeting U.S. forces and their allies — an alarming trend that intensified Sunday with the killing of two American soldiers as they drove through town in broad daylight.

Military officials confirmed that two soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division were shot at as they drove between U.S. garrisons here. But witnesses and the military differed on details of the incident.

One witness, Ahmed Mohammed Ali, 21, said today that the soldiers` car was shot at and then crashed into a concrete wall on a street in an industrial area.

When American troops did not immediately appear, a crowd of teenagers began to gather, he said. Attackers pulled the driver, who was wounded, out of the vehicle, beat him and slit his throat, Ali said.

The passenger also was pulled out and died after being beaten with stones and shoes, he said. The soldiers` weapons and body armor were stolen.

Ali and other witnesses said other Americans didn`t arrive for at least an hour.

A military official in Mosul reached by telephone denied those accounts. He said both soldiers appeared to have died from gunshot wounds. Other troops arrived within minutes to secure the scene, the official said.

The military official said both soldiers were dragged from their vehicle and their equipment was stolen but that there was no evidence their bodies had been abused.

"Their bodies were defiled by gunshots," the official said.

Some residents seemed upset about the attack.

Fahmi Hanna, 60, who runs a plumbing supply store, said: "It`s too bad. These are human beings. I couldn`t bear to look."

An official in Baghdad said this morning that it was unclear whether the soldiers were able to fire back at their attackers.

"I haven`t seen any confirmed indications that this was a Mogadishu-type incident," said the official, referring to a 1993 incident in Somalia in which residents dragged the bodies of U.S. servicemen through the streets of the capital after two Black Hawks were felled by rocket-propelled grenades.

The slaying of the two GIs in Mosul came eight days after two Black Hawk helicopters crashed in a residential neighborhood here — apparently while under enemy fire — costing the lives of 17 airmen.

Another American soldier was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb near Baqubah, and an Iraqi police official in charge of oilfield security in Mosul was reported killed as he left a mosque earlier in the weekend.

In Baghdad, civilian flights remained suspended following a missile attack on a DHL cargo plane taking off for Bahrain on Saturday. The stricken plane returned to the runway safely.

Even before the latest deaths, a sharp rise in attacks had rocked this city of 1.7 million and forced U.S. troops back onto a war footing after months of focusing on economic and political development.

In the last week, troops have raided suspected opposition hide-outs, conducted hundreds of house-to-house searches and dispatched U.S.-trained Iraqi troops into 10 mosques — once a taboo. The raids have yielded numerous arms caches and resulted in the detention of more than 100 men.

Among those detained, the U.S. says, are two suspected Al Qaeda operatives, both Iraqi citizens; an insurgent who allegedly sought to send a woman with a bomb to a police station; and a veteran criminal implicated in a plot to assassinate Col. Joe Anderson at his base near downtown.

"They [Iraqis] don`t understand being nice," said Anderson, who helps oversee the military zone that includes Mosul and environs. He doesn`t hide his irritation after months dedicated to restoring the city: "We spent so long here working with kid gloves, but the average Iraqi guy will tell you, `The only thing people respect here is violence…. They only understand being shot at, being killed. That`s the culture.` … Nice guys do finish last here."

The U.S. says that former members of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party and other insurgents have embarked on a campaign of assassinations in recent weeks, mowing down prominent Mosul residents assisting the U.S., including a judge, a gubernatorial aide and the oil field security official.

The bloody tableau clashes with the image of progress and cooperation that previously characterized postwar Mosul, a city with a functioning government, an efficient police force, a vigorous economy and a commanding general with a Princeton degree.

Although Mosul had been a notorious stronghold of the former Baath regime, U.S. troops stationed here were able to spend much of their time refurbishing schools and factories and jump-starting civic life.

The Army pumped more than $30 million in seized ex-regime funds into hundreds of redevelopment projects.

U.S. forces also helped set up a new police force, fire department and city council, overseeing a caucus process that saw the election of an Arab mayor and councilmen representing Kurds, Christians and other minority groups — widely hailed as the first stab at representative government in post-invasion Iraq.

The government is still going strong, though a gubernatorial aide was recently assassinated and Gov. Ghanim Basoo, like other leaders throughout the country, governs from a heavily fortified City Hall and travels with a phalanx of Kalashnikov-wielding bodyguards.

The scholarly general, David H. Petraeus, is also still here, and Mosul has remained much less bunkered and tense than battered Baghdad, its streets animated with shoppers and office workers and absent the gauntlets of blast barriers and concertina wire.

But military officials say the sharp rise in attacks is a well- organized campaign by former Hussein loyalists to undercut the months of toil aimed at injecting democracy into a city long subjected to iron-fisted Baathist control and an almost Prussian tradition of loyalty to the strongman in Baghdad.

Following the U.S. takeover, officials say, the Baathist cadres lay low for a while before regrouping and setting up networks to secure funding, weapons and personnel to carry out attacks. Now, they have launched their counteroffensive.

"They cannot abide Mosul being a success," said Petraeus, a graduate of Princeton`s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "This is a race to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people…. The other side not only wants to prevent us from getting to the finish line, they want to kill us on the way to the finish line."

The well-armed Hussein loyalists have cash to spread around among ex-soldiers, criminals and others willing to take a shot at U.S. troops or anyone deemed as cooperating with them, U.S. forces say.

"This is an all-or-nothing game for the Fedayeen and the Baath militias," said Petraeus, who puts the core number of Baathist organizers here at fewer than 100 — possibly headed by Izzat Ibrahim, a former top aide to Hussein thought to be coordinating attacks nationwide. "These folks have no hope of ever achieving anything like the wealth, prestige, power and just sheer position in society that they had, if the new Iraq succeeds."

The surge in violence in Mosul — along with recent bombings in Nasiriyah and Basra in southern Iraq, also areas that had been relatively calm — indicates to some that the armed opposition wants to send out a message that no place is safe in this country.

U.S. troops in northern Iraq have intercepted several weapons shipments coming from the so-called Sunni Triangle area, where U.S. forces have come under steady guerrilla-style attacks for months.

"Remember this has not been sweetness and light all the way along here," added Petraeus, noting that six soldiers were killed in one week in July in the Mosul area.

"On the one hand, we`re happy to have a perception that Mosul is wonderful, because that`s good for investment," he said. "But we`ve been in a sense going after these guys steadily all along here. And it`s clear there was a concerted effort that started some weeks back to try and disrupt the progress here."

Ambushes killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding seven this month preceded the recent Black Hawk crashes. Authorities suspect ground fire from a rocket-propelled grenade triggered a midair collision above a city neighborhood.

Anti-U.S. feeling runs strong on the largely Arab west side of the multiethnic city, the zone where the two helicopters went down. Some openly cheered the Black Hawks` demise.

"Mosul will not be safe for the American invaders," declared a man who would only give his name as Mahmoud, as he and others gathered on the grounds of a mosque near the crash site. "The Americans said they would help us, but what have they done? Stolen our oil and taken our land."

U.S. commanders here, as elsewhere in Iraq, are convinced that some mosques have been used as staging sites to organize attacks, store and assemble weapons and lure recruits to a new holy war. Under long-standing policy, U.S. forces will not enter houses of worship without proof of an armed threat.

However, troops here have circumvented the restriction by deputizing U.S.-trained Iraqi civil defense officers to search suspect mosques. The Iraqi forces went into 10 mosques in recent days, pulling out three arms caches and arresting nine men with a detonator at one mosque, said Anderson, the colonel.

That mosque, which the colonel calls "the No. 1 anti-U.S. mosque in the city," is almost directly across the street from the site of the home where Hussein`s two sons, Uday and Qusai, were killed in a U.S. raid in July. Soldiers found $1.3 million in the home — money probably intended to finance attacks against U.S. forces, officials suspect.

U.S. forces have mounted neighborhood sweeps, flooding districts targeted as possible opposition strongholds and entering as many as 1,000 homes. Commanders relaxed longtime rules restricting solders from entering and searching houses. Yet extracting useful information on the insurgent leadership can be difficult.

"All these guys we rounded up, they`re saying in the interrogation, if we don`t torture them, we`re not going to get the information," Anderson said, adding that many Iraqi security officials have told him the same thing: "If you don`t rough these guys up, you`re not going to get the information you need."

One suspect was arrested in connection with a plot to assassinate Anderson, who has a high profile in Mosul, hosting a weekly radio call-in program and a TV show. The would-be assassin was looking to target the colonel as he entered or left the base or during his daily run. The suspect had figured out his jogging schedule, an indication of how the opposition has managed to place Iraqi informers in U.S. and Iraqi police installations.

"We poured a lot of our heart and soul into trying to help the people," said Anderson, who was interviewed on the day he awarded medals to two survivors of one of the Black Hawk crashes. "But it can be frustrating when you hear stupid people still saying, `You`re occupiers. You want our oil. You`re turning our country over to Israel.` …

"Like I told the soldiers when I pinned the Purple Hearts on them this morning: It`s no longer about Iraqis. It`s about Americans. It`s about our comrades. Nothing will deter us, and nothing will slow us down. And we`ll do our job until the day they tell us to go home."

*


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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in Mosul contributed to this report.



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THE WORLD



Shiite Cleric Could Make or Break Transition
Muqtader Sadr has said repeatedly the coalition must leave immediately. U.S. fears his rhetoric will spread violence among his following.
By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

November 24, 2003

KUFA, Iraq — He is angry and unapologetic when it comes to criticizing the occupation of Iraq. But unlike other sworn opponents of the American presence, he has a famous name and family history that give him credibility with millions of poor urban Shiite Muslims who make up the majority in this country.

And that is what makes Muqtader Sadr so potentially dangerous to U.S. hopes for an orderly transition to a stable, democratic government — hopes that are already being sorely tested by an expanding insurgency centered mostly in Sunni Muslim areas of the country.

If Iraq`s Shiite slums — such as Baghdad`s teeming Sadr City, named for the young cleric`s assassinated father — erupt like the Sunni heartland, the already problematic U.S. occupation will become even more difficult. Unlike other Shiite religious figures who counsel giving the Americans a chance to prove they are liberators and not occupiers, Sadr has stoked anti-American feelings with weekly denunciations during Friday prayers.

The dark-eyed, slightly pudgy 30-year-old lived up to his firebrand image last week in an interview with The Times.

In his first comments since plans were unveiled to speed up the naming of a provisional government for the country, Sadr dismissed the proposed hand-over of power by July 1 as inadequate, and rejected any role for what he called the "vicious trinity" of the United States, Britain and Israel in Iraq`s future.

"Whatever is related to occupation must be considered as `occupation,` and must be refused by any rational and peace-loving person," he said, sitting cross-legged on cushions in a reception room near a residence he uses in this central Iraq city. The only real solution, he said, was for U.S. forces to withdraw immediately.

What remained to be seen was whether he would wield his fiery rhetoric, his popularity among youths and his skills at provoking demonstrations to try to waylay the agreement reached between civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III and the Iraqi Governing Council. Hints from him and his supporters have been ambiguous, suggesting that Sadr was hesitating and keeping his options open in the face of U.S. warnings that incitement and insurrection would not be tolerated.

Despite Sadr`s apparent rejection of the accord, a statement issued last week by the Sadr Bureau, a sort of shadow government that has wide influence in many Shiite neighborhoods, said the proposed new provisional government could be supported — if certain conditions were met, including that the occupying powers not interfere with the new government and that it be representative of all of society.

Nevertheless, Sadr`s statements were hardly reassuring for occupation forces already struggling to contain an insurgency by fighters from the old Baathist regime and extremists from the Sunni branch of Islam. Anti-coalition violence is a regular occurrence in central Iraq, and in recent weeks it has shown signs of expanding north to Mosul and south to the Shiite centers of Basra and Nasiriyah.

Shiites make up at least 60% of Iraq`s 25 million people but were second-class citizens under the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein. Since the U.S. and its allies ousted the regime in April, Shiites have emerged to take the majority of seats on the Governing Council and in the interim Cabinet that the council named. Most observers expect that whatever provisional government emerges next year will also be led by a Shiite.

Within the Shiite community, Sadr has a certain following because of reverence for his father, Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, and uncle, Mohammed Bakr Sadr, who opposed the Baathist regime from within Iraq, unlike others who fled to the safety of Iran or other countries, and paid with their lives — in 1999 and 1980, respectively.

Sadr is also seen by many more senior clerics as an ambitious upstart. More respect is usually accorded the septuagenarian Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who from his base in the shrine city of Najaf has kept his distance from occupation authorities but has also told Shiites not to raise arms against them.

Sadr stays mainly in Kufa, about 10 miles from the more prestigious Najaf, because he is not welcome in that bastion of Sistani adherents. But to the south, and in Sadr City in Baghdad, his organization`s emphasis on social work and programs to help the poor has helped cement his popularity.

The nightmare for the U.S. would be if, after it fought a war to depose Hussein, Iraq evolved into an extremely anti-American Shiite state similar to neighboring Iran. Although Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war throughout the 1980s and differ in ethnicity and language, there is a web of overlapping ties and rivalries between the two countries` Shiite establishments.

In the case of Sadr, he is a follower and student of an Iran-based ayatollah whose views on religious governance closely mirror those of the Islamic Republic`s late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Those ties have contributed to the widespread suspicions in Iraq that Sadr himself is under the sway of Iran`s more hard-line factions.

There has been friction between U.S. soldiers and Shiites, particularly Sadr`s militant followers, who tend to represent the anti-establishment movement within Iraqi Shiism. But on the whole, the fact that the Shiites have not challenged the occupation forces has been a huge boon from the American perspective.

In the interview, Sadr said he didn`t know whether the calm would continue, but he rejected the idea that Americans would have any role in the process of establishing a government. "Authority and the government should be transferred to the Iraqi people," he said. "This is the necessary thing, and everybody recognizes this, whether they are Iraqi or not."

Similarly, he rejected the proposed seven-month timetable for setting up the new government, saying, "Leadership and the presidency must be transferred immediately. No one has the right to interfere." Sadr made an attempt over the summer to assemble a militia, "the Mehdi`s Army," and an Islamic government. But in the interview, he conceded that both efforts were now moribund.

Sadr indicated that he would not rule out creating an Iranian-style state but said the question of whether Iraq should be governed by Islamic or secular law should be left to its people.

"A constitution that foreign parties interfere with, especially the Jewish sides, is unacceptable," he said. "We will adopt what the people will choose. This has nothing to do with the religion or the sects."

Despite the U.S. role in getting rid of Hussein, he said he did not consider Americans liberators, because "liberators would leave the country as soon as it was liberated."

In response to the fears of many Iraqis that an early withdrawal by the United States could allow Hussein and his associates to reappear or civil war to break out, Sadr said he expected the opposite. "Iraqis would be unified more than ever," he said, if U.S. troops left.

"If Iraqis are going to be able to control their affairs by themselves, then their cohesiveness and collaboration would be even more obvious. The cause for disunity is the presence of the occupation. Once removed, the divisions would fall away."

On April 10, a prominent Shiite cleric working with the United States was killed in Najaf by a knife and gun-wielding mob who some believe were Sadr`s men; he denies having any role. In the same city in August, popular Shiite political leader Mohammed Bakr Hakim was killed along with more than 100 others in a still-unsolved bombing.

The young cleric said he understood that the same kind of attack may await him.

"Afraid? No!" he said. "But expecting it? Yes!"



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Second of Three Parts



Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt
Wal-Mart, once a believer in buying American, extracts ever lower prices from 10,000 suppliers worldwide. Workers struggle to keep pace.
By Nancy Cleeland, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writers

November 24, 2003

SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS -- When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the Cosmos clothing factory.

Isabel Reyes, who has worked at the plant for 11 years, pushes fabric through her sewing machine 10 hours a day, struggling to meet the latest quota scrawled on a blackboard.

She now sews sleeves onto shirts at the rate of 1,200 garments a day. That`s two shirts a minute, one sleeve every 15 seconds.

"There is always an acceleration," said Reyes, 37, who can`t lift a cooking pot or hold her infant daughter without the anti-inflammatory pills she gulps down every few hours. "The goals are always increasing, but the pay stays the same."

Reyes, who earns the equivalent of $35 a week, says her bosses blame the long hours and low wages on big U.S. companies and their demands for ever-cheaper merchandise. Wal-Mart, the biggest company of them all, is the Cosmos factory`s main customer.

Reyes is skeptical. Why, she asked, would a company in the richest country in the world care about a few pennies on a pair of shorts?

The answer: Wal-Mart built its empire on bargains.

The company`s size and obsession with shaving costs have made it a global economic force. Its decisions affect wages, working conditions and manufacturing practices — even the price of a yard of denim — around the world.

From its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., the company has established a network of 10,000 suppliers and constantly pressures them to lower their prices. At the same time, Wal-Mart buyers continually search the globe for still-cheaper sources of supply. The competition pits vendor against vendor, country against country.

"They control so much of retail that they can put someone into business or take someone out of business if they choose to," said Pat Danahy, a former chief executive at Cone Mills Corp. in Greensboro, N.C., one of the few surviving U.S. textile producers.

In Honduras, the pressure keeps factory managers on edge, always looking for ways to cut expenses without running afoul of labor laws or Wal-Mart`s own contractor rules, which call for "reasonable employee work hours."

"I think we have reached the limit," said Shin Woo Kang, manager of the enormous Han Soll Textile Ltd. sewing plant on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula. The plant employs 1,600 workers, mostly young women. Wal-Mart is its biggest customer.

The brightly lighted factory is filled with humming machines, mounds of clothing parts and fast-moving hands. Down one production line, pieces of navy blue fabric take shape as Bobbie Brooks polo shirts, each bearing a Wal-Mart price tag of $8.63.

Kang said Wal-Mart was paying Han Soll about $3 a shirt — a few cents less than last year.

Asked what he would do if the retailer pressed for an even lower price, Kang grew quiet. "We would have to find something," he said finally. "Honestly speaking, I don`t know what it is."

To cut costs, Honduran factories have reduced payrolls and become more efficient. The country produces the same amount of clothing as it did three years ago, but with 20% fewer workers, said Henry Fransen, director of the Honduran Apparel Manufacturers Assn., which represents nearly 200 export factories.

"We`re earning less and producing more," he said with a laugh, "following the Wal-Mart philosophy."

That`s harsh medicine for a developing country. The clothing industry is one of the few sources of decent jobs for unskilled workers in this nation of 6 million. Many of those jobs depend on Wal-Mart.

"You could be looking at a government meltdown if something were to happen to this industry," said Raja Rajan, a factory manager active in the apparel association.

In Rajan`s view, Wal-Mart is so important to the stability of Honduras that leaders should cultivate stronger ties with the company, almost as they would a foreign country. He has lobbied the government to send high-level envoys to Wal-Mart`s Arkansas headquarters, something Bangladesh and other countries already do.

Even with such efforts, Rajan fears that the migration of sewing jobs to China and other lower-cost countries can`t be stopped, only slowed.

Chuck Wilburn figures that his 1,300 employees will be among the casualties. He manages a factory on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula that cranks out clothing for Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and other retailers.

Wilburn`s employer, Oxford Industries of Atlanta, once owned 44 factories in the American South. It shuttered them all in the last 15 years and moved the work to cheaper locales. That`s how Wilburn found himself in Honduras.

He is proud of his clean, modern factory. "It`s nicer than the one I ran in South Carolina," Wilburn said.

Still, he has had trouble turning a profit. He laid off 500 employees two years ago. Even here, it`s hard to meet Wal-Mart`s prices. Wilburn expects that Oxford will close his factory in the next few years and move on to another country where basic cotton clothes, such as Wal-Mart`s Old Glory khaki pants, can be produced for less.

"Our business is a lot of twill stuff," he said. "That will be gone."

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Waving the Flag

It wasn`t long ago that Wal-Mart was fighting to keep manufacturing jobs on U.S. soil.

In 1985, founder Sam Walton launched his "Bring It Home to the USA" program. "Wal-Mart believes American workers can make a difference," he told his suppliers, offering to pay as much as 5% more for U.S.-made products.

In his 1992 memoir, "Made in America," Walton claimed that the program had saved or created nearly 100,000 jobs by using "the power of this enormous enterprise as a force for change."

But the late Walton`s much-trumpeted effort soon was overtaken by the rise of the global economy. The spread of the Internet and other technology, along with U.S.-led efforts to tear down trade barriers, made it easier to move goods and capital across borders.

To maintain its edge on pricing, Wal-Mart quietly joined other retailers in a worldwide search for the cheapest sources of production.

In apparel, the process begins with Celia Clancy. From a renovated warehouse near the company`s headquarters, the Wal-Mart executive vice president oversees the world`s largest clothing budget, estimated at $35 billion in 2000.

Clancy gives her buyers a "Plus One" mandate every year: For each item they handle, they must either lower the cost or raise the quality.

To demonstrate, she pulled a pair of girls` shorts off the wall of her cramped office and gave them a tug.

"This was a dumb little knit pull-on short," Clancy said. "We improved the fabric, put some more fashion in it and are selling it for the same price as last year — $5.19."

Keeping prices low like this means squeezing costs at every step. Clancy and her buyers have trimmed back the number of brands, styles and color schemes. That allows Wal-Mart to consolidate its purchases of fabric, accessories and thread and to wrangle steep discounts from suppliers.

Clancy`s buyers used to rely on a Hong Kong company and other intermediaries to find bargains overseas. This year, Wal-Mart established its own global procurement division to hunt for the cheapest raw materials, manufacturers and shipping routes. Last year, for instance, the company rerouted cargo from a port in Hong Kong to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where shipping rates were lower. The savings: $650,000.

In purchasing fabrics such as denim and khaki, Wal-Mart plans to approach three to five mills around the world and pit them against each other. "We`ll be putting our global muscle on them," said Ken Eaton, head of the global procurement division, which has 21 offices in 18 countries.

Eaton believes he can reduce costs at least 20% by cutting out the middleman and buying directly from foreign factories. He feels a sense of urgency about his mission, in part because he believes the company`s "Buy American" focus left it playing catch up.

"Honestly, we`re kind of late to the party," he said. "There are a lot of companies out there that have been direct-importing and understanding the global aspect of sourcing for a long, long time."

As late as 1995, Wal-Mart said imports accounted for no more than 6% of its products. Today, consulting firm Retail Forward estimates that 50% to 60% of the merchandise in the company`s U.S. stores is imported.

Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. said in an interview that the trend reflected an inescapable reality: U.S. consumers aren`t willing to pay even a little extra for a "Made in America" label.

"The customer ultimately drives that," he said.

*

Big in Bangladesh

Wal-Mart is the most powerful corporate citizen in Bangladesh, even though it doesn`t operate a single store in the country.

When the company complained to Bangladesh`s Export Promotion Bureau this spring about delays in moving cargo, the response was swift.

Officials in the southern port of Chittagong are speeding up efforts to reduce paperwork and modernize facilities. Over the objections of labor leaders, port officials also are building a five-berth container terminal that will be privately managed. Already, giant cranes have helped shorten a ship`s turnaround time from six days to fewer than four.

It`s no wonder Wal-Mart wields such clout in this country, where nearly half the population lives in poverty. The company bought 14% of the $1.9 billion in apparel that Bangladesh shipped to the U.S. last year.

"Wal-Mart is our biggest customer and it`s important to me," said Commerce Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury. But, he added, Wal-Mart`s prices "are coming down all the time — that`s the biggest threat to us."

Bangladeshi factory owners say Wal-Mart and other retailers have asked them to cut their prices by as much as 50% in recent years.

One apparel manufacturer described a visit from a Wal-Mart buyer who showed him a European-made garment that retailed for $100 to $130. The buyer asked the Bangladeshi to produce a knockoff for $10 a dozen. He declined.

"They say to come down in price, but we have to make a profit," complained another clothing maker. Hoping to land a Wal-Mart order for 600,000 fleece jackets this year, he bargained down his suppliers of fabric, thread and fastenings, and managed to cut his price by 20%.

It wasn`t good enough for Wal-Mart. "They said they will place the order in Vietnam or China," he recalled.

Syed Naved Husain had hoped to avoid this sort of nickel-and-diming by going upscale.

As head of the apparel division for Beximco, Bangladesh`s largest private company, Husain spent $300 million in 1995 to build a computerized textile and apparel manufacturing center in a rice paddy outside Dhaka. He hired hot designers from Asia and Europe.

Within a few years, he was manufacturing clothes for European retailers Diesel and Zara, and his lushly landscaped "manufacturing oasis" had become an industry showpiece.

But the market has started to change. Wal-Mart is selling more-fashionable clothes, and Husain`s high-end customers are nervous. They are pushing him like never before to cut costs.

"Unfortunately," Husain said of Wal-Mart, "they`ve created a model that has taken the world by storm."

U.S. retailers began making their way to Bangladesh in the 1980s. They found a large population of poor, young women willing to work from dawn to dusk for a few pennies an hour.

Many factories lacked ventilation and fire escapes. Labor activists estimated in the mid-1990s that as many as 50,000 Bangladeshi children were sewing apparel for companies such as Wal-Mart and Kmart Corp.

The resulting outcry prompted a government crackdown on the use of child labor and led companies such as Wal-Mart to require suppliers to adhere to labor laws and safety standards.

Sheikh Nazma, a former child laborer, has seen the way Wal-Mart can help clean things up.

She worked at a Dhaka garment factory that had no clean drinking water and only a few filthy toilets for hundreds of employees. After the owner refused to pay their wages for three months, the employees complained to Wal-Mart, the factory`s main customer.

"Wal-Mart interfered, and … the owner paid our salaries and overtime and even paid bonuses to each worker," recalled Nazma, who later helped launch the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation.

But Nazma and others say Wal-Mart undermines its good efforts with its incessant push for lower prices. To fill orders on short schedules, factories often force their employees to work overtime or stay on the job for weeks without a day off, according to Sayeeda Roxana Khan, a former factory manager in Dhaka. To conceal such practices, auditors say, some factories keep two sets of books.

"It`s the workers who suffer when entrepreneurs have to survive by cutting corners," said Khan, who now works for Verite, a firm that conducts factory audits for Tommy Hilfiger, Levi Strauss and other U.S. companies.

Khadija Akhter can attest to that. For about $21 a month, nearly three times what a maid or cook would make, the 22-year-old worked in a Dhaka factory, performing final checks on men`s shirts and trousers.

Employees, she said, often worked from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. for 10 to 15 days at a stretch to fill big orders from Wal-Mart. Exhausted, she quit after a year and took a lower-paying but less grueling job.

All the speeding up by Bangladeshi factories may not be enough to satisfy Wal-Mart.

A. Hasnat, Wal-Mart`s general manager in Bangladesh, said the country`s factories need to become more efficient still. From his vantage, many are poorly managed, have outdated equipment and run too slowly.

"I think they need to improve," he said. "When I entered a factory in China, it seemed they are very fast."

*

3,000 Factories in China

Eyes down, hunched forward, 20-year-old Ping Qiuxia steered a pair of green women`s briefs through a sewing machine. Then her fingers whipped the briefs 180 degrees and moved them back toward her, this time with elastic bands stitched neatly around the edges. Within seconds, she was at work on the next pair.

The garment was part of a 6,000-piece order scheduled for shipment to Wal-Mart stores in Germany. For nine hours a day, sometimes six days a week, Ping and other employees of the Gladpeer Garment Factory in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan churn out undergarments, sleepwear and children`s clothing.

In southern China, Wal-Mart has found all the ingredients it needs to keep its "every day low prices" among the lowest in the world.

Although labor costs more here than it does in Bangladesh, China offers other advantages: low-cost raw materials; modern factories, highways and ports; and helpful government officials.

Wal-Mart has been instrumental in making this corner of China the world`s fastest-growing manufacturing zone. Last year, the company shipped $12 billion in products out of China, 20% more than in 2001.

The marriage between the world`s largest and most efficient retailer and China`s low-cost factories is setting a new global "cost standard" for manufactured products, according to consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

The phenomenon is rattling competitors worldwide and worrying international labor activists. They cite the Chinese government`s hostility toward organized labor and its lack of worker protections.

"Wal-Mart has really been at the forefront in driving down wages and working conditions," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, who has made two trips to China in the last year. "They`re not only exporting the Wal-Mart name and the corporation and the identity. They`re also exporting that way of doing business."

Wal-Mart has more than 3,000 supplier factories in China, and the number is expected to rise. But that doesn`t mean workers in China are secure.

Gladpeer used to make clothes in Hong Kong. It moved production to China in the 1980s because costs were much lower, said Simon Lee, a managing director of the family-owned firm.

Gladpeer`s 1,200 workers — mostly young women — are paid about $55 a month and live in clean but cramped dormitories, eight to a room.

But Lee is likely to reduce his employment in Dongguan soon. He is planning to open a new factory in Guangxi province, a remote region of western China where labor, electricity, housing and taxes are cheaper. "Competition is intense, and our biggest single issue is cost," Lee said. "Many customers look at cost first, then they look at the workmanship. That`s why we`re going to Guangxi."

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cleeland reported from Honduras, Iritani from Bangladesh and Marshall from China. Times staff writer Abigail Goldman and Hong Kong bureau researcher Tammy Wong contributed to this report.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

Ein Lehrbeispiel für Europa. Man sägt den Asr ab, auf dem man sitzt. 2. Teil siehe #9655. 3. Teil morgen.

First of Three Parts



An Empire Built on Bargains Remakes the Working World
Wal-Mart is so powerful that it moves the economies of entire countries, bringing profit and pain. The prices can’t be beat, but the wages can.
By Abigail Goldman and Nancy Cleeland
Times Staff Writers

November 23, 2003

LAS VEGAS -- Chastity Ferguson kept watch over four sleepy children late one Friday as she flipped a pack of corn dogs into a cart at her new favorite grocery store: Wal-Mart.
Media Flash:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-112203unrivaled-fl,1,6189…

The Wal-Mart Supercenter, a pink stucco box twice as big as a Home Depot, combines a full-scale supermarket with the usual discount mega-store. For the 26-year-old Ferguson, the draw is simple.

"You can`t beat the prices," said the hotel cashier, who makes $400 a week. "I come here because it`s cheap."

Across town, another mother also is familiar with the Supercenter`s low prices. Kelly Gray, the chief breadwinner for five children, lost her job as a Raley`s grocery clerk last December after Wal-Mart expanded into the supermarket business here. California-based Raley`s closed all 18 of its stores in the area, laying off 1,400 workers.

Gray earned $14.68 an hour with a pension and family health insurance. Wal-Mart grocery workers typically make less than $9 an hour.

"It`s like somebody came and broke into your home and took something huge and important away from you," said the 36-year-old. "I was scared. I cried. I shook."

Wal-Mart gives. And Wal-Mart takes away.

From a small-town five-and-dime, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has grown over 50 years to become the world`s largest corporation and a global economic force.

It posted $245 billion in sales in its most recent fiscal year — nearly twice as much as General Electric Co. and almost eight times as much as Microsoft Corp. It is the nation`s largest seller of toys, furniture, jewelry, dog food and scores of other consumer products. It is the largest grocer in the United States.

Wal-Mart`s decisions influence wages and working conditions across a wide swath of the world economy, from the shopping centers of Las Vegas to the factories of Honduras and South Asia. Its business is so vital to developing countries that some send emissaries to the corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., almost as if Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation.

The company has prospered by elevating one goal above all others: cutting prices relentlessly. U.S. economists say its tightfistedness has not only boosted its own bottom line, but also helped hold down the inflation rate for the entire country. Consumers reap the benefits every time they push a cart through Wal-Mart`s checkout lines.

Yet Wal-Mart`s astonishing success exacts a heavy price.

By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. By scouring the globe for the cheapest goods, it has driven factory jobs from one poor nation to another.

Wal-Mart`s penny-pinching extends to its own 1.2 million U.S. employees, none of them unionized. By the company`s own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck.

Then there are casualties like Kelly Gray. As Wal-Mart expands rapidly into groceries, it is causing upheaval in yet another corner of the economy. When a Supercenter moves into town, competitors often are wiped out, taking high-paying union jobs with them.

Wal-Mart`s plans to enter the grocery business in California early next year have thrown the state`s supermarket industry into turmoil. Fearful of Wal-Mart`s ability to undercut them on price, the Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons chains have sought concessions from their unionized workers in Southern and Central California, leading to a work stoppage now entering its seventh week.

Half a century ago, the nation`s largest and most emulated employer was General Motors Corp. "Today," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at UC Santa Barbara, "for better or worse, it`s Wal-Mart."

GM brought prosperity to factory towns and made American workers the envy of the world. With a high-wage union job, an assembly-line worker could afford a house, a decent car, maybe even a boat by the lake.

There was a bit of truth, Lichtenstein said, to the famous assertion by Charles Wilson, General Motors chief from 1941 to 1953, that what was good for GM was good for the country.

With Wal-Mart, the calculus is considerably more complex.

`We Have Split Brains`

Glenn Miraflor used to chide his wife for shopping at Wal-Mart.

As a member of Ironworkers Local 416, the 50-year-old father of four is well aware of the retailer`s anti-union stance. But when the family`s credit card debt topped $10,000, Wal-Mart`s deals suddenly looked irresistible.

"Where else are you going to find a computer for $498?" he asked, looking for a PC with his wife, Debbie, at the Supercenter on Serene Avenue, far from the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip. "Everyone I work with shops here."

Surveys by the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers — the two unions most threatened by Wal-Mart — show that many of their own members shop at the discounter.

"We have split brains," said Robert Reich, U.S. secretary of Labor under President Clinton and now a professor of economic and social policy at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. "Most of the time, the half of our brain that wants the best deal prevails."

The connection may be lost on many, Reich said, but consumers` addiction to low prices is accelerating a shift toward a two-tiered U.S. economy, with a shrinking middle class and a growing pool of low-wage workers.

"Wal-Mart`s prices may be lower," he said, "but that`s small consolation to a lot of people who end up with less money to spend."

Others insist there is a net benefit whenever consumers can get more for less. "If you have lower real prices, you`re saving money," said Arthur Laffer, a key advisor to President Reagan who is now an economic consultant in San Diego. "The prices` falling, in effect, raises the wages of everyone who buys their products."

That`s basically the way the Miraflors saw it as they cruised the aisles of the Supercenter — Wal-Mart Store No. 2593 — and snapped up deals: Ragu pasta sauce for 89 cents, Aunt Jemima pancake mix for 48 cents, pork shoulder steaks for $1.49 a pound and five cans of Del Monte vegetables for $2.

After making their way through the groceries, the Miraflors turned their attention to the housewares section, stopping in front of a 20-inch box fan. Glenn Miraflor checked the price and made room for it in their cart.

"Ten bucks," he said. "You can`t beat that. That`s why we come here."

Vendors` Alley

The fan was made 1,700 miles away in Chicago at Lakewood Engineering & Manufacturing Co. A decade ago, the same fan carried a $20 price tag.

But that wasn`t low enough for Wal-Mart. So Lakewood owner Carl Krauss cut costs at every turn. He automated production at the red-brick factory built by his grandfather on the city`s West Side. Where it once took 22 people to put together a product, it now takes seven. Krauss also badgered his suppliers to knock down their prices for parts.

In 2000, he took the hardest step of all: He opened a factory in Shenzhen, China, where workers earn 25 cents an hour, compared with $13 in Chicago. About 40% of his products now are made in China, including most heaters and desktop fans. The Miraflors` box fan was assembled in Chicago, but its electronic guts were imported.

"My father was dead set against it," Krauss said of the move overseas. "I have the same respect for American workers, but I`m going to do what I have to do to survive."

Survival in an age when consumers are hyper-vigilant about prices means shaving expenses again and again. "Nobody wants to be on the shelf with the same item for $1 more," Krauss said.

All the retailers he supplies — including Home Depot Inc. and Target Corp. — drive a hard bargain with manufacturers. But none is as tough as Wal-Mart, Krauss said.

Twice a year, his sales representatives travel to Wal-Mart headquarters to pitch their products. There, competitors sit side by side, waiting to be ushered into one of 60 glass-sided cubicles — a space some call Vendors` Alley.

Then the haggling begins. "You give them your price," Krauss said. "If they don`t like it, they give you theirs."

The suppliers are at a disadvantage. The Wal-Mart buyer can always go out to the waiting room and find someone who will go lower. "Your price is going to be whittled down like you never thought possible," Krauss said.

After moving much of his manufacturing abroad, Krauss doesn`t see any way to push costs lower. "If you`re doing things legally, you can`t," he said.

He may have to find a way.

At the Serene Avenue store, shopper Sarah Saxon, 17, pulled a $40 Lakewood heater off the shelf. She looked it over, then put it back in favor of an AirTech model selling for $34.88. She said it looked better than the Lakewood.

"Besides," she said, "it`s cheaper."

Wal-Mart`s culture of cheap emanates from Bentonville, a town of 20,000 tucked into the low green hills of northwest Arkansas, where a young Sam Walton opened his first five-and-dime in 1950. Even then, Walton had a vision of a different kind of retail.

Rather than charging a little less than his competitors, Walton wanted to slash prices as much as he could and still make a profit. Other stores would use price breaks from manufacturers as a way to boost their bottom lines, paying less at wholesale while leaving retail prices untouched.

Walton passed such savings on to his customers as his discount business evolved into Wal-Mart stores in 1962. He figured he would make up the difference in volume. He was right.

By the mid-1980s, Wal-Mart`s success had catapulted Walton to No. 1 on the Forbes list of richest Americans. Still, he drove an old pickup truck to haul around his bird dogs, refused to fly first class and shared hotel rooms with colleagues on business trips.

Bentonville, like the man who put it on the map, is a combination of Southern charm and Midwestern practicality. The town square is anchored by the original Walton`s five-and-dime (now a visitors` center) and dotted with small shops. But the real action is down Business Route 71, where the Wal-Mart Supercenter rises up, big enough to fit three 747s with room to spare.

Across the street is the base of Wal-Mart operations: the Home Office. The world`s biggest company occupies an industrial-looking hodgepodge of windowless work spaces, connected by bunker-like hallways. The drab gray-and-blue walls display the visage and sayings of Sam Walton, who died in 1992:

"Listen to your associates.... They`re the best idea generators."

"To succeed, stay out in front of change."

"Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom."

Lists abound. The best-performing stores. The worst-performing stores. Under a picture of the founder asking, "Who`s taking your customers?" is a roster of competing retailers, including Costco Wholesale Corp., Circuit City Stores Inc. and Target, with the name and picture of each company`s chief executive.

It`s all part of the Wal-Mart culture: a zealous attention to competition, customers and costs.

Wal-Mart employees, unlike their counterparts at other retailers, are forbidden to accept so much as a soda from vendors — or anybody else the company does business with — on the theory that such frills ultimately are paid for by consumers. The company`s meticulous management of the flow of goods, from the factory floor to the store shelf, has shaved shipping and inventory costs to a degree that retailing experts say is unprecedented.

"You could argue that some of what Wal-Mart does to cut costs has been win-win," said Richard S. Tedlow, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. "What`s being squeezed out is waste."

The company is so ruthlessly efficient that 4% of the growth in the U.S. economy`s productivity from 1995 to 1999 was due to Wal-Mart alone, researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute estimated last year. No other single company had a measurable impact. Wal-Mart also has forced competitors to become more efficient, driving the nation`s productivity — output per hour of work — even higher.

Walton, who still is referred to as Mr. Sam throughout the corporation, worked in a ground-floor office barely big enough for a conference table. The current occupant, Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr., is the keeper of Mr. Sam`s vision. Like all Wal-Mart executives, he empties his own trash and shares budget hotel rooms when traveling. Everyone flies coach.

"We do not have limousines," said Scott, who certainly could afford one, having made nearly $18 million last year in salary, bonus and stock, plus options with an estimated value of $11.3 million. "I drive a Volkswagen Bug."

Wal-Mart`s stinginess reaches from the executive suite to the loading dock.

Some truckers complain that they must unload their own cargo — or pay Wal-Mart to do it. Other big retail chains absorb that cost themselves. "They`re awful," said independent driver George Hauschild of Palm Springs. "They don`t even let you use the bathroom."

At every one of the 2,966 Wal-Marts in the U.S., thermostats are kept at a steady 73 degrees in summer, 70 degrees in winter; raising or lowering the temperature is considered a waste of money.

Such measures seem mild compared with what Wal-Mart has done to cut payroll costs. In one case, a jury in Oregon last year found that company managers had coerced hundreds of employees to work overtime without pay.

The managers were driven by intense pressure from Bentonville, witnesses said. Managers whose labor costs were considered too high were singled out during the company`s weekly in-house satellite broadcasts. In response, managers tampered with electronic time cards or bullied employees to work off the clock, according to trial testimony.

The Oregon jury found last December that Wal-Mart`s behavior was illegal and willful. A separate trial to determine damages for the 290 plaintiffs is set for early next year.

Wal-Mart settled similar overtime suits in Colorado and New Mexico for undisclosed amounts. More than 40 other cases are awaiting trial.

The company says it prohibits off-the-clock work and blames the problems on a small number of rogue managers.

Last month, Wal-Mart ran into trouble because of another cost-cutting practice: using dirt-cheap janitorial services.

A grand jury is investigating whether Wal-Mart knew that janitors provided by subcontractors were illegal immigrants cheated out of overtime pay. Federal agents raided 61 Wal-Marts across the country and seized boxes of documents from the Bentonville headquarters. Wal-Mart has denied wrongdoing.

Scott, the CEO, lauded Wal-Mart`s employment record. Even in tight labor markets, he said, the company never has trouble finding workers.

"It is not forced labor," he said. "The truth is, I go to the stores and shake hands with the associates, and they like working at Wal-Mart."

On the Fast Track

Aaron Rios liked working at Wal-Mart so much that he decided to make his career there.

Like two-thirds of Wal-Mart`s store managers, Rios started off as an hourly worker — in his case, stocking shoes on the graveyard shift at the Wal-Mart in his hometown of Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley.

After two years, Rios was recommended for management training — the company`s fast track — leading him to quit community college and pursue a climb through the Wal-Mart ranks.

"There`s just something about a Wal-Mart environment," said Rios, who became manager of the Serene Avenue Supercenter in Las Vegas at age 26. "It changed who I am, where I was going and what my career goals were."

Wal-Mart store managers earn about $95,000 annually, including bonuses, according to the company. Supercenter managers earn $130,000.

A management position requires long hours — as many as 80 a week — and, often, a willingness to relocate. Rios worked at six California Wal-Mart stores before taking the helm at Serene Avenue.

"It doesn`t come free," said Rios, a divorced father who shares custody of his 2-year-old son.

Still, he said, the benefits outweigh the sacrifices.

"I have an open opportunity. I could go into real estate for Wal-Mart. I could do systems, analysis, accounting. It`s endless," Rios said. "If I wanted to go to Germany or Japan or Brazil or any of the markets we have, I believe I could go."

A few weeks later, Rios snared another promotion, moving back to California as a district manager in the Antelope Valley, overseeing seven stores from Barstow to Palmdale.

Larry Allen had his own dreams of climbing the Wal-Mart ladder.

In the fall of 2001, he and his wife, Jacque, left Portland, Ore., where the economy was sputtering, and headed to Las Vegas. He was an executive chef and she worked in catering. They looked forward to a fresh start in unionized casino jobs, making more than $15 an hour, with health insurance and pensions.

But their timing was lousy. Recession and terrorism were hitting the gaming industry hard, and work of any kind was scarce.

Just before their money ran out, the Allens lowered their expectations and took jobs at the Serene Avenue Wal-Mart. Jacque, then 43, worked the counter at the in-store restaurant, Radio Grill. Larry, 46, stocked produce. They each earned $8 an hour.

Despite the letdown, Larry Allen said he attacked the job with enthusiasm. Inspired by tales of well-paid Wal-Mart managers who had started out as hourly employees, such as his manager Aaron Rios, he figured on working his way up. That was Sam`s way, he said.

"I`ve been following Sam Walton since the 1970s," he said. "He`s the American dream."

The glow faded quickly. At his 90-day review, Allen said, he received an unenthusiastic write-up and an hourly raise of 35 cents. His supervisor told him that if he continued working hard, in two years he might make his way up to $10 an hour.

Allen thinks he knows why he received such mediocre marks. For one thing, he was prone to question company policy. Then, Allen committed the ultimate act of disloyalty: He openly promoted unionization.

West Coast Ambitions

For decades, Wal-Mart has tantalized and frustrated union organizers. But the company`s move into the grocery business — a labor stronghold — has raised the stakes dramatically.

Union organizers say the high wages and benefits of their members are at risk, as Wal-Mart expands its Supercenters beyond the South and Midwest. The company recently established a beachhead in Las Vegas, with five centers.

Next stop: California, where Wal-Mart plans to open 40 Supercenters starting early next year. In a sense, it has already arrived. Wal-Mart`s low wages are a central factor in the labor dispute between California`s three major supermarket chains and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

"They are the third party now that comes to every bargaining situation," said Mike Leonard, director of strategic programs for the UFCW.

Over many years of hard negotiating, the union has won and maintained premier contracts for its 800,000 grocery workers. But with the opening of each new Supercenter, the union`s clout erodes.

Every one of the giant stores sucks away about 200 UFCW jobs, said retail consultant Burt P. Flickinger III, who runs Strategic Resource Group in New York. That means less power at the bargaining table and less money to hire organizers.

On average, Flickinger says, Wal-Mart`s wage-and-benefit package is about $10 an hour less than those offered by unionized supermarkets.

For shoppers, that makes a big difference. A cartful of groceries is 17% to 39% cheaper at a Wal-Mart Supercenter than at a unionized supermarket, according to a survey last year in Las Vegas, Dallas and Tampa, Fla., by investment bank UBS Warburg.

Wal-Mart`s move into groceries has led 25 regional supermarket chains around the nation to close or file for bankruptcy protection, eliminating 12,000 mostly union jobs, Flickinger said.

With this in mind, Safeway Inc. recently aired a videotaped message to employees, whose contract in Las Vegas expires next fall.

"Wal-Mart wants our customers and your jobs," said Safeway executive Larree Renda. Total wage and benefit costs represent 15% of sales at Safeway, Renda said. At Wal-Mart, they account for 9%.

"If we don`t change," Renda said, "you bet we`ll lose jobs — and it will be in the thousands."

Staying Unorganized

From their first day on the job, Wal-Mart employees are advised to avoid unions and to report any organizing activities to their supervisors.

"If a union got in here, every benefit we`ve got could go on the negotiating table, every one of them," says a man identified as Russell, a veteran employee, in a video shown to new hires. "Unions will negotiate just about anything to get the right to have dues deducted out of paychecks. You see, they need big money to pay union bigwigs and their lawyers."

Company policy prohibits any union talk in work areas, and organizers say they routinely are asked to leave stores. The retailer sought, and last year received, a court order keeping organizers out of all of its stores in Arkansas. The state Supreme Court nullified the order in July.

At the first hint of union activity, Wal-Mart managers are supposed to call a hotline, usually prompting a team visit from Bentonville.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams said the intervention was meant to help store managers respond effectively and legally.

"Our philosophy is that only an unhappy associate would be interested in joining a union," she said, "so that`s why Wal-Mart does everything it can to make sure that we are providing our associates what they want and need."

But dozens of times in the last four years, attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board have claimed that the company infringed on the supermarket union`s legal right to organize.

Although some of those claims have been thrown out, others have been upheld by administrative law judges, who have ruled that Wal-Mart illegally influenced employees with offers of raises, promotions and improved working conditions just before they were to vote on whether to join a union.

Judges also have found that Wal-Mart illegally implied that workers could lose benefits such as insurance and profit sharing if they unionized.

What`s more, managers illegally confiscated union literature, threatened to close down a store if workers voted to join the union, fired several union supporters and failed to promote others, according to rulings from Minnesota to Florida.

Stymied in their previous attempts to organize Wal-Mart workers, UFCW leaders adopted a new strategy in 2000. They decided to marshal their resources for a concerted organizing effort in one place: Las Vegas.

The union reached out to workers with a Web site and a weekly radio talk show, and posted organizers outside Wal-Mart stores at all hours. When they could, UFCW members would leave union literature inside stores, hoping that workers would see it before managers ordered the material thrown away.

Larry Allen got his first glimpse at a union pamphlet last year as he carried it to the garbage at the Serene Avenue Supercenter. He was hooked, and began advocating for an election to bring in the union.

"Somebody has got to step up and fight for what is right," Allen said.

Ripple Effect

Less than a mile away from the Serene Avenue store, another shopping center stands deserted, in desperate need of an anchor.

A year ago, the Raley`s grocery store here drew thousands of shoppers who spilled out to neighboring businesses, buying flowers, mailing packages, getting their nails done. Today, the store is gone. The remaining shops are struggling.

"I`m probably down 45%," said Bonnie Neisius, who owns a UPS Store franchise in the center. "I just don`t get the foot traffic anymore."

A few doors away, Windmill Flowers owner Diana I. Murphy leaned on a table where she would have been arranging bouquets — had there been customers.

"There are a couple of things in play," Murphy said. "The recession, terrorism. And Wal-Mart. It`s had a direct effect on me, because they sell flowers, too.... They even deliver."

Unlike small towns with boarded-up commercial centers, fast-growing Vegas quickly loses track of its Wal-Mart victims.

Wal-Mart`s costs to the community tend to show up in subtler ways.

In an informal survey in the late 1990s of people who used Las Vegas emergency rooms for routine medical care, patients who said they were employed but uninsured were asked where they worked.

"Wal-Mart came up more than any other," said Dr. Raj Chanderraj, a Las Vegas cardiologist and chairman of the Clark County Health Care Access Consortium, a group that works to provide medical services to the uninsured.

The reason, say critics: Because Wal-Mart pays such low wages, many employees can`t afford the health insurance the company offers. And those who do have health coverage through the company often can`t afford deductibles that run as high as $3,000 a year.

"Their employees are ending up at the county hospital and become the burden of the county," said Clark County Manager Thom Reilly.

Wal-Mart disputes that. Williams, the company spokeswoman, said that 48% of employees are covered by Wal-Mart`s health insurance plan. Among those who aren`t, 26% have coverage from another source such as a spouse`s employer or Medicare, Williams said.

The notion that Wal-Mart doesn`t provide adequate health coverage is "just rhetoric," she said. "It`s simply not true."

According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, nearly 44% of workers in the retail sector as a whole have employer-provided health coverage. Among big companies in all industries, the figure is 66%.

Those who accuse Wal-Mart of shortchanging its employees, Williams suggested, don`t understand the modern service economy. "Retail and service wages are what they are," she said, "whether you look at a department store, a discount store, the local dry cleaners, the bakery or whatever.

"Wal-Mart is a great match for a lot of people," Williams added. "But if you are the sole provider for your family and do not have the time or the skills to move up the ladder, then maybe it`s not the right place for you."

`I Still Believe in Wal-Mart`

Larry Allen spent about a year advocating for the supermarket union while working at Wal-Mart.

In the parking lot and in the break room, he passed out fliers and talked up the benefits of unionizing. But he and his fellow union backers didn`t get as far as they hoped. About 42% of workers in the grocery department at Serene Avenue signed UFCW cards — not enough for the union to feel confident about winning an election.

In August, Allen was fired. NLRB attorneys said it was because of his union activities and filed a complaint against Wal-Mart, seeking his reinstatement.

On a recent afternoon outside the Supercenter, dozens of union members rallied to support Allen. "Larry, Larry, Larry," they chanted. Over at the store entrance, the demonstration was a muffled, distant bit of noise. Store managers watched on a screen as surveillance cameras scanned the crowd.

Asked about the commotion, a gray-haired Wal-Mart greeter named Robert just smiled. "They want to make the store union," he said. "But that would make the prices go up for our customers. We can`t let that happen."

On some level, even Larry Allen understands. "I still believe in Wal-Mart," said Allen, who now is on the union payroll as an organizer. "I like the idea of it — give a quality product at a low price. It`s what the American public wants."


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kennedy…
COMMENTARY



The White House Plays Dirty With the Environment
Rollbacks of air, water and land pollution rules are taking heavy tolls
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

November 24, 2003

It`s beyond serious dispute that the Bush White House is dismantling 30 years of bipartisan environmental progress, in defiance of law, scientific understanding, popular sentiment and common sense.

The Bush administration`s horrific environmental reputation isn`t just a bad rap. The environmental gains that Americans have enjoyed for years prove that vigorous protection of our natural resources is both effective and consistent with economic prosperity. The administration`s destructive rollbacks threaten decades of progress, and they have already begun to take their toll.

After three years of President Bush`s policies, American waterways are getting dirtier, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, for the first time since passage of the Clean Water Act.

Administration policies have driven automobile fuel efficiencies to their lowest levels in decades.

Superfund cleanups for millions of Americans in tainted communities have been halted because the White House is allowing polluters to escape replenishing the bankrupt fund.

Any prospect of dealing seriously with global warming evaporated when the administration abandoned the Kyoto treaty, suppressed more than a dozen major scientific reports, including the global warming chapter in an EPA environment report, and punished and blackballed scientists who reported their findings honestly, among them Robert Watson, head of a United Nations scientific panel on global warming.

The Bush administration is trying to eliminate Clean Water Act protection for more than 60% of the nation`s stream miles and most of the nation`s wetlands.

If successful, this would let factory farms escape responsibility for catastrophic water and air pollution caused by millions of tons of untreated animal waste and allow industrial polluters to foul our aquifers and drinking water.



Recently, EPA lawyers announced that they would drop prosecution and criminal investigations directed against 50 power plants whose illegal emissions were major causes of mercury pollution that made fish unsafe to eat in 28 states, of asthma attacks that disabled one in every four inner-city black children, of acid rain that sterilized Adirondacks lakes and destroyed Eastern forests and of air pollution that killed 30,000 Americans each year — conclusions of the National Academy of Science.

Those utilities donated millions to Bush, who repaid the investment by gutting the Clean Air Act, discarding the provision that required the oldest and dirtiest power plants and refineries in the United States to install state-of-the-art pollution controls when they expanded or modernized.

The administration also rewarded oil and gas companies by opening the nation`s pristine areas — including Wyoming`s Jack Morrow Hills, Utah`s Red Rock Country, Colorado`s Vermillion Basin and Montana`s Rocky Mountain Front — to road building, pipeline construction and a host of other industrial activities associated with development.

Other proposals eliminate the fundamental requirement that forest management protect wildlife, reduce public involvement in forest planning and scale back long-standing requirements for environmental reviews and public participation in highway construction and offshore oil development.

Bush`s Department of Interior is the first not to voluntarily list a single species as endangered. Worse, the Interior Department has used fraudulent science in attempting to de-list protected animals like the grizzly bear, trumpeter swan, Florida panther and desert fisher.

Unfortunately, there are literally hundreds of other examples touching nearly every corner of environmental law and involving actions by every major federal agency responsible for environment programs. That includes the Department of Defense, which has just obtained from Congress sweeping exemptions to the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts. These exemptions could damage whole populations of threatened species.

Meanwhile, fines collected for violating environmental laws have dropped by more than half since the Bush administration took power, and last year, EPA`s two most senior enforcement officials resigned, citing the administration`s refusal to enforce environmental protections as their reason.

All this while, in the Senate, legislators have been debating perhaps the most venal Bush initiative to date, the $145-billion energy bill boondoggle — labeled "No Lobbyist Left Behind" legislation by Sen. John McCain — that would have a widespread, devastating effect on the environment.

At a time when our government should be addressing critical problems such as global warming, sprawl and the loss of wildlife and open spaces, the Bush administration has put polluters first by raising the standard of living for a few privileged Americans while lowering the quality of life for the rest of us.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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It`s time for concrete ideas, Arnold
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, November 24, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/11/24/hsorensen.DTL



A week before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a buddy and I were scratching our heads, trying to figure out why he was so greatly admired.

True, he started the Peace Corps, which is good, but that alone is not the stuff of greatness. And he was given credit for resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, but perhaps more of the credit belongs to the Soviet Union`s Nikita Khrushchev and Cuba`s Fidel Castro. The Communist leaders weren`t afraid to push limits, but they also had sense enough to know when to back off.

Kennedy`s greatest assets seemed to be a youthful appearance, a winning smile and a wife not named Mamie, Bess or Eleanor. In other words, he was a modern American, a TV president, a winner in the style-over-substance sweepstakes.

I think of Kennedy as the mirror image of Ronald Reagan, another pretty boy who had the masses fawning over him for no particularly good reason.

Which brings us to the subject of today`s diatribe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, hereinafter known simply as "Arnold." (Headline writers take note.)

But before I start kicking sand in Arnold`s face, I`d like to put in a word or two for Richard Perle, best known as a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board. Perle did not make headlines last week when he admitted what most of us already know, that the war against Iraq is a violation of international law.

This "confession" of sorts got somewhat less attention in the news media than, say, the police booking of a Santa Barbara man-child accused of sexual molestations. It was reported once -- in London`s Guardian -- and picked up by only one other publication, The Taipei Times. If it was reported elsewhere, neither Google nor LexisNexis know about it.


Speaking in London, Perle said, "International law . . . would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone."

And: "International law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

I don`t want to dwell on this subject -- you can click on the Guardian article yourself -- but I just felt Perle`s admission should be reported somewhere in the American press, if only in one little online column.

Getting back to Arnold, one hesitates to rush to judgment, but after only a week in the California governor`s office, the film star already appears capable of topping both Kennedy and Reagan for lack of substance.

His first act as governor was to make good on his promised bribe to voters, a repeal of the enhanced motor-vehicle-registration fees.

What that means to me personally is, I`ll get a refund on the fees I cheerfully paid a month ago. That`s embarrassing. This beautiful state of California, wallowing in debt, is kicking money back to the likes of me and you so that our chintzy new governor can pose as a man of the people.

Such malarky! That money was earmarked for local cops and firefighters and essential local services, like emergency medical care, and now we`ll have to find another way to fund those services, or do without them.

But Arnold does have a puckish smile. And a great sense of humor. And a charming wife. So what else matters?

Everybody knows that California is deeply in debt, so what is Arnold`s solution to that problem? Go deeper in debt!

I kid you not. The man is proposing that we borrow $15 billion to balance our books -- provided, of course, that we can find people foolish enough to lend us that kind of money.

Arnold is not getting off to a good start. Last week, he sent his finance director to answer questions of a legislative committee, and the poor woman bolted from the room when it became apparent that she knew as much about California`s finances as I know about nuclear physics.

So, how can our state get out of debt and become self-sufficient again? I have a few suggestions. They may or may not be good ideas, but they are ideas. Here goes:

1) Properly tax all casinos operating within the state`s boundaries.

In other words, do what other states do and tax the Indian casinos. According to Fox News, "California collects $140 million a year from 54 tribes operating 50,000 slot machines. By contrast, Connecticut makes $400 million on just 12,000 slots, and New York gets $36 million from just one tribe."

It`s common knowledge that the casino operators have been buying politicians off in California. The result is they haven`t been asked to pay their fair share of taxes. If they`re not willing to do so, then perhaps we should legalize casino gambling in the whole state. If the reservation casinos don`t pay taxes to the state, the nonreservation casinos will.

2) Put a 10 percent state tax on Internet access. You and I can afford the $2 to $5 per month it might cost us. If such a tax cuts into the obscene profits made by the Internet service providers, we can all have a good cry over that.

3) Close eight or nine of our 33 state prisons and rent them out to chicken ranchers. We have way, way too many people locked up in California. We could release everyone of them convicted of drug charges tomorrow, and the damage to our communities would be negligible.

The cost in dollars and human suffering created by our draconian drug laws far surpasses whatever little benefit we might get from them.

4) Deport all the illegal aliens in our prisons. But don`t just deport them. Make a deal with Mexico to house them in Mexican prisons until they complete their sentences.

We now pay about $28,000 annually for every prisoner in California. If we outsource the illegal alien prisoners, they would cost us perhaps only a quarter of that. Mexico doesn`t squander money on prisoners.

You get the idea. California needs creative solutions to its financial problems. We have to do better than what we`re seeing in Sacramento these days. Cutting our income, as Arnold has done, and increasing our debt, as he would like to do, is no solution.

We need substance. We`ve had enough style.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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http://www.pollingreport.com/

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U.S. soldiers secure the area during an investigation after two U.S. soldiers were killed in the Iraqi town of Mosul, November 23, 2003. Attackers killed two U.S. soldiers as their car stood in traffic in the city of Mosul, and a roadside bomb killed another soldier north of Baghdad.

Tight U.S. Security in Iraq as Ramadan Ends
Mon November 24, 2003 06:41 AM ET


By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis began celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Monday, but celebrations were subdued by tight U.S. security after the grisly killings of American soldiers at the weekend.

Thousands of Sunni Muslims gathered at dawn at Baghdad`s Abu Hanifa mosque, one of Sunni Islam`s holiest shrines, to pray and participate in the Eid al-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting.

Overhead, U.S. military helicopters circled low, keeping watch over the city following a series of small explosions on Monday morning and amid generally intense security after three U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday.

"I don`t think of this as Eid. If the Americans left and there was a new government, with law and order, then every day would be Eid," said Abdel Wadoud Doukhi as he left the mosque.

U.S. forces are on high alert for an intensification of attacks following the end of Ramadan. For most Sunnis, the holy month ends on Monday, but for Shi`ites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq`s population, Ramadan ends a day later this year.

Two U.S. soldiers were shot in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday, before being dragged from their civilian car in broad daylight and beaten and stabbed by an angry crowd of young men, eyewitnesses said.

The killings were the most brazen in a recent rash of bold attacks by anti-American insurgents which have led to the death of 70 U.S. soldiers in the past month. Another soldier was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb near the town of Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad, on Sunday.

Mosul, a city that was considered fairly stable following the fall of Saddam Hussein, has seen an upsurge in violence in recent weeks, including a roadside blast that injured a soldier on Monday.

DEMOCRATS SAY MORE TROOPS NEEDED

Since Washington declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, 185 soldiers have died in action. Despite the steadily rising toll, a senior U.S. general said while visiting Iraq that forces would stay until the job was done and the country was stable.

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also dismissed media reports that Washington planned to keep 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2006.

"To put a date on that would be wrong, to put a number on it would be wrong," Pace said while visiting U.S. troops in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit.

Back in the United States, however, senior Democrats said President Bush needed to send more troops to Iraq urgently in order to quash the growing insurgency.

"I understand it`s incredibly difficult for the president to go to the American people and say we`re going to put more troops in near term," Senator Joseph Biden, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told U.S. television.

"(But) there is not enough force or the right type of force there at this moment to quell the insurgency."

As well as ambushes on U.S. troops, guerrillas have also mounted sabotage attacks on Iraq`s energy infrastructure. A pipeline was ablaze on Monday north of the oil refining town of Baiji.

Oil officials at the scene said the pipeline had been exposed by an explosion several months ago and they suspected spilled oil nearby had been set ablaze, causing the latest fire.

Saboteurs have repeatedly blown up and set fire to Iraq`s main oil export pipeline running north to Turkey in recent months, in a show of defiance of the U.S. military occupation and in an effort to disrupt Iraq`s reconstruction. (With additional reporting by Alistair Lyon in Baiji)

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Monday, November 24, 2003
War News for November 24, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link.
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: US convoy attacked by RPG fire in central Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier wounded in bomb ambush in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: RPGs fired at offices of Care Australia in Baghdad.

CENTCOM reports two US soldiers died and one was injured in a traffic accident near Baghdad.

US officials warn of more anti-US attacks in Iraq.

Lawlessness increases in Baghdad.

Tampa VA hospital treats soldiers from Iraq with brain injuries.

Report from Samarra.

PUK says coalition troops raided its office in Mosul.

Korean businesses withdraw from Baghdad. "An official at KOTRA`s head office in Seoul said that the staff members at KOTRA`s Baghdad office were withdrawn because the city has become too dangerous. He also said that diplomats and businesses from other countries, along with many rich Iraqi citizens, have been reportedly fleeing the city, jamming the roads to the border."

Concrete production soars in Iraq. "Power shortages and lack of security have kept the brakes on Iraq`s reconstruction, but concrete producers are finding consolation in the demand for blocks used as fortification against bomb attacks."

Reservists sound off about poor equipment.

Bush to meet a few carefully selected families of Americans killed in Iraq.

Rummy wants to transform the entire US Army into an occupation force dedicated to Bush`s War. "The US has begun to look seriously at creating military forces that would be dedicated to peacekeeping and reconstruction after future conflicts, defence officials say. It would involve new brigades or whole divisions made up of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other specialists critical to postwar operations."

US launches media blitz to put a positive spin on Iraq occupation. It`s kinda hard to tell if this is a "hearts and minds" campaign directed toward the Iraqi people or "prop up Lieutenant AWOL" political propaganda aimed at the American electorate.

Iraqi police shut down Arab TV offices in Baghdad.

Life gets tougher for Iraqi donkeys.

Commentary

Editorial: Bush’s campaign against Al Qaeda is a miserable failure. “Bush probably doesn`t want to admit any strategic failures as he prepares for next year`s presidential election. Nevertheless, it was the United States that misjudged the difficulties of managing postwar Iraq, and that provided an excuse for a holy war to remnants of Saddam Hussein`s regime and other extremists in Iraq and elsewhere.”

Opinion: Jolly bad show for Bush in London. "The spectacle of the American president in tails wining and dining at Buckingham Palace, when he apparently has little time to attend the funerals of American servicemen killed in the war he started, only compounded the folly of his London rescue operation for Mr. Blair."

Operation Cut and Run

Bush and Blair work out “exit” strategy.

As the administration develops a new "strategy," the neo-con fantasy world lives on. “One official who was involved in the post-war planning argued that many of the administration`s key assumptions have come to pass in Iraq, including the prediction by Vice President Dick Cheney that U.S. forces would be ‘greeted as liberators.’ ‘How dare anyone say that we were not?’ said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ‘I`ve been to the north [of Iraq]. They threw flowers on us. Let`s be fair, we were greeted as liberators and we still are. That is a bum rap.’” Just remember that whatever the Bushies do about Iraq, nut jobs like this are still in charge.




Fisher House. On some other boards, I’ve seen posts from people who want to know how they can help wounded troops. Here’s one option.

Fisher House is a kind of Ronald McDonald House for the families of sick, wounded and injured soldiers who are recovering in military hospitals. There are Fisher Houses at Walter Reed, Landstuhl, Brooke Army Medical Center and about 25 other military and VA hospitals. You can help sponsor a family, buy some groceries, or help build another house at Walter Reed. For more information, click here.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:58 AM

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Rich Procter: `GOP consultant previews Bush media campaign 2004`
Contributed by drprocter on Monday, November 24 @ 10:00:32 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Rich Procter

I was able to grab a few precious minutes with Republican Advertising Consultant Norval Screedmore this past week. He agreed to give us a preview of the RNC/Team BushCo campaign strategy for 2004.

Q: First, of all, thanks for agreeing to this chat.

A: No problem. I`m always happy to accommodate the traitorous weasels of the immoral, secular-Satanist "Hate America First" Democrat Party. I hope you enjoy your last moments of freedom, before you and your fellow quislings are frog-marched to our new "Camp Ashcroft/Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository and Political Re-Education Facility."



Q: Right. So let`s begin. How will you address the fact that almost 70% of American voters believe President Bush was "misguided" in committing the country to the Iraqi quagmire, and believe we`re hopelessly bogged down there?

A: GAY MARRIAGE!!! AHHH! KILL IT! KILL IT! CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER! LEVITICUS 20:13 HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION TO GOD! LINE THEM UP AND SHOOT THEM! NOW!!!

Q: Follow up question - We`ve now lost more soldiers since the "end of hostilities" than we lost when the "war" was being fought. Doesn`t this send a signal to voters that President Bush has no realistic idea of how to win the peace in Iraq?

A: SUPER-SECRET JERRY FALWELL VIDEO OF HOWARD DEAN AND MICHAEL JACKSON GETTING MARRIED, THEN DRINKING THE BLOOD OF ABORTED FETUSES!!! BASED ON SWORN TESTIMONY OF DECEASED VERMONT DAIRY FARMERS PERSONALLY MURDERED BY BILL CLINTON! IT MUST BE TRUE, MATT DRUDGE PRINTED IT! BANNED BY THE LIBERAL MEDIA CONSPIRACY, YOURS FOR $29.95 PLUS SHIPPING AND HANDLING!

Q: Since George Bush personally ordered the invasion of Iraq, committing our fighting men and women to battle, why won`t he attend even one military funeral? He says he`s too busy, and yet he`s not too busy to attend two to three fund-raisers a week. Aren`t Republicans outraged by this triumph of public relations over propriety?

A: HILLARY CLINTON! LESBIAN WICCAN SUPREME COURT JUDGES ORDERING MANDATORY DEVIANT SEX EDUCATION IN KINDERGARTENS! THE ANTI-GOD DEMOCRATS WANT TO FORCE A DEGENERATE GAY LIFESTYLES ON GOD-FEARING, TEN COMMANDMENT LOVING AMERICANS!!!

Q: Final question on Iraq - the first television ad for President Bush, released yesterday, states that (quote), "Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists." Since President Bush has admitted that Saddam Hussein A) had no weapons of mass destruction, and therefore was not himself a terrorist, and B) was giving no aid to al-qaeada, how was Mr. Bush attacking terrorists by invading Iraq?

A: GODLESS, ATHEISTIC PEDOPHILES EVERYWHERE! SODOM! GOMORRAH! SAN FRANCISCO! EITHER WE CHOOSE THE CANDIDATE ANOINTED BY GOD ALMIGHTY HIMSELF TO SAVE US FROM THE MASSING SWARMS OF HEATHEN INFIDELS, OR WE ELECT THE SPAWN OF SATAN AND DROWN IN A TIDAL WAVE OF SODOMY, PORNOGRAPHY, NECROPHILIA, MISCEGENATION, GOLDEN-CALF WORSHIPPING, AND GLUE-SNIFFING!

Q: Okay, let`s move on. The deficit. President Bush has plunged the United States into more debt faster than any other President in history, and his calamitous tax cuts have crippled our ability to get back to the Clinton years of budget surplus. How do President Bush and the Republican House and Senate plan to address these issues in his second term?

A: A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS! ENGULFING THE UNITED STATES! THE WRATH OF GOD BROUGHT DOWN ON OUR HEADS BY OUR DEGENERACY! HILLARY AND BARBRA STREISAND LOCKED IN A NAKED EMBRACE ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN! REPUBLICANS PUT IN JAIL AND FORCED TO HAVE ILLICIT SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH ANIMALS!!! OH, THE HUMANITY!

Q: One issue where President Bush seems especially vulnerable is on the "hypocrisy" issue. He vowed "No Nation Building" and yet he`s embarked on the most ambitious nation building campaign ever in our history. He told us he was a "Free Trader," and has imposed huge steel tariffs. He told us he was a "Uniter, Not A Divider," and yet has run the most partisan, divisive administration since Jefferson Davis. He vowed to run an Administration of integrity, and has engaged in blatant crony capitalism, giving billion dollar no-bid contracts to campaign contributors. He said he was for fiscal responsibility, and has increased the cost of government by 23%, encouraging some of the most outrageous "pork barrel" spending ever seen. He says he`s for average working people, but shovels tax break after tax break to the idle rich. How will the Republicans deal with these liabilities?

A: MEN AND WOMEN FORBIDDEN TO MARRY! CHURCHES TURNED INTO ABORTION CLINICS! THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT! RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES FORCED TO LIVE IN CAVES TO ESCAPE PERSECUTION! THE RAPTURE IS AT HAND!

Q: Since you were kind enough to give me this preview of the Republican "big picture" for Campaign 2004, I`d like to give you the final word. Boil your philosophy down to its essence. What`s your message?

A: GOOD - US! EVIL - THEM! HEAVEN - US! HELL - THEM! ASCENDING TO HEAVEN ABOVE THE FLAMES OF FIERY ARMAGEDDON - US! ROASTING IN THE FLAMES OF ETERNAL HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION - THEM!

Q: Think you`ll have to "tweak" this at all over the next year?

A: It might be too subtle. We may turn up the volume a little. Overall, it`s testing well...
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=13896&mode=nest…

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http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-pe.iraq23nov23,…
Searching for democracy
Iraq: Replacing a tyrant with the voice of the people was key in justifying invasion - but what if that voice isn`t what America wants to hear?

By Michael Hill
Sun Staff

November 23, 2003

There was once a free and fair election in an Islamic country, but the military decided it didn`t like the outcome and staged a coup. The United States and other western powers gave their tacit approval.

That was Algeria in 1991, when a fundamentalist Islamic party won more than 40 percent of the seats in its parliament.

With democracy touted as a cure to all the evils of Iraq, many wonder what would happen if elections there did not go the way the United States had wanted.

"That`s the whole issue with democracy, you can`t control it," says Monty Marshall, who studies emerging democracies at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"It is inevitable, if a new regime actually voices the interests of the Iraqi people, it is not going to fit that well with the U.S. agenda," he says. "If it coincides exactly, you have to question what is going on."

Democracy, to Americans, is more than a system of governance, it is part of the country`s essential mythology, the way for the voice of the populace to assert its unerring wisdom.

That myth is central to the justification of the invasion of Iraq - replacing a repressive tyrant with the freely expressed voice of the people. Putting up with what that voice has to say might be difficult.

"It is very dangerous to put all our Iraqi eggs in the democracy basket if the United States is deeply hypocritical about democracy, which we are," says Benjamin R. Barber, author of Fear`s Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy.

"If America really believes in democracy, it must believe in the right of people to make decisions that make us unhappy," he says.

Barber, who teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park and wrote Jihad vs. McWorld, notes the shifting U.S. position on the United Nations.

"We created the U.N. and were a vital supporter as long as a majority of the General Assembly supported our position. ... But when the U.N. stopped voting the American way, we lost a lot of our enthusiasm. In the `80s, we defaulted on our dues. We saw it as a hostile institution, but it was perfectly democratic."

The first step in Iraq is getting a democracy established. It has become clear that many in the Bush administration had a rather romantic view of how that would happen.

Marshall says he met with administration officials before the war and laid out the difficult road ahead. "But the administration was not listening. They really were sure that the myth of democracy would prevail, that rational people would embrace freedom and live happily ever after. It was very fairytale-ish. That`s naivete."

Reality has proven a bit more difficult. Marshall says one problem the United States faces is that the sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein`s regime were so successful. "They led to the deterioration of all the services and administrative structure necessary to make democracy work," he says.

Marshall also contends that the U.S. agenda is too ambitious, trying for a complete transformation of Iraqi society.

"You can point to the Bolsheviks in 1917," he says. "They were rife with democratic principles, but the fact is, they tried to do too much too quickly and that led to the inevitability of failure."

This desire for a broad-based change led to the removal of bureaucrats who could keep the government functioning, because they were from Hussein`s Baathist party.

"If these Baathist party functionaries are not allowed a role in the new administration, you have already set yourself up for failure," he says.

Marshall`s colleague at the University of Maryland, Jillian Schwedler, disagrees, saying it was right to purge the Baathists.

"In the transition, there is a tendency to favor the status quo, to look at what is in existence and work with it," she says. "But if you do that, you are less likely to get a meaningful transition to a genuine democracy."

Expunging the former ruling elite "is better in the long term, but it is much harder to get right in the short term," says Schwedler, a professor of political science.

The danger is if Iraq`s Sunni Muslims, who dominated the Baathist party - or any other major element in the country - decide that they do not have a stake in the new democracy. That is when they resort to the kind of violence that currently vexes coalition forces.

Marshall says if the Sunnis had retained their government posts, the Sunni population would know that it would not be lost in a new Iraq, giving it the confidence to support the transition. This happened in South Africa where Afrikaners who dominated the bureaucracy stayed on their jobs as they faced the loss of power to a black majority.

Schwedler says that confidence can be instilled by developing institutions other than elections to redress grievances - especially courts.

Marshall says it was especially unwise to throw the entire military out of work, saying if soldiers can`t work for the army, "they will use their skills with guns to increase their economic means, which is organized crime by any definition."

Fundamental to the formation of an Iraqi democracy is the formation of an Iraqi national identity out of a people who are part Arab, part Kurdish, part Sunni Muslims, part Shiite Muslims, part non-Muslims. In the type of instability now rife in Iraq, people turn to those other identities.

"One fears that in creating the current governing council, different factions are mobilized based more on sectarian or other divisive lines," says Waleed Hazbun, a Middle East specialist in the political science department of the Johns Hopkins University.

Schwedler says it would be a mistake to institutionalize that in any new government by guaranteeing these groups representation. That would reinforce the sectarian divisions - as it did in Lebanon - and retard the development of a national identity.

That identity would only be the first step. There are still conflicts over the basic form of government as Kurds seek autonomy in the north, an urbanized middle class looks to a secular regime and various groups of the majority Shiite Muslims support some form of an Islamic state.

Hazbun says the creation of Israel might provide a model, as the religious entities there were given control over such things as marriage and citizenship, in an otherwise secular state.

"You could create a system that appeases the Islamists enough by having some elements of Islamic law as the basis for the state that would marginalize the more radical elements," he says.

The mistake, most believe, would be to try to exclude any of these groups from the political process.

It is much better to get everyone in the tent. If the more radical elements participate in the process - if they have to produce or get voted out of office - they lose their romantic appeal.

"The hypothesis is that inclusion leads to moderation and exclusion leads to radicalism," Schwedler says.

"Don`t think that inclusion is going to make radicals into moderates, but what it does is eliminate the support base for radicals. You will never get rid of the total wackos, but you will see them as fringe groups as opposed to a viable alternative."

Schwedler, who is spending this semester in Jordan, says that that country provides no model for Iraq despite its pro-American stance and its peace treaty with Israel.

"If this is the type of democratic transition that the United States is interested in supporting, then it is not a democratic transition at all," she says. "If tomorrow there were a fully representational assembly in Jordan, there is no question the peace treaty [with Israel] would be overturned. That`s the kind of issue that is likely to happen in Iraq."

The role of the United States must be to provide a secure platform for Iraq to work out these issues - even if part of that process is expressing opposition to U.S. policies.

"Democracy is based on trust, and trust is only established over time," Marshall says. "It will work as long as you are there to maintain security and you don`t take sides, but we are clearly taking sides in this situation."

Schwedler says that bringing democracy to Iraq will be a long, difficult process. She hopes the United States "has the stomach for it."

"It is not easy to get it right, but it is possible to get it right. I hope they do," she says. "If they get it right, it really would remake the Middle East in many ways. If they don`t, it would maintain all the undesirable aspects that are there right now."


Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

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2003-11-24
Al-Arabiya banned from working in Iraq
Interim leadership bans al-Arabiya from working in Iraq for incitement to murder after broadcasting Saddam`s tape.

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BAGHDAD - Iraq`s US-installed interim Governing Council Monday banned Dubai-based satellite television Al-Arabiya from working in Iraq for incitement to murder after it broadcast a Saddam Hussein tape calling for attacks on council members.
"We have decided to ban Al-Arabiya in Iraq for a certain period of time because it broadcast an invitation to murder, an incitement to murder by the voice of Saddam Hussein," said the council`s current chairman Jalal Talabani.

He said council members would also pursue a separate suit against the Arabic-language station through the Iraqi courts, the first here against a news organization since Saddam`s overthrow.

Al-Arabiya announced shortly afterwards that its Baghdad bureau had been forcibly shut.

"Iraqi police entered the Al-Arabiya bureau armed with a decision from the interim Governing Council to close the bureau, seize the furniture and equipment until the channel gives a written commitment not to promote violence," the channel`s Baghdad correspondent reported live.

Only after providing the assurance would the council "examine the question of reopening the bureau," said the correspondent.

"This is the first time that the media has been sued in the new Iraq," Talabani told a Baghdad briefing.

"Although the freedom of expression is guaranteed here, incitement to murder is forbidden in every country of the world," he said.

The offending tape was broadcast on November 16 by Al-Arabiya, which launched this year as a new competitor to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that has received a number of Saddam recordings since the US-led April invasion.

"Those who are installed by foreign armies ... are in the same situation as the occupiers, and we have to fight them even before we fight the foreign armies," said the voice on the tape, referring to the Governing Council.

"That is a legitimate duty, patriotic and humanitarian," the message added, in an address to the Iraqi people on the occasion of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, that ended for Saddam`s minority Sunni community here Monday.

The US-installed Governing Council issued September 23 strict rules for media reporting in Iraq and vowed to keep a close watch to make sure they do not incite violence or comfort supporters of Saddam Hussein.

The five rules were part of a statement announcing that the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya had been banned from reporting on government activities for two weeks because of their "irresponsible actions" after an earlier message calling on Irqis to take up arms and attributed to Saddam.

The statement also ordered all citizens or foreigners to provide the authorities with any information they have regarding terrorist attacks or "any violent action that aims to breed disorder and fear."

While specifically targeting the two television stations, the statement made it clear that all media in the occupied country must respect the rules "in order to allow them to continue working in Iraq."

The statement, signed by the council`s security chief Ayad Allawi, laid down orders for media:

- Do not incite violence against any person or group

- Do not incite disorder

- Do not incite violence against the authorities or people in a position of responsibility.

- Do not advocate the return of the Baath Party (headed by Saddam) or issue any statements that represents the Baath Party directly or indirectly.

- Do not incite sectarian violence or fighting between religious or racial groups.

The rules were criticised by international media watchdogs, but defended by the US-led coalition as a normal limitation on press freedom in a country dogged by insurgency, where relations between different ethnic and religious groups are also delicate after years of repression.

Ironically the US Central Intelligence Agency announced that its findings were "inconclusive" as to whether the voice on Al-Arabiya`s latest tape was actually Saddam.

"The quality of the recording is poor and after an extensive CIA technical analysis, it`s inconclusive as to whether or not it is the voice of Saddam Hussein," a CIA official said in Washington.

The audiotape was dismissed by President George W. Bush as "propaganda".

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U.S. War Tactics Questioned by Rights Groups
Mon Nov 24, 8:56 AM ET Add World - OneWorld.net to My Yahoo!


Jim Lobe, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov 24 (OneWorld) - International human rights groups are raising new questions about U.S. counter-insurgency tactics in both Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).


In a letter sent to Pentagon (news - web sites) chief Donald Rumsfeld late last week, London-based Amnesty International asked whether the U.S. military has adopted a policy of demolishing houses of the families of suspected insurgents in Iraq.


At the same time, New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) dispatched a letter to the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, regarding the status of military investigations announced over the past 11 months into the deaths of three suspected Taliban members while they were in U.S. custody.


Both inquiries come amid indications that the U.S. forces in both countries are stepping up counter-insurgency operations, particularly in the so-called Sunni Triangle of central Iraq and the predominantly Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where some 10,000 U.S. troops are trying to repel Taliban forces returning from Pakistan two years after being ousted from power in a brief U.S.-led military campaign.


Five U.S. troops were killed and seven more wounded when a helicopter crashed just outside Bagram Air Base near Kabul Sunday, although the causes of the crash have not yet been determined. At least two more were badly were injured when their humvee hit a land mind close to the border with Pakistan.


Ten U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan so far this year, a fraction of the 300 killed in combat in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion there in late March. But Washington is increasingly concerned about the Talibans growing presence in an increasing number of provinces, particularly amid preparations for elections next year.


Similarly, in Iraq, the spread of violent resistance to the U.S. occupation from the Sunni Triangle northwards to Mosul, where two U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday, as well as its increased intensity and sophistication, was apparently behind the decision by the Pentagon earlier this month to pursue a counter-insurgency war more aggressively than in the past.


In the past two weeks, U.S. forces have used a number of new tactics, including the bombing by warplanes and attack helicopters of suspected guerrilla hideouts and supply depots. The tactics appear designed primarily to intimidate resistance fighters, in part by taking the war to them, rather than adopting a more defensive posture.


It is in that context that Amnesty is asking that the Pentagon respond to reports that its forces have demolished a number of Iraqi homes in recent weeks.


The U.S. government should clarify whether it has officially permitted house demolitions as a form of collective punishment or deterrence, the group said in its letter. If such proved to be the case, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.


Amnesty said it has received reports that on November 10 U.S. soldiers arrived at the farmhouse of the Najim family near the town of al-Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, and ordered all the residents to leave. Later that day, two F-16 warplanes reportedly bombed and destroyed the house.


As reported by witnesses and the media, the operation was apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack a few days earlier by armed Iraqi groups against a U.S. convoy that resulted in the death of an officer.


The next day, U.S. soldiers arrested six men outside the Najim house after weapons were found inside a truck parked there. More weapons and ammunition were reported to have been found when the house was searched.


It seems that the destruction of the Najim family house was carried out as collective punishment and not for absolute military necessity`," said Amnesty, quoting a provision in the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines the only basis upon which an occupying power is permitted to destroy property.


Amnesty said it had learned that at least 15 houses have been destroyed by U.S. forces since November 16 in or near Tikrit alone. In one case, in the village of al-Haweda, a family was given five minutes to evacuate their house before it was razed to the ground by tanks and helicopter fire.


In another case, according to Amnesty, two men, four children and two babies were said to have been left in freezing night temperatures in the back of a truck before their house was demolished.


A U.S. military official with the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Lou Zeisman, was quoted in media reports as saying: If you shot at an American or Coalition force member, you are going to be killed or you are going to be captured, and if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility. We didnt destroy a house just because we were angry that someone was killed; we did it because the people there were linked to the attack, and we are not going to tolerate it anymore


House demolition has evoked considerable controversy over the years due to its use by Israeli occupation forces against the homes of suspected Palestinian insurgents. Israeli officials are reported to have briefed U.S. officers at length on the tactics they have used against the Palestinian resistance.

Iraqis themselves appear to be aware that the Pentagon may be applying the same tactics. The Americans want to follow the Israeli plan, one elderly resident in a village near Tikrit told the Washington Post. It doesnt work there. Why will it work here?

Indeed, some analysts have warned that the more-aggressive U.S. counter-insurgency tactics of the past several weeks risked provoking greater resistance as well. Dr. Wamid Nadmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, told Knight-Ridder this weekend, that while the escalation may catch more insurgents, the other side is this will increase the people`s rage against the Americans, especially those people whose homes are being destroyed or family members are being killed."

Amnesty called on Rumsfeld to immediately rescind any policy of unlawful destruction of property and collective punishment, and to offer compensation to all families whose houses have been destroyed due to suspicion of a family members ties to the insurgency.

For its part, LCHR noted the deaths in custody at Bagram Airbase last December of two Afghan adults known as Mullah Habibullah and Dilawar, who were reported to have suffered blunt force injuries and whose deaths were classified as homicides.

In March 2003, Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill ordered a criminal investigation. A similar investigation was announced regarding the death at a U.S. holding facility near Asadabad of another Afghan, known as Walli, last June. The BBC quoted sources suggesting that Walli had been tortured during interrogation.

On June 26, President George W. Bush (news - web sites) said the U.S. would not tolerate torture or cruel and unusual punishment of detainees, and the Pentagons General Counsel stated at the time that anyone found to have broken the law in relation to the deaths of the three men would be prosecuted.

Despite world-wide concern, to our knowledge no further information has been made public about the status of the investigations into these three cases, LCHR wrote in its letter asking Gen. Vines to respond to a series of questions regarding the investigations and their progress.

The investigations were announced amid press reports that U.S. captives were often softened up by U.S. soldiers before interrogation on detainees deemed uncooperative.

LCHRs letter also comes amid growing controversy over disciplinary action taken by the Army against Lt. Col. Allen West, who has admitted to firing his pistol over the shoulder of a detainee during interrogation to elicit information about planned ambushes against U.S. soldiers. The Army has reportedly threatened West with criminal prosecution.

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Military Fatalities:

*US**UK**Other**Total

433**53***25*****511

Latest Military Fatality Date: 11/23/2003

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

11/24/03 Centcom: 1 Soldier Dies
A 220th Military Police Brigade soldier died when his patrol vehicle rolled into a canal near Al Iskandariyah at approximately 4:30 a.m. Nov 23.
11/24/03 NewsAU: US convoy under anti-tank fire
A US military convoy came under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on a bridge over the Tigris river in the heart of the capital Monday morning but there no casualties, police said.
11/24/03 Yahoo: Bomb Injures American Soldier in Iraq
In the Mosul attack, gunmen activated a roadside bomb and opened fire on the convoy, injuring a soldier, the military said
11/23/03 Centcom: Hellicopter Cashes in Afghanistan - Dead
A U.S. military helicopter crashed today near Bagram, Afghanistan. Early reports indicate seven service members were injured and at least five service members were killed. The duty status of all on board will be updated as information becomes available
11/23/03 DJ: 3 Contractors Wounded
three U.S. civilian contractors were wounded Sunday in an explosion in the northern oil center of Kirkuk. First reports said the blast was from a mortar, but U.S. Lt. Col. Matt Croke said officials later concluded it was from a bomb.
11/23/03 Centcom: 2 soldiers killed in a traffic accident
Two 1st Armored Division soldiers were killed and one was injured in a traffic accident Nov. 22.
11/23/03 Centcom: Soldier dies in in an apparent drowning
One 4th Infantry Division soldier died in an apparent drowning when the vehicle the soldier was driving slid off the road and went into an adjacent canal.
11/23/03 ABC: US soldier killed in blast north of Baghdad
One US soldier was killed and two were wounded when their convoy was hit by an explosive device in the town of Baquba just north of Baghdad on Sunday
11/23/03 DJ: US Troops Killed In Iraq`s Mosul
Crowds pummeled the bodies of U.S soldiers killed Sunday by gunmen in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, swarming the scene and looting the soldiers` vehicle, witnesses said.

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A turkey was spared from winding up on a Thanksgiving dinner plate when President Bush granted it a pardon today in keeping with White House tradition.

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Monday, November 24th, 2003
10,000 Protest in Fort Benning, Georgia Against School of Americas, What Many Critics Call the “School of Assassins”


Watch 256k stream
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2003/nov/256/d…

Wenn nicht DSL siehe Seite:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/24/1458247

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Some ten thousand people descended on the School of the Americas (now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) headquarters in Fort Benning, Georgia this weekend to protest the U.S. military program that trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics. Frequently dubbed the “School of the Assassins” critics say the school’s graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

Between 35 and 45 people were arrested for trespassing after crossing onto fort property. The Army blared patriotic songs such as "The Army Song" and "God Bless the U.S.A." from loudspeakers 50 yards away from where protesters were speaking to the large crowd. Organizers at School of the Americas Watch are planning to sue, accusing the Army of a “psychological operation.”

We hear speeches from Adriana Bartow who lost 6 members of her family in 1981 when Guatemalan security forces raided her house. Jennifer Harbury, whose husband Guatemalan rebel leader, Efrain Bamaca Velazquez was murdered by troops trained at the School of the Americas. Carlos Mauricio who successfully sued two former Salvadoran generals for human rights abuses in a Florida court. And Roy Bourgeois a Catholic priest, who started SOA Watch and the campaign against the School of the Americas.



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TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, the Harvard-trained lawyer, was one of those who spoke.


JENNIFER HARBURY: Hello. I would like to speak today on behalf of my husband, Efrain Bamaca Velazquez or Comandante El Berardo, of Guatemala. Unfortunately, he is not here today to speak for himself because a few years ago, he was captured alive, tortured for two years, held in a full body cast, and then either thrown out of a helicopter or dismembered by between eight and 12 graduates of the School of the Americas.

I wish that I could say that this happened long ago and that we, therefore, don`t have to worry about it anymore. But, in fact, it happened during the Clinton administration. I wish that I could say every school has its bad apples and maybe Colonel Alpirez, who personally presided over one of the torture sessions was just a bad apple but between the eight and 12 persons that participated directly in his torture and his eventual execution, most of them were also on C.I.A. payroll as paid informants.

This school is not just a training center; it is where we pick up our death squad partners for the C.I.A. This is where we link, this is where all roads cross on the way to Rome.

I`d like to speak briefly about precisely what did happen to my El Berardo, but only in the sense that his case is symbolic of so many other cases. His case, unfortunately, is not an extraordinary case. It is not a shocking case. Throughout Latin America, it was an everyday occurrence. So, while I speak about what happened to him, I`d like you just to be thinking of the hundreds of thousands, millions, of the same people who suffered the same terror, the same torture, the same miserable deaths and who have unmarked graves also across Latin America. Because when we speak for one, we have to speak for all of them.

El Berardo was a Mayan peasant of Guatemala. He grew up starving to death quite literally. He learned to read and write in the mountains where he fought for 17 years. Ironically, he was captured alive by the Guatemalan army in 1992, the year that marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus, something that was not considered cause for celebration by the indigenous population of Guatemala. He was captured, but the army was very careful to carry out an international hoax saying that, in fact, he had not been captured alive, but had killed himself in combat to avoid capture and he was buried in a certain grave marked XX in a nearby town of Retetulello.

In fact, what they have had done is dragged an 18-year-old out of a military base, a young soldier, also a Mayan peasant who had been forcibly recruited. They then placed him in an olive green uniform that matched the URNG forces uniform and tied him by his ankles so tightly with his own socks that it etched a weaving pattern in his skin and kicked him in the skin until his cheekbones collapsed, strangled him, leaving a two-centimeter strangulation around the throat, shot him, stabbed him, and smashed his skull. That is the person that was buried in the grave at Retetulello as we later found out.

Meanwhile, they told all of us that El Berardo had died in combat and was buried in that grave. And, when we asked for the description, we got an identical description of my husband and not the young soldier who was, in fact, dead.

El Berardo was then subjected to nearly two years of torture. We know that he was battered severely. We know that he was injected with drugs again and again. We know that one of the people responsible for his torture sessions was Colonel Julio Roberto Alperez who studied here at the School of the Americas twice, a known C.I.A. asset, a paid informant, who was responsible in 1990 for the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine who, according to the C.I.A.`s own files, excelled in the liquidation campaign against the indigenous peoples in the Mayan highlands in the early 1980`s, a counterinsurgency campaign that has been labeled genocide by the United Nations Truth Commission. We know that the other persons responsible for his torture were within the intelligence death squad called the Commando, responsible for the liquidation of civilian dissidence as well as insurgents within Guatemala. In other words, another death squad where the leadership of that death squad checked in with Uncle Sam in a high-rise building down the street from the U.S. embassy two to three times a week.

But actual torture session, did someone survive to escape from Guatemala and tell us about, involved having my husband stripped, strapped down to a hospital bed with a doctor standing by to make sure he didn`t accidentally die during his torture session, blindfolded him, injected him with a toxic substance that caused him to swell grotesquely and apparently one arm and leg to hemorrhage because they were heavily bandaged and left him raving. We know that he survived that session. I just want to give that as one example of what use our tax dollars are put to by people who graduate from this school and then continue to work as partners with the United States government.

We know that he survived that session and was kept alive for quite a bit longer because C.I.A. files showed that people became very frustrated when they wouldn`t tell him the truth and because he was so intelligent he almost managed to escape several times, forcing him to be held until a full body cast.

The files also show there were nearly 300 other prisoners who were alive and under the same horrible conditions that he was under and being clandestinely detained. The C.I.A. knew about all of this within six days of my husband`s capture and relayed that information to the Department of State and the U.S. embassy. I wasn`t told. Congress wasn`t told. In fact, congress was told in writing, including members of the intelligence oversight board for two years that is was no information. During the two years of hunger strikes, campaigns, O.A.S. cases, etc., etc., all 300 of those prisoners were murdered. They were either stuffed down wells, thrown out of helicopters, or beaten to death and buried under the military base.

Like I say, when we speak for one, please remember all of them from Chile northward to our borders, including the people right now that we need to be worrying about in the Middle East. Thank you very much. [cheering]

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, lawyer and human rights activist. Her husband, Efrain Bamaca Velazquez, was murdered by Salvadorian troops trained at the School of the Americas. Jennifer is a member of the Torture Abolition and Survivor`s Support Coalition, speaking this weekend at the mass protest at the School of the Americas where some 30 to 40 people were arrested.

Carlos Mauricio also spoke. He successfully sued two former Salvadorian generals for human rights abuses in a Florida court. He is a member of the Stop Immunity Project.

CARLOS MARICIO: I’m glad that I came. In 1983, I was captured by the Salvadorian army. In two weeks, I was horrible tortured, badly, badly beaten, and starved. The torturers, most probably, they got training in this School of Americas although I never saw their faces because I was blindfolded and handcuffed. But what I knew is that the top officers in the army, Colonel Cass Nova and colonel Garcia, they both have links to the School of Americas. So, when we found them living in Florida, we made a case against them [cheering] and we, three Salvadorians who survived the torture, Gonzales, Majosa and myself, we made a case against them and we accused them of being responsible for what happened to us.

Everybody knows that the Salvadorian soldiers trained in the United States, came back to San Salvador and carried out the worst of the worst atrocities in El Salvador. In Mosote, For example, after they killed 900 villagers there, and the average age of the children killed is 4 years old, after the soldier left, they wrote a message there in Mosote. It said "hell`s angels were here."

Because we knew that Colonel Garcia and Colonel Cass Nova were responsible, we made a case against them. And in Florida, in West Palm Beach a year ago, a jury found them guilty. [cheering] And now -- now they are paying $54 millions of dollars. The guys who never blink an eye to kill, now they cannot sleep because we are taking their money. Believe me, when I was in the court, I was not alone. When I accused them. When I said to them, you are responsible for what happened to me, I felt the voices of the names of the people in those crosses that you are carrying right now. Their voices, I felt them in my back. Those names on those crosses, they also support me. When I finger them and tell them, you are responsible, you are guilty, you are murderers, I felt those names behind me [applause] because our case is a land mark case. Now several cases have also been filled against military, against Salvadorian military here in the United States.

But also in other places of the world. A Chilean family broke a case against the Chilean military accusing him of being responsible for the killing of their brother, Juisto Cavello, in 1973. Again, a jury in Florida, not only find him responsible for the killing of Cavello, but also found this Chilean military guilty of crimes against humanity. [applause] When I came to the United States, I was given shelter by the people of the United States and support. Now I know that the people here, the young people here is going to support us in the fight against impunity. If we fight impunity, we are going to fight torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Carlos Mauricio successfully sued two Salvadorian generals in a Florida court where they`re living. He is a member of the Stop Immunity Project.

The founder of the School of the Americas Watch, who lives right outside the gate for many years, is Father Roy Bourgeois. Father Roy Bourgeois has been jailed numerous times. One of his first protests was taking a tape records on the base, put it in the trees where Salvadorian soldiers were being trained at what was then called the School of the Americas and he played the last speech of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, the last speech where he called on Salvadorian soldiers to put down their arms. Father Roy Bourgeois was sentenced to 18 months for broadcasting that speech. We`ll turn now to Father Roy Bourgeois addressing the thousands of the protests of the School of the Americas yesterday.

FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS: For all of us gathered here, this is a very sacred day. It is a sacred day because in a very special way, we`re remembering the thousands of our sisters and brothers of Latin America who have been killed by graduates of this school just down the road. We are here to speak for them. years ago, when our movement was beginning, we realized the importance of it being rooted in nonviolence. Early on, we drew on the experience and the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi, of Martin Luther King, of Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez and others. Their way was going to be our way, the way of nonviolence. Yes, anger is a part of this struggle for peace and justice. How can we not be angry at the suffering and the death caused by graduates of this school?

AMY GOODMAN: Father Roy Bourgeois, the leader of the protests, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas. And 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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Da ist Dubya mal großzügig, gleich werden sie frech.(Seine zweite Begnadigung)

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The moral myth
Superpowers act out of self-interest, not morality, and the US in Iraq is no different

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 25, 2003
The Guardian

It is no use telling the hawks that bombing a country in which al-Qaida was not operating was unlikely to rid the world of al-Qaida. It is no use arguing that had the billions spent on the war with Iraq been used instead for intelligence and security, atrocities such as last week`s attacks in Istanbul may have been prevented. As soon as one argument for the invasion and occupation of Iraq collapses, they switch to another. Over the past month, almost all the warriors - Bush, Blair and the belligerents in both the conservative and the liberal press - have fallen back on the last line of defence, the argument we know as "the moral case for war".

Challenged in the Commons by Scottish Nationalist MP Pete Wishart last Wednesday over those devilishly uncooperative weapons of mass destruction, for example, Tony Blair dodged the question. "What everyone should realise is that if people like the honourable gentleman had had their way, Saddam Hussein, his sons and his henchmen would still be terrorising people in Iraq. I find it quite extraordinary that he thinks that that would be a preferable state of affairs."

I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world`s most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.

But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn`t mean that it is motivated by the moral case.

Writing in the Observer recently, David Aaronovitch argued in favour of US intervention, while suggesting that it could be improved by means of some policy changes. "Sure, I want them to change. I want more consistency. I want Bush to stop tolerating the nastystans of Central Asia, to tell Ariel where to get off, to treat allies with more respect, to dump the hubristic neo-cons..." So say we all. But the White House is not a branch of Amnesty International. When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan`s, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon`s and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent.

It is hard to see why we should expect anything else. All empires work according to the rules of practical advantage, rather than those of kindness and moral decency. In Arthur Koestler`s Darkness at Noon, Rubashov, the fallen hero of the revolution, condemns himself for "having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them." "Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance and atonement", his interrogator reminds him, "are for us repellent debauchery".

Koestler, of course, was describing a different superpower, but these considerations have always held true. During the cold war, the two empires supported whichever indigenous leaders advanced their interests. They helped them to seize and retain power by massacring their own people, then flung them into conflicts in which millions were killed. One of the reasons why the US triumphed was that it possessed the resources to pursue that strategy with more consistency than the Soviet Union could. Today the necessity for mass murder has diminished. But those who imagine that the strategic calculus has somehow been overturned are deceiving themselves.

There were plenty of hard-headed reasons for the United States to go to war with Iraq. As Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, has admitted, the occupation of that country permits the US to retain its presence in the Middle East while removing "almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia". The presence of "crusader forces on the holy land" was, he revealed, becoming ever less sustainable. (Their removal, of course, was Osama bin Laden`s first demand: whoever said that terrorism does not work?) Retaining troops in the Middle East permits the US to continue to exercise control over its oil supplies, and thus to hold China, its new economic and political rival, to ransom. The bombing of Iraq was used by Bush to show that his war on terror had not lost momentum. And power, as anyone who possesses it appreciates, is something you use or lose. Unless you flex your muscles, they wither away.

We can`t say which of these motives was dominant, but we can say that they are realistic reasons for war. The same cannot be said of a concern for the human rights of foreigners. This is merely the cover under which one has to act in a nominal democracy.

But in debating the war, those of us who opposed it find ourselves drawn into this fairytale. We are obliged to argue about the relative moral merits of leaving Saddam in place or deposing him, while we know, though we are seldom brave enough to say it, that the moral issue is a distraction. The genius of the hawks has been to oblige us to accept a fiction as the reference point for debate.

Of course, it is possible for empires to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and upon this possibility the hawks may hang their last best hopes of justification. But the wrong reasons, consistently applied, lead at the global level to the wrong results. Let us argue about the moral case for war by all means; but let us do so in the knowledge that it had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

· Monbiot.com


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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US targets opposition clerics in Mosul

Michael Howard in Mosul
Tuesday November 25, 2003
The Guardian

The US military is acting to stem the rising tide of radical Islamism in Iraq`s third largest city and rooting out preachers held to be using their sermons to incite attacks on Americans.
Alarmed by a surge of deadly attacks in Mosul, a Sunni Muslim stronghold of 1.7 million Arabs and Kurds, coalition forces are running what the US commander, Major General David H Petraeus, calls a "race to win over the hearts and minds of the people".

A team of US army chaplains is liaising with imams at the city`s main mosques in an attempt to reassure the once dominant Sunni Arabs that they have not lost their stake in the new Iraq.

The attacks, the latest of which was on Sunday, when two American soldiers were shot dead and then mutilated, reveal a simmering resentment among sections of Mosul`s Arab population - particularly the large number of unemployed and disaffected youth.

Lieutenant Colonel Chester Egert, chaplain with Gen Petraeus`s 101st Airborne Division, coordinates the religious outreach programme. He said: "Since Saddam`s departure and the removal of the Ba`ath leadership, many Sunnis in the city have turned to the mosques for guidance and support at a time of uncertainty.

"We have a great deal of cooperation and support from the most popular and respected imams in the city.

"They understand that we do not want to stay here a moment longer than necessary, and that we are here to help Iraqis through the hard times and emerge with freedom."

Sheikh Salih Khalil Hamoody, one of Mosul`s senior clerics, welcomed the US attempt at bridge-building, but warned it was undermined by heavy-handedness over the city`s worsening security.

"It could drive the youth into the arms of Saddam`s loyalists and religious extremists," Sheikh Hamoody said. Sheikhs complained that US soldiers showed disrespect to ordinary Muslims at the growing number of checkpoints, he said. They also alleged that former Ba`athists, now working for the US-trained civil defence corps, were sent into mosques to spy on the imams` Friday sermons.

The US military believes some mosques are centres of resistance, used to store weapons and enlist recruits.

Over the last week, raids on at least 10 mosques resulted in the arrest of up to 100 people and the capture of weapons.

"The Ba`athists now wear the uniform of occupation," said Mohammed Fikri, a worshipper at the Haibat Khatoun mosque. "They are gaining their revenge on us for our disloyalty to Saddam by reporting lies to the Americans. What has changed?"

The US hearts and minds campaign will not be easy. A group of clerics in the city calling itself the Association of Muslim Scholars recently issued a warning against cooperating: "Beware of supporting the occupiers, and know that contacting them, without a legitimate necessity, is sinful."

"Some mosques in Mosul are outlets for anti-American rhetoric," said Col Egert. "We do monitor what the imams say, and, unlike under Saddam, they are free to say what they want - provided they don`t preach violence." He said Iraqi authorities had so far removed one imam in Mosul for anti-US speeches.

· The Iraqi Governing Council yesterday banned Al-Arabiya, one of the biggest Arab TV news networks, from Iraq for "a certain time" for broadcasting a tape a week ago of a voice it said was Saddam Hussein.

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Das Ende der britischen Autoindustrie?

Rover survival dogged by fresh controversy
Row over Phoenix directors, model delays and continued losses leave Longbridge car maker facing uphill struggle
By Michael Harrison Business Editor
25 November 2003


More than 800 car manufacturers, importers and dealers will descend on the Hilton hotel on London`s Park Lane tonight for the British motor industry`s annual knees-up. To mark its 87th annual dinner, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders is publishing a special report posing a stark question: Does the UK car industry have a future or is it destined to close down?

Today that question resonates loudest of all at the Longbridge car plant in Birmingham, home of MG Rover, the last remaining British-owned volume car maker.

Three and a half years after it was saved from closure by a group of West Midlands businessmen known as the Phoenix consortium, the company is back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. John Towers, the former Rover chief executive who led the rescue in May 2000 and was fêted as a returning hero as he drove back through the gates of Longbridge, is now cast as the villain of the piece.

Mr Towers and his four co-directors at Phoenix stand accused of enriching themselves with multi-million pound loan notes and trust funds at the same time as MG Rover is still losing more than £100m a year and the pension fund for its 6,500 workers is £73m in deficit.

The Phoenix directors have also aroused suspicion by separating the loss-making manufacturing operations from the lucrative financing arm, which is now privately owned by them in conjunction with the high street bank HBOS.

The whiff of scandal could not have come at a worse time. Although MG Rover`s losses have fallen dramatically since it was bought from BMW for a symbolic £10, so have its sales. In 1999, the last full year under BMW`s ownership, MG Rover sold 240,000 cars. This year it is expected to sell 140,000 at best. Longbridge is operating at only two-thirds of its capacity and, indeed, for the next five days the plant will stand completely idle while production stops in order to bring stocks of cars back into line with demand.

The adverse publicity about Phoenix has depleted the fund of goodwill among the MG Rover workforce and the wider West Midlands community. It would be premature to suggest that it has also hit sales. But observers are in no doubt that unless MG Rover can put a stop to the negative headlines, customer confidence will begin to erode just as it did in the 1970s when the company`s forerunner, British Leyland, became a byword for union militancy.

The company blames the strength of the euro for its falling sales. But that is not its only problem. In the past year, its much-vaunted alliance with China Brilliance has collapsed while TWR, the main engineering contractor on its new medium-sized model, has gone into administration. These two events have pushed back the launch of the make-or-break car and MG Rover`s return to profitability to 2005.

As Professor Garel Rhys, director of the centre for automotive research at Cardiff University Business School, says: "The row over the directors` trust fund is a sideshow by comparison with the real issue, which is whether MG Rover is going to survive. The next 18 months are going to be a very difficult period. "It was always going to be a holding operation until the new car comes on stream and that will not now happen until a year later than planned. The test of whether the company has a viable future will depend on the new model and customer reaction to it because it is the devil`s own job to restore credibility if you get a model launch wrong."

Despite the plummeting sales, it is not all doom and gloom at Longbridge. Next month will see the UK launch of the new CityRover, which is being built by Tata of India and will spearhead MG Rover`s return to the small car market in competition with the likes of the Peugeot 106, Ford Ka and Fiat Seicento. MG Rover hopes to import about 30,000 CityRovers a year and stands to make £1,000-£1,500 profit on each car.

The money will be an important addition to the group`s cash flow, which has held up well since 2000 with the aid of the £500m dowry provided by BMW. MG Rover still had £300m of net cash in its balance sheet at the end of last year but its cash position will almost certainly have deteriorated this year, now that the final instalment of money from BMW has been paid.

The cash will also support the development of the new car - a replacement for the Rover45 and MG ZS models. Because the car will be based on the same platform as the Rover75, MG Rover will be able to keep development costs down to between £250m and £300m and provide all the funds from its own resources.

But the company will also need to replace the Rover25 if it is to maintain a presence in the "supermini" segment of the market, which now accounts for one-third of all UK sales, and in order to do this it will almost certainly need a partner.

MG Rover says it is exploring other potential alliances in China. It is also looking at Poland, where it is attempting to strike a deal to take over a former Daewoo plant. Initially, the plant would make the old Rover45 under licence with the hope that this could lead on to bigger and better things.

Hope is the operative word when it comes to MG Rover, a company which, in its various incarnations, has lost heroic sums of money for its various owners over the past three decades. As Professor Rhys says: "You can never use the word optimistic about MG Rover. But I am hopeful and the longer it survives the more reason there is for hope."
25 November 2003 10:26



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 25, 2003
U.S. Acquiesces to Allies on New Iran Nuclear Resolution
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — The United States, bowing to the wishes of its allies, agreed Monday to let the International Atomic Energy Agency adopt a resolution deploring Iran`s nuclear program without referring the issue to the United Nations for possible sanctions, administration officials said.

A senior administration official said the resolution, which could be adopted Wednesday in Vienna, would say that the atomic energy agency "strongly deplores" Iran`s 18 years of secretly developing a nuclear arms program and hints that further actions might be possible if such activity continued.

Yielding to the insistence of France, Britain and Germany, the administration backed off its demand that Iran be condemned and that allegations of its misconduct be referred to the United Nations Security Council. The three European countries have joined in an unusual coalition to press Iran to cooperate.

Administration officials said that in the end, the United States had little choice but to go along not only with the wishes of its European allies, but also with the urging of the atomic energy agency`s leadership, most notably its general director, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei.

The Europeans and Dr. ElBaradei argued that Iran`s recent steps, including its announced suspension of its program to enrich uranium, warranted a conciliatory approach. Moreover, they said, confronting Iran would backfire, causing it to cut off any discussion.

"Getting Iran to acknowledge that it has cheated in the past and that it will cooperate in the future may not be everything the United States wants," a European diplomat said. "But to walk away from talking to Iran will block any chance of progress in the future."

On a visit to Washington last week, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, also argued strenuously for keeping the dialogue with Iran open, telling reporters that it was better to reach out to the government in Tehran than to cut off the possibility of reducing tensions.

As part of the deal negotiated in Vienna, the United States got a clearer indication in the proposed resolution that "all bets are off" if Iran continues to flout the wishes of the world and presses ahead with making nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

"We`re pleased that we were able to reach agreement on a text of a resolution," a senior administration official said. "It makes clear that if there are further failures by Iran, all options will be open. This takes care of our requirement to take full account of all of Iran`s past breaches."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell negotiated the language over the weekend with senior envoys from Europe and with Dr. ElBaradei.

European diplomats said the negotiations had an unusual sense of familiarity, given the fact that in the months leading up to the war with Iraq, Dr. ElBaradei joined with France and Germany in demanding that Iraq be given more time to come clean on its illicit weapons programs.

Britain and the United States, working together, opposed them, in the end giving up on getting United Nations Security Council authorization for military action against Iraq.

Diplomats said the three European countries had sent a powerful message as Mr. Fischer joined with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, in arguing for talking with Iran.

At a time when American inspectors have still been unable to find evidence of the illicit arms programs in Iraq cited as a principal reason for going to war, the United States was dealing with the issue of Iran from a position of weakness, many diplomats involved in the matter said.

In Vienna last week, it was clear that after strenuous lobbying, Mr. Powell was unable to persuade more than 3 of the I.A.E.A.`s 35 board members — Canada, Australia and Japan — to go along with a formal censure of Iran that would refer the matter to the Security Council.

While traveling with Mr. Bush last week in Britain, Mr. Powell declared that the wording desired by others on the agency board was "deficient." Dr. ElBaradei argued, however, that a resolution that would keep talks with Iran going would be "a resolution that strengthens my hand."

It was no secret in the nuclear discussions that the Bush administration has itself been divided on the issue. Administration hard-liners contend that continuing discussions with Iran are a kind of trap that would allow Iran to play for time while pressing forward with its nuclear program in secrecy.

A similar argument within the Bush administration has raged over whether the United States should reopen its direct diplomatic contacts with Iran, shut down since May after bombings in Saudi Arabia were linked by some intelligence officials to groups operating in Iran.

It was unclear to what extent any action by the I.A.E.A. would lead to progress on curbing Iran`s nuclear program. Even many officials who favor negotiating with Iran say they are pessimistic that Iran will ever give up its nuclear ambitions.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 25, 2003
CASUALTIES
Revising Report, Army Denies Throats of 2 G.I.`s Were Cut
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 — Confusion swirled Monday as a United States military official retracted his earlier report that the throats of two American soldiers had been slashed during an attack on Sunday in the northern city of Mosul.

The official, who said he was receiving his information from written military records, said that the two soldiers had died of gunshot wounds to the head, and that their bodies had been pulled from their car by Iraqis and robbed of their personal belongings. Contrary to initial accounts on Sunday from Mosul, he said the bodies of the men had not been mutilated or pummeled with rocks.

The initial reports were seized upon by cable news channels and tabloid newspapers as a virtual replay of an attack in 1993 in which the bodies of American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. That attack, depicted in the popular movie "Blackhawk Down," was seen as one of the principal reasons the United States quit its military operation, which was intended to bring order to the Somali capital.

The New York Times reported in its Monday issue that the throats of the two soldiers had been slashed, quoting the same military official.

In his revised account, the military official said the victims, both of the 101st Airborne Division, were not set upon by a mob but were shot by unidentified gunmen who stopped their car in front of the Americans` car, forcing it to halt. The assailants got out and fired at the Americans through the windshield.

"Their throats were not slit," the military official said. "The cause of death was gunshot wounds to the head." Iraqis then set upon the vehicle to scavenge what they could, the official said.

The military official said that while an initial military report had said that the men`s throats had been slit, further investigation revealed no evidence of such wounds. Nor were the bodies dragged through the streets, the official said.

The men killed were Command Sgt. Maj. Jerry L. Wilson, 45, of Thomson, Ga., and Specialist Rel A. Ravago IV, 21, of Glendale, Calif.

Sergeant Major Wilson was the top enlisted member of the Second Brigade. Brigades have 3,000 to 5,000 troops.

At the Pentagon, Defense Department and military officials had no explanation for the conflicting information from the field, except to repeat the usual caution that first reports are routinely incorrect. The initial reports of throats being slashed came from Iraq, and were never confirmed by officials in Washington, they said.

Military and Pentagon officials confirmed that the bodies were apparently taken from the vehicle, and that valuables and weapons were stolen, but that the victims were not mutilated or dragged through the streets.

Despite the statements on Monday, important questions remained about the incident. One was why the men were traveling through the streets of Mosul alone. Military rules in Mosul and other parts of Iraq prohibit troops from traveling outside their bases except in a convoy. The Americans who were killed were traveling in an unarmored sport utility vehicle without an escort.

"There is no excuse," the military official said.

Equally mysterious were the origins of the report about the throat-slitting. The military official said he could offer no explanation.

The attack was the latest in a wave of violence that has hit Mosul recently. An ethnically mixed city of more than two million people, Mosul was something of a showcase for the American occupation in the first months after the war. Its large Kurdish and Arab populations mingled peacefully, and the soldiers of the 101st Airborne spent millions of dollars refurbishing the city`s streets and public buildings.

The atmosphere began to change in September. Since then, there has been a string of attacks on American forces, prompting soldiers of the 101st to step up military operations. Last week, in an incident still unclear, two Black Hawk helicopters crashed in mid-air, sending 17 American soldiers to their deaths.

Also Monday, the Iraqi police raided the Baghdad offices of Al Arabiya, an Arab-language television station based in Dubai, forcing it to suspend its news-gathering operations inside the country. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council said they would ban Al Arabiya from working in Iraq for an unspecified amount of time.

Jalal Talabani, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, said the council had decided to close Al Arabiya offices because it had broadcast an audiotape, said to have been made by Saddam Hussein, which called on Iraqis to murder fellow countrymen cooperating with the Americans. "Al Arabiya incites murder, because it is calling for killings through the voice of Saddam Hussein," he said.

In a taped message broadcast Nov. 16, a voice resembling Mr. Hussein`s referred with contempt to Iraqi political figures who, he said, could not "walk in the streets of Baghdad or any other Iraqi city." He then called on Iraqis to kill "those who are installed by foreign armies," a clear reference to the Iraqi leadership.

A number of people working in the American-backed government, from judges to police officers to a member of the Governing Council, have been assassinated in the last few months.

A State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the leaders of the Governing Council had acted appropriately. "We agree with their assessment, basically, but they`re the ones on the ground that have to make the judgments and have to try to work out the situation," he said.

Asked whether the administration was approving news restrictions in the name of democracy, Mr. Boucher noted that there are dozens of international broadcasters operating in Iraq. "People need to focus a little bit," he said. "We all hold the view that you don`t yell `Fire!` in a crowded theater."

Also Monday, American military police officers trying to quell a prison riot in Baghdad killed three Iraqis and wounded eight. The riot broke out at the Baghdad Correctional Center when a group of Iraqis began throwing rocks at the guards. A military official said that when the riot began to spread, the American military police were given permission to use lethal force.

The riot lasted about 10 minutes, the official said.

The Baghdad Correctional Center used to be known as Abu Ghraib and had the reputation as one of the grimmest destinations for political prisoners during Mr. Hussein`s rule.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 25, 2003
The Sticker-Shock Congress

Congress nearly always engages in pork-barrel spending as it leaves town for the holidays, usually to feather the nests of special interest groups responsible for the perpetuation of careers on Capitol Hill. But this year`s end-of-session binge has gone way beyond pork, saddling the country with long-term obligations of mammoth proportions and inviting censure not only from the usual good-government types but also from economists who genuinely fear for the future of the economy. The Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, not given to hyperbole, warned in its most recent newsletter that the "U.S. budget is out of control." This sentiment was echoed by the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which monitors federal spending, and which called 2003 "the most irresponsible year ever" in terms of fiscal discipline.

This spending comes courtesy of a Republican Congress and White House. Though the Republicans are historically the party of budget restraint and smaller government, these Republicans have presided over an orgy of tax cuts and benefit increases that, according to the Concord group, will not only boost this year`s projected deficit but also add as much as $800 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years. The damage will be even greater in the following decade. Among the more prominent items are $400 billion for Medicare (this page supported the new prescription drug benefit), $300 billion in tax cuts and $22 billion in new veterans` benefits. If the energy bill had passed, which fortunately did not happen, that would have added another $23 billion to $30 billion in tax cuts, plus perhaps twice that much in newly authorized programs. And all of this comes on top of three consecutive tax cuts totaling more than $1.7 trillion over the next decade.

President Bush must share responsibility. He speaks of fiscal restraint when he is on the road, but back home in Washington he seems content to let Congress do its thing. So far he has not threatened to veto a single bill because of its cost. Warren Rudman, a former senator and moderate Republican who helped found the Concord group, noted that the word "tomorrow" — as in "there is no tomorrow" — no longer exists in the Congressional vocabulary. That goes for the White House as well.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 25, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Three-State Solution
By LESLIE H. GELB

President Bush`s new strategy of transferring power quickly to Iraqis, and his critics` alternatives, share a fundamental flaw: all commit the United States to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities. That has been possible in the past only by the application of overwhelming and brutal force.

President Bush wants to hold Iraq together by conducting democratic elections countrywide. But by his daily reassurances to the contrary, he only fans devastating rumors of an American pullout. Meanwhile, influential senators have called for more and better American troops to defeat the insurgency. Yet neither the White House nor Congress is likely to approve sending more troops.

And then there is the plea, mostly from outside the United States government, to internationalize the occupation of Iraq. The moment for multilateralism, however, may already have passed. Even the United Nations shudders at such a nightmarish responsibility.

The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.

Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly — with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might not win. American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences.

This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, a united Iraq was thought necessary to counter an anti-American Iran. Since the gulf war in 1991, a whole Iraq was deemed essential to preventing neighbors like Turkey, Syria and Iran from picking at the pieces and igniting wider wars.

But times have changed. The Kurds have largely been autonomous for years, and Ankara has lived with that. So long as the Kurds don`t move precipitously toward statehood or incite insurgencies in Turkey or Iran, these neighbors will accept their autonomy. It is true that a Shiite self-governing region could become a theocratic state or fall into an Iranian embrace. But for now, neither possibility seems likely.

There is a hopeful precedent for a three-state strategy: Yugoslavia after World War II. In 1946, Marshal Tito pulled together highly disparate ethnic groups into a united Yugoslavia. A Croat himself, he ruled the country from Belgrade among the majority and historically dominant Serbs. Through clever politics and personality, Tito kept the peace peacefully.

When Tito died in 1980, several parts of Yugoslavia quickly declared their independence. The Serbs, with superior armed forces and the arrogance of traditional rulers, struck brutally against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

Europeans and Americans protested but — stunningly and unforgivably — did little at first to prevent the violence. Eventually they gave the Bosnian Muslims and Croats the means to fight back, and the Serbs accepted separation. Later, when Albanians in the Serb province of Kosovo rebelled against their cruel masters, the United States and Europe had to intervene again. The result there will be either autonomy or statehood for Kosovo.

The lesson is obvious: overwhelming force was the best chance for keeping Yugoslavia whole, and even that failed in the end. Meantime, the costs of preventing the natural states from emerging had been terrible.

The ancestors of today`s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds have been in Mesopotamia since before modern history. The Shiites there, unlike Shiites elsewhere in the Arab world, are a majority. The Sunnis of the region gravitate toward pan-Arabism. The non-Arab Kurds speak their own language and have always fed their own nationalism.

The Ottomans ruled all the peoples of this land as they were: separately. In 1921, Winston Churchill cobbled the three parts together for oil`s sake under a monarch backed by British armed forces. The Baathist Party took over in the 1960`s, with Saddam Hussein consolidating its control in 1979, maintaining unity through terror and with occasional American help.

Today, the Sunnis have a far greater stake in a united Iraq than either the Kurds or the Shiites. Central Iraq is largely without oil, and without oil revenues, the Sunnis would soon become poor cousins.

The Shiites might like a united Iraq if they controlled it — which they could if those elections Mr. Bush keeps promising ever occur. But the Kurds and Sunnis are unlikely to accept Shiite control, no matter how democratically achieved. The Kurds have the least interest in any strong central authority, which has never been good for them.

A strategy of breaking up Iraq and moving toward a three-state solution would build on these realities. The general idea is to strengthen the Kurds and Shiites and weaken the Sunnis, then wait and see whether to stop at autonomy or encourage statehood.

The first step would be to make the north and south into self-governing regions, with boundaries drawn as closely as possible along ethnic lines. Give the Kurds and Shiites the bulk of the billions of dollars voted by Congress for reconstruction. In return, require democratic elections within each region, and protections for women, minorities and the news media.

Second and at the same time, draw down American troops in the Sunni Triangle and ask the United Nations to oversee the transition to self-government there. This might take six to nine months; without power and money, the Sunnis may cause trouble.

For example, they might punish the substantial minorities left in the center, particularly the large Kurdish and Shiite populations in Baghdad. These minorities must have the time and the wherewithal to organize and make their deals, or go either north or south. This would be a messy and dangerous enterprise, but the United States would and should pay for the population movements and protect the process with force.

The Sunnis could also ignite insurgencies in the Kurdish and Shiite regions. To counter this, the United States would already have redeployed most of its troops north and south of the Sunni Triangle, where they could help arm and train the Kurds and Shiites, if asked.

The third part of the strategy would revolve around regional diplomacy. All the parties will suspect the worst of one another — not without reason. They will all need assurances about security. And if the three self-governing regions were to be given statehood, it should be done only with the consent of their neighbors. The Sunnis might surprise and behave well, thus making possible a single and loose confederation. Or maybe they would all have to live with simple autonomy, much as Taiwan does with respect to China.

For decades, the United States has worshiped at the altar of a unified yet unnatural Iraqi state. Allowing all three communities within that false state to emerge at least as self-governing regions would be both difficult and dangerous. Washington would have to be very hard-headed, and hard-hearted, to engineer this breakup. But such a course is manageable, even necessary, because it would allow us to find Iraq`s future in its denied but natural past.


Leslie H. Gelb, a former editor and columnist for The Times, is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 25, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Uncivil War
By PAUL KRUGMAN

One of the problems with media coverage of this administration," wrote Eric Alterman in The Nation, "is that it requires bad manners."

He`s right. There`s no nice way to explain how the administration uses cooked numbers to sell its tax cuts, or how its arrogance and gullibility led to the current mess in Iraq.

So it was predictable that the administration and its allies, no longer very successful at claiming that questioning the president is unpatriotic, would use appeals to good manners as a way to silence critics. Not, mind you, that Emily Post has taken over the Republican Party: the same people who denounce liberal incivility continue to impugn the motives of their opponents.

Smart conservatives admit that their own side was a bit rude during the Clinton years. But now, they say, they`ve learned better, and it`s those angry liberals who have a problem. The reality, however, is that they can only convince themselves that liberals have an anger problem by applying a double standard.

When Ann Coulter expresses regret that Timothy McVeigh didn`t blow up The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal laughs it off as "tongue-in-cheek agitprop." But when Al Franken writes about lies and lying liars in a funny, but carefully researched book, he`s degrading the discourse.

More important, the Bush administration — which likes to portray itself as the inheritor of Reagan-like optimism — actually has a Nixonian habit of demonizing its opponents.

For example, here`s President Bush on critics of his economic policies: "Some say, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper. It bothers me when people say that." Because he used the word "some," he didn`t literally lie — no doubt a careful search will find someone, somewhere, who says the recession should have been deeper. But he clearly intended to suggest that those who disagree with his policies don`t care about helping the economy.

And that`s nothing compared with the tactics now being used on foreign policy.

The campaign against "political hate speech" originates with the Republican National Committee. But last week the committee unveiled its first ad for the 2004 campaign, and it`s as hateful as they come. "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," it declares.

Again, there`s that weasel word "some." No doubt someone doesn`t believe that we should attack terrorists. But the serious criticism of the president, as the committee knows very well, is the reverse: that after an initial victory in Afghanistan he shifted his attention — and crucial resources — from fighting terrorism to other projects.

What the critics say is that this loss of focus seriously damaged the campaign against terrorism. Strategic assets in limited supply, like Special Forces soldiers and Predator drone aircraft, were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, while intelligence resources, including translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming invasion. This probably allowed Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden, to get away, and definitely helped the Taliban stage its ominous comeback. And the Iraq war has, by all accounts, done wonders for Qaeda recruiting. Is saying all this attacking the president for attacking the terrorists?

The ad was clearly intended to insinuate once again — without saying anything falsifiable — that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. (Now that the Iraq venture has turned sour, this claim is suddenly making the rounds again, even though no significant new evidence has surfaced.) But it was also designed to imply that critics are soft on terror.

All this fuss about civility, then, is an attempt to bully critics into unilaterally disarming — into being demure and respectful of the president, even while his campaign chairman declares that the 2004 election will be a choice "between victory in Iraq and insecurity in America."

And even aside from the double standard, how important is civility? I`m all for good manners, but this isn`t a dinner party. The opposing sides in our national debate are far apart on fundamental issues, from fiscal and environmental policies to national security and civil liberties. It`s the duty of pundits and politicians to make those differences clear, not to play them down for fear that someone will be offended.



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Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties
Work for U.S. Leaves Recruits Uneasy

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A01


BAIJI, Iraq -- At the sprawling Baiji train station, long ago looted of everything but rail cars, the men of the city`s Iraqi Civil Defense Corps lamented their first two months as a pillar of the U.S.-trained security forces that will inherit responsibility for keeping order in Iraq.

In a Sunni Muslim town suspicious of U.S. forces and often the scene of armed opposition, villagers have derided the men of the 3rd Patrol as traitors, pelting them with rocks as their trucks pass. Some were stopped in the market by men in checkered head scarves and warned that their commander faced death. Last month, U.S. Special Forces mistook them for guerrillas or thieves -- that point remains in dispute -- and opened fire on them. Worse, they feared, was what lay ahead if U.S. forces withdrew from this northern town.

"I swear to God, we`ll be killed," said Hamid Yusuf, holding a secondhand Kalashnikov rifle.

"We all have the same opinion," insisted one of his commanders, Qassim Khalaf.

"One hundred percent," answered Jamal Awad, another patrol member.

"My family`s already made a reservation on a plot of land to bury me," said Yusuf, 29, breaking into a grin as the men traded barbs tinged with gallows humor. "As soon as they leave, I`m taking off my hat," he said, tipping his red baseball cap emblazoned with the corps` emblem, "and putting on a yashmak," the head scarf sometimes worn by resistance fighters.

The U.S. administration in Iraq has high hopes for the Civil Defense Corps and other forces it is aggressively training, projecting them as an eventual alternative to the 130,000 American troops in Iraq. Some members have performed with remarkable bravery, and dozens have died in the recent wave of car bombings across Iraq. But Yusuf and the other men with the unit in Baiji -- a scared, disheartened and confused lot -- embody the challenge facing Iraqi forces as a new institution in a country still taking shape.

In their conversations over a day at the train station -- hours of monotony punctuated by minutes of action -- they provided a glimpse of Iraq`s ambitions for the future and a sobering lesson about its present. The men of the 3rd Patrol are haunted by unanswered questions. Are they fighting for the United States or Iraq? Are they traitors or patriots? And at what cost do they sacrifice ideals of faith, nationalism and tradition, the essence of their identity?

"We have children, we have families and we need to live," said Yusuf, sitting with the others on a stack of railroad ties, as a brisk wind blew over them. "We don`t love the Americans, but we need the money. It`s very difficult, but there`s no alternative."

The eight men of the 3rd Patrol were trained and equipped by Lt. Col. Larry "Pepper" Jackson, the commander in Baiji, who works by a credo that has made the military in Iraq a marvel of improvisation. Adapt to what you have, he said, and work through the challenges. So far, he has outfitted 198 members of the civil defense force, along with more than 450 Iraqi police officers. As elsewhere in the country, the pace of induction has picked up markedly in recent weeks under the rubric of "Iraqification." Of the 131,000 Iraqis under arms -- more than twice the figure of Oct. 1 -- 8,500 are in the Civil Defense Corps, a contingent that will eventually grow to 40,000.

Jackson put his recruits through three weeks of training -- drilling, marksmanship, first aid and basic combat skills. "And I`m talking basic combat skills," he said. He dealt with the language barrier and even established some camaraderie with the recruits -- some call him captain or general, whichever sounds more senior. He faces no target number for enlistment, but was told to work as fast as he could and recruit as many people as possible. He said he felt induction was proceeding at "the right pace," but that, in the end, it wasn`t up to him.

"What`s to say what`s too fast? I don`t know," Jackson said. "That`s the thousand-dollar question. What`s too fast?"

Either way, he said, the goal remained the same -- to turn authority over to Iraqis sooner rather than later.

"I try to tell them it`s not loyalty to me, it`s loyalty to your community," he said. "I tell them, `What are you going to do when it`s just you downtown? That`s what you need to be trained and prepared for, because eventually that`s going to come.` "

`What Can We Do?`


Baiji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, sits at the tip of the Sunni Triangle, a swath of territory in northern and western Iraq from which former president Saddam Hussein drew most of his support. But its history with the former government tells only part of the story. It is also a region shaped by tribal traditions and reflexive nationalism, stitched together by a fierce interpretation of Islam. Those questions of identity are even more resonant now. The Sunni Muslims who long held sway in this country, where Shiite Muslims make up the majority, face a future without an organized voice, clinging to the privileges to which they have grown accustomed.

The men in the 3rd Patrol share those fears and feelings of insecurity. Perhaps more than anyone else, they understand the difficulty posed by Jackson`s advice. They say they are torn between loyalties to family and faith, country and personal welfare. They have yet to determine where they stand.

The clergy in Baiji, they recalled, had praised those fighting U.S. soldiers as sacred warriors and condemned those working with American forces as infidels. One cleric, they said, had insisted that they could not fast during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food or drink from sunrise to sunset. As collaborators with infidels, the cleric`s reasoning went, they were infidels as well. Raised listening to the clergy, many of the men said they did not disagree with that logic.

"Under Islam, you should not shake hands with Americans, you should not eat with Americans, you should not help the Americans," said Shakir Mohammed, 23, a deputy commander of his patrol.

"Islam doesn`t accept it," added Yusuf.

"But what can we do?" Mohammed asked. "You have to work. It`s my job."

Awad, 25, gaunt like the others, shook his head. It was a gesture at once confused and despairing. "We can quit working with the Americans. Fine," he said. "But will the clergy give us salaries?"

Mohammed grinned at the idea. "They pay us," he said, "and we`ll stop working with the Americans."

"Money is good," Yusuf said, kissing his hand with flair. "Clothes and food for my children. This is the good thing. Should I sleep without dinner and not work with the Americans? No. I should work with the Americans and have dinner."

Yusuf and most of his colleagues make $130 a month, a respectable salary in a city where U.S.-provided jobs in security are among the few available. The more senior officers in the corps make $140 or $175. All of them hail from large families -- the smallest with six members, the largest with 14. Nearly all belonged to the now-disbanded Iraqi army, and many have young children at home.

On their twice-weekly, 24-hour shifts, they sleep on a tile floor in a room with no windows, bringing blankets from home. They brew tea in a charred kettle and share a cup fashioned from the bottom of a plastic water bottle. Each day of Ramadan, adhering to the fast despite the cleric`s judgment, they dispatch one colleague to bring food from the market for the evening meal.

Like soldiers anywhere, they complain most about what they don`t have: cars, radios, bulletproof vests, new uniforms, boots and, in a town where attacks have tripled since July, more ammunition. They trade stories about close calls, most hauntingly about the time they came under fire from Special Forces troops a month ago.

Versions of the story conflict. Jackson, acknowledging the sequence of events was "a little sketchy," said the civil defense patrol traded fire with a dozen or so looters at the rail yards. A Special Forces unit arrived and started shooting. In the end, Jackson said, three or four members of the 3rd Patrol were wounded. Yusuf and his colleagues put the number at five.

"Some guys got caught in cross-fire. It was nothing intentional," Jackson said. "There was a lot of confusion. In war, sometimes that happens. War doesn`t go perfectly. My concern was taking care of them and their families. That was my concern."

Yusuf and his colleagues acknowledged that the wounded were taken to a U.S. military hospital and given the best care possible. But they dispute the contention that looters were present or that they fired before being shot at. They insist the Special Forces soldiers mistook them for guerrillas. In a fusillade of fire that one of them compared to a horror movie, they said they ran for cover, scattering their lunch of potatoes, tomatoes and bread. Trails of blood, blackened by time, are still smeared across the train platform.

"We were yelling, `Civil defense! Civil defense!` " said Khalaf, the unit`s leader.

One of their colleagues, Alaa Nasser, 21, was critically wounded in both legs and remains in a hospital in Baghdad. His colleagues said he needs $425 for an operation. The four others have yet to return to work.

"Only Rambo could have handled the situation," Awad said.

An Emotional Toll


In Baiji`s atmosphere of unease, other young men in the city express amazement that the 3rd Patrol is still working. Latif Sayyib makes $2 a day as a carpenter, when he can find work. His brother, Wathban, works at the electric utility. No amount of money, they said, would persuade them to face the risks entailed in joining security forces that they contend are indelibly tainted by the occupation.

They grew up with Yusuf and some of the others, attending school together or playing soccer in the city`s dusty streets. Suspicion is so intense in the city that they do their best to avoid contact with their old friends.

"I don`t want to see them," Latif said, sitting in his home. "I`ll see them in their house, but if I see them in the street or the market, I`ll only stay a minute or two because I fear I`ll become a target."

His brother nodded.

"Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam," Wathban said. "The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here."

In the streets of Baiji, graffiti clutters the walls, tinted black by fires at the city`s oil refinery. "Anyone dealing with the Americans will be killed," says one slogan, scrawled by hand. "Saddam will be back, you traitors," warns another.

"The people here don`t forget our faces," Mohammed said.

When the men of the 3rd Patrol were training, they said, children threw rocks at them. Awad said he was hit in the back, and had to be kept in bed for three days. Several times, they were pelted with tomatoes as they drove through the vegetable market. They tried to bring civilian clothes with them and change into their uniforms on the job. When they did, their commander threatened to dock $5 from their pay.

Fear has prompted three of the men to leave in the past month, and nearly everyone said they had thought about it.

"Sometimes when I`m in a taxi, I hear the insults," Mohammed said. "I hear them say, `These people working with the civil defense are traitors, they`re agents. Their future will be grim.` "

"It stays in our heart," Awad said.

"We`re scared, I swear to God," Yusuf said. "We don`t know at what moment we`ll be killed. We don`t know what will happen tomorrow." Mohammed interrupted him. "Tomorrow? In 15 minutes, we don`t know what will happen."

Dusk arrived by late afternoon, as it does during winter in Iraq. The men chatted about the Americans, about their city and their country. It was the talk so familiar in Baiji -- confused, contradictory and ambiguous. Some were fond of Jackson and the soldiers they had met, but angry at the idea of an occupation. Some insisted that the guerrillas were fighting only for money. In the same breath, they insisted that the United States had come for Iraq`s resources and that overthrowing Hussein was an afterthought.

"Some people say when the Americans take all our oil, they`ll leave," Yusuf said. "They`ll leave us to kill each other."

As night approached, they gathered wood for their fire. Dinner arrived -- tomatoes, cucumbers and parsley in a black plastic bag. In a looted warehouse littered with charred wood and shattered glass and concrete, they gathered around -- "like brothers," Mohammed said, in a town that is remarkably unfraternal. And over cigarettes, they talked about what they hoped from their future.

"I want my children to live in safety," said Khalaf, 33.

"We want to be like Kuwait. We want to live in luxury," Yusuf said. " We want fancy cars, not the worn-out cars we have."

"Health," Awad volunteered.

Mohammed nodded his head, then added another. "We don`t want to always be scared."



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Hard Lessons for Arab Democracy


By Thomas Carothers

Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A29


Earlier this month President Bush eloquently articulated a vision of a U.S. Middle East policy centered around the promotion of democracy. A potent new mix of U.S. interests, above all the administration`s belief that only positive political change in the Arab world can eliminate the roots of radical Islamic terrorism, has overcome the president`s skepticism about neo-Wilsonian ventures.

It`s more than a little ironic, however, that the Bush administration is inaugurating a high-profile campaign to promote democracy in the Middle East at the same time it is bringing the curtain down on a failed U.S. effort to promote democracy in another region of equal importance. The recent political events in Russia and Azerbaijan have crystallized a profoundly important but startlingly unremarked development: The historic attempt to build democracy on the ashes of the former Soviet Union has largely failed.

President Vladimir Putin`s persecution of oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky highlights the sobering return of a firm KGB grip on the main levers of Russian power. Russia is not a dictatorship, but it is settling in for a long, gray period of semi-authoritarian rule. The tawdry October election in Azerbaijan that brought former president Heydar Aliyev`s son to power underlined the fact that the strongmen leaders of Central Asia and the Caucasus are not going away anytime soon. Democracy may at some point get a second chance in the post-Soviet world, but for the foreseeable future a dispiriting medley of dictatorial and semi-dictatorial regimes will rule. Georgia may be getting its second chance now, but it is a lonely exception in the region and still must overcome years of accumulated political decay.

There will be plenty of time in the years ahead to dissect this failure in detail. The heart of the story, however, is sadly simple. The Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet Union, but no alternative, democratic political elite was ready to step into the breach. Throughout the former Soviet republics, persistent, resourceful nomenklatura elites have reconsolidated their power under new, post-communist banners.

Blame for this tremendously disappointing outcome lies primarily with the tenacious political pathologies of the Soviet system itself, which left the place so ill-prepared for democratization. Nevertheless, the United States shares some of the blame. The first Bush administration failed to seize the crucial moment in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart and to extend a truly bold, generous hand to Russia. The Clinton administration over-personalized its support for democracy in Russia in the mercurial figure of Boris Yeltsin and fell into the pattern of deferring to emergent "friendly tyrants" in Central Asia and the Caucasus who promised America access to oil and gas.

The current administration has let a bad situation deteriorate still further. Eager to keep Russia as a partner in the war on terrorism, President Bush uncritically embraces Putin. Impelled by the desire for new security partners and secure access to energy sources in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the administration gives the strongman leaders of those countries a free pass.

Different though the former Soviet Union and the Middle East are, some lessons from the post-Soviet failures are relevant to the new U.S. campaign for Arab democracy. To start with, no matter how compelling the newfound U.S. interest in democracy may appear to be, countervailing economic and security interests, especially oil and security cooperation, will pull hard against the effort to create a truly pro-democratic U.S. policy. President Bush has effectively set out the case for a new approach, but he has not yet really made clear whether he is willing to push long and hard to overturn deeply ingrained U.S. habits of accommodation to pro-U.S. Arab authoritarians.

Second, elections are certainly fundamental to democracy and must be supported in the Middle East. But clever strongmen in the former Soviet Union have repeatedly demonstrated how the new world of international election aid and observation can be manipulated and misused. Many post-Soviet elections were dubious exercises in political legitimization, but the sponsors of these flawed processes rarely came in for much Western criticism or paid any real price for their electoral shenanigans. The United States must take a much tougher line in the Middle East, not overpraising very limited electoral advances, and coming down hard on electoral wrongdoing.

Third, a democracy campaign in a region with few favorable underlying conditions for democracy is at best a decades-long enterprise and needs to show tremendous staying power. It is notable, and very disappointing, how little most Americans care today about the failure of democracy in the former Soviet Union, a region that once commanded so much of our country`s attention and energy. If President Bush is really serious about mounting a lasting, sustainable democracy promotion effort in the Middle East, he will need to get all of American society, not just an enthusiastic core of U.S. democracy promoters, on board. This means building it as a bipartisan and multilateral effort, something quite different from the sharp-elbowed, "with us or against us" style of the war on terrorism to date.

In pursuing democracy in the Middle East we are rightfully challenging Arabs to aspire to a higher standard of political behavior. Yet this is worth doing only if it reflects a sincere effort to aspire to a higher standard of our own -- to match high-flying rhetoric with real commitment and resources, to promote genuine democratic processes, not pro-U.S. political figures, and to overcome the understandable skepticism of many Arabs about our intentions not with bluster and bombast but with honesty about our sometimes conflicting interests and humility about our capabilities.

Thomas Carothers directs the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.




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The Patriotism Refuge


By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A29


If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson said, then it is the first refuge of politicians. That at least is the case with the Republican National Committee -- and by implication the White House -- which has started running a television commercial defending George Bush`s handling of the Iraq war, saying the president`s various Democratic opponents are attacking him "for attacking the terrorists." Not really. It`s for doing such a bad job of it.

This despicable attempt to muffle criticism by throwing the flag over it may or may not work. Whatever the case, it does not change the fact that the United States went into Iraq for reasons that now appear specious and so distantly related to the war on terrorism that the connection seems merely rhetorical. Saddam Hussein lives and Osama bin Laden lives and yet somehow the Bush White House wants nothing but congratulations. Mine will have to wait.

More to the point, none of the reasons the administration gave for attacking Iraq -- and none of the reasons cited in the congressional resolution authorizing the war -- have proved to be true. As of yet, the United States has found no connection between Hussein and al Qaeda and no evidence that Iraq had an extensive WMD program, particularly one that was about to go nuclear. It remains true that Hussein was a beast with an appalling human rights record, but as bad as he was -- or is -- that was not the reason the administration gave for going to war.

I would like to believe that some well-intentioned people simply misread the intelligence data and concluded what they already thought they knew -- namely that Hussein posed such a grave threat to U.S. security that he had to be dealt with pronto. After all, it`s not as if former Clinton administration officials who had only recently seen some of the same intelligence were jumping up and down demanding to know where the Bush administration was coming from. On the contrary, many of them supported the war.

Yet, as Thomas Powers, an expert on intelligence, points out in the current New York Review of Books, Colin Powell "made 29 claims about Iraqi weapons, programs, behaviors, events and munitions" in his United Nations presentation, and none of them have yet been borne out. His was the best and the most detailed case the administration presented, down to the tonnage of chemical weapons, and I found it convincing at the time. I now feel taken. If Powell feels the same way, he`s entitled -- but he ain`t saying.

If there was merely an intelligence failure, it was massive and inexcusable. Yet, from CIA Director George Tenet to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, every high official has remained on the job. They helped lead the United States into a war that may not have been necessary and may ultimately prove a debacle. Still, not a single administration official has been held accountable.

The other possibility is that they -- the top people in the Bush administration -- knew the stated grounds for war were bogus. If that`s the case, then we do not have a thrilling exercise in presidential power but an abuse of it that makes Watergate look as trivial as Richard Nixon`s defenders said it was. The two GIs whose bodies were mutilated in Iraq the other day -- just to cite two American casualties -- may have died for a lie.

Mistakes can be rectified, although the consequences of this one are hard to exaggerate. But an abuse of constitutional power is a different matter, and it is this we must all begin considering. It is possible -- actually, more than possible -- that a clique of defense intellectuals either snookered the president into going to war or did so with his full cooperation. If this was done, then it represents a grave and reprehensible breach of faith with the American people. We cannot now pull out of Iraq. But we can and we must determine how we got there.

And about the only way to find out what really happened is through the political process. This is especially the case because the Senate has gone from being the world`s greatest deliberative body to the world`s greatest rubber stamp. Naturally and predictably, the White House would like to avoid any accounting whatever and is likely to respond to criticism with demagogic appeals to patriotism. I hope it doesn`t work. I love my country and I love the truth and I always thought the best thing about being an American is that you don`t have to choose.


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Stop This Game


By David Ignatius

Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A29



PARIS -- Imagine for a moment a horrifying game called "terrorist roulette." The unfortunate players are huddled in different groups and spend much of their time bickering about who got them into this mess.

Every few days one of the players is taken away and shot.

If the players could agree on a common strategy, they could overwhelm the assassins. But none will sacrifice their individual prerogatives for the logic of collective action. Some imagine they`ll be safe if they stay separate and keep their heads down. Others try subtly to make friends with the captors. The most muscular member of the group insists he can "go it alone."

So the quarreling goes on. And every few days, another victim is hauled off and killed.

Unfortunately, this isn`t a ghoulish exercise in game theory but an analogy to what has happened over the past few months as the war in Iraq has become more deadly and more international. The logic of uniting to fight a common enemy could not be clearer, yet the political discord continues.

Last weekend it was British bankers and diplomats in Istanbul who were attacked, along with Turks who happened to be nearby. The toll of dead and wounded reached nearly 500. The previous week it was two synagogues in Istanbul, where six Jews and 19 Muslims were killed and more than 300 wounded. The week before, it was 19 Italian troops who were keeping peace in central Iraq; before that, it was a Polish officer in the United Nations-mandated multinational force.

The U.N. headquarters in Baghdad has been bombed twice. The International Committee for the Red Cross has been bombed. It seems the potential target list includes anyone who is trying to help the Iraqi people. And still the international community quarrels or looks the other way.

The most poignant victims are the Iraqi people themselves. Any Iraqi who dares to dream of building a new country risks being killed. Last weekend suicide bombers attacked two police stations north of Baghdad, killing 11 policemen and five civilians. Their crime was that they were cooperating with U.S. occupation forces to maintain law and order. Iraqi tribal leaders who try to stabilize the country are targets. I`m told that a prominent member of the Dulaimi tribe in western Iraq was targeted last week in a car bombing outside his home that killed two, and that a list is circulating of three other Dulaimi "collaborators" who are marked for execution.

Terrorist roulette has even struck the Imam Ali mosque, the sacred shrine for Shiite Muslims. An attack in August killed at least 95 Iraqis, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim. He was working to help create a new Iraq on the ruins of Saddam Hussein`s torture chambers. For that he was assassinated.

A traveler in Iraq two months ago could still find Iraqi children in many towns running alongside U.S. military convoys and waving to the soldiers. But someone has recently been spray-painting warnings in Baghdad: "The hand that waves to the soldiers will be cut off." It`s a war, and a diabolically vicious one. And yet the world so far has mostly stood on the sidelines and watched, muttering about how the Bush administration brought the disaster upon itself by invading Iraq in March.

The French, for example, have talked vaguely about helping train Iraqi police, but have done nothing concrete. They insist on transferring sovereignty to Iraq in five weeks, a political timetable that many experts (especially Iraqis) regard as dangerously unrealistic. The more the United States moves toward French proposals, the more standoffish the French become. They won`t take "oui" for an answer.

The Bush administration isn`t blameless in this ruinous game. President Bush has too often preferred bombastic sermons about terrorism to the diplomatic work that can build powerful alliances. The notion that the United States was so powerful it didn`t need international approval to fight terrorism was a mistake. So was the "bring `em on" rhetoric about postwar insurgents.

One bright spot is that the world`s spies and cops have continued to cooperate while their political leaders bicker. Even as France maintains its diplomatic diffidence, for example, its security services are offering what Western officials say is unprecedented cooperation with the CIA and FBI in fighting terrorism -- including some joint operations.

The world needs to look at terrorist roulette for what it is -- a threat to everyone. Historians can debate whether the Bush administration blundered in invading Iraq. But right now, that truly isn`t the issue. Tomorrow or the next day, another player in this game will be taken out and shot. The world needs to unite and stop the killers now, and worry about assigning blame later.

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Why Religious People Support Bush

Dr. Gerry Lower

11/24/03: (ICH) To para phrase Michael Kinsley (The Limits of Eloquence, Slate, Nov 14, 2003), How can one`s current beliefs be accepted as being "transcendentally correct" if one has recently stated beliefs quite the opposite. How can one say "up" and point "down" and then turn around and say "up" and point "up"? In that regard, "George Bush`s powers of persuasion are apparently so spectacular, at least to some, that almost all the pro-Bush voices in Washington and the media have remained pro-Bush even when "pro-Bush" means the opposite of what it did five minutes ago."

The truth of "up" and "down" does not matter in Bush World. All that matters is the power to dictate which is which, control mania exemplified. Bush World is a religious manipulation unfettered by the restrictions of knowledge and elementary logic. In this regard, Kinsley gives too much credit to Bush`s "powers of persuasion" and not enough credit to the gullibility of religious conservatives.

In the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy and in preparing for an unprovoked war on Iraq, the American people initially supported George Bush because George was, afterall, their president and America had been attacked. In fulfillment of their collective need for vengeance, the people wanted to trust in George Bush`s embrace of fundamentalism and its ready provision of justification for "getting even."

Rallying around religion and the flag was seen as a wonderful thing for an American citizenry that had moved far away from its collective roots in farm, ranch and community life, far away even from each other in our competition for both fiscal surival and wealth. Rallying around anything seemed better than no rallying at all. Unfortunately, as is now apparent, it is honest agreement on the truth, not the common need for vengeance, that provides the more stable ground upon which to rally. Our Father`s requested that we practice independence from papal and monarchical authority, not independence from each other.

External Fears

The people wanted to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the World Trade Center devastation, they wanted to believe that Hussein was connected to al Quaida and bin Laden`s terrorism, because these beliefs that provided an outlet for vengeance. Insofar as George Bush has received blind support from those willing to act with a vengeance, this decidedly non-Christian need has been adequately fulfilled in Afghanistan and Iraq, not by achieving anything remotely resembling justice but by bombing both "nations" of tribes back into the stone age.

The people wanted to believe that Hussein was in possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and that, in being able to use them at a moment`s notice, he posed an immediate and dire threat to America and the "free" world, a belief that nourished further rallying of the religious right by fabricating a common, external enemy worthy of the people`s fear.

Today the entire world knows that most everything George Bush told his religious supporters was fabricated and designed to lead the people into an unprovoked war (immoral by definition in everyone`s eyes but those of the blindly religious). The only remaining justifications for the war on Iraq are bad religious attitudes and capitalistic greed and control mania.

Internal Fears

While external fears still linger in the American cultural air, the Bush administration is no longer supported by those with a dire need for vengeance or for protection from Saddam Hussein. George Bush increasingly gets his support from internal fears on the part of his religious supporters.

To admit that the war on Iraq was launched and is maintained on immoral ground (because it was based on religious attitudes, fabrications and fear-laden hype) would be nothing short of a crisis of self-identity and self-concept for religious fundamentalists.

How can Old Testament believers possibly be immoral? How can the people of the "Good Book" possibly do wrong in the eyes of their all-seeing and all-knowing Old Testament God? How, indeed? How can the religious right wing come to terms with Bush`s lies and failures? The answer is that they simply cannot. They have no choice but to rest their case on fabrications and transcendental self-righteousness.

For religious fundamentalists to admit error would be to denigrate their heavenly source of authority and themselves for abiding supernatural authority. It would require admiting their humanness and fallibility. It would require giving up on the notion that George Bush`s words are somehow transcendent (when they do not even transcendent the realm of dirty lies).

America`s neofundamentalists have, in the western religious tradition, locked themselves into an untenable position by their own beliefs and actions. There is no escape from religious blunder, no way to return to empirical reality without losing control over both the faithful and reality.

This is always what happens when one administers violence based on "transcendent" belief. There is simply no way, in case of failure, to cover one`s ass honestly and intelligently. In the face of lies and failure, Bush`s support is no longer based on belief in his policies and practices. His support is based increasingly on the need of his followers to maintain their religious self-identity as "compassionate" conservatives and would be "Christians."

This fear of losing one`s religious self-identity on the part of Bush`s supporters will ensure that the Bush agenda of capitalistic neoimperialism, however inconsistent that might be with the values of Democracy, will be preserved and fulfilled to the extent possible, until it all falls for its utter lack of honest truth and human values.

The more encompassing freedoms beneath Jefferson`s democracy are "freedom from fear and ignorance," freedoms which cover considerable ground. It was freedom from the fear of religious oppression, for example, which demanded the separation of church and state. Bush World thrives on religious fear and ignorance, and Bush`s policies and programs will remain transcendent in the eyes of his loyal followers.

Wake up good people. The Bush administration has dumbed even good religious people down such that they can no longer make a distinction between the values of democracy and the values of religious despotism, between the values of Christianity and the values of Old Testament vengeance-based religion, between the values of fairness and equality and the values of crony capitalism. Because they have sacrificed themselves to Bush`s "god," most religious people in America no longer know what they are talking about.

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] .

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United States Militarism

John Roberts

11/24/03 (ICH) Unlike British, American militarism only dates back a couple of centuries. But as in other revolutionary regimes, there was, from its inception, an assumption that violence would be successful in the birth of the state.

Since that was allied to the practical and continuing subjection of a slave population, the hierarchical nature of US society was emphasised from the outset and the conquest of the indigenous native population over the next century merely confirmed the importance of the military in controlling and dominating the formative years of the republic.

The lesson of the civil war was that the republic could be very militaristic. After all, it achieved the first modern war, with railway transport as the key to final success and casualties on a truly industrial scale. Even if successful generals might take care to retire, as Washington had done in an example praised and highly regarded, the military traditions were reborn and in the army and navy were treasured and eulogised. The republic kept an honoured place for its office class, already an elite that would wax through successive
campaigns. By the time that overseas imperial expansion began in 1898 this was already clear.

However, the dynamic of democracy during years of peace was adequate to reduce the military to a subordinate position for the first two centuries.

Not until the Second World War did the tendency to rely upon military models and heroes as a guide to political choice become fully significant. The election of a pacific general - Eisenhower - as president was a sign of the changing times but the dismissal of another commanding general - MacArthur - by a civilian president had already quelled fears of a militaristic take-over. And of course, the popular self-deception that imperialism was something for other nations and could only be abhorred by Americans, permitted the military to bask in democratic approval as being other than militaristic.

Bur the pattern of economic and military domination was laid down too clear to ignore or avoid. By 1951 the US had built up a nuclear weapon stock capable of destroying all civilisation several times over and with a hundred military bases in dozens of countries, the influence of the military grew year by year. The military-industrial-scientific-bureaucratic complex became steadily more important and the role of democratic politicians was correspondingly reduced and corrupted. This occurred inexorably and was commented upon, but since its deep-rooted causes were being fed continuously by the expansion of American commerce and industry nothing could seriously challenge it.

The changes went hand in hand with the shift in social attitudes, from a democratic spirit that had been kept alive by the individualism of small communities and social groups to an acceptance of large-scale and hierarchical business and politics. The susceptibility of the American public to the appeal of wealth and power became steadily more apparent. The old-style small-town model was replaced by the propaganda of giant corporations. Vast urban sprawls ensured also millionaire leaders (soon to be billionaires), chosen from a ruling class that either required great wealth to get on the ladder to the top, or who could enrich themselves on the way. This changed pattern fitted much better with a hierarchical society that suited militaristic attitudes.

At the same time, the growing proportion of public wealth devoted to the military also ensured that the armaments industry, wrapped up with the nuclear and airplane corporations would become increasingly important. The influence and overwhelming power of these groups ensured that they would play a greater and greater part in political life, perhaps culminating in the corrupt presidential election of 2000, when the
oil industry and its Republican allies effected a take-over which led directly to a war both entered into mendaciously and illegal with a delusory "war on terrorism" that will be an excuse and a struggle that can last for decades.

Huey Long was reported as saying that fascism could come in the United States, but it ``will have to be called anti-Fascism` and the current militarism has be disguised as a drive to protect freedom, which is precisely what the present administration is about with its Patriot and other Acts. The assault on Iraq to take over its oil-fields, slenderly disgused as an attack on the dictator who was a favoured purchaser of American equipment until he failed to observe all the US requirement, may be in trouble, but it is part of the American corporations` drive to take over more of the world.That will require an intensificaiton of the militarisation of American society. The future of American democracy will be in as much peril as was the Iraqi dictator.

Copyright: John Roberts. 2003.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article5283.htm

[Joerver]

POLL ANALYSES
November 25, 2003


Poll Suggests Close Race in 2004
Voters about evenly divided on congressional and presidential races


by David W. Moore
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- With about a year until the 2004 presidential and congressional elections, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey finds voters about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans in party affiliation and electoral choices for 2004. While President George W. Bush currently leads all of the major Democratic candidates running for president when he is pitted against them one by one, only 44% of voters say they expect to vote for his re-election, while 43% expect to vote against him -- probably a better indicator of voter sentiment at a time when the Democratic candidates are not well known. Similarly, voters are about evenly divided as to which party`s candidate they would choose in their congressional districts, and as to which issue -- the economy or national security -- will be more important in the election.

The poll, conducted Nov. 14-16, finds 24% of registered voters who are certain to vote for Bush`s re-election, but 33% who are certain to vote against him. Another 20% are either "probable" or "leaning" supporters of Bush, while another 10% are "probable" or "leaning" opponents.

If George W. Bush runs for re-election in 2004, would you say -- [ROTATED: you are certain to vote for Bush, you are probably going to vote for him, you are leaning toward voting for him, you are unsure about voting for or against him, you are leaning against voting for him, you are probably going to vote against him, (or would you say) you are certain to vote against Bush]?

2003 Nov. 14-16 National Adults Registered Voters

% %

Certain to vote for Bush 22 24

Probably going to vote for Bush 12 13

Leaning toward voting for Bush 7 7


Unsure 15 13


Leaning toward voting against Bush 4 4

Probably going to vote against Bush 6 6

Certain to vote against Bush 33 33

Weiter:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031125.asp

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart25nov25,1,36470…
Third of three parts
Gestern Teil 1 und 2.



Grocery Unions Battle to Stop Invasion of the Giant Stores
Wal-Mart plans to open 40 of its nonunion Supercenters in California. Labor is fighting the expected onslaught, but the big retailer rarely concedes defeat.
By Nancy Cleeland and Abigail Goldman
Times Staff Writers

November 25, 2003

Inglewood seemed to offer the perfect home for a new Wal-Mart Supercenter, with low-income residents hungry for bargains and a mayor craving the sales-tax revenue that flows from big-box stores.

But nearly two years after deciding to build on a 60-acre lot near the Hollywood Park racetrack, Wal-Mart is nowhere near pouring concrete. Instead, the world`s biggest company is at war with a determined opposition, led by organized labor.

"A line has been drawn in the sand," said Donald H. Eiesland, president of Inglewood Park Cemetery and the head of Partners for Progress, a local pro-business group. "It`s the union against Wal-Mart. This has nothing to do with Inglewood."

Indeed, similar battles are breaking out across California, and both sides are digging in hard. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants to move into the grocery business throughout the state by opening 40 Supercenters, each a 200,000-square-foot behemoth that combines a fully stocked food market with a discount mega-store — entirely staffed by non-union employees. The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Teamsters are trying to thwart that effort, hoping to save relatively high-paying union jobs.

The unions have amassed a seven-figure war chest and are calling in political chits to fight Wal-Mart. The giant retailer is aggressively countering every move, and some analysts believe that Wal-Mart`s share of grocery sales in the state could eventually reach 20%. The state`s first Supercenter is set to open in March in La Quinta, near Palm Springs.

"If we have an advantage," said Robert S. McAdam, Wal-Mart`s vice president for state and local government relations, "it`s that we are offering what people want."

In fact, Wal-Mart has won allies by providing people of modest means a chance to stretch their dollars.

"We need to have retail outlets that are convenient and offer quality goods and services at low prices," said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. "I really think that there are potential economic benefits for this community with the addition of a Wal-Mart."

Yet the Supercenters also threaten the 250,000 members of the UFCW and Teamsters who work in the supermarket business in California.

For decades, the unions have been a major force in the state grocery industry and have negotiated generous labor contracts. Wal-Mart pays its grocery workers an estimated $10 less per hour in wages and benefits than do the big supermarkets nationwide — $19 versus $9. As California grocery chains brace for the competition, their workers face severe cutbacks in compensation.

"We`re going to end up just like the Wal-Mart workers," said Rick Middleton, a Teamsters official in Carson who eagerly hands out copies of a paperback called "How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America." "If we don`t as labor officials address this issue now, the future for our membership is dismal, very dismal."

The push for concessions has already started, prompting the longest supermarket strike in Southern California`s history. About 70,000 grocery workers employed by Albertsons Inc., Kroger Co.`s Ralphs and Safeway Inc.`s Vons and Pavilions have been walking the picket lines since Oct. 11, largely to protest proposed reductions in health benefits. The supermarkets say they need these cuts to hold their own against Wal-Mart, already the nation`s largest grocer.

Rick Icaza, president of one of seven UFCW locals in Southern California, has taken issue with much of the supermarkets` rhetoric since the labor dispute began. But he doesn`t doubt that Wal-Mart is the biggest threat ever posed to the grocery chains — and, in turn, his own members.

"The No. 1 enemy has still got to be Wal-Mart," he said.

The unions and their community allies have stopped Wal-Mart in some places and slowed it down in others. They have persuaded officials in at least a dozen cities and counties to adopt zoning laws to keep out Supercenters and stores like them.

Homeowner groups, backed by union money, sued to stop construction of two Supercenters in Bakersfield, arguing that the stores would drive local merchants out of business. Contra Costa County and Oakland also have passed measures that could block Supercenters.

In Los Angeles, several City Council members are drafting an ordinance to require an examination of how large-scale projects such as Supercenters would affect the community, including the possible loss of union jobs. As envisioned by supporters, the measure would allow the city to insist on higher wages as a condition of project approval.

"We want Wal-Mart to be able to help us with our economic development," said Councilman Eric Garcetti, who is co-sponsoring the measure. "We just want to be able to do it on our terms and not theirs."

Wal-Mart, however, can more than match its foes in resources and resolve.

To soften its outsider image, the retailer has hired local political insiders to coax projects through planning bureaucracies. It has promised jobs and sales-tax bonanzas to cities struggling with deficits and unemployment.

When the answer is "no," Wal-Mart rarely concedes defeat. At least nine times during its latest California push, the company has responded to legal barriers by threatening to sue or to take its case straight to local voters by forcing referendums.

That`s what happened in Inglewood after the City Council in October 2002 adopted an emergency ordinance barring construction of retail stores that exceed 155,000 square feet and sell more than 20,000 nontaxable items such as food and pharmacy products. The measure was tailored to block a Supercenter.

Icaza declared victory. "Wal-Mart`s plans to enter the retail grocery business in Inglewood are dead!" he crowed in a union newsletter.

But they weren`t. Within a month, Wal-Mart gathered 9,250 signatures on petitions, more than enough to force a public vote. The company also threatened to sue the city for alleged procedural violations. Looking at a possible court battle or an embarrassing failure at the polls, Inglewood officials withdrew the ordinance they had passed a month earlier.

Furious with the council, Icaza ran his own candidate in city elections in June. Ralph Franklin, a former supermarket clerk and manager and now a UFCW business agent, won with 70% of the vote, ousting a council member who had gone against the union.

Worried that the council might try to trip it up again, Wal-Mart went on the offensive. In late August, the company, through a group called the Citizens Committee to Welcome Wal-Mart to Inglewood, began gathering a new batch of signatures to force a popular vote on the Supercenter. The initiative, which calls for building permits to be issued without a public hearing or environmental impact study, is expected to be on the March 2004 ballot.

"When people feel they`re not getting a fair shake with the legislative process, they take things to a vote" of the electorate, said McAdam, the Wal-Mart vice president.

Wal-Mart`s opponents have vowed to sue to block the initiative on the grounds that it oversteps the limits of the ballot process.

UFCW and Teamsters locals have raised dues or diverted funds from other programs to bankroll anti-Wal-Mart campaigns. With more than $1 million now available, thousands of members to draw from and encouragement from national leaders, local labor would seem to be in a strong position.

But union efforts have been hampered by personality conflicts and disagreements over strategies and goals, according to people close to the situation.

As in Inglewood, many union locals have focused on so-called site fights, winning zoning restrictions at the local level. That strategy can temporarily save union jobs and give leaders victories to celebrate, but it does little to stop the long-term march of Wal-Mart, critics say. After all, there are 478 cities in California, 88 in Los Angeles County alone.

Pushing for zoning restrictions also can backfire, stirring resentment among consumers and business owners — even those who directly compete with Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart opponents "try to use the government to accomplish things that they may not be able to accomplish in the marketplace," said Alan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce. "It`s not government`s role to interfere with what consumers want."

For their part, national labor strategists want local leaders to focus less on zoning campaigns and more on the daunting, long-term goal of unionizing Wal-Mart employees. Few take the advice, and those who do quickly realize just what they are up against.

George Hartwell, president of UFCW Local 1036 in Camarillo, hired 18 organizers to hit the nine Wal-Mart stores in his jurisdiction. With few leads to go on and employees in stores forbidden to talk about unions, progress was slow. Then in mid-summer, a group wearing union T-shirts was served with trespassing papers and asked to leave a Wal-Mart in Lompoc. Lawyers tussled over that for months. Now Hartwell and his crew can enter the stores, but with strict limitations. "We go through and say, `good morning` or `good afternoon,` just to be visible," he said.

Despite the long odds in taking on the company, many union activists insist they have no choice.

"I`ve put 29 years of my life into this job, and now they`re trying to pull the rug out from under me," said Diane Johnson, a union cashier at a Pavilions store in Los Angeles who is helping to coordinate anti-Wal-Mart efforts in Inglewood through the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

Johnson and co-workers have made door-to-door visits and spoken from church pulpits, hoping to turn public opinion against the discounter. "For me to go backwards would just be hell," she said.

But Wal-Mart, the nation`s largest seller of everything from toys to DVDs, has plenty of defenders too, some of them politically and financially powerful. They range from prominent Los Angeles toy importer Charlie Woo, who recently took up Wal-Mart`s case before Los Angeles City Council members, to Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-founder of Hollywood studio DreamWorks SKG. He lobbied former Gov. Davis against signing a statewide anti-big-box measure passed by the Legislature five years ago; Davis vetoed the bill.

McAdam said Wal-Mart doesn`t order its suppliers to lobby on the company`s behalf. But it does spell out for vendors the consequences of anti-Wal-Mart legislation.

"It`s our belief that on certain issues, they have a vested interest in seeing … that our company can continue to grow," McAdam said.

Wal-Mart also helps smooth entry into new markets by cultivating relationships with civic groups.

As it prepared last year to buy and renovate a former Macy`s in the south Los Angeles community of Baldwin Hills, corporate officials met with leaders of the Los Angeles Urban League and arranged to hire some employees through the organization.

Allies in organized labor tried to dissuade the Urban League`s Mack from cooperating. Normally pro-union, Mack turned them down, saying the community badly needed jobs and low-cost shopping options.

"I`d rather have a person on somebody`s payroll — even if it isn`t at the highest wage — than on the unemployment roll," Mack said. "We`re not going to punish job seekers by refusing to refer them to Wal-Mart for a job."

By the time the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza Wal-Mart opened in January, Wal-Mart had doled out thousands of dollars, mostly in $1,000 grants, to local institutions such as schools and youth programs. The company cut the Urban League a $3,000 check. It also provided $10,000 for new lights at the Martin Luther King Jr. Little League Baseball field.

The ordinance being considered in Los Angeles would ask planners to weigh the "community benefits" of a mega-store in any zone that receives federal, state or municipal funding or incentives — essentially the entire city.

Like an environmental impact report, the community-benefits study would consider possible negative outcomes and propose ways to mitigate them. Wages could be held to "prevailing standards." If supermarkets were deemed the standard, that would mean union scale.

Backed by Garcetti and Councilman Ed Reyes, the ordinance could be ready for a council vote next month.

Several studies commissioned in recent years by independent groups, including the Orange County Business Council and the San Diego Taxpayers Assn., found the state would suffer a net economic loss if union jobs were traded for jobs at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart had declined to respond with numbers of its own until a few months ago, when it commissioned the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. to measure the effect of Supercenters on the region. Researcher Gregory Freeman said the study balanced wage losses with consumer savings, noting that Supercenter prices are typically 20% lower than at union markets.

The study was completed two weeks ago, Freeman said, but hasn`t yet been released.

As he began his study in mid-summer, Freeman told council members that other analyses haven`t fairly measured all the pros and cons of the Supercenters. For one thing, he said, savings from lower grocery prices could be used by working-class shoppers for other things, such as buying homes.

As for those merchants who won`t be able to compete with Wal-Mart, others say, progress always carries a price.

"I grew up in Pennsylvania; my father had a corner market there. When I was 3 or 4, the A&P moved in and put him out of business," recalled the Chamber`s Zaremberg. "That was tough for us, but I don`t think anyone would go back and say we shouldn`t have supermarkets."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times


Rick Middleton, the head of a Southern California Teamsters local, is involved in the fight against Wal-Mart.

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer2…
COMMENTARY




For the GOP, Criticism Is Next to Cowardice
A new ad questioning the patriotism of Democratic candidates is dirty politics.
Robert Scheer

November 25, 2003

What nerve for President Bush to question the patriotism of his Democratic opponents, two of whom are highly decorated Purple Heart and Bronze and Silver Star veterans and all of whom have labored long to make this a better country.

But the television ad that the Republican Party is running on Bush`s behalf in Iowa this week does just that, making the outrageous insinuation that critics of the president`s policies are in fact supporters of terrorists.

"Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," the ad states. "Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others." The ad urges viewers to tell Congress "to support the president`s policy of preemptive self-defense."

This is dirty politics at its absolute lowest, equating criticism with cowardice.

The irony is that the ad features the president delivering the 2003 State of the Union speech, which has turned out to be an enormous embarrassment of admitted distortions, including one claim, based on a forged document, that Iraq was a nuclear threat. It was in that speech that the president touted the imminent threat of Iraq`s so-far-undiscovered weapons of mass destruction while implying that Saddam Hussein collaborated with Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attacks — a charge that the president himself recently conceded was without foundation.

In fact, the Iraq war has proved to be a terrible test case for "preemptive self-defense" because the intelligence it was founded on is so much loose sand. If you say somebody is a threat and then it turns out they aren`t, your "preemptive attack" is no longer "self-defense."

Worse, though, as Gen. Wesley Clark points out, is that the Iraq war and occupation have been a distraction from the war against Al Qaeda. "I`m not critical of President Bush because he`s attacking terrorists," Clark said. "I`m critical of President Bush because he is not attacking terrorists."

If the president were serious about heeding the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, the White House would not be refusing to send executive records to the independent commission that is trying to determine how those attacks were allowed to occur and what might prevent them in the future. Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a member of that commission, has called the president`s stonewalling "Nixonian," suggesting that Bush might not really want the truth to come out.

As Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, put it in an interview with Salon.com: "It`s been painfully obvious the administration not only fought the creation of the commission but that their objective was the war in Iraq, and one of the notions that was built on was there was a direct connection between Al Qaeda and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not. So therefore they didn`t want the 9/11 commission to get going…. They want to kick this can down past the elections."

A more ominous possibility is that the White House and intelligence records being kept from the 9/11 commission may indict the administration for indifference to the problem posed by Osama bin Laden`s gang before the 9/11 attacks.

We do know that the incoming Bush team did not take very seriously the dire warnings passed on by President Clinton`s outgoing national security advisor, Sandy Berger, and by FBI agents in the field. The Bush administration seemed more preoccupied with the war on drugs than terrorism, even congratulating the Taliban for its successful drug eradication program just weeks before 9/11. Furthermore, the U.S. failed to seriously confront Al Qaeda`s sponsors in Saudi Arabia, before and after the terrorist attacks. Instead, we invaded Iraq.

The president has a lot to answer for in his failed war on terrorism.

Bin Laden is still at large, and Al Qaeda, according to the White House, is responsible for the series of devastating terrorist attacks in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Bush has managed to turn formerly secular Iraq into a hotbed of religious fanaticism, while diverting attention from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to creep back in.

Although Cleland voted for the Iraq war authorization last year, that did not stop his Republican opponent, Saxby Chambliss — who avoided service in Vietnam — from defeating war hero Cleland in 2002 by using attack ads that questioned his patriotism.

In those ads Cleland`s face was presented alongside pictures of Bin Laden and Hussein as if they were one and the same. As has been famously said, the appeal to patriotism is often "the last refuge of a scoundrel."

What would be truly unpatriotic — and an abrogation of their responsibility to the American people — is for the Democratic candidates to fail to take on Bush`s record in subverting the fight against terrorism.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Albino gorilla said to be unique in the world dies of skin cancer
Copito de Nieve (Snowflake), a rare albino gorilla and the most popular resident of the Barcelona zoo, died of skin cancer early Monday Nov. 24. Copito, thought to be between 38 and 40 years old, had fathered 22 offspring with three different females during his 37 years at the zoo

[Joerver]

You Know You`re In San Francisco When . . .
VIEW FROM THE RIGHT
Adam Sparks, Special to SF Gate
Monday, November 24, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/11/24/asparks.DTL



"Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five, years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree."
-- Emperor Norton, 1869

The first monarch in the United States -- Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico -- was crowned in San Francisco in 1859. Norton, who issued both his own decrees and his own currency, was perhaps our first and best-known goofball. But the wacky tradition of San Fran-insanity is still alive and well today. Do all politicians become power mad here? Oh, I don`t know, but just click here to look at our current mayor`s getup, and then decide.

And the previous mayor was tossed out of office, after serving just a single term, for doing an interview with two DJs in a shower while they were all nude and cameras were rolling. And that mayor would be former law-and-order S.F. Police Chief Frank Jordan.

How Wacky Are We?

Last week, The Chronicle reported that a man was arrested in San Francisco for having far more fun than is legal while parked in a car with a couple chickens and a jar of Vaseline. That`s an only-in-San Francisco story. It`s a good thing they didn`t send in the nude former police chief to make the arrest. But how do the noninitiated really know whether they`re in San Francisco?

You Know You`re in San Francisco When . . .

You`re a woman searching for Mr. Right in the personals, and you have to sort through "S&M," "BDSM," "AC/DC" and any other number of alphabet combos.
You`re a guy looking for Ms. Right in the personals, and you have to sort through cross-dressing, transgendered, questioning, pre-op or post-op former gentlemen.
You`re not angry because Al Gore`s not the president; you`re angry because you think Ralph Nader should have won.
Your kids find not only old toys in playground sandboxes but also used needles and condoms.
You see bathrooms labeled "His," "Hers" and "Others."
You celebrate Father`s Day by laying a wreath for an unknown donor at the local biotech lab.
You`re an unemployed dot-com refugee and college dropout with no job prospects, and you think it`s the president who is stupid.
The homeless are offered conveniently located outdoor urinals (also known as door entryways), soup, medicinal pot, spare change and acoustic entertainment.
You`re watching a TV program called "Queer Eyes for the Homeless Guys" and you see a cadre of metrosexuals donating facials and new color-coordinated begging signs with matching ensembles to a group of homeless men.
The bizarre mating rituals of the wildlife found in the bushes of our parks won`t soon be seen on the Discovery Channel, as they`re often of the kinky human variety.
Huge traffic jams are caused not by vegetable-oil-powered cars but by thousands of bicyclists intentionally messing up traffic just to irritate the Neanderthal motorists.
There is an extreme housing shortage, but the political establishment responds by not allowing builders to build.
You`re surrounded by water on three sides, but you`ve still never been in it or out on it.
You see bumper stickers that proclaim, "I have a dog, and I vote," signifying the City`s dog-park wars. Here, it`s OK for Rover to poop on the Little League field`s first base, pee on second and dig up the pitching mound because, after all, dogs are people, too.
The district attorney loves to release criminals but is hot to arrest and prosecute the police chief and the top police brass.
Tricycle races are not just for toddlers but also for the grown-ups at the gay community`s annual bar-hopping tricycle race.
Casual Friday has been replaced by Clothing-Optional Friday, and nudity is encouraged each year when roughly 50,000 runners, costumed thrill seekers, beer guzzlers and streakers hit the streets for the annual Bay to Breakers race.
Your family is making more than $125,000 a year, but you can`t find a decent apartment, and you can`t afford a house.
Your contractor is gay, but your hairdresser is straight.
The only flags being waved by marchers at parades have rainbows on them.
Married politicians can ask their fund-raisers to provide both cash and a new baby and not raise an eyebrow.
A parade for Cinco de Mayo, Mexico`s national holiday, gets a bigger turnout than the one for Veteran`s Day.
You get on the bus and you`re surprised to actually hear a conversation in English.
The city government, with a budget of $5 billion -- larger than nearly 40 out of 50 states -- can`t balance its checkbook and still complains that the taxes for corporations and the rich aren`t high enough.
You actually find a parking spot, and you`re so excited that you immediately sell your car.
The name of your child`s second-grade teacher is Flipper, and he has more nose rings and bloody body piercings than a bull in Tijuana after the bullfight.
The only Republicans you know are President Bush and your deer-hunting uncle in Minnesota, and you hate `em both.
Pot is legal, and tobacco is illegal.
You tell your daughter sex before marriage is OK, as long as she and her partner don`t use your recreational drugs, your boyfriend, your priest or your bed.
You can`t decide what to major in at college: astral projections, witchcraft, channeling or hating Republicans.
Every time there`s an earthquake, you`re under a table praying that the metropolis will finally get to break away from the mainland.
Each morning, while drinking a latte at Starbucks, you review a complete list of companies you need to boycott.
You think the Left is right and the Right is wrong.
You lament the negative impact of those awful big-box stores on local mom-and-pop hardware stores while you`re complaining to the cashier at Home Depot.
You think illegal aliens have the right to work, but employers who hire the aliens should be arrested.
You think your mother should get a life and grow up, but you still refuse to move out of her house.
You think cop killers should go free and cops should be arrested.
You think "Alice in Wonderland" should be in the nonfiction section of the bookstore.
You enjoy books about the struggles of smaller, independent bookstores that are systematically being taken over by huge corporations -- and you buy them at Barnes and Noble.
You think big corporations and their tax shelters are harming America but your own under-the-table cash business isn`t.
You won`t cross a picket line, and you proudly display your "Buy Union" bumper sticker on your imported car.
You`re not snobbish -- you just happen to honestly think it`s only San Franciscans who know anything about politics, literature, love, food, fashion, culture and art, except for that high-brow director Michael Moore, of "Roger and Me" fame, who hails from Flint, Mich.
You think that the rest of America is replete with a bunch of screwed-up hillbillies, factory workers, farmers, hunters and veterans -- and that their only redeeming quality is that they pay taxes for the many social programs you, an unemployed artist, can enjoy.
Why, then, regardless of all these eccentricities, would a conservative columnist live in this town? Perhaps he wants to be the burr under the city`s self-righteous, delusional and hypocritical saddle. Or perhaps he likes the excitement of working stealthily behind enemy lines as an embedded reporter. Or just maybe he`s as nutty as the rest of `em.

Adam Sparks is a San Francisco writer. He can be reached at [e-mail].

[Joerver]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I lead the world against terrorism.

[Joerver]

FPIF Special Report
November 2003

Sorrows of Empire
By Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson is the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in California and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. This essay is an excerpt from his forthcoming book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Repbublic (New York: Metropolitan Books; and London: Verso).

http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/sorrows2003.html




Project Against the Present Danger www.presentdanger.org



Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism



With the fall of Baghdad, America`s dutiful Anglophone allies--the British and Australians--are due for their just rewards: luncheons for Blair and Howard with the Boy Emperor at his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. The Americans fielded an army of 255,000 in Iraq, the British 45,000, and the Australians 2,000. It was not much of a war--merely confirming the antiwar forces` contention that an unchallenged slaughter of Iraqis and a Mongol-like sacking of an ancient city were not necessary to deal with the menace of Saddam Hussein. But the war did leave the United States and its two Sepoy nations much weaker than they had been before the war--the Western democratic alliance was seemingly irretrievably fractured; a potentiality for British leadership of the European Union went up in smoke; Pentagon plans to make Iraq over into a client state sundered on Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish realities; and "international law," including the Charter of the United Nations, was grievously weakened. Why the British and Australians went along with this fiasco when they could so easily have stood for something other than might makes right remains a mystery.

The United States has been inching toward imperialism and militarism for many years. Disguising the direction they were taking, American leaders cloaked their foreign policy in euphemisms such as "lone superpower," "indispensable nation," "reluctant sheriff," "humanitarian intervention," and "globalization." However, with the advent of the George Bush administration in 2001, these pretenses gave way to assertions of the Second Coming of the Roman Empire. "American imperialism used to be a fiction of the far-left imagination," writes the English journalist Madeleine Bunting, "now it is an uncomfortable fact of life."1

On March 19, 2003, the Bush administration took the imperial step of invading Iraq, a sovereign nation one-twelfth the size of the U.S. in terms of population and virtually undefended in the face of the awesome array of weapons employed against it. The U.S. undertook its second war with Iraq with no legal justification and worldwide protests against its actions and motives, thereby bringing to an end the system of international order that existed throughout the cold war and that traces its roots back to seventeenth century doctrines of sovereignty, non-intervention in the affairs of other states, and the illegitimacy of aggressive war.

From the moment the United States assumed the permanent military domination of the world, it was on its own--feared, hated, corrupt and corrupting, maintaining "order" through state terrorism and bribery, and given to megalomaniacal rhetoric and sophistries while virtually inviting the rest of the world to combine against it. The U.S. had mounted the Napoleonic tiger and could not get off. During the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, the president`s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, once reproved White House counsel, John Dean, for speaking too frankly to Congress about the felonies President Nixon had ordered. "John," he said, "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it`s hard to get it back in." This homely metaphor by a former advertising executive who was to spend 18 months in prison for his own role in Watergate fairly accurately describes the situation of the United States.

The sorrows of empire are the inescapable consequences of the national policies American elites chose after September 11, 2001. Militarism and imperialism always bring with them sorrows. The ubiquitous symbol of the Christian religion, the cross, is perhaps the world`s most famous reminder of the sorrows that accompanied the Roman Empire--it represents the most atrocious death the Roman proconsuls could devise in order to keep subordinate peoples in line. From Cato to Cicero, the slogan of Roman leaders was "Let them hate us so long as they fear us."

Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. All I have space for here is to touch briefly on three of these: endless war, the loss of Constitutional liberties, and financial ruin.

Allegedly in response to the attacks of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the United States would dominate the world through absolute military superiority and wage preventive war against any possible competitor. He began to enunciate this doctrine in his June 1, 2002, speech to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and spelled it out in his "National Security Strategy of the United States" of September 20, 2002.

At West Point, the president said that the United States had a unilateral right to overthrow any government in the world that it deemed a threat to American security. He argued that the United States must be prepared to wage the "war on terror" against as many as sixty countries if weapons of mass destruction are to be kept out of terrorists` hands. "We must take that battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Americans must be "ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives ... . In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act." Although Bush did not name every single one, his hit-list of sixty possible target countries was an escalation over Vice President Dick Cheney, who in November 2001, said that there were only "forty or fifty" countries that United States wanted to attack after eliminating the al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.2

At West Point, the president justified his proposed massive military effort in terms of alleged universal values: "We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent." He added an assertion that is demonstrably untrue but that in the mouth of the president of the United States on an official occasion amounted to the announcement of a crusade: "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, in every place."

In his National Security Strategy, he expanded on these goals to include "America must stand firmly for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity; the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property." In the preamble to the strategy, he (or Condoleezza Rice, the probable actual author) wrote that there is "a single sustainable model for national success"--America`s--that is "right and true for every person in every society. ... The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere."

The paradoxical effect of this grand strategy is that it may prove more radically disruptive of world order than anything the terrorists of September 11, 2001, could have hoped to achieve on their own. Through its actions, the United States seems determined to bring about precisely the threats that it says it is trying to prevent. Its apparent acceptance of a "clash of civilizations"--wars to establish a moral truth that is the same in every culture--sounds remarkably like a jihad, even to its basis in Christian fundamentalism. Bush seems to equate himself with Jesus Christ in his repeated statements (notably on September 20, 2001) that those who are not with us are against us, which duplicates Matthew chapter 12, verse 30, "He that is not with me is against me."

Implementation of the National Security Strategy will be considerably more problematic than its promulgation and contains numerous unintended consequences. By mid-2003, the United States armed forces were already seriously overstretched, and the U.S. government was going deeply into debt to finance its war machine. The American budget dedicated to international affairs allocates 93% to the military and only 7% to the State Department, and does not have much flexibility left for further military adventures.3 The Pentagon has deployed a quarter of a million troops against Iraq, several thousand soldiers are engaged in daily skirmishes in Afghanistan, countless Navy and Air Force crews are manning strategic weapons in the waters off North Korea, a few thousand Marines have been dispatched to the southern Philippines to fight a century-old Islamic separatist movement, several hundred "advisers" are participating in the early stages of a Vietnam-like insurgency in Colombia and elsewhere in the Andean nations, and the U.S. currently maintains a military presence in 140 of the 189 member countries of the United Nations, including significant deployments in twenty-five. The U.S. has military treaties or binding security arrangements with at least thirty-six countries.4

Aside from the financial cost, there is another constraint. The American people are totally unwilling to accept large numbers of American casualties. In order to produce the "no-contact" or "painless dentistry" approach to warfare, the Pentagon has committed itself to a massive and very expensive effort to computerize battle.5 It has spent lavishly on smart bombs, battlefield sensors, computer-guided munitions, and extremely high performance aircraft and ships. The main reason for all this gadgetry is to keep troops out of the line of fire.

Unfortunately, as the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, ground troops follow in the wake of massive aerial bombing and missile attacks. The first Iraq War produced four classes of casualties--killed in action, wounded in action, killed in accidents (including "friendly fire"), and injuries and illnesses that appeared only after the end of hostilities. During 1990 and 1991, some 696,778 individuals served in the Persian Gulf as elements of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Of these 148 were killed in battle, 467 were wounded in action, and 145 were killed in accidents, producing a total of 760 casualties, quite a low number given the scale of the operations.

However, as of May 2002, the Veterans Administration (VA) reported that an additional 8,306 soldiers had died and 159,705 were injured or ill as a result of service-connected "exposures" suffered during the war. Even more alarmingly, the VA revealed that 206,861 veterans, almost a third of General Schwarzkopf`s entire army, had filed claims for medical care, compensation, and pension benefits based on injuries and illnesses caused by combat in 1991. After reviewing the cases, the agency has classified 168,011 applicants as "disabled veterans." In light of these deaths and disabilities, the casualty rate for the first Gulf War is actually a staggering 29.3%.

A significant probable factor in these deaths and disabilities is depleted uranium (or DU) ammunition, although this is a hotly contested proposition. Some researchers, often paid for by the Pentagon, argue that depleted uranium could not possibly be the cause of these war-related maladies and that a more likely explanation is dust and debris from the blowing up of Saddam Hussein`s chemical and biological weapons factories in 1991, or perhaps a "cocktail" of particles from DU ammunition, the destruction of nerve gas bunkers, and polluted air from burning oil fields. But the evidence--including abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and birth defects in Iraq and also in the areas of Kosovo where the U.S. used depleted-uranium weapons in the 1999 air war--points primarily toward DU. Moreover, simply by insisting on employing such weaponry, the American military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction.

DU, or Uranium-238, is a waste product of power-generating nuclear-reactors. It is used in projectiles like tank shells and cruise missiles because it is 1.7 times denser than lead, burns as it flies, and penetrates armor easily, but it breaks up and vaporizes on impact--which makes it potentially very deadly. Each shell fired by an American tank includes between three and ten pounds of DU. Such warheads are essentially "dirty bombs," not very radioactive individually but nonetheless suspected of being capable in quantity of causing serious illnesses and birth defects.6

In 1991, U.S. forces fired a staggering 944,000 DU rounds in Kuwait and Iraq. The Pentagon admits that it left behind at a bare minimum 320 metric tons of DU on the battlefield. One study of Gulf War veterans showed that their children had a higher possibility of being born with severe deformities, including missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems, and fused fingers.

Aside from the damage done to our own troops and civilians by depleted uranium, the United States military remains committed to the most devastating forms of terror bombing, often without even a pretense of precision targeting of militarily significant installations. This aspect of current American military thinking can be found in the writing of Harlan Ullman, a high-ranking Pentagon official and protégé of General Colin Powell, who advocates that the United States attack its enemies in the same way it defeated Japan in World War II. He writes, "Super tools and weapons--information age equivalents of the atomic bomb--have to be invented. As the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally convinced the Japanese Emperor and High Command that even suicidal resistance was futile, these tools must be directed toward a similar outcome." Ullman is the author of the idea is that the U.S. should "deter and overpower an adversary through the adversary`s perception and fear of his vulnerability and our own invincibility." He calls this "rapid dominance" or "shock and awe." He once suggested that it might be a good idea to use electromagnetic waves to attack peoples` neurological systems and scare them to death.7

The United States government has other ways to implement its new world strategy without getting its hands dirty, including what it and its Israeli allies call "targeted killings." During February, 2003, the Bush administration sought the Israeli government`s counsel on how to create a legal justification for the assassination of terrorism suspects. In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush said that terrorism suspects who were not caught and brought to trial have been "otherwise dealt with" and observed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate. Let`s put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."8

High-tech warfare invites the kind of creative judo the terrorists of al Qaeda utilized on September 11. Employing domestic American airliners as their weapons of mass destruction, they took a deadly toll of innocent American bystanders. The U.S. worries that they might acquire or be given fissionable material by a "rogue state," but the much more likely source is via theft from the huge nuclear stockpiles of the United States and Russia. The weapons-grade anthrax used in the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States almost certainly came from the Pentagon`s own biological stockpile, not from some poverty stricken Third World country. The U.S. government has probably solved the case but is too embarrassed by it actually to apprehend those responsible and bring them publicly before a court of justice.9 Meanwhile, the emphasis on using a professional military with its array of "people-zappers" will only strengthen the identification between the United States and tyranny.

If the likelihood of perpetual war hangs over the world, the situation domestically in the United States is no better. Militarism and imperialism threaten democratic government at home just as seriously as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries. Whether George Bush and his zealots can ever bring about a "regime change" in Iraq or any other country is an open question, but there is no doubt that they already have done so within the United States. In keeping with the Roman pretensions of his administration, Bush often speaks as if he were a modern Caligula (the Roman emperor who reigned from 37 to 41 AD and who wanted to appoint his horse to the Senate). In the second presidential debate on October 11, 2000, Bush said, "If this were a dictatorship, it`d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I`m the dictator." A little more than a year later, he replied to a question by the Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, "I`m the commander--see, I don`t need to explain--I do not need to explain why I say things. That`s the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don`t feel like I owe anybody an explanation."10

Bush and his administration have worked zealously to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of the other branches of government. Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution says explicitly that "The Congress shall have the power to declare war." It prohibits the president from making that decision. The most influential author of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote in 1793, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."11 Yet, after September 11, 2001, President Bush unilaterally declared that the nation was "at war" against terrorism, and a White House spokesman later noted that the president "considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."

During October 3 to 10, 2002, Congress`s "week of shame," both houses voted to give the president open-ended authority to wage war against Iraq. It permitted the president to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq as soon and as long as he--and he alone--determined it to be "appropriate." The vote was 296 to 33 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate. There was no debate; the members were too politically cowed to address the issue directly. Thus, for example, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) spoke on the hundredth anniversary of the 4-H Club; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) talked about the Future Farmers of America in his state; and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) gave Congress a brief history of the city of Mountain View, California.12

Equally serious, the Bush administration arrogated to itself the power unilaterally to judge whether an American citizen or a foreigner is part of a terrorist organization and can therefore be stripped of all Constitutional rights or rights under international law. President Bush`s government has imprisoned 664 individuals from forty-two countries, including teenage children, at a concentration camp in Guantánmo, Cuba, where they are beyond the reach of the Constitution. It has also designated them "illegal combatants," a concept unknown in international law, to place them beyond the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. None of them has been charged with anything: they are merely captives.

The key cases here concern two native-born American citizens--Yasir Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla. Hamdi, age 22, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but raised in Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon claimed he was captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, although in a more detailed submission it acknowledged that he surrendered to the Northern Alliance forces, the warlords whom the U.S. had paid to fight on its side, before he engaged in any form of combat. Padilla is a Brooklyn-born American of Puerto Rican ancestry. He was arrested by federal agents on May 8, 2002, at O`Hare Airport, Chicago, after he arrived on a flight from Pakistan. He was held for a month without any charges being filed or contact with an attorney or the outside world. On the eve of his appearance in federal court in New York, he was hastily transferred to a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina; and President Bush designated him "a bad guy" and an "enemy combatant." No charges were brought against him, and attempts to force the government to make its case via writs of habeas corpus were routinely turned down on grounds that the courts have no jurisdiction over a military prisoner.

A year and a half after September 11, 2001, at least two articles of the Bill of Rights were dead letters--the fourth prohibiting unwarranted searches and seizures and the sixth guaranteeing a jury of peers, the assistance of an attorney in offering a defense, the right to confront one`s accusers, protection against self-incrimination, and, most critically, the requirement that the government spell out its charges and make them public. The second half of Thomas Jefferson`s old warning--"When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny"--clearly applies.13

The final sorrow of empire is financial ruin. It is different from the other three in that bankruptcy may not be as fatal to the American Constitution as endless war, loss of liberty, and habitual official lying; but it is the only sorrow that will certainly lead to a crisis. The U.S. proved to be ready militarily for an Iraq war, maybe even a North Korea war, and perhaps an Iran war, but it is unprepared economically for even one of them, much less all three in short succession.

The permanent military domination of the world is an expensive business. During fiscal year 2003, the U.S.`s military appropriations bill, signed on October 23, 2002, came to $354.8 billion. For fiscal year 2004, the Department of Defense asked Congress for a 4.2% increase, to $380 billion. When the budget was presented, sycophantic Congressmen spent most of their time asking the defense secretary if he was sure he did not need even more money and suggesting big weapons projects that could be built in their districts. They seemed to say that no matter how much the U.S. spends on "defense," it will not be enough. The next largest military spender is Russia, but its military budget is only 14% of the U.S.`s total. To equal current U.S. expenditures, the military budgets of the next twenty-seven highest spenders would have to be added together. The American amounts do not include the intelligence budgets, most of which are controlled by the Pentagon, nor do they include expenditures for the Iraq war or the Pentagon`s request for a special $10 billion account to combat terrorism.

Estimates of the likely cost of the war vary widely. In 2002, President Bush`s first chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, guessed that attacking Iraq--an economy somewhat smaller than that of Louisiana`s--would require around $140 billion, but this figure already looks too small. In March 2003, the Bush administration said it would need an additional amount somewhere between $60 billion and $95 billion just to cover the build-up of troops in and around Iraq, the ships and planes carrying them, their munitions and other supplies, and the fuel they will consume. These figures did not include the costs of the postwar occupation and reconstruction of the country. A high-level Council on Foreign Relations study concluded that President Bush has failed "to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs" of Iraq.14

The first Gulf war cost about $61 billion. However, American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Japan, and South Korea chipped in some $54.1 billion, about 80% of the total, leaving the U.S.`s financial contribution a minuscule $7 billion. Japan alone contributed $13 billion. Nothing like that will happen again. Virtually the entire world is agreed that if the lone superpower wants to go off in personal pursuit of a preventive war, it can pick up its own tab. The problem is that the U.S. is becoming quite short on cash. The budget for 2003 forecasts a $304 billion federal deficit, excluding the costs of the Iraq war and shortfalls in the budgets of programs that are guaranteed, backed, or sponsored by the U.S. government. Virtually all of the U.S. states face severe fiscal shortages and are pleading with the federal government for bailouts, particularly to pay for congressionally mandated anti-terrorism and civil defense programs. The Congressional Budget Office projects federal deficits over the next five years of over $1 trillion, on top of an already existing government debt in February 2003 of $6.4 trillion.

In my judgment, American imperialism and militarism are so far advanced and obstacles to its further growth have been so completely neutralized that the decline of the U.S. has already begun. The country is following the path already taken by its erstwhile adversary in the cold war, the former Soviet Union. The U.S.`s refusal to dismantle its own empire of military bases when the menace of the Soviet Union disappeared, combined with its inappropriate response to the blowback of September 11, 2001, makes this decline virtually inevitable.

There is only one development that could conceivably stop this cancerous process, and that is for the people to retake control of Congress, reform it and the election laws to make it a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency. That was, after all, the way the Vietnam War was finally brought to a halt.

John le Carré, the novelist most famous for his books on the role of intelligence services in the cold war, writes, "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."15 His view is somewhat more optimistic than mine. If it is just a period of madness, like musth in elephants, we might get over it. The U.S. still has a strong civil society that could, at least in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. I fear, however, that the U.S. has indeed crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy. Without root and branch reform, Nemesis awaits. She is the goddess of revenge, the punisher of pride and arrogance, and the United States is on course for a rendezvous with her.



NOTES
Madeleine Bunting, "Beginning of the End: The U.S. Is Ignoring an Important Lesson from History--that an Empire Cannot Survive on Brute Force Alone," The Guardian, February 3, 2003.
Ewen MacAskill, "Up to 50 States Are on Blacklist, Says Cheney," The Guardian, November 17, 2001; James Doran, "Terror War Must Target 60 Nations, says Bush," The Times, London, June 3, 2002.
Tom Barry, "The U.S. Power Complex: What`s New?" Foreign Policy in Focus, Special Report, November 2002, n. 11.
Madhavee Inamdar, "Global Vigilance in a Global Village: U.S. Expands Its Military Bases," The Progressive Response, vol. 6, no. 41 (December 31, 2002).
William M. Arkin, "The Best Defense," Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2002; "War Designed to Test New Weapons: Interview with Vladimir Slipchenko," Rossiyskaya Gazeta, February 22, 2003, online at <http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SLI303A.html>.
Doug Rokke, "Gulf War Casualties," September 30, 2002, online at http://www.rense.com/general29/gulf.htm; Susanna Hecht, "Uranium Warheads May Leave Both Sides a Legacy of Death for Decades," Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2003; Neil Mackay, "U.S. Forces` Use of Depleted Uranium Is `Illegal,`" Glasgow Sunday Herald, March 30, 2003; Steven Rosenfeld, "Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel," TomPaine.com, April 8, 2003; "UK to Aid DU Removal," BBC News, April 23, 2003; Frances Williams, "Clean-up of Pollution Urged to Reduce Health Risks" and Vanessa Houlder, "Allied Troops `Risk Uranium Exposure,`" Financial Times, April 25, 2003; Jonathan Duffy, "Iraq`s Cancer Children Overlooked in War," BBC News, April 29, 2003.
See Ira Chernus, "Shock & Awe: Is Baghdad the Next Hiroshima?" CommonDreams.org, January 27, 2003. On the proposed Anglo-American use of such weapons as lasers that can blind and stun and microwave beams that can heat the water in human skin to the boiling point, see Antony Barnett, "Army`s Secret `People Zapper` Plans," The Observer, November 3, 2002. The United States is also sponsoring research on chemical and biological weapons that violates the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and other international treaties. One of the projects is to produce antibiotic-resistant anthrax. Julian Borger, "U.S. Weapons Secrets Exposed," The Guardian, October 29, 2002; and Thomas Fuller, "Microwave Weapons: The Dangers of First Use," International Herald Tribune, March 17, 2003.
"Complete Text of President Bush`s State of the Union Address," Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2003. Also see Ian Urbina, "On the Road with Murder, Inc.," Asia Times, January 24, 2003; Ori Nir, "Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on `Targeted Killings,`" Forward, February 7, 2003.
See Marilyn W. Thompson, The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); and Chuck Murphy, "Not Iraq, But Anniston, Ala.," St. Petersburg Times, March 16, 2003. According to Murphy, the U.S. Army is currently storing in the United States, 873,020 pounds of sarin, 1,657,480 pounds of VX nerve agent, and 1,976,760 pounds of mustard agent.
Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 145-46.
James Madison, as quoted by Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), October 3, 2002, speaking in opposition to a resolution granting the president open-ended authority to go to war whenever he chooses to do so. See John C. Bonifaz, "War Powers: The White House Continues to Defy the Constitution," TomPaine.com, February 4, 2003.
Winslow T. Wheeler, "The Week of Shame: Congress Wilts as the President Demands an Unclogged Road to War" (Washington: Center for Defense Information, January 2003), p. 17.
William Norman Grigg, "Suspending Habeas Corpus," The New American, vol. 18, no. 14 (July 15, 2002). Also see "Detaining Americans," Washington Post, June 13, 2002; Nat Hentoff, "George W. Bush`s Constitution," Village Voice, January 3, 2003; Benjamin Weiser, "U.S. to Appeal Order Giving Lawyers Access to Detainee," New York Times, March 26, 2003; Dick Meyer, "John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear," CBSNews.com, June 12, 2002; Edward Alden and Caroline Daniel, "Battle Lines Blurred as U.S. Searches for Enemies in the War on Terrorism," Financial Times, January 2, 2003.
Leslie Wayne, "Rumsfeld Warns He Will Ask Congress for More Billions," New York Times, February 6, 2003; Thom Shanker and Richard W. Stevenson, "Pentagon Wants $10 Billion a Year for Antiterror Fund," New York Times, November 27, 2002; Jason Nissé, "The $800 Billion Conflict and a World Left Licking Its Wounds," The Independent, March 9, 2003; Patrick E. Tyler, "Panel Faults Bush on War Costs and Risks," New York Times, March 12, 2003; David R. Sands, "Allies Unlikely to Help Pay for Second Iraq Invasion," Washington Times, March 10, 2003.
59.Edmund L. Andrews, "Federal Debt Near Ceiling; Second Time in 9 Months," New York Times, February 20, 2003.
John le Carré, "The United States of America Has Gone Mad," The Times (London), January 15, 2003, online at <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-543296,00.html&…

[Joerver]

Wohin führt unser Weg?
von Robert Fisk
ZNet 22.11.2003


Das ist der Preis, den man zahlt, wenn man bei George Bushs “Krieg gegen den Terror” mitmacht. Es war ihnen nicht möglich, Großbritannien anzugreifen, während Bush seinen triumphalen Staatsbesuch in London absolvierte, also gingen sie uns in der Türkei an die Gurgel. Das britische Konsulat und die HSBC-Bank, die ihren Stammsitz in England hat: Auslands-London sozusagen. Natürlich hatte niemand geglaubt - am wenigsten die Türken - sie würden am gleichen Ort zweimal zuschlagen. Hatte die Türkei ihr Soll an Attacken nicht bereits abbekommen? Mit “sie” ist “Al Kaida” gemeint. Und natürlich wird es schon reichen, darauf hinzuweisen, dass wir - die Briten - im Moment den Preis für George Bushs infantilen Versuch zahlen, den Nahen/Mittleren Osten im Interesse Israels neuzugestalten, um die üblichen Giftspritzen in Gang zu setzen. Wer die brutale Wahrheit sagt über den Preis an Menschenleben, den das Bündnis Tony Blairs mit der Bush-Administration uns kostet, “nimmt den Terroristen die Arbeit ab” und sei ihr “Propagandist”. Auf diese Weise wird jede Debatte über die gestrigen Gräuel abgewürgt - wie üblich.

Die Regierungen in Amerika und Großbritannien aber wissen die Zeichen sehr wohl zu deuten. Die Australier zahlten in Bali den Preis für John Howards Bündnis mit Bush. Die Italiener zahlten den Preis in Nasiriyah, für Silvio Berlusconis Bündnis mit Bush. Und jetzt sind wir also an der Reihe. Al Kaida hat sich klar ausgedrückt. Die Saudis werden zahlen, die Australier, die Italiener und die Briten. Und sie haben gezahlt. Kanada steht noch auf der Liste. Aber vielleicht, so meine Vermutung, werden wir ein weiteres Mal an der Reihe sein. Schon 1997 hatte Osama bin Laden mir gegenüber wiederholt, die Briten würden dem islamischen “Zorn” nur dann entgehen, wenn sie sich aus dem Golf zurückzögen. Aber dieser Massenmord verfolgt mehr als nur ein Ziel. Die Türkei ist ein Verbündeter Israels, Scharon war auf Ankara-Besuch. Und die Türkei ist sowohl im Irak als auch in weiten Teilen der arabischen Welt verhasst - nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihrer ottomanischen Vergangenheit.

Sie greifen die Saudis an, weil deren islamisches Regime von einer korrupten Monarchie geführt wird, die Türkei greifen sie an, weil die nicht islamisch genug ist. Es geht darum, die Türkei zu spalten. Es geht darum, das Verhältnis zwischen Juden und Muslimen in Istanbul zu zerstören - das war das Ziel der Selbstmordbomben vom letzten Samstag. Und es geht darum, die jetzige “islamische” Kompromiss-Regierung der Türkei zu zerstören. All dies muss Al Kaida durch den Kopf gegangen sein.

Und machen wir uns keine falschen Vorstellungen über “das Gehirn” - wie ich es immer nenne. Wir haben uns daran gewöhnt zu glauben, die Bomber begriffen die Welt außerhalb nicht. Jemand, der “gegen Demokratie” ist, wie kann der uns begreifen? Aber sie begreifen uns doch. Sie wussten ganz genau, was sie taten, als sie die Australier in Bali angriffen: in Australien war die Irak- Invasion unpopulär, daher würde man am Schluss Howard die Schuld geben. Sie wussten, auch in Italien ist die Invasion unpopulär. Also straften sie Italien für Berlusconis Hybris. Sie wussten, George Bush wird in London von Demonstranten erwartet. Warum also nicht von den großen Tieren ablenken und Großbritannien in der Türkei angreifen? Wen interessiert noch Bushs Besuch in Sedgefield, wenn tote Briten in den Trümmern ihres Konsulats in Istanbul liegen? Das Gleiche gilt für Irak. Den irakischen Aufständischen ist sehr wohl bewusst, in den USA fallen die Umfragewerte für George Bush. Sie wissen, wie verzweifelt er versucht, noch vor den Präsidentschaftswahlen im nächsten Jahr aus der Irak- Sache rauszukommen. Also verstärken sie ihre Angriffe auf amerikanische Truppen und deren irakische Helfer, und die US-Armee lässt sich zu immer neuer, grausamer Rache provozieren.

Wir befinden uns in einer Art tödlichem Missverständnis bezüglich derer, gegen die wir in den Krieg zogen. Wir glauben, diese Leute lebten in Höhlen, ohne Bezug zur Realität, sie schlügen blind zu - “verzweifelt”, wie uns Bush weismachen wollte -, sie hätten erkannt, die freie Welt ist enschlossen, sie zu vernichten. Ich glaube, sie sind genau in diesem Moment entschlossen, Mr. Bush zu vernichten - politisch oder selbst physisch - und Mr. Blair. In einem Krieg, in dem wir alle losrennen, um die Führung unserer Gegner zu zerschmettern, was können wir da anderes erwarten, als dass sie diese Politik kopieren? Aber hier hört das Missverständnis noch nicht auf. Nehmen wir nur die ermüdenden Ansprachen Osama bin Ladens. Wir Journalisten reagieren immer gleich, wenn Audiotapes von ihm gesendet werden. Ist er es tatsächlich? Fragen wir uns. Lebt er noch? Für uns ist das die ganze Story. Ganz anders die arabische Reaktion. Die wissen, er ist es und hören sich den Text an. Das sollten wir auch.

Aber leider bedienen wir immer noch die alten Mythen - siehe George Bush am letzten Mittwoch in London. Seine Rede enthielt die üblichen Unwahrheiten. Da ist zum Beispiel die Liste mit (erfolgten) Angriffszielen, die er uns präsentierte: Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa, Najaf, Jerusalem, Riad, Bagdad, Istanbul. Unwahrscheinlich, dass Najaf etwas mit Al Kaida zu tun hat. Und die Selbstmordanschläge in Jerusalem - so verbrecherisch sie sind -, haben absolut nichts mit unserem “Krieg gegen den Terror” zu tun. Sie sind Teil eines brutalen antikolonialen Kampfes zwischen Palästinensern und Israelis. Dass Bush Jerusalem miteinbezieht, macht es Ariel Scharon jedoch möglich, seinen Krieg gegen die Palästinenser in einen Zusammenhang mit Bushs Krieg gegen Al Kaida zu stellen. Die Verlogenheit (der Bush-Rede) geht noch weiter: Israel, so Bush, müsse seine Siedlungen auf palästinensischem Land “einfrieren” - nicht etwa stoppen. Abgebaut werden soll nur, was - so Bushs kunstreiche Umschreibung - “unautorisierter Außenposten” sei. “Außenposten” - das israelische Wort für die allerjüngsten Landnahmen in der Westbank. Und der Begriff “unautorisiert” suggeriert uns, die massiven (jüdischen) Siedlungen, die bereits auf palästinensischem Land bestehen, müssten irgendwie legal sein. Bush sagt, “das Kernanliegen” im Nahen Osten sei “eine lebensfähige palästinensische Demokratie”. Das Wort “Okkupation” nimmt Bush (in seiner Rede) kein einziges Mal in den Mund. Warum nicht? Jagt ihm die Israel-Lobby solche Angst ein - vor den US-Präsidentschaftswahlen im nächsten Jahr - dass selbst diese so offensichtliche Tatsache der Nahost- Erfahrung aus seiner Beschreibung der Ereignisse rauszuzensieren war?

Dann natürlich die übliche Geschichtsverzerrung. Bush sagt (in seiner Rede) Amerika und Großbritannien täten “alles in ihrer Macht Stehende, die Vereinten Nationen davor zu bewahren, feierlich ihre eigene Irrelevanz zu wählen”. Wie bitteschön? Wer war es, der letztes Jahr die UN-Inspektoren daran hinderte, ihre Suche nach Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak zum Abschluss zu bringen? Und wer war es, der für die Irak-Krise kein Verwalteramt der UN akzeptieren wollte? Wieder einmal behauptet Bush (in seiner Rede), wir hätten die Diktaturen im Mittleren Osten “toleriert”. So ein Blödsinn. Wir haben sie geschaffen. Und Saddams Regime ist das offensichtlichste Beispiel. Wer würde bezweifeln, so fragt uns Bush, “dass Afghanistan eine gerechtere Gesellschaft und weniger gefährlich ist, seit Mullah Omar nicht mehr den Gastgeber für Terroristen aus aller Welt spielt?” Spricht er etwa vom selben Afghanistan, das nun erneut unter den Warlords der alten Nordallianz ächzt? Wo Opium aus Mohn wieder wichtigster Exportartikel ist? Wo Helfer von den Taliban niedergemäht werden? Hinsichtlich des Irak - wo die Besatzungmächte sich inzwischen einem irakischen Aufstand furchterregenden Ausmaßes gegenübersehen -, denkt Mr. Bush immer noch, er kämpfe gegen “bathistische Relikte und Dschihadisten”. Selbst seine Militäroffiziere erklären jedoch immer wieder, sie hätten gegen eine wachsende irakische Guerillaarmee zu kämpfen - nicht gegen “Kämpfer aus dem Ausland” oder “Dschihadis”. Am Schluss (seiner Rede) sind wir natürlich wieder beim Zweiten Weltkrieg und bei Churchill angelangt - “dem Führer, der nicht wankte”. Letztes Jahr hatte sich Bush noch selbst mit ihm verglichen, diesen Mittwoch war Tony Blair an der Reihe - “ein Führer mit gutem Urteilsvermögen, mit schonungslosen Ratschlägen und Rückgrat”.

Wohin, wohin führt unser Weg? Wie lange müssen wir diese Geschichtsklitterung noch ertragen? Und wie lange werden wir uns wohl noch absichtsvoll ein falsches Bild von unseren Taten machen und von dem, was uns angetan wird?





[ Übersetzt von: Andrea Noll | Orginalartikel: "Where Are We Going" ]

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$44

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Tuesday, November 25, 2003
War News for November 25, 2003

ZU jeder Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: CENTCOM reports US troops engaged insurgents planting roadside bomb near Fallujah. Three Iraqi insurgents killed.

Bring ‘em on: CENTCOM reports Iraqi insurgents attempted to bomb train near Iskandariyah.

Bring `em on: Bomb at Kirkuk hotel used by US contractors wounds two Iraqi policemen.

Bring `em on: One US soldier wounded during raid in Ramadi. Three Iraqi insurgents killed.

Bring `em on: Explosion reported at offices of British mine clearance agency in Arbil.

Bring ‘em on: Two Bulgarian checkpoints attacked with small arms fire near Karbala.

Insurgency spreading to northern Iraq.

US troops withdraw from Kirkuk municipal and provincial police stations.

Insurgent attacks against Americans decrease while insurgent attacks against Iraqis escalate.

BBC director criticizes the gelded American media on coverage of Bush`s War. "He said there was an appetite for impartial news in the US, judging by the growth in demand there for BBC News…`Our online services have experienced enormous growth too and have regularly received e-mails back from people here in the US saying ‘Thank you for trying to explain events, thank you for being impartial’,” Mr Dyke added.

Violence continues in Baghdad.

Home bomb making in Iraq.

Operation Cut and Run

Analysis: Why now and will it work? “Most importantly because U.S. casualties are rising too fast…This trend is awkward for Bush`s re-election campaign.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Kansas soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Georgia soldier soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Kentucky soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Michigan soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier wounded in Iraq. (Last paragraph of this story.)

Local story: Nebraska soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina soldier wounded in Iraq.

Home Front

Lieutenant AWOL interrupts Crawford vacation for urgent fundraiser in Nevada.






# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:03 AM

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Article Published: Sunday, November 23, 2003



The unilateral president
By Walter Cronkite
Special to the Denver Post


For almost three years now, the world has been given quite a different view of the United States than the one to which it had been accustomed. It has seen global leadership abandoned and replaced with what now is known as American unilateralism - the Bush administration`s disdain for international agreements and sometimes for diplomacy itself. The unilateralism has been a virtual addiction - a truculent constant in a presidency otherwise marked by inconstancy.

The change began in the first few weeks after President Bush took office. After an election campaign during which he preached that we should learn humility in dealing with other nations, he rather arrogantly pulled the United States out of the Kyoto treaty on climate change - a protocol we had signed but not yet ratified. This new self-centered policy found its ultimate - though hardly final - expression when Bush told the U.N. Security Council that the United States was going to invade Iraq, with or without the council`s approval.

It was also in the early days of his administration that Bush announced we would scrap the anti- ballistic missile treaty with Russia. In fairness, it must be noted that withdrawal from the ABM treaty was implicit in Ronald Reagan`s "Star Wars" missile defense program. But research on our interceptor missile had not reached the stage where it would violate the treaty. Whatever the merits of the case, when Bush revoked the treaty, he both frightened and angered other nations, including some of our closest allies, who fear an ABM arms race and a new global instability when and if our anti-missile missile proves successful.

Bush`s rejection of the International Criminal Court, established to try war crimes, arguably has merit, given that American troops make up the lion`s share of peacekeeping forces these days and might well make easy targets for politically motivated prosecution. President Clinton had signed that treaty but for the same reason did not send it to the Senate for ratification. An exception might have been made for American peacekeepers, but the other signatories refused to permit that. Ironically, anger about perceived American arrogance might well have sunk any hopes for compromise on this one.

Bush`s unilateralism has not confined itself to matters of war and peacekeeping. As the 2002 midterm elections approached, the president, who had long identified himself as a free-trader, slapped tariffs on steel imports - a move that clearly helped Republican candidates in several swing states. Now the World Trade Organization has slapped back, ruling that the tariffs violate free-trade agreements to which the United States is a party. That ruling opens the way for retaliation by other WTO members. The European Union alone is threatening to impose $2.2 billion in sanctions on U.S. goods. This time, it appears, the president has bitten off more than he is willing to chew, and it seems he is looking for a way to back down.

And finally, there is the reminder of another aspect of the Bush administration`s unilateralism - its treatment of alleged terrorists being held incommunicado at Guantanamo, Cuba, without charges and denied the benefit of legal assistance. Critics claim their treatment violates international law. The Supreme Court now has decided to hear a suit brought by lawyers for British and Australian nationals held on the island.

Essentially, the Bush administration claims that these prisoners are beyond the reach of international law and of the American legal system. And lower federal courts so far have agreed that they lack jurisdiction, even though Guantanamo is leased by the United States.

The high court might simply confirm those rulings. However, its very decision to hear the case seems an assertion that it, not the executive branch, determines where the writ of the American legal system runs - and suggests that Bush`s almost reflexive unilateralism might also have constitutional limits.

Walter Cronkite has been a journalist for more than 60 years, including 19 as anchor of the CBS Evening News.

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Bush Midland Fantasy Plays Buckingham Palace

I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Midland, Midland
That`s how conditions are.
Everyone in town is treated equal.
And all have an equal shot at pots of gold.
In short, there`s simply not
A more congenial spot
To fantasize forever than right here
In Mi-id-land.

Harry Truman was the Man From Independence (MISSOURI) and Bill Clinton was the Man From Hope (ARKANSAS). They really lived there during their lives, so the literal connection of the town`s name to the man was easy to sell to the rubes, and it wasn`t an attempt to cover up wealth. But JFK from Camelot (BROADWAY), rather than Hyannisport, was. Jackie`s brainchild, it was an attempt to appeal to an idealized vision of her husband as leader of the free world where politicians were just and ladies were fair. And in Camelot, King Arthur wasn`t a philanderer. America`s Camelot Couple were perfect for the fashion mags. Now we have Bush, the Man From Midland (FANTASYLAND).

When Bush visited England last week, he continued mouthing his myth of Midland, where he lived during his grade-school years, as a kind of culmination of the American egalitarian dream of fair-minded, just diversity and opportunity for all: "I never dreamt when I was living in Midland, Texas, that I would be staying in Buckingham Palace." Frank Rich, writes in the NYT, "Mr. Bush, who was born in New Haven, lived in Midland until only the age of 15 before moving on to such hick venues as Andover, Yale and Harvard when not vacationing in family compounds in Kennebunkport, Me., or Jupiter Island, a tony neighbor of Palm Beach."**

But Midland wasn`t a hick venue when Bush lived there as a child, it was a destination for young, Ivy Legue Easterners from wealthy families, eager to make a quick buck in a booming oil business that was set up for success through laws that their relatives helped pass back in Washington. Midland tells us more about Bush than he would want us to know, and it tells us pretty much the opposite of what he wants us to believe.

"If those of us born after 1960 have at times doubted whether the dull, conformist culture of the fifties could have existed in the monochromatic form given to us in books, Midland suggests that it did, and maybe still does. Poppy Bush once called it "Yuppieland West" in a letter, while in 1969 D. W. Meinig, a scholar of geography and culture, called the city`s unbearable whiteness of seeming perhaps the purest example of the "native white Ango-Saxon Protestant" culture in Texas....Just as the textbook picture of the fifties adheres to this city more than others, sociologist David Riesman`s label of "other-directed man," for that era`s creature of the crowd, may fit Bush even better than it fits other politicians.

"On the whole West Texas is a strongly conservative political area, with a form of conservatism which very directly reflects the more general history and character of the region," wrote Meinig in his book Imperial Texas, "...a combination and blending of the provincial, rural, folk conservatism of the native Texan-Southern tradition with the strongly ideological economic conservatism of the newer wealthy class." Ivy-league frontiersmen like George H. W. Bush brought Republicanism to Midland long before the rest of the state fell for the G.O.P., and as it turned out oil and Goldwater mixed quite well. Author Larry L. King, who went to high school in Midland, described the city for the Observer in 1964 as "where the oillionaires and neanderthal Republicans with low, sloping foreheads and angry John Birchers (in full tremble over flouridation of drinking water and impeaching Earl Warren) play, and the skies are not cloudy all day."...In Midland, a city built by the uprooted upper class, the virtuous-capitalist mystique remains strong. If George W. Bush is a native Texan, then dewey-eyed boosterism is his native tradition," remarks Karen Ollson in the Texas Observer

"By the early 50`s Midland had become the corporate center for the West Texas oil boom. The two main undustries in the town were creating oil companies and building tall buildings to house the companies. Junior`s father was involved in the former, Laura Bush`s in the latter. The bosses lived in Midland, the grunts in Odessa. Midland was a town of around 20,00 people. "One out of every forty-five people in the town in the late seventies had reached millionaire status." Odessa, on the other hand, was murder capitol of the nation one year, "with 29.8 homicides per 100,000 residents, gunn[ing] its way past Miami to take dubious honors as the most perilous city in the nation." "Poppy Bush`s story in Midland was pretty similar to the others who lived in Midland. A young man from the East, educated in the better schools, who succeeded where others failed because he had the needed connections and money to make it through the rough spots. The city of Midland pretty much became a physical reflection of such men. "The Midlanders had "Eastern roots that often included four years at St. Paul`s, or Choate, or Lawrenceville or Andover, followed by four years at Harvard or Yale or Princeton or MIT. Men with...teeth sharpened to razor points by years spent dutifully at the knee of their good daddy capitalists back East. Although he turned out to be the most famous among them, George Bush was just one among friends. As the years passed the place because even more exclusive. Residents named streets Harvard and Princeton. They played at the Polo Club, which had been started by a graduate of St. Paul`s and Princeton whose father had been an executive at U.S. Steel. They clearly saw their town as the one exception in an area of the country" best known for its ignorance," writes H.G. Bissinger in "Friday Night Lights."

Nevertheless, Candidate Bush used his fantasy vision of Midland as part of his presidential campaign, and still carries it today right into Buckingham Palace, a familiar kind of place that he used as a hideout during his trip to England, keeping away from the kind of folks he claims he grew up with in Midland. As Bush continues to sell his Midland myth to the rubes, it might be well to remember this letter to the NYT written by UCLA Professor Elma Gonazalez in 2000:

"George W. Bush waxes nostalgic about the values of the West Texas town where he grew up, declaring that "anybody could succeed, and everybody deserved a chance" (transcript, Aug. 4). I also remember the West Texas of the late 1950`s and early 60`s, when my family and many other Mexican-American families migrated to the region to pick cotton. I remember the signs on the restaurant windows in Lubbock and other regional towns that warned us, "No Mexicans or dogs allowed." This same region had official policies for segregated schools during the time that Mr. Bush is memorializing. So what does this say about Mr. Bush? That he didn`t know these things were happening? Or that he knows but that they don`t factor into his vision of the past because they didn`t matter?" --Politex, 11.24.03

http://www.bushwatch.com/

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US pays up for fatal Iraq blunders
Over 10,000 claims but families must waive rights

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The US military has paid out $1.5m (£907,000) to Iraqi civilians in response to a wave of negligence and wrongful death claims filed against American soldiers, the Guardian has learned.

Families have come forward with accounts of how American soldiers shot dead or seriously wounded unarmed Iraqi civilians with no apparent cause. In many cases their stories are confirmed by Iraqi police investigations.

Yesterday the US military in Baghdad admitted a total of $1,540,050 has been paid out up to November 12 for personal injury, death or damage to property. A total of 10,402 claims had been filed, the military said in a brief statement to the Guardian. There were no figures given for how many claims had been accepted.

"The US pays claims for personal injury, wrongful death and property damage," it said. "Payments will only be made for non-combat related activities and instances where soldiers have acted negligently or wrongfully."

Commanders make payments from their discretionary funds, rarely even admitting liability. Payouts average just a few hundred dollars and in some cases families have been asked to sign forms waiving their right to press for further compensation. In one area of south-western Baghdad, controlled by the 82nd Airborne Division, an officer said a total of $106,000 had been paid out to 176 claimants since July.

Beyond the initial payments there is little recourse for the families of the dead. No American soldier has been prosecuted for illegally killing an Iraqi civilian and commanders refuse even to count the number of civilians killed or injured by their soldiers.

Iraqi courts, because of an order issued by the US-led authority in Baghdad in June, are forbidden from hearing cases against American soldiers or any other foreign troops or foreign officials in Iraq.

In three separate cases, families have described to the Guardian how their relatives had been killed apparently without cause by American soldiers manning observation posts or patrolling through the streets of Baghdad. In one case a couple were killed in front of their three young daughters when an Abrams tank ran over and crushed their car.

The number of civilian deaths caused by the US since the war remains largely uncounted. In a report last month Human Rights Watch said it had believed 94 civilians were killed in "questionable circumstances" by American troops between May and September 30.

Human Rights Watch concluded that US troops were operating "with impunity. The individual cases of civilian deaths... reveal a pattern by US forces of over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting in residential areas and a quick reliance on lethal force", Human Rights Watch said. "The lack of timely and thorough investigations into many questionable incidents has created an atmosphere of impunity, in which many soldiers feel they can pull the trigger without coming under review."

For the families of the dead, the killings and the lack of legal recourse has provoked a groundswell of opposition to the US military occupation.

In some cases relatives have spoken of their plans to join the growing guerrilla resistance movement to avenge the deaths of their relatives. "I know the American soldiers are not inhumane because I saw them when they first came and they behaved well. But now they have changed and I don`t know why," said Faiz Alwasity, who works for Civic, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, one of the few groups that has helped secure payments for civilian victims of the US military operations in Afghanistan and now Iraq.

"They are becoming more aggressive, maybe because they are frightened. I am afraid this is creating more resistance against them."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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How do we get out of Iraq?
Winning the war was the easy bit. But since the fall of Baghdad the news from Iraq has gone from bad to worse: daily attacks on US troops, mounting public hostility to the occupation, no credible government in sight. So how can Britain and America escape the quagmire? And how can we prevent Iraq descending into violent chaos as soon as the troops pull out? We asked eight experts with very different viewpoints for an `exit strategy`

Continued in part 2

Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The historian - Paul Kennedy
It is difficult for conservatives here in the US not to concede that things have failed to go according to plan in Iraq, but only a few admit that things are a mess. Meanwhile, among the critics of the Bush administration`s "forward school" - ranging from retired army generals through Middle East experts to anti-war radicals - there seems little satisfaction at having been proved correct in their forecasts that it would be harder to get out of Iraq than to kick one`s way in. The situation in Iraq and, perhaps increasingly in Afghanistan, is too serious for schadenfreude. So, as George Bush and Tony Blair conferred last week, it was hardly surprising that the planned ceremonies were overshadowed not just by the mobs of protesters but also by the urgency of the private discussions about what to do next.

The Bush-Blair confab about strategy brought to mind that old tale about the two English gentlemen who had set forth vigorously one morning across the Irish countryside. By mid-afternoon they realised that their maps were faulty and they were well and truly lost. Spotting a peasant at work in his field, they called out: "I say, old chap, how do we get back to Dublin?" The peasant scratched his head thoughtfully and then replied, "Well, if I were you, sirs, I wouldn`t start from here." No doubt the man had good grounds for offering that opinion, but the problem for the two walkers was precisely that they had to start from where they were at the time. And so do the Bush and Blair governments with regard to Iraq.

As they consider the various options of getting from here to there, they are naturally bombarded with all sorts of ideas from the pundits, with calls from congressmen and MPs for solutions, with urgings from allies, and, above all, with reports from the field, usually conflicting in nature. Amid all the slogans and vogue-words tossed around in this cacophony, one is beginning to drown out the rest: the term is "exit strategy" (as in, how to find one).

The sudden return of Paul Bremer, the US-led coalition`s chief administrator of Iraq, to Washington, and the announcement of some form of handover to some form of Iraqi authority by June, has intensified the impression that the Bush team, especially, are looking for a way out. It`s going to be difficult, politically, to get through the Christmas season (yellow ribbons on trees, families encountering their first Christmas without their father or son, images of soldiers still on patrol in Baghdad on Christmas night); but it may be even more difficult if the US electoral campaign unfolds with the two governments still, metaphorically, a long way from Dublin.

One wishes that the term "exit strategy" was not bandied about at all. Although the conservatives deny the comparison, it has deep echoes of Vietnam. Exit strategies from a conflict, such as Napoleon`s retreat from Moscow or the British army heading towards Dunkirk, are often desperate, hand-to-mouth affairs, and full of Clausewitzian frictions. They smell of defeat, and defeatism. Most importantly, the open discussion by one side of various ways of making an exit gives a tremendous morale and propaganda boost to the opposition - all they have to do now is to hang on until the terminus date itself, and sharpen their knives. This is particularly true in the present situation, because there is an image abroad, fuelled by memories of Vietnam, Mogadishu and the first Iraq war, that Americans can`t stand long and costly wars overseas.

Still, some policies are needed to get us out of the Baghdad quagmire. Perhaps the most important notion, of the dozens floating around, is that the steps to recovery cannot follow a rigid Step I, Step II, Step III "road map". Actions have to be taken at various levels simultaneously, in a mutually reinforcing manner, while being realistic enough to understand that progress could be harder at one level and move surprisingly swiftly at another. Several components suggest themselves.

First, the recovery of legitimacy, especially through some form of constitutional recognition by the UN security council of what is to happen. I stress "some form" because the world body can be amazingly flexible when it wants. The Iraq Recovery Programme could be under a temporary UN mandate, but the security system itself need not be a formal UN peacekeeping operation run from New York; it might instead be in the hands of a broad US and British-led coalition of member states plus, of course, Iraq`s own security forces. Despite sniffs from American neo-conservatives, the placing of the UN`s mantle over Iraq has advantages that the State Department and Foreign Office must long for. Internationally, it makes it so much easier for countries such as India, Turkey, Japan, Korea - even Pakistan and Russia - to offer police forces and possibly troops; it takes a lot of pressure off pro-western regimes in the Arab world; and it gives assurances to bodies such as the World Bank and the Red Cross, who have not only worried about the security of their own personnel but also about the propriety of their being in an American-led game at all. Domestically, the UN`s imprimatur will boost those Iraqis striving to create a normal society. No doubt, though, in the short term it will increase the attempts of Saddam`s gangsters to hurt international forces and their collaborators.

This brings us to the second parallel strand: the improvement of personal security, not just for the allied forces but also, and especially, for the Iraqi people.

It is difficult to think how this can be done, at least in the short term, without increasing, rather than decreasing, the number of troops on the ground. Forget, for the moment, the exit strategy. Forget the helicopters. Concentrate on house-to-house and street-to-street visitations, as the British army seems to be doing in Basra. Individual units will be attacked, certainly; but a sense of security has never come though airborne raids alone. Over time, the military patrols may become police patrols; over time, they should be carried out increasingly by the Iraqi forces themselves, though with far better training than the one-week wonders that are being recruited right now.

The third strand is rebuilding the infrastructure. This is not going to happen because of Congress`s recent allocation of $87bn (£51bn), since most of that money goes to pay for American military efforts. It will happen, however, if the international community sees that the Iraqi people have been brought under the aegis of the UN, and that the personnel of the various agencies, NGOs and Iraqi authorities themselves are protected. Around Iraq, in Kuwait, Jordan and elsewhere, these bodies are waiting to go to work. This is why the two requirements listed above need to be in place, because if legitimacy and security are provided without economic, social, educational and infrastructural improvements, they will lose their impact in a short time. Man cannot live on constitutions alone.

And this, the fourth component, is the one the Bush administration has touted above all - that is, a constitution for Iraq - but it cannot survive without the other elements. The idea is fine in principle, although there are many scholars more expert than I in this field who feel that Washington`s "top-down" approach has much less chance of success than a "bottom-up" strategy. Might it not be better to encourage Iraqi self-government at the local and regional level (with Kurdish, Sunni and Shia districts) before writing a national constitution? As it is now, the present set of council members smells too much, rightly or wrongly, of an American puppet show and a rehash of the Founding Fathers` deliberations

There are, I believe, ways to get from here to there. But, above everything else, they involve the end of the hubris and machismo that have prevailed in Washington over the past two years, and the recognition that the road to Dublin goes via the UN and the international community. Above all, it requires less Rumsfeldian "shock and awe" tactics, and much more working with the Iraqi people themselves. Is that totally impossible?
© 2003, Tribune Media Services International

· Paul Kennedy is Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University.



The negotiator - David Owen
All this talk in the press of an "exit strategy" over Iraq is misjudged. What is needed is a "staying strategy" to help the vast majority of Iraqis rebuild their country. We are told by the Bush administration that the US military is not planning to cut and run and is confident the new self-governing Iraqi administration will condone a continued though reduced US military presence. Indeed, it is hard to see how that government could survive the Ba`athist insurgency without US and UK military support.

George Bush looks a more resolute Republican president than his father after freeing Kuwait, or Ronald Reagan removing US marines from Lebanon, and I hope he will not weaken just because of next November`s presidential election. For me, the words "exit strategy" bring back sad memories of when the Clinton administration used the term in exiting from Somalia, not going into Rwanda and for delaying putting troops on the ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

After the Dayton Accords, President Clinton, to his credit, put US troops into Bosnia, and then fortunately reversed his policy of planning for an early exit and became a strong advocate of Nato staying. US Democrats argued for the Bush Republicans to abandon their electoral rhetoric against nation building and US troops are still in Bosnia today, seven years later. Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the successful Dayton Accords, with Bernard Kouchner, the first UN administrator of Kosovo, are wisely against the EU replacing the UN and Nato as a peacekeeping presence on the ground in Bosnia, believing that the US must stay involved. They are also advocating an early political settlement involving independence for Kosovo. It is not an incompatible strategy to argue for continued military support while speeding up self-government and independence. Administration by occupying powers is not sustainable for long.

It would help in Iraq if, as in Afghanistan, a UN special representative could now play a key role in preparing for self-government, in the same way that Lakhdar Brahimi did in Kabul. How the Iraqi people miss the skills and sensitivity of the late UN representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, tragically blown up by Saddam Hussein`s insurgents. The UN could be a real help to Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, in forming the provisional government by July 1 next year. Despite the withdrawal of UN personnel, I hope Kofi Annan will consider the appointment of another representative soon. I hope, too, that Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British representative, will be treated by Bremer as a key figure in establishing the provisional government. This is the area on which Tony Blair should insist with George Bush for co-ownership of the proposals for a provisional government which must be more representative and include tribal leaders.

It is not now possible to draft and ratify a permanent new Iraqi constitution before we need to assemble the provisional government. We should still aim, however, to establish by July a Heads of Agreement on a Constitution, and this must include a commitment to a highly decentralised form of government, almost certainly a federal one. Unlike in the 1920s, the world cannot this time escape its commitment to Kurdish people; realpolitik dictates at the very least the amount of autonomy for the Kurds that they have experienced for the past 10 years under the air-power protection of the no-fly zone imposed by the US and the UK with, initially, the French.

What is happening in Iraq is not the same as in Vietnam in any particular way, except perhaps for the anti-war protest movement in the US, which may grow if there is a build-up of American casualties. For this reason it is important that, well before July, the US military policing activity on the streets is taken over by Iraqi military and police forces. The US military is poor in this role - with a few exceptions, such as the US 82nd Airborne Division on the eastern border with Syria and Jordan.

Where the US and British military have a crucial continuing role is to track down and defeat the insurgents who are clearly operat ing under an Iraqi strategy planned before their defeat by some skilled people wholly committed to continuing down the path of Saddam. Failure to anticipate this represents one more Washington and London intelligence and planning blunder for the aftermath of regime change. There surely cannot be any question of removing our armed forces while Saddam remains at large. Fortunately, in the US it is the powerful neo-conservative lobby who have turned themselves into nation builders and who want Nato involved militarily, and who are not prepared to contemplate defeat or to abandon their commitment to a democratic Iraq.

Sadly, the Democrats look as if they will campaign against the war in Iraq but, one hopes, majority opinion will stay firm. They know Iraq is already a far better place following the removal of Saddam. Second, Bush is the first US president to recognise that we have all been far too complacent about the Middle East`s undemocratic Arab governments. Third, Bush believes - and I think he is right - that we will not obtain peace in the Middle East unless there is a democratic Palestinian state to take its rightful place alongside Israel. Success for the US and UK policies in Iraq will produce major reforms in the Middle East and create the climate for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. If the US and UK fail in Iraq it will further destabilise a Middle East where Saudi Arabia is looking very vulnerable and do immense harm to the cause of peace in Palestine and in Israel.

· Lord Owen was Labour foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979 and was an EU peace envoy during the 1992 Bosnia conflict.

The Iraqi - Mustafa Alrawi
If the coalition really wants to make a smooth exit from a democratic and free Iraq in the next two years, it must first speed up the transfer of power to an elected government. It can do this by drawing up a constitution immediately, based on current Iraqi law. Second, it must commission one of the many companies it has undertaking surveys in the country to carry out a census. Finally, it should set a specific date in 2004 for elections, to be monitored by an independent international committee.

But the coalition has been hampered by its own mistakes. First, the disbandment of the army; second, the policy of de-Ba`athification; and third, above all, the creation of the governing council (GC). This unrepresentative, power-hungry and reactionary body has done a great deal to hold back political progress in Iraq.

Despite plans of a handover and subsequent elections, the GC is not ready to give up its claims on the reins of. If there were elections tomorrow, at best no more than half the GC would be in any representative government. But if the coalition is going to make a success of its venture in Iraq, it has to bite the bullet and let the chips fall where they may. The coalition`s fear of appearing to be an occupying and colonialist force has allowed that fear to manifest itself: in Baghdad, no one speaks of liberation - it is an occupation, if not still a war, in the minds of most Iraqis.

The GC was supposed to be a symbol of the liberation from Saddam and a temporary remedy for the absence of an Iraqi government. But the GC has no mandate. Its ministers are unaccountable to the GC and the people alike. The GC reveals its undemocratic credentials by banning TV networks from Iraq. The people can see this and realise that the GC represents the old regime more than it does the future of Iraq.

If the coalition were to disband the GC tomorrow and scrap plans for another interim body - which is likely to become no more than a "GC redux" - and instead implement elections, real progress could be made.

The current, fast-deteriorating situation demands a bold move, akin to the confident plan to invade Iraq. Even though the creation of a democratic government will not guarantee an end to the attacks on coalition forces, the lack of representation at the highest level - particularly in urban areas, where the tribal structure is not prevalent - means that if an Iraqi has a grievance he has nowhere to turn.

Neither a constitution nor elections are likely to be perfect, but they would at least be legitimate. Fears over security are unfounded. The coalition proved with its successful money changeover that it is able to plan and execute a nationwide security operation to protect sites and locations during a limited period.

Iraqis are thirsting for a chance to participate, and the creation of the GC prevented this. In Baghdad, there are peaceful daily demonstrations outside coalition locations, proving that the population is ready. Such protests are never outside Iraqi institutions because the protesters know who is really running Iraq - and it is not the GC. It is time for the coalition to prove it will hand over power.

Only actions can rescue this depressing spiral towards the breakdown of order. Baghdad has become a city besieged by fear. Coalition locations such as the "green zone" - Iraq`s governmental institutions and the capital`s hotels - have been reduced to sandbagged fortresses behind miles of concrete blocks. The traffic is unbearable, probably losing the faltering economy millions of dinars a day. And the stream of bombings, by insurgents and coalition forces alike, has picked up speed.

If an elected government were in place, it would probably ask the coalition to stay to help anyway. No fledgling Iraqi government could run the country in its first few years without the presence of the coalition. But the onus of responsibility for the country`s security and progress would be in the hands of Iraqis.

However, in this scenario the coalition would be able to reduce the number of troops on the ground, thereby fulfilling its promises to the Iraqi people while also beginning the changeover to a functioning, democratic Iraq.

The creation of a middleman, in the shape of the GC, prevents democracy taking shape. It implies that a foreign occupier can choose the best leaders for the local population and that Iraqis are not ready to make democracy work.

It is true that Iraqis wanted Saddam removed; but they did not want his regime replaced by a mix of the coalition and the GC. The perpetrators of the attacks in Iraq have the luxury of battling a foreign power and a group of unrepresentative people. The nature of the conflict in Iraq would be significantly changed by the existence of an elected government, with a mandate, serving the people. It would be harder for the attackers to justify their cause in such environment. The people would have ownership of the political process and so would resent anyone who wished to upset it.

· Mustafa Alrawi is managing editor of Iraq Today.



The Washington insider - James Rubin
Regardless of one`s view about the wisdom of invading Iraq in the first place, it is crucial that the United States and Britain finish what they started. A premature withdrawal from Iraq would not only harm America`s credibility, but would send absolutely the wrong message to the Iraqi people and the world. It would embolden the foreign terrorists who have come into Iraq in some misguided "jihad" against American forces. It would also mean abandonment of the Iraqi people who have known only either decades of Saddam Hussein`s tyranny or too many months of chaos and instability since the American military intervention.

Clearly, the Bush administration failed in its responsibility to plan for success. Everyone knew that the American military would defeat the Iraqi army. The hard question was: What happens next? Too many in the Bush administration developed a bad case of wishful thinking. They believed that the Iraqi exiles would waltz back into Iraq and be regarded as legitimate leaders. They believed that the Iraqi regular army and police forces would quickly provide stability and security to the country. They believed that Iraqi oil would make the task of reconstruction self-financing. And they imagined that American forces would be regarded as an army of "liberation" as were the soldiers who triumphantly entered France in 1944.

It is the British and American forces on the ground who are suffering from these naive miscalculations. There were adequate warnings that after Saddam fell chaos would ensue. The American state department provided an extensive report to the department of defence detailing precisely the kind of chaos, looting and societal breakdown that has transpired.

With conditions in Iraq deteriorating, there are three fundamental decisions that need to be made. First, what kind of role should the international community play? Second, what is the right force mix needed to defeat the growing insurgency? And third, how quickly should sovereignty return to a provisional Iraqi government?

Providing the right answers to these questions would allow, over time, for a steady reduction in the size of outside forces deployed in Iraq. The end-state we are seeking is that a new Iraqi government is strong enough to provide stability in the country without relying heavily on outside forces and without threatening its neighbours, that some form of representative government has taken root, and that the country will not become a breeding ground for al-Qaida.

The first step is to end the American monopoly over reconstruction and security. We should look to the Bosnia experience as a model. That means a new international authority for Iraq with real decision-making for our European allies and Arab countries prepared to play a role in building a new Iraq. Then, a European - somebody like Bernard Kouchner [former head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo] or Paddy Ashdown - should be given administrative power. Under those conditions, it is reasonable to expect a new attitude from our allies in terms of troop contributions and reconstruction assistance. America has shown its generosity in the form of approving $18bn for reconstructing Iraq. By sharing decision-making powers other countries should be prepared to do far more than they have pledged so far in terms of assistance and should be prepared to consider a major role for Nato in providing security.

Next, sovereignty should be transferred to a provisional Iraqi government in a matter of weeks. There are dozens of elected regional councils now, who should help select a provisional government, including members of the current Iraqi governing council. Such a step would give Iraqis a greater stake in success. The international administrator would work with the provisional government and have veto power similar to that which Ashdown now exercises in Bosnia. The Bush administration has moved in this direction in recent weeks, but their proposal of waiting until next June is still too long. The window for defeating the insurgency before it begins to develop more and more support among the Iraqi people is closing.

Finally, we need to change the mix of America`s forces. Right now, more than 1,000 of the best US intelligence specialists and linguists are focused exclusively on the seemingly fruitless task of uncovering Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The UN inspectors who have not been asked to return are far more experienced at this task and could be quickly assembled and deployed. That would free American intelligence assets to find the sources of the counter-insurgency that has been killing US soldiers, Iraqis, aid workers, UN workers, and allied personnel in brutal terrorist attacks. The current American force should be transformed from heavy units with long and vulnerable logistical supply lines to lighter units, including more special forces and more units that can operate in the way that the British forces are operating in Southern Iraq.

If we choose this path, it should be possible to stabilise Iraq and more quickly isolate those Saddam loyalists and outside foreign forces who are destroying the Iraqi people`s first real chance to establish a representative government. If we achieve this objective in the next several months, then after a new constitution is made, the first freely elected government is chosen (probably in 2005) and a substantial Iraqi military and police force is restored (also in 2005), it may be possible to reduce the outside forces from America and other Nato countries to a minimum presence. But even in this optimistic scenario, some international security presence, including American forces, may well be necessary in Iraq for many years to come.

On the other hand, if the Bush administration continues to "stay the course", as the president insists, the situation in Iraq may continue to deteriorate and some far more painful paths - an early exit with a premature handover to Iraqi forces or a substantial escalation - could be chosen.

· James Rubin was the state department spokesman under President Clinton and senior adviser to secretary of state Madeleine Albright between 1993-2000.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

How do we get out of Iraq? Part 2
Winning the war was the easy bit. But since the fall of Baghdad the news from Iraq has gone from bad to worse: daily attacks on US troops, mounting public hostility to the occupation, no credible government in sight. So how can Britain and America escape the quagmire? And how can we prevent Iraq descending into violent chaos as soon as the troops pull out? We asked eight experts with very different viewpoints for an `exit strategy`

Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The Iraq expert - Said Aburish
Because the march of folly continues, all I-told-you-so gloating is premature. What is at stake in Iraq is saving the world from a cultural confrontation of unimaginable proportions. Far from being an instrument of change committed to creating a democratic Iraq, Bush and the Christian right coalition behind him are an expression of American naivete and cowboy mentality. They have politicised the decisions of the state department and in the process neutralised all their Middle East experts. And in undermining the United Nations they have promoted the use of force to settle international issues.

The Bush administration was poorly prepared for what might follow Saddam Hussein. America`s and its partners` version of what Iraq should be proved unacceptable to the Iraqi people who see the imposition of US political and economic interests as superficial and out of date. Reconciling the desires of both sides is impossible.

Meanwhile, Iraq`s neighbours cannot help because each of them has its own agenda as to the type of Iraq they want. The Arab League, impotent for decades, has no moral authority or political power to alter the situation. And the problem was compounded by the US and the UK deciding to invade Iraq without deference to them.

What can be done? The options are limited. The American-backed governing council bears a striking resemblance to the doomed monarchy the British created. The Hashemite monarchy imposed on the country in 1921 was rejected by the Iraqi people who saw it as a subsidiary of a foreign power, the creation of king-makers in London.

To correct the developing disaster in Iraq, we must replace the people on both sides who are responsible for it. The Iraqi peoples` growing nostalgia for Saddam is the strongest indication that the wrong Americans and Iraqis are running the show. My leading candidate for the chop is Dr Ahmad Chalabi, the American-appointed head of the governing council.

Indeed, Chalabi has to go because he is the man who convinced the White House and department of defence to invade Iraq. Removing Chalabi is easy; because he is relatively unknown to the Iraqi people, and most of those who do know him consider him an agent of a foreign power, a simple act of withholding American support from him would do it. This would please a large segment of the Iraqi people. The Arab governments, all of which reject him because of his pro-Israeli policies, would applaud his removal and might offer America closer cooperation. It would even strengthen the hand of the governing council because its members resent his arrogance. Even Jordan would welcome Chalabi`s departure and feel vindicated. A Jordanian court sentenced him to a long prison sentence for embezzling more than $50m (£29m) from the country`s Petra Bank.

Replacing Chalabi is relatively easy. Adnan Pachachi, former foreign minister and already a member of the governing council, is my candidate to lead a transitional Iraq. A man with an impeccable reputation, he is better known to the Iraqi people. Furthermore, any transitional authority in Iraq should be expanded to include members who would give it greater credibility; people such as Dr Ghassan Atteya, and Dr Abdel Hussein Sha`aban. The first is a non-Ba`athist Arab Nationalist and the second a human rights activist.

If replacing a Tikriti thug with an embezzler hasn`t worked, it is because the real power behind the Governing Council, America`s viceroy in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has perpetuated the lies that were used to justify the invasion. In addition, there is evidence that he continues to mislead the American government regarding the magnitude of the rebellion facing it. His removal would signal American willingness to admit mistakes, accept responsibility and manage properly.

After Chalabi and Bremer, attention should be directed towards the intelligence establishment and the authors of the various reports which misjudged the prospects in Iraq and the Iraqi people. Surely, instead of being praised, the culprits behind this should pay for their misdeeds.

Up the ladder come assistant secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz and national security advisor Condeleeza Rice. Wolfowitz is the man behind the implementation of Chalabi`s self-serving advice. Rice has shown a singular lack of understanding of the Middle East and Iraq. In reality, both have become specialists in repeating Saddam horror stories and both concurred with the decision to dissolve the Iraqi army, arguably the one organisation capable of holding Iraq together.

Because George Bush does not like to admit failure, removing all these people is a tall order. The prospects favour escalation. And the real solution is to remove Bush himself. This requires the type of reporting we saw from the American press which helped to end the Vietnam war. American journalists are under an obligation to tell their people that they continue to be misled. Their problems are with ordinary Iraqis who want to be independent and free and not with Saddam or foreign mercenaries.

· Said Aburish is the author of Saddam Hussein: the Politics of Revenge and A Brutal Friendship: the West and the Arab Elite.



The soldier - Tim Garden
Everyone has views on military strategy these days. As the Iraq invasion began, we all agreed that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This generalisation proved less than accurate. The fighting phase from March 20 until May 1 was completed without any serious setback to the American, British and Australian invading forces. What has been less impressive is the absence of any serious planning options for what to do after the battle was won. Now the universal cry is for an exit strategy.

The strategic aim is clear. The US wants an Iraq that is governed by a friendly government, and one that can act as a stabilising force on potentially difficult neighbours. From such an arrangement they expect benefits for their war on terror, security of oil supplies, forward basing for other military operations, constraints on proliferation, and also improved security for Israel. While the rest of the world had mixed views on the wisdom of the Iraq intervention, most would now sign up to the importance of making post-Saddam Iraq a successful independent stable country, if not necessarily to the American master plan.

Looking at post-cold war interventions, we have not had that much successful experience in building nations from scratch. The Afghanistan approach suggests a useful template. When the major fighting stopped, and the Taliban government had fled, a system and timetable for interim government, constitutional development and eventual elections were agreed with international help. The interim leadership had legitimacy and Hamid Karzai provided a charismatic focus. The process has largely been seen as equitable and participation in the development of a new constitution has been broadly representative. Where Afghanistan has failed has been in the lack of security arrangements beyond Kabul. As a result, warlords have reasserted their power, and they will make the implementation of an agreed constitution far more difficult, and perhaps ultimately less than democratic.

In Iraq, the scale of the security forces has been significantly greater than in Afghanistan. While the situation is not yet satisfactory, local despots cannot yet rule their areas unhindered. What is lacking is the sense of direction towards a new democratic Iraq. The Iraqi governing council is widely seen as an ineffectual creature of the US. While prudence means that the US has tried to include representatives of significant factions, they lack universal legitimacy. Now the US is set to hand power over to this council next July without fussing about a constitution or an election first.

A theoretical task list is not difficult to assemble. The overriding strategic aim must be to return control of Iraq to an Iraqi government which has both internal and international legitimacy. To achieve this aim, a number of enabling requirements will have to be met. Providing adequate security on the ground is important, but not an end in itself. We can regret the blunders of allowing looting in the early days, of changing the coalition leadership, of disbanding the Iraqi army, of inadequate intelligence resources, and of reversals of political timetables. Nevertheless, the insurgency is not so out of control that it needs to delay the key political process. The problem is the trend in violence. Attacks on US forces, international organisations and Iraqi leadership figures are rising. Unless this is reversed, the maintenance of law and order will displace the building of the new Iraq constitution and government as a priority. The new accelerated timetable favoured by the US suggests that time is now running out.

How can the coalition provisional authority hold the security situation? Large increases in troops from outside the country are not available. The US has shown how surprisingly ill equipped it is to sustain even 120,000 troops for more than a year. A transfer from the curious coalition to a Nato-led force would have advantages, but is impractical given the shortage of time and Nato`s increasing task in Afghanistan. Clearly transfer of security tasks to Iraqis is the way ahead, and the belated training of both police and army personnel is a good move. The US will find it uncomfortable to give greater responsibility to its new Iraqi army. There will also be dangers that the new Iraqi security force could become part of a power struggle, if it is not trained and structured to answer to an elected government. As one regional specialist said to me last year: "If you want to keep Iraq together, you will need to find a new Saddam Hussein to run it."

The real danger of either allowing Iraq to fail and break up, or handing control over to an unrepresentative leadership, makes moving the political process forward the most urgent task. There is no longer time to do much about the way the council has been created. It needs to share responsibility for day-to-day management, but it must have a limited time in power. A date for government elections would give the essential spur to the constitutional process. That date might be 12 months from a UN security council resolution which spelled out the constitutional process. In practical terms, we should aim for free elections by spring 2005.

There would be a lot of work to do in the meantime. The development of a constitution must not be the servant either of US desires or of the unelected governing council. The potentially vast sums of money in international aid need to be managed transparently and without favour. The oil revenues will also need clear interim international management. Even with such major moves to internationalise the future of Iraq, the security situation would remain challenging. Both the US and the UK bear a heavy responsibility for the situation, and will have to be prepared to produce the necessary police and army forces to hold the line. Premature announcements of future force reductions do not help. There will be few thanks, but we made the situation, and we had better be prepared to pay the price to sort it out. Once an elected Iraqi democratic government is in place, it will be for it to decide whether it needs continuing military presence from outsiders.

· Sir Tim Garden, currently visiting professor at King`s College London, is a former air marshal who advocated continued containment rather than a rush to war in Iraq.



The defence expert - Dan Plesch
British objectives in Iraq should be based upon an Iraqi policy for Iraq, a more effective international system based on the UN and progress towards peace and democracy in the region as a whole. The main obstacles are the intensifying war between some Iraqis and the coalition, the theft of key sections of the Iraqi economy through overseas ownership of assets and the potential for civil war.

Elections should be called immediately and held within three months. They should have occurred within six months of the fall of Baghdad. Much of the country is still at peace and an electoral process should be possible in most areas. There is no need to wait for a census. People carry ID cards and can have their thumbs marked with indelible ink to prevent repeat appearances.

The myth is that Iraqis need to be educated in democracy. The reality is that since the League of Nations mandate Iraqis have been allowed to take part in fake democracies, first to support a British-backed regime and then to elect Saddam`s sham parliament. Elections were held repeatedly under Saddam. In many parts of Iraq, locally initiated elections have already taken place and provide the momentum for the election of a new government.

Washington`s new willingness to hand over power in seven months is not soon enough and under this plan there will be no elections even then. The coalition, and indeed some Kurdish and Sunni groups, are keen to prevent the Shia majority gaining power. To this end the coalition is trying to encourage ethnic division in the country and is preparing a census that makes people choose an ethnic identity. Simply being Iraqi will not be permitted. Shia domination is impractical without a full civil war, and there is little sign that Shia leaders would act with such suicidal irrationality.

The UN should stand ready to provide a mandate and a command structure for a force sponsored by the Arab League, if requested by the new assembly. Such a UN-commanded force should draw on troops from Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, the Scandinavian states and Canada. It would have four main tasks: apprehending Saddam; suppressing any major outbreak of civil war; enforcing border security; and collecting and destroying the arsenal of left-over weapons.

The continuing war is so far confined to the centre of the country, but even this may escalate to the point that the US is forced to concede authority to the UN. In the Kurdish areas and in the south, the coalition is tolerated, not least because Saddam has not yet been defeated. However, in the centre the attacks on the US are now being met with greater US force. It is far more likely that President Bush will continue to escalate the war than turn tail and run. His reliance on well-paid Iraqi security forces may well work, on the other hand they may be heavily infiltrated and deeply discredited by their relationship with the US.

The Washington Post has reported that Paul Bremer has now created an Iraqi force out of Saddam`s intelligence and security staff. This will further discredit the occupation forces with Iraqis. Against this backgound both the US and the governing council may yet be grateful for a more neutral force that speaks the language.

The international aid policy should apply the medical principle, "first do no harm" and cancel Iraq`s debts. In addition, Iraq should not have to endure an IMF structural adjustment programme. We must not require Iraq to privatise its society and allow its natural resources to be asset stripped. In the second world war, allied soldiers used the term "liberate" as a euphemism for looting and the same is proving to be true today on a grand scale.

More generally, foreign aid is not a high priority. Iraq is a country with rich agricultural land, huge oil resources and a highly skilled population that kept the country functioning through three wars and the UN blockade. In too many cases, aid to developing countries means rich countries subsidising their own businesses and third-rate consultants. Iraqis should not be prevented from owning and controlling the reconstruction effort.

Calming the waters around Iraq is essential to broader stability. Iraq`s future will be linked closely to that of its neighbours and to the broader international environment, and here there are three major issues - the occupation of Palestine, the profusion of armaments and the global guerrilla war being waged by al-Qaida.

Nondiscriminatory enforcement of UN resolutions is essential to undermine support for extremism. This means applying pressure on Israel to comply with the UN security council decisions requiring it to vacate the occupied territories. The invasion of Iraq on the pretext of enforcing the UN`s will only highlighted western racist double standards.

The Bush regime has done more than many previous administration by explicitly backing a Palestinian state but has not followed through. The UK and the EU have some leverage since Tel Aviv sees its economic future tied to the EU. The European Union entrance requirements have provided a powerful influence on Turkey to humanise its policies and this provides a useful precedent for dealing with Israel and its neighbours.

Iraq should be brought into a new regional process of weapons management and elimination. The international security issues surrounding Israel, Iraq and Iran have a strong military dimension. These should not be approached with yet another round of armaments. Rather, the work done at the end of the cold war to control weaponry should be exported to the Middle East. The then Soviet Union, the US and Europe concluded a binding web of agreements that built confidence and organised the destruction of 50,000 tanks, guns and planes.

Most of these agreements were made through the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Cinderella of European security organisations. The OSCE has quietly gone on with resolving countless ethnic disputes across east and central Europe while Nato and the EU were clawing each other`s eyes out over who was most important. Through the OSCE, Europe, Russia and the US have the in-house expertise to extend this security web to the Middle East. The EU can lead by making them part of its regional association agreements.

Behind the scenes, continental foreign ministries have been looking at how to start this process. This type of work programme can provide the base for managing all WMD in the Middle East and South Asia. As part of the process it will be essential to address Israeli nuclear weapons if there is to be any long-term hope of restraining Egypt and Saudi Arabia, let alone putting controls in place in south Asia. This task of controlling WMD is the real challenge of the modern age. Without such a process we are likely to see an independent Iraq wanting nuclear weapons once again.

· Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and also research fellow at Birkbeck College. He is the author of The Beauty Queens` Guide to World Peace, to be published by Politicos next year.

The dissenter - Clare Short
What we should do now in Iraq is what we should have done in the first place. Even after the rush to war and the deceit that went into it, it would have been possible to organise the reconstruction with international legitimacy and cooperation.

The issues go back to international law. Under the Geneva convention and Hague regulations, occupying powers in occupied territory have a duty to maintain order and provide for immediate humanitarian need. They have no authority to convey sovereignty or engage in major institutional reform. UK civil servants took this very seriously. Their advice was that the military should focus on keeping order and the UN should be asked to provide for immediate humanitarian need. A security council resolution should empower a special representative of the secretary general to consult the Iraqis on the best way of bringing into being an interim Iraqi government and a process of constitution building leading to elections. The UN was fully prepared for this role and on this basis the IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank stood ready to advise the interim Iraqi government on a programme of economic reform and development. I had meetings in the margins of the World Bank spring meetings in March with the French, German, Scandinavian and Canadian ministers about how we might all work together on this.

But the US was in no mood to ask the UN for help. The Pentagon had pushed the state department aside and had set up the office for the reconstruction of Iraq in the Pentagon under the retired General Jay Garner. They wanted no part for the UN and were busy squabbling with the state department over who would pick the Iraqis who would form the new government. Incredibly, no responsible preparation was made for the reconstruction of Iraq while these games went on. Tony Blair, in triumphalist mood after a period of enormous tension as he worked to bridge the contradictory promises made to Bush and to Britain, had no interest in listening to the advice of British civil servants or keeping his promises to me. The one thing he understood was that a UN security council resolution would create the legal authority needed to allow the US to proceed as it wished. So the No10 entourage went into intense telephone contact with the White House and agreed a draft security council resolution that British civil servants responsible for reconstruction saw for the first time on the BBC website.

Thus the UN resolution gave legitimacy to coalition power and failed to establish a proper role for the UN. Security council members decided not to risk US wrath by resisting any further. They let the resolution through but this approach made full international cooperation impossible. The secretary general`s special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was given a subservient role to the coalition in creating an interim government. This contrasts with the role of the special representative of the secretary general in Afghanistan, but even for this - or maybe partly because of the UN role in conferring inappropriate power on the occupying powers - the UN compound was bombed and Sergio and many other UN staff killed.

In Iraq the coalition should have focused on keeping order; the Red Cross was fully ready to patch and mend health, electricity and sanitation systems as it had during the war the UN, which had run the Oil for Food programme for years, was ready to resume immediately its humanitarian responsibilities. And with sanctions lifted, a legitimate Iraqi interim authority would have worked with the international community to employ the many educated and capable Iraqis to get the economy moving. The problem was that the US wanted control of the future of Iraq and was therefore unwilling to hand authority to the UN. Now the coalition desperately wants an exit strategy and is therefore promising a handover to an Iraqi government by June 2004 and elections by the end of 2005. The US is also regretting the disbandment of the Iraqi army and very rapidly building up an Iraqi police force.

Obviously the situation is now massively more difficult than it would have been if the reconstruction had been handled correctly from the start. But the real question remains, is the US willing to hand over authority to a representative Iraqi government which is likely to be anti-American and anti-Israeli? If not, the danger parallels the problems experienced with Vietnamisation. Already there is a stream of violent attacks on Iraqis who are working with the coalition.

Those who have consulted local opinion recently say that hostility to the occupation is growing and there is a real risk that the resistance will strengthen. As yet, the Shia community have not joined in significantly - their leadership fully understanding how much they have to gain from democracy. And there are varying reports about the presence of non-Iraqi fighters. But in a region boiling with anger over US support for Israel, it would be very surprising if large numbers of angry young people were not making their way to Iraq.

Thus the situation remains very dangerous and current plans for an exit strategy may not work. There is still an important role for the UK to play - if we could separate our prime minister from the neo-conservative analysis that he has swallowed so completely. If it is true that our major purpose was to relieve the Iraqi people from the suffering inflicted by Saddam Hussein, then we should hand over political authority to the UN and internationalise the support for Iraqi-led reconstruction. This would make possible the run down and replacement of US/UK troops over time and ensure that the future of Iraq is determined by Iraqis.

· Clare Short resigned as international development secretary in the aftermath of the Iraq war.


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Privatisation won`t make you popular
Resistance has forced a military rethink - but not an economic one

Kamil Mahdi
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The war against Iraq began with simultaneous marches by the military and by Bechtel and Halliburton - the corporations coming as planners, consultants, contractors and public accountants all in one. From the outset, the US assumed that Iraq`s public institutions were, at best, superfluous. There was little interest in rehabilitation and reform, let alone empowerment. Instead, key Iraqi establishments were subjected to the command of private US enterprises under cover of a war emergency.

The US corporations were granted protection by the military, while state institutions and public property were left to face the onslaught of a destructive mob. Not for the first time in the history of the Middle East, imperial interference both unleashed and benefited from chaos.

The destruction of Iraq`s public facilities and infrastructure, together with the induced paralysis of its public institutions, has been the Coalition Provisional Authority`s (CPA) path to privatisation in Iraq. Although remaining controversial, privatisation in Britain usually follows a period of reform, commercialisation and institutional strengthening. Moreover, the UK`s financial markets and private sector can sustain a gradual introduction of public stock. None of these conditions applies to Iraq, where privatisation is being imposed by bombing, looting, freezing of assets, random sacking of staff and exposure to unfair competition.

There has been no assessment of the social or economic impact of privatisation, and no alternatives are being considered. Privatisation now appears to be the only policy, as if by default. Severe financial constraints imposed in abnormal circumstances, together with price and foreign exchange measures, will sink the public sector and prepare it for a bargain sale.

Unlike the former Soviet states, Iraq already had a private sector and a strong business culture. A market-oriented reform programme would not find many enemies if it were to support the private sector while rehabilitating the public sector, and if it were to leave the issue of privatisation until the restoration of normality and constitutional government. By the same token, nothing will damage private-sector development and foreign investment more than associating them with a military occupation, cronyism and mass misery.

Paul Bremer`s ideological drive has shocked Iraqis. I was there when the law permitting full foreign business ownership was announced; Iraqis were united in opposition to it. The Iraqi Governing Council, sidelined by the CPA, was severely embarrassed, while the business sector was up in arms over the charade of "consultation". For most people, the law confirmed Iraq`s colonial status.

The allocation of large funds from the US and other countries for reconstruction will not alter the reality that Iraqi institutions, businesses and workers will not be able to direct, develop or benefit from the funds. On the contrary, the money can be seen as a force to undermine the productive and creative capacity of Iraqis, and to clear the way for domination by foreign firms.

Iraqis are keenly aware that those US funds will not be subject to any overall national economic policy. While the so-called "reconstruction" aid will have a few local benefits, its main effect will be to draw skills and resources away from Iraqi institutions and to raise domestic production costs. Iraq is having no say in who spends what, how much and where in its own economy. This could result in a lot of damage and few benefits.

The dangers of the CPA`s policies were also highlighted by Abbas Alnasrawi, of the University of Vermont, who argues that foreign portfolio investment under the prevailing circumstances would lead to capital flight and that the ultimate prize of the neo-conservatives, oil privatisation, would be detrimental to Iraq`s interests.

Oil as a national resource, and a development strategy stemming from that, are at the centre of Iraqi popular aspirations. If the CPA were to break the link between oil and national objectives and denationalise the oil industry, it would unite the Iraqi people in opposition.

Bremer probably knows this, which may be the reason why the US has not rushed into an oil sell-off. However, the neo-conservative project remains on automatic pilot even as resistance is forcing a rethink of military strategy.

Now that the oil-for-food programme has been handed over to US control, the next CPA objective may be the gradual destruction of the ration system that has kept millions of Iraqis from famine for the past 13 years. Again, there is no economic justification for such a move, but the ration system offends free-market sensibilities.

The search for a way out of the US and British military predicament has led to a number of political and security-policy reversals. None of these will bring about stability as long as extremist economic policies continue to be forced upon Iraq by what is widely perceived to be a colonial venture.

· Kamil Mahdi is an Iraqi and lecturer in Middle East economics, University of Exeter

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No regrets or culprits, just cash for series of random killings
American officers are quietly paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to relatives of those killed or injured in arbitrary shootings by troops

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

For more than an hour Siham al-Tamimi has been waiting in a muddy field marked "holding area" at the entrance to an American military base. A forlorn figure, she is surrounded on three sides by barbed wire and sits perched on a small breeze block. She is dressed in black, her head covered with a black scarf, her hands in small black gloves neatly clasped together.

Siham has come, like so many others be fore her, to the headquarters of the Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in south-western Baghdad to understand why American soldiers shot dead her husband 12 days earlier.

In the months since America`s war in Iraq, an uncounted number of ordinary Iraqis have been killed or maimed by the army that boasts daily of its swift "liberation" victory.

The US military has not punished any soldier for shooting an unarmed civilian and refuses even to keep count of the civilians its soldiers kill. Yet for several months now, American officers have been quietly paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to relatives of the dead and injured, offering polite but carefully-worded condolences and promising investigations that lead nowhere.

In a report last month, Human Rights Watch concluded that "US soldiers at present operate with virtual impunity in Iraq" and accused them of over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting and a quick reliance on lethal force.

It found that the US military was not doing enough "to minimise harm to civilians as required by international law". Human Rights Watch collected evidence that the US military killed 94 civilians between May and the end of September in "questionable circumstances. Taken as a whole," it said, "they reveal a pattern of alleged illegal deaths that merit investigation."

It is a largely unreported toll of death and injury, excused by the army`s broad and secret rules of engagement, but one that has pushed many once-accepting Iraqi families into disgust at their occupiers.

Siham`s case speaks volumes of the arbitrary nature of death in the new Iraq. Her husband Sami Shakir al-Safar, 57, was driving home at 9pm on October 31 in his white Volkswagen Passat. In the front seat next to him was Emad, 25, the eldest of the couple`s four sons. In the back was the youngest boy, Ammar, 11.

Sami, a physicist, took his usual route past the al-Dorah police station in western Baghdad. On the roof of the station house, as always, was a team of American soldiers manning an observation post. Without warning, the car came under fire. Two bullets hit Sami in his left side, blasting open a horrific wound in his abdomen. Another bullet hit Emad, badly wounding him and lodging four pieces of shrapnel in his diaphragm.

"We didn`t hear anything before the shooting started," said Ammar, who survived unhurt. "Suddenly we heard a lot of shooting aimed at us. It broke the windshield and hit my father and then it hit Emad." Though he was losing blood fast, Sami managed to drive for a few minutes more before he collapsed over the wheel. Emad, although badly wounded, took over and drove home. "My father tried to walk into the house but he fell down in the garage. Emad walked through the garden but fell when he reached the kitchen," said Ammar.

Shortly after midnight the boys` father died in hospital. Emad survived and is resting at his uncle`s house because his family have not dared tell him his father is dead. No American soldier has come to the house to account for the shooting.

"The Americans came here to eliminate terrorism but they are causing terrorism. That is why they killed a man who wasn`t guilty of anything," said Siham.

First Lieutenant Rafid Azideen, the Iraqi police officer at al-Dorah police station who is investigating the case, said he believes the family was mistakenly targeted and American soldiers fired the lethal shots.

Five mortars were fired at the police station minutes before the shooting, he said. Sami was driving from the approximate direction from which the shells were launched and that may have encouraged the Americans to shoot. "I believe it was the American soldiers who shot from the roof," he said. "There was no one on the roof except them and I know the shots were fired from the roof."

Bullets


Lt Azideen has a large file with witness statements on the case and a piece from one of the bullets which he will send for testing. But he holds out little hope of the case proceeding through the Iraqi courts. He digs out a note written about a similar case in which the local judge said he was powerless to rule on a case against the US military. Order number 17 imposed this year on June 28 by the Coalition Provision Authority, the US-led civil administration, grants the "coalition forces" immunity from Iraqi courts.

Back at the 82nd Airborne`s base Siham is eventually taken inside to meet Captain Patrick Murphy, a trained lawyer and the prosecutor for the Second Brigade. He asks for sworn witness statements and promises that his own investigation will follow. "We have been very responsive to people`s claims," he says. "But there are two sides to every story."

More than 900 claims have been filed with the brigade, which is responsible for 1.5 million people in the al-Rashid district of Baghdad. Since July, Capt Murphy has paid out an astonishing $106,000 (£62,500) in 176 different cases. Payments are given for damage to cars and houses, injury and death. The money frequently covers little more than the cost of the traditional three-day funeral ceremony. Only rarely does the army admit any liability. As Siham turns to leave, Capt Murphy tells her: "I am sorry for your loss, madam."

Helping Siham with her case is Faiz Alwasity, 41, a former pilot with Iraqi Airways, who now works for the aid group Civic, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which has won assistance for civilian victims of US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is working on dozens of similar cases and is deeply distressed by what he has seen.

"This hurts a lot. I know the American soldiers are not inhumane because I saw them when they first came and they be haved well," he said. "But now they have changed and I don`t know why. They are becoming more aggressive, maybe because they are frightened. I am afraid this is creating more resistance against them."

Privately senior American officers say the rules of engagement are so broad that troops know they will not face punishment even if civilians are accidentally killed as a result of their gunfire. In the face of a mounting guerrilla insurgency, commanders have gone to great lengths to defend their soldiers` aggressive conduct. This week Major General Chuck Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, heaped undiluted praise on his men. "At one moment they are a warrior and the next they are the most compassionate individual on the face of the earth," he said.

Yet the view from so many Iraqi families is disturbingly different. In some cases grief has spilled over into anger and threats of revenge. On October 24 at around 3pm Mohammad Kahdum al-Jurani was driving home with his wife Hamdia and their three young daughters, Bara`a, 21, Fatima, seven and Ayat, five. Again the family were in an old Volkswagen Passat. As they drove down a main highway in western Baghdad, an American Abrams tank suddenly drove out across the lanes of traffic and crushed their car. Mohammad and his wife were both killed and the three girls were seriously injured. Outside their house the twisted wreckage of the car is testament to the crushing force of the impact.

Again a police investigation has confirmed the family`s account of the incident. Sargeant Ali Tariq, at Khadra police station, was at the scene as the bodies were being pulled from the car. He believes the incident was triggered when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a tank near the highway. A second tank positioned across the road raced over to help, bursting through the metal crash barrier in the centre of the road and straight over the family`s car. "I am quite sure what happened. I spoke to the witnesses and I saw the tracks of the tank in the road," said Sgt Tariq. "The tank didn`t see the car and it just smashed over it and left them there."

Mohammad`s son Uday, 31, is left to care for his three sisters. As he describes the accident, young Fatima, her leg broken in the accident, is lying on the floor in the front room of the family house, surrounded by dolls given by friends and relatives. Again no American soldier has been to the house to account for the deaths. "We were hoping a big change would come to Iraq and that things would be better," said Uday. He talks quietly and coherently, but only just holds back a fierce and mounting anger. "Now I am thinking of some kind of revenge. The Americans know very well they made a big mistake and killed innocent people but they didn`t even come to apologise. I am not going to stay silent."

Such anger is common and little eased by the condolences reluctantly offered and the money paid out by the military.

In Aadhamiya, a northern suburb of Baghdad, Faiz Alwasity has helped another family secure a $11,000 payment from the First Brigade of the US Army`s First Armoured Division.

Adil Abdul Karim al-Kawaz, his son Haider, 19, and daughters Uda, 17, and Mervet, eight, were shot dead by an American unit as they drove down the road leading from their house. The unit had been called into the area on the evening of August 7 and had positioned their vehicles at one end of the street as part of an operation. There was no checkpoint and no warning before the family car was riddled with bullets. Only Adil`s wife, Anwar, who was pregnant with her son Hassan at the time, and her remaining daughter Hudail, 14, survived the attack.

Payment


After weeks of negotiations with the US military, the local council and a sheikh from a nearby mosque, Anwar, 34, eventually received the payment. The military asked her to sign a document giving up her rights to future legal action but she adamantly refused. She still guards in her purse the printed receipt she was given on September 24. It describes the money as a "Solatia payment from Cerp," meaning no liability was admitted and that the money came from the local commander`s discretionary funds, the Commanders` Emergency Response Programme. The receipt showed the money was ordered by a Captain Casey Doyle and paid out by a Captain Robert Brewer.

For Anwar, the payout appears to have fuelled her resentment. The $11,000 was only a little more than she had already spent on the traditional, three-day mourning ceremony for her husband and three children.

"They said there was no mistake, just that it was their bad luck that they were driving there at the time," she said. "What kind of logic is that? They killed our family. Even if I was to receive a lot of money it is not going to compensate for the souls of my family. But if the same incident had happened in America how would they behave and what kind of compensation would they pay for an innocent family? Is this what a human being in Iraq is worth?"



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Scary and scandalous
Leader
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The US administration`s defence authorisation bill for fiscal year 2004 was signed into law by George Bush this week. In all, it totals $401.3bn. Amazingly, this figure does not include one-off appropriations for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan of approximately $150bn. Overall US defence expenditure under Mr Bush is at record levels. It is higher, in relative terms, than equivalent, average American spending during the cold war years when a hostile Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact confronted the US and its allies with thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on land, at sea and in the air, as well as chemical and biological weapons and vast conventional forces. Yet Mr Bush suggested that terrorism now represented the most potent threat in the history of the US. "The war on terror is different than (sic) any war America has ever fought," he said. "This threat to civilisation will be defeated. We will do whatever it takes." So much for the peace dividend.

Mr Bush`s knowledge of history is not a matter that should detain us here, no more than is the meaning in this context of the word civilisation which, like Jack Straw, he presumably uses "advisedly". It is clear that Mr Bush senses a very great menace; and that he will take every opportunity between now and the next election to tell American voters how much they have to fear. This is an unusually disconcerting, manipulative message. His campaign slogan could almost be: "Vote for Bush. It`s really scary".

Whatever the actual, unexaggerated threat level may be, some elements of the defence bill are really scary, too - or just plain scandalous. They include exemptions for the military from provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Apparently unpatriotic dolphins and various pacifist fish have been thoughtlessly obstructing training exercises. The bill gives $9.1bn for the further development of Mr Bush`s "Star Wars" global ballistic missile defence wheeze. And it authorises spending on research into a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons, so-called "mini-nukes" and "bunker-busters" that, if built, will make nuclear warfare both more doable and more likely. This project breaches the spirit if not the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which, in a developing world context, the US righteously and noisily insists upon. It is itself a potentially egregious act of proliferation. Japan, the world`s only nuclear victim so far, protested yesterday that the future US deployment of such weapons is "something which cannot be allowed". Yes, but can it be stopped?


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Law lord castigates US justice
Guantanamo Bay detainees facing trial by `kangaroo court`

Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

A senior law lord last night delivered a scathing attack on the US government`s and the American courts` treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, branding it "a monstrous failure of justice".

Lord Steyn, one of the most senior judges in Britain`s highest court, described the military tribunal for trying the detainees as a "kangaroo court".

The term, he said, implied "a pre-ordained arbitrary rush to judgment by an irregular tribunal which makes a mockery of justice". He asked whether the British government should not "make plain, publicly and unambiguously, our condemnation of the utter lawlessness" at Guantanamo Bay.

Delivering the FA Mann lecture at Lincoln`s Inn in central London, Lord Steyn added: "Trials of the type contemplated by the United States government would be a stain on United States justice. The only thing that could be worse is simply to leave the prisoners in their black hole indefinitely."

Lord Steyn said it was a recurring theme in history "that in times of war, armed conflict, or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis. Often the loss of liberty is permanent".

Judges were often too deferential to the executive even in peacetime. He regarded it as "a monstrous failure of justice" that so far the US courts had decided they could not even consider credible medical evidence that a detainee had been or was being tortured.

The Red Cross had described the camp at Guantanamo Bay as principally a centre of interrogation rather than detention. Officials had been reported as saying that the techniques of interrogation were "not quite torture, but as close as you can get".

"The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors," Lord Steyn said.

"The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess," he went on. "On the contrary, the rules expressly provide that statements made by a prisoner under physical and mental duress are admissible `if the evidence would have value to a reasonable person`, ie military officers trying enemy soldiers."

Lord Steyn said the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had no access to the writ of habeas corpus to determine whether their detention was even arguably justified. The military would act as interrogators, prosecutors, defence counsel, judges and executioners. Trials would be held in secret, with none of the basic guarantees for a fair trial.

The jurisdiction of the US courts was excluded. The military controlled everything, subject to decisions of the president even on guilt or innocence in individual cases, as well as sentences. President Bush had already described the prisoners as "killers".

The concession extracted by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, that the British detainees would not face the death penalty, gave a new dimension to the concept of "most favoured nation" treatment, he said. "How could it be morally defensible to discriminate in this way between individual prisoners? It lifts the curtain a little on the arbitrariness of what is happening at Guantanamo Bay and in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic."


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Ku Klux Klan shoots itself in the head
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

The Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacy group notorious for its lynchings of black people and those who favoured desegregation, has scored a spectacular own goal. One of its members has been critically injured after being struck by a bullet fired into the air during a Klan initiation ceremony.

While the organisation is more a subject of ridicule than fear these days, it still has members and still holds initiation ceremonies. The latest took place in Johnson City, Tennessee, the state where the Klan was formed in 1866 by veterans from the Confederate forces.

About 10 people were present at the ceremony, in which a new member was blindfolded, tied to a tree and shot with paint pellets of the kind used by management training groups to build team spirit. In order to give the event a more dramatic feel, one member, Gregory Freeman, 45, fired a real pistol with live ammunition straight up into the air.

It would appear that the Klan, always dismissive of the laws that entitled all citizens to vote and receive an education, also has little respect for the law of gravity. The bullet, having gone straight up in the air came straight down and straight through the head of Jeffrey Murr, 24. It went through his skull, leaving him in critical condition.

Mr Freeman left the scene but was later arrested by police at his home. He has been charged with reckless endangerment and aggravated assault and released on bail.

The Ku Klux Klan held its inaugural meeting at Pulaski, Tennessee. The first gathering of Klan groups was held in Nashville in 1867. The group, infamous for its costume of sheets and pointed headgear and for leaving flaming crosses outside the homes of targets, was a dangerous and powerful force in southern politics for many years and was responsible for countless murders.


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How the world is getting hungrier each year
`War on hunger` is being lost as drought and natural disasters continue to exact a terrible toll in some of the world`s poorest nations
By Paul Vallely
26 November 2003


I have never forgotten my first experience of ordinary life in an African village. I had been in Ethiopia, covering the terrible famine of 1985, with its haunted lines of starving, blank-eyed faces, sitting waiting for death. But I had not been to an ordinary village.

Not long after, I travelled to Sudan where drought had also shrivelled the land. Halfway to the famine area our four-wheel- drive stopped to refuel. There by the roadside in the parched scrub was a dusty straw-thatched hut. Outside a family was huddled around a meagre fire made from a handful of sticks. The children had swollen bellies and thin limbs. The mother was cooking a single piece of flat bread which was the entire meal for the whole family. "Why didn`t you tell me we were in the famine area already," I said to my guide.

He laughed. "That`s not famine," he chided. "That`s just ordinary life in Africa. Being hungry is normal."

The world is getting hungrier, according to a report issued by the United Nations food agency yesterday. After a decade of improvements for the planet`s poor, things have taken a serious turn for the worst. Hunger, which fell steadily throughout the first half of the 1990s, is on the rise again.

Across the world an estimated 842 million people are today undernourished - and that figure is again climbing, with an additional 5 million hungry people every year. The figures, says the report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) "signal a setback in the war on hunger". The prospect of cutting by half the number of people who go hungry - the target set by the world`s governments in 1996 - looks "increasingly remote".

The shocking thing about this is that, in the world of the politics of aid, at any rate, nobody is shocked.

The report tries to put on a brave face. "First some good news," it begins, reporting that the number of chronically hungry people has declined by 80 million in 19 countries, including Brazil, Chad, Guinea, Namibia and Sri Lanka.

So why is the picture so grim everywhere else? The number of those going hungry in India has risen by 19 million since 1995-97, and yet China has reduced its figure by 58 million since 1990-92. "We must ask ourselves why this has happened," says the FAO director-general, Jacques Diouf, in his introduction.

Those who have bucked the trend share five characteristics, he concludes - faster economic growth, rapid expansion in the agricultural sector, slower population growth, lower rates of HIV infection and far fewer natural emergencies.

"The role of capital is decisive," said Hartwig de Haen, assistant director of the FAO`s economic and social department in Washington. "Investment in agriculture is a precondition for growth in incomes of the poor and the food supply," he said.

Yet such investment has been declining. Rich countries must put more cash into the agriculture sectors of poor countries. It must, he said, "go back to the level where it was in the early Nineties".

If only it were so simple. The truth is that the 19 nations who have bucked the trend have not been the authors of their own good fortune.

They have been lucky not to have experienced the high levels of droughts and natural disasters that have increasingly afflicted the Third World over the past decade.

Nor have domestic politics had much influence over rates of population growth, which tend to be determined fairly directly by levels of poverty - the worse things are, the more children you need to look after you in your old age.

Nor have many poor nations been able to manage their Aids epidemics in the way the rich world has with its new drug regimes. It is easy for us in the First World to forget the scale of the ravages of Aids - which has killed some 25 million people in the poor world. In this decade it will claim more lives than all the world`s wars and disasters of the past half- century. Aids takes a terrible economic toll; it kills off farmers in their prime and leaves behind young orphans and aged parents - mouths with no one to feed them.

Neither is it a coincidence that those countries most dependent on agriculture are those with the most hunger. Increasing the amounts of flowers and strawberries grown for export near Third World airports may help the balance of payments, but it does little for pastoral and subsistence agriculture in remoter rural areas. The economics of globalisation are that the very poorest get poorer still. There are some places to which wealth just never trickles down.

There is gloomy evidence of this in the report. "At least half the higher prices received for exports went not to farmers but traders," it notes, "and there was no increase in production in response to the higher prices". Worst still, it adds, "prices are expected to rise more steeply for food products that developing countries import than for the commodities they export.

"Overall," it predicts, "the lion`s share of benefits from trade liberalisation is expected to go to developed countries."

This will surprise no one. The report repeats the familiar statistic that the West spends 30 times more on domestic farming subsidies than it does on aid. It catalogues how the US spends $3.9bn (£2.3bn) a year subsidising its 25,000 cotton farmers - more than the entire GDP for Burkina Faso where 2 million people depend on cotton for their livelihood. Europe is now the world`s second- largest sugar exporter even though EU sugar costs twice as much to produce as does that of Third World peasants.

Yet the harsh truth is - as the failure of the World Trade Organisation round in Cancun brutally showed - the industrialised world has abandoned any pretence that trade negotiations are anything to do with development.

Set against the scale of such large problems and political intransigence, the triumphs the report charts are small by comparison.

In Brazil, President Lula da Silva has launched a Zero Hunger project, with electronic cash cards for needy families and subsidised food in schools, workplaces and "people`s restaurants", all linked to work and literacy incentives. In Vietnam great steps forward have been taken through nutrition education with poor families being schooled in a "coloured bowl" to encourage the right mix of rice, vegetables, meat and fish. But in much of Africa and Latin America the wherewithal is not there for such schemes. It is there that the vast majority of those 842 million people go to bed hungry at night - though interestingly 34 million of them are in the former Soviet Union countries, and 10 million even in the rich industrialised world.

Halving hunger was not the only Millennium Development Goal agreed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1992. There were also to be swingeing attacks on child mortality, illiteracy and education discrimination against girls. There were targets on aid levels, environmental sustainability and creating greater access to world markets for the products of the poorest countries. On most of these the rich world`s promises are slipping too.

"Bluntly stated," the report concludes, "the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will". Bluntly stated, the problem is that none of us really cares.

An undernourished planet

THREE IMPROVING COUNTRIES

Brazil
Luiz Lula da Silva, the President, pledged to eradicate hunger by the end of his four-year term. The number of undernourished Brazilians has fallen from 12 per cent in 1990 to 9 per cent in 2000, thanks to food aid, more jobs and higher income from food production.

Bangladesh
Cyclone-plagued, flood-drenched, over-populated and penniless, Bangladesh was the international byword for disaster. But now, with higher remittances frommanual workers in the Gulf and a booming garments industry, growth of more than 5 per cent is forecast next year.

Vietnam
In the past 20 years Vietnam has achieved what the UN calls "remarkable" success. In 1979 a third of the population was undernourished; now it is about one fifth. One of the biggest factors has been a national programme encouraging families to grow vegetables and fruit, combined with education on balanced meals.

THREE DECLINING COUNTRIES

Guatemala
A combination of a weak economy perpetuated by years of political instability, a series of natural disasters, including hurricanes and droughts, and the belief among donors that poverty in Central America is not as bad as in Africa or Asia has left Guatemalans growing hungrier.

India
India reduced the number of malnourished people by 20 million from 1990-92 and 1995-97, but the number subsequently rose by 19 million. Population growth and unemployment often offset well-intentioned government programmes. Half of all children in India under four are malnourished.

North Korea
Struggling to recover from a famine in the mid-1990s caused by natural disasters and mismanagement. In 1990-92 18 per cent of the population was malnourished. By 2001 it was 34 per cent. About 6.5 million people will depend on aid to survive next year.
26 November 2003 10:14


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 26, 2003
U.S. Rescinds Part of Loan Guarantees to Israel
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration, in a rare rebuke to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has decided to rescind $289.5 million in American-backed loan guarantees for Israel as a punishment for illegal construction activities in the West Bank, the Israeli Embassy announced Tuesday.

An embassy spokesman in Washington said Israel had accepted the reality that some of its construction activities in the West Bank were inconsistent with American policies and had agreed to deduct the $289.5 million from the $3 billion in loan guarantees that was due to Israel this year.

Although it was the United States that took the action on the loan guarantees, the announcement was pointedly made by Israel. After the Israeli statement, a White House spokesman said the Bush administration welcomed what Israel had done, and expressed gratitude for its acknowledgment that its activities in the West Bank were inconsistent with American policy.

Further, the White House maintained, Israel`s agreement on the guarantees represented the "close and continuous cooperation" between the countries — a statement reflecting the extreme political sensitivity in Washington to taking any action that might upset American supporters of Israel.

The agreement on the figure was worked out during the day at a meeting between top Bush administration officials and Dov Weisglass, chief of staff for Mr. Sharon.

Bush administration officials have said that the decision on cutting the loan guarantees was made in principle some months ago, but that an exact number had been held up because of disagreements with Israel over how much of the activity in the West Bank was subject to American review as required by law.

As enacted by Congress, aid to Israel is governed by a requirement that the loan guarantees must be reduced by whatever amount Israel spends on settlements in the West Bank, where an American-backed peace plan envisions a Palestinian state to exist eventually.

Earlier this year, Congress authorized a total of $9 billion in loan guarantees over three years. The $289.5 million would be deducted from the first round.

American and Israeli officials note that the amount of money Israel would be sacrificing is actually quite small. Without the guarantees, Israel would probably be able to borrow the money at a somewhat higher interest rate, costing it somewhere in the range of a few million to several million dollars.

The decision on the loan guarantees ends a period of uncertainty and contention between American and Israeli officials, but the issues at the center of the disagreement are certain to remain.

There was no specification, for instance, of exactly what activities the latest action was intended to punish.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 26, 2003
Army Says Troop Rotation Into Iraq Poses Increased Danger
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Senior Army officers have told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the rotation of more than 100,000 soldiers into Iraq early next year will present a great risk for American forces, with officials saying they must prepare for a surge in attacks on troops who may be more vulnerable during the transition.

The worry, according to Pentagon and military officials, is based on a number of factors, including a temporary increase in the number of troops present in Iraq during the rotation and the prospect that they will be traveling across unfamiliar territory before reaching more secure bases.

"There will be a lot of movement, a lot of forces in transit," one Army officer said. "This raises serious force protection issues for us."

While recognizing these risks, American commanders in Iraq say proper planning could result in significant advantages that could help offset the dangers.

According to Pentagon and military officials, commanders are planning to take advantage of the overlap of arriving and departing soldiers, which offers a natural, if temporary, increase in troop strength without the politically contentious process of requesting additional forces.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of American and coalition forces in the region, is said by senior Pentagon officials to be well into planning for new operations intended to help stabilize Iraq and to capture or kill anti-American fighters during the rotation period. Officers declined to discuss specific plans being considered.

During the troop rotation, which will take place roughly from February to May, more than 105,000 troops will flow into Iraq to replace the current deployment of about 130,000.

A senior Pentagon official said that during planning discussions for the rotation, Mr. Rumsfeld was told by senior officers that "the more American forces you have over there, the more targets the other guys have."

This issue, the official said, "was raised in all of its context: What happens when you have that many more U.S. forces? What are the opportunities? What are the risks?" Senior military officers expressed concerns "not as a warning, but said it is definitely a factor," the Pentagon official added.

Those worries did prompt the Army to begin a series of tabletop simulations to plan for protecting American forces during the rotation, Army officers said.

Military analysts outside the Pentagon added another cautionary note, pointing out that the rotation comes during the presidential primary season, which may allow anti-American forces to think they can influence American politics.

Guerrilla insurgencies "are ultimately about affecting political will," said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area policy research center.

Even as the White House and Pentagon describe plans for decreasing American troop numbers by spring as driven by military requirements and not domestic politics, anti-American forces are aware of the election cycle and probably hope their violence will diminish support for the effort in Iraq, Mr. Thompson said.

"They see their attacks as a potentially significant issue for the president`s re-election," he said.

The bulk of the new troops will first gather at bases in the region outside Iraq, where they will become acclimated to the terrain and weather and join up with their heavy equipment before entering Iraq.

Plans then call for arriving units to overlap with those they replace, conducting joint missions.

American military officers in Iraq have spent considerable time, effort and money to establish relationships with civic and religious leaders in their areas of responsibility, and passing those ties on to successors is a priority.

"This overlap time will let them learn the lay of the land, meet the local contacts and continue those relationships established by the current force," one officer said. "A `hands-on hand-off` is better than a briefing book."

Another challenge for commanders of troops now on the ground is to maintain the combat focus of soldiers eagerly awaiting their departure day. For commanders of those troops arriving in Iraq, the challenge is to bring them quickly to full readiness in a new and unfamiliar environment, officers said.

The coming rotation is described by senior Army officers as the largest American troop movement in such a time frame since World War II.

Senior Pentagon officials said Tuesday that Mr. Rumsfeld was readying another set of alert orders for reservists to prepare for possible duty in Iraq next year, and that 2,000 to 3,000 additional active-duty marines might also be added to the rotation of forces entering Iraq next year.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq
Ayatollah`s Call for Vote Forced Occupation Leader to Rewrite Transition Strategy

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 -- The unraveling of the Bush administration`s script for political transition in Iraq began with a fatwa.

The religious edict, handed down in June by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq`s most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, called for general elections to select the drafters of a new constitution. He dismissed U.S. plans to appoint the authors as "fundamentally unacceptable."

His pronouncement, underestimated at first by the Bush administration, doomed an elaborate transition plan crafted by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that would have kept Iraq under occupation until a constitution was written, according to American and Iraqi officials involved in the process. While Bremer feared that electing a constitutional assembly would take too long and be too disruptive, there was a strong desire on his own handpicked Governing Council to obey Sistani`s order.

With no way to get around the fatwa, and with escalating American casualties creating pressure on President Bush for an earlier end to the occupation, Bremer recently dumped his original plan in favor of an arrangement that would bestow sovereignty on a provisional government before a constitution is drafted.

Bremer`s unwillingness to heed the fatwa until just a few weeks ago may have delayed the country`s political transition and exacerbated popular anger at the occupation, Iraqi political leaders said.

"We waited four months, thanks to Bremer," said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We could have organized this [transition] by now had we started when Sistani issued his fatwa. But the Americans were in denial."

People familiar with the discussions among U.S. officials about the fatwa said American political officers were too isolated to grasp the power of the edict right away, assuming that secular former exiles backed by the U.S. government would push Bremer`s plan. Even when Sistani`s clout became clear, they said Bremer remained reluctant to rework his transition plan right away. "He didn`t want a Shiite cleric dictating the terms of Iraq`s political future," one U.S. official with knowledge of the process said.

U.S. officials said it took months even for Iraqis to grasp the influence of Sistani`s fatwa. Bremer`s deputies also hoped the edict could be countered by statements from other Shiite clerics supporting approaches other than general elections, but few of those materialized.

"What we thought was necessary was for there to be a broad consultation to find out what the Iraqi public wanted," said one official involved in the political transition. "In hindsight," another official added, "we should have done it differently."

Who Would Draft Constitution?


Sistani is a frail man with a black turban, a snowy beard and unquestioned clout among Iraq`s Shiite majority. Born in Iran but schooled in Iraq, he lives in the holy city of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. Although he works out of a modest office on a decrepit alley, he has enormous authority to interpret Islamic law in everyday life.

During the years former president Saddam Hussein was in power -- when the government deemed activist Shiite clerics subversive and ordered many of them killed -- Sistani remained largely secluded from politics. Even after Hussein`s government was toppled in April, Sistani shied away from political pronouncements and public appearances.

At the end of June, when Arab satellite television networks erroneously reported that Iraq`s constitution would be written by American and British experts, Sistani broke his silence. In a two-page fatwa issued on June 28, he declared that he would only support a constitution written by Iraqis chosen through a general election, not by a council selected by the Americans.

The fatwa declared: "There is no guarantee that the council would create a constitution conforming with the greater interests of the Iraqi people and expressing the national identity, whose basis is Islam, and its noble social values."

In Baghdad, Sistani`s pronouncement did not raise immediate alarm among U.S. officials. Bremer`s aides assumed the fatwa would be revised or rescinded once they told Sistani how difficult it would be to hold elections right away. There were no voter rolls, constituent boundaries or electoral laws. "There is simply no way to conduct national elections today," Bremer said at the time.

Bremer also feared that elections would create too much uncertainty. The Bush administration wanted an orderly process it could control, including a constitution that would be a model for its efforts to democratize the Arab world, enshrine individual rights, and establish a secular government, religious freedom and equality of the sexes. Bremer believed that holding a vote before political parties had time to establish themselves would result in Baathists and Islamic extremists, the two best-organized forces in the country, dominating the outcome.

Speaking to reporters a few days after the fatwa was issued, Bremer expressed confidence that he would be able to implement "a process that produces a constitution that meets the general concerns that I understand Ayatollah Sistani mentioned."

Bremer was vague about how the authors would be selected. At the time, his aides privately said Iraqi political leaders and Americans would select the writers. But he pledged that the document was "not going to be written by the United States. It`s not going to be written by the British. It`s not going to be written by the U.N. It`s going to be written by Iraqi people."

Overtures to the Ayatollah


Hoping to change Sistani`s mind, political officers with the occupation authority sought a meeting. But every overture was met with a polite rebuff. "He didn`t want it to look like he was cooperating with the Americans," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council who is close to Sistani.

By early July, Bremer had shifted focus to formation of the council, a 25-member body composed of American allies and political neophytes. In last-minute negotiations before the council was named, the prospective members demanded more authority for a variety of issues, including the drafting of a constitution. As a compromise, Bremer offered to let them form a commission that would identify the best way to select the drafters.

Soon after the council was formed, Bremer asked leaders of the country`s largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to meet with Sistani to see if a compromise could be reached on the constitution, said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, director of the party`s political bureau. He said the party`s leader at the time, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was killed in an August car bombing in Najaf, talked to Sistani about backing away from the fatwa.

"We told Bremer there was no hope for compromise," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Ayatollah Sistani was firm in his position."

Bremer`s Power Challenged


Upon hearing back from Abdel-Mehdi and other intermediaries, Bremer and his aides figured there was still a way to reach a compromise. They talked about recruiting other ayatollahs, such as Hakim, to issue statements warning about the dangers of immediate elections, U.S. officials familiar with the process said. And they sought to hammer out a middle-ground solution with Governing Council members, the officials said.

"There was still a lot of confidence we would find a way around the fatwa," one U.S. official said.

By August, after lengthy discussions, American political officers and several council members settled on the idea of a "partial election." Instead of allowing anyone to stand as a candidate and having to compile voter rolls for general elections, the occupation authority would organize caucuses in each governorate, or province, that would be limited to political, religious, tribal, academic and trade union leaders as well as other influential local figures approved by the Americans. The caucus would select the drafters of the constitution.

Although holding caucuses would take longer than directly appointing the authors, Bremer accepted the idea, as did several influential members of the Governing Council. "It was the ideal compromise," said council member Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy. "The process would be more democratic, but it would avoid the problems of a general election."

Despite their confidence, they had no idea what Sistani thought of the plan. The ayatollah remained silent.

In mid-August, the Governing Council selected a 25-member constitutional commission that began discussing ways to choose the drafters. Composed of lawyers, judges and academics, the commission held meetings with influential figures around the country, including Sistani.

What they heard in their meetings was strong support for general elections, several commission members recalled. In their conversation with Sistani, the commission did not even broach the idea of partial elections, said law professor Hikmat Hakim, one of the commission members.

"We told him his fatwa would be respected," Hakim said. "We didn`t ask him about the partial elections."

On Sept. 8, the commission voted 24 to 0 to endorse general elections. "It was very difficult, if not impossible, to disregard the fatwa of Ayatollah Sistani," said Yass Khudier, another commission member.

Concerned that a unanimous endorsement of general elections would interfere with Bremer`s timetable to wind up the occupation by the end of 2004, U.S. officials grew impatient and urged the council to press the commission for a compromise. "We told them to come up with other ideas," one council member said. "We told them to consider partial elections."

When the commission submitted its final report to the council on Sept. 30, it failed to resolve the impasse. The panel suggested the same three approaches that everyone had been talking about -- direct appointment, partial elections and general elections -- without choosing one of them.

As the report was being completed, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought to push the council to endorse partial elections, saying Iraqis should be given a six-month deadline to complete their constitution. Members bristled. "It was an unreasonable demand," said Dara Noureddine, the council`s liaison with the commission. "We needed time to achieve consensus."

But consensus was elusive. The council had split into two factions. Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds and some moderate Shiites, such as Ahmed Chalabi, favored the partial elections. Other traditionalist Shiite groups, among them the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and the Dawa party, cited Sistani`s fatwa as a mandate and insisted on general elections.

"We felt elections were the only legitimate way to proceed," the Supreme Council`s Abdel-Mehdi said. His party and several other Shiite council members told Bremer that they would not be able reach a consensus on partial elections.

Bremer refused to give up. He chafed at the idea that a cleric would be able to dictate Iraq`s democratic transition. "Is the political structure of Iraq going to be in the hands of one man?" Bremer said to a group of visitors in October.

He urged the council`s five traditionalist Shiites to try to persuade Sistani to support partial elections, said Rubaie, one of the five. Rubaie said he met with Sistani in October and explained the problems with general elections and the benefits of partial elections. Sistani was unmoved, Rubaie said. "He would not have it."

Shortly thereafter, Sistani delivered his first public pronouncements on partial elections. In written comments provided to The Washington Post, he said there could be "no substitute" for a general election.

Fatwas from other clerics in support of partial elections never materialized. Nobody wanted to take on Sistani.

Occupation Chief Yields


Shiite political leaders insisted an election could be organized in less than six months using food-ration rolls as a voter registry. But Bremer and his aides dismissed that, insisting an election could not be pulled off in less than two years.

But as U.S. military casualties escalated, Bremer and other Bush administration officials realized their plan would have to be rewritten. "Once it became clear we couldn`t get around the election, we knew we had to do something else," one American involved in the process said.

On Nov. 9, Bremer called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was at FedEx Field for a Washington Redskins game. With no viable way to draft a quick constitution, both agreed a major change was needed, according to officials familiar with the talks.

The next day, Bremer hurried back to Washington. After two days of White House discussions, he returned to Baghdad with a new plan in hand.

On Nov. 14, he met with the council`s nine rotating presidents to outline the administration`s new approach: Iraq would be given sovereignty before it drafted a constitution. It was a dramatic concession.

The next day, he detailed the plan to the full Governing Council at the home of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader serving as this month`s council president.

In place of a permanent constitution, Bremer said, the council would be able to draft a basic law that would serve as an interim constitution to enshrine basic rights such as freedom of speech and worship, the separation of powers and civilian control over the military. Once the law was completed, he said, each province would hold caucuses to choose representatives for a 250-member transitional assembly whose members would serve as a provisional legislature. The assembly would also elect members for an executive branch from within its ranks, he said.

Bremer said he wanted the process to be completed by June 30, after which he would bestow sovereignty on the interim government. That government then would be responsible for drafting a constitution.

Although there was general support for Bremer`s plan, members pressed him on details. Some protested his requirement that 15-person organizing committees would screen participants in the caucuses. Others questioned whether a 250-member assembly would be able to agree on a government. Others objected to the dissolution of the council after the new government is formed, saying the council should remain as an advisory body.

"The Governing Council has been recognized by the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Why disband it? And what happens if the new government runs into trouble? We need the GC as a safety valve."

Several Shiite leaders expressed concern that the organizing committees might exclude candidates because they were Islamic activists. "The veto power should only apply to people who are Baathists or criminals," one Shiite member said.

Bremer did not want to delve into details, according to several members who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Instead, they said, Bremer wanted the council members to accept the plan and announce it to the news media as if they had created it themselves.

"He brushed aside the details. He just wanted an agreement," one member said. "It was `my way or the highway.` "

In response, occupation authority officials insist the council had plenty of time to discuss the plan, which the officials said reflected the council`s desire that the handover of sovereignty be accelerated.

Before his Nov. 10 flight to Washington, Bremer called Abdel-Mehdi in for a meeting.

"If we go for this option, do you think Sistani will accept?" Abdel-Mehdi recalled Bremer asking him.

"I`m sure," Abdel-Mehdi responded.

While Bremer was flying back from Washington, Abdel-Mehdi said he met with Sistani, who endorsed the broad contours of Bremer`s new plan to hand over sovereignty to a provisional government, which would convene elections for a constitutional council.

But Abdel-Mehdi said Sistani never passed judgment on the details, particularly those that have concerned other Shiite leaders involving how members would be selected. In response to written questions about Bremer`s new approach, Sistani`s office said the ayatollah would not comment.

"He certainly has not blessed the plan," Abdel-Mehdi said.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Pentagon To Review Rules for Tribunals


By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A17


The Pentagon said last night that it is undertaking a thorough review of the rules governing military tribunals for accused al Qaeda fighters at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, after U.S. military officials granted significant concessions to Australian government negotiators who wanted a relaxing of the legal rules that would apply in the military courts.

U.S. and Australian officials announced yesterday that two Australians held at the jail will not face the death penalty if they are convicted before a U.S. tribunal or commission. The Pentagon agreed in July that two British prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have been designated as possible defendants would not be executed if convicted.

Military officials said last night the concessions granted to the British and Australian detainees may not apply to other countries` citizens brought before the tribunals. But international lawyers said it would be difficult politically for Washington to execute other nations` citizens if it ruled out that possibility for these two allies` nationals.

One of the Australian detainees, David Hicks, has been designated by the Pentagon as being in an initial group of six captives eligible for trial by tribunal.

U.S. officials said they agreed to several other concessions. If Hicks is charged, he could talk by telephone with "appropriately cleared" family members, who also could attend the trial. Prosecutors will not bar him from the courtroom even during presentation of sensitive evidence. Military officials will not monitor conversations between him and his attorneys, and if convicted he could serve his sentence in Australia.

Some legal experts have criticized a number of the rules for the tribunals, such as allowing U.S. officials to eavesdrop on defendants` conversations with their attorneys.

"The Department of Defense is in the process of drafting clarifications and additional military commission rules that will incorporate [various legal] assurances where appropriate," the military said in a statement last night.

Military officials said they are gratified Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said in a statement yesterday that "the rules governing the military commission trials provide fundamental guarantees for the accused [that] are similar to those found in our own criminal procedures." They include the presumption of innocence, the right to a defense lawyer, a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the right to call witnesses.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Europe`s Cheap U.S. Labor


By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A25


It`s time again to overeat and commemorate the Pilgrims coming to these shores to build their democratic theocracy and share some grub with the natives. The natives, we all know, didn`t make out so well as the European conquest progressed, but that, at least, was then.

Or was it? In fact, right now, in the opening years of the 21st century, Europeans are still coming here to exploit the American workforce.

The irony is that these European-based global enterprises are the kind of model corporate citizen over there that has all but vanished over here. In Europe, they pay their workers decently, tend to health and safety concerns and actually encourage their employees to unionize.

When they cross the Atlantic, however, they find themselves in a brave new world where wages have eroded (a new Russell Sage Foundation study concludes that 24 percent of U.S. workers make less than $8.70 an hour) and employees` rights to unionize have been effectively abolished. And rather than bring their Euro standards with them, the companies go native.

Consider the H&M clothing chain, a Swedish-based firm with more than 800 outlets in Europe. Over the past three years, H&M has opened about 70 stores in the Northeast, with outlets cropping up here in Washington over the past several months. A highly profitable purveyor of "cheap chic" fashions, H&M plans to open 12 to 15 stores a year in the United States.

Which would be a boon to U.S. workers if the chain adhered to its own code of conduct, which proclaims: "We have to make sure that nobody whose work is contributing to our success is deprived of his or her human rights, or suffers mental or bodily harm."

That comes as news, however, to Ana Maria Araujo, a Peruvian immigrant and mother of three who until Nov. 6 worked at H&M`s U.S. distribution center in Secaucus, N.J. In September of last year, a box toppled off a dolly in the plant and knocked her unconscious. Then, this February, she ruptured a tendon in her right shoulder from hoisting too heavy a load. She was on disability for a month, then returned to work under orders from her doctor not to lift boxes or packages over a certain weight.

Which brings us to Nov. 6, when Araujo and a number of fellow workers with similar medical restrictions were called into their manager`s office and given a choice: Either work without the restrictions or find work elsewhere. Fourteen workers were discharged, eight of whom had such restrictions, says Steve Weingarten of UNITE, the apparel union that is trying to organize H&M in the States.

As Araujo tells the tale, H&M is the kind of employer that adds insult to injury. When her daughter was facing surgery in Peru last year, Araujo asked the company for a 10-day leave. "My manager told me that if I wanted to go, the only way to do it was to resign," says Araujo.

If H&M treated its workers in Sweden this way, it would be banished to the company of moose. In the United States, though, in the age of Wal-Mart, conduct such as H&M`s is increasingly the norm, especially with an immigrant work force. The company is resisting workers` attempts to unionize; it has thrown organizers out of its stores and called the cops when UNITE began organizing outside its Secaucus plant this July, only to have the cops tell the company that the union wasn`t breaking any laws. (Calls to H&M`s management were not returned.)

Meanwhile, another pillar of the Euro-corporate community, the Danish security company Group 4 Falck, is taking a similar tack with the thousands of security guards it employs here since it purchased Wackenhut Corp. in May 2002. In Denmark, Group 4 Falck`s security guards receive 111 hours of training and make between $16 and $19 an hour. In the United States its guards receive as little as one hour`s training, and pull down an hourly wage of about $8. In suburban Chicago, where the Service Employees International Union recently won family health insurance for guards at 30 companies, Group 4 Falck refused to sign the contract and informed its employees that if they wanted to maintain their company health insurance they`d have to leave the union.

So it`s come to this: When European employers look to the United States, they see roughly the same thing that U.S. employers see when they look to China: millions of low-wage workers who have all but lost the right to organize and a government intent on keeping things just the way they are.

The erosion of worker power and the growth of employer supremacy here have transformed the bottom half of the U.S. workforce into a vast exploitable mass worthy of a colonial backwater.

Something to chew on as we give thanks for the marvel that once was America.

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Be Thankful You`re Not Dubya
Craving more juicy reasons to offer up profound gratitude this T-day? Try a few of these
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2003/11/26/notes112603.DTL



This Thanksgiving, as you sip the wine and hug the family and toast the friends and hoard the stuffing and curse the airport security, remember to give thanks you are not G.W. Bush. Hey, it`s important.

1) Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya`s massive crushing karmic burden, as wrought by inflicting heaps of environmental disaster and vicious unnecessary war and a stunning string of lies lies lies like a firehose of giblet gravy splattered all over the planet.

For it really is all too plain: G.W. Bush is one of the most reviled and openly disrespected major world leaders in modern history. America has never been so embarrassed and reluctant to send a president abroad. We cringe when the man takes the stage. We offer humiliated apologies to our former allies, and to the 200,000 Bush/war protesters in London, just last week.

In Bush`s defense, it cannot be easy to be so undeservedly powerful, yet so bumbling and inarticulate and globally loathed for your abhorrent policies and hollow corporate agenda and baffled doofus manner. This Thanksgiving, be grateful you are not him.

2) Thanks, you might want to give, that you are not Iraqi. Be grateful you did not go from brutal scowling despot who at least kept the damn lights on to brutish occupying army no one asked for that is right now laying waste to whatever remains of your once semi-proud oil-rich nation.

Give thanks, furthermore, that you are not one of the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed to date by U.S. forces, not to mention one of the untold tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were hammered by our million pounds of billion-dollar ordnance in the first few days of the massacre. Be grateful you are not dead in the name of American political and petrochemical profiteering.

3) Give thanks you are not a member of the much-abused U.S. military. Sad but true. Be grateful you are not right now suffering that sickening sinking feeling that you are not, in fact, protecting America from any sort of marauding terrorists, or defending our honor, or our way of life, or guarding innocents from swarthy evildoers and nonexistent WMDs.

But that you are, instead, a wholly disposable henchman for the BushCo corporate regime, with the odds increasing every minute that you will soon join the more than 9,000 U.S. wounded or more than 430 "necessary" dead U.S. soldiers Rumsfeld mentions when he shrugs off the latest round of guerrilla bombings that killed another batch of your friends. Support our troops. Bring them home right now.

4) Be grateful BushCo`s ratings are slipping lower than an SUV`s mpg rating, and there is only one year left until he joins his father as one of those embarrassing historical footnotes, a jagged scar on the heart of a wary America that other countries point to in years to come and say wow that`s a nasty scar where`d you get that, and we reply, George W. Bush, and they go, oh my God, that`s right. So sorry.

5) Be grateful you are not right now in any way related to, or serve as a spokesperson for, or are employed as one of the apparently very deranged or heavily drugged plastic surgeons who worked on Michael Jackson. This is a gimme.


6) While you`re at it, give thanks you`re not Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, Bennifer, Britney, Liza Minnelli, Joan Rivers, Howard Stern, Ann Coulter, Ashton Kutcher, Bill O`Reilly, Anna Kournikova, Madonna or Mary Hart. These are lives you probably do not want to lead. Give thanks your soul is not all withery and Botoxed and that it still manages to radiate cool colors like one of those funky cheesy fiber-optic lamps from the `70s.

7) Be thankful they have yet to figure out a way to blot out the sun. Or, for that matter, the moon.

8) Offer immense gratitude that despite a massive ongoing Herculean effort on the part of numerous world governments to rape and pillage and pretty much slap down most all tender offerings of the planet, Earth still manages to produce for us an astonishing array of flora and fauna and oxygen and edible delicacies and awe-inspiring trees and relentless merciless beauty.

9) Be thankful the planet rather effortlessly continues to baffle scientists and confound astronomers and completely entrance biologists and philosophers and poets. We still, for example, have no idea why whales sing, or how long they live, or where blue whales, the largest and most magnificent creatures on the planet, go to mate. Be grateful for the Mystery.

10) Kneel down, right now, for free speech. Oh yes. We must. Because it is under severe duress. To exercise it now, to speak out against BushCo and war and global corporate profiteering, is a true sign that you are a traitor and an al Qaeda operative and a personal friend of Barbra Streisand. This is what they sneer at you.

Give it up, instead, for free unfettered alt-news sources like truthout.org. And commondreams.org. And alternet.org and counterpunch.com and buzzflash.com and smirkingchimp.com and even Slate and the BBC and The Onion. Cheney scowls, Rove oozes, Ashcroft would love nothing more than to shut down the entire impious godforsaken Internet. Be grateful they can only quiver and hiss and rattle their chains. So far.

11) Molly Ivins. Gore Vidal. Michiko Kakutani. David Foster Wallace. Don DeLillo. Maureen Dowd. Caroline Myss. W.G. Sebald. Tom Robbins. Starhawk. William Rivers Pitt. Rob Brezny. David Attenborough. Dave Eggers. Joseph Campbell. Lewis Lapham. Haruki Murakami. Katha Pollitt. Et al. Thank you.

12) For baskets of locally grown organic small-farm produce delivered to your door. For handmade whiskey-filled chocolate truffles smeared over a lover`s tailbone. For Bernese mountain dogs. For the return of Opus. For Rufus Wainwright and Beth Orton and the Mini Cooper. L`Occitane honey incense and the Apple iPod and "Six Feet Under." For Cate Blanchett, The Sun magazine, The New Yorker, Peet`s coffee and "Spirited Away."

13) Here is the big cliché. Here is the final praise. It cannot be overstated: Despite an impressive assault on civil liberties, despite savage BushCo attacks on everything from national forests to air quality to rivers and oceans and water quality and health care, despite attempts to numb the national consciousness overall, we must give enormous, unfettered thanks for this incredible and kaleidoscopic America.

Ours remains the most breathtakingly beautiful, diverse, epic, multifaceted, multiorgasmic landscape on the planet today. It`s true.

We tend to forget. We take for granted. We presume it must be like this everywhere. But one quick trip abroad will only serve to remind you and reinforce your devout appreciation for what this country can offer, the free expression and the religious autonomy and the clean water and the good dentistry and the fresh produce and the space to explore.

We are deeply flawed. We are massively arrogant. We are bratty and insolent and abusive and sloppy and violent. But we balance it with astounding acts of love and beauty and art, nature preserves and activism and organic awareness and sex positivism and community awareness and quiet personal spiritual questing and lots and lots of great bookstores.

14) Here is where you make you own list. Here is where you set aside the cynicism and the sighing and the bitterness, just for a moment, and get quiet, look around, look inside, check the karmic inventory and offer up heaping pies of gratefulness for what you find.

Sure it seems clichéd. Of course you don`t need some holiday to be deeply thankful for the radiance in your life. But, hey, an opportunity is an opportunity. Just remember, big meaty drumsticks of general gratitude are absolutely fine. But the divine, personal gravy is where the real flavor is.


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

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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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Iraks Presse
von Robert Fisk
ZNet 23.11.2003


Unter US-Kontrolle kommt die Pressefreiheit zu kurz - die Freiheit der Presse im neuen Irak riecht etwas streng. Vor wenigen Wochen erhielt der arabische TV-Sender Al-Dschasierah einen Telefonanruf vom Gelände des Präsidentenpalasts, von einem der Lakaien des US-Prokonsuls Paul Bremer. Der Sender habe innerhalb von 24 Stunden ein paar Fragen zu beantworten, wurde den Reportern mitgeteilt. “Sie insistierten, kämen wir nicht zu ihnen, kämen sie zu uns”, so ein Al-Dschasierah-Reporter gegenüber ‘The Independent’. Und sie kamen tatsächlich und fuhren die Angestellten des Senders zum Palast, wo man ihnen ein Stück Papier aushändigte. Darauf die Frage, ob sie Vorwarnungen von “Terrorattacken” erhalten hätten oder “Terroristen” bezahlt, um an Information zu kommen. Al-Dschasierah - und dessen Konkurrenzsender Al-Arabia - waren bereits zuvor vom US-installierten Regierungsrat angeprangert worden. Diesem Rat steht zur Zeit ein verurteilter Betrüger namens Ahmend Chalabi vor. Wegen ihres angeblich provokanten Programms wurden beide Sender zur Strafe für zwei Wochen von allen Pressekonferenzen des Rats ausgeschlossen. Dann erstellte der Rat - offensichtlich auf Anordnung Bremers - eine Liste mit ‘Geboten’ und ‘Verboten’ für alle Medien, vom Verbot der Gewaltaufwiegelung bis zum Verbot, über die Wiedergeburt der Bath-Partei zu berichten bzw. über die Ansprachen Saddams. Der Kolumnist Hassan Fattah bezüglich der vom Rat über die beiden arabischen Sender verhängten Strafe: “der Rat und der Interimsrat werden für zwei Wochen fast überall in der arabischen Welt, inklusive Irak selbst, nicht zu hören sein. Der ‘Widerstand’ und die Terroristen hingegen werden weiter sagen können, was sie wollen. Eine tolle Gelegenheit, Filmmaterial über sie zu senden, sodass sie die Köpfe und Herzen der Iraker erobern, die verzweifelt nach Stabilität und einer Art Führung verlangen”.

Aber auch in den von den Amerikanern betriebenen TV- und Radiostationen Bagdads läuft es nicht besser. Die 357 Journalisten, die auf Bremers Palastgelände arbeiten, haben schon zweimal für mehr Geld gestreikt, und sie beschweren sich über Zensur. Einer der Reporter sagt, John Sandrock - Chef der privaten amerikanischen SAIC-Gesellschaft, die die TV-Station betreibt -, hätte geäußert: “entweder, ihr akzeptiert, was wir euch bieten oder ihr reicht die Kündigung ein, es gibt jede Menge Kandidaten für eure Jobs”. Wohl unnötig zu betonen, diese TV-”News” sind eine miserable Angelegenheit. Oft erwähnen sie die zunehmende Gewalt und die Angriffe gegen Amerikaner im Irak mit keinem Wort, wo doch sämtliche ausländischen Journalisten - und die meisten irakischen Zeitungen - darüber berichten. Im letzten Monat explodierte in einem Teilbereich einer Moschee in Falludschah eine Bombe - mindestens drei Männer starben. Einwohner behaupteten, das Gebäude sei von einer Rakete getroffen worden, abgefeuert aus einem amerikanischen Jet. Die Amerikaner bestritten das. In den US-kontrollierten Medien Bagdads fand der Vorfall keine Erwähnung. Nach einer Erklärung befragt, sagte Nachrichtensprecher Fadl Hatta Al-Timini: “Ich kenne die Antwort darauf nicht - ich bin hier, um Nachrichten zu verlesen, und die werden mir aus dem Convention Palace (dem amerikanischen Hauptquartier, dort sind auch die Büros des Senders untergebracht) geliefert. Das ist alles”. Patrice Claude von Le Monde schreibt in seiner Zeitung, sämtliche von Amerika betriebenen Medien bezeichneten die Herrschenden als “die Kräfte der Befreiung”, während die Auslandspresse - und die New York Times - von “Besatzungskräften” sprächen. Bisher investierten die USA schätzungsweise etwas über 21 Million Pfund Sterling in den neuen audiovisuellen Output im Irak. Die irakischen Mitarbeiter allerdings behaupten, sie hätten von dem Geld nichts gesehen. Vom Reporter des Le Monde um Erklärung gebeten, verweigerte Sandrock die Antwort.

Oberflächlich betrachtet gelingt es Bremers Publicity-Leuten natürlich, sich einer aufblühenden, freien, neuen Presse zu rühmen - allein in Bagdad gibt es 106 neue Zeitungen. Viele werden von politischen Parteien gesponsert bzw. von Männern, die in die Politik streben. In manchen Presseprodukte wird zum Dschihad gegen die Amerikaner aufgerufen. Dann bekommen sie Besuch von amerikanischen Offizieren, die nachhaken. Andere wiederum verbreiten plumpe Lügengeschichten über die Besatzungsarmee. So wurde beispielsweise behauptet, US-Soldaten hätten etwas mit der Verteilung von Pornobildern an Schulmädchen zu tun. Oder sie hätten irakische Frauen in die Schlafzimmer des Palestine Hotels gebracht. Ein Problem ist, viele Journalisten der irakischen Blätter sind entweder Konvertiten des alten Regimes oder Neulinge ohne journalistisches Training im Hinblick auf Fairness und Faktenprüfung. Die am professionellsten produzierte Zeitung - und die Betonung liegt hier auf “produziert” -, heißt Az-Zaman, ein Name der sich grob mit ‘Die Zeit’ übersetzen lässt. Deren Herausgeber, Saad Al-Bazaz, ist jener frühere irakische Diplomat, der sich mit Saddam überworfen hat. Während der langen Bath-Herrschaft hat Bazaz seine Zeitung von London aus verbreitet. Früher war er Herausgeber von Saddams Zeitung Al-Jumhouriya. Eine seiner ehemaligen Kolleginnen bei dem alten Bath-Klatschblatt hieß Nada Shawqat. Sie ist inzwischen Chefredakteurin von Az-Zaman in Bagdad. “Hier in Bagdad haben wir eine Auflage von 50 000, in Basra weitere 15 000, jede Nummer hat 12 Seiten mit ausländischen und arabischen Nachrichten, 8 mit lokalen Nachrichten”, sagt Frau Shawqat. “Es ist schön, sich endlich wie eine echte Journalistin zu fühlen”. Alle Nachrichten-Entscheidungen werden allerdings in Az-Zamans London-Büros getroffen. Die Zeitung spricht nie von “Besatzung”, stets ist von der “Koalition” die Rede (der von den USA favorisierte Ausdruck für die Truppen der USA und ihrer Verbündeten im Irak). Bazaz selbst lebt nach wie vor in London - wo Az-Zaman jahrelang im Exil produziert wurde. Zwei weitere Exilzeitungen, die inzwischen in Bagdad gedruckt werden, sind die kurdische Al-Ittihad und Iraqi National Congress’ Al-Moutamar. Frau Shawqat hielt in Saddams Al Jumouriyah die Stellung bis zum allerletzten Kriegstag - dem 9. April, als die Büros geplündert und verbrannt wurden und die Archive, in denen auch zeitungseigene Reportagen über das Treffen Donald Rumsfelds mit Saddam im Jahr 1983 lagerten, zerstört wurden. Shawqat sagt, unter Saddam hätte sie eine gewisse Freiheit beim Schreiben genossen - bis dessen beiden Söhne, Udai und Kusai, sich für die Presse interessiert hätten. “Dann fing das an, dass wir jeden Tag Anweisungen vom Minister für Information erhielten. Er sagte uns, was wir zu schreiben hätten und was wir nicht zu schreiben hätten - es wurde immer schlimmer in den letzten 13 Jahren”.

Niemand wird behaupten wollen, Journalismus unter Amerika sei in irgendeiner Weise mit diesen Zeiten vergleichbar. Aber die irakischen Schreiber haben doch das Gefühl, der Bremersche “Benimm-Kode” - der “ungezügelte (!) Sprache” verbietet, die zu Gewalt aufrufen könnte” -, sei ein gutes Beispiel für “selektive Demokratie”, im Sinne, wenn nicht gar mit den Folgen, von Saddams Zensur. Der Journalist Khadhim Achrash: “diese Entscheidung passt nicht mit der US-Ankündigung zusammen, man sei gekommen, den Irak zu befreien und ein demokratisches System aufzubauen”. Viele der neuen Zeitungen sind eine Mischung aus Klatschküche, Unterhaltung und Stories über das alte Regime. Einer der ersten furchtbaren Berichte über Saddams Gräuel erzählt, wie Saddam während des Iran-Irak-Kriegs zwischen 1980 und 1988 mit Soldaten verfuhr, die der Feigheit bezichtigt wurden. Zwei erschütternde Fotos - geschossen von Saddams eigenen Militärgeheimdienstoffizieren -, zeigen ein Exekutionskommando, das eine Linie von Soldaten niederschießt und einen Offizier, wie er einem noch lebenden Mann, der am Boden liegt, den ‘Gnadenstoß’ versetzt.

Viele irakischen Journalisten sind der Meinung, das halblegale “Pressesyndikat”, das derzeit in Bagdad Gestalt annimmt, sei nach wie vor bei den Bathisten verwurzelt. Andere glauben, man könnte es nutzen, ein neues Presserecht zu schaffen, das Bremer die Zensur aus der Hand nimmt. Jalal Al-Mashta, Herausgeber von An-Nahda, gibt dem schnellen Wandel die Hauptschuld am Problem: “Die irakische Presse hatte lange Zeit einen Maulkorb um, sie war unprofessionell und streng überwacht. Und plötzlich wurde sie frei”.





[ Übersetzt von: Andrea Noll | Orginalartikel: "Iraq`s Press" ]

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Conservatives Shocked By the Power of Money
by Joe Conason



Whenever Republican leaders complain about the power of money in politics, the source of their concern is always the same: Somewhere, a Democrat of means has just written a substantial check. To Republicans who regard their financial advantage as a partisan birthright, such leveling gestures seem terribly unfair—as unsporting as a liberal who fights back.

So imagine their outrage at the news that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, will spend millions next year to defeat President Bush. Actually, no imagination is needed to hear the squealing and squawking from the right. From the commanding heights of the Republican National Committee and House hearing rooms all the way down to the lowliest Web sites, George Soros is an object of vilification.

Righteous anger about the Soros funding burns hottest among those with the least credibility. Leading the anti-Soros chorus is Ed Gillespie, the new R.N.C. chairman and former lobbyist. His clients notably included the late Enron Corporation, a firm where criminal book-cooking paid for promiscuous political palm-greasing.

According to a former Enron executive interviewed by The Washington Post, "whenever we had to get in to see a Republican, the first call was to Gillespie." While churning out press releases about the nefarious Soros, the R.N.C. chief continues to hold an ownership stake in Quinn Gillespie, the lobby shop he founded in 2000 with former Clinton White House counsel Jack Quinn that has reported fees totaling $27 million from its corporate clientele.

Now Mr. Gillespie accuses Mr. Soros of seeking to empower "special interests," and of undermining campaign-finance restrictions that the Republican Party has traditionally opposed and subverted. He frets that the Soros donations may not be "disclosed to the public."

As Republican distress over Mr. Soros echoes in the conservative chat rooms, some critics aren’t as high-minded as Mr. Gillespie. On the Web site run by GOPUSA—a commercial entity that attracted major Republican legislators, lobbyists and commentators to its Washington conference this month—the Jewish financier was recently described as "a Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock."

For the vast majority of right-wing whiners, however, what rankles is not his ethnicity, but his determination. Mr. Soros, they say, is a hypocrite because after endorsing campaign-finance reform, he’s now violating the spirit of the McCain-Feingold law that banned soft-money donations to the political parties. The Wall Street Journal warns that liberal "fat cats" like Mr. Soros will be "less accountable" than the old soft-money donors, and that "his views will follow his cash in influencing Democratic policy."

The Journal editorial sniffs that Mr. Soros will give money through so-called "527" committees (a reference to the section of the I.R.S. code that regulates such groups), whose "disclosure patterns … have been full of holes and evasions." And any Democrat who defeats the President will have no choice but to answer to the Soros political "machine."

Exactly what has Mr. Soros done to provoke this reaction? He has given $3 million to a new liberal Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress. And yes, he has publicly pledged $10 million to Americans Coming Together, a liberal voter-registration effort, and $5 million to MoveOn.org, an Internet-based group that is raising millions of dollars in small donations for liberal candidates and causes.

That sounds like a lot of money, except when contrasted with the enormous amounts pumped into organs of conservative propaganda every year by such truly prodigious spenders as Sun Myung Moon, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Mellon Scaife and literally dozens of other obscure but rich Republicans.

Besides, there is no evidence that Mr. Soros is seeking to influence Washington policy on behalf of his financial interests. The same can hardly be said of the "Rangers" and "Pioneers" who collect hundreds of thousands of dollars every day for the Bush campaign. The corporate leaders and K Street lobbyists who "bundle" these donations include an individual "tracking number" on every check—to ensure proper "credit" by the White House.

The results can be traced in nearly every important item of White House legislation. Its energy bill brimmed with billions in favors to the oil, nuclear, coal and auto industries. Its Medicare "reform" will dispense billions to the insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital and nursing-home industries.

Meanwhile, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay oversees his own array of Republican 527 committees, which funnel millions of dollars into various advertising campaigns and legislative races. He has long since mastered the "holes and evasions" of this system, and is constantly drilling new ones.

According to The New York Times, his latest is a "charity" that would suck huge, undisclosed contributions from anonymous Republican donors who desire access to Congress. Supposedly intended for the benefit of neglected children, this money’s real purpose is to pay for "late-night parties, luxury suites, and yacht cruises" at next September’s Republican convention.

But it is Mr. Soros who threatens the integrity of the political process. He wants to register more voters.

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: [e-mail].

back to top
This column ran on page 5 in the 12/1/2003 edition of The New York Observer.

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ASHCROFT URGES MILITARY TRIBUNAL FOR WHITE HOUSE TURKEY

No Pardon for Gitmo-bound Poultry


U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed President Bush to withhold the customary pre-Thanksgiving pardon for the White House turkey today, forcefully arguing that the bird should face a military tribunal at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba.

FBI agents arrested the turkey moments before the traditional pardoning ceremony, taking it away in shackles as a busload of third graders watched in horror.

The decision to detain the White House turkey at Gitmo surprised many in Washington who had expected the turkey to receive leniency from Mr. Bush.

But in a press conference at the Justice Department, Mr. Ashcroft said that there were "too many questions" hovering over the suspicious poultry to let it go free.

"We would very much like to know how he got on the White House lawn and what he intended to do while he was there," Mr. Ashcroft said.

The Attorney General added that, using powers granted by the Patriot Act, the Justice Department had placed the fowl under surveillance over eight months ago, eavesdropping on the turkey`s conversations and following its movements on a twenty-four hour basis.

Mr. Ashcroft said that the Justice Department pounced on the turkey after noticing an increase in "suspicious chatter" from the bird over the past seventy-two hours.

"While I`m sure some would argue that it was merely innocuous gobbling, we were not prepared to take that risk," Mr. Ashcroft said.

Mr. Ashcroft used his press conference to wish all Americans a happy Thanksgiving, adding, "I may not be sitting at the same table as you, but I`ll be listening."

**** WATCH ANDY BOROWITZ ON CNN`S "AMERICAN MORNING" ****

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Wednesday, November 26, 2003
War News for November 26, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Insurgents give Jack Straw the Wolfowitz Welcome in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: US troops mortared in Tikrit.

Bring `em on: Central Baghdad mortared again.

Bring `em on: Oil pipeline ablaze near Beiji.

Bring `em on: Two Iraqi police wounded in RPG attack in Baghdad.

General Gerner admits Bushies screwed up post-war occupation of Iraq. "`He told BBC Radio 4`s Today programme: `I don`t think we are speeding things up now, I think we are trying to catch up to where we should have been a month ago.` He also acknowledged that not enough effort was put into winning over ordinary Iraqis by getting America`s message across to them after the war. ˜We did a bad job of executing that. There`s no excuse for that. The consequence of that is all they got to listen to was [Arab-language TV station] al-Jazeera,` he said." And now Rummy is whining about all this. Do these neo-cons ever take responsibility for their own fuck-ups?

Bush`s Foreign Policy: "When (George W.) Bush came into office, he had a five-man hate list," Gregg said. "These were men he wanted nothing to do with, men he would rather blow out of the water than negotiate with." The speaker was one of Poppy Bush`s National Security advisors.

Shi`ite cleric criticizes Bush`s sovereignity plan as as "incomplete and insufficiently Islamic."

Sen. Hillary Clinton spends Thanksgiving with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lieutenant AWOL has pressing engagements at Crawford and at a fundraiser in Nevada.

Norwegian officers in Iraq worry about safety. "...Norwegian politicians must now realize that far from operating in a humanitarian situation, the situation in Iraq is war-like."

Cheney`s deceitful fundraiser rhetoric.

Military blames AP for "false report. "`Personally, I would fault the AP as a member of the coalition and really as an American citizen,` Coalition Spokesperson Sgt. Danny Martin said. `The AP is an American-based media outlet. They have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of press. They pretty much print what they like. I do find it somewhat irresponsible in their journalism that instead of perhaps showing some patience and waiting for the initial military report, that they just went from eyewitness accounts that have proven in just about every instance here to be exaggerated, embellished, or just false.`"

Lieutenant AWOL is more frightened that the troops might sound off than he is of the press. "Before the press was herded into the giant hangar in advance of George W. Bush`s pep rally/photo op with the Fort Carson troops, we were given the rules. No talking to the troops before the rally. No talking to the troops during the rally. No talking to the troops after the rally." And except for this reporter, the lapdog American media rolled over and complied with Bush`s desires.

Wounded soldier: Reports of his death were greatly exaggerated at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Wrongful death payments to Iraqi civilians.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Florida soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier dies in Iraq.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:28 AM

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hayes26…
COMMENTARY



Making an Iraq-Al Qaeda Link
A new memo cites 50 points about the long relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
By Stephen F. Hayes
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at the Weekly Standard.

November 26, 2003

In an Oct. 7, 2002, letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director George Tenet wrote that his agency had "solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade."

According to Tenet, the CIA had "credible information" about discussions between Iraq and Al Qaeda on "safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression," as well as "solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members" and "credible reporting" that "Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

But critics of the Bush administration were blithely dismissive of these charges in advance of the war. Cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden was inconceivable, they argued, because Hussein was a secularist and Bin Laden a radical Islamist. Bin Laden, after all, had publicly called Hussein an "infidel."

Since the end of the war, these critics have become even more emboldened, complaining with increasing volume and self-righteousness about alleged prewar "deception" on the relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden.

"Clearly the Al Qaeda connection was hyped and exaggerated, in my view," California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said this fall.

"The president told everybody that Al Qaeda was in Iraq and they were in cahoots," Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said. "That was not true."

Other Democrats joined in what quickly became a chorus of conventional wisdom. Al Gore, in an acidic speech in New York, accused the Bush administration of "deception," adding that "the evidence now shows clearly that Saddam Hussein did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction."

What "evidence" was it, exactly, that led Gore to this conclusion? Nobody knows. He didn`t say.

But it now appears that he and his fellow Democrats were wrong. A new document, prepared by Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, contains 50 points on intelligence reporting on the relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden.

Feith sent the 16-page report to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 27, 2003.

Whatever Gore`s "evidence" was, it`s a safe bet that this CIA reporting, from a "well-placed" source and included in Feith`s memo, wasn`t part of it: "Bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the [Iraqi Intelligence Service`s] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at Bin Laden`s farm in Khartoum [Sudan] in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996."

Nor do the Democrats appear to have taken into account this piece of information from a U.S. interview with Farouk Hijazi, former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence: "He said that in a 1994 meeting with Bin Laden in the Sudan, Bin Laden had requested that Iraq assist Al Qaeda with the procurement of an unspecified number of Chinese-manufactured anti-ship limpet mines … Bin Laden also requested the establishment of Al Qaeda training camps inside Iraq."

According to other reporting in the Feith document, Bin Laden eventually got at least some of those training camps. What happened there? "An Iraqi intelligence officer said that as of mid-March, the IIS was providing weapons to Al Qaeda members located at a training camp in northern Iraq, including rocket-propelled grenade (RPG-18) launchers."

Other information in the document points to a secret operational relationship between Bin Laden and the Iraqi leader that goes well beyond mere "contacts" or "links" or "connections." According to one entry, a "sensitive source" reported that "Iraq`s contacts intensified after Al Qaeda`s successful attacks against the U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998."

If their recent statements are any indication, Democrats and other critics of the administration are clinging to the conventional wisdom, discredited though it may be.

At a presidential debate Monday, several of the Democratic candidates again accused the Bush administration of misleading the country to go to war. Jesse Jackson, after the debate, flatly declared that there were no connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Evidence to the contrary is mounting. Serious questions remain about the existence of Hussein`s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration`s postwar planning. Democrats do themselves and the country a disservice by ignoring the relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden, two of America`s most dangerous and determined enemies.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Im Augenblick ist in der vUSA ein Streit im Gange zwischen der NeoCon-Vereinszeitung "Weekly Standard" und Journalisten über die Verbindungen zwischen Saddam und Bin Laden. #9733 u. #9734

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer2…
COMMENTARY


`Evidence` for Link Is Administration Ploy
By Christopher Scheer
Christopher Scheer is the co-author of the "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq," co-published this month by Seven Stories Press and Akashic Books.

November 26, 2003

Two weeks ago, a flurry of opinion polls from CBS News and elsewhere showed that Americans were increasingly unhappy with the war in Iraq and didn`t believe that it had achieved its aims or made us any safer. The following week, the Weekly Standard, the organ of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, published extensive excerpts of a leaked, top-secret memo sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee the previous month by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, a leading neocon ideologue in the Bush administration. The memo sought to retroactively defend the debunked claims that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had meaningful ties.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But the leak and publication of the Feith memo, which selectively presented a few dozen raw intelligence items plucked from more than a decade of debriefings by national and foreign intelligence agencies, not only shows a certain desperation on the part of the administration to shore up support for the occupation, but it also fits squarely into the cynical pattern of abusing Americans` trust we have seen since 9/11. That, you will remember, was when the administration made the calculated political decision to exploit American anger and grief as the launching pad for an unrelated and extremely reckless foreign policy hatched up in a pair of right-wing think tanks.

"This is made to dazzle the eyes of [those] not terribly educated" about intelligence methods, said Greg Thielmann, a longtime veteran of the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence who retired in late 2002.



For those who have watched this pattern, the modus operandi is familiar: Leak to the media or place in speeches intelligence nuggets of questionable value — aluminum tubes, Nigerian uranium, the undocumented Prague meeting — then retreat when pressed. Keep the story alive in the friendly pockets of the media, like William Safire`s column or Fox News. When the factoid`s cracks start showing, replace it with a new one. Repeat as needed.

Is this just business as usual for American government? No, it is not.

Despite all our tough talk about not trusting politicians, Americans living in a democracy are always forced to some extent to trust our leaders to not exploit our lack of knowledge by lying to us, especially about matters of national security. This is one reason the intelligence agencies have long-established ground rules for how intelligence is vetted and distributed within the government: to make it less open to political manipulation. Raw intelligence, for example, shouldn`t be divulged publicly because it is riddled with unverifiable hearsay. But these best practices have been ignored at the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has bypassed the department intelligence agency in favor of an ad hoc, Feith-based system where any flotsam that echoes the White House position is deemed solid.

Feith, who has been playing the cherry-picking role as an amateur intelligence chief for two years, could have just as easily gone into the mountains of intelligence data assembled every year to paint a picture of the much stronger links between Al Qaeda and the Saudi royal house, for example, or the Pakistani intelligence agency — both from nations that are our allies. But the White House position since the first days after 9/11 has been that remaking Iraq was to be the centerpiece of the "war on terror."

Unfortunately for the president heading into an election year, it doesn`t wash. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that a full 79% of Americans didn`t believe the war in Iraq had made them safer from terrorism. This is why eight months after we took Baghdad, the conservatives continue to leak questionable secrets to justify their actions.

The simple fact is, Al Qaeda didn`t need Iraq to pull off 9/11 or any of its other savage attacks, and even if all the anonymous statements in Feith`s memo panned out, there still would be no evidence Iraq significantly aided the extremists. We are, whatever the neocons might want us to believe, waging the wrong war in the wrong way.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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HOWARD DEAN FOR PRESIDENT

In 2004, Anybody But Bush
NEW YORK--I don`t regret voting for Ralph Nader in 2000. Given the information we had at the time, Al Gore looked like a lukewarm version of Bill Clinton: another southern New Democrat into free trade and welfare reform, albeit with a genuine passion for long-ignored environmental issues. I figured George W. Bush for a meaner, stupider version of his dad, another linguistically challenged, harmless centrist with little agenda aside from paying off his contributors with, say, a cut in the capital gains tax.

Boy, was I wrong. To paraphrase National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who could have imagined back then that a dozen maniacs would hijack our democracy, bankrupt the treasury and subvert our basic values?

Heretofore I have opposed strategic voting tactics. When citizens vote for candidates because they seem likely to win, it creates a winner-takes-all aggregation of support. That subverts democracy`s underlying assumption: that people vote for the man or woman they`d most like to see win. At its worst, pick-the-winner voting elevates any candidate lucky enough to enjoy an early jump in the polls to premature, and possibly undeserved victory. Let the electorate vote for politicians whose ideas they like best and let the chads hang where they may.

This year is different.

Even if his only crime had been the despicable way he seized power, using a rogue Supreme Court to have himself appointed to office, Bush would be the most poisonous leader in U.S. history. He treasonously undermined the constitutional separation of powers, savaged the right of the states to conduct elections, and brutalized faith in the principle that, rich or poor, black or white, every vote counts.

Only after 9/11, however, did Bush begin acting like a dictator: jailing innocent people solely because they were Muslim, authorizing the FBI and CIA to spy on political opponents, converting Guantánamo Bay into a concentration camp for 12-year-old prisoners seized in Afghanistan. Thanks to tax cuts diabolically devised to minimize the possibility of economic stimulus, a ten-year $4 trillion surplus has become a $6 trillion deficit. Now he has us stuck in a unilateral, losing war in Iraq, a vicious quagmire that has given us neither preemption from WMDs nor cheap oil--just $500 billion wasted along with 350 dead soldiers and more than a thousand who will never walk again. Bush is nothing like his dad, except in his casual disregard for the problems of the unemployed.

America is under attack, and Bush is enemy number one.

When you`re at war for your future, you can no longer enjoy the luxury of picking the ideal candidate or the perfect party. Under normal circumstances, third parties like the Greens and Libertarians deserve the support of like-minded voters. But, the fact is, only the Democratic Party can defeat Bush next year. Democratic contenders like Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton have brought common sense, progressive perspectives on the war in Iraq and what we should expect from government into the conversation, but they suffer from, respectively, lack of money and lack of melanin. They won`t win the Democratic nomination.

I`m a charter member of the 2004 ABB (Anybody But Bush) society. Whether the nominee turns out to be a right-winger (Clark, Lieberman) or a colorless bore (Edwards, Kerry, Gephardt), I`ll vote for him over Bush, in the same spirit with which the late Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud reportedly toasted a meeting of anti-Soviet factions during the `80s occupation: "First we kill the Russians. Then we kill each other." But I have a preferance:

Howard Dean has the best chance to beat Bush.

Brilliant, aggressive and moneyed (that`s Dean Witter to you, pal), Dr. Dean has a corner on the single most important issue to Americans: health care. His politics are surprisingly centrist, in both the refreshing sense (he`s pro-Second Amendment and he came out for class-, rather than race-based affirmative action) and in the disappointing, Clintonian sense (he opposed invading Iraq, but not Afghanistan). He`s got traditional Democratic constituents (he just stole the biggest AFL-CIO union`s endorsement away from Gephardt) and fresh new ones (twentysomething bloggers have mailed him $25 million in crisp twenties).

Dean`s got lots more going for him, not the least of which is running as an insurgent small-state governor disliked by his own party`s top leaders (the ex-governor thing casts him as even more of an outsider). Polls show Dean leading his nearest rival, John Kerry, 33 percent to 19 percent in the crucial New Hampshire primary. Coming out early and hard against the war in Iraq wins him major props with the liberal base and makes him seem ahead-of-the-curve to everyone else. Most importantly, he`s his own man. "He doesn`t really owe his current standing to any of them, not to labor, not to minority groups, not environmental organizations, so he`ll have more leeway as a nominee to follow his own course," says Darrel West, a political science professor at Cornell.

But the rubber would really tear up the road at the presidential debates, where Dean`s dry, sardonic Long Island wit would devastate the hapless Bush--and charm television viewers. His natural pugnacity could help Dems deal more aggressively than usual with the nasty attack ads they can expect in the campaign ahead. Frankly, the other Democratic contenders don`t have what it takes to stand up to Karl Rove`s brutal war machine.

Maybe it`s premature to endorse Gov. Dean. But right now, given the information we have available, he`s the preferred candidate of us Anybody But Bushies.

(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.)

COPYRIGHT 2003 TED RALL

RALL 11/25/03

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Attacked for telling some home truths

Are we now to support atrocities against the `scum of the earth` in our moral campaign against Evil?

By Robert Fisk

26 November 2003: (The Independent) In Iraq, they are just numbers, bloodstains on a road. But in the little town of Madison in Wisconsin last week, they were all too real on the front page of the local paper, the Capital Times. Sergeant Warren Hansen, Specialist Eugene Uhl and Second Lieutenant Jeremy Wolfe of the 101st Airborne Division were all on their way home for the last time.

Hansen`s father had died in the military. Uhl would have been 22 at Thanksgiving but had written home to say he had a "bad feeling". His father had fought in Vietnam, his grandfather in the Second World War and Korea. Two of the three men were killed in the Black Hawk helicopter crash over Tikrit just over a week ago.

But of course President Bush, our hero in the "war on terror", won`t be attending their funerals. The man who declined to serve his nation in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans into the biggest rat`s nest in the Middle East doesn`t do funerals.

Nor do journalists, of course. The American television networks have feebly accepted the new Pentagon ruling that they can`t show the coffins of America`s young men returning from Iraq. The dead may come home but they do so in virtual secrecy.

Things are changing. At a lecture I gave in Madison last week, there was a roar of applause from the more than 1,000-strong audience when I suggested that the Iraq war could yet doom George Bush`s election chances next year. A young man in the audience stood up to say that his brother was in the military in Iraq, that he had written home to say that the war was a mess, that Americans shouldn`t be dying in Iraq.

After the lecture, he showed me his brother`s picture - a tall 82nd Airborne officer in shades and holding an M-16 - and passed on a message that the soldier wanted to meet me in Baghdad next month.

But I`d better make sure I don`t reveal his name because those in America who want to keep the people in the dark are still at work.

Take the case of Drew Plummer from North Carolina who enlisted during his last year in high school, just three months before 11 September 2001. Home on leave, he joined his father, Lou, at a "bring our troops home" vigil. Lou Plummer is a former member of the US 2nd Armoured Division whose father, unlike Mr Bush, served his country in Vietnam. Asked for his opinion on Iraq by an Associated Press reporter, Drew Plummer replied that "I just don`t agree with what we`re doing right now. I don`t think our guys should be dying in Iraq. But I`m not a pacifist. I`ll do my part."

But free speech has a price for the military in America these days. The US Navy charged Drew Plummer with violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Disloyal Statements. At his official hearing, he was asked if he "sympathises" with the enemy or was considering "acts of sabotage". He was convicted and demoted.

Yet still the US press turn their backs on this. How revealing, for example, to find that the number of seriously wounded soldiers brought home to America from Iraq is approaching 2,200, many of whom have lost limbs or suffered facial wounds. In all, there have been nearly 7,000 medical evacuations of soldiers from Iraq, many with psychological problems.

All this was disclosed by the Pentagon to a group of French diplomats in Washington. The French press carried the story. Not so the papers of small-town America, where anyone trying to tell the truth about Iraq will be attacked.

And while the Pentagon is now planning to have 100,000 GIs in Iraq until 2006, the journalistic heavyweights are stoking the fires of patriotism with a new and even more chilling propaganda line. One of the most vicious has just been published in The New York Times. Claiming that Saddam`s torturers are attacking American troops - some of his intelligence men are now working for the occupying army, but that`s another matter - David Brooks writes that "history shows that Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them. What will happen to the national mood when the news programmes start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause ... somehow ... the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror ..."

What on earth is one to make of this vile nonsense? Why is The New York Times providing space for the advocacy of war crimes by US soldiers? I doubt the US channels will broadcast any images of "brutal measures" - they`ve already had the chance to do so and have declined. But atrocities? Are we now to support atrocities against the "scum of the earth" - Mr Brooks` word for the insurgents - in our moral campaign against Evil?

Amid such filth, we should perhaps remember the simple courage of Drew Plummer. And remember, too, the following names: Army Private First Class Rachel Bosveld, aged 19, Army Specialist Paul Sturino, aged 21, Army Reservist Dan Gabrielson, aged 40, Army Major Mathew Shram, aged 36, Marine Sergeant Kirk Strasekie, aged 23. They, too, came from Wisconsin. And they, too, died in Iraq.

Copyright: The Independent

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Blue Collar Workers Move To China, India To Reclaim Lost Jobs

Mass exodus of manufacturing jobs prompts mass migration of American workers to the Third World .
freepressed.com

CAPTION: Kellerman hopes he will fit in at his new job in Calcutta.

Free Trade Zone-- Thousands of blue collar workers are leaving the United States in pursuit of the 2.7 manufacturing jobs that moved overseas during the past three years.

Deke Kellerman, a worker at the recently-closed Maytag Plant in Galesburg, Illinois, is moving his family to India so that he can keep his job constructing refrigerators. His pay will be cut from $11.95 to a whooping 35 cents an hour.

“There aren`t any jobs here in the states anymore,” Kellerman said. “So me and Missy, Deke Jr. and Delyn decided we’d move over there and give it a shot. I figure as long as they got a Mickey D’s and I can catch the Bears on TV, I’ll be happy.”

The Kellermans are not the only family from the closed Maytag plant that are moving half-way around the world to save their jobs.

Buel Jackson, his wife, Mary and their children Tucker, Conroy and Beldin followed Jackson’s job all the way to the slums of Surat in the Western Indian State of Gujaret.

“Sure, we don’t have any running water, tuberculosis is rampant and, last week, a couple of buildings in the slum collapsed, killing a bunch of people, but we’re happy...sort of,” Jackson said.

In the Jackson family’s one-room abode, the children sleep on mats on the floor. The youngest child, Beldin, lay on the floor sweating from a severe bout of dengue fever.

“The hardest part for me has been getting used to the food,” said Mary Jackson, as she placed a cool cloth on her son’s forehead. “We can’t afford any.”



CAPTION: The slums of Surat may be infested with diseased rats and open sewers, but at least it`s close to the sweatshop where the Jackson family works together.


Mary Jackson who used to weigh a portly 180 pounds has lost 50 pounds since the family moved to India three months ago.

She moved about the apartment wearing an Eskimo Joe shirt underneath a Sari.

While the Jackson family used to regularly throw away several pounds of food per week, they now pour a little water into their bowls after they have had their daily allotment of rice so that they can sop up every last morsel of food.

Besides Buel, the rest of the family also works on the assembly line at the Maytag plant for 12 hours a day eeking out barley enough money to survive.

The mass exodus of manufacturing jobs started during President Reagan’s tenure and gained steam when President Clinton signed the NAFTA free trade agreement, which opened up the borders between the US and Mexico. The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has led to the further loss of jobs. Both groups have loopholes that allow them to overturn national laws in areas such as safety and environmental standards.

"Increasing poverty and joblessness in the United States is not just an afterthought of our policy; it`s the main motivation," said Robert Noriega, an assistant secretary of state. "Free trade is primarily about taking jobs away from Americans and creating economies based on slave labor around the world for the financial benefit of multi-national corporations."

Pittsburgh, PA Steel Worker Thomas Barrett, moved his family to Shuiye Town in the Henan Province of China to work for Huaguan Iron and Steel Co. after his company, Bethlehem Steel, shuttered its door earlier this year.



CAPTION: Thomas and Amy Barrett couldn`t ask for better jobs except ones that paid enough to friggin` eat on.

Barrett works 14 hours a day in unsafe conditions while his children are schooled at the state-run Communist public school where they are taught anti-American propaganda and to hate Buddhists.

“Well, we couldn’t continued to compete against the slave wages that they pay over here in China so I decided if you can’t beat them join them,” Barrett said.

Barrett’s wife, Amy, works in a Textile company where she sews together blue jeans for shipment to the United States.

“Kind of ironic isn`t it?” she said.

The 3 million lost jobs are not ever expected to return to the United States. Many analysts predict that within 10 years most of the manufacturing jobs in the country will have been lost permanently.

High Tech jobs are also being shipped overseas as Microsoft and other computer companies outsource tens of thousands of IT jobs to India and Singapore.

“Either everyone will work flipping burgers or we are going to undergo a mass exodus out of the U.S. in the next twenty years,” said Jerry Cohen, leader of NoWTO.

- Contact [e-mail] to receive the weekly email edition of FreePressed.

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Cartoon by John Chuckman

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Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
The Radical Mind of Dick Cheney: An In-Depth Look at the Vice President


Watch 256k stream: http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2003/nov/256/d…


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/26/1532223

Read Transcript
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We take an in-depth look at the historical role Vice President Dick Cheney has played in U.S. foreign policy, his treatment of the intelligence community and his hawkish influence on President George W. Bush. We speak with The New Republic’s Spencer Ackerman who co-wrote this week’s cover story on Cheney. [Includes transcript]

Spencer Ackerman, assistant editor at The New Republic.


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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provided closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: We`re joined by Spencer Ackerman, assistant editor of the "New Republic." Welcome to Democracy Now!.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it`s good to have you. Why don`t we start from where you begin tracing the odyssey of Dick Cheney going back to the first Bush.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Well, what we wanted to figure out, when we undertook this project, was why someone who many people thought in 2000, when he became the Republican vice presidential nominee, would be a voice of advocacy for stability and, in general, real politic like the first Bush administration generally was, became someone who was so eager to reverse what many consider in retrospect sort of the central aspect of the Bush administration-- the first Bush administration`s foreign policy, which was essentially ending the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein in power. And, the more we looked at Cheney`s record in the Pentagon, the more we saw that he wasn`t within the mainstream in that first Bush administration. He was more of its ideological outlier.

When it came time to formulate policy towards the Soviet Union during the waning days of the Cold War, Cheney wasn`t interested, like his colleagues James Baker or Brent Scocroft or even the first President Bush, in arms control or supporting Mikhail Gorbachev and sort of bringing the Soviet Union to what some would call a soft landing. He wanted to really press a very radical approach and sort of shock the system by supporting uprisings in the rebellious Ukraine to create something of an outpost in the region that he would hope would become something of a linchpin for a democratic transformation. Similarly, support Boris Yeltsin, who would then challenge the regime at its core. And you can hear some of the overtones in the-- when you-- in the Iraq War today, looking at that. There would be the end of that 40 years worth of ideological confrontation that would be solved on the United States` terms if we first found someone we could support, who would have our interests at heart in this figure, that they would convince themselves is a world historical figure, like Yeltsin, and similarly creating an outpost in the region would then provide a foothold through which the ideological problems of the region, communism, in so many words, as it was falling down in the end of the 1980`s, would then provide this sort of regional positioning towards which the region would then sort of look more like the United States and sort of an open liberal democratic region.

AMY GOODMAN: We`re talking to Spencer Ackerman, who is assistant editor at the "New Republic." His piece is called "The Radical Mind of Dick Cheney." So, you look at the last ten years. Talk about Wolfowitz and Cheney.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: They had a very interesting relationship. Both men have-- it`s somewhat overlooked-- both men have, in fact, rather similar backgrounds. They`re both academics. They both spent their lives thinking very seriously about defense policy. They both-- even something of a meritocratic idea-- sort of finding bright, young intellectuals who are willing to challenge the received wisdom and then placing them in important policymaking places. And that came to its germination in the first Bush administration. Cheney was secretary of defense. Paul Wolfowitz was Cheney`s policy director, the undersecretary of defense for policy.

And over that time, Cheney saw his policy shop run by Wolfowitz as less of a 400-man unit that would think a about basing rights and weapons procurement, and formulating military to military ties with other countries, and more of an incubator for really strategic ideas. This was something that Wolfowitz was very keen on. There was a document that comes out of Wolfowitz`s policy shop in 1992 called the "Defense Planning Guidance," that was very controversial. It eventually becomes the 1993 "Regional Defense Strategy." That was the first time a document for American policymakers spelled out circumstances under which it would be justified to undertake preventive military action, in this case to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. What does that sound like right now?

Similarly, Wolfowitz saw that, with this "Defense Planning Guidance," that with the end of the Soviet Union and the birth of what we now call the Unipolar Moment, would be a unique opportunity for America to exercise its ability to intervene in other moments of foreign policy crises with a lot greater freedom than it would during this period of ideological confrontation. Similarly, Wolfowitz advocated that if America shrinks from its rather dominant role on the world stage, then the ideological gains of the Cold War would be perhaps momentary and fleeting, and so America needed to stay with its presence on the world stage, is what it was, in order to encourage that these games-- particularly, he was thinking more in Eastern Europe at this point. It would sort of be locked in. And, finally, America had to retain its very robust military capabilities to make sure that no rival emerged to challenge the United States over this period.

And this was just simply not something that was really on the radar in 1992. It was not something that anyone was really thinking about at that time. People were expecting a peace dividend in the Cold War, the 1992 election was all about domestic politics, domestic problems, solving longstanding domestic issues. And, so, it caused a great deal of controversy in the first Bush administration. When the White House heard about it, they repudiated it. But, an interesting thing happened, which is that Cheney, while he did accede to White House pressure and sand down the edges and make sure it got leaked to the same people the original draft got leaked to so that people could see it was no longer quite so aggressive.

Nevertheless, he retained most of its key ideas, most importantly about the necessity, at times, for preventive action and a forward-leaning military presence and most importantly, this idea that American security was really-- was really dependent on what he called zones of democracy. Different areas around the world, which were former security threats, which through American intervention could be transformed into sort of democratic outposts. That`s all retained in a January, 1993 document called the defense plan-- I`m sorry, called the "Regional Defense Strategy." And, so, it really shows that the-- the alliance between Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney wasn`t sort of a marriage of convenience. It was really more of a meeting of two minds, people who really did see the world in a very similar way, and were very eager to see that their vision was implemented.

AMY GOODMAN: We`re talking to Spencer Ackerman. You talk about Dick Cheney leaving his position as Defense Secretary to become head of Halliburton and how he circumvent-- how his disgust with the CIA led him to hire retired intelligence people, a policy he has carried on through this day. Can you talk about the kind of brain trust he set up at Halliburton to deal with the world, to deal with countries?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Well, basically, he comes out of the-- out of the first gulf war with a really acute sense-- and so does Paul Wolfowitz and so do others who work in the Pentagon-- with a really acute sense that in many very important respects the American intelligence establishment has failed. It`s failed to -- it`s failed to see that the Soviet Union had a bioweapons program, that we only found out about that in September of 1992, because Boris Yeltsin just flat-out told us. And, you know, that`s the whole-- the Soviet Union was the whole reason, more or less, that the CIA existed. So, how could they have missed something so important. Very, very few analysts in the intelligence community accurately predicted the invasion of Kuwait, and so on. There were several failures that proved to be somewhat seminal.

And by the time Cheney gets to Halliburton, like-- like any businessman, he wants to have the most accurate information he can, and so as he hires people who have been former intelligence professionals and others to sort of help him with his forecasting as he ran the company-- we talked to one of them-- and this person told us that, in very florid and not perhaps broadcastable language, how angry Cheney was at the CIA, and how little faith he had in it. And, by the time that Cheney becomes vice president, that`s a deeply held belief that he carries over with him. And it`s what leads Cheney and his bureaucratic allies to set up channels within the government to sort of second-guess, challenge, outsource and almost replace the judgments of the established intelligence community.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about his relationship with Ahmed Chalabi.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Chalabi, in the 1990`s, as he`s-- as he goes through his period where he falls out of favor with the Clinton administration, and with the Clinton administration CIA, cultivates more and more contact in Washington among conservatives. Importantly, Richard Perle and other scholars and former defense officials and other government officials who end up at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. And that`s where Cheney goes after his stay as Secretary of Defense and before he becomes head of Halliburton, and through annual conferences that-- that AEI would set up in Beaver Creek and elsewhere, Cheney comes to meet Chalabi. And it`s at these conferences where Chalabi would be making his case if only the U.S. would support the Iraqi National Congress and its insurgents, a democratic Iraq could very easily flow out of a very brief period of uprising and instability and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

So, at that point, it becomes more and more enticing to more and more people, the idea that you can be rid of this hideous dictator who seems to be addicted to weapons of mass destruction, who seems to have regional designs on the Middle East even after the Gulf War, and who seems to be sort of a relentless enemy of the United States, replaced with a democratic and free Iraq, which is sort of the bargain of all bargains. And by the time that Cheney becomes vice president, not only does he sort of keep an open line to Chalabi, but many of the people on his staff, including his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, one of his foreign policy advisers, John Hannah, another of his foreign policy advisers who goes over to work in the Pentagon later on, Bill Rooney. A lot of these people have established ties to Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles. And they keep an open line within the vice president to listen to Chalabi and solicit his advice on some cases, to sort of get Chalabi`s perspective on intelligence or get alternative intelligence analyses.

AMY GOODMAN: And the whole issue of Joe Wilson and the information-- that the information was false about the yellowcake uranium being sold to Iraq. Can you talk about Alan Foley, the director of the CIA`s nonproliferation center and what Cheney and Scooter Libby and the others were doing with him?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Foley was perhaps one of the most impor-- he`s retiring now-- he ran one of the most important directorates at the CIA in this day and age, which is about weapons proliferation. And, over the course of 2002, there were several visits undertaken both by Cheney personally, by Cheney`s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and then there were simply reams of other-- questioning of documents that would come out of the directorate to sort of, as people who work for Foley have made clear, had the effect of something of a chill factor, that they got the impression that Cheney and his office wanted intelligence reports to conform to what they considered to be the proper conception of the threat, which is Saddam Hussein having reconstituted his nuclear weapons program. And with the Niger issue, a lot of that remains murky.

Basically, the CIA felt-- in early 2002, there`s a report that makes its way to Dick Cheney that appears to have originated with Italian intelligence about Saddam seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger, and Cheney asks the CIA in early 2002, do you have anything to corroborate this, do you have any further information, how accurate is it? The CIA said they didn`t know. They wanted someone to find out, because they considered it of sufficient importance on its own merits and such importance to the vice president that it deserved a fuller answer. They asked Joe Wilson, who had been ambassador to several countries in Africa and had been an African specialist on the Clinton National Security Council to go to Niger and check it out.

Wilson went in March-- I`m sorry, in February of 2002, concluded that, because of various bureaucratic strictures, because of the structure of Niger, the uranium industry-- it`s run by two French-led consortiums in particular-- and because of the difficulties in spiriting away uranium or making deals out in the open on uranium without attracting oversight, most importantly by the International Atomic Energy Agency, such a deal almost certainly did not occur. Wilson returns to the United States. He briefs his CIA contact, and that sort of, is as far as he hears. Cheney`s office is adamant that they did not know about Wilson`s trip, that they did not know until they read about it in the papers just this summer that this trip had occurred, and they thought that the CIA had answered its ques-- had answered the questions from the vice president`s office in its entirety in 2002.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you talk about Cheney citing a Zogby poll, opposing those who said there was not support on the ground in Iraq, by citing this poll to say that the Iraqi people were with the U.S. military. Can you talk about that?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: This was one of the most bizarre statements Cheney made, both before the war, during the war, and in the post-war. In August, the Zogby organization tried to conduct the first scientific, as they call it, understanding of Iraqi public opinion. And what they found was decidedly not good for the United States. Sure enough, they found overwhelmingly that the Iraqi people, as any oppressed people would be, were overjoyed to be rid of Saddam Hussein, that did not translate into an overwhelming endorsement of the coalition`s occupation. Cheney took the findings on television and spun it in a way that suggested that that was exactly what Zogby had found, and it was used by Cheney as way to vindicate the coalition action. Yet, Zogby, when you analyze the poll, just paints such an overwhelmingly different picture, it`s very strange. Cheney had said that the American model of government was the most popular among the Iraqis.

In fact, a breakaway plurality of 49% wanted a democratic state that was guided by Islamic law. The closest choice to the United States model, which was a secular and democratic Iraq, garnered, by contrast, only 21% support. Cheney had said that about two-thirds of Iraq-I`m sorry, about 60% of Iraqis wanted to stay for at least another year. In fact, what they had said was they wanted the United States to leave in a year. And when you look at just the Sunni population of Iraq, that figure is at 70%. About half of Iraqis said that they expected the United States over the next five years to be harmful to their country. So, only-- only-- I think a fair reading of the poll would probably say that the Iraqis have somewhat mixed to negative feelings at the point at which Zogby conducted the poll about the American occupation. It was quite far from the enthusiastic reception that Cheney told the public that Iraqis had on "Meet the Press."

AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, I want to thank you for being with us. Spencer Ackerman is co-author of the piece, "What Dick Cheney Really Believes, The Radical." You`re listening to Democracy Now! Stay with us.

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How George transformed Tony`s world
There`s a lot of taking and little giving in this special relationship

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday November 27, 2003
The Guardian

November 22 marked the 40th anniversary of John F Kennedy`s assassination. "For of those to whom much is given, much is required," he famously remarked in 1961. It was his idea not only of the citizen`s relationship to the nation but of the US`s obligation to the world. However, George Bush has changed the maxim, at least in regard to Britain: "For to those of whom much is required, nothing is given."

In his speech of November 18 at the Banqueting Hall (avoiding an appearance before parliament, where backbenchers might make rude noises), Bush freely displayed his erudition, citing Shaftesbury and Wilberforce, Tyndale and Wesley, to cast himself as a liberal idealist and internationalist in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson. "We`re sometimes faulted for a naive faith that liberty can change the world," he said. "If that`s an error, it began with reading too much John Locke and Adam Smith." One wonders how often Bush has perused The Second Treatise of Civil Government. Certainly his speech was a repudiation of his father`s foreign policy realism: the Oedipal doctrine.

Putting his volume of Locke aside, Bush entered into negotiations with Blair to act out something more like Hobbes`s Leviathan. Blair had been put into the position of having to appear before the president as petitioner. He asked for relief on US steel tariffs; for the rendering of British prisoners at Guantanamo to Britain; and for US pressure on the Israel-Palestine peace process. But Blair was rebuffed.

Peter Riddell, in his book Hug Them Close, writes that from initial anxiety about representing British interests, Blair has grown to see Bush as something of a soulmate. Blair`s rhetoric during the visit sounded trumpet notes as though it was still the call to the war in Iraq and the postwar realities had not intruded. Riddell reports that Blair in retrospect regards Bush`s predecessor as "weird". That fact or factoid, true or not, may be interpreted as perhaps another gesture of ingratiation - demeaning Clinton is always deeply appreciated by Bush.

I recall being present at meetings between Blair and Clinton where, in 10 minutes, apparently difficult problems, including trade, were resolved to Britain`s advantage. How weird was that? Now Blair has equated the long-term interests aligning the US and the UK with adamantine support for the short-term strategies of the Bush administration. Yet the tighter the embrace, the weaker the influence.

As Blair rightly insists, the US is the world`s most powerful democracy and sets an example for the rest of the west: the rise of the welfare state in Britain followed the New Deal; Labour`s resurgence of the mid-60s followed the New Frontier and the Great Society. Conversely, Margaret Thatcher followed the conservative reaction of Richard Nixon and became the partner for Ronald Reagan. Clinton was the trailblazer for Blair. Now Bush`s America has taken a radical swerve toward authoritarian conservatism, creating an international undertow. Will Britain have a special exemption?

Wearing the laurels of his London triumph, Bush returned to Washington to roll back one of JFK`s great social initiatives and challenge the patriotism of Democrats. Bush`s draconian bill restricting Medicare (or public health care for the elderly) is the most significant attack on the social compact since the New Deal. It will drop about one-quarter of workers from their coverage for prescription drugs; 6 million elderly will lose coverage; another 3.8 million will have it reduced or eliminated.

The whole $400bn programme will be financed by regressive taxation, in contrast to the current untaxed entitlement; and $125bn will flow into healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, who are major Bush donors. Meanwhile, Karl Rove, Bush`s senior political aide, announced that "reform" of social security, the foundation of the New Deal, is next.

While Republicans kept Democrat leaders out of the Senate conference committee, in violation of all precedent, to ram the bill through, the Republican National Committee began running an advert on TV. "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," intoned the voiceover. But no Democrat was doing that. Bush himself appeared: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent," he said. But it was Bush who ignored intelligence to make the case that "the threat is imminent" in Iraq. Then the voiceover: "Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others." But it was Bush who was planning troop reductions during the election year. Who are the "others"? The UN? He could not have been referring to Blair, who pays any price, bears any burden.

· Sidney Blumenthal, former assistant and senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars

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Murky divorce details put Bush`s brother in spotlight
Gary Younge in New York
Thursday November 27, 2003
The Guardian

Whether it is dodging the issue of weapons of mass destruction or evading the imbroglio over the recount in Florida, the two most prominent scions of the Bush dynasty have a knack for braving doubts about their credibility.

But while United States president George Bush and his brother Jeb, the Florida governor, have made it through some tough questioning, the president`s younger brother, Neil, may not be so lucky.

In a court deposition, taken in March and released this week, Neil claims that attractive women came to his hotel door looking for sex while he was on business trips in Hong Kong in Thailand. And as a big-hearted Texan Neil, the third of five Bush children, merely did as he was asked.

"You have to admit it`s pretty remarkable for a man to go to a hotel room door and open it and have sex with her," said his ex-wife`s lawyer, Marshall Davis Brown. "It was very unusual," replied Mr Bush. He insists he didn`t know them, did not see them afterwards and didn`t pay them. "Were they prostitutes?" he was asked. "I don`t know," he said.

Mr Bush, 48, divorced his wife, Sharon, in April after 23 years of marriage. The split came after a bitter dispute with another couple, Maria and Robert Andrews, whom they met several years earlier.

Sharon, who is the subject of a $850,000 (£496,000) defamation suit after she alleged that Mr Bush was the father of the Andrews` two-year-old son, has called on Neil and Mr Andrews to take paternity tests.

Mr Bush and Maria Andrews are now a couple.

On Friday a Texas judge ordered Sharon Bush to allow one of their daughters, Ashley, 14, to accompany Neil and Maria to France for Thanksgiving. "They don`t even celebrate Thanksgiving in France," said a friend of Sharon`s.

The deposition also shed light on Mr Bush`s business dealings and ability to land fat contracts with little expertise.

The hotel trysts took place while Mr Bush was working as a consultant for Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, which is backed by the son of former Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, for which he was paid $2m in stock options over five years.

It is not the first time that he has been involved in corporate controversy. In the late 1980`s he was director of Denver-based Silverado Savings & Loan, which collapsed at a cost to taxpayers of $1bn. At the time he denied any wrongdoing but was sanctioned by the federal government for his part in the failure.

During the deposition Mr Brown asked: "Now, you have absolutely no education background in semiconductors, do you Mr Bush?"

"That`s correct," said Mr Bush.

Mr Brown also questioned him about work for Crest Investment Corporation, where he was paid $5,000 a month for work that totalled no more than four hours a week. Bush said he provided Crest with "miscellaneous consulting services". "Such as?" asked Brown.

"Answering phone calls when the other co-chairman called and asked for advice," said Mr Bush.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Shia leader set to reject plans for new Iraq
By Phil Reeves in Baghdad
27 November 2003


The Bush administration`s plans for formally ending the occupation of Iraq face further complications with signs of hardening opposition from the country`s most influential Shia Muslim cleric.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has criticised plans by Washington to transfer political responsibility to Iraqis next year as incomplete and believes they pay too little heed to Islam, a Shia politician said yesterday.

His comments, which come as America is struggling to contain a Sunni-led insurgency, will concern Washington`s strategists, including Paul Bremer, the US pro-consul in Iraq.

They know Ayatollah Sistani holds great sway over thepoor urban Shias, who comprise 60 per cent of the 25 million population, and has influence over the 25-seat US-appointed Iraqi governing council. Although the Americans do not want their policy determined by a Shia religious leader, they know that many Shia Iraqis would be unlikely to accept proposals that were rejected by him.

Since the occupation, Ayatollah Sistani has avoided involvement in the political fray. But this frail and reclusive figure, based in a modest office in the holy Shia city of Najaf, has become a powerful presence on the political landscape.

In June, he issued a fatwa that did much to sink a plan by Mr Bremer to appoint the authors of Iraq`s new constitution. The ayatollah`s edict stated that he would only support a constitution written by Iraqis chosen through a general election. This month, eager to hasten the transfer of political responsibility to Iraqis and quell the worsening violence, the US revised its strategy, producing plans for a 250-member transitional assembly, chosen by provincial caucuses, which would assume sovereignty and then set about drafting a constitution.

The ayatollah`s views on this plan, which stopped short of outright rejection, were outlined yesterday by Abdul-Aziz Hakim, a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, on the same day that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was promoting the proposals during a visit to Baghdad. Mr Straw said he was "absolutely sure" that the plans would "assist the security situation". He nearly had a first-hand experience of the violence on Tuesday night, when guerrillas fired three rockets that landed near the complex where he was staying. He said yesterday he had been unaware of the attacks.

Of the future of the 9,800 British troops in southern Iraq, he said: "We will stay as long as the Iraqi government and people wants us to stay and there is a job for us to do."

Mr Hakim said he had discussed the US`s proposals with the ayatollah, who told him they were flawed because they did not include a ban on legislating anything that contradicts Islam. This, too, will concern Americans who want a constitution that establishes a secular government. Mr Hakim said: "He expressed concern about real gaps, which must be dealt with or the plan will lack the ability to meet the hopes of the Iraqi people."

His comments come days after Muqtader Sada, a radical anti-American Shia cleric, dismissed the proposed handover of power by 1 July as inadequate in a New York Times interview, and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the allied forces.

Many Shias were wary of the American-led invasion but have since consolidated their gains by securing a majority of seats on the Governing Council and in the interim cabinet. Analysts predict that a Shia will lead the transitional government.

But there are fears, too, that, having largely stayed out of the violent resistance to the US occupation, Shias could become disaffected and take up arms against the Americans.

* The wife and daughter of the vice-chairman of Saddam Hussein`s Revolutionary Command Council, suspected of masterminding the anti-American insurgency, were arrested yesterday by US soldiers. The relatives of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, number six on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis, were detained in Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad.
27 November 2003 10:39



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Why Florida Senate race could turn into a comedy drama
By David Usborne in New York
27 November 2003


The Republicans have a potential cruise missile for a candidate to contest the crucial race in Florida next year for a seat in the US Senate being vacated by the retiring Democrat Bob Graham. She is a woman of independent wealth, with striking looks and, most importantly, with exceptionally high name recognition.

Why then, are all Republicans, and the White House in particular, petrified at the very prospect? Because her name is Katherine Harris, once called the "power bitch" for her pivotal role as Florida`s secretary of state in handing the state, and therefore the Presidency itself, to George Bush in the 2000 balloting debacle.

What was a tragedy in 2000, at least for supporters of Al Gore, is shaping up to be a comic drama for 2004. Mr Bush wants nothing more than for the country to forget the screwball manner in which he squeaked into the White House three years ago. No such national amnesia will be possible if Ms Harris is in the picture.

A Senate run by Ms Harris, who was elected to the US House of Representatives last year, is still not a sure thing. When Senator Graham recently made the surprise announcement that he was retiring, she said only she was thinking about it.

But a poll in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper yesterday showed her far in the lead of other possible Republican candidates. Equally easy to see is why political strategists for President George Bush would be mortified. Not only would he have to stand on the same platform as Ms Harris every time he visited Florida next year but her candidacy would be sure to galvanise Democrat voters across the state, who blame her for "robbing" them of victory last time around.

Florida is vital to Mr Bush`s re-election hopes next year. His Housing Secretary, Mel Martinez, who is from Florida, has suddenly expressed an interest in running for the Senate seat although only a few months ago he was ruling it out.

But if he is being pushed into joining the race by the White House, he may face an uphill struggle. The same Sentinel poll yesterday gave him a level of support only in the single digits. Complicating the plot further is the role of Jeb Bush, the President`s brother and the Governor of Florida.

The Martinez manoeuvre has reportedly infuriated Governor Bush, who does not take kindly to any suggestion of the Oval Office manipulating the politics of his state. Revealing its interest in the issue, the White House dispatched its key political strategists to meet Mr Martinez a fews days after Mr Graham dropped out. Governor Bush keeps denying there are tensions between Talahasse and Washington while reiterating that there will be no special favours for Mr Martinez. When the Palm Beach Post newspaper asked him about a Martinez candidacy Mr Bush replied: "If he runs, he`s going to have to earn it. This year we have had candidates who had the courage to run when Bob Graham was still in the race."

When reporters in Tallahassee asked whether he and President Bush had argued over the issue, Governor Bush said: "She said only she was thinking about it. No, no. We`re totally in sync."

But Ms Harris continues to take umbrage at what every Democrat says about her, that she fixed the outcome for his brother in 2000 by certifying the Bush victory in Florida and then by refusing to legitimate recounted votes in Broward County. (Mr Bush, after a ruling by the US Supreme Court, ended up taking Florida by just 537 votes.)

She said she would like to use a campaign for the US Senate to "gut all the inane arguments they make about the recount, which are really ludicrous". She added: "I know we conducted the recount honourably and we can prove it."

Ms Harris, 44, a former Democrat who became a Republican in 1986, cannot seek re-election when her present term as secretary of state ends in January 2003. But she can raise money for what may prove to be the year`s most expensive Senate race in America. "There is no question that Republican activists, conservative, moderate, you name it, think the world of her," Jim Kane, director of Florida Voter, said. Ms Harris told The New York Times that running for the Senate "is not something I had really considered", but since Mr Graham announced that he would not run "my phone has just not stopped ringing". She said she had been trying to determine whether her candidacy would hurt President Bush.
27 November 2003 10:40

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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In Mosul, where business is flourishing, Iraqis celebrated Id al-Fitr Wednesday to mark the end of Ramadan.

November 27, 2003
Attacks on G.I.`s in Mosul Rise as Good Will Fades
By DEXTER FILKINS

MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 26 — Since the Americans came to town seven months ago, the firefighters in this northern Iraqi city have gotten new trucks and new uniforms, American training and salaries 10 times larger than they used to be.

But when word came Sunday afternoon that two American soldiers had been shot in the head and killed a block away, the men of Ras al Jada fire station ran to the site and looked on with glee as a crowd of locals dragged the Americans from their car and tore off their watches and jackets and boots.

"I was happy, everyone was happy," Waadallah Muhammad, one of the firefighters, said as he stood in front of the firehouse. "The Americans, yes, they do good things, but only to enhance their reputation. They are occupiers. We want them to leave."

It was not supposed to be this way in Mosul, an ethnically diverse city of two million people and the economic and cultural center of northern Iraq.

As places like Ramadi and Falluja and Tikrit burned and their residents rebelled against the American occupation this summer, Mosul stayed calm, the one city with a Sunni Arab majority where most people still seemed to regard the Americans as their friends. A vigorous and far-reaching effort by the 101st Airborne Division to rebuild the city`s roads, schools and public buildings seemed to cement an unusually warm bond.

That appears to be changing very fast. The money the American occupiers once doled out freely has dried up, and other reconstruction aid has yet to arrive. Attacks on Americans, which have killed more than 25 in the Mosul area this month, have highlighted what local Iraqis say is a rapidly deteriorating relationship.

While Iraqi leaders once saluted American soldiers as their partners in building a new country, many now say their complaints go unheard. Moderate Iraqis cooperating with the Americans say the young men of Mosul are increasingly heeding the calls of militant clerics. With three prominent Iraqi civil servants killed in recent weeks, the Iraqis say, they are paying a steadily higher price for their cooperation.

It is not too late, residents say, to rebuild trust, but few Iraqis express much hope. Since the attacks against Americans increased, commanders have sent more troops into the city and detained dozens of suspected militants. The result appears to be a descending spiral, in which the crackdown is draining away much of the good will that remains.

"I want the Americans to succeed, and I want every American soldier to go home safely," said Raad Khairy al-Barhawi, a city councilman and a Sunni Arab. "But the Americans have completely misunderstood the situation. I am trying to help the Americans, and I am getting death threats. I am stuck in the middle."

The situation in Mosul, once so promising, now seems the object of drastically differing perceptions.

American commanders say the situation is still very much in their control, and they insist that they still have the overwhelming support of the people. They say the attacks on their men, while serious, are the work of perhaps a few hundred malcontents, most of them members of Saddam Hussein`s old government.

"I reject the idea that things have gone bad here," said Col. Joe Anderson, who commands about 5,000 men in the heart of the city. "Most of the Iraqis are glad we are here, and they are cooperating with us."

Indeed, the progress in Mosul, even with the recent spate of attacks, still strikes a visitor from Baghdad as remarkable. The sidewalks are jammed with shoppers. The telephone, electricity and water networks are in good working order, thanks in large part to $33 million in projects carried out by American soldiers since April. A 28-member city council brings together the city`s remarkable mix of Arabs, Christians, Kurds, Shabaks and Yazidhis.

The current attacks in and around Mosul, which number from 6 to 10 a day, are the work of a small number of bitter-enders, the Americans said. Colonel Anderson said the Americans had identified three cells here of about 100 fighters each, a small number given the city`s size. Other officers said many of the attacks had been staged by Iraqis who had come from Baghdad and other parts of the so-called Sunni triangle, the region north and west of the capital that is generating most of the violence.

In assaults last week, American troops zeroed in on what they described as a "rat line" of houses and sympathizers stretching south toward Baghdad, a line that assisted militants in traveling north to Mosul. The Americans detained 89 suspected guerrillas in those raids, and more than 100 in others across the city. Among those recently seized, they say, are three members of Al Qaeda and two of another militant Islamic group, Ansar al-Islam.

"What I think is that this is a case of people coming from the outside trying to spoil a good thing," Maj. Trey Cate said.

But many local Iraqis say the Americans` problems run deeper and broader. Expectations that the Americans would rapidly generate prosperity in Mosul have been met with disappointment, and vast numbers of Iraqis still find themselves unemployed. The pool of money the American military used here to employ hundreds of Iraqis for local projects has dried up, and the large sums recently approved by Congress for reconstruction have yet to arrive.

A network of former members of Mr. Hussein`s Baath Party, stretching from the universities to government offices, openly flout the Americans` edicts and, some Iraqis say, quietly support the resistance.

"I would say that the number of people who are opposed to the Americans here numbers in the thousands, the tens of thousands," said Hunien Kadu, a professor of economics at Mosul University and a city council member. "There are deans and assistant deans who were high-ranking members of the Baath Party. There are Baathists all through the government. The Americans can`t continue to let these people operate."

Many Iraqis complained that the recent American crackdown had pushed potential supporters away. Mr. Barhawi, for instance, cited a local cleric detained on suspicion of encouraging attacks against the Americans in his weekly sermons. He said American troops had handcuffed, hooded and slapped the cleric. Word of that, he said, was helping to alienate many Iraqis here who were still more or less receptive to the American enterprise.

The cleric, Abdul Satar al-Jawiri, was released after a search of his home turned up nothing, Mr. Barhawi said. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne said Wednesday that he could not confirm the incident.

"I am not defending the cleric, but he was humiliated in public," Mr. Barhawi said. "Do you realize what he is going to say in his sermons now?"



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 27, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Letter From Tikrit
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

emo to: President Bush

From: Saddam Hussein

Dear Bush: Well, it`s been a while since we last communicated. It`s not easy getting tapes out from this basement in Tikrit, but I thought it was time we had a little chat. Heard your speech on Arab democracy on the BBC Arabic Service. I`ll give you this, Bush, you and Blair do understand the stakes. It`s your willpower I doubt.

You see, Bush, this really is "The Mother of All Battles." You may not have meant to, but you have triggered a huge civilizational war — the war within Islam. Who wins in Iraq will have a big impact on this war — which is now spreading to Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

By now you`ve realized that I was prepared for this war. I got rid of all my W.M.D., hid explosives and set up an underground network to fight you once you were in country. But God bless the Turkish Parliament. By not allowing you to use Turkey to invade from the north, my boys in the Sunni Triangle were spared. By the time you got here from the south, we just receded into the shadows. You occupied our Sunni towns, but never defeated them. Had you been able to sweep down from the north, my boys would have had to engage you, and you would have killed them wholesale by the hundreds. Now you have to kill them retail — one by one.

We`re not fanatics. We`re I.B.M. We have a business plan and we`re executing it: We started by eliminating the U.N., the Red Cross and attacking oil pipelines. Then we moved against the countries that have sent troops or might — Italy, Jordan and Turkey. And now we`re killing all Iraqis who collaborate with you — police, army, judges, technocrats. We know who everyone is and where they live. We`re "a learning enemy." When you adapt to us, we re-adapt to you. Yes, we`re secular Baathists, but we`ve made contact with Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria, and they drive our suicide vans. So many volunteers, so many good targets.

What we all believe is that if we can defeat you here, American cultural, political and economic influence in this part of the world will be finished for a long time.

So far, I feel pretty good. As isolated as I am in my bunker, I know that my view of this war — which is that you Americans have come here to put the Arabs down and steal our oil — still dominates Arab public opinion. I am bolstered by the fact that ill-qualified, intolerant Arab religious educators, spiritual leaders and "intellectuals" — who have long dominated our schools and mosques because tyrants like me found them useful — still feed this view to our youth. They think the only reason we are backward is because you put us down.

As long as the Arab street is locked in this view, I win. Because it means the people would rather have a cruel Arab leader like me or bin Laden — who momentarily lifts their pride by sticking a finger in your eye — than looking in the mirror and admitting that our society, religious leaders and culture have failed to prepare our people to succeed at modernity.

Changing all this is what this war of ideas is all about, and I am so pleased you are so bad at it. As long as you let one of your top generals and your pals on the Christian right spew hate against the Prophet Muhammad, you only strengthen the will of my young people against you. And your "moderate" Arab allies are good at the police tactics to repress our angry, humiliated youth, but they have no serious strategy to give them new jobs, new ideas and new beliefs.

Yes, Bush, you and Blair have kicked off something very big — a war of ideas with, and within, Islam. It`s as big as the cold war. But to win, you have to mobilize your whole society, as you did in the cold war. You are talking about trying to change a whole civilization, whose backward, fanatical elements — when combined with modern technology — now threaten you.

Yet your Pentagon only talks about pulling troops out of Iraq, when you should be putting more in. What are you thinking? You should have brought every soldier you have in Europe and Japan right here. The whole game comes down to security. We are in a race to see who gets to the tipping point first. Iraqis will follow the strong horse. My bet is that I can generate enough insecurity among Iraqis to shun you, before you can induce them to carry out your program to build a democratic alternative to me.

I still think I can win, because I prepped my base for the Mother of All Battles, and you prepared yours for Mother Goose — a short war, with few troops, few funerals and no sacrifices for average Americans. Sorry pal, but that`s no way to win The Big One.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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U.S. May Slow Push for U.N. Plan
Delay Expected Until Iraq Sets Up `Basic Law,` Officials Say

By Colum Lynch and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 27, 2003; Page A24


UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 26 -- The Bush administration is seriously considering deferring its plans to seek U.N. Security Council support for a new resolution blessing its plan to transfer power to Iraqis this summer, U.S. and U.N. officials said Wednesday.

Administration officials are concerned that France, Germany and Russia will reopen their bid to secure a greater role for the international community in Iraq`s political transition, the officials said.

Just one week ago, senior U.S. officials expressed a desire to obtain the council`s quick endorsement of a recent U.S.-Iraq pact that would pave the way to a hand-over of power to an Iraqi transitional government by June 30.

U.S. officials are now indicating that they would not bring such a request before the Security Council until March. By that time, Iraq will have established a new "basic law" enshrining the essential principles that will guide Iraq`s political transition.

"The time to have this discussion is maybe in the spring of the next year," said a Security Council diplomat familiar with U.S. thinking. "More things will be certain. The United Nations may be more in a position to engage."

But other diplomats said that it is too soon to rule out the possibility of a compromise leading to a council acknowledgment of the U.S.-Iraq timetable for a political transition. Britain and other coalition members have been particularly eager to lock in the council`s formal endorsement of the latest development in the political transition before the momentum is lost. They continue to favor the adoption of a series of resolutions recognizing key stages of the political process as they unfold over the coming year.

Senior U.S. officials are assessing the prospects for successfully implementing their plan for the political transition. Robert Blackwill, the top National Security Council official dealing with Iraq, is in Baghdad for discussions with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, and Iraqi leaders.

On Monday, the president of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Jalal Talabani, requested in a letter to the Security Council that the United Nations "adopt a new resolution taking into consideration the new circumstances."

But James Cunningham, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, questioned the need for a new resolution in a closed-door council meeting Monday afternoon, diplomats who attended the meeting said. Instead, he persuaded the council to send Talabani a message confirming receipt of the letter and pledging to give it consideration.

U.S. officials said Wednesday that Talabani informed the United States that the letter presented to the council was only a draft and that they expected the Iraqi council to present an amended letter without a call for the resolution. "There doesn`t seem to be any support in the Governing Council, the [U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority] and the rest of the [U.S.] government for going ahead with a resolution at this time," said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Not at this moment."

The United States and Britain put out feelers last week to determine whether they could persuade key council members to support the adoption of a simple resolution endorsing the U.S.-Iraqi timetable for a political transition that would culminate with a ratified constitution and national elections by the end of 2005.

But representatives of France, Germany and Russia demanded Friday that the United States grant the United Nations and foreign governments more authority over the country`s political transition in exchange for their support.

"There`s always a rankling or criticism when they [Russians, French and Germans] speak out. It doesn`t affect very much right now," a senior U.S. official said. "The Russians want an international conference. The French want a faster turnover and an immediate and more prominent U.N. role."

U.S. officials expressed concern that many of those ideas would find a new outlet for consideration at a U.N.-sponsored meeting on Iraq`s political future.

The meeting, which will be convened by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, will draw together representatives of 17 nations, including Iraq`s neighbors, Egypt, the five permanent members of the Security Council and five nonpermanent members.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bridging a Divide, but Only in Language
While Helping Iraqis Contact the Occupation, Translator Remains Hostile to Americans

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 27, 2003; Page A28


BAQUBAH, Iraq -- The Iraqis come in with their petitions in Arabic, and the papers leave Nebras Ali`s translation office in English. Tales of cars wrecked by tanks, queries about detained and missing relatives, advice on how to rule Iraq -- Ali has seen them all.

With the sheaths in hand, he walks up to concrete barriers that encase the U.S. Army`s civil affairs office just across the street and hands them to a guard who hands them to someone else inside. Ali helps the Iraqis connect with the Americans and makes money for himself. He says he hates the Americans.

Ali personifies the murky sea of hostility that surrounds U.S. forces in this town, which has become yet another focal point of armed opposition to the occupation and the Iraqis who work with the Americans. Last week, suicide car bombers blew up police stations here and in nearby Bani Sad and killed 18 Iraqis, including four civilian adults and a child.

Yet the kind of opposition to the Americans espoused by Ali and a group of friends who help out at his office is hard to classify. They all condone the attacks on Americans. Some think Iraqi collaborators ought to be targets, some don`t. Some think suicide bombings are justified, some think they are sinful.

Ali`s philosophical position is especially precarious. He makes his living by helping Iraqis contact U.S. forces, yet he thinks they should not cooperate with them. "I don`t help Iraqis cooperate with the Americans. That would be against my religion," he said. "I help them deal with them."

His complex logic is further complicated by religious beliefs. "Under Islam, the Americans are invaders. I don`t trust them. They came for their own benefit," he said.

But Ali doesn`t want the Army to leave just yet. "We Iraqis have too many problems among ourselves. We have to unite first and then the Americans should leave," he said.

Ali`s attitude is widespread in Iraq. Toleration for Americans, such as it is, persists in part because Iraqis fear worse to come. Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, lies in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where many Iraqis are devoted to deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. They are afraid of domination by the country`s Shiite Muslim majority in the south. Shiites fear a return of the control that Sunnis exercised when Hussein ruled.

"The general public lives with too much uncertainty," Ali said.

Many U.S. military officers express bewilderment at their contacts with the Iraqi world. "It`s frustrating. You don`t know who you can trust. You don`t know who is who," said Lt. Robert Small, a military liaison officer at the civil affairs office.

Transcribers are a fixture outside government buildings in Iraq. Many set up shop at sidewalk tables piled high with official forms under umbrellas. They sip tea and absorb the preoccupations of their fellow citizens. With the Americans in charge of Iraq, command of English is a plus.

Ali is a slender 25-year-old who belonged to the Republican Guard, a branch of the Iraqi army regarded as loyal to Hussein. Yet he claims no loyalty to the leader-in-hiding.

"When I was a child, I loved Saddam Hussein. His face was everywhere. He was like a second father," he said. "Then when I got older, I changed. I saw the government was stealing from the people. My parents tried to keep me quiet. They were wrong."

As an electrical engineering student, Ali was tapped to join the ruling Baath Party. He refused. By then, he had turned to religion as an ideological guide. "Islam says there is only the party of God and the devil. Any political party is a virus," he said.

Nonetheless, his skills won him a place in the Republican Guard as a communications officer. When the United States invaded, "We sat trying to avoid bombs," he said. "We went home as losers.

"I see myself as a warrior now. We need a strong man to lead us. Not like Saddam Hussein. One who is honest and believes in God," he said.

His four friends -- all university-educated and all militantly anti-American -- arrived at Ali`s office, which is within sight of the blown-up police station. They debated the merits of the suicide bombing.

"Well, I think it was wrong and therefore it was probably the Americans who did it," said Osama Yaz, another electrical engineer. He said attacks on Americans are designed to make sure that, sooner or later, they leave Iraq.

"It is up to everyone to choose his way of struggle," said a companion who would not provide his name.

A customer entered Ali`s little office the other day and Ali handed him a form that began: "To Whom It May Concern in the CPA," the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-dominated administration in Iraq. The man dictated: U.S. soldiers detained my son a month ago, and I want to know where he is.

"Iraqis get angry that the Americans give them information slowly, if at all. We hand these papers in, and then nothing happens," Ali said.

An out-of-work teacher complained that he was laid off because of "political reasons for his past life" -- belonging to Hussein`s Baath Party. "I`m a father of six," he said as Ali took down his words, "and have a heart malfunction. I thought things would be good with the Americans. Instead, I have awakened to the hard-to-believe reality."

A 20-year-old with a mustache dictated an appeal for a job with the U.S.-organized police. "They will need some new police now," he said as he recited his resume to Ali.

The room fell silent. Ali took down the data and said, "I know you are doing this out of good intentions. Just stay away from the Americans."

"I need the job," answered the man.

"Better to stay far from the Americans," Ali repeated. "You know it`s dangerous out there."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
88 New Cartoons Today, wir sollten uns Washington von 1789 anschließen für an Thanksgiving von 88 frischen Cartoons:

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parole27nov27,1,3096…
THE STATE



Gov. Paroles Second Killer
By contrast, Davis freed only eight murderers during his five-year tenure, and twice denied the woman freed by Schwarzenegger.
By Nancy Vogel
Times Staff Writer

November 27, 2003

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed Wednesday to parole a woman who killed her husband`s mistress in 1987 — marking the second case in a week in which the newly elected governor has granted parole to a convicted murderer and a notable departure from the policy of his predecessor, Gray Davis.

One of the hallmarks of Davis` five years as governor was his repeated refusal to grant paroles approved by the state`s Board of Prison Terms.

Of 294 paroles agreed to by the board in murder cases, Davis blocked all but eight, following his professed belief that extenuating circumstances should not be used to justify homicide. He twice rejected parole for Rosario Muñoz, the woman Schwarzenegger has now agreed to free.

Shortly after his election, Davis said in an interview with The Times that he did not believe in redemption in murder cases.

"If you take someone else`s life, forget it," he said. Aides later denied that Davis` statements expressed a firm policy, but in at least one case a state judge found that Davis had adopted an illegal blanket policy of denying parole in all murder cases.

Schwarzenegger, by contrast, appears to be taking a more liberal stance and providing an early indication of his overall attitude toward criminal justice issues.

Although Davis waited two years to approve a parole, Schwarzenegger`s first such action came last Thursday, three days after he took office. That case involved a Sacramento man convicted of a 1985 murder. At the same time, the governor denied parole for a Visalia man who killed a woman while driving drunk in 1986.

Aides to Schwarzenegger have also said the governor is considering cuts in the state prison budget, which Davis protected against reductions.

"Schwarzenegger said he was going to be an economic conservative and a social moderate," said Dan Schnur, a Republican political consultant with close ties to the new administration. "Most self-described moderates would agree that some convicts are deserving of parole."

The governor seems more willing than Davis to chance being blamed if a parolee commits another crime, Schnur said.

"There`s some risk every time a governor grants parole," he said. "But as Gray Davis discovered, there can be a political risk in appearing too rigid and doctrinaire by rejecting every parole recommendation."

Under state law, the board makes decisions on paroles, but the governor has the power to reject those. The governor received that authority in 1988 under a ballot initiative pushed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian. California is one of only three states that give governors the power to veto parole decisions.

Schwarzenegger made no comment on the decision to parole Muñoz, a 51-year-old mother of three who was convicted in 1989 of killing her husband`s lover in Los Angeles.

"There were no issues in dispute on this case, so the recommendation from the Board of Prison Terms will stand," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto.

An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Muñoz may be paroled to that country. She told the board that she planned to live with her sisters there and work as a graphic designer or in a restaurant.

Schwarzenegger`s decision to free Muñoz cheered inmate advocates, who hope that it points to a more positive future for the thousands of murderers, rapists and kidnappers whose fates the parole board weighs each year.

"The fact that [Schwarzenegger] has some confidence in the system and the way it`s set up, that gives me hope," said Cheryl Montgomery, an attorney who has represented hundreds of inmates before the parole board.

Davis` policy "was a huge, huge breakdown in the system and an incredible waste to the taxpayer to be paying for this whole process that got nixed at the final step," she said.

The parole board had voted in both January and July 2002 to free Muñoz after receiving testimony from her husband, Felix Muñoz, that he had abused his wife "in every conceivable way."

In rejecting parole the second time, in November 2002, Davis wrote that "given the gravity of the crime, I believe Ms. Muñoz has not served sufficient time in prison and continues to pose too great a risk to public safety."

After a hearing in July, the parole board again moved to free Muñoz, declaring that her crime was committed "during a brief period of extreme mental and emotional trauma."

The board`s decision was based on Muñoz`s apparent remorse for the killing, psychological evaluations that showed a very slim chance of her offending again and her efforts to raise money for the victim`s daughter by selling portraits, said board spokesman Bill Sessa. While in prison, Muñoz learned to paint portraits and speak English.

"I think that one of the more unusual aspects of her case that showed us that she had moved on and matured as a person is that there was a child that was left without a mother as a result of the crime," Sessa said. "She has provided financial support for that child the entire time she was in prison."

The shooting occurred Sept. 7, 1987, at the apartment complex of the victim, Julia De La Cruz, 28. Muñoz had gone to the apartment after spending several hours at a park with her husband and their children. According to testimony, Felix Muñoz had forced his wife to drink several beers at the park then dropped her and the children off at the clothing factory in downtown L.A. that the couple owned.

After sewing for an hour or so, Rosario Muñoz left the children, took the loaded gun they kept at the factory and caught a bus to De La Cruz`s apartment, according to her statement to the parole board. She confronted her husband and his mistress as the two drove up in his van with De La Cruz`s 14-month-old daughter between them.

"When I saw the car approaching, I saw them laughing and with the beers in the hand," Muñoz told the parole board. "And I remember my family, my children living in fear all the time. And I remembered the time that my husband beat on my boy in front of me."

Muñoz opened the van door and fired more than once, killing De La Cruz. One of the bullets grazed the child`s arm.

Convicted of second-degree murder, Muñoz was sentenced to 15 years to life.

Her daughter and sister testified to the parole board that Felix drank excessively and frequently beat his wife and the children. Felix testified that his wife worked long hours besides caring for their children. He made no secret of his longtime relationship with De La Cruz, who had been a live-in baby-sitter for the family.

Muñoz told the parole board that she once left her husband and went to Mexico but that her father forced her to return.

"Rosario did not deserve the nightmarish life I gave her anymore than Julia deserved to die," Felix Muñoz wrote to the parole board in 2001.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fontana…
COMMENTARY



Bush Is Wrong to Oppose EU `Statehood`
By David Fontana
David Fontana is a law student at Yale Law School and Oxford University.

November 27, 2003

President Bush has had his foreign policy failures — and some successes — but when he met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week, he made one of the major foreign policy mistakes of his tenure. And it had nothing directly to do with Iraq.

According to the Sunday Times of London, Bush strongly encouraged Blair to oppose a European "super-state" and therefore, by implication, the ongoing efforts to create a European constitution that would establish a stronger European Union. Bush`s opposition and his near-exclusive focus on Iraq have made it harder for a public debate on the constitution to emerge, to the detriment of Europe and the United States.

The administration is seemingly worried about a united Europe challenging American power. Have no doubt about it: This constitution would have a transformative effect on Europe and the United States. It would unify power in a single European president and in a single foreign minister. For the first time, there would be a clear bill of rights that had preeminent status throughout Europe. The U.S. would no longer be dealing with disparate countries, but instead with a formidable, coherent Europe.

Since the end of World War II, Europe has gradually become more and more united as one entity. Two years ago, the 15 member-states of the EU decided to take this further, agreeing to create a formal constitution to govern Europe. However, there is no continent-wide discussion about it, and that is the problem.

The Bush administration`s consistent opposition to a united Europe has European leaders trying to pacify the Americans instead of focusing on the constitutional debate. The political oxygen in Europe is almost entirely sucked into a discussion of the United States and terrorism. That is important, but not the only major issue facing Europe.

The leaders of the constitutional debate are all well past their political prime, so there is no larger-than-life figure to drive the momentum. The constitution currently focuses mostly on technical issues, not first principles of government that are likely to arouse the interest of the citizenry. The result is clear: Less than 40% of Europeans even know about the constitution.

Encouraging greater participation by all governments and citizens would ensure that the European founding fathers do not go too far too fast. The elites and the average citizens greatly differ in their attitudes about how much power the European Union should have over cultural issues and foreign policy. An engaged population could serve as a check on overeager elites. Moreover, in a heterogeneous area like Europe, it is particularly important to have a dialogue with all citizens to ensure that the full range of costs and benefits of any potential action related to the constitution is considered.

Creating the constitution with the full participation of all citizens can help the United States. Europe does not have the military might to be a threat to the U.S. in the near future. A united Europe could even help the United States in any new global wars. There is NATO, but it is dominated by the U.S. and therefore limited in what battles it fights. A European military force, freed of American political constraints, might be more willing to respond to some crises that deserve attention — and sooner.

These positive results follow only if a united Europe is what results from the new constitution. If the process continues without widespread citizen involvement, there will be much discontent with a new EU government.

This is where Bush enters the picture. He should encourage Blair and the other major leaders of Europe to join the constitutional debate more directly and actively, including convening special sessions of their domestic legislatures solely to discuss the constitution. European leaders could then sponsor a referendum on the constitution.

Europe is in the midst of a historic transformation. The Bush administration`s opposition has made the process harder — and Europe and the United States could be the worse for it.


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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/150058_bigspending27.h…

Bush budget quake deeply felt
Thursday, November 27, 2003

By BRYAN D. JONES AND JAMES L. TRUE
GUEST COLUMNISTS

Debates over President Bush`s $87 billion request for Iraq obscure the fact that even before venturing into Baghdad, Bush was presiding over the most spectacular growth of U.S. government in decades.

Studies conducted at the University of Washington and Lamar University in Texas measured real-dollar changes in each budget category over time. The inflation-adjusted 6.2 percent growth in the first full Bush budget, FY2002, was the second-highest in two decades. This was on top of an 11.3 percent leap in 2001, a budget that Bill Clinton had submitted but that Bush substantially increased through several supplemental requests.

Defense growth, in particular, has been immense under Bush. In real dollars, Fiscal 2004 will register the largest percentage change for the military since the Vietnam War. From 1965, the first year of the Vietnam buildup, through 1968, the defense budget grew 39 percent. If the 2004 Iraq supplement is enacted as Bush intends, the inflation-adjusted defense budget will have swelled by one-third from 2001 through 2004. (The comparable Reagan defense buildup, from 1981 through 1984, was 25 percent.)

Political scientists sometimes think in terms of policy "earthquakes" -- times when dramatic, fundamental shifts take place. The Bush budget quake has been across-the-board, which is to say that the administration is failing to hold down spending in all areas, not just those related to defense and homeland security. Across-the-board increases are signals that a culture of spending has been embraced in Washington. This is not a readjustment of priorities to meet new challenges but a serious long-term shift in budgetary politics.

The Bush budget quake is the third in U.S. postwar history. Our studies have isolated two previous budget quakes. Budget quakes occur when all budget categories move together in an upward or downward shift. One occurred in the mid-`50s, during the Eisenhower administration, and involved a ramping up of highways, education, housing and science, foreshadowing the policy initiatives of the Kennedy-Johnson Era.

The second, a downward shift, happened after the "budget wars" between Richard Nixon and Congress in the mid-`70s. Nixon refused to spend congressionally authorized funds, claiming that spending was out of control. Congress responded by limiting presidential authority to impound, but also added new congressional procedures directed at controlling spending. Between 1975 and 2001, federal spending occasionally spurted ahead in some categories, and declined in others, but did not leap across the board.

Spending was under control after 1975, but the Reagan tax cuts caused large deficits. Both the first President Bush and President Clinton adjusted revenues to match spending, and ushered in a brief era of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets.

All that has changed with George W. Bush. His aggressive spending is affecting all areas of public policy. Unlike Reagan, George H.W. Bush or Clinton, he has been unable to prioritize. This is due both to the administration`s inability to enforce fiscal discipline and the Republican Congress` refusal to renew the congressional budget caps enacted in the early `90s.

Are the changes permanent? We can`t know for sure, but the other two budget quakes set a spending tone that lasted 20 and 30 years, respectively. Spending cultures, once established, are very difficult to change. The policy landscape has been altered permanently.

The Bush administration clearly intends to finance the budget quake through deficits. The president is demanding that Congress make his tax cuts permanent. Clinton`s surpluses are now Bush`s structural deficits. That means that these deficits will not disappear when robust economic growth resumes. The Bush deficits are far more dangerous than those under Reagan, who held spending down (except for defense).

If we are right, then the federal spigot is "on." Democrats and moderate Republicans are clamoring for more domestic spending to match the administration`s commitment to Iraq. A new budgetary era has begun, and it is likely to be funded from borrowing against the future rather than taxation.



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Bryan D. Jones is the Donald R. Matthews distinguished professor of American politics and director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at the University of Washington. James L. True is the Jack Brooks chairman of Government and Public Service at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Perle`s Confession
That`s Entertainment
By STEW ALBERT

Why would Richard Perle spill the neo-con`s beans and acknowledge that the US invasion of Iraq was against international law? Perhaps to make official and legitimate the Bush administration`s private principle that it is above any law written by a human being. But then why do Dubya and Powell spend so much time inventing crackpot theories that prove the conquest of Iraq was a perfectly law abiding act?

Perle was in London with Bush, and the professor spoke at a meeting of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. His point was that getting rid of Saddam was desirable but illegal. So his gang went ahead and did it anyway.

How come the confession? Maybe Perle thinks the new world order requires that elite intellectuals be on the same page. Agree or disagree, the policy discussions that the brainiacs engage in, must transpire in a spin free environment. Those with souls of gold should not be fed from a Big Mac menu. Indigestion might drive them into the enemy camp.

But what about the rest of us? Surely we will rise up now that we know our nation has become a war god worshipping international outlaw. Don`t count on it. Just a few weeks ago a Rummy authored memo surfaced in which he admitted the US had no idea if it was winning or losing the war on terror. And then Cheney declared Saddam was involved in 9/11 and then Bush said he wasn`t. Nothing much happened. Bush continues making up the world in his hideous likeness, and the ruling pundits lament about the new hostile tone creeping into the expressions of his critics.

Truth or fiction doesn`t matter much anymore. A few years back the global wrestling promoter Vince McMahon admitted that the outcome of all his battles to the near death, were predetermined. That what he did for a living was sports entertainment. Pro Wrestling was strictly show business.

For decades the moguls of the mat world had insisted their product was a strictly legitimate sport. They reasoned that if the disillusioned fans knew it was all a fake, they would go on to the next tent. Maybe check out the sword swallower or the two headed gorilla and never spend another dollar on watching the lost art of grunt n` groan.

Of course, the wrestling promoters lot was not an easy one. There were endless exposes in the press and occasional government investigations and demands for greater regulation of professional wrestling by the state athetlic commissioners. And then McMahon had his fantastic insight. Wrestling fans were in love with the spectacle of combat. In an age of video games and technologically spawned action movies, nobody really cared if the battles were actually real. And by calling his promotions entertainment, he would send those now blind athletic commissioners back to the showers.

In an age of spectacle does the average Joseph Six Pack really care if the last Presidential election was on the level. In a boring campaign, the rigged conclusion actually made for some exciting tube time. It was a lot more fun than Al Gore`s speeches.

So, like Vince McMahon, Richard Perle can from time to time tell the truth and Bush can keep lying and if the show remains lively and plays sufficiently on powerful emotions like rage and the never ending desire for power and revenge, citizens won`t much care if its all a pile of of bullshit. Like Californians they wont be able to tell the difference between a movie actor, the Terminator, and their governor.

It seems the only chance we have of busting the Bush gang`s hustle, is by laying waste to their particular corner of show business. Seizing the Bushies stage while they are in mid performance and putting banana peels under their feet, pinching their cheeks and throwing pies in their faces, this kind of audacious chutzpah will do a lot more good than just writing another leaflet. Telling the truth my be necessary but it is very far from sufficient.

Our imaginative disruptions should make the Bushies look like silly action figures, slipping in the mud of their own making. They are trying to look like super heroes and never mind that Bush is afraid of horses. Remember, it`s all a put-on anyway and nobody really cares, unless the fake gets obviously foolish or boring. Making that happen is our noble task.

Stew Albert runs the Yippie Reading Room. His memoir, Who the Hell is Stew Albert?, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

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November 14 / 23, 2003

Invasion as Marketing Problem
The Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
By NOAM CHOMSKY

Establishment critics of the war on Iraq restricted their comments regarding the attack to the administration arguments they took to be seriously intended: disarmament, deterrence, and links to terrorism.

They scarcely made reference to liberation, democratization of the Middle East, and other matters that would render irrelevant the weapons inspections and indeed everything that took place at the Security Council or within governmental domains.

The reason, perhaps, is that they recognized that lofty rhetoric is the obligatory accompaniment of virtually any resort to force and therefore carries no information. The rhetoric is doubly hard to take seriously in the light of the display of contempt for democracy that accompanied it, not to speak of the past record and current practices.

Critics are also aware that nothing has been heard from the present incumbents -- with their alleged concern for Iraqi democracy -- to indicate that they have any regrets for their previous support for Saddam Hussein (or others like him, still continuing) nor have they shown any signs of contrition for having helped him develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when he really was a serious danger.

Nor has the current leadership explained when, or why, they abandoned their 1991 view that "the best of all worlds" would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein" that would rule as Saddam did but not make the error of judgment in August 1990 that ruined Saddam`s record.

At the time, the incumbents` British allies were in the opposition and therefore more free than the Thatcherites to speak out against Saddam`s British-backed crimes. Their names are noteworthy by their absence from the parliamentary record of protests against these crimes, including Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, and other leading figures of New Labour.

In December 2002, Jack Straw, then foreign minister, released a dossier of Saddam`s crimes. It was drawn almost entirely from the period of firm US-UK support, a fact overlooked with the usual display of moral integrity. The timing and quality of the dossier raised many questions, but those aside, Straw failed to provide an explanation for his very recent conversion to skepticism about Saddam Hussein`s good character and behavior.

When Straw was home secretary in 2001, an Iraqi who fled to England after detention and torture requested asylum. Straw denied his request. The Home Office explained that Straw "is aware that Iraq, and in particular the Iraqi security forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the courts with the provision of proper jurisdiction," so that "you could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted judiciary."

Straw`s conversion must, then, have been rather similar to President Clinton`s discovery, sometime between September 8 and 11, 1999, that Indonesia had done some unpleasant things in East Timor in the past twenty-five years when it enjoyed decisive support from the US and Britain.

Attitudes toward democracy were revealed with unusual clarity during the mobilization for war in the fall of 2002, as it became necessary to deal somehow with the overwhelming popular opposition.

Within the "coalition of the willing," the US public was at least partially controlled by the propaganda campaign unleashed in September. In Britain, the population was split roughly fifty-fifty on the war, but the government maintained the stance of "junior partner" it had accepted reluctantly after World War II and had kept to even in the face of the contemptuous dismissal of British concerns by US leaders at moments when the country`s very survival was at stake.

Outside the two full members of the coalition, problems were more serious. In the two major European countries, Germany and France, the official government stands corresponded to the views of the large majority of their populations, which unequivocally opposed the war. That led to bitter condemnation by Washington and many commentators.

Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the offending nations as just the "Old Europe," of no concern because of their reluctance to toe Washington`s line. The "New Europe" is symbolized by Italy, whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was visiting the White House. It was, evidently, unproblematic that public opinion in Italy was overwhelmingly opposed to the war.

The governments of Old and New Europe were distinguished by a simple criterion: a government joined Old Europe in its iniquity if and only if it took the same position as the vast majority of its population and refused to follow orders from Washington.

Recall that the self-appointed rulers of the world -- Bush, Powell, and the rest -- had declared forthrightly that they intended to carry out their war whether or not the United Nations (UN) or anyone else "catches up" and "becomes relevant." Old Europe, mired in irrelevance, did not catch up. Neither did New Europe, at least if people are part of their countries.

Poll results available from Gallup International, as well as local sources for most of Europe, West and East, showed that support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" did not rise above 11 percent in any country. Support for a war if mandated by the UN ranged from 13 percent (Spain) to 51 percent (Netherlands).

Particularly interesting are the eight countries whose leaders declared themselves to be the New Europe, to much acclaim for their courage and integrity. Their declaration took the form of a statement calling on the Security Council to ensure "full compliance with its resolutions," without specifying the means.

Their announcement threatened "to isolate the Germans and French," the press reported triumphantly, though the positions of New and Old Europe were in fact scarcely different. To ensure that Germany and France would be "isolated," they were not invited to sign the bold pronouncement of New Europe -- apparently for fear that they would do so, it was later quietly indicated.

The standard interpretation is that the exciting and promising New Europe stood behind Washington, thus demonstrating that "many Europeans supported the United States` view, even if France and Germany did not."

Who were these "many Europeans"? Checking polls, we find that in New Europe, opposition to "the United States` view" was for the most part even higher than in France and Germany, particularly in Italy and Spain, which were singled out for praise for their leadership of New Europe.

Happily for Washington, former communist countries too joined New Europe. Within them, support for the "United States` view," as defined by Powell -- namely, war by the "coalition of the willing" without UN authorization -- ranged from 4 percent (Macedonia) to 11 percent (Romania).

Support for a war even with a UN mandate was also very low. Latvia`s former foreign minister explained that we have to "salute and shout, `Yes sir.` . . . We have to please America no matter what the cost."

In brief, in journals that regard democracy as a significant value, headlines would have read that Old Europe in fact included the vast majority of Europeans, East and West, while New Europe consisted of a few leaders who chose to line up (ambiguously) with Washington, disregarding the overwhelming opinion of their own populations.

But actual reporting was mostly scattered and oblique, depicting opposition to the war as a marketing problem for Washington.

Toward the liberal end of the spectrum, Richard Holbrooke stressed the "very important point [that] if you add up the population of [the eight countries of the original New Europe], it was larger than the population of those countries not signing the letter." True enough, though something is omitted: the populations were overwhelmingly opposed to the war, mostly even more so than in those countries dismissed as Old Europe.

At the other extreme of the spectrum, the editors of the Wall Street Journal applauded the statement of the eight original signers for "exposing as fraudulent the conventional wisdom that France and Germany speak for all of Europe, and that all of Europe is now anti-American."

The eight honorable New European leaders showed that "the views of the Continent`s pro-American majority weren`t being heard," apart from the editorial pages of the Journal, now vindicated. The editors blasted the media to their "left" -- a rather substantial segment -- which "peddled as true" the ridiculous idea that France and Germany spoke for Europe, when they were clearly a pitiful minority, and peddled these lies "because they served the political purposes of those, both in Europe and America, who oppose President Bush on Iraq."

This conclusion does hold if we exclude Europeans from Europe, rejecting the radical left doctrine that people have some kind of role in democratic societies.

Noam Chomsky is the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival: America`s Quest for Global Dominance, from which this commentary is adapted. For more information on the book, published by Metropolitan Books, see http://www.hegemonyorsurvival.net.

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Posted on Wed, Nov. 26, 2003



Iraq war diverting resources from war on terror, experts say

By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - A growing number of counter-terrorism experts are challenging President Bush`s assertion that Iraq is a major battle in the war against terrorism and are questioning whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq has hurt rather than helped the global battle against al-Qaida and its affiliates.


Experts who have served in top positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations are increasingly suggesting that the Iraq war has diverted momentum, troops and intelligence resources from the worldwide campaign to destroy the remnants of al-Qaida.


They note that the presence of U.S. troops in an Arab homeland is serving as a major recruiting tool for signing up and motivating new jihadis, or Islamic holy warriors.


"Fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it (so)," said Richard Clarke, who was a senior White House counter-terrorism official under Bush and President Bill Clinton.


There are few objective measures by which to judge the progress of the war on terror, something that makes it difficult to gauge whether the United States is winning or losing the battle.


Bush administration officials note that much of al-Qaida`s known top leadership has been caught or killed, but even Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a much-publicized memo that was leaked last month, said ways of measuring progress are almost nonexistent.


"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," Rumsfeld wrote.


Yet gauging the status of the war against al-Qaida has taken on fresh urgency with a series of deadly car bombings this month in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and new threat warnings at home.


The war on terror also appears destined to play a major role in next year`s presidential campaign, with Bush and his Democratic opponents running dueling television ads on national security issues.


Some possible indicators of success or failure are murky, analysts say.


Islamic terrorist groups, perhaps with inspiration but not direction from al-Qaida, are striking out at civilian targets in the Muslim world. Their operations, while deadly, appear to some experts to be hurried and without central control, a sign that the war is taking a toll on al-Qaida.


It remains unknown, however, whether Osama bin Laden`s group can mount another 9-11-style "terrorist spectacular" in the United States. Nor is it known whether bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaida leaders still exercise direct control over the network, or how close they are to being captured.


There are worrisome signs that the terrorist threat is regenerating.


A United Nations report due out in early December is expected to say that al-Qaida, while probably weakened by U.S.-led assaults, possesses surface-to-air missiles for use against aircraft and is working toward a biological or chemical weapons attack.


In Afghanistan, the Taliban militia ousted in late 2001 is resurgent, fueled by an upsurge in opium production.


And while terror training camps have been eliminated in Afghanistan, new ones are being established in the Caucasus and the Philippines, former White House officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write in a new afterword to their book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."


"From the perspective of counterterrorism professionals, the war in Iraq was not a continuation, but a diversion," they write.


No evidence of links between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida has been made public since the U.S. invasion, despite pre-war claims by top Bush aides that such ties posed a growing threat to the United States.


According to current and former officials, the Bush administration diverted precious assets, including U.S. military special operations forces, intelligence operatives and spy satellites from tracking al-Qaida to the war in Iraq.


By one official`s estimate, half of the special operations and intelligence resources focused on al-Qaida were redirected to support the March 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. That figure could not be confirmed.


Former White House counter-terrorism coordinator Rand Beers, who resigned in March just before the Iraq war began, said that U.S. troops, CIA paramilitary officers and intelligence collection devices were withdrawn from Afghanistan and refurbished for use in the war against Iraq.


Beers - who now works for the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. - added that war with Iraq added to U.S. difficulties in committing the security force or aid needed to stabilize Afghanistan.


"We missed some opportunities," Beers said.


Others note that the number of U.S. spy satellites and electronic listening posts is limited as is the number of analysts trained to decipher and translate intercepted messages. While they have no specific information to corroborate their statements, they believe U.S. intelligence is almost certainly listening in on fewer suspected terrorists outside of Iraq as they assign much of their intelligence capabilities to detecting and pre-empting attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.



Steve Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, insisted that the global war on terrorism has not been hurt by a diversion of resources to Iraq.


"The intelligence community writ larger, and the (Pentagon) specifically, continue to do the monitoring, the assessment and are taking the appropriate actions ... in the world writ large," said Cambone, a close associate of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.


"At the level of the global war on terrorism, there isn`t a lack of focus," he said.


Cambone acknowledged that there is a shortage of experts in collecting and analyzing human intelligence within the military services. But he said the Pentagon has instructed each service to institute a crash training program to boost so-called HUMINT teams working in Afghanistan and Iraq.




Another top intelligence official said the CIA, with a finite number of Arabic speakers, paramilitary operators and other assets, has inevitably had to divert resources to the Iraq effort.


But "we`ve struggled mightily not to diminish our counter-terrorism efforts" through reorganization and longer work hours, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have been flooded with new funds since the Sept. 11 attacks.




Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, questioned whether the diversion of U.S. troops from Afghanistan makes a difference in the hunt for bin Laden, who is thought to be along the Afghan-Pakistani border.


"Ultimately, if bin Laden and Zawahiri are going to be tracked down, probably Pakistani forces are going to have the best chance at that," he said.




Bush administration officials point out that there have been major successes against al-Qaida since September 2001.


The network`s operational leadership is dead, captured or on the run, they say. More than 3,400 terrorist suspects have been detained by over 100 countries, and more than $200 million in terrorist-related finances have been seized. Saudi Arabia has begun a major crackdown on the group and its affiliates.


In response, Katzman said, the terrorist network has fragmented into "local al-Qaidas or pro-al-Qaida centers" whose focus appears to be attacks in the Middle East.


Terrorists are seeking out new pastures, too.


Counter-terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland recently visited the Tri-Border Area, a lawless region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet that has been used by Islamic terrorist groups to hide and raise funds. Fifteen minutes after arriving in Paraguay, he said, he was offered explosives and arms - for cash.


---


(Knight Ridder Washington correspondent Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this report.)


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

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

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John Chuckman: `The doomsday machine`
Posted on Thursday, November 27 @ 10:11:42 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By John Chuckman

It occurred to me to write a satire about Osama and the boys sitting around in the mountains somewhere holding a conference about the worst possible damage they could inflict on the United States and deciding that it would be whatever act got Bush re-elected.

But retired American General Tommy Franks came along and spoiled the fun. General Franks has followed the advice of the fictional Doctor Strangelove by announcing to the world what he believes will happen if the United States is attacked by terrorists using strategic weapons: he says Americans will scrap the Constitution and set up a military government.

If you recall the bitter and hilarious Cold War film, Dr. Strangelove, there is a scene where the Soviet ambassador puts down the phone to Moscow, groaning about "The fools, oh, the mad fools," and then informs the American President and Pentagon brass for the first time of the Doomsday Machine. The Doomsday Machine, he explains to those gathered in a desperate effort to stop an unauthorized attack launched by a lunatic American wing commander, is an automated device that, once set, cannot be prevented from responding to any attack by releasing an earth-straddling cloud of deadly radiation.



Doctor Strangelove, a character based on captured scientists and others from Nazi Germany who rose to high places in the American government during the Cold War, shrieks from his wheelchair, struggling to control the tendency of his right arm to rise in the Hitler salute, what is the good of such a deterrent if no one is told about it?

Indeed, so General Franks has warned us. Considering the wholesale insanity we`ve witnessed since 9/11, there is little reason to doubt the general`s judgment.

Many Americans would not be frightened by the idea of military government. After all, they receive a steady diet of sappy stuff about "our boyz." But if you look at what the boys have been doing lately in Iraq and recall the atrocities of Vietnam, any warm, cozy expectation of being ruled by the likes of Jimmy Stewart in khakis vanishes.

For many reasons, democracy always has had a tenuous hold in America. Its history as a democracy where almost everyone can vote only goes back several decades, and as we saw in Florida during the last presidential election, that basic principle is not yet firmly entrenched. The adolescent nature of much of American culture - exhibited in a thousand ways from endless movies about muscle-bound superheroes to the flag-waving spectacles made of football games - reveals an attraction to fascism, fascism being merely an adult form of adolescent fantasies about power.

It is not difficult at all to imagine democracy`s hold being quickly snapped, especially where dark, exaggerated fears are involved, such fears also being a prominent feature of American culture. Consider the millions of Christian fundamentalists who fervently embrace the notion that earth faces imminent destruction in an Armageddon. Just a few years ago, as the calendar turned to the year 2000, millions of secular crackpots, the militia/survivalist types, stocked ammunition and freeze-dried rations in a modern-day repeat of the fallout shelter lunacy of the 1950s. There have been countless gatherings on mountaintops to await the "end of time" and many bizarre mass suicides. America, reflecting its unpleasant Puritan heritage, almost certainly leads the advanced world in holding to voodoo-like fears.

The impact of an American military government on the world would be incalculable. Treaties, agreements, diplomatic conventions all might effectively be suspended since it is the Constitution that gives foreign treaties their primacy in law within the United States. International borders effectively could be erased since few are in a position to prevent the American military`s taking whatever arbitrary measure it pleases. The United Nations might well be dismissed as an unnecessary expense and a security risk.

Huge, destabilizing uncertainties would be introduced into world markets. The flow of international capital would be affected. A world depression could easily be induced. After all, it was poorly-considered American law, the Smoots-Hawley Tariff, that helped create the Great Depression.

The military-service draft would certainly be re-introduced.

The prospect for a quick end to military rule would not be good because such a government`s central purpose would be fighting terror, yet all applicable history tells us that conventional military action is ineffective against terror - ineffective, that is, unless you are prepared literally to crush great masses of people. Of course, America does have its advocates for this last, like the upstanding young man from Texas who e-mailed me, after reading something of mine, that Afghanistan should have been reduced to a lump of radioactive glass.

Bush`s response to 9/11 has widely dispersed the adherents of terror and strengthened terror`s appeal to new recruits. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other important countries display genuine signs of instability. Every thoughtful statesman warned Bush of this before he invaded Iraq, but he chose to ignore them all. This clearly is not all the work of the mysterious al-Qaeda Bush loves to blame but of many aggrieved individuals. Iraq itself has been turned into a suppurating wound of grievances. The Arab world, a very large place indeed, deeply resents America`s humiliating occupation of a major Arabic capital and its continued generous support for Israel`s occupation and abuse of Palestinians.

You might think that Americans - a people deeply attached to guns and slogans like "Live free or die" and "Don`t tread on me" - of all people in the world would understand the anger and resentment of Iraqis. Yet the polls still show substantial support for a President who utters nonsense each time he speaks on the subject. I can only explain this fact by out-of-proportion tendencies to fear and indifference to the lives of others. Liberal Internet sites headlining every slight downward tick in Bush`s polls have about them a eerie feeling of desperate fantasy.

George Bush represents the culmination of America`s long-term arrogant and uninformed policies towards a good deal of the world, the kind of policies that were indisputably the root cause of 9/11. A man whose capacities and imagination do not exceed those of a dozy Southern county sheriff has been thrust upon the world as a leader because many Americans just can`t be bothered to consider how the actions of their government affect so many others.

Bush has managed to convert a one-off, sensational terrorist attack, which could and should have been dealt with by methods several European states had long used against terror, into a tangle of nearly insoluble world-scale problems. The invasion of Iraq particularly was an irrational act.

Americans are not taught a sense of responsibility concerning their great power in the world, and they often are unaware of the impact they have on the others. After all, many Americans are raised to behave exactly that way towards their own society, a predatory, often chaotic place where having fun or getting ahead at the expense of others is widely regarded as youthful exuberance or entrepreneurial skill.

There is little doubt in the minds of thoughtful people removed from America`s unforgiving, brutish national politics that Bush`s actions as President have been destructive beyond calculation. They have hurled America along a path from which it may not recover, for, regardless of the upcoming election, the nation`s political institutions may not be adequate to the job.

First, there is no easy way out for American forces in Iraq. A sudden withdrawal now would be irresponsible and disastrous. And yet the longer troops stay under existing circumstances, the more hatred and resentment they engender. This seems an almost impossible paradox. Turning over administration to the United Nations is the logical step, but that would not likely mean the departure of all American troops.

Suppose a Democrat wins the next election - miracles do sometimes happen - the new President would face exactly the same choices. Bush`s rash act has effectively bound the hands of any successor. Despite the pathetic appeals on some liberal Internet sites to bring home the troops, this cannot quickly be done. In any event, the Republicans would stand ready to harshly criticize every mistake and every American soldier killed as a reflection of failed new policy.

Of course, that assumes the Democrats manage to elect someone whose views greatly differ from those of the gang feeding Bush his lines. The Democratic party has some people running who really disagree very little with Bush except on the issue of who should be in the White House doling out patronage.

The Republicans are expert at vicious, well-financed attacks, and Americans are not immune to these. They are a people who thrive on a great deal of momentary sensation and vitriol. Shows with conflict and meaningless verbal attack do well on American television. So Republicans maintain a large kennel of pet attack-commentators used to reduce all discussion to confused, snarling noise, a technique perfected in Germany during the 1920s and `30s.

As we can see through events since 9/11, Democrats possess no comparable weapons. First, Democrats may not have the financial resources for the job. Second, one suspects that twisted nastiness is part of the right`s genetic endowment. It`s what enables them to sneer or laugh at the miseries and concerns of others. It`s what gives Lynne Cheney`s smile all the infectious appeal of a cracked hard-boiled egg.

There`s a role for stupidity, too. A good many Republicans embrace stupidity so long as the ideology is right. The examples are numberless. There was the late Sen. Hruska`s immortal comment on one of Nixon`s worst attempted appointments to the Supreme Court that mediocrity also needed to be represented on the court. There was Sen. Smith`s lunatic muttering about the federal government running a concentration camp where they kept the poor Cuban boy, Elian, after finally rescuing him from his tormenters in Florida. There was Sen. Jesse Helms` poisonous, almost treasonous, suggestions on how military personnel should treat President Clinton. There was Tom DeLay`s racism-laced remarks on Clinton`s highly successful trip to Africa. And there was the colossal, multi-million dollar spectacle of impeaching a President over a stain on a dress.

Much of America`s post-World War policy reflects exactly the impact of such viciously-selfish political activity. George Wallace, the late, hateful Governor of Georgia, nicely summed up the forces at work when he once swore after a failed election that "nobody was gonna out-nigger me ag`in." Applied to foreign affairs, Wallace`s statement becomes a template for much of American policy. America was dragged into the Korean War by haunting fears of accusations like "loosing China" - never mind that you can`t loose what was never yours - despite the Pentagon`s assessment that South Korea was not a place of major strategic importance. Truman instituted all kinds of dark measures such as loyalty oaths as he felt the hot breath of vicious fanatics down his neck. Lyndon Johnson launched the deadly crusade in Vietnam in large part through fear of being "out-commied" by a political predator such as Richard Nixon.

There is little basis for optimism if Bush remains in office and not a great deal more promised in the circumstances and leading personalities of the Democratic party. Were a new administration to manage the patient and demanding steps to appropriately extricate the U.S., American voters would begin showing impatience long before the end. And what administration ever is going to adequately pressure Israel to give us peace with an end to its occupation and land-grabs, shutting down that inexhaustible source of Arab anger, humiliation and desire for revenge?

In any case, who does not fear that some additional devastating attack on the United States is just a matter of time? Even a succession of them? Bush could hardly have done a better job of creating gangs of new and bitter enemies, and bitter people carrying their grievances to the United States reflect only the same inevitable forces of globalization that have introduced countless other changes to American life. Then General Franks` Doomsday Machine might well roar into operation, launching us all into a new dark age.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=13934&mode=nest…

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Thursday, November 27, 2003
War News for November 27, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/


Bring `em on: Two US soldiers wounded in mortar attack near Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Insurgents fire RPG at Italian embassy in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: US troops ambushed near Abu Ghraib.

Bring `em on: Two US soldiers wounded, five insurgents killed in two attacks on US troops in Mosul.

Bring `em on: Police sergeant assassinated in Mosul.

Iraqi general dies during US interrogation.

Iraqi police reported as supporting insurgency.

US takes Iraqi family members as hostages.

Analysis: Why the insurgency is spreading north.

Report from Mosul. "It is not too late, residents say, to rebuild trust, but few Iraqis express much hope. Since the attacks against Americans increased, commanders have sent more troops into the city and detained dozens of suspected militants. The result appears to be a descending spiral, in which the crackdown is draining away much of the good will that remains."

Additional 3000 Marines deployed to Iraq.

Bush is losing the war against the insurgents, so he wages war to keep the American electorate from learning about it.

Counterterrorism experts say Bush is lying about Iraq and the war against terrorism. "Experts who have served in top positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations are increasingly suggesting that the Iraq war has diverted momentum, troops and intelligence resources from the worldwide campaign to destroy the remnants of al-Qaeda. They note that the presence of U.S. troops in an Arab homeland is serving as a major recruiting tool for signing up and motivating new jihadis, or Islamic holy warriors. `Fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it [so],` said Richard Clarke, who was a senior White House counterterrorism official under Bush and President Bill Clinton."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Utah soldier dies in Iraq.


# posted by yankeedoodle : 6:42 AM

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Siehe auch gestern Interview mit dem Herausgeber bei Democracy Now.

The Radical

What Dick Cheney really believes.

By Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman

December 1 & 8, 2003: (The New Republic)

In early 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to President George W. Bush
from the heart. The war in Afghanistan had been an astonishing display of
U.S. strength. Instead of the bloody quagmire many predicted, CIA
paramilitary agents, Special Forces, and U.S. air power had teamed with
Northern Alliance guerrillas to run the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of their
strongholds. As a new interim government took power in Kabul, Cheney was
telling Bush that the next phase in the war on terrorism was toppling Saddam
Hussein.

Bush was well aware that several of his senior aides wanted to take the battle
to Iraq. When his advisers had convened at Camp David the weekend after the
September 11 attacks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz argued on three
separate occasions that the United States should immediately target Iraq
instead of the more difficult Afghanistan. Bush had settled the matter by
instructing his chief of staff, Andrew Card, to quiet Wolfowitz -- a moment
humiliatingly enshrined by Bob Woodward in his book *Bush at War*. But, in
early 2002, Cheney dispensed with the policy arguments for taking down Saddam
in favor of a far more personal appeal. He said simply that he had been part
of the team that created what he now saw as a flawed policy -- leaving Saddam
in power at the end of the Gulf war -- and now Bush had a chance to correct
it.

His plea was enormously successful. "The reason that Cheney was able to sell
Bush the policy is that he was able to say, `I`ve changed,`" says a senior
administration official. "`I used to have the same position as [James] Baker,
[Brent] Scowcroft, *and your father* -- and here`s why it`s wrong.`" By
February, observes a since-departed senior National Security Council (NSC)
staffer, "my sense was the decision was taken." The next month, Bush
interrupted a meeting between national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and
three senators to boast, "Fuck Saddam. We`re taking him out."

That Cheney had become the decisive foreign policy player in the White House
is hardly surprising. Bush had, after all, added him to the ticket precisely
for his national security heft. What was astonishing -- even to those who
thought they knew Cheney well -- was that Cheney had seemingly swung so
strongly against the policies of the administration he loyally served as
Defense secretary, an administration that valued stability above
democracy-building and crisis management above grand strategy. "Look,"
confesses someone who has worked with Cheney in the past, "I am baffled."

It`s easy to understand this bafflement. When Cheney signed on as Bush`s
running mate in 2000, many people expected him to bring George H.W. Bush`s
realist foreign policy instincts with him. *U.S. News & World Report* quickly
dubbed him "BUSH`S BACK-TO-THE-FUTURE VEEP PICK." After all, Cheney had spent
the latter half of the 1990s as CEO of one of the world`s largest oil-services
companies, where he argued against economic sanctions and for engagement with
tyrannies like Iran. And Cheney had *not* spent the `90s -- as his longtime
ally Wolfowitz had -- publicly agonizing over the decision to leave Saddam`s
regime intact.

But imparting George H.W. Bush`s cautiousness to his former Defense secretary
misreads Cheney entirely. Far from fitting into 41`s foreign policy team,
Cheney was its ideological outlier. On the greatest issue of the day -- what
to do about a declining Soviet Union and America`s place in a unipolar world
-- Cheney dissented vigorously. His Pentagon argued, again and again, that
the only true guarantee of U.S. security lay in transforming threatening
nations into democratic ones -- a radical notion to the realists in the first
Bush White House. Cheney`s policy allies were not national security adviser
Scowcroft and Secretary of State Baker but rather a set of intellectuals on
the Pentagon policy staff who shared and helped him refine his alternative
vision of U.S. power and purpose. In the `90s, this worldview came to be
known as neoconservatism. Cheney was there first.

As he fought an uphill ideological battle in the first Bush administration,
Cheney`s foreign policy vision was paired with a tendency that would prove key
to understanding his performance in W.`s White House: a willingness to
circumvent the typical bureaucratic channels to gain advantage over his
rivals. In particular, Cheney came to see the intelligence establishment as
flawed and corrupted by political biases hopelessly at odds with his goals.
By 2001, when Cheney became the most powerful adviser to the president of the
United States, his vision of global democracy and his mistrust of the CIA had
reached full maturity. Both convictions would be brought to bear when the
vice president turned his full attention to Iraq.

SIMILAR WAVELENGTHS

When Dick Cheney arrived at the Pentagon in 1989, he created a brain trust in
his own image, cultivating young staffers with academic backgrounds like his
own. These brainy types congregated in the highest ranks of the policy
directorate run by then-Undersecretary Wolfowitz. In most administrations,
the policy directorate largely deals with mundane tasks, such as the
negotiation of basing rights and arms sales. Those issues held little
interest for Wolfowitz and his team. "They focused on geostrategic issues,"
says one of his Pentagon aides. "They considered themselves conceptual."
Wolfowitz and his protégés prided themselves on their willingness to reexamine
entire precepts of U.S. foreign policy. In Cheney, they found a like-minded
patron. Wolfowitz, in 1991, described his relationship with his boss to *The
New York Times*: "Intellectually, we`re very much on similar wavelengths."
Nowhere was this intellectual synergy more evident than on the Soviet Union.

At the time Cheney took office, Mikhail Gorbachev had been in power for four
years. By then, the Soviet premier had charmed the American media and foreign
policy establishment with his ebullient style. Like many hard-liners, Cheney
thought he saw through these atmospherics and publicly intimated his
skepticism of perestroika. Appearing on CNN in April 1989 -- only one month
into his term as Defense secretary -- he glumly announced that Gorbachev would
"ultimately fail" and a leader "far more hostile" to the West would follow.
Such dourness put Cheney well outside the administration mainstream. Baker,
Scowcroft, and President George H.W. Bush -- as well as the NSC`s leading
Russia hand, Condoleezza Rice -- had committed themselves to Gorbachev`s (and
the USSR`s) preservation. But Cheney believed that, with a gust of aggressive
support for alternatives to Gorbachev, the United States could dismember its
principal adversary once and for all.

To craft an alternative strategy, Cheney turned to alternative experts. On
Saturday mornings, Wolfowitz`s deputies convened seminars in a small
conference room in the Pentagon`s E ring, where they sat Cheney in front of a
parade of Sovietologists. Many were mavericks who believed the Soviet Union
was on the brink of collapse. Out of these Saturday seminars, Cheney`s Soviet
position emerged -- with concepts and rhetoric that perfectly echo the current
Bush administration`s Iraq policy. They would push regime change in the
Soviet Union, transforming it into a democracy. Support for rebellious
Ukraine would challenge the regime from its periphery; and support for Boris
Yeltsin, the elected president of the Russian Republic, would confront the
regime at its core. "[Yeltsin] represents a set of principles and values that
are synonymous with those that we hold for the Soviet Union --
democratization, demilitarization," Cheney announced in a 1991 appearance on
NBC`s "Meet the Press." Bush père and Scowcroft fretted about instability,
but Cheney retorted, if the demolition of the Soviet Union required a little
short-term disruption, such as a nuclear-armed Ukraine, then so be it. After
all, as he observed in a 1992 speech to the Economics Club of Indianapolis,
true security depended on the expansion of "the community of peaceful
democratic nations."

Cheney was unsuccessful in pushing the White House away from Gorbachev. After
he mused aloud about Gorbachev`s shortcomings in a 1989 TV interview, Baker
called Scowcroft and told him, "Dump on Dick with all possible alacrity."
When the "Gang of Eight" -- Bush`s senior advisers -- met to decide policy in
the final days of the Soviet Union, the meetings featured, as CIA chief Robert
Gates has recalled, "Cheney against the field." The Soviet collapse
ultimately settled the issue. But Cheney`s battle against realism had only
begun.

There was, however, a moment of détente in that battle: the Gulf war. Cheney
accepted ending the war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein still in power, as
did all of Poppy`s other senior advisers. (Not even Wolfowitz -- now so
associated with Saddam`s toppling -- dissented at the time.) The lasting
effect of the war on Cheney, however, was less strategic and more
bureaucratic: It shattered his faith in the CIA`s ability to produce reliable
intelligence.

When Saddam first began amassing troops on the Kuwaiti border in mid-1990,
conventional wisdom in the U.S. intelligence community held that he was
attempting to gain leverage in opec talks and, at the most, might seize a
Kuwaiti oil field. The analysis made little sense -- Saddam was moving his
elite Republican Guard units, the very guarantors of his rule, from their
Baghdad positions -- yet only a few analysts issued starker warnings of an
all-out invasion. Worse still, a National Intelligence Estimate released just
before Christmas that year concluded that Saddam would withdraw from Kuwait to
avert a war with the United States. In a paper for a 1994 conference on
intelligence policy, Wolfowitz reflected, "[W]hen the signs started to turn up
that the projected scenario regarding Iraqi behavior was not unfolding as we
wished, ... somebody within the [intelligence] community should have said,
`Wait a minute, here are facts that we ought to take some account of.`"

Cheney saw little option at the time but to request thorough briefings from
intelligence analysts and subject their judgments to as much scrutiny as he
could muster. Before the Gulf war, one former analyst remembers being
"whisked into a room, there`s Dick Cheney, he`s right in front of you, he
starts firing questions at you, half an hour later and thirty questions later,
I`m whisked out of the room, and I`m like, `What the hell just happened?`"
Yet analysts can distinguish between thorough questioning and contempt -- or
pressure. Cheney showed none of it. "He would ask you factual questions
like, `OK, about this thing you said. Do I understand you correctly that
such-and-such is true? And are you sure about this, and how do you know
that?`" recalls Patrick Lang, the Defense Intelligence Agency`s (DIA) Middle
East expert during the Gulf war and one of the few analysts to predict the
invasion of Kuwait. "And I regard that as a legitimate question. ... He
wasn`t hostile or nasty about it; he just wanted to know how you knew. And I
didn`t mind that in the least."

But, as Cheney and his aides watched, the intelligence failures kept on
mounting. In the fall of 1992, U.N. inspectors uncovered an Iraqi nuclear
weapons program far more advanced than the intelligence community had
suspected. More disturbingly, the CIA admitted to having no clue about the
Soviet Union`s massive clandestine biological weapons program, which Yeltsin
had spontaneously acknowledged in 1992 -- and this was an enemy the Agency had
studied carefully for decades. Gradually, Cheney and his staff came to
consider the CIA not only inept but lazy, unimaginative, and arrogant--"a high
priesthood" in their derisive terminology. With uncharacteristic vitriol,
Wolfowitz`s 1994 paper argued that the Agency`s style "allows [analysts] to
conceal ignorance of facts, policy bias or any number of things that may lie
behind the personal opinions that are presented as sanctified intelligence
judgments."

By the time Cheney arrived at Halliburton in the mid-`90s, he felt he could no
longer rely on his old Langley connections to provide him the information he
needed to do business in the former Soviet Union. So, according to one ex-CIA
operative, Cheney hired a team of retired intelligence agents to collect
information independently. The ex-agent says, "Cheney would just bitch and
moan about the CIA and various parts of the world that they didn`t know shit
[about]. ... He was terribly frustrated."

But, while the decision to leave Saddam in power at the end of the Gulf war
would reverberate through neocon circles for the next decade, a policy
initiative devised by Cheney`s Pentagon in 1992 would be arguably more
important, laying the foundation for every major theme of George W. Bush`s
post-September 11 foreign policy. Under Wolfowitz`s direction, the Pentagon
produced a strategy paper called the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG). At a
moment of strategic uncertainty -- the Soviet Union had formally collapsed
just months before -- the document offered a vision of unbridled U.S.
dominance and proposed democratization as the only true guarantor of U.S.
security.

Without a Soviet Union to contain, there was no longer any obvious reason for
the United States to retain its outsized presence on the world stage. To meet
domestic expectations for a "peace dividend," Cheney implemented force
reductions across all the armed services. But the Defense secretary and his
planning staff also saw danger in these cuts. It was impossible to predict
the next global rival to the United States, and, without the forward presence
to encourage and cement democratization in newly freed nations, the gains of a
unipolar world could be short-lived. A new conceptual framework to justify
U.S. leadership was necessary.

DPGs typically explain how the Pentagon plans to implement defense
requirements. They traffic in the minutiae of weapons systems and force
structures, not reconceived notions of global leadership. But, just as
Wolfowitz had used a modest policy office for grander ambitions, in February
1992 his staff drafted a DPG, advocating a value-driven security policy. It
would be a U.S. priority to "encourage the spread of democratic forms of
government." The stakes, they said, were extremely high. Everywhere the DPG
authors looked, they saw the prospects for rivalry: in Russia, where there was
"the possibility that democracy will fail"; in "Indian hegemonic aspiration";
in communist Asia, "with fundamental values, governance and policies decidedly
at variance with our own"; even in allied Europe.

Instead of passively accepting the emergence of such rivals, the DPG proposed
snuffing them out. Washington needed to convince other countries that "they
need not aspire to a greater [global] role," whether through "account[ing]
sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations" or through
traditional deterrence. By preventing the emergence of a rival, U.S. strategy
could recreate itself for a unipolar world, where U.S. power could be used
more freely. "We have the opportunity to meet threats at lower levels and
lower costs," the document read. Chief among those threats was the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). A full decade before
George W. Bush enshrined preemption as state policy in his National Security
Strategy, the DPG raised the prospect of "whether to take military steps to
prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction."

It was uncharted territory for the United States, and it alarmed certain
Pentagon officials, who leaked drafts of the DPG to *The New York Times*.
Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their staffs awoke on March 8, 1992, to the headline
"U.S. STRATEGY PLAN CALLS FOR ENSURING NO RIVALS DEVELOP." A horrified
Senator Joseph Biden said the DPG led the way to "literally a Pax Americana."
George H. W. Bush immediately disassociated himself from the document, begging
the press corps, "Please do not put too much emphasis on leaked reports,
particularly ones that I haven`t seen." The White House strongly indicated
its displeasure to the Defense secretary.

Cheney was forced to revise the document, sanding down its edges considerably,
but he did not let its ideas perish. In January 1993, as they were about to
leave office, Wolfowitz`s planning staff recycled all the controversial ideas
in the DPG and published them in a document called the Regional Defense
Strategy. Again, the strategy was based on the concept of "a democratic `zone
of peace,`" defined as "a community of democratic nations bound together in a
web of political, economic and security ties." It remained the task of
American leadership "to build an international environment conducive to our
values." The fact that the DPG vision didn`t die a quiet, bureaucratic death
wasn`t just a tribute to the tenacity of Wolfowitz and his staff; it was a
reflection of how deeply Cheney believed in it.

To this day, his closest aides point to the document as the moment when
Cheney`s foreign policy coalesced. The attacks of September 11 may have given
Cheney a new sense of urgency, but the framework was already there. As one
former staffer puts it, "It wasn`t an epiphany, it wasn`t a sudden eureka
moment; it was an evolution, but it was one that was primed by what he had
done and seen in the period during the end of the cold war."

ALL THE VICE PRESIDENT`S MEN

Cheney`s ideology hardly made a dent in the first Bush White House. But, in
the second, George W. Bush tasked him with a robust foreign policy portfolio.
To ensure his ideas won out, the new vice president reassembled the
intellectuals he had relied on in Wolfowitz`s policy operation. Stephen
Hadley, who had worked on arms control for the Wolfowitz policy staff, became
deputy national security adviser. Zalmay Khalilzad, another policy aide, took
over the NSC`s Middle East portfolio. Others Cheney kept for his own staff.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Wolfowitz`s deputy, particularly rose in influence.
In addition to becoming the vice president`s chief of staff, he became
Cheney`s national security adviser and an adviser to the president himself.
For his White House deputy, Libby tapped Eric Edelman, the Pentagon`s top
Sovietologist and organizer of the Saturday seminars. They brought in John
Hannah, who had championed the anti-Gorbachev case at the Bush 41 State
Department, to handle Middle East affairs. With a nod from Wolfowitz, they
recruited a Navy officer, William Luti -- who had advised former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich -- to work with Hannah.

Cheney didn`t reconvene the group out of nostalgia. During the transition to
the new administration, the NSC had been stocked with wonks from State and the
CIA, and hawks felt ideologically frozen out of the new president`s foreign
policy staff. Other neocons -- including Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of
State John Bolton -- were stuck a rung lower on the bureaucracy than their
comrades felt they deserved. "A lot of people didn`t end up at State and NSC
and DOD [Department of Defense]," one senior administration hawk says.
"Scooter tried to find a home for them." Cheney`s office came to be viewed as
the administration`s neocon sanctuary.

The Office of the Vice President (OVP) was more than a consolation prize.
Cheney gave his national security staff far greater responsibilities than had
traditionally been accorded the vice president`s team. His regional
specialists wouldn`t be involved only in issues relevant to the vice president
-- they would participate fully in the policymaking process and attend almost
every interagency meeting. When Cheney first created this new structure, some
Bushies openly described the operation as a "shadow" NSC. For those in the
NSC itself, it often seemed like the "shadow" had more power than the real
deal. One former Bush official says, "In this case, it`s often the vice
president`s office that`s driving the policy, leading the debate, leading the
arguments, instead of just hanging back and recognizing that the vice
president is not supposed to be driving the policy."

Not only was the OVP staff familiar, so were their ideas. Even before
September 11, 2001, Cheney`s staff was convinced Iraq could be a democratic
outpost in the region -- much as they had hoped Ukraine would become -- albeit
through a U.S.-funded insurgency, not an invasion. According to his aides,
Cheney had grown more convinced throughout the `90s of the futility of
containing Saddam. In the early `90s, while Cheney was holed up at the
American Enterprise Institute, his think-tank colleagues say he met Ahmed
Chalabi and increasingly lent the Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader a
sympathetic ear. In July 2000, Chalabi delighted over Cheney`s
vice-presidential nomination, boasting, "Cheney is good for us." He was
right. Within two weeks of Bush`s inauguration, Cheney helped free U.S. INC
funding that had been bottlenecked during the Clinton administration. At the
senior staff meetings, which considered Iraq policy almost every week during
the first few months of the administration, Cheney`s office supported efforts
to topple Saddam through empowering the INC even further. According to former
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Edward Walker, a regular
attendee at those meetings, Cheney seemed increasingly exasperated with his
options. "Everything that had been tried before didn`t work. By a system of
elimination -- sanctions won`t stop him, bombing won`t stop him, and so on --
you come down to the last resort: Then we`ll have to take him out."

The attacks of September 11 violently accelerated Cheney`s nascent vision of a
democratic Middle East. As the ruins of the Twin Towers smoldered, Cheney
decided the administration needed to change the strategic framework that had
left the nation vulnerable to mass murder. He unveiled his thinking at the
first NSC meeting after the attack. "To the extent we define our task
broadly, including those who support terrorism, then we get at states," Cheney
said, according to Bob Woodward`s account of the meeting. The night before,
Bush had told the nation he would make "no distinction" between Al Qaeda and
its state sponsors. Cheney was pushing the president`s reasoning to its next
stage. As a friend recollects, Cheney now understood that "what you had to do
was transform the Middle East."

But, if Cheney realized that the Middle East needed to be recast, he also
believed that one of the nation`s most important instruments for doing so --
its intelligence community -- was badly broken. An intelligence failure on
the scale of September 11, in the view of the vice president and his staff,
merely confirmed the OVP`s already dim estimation of the CIA. Before the
attacks, Cheney had mused about the centrality of intelligence to national
security, telling *The New Yorker*`s Nicholas Lemann in May 2001, "You need to
have very robust intelligence capability if you`re going to uncover threats to
the U.S., and hopefully thwart them before they can be launched." Now there
could be no confidence in the predictive capabilities of the country`s
intelligence services. Both lessons -- the need to force a strategic
realignment in the Middle East and the unreliability of normal intelligence
channels -- had deep roots in Cheney`s Pentagon experience.

In mid-2002, Cheney made at least two visits to the CIA`s Langley headquarters
to talk with the analysts on the intelligence assembly line, who warned that
they had no evidence showing that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear
program. These visits have been chewed over in the press, decried by retired
Agency officials, and condemned as attempts to pressure the CIA into producing
more damning intel. But they only begin to capture the depth of the vice
president`s personal involvement in shaping Iraq intelligence. In addition to
trekking to Langley, his former aides say, Cheney paid calls to analysts at
the DIA, the National Security Agency, and even the National Intelligence
Mapping Agency. "He visited every element of the intelligence community,"
says a former Cheney staffer. When he wasn`t visiting these agencies, his
staff snowed them with questions. According to one former CIA analyst, "The
Agency [would write] something on WMD, and it would come back from the vice
president with a thousand questions: `What`s this sentence mean?` `What`s
your source for this line?` `Why are you disregarding sources that are saying
the opposite?`"

Among Cheney`s aides, resentment of the CIA went far beyond a healthy
skepticism of fallible intelligence analysts and an Agency with a decidedly
mixed record. Whereas Cheney`s questioning of intelligence during the Gulf
war had been probing but respectful, now his staff belittled the intelligence
community`s findings, irrespective of their merits. For years, Libby and
Hannah in particular had believed the Agency harbored a politically motivated
animus against the INC and irresponsibly discounted intelligence reports from
defectors the INC had brought forward. "This had been a fight for such a long
period of time, where people were so dug in," reflects a friend of one of
Cheney`s senior staffers. The OVP had been studying issues like Iraq for so
many years that it often simply did not accept that contrary information
provided by intelligence analysts -- especially CIA analysts -- could be
correct. As one former colleague of many OVP officials puts it, "They so
believed that the CIA were wrong, they were like, `We want to *show* these
fuckers that they are wrong.`"

Intelligence analysts saw little difference between Cheney and his staffers.
The vice president`s aides may have made more trips to Langley and signed more
memoranda asking for further information, but, as the CIA saw it, the OVP was
a coordinated machine working for its engineer. "When I heard complaints from
people, it was, `Man, you wouldn`t believe this shit that Libby and
[Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J.] Feith and Wolfowitz do to us.` They
were all lumped together," says an ex-analyst close to his former colleagues.
"I would hear them say, `Goddamn, that fucking John Hannah, you wouldn`t
believe.` And the next day it would be, `That fucking Bill Luti.` For all
these guys, they`re interchangeable." Adds another, "They had power.
Authority. They had the vice president behind them. ... What Scooter did,
Cheney made possible. Feith, Wolfowitz -- Cheney made it all possible. He`s
the fulcrum. He`s the one."

From the OVP`s perspective, the CIA -- with its caveat-riddled position on
Iraqi WMD and its refusal to connect Saddam and Al Qaeda -- was an outright
obstacle to the invasion of Iraq. And, as Cheney and his staff remembered so
vividly from their Pentagon days, the CIA was often wrong on the biggest
security questions. So Cheney reverted to the intelligence-gathering method
he had perfected at Halliburton: He outsourced. Even before September 11,
2001, Cheney had given his staff clear instructions to go beyond the typical
information channels in the bureaucracy. "He very, very much did not want to
be trapped inside the government bubble and only see intelligence reports and
State Department cables and Department of Defense memos," an ex-staffer
recounts. Escaping the bubble was often innocuous and intellectually healthy.
The OVP arranged meetings for Cheney with Middle East experts, such as the
University of Haifa`s Amatzia Baram, Princeton`s Bernard Lewis, and Johns
Hopkins`s Fouad Ajami, and it gave him documents, such as the U.N.`s 2002 Arab
Human Development Report, which pointed to tyranny as the source of the
region`s problems.

But Cheney`s office didn`t escape the government bubble so much as create a
new one. Any doubts expressed by the intelligence community about the OVP`s
sources, especially Chalabi, were ignored. During his stint as an adviser to
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Hannah had been one of the Clinton
administration`s most fervent INC supporters. Working for Cheney, he stayed
in regular contact with the exile group. "He relied on Ahmed Chalabi for
insights and advice," says a former Bush administration official. Cheney
himself became an increasingly vocal Chalabi advocate. At an NSC meeting in
the fall of 2002, the State Department and Pentagon feuded over releasing even
more funding to the INC. In a rare burst of open influence, Cheney "weighed
in, in a really big way," according to a former NSC staffer. "He said, `We`re
getting ready to go to war, and we`re nickel-and-diming the INC at a time when
they`re providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi WMD.`" To the OVP, the
CIA`s hostility to such "unique" INC intelligence was evidence of the Agency`s
political corruption. Before long, "there was something of a willingness to
give [INC- provided intelligence] greater weight" than that offered by the
intelligence community, says the former administration official.

Chalabi was not the only source Hannah used to get alternative information to
Cheney. In 2001, Luti had moved from the OVP to across the Potomac to become
Feith`s deputy for Near East and South Asia (NESA). By late 2002, Luti`s Iraq
desk became the Office of Special Plans (OSP), tasked with working on issues
related to the war effort. In addition to actual planning, the OSP provided
memoranda to Pentagon officials recycling the most damaging -- and often the
most spurious -- intelligence about Iraq`s Al Qaeda connections and the most
hopeful predictions about liberated Iraq. In the fall of 2002, one of the
memos stated as fact that September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met in Prague
with an Iraqi intelligence agent months before the attacks -- a claim the FBI
and CIA had debunked months earlier after an exhaustive investigation. And
the OSP didn`t just comb through old intelligence for new information. It had
its own sources. For example, one of Luti`s aides, a Navy lieutenant
commander named Youssef Aboul-Enein, was tasked with scouring Arabic-language
websites and magazines to come up with what Aboul-Enein would call "something
really useful" -- statements by Saddam praising the September 11 attacks,
Palestinian suicide bombings, or any act of terrorism.

According to those who worked in NESA, Luti`s efforts had a specific customer:
Cheney. "Cheney`s the one with the burr under his saddle about Iraq," says
retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked for Luti
from May 2002 until the eve of the war. During that time, Luti held only
about six or seven staff meetings, she says, and "I heard Scooter Libby`s name
mentioned in half those meetings." Discussing Iraq, Luti would say "things
like, `Did you give something to Scooter?` `Scooter called; hey, call him
back,` ... [or] `Oh, well, did you talk to Scooter about that?`" And Luti
would make trips across the Potomac to see his old colleagues at the OVP.
White House officials would often see Luti disappearing into Hannah`s office
before going on to Libby`s.

The OVP didn`t just generate this information for themselves. They tried to
pump it back into the intelligence pipeline on visits to Langley. "Scooter
and the vice president come out there loaded with crap from OSP, reams of
information from Chalabi`s people" on both terrorism and WMD, according to an
ex-CIA analyst. One of the OVP`s principal interlocutors was Alan Foley,
director of the CIA`s Nonproliferation Center. Cheney`s office pelted Foley
with questions about Iraq`s nuclear weapons program -- especially about
Saddam`s alleged attempts to purchase uranium from Niger. According to a
colleague, Foley "pushed back" by "stressing the implausibility of it."
Months earlier, after all, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson had gone to Niger
at the behest of the CIA -- a visit that had itself been instigated by
questions raised by Cheney in an Agency briefing -- and concluded that the
sale almost certainly did not occur. But Cheney kept pressing, and it took
its toll on Foley. "He was bullied and intimidated," says a friend of Foley.

In the view of many at Langley, the OVP wasn`t simply highlighting what it
considered weaknesses in CIA analysis. Rather, it was trying to stifle
information that it considered counterproductive to the case for war. The
tone of the questioning, some analysts felt, was less inquisitive than
hostile. "It was done along the lines of: `What`s wrong with you bunch of
assholes? You don`t know what`s going on, you`re horribly biased, you`re a
bunch of pinkos,`" says a retired analyst close to his active-duty colleagues.
Some analysts saw the questioning as a method of diverting overtaxed CIA
analysts from producing undesired intelligence product. On one occasion,
officials asked analysts hard at work on Iraq to produce a paper on the
history of the British occupation of Mesopotamia following World War I. The
request might seem reasonable on the surface -- after all, an occupation ought
to be informed by precedent. But policymakers in the OVP and the DOD could
just as easily have picked up histories of Iraq from the library and let the
CIA go back to work on classified analysis. But, after enduring the
questioning for months, an ex-analyst explains, "It gets to the point where
you just don`t want to fight it anymore."

Eventually the OVP`s alternative analyses found their way into the
administration`s public case for war. The distance between the OVP and the
intelligence community was greatest on terrorism, and the OVP was determined
to win. Libby wrote a draft of Colin Powell`s February speech to the U.N.
Security Council that outlined a far different threat than the secretary of
State envisioned. "[The OVP] really wanted to make it a speech mostly about
the link to terrorism," says one former NSC official. Although Powell and his
staff balked at the most controversial -- and poorly substantiated -- details,
Libby still provided the initial outline for the speech.

Cheney`s own public statements went far beyond what the CIA and other
intelligence agencies had verified. In an August 2002 speech in Nashville,
Cheney asserted, "The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its
capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue
to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago." The intelligence
community was in fact deeply divided over whether the nuclear program was
again active, and a classified DIA report a month later indicated that the
Agency had "no reliable information" about Iraq`s chemical weapons program.
But these doubts never seeped into Cheney`s public statements. Days before
the invasion, Cheney told NBC`s Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," "We know
[Saddam is] out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons, and we know that
he has a longstanding relationship with ... the Al Qaeda organization." By
contrast, the intelligence agencies assessed that, despite some apparently
fruitless contact between Saddam`s henchmen and Al Qaeda terrorists in Sudan
in the mid-`90s, Iraq and Osama bin Laden were two unrelated threats.

The OVP never considered that it could be wrong, despite the fact that none of
its senior members had intelligence training. The CIA, on the other hand,
rather than behaving as a rigid and unshakable bastion of unquestionable

Copyright: The New Republic

[Joerver]

Again battling an abomination of power
| By Jonathan Turley | 25-11-2003
Print friendly format | Email to Friend

Largely unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of politics, a quiet and frail 82-year-old man made a symbolic return to Washington, D.C., this month.

His name is Fred Korematsu, and his name graces one of the most infamous decisions ever rendered by the US Supreme Court, the 1944 case of Korematsu vs. United States. With that decision, Korematsu was sent to internment camps to join 120,000 other Japanese Americans who were imprisoned solely because of their ethnicity.

Recently, Korematsu filed a brief before that same court on behalf of hundreds of Muslims being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For Korematsu and thousands of camp survivors, one of the darkest and most painful chapters of American history is repeating itself.

The Korematsu case has been largely taught in law schools as an abomination, a case in which the Supreme Court yielded to fear and pressure in sending tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children into camps. Then came 9/11. Soon, the Bush administration was relying on the arguments from the Korematsu case to assert the same authority exercised by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to put individuals into detention without trial or access to the courts.

The administration has further argued that the president may do with the Guantanamo detainees as he wishes, including executing them under his own set of rules and standards. By locating the camp in Cuba, the president holds that his actions are no longer controlled by constitutional law. Despite the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a sealed, highly armed US military base, the court has previously held that it is legally "foreign" territory under the control of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Of course, unlike World War II, there is no declared war against a nation-state. Rather, the president has declared war on terrorism, which is a category of crime. Under this interpretation, any president could declare such a war and claim wartime authority to indefinitely detain people and even execute them without access to the courts. Korematsu has heard much of this before - 60 years ago. In 1942, he was 22 years old and had twice tried to enlist in the army to serve his country, only to be turned down for a physical disability. On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, giving the military`s Western Defence Command the authority to issue any orders that it deemed necessary to protect the nation – the legal basis for the camps.

Korematsu desperately fought to remain free. He changed his name to Clyde and underwent eyelid surgery to look less Asian. It didn`t work. He was arrested and thrown into a race-track horse stall to await "processing." These are events that most Americans thought could never happen again. After all, Korematsu was given the Medal of Freedom in 1998 (the highest US civilian honour) for his fight against internment, and Congress awarded reparations to the Japanese Americans sent to the camps. President Bush`s father, President George H.W. Bush, apologised to Japanese Americans on behalf of the United States.

Yet, last year, Korematsu, who lives in Northern California, watched as hundreds of people were sent to a camp in Cuba without hearings required under international law or access to US courts. That is when Korematsu resolved to go back before the court that had failed him and thousands of other citizens decades before. His statement to the court in his brief is simple: "[t]o avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, this court should make clear that the United States respects fundamental constitutional and human rights - even in time of war." The return of Fred Korematsu should be a source of great shame for members of the Supreme Court.

Although other justices penned the 1944 decision, the institution failed the primary test of an independent judiciary: the ability to stand before the mob and to refuse to give legitimacy to racist impulse. Rather than being the bulwark against hate, the court became its vehicle. After the 1944 opinion, some on the court regretted their actions, and the California attorney general who advocated mass internment, Earl Warren (later a chief justice of the Supreme Court), described himself as "conscience-stricken" over his role on the camps.

Warren`s regrets, however, are not apparently shared by some members of the current court, particularly Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In his 1998 book, "All the Laws but One," Rehnquist defended the basis for the Korematsu decision and stated menacingly that "[t]here is no reason to think … that future justices of the Supreme Court will decide questions differently."

While agreeing that some criticism of the 1944 ruling might be warranted, Rehnquist seems to endorse a variation on the ancient maxim inter arma silent leges - "in times of war, the law is silent." Rehnquist suggests that while laws may "not be silent in times of war … they will speak with a somewhat different voice."

That is a voice that Korematsu has already heard.


©Los Angeles Times- Washington Post News Service

Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.

[Joerver]

Raid On Arab TV Network Hardly A Democratic Move
Dictators Should Be Only Ones Shutting Down Media Broadcasts

POSTED: 5:22 p.m. EST November 26, 2003
UPDATED: 5:23 p.m. EST November 26, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The raid by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials on an Arab television network bureau in Baghdad and the ban on its broadcasts hardly fits my idea of how to spread democracy in the Middle East.

Isn`t that the first thing dictators do -- shut down broadcast outlets and newspapers? For those in power, tolerating a free press is difficult, even in a democracy.

As a foreign occupier in Iraq, we are proving that it is intolerable.

The terrible irony here is that we pride ourselves on offering a model to the rest of the world on how to design -- and live by -- our constitutional freedoms.

Journalists around the globe have been taught to emulate our approach to newsgathering, hopefully in an atmosphere free of government restraints.

At the same time, we`re snuffing out news outlets we don`t like.

On Monday, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government raided the Baghdad bureau of the Al-Arabiya TV network.

The network`s crime was to broadcast an audiotape from Saddam Hussein complaining about Iraqis who were cooperating with the U.S. occupation force and calling for resistance. The tape had been sent to Al-Arabiya`s headquarters in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

The network, which has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell in the past, is one of the largest TV outlets in the Arab world.

Any tape portraying Saddam`s views on life fits the definition of news, if for no other reason than it is evidence that he is still alive and able to secretly communicate from wherever he was hiding.

Al-Arabiya and its competitor, the Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, have a wide following throughout the Middle East. Al-Jazeera caused Washington much discomfort in the lead-up to the war by broadcasting statements from Saddam.

The White House strongly offered "advice" to U.S. TV outlets to shun those tapes but the American networks generally ignored the unhelpful hints.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused both Arab stations of being hostile by covering news of the guerrilla attacks on American forces.

Al-Jazeera`s Baghdad bureau was hit by a U.S. missile on April 8, killing a reporter-cameraman. The network also has complained of an attack on its marked vehicle April 7.

On Nov. 13, 2001, during the U.S. war on Afghanistan an American missile went "awry," according to the Pentagon, and destroyed the Al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the move against Al-Arabiya, noting that "statements from Saddam Hussein and the former Iraqi regime are inherently newsworthy and news organizations have a right to cover them."

Rumsfeld grouses that the two stations were violently against the American coalition. He hopes to counter their influence when a U.S.-controlled TV satellite channel begins broadcasts next month.

Then will the Iraqis and the Arab world be guaranteed the truth?

In a brilliant speech earlier this month before the National Conference on Media Reform, broadcaster and former newspaper editor Bill Moyers warned that American media conglomerates may find common cause "with an imperial state."

But Moyers said "the greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it."

Against that statement of values, the recent performance by American journalists does not measure well.

White House and Pentagon reporters initially pulled their punches in reporting on the Iraqi war. Some media outlets admittedly did not want to rock the boat by showing grisly photos or videotape that could be disturbing to Americans.

As a result, many Americans tuned in on foreign news channels to get the full picture of the war.

Even now, with the administration`s pro-war arguments reduced to a pile of confetti, many news outlets have failed to demand accountability from the Bush administration for what appears to be systematic dishonesty in trying to justify the U.S. attack.

This failure and the U.S.-led suppression of newsgathering in Iraq show that the historic American model for a free and independent press needs courageous bolstering.

(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address [e-mail]).
Copyright 2002 by Hearst Newspapers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Joerver]

Published on Thursday, November 27, 2003 by the International Herald Tribune
Guantánamo: A Monstrous Failure of Justice
by Johan Steyn

The following was adapted by the IHT from the 27th F.A. Mann Lecture, delivered in London on Tuesday. Lord Steyn is a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, one of 12 judges who sits on Britain`s highest court.

The most powerful democracy is detaining hundreds of suspected foot soldiers of the Taliban in a legal black hole at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, where they await trial on capital charges by military tribunals.

Democracies must defend themselves. Democracies are entitled to try officers and soldiers of enemy forces for war crimes. But in times of war, armed conflict or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis. One tool at hand is detention without charge or trial. Ill-conceived, rushed legislation is passed granting excessive powers to executive governments which compromise the rights and liberties of individuals beyond the exigencies of the situation. Often the loss of liberty is permanent.

Even in modern times terrible injustices have been perpetrated in the name of security on thousands who had no effective recourse to law. Too often courts of law have denied the writ of the rule of law with only the most perfunctory examination.

In the context of a war on terrorism without any end in prospect, this is a somber scene for human rights. But there is the caution that unchecked abuse of power begets ever greater abuse of power. And judges do have the duty, even in times of crisis, to guard against an unprincipled and exorbitant executive response.

After the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress rushed through the Patriot Act which gave to the executive vast powers to override civil liberties. Congress promptly authorized President George W. Bush to use all necessary force against, inter alia, those responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to prevent further attacks. On Oct. 7, 2001, the air campaign against Afghanistan began.

On Nov. 13, 2001, the president issued an order providing for the trial by military commissions of persons accused of violations of the laws of war. That order has been repeatedly amended. Since January 2002, about 660 prisoners have been transferred at first to Camp X-Ray and then Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay. The number included children between the ages of 13 and 16 as well as the very elderly. Virtually all the prisoners are foot soldiers of the Taliban. By a blanket presidential decree, all the prisoners have been denied prisoner-of-war status.

How prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have been treated we do not know. But what we do know is not reassuring. At Camp Delta the minute cells measure 1.8 meters by 2.4 meters (6 feet by 8 feet). Detainees are held in these cells for up to 24 hours a day. Photographs of prisoners being returned to their cells on stretchers after interrogation have been published. The Red Cross described the camp as principally a center of interrogation rather than detention.

The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors. The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess. On the contrary, the rules expressly provide that statements made by a prisoner under physical and mental duress are admissible "if the evidence would have value to a reasonable person," i.e. military officers trying enemy soldiers.

At present we are not meant to know what is happening at Guantánamo Bay. But history will not be neutered. What takes place there today in the name of the United States will assuredly, in due course, be judged at the bar of informed international opinion.

The regime applicable at Guantánamo was created by a succession of presidential orders. It can be summarized quite briefly. The prisoners at Guantánamo, as matters stand at present, will be tried by military tribunals. The prisoners have no access to the writ of habeas corpus to determine whether their detention is even arguably justified. The military will act as interrogators, prosecutors, defense counsel, judges, and when death sentences are imposed, as executioners.

The trials will be held in secret. None of the basic guarantees for a fair trial need be observed. The jurisdiction of U.S. courts is excluded. The military control everything. It is, however, in all respects subject to decisions of the president as commander in chief, even in respect of guilt and innocence in individual cases as well as appropriate sentences. The president has made public in advance his personal view of the prisoners as a group: He has described them all as "killers." The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has recently ruled that, despite the fact that the United States has had exclusive control over Guantánamo Bay since 1903, the courts have no jurisdiction to examine the legality of the detention of the prisoners. But on Nov. 10 the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari for the case to proceed to a substantive hearing on the question whether the lower courts were right to conclude that they had no jurisdiction to entertain habeas corpus applications. This will be the only issue on which the Supreme Court will rule. That hearing will take place in spring next year.

As matters stand at present the U.S. courts would refuse to hear a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay who produces credible medical evidence that he has been and is being tortured. They would refuse to hear prisoners who assert that they were not combatants at all. They would refuse to hear prisoners who assert that they were simply soldiers in the Taliban army and knew nothing about Al Qaeda. They would refuse to examine any complaints of any individuals. The blanket presidential order deprives them all of any rights whatever.

As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice.

The question is whether the quality of justice envisaged for the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay complies with minimum international standards for the conduct of fair trials. The answer can be given quite shortly: It is a resounding No. The term kangaroo court springs to mind. It conveys the idea of a preordained, arbitrary rush to judgment by an irregular tribunal which makes a mockery of justice. Trials of the type contemplated by the United States government would be a stain on United States justice. The only thing that could be worse is simply to leave the prisoners in their black hole indefinitely.

Looking at the hard realities of the situation, one wonders what effect it may have on the treatment of United States soldiers captured in future armed conflicts. It would have been prudent, for the sake of American soldiers, to respect humanitarian law.

Second, what must authoritarian regimes, or countries with dubious human rights records, make of the example set by the most powerful of all democracies?

Third, the type of justice meted out at Guantánamo Bay is likely to make martyrs of the prisoners in the moderate Muslim world with whom the West must work to ensure world peace and stability.

What other route could the United States have taken? The International Criminal Court could not be used to try the Guantánamo Bay prisoners because the Rome Treaty applies prospectively only, and the prisoners were captured before the Treaty came into force in July 2002. The United States courts could have assumed universal jurisdiction for war crimes. The prisoners would have received fair trials before ordinary United States courts. It would have been an acceptable solution. On the other hand, the Muslim world would probably not have accepted this as impartial justice. The best course would have been to set up through the Security Council an ad hoc international tribunal. That would have ensured that justice is done and seen to be done.

There is, of course, a dilemma facing democracies. Aharon Barak, President of the Supreme Court of Israel, presided in a case in which the court held that the violent interrogation of a suspected terrorist is not lawful even if doing so may save human life by preventing impending terrorist acts. He said:

"Sometimes, a democracy must fight with one hand tied behind its back. Nonetheless, it has the upper hand. Preserving the rule of law and recognition of individual liberties constitute an important component of its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties." Such restraint is at the very core of democratic values.

It may be appropriate to pose a question: Ought the British government to make plain publicly and unambiguously its condemnation of the utter lawlessness at Guantánamo Bay?

John Donne, who preached in the Chapel of Lincoln`s Inn, gave the context of the question more than four centuries ago:

"No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; . . . any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Copyright © 2003 the International Herald Tribune

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Conversation time
Leader
Friday November 28, 2003
The Guardian

The case for delaying direct elections in Iraq grows harder to sustain. The US and Britain have already changed their minds about how to handle the political transition three times since the war ended. UN resolution 1483, passed last May, placed Iraq`s future in the hands of the two "occupying powers" for an indefinite period, setting up the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority backed, principally, by Anglo-American forces. As postwar resistance and political pressure increased, resolution 1511 passed in October stressed the "temporary nature" of CPA rule. It recognised the US-appointed Governing Council and its ministers as the "principal bodies" of Iraq`s interim administration, embodying Iraqi sovereignty. The council would "progressively undertake" fuller responsibilities. 1511 also urged all UN members to join a multinational force (an appeal with as much bounce as a dead cat).

On November 15, amid signs of loss of nerve in Washington, the US changed tack again. In short, it induced the Governing Council to agree to abolish itself. Under this latest scheme, it will be replaced next July by a provisional government selected by a provisional assembly working from a provisional constitution (which the US will help write). The problem with this plan is that, like its predecessors, it does not fully take into account the wishes of Iraqis. For this reason, it may fail, too. Leading members of the council are having second thoughts about giving up power, partly because some of them, imported from exile by the Pentagon, lack electoral appeal.

More serious is the criticism of the US plan by Iraq`s most influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who speaks, spiritually and to a considerable degree temporally, for 60% of Iraq`s population. He has urged direct national elections to create a legitimate, fully fledged rather than interim government, just as he previously, successfully insisted that the members of any constitutional convention must also be directly elected. There is no doubt that the risk in any political transition of factionalism, civil strife and regional fragmentation is real - one good reason why an over-arching, unifying UN role is necessary. But Ayatollah Sistani is hardly alone, in Iraq or beyond, in believing that truly representative self-governance is a desirable objective that is achievable and workable far more quickly than the Bush administration, in its condescending, self-interested way, will allow. Having repeatedly got it wrong, Washington should take Tony Blair`s tip and hold a national conversation in Iraq. But does it want to listen? Suspicion grows that the US, for all its fulsome talk of promoting democracy, fears early, empowering elections may produce an Iraq unsuited to its purposes.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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The turkey has landed: how Bush cooked up a secret mission to give thanks to his troops
By Phil Reeves in Baghdad and David Usborne in New York
28 November 2003


George Bush delivered a dramatic Thanksgiving Day surprise last night by flying, under cover of darkness, into Iraq on board Air Force One.

Two hundred and ten days after declaring an end to major combat, President Bush slipped into the unstable and dangerous Middle Eastern country that his troops now occupy with the lights on his plane darkened and the windows blacked out.

The extraordinary mission ­ no American president has visited a war zone since Richard Nixon flew to Vietnam in 1969 ­ was clearly calculated to burnish Mr Bush`s image as he prepares for a re-election campaign that will be overshadowed by violence in Iraq and the rising toll of American casualties. It was spent with 600 soldiers at a turkey and sweet potato dinner in a mess hall at Baghdad airport and lasted a mere two and a half hours.

Yet it was enough to secure valuable prime-time television coverage on Thanksgiving Day, featuring pictures of a determined president rallying his troops after a grim month in which 70 lives have been lost. The operation was surrounded in extraordinary secrecy, and was known beforehand only to a handful of the President`s closest aides. The White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, told a group of hand-picked reporters invited on the flight and sworn to secrecy that "if this breaks while we are in the air, we`re turning around".

Even Laura Bush, the President`s wife, was reportedly kept out of the loop until the last moment. In a deft stroke of misinformation, the White House had said that President Bush would be eating Thanksgiving Day dinner at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and even released details of the menu.

His parents, George and Barbara Bush, travelled there expecting to see him. Instead, unknown even to secret service agents guarding his Texas ranch, Mr Bush flew back to Washington DC from Texas on Wednesday evening to begin the clandestine flight to Baghdad.

It was a moment of extraordinary political theatre as Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq, told troops he had a Thanksgiving message from the President and that the most "senior" US official among them should be the one to read it. Turning toward the stage backdrop, Bremer asked: "Is there anyone back there who`s more senior than us?"

Enter Mr Bush. "I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere ­ thanks for inviting me to dinner," the President, wearing a coy smile and with tears in his eyes, told the soldiers.

In spectacular vote-winning form, he posed with a platter of roast turkey. And for 10 minutes he dished out mashed potatoes and corn to the the 1st Armoured Division and the 82nd Airborne Division.

News of the visit only broke in the US after Air Force One had taken off from Baghdad and was on its way home. And no sooner was the visit made public in Baghdad, than the city was shaken by the sounds of conflict ­ repeated loud explosions, gunfire and ambulance sirens.

The administration will be hoping that the video images will help erase memories of a not dissimilar staged event on 1 May in which the President landed on an American aircraft carrier to announce that the war in Iraq had been won. As the violence has worsened, that day has come to haunt the White House. This time, wearing a US army jacket, he told the troops that America "stands solidly" behind them, and ­ to whoops of approval ­ that the US military was doing a "fantastic job".

As well as potatoes, he also served them, and the television cameras, with a portion of his familiar "war on terror" rhetoric. "You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq," he said, "so we don`t have to face them in our own country."

Not that the mere fact of the President having spent two and a half hours in Iraq is likely to do anything to change events in Iraq or curb the violence there. Nearly 300 US services personnel have died in hostile action, 183 of them since 1 May when Mr Bush declared an end to major combat.

More than 60 US troops were killed by hostile fire in November, more than any other month since the end of major combat. But it was a bold and meticulously orchestrated gesture that will have no political downside. Mr Bush will also have artfully upstaged Senator Hillary Clinton who is due to visit the Iraq capital this morning. "You are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful," he told the soldiers.

The visit came during a lull in the violence, which may have been linked to the Muslim Eid-al-Fitr holiday. Some Iraqis were unimpressed. "To hell with Bush," said Mohammed al-Jubouri. "He is another Mongol in a line of invaders who have destroyed Iraq."
28 November 2003 08:49


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Iraqis recapture thrills at rusting amusement park
By Phil Reeves in Baghdad
28 November 2003


All they want to do is have some fun. Their home town has been bombed, invaded and occupied by foreigners, looted and turned into a battlefield for a guerrilla war. Anyone would need to blow off steam after eight months living in the cross-hairs of other people`s guns.

So what do the good citizenry of Baghdad do? A relaxing massage, perhaps? Group counselling about post-traumatic stress syndrome? Soothing poetry readings on the banks of the Tigris? Not in this steel-nerved city.

Raw fun here is as elusive as Saddam Hussein himself. Nights are no-go zones. Clubs, discos, cinemas either do not exist or are choked with cobwebs, waiting to be unlocked when ­ or rather, if ­ better days dawn.

So when 16,000 Iraqis went in search of their kicks to celebrate the Eid-al-Fitr holidays yesterday, they went to the fair. And they did so in a manner that was almost as frightening as the conflict they were trying to forget.

The longest queues in the weed-choked Baghdad Amusement Park were for white-knuckle rides on a rust-bitten roller-coaster. But plenty of people also wanted to be whizzed like eggs in a blender in a centrifugal machine.

Some blasted tiny dangling plastic figures with air rifles ­ which is odd, given that every householder has at least one Kalashnikov and knows how to use it, and odder still when you think that people in these parts should by now be weary of gunfire. Others chose to have the dregs of their war-frazzled adrenal glands pumped dry by a ride on a Victorian-era ghost train.

"This is a different type of scariness," explained Razzak Araim, the general manager of the amusement park, when asked why so many Iraqis would want to frighten themselves some more. When the park, now privately run, was built in 1963, it was the first in the Middle East and the pride of Baghdad. It was here that families would gather for feast days during the Saddam Hussein era.

But yesterday, the place was packed with lean young lads in ugly new stripy Turkish-made shirts. Such fashion statements were, said Wissam Fadr, a 19-year-old mechanic, impossible under Saddam.

But the merry-go-round and flying pink pig rides were doing no business at all. It was not a family day. Mr Araim, armed with a walkie-talkie, was escorting one of the few groups of women and children. People in post-Saddam Baghdad were "ruder than before", he complained. "They don`t respect any rules. This is how they understand the meaning of our freedom."

Like many Iraqis, he was no fan of the occupation forces, who yesterday flew a Cobra helicopter low over the park. "If people took over your country, what would you feel? Would you feel free?" Whether freedom has any meaning at all for Baghdad`s women is open to doubt.

We were still negotiating our way over the mud bath at the park`s entrance when the police opened fire in the air with the AK-47s. They said they were intercepting an attempt by a man to abduct a girl. According to a security guard, Kamel Abu Haider, it was the third such attack in two days. The wave of kidnappings that followed the fall of Baghdad has ebbed but is still going on.

More than seven months after President George Bush joyously implored Iraq to "let the good times roll", Baghdad was trying its best. But, as every funster scaring himself witless on the roller-coaster surely knew, the bad times are not yet over.
28 November 2003 08:52



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 28, 2003
POLITICS
Meeting of Iraqi Leaders Gives Lift to U.S. Plan on Power Shift
By JOEL BRINKLEY

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 27 — The American plan to transfer power to Iraq regained some momentum on Thursday, after a meeting between two leading Iraqi political figures.

Jalal Talabani, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, traveled to Najaf to confer with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior Iraqi cleric who had raised objections to the American plan for indirect elections for a new provisional government. Afterward, both sides appeared to be moving toward a possible compromise.

Ayatollah Sistani exercises strong influence over Iraq`s majority Shiites, and on Wednesday his spokesmen said he was insisting that the election planned for next June must be a direct, popular ballot and not the indirect caucus election called for in the American plan.

That threw the future of the plan for speeding up self-rule into doubt. The American authorities have maintained that popular elections are impossible in the absence of a census, which cannot be completed by next summer. But at a news conference on Thursday night, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric and member of the Governing Council who is close to Ayatollah Sistani, said there was room for negotiation.

"There are different proposals for getting the opinion of the Iraqi people," he said. "The best way would be to have a census and election law, and elections. But in these circumstances, there are other ways you can reach the views of the Iraqi people."

"The most important thing," he added, "is to end the occupation."

That is exactly what the Americans have been saying. American officials declined to comment on the discussions on Thursday. But on Wednesday, Bush administration officials in Washington said they hoped that a system of provincial and local elections, town meetings and caucuses of civic leaders throughout Iraq might be acceptable to Ayatollah Sistani.

Mr. Hakim declined to comment directly on that idea. Throughout his news conference, however, he spoke respectfully of the occupation authorities. But at one point he did issue what appeared to be a threat. If Ayatollah Sistani`s views are not heeded, he warned, "there will be a real problem in this country."

After his meeting with the ayatollah, Mr. Talabani, the Kurdish leader who heads the Governing Council until the end of this month, called his objections "logical and reasonable."

He went even further, seemingly embracing the views of Ayatollah Sistani without reservation.

"I will take his views to the council, and we, God willing, hope to ratify them," Mr. Talabani said after the meeting at the ayatollah`s headquarters in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad.

He added that while the self-government proposal remains, "we may add an attachment that has additional clauses" to address Ayatollah Sistani`s concerns. "The agreement can evolve," he said.

Aides said the ayatollah had also insisted that the proposal must declare more forthrightly that Iraq is an Islamic state and ensure that no Iraqi law will be permitted to conflict with Islamic law.

Mr. Talabani said one appendix "says Islam is the religion of the majority, and it must be respected and considered a main source for the constitution" that is to be written in the coming years.

Mr. Talabani`s position as president of the Governing Council is largely symbolic and holds no particular authority. Many others on the council are likely to take issue with his statement that Ayatollah Sistani`s views should be accepted and enacted. When Mr. Talabani`s term ends, the next council president, for December, will be Mr. Hakim.

American officials said they were insisting on indirect elections of some form because no voter rolls existed for full national elections, and a voter registration list could not be compiled in the coming year.

But Mr. Talabani said Ayatollah Sistani suggested this morning that the United Nations food rations registry could be used as the basis of a voter registration. No census has been taken in Iraq since 1998, so that list stands as the most complete count of Iraq`s roughly 25 million citizens.

Mr. Hakim reiterated that using the rations registry was one idea. But he made a point of saying "other ways" of holding elections might be considered as well.

Mahdi al-Hafidh, Iraq`s minister of planning, said it normally took two years to conduct a census. But if the census was stripped of all questions except those that are needed for an election, he added in a recent interview, it is possible that it could be competed by next summer.

Mr. Talabani said he would discuss Ayatollah Sistani`s view with the Governing Council and the American authorities. Mr. Hakim warned that reaching agreement might not be quick or easy.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 28, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
We Are Where We Shop
By SHARON ZUKIN

Today, according to ancient American custom, thousands of moms and dads will wake before dawn, jump into their cars and drive to the mall. There they will wait patiently in the parking lot for the doors to open. Then they will race their shopping carts through the broad, familiar aisles of our nation`s most popular discount stores, filling them with DVD players, wide-screen TV`s, Hokey Pokey Elmos — something`s always on sale. Before noon, if they`re lucky, they will emerge triumphant from behind the cash registers with the trophies of their early-morning hunt.

While the most coveted trophies may change from year to year, the ritual does not. During the past century, America has transformed itself into a shopping nation. Since the 1870`s — the dawn of mass-produced consumer goods — new stores, products and promotions have continually surrounded us with visions of abundance and supplied us with the means to fulfill our dreams.

Low prices reflect democracy. Brand names represent our search for a better life. And designer boutiques embody the promise of an ever-improving self. Yet Americans have made a Faustian deal with the culture of shopping, and especially with bargain culture. The retail prices may be low, but the social costs are high.

Consider, for example, Wal-Mart, which is the largest company in the United States based on revenue, with annual sales last year of more than $244 billion. Wal-Mart`s reputation for bringing a wide variety of goods to small towns and rural communities gives the company leverage over town councils and planning boards, which are often asked to grant zoning concessions or relax environmental standards. And Wal-Mart`s frequent position as the only big employer in town allows it leeway to hire workers at low wages.

But Wal-Mart`s strategies aren`t exactly new. F. W. Woolworth, who opened his first five-and-dime store in 1879, succeeded by providing a wide array of common household and personal goods at standardized, low prices. During the glory years of the five-and-dime, men shopped there for hardware and stationery, women bought sewing supplies and hair ornaments, and children chose toys and Big Chief writing tablets.

Like Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart in 1962, Woolworth was able to keep prices low by ruthless cost cutting — using self-service to reduce the number of sales clerks, paying them low wages and encouraging tight control over inventory. Woolworth also introduced employee stock ownership — but only for managers, who, unlike the sales clerks, were all male. And Woolworth fiercely opposed labor unions.

Compared with consumers in other countries, Americans have benefited from these policies. Since the 19th century, the middle class has depended on low prices for consumer goods — mainly food, clothing and, until recently, housing — to maintain its standard of living. To a great extent, however, these low prices are encouraged not only by the market but also by the government.

Almost every president of the 20th century acknowledged the major role of consumption in the American economy. Bill Clinton supported free trade, which keeps prices low by encouraging companies to make goods in low-wage countries and sell them in the United States. More recently, politicians have joined merchants to encourage Americans to shop their way out of recession, for example, or the trauma of a terrorist attack.

Throughout his career, Sam Walton kept the motto of an earlier entrepreneur, James Cash Penney, above his desk: "Serve the public . . . to its complete satisfaction."

But Walton also expanded the chain with a methodical, state-by-state saturation of local markets — putting smaller, locally owned stores out of business. Unlike Sears, Wal-Mart made an effort to appeal to women by featuring health and beauty products. And unlike many department stores, Wal-Mart consistently resisted going upscale. Most important, in the 1980`s, Wal-Mart largely abandoned American-made goods for imports and switched from mostly generics to nationally advertised brands.

Now shoppers could find cheap designer jeans and brand-name refrigerators in the same store. This one-stop shopping offered low prices, high quality and convenience — an ideal situation for shoppers of modest means. But it also attracted shoppers with higher income levels. Like the upper-class women who shopped at Woolworth during the Depression, they could always find something to buy.

It is social equality — of a sort: instead of reducing differences between the classes, we are satisfied to see them shopping in the same discount store. Instead of supporting local businesses, we shop at giant chains. Instead of raising incomes, we lower prices. Americans have accepted bargain culture as our vision of democracy.

When the economy is uncertain, the appeal of bargain culture grows. But low prices are not really a bargain. They may allow us to shop more often, but they weaken our ability to pay the bill.


Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, is author of ``Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture.``



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 28, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Good News
By PAUL KRUGMAN

I`ve heard it said that I should try, just once, to write something upbeat. Honestly, on the domestic front it`s hard. Yes, the business cycle is looking up — but with the budget out of control, pork-stuffed legislation making its way through Congress and the extractive industries making environmental policy, we seem to have lost the ability to govern ourselves. Did I mention civil liberties?

But if I take the global long view, there`s still a lot to cheer about.

When I went to graduate school, almost 30 years ago, I initially thought about specializing in development. After all, there is no more important topic in economics than how to raise the standard of living of the world`s poor.

But in the mid-1970`s, development economics was just too depressing to pursue. Indeed, it might as well have been called non-development economics. No third world nation had made the transition to advanced-country status since 19th-century Japan. Circa 1975 it seemed that the club of nations with decent living standards was no longer accepting new members.

Now we know that the club isn`t that exclusive, after all. South Korea and several smaller Asian economies have made a full transition to modernity. China is still a poor country, but it has made astonishing progress. And there are signs of an economic takeoff in at least parts of India. I`m not talking about arid economic statistics; what we`ve seen over the past generation is an enormous, unexpected improvement in the human condition.

How was this improvement achieved? Whenever I give talks about my latest book, someone asks whether I still believe in free trade. The answer is yes — not because I have any fond feelings about multinational corporations, but because every one of those development success stories was based on export-led growth. And that growth is possible only if rising economies can expand into new markets. Some critics of globalization seem to be nostalgic for the era before the big growth in third-world exports of manufactured goods. I`m not, because I remember the way that era really felt, our despair over the possibility of development.

That said, the critics of globalization do have some valid points.

First and foremost, the promise of export-led growth has failed in too many places. In particular, Latin America has signally failed to replicate Asia`s success: Latin nations have liberalized, privatized and deregulated, with results ranging from disappointing (Mexico) to catastrophic (Argentina). Open world markets, it seems, offer the possibility of economic development — but not an easy, universal recipe.

Meanwhile, competition from newly industrializing economies does hurt some workers in advanced countries. I could tell you how sensible government policies could minimize this cost, but since we don`t have those policies and aren`t about to get them, free trade is, in reality, a morally ambiguous issue. And someone in my situation has to acknowledge being in a particularly weak moral position, since they aren`t yet having newspaper columns written in Bangalore.

Yet I keep coming back to the big good news of the past 25 years: in a world with more or less free trade, development is possible. We are not, it turns out, condemned to live forever on a planet where only a small minority of the global population has a decent standard of living.

Will this good news continue? Growing tensions over world trade worry me. The steady trickle of U.S. protectionist moves, against everything from steel to Chinese bras, hasn`t yet become a torrent. But there`s a definite sense that the grown-ups have left the building.

What`s particularly striking is the contempt this administration has for the rules. I was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration (those were nonpolitical jobs back then); one thing I remember was that if the experts said a proposed trade restriction violated international trade law, that was that. By contrast, just about every protectionist step taken by the Bush administration has been clearly in violation. And if the major economic powers stop honoring the rules that preserve open global markets, the chances of future development in poor nations will be much reduced.

But none of this cancels the fact that over the past 25 years more people have seen greater material progress than ever before in history. That`s something to celebrate.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
An Indelible Moment in A War and Presidency


By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A01


Three images tell the story of George W. Bush`s presidency.

The first, of Bush and bullhorn atop the rubble at New York`s Ground Zero on Sept. 14, 2001, came to symbolize his transformation into a powerful wartime president. The second, of Bush in flight suit with "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, became the symbol of Bush`s unrealized optimism about the U.S. military`s victory in Iraq.

Yesterday, Nov. 27, 2003, brought an equally vivid but more complex image of Bush. His stealthy landing in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day portrayed a leader well aware of the chaotic and dangerous situation in Iraq but determined to assure the Iraqi people that the United States will not, as he has put it, "cut and run."

While the troops cheered the moment, it is too soon to know whether the image of Bush in his Army jacket yesterday will become a symbol of strong leadership or a symbol of unwarranted bravado.

Iraqis may be reassured that the United States will put down the insurgency and restore order in their country. Or they may take the image of Bush landing unannounced at night without lights and not venturing from a heavily fortified military installation as confirmation that the security situation in Iraq is dire indeed.

But one thing is certain. Bush`s Thanksgiving Day surprise ties him, for better or worse, ever more tightly to the outcome of the Iraq struggle.

"It raises the stakes," said Rich Bond, a former head of the Republican Party. "When you`re playing poker and somebody is coming at you, a great way to deter them is to raise the stakes. George Bush just placed his stature in an extraordinary way to reassert his commitment to Iraq."

There is nothing novel about presidential visits to war zones at holiday time. Bill Clinton went to Kosovo for Thanksgiving in 1999, Lyndon B. Johnson went to Vietnam for Christmas in 1967, and President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Korean battle fronts in 1952. Richard M. Nixon also traveled to Vietnam, in 1969.

It is also not unprecedented for a president to make unannounced trips in wartime under intense security. Franklin D. Roosevelt`s trips to Yalta and other ports during World War II make that clear. And while people may debate the wisdom of sending Air Force One into an area known to have frequent antiaircraft fire, security experts said the secret defensive technologies on Air Force One put the plane at little risk compared with the DHL aircraft that was struck over Baghdad a few days ago.

In contrast to Bush`s carrier landing, which they immediately branded a stunt, Bush`s critics yesterday did not begrudge him the trip to Iraq, nor the necessary secrecy, nor even the disinformation the White House used to lead people to believe he would be at home on his ranch in Texas all day. Rather, they said the visit may come to reinforce their view that the administration has led the United States into a lonely occupation of Iraq without an obvious exit strategy.

Bush`s entourage was fitted with ballistic vests, and the plane came in with neither running lights nor cabin lights, parking on a dark landing strip. "The message to the Iraqis is Bush doesn`t think their country is secure," said Sidney Blumenthal, a former adviser to Clinton. "It underscores the insecurity, and it conveys insularity."

Chris Lehane, a strategist for retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark`s presidential campaign, said Democrats would not fault Bush for visiting the troops.

"It`s absolutely appropriate to be honoring our soldiers overseas in battle on a day like Thanksgiving," he said. "It`s more important to honor them every day, which includes allowing us to appropriately honor the heroes who come back in caskets and giving our troops a strategy so they`re not there next Thanksgiving."

Bush, in his brief words to the troops, had little of the braggadocio from his May 1 speech and much of the grim determination from his bullhorn speech.

There were no pithy slogans on banners behind him. "You`re engaged in a difficult mission," he said, with a poor amplification quality that fit the improvised nature of the trip. "Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will."

But, he added to applause, "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins."

The message fit the mood of the weary soldiers. In the audience, Staff Sgt. Gerrie Stokes Holloman of Baltimore said she feels "depressed" being in Iraq but buoyed by Bush`s visit: "For the most part, people are tired and want to go home. But the support and encouragement we get from our leadership builds a bond with our soldiers."

Retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a commander during the 1991 Persian Gulf War who maintains extensive ties to the Army, predicted the visit would boost soldiers` morale. The visit "brought tears to my eyes," McCaffrey said. "This is the kind of thing that will have a major impact on their level of trust with their own commander in chief."

The visit`s impact on U.S. public opinion and on the Iraqi public is not yet knowable. Though it will be to history to judge whether this third major image of Bush`s presidency will become shorthand for a failed occupation or a successful war, both supporters and critics yesterday said it was appropriate to make a holiday visit to the soldiers he sent to battle -- and to bind further his political fortunes to the outcome of the mission in Iraq.

"The fact that it`s on Thanksgiving is a little bit contrived, but I don`t have any problem with it," said Michael O`Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and a frequent critic of the president`s Iraq policy. "It`s politics the way it`s supposed to be, in a sense."

Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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U.S. Weighs Elections for Iraq`s Provisional Government


By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Nov. 27 -- Less than two weeks after overhauling its plans for Iraq`s political transition, the Bush administration is considering more major revisions that could include elections for a provisional government in an attempt to appease the country`s most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric, senior U.S. officials said.

Holding elections would be a major reversal for the administration, which has long argued that the absence of an electoral law and accurate voter rolls would make a nationwide ballot time-consuming, disruptive and open to manipulation by religious extremists and loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein.

But the senior officials said the administration may be forced to organize elections to satisfy Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. A senior cleric who has strong support among Iraq`s Shiite majority, Sistani appears to have rejected a plan devised earlier this month to select a provisional government through 18 regional caucuses. Two Shiite politicians said Sistani told them on Wednesday that he does not support the caucuses and instead wants the provisional government chosen through a general election.

"Elections are now a possibility," said a senior U.S. official close to Iraq`s political transition. "We`re scrambling to find a solution."

The revisions under consideration illustrate the challenge the administration faces as it attempts to craft a political blueprint for Iraq that satisfies the country`s diverse religious and ethnic groups while attempting to ensure U.S. influence over the new government and an end to the civil occupation before the presidential election next year.

Although the White House and the U.S.-led occupation authority in Baghdad are waiting for a clear statement from Sistani about what he wants, administration officials have concluded that their latest plan -- crafted in part to answer his earlier objections -- does not satisfy the grand ayatollah. Some officials said they are still hopeful he can be appeased with changes to a caucus system. If not, they said, the administration may have no choice but to hold elections to retain the support of Iraq`s Shiite majority.

"We were surprised that Sistani did not bless the plan," another senior administration official said. "We`re waiting to see what he says. If he says no to the caucuses, then we have to figure out a way to get elections done."

During his brief visit to Baghdad on Thursday, President Bush met with four members of Iraq`s U.S.-appointed Governing Council. Bush said he reminded them that "it`s up to them to seize the moment, to have a government that recognizes all rights, the rights of the majority and the rights of the minority, to speak to the aspirations and hopes of the Iraqi people."

According to three of the council members at the meeting, Bush indicated that he would be willing to accept revisions to the administration`s transition plan, although he did not endorse the idea of elections.

One of the council members, Mowaffak Rubaie, said Bush told the group: "I will support any decision you make. I won`t make decisions for you. I will help you in implementing your decisions." Two other members at the meeting, Ahmed Chalabi and Rajaa Habib Khuzai, concurred with Rubaie`s account but added that Bush expressed a desire for the provisional government to be chosen through caucuses.

"He talked to us about getting the job done, about moving toward sovereignty," Chalabi said.

U.S. officials said Bush did not delve into specifics of the transition plan and merely indicated to the council members that the United States wanted to be helpful and supportive of the council. "He said, `We`re here to support you,` " an administration official said.

A senior Shiite politician who met Sistani on Wednesday evening said the grand ayatollah made clear that he wanted members of a provisional government to be chosen through direct elections, not caucuses. The politician said Sistani would issue a religious edict in the coming days that would articulate his views.

Another Shiite political leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, said Wednesday that Sistani was concerned that the administration`s transition plan did not give ordinary Iraqis enough of a say in shaping the provisional government. Hakim said Sistani also was worried that the plan lacked safeguards for what he called the country`s "Islamic identity."

In an effort to defuse the crisis, the Governing Council`s current president, Jalal Talabani, met with Sistani on Thursday in the holy city of Najaf. Talabani said that he agreed with several of Sistani`s objections and that the council would seek to modify the plan to take the cleric`s views into account.

"I see the views of his grace as logical and reasonable, and I agree with them," Talabani said after meeting with Sistani.

But Talabani stopped short of endorsing Sistani`s reported demand that members of the provisional government be directly elected. Instead, Talabani suggested that the council would attempt to modify the caucus arrangement and add language that addressed Sistani`s concerns about the role of Islam in the provisional government.

Sistani did not issue any public comments after the meeting. It is not known whether Talabani`s concessions will satisfy him. Some council leaders said they believe that Sistani will accede to a revised caucus system, while Shiite political figures contend he will not agree to anything but elections.

Sistani`s earlier demand that drafters of Iraq`s constitution be elected effectively forced the administration to rework a political transition plan that called for drafters to be selected by other means -- on the grounds that early elections would be too problematic.

Under the revised plan, the handover of sovereignty would no longer wait for Iraqis to write a constitution. Instead, caucuses would be held in the country`s 18 provinces to choose representatives to serve on a transitional assembly, which would form a provisional government that would assume sovereignty by next summer. After power is transferred, Iraqis would be free to elect delegates to write a constitution.

As soon as the new plan was announced Nov. 15 by leaders of the Governing Council, council members began pushing for changes. Contending that the plan was forced on them by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, they have sought to revise several key elements, including the planned dissolution of the council after the provisional government was formed.

Several Shiite members also have objected to the method of choosing participants in the caucuses. Under Bremer`s plan, they must be approved by 11 of 15 people on an organizing committee, which would be selected by the Governing Council and U.S.-appointed councils at the city and province level. Shiite leaders worry that religious figures may be excluded by the organizing committees.

But even Shiite leaders acknowledge that holding elections for the assembly will be a difficult endeavor. Iraq has no voter rolls, electoral districts or other basic infrastructure to facilitate a popular ballot.

Several Shiite leaders contend that the easiest way to get around that problem would be to rely on a database used to distribute food rations that lists the name and address of almost every person in the country. "It would be a quick and dirty election, but Sistani doesn`t mind that," said Rubaie, a Shiite close to the grand ayatollah. "He thinks it can be done."

Bremer and other administration officials have long opposed elections because they are concerned that the voting could open the way for former members of Hussein`s Baath Party or followers of anti-American Islamic extremists to slide into the new government.

U.S. officials also contend that security problems, particularly in Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad, could doom elections.

One option administration officials are considering would be to hold elections in Shiite and Kurdish areas and caucuses in Sunni areas, where resistance to the occupation has been fierce. But Shiite leaders contend that approach could exacerbate Sunni anger. They maintain that the prospect of elections could, in fact, help to quell Sunni violence.

"Will it work?" a senior administration official said. "Something`s got to work. June 30 is turnover day, which is when Iraqis will have full authority and power, and nothing`s going to change that."

Wright reported from Washington.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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An Iraqi`s Likely Story


By David Ignatius

Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A41


PARIS -- Bush administration hard-liners have a dangerous habit of selectively using intelligence to support the policy conclusions they favor. The latest example of that tendentious approach comes in the leaked Pentagon memo on alleged operational links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that was summarized last week by the Weekly Standard.

To understand why the memo sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith was misleading, a little background is necessary.

The claim that Hussein`s intelligence service had contacts with al Qaeda isn`t new, and by itself it doesn`t prove much. In the murky world of espionage, operatives are constantly checking out potential friends and adversaries; it would be surprising, in fact, if the Iraqis and Osama bin Laden`s men hadn`t met. CIA Director George Tenet summarized these feelers in an October 2002 letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He noted that contacts between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda dated back to the early 1990s and had included discussions about giving al Qaeda operatives sanctuary in Iraq or helping them acquire chemical weapons.

Analysts working for Feith gathered those old intelligence reports and some new ones and argued that they showed significant links between the Iraqis and al Qaeda -- rejecting the CIA`s skepticism on one of the most sensitive issues in the Iraq debate. The Senate Intelligence Committee then asked Feith to explain why his staff had reached this conclusion and he responded with 50 specific intelligence items, his spokesman explained. The Standard summarized the memo this way in the lead of its article: "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003."

There`s a reason why the CIA and British intelligence remained dubious about any serious Iraq-al Qaeda operational link, even though they knew about covert contacts between the two. That`s because they had an unusually well-placed source in Iraq who told them before the war that in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had indeed considered such an operational relationship with bin Laden -- and then decided against it.

"The Iraqis did consider the possibility of links with al Qaeda to explore the possibility of cooperation, but they decided not to pursue that course of action," explained a senior intelligence official. "The Iraqis decided it wasn`t in their best interest to be linked to an Islamic terrorist group."

The information was based on "high-level human source reporting," the official added, and it was the most important reason why "prior to the war, the CIA and Britain agreed that despite contact between Saddam and al Qaeda over the years, there had been no substantive, institutional cooperation. Nothing we have learned in recent months would cause us to change that view."

Now the interesting part: Confirmation of this version of events can be found in, of all places, the Weekly Standard article. And it`s one of the few elements in the story that`s genuinely new, for it`s based on a recent interview with a captured Iraqi spy.

Here`s how the Weekly Standard quotes from the new intelligence: "One senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, `said that the last contact between the IIS [Iraqi intelligence service] and al Qaeda was in July 1999. Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from Saddam`s office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda.` " The Standard story dismisses the importance of this information, arguing that "the bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this claim."

But the contradictory "bulk" turns out to be pretty flimsy. For example, the Feith memo cites an intelligence report that al Qaeda "in late 1999" set up a training camp in northern Iraq. If the camp was in the north, then it was probably in an area under effective Kurdish or Iranian control.

Don`t get me wrong. I respect the Weekly Standard`s reporter, Stephen Hayes, and I think he had a good scoop (although I think he may have buried the lead). No, my complaint is with Feith, who produced an intelligence memo that to me had a clear political agenda, despite his claims to the contrary. The case that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were working together against America is not "closed," as the Weekly Standard would have it. The CIA, which collected most of the raw intelligence Feith cites, remains unconvinced, and for good reason. The case is thin, and contradicted by high-level Iraqi sources. Advocates for U.S. policy in Iraq should understand that it weakens their credibility, rather than strengthening it, when they seem to be cooking intelligence to serve President Bush`s political interests.

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THE WORLD



Iran-Pakistan Atomic Link Seen
Both nations deny technology assistance. The U.N.`s watchdog agency is investigating.
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer

November 28, 2003

ISTANBUL, Turkey — The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency is investigating potential links between the atomic programs of Iran and Pakistan after discovering that the secret Iranian uranium-enrichment program used technology identical to Pakistani plans, diplomats said.

Tehran acknowledged to the International Atomic Energy Agency that its centrifuge enrichment program was based on designs by a European firm, Urenco. Diplomats said the designs were the same Urenco-based technology used by Pakistan to develop its nuclear bomb in the 1990s.

Centrifuges are used to process uranium into fuel for reactors or fissile material for bombs. The purification process is complex, and perfecting the machines, which spin at twice the speed of sound, can take years.

The most recent IAEA report on Iran`s nuclear program said Tehran started research in 1985 and got the centrifuge designs "from a foreign intermediary in 1987." Iran has told the agency that they came from a middleman whose identity remains a mystery.

The United States has accused Iran of using a civilian program to conceal efforts to develop an atomic bomb. IAEA inspections in recent months have uncovered numerous instances in which Iran concealed nuclear activities that could have played a role in developing an atomic bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program exists solely to generate electricity. This month, Tehran agreed to provide the IAEA with a full disclosure of its program`s history and accept tougher IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.

On Wednesday, the IAEA governing board in Vienna condemned Iran for its long cover-up of sensitive nuclear research and warned that any future violation of its nonproliferation obligations could result in sanctions.

The board stopped short of referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, as the Bush administration initially wanted.

A Western diplomat said in a telephone interview Thursday that the U.S. believed that Iran was still hiding activities and that the matter eventually would go to the U.N.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, said a new report on Iran would be ready for the agency`s board in mid-February. He said the agency`s inspectors had "a lot of work to do before we can conclude that Iran`s program is exclusively for peaceful purposes."

Diplomats said discovering the origins of the Iranian uranium enrichment process was one of the key areas under investigation by the IAEA as it attempted to reconstruct 18 years of hidden activities.

A diplomat said that the IAEA had not determined whether the centrifuge plans had come directly from Pakistan or were obtained or stolen from a Pakistani nuclear laboratory by the middleman.

Urenco is a British, Dutch and German consortium and a world leader in centrifuge design and operation. The company denied supplying centrifuge technology or blueprints to Iran.

Pakistan repeatedly has denied providing any nuclear assistance to Iran and criticized as "anti-Muslim" articles suggesting it had aided Iran. Tehran also has denied cooperating with Pakistan.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the primary developer of Pakistan`s nuclear bomb, worked at the Urenco enrichment plant in the Dutch city of Almelo in the 1970s. After returning to Pakistan, he was accused of stealing centrifuge plans from the facility.

Two former Iranian diplomats told the Los Angeles Times last summer that Khan made several trips to Iran, beginning in 1987, to help with Iran`s nuclear program. One of them, Ali Akbar Omid Mehr, said Khan was given a villa on the Caspian Sea in return for his assistance.

On a trip to South Korea this month, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said a reported visit by Khan to Iran was connected with attempts to purchase short-range missiles, not nuclear technology sales.

The Iranian centrifuge program is at the top of the IAEA inquiry list because traces of weapons-grade uranium were found in two locations where the machines had been assembled and tested.

One of the locations was the massive underground enrichment plant being constructed near Natanz in central Iran. Diplomats said IAEA inspectors spotted the similarity to the Urenco designs when they visited the plant.

The centrifuges at Natanz appeared to have been modified to produce enriched uranium more efficiently that the original design, said diplomats familiar with the inspection.

Traces of weapons-grade uranium also were discovered at Kalaye Electric Co. Tehran reluctantly acknowledged having performed extensive tests on purifying uranium with centrifuges at the Kalaye plant, once identified as a watch factory.



The machinery had been removed and extensive construction had been done by the time inspectors visited the site, but they found the enriched-uranium particles through tests.

Iran had long maintained that its centrifuge program was indigenous.

Confronted with the IAEA discoveries, Iranian officials said some components were contaminated with enriched uranium when they were purchased outside the country through middlemen.

The inquiry into the origins of the centrifuge designs is only one aspect of a widespread investigation by the IAEA of what turned out to be a surprisingly broad nuclear program in Iran.

The IAEA report this month said Iran had been conducting research using exotic laser technology to enrich uranium for 12 years before disclosing the program this fall. Some of the laser technology appears to have come from Russia and some of it may have European origins, diplomats familiar with the inquiry said.

The agency`s report said Iran established a pilot plant for laser enrichment three years ago and shut it down and disassembled the machinery in May.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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NEWS ANALYSIS



Bush Trip Emblematic of His Approach to Politics
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

November 28, 2003

WASHINGTON — With his dramatic visit to Baghdad, President Bush has demonstrated again the depth of his commitment to the military mission that could decide his fate in the 2004 election.

In his speech to the troops, and even more emphatically with the symbolism of his presence in a war zone half the world away, Bush underscored his resolve to stay the course against growing violence on the ground in Iraq and growing doubts about the effort at home.

"We will stay until the job is done," Bush said.

The unexpected trip, cloaked in secrecy and received enthusiastically by the troops, drew praise not only from Republicans but aides to several of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Yet the underlying message of Bush`s trip seems more likely to harden than rearrange the increasingly polarized lines of domestic debate over the struggle to reconstruct Iraq.

To Bush`s supporters, the trip is likely to highlight his traits they like best: determination, forcefulness, empathy and commitment to his causes.

"They will perceive this as a reinforcement of the things they prize about him," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who has closely followed Bush`s political career.

Indeed, some analysts noted that it would be difficult to imagine how Bush could have more vividly displayed his determination than to fly into a war zone on a trip considered so dangerous that the White House said it was prepared to turn back if word leaked out before he arrived.

"What the president did today was show he was willing to put himself in harm`s way, like the troops," presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told CNN.

But to Bush`s Democratic critics — and the voters sympathetic to their arguments — the trip could receive a more mixed response.

On the one hand, even critics of the war praised Bush for making the effort to show support for the troops.

"On this Thanksgiving, all Americans are grateful for our troops who are spending this day far from family and loved ones," said Tricia Enright, communications director for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination has been fueled by his opposition to the war. The visit "was good for the troops, certainly."

On the other hand, some Democrats argued that Bush`s demonstration of support for the troops did nothing to resolve the larger questions about America`s direction in Iraq.

"It`s great for him to do this; you can`t criticize the president for spending time with the troops," said Matt Bennett, communications director for retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, another Democratic presidential contender who has criticized the war. "But this isn`t a substitute for having a policy for success in Iraq."

Both sides agree that the trip was emblematic of Bush`s approach to politics. From his repeated tax cuts to the changes in Medicare that he steered through Congress this month to his attempt to reorient U.S. national security policy around his vision of preemptive defense, Bush has consistently set out large goals — and then pursued them tenaciously, even at the price of sharply dividing opinion at home and around the world.

When challenged, he usually digs in deeper, and that may be precisely what he intended to convey with his visit Thursday.

"It was very much him making an emphatic statement that he believes in this, that he is going to persist," one GOP strategist close to the White House said. "Instead of backing away when he is criticized, he redoubles his efforts."

From a political perspective, the trip offered a strikingly different picture than the images generated May 1, when Bush landed on the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq. At that moment, Bush seemed bursting with bravado as he stood before a banner that declared, "Mission Accomplished."

That image has seemed so out of tune with the grueling and deadly struggle in Iraq since then that it has been first used in a commercial not by Republicans, but by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, one of the 2004 Democratic hopefuls.

The pictures from Iraq Thursday showed a much more somber president, portraying the struggle in Iraq for the troops and the nation as closer to the beginning than the end and acknowledging the likelihood of difficult days ahead.

In his words to the troops, Bush certainly seemed to be speaking from the heart, even Democrats said. But they said that his chastened message may represent an implicit acknowledgment from the White House that the pictures of the president strutting across the aircraft carrier were now more a problem than an asset.

"This trip was born of good intentions; I don`t doubt it," Bennett said. "But I also think it will provide them an opportunity to replace the swaggering imagery of the flight suit with more responsible imagery."

The trip occurred against a backdrop of growing public anxiety about the mission in Iraq. Amid the steady drumbeat of U.S. casualties, public "sticker shock" at Bush`s request for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan and the inability of coalition forces to find conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, doubts about the war have grown steadily in polls since Bush`s aircraft carrier landing.

In a Los Angeles Times Poll released last week, 45% of Americans responding said they approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq, while 51% disapproved. That was a sharp drop from April, when a Times Poll found more than three-fourths of American respondents expressed approval of Bush`s Iraq policy.

Similarly, the share of Americans who said the war was worth fighting fell from 77% in the April poll to 48% now. And the new poll found just 35% said the war was worth the cost in American lives.

Several analysts said Thursday that Bush`s visit could temporarily shore up those doubts, but that conditions in Iraq would undoubtedly exert more impact on American opinions over time.

The visit is likely to make a more lasting impression in public attitudes toward Bush.

For his supporters it shows a president of deep beliefs unfazed by criticism or shifts in public opinion. For his critics it may help symbolize a man who refuses to reconsider his course even when events seem to demand it.

Americans may embrace or reject Bush`s approach to domestic and world affairs in next year`s election, but Thursday`s visit was another reminder that they are likely to have no confusion about the direction he intends to take the country.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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The Maybach 62 is DaimlerChrysler`s 20-foot long, 3-ton, $358,000 super-limousine.
(BRIAN VANDER BRUG / LAT)




http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-…
RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL



Limo ready for takeoff
L.A. to San Francisco may take longer aboard Benz`s Maybach 62 than by air, but when you`re surrounded by such luxury, time flies.
By Dan Neil

November 26, 2003

It`s the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday. For those about to fly, I salute you.

I`ve logged about 2 million air miles in my career, bathed in the cabin-borne aromatics and aerosols of my fellow travelers. Not unlike Prufrock have I measured out my life with plastic coffee spoons, waiting for the pretzels to arrive.

Flying was miserable before 9/11. Now the entire flying public has to be frisked to ensure they aren`t carrying anything more threatening than sharply worded memos.

If Angelenos absolutely, positively have to be in New York or Tokyo, well, flying is their lot. But what if they have to be in Las Vegas, San Francisco or Phoenix? Destinations within a 400-mile perimeter constitute a kind of zone of exasperation, in which it might actually be faster to drive than to fly. For example, from the downtown offices of the Los Angeles Times, it can take an hour to get to LAX. Another hour to check in and get to the plane. Plus, an hour-and-a-quarter gate to gate. And — in this example, which you will see is not so theoretical — another hour from SFO to the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Or 4 hours and 15 minutes of scrambling, bag-lugging misery in the company of icky and odiferous strangers. Present company excepted, of course.

Enter the Maybach 62, DaimlerChrysler`s $358,000 super-limousine.

This car, 20 feet long, 3 tons, 550 turbocharged horsepower, is designed for high-speed, low-altitude, intra-nodal transit. It is essentially a four-wheeled corporate jet.

To appreciate how the Maybach compares with air travel, I arranged for the car to transport me and a passenger — my sweetheart, Tina Larsen, in the role of the inappropriately affectionate secretary — from the Times offices to San Francisco`s Fairmont Hotel. Starting time: 9:15 a.m. on a recent Monday. Our chauffeur was Geno Effler, a DaimlerChrysler executive based in Costa Mesa. For our experiment, Effler consented to be called "James" — as in, "Home, James," or, "Damn you, James, we`re out of Cristal!"

9:15 a.m. Like most car geeks, I always drive — if I could take over for cab drivers I would. So it takes awhile for me to settle into the passivity of being chauffeured.

And yet as Effler expertly fillets slower traffic on the I-5 with the mighty Maybach, and I watch idly from behind the enormous, acoustically silenced, infrared-shielded side windows, a silly happiness overtakes me: This is fun. Don`t spare the horses!

First, Tina and I play with the gadgets. We deploy the folding tables, fiddle with the 600-watt stereo system with its cordless Bose headphones, run through the TV channels, watching on the seatback-mounted LCD screens. As usual, Tina is better at figuring out the complexities of the remote control.

One of the most fascinating devices onboard is the panoramic roof that switches from transparent to a kind of milky opaque at the touch of a button. Also, the panoramic roof has a kind of inner eyelid that, once closed, glows with electro-luminescent ambient light.

But I am disappointed. The car`s sterling silver champagne flutes engraved with the "MM" (Maybach Motoren) are missing. It crosses my mind to have Effler flogged.

Tina asks me what "Maybach" means. The name belongs to Wilhelm Maybach and his son Karl. The former was the partner of Gottlieb Daimler, with whom he essentially invented the modern automobile in the form of the famous Jellinek Mercedes, circa 1900. Karl built high-output engines for the Graf Zeppelin airship company, which was a splendid business until the end of World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from the aviation business.

In response, Karl, with his father advising, threw his efforts into autos. The Maybach company became the Rolls-Royce of Germany, famed for its precision, unsurpassed quality and technical achievement. Based on the shores of beautiful Lake Constance, the firm also built high-output diesel engines for trains and tracked vehicles and was a key supplier to the Nazi war machine.

After the war, Maybach Motoren staggered on, building heavy-duty engines for international customers. In 1960, Daimler-Benz acquired a majority stake in Maybach Motoren. In 1969, the firm`s name was changed to MTU (Motoren und Turbinen-Union). MTU continues to build world-class power plants for industrial and nautical applications. Meanwhile, Daimler-Benz put the Maybach name in its vest pocket.

In the late 1990s when the DaimlerChrysler board decided to build a super-luxury saloon car, it resurrected the name. According to the company, a small percentage of elite Mercedes customers wanted something more exclusive than the three-pointed star, found on everything from industrial trucks to European minicars. Few marques could be more exclusive than Maybach. Or obscure.

Conjuring the old Maybach marque was a gamble. Whereas the names Rolls-Royce and Bentley have almost universal brand awareness — hence German giants BMW`s and VW Group`s purchase of the decrepit old British firms — virtually no one outside Pebble Beach knew who Maybach was.

The marque remains something of a mystery in America, despite the car`s spectacular coming-out party in July 2002, when it was flown by helicopter from the deck of the Queen Elizabeth II to Wall Street. Last year, DaimlerChrysler board member Jurgen Hubbert confidently predicted worldwide sales of the built-to-order super saloon to be 1,000 per year. DaimlerChrysler won`t release sales figures, but it`s clear sales are well off the expected pace.

10:15 a.m. We pass the green iridescence of Pyramid Lake, deep in the vaulting highlands of Los Padres National Forest. The Maybach 62 (the designation refers to its length of 6.17 meters) is an enormous car, with an official curb weight of 6,281 pounds, one supermodel away from the scale-busting Hummer H2`s 6,400 pounds.

The old Maybachs were similarly imposing. In the lobby of the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany, is a Maybach Zeppelin DS8, a 12-cylinder leviathan with waist-high wheels and a hood the size of a conference table.

As big as it is, the new Maybach takes no notice of the long, steep freeway inclines that leave the big rigs gasping. Under the hood is a 5.5-liter, twin-turbocharged V-12 engine producing 550 horsepower and a globe-turning 664 pound-feet of torque from 2,300 to 3,000 rpm. This is an unholy amount of force; creating the sensation of sheer, effortless propulsion, a kind of x-axis weightlessness. Effler has the car locked on 85 mph, and the Maybach doesn`t even seem to take a breath as it ascends a hill.

11 a.m. We are on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley. The endless rows of crops fan by. I study the bizarre ingenuity of the region`s water-management system: The California Aqueduct appears out of nowhere, a lazy river with concrete banks, with the feed pipes plunging through the mountain rock like a roller coaster. I see migrant pickers gathered in clumps around orange groves or far out into fields of Brussels sprouts. I think about Frank Norris` "The Octopus" and John Steinbeck`s "The Grapes of Wrath."

I ponder the mysteries of class. Born poor and almost certain to die that way, I consider myself a class loyalist, proudly proletariat. In any dispute between management and labor, I`m on labor`s side. Yet with such blandishments as the Maybach, the ruling classes could have me if they really wanted. Even though I`m not cruising at 30,000 feet, the little people don`t look any bigger from here.

Tina is napping.

11:45: Lunch at the Kettleman`s Ranch. Huevos rancheros. A quick time-distance calculation: 176.5 miles in 2.5 hours, for an average speed of 70 mph.

The truth is much of the Maybach is wasted in the speed-limited U.S. With its deep drawn transaxle, semiactive air suspension, Z-rated tires, 40-gallon fuel tank and mighty power plant, this car can glide at 155 mph, its governed top speed, for as long as the fuel holds out. Think Munich to Berlin, or Cairo to Mecca. At such speeds its logistical benefits multiply. It does not seem much of a stretch to imagine some wealthy Swiss banker ditching his private plane in favor of the Maybach.

12:45 p.m. Back on the road. The Maybach 62`s signature feature is the two first-class airline seats in the rear cabin. The seats themselves are kinematic wonders, reclining to 47 degrees and equipped with thigh and foot support, multiadjustable headrests, seat heating, ventilation through the perforated leather upholstery and lumbar massage, and all of it wrapped in grand nappa leather softer than a rabbit`s nose.

But for all its size and cost, the Maybach 62 is a two-passenger car — well, two passengers who count. If I were in a position of power and authority — and I think we can breathe easier knowing I`m not — the thing that would most attract me to the Maybach is something you won`t find in its multivolume owner`s manual. Privacy.

Where else can you get hours alone with a business partner, or rival, to hash out differences? From its teleconference-capable AV system and dual phones to its boardroom quiet, the Maybach is about business, or more specifically, the art of the deal.

Turn off the phones. Close the rear window curtain. Raise the optional partition`s retractable window. It`s mano a mano, executive style.

Our test car does not have the optional partition. Tina and I behave ourselves.

1:45 p.m. Effler wheels the big car onto West 152, passing along the timbered north shore of the San Luis Reservoir and onto the tawny grasslands. We pass through Gilroy, garlic capital of the world, and Effler switches the climate filtration system to vent so we can smell the air.

2:15 p.m. Tina and I watch "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" on the car`s DVD system. The car`s vibe soaks into my skin. The French cherry woodwork, as fine as Chippendale marquetry. The piano-black switches. The quiet like cotton in the ears. Overhead, three aircraft-style gauges keep the passengers informed of speed, time and temperature. And thus in this gondola of privilege we cruise. Effler, tending to his company`s $350,000 hardware, is soldier straight and eyes forward.

2:45 p.m. God, I`m comfortable. Must sleep.

3:30 p.m. We pass within sight of San Francisco`s airport.

3:55 p.m. We arrive at the Fairmont Hotel on Mason Street. Elapsed time: 6 hours, 40 minutes, with an hour for lunch. Distance: 383.7 miles, for an average speed of 58 mph.

In conclusion: To say the Maybach 62 is a special piece of machinery is like saying Rita Hayworth was somewhat photogenic. There is no car like it. Had we flown commercially, we probably would have saved two hours, but in my opinion those two hours were much better spent in the Maybach.

Life is too short to be in such a hurry.

Times automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at [e-mail].

*

2004 Maybach 62

Wheelbase: 150.7 inches

Length: 242.7 inches

Curb weight: 6,281 pounds

Powertrain: Twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter, 36-valve V-12, five-speed automatic transmission, rear-wheel drive

Horsepower: 550 at 5,250 rpm

Torque: 664 pound-feet at 2,300 to 3,000 rpm

Acceleration: Zero to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds

EPA rating: 12 miles per gallon city, 17 highway

Price, base: $358,000

Price, as tested: $358,000

Competitor: Learjet 35

Final thoughts: Low-orbit boardroom

Source: DaimlerChrysler

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Only dictators ban broadcasts
Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers
Friday, November 28, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/28/EDGTH39PUA1.DTL


Washington -- THE RAID by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials on an Arab television network bureau in Baghdad and the ban on its broadcasts hardly fits my idea of how to spread democracy in the Middle East.

Isn`t that the first thing dictators do -- shut down broadcast outlets and newspapers? For those in power, tolerating a free press is difficult, even in a democracy. As a foreign occupier in Iraq, we are proving that it is intolerable.

The terrible irony here is that we pride ourselves on offering a model to the rest of the world on how to design -- and live by -- our constitutional freedoms. Journalists around the globe have been taught to emulate our approach to newsgathering, in an atmosphere, it is hoped, free of government restraints.

At the same time, we`re snuffing out news outlets we don`t like.

On Monday, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government raided the Baghdad bureau of the Al-Arabiya TV network. The network`s crime was to broadcast an audiotape from Saddam Hussein complaining about Iraqis who were cooperating with the U.S. occupation force and calling for resistance. The tape had been sent to Al-Arabiya`s headquarters in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

The network, which has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell, is one of the largest TV outlets in the Arab world.

Any tape portraying Hussein`s views on life fits the definition of news, if for no other reason than it is evidence that he is still alive and able to secretly communicate from wherever he was hiding.

Al-Arabiya and its competitor, the al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, have a wide following in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera caused Washington much discomfort in the lead-up to the war by broadcasting statements from Hussein. The White House offered "advice" to U.S. TV to shun those tapes, but the American networks generally ignored the unhelpful hints.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused both Arab stations of being hostile by covering news of the guerrilla attacks on American forces.

Al-Jazeera`s Baghdad bureau was hit by a U.S. missile on April 8, killing a reporter-cameraman. The network also said its marked vehicle was attacked April 7.

On Nov. 13, 2001, during the U.S. war on Afghanistan, an American missile went "awry," according to the Pentagon, and destroyed the Al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul.

The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York has condemned the move against Al-Arabiya, noting that "statements from Saddam Hussein and the former Iraqi regime are inherently newsworthy and news organizations have a right to cover them."

Rumsfeld grouses that the two networks were violently against the American coalition. He hopes to counter their influence when a U.S.-controlled TV satellite channel begins broadcasts next month.

Then will the Iraqis and the Arab world be guaranteed the truth?

In a brilliant speech earlier this month before the National Conference on Media Reform, broadcaster and former editor Bill Moyers warned that American media conglomerates may find common cause "with an imperial state." But Moyers said "the greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state, but when they stood fearlessly independent of it."

Against that statement of values, the recent performance by American journalists does not measure well.

White House and Pentagon reporters initially pulled their punches in reporting on the Iraq war. Some media outlets did not want to rock the boat by showing grisly photos or videotape that could be disturbing to Americans. As a result, many Americans tuned in on foreign news channels to get the full picture of the war.

Even now, with the administration`s pro-war arguments reduced to a pile of confetti, many news outlets have failed to demand accountability from the Bush administration for what appears to be systematic dishonesty in trying to justify the U.S. attack.

This failure,and the U.S.-led suppression of newsgathering in Iraq show, that the historic American model for a free and independent press needs courageous bolstering.


©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

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Karl Rove Sends A Turkey To Iraq


http://internetweekly.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://internetweekly.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8

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Some Iraqis welcome Bush, others wish him hell

BAGHDAD - Some Iraqis were happy U.S. President George W. Bush came to their country Thursday, others wished he had gone to hell instead.


"As far as I`m concerned he`s welcome to come and he`s more than welcome to leave," said Abu Mohammed, 57, a cigarette and chewing gum vendor on the streets of the capital.


Bush secretly left his Texas ranch and traveled to Baghdad Thursday and spent two and a half hours in the Iraqi capital with U.S. troops, giving them a big morale booster on Thanksgiving Day.


Abu Sara, a restaurant owner in the capital, said if security and living standards under the Americans did not improve rapidly, more Iraqis would turn against the U.S. forces.


"We welcome Bush as we welcome any guest who comes peacefully," he said. "But we want to draw attention to the fact that there is no security, no jobs and no services well into the American occupation of Iraq.


"If the situation continues, Iraqis will use everything they have to throw the Americans out, including stones."


In the nearly eight months since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam, U.S.-led authorities have struggled to restore security and provide simple services to ordinary Iraqis who have grown frustrated by the occupation.


More than 180 U.S. soldiers have died in action in Iraq since Bush declared major combat over in the country on May 1 and in recent weeks an insurgency led by loyalists to the former regime appears to have deepened and gained coordination.


To try to quell guerrillas, U.S. forces have stepped up operations, dropping bombs on suspected rebel positions, firing mortars and missiles and raiding homes with heavy fire.


The aggressive tactics have angered many ordinary Iraqis and led some to compare Bush to imperial invaders of old.


"To hell with Bush. He is another Mongol in a line of invaders who have destroyed Iraq," said Mohammed al-Jubouri.


Iraqis waiting for hours to fill up with gasoline in the center of Baghdad said Bush was not liked at all.


"Look at what we have to go through. Our living conditions have become deplorable. The U.S. situation in Iraq will only become worse if things do not improve," said one taxi driver.


"Bush has zero popularity here."Reuters/abs-cbnNEWS.com

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Peter Lee: `Dark land`
Posted on Friday, November 28 @ 09:17:48 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Peter Lee

Let`s ditch those unfair and inflammatory Hitler comparisons.

Just call George W. Bush "America`s L. Paul Bremer."

There are differences, of course. Bremer clumps around in army boots against the likely day when a car bomb or RPG sends him staggering toward safety out of the twisted hulk of his limo across a roadway littered with broken glass and burning debris. Bush scampers through America in his Weejuns on a protective carpet of money, muscle, complacent citizens, and our forgiving Constitution.

Otherwise, however, the parallels are inescapable.



Both unelected satraps preside over deeply divided, polarized, and embittered nations.

Their administrations are opaque, riddled with corruption and cronyism, financially overextended, and shielded from democratic or legal accountability.

Their dependent legislative and judicial branches of government are powerless collections of opportunists, cynics, and useful and useless idiots.

Their policies provide private enrichment for a few and broken promises and empty rhetoric for the rest.

They mislead, bully, or co-opt the media to distort the truth about their rule

They use the language of anti-terrorism to expand the bounds of permissible state violence.

And they both rely on the US armed forces as the prop for their domestic political supremacy.

Bush`s appearance in an adoring cocoon of servicemen and women on Thanksgiving Day in Iraq should come as no surprise. Did anyone think that Rove would allow the Democrats to Doverise Bush as the AWOL Commander in Chief and allow Hilary Clinton (the real target of this lightning strike) to get political mileage out of visiting Afghanistan and Iraq over the holiday? The Bush product was roadtested by a safe out-of-country private visit with grieving military widows in the distant UK, and the tightly-controlled appearance at Fort Carson last week. When nobody heaved a chair at him, the order was issued: On to Baghdad!

And anyone who thinks that America`s overwhelming Republican officer corps is going to allow squirrelly troop sentiment to endanger Bush`s political standing had better wake up and smell the napalm.

Plaintive liberal calls to support our troops by bringing them home (Look at me, Mom! I`m walking the democracy/patriotism tightrope! Aaaaaah! Thud!) will be drowned out by a drumbeat of reminders of the unique duties and opportunities that American politics presents to the fighting man and woman today.

Tommy Franks` ruminations about Apocalypse America in Cigar Aficionado received (deservedly) a lot of play.

"It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world ñ it may be in the United States of America ñ that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important."

When asked what he`s smoking nowadays, the General replied, "I`ve got to thank the Colombian paramilitaries for this fantastic bud. I wouldn`t have dared toke shit this strong before I retired".

Well, I made up the last part. But the first part -- with Franks describing how to concoct a military dictatorship like a dry martini: "Take one part dirty bomb, two parts Fox News, add a crumbled handful of dark-skinned men and five thousand corpses, then whip mercilessly" -- is a straight quote.

In case you didn`t notice, the best part was that the attack doesn`t even have to take place in the United States. If Osama can`t get it together to inflict another 9/11 during Bush`s second term, well, any overseas disaster -- My God, somebody blew up the Eiffel Tower! Quel horreur, my French amis! -- would be enough for martial law.

No wonder Chalmers Johnson and Juan Cole -- respected academics trained to draw only the most adequately documented, cautious, and defensible conclusions -- separately decided that American democracy faces a direct and genuine threat. (See Chalmers Johnson`s Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, forthcoming, exerted at www.presentdanger.org and Franks Broaches Military Dictatorship, Informed Content Nov. 23, 2003, at www.juancole.com.)

You may be thinking, "Ah, military dictatorship. Riiiight. I`ll worry about that when it happens."

Well, even today there is a domestic role for our reliable, motivated, aggressive, and unaccountable military forces to play on behalf of the federal government.

Consider the statement by Air Force General Ed Eberhart that it`s time for the armed forces to pay more attention to "the home game" i.e. fighting the terror war within our borders.

To help out, the Defense Department now has its own domestic intelligence resource, CIFA, Counterintelligence Field Activity. Under the pretext of protecting domestic defense installations within the United States CIFA can, with the same puppyish enthusiasm and disregard for accuracy and credibility that DOD`s Office of Special Plans displayedin the runup to the Iraq war, cherrypick or concoct the intel that would enable the armed forces to be employed within the U.S. under presidential order. (William Arkin`s article in the Nov. 23, 2003 LA Times Mission Creep Hits Home provides the full, gruesome details.)

Progressives are feeling a chill down their spines. Not in an abstract "Oh how I weep for the shattered republic" kind of way.

More like "I hope a government provocateur doesn`t start a riot that gets my leg crushed under a police horse at the Republican convention in New York" kind of way.

It`s because domestic dissent has not only been demonized and criminalized.

It`s been "terrorized" and militarized.

And Bush seems to have weathered the brief political tempest that the exposure of his Iraq debacle provoked, and emerged with his post-9/11 ability to evade or ignore the traditional constitutional, legal, political, moral, and practical safeguards against the arbitrary and extreme use of government power within this country intact.

Consider how Dubya, Jeb, and local authorities came together to make some political and financial hay out of protests at the FTAA free trade meeting in Miami.

Protesters were pre-emptively classified as "terrorists" and "vandals" by the local Wiggum, John Timoney; $8.5 million of Iraq`s $87 billion appropriation was put to work in the streets of Miami for security; 40 law enforcement agencies, including plainclothesmen and provocateurs, were mobilized; local reporters were embedded and converted into bystanders and cheerleaders for an overtly violent and militarized police attack on the demonstrators; and the effort was described by Miami`s mayor Manny Diaz as "a model for homeland defence".

Naomi Klein drew the same conclusion in different words:

"The war is coming home." (America`s Enemy Within, Naomi Klein, Guardian, Nov. 26, 2003).

The FBI is already monitoring antiwar demonstrators` "training camps" and tracking their fundraising on the Internet. Quick-witted law enforcement officers are probably waking up to the parallels with al-Qaeda: They use the Internet too! They also have training camps! Holy Padilla! Get me General Boykin!

At this rate, Ann Coulter can forget about adding "Subversion" to her diptych of books "Slander" and "Treason" maligning American liberals, and just skip straight to "Report to Your Justice Centers for Immediate Processing, Subhuman Vermin"

What`s really scary is that this anti-terror mindset gives a feeling of clarity, safety, and purpose to a wide swath of the population. And it feeds on itself, because the justification of the imminent threat of terror both excuses and encourages excesses that were once legally and constitutionally beyond the pale -- and the resulting opposition to the anti-terror measures is, by definition, a terrorist act.

We can stop looking for parallels in Cointelpro -- which, after all, was hidden, extra-legal and withered under public scrutiny -- to the obsessive, paranoiac security mindset of the KGB in the USSR and the Stasi in East Germany, each openly and unequivocally dedicated to protecting the state at all costs and producing not only battalions of secret policemen but armies of morally degraded informers and collaborators.

Scott Ritter, in a speech at Northwestern University, provided a damning refutation of every basis for the Iraq war and demonstrated that it was built on a foundation of Bush lies. Afterwards, one student said:

"If the majority of Americans agree with Scott Ritter`s idea of what is justified warfare, he would be 100 percent right...Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans understand our nation`s reasons, and accusations of lies on behalf of the Bush administration will not fool the American people who are most concerned about their security." (Speech sparks more Iraq war debate, The Daily Northwestern, Meera Yao, Nov. 25, 2003)

In other words, "The President took the trouble to lie to me! It must have been really important! Thank you, Mr. President!"

In a happier time, this sorry specimen might have found a career cracking walnuts with his forehead. But after graduation he`ll probably start pulling down $25,000 a year in the Department of Homeland Security tracking your Internet usage, analyzing the terror threat level you represent, and maybe intimidating you with prosecution under the Patriot Act if you don`t bulk up his dossiers on your friends with innuendo and allegations.

Anti-terrorism is big business, and it will attract the support and energies of those who believe -- and those who simply want to profit. Corporations, think tanks, the voracious, mission-hungry military/industrial complex, expansion-minded federal agencies, and cash-poor local governments will make sure that the funding, regulatory environment, and consumer demand is in place for hyper-expansion in the world`s biggest, most lucrative market:

America.

But there`s still hope. Sometime in the not too distant future, our arrogant and out of touch chief executive will reach the end of his legal term and surrender power peacefully as the constitution demands. Free speech and dissent will be recognized as signs of the country`s health, not as a threat. Given the opportunity to heal and rebuild, the factions that despised each other will instead embrace each other joyfully in recognition of their shared humanity and desire for freedom and dignity.

And Ayatollah Sistani will make sure that free elections are held real soon.

As for the USA, well, I`m not so sure anymore.

Copyright 2003 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the antiwar satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at [e-mail].

[Joerver]

Friday, November 28, 2003
War News for November 28, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed in mortar attack near Mosul.

Bring `em on: US soldier killed in Ramadi.

Total US casualies from Bush`s War approach 10,000. "Military officials deny they are fudging the numbers. But the latest figures show that 9,675 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured such as in accidents, or become sick enough to require airlifting out of Iraq."

Lieutenant AWOL makes brief campaign visit to Baghdad. Somebody tell the mess sergeant that the turkey`s here...

CNN not included in Lieutenant AWOL`s press pool. "When the president travels, the White House uses a rotating system for a pool that includes newspaper, wire-service and television reporters, but news executives were not sure Thursday whether the standard procedures had been followed, according to a story in the Washington Post." New White House media policy: brown-nosers only.

Coalition of the Wobbly: Poll reveals 67 percent of Poles want their troops out of Iraq; support dropped ten percent in past month.

Pipeline attacks occur weekly. (Link fixed.)

Iraqis unimpressed with Lieutenant AWOL`s midnight visit. "`We cannot consider Bush`s arrival at Baghdad International Airport yesterday as a visit to Iraq,` said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. `He did not meet with ordinary Iraqis. Bush was only trying to boost the morale of his troops.`"

3d Infantry Division after-action report confirms that Bushies screwed up post-war phase through lack of realistic planning and adequate guidance.

Military families form Iraq peace mission.

US troops kill two Iraqi civilians near Baquba.

More about soldiers wounded in Bush`s War.

Montana soldier serving in Iraq.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Iowa soldier wounded in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 7:46 AM

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Fox, but not CNN, was at Bush`s Thanksgiving surprise


When President Bush landed in Iraq for Thanksgiving dinner, Fox News was there, but CNN was not.

When the president travels, the White House uses a rotating system for a pool that includes newspaper, wire-service and television reporters, but news executives were not sure Thursday whether the standard procedures had been followed, according to a story in the Washington Post.


The 13 pool correspondents summoned for the trip included Jim Angle of Fox News, Terence Hunt of the Associated Press, Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Richard Keil of Bloomberg News, a Reuters reporter and photographers from Time, Newsweek and three wire services, the Post reported.

Kathryn Kross, CNN`s Washington bureau chief, told the Post that a two-person crew from her network was dismissed from the White House pool Wednesday, with the understanding that no further news would be made.

"We`re all for the president boosting the troops however the White House feels is appropriate," she said, according to the newspaper. "But apparently the White House put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this trip, and we`re real interested to learn their reasons for doing that."


Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/cnn/1103/28cnn.…

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Military Fatalities:

*US**UK**Other**Total

437**53***25*****515

Latest Military Fatality Date: 11/28/2003

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

11/28/03 Centcom: Mosul Mortar Attack Death Confirmed
A 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldier was killed just after 11 a.m. today in Mosul during a mortar attack on the division headquarters here.
11/28/03 ABC: U.S. Soldier Killed in Mortar Attack
A U.S. soldier was killed in a mortar attack on U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
11/28/03 Centcom: SOLDIER DIES FROM GUNSHOT WOUND
Early Thursday morning, a soldier from Task Force “All-American” died as the result of a gunshot wound. The soldier was in his barracks when the incident occurred.
11/27/03 DJ: Iraqi Policeman Shot Dead In Mosul
Unidentified gunmen on Thursday shot dead an Iraqi police sergeant in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Brig. Gen. Muwaffaq Mohammed said.
11/27/03 DJ: Convoy Comes Under Attack
A U.S. military convoy came under attack Thursday on the main highway west of Baghdad near the town of Abu Ghraib, witnesses said

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Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Hillary Clinton dines with troops during Afghanistan visit
David Rohde NYT
Friday, November 28, 2003



BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called Thursday for the deployment of additional foreign soldiers in Afghanistan during a Thanksgiving visit to American troops here.

Clinton, citing recent attacks on aid workers, said reinforcements were needed to increase security and could come from the United States or NATO.

"I believe we need more troops," she said. "I don`t think we have an adequate number of troops to do what needs to be done."

Her comments came during a whirlwind, one-day visit to Afghanistan along with Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island. Both serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee and will also visit Iraq and Israel after Afghanistan.

The senators began their visit here with a meeting with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul`s stately presidential palace. They ended it in a linoleum floored U.S. Army mess hall, eating turkey, mashed potatoes and yams off cardboard trays with soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, which is based at Fort Drum, New York.

Twenty officers and soldiers from Queens, Ithaca, Geneva, Brooklyn, Homer, New Rochelle and other towns across New York State dined with the senators.

Clinton, a Democrat, received a generally warm reception from members of the military, who are often perceived as politically conservative.

After the meal, more than a dozen soldiers formed a line to have their photographs taken with the former first lady. A half dozen asked for her autograph, often inscribed to their daughter. One soldier had Clinton autograph an American flag.

"It`s great that she came here," said Captain Jim Mullin, 29, of Mahopac, New York, who pointed out that Clinton could have spent the holiday with her family. "It`s selfless, something I respect."

Both senators criticized the Bush administration`s policies in Afghanistan. Reed said the United States had wasted "precious months" in the country and lost momentum in the struggle against Islamic militants.

"We let our attention wander from Afghanistan," he said. "We lost the initiative. We gave these groups a second chance."

The senators called on NATO countries to contribute additional troops for a long-delayed expansion of peacekeeping operations outside Kabul, the capital. There are currently 11,600 combat troops, the vast majority of them American, carrying out operations against the Taliban and other Islamic militants in the country. Another 5,500 international soldiers patrol Kabul in a NATO-led peacekeeping mission.

Soldiers said they hoped the visit would increase American public interest in Afghanistan and the 10,000 American soldiers deployed here.

"Being here raises awareness," said Captain Micaela McMorrough, a 27-year-old intelligence analyst from Ithaca. "Sometimes we do feel this is a bit of a forgotten war."

The New York Times

Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune

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ZNet | Iraq

Purported Bush Tape Raises Fear of New Attacks
(satire)

by Robert Jensen and Sam Husseini; Disassociated Press; November 28, 2003

A tape today surfaced in U.S. media outlets of someone purporting to be George W. Bush at a U.S. military base in Baghdad.

Intelligence analysts around the world are studying the videotapes. "It certainly looked and sounded like him, but we get so few glimpses at Bush in real-life situations that it is hard to tell," said one operative from a Western intelligence agency.

People who know Bush said it appeared to him. "That`s him, all right," said one longtime associate.

The tape shows the man claiming to be Bush praising U.S. attacks in Iraq. "We will stay until the job is done," he threatened.

The videotape was delivered to the Baghdad bureau of FOX News by an intermediary courier who has brought material before from the U.S. military, according to the U.S. network.

There were calls for FOX to be banned from some Arabic countries for broadcasting American militaristic propaganda.

While the quality of the tape was not poor, the alleged Bush did appear tired in portions of it, prompting speculation that he is on the run.

The man claiming to be Bush said: "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins."

Analysts pointed out that given the ongoing nature of the Iraqi resistance since "the end of major combat operations," that comment could have been recorded anytime in the past six months.

"When the man identified as Bush tells U.S. troops, `You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq so we don`t have to face them in our own country,` well, it`s a little hard to believe that even the Bush White House would try to spin that," said the operative from a Western intelligence agency.

"How could anyone believe, after all that has been disclosed about the lies and distortions used to manipulate the public into accepting this war, that U.S. troops are defending the American people in Iraq? No major world leader would be so obtuse or so low as to try to sell that to people at this stage."

Members of the Iraqi Governing Council who met with the man identified as Bush said they had met with a man identified as Bush and were delaying comment until Paul Bremer was available to tell them what their comments would be.

Omar Ali, an Iraqi in a poor area of Baghdad said: "I don`t understand why he didn`t stay. Just because the U.S. nearly starved us with the sanctions for 12 years, killed my cousin during the invasion, busted down my door last week and is trying to find a way to steal our oil -- does he think that Iraqis would want to hurt him, our great liberator?"

Private Charles Sanders, who has been stationed in Iraq since the invasion said: "I was supposed to be back home by now. It was really getting depressing, but this is great. Sure, I don`t get to look into the eyes of my little girl, or hold my wife tenderly in my arms, but the president served me turkey!"

Susan Jones in Pittsburgh, who this morning was driven to tears while watching "Dances with Wolves" on cable TV, said: "I was planning on talking over the Thanksgiving Day table with my family about how we slaughtered the Indians and enslaved the blacks, bullied Latin America and bombed Vietnam, and now were occupying Iraq. I don`t know, is it just me, or do we just have this brutal aggressive side to us? But now I guess, well, just talk about Bush`s visit instead."

When asked whether she was certain the president had gone to Iraq, Laura Bush said she hadn`t noticed her husband had left the Crawford ranch. "I assumed he was out clearing brush," the First Lady said.

Correspondents Robert Jensen and Sam Husseini contributed to this report.

[Joerver]

Soros `speculating against dollar`
Pound surges to five-year high against US currency. Buffett also said to be betting against greenback
By Philip Thornton and Michael Jivkov
28 November 2003


The pound surged against the dollar yesterday amid speculation that Warren Buffett and George Soros, the world`s most famous speculators, are betting the US currency will plummet.

Sterling powered to a five-year high against the dollar for a second day as concerns over the US current account deficit continued to outweigh evidence of a rebounding economy.

Traders believe selling the dollar is a one-way bet, and some latched on to rumours that speculators were building "short" positions on the dollar - betting it will tumble in the coming months.

One hedge fund manager, who asked not to be named, said: "I have heard that both Soros and Buffett are shorting the dollar. There`s a growing belief on Wall Street that the dollar is looking like a one-way bet downwards."

A spokesman for Mr Soros, who famously "broke" the Bank of England when the pound crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism a decade ago, said he never commented on speculation. Mr Buffett was unavailable for comment.

The surge in the pound to $1.7155, its strongest level since October 1998, was boosted after Merrill Lynch forecast the dollar would plunge a further 8 per cent by the end of next year.

Demand for the dollar has waned on concern the country will not attract enough capital to fund its record current account deficit, which is expected to break through 5 per cent of GDP this year.

In a massive revision to its forecast issued on the eve of yesterday`s Thanksgiving holiday, Merrill Lynch said the pound would hit $1.85 - which would be its highest level since 1992.

The blue chip Wall Street bank said sterling would rise on signs of returning economic strength, rising interest rates and hope that the Government won`t raise taxes before a 2005 election. But it warned that the surge in the pound would be short-lived as the concerns overhanging the UK - from a budget deficit, huge consumer indebtedness and a tight labour market - would come home to roost.

"Bubble trouble currencies such as the pound should continue to do well for now," it said. "But upsides in the currencies in these regions should end next year as tighter conditions threaten to burst credit bubbles and shape market expectations of lower rates."

Merrill Lynch expects the dollar to tumble to $1.33 against the euro, a drop of 12 per cent from yesterday`s $1.19 value. But it cut its forecast for the euro to surge to 80p against the pound - a level that would smooth sterling`s entry into the single currency - to 73p.

A surge in the pound against the dollar will be a boon for British tourists but could cause headaches for both businesses and the Bank of England.

Khuram Chaudhry, a strategist at Merrill Lynch, said: "UK investors may find company sales exposure to the US unfavourable in this scenario.A stronger domestic currency is likely to mean the Bank is less likely to raise interest rates aggressively." David Bloom, a global economist at HSBC who does not see the pound going much above $1.70, said any spike in the pound would be short-lived. "If you want to sell the dollar because you believe in the structural problems such as the current account deficit then you buy the pound but there`s a downside because the UK is also looking a trade deficit, an indebted economy," he said.

"If you think those factors will cause the dollar to fall then the pound should fall as well."

He said the main beneficiary should be the euro, which has smaller deficits - despite the high-profile row over the stability and growth pact. He said HSBC was sticking with its historic forecast for a dollar-euro rate of $1.35.

Mr Bloom warned that if the pound were to fall it could tumble even further than the dollar as there would be little interest from other countries to prop it up.
28 November 2003 22:03



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Outlook: George Soros adds his weight to the case against the dollar
LSE charges; Drought orders
By Jeremy Warner
28 November 2003


It was Thanksgiving in the United States yesterday, but that didn`t stop the dollar taking a further beating in foreign exchange markets. The latest rumour to feed the frenzy is that George Soros, the man who broke the Bank of England, has taken some sizable short positions in the greenback. Unsurprisingly, Mr Soros won`t say, but you don`t have to be a currency speculator as accomplished as Mr Soros to realise the dollar is a one-way bet right now. Nor would Mr Soros`s lack of faith in the medium-term outlook for the dollar come as any surprise to anyone who has read his thoughts on President George Bush.

Ensuring that Mr Bush is defeated in the next year`s presidential election "is the central focus of my life", he was quoted as saying in The Washington Post. "It is a matter of life and death." The 74-year-old financier`s opposition to Mr Bush is based on his belief that "Bush is a danger to the world" rather than that he may be mismanaging the US economy. In any case, what Mr Bush is trying to do with the economy is perfectly obvious; he`s pump priming it for a second term, knowing that once home and dry, he can repent at leisure for the present profligacy.

Is Mr Bush, then, a long-term danger to the US economy too? The US is growing faster than almost anywhere else right now, but it doesn`t fool the currency markets. About the only foreigners still buying dollar assets are the Chinese and the Japanese, who must keep their own currencies weak against the dollar to support the competitiveness of their US exports. Everyone else seems to be a seller. If there is no foreign funding for the ever-growing US trade deficit, then the US currency must fall until trade is brought back into balance.

This in turn helps growth and employment in the US. In combination with tax cuts, high federal spending and historically low interest rates, it is just what Mr Bush needs to win the next election. A sharp currency devaluation is worth any number of protectionist trade tariffs and, what`s more, it is legal. Paradoxically then, Mr Soros may actually he helping Mr Bush if it is true he`s a big dollar seller. Certainly he advanced just such a justification when he bounced the pound out of the ERM 11 years ago. His actions, he argued, were a boon to the UK.

The dollar will continue to fall, until eventually it overshoots and the next great shift in trading sentiment takes place. That may still be some distance off. Time to book that shopping trip to New York, I would suggest.

LSE charges

The London Stock Exchange has agreed to reductions averaging 25 per cent in the cost of listing on the exchange, and to cap those charges for three years, rather than risk being referred to the Competition Commission for abuse of its monopoly in domestic share trading. The LSE`s retreat hardly falls into the same category as the Stock Exchange`s great battles with the Office of Fair Trading in the early 1980s, which culminated ultimately in agreement to abandon dual capacity and minimum commissions, yet it is of more than passing interest in demonstrating the continuing power of exchanges to dictate what the customer has to pay.

Despite the growth in competition between national exchanges and the establishment of alternative domestic methods of trading shares, publicly quoted companies have little option but to pay whatever it is the exchange in their country of origin demands. With demutualisation across Europe, national bourses have been particularly aggressive in raising profits so as to maximise profits. The London Stock Exchange brought the OFT investigation on itself last year by jacking up charges by an inflation busting 30 per cent.

The London Stock Exchange points out that compared with many of its rivals, issuer charges are not excessive. The maximum a large publicly quoted company will pay is £43,240 a year, against the £308,000 charged by the New York Stock Exchange. Ofex also charges more for a listing than the Stock Exchange`s Alternative Investment Market. Even so, it is amazing that stock exchanges can get away with charging anything at all. Such charges are hardly a major disincentive to listing with a particular exchange, but share listing is a natural monopoly, and it is not right that the LSE should be allowed to exploit it. Issuer services last year accounted for 15 per cent of the LSE`s total revenues, and without OFT action, the LSE would almost certainly have made it larger still.

The LSE insists that the coming of a single company prospectus which will have validity across all European Union exchanges will further increase the competition among national bourses for listings. Perhaps, but much more likely, companies will feel obliged to list on all of them and pay whatever is demanded. The LSE says it doesn`t agree with the OFT`s conclusions, but I fear it is in a minority of one in so doing.

Drought orders

It never rains but it pours in the UK water industry and, despite the bucket loads of the stuff that have descended on most of Britain over the past week, it is not enough to head off the possibility of drought orders early in the new year. Unfortunately, it`s been the wrong type of rain. What the water industry needs to refill the aquifers and make the springs flow afresh is a steady and prolonged drizzle, running preferably over several months. The downpours of the last week will mainly have been wasted in run-off and headed straight out to sea.

The water companies insist that the present shortage of water is down to the summer heat wave and the autumn dry patch, rather than in any systemic failure on their part in failing to ensure adequate supply. One of the lowest periods of rainfall on record has coincided with exceptionally high usage caused by the summer heat.

However, there are plainly structural water shortages building up in the system too, particularly in the over populated South-east of England. Thames Water has already applied for a drought permit, which would allow it to abstract more water from rivers and bore holes, and is the first stage on the road to an outright drought order, allowing the company to limit supply for non-essential use.

Looking further into the future, it is clear that the company has a major structural problem in satisfying demand. The population of London alone is expected to grow by 700,000 by 2016. The Government also plans for an extra 200,000 homes in the South-east on top of normal build by the same date. Never mind global warming, even with normal rain fall, Thames and others may soon have a problem with supply. Plans for new reservoirs to cater for the ever growing population have run into the usual protests over damage to the environment and property rights.

Yet there is plenty the industry could have done to help itself. Only belatedly have Thames and others started investing on the scale necessary to deal with the problem of excessive leakage from what in parts is a 15 -year-old water supply system. More could also have been done to encourage water conservation. For instance, most loos could operate perfectly adequately on two-thirds of their present water usage.

All the big water companies continue to insist they will be able to cope without need for construction of a national grid, to take water from the population scarce but rain heavy North to the parched South-east. Let`s hope they are right, for any such scheme would be extraordinarily costly. Nor could it`s environmental impact be easily predicted, other than it is bound to be bad.

The Environment Agency recently pronounced the industry "on target" for long-term supply in England and Wales. As in all things, however, the longer problems are left unaddressed, the more they cost to fix and greater the disruption caused. The water industry may be a case in point. So who`s going to pay for the belated programme of extra investment on greater sources of supply? You`ve guessed it. You, the consumer, through higher water charges.

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28 November 2003 22:07



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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And Now…Talk Of Dividing Iraq To "Weaken The Sunnis"!

Raghida Dergham

11/28/03: (Al-Hayat) New York: Whispered at times, denied at others, it is today a proposal explained by Leslie Gelb, the President emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, detailed in the New York Times in an article entitled "The three-state solution." According to Gelb, this suggestion is based on a strategy to divide Iraq, aimed at strengthening the Kurds and Shiites, and weakening the Sunnis. There was nothing new in the content of the article, as it discusses dividing Iraq and Saudi Arabia so as to impose a quasi-American tutelage over the oil regions, both Shiite and Kurdish, whilst containing the Sunnis in the non-oil producing regions, to make them become the poorer cousins, as Gelb described. Gelb is not known to be a radical neo-conservative; this why it was very surprising that he came forward with the suggestion to divide Iraq. The issue requires serious attention, as the idea is no longer the product of a radical group`s imagination that come up with suggestions such as dividing this or that Arab country for instance, or carrying out the "transfer" as an alternative strategy replacing the two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Officially, the U.S. administration opposes the division of Iraq and asserts the importance of its territorial unity, just like the other previous administrations. However, there is a clear contradiction between the official government stances and the decision-makers in the Bush administration and those individuals enjoying power and influence over this administration. In fact, those are the people who put forward the idea of invading and occupying Iraq as part of a wider strategy that includes finding radical solutions to the Palestinian problem, so as to solve Israel`s demographic crisis and eliminate the two-state solution, which involves instability and chaos as a necessary alibi to guarantee the U.S. remaining the sole superpower within "the preemptive doctrine," which includes resorting to fear and fear-provoking as a way of gaining the support of the American public opinion for policies, and twinning terror and Sunnis, after having twinned terror and Wahhabism, whilst considering the Shiites as a logical ally.

Regarding Israel and Palestine, the contradiction is clear between Bush`s official stances and the plans of Israel`s apologetics, even at the expense of American interests. The U.S. President wants the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and he confirms his commitment to the two-state solution, considering the Roadmap as based on his vision.

The poles of "creative change" among the members of his administration and opportunistic advisors are certain the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will never accept the two-state solution based on putting an end to the 1967 occupation. They also know that Israel, and the majority of Jews abroad, will not accept the one-state solution that would group Arabs and Jews within a democratic state where both communities would enjoy equal rights. Such a democratic state denies and crushes the notion of "the Jewish state," which is unique in the world, thereby destroying Zionism`s dream. Hence, considering that the demographic statistics show that Jews will be a minority in "the Jewish state" in a decade, which would lead to the cancellation of the Jewish state in a few decades, the only practical solution would be the forced deportation of Palestinians from inside Israel and from the West Bank towards Jordan as the "alternative nation."

This plan requires an instable and chaotic environment, as well as a few wars in the region. The plan-makers are not directly challenging George Bush and "his vision," but rather are working in a cunning and intelligent way on postponing it and making it hostage of an impossible equation. The equation of the security rationale and the American-Israeli twinning in fighting terror. These people will not challenge those relying on Bush`s election for a second term, or those who are against unnecessary wars or radical developments at this turning point. They are patient and aware that their dreams could vanish if Bush loses the elections, and are thereby preparing themselves for a second mandate. They nod their heads, pretending to approve the president`s "vision," while they do exactly the contrary with secret documents in drawers and as far as the lack of stability and facts on the ground.

Lack of stability and fear are two major tools in the supremacy strategy, based on the preemptive doctrine. Instability in the Middle East and fear in the U.S.

In the past, stability was the core of U.S. policy in the Middle East, regardless of the repression it entailed and the resulting alliances. As long as stability benefited oil and strategic interests, it did not matter whether the peoples suffered or if they needed democracy, or if from time to time instability was necessary for changing a situation or obstructing development. But on the whole, stability was a chief foundation.

Today, things are different and it seems that creating instability has become a strategic objective, at least for the authors of the new American policy. This explains why a campaign is being waged against regimes, rulers and governments under the banner of "reform" and "democracy." Here again appears the contradiction between the claims of the American President, or maybe his beliefs, and the actions of those who have interests in dividing the region instead of reforming it, and not for the sake of democracy, but because chaos and instability are necessary for division, separation and total control over the oil wealth and placing them under American tutelage.

To those radicals active in the U.S. administration, the fear of the Arab people has no weight in their considerations, nor does the lack of trust in the U.S. Part of the U.S. administration seeks to gain the trust and the `hearts and minds` of the Arab region. So does the American President. He wants to be accepted by the Arab and Muslim peoples. But not the radicals among the fundamentalists and neo-conservatives. For they are still full of hatred and racism, and the fear they want to spread is that of the American popular base.

Hence in their plans, it is necessary to repeatedly remind the American people that terror is a permanent enemy, and that the President is always ready to defend the U.S. and defeat terrorists… So, keeping the Americans in a state of fear leads them to hold on even more to their president and be more tolerant over the dangerous violations of civil rights and more willing to become hostages of the American greatness.

Because George Bush is entering an electoral battle, and the U.S. is locked in a war that hasn`t ended yet, it is necessary for the electoral campaign to divert the attention away from the losses and the death of American soldiers towards the change of strategy so as to make the war seem "remote." This modification might require decreasing the number of American troops in Iraq, but not to the point of undermining the main strategy. There is nothing to assure that the U.S. will totally withdraw from Iraq, and the occupation will bear a different name, and the military presence will be based on an "invitation" from a transitional Iraqi government, and Iraq will not be handed over to the UN to replace the coalition authority. And any country contributing with its forces is just a small ally of the U.S. The U.S. administration did not invade and occupy Iraq just to leave it quickly. It represents an important basis in the strategic calculations and plans.

At this stage, what is required is either a new "direction" of old policies or starting early on to implement the idea of dividing and splitting Iraq.

Once again, the contradiction reaches its peak between Bush`s official sayings and wishes and between what has been drafted in the minds of those who drew the map for Iraq and the region a while ago.

The article Leslie Gelb wrote last Tuesday indicates one of two things: either the idea is a basis and is not limited to the radicals such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle at the Pentagon, or the radical idea has made its way to the so-called mainstream, and so being whispered to become a declared idea that can be defended and marketed to the administration and to the public. In fact, Gelb considers a united Iraq as a historical flaw and considers the American commitment to the unity of Iraq an essential error, because a united Iraq would be a fabricated secretion in trying to unite three different entities, at the ethnical and confessional level.

Amid the mounting rumors about the U.S. set for withdrawing from Iraq and the probability of not sending any additional forces, Gelb maintains that the only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the North, Sunnis in the Center and Shiites in the South.

This would enable the U.S. to invest its money and troops where they would yield fast and good profits (with the Kurds and Shiites); this means withdrawing the majority of forces from the Sunni triangle North and West of Baghdad, thus being released of a costly war they might not win. Hence, American officials could wait and see if those "troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues," will "moderate their ambitions" and if not, they will suffer the consequences.

According to Gelb, Sunnis are inclined to Arab nationalism, and they have a significantly greater stake in a united Iraq, much more than the Kurds or Shiites. And because the center of Iraq, where Sunnis reside, is without oil or oil revenues, the Sunnis will soon become the `poor cousins` of the Shiites, who might want a united Iraq if they manage to control it, of the Kurds who have no interest in any strong central authority, according to Gelb.

Hence, the strategy of dividing Iraq and moving toward a three-state solution would be built on such reality, and the general idea is to strengthen the Kurds and Shiites, and weaken the Sunnis, then wait to see whether it would be better to obstruct self-rule or encourage the creation of small states.

Gelb also suggests granting the UN a role in the Sunni triangle, while the U.S. settles more with the Kurds and Shiites. Then, and depending to the Sunnis` good behavior, they could be turned into a Taiwan with respect to China as far as autonomy, while both the Shiite and Kurdish states would enjoy the oil wealth and the alliance with the U.S.

This dangerous talk is serious on the American intellectual scene, just like the dangerous plans existing in drawers to divide Iraq are. It is dangerous because it sows the seeds of turmoil and sectarian wars; it is dangerous because it dares promote it without hesitation and in a terrible kind of confidence that none of Iraq`s neighbors will dare challenge or block it… or else, its fate would be worse.

As a disavowal, it might be said that the U.S. administration does not support this talk, and hence, that there is no need to exaggerate it. But this argument merely represents an escape forward from the deadlines and from thinking about the choices available regarding Iraq and the region. It is probably time for the Arabs to think ahead of time, in order to avoid repeating the past experiences of surprise before another fact on the ground, which it was said was a fictive scenario.

Policies in the U.S. are not only made in closed rooms but also by collecting ideas on pages. The Arab scene needs to think, in a courageous way and through an effective participation between people and government, in such a way as to replace the existing relation between ruler and citizen that is built on the (wali) ruler/ruled relationship

Copyright: Al-Hayat

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U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (R) is given a tour of 2nd Battalion, 2nd Airborne Division by Lt. Col. Brian Mennes in Baghdad, November 28, 2003. Clinton spent a day touring Baghdad, meeting with military personnel, top officials of the occupation administration and aid groups
Hillary Clinton Wants Wider International Role in Iraq
Fri November 28, 2003 01:52 PM ET





BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Senator Hillary Clinton called Friday for a wider international role in running Iraq, but doubted the U.S. administration would cede much control in the country it invaded and occupied.
"I`m a big believer that we ought to internationalize this, but it will take a big change in our administration`s thinking," Clinton, a Democrat from New York, said during a nearly 10-hour visit to Baghdad where she met with U.S. troops, military chiefs and civilian officials including U.S. administrator Paul Bremer.

"I don`t see that it`s forthcoming," said the wife of former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton, who has ruled out a 2004 presidential bid, arrived in Baghdad with Democrat Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island a day after President Bush`s surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops and Iraqi officials in the capital.

Bush`s trip was widely seen as a move to boost the flagging morale of a U.S. military facing mounting casualties at the hands of a deepening guerrilla insurgency nearly eight months after the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The Bush and Clinton visits also come as senior Iraqi officials on the U.S.-backed Governing Council struggle to define terms of an agreement for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.

Clinton said the United Nations -- which pulled all but a handful of foreign staff from Iraq after the August bombing of its Baghdad headquarters -- could still play a role in administering Iraq, easing the burden on the United States.

"We`re in a very difficult political situation, trying to expedite a process for self-governance that will be very challenging," she said.

"It`s no longer sufficient for our military to win battles, but they have to win the hearts and minds. It`s a very big challenge," Clinton said.

In an interview Friday in the French newspaper Liberation Secretary of State Colin Powell also called on the United Nations to play an active role in Iraq, notably in setting out the timetable and arrangements for restoring self-rule.

The head of the Governing Council, Jalal Talabani, said on Thursday a roadmap for transferring power to Iraqis would need to address the concerns of the country`s top Shi`ite Muslim religious authority, which has said the current plan sidelines Iraqis and gives short shrift to Islam in governing.

Shi`ite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of Iraq`s population, hope to play the lead role in a future government and their support would be crucial to the success of a proposed transfer of power to Iraqis by the end of June.

Clinton and Reed arrived from Afghanistan, where Thursday she met Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as troops from the 11,500-strong foreign force in Afghanistan pursuing remnants of the Taliban and allied Islamic militants, including al Qaeda. (This story was based on a pool report from the Associated Press.)

© Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.
washingtonpost.com
Sen. Clinton Says More Troops Needed in Afghanistan


By Thomas Wagner
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 27, 2003; 10:44 AM


KABUL, Afghanistan -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton promised Thursday that America will stand with Afghanistan as it tries to rebuild after a quarter-century of conflict and warned Taliban rebels that they "are fighting a losing battle."

But the New York Democrat also said more troops are needed in the multinational military coalition providing security. She told The Associated Press it was for others to decide whether those troops should come from the United States or other countries.

The former first lady, who was in Afghanistan along with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on a whistlestop tour to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops, said the United States is determined to support Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"I am very impressed by the resolve of the Afghan government, President Karzai in particular," Clinton said after a meeting with Karzai at the presidential palace.

She spoke in a room at the palace still pocked by decades of conflict. Two windows behind Clinton had bullet holes in them.

Clinton said Washington is concerned about recent attacks, especially in the south and east of the country, by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters against aid workers, Afghan government employees and soldiers.

More than a dozen aid workers have been killed this year, most recently a 29-year-old French woman working with the U.N. refugee agency who was gunned down in broad daylight earlier this month south of the capital. The killing led the United Nations and several aid agencies to pull international staffers out of large swaths of the country.

"The U.S. is resolved to stand as a strong partner and to ensure that the terrorists, whoever they are, wherever they come from, will be dealt with," Clinton said. "The message should be: The Taliban terrorists are fighting a losing battle."

Clinton and Reed, who once served as a U.S. Army paratrooper, later sat down for a dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie with about 50 American soldiers at Bagram Air Base, just north of the capital.

"I also want to convey to them that the American people are fully behind them as they carry out a very difficult task," Clinton said.

Afterward, Clinton said in the AP interview that more troops are needed to defeat insurgents and to provide the security needed for Afghans to rebuild.

Taliban and al-Qaida forces are trying "to wear down our staying power," she said. "I believe we need more troops to be able to provide that security."

Clinton said she couldn`t say whether additional forces should be drawn from the U.S. military, NATO nations or the armed forces of other countries.

Clinton met with soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, which is based at Fort Drum in northern New York.

"I have a lot of respect for her as a woman," said Staff Sgt. Tamecha Moore, 31, from Hempstead, N.Y. "I hope she runs for president."

Clinton has said she has no intention to run for president in the 2004 election.

The two senators, who have criticized the Bush administration`s handling of post-war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, were later traveling to Iraq. Making his second visits to Afghanistan and Iraq, Reed said he wanted to hear from troops about how their missions are going.

Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul, is home to most of the 11,600 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. An additional 5,500 peacekeepers patrol the capital.

On Nov. 7, American and Afghan soldiers launched a special anti-terrorism operation in two eastern provinces of snow-covered mountains bordering Pakistan: Nuristan and Kunar.

On Sunday a U.S. transport helicopter crashed just after leaving Bagram in support of the operation, killing five U.S. servicemen and injuring eight. The cause of the crash is being investigated, but the Pentagon said the MH-53`s engine may have failed.

Some 35 Americans have died from hostile fire in Afghanistan since the October 2001 start of the Afghan war, according to the U.S. military.

Karzai`s government has taken important steps toward adopting a new constitution and holding elections in war-torn Afghanistan.

But Karzai and the coalition forces have been criticized for failing to reign in warlords, and for allowing cultivation of poppies -- the source of heroin -- to boom.

In another development Thursday, Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American, arrived in Kabul to assume his position as the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun who previously served as President Bush`s special envoy to Afghanistan, succeeds Robert Finn, who was the first U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in more than 20 years.


© 2003 The Associated Press

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 28. November 2003, 14:40
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,275894,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,275894,00.html

US-Bürgerrechte

Senioren in Handschellen

Von Marc Pitzke, New York

Die US-Bundespolizei FBI nimmt Kriegsgegner und Bush-Kritiker als potenzielle Terroristen ins Visier. Selbst harmlose Protestler laufen nun Gefahr, auf die FBI-Abschussliste zu geraten.


Rabiater Umgang: Auch harmlose Demonstranten geraten . . . . . . Protest der Patrioten: Auch Weltkriegsveteranen wie Gene Glazer
rasch in die Fänge der Justiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gehen gegen die Irak-Politik der US-Regierung auf die Straße

Bill Neel liebt sein Land. Der 66-jährige Amerikaner hat sein ganzes Leben in Pittsburgh verbracht, hat sechs Jahre lang in der Army gedient und danach 35 Jahre in einer Fabrik für AK Steel geschuftet, einen der größten Stahlkonzerne der USA. "Ich weiß", sagt Neel, "was es heißt, ein Patriot zu sein."

Was es jedoch in Zeiten von Krieg und Terror heißt, ein Patriot zu sein, ahnt Neel erst seit vorigem Herbst. Denn "das Recht, meine Regierung zu kritisieren", ist da wohl nicht mehr mit eingeschlossen: Als der Pensionär mit einem Protestplakat zu einem Auftritt von Präsident George W. Bush aufkreuzte, wurde er prompt in Handschellen gelegt. Erst nach Bushs Abreise ließ ihn die Polizei wieder frei und verzichtete auch nur auf Intervention der US-Bürgerrechtsunion ACLU auf eine Anzeige.

Neel ist nur einer von inzwischen vielen hundert Fällen in den USA, in denen friedliche Demonstranten über die Beschneidung ihres Verfassungsrechts auf freie Meinungsäußerung klagen. Die Übergriffe, sanktioniert vom drakonischen Anti-Terror-Gesetz "Patriot Act" von 2001, sind längst so zahlreich und weit verbreitet, dass die ACLU darin mittlerweile ein bedrohliches "Muster der Diskriminierung" gegen Andersdenkende zu erkennen beginnt.

Opposition in Terror-Nähe gerückt

Ein Muster, das sich nun erstmals als eine Strategie der Regierung zu offenbaren scheint, ihre Kritiker mundtot zu machen. Und zwar geht das aus einem internen Memo hervor, das die Bundespolizei FBI im Oktober als "Bulletin Nr. 89" an alle örtlichen Behörden geschickt hat und das diese Woche, gegen den Willen des heimlichtuerischen FBI, bekannt wurde.

Darin gibt das Bundesbüro Instruktionen für den Umgang mit regierungskritischen Protestlern. Die örtlichen Polizeistellen, so die zweiseitige Anweisung, mögen fortan "alle potenziell illegalen Akte" bei Anti-Bush-Demos an eine der 66 lokalen Terror-Arbeitsgruppen des FBI melden - also auch das ordnungswidrige Herumtragen von Plakaten außerhalb der polizeilich abgeriegelten "Potestzonen", dessen sich der Rentner Neel schuldig gemacht hatte. Neels Plakat trug die wütende, doch harmlose Aufschrift: "Die Familie Bush lieben die Armen sicher - sie hat so viele von uns arm gemacht."

Das Memo zeigt, wie tief die Abneigung der US-Regierung gegen Protest und Widerspruch ist und wie schnell jegliche Opposition seit dem Horror des 11. September 2001 in die Nähe von Terroristen gerückt zu werden droht. Es ist aber auch deshalb bemerkenswert, weil es die ersten offiziellen Hinweise darauf enthält, dass polizeiliche Informationen über die Bush-Kritiker an zentraler Stelle gespeichert werden.

Dementi via Leserbrief

Das weckt böse Erinnerungen. "Die Linie zwischen Terrorismus und zivilem Ungehorsam wird verwischt", sagt ACLU-Direktor Anthony Romero. "Dies ist ein Rückfall in die Zeiten J. Edgar Hoovers." Unter dem berüchtigten FBI-Chef der sechziger und siebziger Jahre war das Bespitzeln von Bürgerrechtlern, Kriegsgegnern und anderen Unliebigen an der Tagesordnung.

Schwere Vorwürfe, die das FBI mit schwerem Geschütz zurückweist. In einem seltenen "Leserbrief" an die "New York Times", die zuerst aus dem Memo zitierte, bestätigte die geheimniskrämerische Behörde zwar dessen Existenz, dementierte aber vehement, dass sie politisch "auf Anti-Kriegs-Demonstranten abzielt". Die "New York Times" verzichtete bisher auf einen Abdruck des FBI-Briefes.

Das Original-Memo kann jedoch, bei näherer Ansicht, die Befürchtungen der Bürgerrechtler kaum zerstreuen. Nicht zuletzt die Wortwahl enthüllt, dass Washington zwischen Bush-kritischen "Aktivisten" und mordenden "Terroristen" nur wenig Unterschied macht.

Das auf 15. Oktober datierte Dokument - aus einer Reihe allwöchentlicher "Intelligence Bulletins", die die FBI-Zentrale seit 2001 an die Polizei der Bundesstaaten und Städte ausgibt - befasst sich mit den massiven Anti-Kriegs-Demos, die zehn Tage später in Washington und San Francisco geplant waren. Betreff: "Taktiken bei Protesten und Demonstrationen."

Sonnenbrillen als Terror-Werkzeuge

Gemeint sind die Taktiken der Bush-Gegner. "Die meisten Proteste sind friedliche Veranstaltungen", schreibt das FBI zunächst artig - nur um ein paar Sätze weiter gleich nachzulegen: "Selbst die friedlicheren Techniken können ein Klima der Unordnung schaffen." Genauer gesagt: "Eine Zahl von Demonstrationen" würden "wahrscheinlich gewaltsam und störend" verlaufen.

Als Beispiele für die besagten "potenziell kriminellen", sprich terrorverdächtigen Aktivitäten der Bush-Kritiker nennt das FBI das Internet, Fundraising und "Vorab-Koordination von Demonstrationen" - ausnahmslos legale Handlungen, die ebenso gut den Präsidentschaftswahlkampf beschreiben könnten. Ferner im Terror-Visier des FBI: Handys, Walkie-Talkies, Sonnenbrillen (zum Schutz gegen Tränengas), Mülltonnendeckel (zum Schutz gegen Prügel) und Videokameras (zur "Einschüchterung" von Polizisten).

Wahllos bezeichnet das Memo die Kriegsgegner ohne Unterscheidung mal als "Aktivisten", mal als "Extremisten"; am Ende landen sie alle in einem Topf. Die von ACLU-Direktor Romero beschworene "Linie zwischen Terrorismus und zivilem Ungehorsam" existiert da nicht mehr.

Zum Schluss steht die scharfe Erinnerung, dass dieses Memo "nicht außerhalb von Polizeikreisen zirkuliert werden" dürfte - und insbesondere nicht "gegenüber der Presse".

71-Jähriger im Fadenkreuz

Das Memo bestätigt einen Trend, den Bürgerrechtler schon länger beobachten.

In Denver gestand das Police Department kürzlich, Jahre lang Informationen über friedliche Aktivisten und Demonstranten gesammelt zu haben - unter dem Archiv-Stichwort "kriminelle Extremisten". Unter den bespitzelten Organisationen: Amnesty International und eine islamische Moschee.

Bei der ersten großen Anti-Kriegs-Demo im Februar 2003 setzte die New Yorker Polizei Schlagstöcke und Tränengas ein und galoppierte mit Pferden in die Menge, in der sich auch Kinder und alte Leute drängten. Die Beamten notierten sich die Namen vieler Demonstranten auf Formblättern mit dem Titel "Counter Terrorist Intelligence". Polizeichef Michael Esposito räumte ein, Terror-Verdacht habe im Vordergrund des Einsatzes gestanden.

Ähnlich vorige Woche bei den Großprotesten gegen die Freihandels-Konferenz in Miami. Die 8,5 Millionen Dollar, die die Stadt für den Polizeieinsatz ausgab, entstammten dem staatlichen Anti-Terror-Topf - namentlich dem Milliardenpaket des US-Kongresses für den Irak; Miami fand sich da im Kleingedruckten.

Die Wirkung dieser Subvention bekam unter anderem auch der 71-jährige Bentley Killmon zu spüren, der mit einer Seniorengruppe zur Demonstration gekommen war. Er wurde von mehreren Polizisten zu Boden gestoßen und mit Handschellen gefesselt.

Ein neuer McCarthyismus?

Jedes Mal, wenn Bush irgendwo öffentlich auftritt, werden seine jubelnden Fans ganz nahe rangelassen, seine Gegner jedoch in winzigen Freigehegen, mit zynischer Herablassung "Free Speech Zones" genannt, ausgesperrt, oft hunderte Meter entfernt. Wer sich daran nicht hält wie Bill Neel riskiert so nun, auf den zentralen Terror-Listen des FBI zu landen - und verspielt im Ernstfall jeden Anspruch auf den üblichen Verfassungs- und Rechtsschutz, wie die zahllosen in US-Terrorhaft Verschwundenen bezeugen können.

Das beunruhigt nicht nur Bürgerrechtler. Senator John Edwards, einer der demokratischen Präsidentschaftsbewerber, hält diese Art der Rasterfahndung für einen neuen "McCarthyismus". Sein Wahlrivale, der Reverend Al Sharpton, geht sogar noch weiter: "Diese Regierung ist gegen jede abweichende Meinung, sie ist gegen Demokratie."

Bill Neel bezeichnet sich trotzdem weiter als ein amerikanischer Patriot. "Wenn es nach der Bush-Regierung ginge, würden alle, die sie kritisieren, aus dem Blickfeld verschwinden", sagt er. "Jeder, der sich für einen Patrioten hält, müsste darüber so besorgt sein wie ich."

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Wird es zum Aufstand gegen die Wal-Martesierung der USA kommen?

US shoppers join counter revolution
Benefits battle could be one of most critical strikes in American labour history

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

Normally, during Thanksgiving week, Vons supermarket in Santa Monica would be packed with shoppers waiting in long lines at the checkout counters. This week, however, the only lines are the picket lines outside the store as one of the largest and what is described as one of the most critical strikes in modern American labour history enters its eighth week.

More than 70,000 workers at 859 locations across central and southern California have been on strike in protest against plans by supermarket chains to cut their health and pension benefits. This week, the strike, called by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, intensified as Teamsters union drivers refused to cross picket lines at depots. The strike`s most significant backers, however, are the shoppers who are also refusing to cross picket lines, reducing turnover in some stores to a third of the normal volume.

The stakes are high. Victory for the strikers would accelerate attempts to unionise other big service companies, say union organisers; defeat could have a chilling effect on recruitment. Union leaders say the strike could be the first round in a fight in which major companies seek to reduce traditional benefits because they claim they are being undercut by vast non-union firms, such as Wal-Mart.

The strike started after talks broke down over the employers` intention to cut health and pension benefits by stopping paying their employees` insurance premium. First the staff at Vons and Pavilions, two chains owned by Safeway Inc, walked out. The following day, two other chains, Ralphs and Albertsons, which are owned by Kroger, which bargains jointly with Safeway, locked out their staff.

The strike is different from the traditional disputes because many shoppers have personal relationships with checkout staff, whom they often know by name. As a result, backing has been heavy, with the sound of honking car horns, as drivers signal their support, now part of the rhythm of life around striking stores. As a result, the companies are losing $40m (£23m) a week in sales to rival stores.

"Support has been very strong," said Ralph Venegas, 50, who has been with Vons for 14 years and was standing outside the store`s main entrance. A customer had just dropped off a large Thanksgiving pie for the picketers, others had come by with tacos and sandwiches.

"A lot of unions are starting to realise that this is much bigger than just a retail clerks` strike. If we go down, others will go down."

Support


Linda, who has been working for Vons for 17 years and preferred to give only her first name, said most members of the public supported the strike. "A few are rude and say `It`s a free country, I`ll shop where I like`, but most support us." She said people knew the supermarkets were highly profitable. "After Enron, that term `corporate greed` came up and people understand that."

Ellen Andreder, the UFCW spokeswoman in southern California, said other unions were watching closely and support was coming from unions across the US. "I`ve never seen anything like this in 19 years," Ms Andreder said. "This is probably the biggest strike - in terms of numbers and locations - in the history of the labour movement. The Teamsters and other unions see a direct link: no industry would be immune [from cuts in benefits] if they get away with it here.

"Our feeling is that we have come too far as a society to lower the bar and go back to the days of Carnegie and Rockefeller when the more you exploited your workers, the more successful you were." Ms Andreder said the companies had enjoyed a 91% increase in profits in the past five years and could well afford to continue paying benefits. Safeway has an annual turnover of $30bn (£17bn).

"This strike should send a message," said Greg Denier, the UFCW communications director. "Healthcare is a major issue now and people understand and are sympathetic." He said the dispute would have a major effect on the union movement: "This experience will shape a whole new generation of trade unionists. We`re getting more and more members and support from other unions.

"But the most important support we have had is from the grocery shopper, and the fact that they have not been crossing picket lines is a sign of our success."

The local Teamsters president, Jim Santangelo, declared on announcing that the drivers would respect picket lines at depots: "We either end this thing together or we die together."

The companies have started to place whole-page advertisements in the newspapers headlined Read Between the Picket Lines and subheaded We care about our employees, too. The ad concludes: "We`re united in our goal of reaching a contract settlement that addresses the very real competitive threats and skyrocketing healthcare costs we face."

They argue that their employees continue to enjoy better health benefits than "the vast majority of our customers". Around 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all.

The supermarket chains claim they are being undercut by non-union firms, like Wal-Mart, which pay minimum wages. Wal-Mart, now the world`s largest grocery store, is able to pay low wages - $9.64 (£5.59) an hour, compared with an average of $15.98 (£9.27) for a union store worker - because of the vast reservoir of immigrant labour in the US who will work cheaply and will heed company warnings not to join a union for fear of losing their jobs.

Conditions


The length of the strike and the level of support it has attracted is an indication of the times, according to David Koff of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International union, which this year helped to organise a Freedom Ride of immigrant workers in buses across the country to draw attention to their conditions. "There is a growing awareness that living conditions are being driven relentlessly downwards and that concentrates the mind," Mr Koff said. "Union leaders realise that they have to support each other.

"The slogan `united we stand` is often hollow but now content is being poured into it. This is a critical fight. A lot of the union leaders came of age in the 60s and 70s and they were inspired by people like Cesar Chavez [the farmworkers` leader] and Martin Luther King and they understand the importance of solidarity."

He said union membership in the private sector had slipped below 10%, with membership overall around 13% of the workforce. One of the reasons for the unions prospering in the service sector of supermarkets, catering and cleaning is that it is one of the few industries which cannot move its operations abroad.

A new book, Insurrection, Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power, by Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark, suggests that a growing number of people are becoming politically active, spurred on by revelations of corporate malpractice. Danaher, a co-founder of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, said yesterday of the strike: "If they can win, it would be a significant boost. It would say to people if you persevere, you can achieve anything."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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US wins nine-day reprieve from steel tariff sanctions
Charlotte Denny
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

The US sent the first signals yesterday that it is prepared to defuse a dangerous transatlantic clash over steel tariffs, when it asked the EU and its allies to delay imposing tit-for-tat sanctions.

Brussels, which was preparing to strike back at American exports as early as next week, has granted Washington an extra nine days to lift the illegal tariffs. "If the delay allows the US time to withdraw the protectionist measures, that is better for everybody," said Fabian Delcros, a spokesman for the EU in Geneva.

The rubber stamping of the World Trade Organisation ruling on the illegal tariffs will be delayed until December 10. Unless America lifts the tariffs within five days of the ruling, the EU will hit back with $2.2bn of tariffs on exports from electorally sensitive states.

Ending protection for the industry more than a year ahead of schedule could prompt a political backlash against George Bush in next year`s presidential election in the pivotal steel-producing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Bush advisers have apparently concluded that the tariffs are causing more harm than good and that lifting them would boost Bush`s standing with steel consuming industry, another important constituency, industry sources said.

"The only question is when," said David Phelps, president of the American Institute for International Steel, which represents steel importers.

One possibility suggested by the industry is for the administration to gradually lift the tariffs, but an EU source said yesterday that Brussels would not accept that as a solution.

The EU sanctions have been chosen to have the maximum political impact in states that could be crucial to the outcome of the November 2004 presidential poll.

Japan, which was initially reluctant to make threats, has also announced plans to retaliate on $458m worth of US products ranging from coal to textiles.

Norway, too, has drawn up a battle plan, while Brazil, China, New Zealand, South Korea and Switzerland are considering their response.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Iraqis express cynicism at Bush`s 150-minute visit
Michael Howard in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

Iraqis yesterday greeted news of President George Bush`s extraordinary 150 minutes on Iraqi soil with a mixture of indifference and cynicism, as guerrilla insurgency against US forces continued and plans to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis remained mired in uncertainty.

The surprise visit to Baghdad`s heavily fortified airport was intended to boost the morale of the battle-weary US troops and to display the Bush administration`s determination to stay with its troubled Iraq project "until the job is done".

But Mahmoud Othman, a member of Iraq`s governing council, said: "His visit cannot be considered as a visit to Iraq. It was really a visit to an American military base in the country to boost the morale of the troops. He did not conduct any official meeting with Iraqis. He did not meet with ordinary Iraqis. But it was good to hear of his promise to see the job through."

In the US, news of the visit dominated the television news on the Thanksgiving holiday, and the front pages of yesterday`s newspapers. Much of the coverage focused on the elaborate secrecy surrounding the trip, which involved the president and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, leaving the Bush ranch in Texas in disguise.

Analysts pointed out that the trip could hold political risks for the president.

"While the troops cheered the moment, it is too soon to know whether the image of Bush in his army jacket yesterday will become a symbol of strong leadership or a symbol of unwarranted bravado," Dana Milbank, a political writer at the Washington Post argued.

One of the four members of the governing council who attended the dinner at Baghdad airport, Mouwafik al-Rubei`e, described their conversation with Bush as "fruitful". He said: "The US president reaffirmed his country`s commitment to build a new, democratic and prosperous Iraq."

But another member of the governing council, who asked not to be named, said the "excessive secrecy" surrounding the visit could provide a propaganda boost to the insurgents. "They will be able to boast that they forced the most powerful man in the world to come in through the back door," he said.

In Baghdad yesterday discussions were under way to try to rescue new US-backed plans to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis next summer, after the country`s most revered Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had raised objections.

The plan included election of the government through a show of hands at regional meetings. But Ayatollah Sistani wants the transitional government to be voted in by popular ballot.

The US press yesterday quoted unnamed officials saying the administration was now considering holding elections agreeable to the powerful Shia leader.

Ms Rice welcomed debate on the implementation of the existing plan so the new government "really does give to the Iraqi people the kind of voice that they need".


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Billionaire Soros stakes fortune on `matter of life and death` - defeating George Bush
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
29 November 2003


George Soros has donated almost $5bn (£3bn) over the years to help emerging democracies in Eastern Europe recover from the shadow of tyranny. Now he is applying the same principles, and a large chunk of his fortune, to the United States, where he believes the defeat of George Bush in next year`s presidential election is "a matter of life and death".

So far, he has spent more than $15m: two-thirds of it going to a liberal-leaning group called America Coming Together, which intends to mobilise voters in battleground states next November; $3m of it going to a new Washington think-tank run by Bill Clinton`s former chief of staff, John Podesta; and $2.5m to the passionately anti-Bush internet lobbying group MoveOn.org, to help pay for television advertisements attacking the President.

Political donations on this scale have precedents. On the right, figures such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades on political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton`s sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster).

But on the left it is almost unheard of. Mr Soros has given money to political campaigns before - $122,000 in the 2000 elections alone. This, though, is very different. In recent interviews he has likened the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric of the Bush administration to the political language of Nazi Germany. And in a forthcoming book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, he argues that the destructive arrogance of the White House, in Iraq and elsewhere, is like an overheating of the stock market that must and will be corrected.

The Hungarian born financier and philanthropist describes the Bush administration`s policies as a crude form of social Darwinism. "I call it crude because it ignores the role of co-operation in the survival of the fittest, and puts all the emphasis on competition." And he explains why the current administration is so much at odds with the driving ideology of his worldwide Open Society Institute. "The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognise that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth," he writes. "When President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America`s lead ... A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world."

Unlike other critics who have made casual comparisons between the Bush White House and the Nazis, Mr Soros speaks with some authority - he survived the German occupation of Budapest as a boy.

That has not deterred prominent Republicans from hooting with indignation, or from accusing him of hypocrisy because Mr Soros has been a champion of campaign finance reform intended to keep big-money donations out of politics. "It`s incredibly ironic that George Soros is trying to create a more open society by using an unregulated, under-the-radar-screen, shadowy, soft-money group to do it," the Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson said recently. The Washington Post has similar reservations, writing in a recent editorial: "Wasn`t the whole point of the new campaign finance law to get big checks of this kind out of politics? Are these huge donations healthy for small-d democracy, not just big-D Democrats?" Mr Soros`s response seems to be: I will do whatever it takes, if the result is defeat for President Bush.

If the Republicans are alarmed, it is partly because the Soros donations are part of a new form of political activism on the left, one that takes advantage of the internet. MoveOn.org, with its 1.8 million members, has proved it can raise millions of dollars in days for a liberal cause and act as a counterweight to political organisations, including the Democratic Party leadership.
29 November 2003 10:29



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Soldiers in a Bradley fighting vehicle patrolling in Baghdad in front of the Rashid Hotel, where Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying when the hotel was attacked by rockets in October.

November 29, 2003
U.S. Is Worried Foe Is Tracking Targets in Iraq
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — Bush administration officials are increasingly concerned that anti-American forces in Iraq are using simple but effective means to monitor activities and coordinate attacks against the American military, civilian administrators and visiting dignitaries.

As evidence, Pentagon and military officials cite a recent raid by troops of the 101st Airborne Division during which they broke up an apparent plot to assassinate an American colonel. The would-be assailants, they said, had observed and charted the Army officer`s daily routine — including his jogging route and schedule of public appearances — to plan their attack.

Evidence gathered by investigators also sheds new light on the rocket attack that struck the Rashid Hotel during the overnight visit to Baghdad by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, in late October. Military intelligence officers have reported that the hotel staff was infiltrated over the summer by at least one former member of Saddam Hussein`s secret service.

Although Pentagon, military and intelligence officials caution that some of the evidence remains circumstantial while investigations continue, these concerns help explain the extraordinary secrecy surrounding President Bush`s surprise visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day.

American troops already vary their routes and routines, officials said, and are being encouraged to do it more. But Baghdad`s infrastructure of roads and secure places to stay is limited, making it difficult to obscure actions that might allow an observant resistance to plan attacks.

"It does not require a very robust intelligence capability to pick up from time to time the presence of `high value` American officials," said a Bush administration official with access to intelligence reports from Iraq. "It is hard to shield the large security presence that identifies senior officials in Iraq."

Investigators are reviewing recent attacks on American convoys hit by improvised explosives to see whether the routes had become so routine as to make them obvious targets. They are also examining the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August, in which the explosives-packed vehicle detonated adjacent to the United Nations special representative`s window.

American officials say operatives loyal to the ousted Hussein government do not require high-technology eavesdropping devices to gather substantial amounts of information on the activities of American officials. "Given the size of our footprint, you can`t overestimate the amount of information you can gather just standing on a street corner and watching," one official said.

Mr. Hussein`s government operated a Stalinist-style domestic security apparatus to control Iraqis, so there is no shortage of agents skilled in traditional surveillance techniques.

In the case of the Rashid, which had become home to Americans and other foreigners working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, "the hotel was penetrated," according to a Pentagon official.

Military intelligence officers discovered that, at least as early as summer, the Rashid`s catering service had on its staff a former member of Mr. Hussein`s intelligence agency, officials in Washington and Iraq said.

But officials noted that given the large Iraqi staff at the hotel, valuable information could just as easily have been gathered by listening to coffee house gossip, or by watching streets around the hotel for unusually large convoys.

Much of the intelligence-gathering by supporters of the former government falls into this category of waiting, watching and listening in order to plan attacks, officials said.

"It is not unusual for hostile factions to engage in both passive and active collection against key coalition leaders," a military intelligence officer in Iraq said. "As such, we`ve received indications that some of our key personnel have been observed and identified for possible targeting."

American officials in Washington and Iraq offer differing assessments on whether the multiple-rocket launcher set up outside the Rashid`s security wall during the visit by Mr. Wolfowitz was specifically timed for that. One Army officer was killed, and more than a dozen Americans and other foreigners were wounded.

The launcher itself had taken weeks to construct, military officials said. While Mr. Wolfowitz`s visit was a closely held secret before his departure, "I cannot believe that former regime loyalists were unaware the deputy was staying there," a senior administration official said. "He had been in the country for a day or two, which was widely publicized. He hosted an event the night before in the hotel, and did not leave. He travels with not a small footprint."

Military investigators say no suspects have yet been detained who could confirm that the attack was timed to the visit. "Would it have been possible for them to know, and to target him? Yes," a military officer in Iraq said. "Do I think it is likely they were targeting him specifically? No."

But recent raids have uncovered other evidence about the Rashid attack. By comparing technical fingerprints of the rockets, like welding and wiring, military officers are convinced that the same group that carried out the Rashid attack was also responsible for similar attacks a week ago.

In the recent attacks, rockets were fired at the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels and the Oil Ministry from four donkey carts disguised as hay wagons.

Army officers in Iraq stressed that a significant number of attacks had been thwarted by the American military and Iraqi security services, by American intelligence agencies and by information provided by Iraqi civilians.

The American-led alliance`s intelligence system "continues to get better every day in theater, and we receive credible information which assists us in pre-empting potential attacks against our soldiers," a military officer said.

Investigators also continue to scrutinize the Aug. 19 attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, including the special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

The explosives were detonated next to the window of Mr. de Mello`s office, investigators say, leading some to believe that the suicide bombers knew specifically where the senior United Nations official worked inside the building.

"You can certainly speculate and come to that conclusion, but no absolute determination has been made," an American official said.

Military intelligence officers also have realized that improvised explosive devices, known as I.E.D.`s, have been placed along routes frequented by American military convoys. "If you look at the pattern of I.E.D.`s, they go where we go," a military officer in Iraq said. "They watch us. They migrate with the herd."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Achtung unbedingt lesen alle die Ironie und Spass verstehen.

November 29, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Name That War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

A drum roll, please: It`s time to announce the results of the Name That War Contest.

In a column 10 days ago about Iraq, I expressed frustration at the absence of a good name for our war there. So I offered prizes (Iraqi 250-dinar notes with Saddam`s picture) and invited readers to send in entries.

Then I fled to Guatemala and El Salvador, and when I returned to the office this week, there were 4,000 entries from all over the world.

Hundreds of people offered "Bush`s Folly," "Burning Bush," "Bush League War," "Bubba`s War," "Shrub`s War," "Operation Quicksand" or "The Crawford Conflict." Then there were zillions of "Iraqmire," "Iraqgate" and "Iraqnam."

Lois from New Zealand suggested "Operation Bushwhack Iraq." Avie Hern of California offered "Bushkrieg."

Some people suggested that instead of Operation Iraqi Freedom, this is "Operation Iraqi Liberation." I thought they were hawks until I recognized the acronym: OIL. Also on the petroleum front, Peter Wilson of Pennsylvania offered "Mother of Oil Wars."

Some names were interesting but a bit long. For example, Charles Hayes of New York offered these options: "Bremer Takes a Baath," "I Waged Two Wars Against Saddam and All I Got Was His Headache" and "Visit Scenic Saddam and Gomorrah."

Imaginative, but try to fit those into a headline. Or this from Pat Malach of Oregon: "Operation Gee Whiz, This Liberation Thing Seemed a Lot Easier When We Were Drawing It Up Back at the Think Tank."

But some entries were so concise they sounded as if they could have graced a Robert Ludlum thriller: "The Iraq Pre-emption," "The Bush Incursion," "Bush`s Botch" and "The Big Uneasy."

The last is, of course, a play on the movie "The Big Easy." There were lots of other pop culture references (my assistant, Christina Lem, had to translate some for me; I speak foreign languages but have never been fluent in pop). A Minnesota astronomer who evidently likes Britney Spears offered: "Operation Oops, We Did It Again." And movie buffs urged "Operation Kick the Dog," "The Empire Strikes Out," "Apocalypse Right Now," "Mission Implausible: A Job Well Spun" and "Trek 2: Wrath of Neo-Khan."

Scholarly readers argued that the distinctive quality of this war was America`s claim that it has the right to invade other countries if they are developing weapons of mass destruction and may threaten us. John Parry of North Carolina suggested "Pre-emptive War I," leaving room for us to continue the series if we move on to Tehran and Pyongyang.

On the model of the War of Jenkins` Ear, one reader suggested "The War of Bush`s Flight Suit." Harold Kramer of Massachusetts singlehandedly came up with "Rummy`s Retreat," "Cheney`s Chaos," "Perle`s Predicament," "Powell`s Problem" and "Rice`s Regret."

Others came up with "King George`s New Colony," "The War of the Roves" and "The War That Cried Wolfowitz."

Donn Blodgett of Vermont urged "Coup d`États Unis," and Linda Kolker of Georgia recommended "The Charge of the Right Brigade."

Honorable mention in this contest goes to "Operation Unscramble Eggs," by Russell Schindler of New York; "Desert Storm und Drang," by Robert Proctor of Connecticut; "The `Raq," by Jeff Schramm of Missouri; "A`bombin`nation," by Kent Moore of North Carolina; "Tigris by the Tail," by Paul Reeves of New Mexico; "War of Mass Deception," by Scott Dacko of New York; and "Iraq: A Hard Place," by Chris Walters of Texas.

The five winners, each of whom gets a 250-dinar note left over from my last Iraq trip, are: Brad Corsello of New York for "Dubya Dubya III"; Richard Sanders for "Rolling Blunder"; John Fell of California for "Desert Slog," Will Hutchinson of Vermont for "Mess in Potamia"; and Willard Oriol of New York for "Blood, Baath and Beyond."

More seriously, during this holiday weekend, I hope we`ll think often and appreciatively of those Americans who are in Iraq right now. Humor cannot erase their fear and loneliness in the face of Washington`s policy failures, or the heartbreak here in so many homes where bereaved parents, spouses and orphans are struggling in this season to remember why they should be giving thanks.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Immer Sonnabends im Thread.

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washingtonpost.com
Intelligence Weaknesses Are Cited
Draft Says Agencies Not Equal to Needs of Preemptive Attack Policy

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page A18


More than 10 years` work by U.S. and British intelligence agencies on Iraq`s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or programs has "major gaps and serious intelligence problems," according to a new study by Anthony H. Cordesman, a Middle East and intelligence expert who is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Even a cursory review" of charges the U.S. and British administrations made in white papers released before the Iraq war "shows that point after point that was made was not confirmed during the war or after the first [six] months of effort following the conflict," Cordesman found in his study, a draft of which he provided to The Washington Post.

Although the United States has the world`s most sophisticated technical systems for collecting and analyzing intelligence, Cordesman found, the Iraq experience shows that U.S. intelligence is "not yet adequate to support grand strategy and tactical operations against proliferating powers or to make accurate assessments of the need to preempt." Preemption, or waging war to prevent an enemy from attacking, is a key part of the Bush war on terrorism policy.

Another new nongovernmental report, on the Bush administration`s controversial claim that Iraq was seeking specialized aluminum tubes to use in a centrifuge to create nuclear weapons material, raises questions about whether senior policymakers ignored technically qualified critics to promote the Iraqi threat.

Together, the two reports track what congressional sources described as many of the tentative findings of investigations by House and Senate committees.

The second study finds shortcomings in the way the U.S. intelligence community handled technical questions involving the tubes.

The Bush administration`s strategies of using preemption or preventing countries from obtaining weapons of mass destruction "depend critically on reliable intelligence on highly technical matters," wrote physicist David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Albright has been working with Iraqi scientists since serving in the 1990s on the first United Nations inspections in that country; his study is to be released on the ISIS Web site next week.

In the fall of 2002, while polls were showing that the U.S. public and Congress were not convinced of the case for invading Iraq, administration spokesmen including Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were making statements that the tubes were for nuclear weapons.

Such statements, Albright wrote, were made before a fierce debate within the intelligence community over whether Iraq intended to use them for rockets or centrifuges. The issue was decided in October 2002 by a vote in which those intelligence agencies with "no technical [centrifuge] expertise outnumbered those that did," according to Albright.

The process, he wrote, "exposed a fallible intelligence community that developed and adjudicated its technical disputes poorly."

Cordesman`s and Albright`s conclusions reflect many of the draft findings of inquiries underway by the House and Senate intelligence committees, according to congressional sources. Those committees are not expected to report their findings until next year, after reviewing the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, the 1,400-person U.S. and British search for weapons and evidence of weapons programs in Iraq. David Kay, director of the survey group, said in October that he did not expect to make another report for 60 to 90 days.

Cordesman`s study says the intelligence weaknesses shown so far with Iraq raise serious questions about how to deal with weapons proliferation overseas.

"No one who focuses on the specific case of the Iraq war can afford to ignore the fact that future threats of proliferation posed by states or terrorist movements may again seem so great that it may not be possible to wait to take military action until many key uncertainties are resolved," it says.

President Bush, for example, said in October 2002 that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." In his London speech two weeks ago, he said, "The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists and the dictators who aid them."

Nothing has been uncovered in Iraq to support the notion that Saddam Hussein had such weapons or entertained any such weapons transfer. In fact, both U.S. and British intelligence analysts reported that such a weapons transfer -- if Baghdad had such weapons -- would take place only when the Iraqi leader faced annihilation, and did so as his final act.

Cordesman`s study says one weakness in gathering intelligence on weapons proliferation is that research can be done on legitimate civilian projects, mixing "highly secret covert programs with open civil or dual-use programs." It adds that in reviewing the collection of such material, "far too little analysis is subjected to technical review by those who have actually worked on weapons development."

In addition, it says, analysts often overlook problems in system integration, which "often are the real-world limiting factors in proliferation." The result, it says, is "to push analysis toward exaggerating the probable level of proliferation."

One of Kay`s major findings in his October report illustrates that. He reported finding "a clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) containing equipment that was subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW [chemical and biological weapons] research."

Kay does not support the allegation of illegal laboratories with evidence. He reports that records were destroyed and IIS officials have been questioned, and that "we are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW [biological weapons] terror weapons." Still, he reported that "this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW-capable facilities and continuing R&D [research and development] -- all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production."

A senior U.N. weapons expert said recently that a lot of laboratory equipment such as that cited in Kay`s findings in IIS offices might be used for weapons work, but was more likely used for criminal work or even food testing. Before they were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998, U.N. inspectors found that Iraqis often failed to report laboratory equipment, because reading the Security Council Resolution 1441 narrowly could include every piece of laboratory equipment in every school in the country.

Cordesman`s study says that another intelligence problem is that "the intelligence effort tends to produce estimates of the maximum size of the possible current holdings of weapons and WMD materials."

In 1991, Iraq was required to declare its stocks and capabilities in the chemical, biological and nuclear fields, and that the number of weapons it reported was in the tens of thousands and stocks in the tons. Much of that was destroyed or disabled by U.N. inspectors or the Iraqis, but the Hussein government was often caught in lies and inexplicable gaps.

But intelligence analysts, the study notes, believed that Hussein was obsessed with record-keeping and lied, and assumed "that little or no destruction had occurred" whenever U.N. agencies reported unexplained issues.

Another major weakness, stressed in the past by the House and Senate intelligence committees, was in the inability to develop "a reliable mix of redundant human intelligence sources within the system or as defectors," Cordesman found.

The British were said to have agents in Iraq; one of them in the Iraqi army was the sole source for the statement that it would only take 45 minutes to deploy a chemical shell, according to a recently concluded investigation by the British government. U.S. intelligence did not believe that source reliable and never repeated the statement in its intelligence estimates.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
November Deadliest Month in Iraq


By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page A14


More U.S. troops have died in Iraq in November than in any month since the war began in March, according to Defense Department figures.

With November nearly over, the official death count yesterday stood at 79, surpassing March (65) and April (73), when the invasion was underway and fighting was most intense and widespread.

The surge has reflected an increase in the effectiveness and the frequency of guerrilla attacks.

About half of the deaths resulted from the downing of four military helicopters, in which 39 soldiers were killed. U.S. aircraft in Iraq have been targeted in the past, but these incidents, involving either a surface-to-air missile or rocket-propelled grenade, marked the first major hits.

Most of the other U.S. combat fatalities occurred in ground attacks by enemy fighters using weapons that have become characteristic of their resistance: guns, rocket-propelled grenades and remote-controlled explosives.

At one point during the month, military officials reported that the number of guerrilla attacks was averaging more than 40 a day. In response to the heightened activity, U.S. troops intensified their tactics, engaging in a stronger show of force that included greater use of artillery, tanks, attack helicopters, F-16 fighters and AC-130 gunships to pound targets throughout central Iraq. The move was followed by a drop in the rate of assaults on U.S. forces to fewer than 30 a day.

In contrast to the higher combat deaths in November, the number of accidental deaths -- 11 -- stayed comparatively low.

In all, 437 troops have died in Iraq since the war began, 2,094 have been listed as wounded in action and 2,464 have suffered noncombat-related injuries, ranging from accidental gunshots to broken bones and injuries in vehicle accidents. Since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, 298 troops have died.

As the numbers have mounted, administration officials have offered various responses in an attempt to cushion the impact on public opinion and avoid a collapse in support for the Iraq operation.

Officials have noted that most of the attacks on U.S. forces have occurred in central Iraq, while the rest of the country has remained less menacing. They have emphasized the improvements being made to Iraq`s public facilities, the revival of economic activity and the steps toward self-rule.

They also have cited a rapid growth in the number of Iraqi security forces, now exceeding 145,000, who are to relieve some of the burden on the 130,000 U.S. troops in the country and allow for a reduction to about 110,000 by spring.

Earlier this week, a senior general with the Coalition Provisional Authority suggested that the rising U.S. casualty rate should not be taken as a sign that the United States is losing the war, especially when compared with enemy casualties.

"The casualties that we put on the enemy far exceed the casualties they inflict on us," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a news conference in Baghdad.

He offered no figures for enemy dead or wounded, however. As a rule, the Pentagon does not publicize such numbers, to avoid the frequent enemy body counts that marked the Vietnam War and ultimately proved a poor measure of U.S. military performance.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week provided one partial figure for enemy dead, indicating that the Pentagon is keeping some tally on the damage U.S. forces are doing to the ranks of Iraqi guerrillas. In the week ended Nov. 23, he said, U.S. forces had killed 40 to 50 enemy fighters and wounded 25 to 30.

Rumsfeld also sought to put the U.S. death toll in Iraq in the context of previous wars waged by American forces.

"If one thinks back to the casualties of wars past -- some 292,000 were killed in World War II, 34,000 in Korea, 47,000 in Vietnam -- we can give thanks that our forces in this war have not faced casualties of such enormous magnitude," he said at a news conference.

Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
With Iraq Trip, an Afterglow, but Uncertain Aftermath


By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page A16


CRAWFORD, Texas, Nov. 28 -- As President Bush`s aides basked Friday in the extensive and emotion-charged coverage of a surprise visit to Baghdad that they considered a logistical and public relations triumph, top Democrats refrained from criticism, even though some predicted the trip would offer Bush little long-term benefit if chaos and casualties continue in Iraq.

The president`s Thanksgiving Day visit to U.S. troops at Baghdad International Airport -- including a dramatic corkscrew landing by a blacked-out Air Force One as protection against any antiaircraft missiles fired by guerrillas -- produced a bonanza of holiday images setting him amidst the conflict`s most positive element: the nation`s workaday soldiers.

The trip triggered a debate over whether Bush`s short-term image-polishing might help secure long-term popularity. Strategists in both parties said that by confining his visit to the friendly military setting, Bush avoided criticisms that might have followed a trip featuring high-profile visits with Iraqi officials or reconstruction sites. They said the president may have won a political reprieve at a time when Americans are showing increasing skepticism about the U.S. occupation of Iraq and strategies for ending it.

Administration officials said Bush enjoys surprises and showing himself in charge, and Thursday`s whirlwind trip involved both. The president told reporters on Air Force One afterward that he had watched the landing from the cockpit and had spent weeks quizzing his pilot and military and security officials about the trip`s feasibility, insisting that it be scrapped if it endangered any Americans. "I was pretty tough," he said.

Bush smiled as he stepped from Air Force One at 4 a.m. Friday, as cable TV networks provided live coverage of his return to Texas.

The 33-hour foray carried political as well as logistical risks, however. Bush`s aides engaged in temporary secrecy and deception about his whereabouts, and Democrats said it might make it easier to portray his administration as driven by visual images. Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who managed Al Gore`s presidential campaign in 2000, said the journey is likely to temporarily enhance the administration`s image as "the most scripted, most disciplined White House in the history of America," but could haunt Bush in the long run.

"They know how to punch the right buttons and paint the right picture at the right moment," she said. "This reinforces the images of Bush as a strong, decisive leader, and Democrats are right to give him a pass, temporarily. But now that he has made a visual connection with the [Iraqi] landscape, it`s like Lyndon Johnson`s visit to Vietnam. Now when there`s a story about another casualty, people in the back of their mind will say `Bush` instead of `America.` "

Some Iraqi officials told reporters in Baghdad that Bush`s visit meant little because it included no exchanges with ordinary Iraqis. But back home, some Democrats said the journey highlighted the power of incumbency and might quell criticism of Bush`s decision not to attend funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

Several Democratic presidential candidates declined to criticize the visit or portray it as a sequel to Bush`s widely criticized May 1 landing on an aircraft carrier to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said in New Hampshire that Thursday`s visit to Baghdad was "terrific . . . the right thing for a president to do." But he added that "for the next 364 days, we have a problem with our policy."

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) said on a New Hampshire radio program that he did not "have anything political or partisan to say about it." Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) issued a statement calling the visit "a nice thing for the president to do." Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark said he is "glad he went." A noncandidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said during her own trip to Iraq that Bush`s visit sent "a strong signal of national support" for the military.

A strategist for one of the Democratic campaigns said Bush`s trip appeared designed in part to counteract the May 1 event, whose "Mission Accomplished" banner later was derided as premature.

This official said the Democratic candidates must "isolate and neutralize this [Thursday trip] as a fleeting photo op so we can go on to criticize the [overall Iraq] policy. You could have attacked the cynical element it had -- using the troops as a backdrop to try to erase the `Mission Accomplished` image. But fixating on this would have helped Bush drive home the message he wanted, that he was standing with the troops."

An official at another campaign said Bush`s Baghdad visit "bought them some time, but they still are going to have a tough time explaining why they can`t protect our troops from a shooting gallery."

The Pentagon says 437 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the invasion last March, 298 of them since May 1.

The unwillingness of U.S. allies to contribute significant numbers of troops has left U.S. forces extended and tired, and some units have been warned they might not get the rest-and-recuperation breaks they were promised.

The Bush administration moved quickly to promote Thursday`s images at home and abroad. In Iraq, officials at the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority said they plan to distribute the president`s remarks in Arabic, along with computer disks containing photos of the event for easy use by fledgling newspapers.

Bush`s Saturday radio address will be devoted to the topic, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, two hours after returning to the president`s Texas ranch from the Baghdad sojourn, appeared on five network TV morning shows.

She later told reporters that the visit had no political elements: "For the American people, I don`t care what your party, they know that the president of the United States, as commander in chief, going to see these troops is an important step." Rice defended the deceptive tactics, saying: "Everyone knew that this was extraordinarily sensitive and it would have to be scrapped if word leaked out."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Thanksgiving Surprise




Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page A22


AS POLITICAL theater goes, it was classic. Surely the image of the president of the United States carving turkey with the troops in Baghdad ranks up there with Franklin Roosevelt`s 1941 shipboard meeting with Winston Churchill near Newfoundland or Lyndon Johnson`s decision to land at Cam Ranh Bay at the height of the Vietnam War. Indeed, precisely because it was so beautifully timed, both to interrupt a Thanksgiving Day news lull and to kick off this winter`s presidential campaign, many will dismiss it as nothing more than a clever television stunt, conceived and carried out by the president`s media advisers.

They may well be right. But even television stunts have more serious consequences. By appearing in person in Baghdad, President Bush has identified himself more deeply and personally with a costly military campaign from which he might have tried to keep his distance. He has also recommitted the United States to staying the course in Iraq, just as some there were beginning to wonder whether U.S. dedication might be wavering. Said the president to the troops: "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. . . . We will stay until the job is done." That pledge, made in Baghdad, was an important one, and worth whatever gimmickry it took to get him there.

At the same time, the nature of the president`s trip inadvertently revealed a great deal about the true state of affairs in Iraq. The fact that the president of the United States had to travel in an unmarked car to a secret flight, land and depart in darkness and was unable to tell even members of his family that he planned to visit Baghdad hardly speaks well for the security situation. Administration officials seem pleased to have pulled off such a surprise, but it would have been a far more triumphant visit if the element of surprise had been unnecessary.

As his advisers will surely have noted, the president also landed just as the latest agreement on Iraq`s political future seemed to be coming apart. While the president was in Baghdad, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was in Najaf telling a member of the Iraqi Governing Council that the U.S. plan for indirect elections of a new government needed to be revised -- a demand that U.S. officials said they would have to accommodate. If progress in Iraq hangs on the edicts of a Shiite religious leader who favors Islamic rule, then it is hard to describe the political situation as promising. Yet, along with cheering up the troops, the president made a promise to Iraqis: "The United States and our coalition will help you build a peaceful country so that your children can have a bright future," he said.

Iraq is a long way from that goal. That`s why we welcome Mr. Bush`s dramatic personal commitment -- and trust he will stick to it during what is likely to be a difficult year ahead.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
52 New Cartoons Today, trotz Bu$h`s Reise nach Ur nur 52 frische Cartoons:
http://www.flu-ent.com/graveyard/20031129__052toons.htm

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Posted on Sat, Nov. 29, 2003



Don`t start another divisive culture war

BY JOAN VENNOCHI
[e-mail]

Cultural war versus war in Iraq. To Republicans, a war over gay marriage rights foisted upon the nation by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court may sound like a welcome and winnable distraction.

That is, until they remember Houston. ``The radical right is demanding a cultural war and calling for a civil war within the Republican Party at a level not seen since the 1992 Houston convention,`` says Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. ``The last time I checked, that led to the defeat of the first President Bush.`` The group, the nation`s largest gay Republican organization, put out a statement applauding the Massachusetts decision that homosexual couples are constitutionally entitled to marry.

Guerriero believes that Republicans and the White House should stick with jump-starting the economy and winning the war on terrorism rather than going down the path of ``Patrick Buchanan, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and the failed strategy of the past.``

In 1992, the GOP`s right wing took over the convention in Houston to declare a mean and supposedly holy war against Americans whose beliefs are different from its own. In a speech to delegates, Buchanan stated it plainly: ``There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.`` Buchanan`s theme was reinforced by other conservative political and religious leaders who scared the country on prime-time TV.

That November Bill Clinton won the White House. Bush`s defeat was due partly to his failure to address the nation`s stagnant economy. But the ousting of an incumbent was also the country`s reaction to the ugly, narrow intolerance displayed in Houston, not by Bush but by others in his party.

Why would George W. Bush want that same shrill, divisive discourse to permeate his campaign for reelection? He was elected as a compassionate conservative. His vice president, Dick Cheney, has an openly gay daughter who brings her partner to White House dinners. Today the country is even more tolerant toward gays than it was a decade ago, and the tolerance is more outspokenly bipartisan. That political reality of growing tolerance toward gays and lesbians can be seen in Bush`s initial response to the Massachusetts court ruling. He did not specifically endorse a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.

Guerriero, a former Massachusetts legislator and mayor, is trying to keep it that way: ``The closer the Republican Party gets to fueling this cultural war and having a national debate about basic civil rights, the closer they get to a very dangerous path,`` he warns.

Challenging Bush

The right wing is battling anew for Bush`s soul. ``There is a real split in the White House. Some see this as a great wedge issue against certain Democratic candidates. Others fear that a cultural war could supersede tax policy and other issues Republicans can win on,`` says Guerriero.

At the same time, the court ruling also holds political risks for Democrats seeking to challenge Bush. Most of the Democrats running for president support some form of legal rights for same-sex couples. In response to the ruling, Dennis Kucinich said, ``The right to marry is a civil right that should not be denied.`` Those polling higher were more equivocal. Howard Dean`s statement noted that he signed a bill authorizing civil unions when he was Vermont`s governor. Sen. John F. Kerry says he opposes gay marriage but called on the Legislature to ensure equal protection for gay couples. Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark said, ``as someone who supports the legal rights of all Americans regardless of sexual orientation, I appreciate today`s decision.`` The Democrats oppose a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

Is it better for Bush if the election turns on the sanctity of traditional marriage or the long-range merits of ``Iraqification?`` Republicans should be careful what they wish for.






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© 2003 The Miami Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com

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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/29/guerri…

Guerrilla war in Iraq spreading
US says attacks on rise outside Sunni Triangle
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 11/29/2003

WASHINGTON -- The guerrilla war in Iraq has moved steadily beyond the so-called Sunni Triangle and into areas of the country once considered peaceful, a potentially ominous development for security forces trying to restore order in the country.

Since the end of major combat operations on May 1, nearly 40 percent of attacks on US and coalition targets have been outside the Sunni Triangle, home to many remnants of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein`s regime, according to internal Defense Department reports obtained by the Globe.

The monthly breakdown is classified, but Defense Department officials confirmed that the number of attacks occurring in the far north, south, and far western Iraq -- areas outside the Sunni Triangle, which is immediately north and west of the capital of Baghdad -- has increased in recent months.

This week alone, two US soldiers were shot, dragged, and hit with rocks in the northern city of Mosul and another was killed there yesterday in a rocket attack, adding to growing violence in what had been considered a relatively stable city.

"We have seen an increase," General Richard B. Myers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said on Tuesday, referring to the attacks outside the triangle, though he described the increase as modest and insisted that those attacks were probably due to remnants of Saddam Hussein`s government.

US forces have stepped up patrols inside the triangle in recent days, hoping to knock out leaders of the insurgency. Myers said military leaders are still examining the rate and location of the attacks outside the triangle to determine how best to contain them.

"We`re still looking at what this means in terms of the strategy of the former regime elements that we`re up against. How they`re tied regionally within Iraq and how they`re tied nationwide is to be determined," Myers said. "We don`t have as much insight there as we need, and we`re working on that insight."

But US intelligence officials said the widening range of attacks could have serious implications for US efforts to quell the guerrilla war, turning citizens from peaceful areas against the coalition forces if it is unable to provide security.

"What I worry about is broader support [among Iraqis] for the insurgent guerrilla activity," said a senior US intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The official added that most of Iraq so far appears to be supportive, or at least tolerant, of the US operation. But "only time will tell."

The Sunni Triangle is home to most of the country`s Sunni Muslims, members of Hussein`s ethnic group. Southern Iraq, home to the country`s majority Shi`ite Muslims, and the Kurdish-dominated north have been more receptive to the US occupation, but guerrilla attacks in those areas have been increasing.

Since May, when major combat operations were declared over, a total of 2,227 guerrilla attacks took place in the Sunni Triangle, according to figures as of the end of last week. The rest of the country has had 1,416 attacks, most of them against occupation forces.

The attacks outside the triangle have included the use of small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosive devices, military officials said. They have targeted US and coalition troops, but also Iraqi security forces and civilians, as well as public infrastructure, such as electrical grids and pipelines.

Military analysts said the widening of the location of attacks is characteristic of a classic guerrilla campaign, in which insurgents seek to destabilize areas of the country that are considered peaceful, slowly expanding the war zone until most of the country fears for its security.

The number of attacks in the southeast sector of the country, where the Shi`ite Muslim and relatively pro-US city of Basra is located, has doubled since August, according to the military`s statistics. The exact number of those attacks per month is classified, according to a military official.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking with reporters on Tuesday, downplayed the significance of the recent spike in attacks in Shi`ite areas.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Scoop ist eine neuseeländische Seite. Da sind jede Menge Bilder, Berichte usw. über den "Herr der Ringe" zusammengestellt. Auf dieser Seite sind 4 Jahre Berichte und Bilder in Links zusammengefasst.
Zur morgigen Welturaufführung des dritten Teils in Wellington(NZ).

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=onering

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A Chickenhawk Thanksgiving in Baghdad
David B. Livingstone, AlterNet
November 28, 2003
Viewed on November 29, 2003

Oh, what a Thanksgiving party it was.


George Walker Bush, President of the United States of America, flew into Baghdad International Airport under cover of darkness, accompanied only by his usual retinue of mainstream press syncophants, to spend two hours mouthing platitudes and getting his picture taken in the company of 600 hand-picked military personnel.


As the only well-fed people in newly "liberated" Iraq tucked into their turkey and dressing, Bush treated the assemblage to a soundbite-friendly speech rich in flag-waving rhetoric and practical vagaries. Speaking in short, broad generalities, Bush told the soldiers, "You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq so we don`t have to face them in our own country," and "You are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful."


It is doubtful that Bush is perceptive enough to note the ironies implicit in both his presence and his pronouncements, though surely Karl Rove and his fellow cogs in the White House spin machine got a chuckle out of every nuance. While speaking for purposes of ostensibly expressing gratitude -- isn`t that what the holiday is all about in the first place? -- Bush`s words served instead both to perpetuate illusions and to inculcate fear. The President`s repetitive mantra of "terror," "danger," freedom" and the like -- the familiar buzzwords guaranteed to fulment unreasoning emotions in the hearts of all good Fox-viewing Americans -- seemingly found its origins on Madison Avenue rather than Pennsylvania Avenue.


Deftly baiting-and-switching the public`s attention away from the 60 personnel slain over the course of the preceding month or the spiraling costs of a mission he had declared "accomplished" mere months before, Bush`s underlying message to America seemed to be that the boogeyman was at the door, that danger still stalked the stars and stripes, and that only continued neo-colonialism could protect our TVs, toasters and steel-belted radials from sinister terrorists.


It was a propaganda coup of the first order, replete with adoring camera angles and wildly cheering multitudes, all conducted under a shroud of Stalinist press secrecy. Indeed, the administration and its media admirers seem to regard its very deceit of the public and the press a point of pride. Lost in the torrent of excited blither from small-screen news anchors and pundits was a fairly basic question: Why was the chief executive of the United States, an ostensibly democratic nation, skulking into Baghdad when we`d been told he was in Crawford, Texas? Why were we lied to?


"For security," of course. Sure, the mortars drop on Baghdad International with unerring frequency, and even George W. would rather not be blown to bits. Understandable enough. Of course, some of us might wonder how it came to be that an American President might have the unmitigated gall to embark on such a reckless, expensive, and tactically meaningless expedition for purposes of a blatant photo-op. An answer to such a question, if asked, would surely be slow in coming. Given the administration`s success in framing public discourse (remember "you`re either with us or against us" and Ari Fleischer`s admonition to "watch what you say") serious questioning of any gesture, however meaningless, that purports to "support our troops" is pretty unlikely in the fawning U.S. media. Overseas, however, the reaction was less muted: "The Turkey Has Landed" was the sneering headline in London`s Independent.


The very nature of Thanksgiving is called into question by Bush`s latest exercise in media-friendly self-aggrandizement. Who should be giving thanks to whom, and for what? Bush doesn`t seem to have a firm handle on the answer. It seems worth noting that rather than junketing his cocoon over to an airplane hanger in Baghdad in order to mix up feel-good with fear along with a side of dressing, he could have spent his time and energy visiting the families of the soldiers who have died. Or, he could have stopped in at any given VA hospital, where he might have a word or two with the young men and women who had given arms, legs, eyes, ears, or other valuable body parts in service to Bush and Halliburton.


Just as the Thanksgiving holiday itself was the unintentionally ironic creation of a group of colonialists whose descendents proceeded to virtually wipe out an entire indigenous population, Thanksgiving in Baghdad 2004 served as an unblinking and unthinking exercise in reactionary gall, undertaken by a president seemingly incapable of comprehending the real meaning of his actions. Thanks to his strategists and the whipped-cur behavior of his unquestioning news channel minions, we can expect to see at least a brief spike in Bush`s popularity polls and some nice video snippets in next year`s election ads.


But important, if unasked, questions linger about a president who foregoes both taste and honesty in his advancement of his agenda--questions of integrity, character and ethics. They might be aptly summed up in a riposte posed to another Republican nearly five decades ago, Senator Joseph McCarthy, during his final days on Capitol Hill: "Finally, sir, have you no shame?"


David B. Livingstone is a Michigan-based writer, commentator, and activist. He can be reached at [e-mail].


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17283

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

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

[Joerver]

How to keep an idiot busy...
(for at least a couple minutes)


http://www.pagetutor.com/idiot/idiot.html




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[Joerver]

ZNet | Iraq

Imperial Folly:
on landing in "Baghdad"

by Tom Engelhardt; TomDispatch; November 29, 2003

Quote of the half-century: Senator J. William Fulbright, 1966: "Power has a way of undermining judgment, of planting delusions of grandeur in the minds of otherwise sensible people and otherwise sensible nations."



Quote of the day: "`We have children, we have families and we need to live,` said Yusuf, sitting with the others [in an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps squad] on a stack of railroad ties, as a brisk wind blew over them. `We don`t love the Americans, but we need the money. It`s very difficult, but there`s no alternative.`"



Quote of the day (2): "`Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam,` Wathban [a neighbor of the corpsman above] said. `The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here.`" (Anthony Shadid, "Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties," the Washington Post, 11/25)



The ritualistic presidential trips abroad of this administration were all flipped on their head yesterday when the President visited "Iraq" (or at least the beleaguered American version of it at Baghdad International Airport). Previously on his imperial peregrinations, he had imposed his "bubble" world on whole cities -- from Manila to Sydney to London -- shutting them down and buttoning them up, emptying them of anything like normal life as he passed through their streets and institutions untouched. Yesterday, on his two-hour turn-about at Baghdad International, he shut himself down, slipping out of his house in an unmarked car, sending out such complex and heavily preplanned disinformation that he reputedly fooled his own parents, who arrived at the Crawford ranch for a Thanksgiving meal with their missing son. He then rode a blacked-out Air Force One into Baghdad International, shut down the airport till he left, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.



Phil Reeves of the British Independent commented in an aptly titled piece, "The turkey has landed," (Nov. 28):



"The administration will be hoping that the video images will help erase memories of a not dissimilar staged event on 1 May in which the President landed on an American aircraft carrier to announce that the war in Iraq had been won. As the violence has worsened, that day has come to haunt the White House. This time, wearing a US army jacket, he told the troops that America `stands solidly` behind them, and to whoops of approval that the US military was doing a `fantastic job.`"



I have no doubt - based on watching TV last night - that this political coup de theater will briefly pump up support here for the President (or at least that ephemeral category of presidential existence, his "job approval rating"), but since the stealth visit was phantasmagoric and changed nothing in Iraq -- as opposed to "Iraq" -- I`m ready to make a small wager of my own. Some months down the line these triumphant propaganda photos, meant to replace "Mission Accomplished," will look no better than the strutting-the-flight-deck ones do now, and will be no less useful to the other side in the presidential race. (Keep these photos Democrats!) It was perhaps typical of the event that Bush strode out from behind some curtains on the introduction of L. Paul Bremer, saying, "I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere," but evidently never ate a bite.



His rallying speech to the troops was surprisingly retread-Vietnam in tone -- all that talk about them "testing our will," us not "retreating" ("we will prevail"), not "running" ("They hope we will run") and especially that classic Vietnam line, "You are defeating the terrorists [it would, of course, have been "communists" back then] here in Iraq, so that we don`t have to face them in our own country."



It would be interesting to see what Lyndon Johnson said on his surprise visit to Cam Ranh Bay back in October 1966. I`ll bet some of the lines and phrases would have been almost exact duplicates. (Johnson, after all, used to talk about fighting the communists in Vietnam rather than on the beaches of San Diego.) LBJ broke off an Asian tour to fly in and out of the giant base at Cam Ranh Bay which, like Baghdad International, was a little fortified version of America and he, too, spent just 2 ½ hours in country.



I don`t know whether there were any of "our" Vietnamese present when Johnson arrived, but there were evidently members of our appointed Iraqi Governing Council locked in with the troops when Bush appeared because the President mentioned them and commented that he was "pleased you are joining us on our nation`s great holiday. It`s a chance to give thanks to the Almighty for the many blessings we receive." (I doubt he was referring to Allah.)



And then, he assured the troops, just before boarding his stealth jet back to Crawford, "We will stay until the job is done." They, of course, will have to stay. Need I say more, except that such words are soon likely to feel sour indeed. There are, after all, other realities creeping up on this administration. Just a few days ago, for instance, the widow of a soldier slain in Iraq refused to join other relatives of those who had died at a Fort Carson (Colorado) meeting with the President ). "I have a lot of harsh feelings for the president right now," [Johnna] Loia told The Pueblo Chieftain. "I contemplated going, but right now I think I`d find it hard to be respectful… I would want to know why he decided to go to Iraq and why he felt that the war was justified… In my eyes, I don`t feel it was justified at all." (AP, Nov. 25)



Actually, this "unmarked," "blacked out" visit to Baghdad tells us a great deal -- none of it particularly good news for them -- about where the Bush administration is today as well as about where the arrogance of power can lead mighty nations. After all, this administration is filled with men who imagined the President`s first entry into Baghdad as a truly triumphal event. (Remember those flowers that were to be strewn in the victor`s path?). If you want to check out the fullness of their fantasy, don`t miss Juan Cole`s "Informed Consent" website.



Another problem for the administration: In our world, propaganda can`t just be confined to your own side. The President may get a bump in the polls here, but the very nature of his trip, his inability to visit Iraq rather than "Iraq," his stealth journey, and so on can only be a form of aid and comfort to the enemy. His trip can`t but be a sign to them of their own success to date. The problem for George Bush is that it`s not as easy to black out the parts of the world you don`t want to know about as it is to black out an airplane. As the Independent pointed out in the piece quoted above:



"News of the visit only broke in the US after Air Force One had taken off from Baghdad and was on its way home. And no sooner was the visit made public in Baghdad, than the city was shaken by the sounds of conflict repeated loud explosions, gunfire and ambulance sirens."



And, of course, another American died from a roadside bomb this morning.



The folly that lurks in imperial arrogance is that it naturally walls you off from other realities, even in a sense from the existence of other places beyond your particular vision of them. This has taken a particularly striking form in Iraq, a country we invaded so blithely convinced of our power to rule over events anywhere on this planet that we hardly bothered about specific Iraqis. It wasn`t just the lack of translators who could speak Arabic among the occupation forces, or of specialists in the region (they were left behind because they were associated with the reviled State Department when the Pentagon was riding high), or the junking of all the State Department`s prewar planning for the occupation (same reason), but also our inability even to imagine that individual Iraqis had wills that might successfully oppose ours.



Who woulda thunk it: Iraqis actually live in Iraq with ideas of their own about how their world should be shaped. The imperial imagination, even when it soars, is still a distinctly limited creature.



The president certainly spoke of the "will" ("those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will"), but he didn`t have Iraqi wills in mind. So it`s interesting to discover that the whole occupation enterprise has unexpectedly run up against the will of a single Iraqi, Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. To see how the attempt to mold an Iraq to our imperial will ran aground on the will of an unseen other, check out a Nov. 26 Washington Post piece, "How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in which a Governing Council member says succinctly, "The Americans were in denial." Put more imperially, "`[Bremer] didn`t want a Shiite cleric dictating the terms of Iraq`s political future,` one U.S. official with knowledge of the process said." The piece begins:



"The unraveling of the Bush administration`s script for political transition in Iraq began with a fatwa. The religious edict, handed down in June by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq`s most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, called for general elections to select the drafters of a new constitution. He dismissed U.S. plans to appoint the authors as "fundamentally unacceptable."



"His pronouncement, underestimated at first by the Bush administration, doomed an elaborate transition plan crafted by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that would have kept Iraq under occupation until a constitution was written, according to American and Iraqi officials involved in the process."



Or, if you want to find out just what a complex process it is to shape wills to our own desires, consider the revealing piece in the same paper by Anthony Shadid (cited above) on our attempt to create civil defense and police forces that will take some of the load of the occupation off our military shoulders.



Back in October 1966, when Lyndon Johnson was visiting Cam Ranh Bay, there was another establishment voice abroad in the land and it was oppositional -- that of Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. His words were powerful then and remain no less so now. A former close ally of the president, he wrote a book against the Vietnam War, published in 1966, with the title The Arrogance of Power in which he considered the "folly of empire." He grasped what we were and where we were going 37 years ago.



Fourteen months ago, Jim Lobe, who writes for Inter Press News Service and whose reporting, to my mind, is consistently the best to come out of Washington on the ins and outs of the Bush administration, chose some of those words and published them at Tompaine.com (also on ZNet). The Fulbright passages read then as if they had been written the previous night. Another 14 months up the line (and with excerpts tacked on from a speech the senator gave on the "Price of Empire" the following year), they prove even more apt, the evergreen of evergreens. Most of them on the lures of and folly of imperial ambitions could have been written as our President was landing at Baghdad International.



In addition, you might check out Boston Globe columnist James Carroll`s latest, "Of Thanks and Mercy," 11/23. ("Yet Americans know that there are empty places at Thanksgiving tables this week, and the end of Ramadan for untold Muslim families in two nations is equally a time of grief. And for what? Last week, George W. Bush and Tony Blair offered justifications for their war - `democracy` -- that had nothing to do with justifications offered last March - `prevention.` Are we not supposed to notice that? And what of months from now, when the purpose of democracy, too, will have failed and faded? What then? We went to war for the fun of it?")



Unfortunately, while Lobe`s pieces are regularly published around the world, they have been hard to find here. It`s a case of too-good-to-be-published in the mainstream, I`m afraid. Fortunately, the libertarian site antiwar.com, with the best eye(s) around for the latest in global news, is now publishing Lobe almost daily. His particular expertise is the world of and history of the neocons of this administration and his invaluable writings on them are archived. If you want to check out an example of his recent work, read Foreign Policy Realists Rally where he considers whether the unilateralist hawks are losing clout in the administration (yes, they are), whether this is a permanent change or an election-year adjustment (open to question), and what the appointment of Robert Blackwill to preside over Iraq policy-making in Washington may mean:



"The recent announcement that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which is officially controlled by Rumsfeld, is doubling the number of foreign-service officers to 110 - most of them from the State Department`s Near East bureau - marks a major defeat for the Pentagon`s neo-cons, who had vetoed virtually all of the State Department`s Arabists for top CPA positions before the occupation due to suspicions that they were too pro-Sunni or elite-oriented.



"Worse, CPA chief L. Paul Bremer appears to be working directly with Blackwill in the White House, effectively circumventing Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative aides."



As Lobe pointed out to me in a phone call last week, what makes Senator Fulbright`s opposition to the Vietnam War so striking today is that he had been the floor manager of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. He was, in other words, the man who ran the "debate" and guided Lyndon Johnson`s equivalent of a declaration of war through. Unlike Sen. Kerry and a number of our other Democratic candidates for president, who are still bobbing and weaving over their war resolution votes, Fulbright later forthrightly stood up and said flat out that he had been wrong -- badly mistaken in his actions and deeply misled.



If you compare Fulbright with his modern day equivalent, another Southern Senator with a checkered past (the man I call "the last Roman Senator"), Robert Byrd of West Virginia, you can sense how much deeper in the imperial muck we are today. Byrd and his magisterial speeches have been thoroughly marginalized, and I still await the appearance of a book by him from a major publisher denouncing Bush imperial policies.



[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture and The Last Days of Publishing.]

[Joerver]

Saturday, November 29, 2003
War News for November 29, 2003 Draft


Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: One US soldier wounded in roadside bomb ambush near Samarra.

Bring `em on: Explosion in Baghdad damages highway bridge.

Bring `em on: Spanish intelligence team attacked near Baghdad.

Bring `em on: US patrol ambushed by roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Two US soldiers wounded by land mine near Syrian border.

CENTCOM reports US soldier dies from "non-hostile gunshot wound."

Attacks on US troops are down to 22 per day. How much has the US operations tempo has increased to suppress insurgent activity? And how long can US forces sustain a high optempo?

Insurgents developing effective intelligence network.

Bremer`s Iraqi police may be helping insurgents.

Iraqis wonder why Lieutenant AWOL didn`t stay very long.

Bush`s Baghdad trip: Turns out Andy Card had to put a boot in Lieutenant AWOL`s ass. "For a president fond of a tough-guy image, George W. Bush was uneasy when an aide casually asked him, `You want to go to Baghdad?`"

Sen. Clinton arrives in Baghdad.

Neil "Silverado" Bush cashes in on Iraq reconstruction with a little help from Joe Allbaugh. If this was a story about Bill Clinton`s brother, the press would be all over it. Tomorrow morning you`d see Orrin Hatch on the talk shows doing back flips and squirting diarrhea all over Tim Russert`s suit and tie.

Chalabi reviews reconstruction contracts.

Montana soldier describes Iraq duty before returning. "A Great Falls police officer for five years, Badgley was activated by the Army Reserve on Feb. 7. His 889th Quartermaster Company left for Fort Lewis, Texas, on Feb. 10 and arrived in Kuwait April 22. Badgley entered Iraq on May 15."

Army hospital in Baghdad. " The worst that Maj. Michael Hilliard, 33, an emergency physician, saw back home in San Antonio were car crash and gunshot victims. Here, he estimates that he has treated the broken bodies of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers."

Patrolling in Tikrit.

One of the hidden casualties.

Casualty Assistance Officer: The hardest job in the Army. " Relatives dread nothing more than the unexpected drop-in by a military officer while a family member is on duty overseas."

Pipeline Watch: Summary of insurgent attacks against oil targets.

Army reservist sounds off about back-to-back deployments. I don`t condone this shit, especially from an officer. But it`s a strong indicator of the state of morale that a soldier with previous tours in Bosnia and Afghanistan sounds off like this.

Bush and Rummy continue their "Bone the Troops" policy. "Joyce Wessel Raezer, director of government relations for National Military Family Association, said it’s time to stop raising anxiety levels among military families with `business-case` attacks on military support systems such as schools and the $1 billion-a-year commissary subsidy. `Why is it so important right now to nickel and dime the commissary benefit?` she asked. `It’s just raising stress. And it is small potatoes compared to some of the other items in the defense budget.`"

Nick Kristoff announces results of "Name That War" contest.

Commentary

Opinion: A nation at war. "That we support our troops cannot be denied, and should never be questioned. When they return, they will be honored and they will have tales to tell and questions to ask. They deserve our ears and our answers. That we should look with pride and trust to a man who put these men and women at grave risk under false premises, who squandered the good will of nations, to say nothing of lost opportunities, and whose actions have polarized the country, is incomprehensible to me."

Opinion: Bush delivers a turkey. "The May 1 campaign appearance produced the Flight-jacket George doll, and perhaps the Thanksgiving photo op will give us Army-jacketed George delivering a plate of turkey. The turkey can symbolize his Iraq policy."

Operation Cut and Run

Back to the drawing board. "But the administration`s initial plan for that transfer of authority has unraveled, raising doubts about whether the June 30 deadline for ending the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad remains feasible." Have these neo-conservative clowns had any plans that didn`t "unravel?" When reality meets ideology, reality always wins.

Casualty Reports

Local story: North Carolina soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Dakota soldier dies in Iraq.







# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:00 AM
Comments (2)

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Dear Fellow Americans,

I attacked and took over 2 countries.

I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.

I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).

I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

I`ve made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.)

I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.

In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad`s, but I did).

I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.

I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.

I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.

I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.

I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other US president in history.

I cut health care benefits for war veterans.

I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.

I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.

I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.

I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.

I took the world`s sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.

I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

With Love,
GEORGE W. BUSH
The White House, Washington, DC
Note: this information should be useful to voters in the 2004 election.

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Spain Confirms Six Dead, One Wounded in Iraq Attack
Sat November 29, 2003 01:05 PM ET

MADRID (Reuters) - Six people were killed and one wounded on Saturday when guerrillas attacked a convoy of Spanish intelligence officers south of Baghdad, a Spanish Defense Ministry spokesman said. The spokesman had no information about the eighth member of the group.
Spanish Team Hit in Iraq, Several Said Dead
By REUTERS

Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least four and possibly eight members of a Spanish intelligence team were killed south of Baghdad on Saturday, Britain`s Sky News television reported, the latest guerrilla attack on a close U.S. ally in Iraq.

Sky reporter David Bowden said from Baghdad after returning from the scene that he saw four bodies and that local people said eight were killed in total and another two people taken prisoner.

Spanish officials said in Madrid an eight-strong team had been attacked, but it was unclear how many were hurt.

The ambush came hours after the top military commander in Iraq said attacks against U.S. forces had fallen sharply in recent weeks, despite figures showing November to be the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began.

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said anti-American insurgents had struck fewer times in the past seven days than in the previous week and put the reduction down to the more aggressive tactics used by U.S. forces.

The Sky reporter said of the attack on the Spaniards: ``We were actually driving from the town of Hilla, which is just south of Baghdad, and we saw these men lying dead on the floor (ground) by the side of the road after the ambush.

``We were told by locals there that...about 30 minutes before, they`d attacked a convoy of three vehicles. They pulled the people out of the vehicles. They told us that in fact they`d killed eight people and they`d captured two others.

``I only saw with my own eyes four dead bodies on the road.

``We filmed for a couple of minutes and then we became the focus of the mob`s attention. They were shouting praise to Saddam (Hussein) and we disappeared pretty quickly.``

OTHER U.S. ALLIES ATTACKED

Just over two weeks ago, 19 Italians were killed in an attack on a military police barracks in southern Iraq, the worst military disaster for Italy since World War two.

Britain, which stood beside the United States in the March 20 invasion of Iraq, has lost 20 soldiers in military action since then. A Polish army officer has also died.

Spain had earlier lost two other military men: an intelligence officer attached to the Spanish embassy gunned down in the street, and a Spanish naval officer who was among 22 people killed in a suicide bomb attack on the U.N. mission.

In his Baghdad news conference, Sanchez said the U.S. military was reshaping its forces in Iraq to rotate in more mobile units and ship out heavy armor such as tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

``In the past 14 days, we have seen the daily average of engagements throughout the country decline by over 30 percent,`` he said.

``And over the last seven-day period, we`re down to an average of 22 engagements a day,`` he said, against as many as 50 a day just a couple of weeks ago. ``This decline has been most significant where we have taken the fight to the enemy.``

Despite the decline, however, figures from U.S. military officials show at least 72 U.S. soldiers died in action in November, according to a count by Reuters.

At least four others have died in non-hostile circumstances, making November the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war to overthrow Saddam was launched in March.

HEAVY DEATH TOLL

Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1, 185 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action, bringing the total U.S. military deaths -- combat and non-combat -- since the start of the war to 436, according to the Pentagon.

To take on insurgents more efficiently, Sanchez said the military was kicking off a new phase of the war, Iraqi Freedom II, in which more mobile infantry would replace armor.

``We are going to change the composition of the force,`` he said. ``We`re going to have additional mobility...with the right mix of heavy and light.``

President Bush in his weekly radio address on Saturday expressed sympathy for the families of the some 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and urged Americans to help out their families by doing volunteer work such as preparing care packages and collecting gifts for baby showers for expectant wives.

Bush made a surprise flying visit to the U.S. base at Baghdad`s heavily guarded airport for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

But his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said it was a White House aide -- not Bush himself -- who suggested the trip.

With the president safely back at his Crawford ranch in Texas, White House supporters seized on the 2-1/2 hour visit as a public relations coup that could boost troop morale and Republican fund raising ahead of his campaign for re-election next year.



Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd.

[Joerver]

Spec. Ronald Dekker leans in close to encourage fellow platoon member Pfc. Matthew VanBuren during a hospital visit the day after VanBuren was wounded and another soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad`s Sadr City.

washingtonpost.com
Facing the Horrific Every Day
Army Hospital in Baghdad Is First Refuge for U.S. Casualties

By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD -- The patient was talking. He had arrived one recent Saturday night at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, bare-chested and bleeding from wounds in both legs. In the emergency room, when his voice rose above the din of the machines and medical staff, it was a good sign.

"Oh, I`m doing dandy," the soldier said as he lay prone on a green Army litter, his tone dripping with sarcasm but not bitterness. Two medics wheeled him into Trauma Room No. 2, where everyone seemed to exhale with relief at the soldier`s sense of humor. The ER staff, dressed in beige boots, camouflage pants and scrub tops, worked crisply but without the urgency that accompanies a patient near death.

"We`re going to expose you, okay?" said Maj. Jason Boardman, a general surgeon from West Point, N.Y.

"I was born naked, it`s okay," the soldier quipped. He turned his head to the side and told an administrator his name. VanBuren. Matthew. 21, from Kansas City, Kan. A private first class with the 1st Armored Division`s HHC 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, a cavalry unit.

Using dull-tipped scissors, Lt. Hope Simmons, 25, a nurse from Tampa, carefully cut through the uniform pants. "Ow. If you press on my thigh again, I`m going to punch you," VanBuren deadpanned.

Soon VanBuren was naked except for a thin blue gown draped across his private parts. The medical staff pored over the rest of his body. Hot shrapnel from a roadside bomb had gouged the underside of his left thigh, leaving a hole the size of a grapefruit that oozed blood and flesh. On his lower right leg, another shrapnel wound was bleeding. His right shoulder was injured, but it was not clear how seriously.

"Just sit back and relax," Boardman told VanBuren. "We`re going to do all the work."

Since the largest U.S. Army hospital in Iraq opened its doors on April 10, nearly all U.S. casualties have passed through its first-floor emergency room. Some come already dead. Some arrive with one arm instead of two, a shattered leg or a face wiped away by an explosion.

Assaults on U.S. troops have numbered as many as 45 a day in recent weeks. For the staff at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, located within the U.S.-led occupation authority`s headquarters at one of former president Saddam Hussein`s palaces, that translates into a dozen patients some days. Twenty-four hours in the hospital`s emergency room with soldiers stripped of their uniforms and gritty exteriors revealed the physical and emotional toll.

About 70 percent of the hospital`s patients are wounded soldiers; the rest are Iraqi civilians and prisoners, along with a small number of U.S. civilian contractors, said Maj. Mark White, director of patient administration.

The number of soldiers treated for serious combat injuries is not publicly disclosed. Instead, the hospital releases statistics on patient admissions -- a total of 1,659 U.S. soldiers through Oct. 30. The combined number of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi patients admitted per month has increased since September, and this month was expected to reach about 400, White said.

Soldiers stay here for up to two days; those with serious wounds requiring further treatment are sent on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and, if necessary, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"They come in here saying, `Did he make it? Did my driver make it?` " said Lt. KomKwuan Pholtavee, 24, an ER nurse from Bellmore, N.Y. In their haze of pain and fear, she said, "I`ve had soldiers think that I`m their wife."

The worst that Maj. Michael Hilliard, 33, an emergency physician, saw back home in San Antonio were car crash and gunshot victims. Here, he estimates that he has treated the broken bodies of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers.

"The injuries are horrific," he said. "They are beyond anything that you see in a textbook, and they are the worst that I have ever seen."

`No Pulse, No Pulse!`


The ER night crew came on at 6 p.m. Some had finished up an unusually flavorful Army rations dinner of chicken fajitas. Others silently watched movies on a laptop computer or read e-mail.

The staff was clustered around the nurses` station outside the ER, tucked away in the back of the ground floor of the three-story, 76-bed hospital that was once the private clinic for Hussein`s relatives. The large wooden desk had a clunky military telephone and radio keeping the staff in touch with the hospital`s operations center, which would announce when a medical helicopter was about to arrive.

Around 8 p.m., the radio crackled.

"EMT, this is China Base," said a soldier at the center, using the hospital call sign.

"China Base, EMT," replied First Lt. Chris Haese, 33, an ER nurse from Brillion, Wis., who was listening for radio traffic.

"Air evac coming in. One litter, urgent, IED shrapnel," the soldier said.

A medical evacuation helicopter was carrying a soldier seriously wounded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb -- in military speak, an improvised explosive device, or IED.

Haese made a quick check of the supplies in Trauma Room 1. Simmons, the ER nurse, pulled on white rubber gloves and went through the ER`s double receiving doors to wait. As the helicopter approached the helipad, three medics from the ER put on green helmets and climbed into what resembled a golf cart, then sped out of the hospital`s black rear gates to pick up the patient.

The vehicle returned minutes later, a soldier hitched to the front. He lay on a narrow green stretcher, wrapped in a blanket. A resuscitator covered his nose and mouth, and the helicopter medic pumped the balloon to assist the soldier`s breathing. The sky was black, but outdoor lights flooded the hospital`s back parking lot.

"On the count of three," one medic said. "One, two, three!" Up went the soldier from the stretcher and onto a narrow wheeled cot. Blood had pooled on the black backboard left behind.

With a short run, they wheeled the patient into the trauma room. Hilliard stood at the head of the cot while the rest of the staff crowded around the sides, hooking up IVs, touching every inch of the soldier`s body in a search for wounds and signs of life.

"Does he have a pulse?" Hilliard shouted. He turned around to reach for a sonogram that would show heart activity. "There`s no pulse, no pulse!" a nurse responded.

The helicopter medic, still in his flight suit and helmet, quickly briefed Sgt. Dylan Jones, 26, of Philadelphia, the night medic in charge of operations. A roadside bomb had exploded in Sadr City, the Shiite Muslim slum in northeastern Baghdad. "I gotta go pick up another one," the medic said, and rushed out.

Flying shrapnel from the explosion had breached the soldier`s skull and spattered blood on the right side of his face. Hilliard checked the extent of the injury. The soldier`s helmet lay a few inches from his head, covered in blood on the right side.

The crisp, hurried movements of the trauma team slowed. Boardman, the general surgeon, ripped off his white latex gloves and walked away, muttering expletives.

Drops of dark red blood pooled on the white marble floor. The remaining staff peeled away from the soldier`s bedside. Pvt. Kurt R. Frosheiser, 22, of Des Moines, was dead.

It was 8:17 p.m. Maj. Benjamin S. Gonzalez, 41, of Mesa, Ariz., assistant chief of emergency medicine at Walter Reed Army Hospital, now the chief of the Baghdad ER, was the first to speak.

"We`ve got another one coming in about three minutes," he said.

A Very Fine Line


Another patient dead, thought Maj. Fred H. Brennan, 38, a soft-spoken, bespectacled sports doctor from Fort Belvoir. A soldier.

"It`s never easy to see it," Brennan said. "It`s a very fine line for us between compassion and being hardened to it. You can`t dwell on it for very long because it gets to you. We feel for him."

He sighed. "But if you dwell on him, you can`t do your job."

VanBuren, the chatty soldier from Kansas, came in by ambulance, unaware that Frosheiser had arrived moments earlier. Both men were victims of the Sadr City bomb; VanBuren had been driving the Humvee when the explosion happened. He worried about his friend and feared the worst.

"God, I hope he`s going to be okay," he said as he lay prone.

An Army chaplain quietly slipped into the trauma room and asked VanBuren if he could pray with him. He agreed. They clasped hands.

"My buddy Frosh, he was fresh out of basic," VanBuren said. "He got to the unit about a week ago, from Des Moines." He started to cry.

"I was teaching him my job so that if I got hurt, he could take over for me," he said, the tears sneaking out from the corners of his bright blue eyes.

"He was a good guy and a good soldier. I didn`t want for him to die."

The commander of the hospital, Col. Beverly Pritchett, 46, from Buffalo, came into the trauma room to survey the scene, as she often does after a soldier`s death or other serious incident.

Pritchett walked up to VanBuren in Bed No. 4, introduced herself and shook his right hand. She stroked his bare left shoulder.

"I`m going to take real good care of you," she said. "Just take some deep breaths."

"My mother, she`s going to kill me," VanBuren said.

"No, she`s not going to kill you," Pritchett answered softly. "She`s going to be so happy that you`re alive."

Across the room, Spec. Alrick Williams, 20, of Geist, Ind., waited for treatment in Bed No. 5. He had come in shortly after 9 p.m. with small, dark-red cuts from shrapnel on the right side of his face, near his right eyebrow. His head rested on a mud-brown Meals Ready to Eat bag. Williams, a gunner, was a member of the 716th Military Police Battalion.

"We went to Baghdad to pick up some supplies," Williams said slowly, squinting as a medic cleaned out his minor wounds with a squirt bottle.

"We were supposed to leave during the day, but we ended up leaving at night because we were waiting for another unit. There were seven vehicles. We picked up the rear, and then next thing you know, an IED goes off. It was very loud, and I went deaf for a minute, and I couldn`t breathe."

Williams said he had already survived a previous rocket-propelled grenade attack, and in October his battalion lost a commander and two other soldiers in an ambush near a mosque in Karbala, south of Baghdad.

"I thank the Lord," Williams said. "We`ve already had three deaths in our battalion, and we don`t need one again."

By 1 a.m., the ER was quiet. VanBuren was upstairs having orthopedic surgery to remove a shrapnel fragment embedded in his right leg. A corporal who had arrived with Williams and who had lost two inches of bone in his arm from the roadside blast was sleeping off his surgery. A soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division was in the ER operating room, while his commander sat outside, blank-faced and nervous. The ER staff settled back into the nurses` station and began to play cards.

"This is an average night; this is not even a busy night," said Simmons, the ER nurse.

`That Kid`s a Hero`


Morning brought fresh faces, the day shift. The wait for patients resumed.

On the third floor, VanBuren lay on a hospital bed, surrounded by seven of his buddies. They had brought him a pair of spurs and a certificate honoring his bravery.

Spec. Ronald Dekker, 21, from Tucson, stood at VanBuren`s bedside, listening. VanBuren told him he`d be leaving for Landstuhl in 24 to 48 hours.

"It`ll be two to three weeks before I can be on my feet again," he said. Both of his legs were wrapped in white bandages.

His X-rays lay at the foot of his bed in a yellow envelope. The soldiers took them out and held them up to the light, curious to see the piece of shrapnel embedded in his leg bone.

The surgeon had given VanBuren the jagged bit of metal, which he kept by his bed in a small plastic cup with a lid. It was rectangular and narrow, a piece of artillery shell the size of half a pinky. VanBuren planned to keep it, melt it down and make it into a medallion he`d wear around his neck.

"It`s all I have to remember my friend by," VanBuren said. He started to cry. Dekker reached down and gave him a hug.

Frosheiser had arrived in the unit about eight days before he died, VanBuren said. Because they both hailed from Midwestern cities and shared a love for the Kansas City Chiefs, VanBuren had taken the young soldier with delicate ears and a boyish smile under his wing.

VanBuren recalled that one Friday, usually a maintenance day for the trucks, lamenting the need to change a mirror and look at the transmission. VanBuren left for two hours on a mission, and when he came back, Frosheiser had put in a brand-new mirror, serviced the transmission and put in fluids.

"He knew it had to get done, and he got it done without being asked," VanBuren said. "I decided right at that point that this guy could be an excellent soldier. He needed someone to be there for him and teach him the ropes."

Staff Sgt. Darrell Clay, 32, from Fayetteville, N.C., also thought someone should show Frosheiser the ropes. When a call came to pick up a noncommissioned officer, Clay thought it might be useful to take along two of the unit`s newest privates, including Frosheiser, so they could start to get a feel for the city.

"We were training them how to drive around Baghdad, Iraqi culture, what to expect during Ramadan, just getting them up to speed pretty much," he said, speaking softly in VanBuren`s cramped hospital room.

VanBuren was the driver. Clay sat in the passenger seat. In the rear, a private named Plumley sat in the right seat and Frosheiser in the left. The gunner, Spec. Watson, peered out from the top.

"We were moving at a pretty fast clip," VanBuren said. "Then, all of a sudden, there was this nasty sound and smell of smoke and explosives. I couldn`t hear much out of my left ear."

Clay told VanBuren to hit the gas. "My plan was to haul ass to get us to Assassins` Gate," VanBuren said, referring to the main gate of the U.S.-led administration headquarters in Baghdad.

"You did the right thing," Clay said.

That whole time, VanBuren said, he didn`t hear a peep from his friend. Clay told VanBuren to pull over. "I didn`t want to tell him why," he said, but it was to assess Frosheiser`s condition.

When he stopped the Humvee, VanBuren got out and bandaged his own bleeding legs with the field dressing attached to his flack vest. His friend was slumped over in his seat.

Capt. Joel Raoelina, 37, of Logan, Utah, the chaplain of the battalion, stood in the corner of the room, listening, never chiming in. He had rushed over to the 28th Combat Support Hospital the evening before to see VanBuren. Then he stayed with Frosheiser`s body in the hospital morgue, a small room near the ER trauma rooms.

Raoelina prayed with VanBuren that night. The chaplain never told him that Frosheiser had been killed.

"I don`t think anybody told him," Raoelina said. VanBuren just knew.

At the end of the afternoon, VanBuren`s company commander, Capt. Jonathan Redmond, came by. The soldiers in the unit cleared away so VanBuren could talk one-on-one with Redmond, the most senior officer in the room. Soon he hugged VanBuren and walked away. The rest of the unit followed suit, also giving hugs and filing out.

"I love you, man," Dekker said.

"I`ll see you in a few months," VanBuren replied.

Redmond stood in the hospital hallway, the soldiers in the unit milling around him. "That kid`s a hero," the commander said. "Let`s pin the medallion on him, send him home and get him back in the fight as soon as he`s ready."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Und es könnte noch schlimmer kommen, und es......

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U.S. Says Iraqi Police May Have Coordinated Attacks on G.I.s

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

11/29/03: (New York Times) BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- There is no evidence that al-Qaida terrorists have taken part in the long string of attacks on U.S. or Iraqi targets, but some U.S.-trained Iraqi police appear to have coordinated some of those assaults, the top U.S. military official in Iraq said Saturday.

U.S. military officials are concerned that some attacks on Americans have been coordinated by a few of the numerous Iraqi civilians hired by the U.S. military, who may glean intelligence on troop movements and travels of high-ranking officers, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters at the Baghdad Convention Center.

``Clearly those are concerns we have. We try to do the vetting (of Iraqi employees) as close as we can,`` he said. ``There have been instances when police were coordinating attacks against the coalition and against the people.``

He said the insurgency was becoming particularly bloody for Iraqi civilians. Guerrillas launched more than 150 attacks on Iraqi civilian and police targets, killing scores during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week.

Sanchez also said the United States is boosting the number of infantrymen in Iraq and moving from a force based on tanks and heavy armored vehicles to one specializing in urban raids.

A new phase in the Iraq war, known as Iraqi Freedom II, would begin as current forces are rotated out of Iraq and replaced by new units, including several thousand U.S. Marines, Sanchez said.

``We are going to change the composition of our forces,`` Sanchez said. ``We`ll have more infantry. We`re moving to a more mobile force, one that has the right blend of light and heavy.``

Sanchez said he saw no need for an overall increase in U.S. forces in Iraq, and the number of troops would decrease as transportation, logistics and communications personnel are sent home.

The general said some support troops are being replaced by civilian contractors, in the case of transportation and logistics. The military also is starting to use commercial sources for communications, he said, thus allowing more soldiers to depart.

Washington currently has 130,000 troops in Iraq.

The Department of Defense had announced this month that the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq would drop to about 105,000 after troop rotations that start in January are completed in May. But the additional marines appear to bump up that total to 110,000.

``There`s no way we`re going to put this mission at risk in terms of combat power,`` Sanchez said, explaining the need for the marines, whose normal tasks tend toward invasions, not occupation duties.

``What we`re in search of is a very mobile, very flexible, lethal force that can accomplish its mission. Those terms are dictated by the enemy.``

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press

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Posted on Fri, Nov. 28, 2003



Toll on U.S. troops in Iraq grows as wounded rolls approach 10,000

BY ROGER ROY
The Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.

Unlike the more than 2,800 American fighting men and women logged by the Defense Department as killed and wounded by weapons in Iraq, the numbers of injured and sick have been more difficult to track, leading critics to accuse the military of under-reporting casualty numbers.

Military officials deny they are fudging the numbers. But the latest figures show that 9,675 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured such as in accidents, or become sick enough to require airlifting out of Iraq.

"I don`t think even that is the whole story," said Nancy Lessin of Boston, the mother of an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, a group opposed to the war in Iraq.

"We really think there`s an effort to hide the true cost in life, limb and the mental health of our soldiers," Lessin said. "There`s a larger picture here of really trying to hide and obfuscate what`s going on, and the wounded and injured are part of it."

The number of sick and injured is almost certainly substantially higher, because the figures provided by the military last week include totals only through Oct. 30.

Virginia Stephanakis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army surgeon general, said there has been no effort to manipulate the casualty statistics.

"I can reassure you that these are the best figures we have," Stephanakis said. "We`re certainly not playing with the numbers or trying to downplay them."

As of Friday, 2,401 U.S. troops were listed as wounded in Iraq since the war began in March. At least 424 have died in combat or in accidents.

Another 2,464 suffered nonbattle injuries, which would include everything from accidental gunshots to broken bones and vehicle accidents, Stephanakis said.

And another 4,397 troops have been evacuated from Iraq to U.S. military hospitals - usually in Germany - for treatment of medical problems not related to wounds or injuries.

They include 290 treated for urological problems such as kidney stones - thought by many soldiers to be caused by drinking large quantities of high-mineral bottled water during the blistering summer in Iraq. Another 299 were treated for heart problems and 249 for gastrointestinal illnesses.

Another 504 troops were evacuated for treatment of psychiatric problems.

Stephanakis could not say how many of the psychiatric cases have been diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, a debilitating mental condition that can strike troops who have been in combat or a war zone.

"I have no breakdown," she said. "Most are related to what people call combat stress, depression, anxiety."

The Pentagon is not expected to release any updated figures on noncombat wounded, sick and injured until early next month.

Some critics accuse the military of low-balling its figures to curb criticism of the war.

"I think it`s a general reluctance to be forthcoming," said Wilson "Woody" Powell, a Korean War veteran and executive director of Veterans for Peace, a St. Louis antiwar organization.

"There are ways of shaping numbers," Powell said. "You can do a lot just by omitting a few things now and then."

For example, critics said, the figures released by the Army do not include men and women whose injuries or illnesses were treated in Iraq, but only those who required transfer to medical facilities outside Iraq.

Some troops who have been wounded in bomb or mortar attacks have been awarded the Purple Heart, but their wounds were not serious enough to require them to be evacuated.

And Lessin said the reported number of troops treated for psychiatric problems does not include those who didn`t seek treatment until they returned home.

Since April, the military says, at least 17 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq, and the cause of at least two dozen other noncombat deaths had not been determined.

Stephanakis acknowledged the figures don`t include every troop injury and illness from the war in Iraq. But because the military medical system was designed to give only enough treatment in Iraq to stabilize patients, then transfer them to facilities in Europe or the United States, virtually every serious injury or illness is included in the numbers, she said.

And some troops were taken to medical facilities in Europe for minor procedures not available in Iraq, Stephanakis said.

For example, 319 troops were evacuated for gynecological treatments, some of which may have been minor procedures, she said.

"It`s easier for us to evacuate them to Germany than to keep a gynecologist in Baghdad," Stephanakis said.

And although accidents have killed and seriously injured hundreds of troops in war-time Iraq, even in peace time, military accidents claim many lives.

In 1999, the latest year for which statistics were available, 761 U.S. troops died around the world out of a military population of about 1.4 million, according to the Defense Department. Most of those deaths - 411 - were caused by accidents, with illness claiming another 126 lives and self-inflicted wounds, 110.

Even so, according to the Defense Department statistics, the death rate among troops that year was less than half the death rate in 1980.

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© 2003, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com. On America Online, use keyword: OSO.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.






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© 2003 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

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The Pentagons Death And Deception

A readers Commentary

11/29/03: (ICH) In Iraq War I, the death rate of the combat wounded was 24%. That is, 24% of soldiers wounded in combat later died of their wounds. In Iraq War II the reported death rate is 0.37%. Are flak vests and medical facilities really that much better now or is the Pentagon lying through its teeth as it has so often before?

According to Lt. Barry Venable in charge of public relations at the Pentagon, 2094 soldiers were wounded in action from March 20 through Nov. 26 and only 9 later died of their wounds. The Landstuhl Medical Facility in Germany admits to 4 deaths among the 7000 soldiers that have been admitted (including many with psychological problems). Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, reported only one death despite a steady stream of wounded soldiers that keeps half the hospital filled. Apparently, the remaining 4 soldiers died in field medical facilities.

The number of deaths of the wounded reported is astoundingly low. In World War II the wounded death rate was about 40%. Medical advances and superior flak protection reduced the rate in the Viet Nam War to 25% and further to 24% during Iraq War I. Are we really supposed to believe that the rate is now 0.37%? If the real rate were only 10%, 201 soldiers would have died from their wounds, if 20%, 402 soldiers would have died. These numbers compare to the killed in action total of 298, as of Nov. 26. No wonder Rumsfeld has suppressed this information.

Americans deserve to be told the truth about the real number of our tender youth who have lost their lives in this terrible war. Such knowledge could help prevent another headlong rush to a pointless and divisive conflict.

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http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?display=rednews/200…


Guest Opinion: Bush makes protesters `disappear`

By CHARLES LEVENDOSKY
Casper Star-Tribune

President Bush has never been an advocate of the First Amendment. Even when he was governor of Texas, he prohibited demonstrations on the walkways in front of the governor`s mansion, an area that had traditionally been used for peaceful protests.


As president, Bush has widened his restrictions on demonstrations against his policies. Anti-Bush protesters are now relegated to what are euphemistically called Free Speech Zones. These areas are cordoned off as far as a mile away from the president and the main thoroughfares, so that Bush cannot see the demonstrators, or their signs of protest, nor hear their chants.


The free speech enclosures are only for those who disagree with the administration`s current policies. Those citizens who carry pro-Bush signs are allowed to line the street where the president`s motorcade passes.


Free speech zone
Members of the Secret Service or local law enforcement officers under orders of the Secret Service demand protesters move into a free speech area.


Peter Buckley, of Oregon, a former Democratic candidate for Congress, attended a presidential appearance. After being herded into a fenced-in free speech area, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Oregonian: "We were not allowed anywhere near any kind of position where the president, or the media which follows him, would see or hear us. This is not America. This in not the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is some other country. I`m a patriotic American. I want the country I was raised to believe in, a country strong enough for political discourse and debate, with leaders courageous and decent enough to have the willingness to listen to all citizens, not just those who parrot their own views. ... The effort being made to hide political opposition in this country is more than cowardly, it`s un-American."


Brett Bursey, of South Carolina, attended a speech given by the president at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. He was standing among thousands of other citizens. Bursey held up a sign stating: "No more war for oil."


Bursey did not pose a threat to the president, nor was he located in an area restricted to official personnel. Bursey wasn`t blocking a corridor that the Secret Service needed to keep clear for security reasons. He was standing among citizens who were enthusiastically greeting Bush. Bursey, however, was the only one holding an anti-Bush sign.


He was ordered to put down his sign or move to a designated protest site more than half a mile away, outside the sight and hearing of the president. Bursey refused. He was then arrested and charged with trespassing by the South Carolina police.


However, those charges were dropped. Understandably, courts across the nation have upheld the right to protest on public property.


Instead, Bursey was indicted by the federal government for violation of a federal law that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas visited by the president. Bursey faces up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.


Free speech plea
Members of the U.S. House, including those on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft urging him to drop the federal criminal prosecution of Bursey.


The letter signed by 11 members of the House, including Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, states, in part: "As we read the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is a "free speech zone." In the United States, free speech is the rule, not the exception, and citizens` rights to express it do not depend on their doing it in a way that the president finds politically amenable."


The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of four national advocacy groups, has filed a lawsuit in federal court charging the Secret Service with a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against protesters that violates their free speech rights. The suit seeks to ban the Secret Service and local police from confining protesters to areas away from the view of public officials and the press.


The pattern is clear: the Bush administration wants to suppress civil disobedience and peaceful protest. The federal government has never criminally prosecuted an entire organization for the free speech activities of its supporters. It`s an attack on the very core of the First Amendment.



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Charles Levendosky, editorial page editor of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, has a national reputation for Bill of Rights commentary. His e-mail address is [e-mail].

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Published on Saturday, November 29, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Soldiers At My Front Door
by John Dear

I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico. Everyone in town--and the whole state--knows that I am against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for the closing of Los Alamos, and that as a priest, I have been preaching, like the Pope, against the bombing of Baghdad.

Last week, it was announced that the local National Guard unit for northeastern New Mexico, based in the nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next year. I was not surprised when yellow ribbons immediately sprang up after the press conference.

But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, passed our St. Joseph’s church, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and “Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill those guys all night.”

Their chants were disturbing, but this is war. They have to psyche themselves up for the kill. They have to believe that flying off to some tiny, remote desert town in Iraq where they will march in front of someone’s house and kill poor young Iraqis has some greater meaning besides cold-blooded murder. Most of these young reservists have never left our town, and they need our support for the “unpleasant” task before them. I have been to Iraq, and led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to Baghdad in 1999, and I know that the people there are no different than the people here.

The screaming and chanting went on for one hour. They would march passed the church, down Main Street, back around the post office, and down Main Street again. It was clear they wanted to be seen and heard. In fact, it was quite scary because the desert is normally a place of perfect peace and silence.

Suddenly, at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically louder. I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were--all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, in the street right in front of my house and our church, shouting and screaming to the top of their lungs, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on.

I was astonished and appalled. I suddenly realized that I do not need to go to Iraq; the war had come to my front door. Later, I heard that they had deliberately decided to do their exercises in front of my house and our church because of my outspoken opposition to the war. They wanted to put me in my place.

This, I think, is a new tactic. Over the years, I have been arrested some 75 times in demonstrations, been imprisoned for a “Plowshares” disarmament action, been bugged, tapped, and harassed, searched at airports, and monitored by police. But this time, the soldiers who will soon march through Baghdad and attack desert homes in Iraq, practiced on me. They confronted me personally, just as the death squad militaries did in Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s, which I witnessed there on several occasions.

I decided I had to do something. I put on my winter coat and walked out the front door right into the middle of the street. They stopped shouting and looked at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, “In the name of God, I order all of you to stop this nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want all of you to quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not to kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed. I want you to practice the love and nonviolence of Jesus. God does not bless war. God does not want you to kill so Bush and Cheney can get more oil. God does not support war. Stop all this and go home. God bless you.”

Their jaws dropped, their eyeballs popped and they stood in shock and silence, looking steadily at me. Then they burst out laughing. Finally, the commander dismissed them and they left.

Later, military officials spread lies around town that I had disrupted their military exercises at the Armory, so they decided to come to my house and to the church in retaliation. Others appealed to the archbishop to have me kicked out of New Mexico for denouncing their warmaking. Then, a general called the mayor and asked him to mediate “negotiations” with me, saying he did not want the military “in confrontation” with the church. Really, the mayor told me, they fear that I will disrupt the gala send-off next month, just before Christmas, when the soldiers go to Iraq.

This dramatic episode is only the latest in a series of confrontations since I came to the desert of New Mexico in the summer of 2002 to serve as pastor of several poor, desert churches. I have spoken out extensively against the U.S. war on Iraq, and been denounced by people, including church people, across the state. I have organized small Christian peace groups throughout the state. We planned a prayer vigil for nuclear disarmament at Los Alamos on the anniversary of Hiroshima this past August, but when the devout people of Los Alamos, most of them Catholic, heard about it, they appealed to the archbishop to have me expelled if I appeared publicly in their town. In the end, I did not attend the vigil, but the publicity gave me further opportunities to call for the closing of Los Alamos. I receive hate mail, negative phone calls and at least one death threat for daring to criticize our country. But New Mexico is the poorest state in the U.S. It is also number one in military spending and number one in nuclear weapons. It is the most militarized, the most in need of disarmament, the most in need of nonviolence. It is the first place the Pentagon goes to recruit poor youth into the empire’s army.

If we are to change the direction of our country, and turn people against Bush’s occupation of Iraq, we are going to have to face the ire and persecution of our local communities. If peace people in every local community insisted that our troops be brought home immediately, that the U.N. be sent in to restore Iraq, that all U.S. military aid to the Middle East be cut, and that our arsenal of weapons of mass destruction be dismantled, then we might all find soldiers marching at our front doors, trying to intimidate us. If we can face our soldiers, call them to quit the military and urge them to disobey orders to kill, then perhaps some of them will refuse to fight, become conscientious objectors and take up the wisdom of nonviolence. If we can look them in the eye and engage them in personal Satyagraha as Gandhi demonstrated, then we know that the transformation has begun.

In the end, the episode for me was an experience of hope. We must be making a difference if the soldiers have to march at our front doors. That they failed to convert me or intimidate me, that they had to listen to my side of the story, may haunt their consciences as they travel to Iraq. No matter what happens, they have heard loud and clear the good news that God does not want them to kill anyone. I hope we can all learn the lesson.

John Dear is a Catholic priest, peace activist, lecturer, and former executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His latest books include “Mohandas Gandhi” (Orbis) and “Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace” (Ave Maria Press). For info, see. www.johndear.org

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Guantanamo Officer Charged with Security Breach
Sat November 29, 2003 04:46 PM ET

By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Saturday charged an Army colonel with mishandling classified material at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the fourth person assigned to the prison camp to face security violation charges.

Col. Jack Farr was charged with disobeyeing an order by transporting classified material without the proper security container, and with making a false statement during an investigation into his handling of classified material, the U.S. military`s Southern Command said.

A statement said the charges stemmed from an incident on Oct. 11 but did not elaborate.

Farr was assigned to the task force holding about 660 suspected Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba.

The military statement said the charges were forwarded to the task force commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who will decide whether to drop the charges, begin an Article 32 hearing -- the military equivalent of a grand jury investigation -- or refer the charges for court martial.

Farr has been on temporary duty at Guantanamo for six months, serving as an intelligence staff officer.

The statement said Farr had been assigned two defense attorneys but did not indicate whether he had been taken into custody. Southern Command officials could not be reached for comment.

Three other men who worked with the Guantanamo prison camp have been arrested since July.

Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the base, was charged with six violations, including failing to obey orders by taking classified material to his home and wrongfully transporting the material without proper security containers. He was also charged with making false statements, adultery and storing pornography on a government computer.

Yee was released from a military brig on Tuesday and assigned to a base in Georgia pending further action.

The other Guantanamo staff arrested were Arab-language translators, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi and civilian contractor Ahmed Mehalba.

Halabi, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Syrian descent, was arrested on July 23 and charged with spying for Syria and aiding the enemy. Mehalba, a naturalized citizen of Egyptian descent, was arrested on Sept. 29 and charged with wrongfully carrying classified documents.

© Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.

[Joerver]

ZNet | Iraq

Tricky Stuff, Evil
The lies we tell our enemies who are now our friends

by Robert Fisk; UK Independent; November 29, 2003

When George Bush sneaked into Baghdad airport for his two-hour "warm meal" for Thanksgiving, he was in feisty form. Americans hadn`t come to Baghdad "to retreat before a bunch of thugs and assassins". Evil is still around, it seems, ready to attack the forces of Good. And if only a handful of the insurgents in Iraq are ex-Baathists - and I suspect it is only a handful - then who would complain if Saddam`s henchmen are called "thugs"? But Evil`s a tricky thing. Here one day, gone the next. Take Japan.

Now, I like the Japanese. Hard-working, sincere, cultured - just take a look at their collection of French impressionists - they even had the good sense to pull out of George Bush`s "war on terror". And Japan, remember, is one of the examples George always draws upon when he`s promising democracy in Iraq. Didn`t America turn emperor-obsessed Japan into a freedom-loving nation after the Second World War?

So, in Tokyo not so long ago, I took a walk down memory lane. Not my memory, but the cruelly cut-short memory of a teenage Royal Marine called Jim Feather. Jim was the son of my dad`s sister Freda and he was on the Repulse when she was sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10 December, 1941. Jim was saved and brought back to Singapore, only to be captured when the British surrendered. Starved and mistreated, he was set to work building the Burma railway. Anyone who remembers David Lean`s magnificent film Bridge on the River Kwai will have a good idea of what happened. One of his friends later told Freda that in Jim`s last days, he could lift the six-foot prisoner over his shoulder as if he were a child. As light as a feather, you might say. He died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp sometime in 1942.

I wasn`t thinking of Jim when I walked into the great Shinto shrine in central Tokyo where Japan`s war dead are honoured; not just the "banzai-banzai" poor bloody infantry variety, but the kamikazes, the suicide pilots who crashed their Zero fighter-bombers on to American aircraft carriers. Iraq`s suiciders may not know much about Japan`s "divine wind", but there`s a historical narrative that starts in the Pacific and stretches all the way through Sri Lanka`s suicide bombers to the Middle East. If President Bush`s "thugs and assassins" think of Allah as they die, Japan`s airmen thought of their emperor. At the Shinto shrine, in the area containing photographs of the Japanese campaign, there are some helpful captions in English. But in the room with the portraits of the kamikazes - including a devastating oil painting of a suicide attack on a US carrier - the captions are only in Japanese. I wasn`t surprised.

What I was amazed to see, a few metres from the shrine, was a stretch of railway with a big bright green Boy`s Own paper steam locomotive standing on it. Japanese teenagers were cleaning the piston rods and dabbing a last touch of green to the boiler. As a boy, I of course wanted to be an engine driver, so I climbed aboard. Anyone speak English, I asked? What is this loco doing in a Shinto shrine? An intense young man with thin-framed spectacles smiled at me. "This was the first locomotive to pull a Japanese military train along the Burma railway," he explained. And then I understood. Royal Marine Jim Feather had died so this pretty little train could puff through the jungles of Burma. In fact, this very same loco`s first duty was to haul the ashes of dead Japanese soldiers north from the battlefront.

The Japanese are our friends, of course. They are the fruit of our democracy. But what does this mean? Even now, the Japanese government will not acknowledge the full details of the crimes of rape and massacre against women in their conquered "Greater South East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". After the post-war International Military Tribunal - 27 Japanese war criminals were prosecuted and seven of them were hanged - not a single Japanese has been prosecuted for war crimes in Japanese courts. Men who have admitted taking part in the mass rape of Chinese girls - let alone the "comfort women" from China and Korea forced to work in brothels - are still alive, safe from prosecution.

Didn`t these men represent Evil? What is the difference between the young Japanese men honoured for blowing themselves up against American aircraft carriers and the equally young men blowing themselves up against American bases in Iraq? Sure, the Iraqi insurgents don`t respect the Red Cross. Nor did the Japanese.

It`s all a matter of who your friends are. Take that little exhibition of "crimes against humanity" a year ago at the Imperial War Museum in London. Included is a section on the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, the genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, which taught Hitler how to carry out the greatest genocide of the 20th century, the Holocaust of six million European Jews. But the exhibition included a disclaimer from the Turkish government, which still fraudulently claims that the Armenians were not murdered in a genocide carefully planned by the Turkish leaders of the time - which is the truth - but merely victims of chaos in First World War Turkey.

Andy Kevorkian, whose father`s entire family was murdered by the Turks in 1915, wrote a letter to Robert Crawford, the museum`s director general. Nowhere in the exhibition is there a disclaimer of the Jewish Holocaust by the right-wing historian David Irving or by neo-Nazis, Kevorkian complained. Nor should there be. But "for the IWM to bow to Turkish (or is it Foreign Office?) pressure to deny what the entire world accepts as the first genocide of the 20th century is an insult to the Armenians who survived... For the IWM to allow the Turks to say that this didn`t happen is a travesty of justice and truth."

But the disclaimer wasn`t removed. The New York Times, which originally broke the story, now spends its time casting doubt on the killings, calling them "alleged". Not long ago, the paper carried a well-known 1915 photograph, taken by a German, of a line of Armenian men being led away to execution. But The New York Times caption fraudulently stated that the Armenians were being "marched to prison [sic] by Turkish soldiers in 1915". What next? Is The New York Times going to carry photographs of Europe`s doomed Jews being packed into cattle trains and claim they are en route to "resettlement camps"?

It`s the same old problem. The steam loco in Tokyo and the disclaimer in the Imperial War Museum and the newspaper photo caption are lies to appease enemies who are now friends. Japan is a Western democracy. So Evil is ignored. Turkey is our secular ally, a democracy that wants to join the European Union. So Evil is ignored. But fear not. As the Americans try ever more desperately to escape from Iraq, the thugs and assassins will become the good guys again and the men of Evil in Iraq will be working for us. The occupation authorities have already admitted re-hiring some of Saddam`s evil secret policemen to hunt down the evil Saddam.

Tricky stuff, Evil.

[Joerver]

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Terror camp Britons to be sent home
Guantanamo Bay deal `before Xmas`

Kamal Ahmed and Tracy McVeigh
Sunday November 30, 2003
The Observer

A deal to return British terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo Bay is to be sealed before Christmas, according to officials from America and the United Kingdom.

The `returns policy` is now believed to be the leading option being considered in Washington which has made clear that it wants to end the tension between the US and Britain over the issue.

Under the agreement, the nine British detainees will be sent back to Britain, either after pleading guilty to charges in America and being sent to serve their sentences in British prisons, or without being charged.

It is then likely that some of them will be sent to Belmarsh prison in south London and held under prevention of terrorism legislation. At least two, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, the so-called `Tipton Two` could be freed.

The agreement will end one of the most damaging conflicts between the White House and Downing Street, which has been pressing for fair trials for the Britons who have been held under military command at the US base in Cuba for two years.

Many observers thought that a deal would be signed to mark President George Bush`s visit to London two weeks ago. But complex legal arguments, which are still on-going, meant a delay.

America has been moving rapidly in recent weeks to solve the Guantanamo problem which has seen strained relations with a number of countries whose citizens are held at the same base.

Last week Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, indicated that although a deal was not yet done with Britain, they had finished questioning two of the nine detainees, thought to be Rasul and Iqbal.

An American diplomat also recently announced the release of 20 other non-British inmates. Australia has also agreed a deal on its nationals held there.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, have consistently made it clear that they wanted to see the suspects sent back to face British justice. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, has also made trips to Washington to try to secure a deal.

British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who is working with the suspects, said he was confident that a deal had been struck.

`The British Government has finally realised it has to help the Americans out of the corner they have painted themselves into,` he said. `This deal will most likely consist of the British having to plead guilty on some nonsense charge and come back here to serve their sentence.

`However it seems highly improbable that Iqbal and Rasul will be charged with anything. There simply is nothing there.`

It appears that Downing Street would be comfortable with some charges being brought but it is clear that the British Government could not guarantee a trial of anyone sent back to the UK, one of the original demands made by the US.

`The Americans just want these people to plead guilty so that it looks as if they have been telling the truth that these are all "bad dudes",` Stafford Smith said. `We know that is nonsense. There is no evidence of any kind against them. In one man`s case all he was doing was running a school.`

Stafford Smith said Iqbal had been taken abroad for an arranged marriage by his parents who were concerned about his `westernised ways`, including a fondness for Manchester United.

He disappeared on his stag night and turned up several weeks later in an Afghan jail. At the time the US was offering local people $4,500 to hand in `foreign Taliban fighters`.

`The idea this rowdy football supporter from Tipton is a terrorist is laughable,` Stafford Smith said. `He doesn`t know how to load a gun.`

The families of the two men had not been told of the imminent deal but professed delight if their relatives were to be returned home. Iqbal`s sister, Nasreen Iqbal said: `We have heard nothing about this at all. If it is true then obviously we would be very happy but I don`t really want to say anything until we know the details for sure.`

· A US Army intelligence officer was charged yesterday with violating security at the camp - the fourth worker at the base accused of such violations.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Militia factions threaten Iraq peace hopes
Coalition leader warns of threat from maverick groups and a lack of potential leaders as transfer of power nears

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, in Baghdad
Sunday November 30, 2003
The Observer

Iraq`s US-led governing body yesterday pledged to move against independent militias that refuse to be incorporated into the country`s new security forces.

The move came as part of its efforts to guarantee the country`s stability during the transfer of power to a new government next summer.

Amid fears that militias loyal to various figures on Iraq`s governing council could dangerously unsettle efforts to encourage the emergence of a new unified leadership, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, deputy to America`s proconsul in Iraq Paul Bremer, indicated yesterday that the issue was now a priority in the transfer of power.

A number of figures who sit on the governing council, the body picked by the US to represent Iraqi interests, represent groups with militia formations, including the Shia Badr Brigade and Ahmad Chalabi`s Iraqi Free Forces.

`The governing council is being encouraged to think very carefully about the degree to which militias need to be persuaded to work within the new state security structures,` Greenstock told The Observer yesterday.

The issue of the militias has long been a thorny one. A number of members of the governing council would like to see them incorporated into a special security force they say can root out terrorism more effectively than the coalition forces. But others regard them with suspicion.

Greenstock delivered his comments during a wide ranging assessment of the risks facing Iraq over the next six months in the run-up to the handover of power and in the three-year period until general elections in 2006.

In contrast to many in the Coalition Provisional Authority who have tried to play down the impact of the continuing guerrilla attacks on international forces and Iraqis working with them as no more than a minor irritation in an overall success story, Greenstock is tough in his assessment of the situation, believing that it is precisely the security threat that could derail the project for Iraq`s political reconstruction.

`It is nasty out there,` he said. `That is the effect that terrorism achieves. The reality is that you may only really be isolated in a few spots, but you feel under threat everywhere. That is the effect of random violence. You have to protect everywhere. And that is why the terrorists have to be faced down by Iraqi society.`

Unusually, Greenstock is prepared to admit there is a risk that the US and its coalition partners could ultimately fail. But he also believes that the measures being undertaken by the CPA and its Iraqi partners to rebuild the country politically, economically and socially will eventually succeed. It is, he says, contingent in large measure on defeating and isolating the guerrillas.

`It is doable,` he said. `There are small numbers of these people who have a large impact in terms of political effect. It is why the timetable for the exchange of power is so important - so that Iraqis can see it as a timed process and that they can be involved in creating a stable Iraq.`

Greenstock is under few illusions about how Iraqis feel about the present situation in their country. `We remain convinced that Saddam is hugely unpopular,` he said. `Violence is unpopular, and the occupation is hugely unpopular. But that last problem is finite.

`There has been a weakness in the presentation of policies by the governing council and to the media and that is something that we have been trying to address in the last month.`

A second key issue that he identifies is a problem of leadership.`The difficulty is that there are many of the govern ing council who are viscerally against anyone who smacks in any way of the old regime,` he said.

You sense that although he skirts around it, what worries Greenstock most about the current crop of political leaders is whether Iraq can throw up the kind of figures, in so short a time, who can really pull the country together and turn round its fortunes.

`We are all looking for a leadership that can unify Iraq,` he said. `But the leaders in this new period have not yet had time to grow.`

The importance of the political process - and the huge investment in it - is underlined by Greenstock`s view that the time for the Iraqi people to come together is now - or face the threat of long-term communal strife.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Bush plans new nuclear weapons
`Bunker-buster` bombs set to end 10-year research ban

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday November 30, 2003
The Observer

The United States is embarking on a multimillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear arsenal, prompting fears it may lead the world into a new arms race.

The Bush administration is pushing ahead with the development of a new generation of weapons, dubbed `mini-nukes`, that use nuclear warheads to penetrate underground bunkers.

Last week, it gave a quiet yet final go-ahead to a controversial research project into the bunker-buster. The move effectively ends a 10-year ban on research into `low-yield` nuclear weapons. Critics fear it may lead other countries to push ahead with developing such weapons. It also comes at a highly sensitive time diplomatically, with the US lobbying countries such as Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear plans.

`The United States is spurring a new global arms race with our own development of a new generation of nuclear weapons,` said Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who led an unsuccessful bid in Congress to have the programme scrapped.

The new warheads are designed to use shockwaves to destroy deep bunkers even if the bomb does not reach them. Experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has shown army planners that bunkers are being built deeper and more securely. `We have to be able to match our capability to our potential targets,` one White House official said.

But critics say the weapons won`t work and doubt claims that the radiation will remain underground.

The US Army plans to convert two existing nuclear bombs - the B61 and B83. The B61 can be dropped by B-52 bombers or F-16 jets. The larger B83 has explosive yields of one to two megatons. Research will focus on hardening the bomb casings so they can penetrate layers of steel, rock and concrete.

Anti-nuclear campaigners say the B83`s large size makes its classification as a `mini-nuke` debatable. `The powers that be describe them as low-yield weapons. But that is far from the case,` said Jay Coghlan, director of Nukewatch.

Critics also question the wisdom of developing such weapons and say America`s willingness to deploy them will blur the distinction between nuclear war and conventional conflict. Bob Schaeffer, of the Anti-Nuclear Alliance, said: `It is dangerous and provocative. It is like a drunk preaching temperance to everyone else at the bar, while ordering another round.`

Leading Democrats contend that the development of the bunker-buster is part of a broader re-evaluation of America`s nuclear arsenal by George Bush`s administration. They point to signs that nuclear weapons are being given a prominent role in the post-Cold War world, at a time when many others see them as obsolete. `This White House has a dramatically different view of nuclear weapons compared with previous administrations,` said Tauscher.

`The administration`s actions are having the opposite effect by erasing the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. Russia has already indicated that it will develop new "tactical" weapons in response and no one doubts our enemies will follow suit.`

Since Bush announced a `nuclear posture review` after coming to office, the administration has taken several steps to develop and modernise its nuclear arsenal to deter a wide range of threats, including chemical and biological weapons and what the review called `surprising military developments`.

Three Tennessee Valley power stations have been selected to resume production of tritium, a substance used to increase the yield from a nuclear blast. Tritium has not been actively produced in the US for years and this is the first time civilian power plants have been scheduled for military use.

In April, the Los Alamos military laboratory in New Mexico produced the first `plutonium pit` in America for more than a decade. Plutonium pits are triggers vital to the production of nuclear weapons and officials are pushing to get funding to build an entire new facility.

Concern also surrounds plans to cut the time needed to bring American underground nuclear testing sites back into working condition. Currently the time needed would be 24 months, but the administration has pushed for funds to reduce that to 18 months. While officials insist the US has no plans to resume nuclear testing - which would breach an international ban - critics say the enhanced preparations for a resumption are worrying.

`Why are they even talking about this now, unless something is planned? It makes no sense to us. America has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, but it did not stop 9/11,` said Schaeffer.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Britain caught between Nato and EU as Rumsfeld flies in
By Stephen Castle in Naples
30 November 2003


The Government was last night battling to calm American fears over its deal on European Union defence, ahead of the arrival of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, in Brussels today for talks at Nato.

A controversial package of measures on defence dominated a meeting in Naples which backed plans for an EU foreign minister, and heard calls for the main issue blocking a deal on a new European constitution to be fudged.

Although it was hailed as a "breakthrough" by France, the text of the defence deal between London, Berlin and Paris has still not been agreed, apparently because Washington has not given the UK the green light to sign up.

Under fire from his critics at home, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, insisted that the plans to build up Europe`s defence capabilities would not undermine the transatlantic military alliance.

Mr Straw insisted that he was a "100 per cent signed-up Atlanticist", describing Tony Blair as "200 per cent". But it was clear that American objections could still wreck the deal struck by senior officials in Berlin last week. The Foreign Secretary said: "There is a process of discussion to take place with our partners. This has to be done on a consultative basis."

Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, was reported to have telephoned two EU ministers during the talks at Naples, though Mr Straw said he had last spoken to Mr Powell on Thursday. However it will be Mr Rumsfeld, the Pentagon hawk, rather than the doveish Mr Powell, who will present the main obstacle to the deal under which the EU would gain an operational military planning cell for the first time.

Leaks of the agreement in the French press suggest Franco-German plans for a separate HQ will be scrapped. But the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, added to the confusion when he said that details were still be discussed and he hoped for the "most ambitious solution".

At their meeting yesterday, the Italian presidency of the EU laid down ground rules under which groups of countries will be able to engage in closer defence co-operation, if they have the capability, by 2007, to intervene in operations of up to four months` duration.

Mr Straw claimed that any one of the 25 present and future EU nations would have veto on the launch of a mission by the smaller group. But that interpretation did not appear to be borne out by a new protocol circulated by the Italian presidency last night.

The meeting failed to solve any of the key outstanding issues which are blocking agreement on the constitution, due to be finalised at a summit on 12-13 December. But it moved several steps closer to a series of likely compromises and backed a plan for an EU foreign minister combining the roles of Javier Solana, the foreign policy representative appointed by member states, and Chris Patten, the European Commissioner for external relations.

The UK still objects to the term "foreign minister" but the weakness of his opposition was illustrated by the fact that Mr Straw used the term himself. The big blockage rests with Spain and Poland which have both rejected proposals to abolish member states` weighted votes in EU decision-making, agreed in Nice in 2000, which favour them disproportionately to their population size.

Mr Straw pressed for a delay on a decision on a new system, because the 2000 Nice Treaty voting plan is legally bound to stay in place until 2009. He argued: "It`s only 2003 now, why do we have to have an unnecessary argument about this? Why not have a rendez-vous clause [delaying the decision until a later point] for somewhere closer to 2009, and in the light of experience we can then decide whether Nice is working or it`s not working." His suggestion that this plan was being floated by the Italian presidency drew a rebuff from Italy`s foreign minister, Franco Frattini. He said: "We have not spoken in terms of a rendez-vous clause. That would be totally mistaken." But he did say that, with the system being in place until 2009, "there will be a chance to see whether it works".

Germany is determined to get a deal on a new system outlined in the draft constitution under which decisions would need the support of 50 per cent of countries representing 60 per cent of the EU population. But Germany`s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, said he left Naples "more concerned" about divisions. "There is the question whether the enlarged Europe will meet the challenges or fall back."
30 November 2003 11:59



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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November 30, 2003
PREWAR PLANNING
Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was Done
By JOEL BRINKLEY and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 29 — In the months before the Iraq invasion, Iraqi exile leaders trooped through the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department carrying a message about the future of their homeland: without a strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread looting and violence would erupt.

"On many occasions, I told the Americans that from the very moment the regime fell, if an alternative government was not ready there would be a power vacuum and there would be chaos and looting," said Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a longtime ally of the United States. "Given our history, it is very obvious this would occur."

Similar warnings came from international relief experts and from within the United States government. In 1999 the same military command that was preparing to attack Iraq conducted a detailed war game that found that toppling Mr. Hussein risked creating a major security void, said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who headed the command.

But as Pentagon officials hurriedly prepared for war last winter, they envisioned Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein`s government as far more manageable.

That miscalculation and the low priority given to planning for the aftermath of Mr. Hussein`s fall have taken on new significance with the recent wave of deadly attacks and the Bush administration`s abrupt decision this month to accelerate its timetable for transferring control to the kind of Iraqi authority that leading exiles were calling for a year ago.

The exiles were among the most energetic cheerleaders for the war, and critics of the Bush administration have accused some of them of skewing the facts in the process. But more than a dozen of the leaders who have returned to Iraq said in interviews here that they had also warned about the chaos that could follow.

The fact that the administration embraced their encouragement to go to war but apparently discounted their warnings is an insight into the Pentagon`s prewar planning.

"I told them, `Let there not be a political vacuum,` " said Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi author and college professor who said he had consulted with several senior administration officials and met twice with President Bush.

In many ways the war plan drove the postwar plan, senior military officials said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the invasion force be kept as small as possible, prompting his commanders to build an attack plan based on speed and surprise. Any recommendations for sending more troops to maintain order afterward would probably have collided with the war plan, the officials said.

Besides, the plan for after the Iraqi government fell assumed that Iraqi troops and police officers would stay on the job — an assumption that proved wrong. "The political leadership bought its own spin," said one senior Defense Department official involved in the planning, in part because it "made selling the war easier."

Senior administration officials acknowledged that they had considered these warnings before the war, but defended their judgments.

"The United States government did extensive, detailed contingency planning for post-Saddam Iraq," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The Pentagon developed plans to cope with catastrophes that did not occur, like widespread oil field fires and large-scale refugee flows.

The shortcomings in the planning became immediately apparent to some exile leaders after Baghdad fell. Rend Rahim Francke, who on Nov. 23 was appointed Iraq`s ambassador to Washington, said: "When people started looting and the Americans just watched, what it did was legitimize lawlessness. `It`s O.K. No problem.` And we are still suffering from it now."

Iyad Alawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord exile group, said, "I am not sure there was any strategy."

In fact, the Army`s Third Infantry Division said in an after-action report that when it arrived in Baghdad it had no instructions, no mission statement.

"Despite the virtual certainty that the military would accomplish the regime change, there was no plan for oversight and reconstruction, even after the division arrived in Baghdad," the report said.

For years the passion of Iraqi exile leaders was not just freeing Iraq from Mr. Hussein but also figuring out what would become of Iraq after he was gone.

They wrote papers and held conferences. Most of them had not visited Baghdad for decades, and they carried on their work from the United States, Britain or Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq.

Starting in the fall of 2002 they received calls to meet with officials in the State Department, the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House, including Mr. Bush.

They hardly spoke with a unified voice, or presented a single clear strategy for how to avoid the current conditions in Iraq. Some of them were self-interested, promoting a war that could bring them new power. Critics of the Bush administration have pointed to Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, as an exile who fed the officials exaggerated information to encourage the invasion.

But Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an interview that "while there`s been a caricature of D.O.D. talking to Chalabi, the fact is we talked to lots of Iraqis."

The common warnings of unrest from the exile leaders were partly drawn from Iraq`s history.

Some made the point, for example, that looting had accompanied other leadership crises in Iraq. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, looting was rampant in "liberated" areas, Iraqi officials said. "The pillaging and looting was unbelievable," said Barham Salih, premier of the southeastern part of the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq.

The exile leaders were hardly a lone voice. Leaders of aid groups said they also warned about a lack of security in Iraq after the fall of the government. Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International and a former Pentagon spokesman, said, "It should have been expected."

In fact, it had been. The 1999 war-game exercise, which envisioned an American-led military overthrow of Mr. Hussein, "surfaced a lot of problems," said General Zinni, the former chief of the United States Central Command. But none perhaps as serious, he said, as the security void that would follow the collapse of Mr. Hussein`s rule in Baghdad.

Some of the exiles said they told American officials that the void would be partly filled by the Iraqi police officers and elements of the Iraqi Army, which they said would remain in place, but only if an Iraqi-led provisional government was appointed. "The people would see that another government had been established, and they would have had confidence to stay in their jobs," said Mr. Barzani, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

The American-led occupation authority appointed the Iraqi Governing Council instead, but United States officials have said that one reason it has not been more effective is discord among representatives of various factions of Iraqi society.

But to Iraqis, one reason for the troubled occupation is discord within the United States government. "This country fell victim to the intense struggle within the U.S. government over Iraq policy," Mr. Makiya said.

Last fall, experts from the State, Defense and Treasury Departments and other agencies began writing the outlines of plans for dealing with potential civilian crises in postwar Iraq, establishing a new government and other issues. But, officials said, the White House failed to resolve a feud between the State Department and the Pentagon over which department would oversee the mission, a fight that was settled only in January when Mr. Bush chose the Pentagon.

One issue in the feud was what kind of provisional government would be established. The Pentagon favored an authority led by Iraqi exiles, but the State Department was skeptical that exiles like Mr. Chalabi, who had not lived in Iraq in decades, could lead effectively.

The planning that did occur for Iraq after the Hussein government fell relied on several pivotal assumptions that turned out to be wrong, including the expectation that parts of the Iraqi Army and police force would remain intact. Mr. Feith, the Pentagon under secretary, said the assumptions about the police were based partly on a C.I.A. assessment that predicted that the force would "have respect even after the regime went away." The police never showed up.

Within the military, planning for the peace was a low priority. An early team assigned to that mission, Joint Task Force 4, was an understaffed orphan among the war-plotting teams churning out battle plans, military aides said.

In the end, administration officials appeared to have formed their views by picking and choosing from the advice offered. Mr. Makiya cautioned about the political vacuum, but also told Mr. Bush that American troops entering Baghdad would be greeted with "sweets and flowers."

In a speech just days before the war began, Vice President Dick Cheney said American troops would "be greeted as liberators."

The dangers of the political vacuum were real, Mr. Makiya said. As for the sweets and flowers message, he now says, "I admit I was wrong."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

November 30, 2003
RESOURCES
Oil Experts See Long-Term Risks to Iraq Reserves
By JEFF GERTH

As the Bush administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars to repair the pipes and pumps above ground that carry Iraq`s oil, it has not addressed serious problems with Iraq`s underground oil reservoirs, which American and Iraqi experts say could severely limit the amount of oil those fields produce.

In northern Iraq, the large but aging Kirkuk field suffers from too much water seeping into its oil deposits, the experts say, and similar problems are evident in the sprawling oil fields in southern Iraq.

Experts familiar with the Iraqi oil industry have said years of poor management damaged the fields, and some warn that the current drive to rapidly return the fields to prewar capacity risks reducing their productivity in the long run.

"We are losing a lot of oil," said Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq`s former oil minister. He said it "is the consensus of all the petroleum engineers" involved in the Iraqi industry that maximizing oil production may be detrimental to the reservoirs.

A 2000 United Nations report on the Kirkuk field said "the possibility of irreversible damage to the reservoir of this supergiant field is now imminent."

American officials acknowledge the underground problems, but figuring out how to address them is a quandary for the United States. The Bush administration and the Iraqis are banking on oil revenues to help pay for Iraq`s reconstruction, and American officials say aggressively managing the reservoirs is crucial to keeping oil and revenue flowing. But so far, American officials have steered clear of delving below ground, partly, they say, out of fear of adding to suspicion in the Arab world that the United States invaded Iraq to control its oil.

The above-ground versus below-ground debate also raises the question of whether the American-led reconstruction effort is intended just to repair damage from the war or to improve conditions beyond what they were before the invasion.

When Wayne Kelley, a Texas oil engineer, and other experts asked about attending to Iraq`s oil reservoirs during a government conference for contractors in July, Army Corps of Engineers officials said their mission was restoring war-damaged facilities, not "redeveloping the oil fields," according to a transcript of the meeting.

But in a recent interview, Rob McKee, a former top executive with ConocoPhillips who took over last month as senior oil adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, said that while some might overstate the underground problems, he believed that the reservoirs did demand attention.

"It`s bad," Mr. McKee said in a telephone interview, "but it will not be catastrophic and especially overnight." Still, he said, it is crucial to collect data, and do engineering on the problem.

Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, the Houston oil services and engineering company managing the Iraqi oil-repair job, said Iraq`s present production levels and the administration`s future oil goals "cannot be sustained without reservoir maintenance."

Thamir Ghadhban, a senior adviser to the Iraqi oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, disputed that view and predicted that production would return to prewar capacity of three million barrels a day by the end of 2004; current production is at slightly more than two million barrels a day. At the same time, he said in an interview, "we should do much more than we have in the past" to maintain the reservoirs. "We definitely have to put more money into it and bring in consultants," he said.

The Army Corps of Engineers has already set aside $1.7 billion for maintaining Iraq`s oil supply, and the money has been split between paying for imported fuel and fixing the Iraqi pipes, pumps and transfer stations, officials say. About $2 billion has been approved for oil infrastructure repairs next year, including about $40 million to begin the study of the reservoirs. But managing the reservoirs could be a long and expensive process involving complicated computer simulation and changes in extraction techniques.

This work is particularly important, oil experts say, because while Iraq sits on one of the world`s largest deposits of oil, most of it is drawn from two older fields, Rumaila in the south and Kirkuk in the north.

The complications in Iraq are common in aging fields, whose management is a balance of geology, physics and economics. Engineers often compare oil reservoirs to a bottle of soda, which has a high level of energy when full but loses energy as it is depleted. Engineers use a variety of methods to maintain the pressure needed to bring the oil to the surface, including injection of gas or water into the fields.

Pumping oil too quickly can upset the balance, leading to more gas and water migrating into the wells and ultimately making extraction of oil uneconomical. Oil experts said Saddam Hussein demanded high production, but United Nations economic sanctions precluded Iraq from acquiring the sophisticated computer-modeling equipment and technology required to manage older reservoirs properly. As a result, despite the ingenuity of Iraqi engineers, the fields have suffered.

Oil experts working for the United Nations found that some reservoirs in southern Iraq "may only have ultimate recoveries of between 15 percent and 25 percent of the total oil" in the field, as compared with an industry norm of 35 to 60 percent.

Before the United States-led invasion, the Iraqis sought outside help in managing its reservoirs. "Kirkuk was of particular concern and particular urgency," said Maury Vasilev, senior vice president of PetroAlliance Services, a Russian oil-field company that held discussions last year with Iraq`s Oil Ministry. He said that because of the water content in the wells, "there was a question of how much oil they could recover."

More recent estimates of Kirkuk`s condition are also bleak. Fadhil Chalabi, a former top Iraqi oil executive now based in London, said Kirkuk`s expected recovery rate had dropped to 15 percent from 30 percent. An American oil executive said Iraqi engineers recently told him that they were now expecting recovery rates of 9 percent in Kirkuk and 12 percent in Rumaila without more advanced technology.

Iraq`s problems were well known to the United States before the war. The Energy Infrastructure Planning Group, set up by senior Bush administration officials in September 2002 to plan for the oil industry in the event of war, learned that Iraq was reinjecting crude oil to maintain pressure in the Kirkuk field.

"Iraqis acknowledged it was a poor practice," said one administration expert involved with the group, and as the main war wound down, the Iraqis "were unequivocal that that practice had to stop and right away."

But it did not. The amount of oil being reinjected is now 150,000 to 250,000 barrels a day, down from as much as 400,000 barrels a day last summer, said Mr. McKee, but he added that he had never encountered such a practice in his long career in the oil industry.

The reinjection of oil was a clear sign of trouble in the underground reservoirs, but the energy planning task force decided not to address them, partly for political reasons, according to participants.

"We didn`t want to give fuel to the fire of debate that was saying the U.S. was just doing this to steal the oil," an administration official said.

Task force participants said there was another potential political factor. The group had secretly decided, without soliciting bids, that the contract for fixing Iraq`s oil infrastructure would go to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of Halliburton, which had an existing Pentagon contract related to war planning. Halliburton was previously run by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Everyone realized the selection of K.B.R. was going to look bad," said one task force member.

K.B.R. and others made a case that reservoir management was necessary, and the occupation authority asked Congress for the $40 million now set aside for reservoir management. But Ms. Hall, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said this month that those underground tasks had been "pulled and are not being funded" even though reservoir maintenance is crucial to even present production.

Mr. McKee, however, said the financing was not canceled, but just "pushed back for a short while."

There is not yet a firm price tag for modernizing Iraq`s oil industry, but it is clear it will be enormous.

Edward C. Chow, a former Chevron executive who is now a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates that it will cost $20 billion to restore Iraqi production to prewar levels.

Mr. McKee said he believed that Iraq could get back to the prewar production capacity of three million barrels a day under current budgets.

But even he is cautious.

"How sustainable that would be is a question," he said.


Joel Brinkley contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad, Iraq



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

November 26, 2003
Q&A: Non-lethal Weapons

From the Council on Foreign Relations, November 26, 2003


What are non-lethal weapons?

Non-lethal weapons (NLW) are intended to incapacitate people and equipment while limiting unnecessary loss of life and damage to property and the environment. Some NLW deliver blows or electric shocks, spread slippery material that makes roads impassable, or disperse rapid-hardening foam to limit access to or disable machinery. Non-lethal weapons, some already available and some in development, can also disable explosive devices and block radio or television broadcasts.

How are they different from regular weapons?

Most armaments designed for military use destroy targets through blast, fragmentation, or penetration, according to a 1999 Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force Report, "Non-lethal Technologies: Progress and Prospects." (A new, updated task force report on non-lethal weapons will be released in January 2004.) Experts say NLW, by contrast, have reversible, temporary effects. "Most of what`s available today is relatively short-range, blunt-impact kinetic munitions," says Marine Colonel David P. Karcher, director of the Defense Department`s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD). "They`re essentially improved versions of what a city police department would have."

Would NLW have applications in Iraq?

Yes. In Iraq, U.S. soldiers face guerrilla warfare, the use of human shields, and so-called intermingled targets--assailants hiding in crowds of innocent people or tanks parked next to hospitals or schools. NLW could effectively target attackers without causing unnecessary loss of life or property damage, experts say.

What are the most commonly used NLW?

Experts say there is a wide range of NLW available for use, including:

Chemical

Tear gas.
Pepper spray. It causes an intense burning sensation on the contact area. The use of both tear gas and pepper spray is strictly regulated under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Blunt Impact

Rubber bullets/rubber balls. Fired at the ground, they bounce and ricochet off people in a crowd.
Square bean bag rounds, cloth pouches filled with pellets.
Sock rounds, a bean bag with a fabric tail to stabilize it in flight.

Diversionary

Flash/bang grenades that explode with a bright flash and loud bang.
Tasers that deliver an electric shock.
High Intensity Directed Acoustics (HIDA), which emit a 3,000-watt blast of disabling noise.
Weapons that use light, sound, heat, or smell to halt or disperse suspects.

Anti-vehicle

Caltrops, metal devices used to deflate tires.
Stinger Spike Strips, tiny needles placed in strips on the ground to deflate tires.
X-net, a spiked net that can stop vehicles at checkpoints.

What are NLW most useful for?

Experts say non-lethal weapons are best for military policing activities, including: crowd control or dispersal, protecting convoys and other forms of "route control," moving or guarding prisoners of war, and security details or guard duty. "Non-lethal weapons are a complementary way, along with the use of lethal force, for the commander to accomplish his mission," Karcher says. "What we find most useful today are the shotgun and 40-mm beanbag-type munitions." JNLWD, the unit Karcher heads, was established in 1997. It has a staff of 19 and a $43 million budget for 2004--up from $24.2 million in 2003. It is dedicated to educating the military about NLW and aiding the armed services in developing effective NLW applications.

Who uses them?

Various police forces around the world use different types of NLW to pacify subjects and perform crowd and riot control. In Iraq, the U.S. armed forces are using six non-lethal capability sets (NLCS), at a cost of $1 million each, experts say. Each NLCS has supplies for 200 soldiers and contains a range of NLW, including expandable batons, 12-gauge "point" rounds made of sponges, riot helmets, riot shields, and Caltrops. The units using the NLCS include the 80th Military Police Brigade, the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit and the 101st Airborne in Mosul.

Would wider use of NLW help U.S. soldiers in Iraq?

Many experts say yes. Colonel John T. Boggs, Marine Corps military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the situation in Iraq--a guerrilla insurgency with local support--makes it vital that U.S. soldiers are able to exercise force discriminately. "If you understand the nature of what you`re dealing with, you`ll have to change tactics and weapons systems to meet it," he says. "What you don`t want to do is make enemies out of potential friends." Experts say the capability provided by NLW is invaluable. "A level of force between `shoot` and `don`t shoot` solves a lot of problems," says Richard L. Garwin, the Philip D. Reed senior fellow and director in Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Why isn`t NLW use more widespread in Iraq?

Experts say it is very costly to develop, build, and test NLW technology. "It`s a substantial amount of time, because we have to get it right," says Karcher. He says the U.S. military tested rubber bullets but removed them from use because they decided the risk of accidental injury was too high. A new NLW currently takes between 18 months and several years to go from conception to use by the armed forces, Karcher says. Garwin says that new NLW technologies--like the Active Denial System, a debilitating heat wave that has a range of several hundred yards--are promising, but are not being supplied in the numbers needed. Garwin says the armed forces are not equipping enough of their troops with the available NLW and have not invested enough of their limited resources in product improvement. "The evolution of consumer electronics or sports equipment is far more rapid than that we have achieved with NLW and capabilities," he says.

Could NLW help establish order in Iraq?

Experts disagree. Many think that use of NLW by U.S. forces in Iraq would reduce inadvertent casualties by soldiers--shooting drivers who fail to stop at roadblocks, for example--and increase goodwill between Iraqi civilians and coalition forces. Others say NLW could be an extra distraction for soldiers who already have enough to worry about in combat situations. Some military leaders have expressed concern that soldiers using NLW will be vulnerable to renewed attack by conventional arms. But Karcher says that having access to NLW will make both soldiers and civilians safer, because soldiers often do not react to potentially dangerous incidents with lethal force for fear of harming innocent people. "I`ve seen Marines and soldiers accept more risk to themselves in order to reduce risk to the civilian population," says Karcher. In Kosovo, he says, angry Serbs would pelt U.S. Army troops with rocks, sticks, and wooden boards with exposed nails; the American soldiers didn`t strike back, even after some of them were bleeding from the assaults, he says.

What other types of NLW might be useful in Iraq?

An Army report analyzing the use of NLW in Iraq this summer indicated that soldiers in Iraq most need NLW that could help them separate gunmen from human shields in crowds; sweep areas through which convoys were moving; suppress fire from rocket-propelled grenade launchers without killing nearby noncombatants; and stop suicide car and truck bombers at checkpoints.

Is there support for NLW in the military and Washington?

"There`s a building groundswell," says Karcher. The Defense Department nearly doubled the budget for the JNLWD this year, but experts say a lot more money is needed. Garwin estimates that it would cost some $200 million to $400 million per year to "jump start the deployed capability in Iraq and equip our forces for the new realities of warfare and the pursuit of the nation`s security goals." Karcher, a Marine who served in Grenada, Lebanon, Liberia, and Somalia, says NLW would have helped in many of those conflicts. "We didn`t have them, and I wish we had," he says.

-- by Esther Pan, staff writer, cfr.org



Copyright 2003

[Joerver]

After he was ousted, Mohammed Mossadegh, head on hands, was found guilty of treason and imprisoned in Iran.
November 30, 2003
IRAN AND GUATEMALA, 1953-54
Revisiting Cold War Coups and Finding Them Costly
By STEPHEN KINZER

SOON after the C.I.A. installed him as president of Guatemala in 1954, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas visited Washington. He was unusually forthright with Vice President Richard M. Nixon. "Tell me what you want me to do," he said, "and I will do it."

What the United States wanted in Guatemala — and in Iran, where the C.I.A. also deposed a government in the early 1950`s — was pro-American stability. In the long run, though, neither Colonel Castillo Armas nor his Iranian counterpart, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, provided it. Instead, both led their countries away from democracy and toward repression and tragedy.

How did this happen? From the perspective of half a century, what is the legacy of these two coups?

Several dozen scholars, including leading experts on Iran and Guatemala, gathered in Chicago this month to consider those questions. Their conclusions were grim. All agreed that both coups — the first that the C.I.A. carried out — had terrible long-term effects.

"It`s quite clear that the 1953 coup cut short a move toward democracy in Iran," said Mark J. Gasiorowski, a historian at Louisiana State University who began studying that coup in the 1980`s. "The United States bears responsibility for this."

Iranians wrote a constitution and elected a parliament early in the 20th century. Their progress toward democracy stopped after the Pahlavi dynasty took the throne with British help in 1921, but resumed after World War II. By the time of the 1953 coup, Iran was more free than at any time before or since.

The verdict on Guatemala was even harsher. Within a few years after the 1954 coup, Guatemala fell into a maelstrom of guerrilla war and state terror in which hundreds of thousands of people died.

"The C.I.A. intervention began a ghastly cycle of violence, assassination and torture in Guatemala," said Stephen G. Rabe, a historian from the University of Texas at Dallas and author of "Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism."

"The Guatemalan intervention of 1954 is the most important event in the history of U.S. relations with Latin America," Mr. Rabe said. "It really set the precedent for later interventions in Cuba, British Guiana, Brazil and Chile. The tactics were the same, the mindset was the same, and in many cases the people who directed those covert interventions were the same."

President Harry S. Truman authorized creation of the C.I.A. in 1947, and during his administration it carried out covert actions. Truman refused, however, to authorize the overthrow of governments. That changed when Dwight D. Eisenhower became president in 1953.

On Aug. 19, 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran became the first victim of a C.I.A. coup. Ten months later, on June 27, 1954, President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala became the second.

The recent Chicago meeting, at Northeastern Illinois University, was the first time scholars have considered these two coups together. Some of the participants have taken anti-interventionist positions in the past, but all are respected scholars in their fields. Several have devoted years to studying either the Guatemala coup or the one in Iran. Some now see them as constituting a single historical moment, the beginning of an era of C.I.A.-backed coups around the world.

Eisenhower ordered these coups for a combination of economic and political reasons. Elected Iranian and Guatemalan leaders had challenged the power of large Western corporations, Mr. Mossadegh by nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Mr. Arbenz by forcing the United Fruit Company to sell some of its unused land for distribution to peasants. American officials charged that both were leading their countries toward Communism, but recent research suggests that the likelihood of Communist takeovers in Iran and Guatemala was exaggerated.

Mr. Mossadegh pursued a neutralist foreign policy and cooperated with Communist members of parliament to win approval of social reforms, but was not inclined to socialism. American officials who were assigned to monitor Communist movements in Iran during the 1950`s admitted years later that they had routinely overstated the strength of these movements.

Mr. Arbenz was more sympathetic to socialist ideas, and bought weapons from Czechoslovakia after Washington blocked access to other sources. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sought to link him to a Soviet bid for influence in the Americas. "Fifty years later," Mr. Rabe said, "still no link has been established."

After installing friendly leaders in Iran and Guatemala, the United States lost interest in promoting democracy in either country. "There was no democratic agenda," asserted Cyrus Bina, an economist from the University of Minnesota at Morris. Both countries fell into dictatorship and bloody upheaval.

In Iran, the shah`s regime imprisoned dissidents and alienated religious leaders by imposing secular reforms. Many democrats and leftists made common cause with fundamentalist clerics. "The only way they were able to develop was in the mosque," Mr. Bina said.

Fariba Zarinebaf, a historian at Northwestern University, said the most profound long-term result of the 1953 coup may be that it led many Iranian intellectuals to conclude that although Western leaders practiced democracy at home, they were uninterested in promoting it abroad. "The growing disillusion of Iranian intellectuals with the West and with Western-style liberal democracy was a major development in the 1960`s and 70`s that contributed to the Islamic revolution," she said.

If the overthrows in Iran and Guatemala marked the beginning of the coup era 50 years ago, this year`s invasion of Iraq suggests that the era has ended. Governments like Saddam Hussein`s learned to protect themselves against coups, participants at the conference said. "Conditions in the world are more constricting today and it is more difficult, I believe, to pull off coups," said Douglass Cassel, a Northwestern University law professor. In Iraq this year, the United States invaded instead. That option would probably have been closed during the cold war, when the Soviet Union was likely to have opposed it.

During the Clinton administration, American leaders expressed regret for past actions in Iran and Guatemala. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright conceded that the 1953 coup "was clearly a setback for Iran`s political development," and that "many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America." President Clinton said the United States had been wrong to support Guatemalan "military forces and intelligence units engaged in widespread repression," and pledged that it would "never repeat" this mistake.

Susanne Jonas, a professor of Latin American studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the United States should help Guatelamans implement the "truly visionary" peace accords signed there seven years ago after talks sponsored by the United Nations, with American support.

Ms. Jonas urged the Bush administration to give more financial and moral support to the United Nations mission in Guatemala, which oversees the peace process, and to use its influence over Guatemala`s military "to push along the agenda of replacing the old repressive apparatus with a new kind of security system."

"This is the only opportunity Guatemala has had since 1954," she said, "and the best one it will have over the next half century."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

November 30, 2003
The Unemployment Myth
By AUSTAN GOOLSBEE

CHICAGO

The government`s announcement on Tuesday that the economy grew even faster than expected makes the current "jobless recovery" even more puzzling. To give some perspective, unemployment normally falls significantly in such economic boom times. The last time growth was this good, in 1983, unemployment fell 2.5 percentage points and another full percentage point the next year. That`s what happens in a typical recovery. So why not this time? Because we have more to recover from than we`ve been told.

The reality is that we didn`t have a mild recession. Jobs-wise, we had a deep one.

The government reported that annual unemployment during this recession peaked at only around 6 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in 1992 and more than 9 percent in 1982. But the unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as "not in the labor force."

In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified from "not in the labor force" to "employed" in order to reduce the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been the same.

Research by the economists David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mark Duggan at the University of Maryland shows that once Congress began loosening the standards to qualify for disability payments in the late 1980`s and early 1990`s, people who would normally be counted as unemployed started moving in record numbers into the disability system — a kind of invisible unemployment. Almost all of the increase came from hard-to-verify disabilities like back pain and mental disorders. As the rolls swelled, the meaning of the official unemployment rate changed as millions of people were left out.

By the end of the 1990`s boom, this invisible unemployment seemed to have stabilized. With the arrival of this recession, it has exploded. From 1999 to 2003, applications for disability payments rose more than 50 percent and the number of people enrolled has grown by one million. Therefore, if you correctly accounted for all of these people, the peak unemployment rate in this recession would have probably pushed 8 percent.

The point is not whether every person on disability deserves payments. The point is that in previous recessions these people would have been called unemployed. They would have filed for unemployment insurance. They would have shown up in the statistics. They would have helped create a more accurate picture of national unemployment, a crucial barometer we use to measure the performance of the economy, the likelihood of inflation and the state of the job market.

Unfortunately, underreporting unemployment has served the interests of both political parties. Democrats were able to claim unemployment fell in the 1990`s to the lowest level in 40 years, happy to ignore the invisible unemployed. Republicans have eagerly embraced the view that the recession of 2001 was the mildest on record.

The situation has grown so dire, though, that we can`t even tell whether the job market is recovering. The time has come to correct the official unemployment statistics to account for those left out. The government agencies that can give us a more detailed and accurate picture of the nation`s employment situation — the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis — need additional funds and resources from Congress to do their jobs.

Otherwise, announcements about a rebounding economy will continue to show only half the picture. Take the revised numbers released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday. They showed that output in the third quarter grew at a rate of 8.2 percent, an extraordinary pace, and productivity grew even faster. Almost no one noted, though, that Social Security also announced the latest data on disability applications. Almost 200,000 people applied in October — up 20 percent from the previous month — tying the highest level ever. Despite the blistering growth of the economy, the invisible unemployment problem continues.

We didn`t have a mild recession and a jobless recovery. We covered up a deep recession and will need a sizable bit of recovery just to get us back to the point the unemployment rate suggested we already were. As the Red Queen said to Alice in "Through the Looking Glass": "Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"


Austan Goolsbee is professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

[Joerver]

November 30, 2003
The Productivity Paradox
By STEPHEN S. ROACH

Despite the economy`s stunning 8.2 percent surge in the third quarter, the staying power of this economic recovery remains a matter of debate. But there is one aspect of the economy on which agreement is nearly unanimous: America`s miraculous productivity. In the third quarter, productivity grew by 8.1 percent in the nonfarm business sector — a figure likely to be revised upwards — and it has grown at an average rate of 5.4 percent in the last two years.

This surge is not simply a byproduct of the business cycle, even accounting for the usual uptick in productivity after a recession. In the first two years of the six most recent recoveries, productivity gains averaged only 3.5 percent. The favored explanation is that improved productivity is yet another benefit of the so-called New Economy. American business has reinvented itself. Manufacturing and services companies have figured out how to get more from less. By using information technologies, they can squeeze ever increasing value out of the average worker.

It`s a great story, and if correct, it could lead to a new and lasting prosperity in the United States. But it may be wide of the mark.

First of all, productivity measurement is more art than science — especially in America`s vast services sector, which employs fully 80 percent of the nation`s private work force, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Productivity is calculated as the ratio of output per unit of work time. How do we measure value added in the amorphous services sector?

Very poorly, is the answer. The numerator of the productivity equation, output, is hopelessly vague for services. For many years, government statisticians have used worker compensation to approximate output in many service industries, which makes little or no intuitive sense. The denominator of the productivity equation — units of work time — is even more spurious. Government data on work schedules are woefully out of touch with reality — especially in America`s largest occupational group, the professional and managerial segments, which together account for 35 percent of the total work force.

For example, in financial services, the Labor Department tells us that the average workweek has been unchanged, at 35.5 hours, since 1988. That`s patently absurd. Courtesy of a profusion of portable information appliances (laptops, cell phones, personal digital assistants, etc.), along with near ubiquitous connectivity (hard-wired and now increasingly wireless), most information workers can toil around the clock. The official data don`t come close to capturing this cultural shift.

As a result, we are woefully underestimating the time actually spent on the job. It follows, therefore, that we are equally guilty of overestimating white-collar productivity. Productivity is not about working longer. It`s about getting more value from each unit of work time. The official productivity numbers are, in effect, mistaking work time for leisure time.

This is not a sustainable outcome — for the American worker or the American economy. To the extent productivity miracles are driven more by perspiration than by inspiration, there are limits to gains in efficiency based on sheer physical effort.

The same is true for corporate America, where increased productivity is now showing up on the bottom line in the form of increased profits. When better earnings stem from cost cutting (and the jobless recovery that engenders), there are limits to future improvements in productivity. Strategies that rely primarily on cost cutting will lead eventually to "hollow" companies — businesses that have been stripped bare of once valuable labor. That`s hardly the way to sustained prosperity.

Many economists say that strong productivity growth goes hand in hand with a jobless recovery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the 1960`s, both productivity and employment surged at an annual rate of close to 3 percent. In the latter half of the 1990`s, accelerating productivity also coincided with rapid job creation.

In fact, there is no precedent for sustained productivity enhancement through downsizing. That would result in an increasingly barren economy that will ultimately lose market share in an ever-expanding world.

That underscores another aspect of America`s recent productivity miracle: the growing use of overseas labor. While this may increase the profits of American business — help-desk employees or customer-service representatives in India earn a fraction of what their counterparts in the United States do — the American worker does not directly share the benefits. The result is a clash between the owners of capital and the providers of labor — a clash that has resulted in heightened trade frictions and growing protectionist risks. There`s nothing sustainable about this plan for productivity enhancement, either.

In the end, America`s productivity revival may be nothing more than a transition from one way of doing business to another — a change in operating systems, as it were. Aided by the stock market bubble and the Y2K frenzy, corporate America led the world in spending on new information technology and telecommunications in the latter half of the 1990`s.

This resulted in an increase of the portion of gross domestic product that went to capital spending. With the share of capital going up, it follows that the share of labor went down. Thus national output was produced with less labor in relative terms — resulting in a windfall of higher productivity. Once the migration from the old technology to the new starts to peak, this transitional productivity dividend can then be expected to wane.

No one wants to see that. For all their wishful thinking, believers in the productivity miracle are right about one critical point: productivity is the key to prosperity.

Have we finally found the key? It`s doubtful. Productivity growth is sustainable when driven by creativity, risk-taking, innovation and, yes, new technology. It is fleeting when it is driven simply by downsizing and longer hours. With cost cutting still the credo and workers starting to reach physical limits, America`s so-called productivity renaissance may be over before Americans even have a chance to enjoy it.


Stephen S. Roach is chief economist for Morgan Stanley.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 30, 2003
FRANK RICH
America Tunes In for the Money Shot

There`s not much meat left on Michael Jackson`s bones. He is 5 foot 11 and weighs 120 pounds. His face is falling off. But that doesn`t mean we can`t feast on him for what could be at least a year of what TV calls "celebrity justice." In that time there will be a presidential campaign, an election and war. But it`s possible that nothing, the red meat of Kobe included, will upstage the thriller from Neverland — nothing, that is, short of the kind of domestic terrorist attack that forced us to wrench our attention away from Gary Condit and rampaging sharks two autumns ago.

"Viewers can`t seem to get enough," the news director at KTLA in Los Angeles said of the Jackson saga. But why? Our knee-jerk response is to view the frenzy as another perfect storm of modern American culture: celebrity, crime and media overkill. That`s true enough, yet not quite the whole story. Mr. Jackson is a celebrity, but his superstardom is as far back in the past as it is for Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard." He has produced little new music in the last decade and hasn`t toured America since 1991. He didn`t make the top 20 in a 2001 Los Angeles Times record-industry poll naming the most valuable acts in the music business.

Mr. Jackson`s sole entertainment value for some time, in other words, has been as a freak. To say that we care about him now because he`s a celebrity or a pop star or an alleged criminal is to sanitize both his real appeal and the audience`s sleazy complicity in his spectacle. People are turned on by the Jackson story because it`s about sex, specifically pedophilia, at a time when the sexual fetishization of children is not limited to whatever may or may not have happened at Mr. Jackson`s ranch. If a mass audience can fixate on whether or not Britney Spears, a singer first marketed as a devoutly Baptist schoolgirl, has lost her virginity, it is no wonder that the Jackson sideshow would move to the center ring and become a main event.

So if anything of value is to come from this circus, let`s drop the pretense that it is about something as lofty as the American system of justice or even the lure of fame. This is a base morality tale with no heroes. The Santa Barbara district attorney, Thomas Sneddon Jr., used Mr. Jackson`s arrest as an opportunity for showboating before the cameras, cracking a joke about the jolt in sales tax income the media presence would mean for his jurisdiction. The public, while purporting to be outraged by the crime of child abuse, is hypocritically slobbering over every last speculative pornographic detail used to fill in the supposed contours of that abuse; cable news ratings immediately shot up by double digits. And those who are now taking to the public stage to intone gravely about pedophilia in the Jackson show are often trading in titillation themselves; you haven`t lived until you`ve heard Larry King bandy about the word "penetration."

When Mr. Jackson was arraigned in Santa Barbara, cable news commentators referred to the image of him in handcuffs as "the money shot." That is the porn industry`s term for the moment of ejaculation, and the talking heads were engaging in a disingenuous code for their all-too-knowing audience. The actual "money shot" in the Jackson case, should it exist, would be the most graphic possible image of him and his accuser in bed, and there`s already a clamor for it. The first step toward that goal was achieved last weekend when foreign newspapers published the name and picture of a boy believed to be the accuser and Drudge helpfully provided a link.

Instead of the carny barkers of yore, there`s a new breed of hustlers clawing their way into the act for fun and profit. Jeanine Pirro, the politically ambitious Westchester district attorney who has nothing to do with the case, has gone on a national tabloid TV show to offer her own salacious commentary on some decade-old video of Mr. Jackson`s bedroom. Former Jackson intimates with books to sell, Uri Geller and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (the author of "Kosher Sex," yet), have become ubiquitous purveyors of heavy-breathing theorization. Not far behind in media appearances is the uncle of the child in the case that Mr. Jackson settled out of court a decade ago. His name — who could make this stuff up? — is Raymond Chandler.

So far the most prolific purveyor of Jackson porn among our media giants is Viacom — specifically, that conglomerate`s CBS, MTV and VH1 networks. In February`s sweeps, when specials devoted to Mr. Jackson`s private life proved to be ratings testosterone for ABC, NBC and Fox, CBS was caught looking. Not this time. Though the network made a great show of yanking a Jackson entertainment special scheduled for last Wednesday — the official announcement deemed the show "inappropriate" — it`s hard to imagine how any rehash of Mr. Jackson`s greatest hits could be any less appropriate than the rehash of his greatest rumored hits on children in last weekend`s "48 Hours Investigates."

The hour`s anchor, Harry Smith, opened by referring to Mr. Jackson as "a middle-aged man accused of an almost unspeakable crime" — almost unspeakable but not quite, as it turned out. The first interview subject was a 9-year-old Neverland visitor, now 17, who was asked, "Who decides who gets to sleep in the same bed with Michael?" and "How many at a time?" Though the boy didn`t see his host "getting aroused," we were assured, this unfortunate lack of a money shot was rectified for viewers soon enough, when a private eye filled us in on the "great detail" to be found in a legal document`s description of the singer`s genitals. CBS, you may recall, is the same network whose C.E.O., Les Moonves, described its recent pulling of the mini-series "The Reagans" as a "moral call" predicated on the principle that networks are a "public trust."

"There are certain things that even people who buy everything won`t buy ads in, and child abuse has got to be at the top of that list," Jon Mandel, the chief global ad buyer for MediaCom, said to Bill Carter of The New York Times when discussing CBS`s cancellation of the Jackson entertainment special. But there was no shortage of advertisers when CBS broadcast "48 Hours Investigates" on Saturday night at 8 — the best time to reach children parked in front of a TV set by babysitters. J.C. Penney, Pizza Hut and RadioShack, pushing a toy tie-in for the "Cat in the Hat" movie, were all on tap. The only more lurid TV show that they could have sponsored that night occurred two hours earlier on MTV, where the definition of the "lewd or lascivious acts" of the singer`s arraignment was spelled out, complete with the appropriate bodily fluids.

Such wholesale wallowing in pedophilia is no anomaly. Dozens of Web sites are devoted to counting down to the 18th birthday of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, twin kid stars of a 1990`s sitcom who are now branding their emerging sexuality to move a merchandise line. We are only just recovering from the marathon bookselling tour enthusiastically taken by the parents of Elizabeth Smart, the abducted Utah 14-year-old. (The "money shot" everyone was looking for in that case was succinctly summed up when Oprah told the couple, "I think we all assume your daughter was sexually assaulted.") Still going strong is R. Kelly, the R & B singer due in court tomorrow on 21 counts of child pornography involving a 14-year-old girl. His new CD debuted at No. 1 in Billboard after he was charged. He also collaborated with Mr. Jackson on the one new song (titled "One More Chance," if you please) on the singer`s compilation CD — just as he has with Britney Spears on her new CD.

Ms. Spears, her ex-beau Justin Timberlake and her rival Christina Aguilera were all first spotted as pubescent sex symbols when converging as mouseketeers on the Disney Channel`s "All New Mickey Mouse Club" in 1993, the year of the last Jackson sex scandal. The media assembly line moved her along from chaste child star to Lolitaesque jailbait in record speed; her trajectory is nothing if not an Internet-time version of Mr. Jackson`s progress since his early days as a child star. By 16, Ms. Spears was wearing a Catholic school uniform in the video for her hit ". . . Baby One More Time." Her image, a fusion of sex and dewy ersatz innocence out of the Jackson family playbook, was bought not only by kids who might not know better but by the parents who shelled out for her merchandise.

It`s hard to imagine many Americans complaining about Calvin Klein ads anymore. Perhaps pedophilic chic is growing because in a porn-saturated nation, it`s the one taboo left (and barely at that). Perhaps it`s because of our culture`s ever-increasing panic about growing old, as manifested in our favorite new spectator sport, plastic surgery, for which Mr. Jackson is the unfortunate poster boy. Whatever the explanation, this phenomenon is worthy of far more debate than the jurisprudence surrounding the singer`s legal fix. After all, that debate is over; he`s already been declared guilty by the court of public opinion. Aside from Elizabeth Taylor, who would so much as entertain the notion that Michael Jackson might be the innocent victim of a hysterical "Capturing the Friedmans" scenario? Only those prudes who would pour cold water on the nation`s most popular erotic pastime.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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November 30, 2003
Unbearable Lightness of Memory
By MAUREEN DOWD

They are pretty.

Pretty and soothing.

Soothing and smooth.

Smooth and light.

Light and watery.

The eight designs for a memorial at ground zero, gleaming with hanging candles and translucent tubes and reflecting pools and the smiling faces of those killed on 9/11, aim to transcend. And they succeed.

They transcend terror. They have the banality of no evil. They represent the triumph of atmosphere over atrocity, mood over meaning. The designs are more concerned with the play of light on water than the play of darkness on life.

They have taken the heaviest event in modern American history and made the lightest memorials.

As I walked around the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, looking at the finalists in the competition held by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, it was hard to feel any connection to the grotesque evil that had crashed into innocence right outside these windows two years ago, the evil that still radiates from that huge pit and makes you mutter imprecations against Osama bin Laden.

"The designs are horribly, horribly bland," mourned Eric Gibson in The Wall Street Journal.

The ugliness of Al Qaeda`s vicious blow to America is obscured by these prettified designs, which look oddly like spas or fancy malls or aromatherapy centers. It`s easy to visualize toned women with yoga mats strolling through these New Age pavilions filled with waterfalls and floating trees and sunken gardens and suspended votives. Mass murder dulled by architectural Musak.

The designs are reflections of our psychobabble culture, exuding that horrible and impossible concept, closure. Our grief and anger have been sentimentalized and stripped of a larger historical and moral purpose.

Even the names of the models sound like books by Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson: "Garden of Lights," "Inversion of Light," "Votives in Suspension," "Suspending Memory," "Reflecting Absence," "Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud." All ambient light and transient emotion — nothing raw or harsh or rough on which the heart and mind can collide.

The spontaneous memorials that sprang up right after 9/11, both near ground zero and at police and fire stations around the city, had more power and raw passion. What`s missing from the designs is some trace of what actually happened on this ground. Why not return that twisted metal skeleton cross to the site, the one that made the World Trade Center ruins such a chilling and indelible memory for the thousands of Americans who flocked to ground zero in the months after the attack?

That`s what makes other memorials, like Pearl Harbor`s sunken Arizona, which still emits oil bubbles almost 62 years later, and the rebuilt Berlin church that retained its bombed spire, so emotionally affecting. They remain witnesses to the evils of modern history.

The fussy 9/11 designs also lack the power of narrative. With its black marble gravitas, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial tells the anguished story of how America got sucked in deeper and deeper, with the death toll rising along with the memorial`s V-shape design.

Like the White House, these designs turn away from examining what went wrong and offer no instruction. How were we so vulnerable to attack? Who are our terrorist foes? Why do they hate us? The Holocaust museum in Washington shows that you do not have to choose between reflection and instruction; it offers both.

There`s no darkness in these designs, literally or metaphorically. They have taken death and finality out of this pulverized graveyard.

At a debate last year at Columbia with Daniel Libeskind, the architect whose firm submitted the first plan, which failed to garner support, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, suggested that the site itself has so much power that a flag and a void would suffice.

"Lower Manhattan must not be transformed into a vast mausoleum, obviously," he said, "but neither must it be transformed into a theme park for advanced architectural taste."

The memorial cannot be sunshine-and-light therapy to make current generations feel they have moved beyond grief and shock. It must be witness and guide to future generations so they can understand the darkness of what scarred this earth.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Plan May Be in Flux as Iraqis Jockey for Postwar Leverage


By Robin Wright and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 30, 2003; Page A29


The latest plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq is barely two weeks old, but it already faces an array of problems that has led Iraqis and Iraq experts to question its prospects for creating a stable democratic government by July 1.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, are developing fallback options. But the Bush administration`s decision to hand over the reins in seven months has limited U.S. leverage to solve problems during this delicate period, Iraq experts say. Despite his power on paper, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer is effectively a lame duck, and everyone who disagrees with the U.S. plan knows it.

"Iraqis are now watching the calendar," said Henri Barkey, a former State Department policy planner who chairs Lehigh University`s international relations department. "There`s very little incentive to cooperate with the United States, because virtually every actor thinks he can get a better deal after the Americans leave."

"All of their activities are now designed to better their bargaining position for afterwards, not to help the United States now," Barkey said. "It`s not necessarily because they`re mean, but because the stakes are so high."

Even more daunting than the volatile security situation, administration officials concede, are assorted political skirmishes among Iraqis that jeopardize the next two big steps: writing a set of "basic laws," and selecting a provisional government to take over from the United States.

U.S. officials have been preoccupied in recent days with a demand from Iraq`s most powerful Shiite cleric for direct elections to the new government, rather than an indirect system of town hall gatherings and regional caucuses to pick delegates to a national assembly. But an even larger question now looms for the administration: Will the powerful Sunni community, which dominated Iraqi politics under Saddam Hussein, opt to boycott the process?

Large numbers appear likely to balk at the current political formula for one or more reasons: loyalty to Hussein, opposition to the plan, or fear of retribution for complying with the Americans, said Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert and senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Sunni Arabs, who account for about a quarter of the 25 million Iraqis, are also the most fearful of democracy.

"The Sunnis view democracy with terror and as the destruction of their historic role and place in society, around which they`ve built their self-image," said Edward N. Luttwak, a Middle East analyst and author of "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace." "For them it`s a double loss. First they lose their dominance, and then they don`t believe there will be any genuine protection of their rights as equals in a country with a majority Shiite Muslim population."

Sunnis may not actively protest or confront communities that do participate, but the refusal of large numbers to engage could undermine the U.S. plan or stall the political transition at the heart of Washington`s exit strategy.

At the moment, however, Bremer`s more pressing problem is navigating among rival parties willing or able to consider the U.S. plan. They fall into two broad categories: the handpicked Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by former exiles and five parties backed by the United States before the war, and the traditional leaders with far wider popular support among Shiite Muslims, Kurds and several minorities.

U.S. strategy has relied on the council to play the leading role in the transition. But in recent weeks it has become increasingly unclear whether the council "is part of the problem or part of the solution," Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes in an analysis from a recent trip to Iraq.

One way or another, key council members are vying either to shape the transition or ensure the council remains intact and a powerful body, as the U.S. plan envisions. Because many of the 24 council members probably would not fare well in open elections, they pressured Bremer to establish an indirect three-step system to select a new national assembly, which in turn would pick a prime minister and cabinet, a process so complex that many Iraqis and U.S. experts doubt it will work.

A former U.S. adviser to Bremer described the plan as "an insane selection system of caucuses, like the Iowa caucus selecting those who will vote in New Hampshire."

The U.S. plan effectively gives the Governing Council a kind of remote control because it will have the deciding vote in local caucuses that will pick a national assembly.

"The Governing Council has a veto, and that`s a bad system," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst at the National Defense University. "It`s also such a complicated formula that it seems almost guaranteed to keep power in the hands of the few, and that would not be a good thing for Iraqis to have as the first taste of elections. If they get a bad taste they may not want to do it again."

The controversy was underscored yesterday when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected the caucuses and insisted on a nationwide election, "so the assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly without its legitimacy being tarnished in any way," he said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Even if the United States can broker a compromise formula, council members are still trying to retain their leverage by arguing that the council should remain as a second legislative body, the equivalent of a senate, an idea likely to ignite further controversy, Iraq experts warn.

Alternatively, the council could try to slow the process, hoping to preempt the latest U.S. plan.

Having invested in the Governing Council as its partner, the United States is saddled with trying to find a way to accommodate the shifting balance of power in postwar Iraq -- without alienating its allies. Washington faces a danger that some council members might opt not to cooperate if they feel their positions are endangered.

"They may be unwilling to risk general elections or cooperate with a new provisional government from which they`re excluded," Yaphe said.

A further challenge lies ahead for the United States over the Basic Law, a forerunner of Iraq`s proposed constitution. It will enshrine principles to be formalized at a constitutional convention after the U.S.-led occupation ends.

The law will have to address the two most contentious issues at the heart of the future political system: First, what is the role of Islam, with some favoring separation of mosque and state, and others favoring adoption of Islamic law. Second, what kind of federal state will be crafted from diverse ethnic groups, with some wanting autonomy and others favoring strong national rule.

Two weeks ago, the administration decided to defer the constitutional convention, fearing that arguments among Iraqis could complicate or drag out the transition. Already, however, Iraqis and Iraq experts say the same issues must be decided for the Basic Law.

Administration officials also concede the U.S. plan may not yet be in final form.

"Whether there are modifications [to the plan] is ultimately up to the Iraqis," a senior administration official said. "The basic framework is going to remain. But will it be tweaked? Probably."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The Bush Betrayal


By David Boaz

Sunday, November 30, 2003; Page B07


In 2000 George W. Bush campaigned across the country telling voters: "My opponent trusts government. I trust you."

Little wonder that some of his supporters are now wondering which candidate won that election.

Federal spending has increased by 23.7 percent since Bush took office. Education has been further federalized in the No Child Left Behind Act. Bush pulled out all the stops to get Republicans in Congress to create the biggest new entitlement program -- prescription drug coverage under Medicare -- in 40 years.

He pushed an energy bill that my colleague Jerry Taylor described as "three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics . . . a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington."

It`s a far cry from the less-government, "leave us alone" conservatism of Ronald Reagan.

Conservatives used to believe that the U.S. Constitution set up a government of strictly limited powers.

It was supposed to protect us from foreign threats and deliver the mail, leaving other matters to the states or to the private sector -- individuals, families, churches, charities and businesses.

That`s what lots of voters assumed they would get with Bush. In his first presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush contrasted his own vision of tax reduction with that of his opponent, who would "increase the size of government dramatically." Gore, Bush declared, would "empower Washington," but "my passion and my vision is to empower Americans to be able to make decisions for themselves in their own lives."

Bush was tapping into popular sentiment.

In fact, you could say that what most voters wanted in 2000 was neither Bush nor Gore but smaller government. A Los Angeles Times poll in September 2000 found that Americans preferred "smaller government with fewer services" to "larger government with many services" by 59 to 26 percent.

But that`s not what voters got. Leave aside defense spending and even entitlements spending: In Bush`s first three years, nondefense discretionary spending -- which fell by 13.5 percent under Ronald Reagan -- has soared by 20.8 percent. His more libertarian-minded voters are taken aback to discover that "compassionate conservatism" turned out to mean social conservatism -- a stepped-up drug war, restrictions on medical research, antigay policies, federal subsidies for marriage and religion -- and big-spending liberalism justified as "compassion."

When they`re given a chance to vote, Americans don`t like big government.

Last November 45 percent of the voters in the most liberal state in the Union, Ted Kennedy`s Massachusetts, voted to abolish the state income tax.

In January, Oregon`s liberal electorate rejected a proposed tax increase, 55 percent to 45 percent.

In September Alabama voters rejected Gov. Bob Riley`s $1.2 billion tax hike by 2 to 1.

California voters tossed out big-spending Gov. Gray Davis, and 62 percent of them voted for candidates who promised not to raise taxes to close the state`s deficit.

Bush and his aides should be worrying about the possibility that libertarians, economic conservatives and fed-up taxpayers won`t be in his corner in 2004 in the same numbers as 2000.

Republican strategists are likely to say that libertarians and economic conservatives have nowhere else to go. Many of the disappointed will indeed sigh a deep sigh and vote for Bush as a lesser evil.

But Karl Rove, who is fascinated by the role Mark Hanna played in building the post-1896 Republican majority, should remember one aspect of that era: In the late 19th century, the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland was known as "the party of personal liberty." More so than the Republicans, it was committed to economic and cultural laissez-faire and opposed to Prohibition, protectionism and inflation.

When the big-government populist William Jennings Bryan claimed the Democratic nomination in 1896, many assumed he would draw industrial workers from the Republicans and bring new voters to the polls. Instead, Bryan lost in a landslide, and turnout declined for the next few elections. As the more libertarian Democrats found less reason to go to the polls, the Republicans dominated national politics for the next 36 years.

It could happen that limited-government voters decide to stay home, or vote for an independent candidate in the mold of Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura or vote Libertarian.

They could even vote for an antiwar, anti-Patriot Act, socially tolerant Democrat.

Given a choice between big-government liberalism and big-government conservatism, the leave-us-alone voters might decide that voting isn`t worth the trouble.

The writer is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of "Libertarianism: A Primer."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Killing of Spaniards, Japanese Fuels Debate on Iraq
Sun November 30, 2003 07:44 AM ET


By Andrew Marshall
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The killing of seven Spanish intelligence agents and two Japanese diplomats in ambushes in Iraq sparked fresh debate on Sunday in countries allied to the United States on the risks of joining the Iraq mission.

Within hours, two more foreigners, possibly Koreans, were badly wounded not far from where the Japanese died on Saturday.

The U.S. Army said two American soldiers had also been killed on Saturday when guerrillas attacked their convoy with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades near the Syrian border. The attack brought to 187 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.

Reuters journalists near Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit saw two seriously wounded men in a car that had been shot up on the same highway where the Japanese diplomats were shot dead at a roadside stall. Local people said the men were Korean. U.S. troops were treating one man. The other was slumped lifelessly.

South Korea is considering send more troops to Iraq on top of 675 medical and engineering soldiers deployed since May. But, as in Japan and other nations, the issue is a controversial one.

In Spain, where public opinion was widely against center-right Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar`s support for the U.S. invasion, Saturday`s killing of the seven agents south of Baghdad reignited longstanding doubts about the role of around 1,300 Spanish troops helping to control south-central Iraq.

"Spain pays a high price," the left-leaning newspaper El Pais said in an editorial. The El Mundo daily described the killings as: "Deaths which require explanations and reflection."

BODIES ABUSED

The Spanish were killed by guerrillas firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Witnesses said a crowd then descended on the crippled vehicles, kicking the corpses and shouting slogans in support of fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein.

On Sunday morning, youths were jumping on the wreckage and pulling apart one burned-out car.

"We`re happy about what happened," said 20-year-old Abdul Qader, a student. "We don`t like the Americans or the Spanish."

Defense Minister Federico Trillo flew to collect the bodies.

Opposition socialists put aside their stiff objections to the war to join the outpouring of sorrow for the dead and wounded and support for their relatives. Other opposition parties demanded Trillo`s resignation and a troop withdrawal.

JAPAN`S CHOICES

In Tokyo, Japan`s foreign minister confirmed that two diplomats were killed in an ambush on Saturday as they traveled to a seminar on reconstruction in Saddam`s hometown of Tikrit.

The killings are certain to complicate Tokyo`s fraught decision on when to send troops to Iraq.

Political analysts have said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi risks a serious blow to his popularity if troops are sent to Iraq and deaths occur, an especially unwelcome prospect with an election for parliament`s Upper House set for next July.

But Koizumi said on Sunday Japan would not be deterred.

"Japan must not give in to terrorism. We will firmly carry out our responsibilities for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. There is no change in this," he told reporters.

"Why does this kind of thing happen? I am furious."

Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald, spokesman for the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, said the Japanese diplomats were attacked along with their driver when they stopped at a roadside stall on the way to Tikrit.

"The three had stopped to buy food and drink when attackers fired small caliber weapons at them," he told reporters.

Japan has passed a special law to enable it to send troops to Iraq, but in line with the nation`s pacifist constitution, they can only be sent to "non-combat zones" and must take part only in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

Japan`s plans to send troops were put on hold earlier this month after a suicide attack on an Italian base in the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya killed 19 Italians and nine Iraqis in the deadliest attack so far on multinational forces in Iraq.

After the bombing, Japan sent a fact-finding team to southern Iraq, where the Japanese would be based. Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the mission had reported that the area was relatively stable. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker in Latifiya, Dean Yates in Tikrit, Emma Graham-Harrison in Madrid and Linda Sieg and Masayuki Kitano in Tokyo)

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U.S. Bases Grapple With Infiltration by Iraqi Fighters
A foiled plot against the commander of 5,000 troops around Mosul points to a vulnerability: heavy reliance on local translators and workers.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

November 30, 2003

MOSUL, Iraq — The would-be assassins studied the colonel`s routine.

They carefully tracked the movements of his Humvee as it came and went at the U.S. military base in this northern city.

"They said they were going to put bombs outside the gates, because they knew I had to come in and out of the gates," said Col. Joe Anderson, who commands about 5,000 troops occupying Mosul and surrounding towns.

Ultimately, the plot was foiled, its alleged ringleader arrested and the cell behind it broken up, Anderson said.

But the case underscores a fundamental dilemma facing U.S. authorities in Iraq.

The U.S. military here is dependent on thousands of Iraqi translators, contractors, laborers and others who toil at coalition bases and other official installations. Most have proved exceedingly loyal, U.S. officials stress. And most are happy to have relatively well-paying jobs in a nation whose war-ravaged economy offers sparse hope for many.

Yet some may be reporting back to the insurgents, perhaps for a price. That may be how those targeting Anderson learned his daily routine.

The issue of infiltration is one that confronts every occupation army fighting an insurgency.

"Those are always concerns in this kind of environment," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said Saturday at a Baghdad news conference. "We try to do the best we can to maintain a very close eye on those kinds of issues, because that possibility always exists … given the numbers of Iraqis that we`re hiring for translation and support inside of our compounds."

Officials do conduct basic background checks, although the Army has acknowledged great gaps in its intelligence about Iraq. Police officers and other security personnel who work closely with the military are vetted for past activities with Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party and military rankings.

Even the U.S.-trained Iraqi police force — touted as perhaps the military`s greatest ally here — has been found suspect. This summer, Marines in the central city of Najaf busted a ring of police officers allegedly organizing attacks on U.S. troops.

Sanchez said Saturday that other Iraqi police had been implicated in other anti-coalition violence.

"We have brought [the police] back on board; we`ve had great successes out of them," the general said. "But at the same time, there have been incidents where the police have been conducting attacks against the coalition and working against the people. So that`s always a possibility. We remain very conscious of that — and focused on ensuring that it doesn`t happen."

Talk about possible insurgent infiltration of coalition sites has resounded in Iraq for months.

Speculation has focused on several high-profile incidents, starting with the August bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Among the 22 killed was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. chief here at the time. The truck — carrying more than 1,000 pounds of military-grade munitions — was parked on a side street within about 15 yards of Vieira de Mello`s office. Media speculation focused on the possibility that he was the target, with some theorizing that the attackers knew from informants where he was at the time.

But investigators tended to downplay the "inside job" scenario. One FBI official noted that the bomb-laden truck had been parked at the spot closest to the building. Security was later found to be seriously flawed at the U.N. compound.

Last month, talk of infiltration surfaced again when rockets hit Baghdad`s Rashid Hotel, which the coalition then used to house officials, visitors and civilian workers. Among the guests at the time was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, an architect of Washington`s Iraq policy, who was uninjured in the rocket barrage. A U.S. military officer was killed in the attack.

Officials here have since announced a number of arrests and said Wolfowitz`s presence was probably a coincidence.

In the case of Anderson, he said the Army got word of a plot aimed at him. "There was a cell actually targeting me specifically," said Anderson, who is a well-known figure in Mosul, appearing often on TV and radio.

The would-be assailants were planning to go after the military commander as he jogged around the compound or as he went through the compound`s gates in his Humvee, Anderson said.

The suspected ringleader was identified as a former member of the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary unit under the old regime.

"We`ve got some nasty guys — some real McCoys, if you will," Anderson said. "He`s behind bars, but he`s being very uncooperative…. Nothing we`re going to do is going to break this guy."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-…
COMMENTARY



Them`s Fightin` Words
By Geoffrey Nunberg
Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist at Stanford University.

November 30, 2003

"We did not … defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins." That was President Bush addressing troops in Baghdad during his holiday drop-in, picking two terms from the long list of epithets for the bad guys in Iraq.

A CBS News report last week used five different names in the space of a couple of paragraphs. It was headed "Series of Strikes on Iraq Rebels," and it went on to say, "U.S. forces assaulted dozens of suspected guerrilla positions, killing six alleged insurgents … amid a U.S. drive to intimidate the resistance…. Soldiers arrested an organizer of the fedayeen guerrillas."

Thugs, assassins, rebels, guerrillas, insurgents, resistance and fedayeen — everybody has been struggling to find the right term for the enemy in Iraq. True, as long as it`s unclear who is behind the attacks, it`s probably prudent to cover all the bases.

But the variation also signals a deeper problem in interpreting the news coming out of Iraq. The media may be making a valiant effort to cover the good news, but no one`s sure what story line to wrap around the bad. Just which movie are we screening here?

Take "the resistance," which Merriam-Webster`s defines as "an underground organization of a conquered or nearly conquered country engaging in sabotage and secret operations against occupation forces." That seems to fit the present situation on all counts, right down to the "or nearly conquered" part.

Still, you can understand why papers like the Los Angeles Times would demur from describing the fighters as "the resistance," a name that conjures up stirring World War II heroics, a la "Casablanca" and "Passage to Marseille," this before the French were recast as duplicitous surrender monkeys. (You could see Sydney Greenstreet as Ahmad Chalabi but Paul Bremer deserves better than Conrad Veidt.)

The other words have problems too. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "insurgent" as "one that revolts against civil authority" and "rebellion" as "open, armed and organized resistance to a constituted government." But both words seem a little optimistic for Iraq right now, where civil authority and "constituted government" are thin on the ground. Then too the words have awkward heroic resonances of their own: They bring to mind the good guys in "The Empire Strikes Back" or more disquietingly, "Lawrence of Arabia." (I picture Alec Guinness saying, "The English have a great hunger for desolate places.")

Bush`s "thugs" and "assassins" trail inauspicious associations too. The assassins were originally members of a radical Ismaili sect in medieval Syria who were sent out to murder the Crusaders by a reclusive ascetic known as "the old man of the mountains," who never was captured. (A popular myth links the name of the cult to the hashish that its members chewed.) And thugs were originally the disciples of thuggee, murderous Indian banditry that the British finally suppressed in the 1830s after a messy, decade-long campaign. The cult lives as a model for villains in Orientalist melodramas, from Wilkie Collins` "The Moonstone" to "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

For a while, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was pushing "bitter-enders," which brought to mind those Japanese holdouts in the caves of Saipan and Tarawa (recall Jeffrey Hunter in "Hell to Eternity"). But if you depict the task in Iraq as merely a mop-up operation, you have to acknowledge at some point that it isn`t going very well.

Hence the shift to describing the situation as "a low-intensity conflict, a guerrilla war," as Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of the country, put it recently. Those terms put the engagements on a different footing — what were disturbing postwar security problems have now become merely minor skirmishes in an ongoing "postwar" (as a few journalists have taken to rendering the word) battle.

When rockets were launched at two Baghdad hotels from donkey carts last week, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt dismissed the attacks as a "militarily insignificant" effort to grab headlines. (And so it did — a Reuter`s follow-up story was headed "Life worsens for Iraqi donkeys under U.S. suspicion," which sounded like a line from a plot summary of "The Secret of Santa Vittoria.")

But it was notable that Kimmitt went on to refer to the perpetrators with the singular "he" that soldiers have used since Kipling`s day to confer a grudging respect on the enemy. "He`s an inventive, ingenious enemy."

So it`s understandable that some people should be looking for a new word for enemy that isn`t charged with unwanted associations. Back in June, Bremer started to refer to those resisting the coalition presence as "rejectionists," adapting a term that has been used since the 1970s for Arab groups and governments opposed to a negotiated peace settlement with Israel. Recently the new use of the word has begun to pop up in other places — Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) used it in a recent op-ed piece.

It would take quite a while for any new nameto establish itself and for a story line to cohere around it, particularly if the screenplay has to be written from scratch. But it`s looking as if there will be time for that.


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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Sie haben Lügen für ihre Propaganda benutzt
von John Pilger
Socialist Worker / ZNet 21.11.2003


In seinem neuesten Film "Breaking the silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror ", der im September im britischen Fernsehen lief, entlarvt der Journalist und Dokumentarfilmer John Pilger die Lügen, die Bush und Blair benutzten, um ihren Krieg gegen den Irak zu führen.

Im folgenden Interview, das Anthony Arnove für den Socialst Worker mit ihm führte, erklärt er, warum die USA in diesen Krieg zogen und warum sich die Besatzer in der Krise befinden.

In ihrem neuen Dokumentarfilm bringen sie die Beweise an den Tag, dass Colin Powell und Condoleezza Rice wussten, dass der Irak keine Bedrohung darstellte. Können Sie diese Beweise beschreiben?

Diese ergeben sich aus ihren eigenen Worten. Ich fand einige außergewöhnliche Spuren während der stundenlangen Suche nach Aussagen der Bush-Bande, die ich für "Breaking the silence" verwendete.

Am 24. Februar 2001 sagte Powell in Kairo, Ägypten: "Er [Saddam Hussein] hat in Bezug auf Massenvernichtungswaffen kein sichtbares Potential entwickelt. Er ist nicht in der Lage, konventionelle Macht gegen seine Nachbarn zu gebrauchen." Dies ist natürlich das Gegenteil von dem, was Bush und Blair ihren Bürgern mitteilten.

Powell rühmte sich sogar damit, dass es die US-Politik der "Eindämmung" gewesen sei, die den irakischen Diktator effektiv entwaffnet habe - wiederum das Gegenteil von dem, was Bush und Blair immer wieder behauptet haben. Am 15. Mai 2001 ging Powell noch weiter und stellte fest, dass Saddam nicht in der Lage gewesen sei "sein militärisches Rückgrat aufzubauen und in den letzten zehn Jahren Massenvernichtungswaffen zu entwickeln." Amerika sei erfolgreich gewesen sei, ihn "in seinem eigenen Schlamassel" sitzen zu lassen.

Zwei Monate später beschrieb Condoleezza Rice den Irak als schwaches, geteiltes und militärisch wehrloses Land. "Saddam kontrolliert den nördlichen Teil seines Landes nicht", sagte sie. "Unser Ziel ist es, zu verhindern, dass er an seine Waffen gelangt. Ihm ist es nicht gelungen, seine Streitkräfte wieder aufzubauen."

Es gab hier also zwei hohe Beamte aus Bushs Umgebung, die sich für ihre anschließende eigene Propaganda der Lüge bedient haben.

Da nun der Krieg offiziell vorüber ist, inwieweit hält Tony Blairs "Dossier" über die irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen der genauen Prüfung stand?

Dabei handelt es sich um eine Witzfigur. Ein Teil des Dossiers ist ein Plagiat einer Doktorarbeit, die von einem amerikanischen Student verfasst wurde. Selbst seine Rechtschreibfehler wurden übernommen und Ausdrücke wie "Oppositionsgruppen" wurden durch "terroristische Gruppen" ersetzt. Es im Ernst eine inkompetente Lüge. Der Rest des Dossiers wurde von Blairs obersten Geheimdienstbeamten widerlegt, sogar vom Stabschef des Geheimdienstes während der Hutton-Untersuchung.

Haben Sie irgendwelche Informationen gefunden, die beweisen, dass der Irak Beziehungen zu al-Qaeda unterhielt?

Keine. Tatsächlich sind der Präsident der USA und sein Verteidigungsminister meine beiden besten Quellen, die innerhalb weniger Tage unabhängig von einander im September genau die Vorstellung, dass der Irak und al-Qaeda verbündet seien, zurückgewiesen haben. Das ist der Maßstab ihres Zynismus. Belüge die Nation und die Welt, so dass die Mehrheit der Amerikaner dir glaubt und dann widerlege das Ganze still und heimlich. Wenn man sich sämtliche Berichte anschaut, so gibt es keinen Beweis, dass sich al-Qaeda-Mitglieder - sogar momentan nicht - im Irak aufhalten. Sie können vielleicht dort sein, aber, wie bei den Massenvernichtungswaffen, gibt es dafür keinen Beweis.

Was halten Sie von den Behauptungen der Bush-Administration, dass der Widerstand gegen die Besetzung des Irak von "ausländischen Terroristen" ausgeht?

Wie ironisch klingt es, wenn US-Regierungsbeamte von "ausländischen Kämpfern", welche die Amerikaner angreifen, sprechen. Das hört sich an, als ob Amerikaner Iraker seien oder dass die Iraker gar nicht existierten.

Wie Robert Fisk schon ausgeführt hat, befinden sich 200 000 ausländische Kämpfer im Irak, von denen 146 000 US-Uniformen tragen. Es mag sehr wohl ausländische Kämpfer im Irak geben. Die angloamerikanische Invasion war ein Angriff auf die arabische Welt, und es würde mich nicht überraschen, einen pan-arabischen Ad-hoc-Widerstand zu erleben. Die französische Résistance wurde von Ausländern, ganz besonders von Briten, unterstützt und schreckliche Dinge geschahen. Es gibt keinen Unterschied. Die Propaganda zielt jetzt darauf hin, die Wahrheit über einen nationalen Widerstand zu vernebeln.

Ob sie es nun mögen oder nicht, aber für viele Iraker verkörperte Saddam Hussein einen gewissen Nationalismus und die so genannten "Überreste Saddams" sind Nationalisten. Der Irak ist eine so stolze Gesellschaft und nicht in Stämmen aufgeteilt, wie es uns einige westliche Kommentatoren weismachen wollen.

Die Besetzung weist Parallelen zu Vietnam auf, besitzt aber die größte Ähnlichkeit mit der sowjetischen Katastrophe in Afghanistan. Und sie hat noch gar nicht ernsthaft begonnen. Das wird geschehen, wenn die Schiiten den ersten Zug machen.

Soviel ich weiß, formiert sich heimlich eine schiitische Armee; sie sind traditionell geduldig und warten auf ihren Augenblick, so wie sie es im Iran unter dem Schah taten. Die Besetzung und Bush befinden sich in ernsthaften Schwierigkeiten.

Warum, glauben Sie, dauerte es solange bis die Massenmedien besonders in den USA über die Beweise für den Betrugs und die Verzerrung durch die Regierung berichteten?

Die Massenmedien sind der verlängerte Arm des Staates. Das ist eine Binsenweisheit, die fast nie auf den Journalistenschulen gelehrt wird. Werfen wir einmal einen Blick zurück auf die Mac-Carthy-Zeit; lesen wir die Zeitungen, hören uns die Radioarchive an. Von einigen ehrenwerten Ausnahmen abgesehen, herrscht ein unheimliches Echo der Gegenwart. Fast während seines gesamten Aufstiegs wurde Mac Carthys üblen Verleumdungen von den Massenmedien weiter verbreitet und verstärkt.

Sogar der große Edward R. Murrow wartete bis 1954, bevor er Mac Carthy, der zu der Zeit an Glanz verlor, denunzierte. Erst als Mac Carthy seine irren Anschuldigungen machte, das US-Militär sei von Kommunisten durchsetzt, geriet er ins Schwimmen und nicht dank der Medien. Jetzt im 21. Jahrhundert schlugen die Massenmedien blinden Alarm zugunsten des Extremismus. Charles Lewis, der das Center for Public Integrity (Zentrum für öffentliche Ehrlichkeit) leitet und früher als Journalist bei CBS arbeitete, sagte mir, er sei der Meinung, wenn die Medien Bushs Täuschungen nicht herausgefordert hätten, wäre es nicht zu einer Invasion gekommen, sie wären enthüllt und damit unhaltbar geworden. Dem stimme ich zu.

Die potentielle Macht der Journalisten besteht darin, als Vertreter der Wahrheit und der Menschen und nicht der Propaganda und der Macht zu handeln. Es wird Zeit, dass Journalisten, die ihr Handwerk ernst nehmen, anfangen ihr Gewissen zu untersuchen und damit aufhören, ihren Verstand und ihre moralischen Empfindungen zum Wohle des Berufs zu entzerren.

Wenn also Massenvernichtungswaffen und Verbindungen zu al-Qaeda auf betrügerische Art zustande gekommene Rechtfertigungen für die Invasion des Irak waren, was, denken Sie, waren die wahren Motive?

Es ging natürlich ums Öl und die direkte Kontrolle des Nahen Ostens. Amerikas Stellvertreter Saudi Arabien ist momentan unzuverlässig. Die USA wollten den Irak, ein ganzes Land, sowohl als militärischen Stützpunkt als auch als Quelle für ihr Öl. Lesen Sie einmal die ersten Berichte, die Bush und Cheney kurz nach ihrer Amtseinführung zu sehen bekamen. Ein Bericht des Council on Foreign Relations (Rat für Beziehungen zum Ausland) ist bemerkenswert wegen der Warnungen, die er enthält und im Effekt aussagt: "Begebt Euch jetzt dort hin und holt das Öl, bevor es zur Neige geht oder China es sich nimmt."

Die Invasion war auch ein "Demonstrationskrieg", wie Alexander Haig ihn nannte. Sie demonstrierte die absolute Raubgierigkeit der Extremisten um Bush und ihre Entschlossenheit, der Menschheit ihre Art von Kapitalismus überzustülpen. Von der Invasion ging eine Botschaft aus: "Nehmt Euch in Acht. Ihr könntet als Nächste an der Reihe sein."

Wie sehen die Lebensbedingungen der normalen Iraker aus?

Ich kann persönlich nicht sagen, wie die Bedingungen sind. Aber Freunde dort erzählen mir, dass es - wie einer schrieb - "eine Hölle ist, die wir nie erwartet hatten". Ein Institut in Bagdad hat die erste glaubwürdige Umfrage seit der Invasion durchgeführt und herausgefunden, dass die Mehrheit der Iraker glaubt, die Lage für normale Menschen sei schlimmer als unter Saddam Hussein.

Es gibt sicherlich mehr Gefangene - wenigstens 4000 und wahrscheinlich noch viele mehr wurden verhaftet. Es gibt Kollektivstrafen, Folter und die Verletzung aller verbrieften internationalen Rechte. Amnesty Internationals Berichte darüber könnten aus jedem totalitären Staat stammen.

Sie haben kürzlich das Nachkriegs-Afghanistan besucht. Was können wir über die Besetzung des Irak von den Bedingungen dort lernen?

Wir können lernen, dass die USA die unbestrittene Fähigkeit besitzen, schwache und wehrlose Länder zu zerstören, aber kaum die Fähigkeit diese direkt danach zu kontrollieren. In Afghanistan verschanzen sich die Amerikaner auf dem Luftwaffenstützpunkt Bagram, was mich sehr stark an den Stützpunkt in Pleiku in Vietnam erinnert.

Sie sind umgeben vom Misstrauen und Hass und sie haben kein Interesse daran, den Versuch zu unternehmen, eine ähnliche koloniale Situation aufzubauen, welche den Briten ermöglichte mit wenigen Soldaten ganze Bevölkerungen zu kontrollieren. Ich glaube, dass die USA aus dem Irak vertrieben werden und die Auswirkungen werden für Bush genau so ernst sein, wie diejenigen in Vietnam für Präsident Lyndon Johnson.

Wie werden die USA Ihrer Meinung nach auf die gegenwärtige Krise reagieren? Glauben Sie, sie werden versuchen die Initiative wieder zu ergreifen?

Die USA haben die materielle und die militärische Macht, deshalb ist das möglich. Es würde aber künstlich und kurzlebig sein.

Was, glauben sie, sollte den Vorrang bei der Antikriegsbewegung haben?

Direkte Massenaktionen auf unterster Ebene. In jeder kleinen Stadt, in jedem Stadtviertel sollten Stimmen gehört werden und Leute bereit sein, alle Risiken des zivilen Ungehorsams auf sich zunehmen.

Lasst uns das in Amerika machen, was die Menschen in Bolivien kürzlich in ihrem kleinen veramten Land gemacht haben, wo sie den Präsidenten stürzten. Kommt in Schwung. Tretet in Kontakt mit den Angehörigen der GIs, die im Irak dienen oder die dort getötet und verwundet wurden.

Denkt daran, dass die Antikriegsbewegung die demokratische Opposition ist. Es gibt momentan keine andere. Die Möglichkeiten und die Verantwortung sind jetzt klarer als zu jedem anderen Zeitpunkt, an den ich mich erinnern kann.





[ Übersetzt von: Tony Kofoet | Orginalartikel: "Dieser Artikel ist NICHT auf zmag.org erschienen!" ]
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Theatrics Of It All In Iraq
Ellis Henican





November 30, 2003

It was one of those moments of charming distillation that occasionally present themselves in the rear sections of airplanes.

This was Thanksgiving eve. The plane was Air Force One. And Richard Keil, a White House beat reporter for Bloomberg News, was jammed into the press area with Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Jim Angle of Fox News and 10 other media types. The departure had been sudden. The secrecy was total. The destination was Baghdad.

George W. Bush was leaving his family behind at the ranch in Crawford and paying a visit on some of the 130,000 war-weary U.S. troops he is keeping uncomfortably in Iraq.

As the plane took off from Texas and sped at 665 miles an hour toward a brief stopover at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, the reporters on board were all trying to sort out exactly what they were being dragged along on.

A slightly incredulous Keil adjusted his 6-foot-3-inch frame - "Stretch," Bush sometimes calls him - leaned out of his seat and announced in a voice loud enough to be heard across the back of the plane:

"The president of the United States is AWOL, and we`re with him. The ultimate road trip!"

Yes, Keil had his finger on something. But as he and the others discovered quickly, it wasn`t quite Thelma and Louise.

This trip had been planned by the president`s closest aides over the past five weeks. It was staffed for maximum media exposure. It was timed for the slowest of slow news days.

And the result - no question about it - was a remarkable piece of political theater.

As remarkable, you`d have to say, as the president`s last big theatrical turn: his May 1 "Mission Accomplished" swoop-down on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, when he strode up to the cameras in a flight suit and declared major combat had ended in Iraq.

Uh, maybe not!

You see. That`s the problem with these presidential photo stunts. Eventually, the facts have a way of catching up with them. Today`s rave review is tomorrow`s dangling embarrassment - and then where are you? - symbolizing something very different from what was intended.

Almost seven months after the "Mission Accomplished" swoop-down, war still rages in Iraq. The end is nowhere in sight. Security is getting worse - not better. We lost more American soldiers in November than in any previous month. More U.S. troops now have been killed and injured after the supposed end of combat than before.

And the film footage from that giddy day in May is now more likely to enliven a commercial for one of the Democrats now running for president - not Bush`s re-election campaign.

Strong as the symbols are, clear as the imagery may be, smoke-and-mirrors won`t neutralize a dogged enemy, won`t improve a war plan that is flawed, won`t force the headstrong zealots at the Pentagon to pull us out of the mess they`ve put us in.

The problem isn`t the theater, it`s the war.

Lyndon Johnson learned that painful lesson the hard way, more than three decades ago.

His photogenic war zone was Vietnam. He flew in twice to visit with the troops, in 1966 and 1967. On both occasions, he showed up unannounced at the U.S. military command at Cam Ranh Bay. The pictures looked great.

Johnson`s trip, like Bush`s, got terrific coverage. Shots of President Johnson shaking hands with the troops hit the front pages of papers across America. Others led the TV news. The trip was declared a brilliant political stroke in the face of growing opposition to the war.

Like Bush`s turkey trot to Baghdad, it was full-fledged shock-and-awe for the cameras, targeting hearts and minds at home and abroad.

And then, despite the two visits and all the pretty pictures, Johnson`s war kept going to hell.

American losses kept growing. The Viet Cong would not back down. The generals kept promising success around the corner. The success did not materialize. And the war grew less popular by the week.

In November of 1967, Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy declared his candidacy for president, pledging he would end the war at once. It was a message millions were ready to hear.

In January, the Viet Cong launched their giant Tet Offensive, reaching all the way to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The North Vietnamese took heavy casualties. Scholars still argue about the military impact. Two things were certain: Washington`s commitment was rapidly fading, and the PR victory clearly went to Hanoi.

In February, the Viet Cong killed 2,800 civilians at Hue. The U.S. casualty rate hit a weekly high, 543 killed.

It was in March that Johnson, sounding like a thoroughly beaten man, accounted he would not seek reelection as president. All those glad-handing photos - all those sit-downs with the troops - weren`t enough to save his war or his presidency.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nyhen303563909nov3…

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The Neocon Ant Colony
By Bill O`Neill
Tom DeLay and his followers are like one of those glass-sided ant houses. They show us how the whole industrious neoconservative colony works. Take his stances on the balanced budget issue. In 1996 he was one of the leading advocates of shutting down the government over the issue. He opposed Bob Dole`s efforts at compromise with the Clinton administration. "If [Bob Dole] wants to cave in to the wishes of the White House he can do it ... but we are going to get a balanced budget," DeLay said (New York Times, Jan. 4, 1996). Under the Bush administration, however, he has pushed every tax cut, apparently unworried about the record deficits. And, to top it all, he has now authorized debate on the House floor of a balanced budget amendment.

Balanced budget is important. Balanced budget is not important. Balanced budget is important. Do you get the feeling that he doesn`t give a flatulent emission about a balanced budget? Yet, these flips and flops are conducted with great energy. They must have survival value. As we look through the glass of the DeLay-led neocon ant colony we can see two distinct activities: 1) a great grabbing of money for wealthy supporters, friends, and family. (Tom has a brother, Randy, who gets paid lots of money to lobby for various forms of corporate money grabbing. Space limits prevent getting into the relevant Bush and Cheney money channels, as in Carlyle Group. Read Joe Conason`s book Big Lies.) 2) An energetic public display of vote-getting pieties -- balanced budget, flag burning, religious fundamentalism, something nice about family -- which camouflage them as being regular guys and get them reelected so they can continue with number one.

Tom DeLay`s political career seems to have begun with the banning of DDT. The replacement chemical cost his Houston company, Albo Pest Control, more money, reducing its profits. He pronounced the EPA "the Gestapo," put down his spray gun and took up politics. Since becoming a congressman he has routinely allowed corporate lobbyists to write anti-environmental legislation, tried to gut the Clean Air Act, favored drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Preserve, and sponsored a bill to cut the EPA`s budget by a third (Jan Reid in Mother Jones Sept/Oct 1996). The corporate supporters get what they pay for. Corporate profits are important. Corporate profits are important. Corporate profits are important. No flips. No flops.

Is it that simple? Just something he learned from his former adversaries at Albo Pest Control -- an ant-like obsession with hoarding up treasure and a clever use of ant-like camouflage? Only here the ant simile breaks down a bit. The camouflage is not to avoid predators, but to lure voters. It`s really sucker bait. Republicans have used the three f`s of fundamentalism, flag and family, as sucker bait for years. Bush senior admitted after his election that he planned no attempt at a pledge-of-allegiance law, the issue he had railed about all through the campaign. He knew what Tom knows: The thing about sucker bait is that you can use it again next election, and next, but only if you don`t do something stupid, like make it into law. Oh, they introduce a bill or two, a flag burning amendment, a prayer-in-school law, a balanced budget amendment. They get the Dems to vote against the flag and against praying and against a balanced budget, and then they quietly mothball them, put them back in the closet for next election.

DeLay`s career makes this essential truth of our politics transparent. His religious fundamentalism, for example, seems to have developed simultaneously with the growth of same in his district of Sugar Land, Texas (see Jeff Goodell`s "The Exterminator of Capitol Hill," Rolling Stone, May 10, 2001). When he blamed the Columbine massacre in part upon the fact that evolution was taught there, his remark was quoted widely as evidence of dim-wittedness. But he may not really be that dumb. As sucker bait it was brilliant.

And DeLay neocon patriotism is made of the same stuff. Virtually all neocon pols dodged the draft during Vietnam while vocally supporting the war. See Al Franken`s chicken hawk chapters. Tom said that "true patriots" such as he and Dan Quayle couldn`t find a place in the military because of all the minority people who had signed up. Hey, Progressive Populist readers, he doesn`t expect us to believe that, but heads nodded agreement in Sugar Land.

The Ten Commandments in granite are put in the public square for the purpose of being hauled away by liberals. The culture war is World Wrestling Federation stuff. Only the clueless believe it.

In trying to understand these guys we have thought too hard. They are not that complicated. It`s the money, folks. George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize winning economist got it exactly right. Referring to the Bush administration`s economic policies, he says, "What we have here is a form of looting" (Spiegel Online 2003). Some conservatives, Sen. John McCain for one, undoubtedly operate on principle. But for the DeLay neocons, and that seems to be most of them these days -- White House crew included -- it`s sucker bait and it`s looting, and it should be as clear to us as a glass-sided ant colony.

Bill O`Neill is a retired English professor in Stout, Wis.

http://www.populist.com/03.22.oneill.html

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November 30, 2003
Shevy`s big mistake: Crossing Uncle Sam
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
The latest recipient of Washington`s "regime change" was not some miscreant Muslim state but the the mainly Christian mountain nation of Georgia.

Eduard Shevardnadze, the 75-year-old strongman who has ruled post-Soviet Georgia`s 5.1 million citizens since 1991, was overthrown by a bloodless coup that appears to have been organized and financed by the Bush administration.

Shevardnadze`s sin, in Washington`s eyes, was being too chummy with Moscow and obstructing a major U.S. oil pipeline, due to open in 2005, from Central Asia, via Georgia, to Turkey. Georgia occupies the heart of the wild, unruly, and strategic Caucasus region, which I call the Mideast North.

In recent months, Shevardnadze had given new drilling and pipeline concessions to Russian firms.

He should have recalled the fate of Afghanistan`s Taliban regime, which, like Georgia, was a U.S. client and recipient of American aid until it turned down a major pipeline deal with an American oil firm and awarded it to a Latin American consortium.

Shevardnadze was no democrat.

He rigged elections, used goon squads to silence opponents, survived two assassination attempts and ran Georgia like a medieval fief.

But he was also a fascinating man, as I found when extensively interviewing him in Moscow in 1989 when he was foreign minister of the Soviet Union.

"Shevy-Chevy," as we used to call him, looked like an amiable grandfather, with his wispy white hair and bulging eyes. In fact, he had been the tough, ruthless party and KGB boss of Georgia. Yet this dedicated communist became Mikhail Gorbachev`s right hand man in implementing glasnost and perestroika reforms. He played a decisive role in ending the Cold War and breaking up that criminal empire, the USSR.

Like Gorbachev, Shevardnadze became a hero in the West, but was reviled at home as a traitor and wrecker. Many Russians believed Gorby was a British agent and Shevardnadze a CIA "asset."

After the USSR`s collapse, Shevardnadze returned to Georgia and, backed by U.S. funding, seized power from the fiery post-independence leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who may have committed suicide or been murdered.

Poor and beautiful

Georgia is wild, turbulent, dirt poor and very beautiful. I still savour the memory of the majestic, mist-shrouded mountains of Abkhazia, the lovely Black Sea coast that recalls the French Riviera, and Georgia`s famed, highly potent yellow wines.

Georgia has been a battleground for much of its 2,500-year history. Its knights and warriors, who fought under the banner of St. George, waged an heroic struggle against the Persian, Ottoman and Russian empires. Georgia and neighbouring Armenia are the two oldest existing Christian nations. Georgian, Albanian and Basque are Europe`s oldest living languages.

Like all mountain states, Georgia is deeply divided by topography and fierce clan rivalries.

Minorities of Armenians, Azeris, Ossetians (a Christian Turkic tribe), Mingrelians and Muslim Abkhaz add further volatility. The Caucasus has over 100 feuding ethnic groups, a time bomb waiting to explode.

Abkhazia and Ossetia seceded from Georgia after bloody fighting and ethnic cleansing that killed 10,000 and left 250,000 refugees. Today, Russian "peacekeeping" troops keep the two rebellious regions, and a third Muslim enclave, Azharia, independent of Georgian control. Just to the north, Chechnya`s ferocious struggle for freedom from Russian rule grinds on, with the bloody struggle spilling into Georgia.

Moscow repeatedly accused Georgia of aiding Chechen independence fighters, which is likely true.

Neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan have waged a sporadic war for over a decade.

Shevardnadze kept Georgia independent by deftly playing off the Americans against the Russians, both of whom had designs on the little nation.

But his luck finally ran out.

Washington sent high-level emissaries to warn Shevardnadze not to do anything that threatened the proposed oil corridor.

When he went ahead with Russian oil deals, Washington denounced the Nov. 2 Georgian elections as rigged, which they were, although it also turns a blind eye to rigged elections in useful allies like oil-rich Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc.

Cash and anti-Shevardnadze political operatives from the U.S. poured into Tbilisi to back up the president`s American-educated principal rival, Mikhail Saakashvili. The rigged election ignited mass protests by Georgians fed up with corruption and crushing poverty. Saakashvili forces stormed parliament and drove out Shevardnadze, who resigned after the army and police refused to defend him.

What next? Saakashvili appears almost certain to become president. But the three political clans who united to overthrow the ancient regime, and now support him, may, true to local tradition, soon be at one another`s throats. In hot-blooded Georgia, civil war is never far away.

Russia will try to limit U.S. influence in Georgia and extend its own by stirring the pot and finding new Georgian allies. Washington will shore up its man in Tbilisi, Saakashvili, and may send Special Forces troops under the pretext of the faux war on terrorism.

The entire Caucasus is near a boil. The sharply increasing rivalry between the U.S. and Russia for political and economic influence over this vital land bridge between Europe and the oil-rich Caspian Basin promises a lot more intrigue, skullduggery and drama.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov30.html
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Sunday, November 30, 2003
War News for November 30, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/


Bring `em on: Two US soldiers killed, one wounded in ambush near Husaybah.

Bring `em on: Two Japanese diplomats killed in ambush near Tikrit.

Bring `em on: Two South Korean workers killed, two wounded in ambush near Tikrit.

Bring `em on: Colombian civilian contractor killed, two wounded in ambush near Balad.

Tikrit is open for business! "In a tightly guarded ceremony, the governor of Saddam Hussein`s home province declared Saturday that the region was open for business, and thanked foreign businessmen who attended a gathering wearing flak jackets and helmets." Is Neil Bush in town?

Iraqi exiles criticize pre-war planning. "The fact that the administration embraced their encouragement to go to war but apparently discounted their warnings is an insight into the Pentagon`s prewar planning."

Thanksgiving for wounded soldiers at Landstuhl Army Hospital.

NATO plans force cuts in Bosnia to reinforce Afghanistan and Iraq. Starving success to feed failure.

Deaths of Japanese diplomats may delay troop deployments.

Japan warns citizens to leave Iraq.

Update: Seven Spanish intelligence officers were killed, one wounded in yesterday`s ambush.

Army Psyops in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the main effort in the information war is flat on its ass. "On Wednesday, the former chief of Iraq`s interim administration, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, said the United States did a `bad job` of communicating with Iraqis, adding that `the consequence of that is who they got to listen to is Al-Jazeera.`"

"The station`s ties to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority have hamstrung its credibility, said Don North, an adviser and trainer at Al-Iraqiya who later left the network…`IMN has become an irrelevant mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news and mediocre foreign programs,` North wrote in a letter to The Associated Press."

Thai troops expect more insurgent attacks near Karbala.

Report from Samarra.

More on the Army reservist mentioned yesterday.

Brown & Root is recruiting.

Commentary

Opinion: Bush has created an image of American lawlessness.

Editorial: All stuffing and no meat. "Nobody has supported this war more than I did since the threat of war against Saddam became war itself. However, it has come time to question just exactly what we are accomplishing in Iraq. For that matter what did we accomplish in Afghanistan? It seems that we moved around a lot of dirt in Afghanistan, but what real progress has been made?"

Cartoon: By Jeff Danziger. Danziger is an Army Vietnam veteran, which is why I sometimes find his cartoons so entertaining.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Texas soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.





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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
28 November 2003
http://www.cia.gov/
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Iraq`s WMD Programs: Culling Hard Facts from Soft Myths
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq`s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has been dissected like no other product in the history of the US Intelligence Community. We have reexamined every phrase, line, sentence, judgment and alternative view in this 90-page document and have traced their genesis completely. I believed at the time the Estimate was approved for publication, and still believe now, that we were on solid ground in how we reached the judgments we made.

I remain convinced that no reasonable person could have viewed the totality of the information that the Intelligence Community had at its disposal—literally millions of pages—and reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached. The four National Intelligence Officers who oversaw the production of the NIE had over 100 years` collective work experience on weapons of mass destruction issues, and the hundreds of men and women from across the US Intelligence Community who supported this effort had thousands of man-years invested in studying these issues.

Let me be clear: The NIE judged with high confidence that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 km limit imposed by the UN Security Council, and with moderate confidence that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. These judgments were essentially the same conclusions reached by the United Nations and by a wide array of intelligence services—friendly and unfriendly alike. The only government in the world that claimed that Iraq was not working on, and did not have, biological and chemical weapons or prohibited missile systems was in Baghdad. Moreover, in those cases where US intelligence agencies disagreed, particularly regarding whether Iraq was reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for its nuclear weapons program, the alternative views were spelled out in detail. Despite all of this, ten myths have been confused with facts in the current media frenzy. A hard look at the facts of the NIE should dispel some popular myths making the media circuit.

Myth #1: The Estimate favored going to war: Intelligence judgments, including NIEs, are policy neutral. We do not propose policies and the Estimate in no way sought to sway policymakers toward a particular course of action. We described what we judged were Saddam`s WMD programs and capabilities and how and when he might use them and left it to policymakers, as we always do, to determine the appropriate course of action.

Myth #2: Analysts were pressured to change judgments to meet the needs of the Bush Administration: The judgments presented in the October 2002 NIE were based on data acquired and analyzed over fifteen years. Any changes in judgments over that period were based on new evidence, including clandestinely collected information that led to new analysis. Our judgments were presented to three different Administrations. And the principal participants in the production of the NIE from across the entire US Intelligence Community have sworn to Congress, under oath, that they were NOT pressured to change their views on Iraq WMD or to conform to Administration positions on this issue. In my particular case, I was able to swear under oath that not only had no one pressured me to take a particular view but that I had not pressured anyone else working on the Estimate to change or alter their reading of the intelligence information.

Myth #3: NIE judgments were news to Congress: Over the past fifteen years our assessments on Iraq WMD issues have been presented routinely to six different congressional committees including the two oversight committees, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. To the best of my knowledge, prior to this NIE, these committees never came back to us with a concern of bias or an assertion that we had gotten it wrong.

Myth #4: We buried divergent views and concealed uncertainties: Diverse agency views, particularly on whether Baghdad was reconstituting its uranium enrichment effort and as a subset of that, the purposes of attempted Iraqi aluminum tube purchases, were fully vetted during the coordination process. Alternative views presented by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State, the Office of Intelligence in the Department of Energy, and by the US Air Force were showcased in the National Intelligence Estimate and were acknowledged in unclassified papers on the subject. Moreover, suggestions that their alternative views were buried as footnotes in the text are wrong. All agencies were fully exposed to these alternative views, and the heads of those organizations blessed the wording and placement of their alternative views. Uncertainties were highlighted in the Key Judgments and throughout the main text. Any reader would have had to read only as far as the second paragraph of the Key Judgments to know that as we said: "We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq`s WMD program."

Myth #5: Major NIE judgments were based on single sources: Overwhelmingly, major judgments in the NIE on WMD were based on multiple sources–often from human intelligence, satellite imagery, and communications intercepts. Not only is the allegation wrong, but it is also worth noting that it is not even a valid measure of the quality of intelligence performance. A single human source with direct access to a specific program and whose judgment and performance have proven reliable can provide the "crown jewels"; in the early 1960s Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, who was then this country`s only penetration of the Soviet high command, was just such a source. His information enabled President Kennedy to stare down a Soviet threat emanating from Cuba, and his information informed US intelligence analysis for more than two decades thereafter. In short, the charge is both wrong and meaningless.

Myth #6: We relied too much on United Nations reporting and were complacent after UN inspectors left in 1998: We never accepted UN reporting at face value. I know, because in the mid 1990s I was the coordinator for US intelligence support to UNSCOM and the IAEA. Their ability to see firsthand what was going on in Iraq, including inside facilities that we could only peer at from above, demanded that we pay attention to what they saw and that we support their efforts fully. Did we ever have all the information that we wanted or required? Of course not. Moreover, for virtually any critical intelligence issue that faces us the answer always will be "no." There is a reason that the October 2002 review of Iraq`s WMD programs is called a National Intelligence ESTIMATE and not a National Intelligence FACTBOOK. On almost any issue of the day that we face, hard evidence will only take intelligence professionals so far. Our job is to fill in the gaps with informed analysis. And we sought to do that consistently and with vigor. The departure of UNSCOM inspectors in 1998 certainly did reduce our information about what was occurring in Iraq`s WMD programs. But to say that we were blind after 1998 is wrong. Efforts to enhance collection were vigorous, creative, and productive. Intelligence collection after 1998, including information collected by friendly and allied intelligence services, painted a picture of Saddam`s continuing efforts to develop WMD programs and weapons that reasonable people would have found compelling.

Myth # 7: We were fooled on the Niger "yellowcake" story—a major issue in the NIE: This was not one of the reasons underpinning our Key Judgment about nuclear reconstitution. In the body of the Estimate, after noting that Iraq had considerable low-enriched and other forms of uranium already in country—enough to produce roughly 100 nuclear weapons—we included the Niger issue with appropriate caveats, for the sake of completeness. Mentioning, with appropriate caveats, even unconfirmed reporting is standard practice in NIEs and other intelligence assessments; it helps consumers of the assessment understand the full range of possibly relevant intelligence.

Myth #8: We overcompensated for having underestimated the WMD threat in 1991: Our judgments were based on the evidence we acquired and the analysis we produced over a 15-year period. The NIE noted that we had underestimated key aspects of Saddam`s WMD efforts in the 1990s. We were not alone in that regard: UNSCOM missed Iraq`s BW program and the IAEA underestimated Baghdad`s progress on nuclear weapons development. But, what we learned from the past was the difficulty we have had in detecting key Iraqi WMD activities. Consequently, the Estimate specified what we knew and what we believed but also warned policymakers that we might have underestimated important aspects of Saddam`s program. But in no case were any of the judgments "hyped" to compensate for earlier underestimates.

Myth #9: We mistook rapid mobilization programs for actual weapons: There is practically no difference in threat between a standing chemical and biological weapons capability and one that could be mobilized quickly with little chance of detection. The Estimate acknowledged that Saddam was seeking rapid mobilization capabilities that he could invigorate on short notice. Those who find such programs to be less of a threat than actual weapons should understand that Iraqi denial and deception activities virtually would have ensured our inability to detect the activation of such efforts. Even with "only" rapid mobilization capabilities, Saddam would have been able to achieve production and stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons in the midst of a crisis, and the Intelligence Community would have had little, if any, chance of detecting this activity, particularly in the case of BW. In the case of chemical weapons, although we might have detected indicators of mobilization activity, we would have been hard pressed to accurately interpret such evidence. Those who conclude that no threat existed because actual weapons have not yet been found do not understand the significance posed by biological and chemical warfare programs in the hands of tyrants.

Myth #10: The NIE asserted that there were "large WMD stockpiles" and because we haven`t found them, Baghdad had no WMD: From experience gained at the end of Desert Storm more than ten years ago, it was clear to us and should have been clear to our critics, that finding WMD in the aftermath of a conflict wouldn`t be easy. We judged that Iraq probably possessed one hundred to five hundred metric tons of CW munitions fill. One hundred metric tons would fit in a backyard swimming pool; five hundred could be hidden in a small warehouse. We made no assessment of the size of Iraq`s biological weapons holdings but a biological weapon can be carried in a small container. (And of course, we judged that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon.) When the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), led by David Kay, issued its interim report in October, acknowledging that it had not found chemical or biological weapons, the inspectors had then visited only ten of the 130 major ammunition depots in Iraq; these ammunition dumps are huge, sometimes five miles by five miles on a side. Two depots alone are roughly the size of Manhattan. It is worth recalling that after Desert Storm, US forces unknowingly destroyed over 1,000 rounds of chemical-filled munitions at a facility called Al Kamissiyah. Baghdad sometimes had special markings for chemical and biological munitions and sometimes did not. In short, much remains to be done in the hunt for Iraq`s WMD.

We do not know whether the ISG ultimately will be able to find physical evidence of Iraq`s chemical and biological weapons or confirm the status of its WMD programs and its nuclear ambitions. The purposeful, apparently regime-directed, destruction of evidence pertaining to WMD from one end of Iraq to the other, which began even before the Coalition occupied Baghdad, and has continued since then, already has affected the ISG`s work. Moreover, Iraqis who have been willing to talk to US intelligence officers are in great danger. Many have been threatened; some have been killed. The denial and deception efforts directed by the extraordinarily brutal, but very competent Iraqi Intelligence Services, which matured through ten years of inspections by various UN agencies, remain a formidable challenge. And finally, finding physically small but extraordinarily lethal weapons in a country that is larger than the state of California would be a daunting task even under far more hospitable circumstances. But now that we have our own eyes on the ground, David Kay and the ISG must be allowed to complete their work and other collection efforts we have under way also must be allowed to run their course. And even then, it will be necessary to integrate all the new information with intelligence and analyses produced over the past fifteen years before we can determine the status of Iraq`s WMD efforts prior to the war.

Allegations about the quality of the US intelligence performance and the need to confront these charges have forced senior intelligence officials throughout US Intelligence to spend much of their time looking backwards. I worry about the opportunity costs of this sort of preoccupation, but I also worry that analysts laboring under a barrage of allegations will become more and more disinclined to make judgments that go beyond ironclad evidence—a scarce commodity in our business. If this is allowed to happen, the Nation will be poorly served by its Intelligence Community and ultimately much less secure. Fundamentally, the Intelligence Community increasingly will be in danger of not connecting the dots until the dots have become a straight line.

We must keep in mind that the search for WMD cannot and should not be about the reputation of US Intelligence or even just about finding weapons. At its core, men and women from across the Intelligence Community continue to focus on this issue because understanding the extent of Iraq`s WMD efforts and finding and securing weapons and all of the key elements that make up Baghdad`s WMD programs— before they fall into the wrong hands—is vital to our national security. If we eventually are proven wrong—that is, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs were dormant or abandoned—the American people will be told the truth; we would have it no other way.

Stu Cohen is an intelligence professional with 30 years of service in the CIA. He was acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq`s Weapons of Mass Destruction was published.



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Sunday, Nov. 30, 2003
Inside "The Wire"
Security breaches. Suicidal detainees. A legal challenge heading to the Supreme Court. Welcome to Guantanamo
By NANCY GIBBS WITH VIVECA NOVAK IN GUANTANAMO

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031208-…

Next to the alternatives, Camp Four is paradise. Real, colored prayer rugs, thicker mattresses, pillows even, and soccer shoes. Pure-white clothes instead of glaring catch-me-you-if-you-can orange. A librarian comes around with books, and lunch is on picnic tables, family style. This is where the prisoners get to come if they are good, meaning well behaved and fruitful in their interrogations. "We try to sell this place," says Army Colonel Jerry Cannon, a National Guard member who in his other life is the sheriff of Kalkaska County, Mich. Military interrogators mention Camp Four to the prisoners, who get a glimpse of it as they pass it on their way to the hospital or elsewhere. It is one more step toward the day when some of the detainees might actually get out for good. That goal is reinforced by Arabic posters in the exercise yards, like the one full of children`s faces. Loosely translated, it reads, Dad, how can I grow up without you?

Of course, how to get out of the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is as great a mystery as the place itself. Escape is a long shot. The base is a prison, and a jewelry box. "You can`t be too careful protecting this enormously valuable intelligence trove," says Army General Geoffrey Miller, commander of the joint task force that runs the detainee operation on the 45-sq.-mi. base. And so there are constant perimeter patrols by infantry squads in full battle gear, and visitors get turned inside out before they`re allowed anywhere near the cellblocks. Getting out legally doesn`t seem much easier. The detainees—660 suspects from 44 countries, scooped up in the war on terrorism—cannot challenge their arrests or plead their cases or even talk to a lawyer, because the U.S. government denies that they have those rights.

They are not U.S. citizens, and the base, while under total U.S. control, is not on American soil; since 1903, it has been leased from Cuba for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085, in perpetuity.

That leaves one last exit strategy when desperation takes hold. According to military officials, there have been 32 suicide attempts in 18 months, at least one of which left a man in a coma. (Cannon calls the attempts "manipulative behavior.") Former detainees say in most cases the prisoner made a noose out of clothes or sheets and tried to hang himself from the cell bars; one, they say, tried to slit his throat with a knife he had made from metal.

"Whenever we saw someone trying to kill themselves," says Ghazi Salahuddin, a detainee from Pakistan released in July, "we would all shout, attracting the attention of the guards." The new mental-health clinic on the base is usually close to full.

Though U.S. officials have released some inmates deemed harmless, new ones are still arriving, with about 20 coming and going last week. Amid a global argument about their rights, the Supreme Court recently agreed to decide whether the captives at Guantanamo can at least challenge their detention in federal court. But in the meantime, however great the outcry from allies and human-rights groups, the U.S. military, along with the White House and the Justice Department, has not retreated from an unprecedented approach to prisoners captured in an unprecedented war.

If you are a government hungry for clues about the enemies` plans, one problem with the Geneva Convention governing treatment of traditional prisoners of war is that it includes strict rules limiting interrogation. So these detainees are called "enemy combatants," and there is no field manual outlining the rules for handling them. Inmates arrive with no knowledge of how long they will stay, facing the possibility of trial by a military tribunal whose procedures have yet to be tested, on charges that have yet to be revealed and that carry sentences that may depend on not just what crimes they committed but what country they are from. The U.S. last week cut a deal with Australia that if its detainee David Hicks is found guilty, he will not be executed and will be allowed to have his family in the courtroom and talk to his lawyers without Americans listening in. But the Brits are pushing for more, and what about the inmates from Yemen or Pakistan or Afghanistan? Seeing the risks of multiple standards of justice, Pentagon officials said last week that they are conducting a wholesale review of the tribunal rules.

Washington attorney Thomas Wilner represents the families of 12 Kuwaiti detainees whose case is among those the Supreme Court will hear early next year. He rejects the Bush Administration`s insistence that detainees have no legal rights. "The arrogance of saying `Well, we`re feeding them well` is just absolutely absurd," he argues. Two of his clients` fathers have died while they were incarcerated. "They have had children born and parents die.*spaceThey don`t get to see their families, and they have no hope of getting out, even if they are innocent. That is what the Geneva Convention is about." Wilner has no problem with the U.S. imprisoning proven terrorists. He just wants a way to establish who the bad guys are. "Can you imagine being an innocent person being swept up into this thing and having no opportunity to say to somebody `Hey, you`ve got the wrong guy?`"

So far, the processing of detainees, whether for trial or release, has been slow; the Supreme Court`s intervention, however, may have delivered a jolt. A U.S. military official tells Time that at least 140 detainees—"the easiest 20%"—are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them." U.S. officials concluded that some detainees were there because they had been kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty the U.S. was offering for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "Many would not have been detained under the normal rules of engagement," the source concedes. "We`re dealing with some very, very dangerous people, but the pendulum is swinging too far in the wrong direction."

Still, even as he speaks, new interrogation headquarters are being built to replace the long beige trailers where questioning occurs. If over the past two years conditions at Guantanamo—Gitmo for short—have become more humane, it is partly because they are also more permanent. The standards have come a long way from Camp X-Ray, the holding pen established during the Afghan war, where the world saw shocking images of detainees on their knees, blindfolded and shackled in a compound of cages. These days at X-Ray, vines curl through the old cells; turkey vultures circle overhead. X-Ray has been replaced by Camp Delta, but because the Army has allowed no outside photographers to shoot the new facilities, it is the old image that lingers.

The population of the naval base, civilian and military, has tripled to more than 6,000 since January 2002. To accommodate the growth, a great deal of new construction is going on beyond the cellblocks. In addition to McDonald`s, there are now Pizza Hut, Subway and KFC. Another gym is being built, and town houses, and a four-year college opens next month. Amenities matter because the troops have nowhere else to go; the rest of Cuba is off limits. Asked what he misses most besides his family, Sergeant John Campbell, a National Guardsman on a one-year deployment, talks as if he`s in detention too: "the ability to get in a car and drive somewhere else."

The priority of the base is security—keep terrorists off the streets—but the product is information. Every week close to half the detainees are brought in for sessions that may last anywhere from one to 16 hours. They are conducted by any of the 40 four-person "tiger" teams—two interrogators, a linguist and an analyst. The commanders have concluded that interrogators should be young, maybe mid-20s, fairly new to the service. "Intelligence gathering is a young person`s job," says Miller. "They`re inventive and thoughtful." The idea is to build rapport with the detainees and come at them again and again, using new leads from intelligence gathered at Gitmo or elsewhere. "We got five times as much intelligence (from the detainees) last month as in January `03," says Miller, which, depending on whom you talk to, means that either the interrogators are getting better or the inmates more willing to say anything.

British detainee Moazzam Begg is among the first six prisoners cleared for possible trial. His parents say he had gone to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work—set up a school, install water pipes—and was picked up in Pakistan by American soldiers at the house where he was staying. "It is nearly a complete year since I have been in custody," he wrote to his parents early this year.

"After all this time, I still don`t know what crime I am supposed to have committed. I am beginning to lose the fight against depression and hopelessness." According to lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Begg confessed to an al-Qaeda plot to load a drone aircraft and then dust the House of Commons with anthrax. Smith, who represents the British detainees at the behest of their families, dismisses the confession as nonsense. "If you`re held in solitary confinement, you`re going to start making things up just to try and get out of that," he says. "Part of this whole Alice in Wonderland world is that in order to get charged with an offense down there and in order to get a lawyer, you have to agree to plead guilty."

All new inmates at guantanamo start in Camp Three, the highest-security unit. (There is no logic to the camp names: Camp Three is tighter than Two or One, but Camp Four is the least restrictive.) Cells are 6 ft. 8 in. by 8 ft., with a squat-style toilet, a metal sink and a sleeping berth affixed to green steel-mesh walls. Each new detainee is issued a pair of shorts, a pair of long pants and two T shirts, all in orange, plus shower shoes, a towel and washcloth, toothpaste and shampoo, a prayer mat, beads, prayer oil, a prayer cap, a copy of the Koran and basic bedding, though no pillow.

Twice a week, detainees get 20 to 30 minutes to shower and exercise. The guards say inmates spend much of the day reading the Koran; an arrow in their cells points the way to Mecca, and there are five calls to prayer daily via loudspeaker—instituted after a five-day hunger strike by some inmates. Former Pakistani detainee Salahuddin recalls that the prisoners who spoke English would try teaching their U.S. guards about Islam. "Some of the soldiers were interested," he says. "They even learned to recite the Kalma, the invocation of the Koran."

Guards patrol the hall of each 48-cell unit constantly, on routes designed to have a set of eyes on each prisoner every 30 seconds. Female guards have a harder time than males. "It`s stressful," says Sergeant Rebecca Ishmael. "Sometimes they won`t look at females or will refuse their food if it`s been handled by a female." Prisoners have sometimes thrown bodily waste at the guards. Detainees in turn tell stories of punishment for bad behavior.

Mohammed Sagheer, 52, a Pakistani preacher who has filed a $10.4 million lawsuit against the U.S. government for wrongful imprisonment, claims the Guantanamo wardens used drugs to control the prisoners. "They would give us these tablets that made us senseless," he says. "I`d hide the pill under my tongue and then spit it out when the guard was gone." Sagheer says he was twice put into solitary confinement in a dark cell for spitting at guards, who, he says, provoked him by throwing his Koran on the ground and beating him. A Guantanamo official said the task force doesn`t address individual allegations, but she insists that the detainees are treated "humanely." With good behavior, inmates can move up to Camp Two, then One, in hopes of new privileges—bottled water and a cup, a checkerboard and checkers, more exercise time. There are three juvenile prisoners, ages 13 to 15, who live outside the gates of Camp Delta at Camp Iguana. Once an officer`s cottage, it has a magnificent view of the ocean, which none of the underage detainees had seen before coming to Guantanamo. Inside are two bedrooms, each with two beds, and a room with a TV and a vcr. Videos with animals are popular with the kids; their favorites include White Fang and The Call of the Wild. The kitchen has a refrigerator where fruit and other snacks are kept.

Among the guards is Sergeant P., who, like almost everyone else at Camp Delta who has contact with the detainees, covers the name on his uniform with duct tape so the prisoners can`t identify him now or ever. Sergeant P. did not even want his full last name used in this story. A middle-school teacher in his nondeployed life, he, along with some of the other guards, was handpicked because of his experience with juveniles. "We do a lot of math and science with them," he says. "We don`t try to indoctrinate them in Americanism." The juveniles pick up English quickly, he notes. Outdoors, the teenagers play soccer, boccie and volleyball. "We`ve lost quite a few balls to the ocean," he says.

Officials at Gitmo say most detainees have gained weight since they arrived at the facility. In the kitchen, where food is prepared for both detainees and troops, boxes of bananas and pita wait to be incorporated into a dinner menu.

Bread, milk, vegetables and fruit—bananas, apples, pears or dates—are included in each meal. The cooks use a lot of curry—breakfast might be curried eggs, dinner a curried-chicken stew—to approximate the cuisine of at least some of the prisoners. "The food I ate there was the best I`d ever had in my life," says Pakistani Shah Mohammed, now 21, who says he landed at Gitmo after he was kidnapped by an Uzbek commander and sold to the Americans for a bounty being offered for al-Qaeda fighters. He was released last July, after his interrogators concluded that he not only had had no contact with Osama bin Laden`s group but also hadn`t even known 9/11 had happened until they showed him pictures. "I`d like to visit America someday," he says. "Some of the wardens and soldiers became my friends."

In letters to their families, which are censored coming in and going out, some detainees have given the conditions at Gitmo decent reviews. Airat Vakhitov, one of eight alleged Talibs from Russia, wrote to his mother in Tatarstan that his conditions in Gitmo were much better than in the best Russian sanatorium. In fact, his mother Amina is concerned lest the Americans extradite her son to face a worse fate back home; she and another Russian mother have petitioned the U.S. government not to deport their sons. One detainee`s brother, Arsen Mokayev, who served two years in prison for a criminal offense, sees it this way: "If they get into the hands of Russian investigators, they will be tortured and humiliated, and their will and beliefs might be broken. In the U.S., even if they are executed, they will think they are dying for their religion, which is just fine for a devout Muslim."

But the grandmother of a Canadian detainee has a different experience. One of Fatmah Elsamnah`s two grandsons at Gitmo was released. She says the other, Omar Khadr, 17, is still recovering from wounds suffered during a fire fight with U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July 2002. The U.S. military has accused Omar of tossing a grenade that killed a 28-year-old Army medic during that battle. Omar is the son of Ahmed Said Khadr, described by counterterrorism experts in Canada and Egypt as al-Qaeda`s financier and ace bombmaker. Elsamnah, who lives in the Toronto area, chokes back tears as she recounts a letter from Omar: "How are you, how are you doing, I miss you, do something for me, pleeeeease, do something for me."

By next July, the Supreme Court should rule whether the detainees may have access to the federal courts—but even if such rights are granted, that may not change much. Captives could force the government to show why they should be held, but it would take an unusual judge to stand up to a military that says a detainee is dangerous and possesses critical antiterrorist intelligence; judging guilt will be a completely separate process. Still, allowing prisoners a hearing would be a major step forward. "We ask that they have access to a lawyer, access to their families and, most important, have access to some tribunal to see whether there is a basis for them to be there," attorney Wilner says. "We ask for all those things, subject to any reasonable security regulations the government wanted to impose." He says at least two high-level government officials have told him they would welcome that kind of ruling. Among other things, it would affirm the values the war is defending in the first place.

—With reporting by Helen Gibson/London, Tim McGirk and Ghulam Hasnain/Islamabad, Siobhan Morrissey/ Miami, Simon Crittle/New York, Cindy Waxer/ Toronto and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow




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Carter Slams Mid-East `Bias`

From correspondents in Washington

December 1, 2003: (Agence France-Presse) FORMER US president Jimmy Carter has criticised the White House for favouring Israel and abandoning "a bipartisan commitment" to Middle East peace, Time magazine reported today.

He said George W. Bush`s administration had "abandoned what has been in the past a bipartisan commitment to a relatively balanced position in trying to find peace" in the Middle East.

"It`s been an ostentatious alliance between the White House and the (Ariel) Sharon government, I think to the detriment of our nation`s image and to the detriment of an eventual peace agreement," he said.

Mr Carter added that "they`ve hurt" the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Copyright: Agence France-Presse

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November 30, 2003
U.S. Forces Beat Back Ambushes in Central Iraq, Killing 46
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TIKRIT, Iraq -- U.S. troops repelled simultaneous attacks Sunday afternoon in the northern city of Samarra, killing 46 Iraqis, wounding at least 18 and capturing eight, the U.S. military said. Five American soldiers and a civilian were wounded.

Many of the dead attackers were found wearing uniforms of the Fedayeen, a militia loyal to Saddam Hussein, according to Lt. Col. William MacDonald of the 4th Infantry Division. MacDonald described the attack as massive and well coordinated.

"This is the largest one for our task force since we`ve been in theater," he said.

"It sounds like the attack had some coordination to it, but the soldiers responded, used their firepower, used tank and Bradley fire and other weapons available to them, to stop this attack and take the fight to the enemy," he said.

Two U.S. logistical convoys were moving into Samarra when they were attacked with roadside bombs, small arms fire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The attacks -- one on the east side of the city, the other on the west -- were simultaneous, MacDonald said.

After setting up a barricade along the route of one of the convoys, the attackers opened fire from rooftops and alleyways, MacDonald said.

He said U.S. soldiers returned fire from several locations at each ambush, using small arms, 120mm tank rounds and 25mm canon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles. The U.S. fire destroyed three buildings the attackers were using, he said.

None of the wounded Americans suffered life-threatening injuries, MacDonald said. Two sustained only minor injuries, while the other three were evacuated to a hospital, along with the wounded civilian.

MacDonald said he didn`t think convoy procedures needed to be altered as a result of the attack, because his troops won the battles.

"We have been very aggressive in our convoy operations to ensure the maximum force protection is with each convoy," he said. "But it does send a clear message that if you attempt to attack one of our convoys, we`re going to use our firepower to stop that attack."

In a separate attack about an hour later, another convoy of U.S. military engineers was attacked by four men with automatic rifles. The soldiers returned fire, wounding all four men, MacDonald said. He said soldiers found Kalashnikov rifles and grenade launchers in their car, a black BMW.

Samarra is 60 miles north of Baghdad in the so-called Sunni Triangle where opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been fiercest.

Also Sunday, two South Korean civilian contractors were killed and two were injured in a roadside attack near Samarra. MacDonald said the attack was unrelated.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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The Democratic Dividend

The stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans. Why?

President George W. Bush inherited the lousy end of the business cycle. The stock market has been falling throughout his entire term, battered by war, a feeble economy, and corporate scandals. Yet this decay still hasn`t shaken Americans` faith that Republicans are better for the economy and the market. Poll after poll shows that when Americans divide up the chores of running the country, they tend to think of the economy and stock market as Republican domain and delegate softer issues, like the environment, to Democrats.

But Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans. Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader`s Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century`s bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of `29, the early `70s oil shock, the `87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.)

According to almanac editor Jeffrey Hirsch, the presidential party figures are among the most significant he`s found. If the stock market were random, we`d expect such a result only one-quarter of the time. "I don`t know why people are convinced Republicans are good for the stock market," Hirsch says.

Nor does having a Republican Congress help the market. A Democratic Senate showed returns of 10.5 percent (versus 9.4 percent for a GOP upper chamber), and a Democratic House returned 10.9 percent versus 8.1 percent for the Republicans.

When both houses of Congress opposed the president, the return was a stellar 12.9 percent. Libertarians may celebrate this as proof that the market likes gridlock and government inaction. But the market likes steamrollers nearly as much: The S&P performs almost as well—returning 11.8 percent—when the presidency and both houses are held by the same party. The only situation Mr. Market dislikes is what we have now: one house for each party. Those years have a -0.9 percent return.

Republicans are no doubt muttering that that`s just the stock market, not the whole economy. But real GDP growth follows the same pattern. Since 1930 (the first year decent data is available), GDP growth was 5.4 percent for Democratic presidents and 1.6 percent for Republicans.

There may be all sorts of explanations for the bias of the economy and the markets toward Democrats. The worst years of the Great Depression occurred under Republican Herbert Hoover, and Democrats got credit for the entire recovery. Democrats had some awfully good streaks of peace and prosperity in the `30s, late `40s, and `90s. These could be chance, or it could be that Democrats more tightly regulate the markets, which gives investors confidence. Democrats are more likely to spread the wealth around through public spending on education or transportation, which may stimulate the economy more broadly. The foundation of recent GOP economic policy—tax cuts—may offer narrower benefits than Republicans claim. High defense spending, another GOP hallmark, may only boost one sector while hurting the whole economy in the form of bigger federal deficits and higher interest rates.

Whatever the reasons for it, this Democratic dividend should encourage the party`s 2004 presidential contenders. They have a new slogan to run on: Democrats—the party of Wall Street.

Moneybox thanks economists Susan Woodward and Robert Hall, Ibbotson Associates, and the Stock Trader`s Almanac

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A nation divided
Voters either adore or abhor Bush. This is the one factor that will determine next year`s US election

Gary Younge
Monday December 1, 2003
The Guardian

Every weekday afternoon on CNN, a programme called Crossfire pits a Democrat commentator against a Republican. In what passes for debate, they raise topical issues in rapid succession and bellow over each other in an attempt to score cheap points and earn applause from the studio audience.

The overriding impression is one of mayhem, machismo, bluster and braggadocio. The aim is not to win anyone over but to shout them down. Those who clap do so not because they have been convinced but because their views have been confirmed. A few years ago this would have resembled little more than a device for a knockabout show on a channel with more airtime than news. But with the presidential election less than a year away, Crossfire is beginning to serve as a metaphor for the state of US political discourse.

A nation riven between those who adore President Bush and those who abhor him is in no mood for reasoned discussion. Having rallied around the flag after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and then again (though less so) when the troops went to war, people are now retreating to their political affiliations. And all the indications are that they intend to stay there until polling day. The presidential elections of 2004 will be decided not by who can sway the centre but rather who can shore up their base.

For every sign that some are desperate for regime change at home, there is proof that a similar number have undying faith in the president. In a recent Time/CNN poll, 47% said they were likely to vote for George Bush and 48% said they would not; 79% of Republicans said they believed he was a president you could trust, 75% of Democrats said they thought he wasn`t; 68% of Democrats believed he had been "too quick to interject his own moral and religious beliefs into politics", 67% of Republicans believed he hadn`t. Break down the response of almost any question along party lines and the nation appears irrevocably split - separate outlooks roughly equal in size.

"National unity was the initial response to the calamitous events of September 11 2001," argued the Pew Research Centre in a report, The 2004 Political Landscape: Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarised. "But that spirit has dissolved amid rising political polarisation and anger. In fact, a year before the presidential election, American voters are once again seeing things largely through a partisan prism."

And what is true in the polls is reflected in popular culture. Dude, Where`s My Country?, the latest book by the leftwing polemicist Michael Moore, may be No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, but when it comes to children`s toys, the George W Bush elite force aviator doll - a 12-inch figure of Bush in the military garb he wore on the USS Lincoln when he declared the war was over - has set a sales record for collectible action figures on the KB Toys website.

It is a far cry from Bush`s inaugural speech, in the wake of Florida`s vote-counting debacle three years ago, when he pledged to "work to build a single nation" and "seek a common good". Instead he has created divisions so deep that Americans take one look at him and, depending on their political persuasion, see two completely different people. Asked to describe Bush, Republicans were most likely to use the words "decisive", "determined" and "strong", while Democrats described him as "cocky", "arrogant" and "boneheaded".

This gulf is already having far-reaching political consequences. For if the two sides are evenly balanced, as it appears they will be, the election will be shaped as much by logistics as politics. There will be no equivalent to the Reagan Democrats or Clinton Republicans in this election - just voters who love Bush and voters who loathe him.

This explains the insurgent success of the former Vermont governor Howard Dean in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination. His anti-war stance and promise to reverse tax cuts were initially dismissed as alienating to swing voters. But as the political landscape becomes ever more polarised, the issue is not whether you can influence the doubters (who are dwindling) but whether you can energise the devout (who are growing).

Dean has benefited not just from the rage that Democrats harbour against Bush`s excesses, but from the frustration at their own party`s inability to effectively challenge them in Congress. In order to run against the president, he must first run against the Democrats` party establishment.

Bush faces a different dilemma. With the ban on partial-birth abortions, a hawkish foreign policy and extensive tax cuts, he has already motivated his base to vote for him. His primary desire now is to do as little as possible before election day to further antagonise the Democrats` traditional supporters, who might otherwise stay at home.

The Medicare bill, passed with much arm-twisting last week, was aimed not at helping the elderly (by and large it won`t) but at neutralising an issue where the Democrats do well, relating to an electorally important group (the elderly) who lean towards the Democrats. Similarly, after backing a legal challenge to affirmative action in the supreme court, the White House has gone out of its way to look good to African-American voters. In June, the administration banned federal law enforcement officers from racial profiling in routine police work. A month later Bush went to Africa and branded slavery "one of the greatest crimes of history". He knows few black Americans will vote for him, but he hopes that, by appearing sensitive to their concerns, they will not vote against him.

For all the president`s efforts, however, the Democrats are making almost all the headway. The increasing financial and human costs of the war in Iraq, and the state of the economy (a statistical recovery without jobs will not help the Republicans), have sent Bush`s ratings into a four-month decline that shows few signs of reversing.

The trouble is, when it comes to logistics the Republicans win hands down. First, they have a candidate. The Democrats do not even have a clear frontrunner and will only get one after a bruising, costly, crowded battle likely to run at least into spring.

Second, the Republicans` most loyal supporters - the Christian right - are far better organised, motivated and ideologically cohesive than those of the Democrats - African-Americans. Since the war the Democrats have won only one election - 1964 - without needing black support.

Finally, and most importantly, the Republicans have far more money. The Democrats are talking about giving up on the South altogether (with the exception of Florida) because they can`t afford to fight in a region where they are unlikely to win any states. Meanwhile, the Republicans have sufficient funds to talk about mounting a serious challenge in California - a state they have not won since 1988.

The good news for the Democrats is that the basic message, that Bush is doing the country more harm than good, is finally getting through. The bad news is that the next election will be decided less by who has the best message than who has the biggest megaphone, whether they know which direction to point it and whether anyone at the other end is listening. On all three counts, the Republicans are ahead.

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He thought he could trust the little guy
But Joseph P Williams, who invented the credit card, was wrong

John Sutherland
Monday December 1, 2003
The Guardian

At some point this Christmas the turkey-stuffed British populace - having heard all about the monarch`s Annus Horribilis VII - will watch, for the umpteenth time, Jimmy Stewart throwing money at his bank`s clients in the heart-warming conclusion to It`s a Wonderful Life. Lovely idea, lousy economics, we will think for the umpteenth time. Giving unsecured loans to all those ordinary citizens of Bedford Falls - madness. "In God we Trust: All others pay cash". That`s the only way to run a business. Forget Christmas cheer.

I wonder what Joseph P Williams thought when he watched Frank Capra`s movie. Williams, alas, will miss it this year. He died a couple of weeks ago, aged 88, in Florida.

In 1946, when Capra`s film came out, Williams had just enrolled, on the GI bill, to take a business degree. On graduation he landed a job with the Bank of America, California branch. Thereafter he rose steadily in the loan department and by 1958 was senior enough to persuade his bosses to try a revolutionary idea: the all-purpose credit card. His motives were altruistic: "people should make credit pay them, instead of them having to pay for credit." The BankAmericard would help keep people out of debt while giving them access to what they needed. It would also turn an honest buck for the bank - but that was only fair.

Sleepy Fresno was chosen for the card`s launch. The basic idea of It`s a Wonderful Life (trust Joe Citizen) was plasticated and dropped in 60,000 mailboxes (almost all, of course, male-boxes, it being 1958).

Thanks to Williams ordinary people with modest bank balances were suddenly able to buy goods and services when they needed and pay up when they could and, if necessary, "revolve" their debt indefinitely with a non-usurious interest payment. The card offered hire-purchase convenience with the added freedom of being able to spend on whatever you wanted - church donation, escort services, vacations, booze.

Within a year, there were some 2m credit card holders in California. It was a total disaster. The ordinary citizen, it appeared, had not seen Capra`s movie. BankAmericard lost almost $10m in its first year. Delinquency ran at a crippling 25%. Prostitutes (who sneaked the cards from clients` pockets) and thieves got rich. Fraud was rampant. Even honest cardholders lost control of their spending (without computer feedback, it was impossible to keep cards within their maximum allowance). Shopkeepers lost faith. The police declined to take action - if the Bank of America wanted to throw its money away, too bad.

Williams and Capra were wrong. The little guy, given the chance, was not trustworthy. Williams paid the price. The Bank of America let him go, blaming his "inexperience" for the failure of the scheme. They did not, however, ditch his brainchild. They set up knee-capping collection departments and screened clients as carefully as J Edgar Hoover. The arrival of the magnetic strip, in 1970, made it possible to control the system efficiently.

In 1976, the BankAmericard became Visa - a name which suggested credit sans frontiers. It was a good name. Electronic data capture, via new and powerful computer control, made the card universal, international and essential. By the 1990s, American consumerism (the economy`s engine) ran on plastic; as does the web (imagine sending off a postal order for access to a porn site; a real passion-killer).

Williams` optimism about the inherent trustworthiness of ordinary people has been triumphantly vindicated. The American population is more heavily indebted than at any point in history with a repayment liability of around 130% of average family income. According to the national debt clock (ticking as you read) every American citizen owes $23,706.15 (£13,800). Under George Bush, who has stoked the fire energetically, national debt is growing at $2.64 billion per day. Who said we had to trust him?


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Saddam`s nephew calls invasion a disaster and warns of civil war
Luke Harding in Zürich
Monday December 1, 2003
The Guardian

Saddam Hussein`s nephew launched a bitter attack yesterday on America`s "catastrophic" occupation of Iraq.

In the first interview by a member of Saddam`s immediate family since the fall of Baghdad, Ali al-Tikriti said he had no idea where Saddam might be hiding. But he said the "president" would never give himself up voluntarily, adding: "I hope the Americans don`t get him."

Speaking from Switzerland, Ali, whose father Barzan is Saddam`s half-brother and Iraq`s former head of security, said that the US invasion had turned into a disaster.

"Every day there are explosions. People are killed. This didn`t happen before. I don`t say that the government was made up of angels, but there was infrastructure, security and food," he told the Zürich-based newspaper Blick.

"Before the US occupation Iraq was a land without terrorism. It`s now the new Afghanistan." As a result of the chaos, al-Qaida had found a new safe haven.

The Americans arrested Barzan al-Tikriti on April 19, shortly after he telephoned his family in Geneva to assure them he was still alive.

Ali, who lives in Geneva, dismissed as a "fairytale" the suggestion that Saddam and his relatives amassed millions during their years in power, including 462m Swiss francs (£207.7m) apparently hidden in Swiss bank accounts. The family was broke, he claimed.

Photos from the mid-1980s show Ali, then a small boy wearing shorts, sitting next to Uncle Saddam, together with Saddam`s sons Uday and Qusay, Ali`s sister, and other relatives. Uday married Ali`s sister a decade later. The marriage collapsed almost immediately, amid allegations that Uday was a violent psychopath.

Asked whether Uday, who was killed by US troops four months ago, had beaten his sister, Ali replied: "Uday did not beat her black and blue but treated her like a princess. My sister was only 16, and had different ideas about marriage. That`s why they separated soon after the wedding."

Ali`s father Barzan, who was security chief until 1983, moved to Switzerland in the late 1980s, after Saddam made him ambassador to the UN. In 1998 he went back to Baghdad, leaving his children behind.

Ali said his father had warned him to avoid politics and that he had, as a result, declined to become a member of the Ba`ath party.

"As an Iraqi and as Saddam Hussein`s nephew I believe that the 1990 invasion of Kuwait was wrong," he said. "You can`t simply march into a country." But there were double standards at play. "When Iraq does it, it is punished. When America does it, nothing happens. Is it just that Saddam is judged and Bush isn`t? And why is it that only the leaders of third world countries appear in court?"

Iraq had plenty of weapons of mass destruction during the Iran-Iraq war - when Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, was greeted in the White House - but later got rid of them, he said. Every Iraqi now wanted the Americans to leave Iraq, he added.

"The problem is that the consequences could be terrible. I don`t rule out civil war. Barzani and Talabani [the two main Kurdish leaders] are good leaders, but have the disadvantage of being Kurds. The Shiites will never accept them. The other members of the government are either puppets of Iran or thieves like Ahmad Chalabi" - the leader of the pro-Washington Iraqi National Congress.


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Body bag count puts strains on coalition
Spanish PM fights off calls to pull out after record death toll

Giles Tremlett in Madrid and Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday December 1, 2003
The Guardian

A weekend of bloodshed across Iraq saw November chalk up new and grim records, including the highest number of casualties among coalition troops and the deadliest single month for America`s armed forces since the 1991 Gulf war.

The killings of seven Spanish military intelligence officers in an ambush at Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, together with the deaths of two more US soldiers brought the monthly toll of coalition dead to 111.

It also brought to 79 the number of US troops killed in Iraq, outstripping the total for September and October.

The flow of body bags back to the US and other countries made its mark on the political arena, with the Democratic party presidential candidate Wesley Clark, a former Nato supreme commander, yesterday describing Iraq as "a distraction from the war on terror".

"Are we safer with Saddam Hussein gone? That`s a very tough case to make," he told CNN.

In Spain, the prime minister, José Maria Aznar, acted to head off criticism from opposition politicians and newspapers of his unpopular policies in Iraq.

With the deaths of the seven military intelligence officers last month bringing to nine the number of Spanish soldiers killed in Iraq, he vowed that the troops would not be brought back. "Withdrawal is the worst possible path to take," he said.

Mr Aznar claimed that the killings were, in themselves, proof that his own policies were correct.

"The fanatical hatred that has accompanied this new atrocity has provided unimaginable pictures that we will never forget. We have no option but to face this fanaticism head on," he said.

The Socialist opposition leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, praised the bravery of the dead men but also led calls for the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq to be "brought home".

He was backed by smaller opposition parties who, like Iñaki Anasagasti of the Basque Nationalist party, warned there could be "many more deaths in a very short period of time and for no good reason".

Several newspapers condemned Mr Aznar`s determination to keep troops in the country, despite the fact that 85% of Spaniards - more than any other EU country - believes the Iraq war was a mistake.

"Nobody who saw the glee with which passersby trampled the corpses of our countrymen can still maintain that the majority of Iraqis consider coalition troops to be their liberators," El Mundo newspaper said.

Mr Aznar, whose deputy prime minister and heir-to-be Mariano Rajoy will lead the People`s party into a general election in the spring, was an enthusiastic backer of George Bush before and during the war.

An attack on South Korean civilian workers, which killed two and left two more badly injured, has increased pressure on South Korea`s president, Roh Moo-hyun, after he pledged to send more troops to Iraq in addition to 675 medics and military engineers deployed since May. He has yet to make the politically sensitive decision whether to include combat forces in the expected 3,000-strong contingent.

Asked whether the killings would affect Korea`s decision to send more troops the deputy foreign minister, Lee Soo-hyuck, told a hastily arranged briefing in Seoul: "It is too early to comment. We must take time to analyse things."

Japan, which had two diplomats killed in Iraq over the weekend, is also struggling with the thorny decision of whether to send troops. Plans to deploy non-combat soldiers were put on hold this month after the attack on the Italian base in Nassiriya.

November was the bloodiest month for the coalition forces in Iraq since the invasion, with the following deaths

US 79

Italy 19

Spain 7

Japan 2

South Korea 2

Poland 1

Colombia 1

· What the leaders say

US: "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins" President George Bush

Italy: "No intimidation should divert us from our determination to help resurrect this country" Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi

Spain: "Against fanatical terrorism there is no other option than confronting it" Prime minister José María Aznar


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December 1, 2003
46 Iraqis Die in Fierce Fight Between Rebels and G.I.`s
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 30 — American soldiers killed 46 guerrilla attackers in a firefight on Sunday afternoon in central Iraq. Military officials said the clash was the largest battle in the country since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein`s government last spring.

At least 18 of the attackers were wounded, the military said, and eight were captured. No American deaths were reported.

The soldiers, members of the Fourth Infantry Division, met multiple ambushes on two convoys rolling separately through the town of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Master Sgt. Robert Cargie, a division spokesman. The Americans responded with automatic rifle fire, Bradley fighting vehicles and other weapons.

Three buildings lay in ruins, destroyed by the American weaponry, Sergeant Cargie said in an interview.

Artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles were strewn across the rubble. So were dozens of bodies, apparently all Iraqi, many wearing the uniforms of fedayeen paramilitary fighters loyal to the overthrown Hussein government, according to Sergeant Cargie. Five American soldiers and one civilian traveling with one of the convoys were wounded.

"Coalition firepower overwhelmed the attackers," Sergeant Cargie said.

The American display of force was among the most deadly for Iraqi fighters since the occupation began.

The battle came on the final day of the bloodiest month for American soldiers in Iraq, with 81 dead, almost half of those in helicopter crashes linked to enemy fire. By contrast, in April, the month of the invasion, 73 Americans died.

The firefight unfolded in an area where three foreign contractors were killed in two attacks the same day. Those deaths suggested a change in strategy by the insurgents fighting the American-led occupation, to target civilians as well as coalition troops. Samarra is just south of Tikrit, the birthplace of Mr. Hussein and a stronghold of Baathist Party supporters and Iraqis hostile to the occupation.

The battle began at 1:30 p.m., as one logistics convoy moved into Samarra`s east end and another into the west part of the city, Sergeant Cargie said. The attackers had apparently massed for a bold, coordinated ambush, and the convoys were immediately bombarded with small-arms fire, mortars, homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Attackers shot from the street and from rooftops.

Some guerrillas had thrown up a makeshift barricade in front of one of the convoys, but the vehicles immediately barreled through it, Sergeant Cargie said.

The First Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment and military police returned fire, shooting 120-millimeter tank rounds and 25-millimeter cannon rounds from Bradley fighting vehicles, destroying three buildings used by attackers for cover.

The firefights lasted "many minutes" as the convoys raced through the city, Sergeant Cargie said.

Another shootout broke out in the city at 2:25 p.m., when four men in a black BMW fired automatic weapons at soldiers of the 244th Engineer Battalion, Sergeant Cargie said. The soldiers shot back and wounded all four men. They searched the car and found three AK-47 rifles and two rocket-propelled grenades, Sergeant Cargie added.

Military officials did not publicly report the battle until late Sunday night, even though a senior military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, held a routine news conference on operations at 5 p.m.

Much of that news conference centered around the increasing danger to civilians.

The three foreign contractors killed Sunday near Samarra died within 24 hours of two roadside ambushes that killed nine people from America`s coalition allies, all wearing civilian clothes.

Two of the three contractors killed Sunday were South Korean electricians and one was Colombian; they died in two separate attacks on their cars. On Saturday, two Japanese diplomats stopping for food were ambushed and killed on the same road, while seven Spaniards traveling in a two-car convoy were killed by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades south of Baghdad.

The Spaniards were in civilian cars but served as intelligence officers, the Spanish government said. A crowd of onlookers standing by the wreckage on Sunday morning grinned and spoke gleefully of the ambush.

General Kimmitt said it was unclear whether their attackers knew they worked for a coalition-member government. If the guerrillas did not know that in advance, he said, then the attack could have been one of opportunity, supporting the recent trend of targeting foreigners.

In other violence illustrating the danger on the roads between Baghdad and Tikrit, attackers opened fire on a Turkish diesel fuel tanker on Sunday evening, blowing out four of the eight tires, police officers said. The driver managed to get the tanker to a police station near Samarra. Policemen quickly showed the truck to a visitor, then locked themselves inside the station.

General Kimmitt said the guerrillas seemed to be focusing less on military targets and more on civilians. "The enemy realizes that attacking a military target will probably lead to his death or capture," he said. "And going against soft targets is probably an easier way to achieve what the enemy is trying to achieve."

General Kimmitt said the Colombian contractor killed Sunday morning was traveling in a convoy near the town of Balad, about an hour`s drive north of Baghdad. Attackers fired on the convoy with small arms. Two of the contractor`s colleagues were wounded.

The two South Koreans were ambushed near Samarra on the way to Tikrit, where they worked at an electric power transmission station, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, quoting the country`s Foreign Ministry director. They were employees of a company based in Seoul that is under contract to lay power lines for an American company. Two of their colleagues were wounded in the attack, and one was in critical condition.

Lt. Col. William MacDonald, a spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, said the killings of the South Koreans were unrelated to the convoy attacks, The Associated Press reported.

The attacks over the weekend concluded a month that was the bloodiest yet for American soldiers. The body count of 81 surpassed that in April, when 73 soldiers died during the invasion. Two died on Saturday, when guerrillas ambushed a convoy east of the town of Husaybah.

General Kimmitt said the numerous fatalities were partly a result of more aggressive military operations.

When you go after the enemy, he said, "you will lose American soldiers, you will lose coalition soldiers."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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December 1, 2003
White House Signals Reverse of Steel Tariffs
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 — President Bush is expected to announce this week that he will immediately lift most of the tariffs he placed on foreign steel in an effort to protect American industry, bowing to a ruling by the World Trade Organization that his administration had violated global trading rules, industry officials who have been in negotiations with the White House said on Sunday.

The possible announcement, first reported in Monday`s issue of The Washington Post, could come on Monday, the officials said, when Mr. Bush is in Michigan to attend an economic event and raise money for the 2004 campaign. But he may wait until after a Tuesday trip to Pittsburgh, where the decision to accede to the trade organization ruling, even if accompanied by an expected threat by Mr. Bush to reimpose tariffs if there is a surge of low-cost foreign steel, will be deeply unpopular among steelworkers and owners of the American steel manufacturers.

The White House has said Mr. Bush may make no decision until a deadline in the middle of December. But industry officials who have been talking to White House economic officials say Mr. Bush`s advisers have warned him that there is no way to avoid the billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs that Europe and Japan have threatened to impose on American goods if the tariffs are not lifted.

The Europeans would use retaliatory tariffs to strike at industries in states crucial to the 2004 election, for example, on Florida citrus, motorcycles produced in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and other products in states that Mr. Bush feels he must win in 2004.

One industry official who has been talking to the White House said he expected that Mr. Bush would try to make the best of his defeat by arguing that the main objective of the tariffs has been achieved: the American steel industry has consolidated significantly in the past 18 months, exactly the reorganization that Mr. Bush declared had to happen during the three-year life of the tariffs.

Under the trade organization`s rules, the tariffs on foreign steel decline every year so that the domestic steel industry would face increasing pressure to become more efficient.

"He`ll try to declare victory, as best we understand it," the industry official said. "But clearly, this could be politically costly."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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December 1, 2003
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Turning Northeast Wyoming Upside Down in the Hunt for Coal-Bed Methane
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

In its own quiet way, there is hardly a landscape in America lovelier than the hills of northeastern Wyoming. The drama of that countryside is understated, except when the weather bears down hard. Pockets of low brush on the hillsides burn as bright as sugar maples when October comes. After half a decade of drought, the pasture grasses by mid-November seem utterly bleached, as if they had been reduced to silica. Angus mother cows wander along the irrigation ditches, and when the sun catches the herd through a break in the clouds, the contrast between the black cattle and the blond light rising from the grass seems to define the limits of the visible spectrum.

The eye catches just the surface of things — the drought-deprived flow in the creek bottoms, the long rows of round bales stacked against the prevailing winds, the superficial differences that separate wild land from rangeland from hayground.

In the Powder River Basin, it`s hard to miss the fresh dirt roads that crawl along the draws and up over the saddles in the hills. But those roads are a sign that the surface no longer means much in this part of Wyoming. What the eye can`t see is that the real owners of the land own what lies beneath. Those who own the surface are just squatters.

The Powder River Basin is the most active region of coal-bed methane drilling in the nation, a place where in the next few years more than 50,000 wells will have been drilled to obtain, at most, a year`s supply of natural gas. There has always been plenty to divide one neighbor from another in the area. But the coal-bed methane push, which began, innocuously enough, with a tax credit in the late 1980`s, has caused a bitterness that may never be repaired.

In Wyoming, and in much of the country, mineral extraction is still considered the highest and best use of the land. When property is sold in Wyoming, a portion of the mineral rights usually remains with the previous owner. What that means is that most land has two and often many more owners — the owners of the mineral rights, which include the state and federal governments, and the owner of the surface rights.

Extracting coal-bed methane means draining groundwater that is often charged with toxic salts. The process has demoralized the landscape of the Powder River Basin, especially its western edge where there has been little conventional mining. The coal-bed methane push has carved up a delicate landscape, causing new scars all across the terrain. It has created an incentive for ranchers who control their mineral rights to deface the land. It has sent ranchers who don`t control their mineral rights into the frenzy that most people would feel who saw land they cared for being torn up.

The methane push has also demoralized the landscape in another sense. When entire valleys have been seamed with new roads and punctured by new drilling, when the draws have been dammed and lined to hold the runoff water from methane wells, it becomes harder and harder to stand up for the character of your own land, especially when you know, as most people in the basin do, that someday soon the crews will be back to lay the pipelines that will connect the wells.

The erosion is moral as well as literal. Ranchers usually do pretty well when their backs are against the wall. That`s part of the ethos of ranching. But when you feel that the entire logic of the land is suddenly against you, it`s all too tempting to give up in the name of what some people like to call the national interest.

I`ve come to think of the coal-bed methane industry as a metaphor for something deeper that`s going on in our country. The methane play, as the industry likes to call it, is being sold on the grounds of energy security, as a way of ensuring that the American lifestyle can continue uninterrupted and undiminished. But what that means is turning everything upside down. All that drilling and scarring, all that animosity and moral erosion lead to one year`s supply of natural gas and the waste of billions of gallons of water.

Americans could essentially create that amount of energy through conservation, which is the true source of energy security. But conservation turns no profits, not to the owners of subterranean mineral rights or the gas companies or the pipelines or the lobbyists who drive this kind of extraction through the highest levels of government. No. The methane play is about short-term profits, not long-term security. A deal gets done, and soon you no longer recognize the country you live in.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. to Release 140 From Guantanamo
No Time Frame Given for Letting Detainees Go


Reuters
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A07


The United States plans to release 140 of the 660 prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for suspects in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, Time magazine reported yesterday.

Slated for release were "the easiest 20 percent" of detainees, a military official told the magazine. Time did not identify its source, who said the military was waiting for "a politically propitious time to release them."

A Pentagon spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

No charges have been filed against any of the 660 prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Defense officials say many are suspected members of Osama bin Laden`s al Qaeda network or Taliban fighters from the war in Afghanistan.

Human rights groups have criticized the United States for holding the detainees without charges. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving two Britons, two Australians and 12 Kuwaitis, has agreed to decide whether foreign nationals can use U.S. courts to challenge their incarceration at the base.

According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded that some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Separately yesterday, a British human rights lobbyist said five European nations were close to a deal to repatriate citizens held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, possibly as soon as Christmas.

Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, said his group has been tracking negotiations over the prisoners between Washington and Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.

Since the prison opened in January 2002, prisoners from 42 countries have been taken to Guantanamo Bay for detention and questioning. As of Nov. 24, 84 prisoners had been transferred to their home countries for release and four had been returned to Saudi Arabia for imprisonment.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Losing the Media War




Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A22


ONE BATTLE THAT the occupation authority in Iraq has been steadily losing is that of the media. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein there has been an explosion of information sources in the country; more than 200 newspapers are being published, and Iraqis have rushed by the tens of thousands to acquire satellite equipment allowing them to watch Arab and other international news stations. Meanwhile, the coalition`s own attempts to broadcast news and information have been woefully deficient. Although it controls Iraq`s main broadcast channel, two domestic radio stations and a major newspaper, the authority and its American contractors have failed to capture the Iraqi audience -- news programs, in particular, smack of sanitization. The problem is made all the more serious by the fact that Arab satellite broadcasters are at once more skilled in production, more credible with many Iraqis and wildly biased against the U.S. mission. Last week, with the approval of the Bush administration, Iraq`s Governing Council reacted by shutting down the Baghdad operation of one of the two leading broadcasters, al-Arabiya. In addition to setting a terrible precedent for press freedom in Iraq, this will only make the underlying problem worse.

Al-Arabiya, like its competitor al-Jazeera, covers Iraq and the Middle East with a slant that is disturbing to Westerners, but typical of the prevailing outlook among the Arab intelligentsia. It heaps attention on violence in the Israeli-occupied territories, and on the resistance to the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both channels sympathized with Saddam Hussein`s resistance to the U.S. invasion, and al-Arabiya recently broadcast a statement it received at its Dubai headquarters that was attributed to the former dictator. This last act was the pretext for its shutdown. Yet the channel was doing no more or less than American networks that report smuggled statements from Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, not because they support them but because they are news. After this fact was pointed out, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld charged at a press conference that al-Arabiya works in league with the Iraqi resistance, which, he claimed, summons it to cover attacks. But he offered no evidence to back this sensational charge. The channel, like other media outlets, covers the aftermath of attacks, but those who monitor it say it has not broadcast them as they occur.

If al-Arabiya really were a mere tool of the Iraqi resistance, the U.S. challenge in Iraq would be easier than it is. In fact the channel merely reflects as well as drives common Arab and Iraqi opinion about the United States and the occupation -- which is mistrustful, misinformed and often antagonistic. Censorship will only reinforce such biases while driving up al Arabiya`s viewership. The only effective way to attack the problem is to offer an alternative -- or many alternatives -- that give Iraqis and other Arabs access to quality programming and credible information, provided by professional journalists who are independent of the governing authority. This ought to be something that an American administration can get right. That it has not done so, after seven months in power, is an inexcusable failing.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The Nitty-Gritty of Democracy


By Fred Hiatt

Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A23


When I recently asked an Egyptian human rights leader whether she had taken heart from President Bush`s new commitment to democracy in her region, she looked at me as though I must be either slightly mad or utterly naive. Choosing her words with as much polite restraint as she could muster, Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla replied: "What Egyptians have experienced from U.S. policy is not in harmony with any human rights values."

Her reaction, which mirrors that of many democracy advocates in the Middle East, speaks to the challenge of shifting policy when a president experiences a midterm conversion.

Some critics have belittled the new Bush doctrine, or questioned its sincerity, given Bush`s skepticism of democracy promotion when he was a candidate. A more generous reading would give the president credit for frankly acknowledging the failure of past U.S. policy and the need for a new direction.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said last month. "Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."

But announcing a new policy doesn`t make it so. If the United States is to commit to a struggle equivalent to its fight against communism, Bush will have to back his words with the nitty-gritty of execution -- with student exchanges, with support for language training and area studies in universities, with reorientation of every government institution.

The foreign-service bureaucracy he directs, after all, is a product of that mentality of the past 60 years -- a mentality that considered democracy unrealistic for Arab countries and, as Bush said, cherished stability as the primary goal. Even his own political administration was formed by a president -- the pre-9/11 George W. Bush -- for whom democracy in the Middle East wasn`t a consideration.

The momentum of the "failed" policy is strong. The administration directed $29 million in fiscal 2002 and $100 million in fiscal 2003 toward its efforts to promote reform throughout the region. Meanwhile it continues to give Egypt alone $2 billion every year, so far without regard to whether democracy there advances or regresses.

And the continuity isn`t solely due to inertia. The Sept. 11 attacks brought Bush and many others to an understanding that U.S. security ultimately is harmed by repressive Arab regimes that maintain power in part by striking bargains with intolerant Islamist movements. But the attacks, by illuminating U.S. vulnerability, also pushed the administration to cooperate more closely than ever with the police forces, skilled in torture, of the regimes that Bush now decries.

Many Arab advocates of human rights and political freedom say that, from among these contradictory signals, their rulers so far have chosen to receive only the green light for repression.

"This anti-terror discourse has given our government something to lean on for any human rights violation," Dr. Seif El Dawla said.

Dr. Seif El Dawla, a psychiatrist who was in this country to receive an award from Human Rights Watch, founded the Egyptian Association Against Torture and helps run a clinic for female victims of violence, whether state-sponsored or domestic. She has battled religious intolerance as well as government repression, thus occupying the narrow space that administration officials now say must be expanded if democracy in the region is to take root.

But over the past few months, as President Mubarak`s regime has refused to register her organization, she says she has sensed no support from the U.S. Embassy.

Similarly in Morocco, Bush and his administration have chosen to focus on the steps of King Mohammed VI toward including women in politics. Meanwhile the government there "seems to have made the decision to restrict liberty in the name of security, perhaps in imitation of the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks," as newspaper publisher Aboubakr Jamai has written.

And in Kuwait, a moderate Islamist member of parliament told me recently that he does receive an occasional visit from a U.S. Embassy officer -- but one who cannot speak Arabic and who visits only to lecture on the need to allow women to vote. There is, the MP said, no exchange of views.

In an interview last week, an administration official knowledgeable about Mideast policy acknowledged that some skepticism is to be expected. "We don`t have a lot of credibility in some places," the official said. "People understandably say, for decades you haven`t cared about democracy and you haven`t cared about human rights. . . . Part of what we have to do, and what I hope we`re beginning to do, is show people that we are serious, that we`re here for the long term."

It`s the right goal, but still a distant one.

[e-mail]



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
67 New Cartoons Today, saure Gurken Zeit nur 67 frische Cartoons:

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Your reaction to today`s Mike Luckovich:

I like Mike. 84.00% I don`t like Mike. 16.00%

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Last update - 01:32 30/11/2003
The killing fields of Rafah
By Gideon Levy

Quietly, far from the public eye, Israeli soldiers continue killing Palestinians. Hardly a day goes by without casualties, some innocent civilians, and the stories of their violent deaths never reach the Israeli consciousness or awareness. If there is one consistent piece of data in the current intifada, it is the number of Palestinian casualties: dozens a month, unceasingly.

There were 30 in November, 57 in October, 33 in September. In May and June, the number of casualties reached 60 a month (all data supplied by B`Tselem). While Palestinian terror shocks us with its brutality, the daily killing of innocent Palestinians in far greater numbers is ignored - unless it is a case of an army operation as in Nusseirat refugee camp in October.

Here`s a list of victims from the last month, taken from the margins of the daily newspaper chronicles: A 32-year-old motorcyclist shot to death in the chest after soldiers said he tried to escape a checkpoint near Iskar refugee camp; a 10-year-old boy from Sejaya in Gaza who was bird hunting with a slingshot near the separation fence around Gaza, killed by a tank shell fired at him; an eighth-grader from Barukin, near Jenin, who threw stones at soldiers, shot dead; a youth shot to death during "disturbances" after the funeral of his friend in Jenin; a taxi driver and father of six shot to death in Tul Karm by soldiers who thought he was trying to get away; a 15-year-old killed in Yata during some arrests; a nine-year-old killed by IDF fire in Rafah; and three Palestinians who were on their way to the holiday dinner last Wednesday in Gaza, killed by soldiers who claimed they thought the three were an armed cell.

The IDF admitted the next day that they were "accidentally" killed. But a day later, Brigadier General Gad Shamni, commander of the Gaza forces in the Strip hurried to say the soldiers actually behaved correctly. Even though three innocent people were killed, he didn`t even think it was a mistake.

Life in the killing fields of Rafah, for example, is as cheap as the hundreds of houses that have been demolished there for various, strange reasons. Just a few days ago, the IDF demolished the home of someone in their custody whom the army claimed was responsible for the smuggling tunnels. There`s no need for blood on the hands to justify demolishing a person`s house in the current intifada. Only someone who has lately visited Rafah can understand how cheap life has become in this remote place, where there`s practically no building that has not been damaged.

Last weekend, the BBC broadcast a program titled "When the killing is easy" about the killing of British TV cameraman James Miller, the death of International Solidarity Movement volunteer Rachel Corrie under a bulldozer, and the shooting of ISM peace activist Tom Hurndall, who has been rendered a vegetable by his injuries. All three incidents happened within a few weeks in Rafah.

The TV cameras caught Miller walking in the night to his death: wearing a flak vest marked with fluorescent ink identifying him as a journalist, white flag in hand, walking slowly and cautiously, calling out to the soldiers in the armored personnel car facing him so they calm down. Then, the sound of a shot in the dark, and then another and Miller falls, dying in the dirt. The single bullet that struck his neck was well-aimed.

The soldiers in the APC had the best night vision equipment and it is difficult to assume that they were unable to identify their victim as a journalist. Maybe they did not want to kill a journalist, maybe they thought it was a Palestinian pretending to be a journalist, but there is no doubt he was not endangering any of their lives inside the APC. They could have warned him to halt, they could have only wounded him. Hurndall was also an innocent victim of the easy fire. A bullet struck him in the head and he`s now a vegetable.

In effect, there is no difference between how Miller was killed, how Hurndall was wounded and how the three Palestinians were shot dead last Wednesday, except for the fact that a movie was made about Hurndall and Miller, because they are not Palestinians. When soldiers know they will not be prosecuted - and usually no investigation will even take place - for killing an innocent foreign photographer or innocent Palestinians on their way to a festive dinner, they are getting a license to kill from their commanders.

In the eyes of a soldier`s commander, at most he made a mistake. When Brigadier General Shamni announced his soldiers operated "correctly" by killing three unarmed residents, he paved the way for the next unnecessary killing.

If there`s no investigation and no punishment, it means nothing wrong happened. If the pilots are allowed to kill 10 civilians for a single wanted man, obviously the killing of a single innocent resident is inconsequential. Thus the line blurs between killing and murder. What was the sniper`s bullet that struck Miller in the neck? In the complacent response, the IDF`s senior command sends a worrisome message to its soldiers. No instruction booklet about what is allowed and not allowed and no day of discussion about "respecting human dignity" that certain units in the territories have lately taken will erase the damage of the sweeping license to kill that the IDF grants 19-year-olds in the territories.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/366499.html

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Pentagon Establishes New Force For Future Invasions

Alex Massie

11/30/03: (The Scotsman) HAVING discovered in Iraq that it can be harder to win the peace than the war, America is taking steps to ensure future conquests do not turn sour.

Senior Pentagon officials are currently considering plans to set up two 15,000-strong divisions that would be dedicated to overseeing the reconstruction of countries in the aftermath of future military campaigns.

And while the units could be used for peace-keeping operations anywhere in the world, it is understood their use has been included in Pentagon wargaming of potential invasions of countries such as Iran, Syria and even North Korea.

As part of its ongoing "transformation" project, the Pentagon has recently been updating wargame scenarios for these areas and concluded the United States can win battles faster and with fewer troops than previously been thought possible.

As a result, a thorough overhaul of US troop deployment around the world is under way, with an emphasis on a smarter, leaner army able to deploy anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.

The changes underline America’s determination to maintain the capability to overthrow other rogue regimes suspected of harbouring terrorists, but there is also a recognition that military force alone cannot guarantee stability and a successful transition to democratic civilian rule.

Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation, a bureau charged with devising ways for the US military to operate more efficiently and effectively, has backed the proposal to set up two peace-keeping divisions of 15,000 troops, which was developed by the National Defence University. "This [post-conflict] mission is too important and too hard to rely on cobbling a force together," he said.

Cebrowski argues a permanent post-conflict stabilisation force needs to be treated as being of equal importance to combat troops and not as an optional extra. "War is more than combat and combat is more than shooting," he said.

Although many of the elements - such as engineers and military police - that would make up a post-conflict force are already found within the US military, Cebrowski said: "Their existence does not constitute a capability until you organise for that. The military has to get good at that."

A second proposal envisages a 5,000-strong peace-keeping brigade specialising in what the Pentagon now calls "stability operations".

Each scheme is an acknowledgement that the US army does not possess an adequate "post-conflict" capability.

A senior Pentagon official said it appeared likely this would change. "It’s an idea that has legs. If you have dedicated forces, you can ensure they will be better organised for post-war tasks and know what they are about," the insider said.

The idea is a significant U-turn by President George Bush’s administration and is seen as an attempt to limit the political damage caused by the continuing casualties being sustained in Iraq.

As recently as June, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had speculated that while the US might "provide some leadership for training of other countries’ citizens who would like to participate in peace-keeping", it would not be interested in playing a leading role in those operations itself.

But, according to the Washington Post, he sent a memo in August pondering the possible need to "try to fashion a post-combat capability of some sort".

According to James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the US is currently ill-equipped to mount peace operations.

"When American forces do undertake peace missions, they try, as much as possible, to make them mirror traditional military activities," he said.

Carafano said the military had a "tradition of forgetting" the lessons of previous peace-keeping and post-conflict operations, such as the occupation of the Rhineland after the First World War, and military governments in Mexico, California, the Southern States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, China and the Philippines.

Thomas Donnelly, a defence analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said it was still "painfully obvious the civilian and uniformed leadership of the US military remains resolutely fixated on battle and, it seems, wilfully ignorant about war: the use of armed force for a political purpose".

Within the US, there is a significant lobby that believes there are still battles waiting to be fought to achieve victory in the war on terror.

Michael Ledeen, author of The War Against the Terror Masters who believes the US must put more pressure on Syria and do more to support the reformist opposition in Iran, said: "We are involved in a regional struggle, not just a national conflict.

"This is not a civil war, it is part of the broad war against the terror masters, and it cannot be won if we limit our vision and our action to Iraq." However, he added: "At the moment, the top policy people do not want to take on another terror master, whether in Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli or Jeddah."

Any such operation would prove unpopular with senior army officers who are already concerned the US military is dangerously over-stretched.

And there are other signs of tension between senior army officers and Pentagon defence strategists.

As part of the wider review process, plans are being considered that would effectively strip away power from the four-star generals who currently run the military’s six command areas and concentrate power within the Pentagon itself.

"The traditional sensibility about forces being solely dedicated to regional duty is something we want to discuss," said a senior defence official.

"The process of deploying US troops will be more centrally controlled by the Pentagon who will move US forces around the world as though they were pieces on a chessboard."

Copyright: The Scotsman.

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BUSH DECIDES TO DO EVERYTHING IN SECRET FROM NOW ON

Holds Midnight Press Conference in Guam


Delighted by the success of his super-secret visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush has decided to do everything in secret from now on, sources acknowledged today.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to confirm or deny the President`s decision to enshroud the executive branch in mystery, saying only that it was "a secret."

But Mr. McClellan did say that from now on, all information relating to foreign policy, judicial appointments and especially the President`s schedule would be divulged on a "need to know" basis only.

While the secret Baghdad trip may have served as an inspiration for Mr. Bush`s new policy, the President has long coveted the air of secrecy surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Mr. Bush has seen above ground only twice in the past eighteen months.

Reportedly, Mr. Bush believes that his decision to evade detection will not prevent him from getting his message out to the American people, although he intends to deliver that message from now on in a top-secret code known only to him.

In a sign that the President`s new policy has already taken effect, Mr. Bush held an unannounced press conference last night at midnight at a remote Air Force base in Guam, attended by no one.

To avoid being spotted, the President did not take Air Force One, instead flying in an unmarked plane operated by Hooters Air.

Mr. Bush opened his press conference by saying, "Mixdy levgo trisdikk fleddxy," before dashing back into the plane and jetting home to Crawford, Texas, where aides said he planned to do "something."

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THE WORLD



Wary Saudis Withhold Aid to Iraq
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2003

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia will withhold the $1 billion in loans and credits that it pledged last month for Iraq`s reconstruction until the security situation is stabilized and a sovereign government takes office, U.S. and Saudi officials said.

The Saudi decision is a setback for the Bush administration, which had hoped that the kingdom would set an example for other Arab governments by providing vitally needed aid. At an international donors conference in Madrid in October, Saudi Arabia pledged to give Saudis willing to do business in Iraq $500 million in loans and $500 million in export credits over the next five years. The U.S. hailed the commitment.

But Baghdad won`t be counting Saudi cash any time soon, according to Saudi and U.S. officials. The money "can`t go anywhere until there can be actual movement toward development," said a Saudi official, referring to the military and political instability in Iraq.

The Saudis` reluctance underscores how the mounting violence in Iraq is feeding a deep ambivalence among Arab governments about the rebuilding effort, Arab diplomats in Washington said. The deadly insurgency that U.S. officials say is being mounted by remnants of Saddam Hussein`s deposed regime and foreign militants has already forced international aid agencies to decrease their staffs in Iraq.

In a gesture of support, Arab governments have provided humanitarian assistance and begun rebuilding economic ties with Baghdad. Despite their publics` unhappiness with the U.S. presence, they also have taken the first steps toward recognizing the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council.

But some governments have dragged their feet on securing their borders to prevent militants from entering Iraq. They have been slow to respond to the Governing Council`s pleas for a quick return of billions in Iraqi cash smuggled out by the former regime. And they have continued to hang back when Washington has asked for cash and military assistance.

"The first thing [regional governments] need to do is stop messing things up," said one senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

American officials have accused non-Arab Iran of being the most egregious offender when it comes to letting militants pass through its territory, but Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia also could do more, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials say the ambivalence of regional governments reflects in part their fears that shifting U.S. plans for Iraq may produce a weak and divided state, the first Shiite-led Arab state or the most democratic state in the Arab world — all unsettling prospects for the region`s authoritarian regimes.

While some governments have "started to take some steps, too many have stood on the sidelines, criticizing the United States and remaining mute on the topic of the interim Governing Council," said another U.S. official, who also spoke on the condition that he not be named.

U.S. officials said that Arab regimes "resigned themselves to the idea that the U.S. will be in Iraq for a while," said one official. "But there are suspicions … there are misgivings."

For these governments "it is troubling to be asked to cooperate, when it`s so unclear which path the United States is following," said Khalid Dakhil, a professor at King Saud University and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Economic ties between Arab states and Iraq could do more to restore Iraq than the billions the U.S. plans to pour into the country, experts said. But if Arab states turn against the effort, they could jeopardize reconstruction and weaken U.S. efforts to fight insurgents or build an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

U.S. officials continue to try to make the case to Arab regimes that a stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq is in their interest.

"We all have a stake in seeing reconstruction succeed. But I think neighbors of Iraq have a particularly high stake in having this work out," said Alan P. Larson, U.S. undersecretary of State for political and economic affairs. "They will be the ones who, if Iraq is a prosperous democracy, will stand to benefit. If Iraq is an unstable, declining economic neighbor that at times is threatening to its neighbors, they will be the first to suffer as a result of that."

For many in the Arab world, any support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq is remarkable. A nation considered a wellspring of Arab civilization is now patrolled by about 130,000 U.S. soldiers, in what to many ordinary Arabs "looks like another step in the American war against Islam," said one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition that he not be named.

Arab television broadcasts regularly juxtapose images of Israeli troops patrolling the West Bank with U.S. soldiers firing at insurgents in Iraq. In some Arab countries, approval of the United States has plunged to the single-digit range in the past year, polls show.

Nevertheless, governments in the region have allowed representatives of the Iraqi Governing Council to take part in meetings of the Arab League, OPEC and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Governments don`t have full diplomatic relations with the Governing Council, yet Egypt recently received its interim foreign minister.

And some have cooperated in other ways. Saudi Arabia and Jordan have set up large field hospitals in Iraq; the Saudis have built water purification plants and have been flying Iraqis with severe medical problems to hospitals in their country.

Non-Arab Turkey has reopened a lifeline, allowing the regular flow of trucks, and has been boosting Iraq`s power supply with 1 billion kilowatts of electricity, in exchange for Iraqi oil. Jordan, which with Kuwait is the Arab regime most openly supportive of the new order, has agreed to provide facilities for the training of up to 1,500 police a month.

Yet American and Iraqi leaders are urging regional governments to do much more.

Iyad Allawi, one of the nine rotating presidents of the Governing Council, said a top priority is to get the return of what he believes is billions in assets illegally spirited out of the country by members of Hussein`s regime and now held in countries such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria."This is cash that is available now in banks, as we speak," Allawi said in a recent interview.

Arab officials say that in some cases the money clearly belongs to Iraqis and should be returned. In other cases, foreign businesses say the money was sent to them as payment for legitimate purchases and belongs to them. It will take time to figure out the claims.

It remains to be seen how much money will be sent to Iraq, and how soon, from the international donors conference held in Madrid. At the close of the conference, attended by 73 nations, the U.S. said that $13 billion had been pledged in grants, in-kind services and other assistance.

But so far, no checks have been written to make good on the pledges, said one U.S. official, since an international trust fund for the money has yet to be put in place.

U.S. officials said they also haven`t given up trying to persuade Arab governments to send troops as peacekeepers in Iraq. None, however, has been willing to send even military medical units or military police.

And there have been some overt diplomatic snubs.

One occurred during a recent Arab ministerial meeting in Damascus, where Syrian officials invited the Iraqi Governing Council to attend just one day before the meeting began. "There was a lot of suggestion it was an intentional slight," said a U.S. official.

Although the U.S. and Saudi governments have been drawn together by recent terrorist bombings in the Saudi kingdom — and one Saudi official insisted that "our goal is to help any way we can, short of sending troops" — the Saudis continue to resist pressure to give cash grants. Part of this "is ideology: oil producers just don`t see why they should be giving money to another large producer," said Edward S. Walker, who is president of the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former senior State Department official.

A further source of friction is the looming question of Iraq`s crippling foreign debt, estimated at about $300 billion to $400 billion. The U.S. would like to see nations forgive much of that debt, arguing it is a necessary step to ensure than an emerging democratic regime in Iraq will have financial stability.

Iraq owes about $50 billion to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab nations, and they are loathe to forgive that debt.

"These obligations are real," said one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A senior U.S. official said he expects an international agreement on the debt next year, with Arab countries participating. "It`s now a front-burner issue," he said.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-bus1…
THE WORLD



17 Die in Iraq as Bus Bound for Kuwait Overturns
From Reuters

December 1, 2003

KUWAIT CITY — Seventeen people were killed Sunday when their bus overturned in southern Iraq as they were returning to Kuwait from the funeral of a leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Kuwait`s state news agency reported.

The agency quoted Kuwaiti Health Minister Mohammed Jarallah as saying that 33 others were injured in the accident near the southern city of Nasiriyah. The injured were taken to three hospitals in Kuwait.

They were part of an original convoy of more than 25 buses that carried hundreds of Shiites from Kuwait on Friday for the funeral of religious authority Merza Abdulrasoul Haeri Ehqaqi, who was 75. The Kuwaiti cleric`s body was taken for burial to the Iraqi holy city of Karbala by family and followers. Ehqaqi died Wednesday in London, where he had sought treatment for an unspecified ailment.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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Talking Turkey About The Bush Bros.
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, December 1, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/12/01/hsorensen.DTL



Eat your heart out, Ronald Reagan! George W. Bush has made you look like a rank amateur. His Thanksgiving Day publicity stunt in Baghdad was the stuff of true genius.

Take a back seat, Mr. Great Communicator. "Win one for the Gipper" just doesn`t cut it any more. This is the new millennium. Bush rules!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, readers of all ages, it may surprise you to learn that I`m sincere. Do I still detest Bush? Most assuredly. What person who loves his country would not detest a man dedicated to ruining it?

But one must give credit where credit is due, and the advantage our current president took of a slow news day was absolutely brilliant. He must be commended for his audacity, which rivals his mendacity.

And, as much as I dislike Bush, even I had to fight back a tear as he emerged from behind the mess hall curtain and the room erupted in cheers on the television replay. Had I been there, I would have cheered, too.

It was great showmanship.

Now, I don`t want to appear churlish about this (even if I am), but I do feel obligated to point out that the trip to the Baghdad airport, for all its grandeur, was slightly less dangerous than the three hours I spent on Highway 101 Thanksgiving Day.

(Please, please, no applause. One risks Highway 101 only because one must. I`m no hero. Aw, shucks, I`m just a regular guy, more or less like Dubya. And although our president is now legally entitled to a campaign ribbon for his two and a half hours in Iraq, I honestly don`t feel I should be given a comparable ribbon for Highway 101 combat.)

Pulling outrageous stunts and getting away with them seems to be in the Bush family genes. My heart still bursts with admiration for Papa Bush, who, when the Iran-Contra mess started closing in on him, used his presidential pardon powers to pardon all five of the guys who might have fingered him.

That took chutzpah. But it worked. The compliant liberal press said, "Oh, my," and Papa Bush went on to start a new career as a war profiteer ... which, one might argue, takes chutzpah to the max, considering the son started the war that now profits the father and his loyal moneymaking sidekicks.

One of my favorite Bushes is our brave president`s younger brother, Neil. He is best known as a director of Silverado Savings & Loan in Denver, which went belly up in the 1980s and left the taxpayers with a $1 billion bailout tab.

Neil Bush profitted mightily from Silverado`s shenanigans, but he was let off the hook with a $50,000 fine, just a fraction of his ill-gotten gains. It was kind of like robbing a bank of $1,000 and being punished with a $50 fine.

Neil made news recently when some of his heretofore unreported activities came out in divorce proceedings. A Nov. 25 Reuters article by Jeff Franks pretty well sums up the main points.


The most fascinating part, perhaps, is Neil`s associations with certain women during business trips to Thailand and Hong Kong. As luck would have it, these women knocked on Neil`s hotel room doors, and, after he let them in, proceeded to have sex with him, no questions asked.

Neil said he didn`t know if these women were prostitutes because they didn`t ask for money and he didn`t give them any.

In a deposition, Neil was asked: "Mr. Bush, you have to admit it`s a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her."

"It was very unusual," Neil replied.

Some guys are just unusually lucky.

If you`re one of the people who lost a job during the Bush Recession That Doesn`t Exist, you might consider the kind of jobs Neil Bush gets. One of interest was with Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.

Grace, backed by the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, agreed to pay Neil $2 million in stock over five years for acting as a "consultant," plus another $10,000 for every board meeting he attended.

(Neil gets around. In another of his business deals, his investors include the well-known bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia.)

Does Neil know anything about semiconductors? No, he admitted. So, if you know nothing about semiconductors, perhaps you, too, can get a semiconductor firm consultant`s job paying around $400,000 per year. Neil Bush did; why can`t you?

In another instance, in documents first made public by the Houston Chronicle, Neil somehow became co-chairman of an outfit called Crest Investment Corporation. He said he worked an average of three to four hours a week for Crest, but was paid $15,000 every three months for providing what he called "miscellaneous consulting services."

"Such as?" he was asked.

"Such as answering phone calls when Jamail Daniel, the other co-chairman, called and asked for advice," he replied.

All those good jobs out there, and millions still unemployed. I don`t get it.

There also is some chatter in Houston that Neil Bush may be the true father of another man`s 2-year-old child, but it seems safe to say that Bush "did not have sex with that woman." Lawsuits are involved, so we`ll probably be hearing more about this.

The Bush family is indeed fascinating. George W. is their front man for the moment, but you can bet the whole tribe is out there wheeling and dealing in one way or another.

And barring some kind of public relations disaster within the next year, President Bush`s dramatic appearance in Baghdad last Thursday will probably provide the push he needs to legally win next year`s election.

You have to give the Bushes credit. They might not be the nicest people in the world, but they sure know how to look out for themselves.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

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Why Johnny, Shakela and Jose can`t read
Schools are rat traps, home is a rescue mission, funerals abound
Jean Baker
Sunday, November 30, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/11/30/ING8L39SL21.DTL


I`ve spent the past few months teaching English Intervention in one of Richmond`s inner-city schools, the lowest income per capita school district in the Bay Area. Since arriving last summer from the Olympic town of Park City,

Utah, I`ve experienced a cultural exchange of planets. Teaching Shakela, Jose,

Johnny and others to read is virtually impossible in such a destructive environment.

Of this middle school`s population of 1,400, 65 percent are of Hispanic origin, and the rest are primarily of African American heritage.

Incredibly, the school building was constructed more than 50 years ago to accommodate a maximum of 600 students. No major repairs or expansion have occurred since 1950. There have been severe cutbacks in janitorial staff, so the school cannot possibly meet the basic health requirements.

Tiles hang tentatively from the ceiling and faucets spin pointlessly in your hand. Water fountains are gummed-up, germ-filled nightmares. Floors are covered in litter and sticky filth that make shoes stick noisily to the linoleum.

Signs in faculty restrooms ask teachers to bring their own soap. Paper towels are an infrequent luxury in restrooms or the staff`s tiny kitchen. And no, Arnold, there aren`t enough books to go around. Many students share or do without.

For the entire school, there are three counselors who are stretched beyond belief under a heavy caseload. The word is there will be no counselors next year. I`ve learned the hard way that students are not to be sent to counselors for minor infractions such as screaming obscenities, stealing or fist fighting in the classroom.

The baggage these kids carry in their lives includes an incredible amount of anger and potential violence. Yet, our higher-income society sits in judgment, theorizing on these issues. We often wonder why these kids can`t learn to read, or why the parents don`t just go find a good job or why the families are caught in a generational web of living below the poverty line.

The intervention program I`m involved in is designed to help the seventh- and eighth-grade students "catch up." In my classes, pupils at ages 12 to 15 read at the first- to fourth-grade levels. Ironically, high-achieving students in a few English classes are labeled Avid, meaning they read at fifth-grade level, only two years lower than the rest of the nation. I`m trying to imagine any of these students achieving academic success in even the least demanding high school.

Cutting life-enhancing programs such as art, music, French and home economics from the curriculum leaves me wondering why any kid would want to show up at school. This might partly explain the greater than 50 percent rate of absenteeism. The cost to the schools is $25 per day for each student who doesn`t attend, reaching $250,000 for the term. Many students are absent for as long as a month to attend Christmas festivities with families in Mexico.

The reading materials have been dumbed down enough to bore any savvy first-grader. In addition to struggling to keep students focused on such material, teachers are constantly wrestling with state-required testing in order to have students pass and save the teachers` jobs. Little time is left to present relevant lesson plans or actually teach reading.

Contrary to negative news reports, these teachers are the most dedicated, responsible, loving people, many of whom have risen from the ashes of their own low-income neighborhoods. Being the token white teacher from Utah, I have been commuting from Petaluma.

Wasting valuable grading or planning time by attending senseless teacher meetings after school is a pet peeve among faculty. The esoteric topics presented usually include focusing on our goals as a school culture and having meetings about protocol to have meetings. There is a lot of empty talk about consensus but no discussion about relevant issues such as discipline, behavior problems, teacher support, activities, or community involvement or resources.

Why don`t we discuss why Johnny beat the hell out of Jose in English class? In my past private school experience, I can`t even imagine asking teachers to spend their time hashing out philosophical nonissues while ignoring daily survival techniques.

The curriculum consists of not very exciting lessons based on experiences such as introducing yourself as a new student from Thailand, saving the wetlands or preventing pollution. I cannot begin to tell you how little these inner-city kids relate to these concerns. Some students innocently ask why there`s garbage all over their neighborhoods but not in the few other places they`ve visited. They believe California is its own country and "pimping" is the coolest profession.

It`s difficult to comprehend, but many of these kids have never been to San Francisco and only 25 percent have ever been to the beach. They exist in a day-to-day survival mode. It`s hard to get worked up over the plight of the whooping crane when there`s no food on the table at home.

Home for half of the students is living at a rescue mission or with a distant relative. One child is left on his own until the father arrives home from work at 11:30 p.m. and unlocks the door. Some babysit while a parent is out until 2 a.m. That information was related to me by a boy who had to babysit his 2-day-old sister.

The most common excuse for absence is to attend funerals for cousins in their 20s who`ve been shot in the streets. When asked why pioneers would cross America to come to San Francisco, a troubled youth responded, "To kill somebody?" One 12-year-old girl told me, "You can`t open the door on Halloween because people will knock on your door and when you open it, they shoot you." The kids say it takes 45 minutes for the police to respond to a 911 call. What kind of life is it for these kids if they live in constant fear of being shot to death?

Some students create fantastic tales about their families or missing parents. However unlikely the story, they try to convince you their dad lives in Paris or their mother works as a fashion model in New York. Saying your father is a soldier in Iraq is a bit more exotic than the fact that he`s an inmate in a California prison. A live-in alcoholic uncle may be the cause for an adolescent girl to move away from her own community, mother and siblings in order to be farmed out to an auntie. Her story may be that she`s moving with her mother to live in Hawaii. We may see through the lies, but do we see the necessity for escape from the incredible poverty, both physical and spiritual, in which these kids live?

If you are a concerned, responsible, slightly embarrassed adult, perhaps you can find a way to provide assistance to these inner-city schools. They are starved, not only for food and knowledge but also for a sense of caring. Why would anyone bother to teach dance, art or music classes after school? Why mentor a student who struggles in math or with their own English language? Why bother financing a field trip for kids who`ve never seen a beach but live an hour`s drive away?

It`s easy to be complacent with the richly rewarding lives we take for granted. I`m trying to imagine a child focusing on learning in a Richmond school compared with my middle-class childhood in Texas. My doctor made house calls when I was sick. I had routine dental checkups. There was plenty of food from the garden or the grocery store. My parents, who never divorced, employed a gardener and a nanny. The librarian down the street taught me to read at age 5, and I loved excelling in school. Guns were used for shooting deer for food.

By comparison, these kids do not know a dentist or a doctor who can fix their rotten teeth or open sores. Many need eyeglasses just to see what`s going on in the classroom.

Do we really wonder why these students can`t focus on learning with all the life issues they face? Even those who can learn are constantly being held hostage by the negative behavior and emotional problems of the few. There are many innocent children in Richmond caught in a world of under-achievement and failure.

Do we honestly understand that today`s uneducated youth will be our caretakers of the future? They will not only be handing us our medications but inheriting our civilization.

So how much did we spend on the Olympics? Even worse, I can`t stop thinking about the $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. This may be one of those times we need to think about rebuilding our inner cities, to clean up the mess in our own backyard.

Petaluma resident Jean Baker teaches in Richmond.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Monday December 1, 12:59 AM
Two Iraqi Governing Council members deny accord on direct elections



Two members of Iraq`s US-installed interim Governing Council denied that the body had reached accord over a call by the country`s top Shiite Muslim authority for direct elections.

"The discussions are still going on over this matter," said council members Rajaa Khuzai and Nassir Chadershi at the end of a four-hour meeting.

Fellow council member and leader of Iraq`s main Shiite party, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, said earlier that a "unanimous decision" had been made to consult the people on how best to apply the mid-November agreement between it and the US-led coalition on transferring power to an Iraqi government.

Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), had been speaking to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television.

Hakim, who will assume the rotating presidency of the council Monday, said the council`s decision is backed by SCIRI and the "Shiite religious authority."

Iraq`s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has criticised the power transfer plan, which calls for putting a caretaker government in place by June next year after the drafting of a basic law by end-February 2004 and the selection of a transitional assembly by end-May 2004 through regional caucuses.

Sistani has rejected the caucuses and insisted on a nationwide election of the assembly in a move that plunged council members into crisis talks Saturday in an effort to save the US-backed plan.

Council members are expected to meet with US overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer on Wednesday or possibly earlier in an effort to solve the impasse.

A meeting between a council delegation and Sistani could also take place in a week, said Khuzai.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/031130/1/3gbkv.html

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Monday, Dec. 08, 2003
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,552124,00.…

Losing Hearts And Minds
Unmoved by Bush`s visit, Iraqis blame the U.S. for civilian deaths, missing detainees and razed homes
By BRIAN BENNETT; VIVIENNE WALT/BAGHDAD


Mohammed Ali Karam wants to kill a U.S. soldier. He doesn`t love Saddam Hussein, and he was happy in April when U.S. Marines rolled through his Baghdad neighborhood on their way to liberate the capital. But he turned against the Americans the night he saw his brother Hussein, 27, take two bullets in the neck. At 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 17, Karam says, he and three of his brothers were driving to a neighborhood where the pumps were working in order to get water for their home. Hussein, in the passenger seat, talked excitedly about having his new suit tailored for his upcoming wedding. That`s when 82nd Airborne paratroopers, crouched in an observation post across the street, opened fire — after rounds struck their position, they say. Three of the brothers ran to the safety of a creek bed, but Hussein didn`t make it. In the car, said Karam, the soldiers found Hussein — gurgling blood through his throat — but no weapons. Hussein died on the way to the hospital — three days before his wedding.

U.S. troops face a difficult task in trying to root out the violent insurgents who want to drive them out of Iraq. But in pursuing this deadly enemy, the Americans are frequently guilty of excesses that are turning ordinary Iraqis into foes. Bush`s Thanksgiving visit meant little to Iraqis, who cite three areas of concern: the killing of innocents, the "disappearance" of countrymen detained by U.S. forces, and the destruction of buildings, including family homes. The last tactic, justified by U.S. commanders as legitimate demolition of military targets, is criticized by human-rights groups like Amnesty International as smacking of collective punishment. As U.S. forces employ more aggressive tactics to take on the resistance, these grievances are only getting worse, setting back the effort to win over local hearts and minds. "Before the Americans came, we heard a lot about their respect for human rights," says Khalid Mustafa Akbar, at a mourning tent for his three brothers who were shot dead while driving their pickup by a U.S. patrol outside Tikrit last week. "But then we found it is only talk."


It`s hard to say how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the fighting. The U.S. military does not track civilian casualties in wartime. Iraqi hospital records are unreliable, and because Iraqi Muslims usually bury their dead swiftly, deaths are not always recorded. The Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Mass., estimates that about 200 Iraqi noncombatants have been victims of coalition firepower since May 1, when President Bush announced the end of major hostilities.

The widespread arrests and detentions are no less troubling to Iraqis. U.S. officials last week said they are holding roughly 5,000 "suspected terrorists" in custody in Iraq, including 300 with foreign passports. But the officials aren`t always able to say where the detainees are, frustrating Iraqis desperately looking for friends or family members who have disappeared. The last time Raed Karim al-Ani saw his brother Mohammed, 27, was in mid-May, when the taxi driver climbed into his battered 1983 Volkswagen and chugged out the driveway of his parents` house. In early July two men came to the house with Mohammed`s ID card and car, and said they had seen U.S. soldiers pin him to the ground at a checkpoint, then haul him away.

Raed, who had already checked Baghdad`s morgues, drove the next day to a U.S. military base to ask if his brother was being held there. An Iraqi translator suggested he try the detention center at Baghdad international airport, where a soldier told Raed to return the next day to another entrance. There, hundreds of Iraqis stood for hours in 120º heat, searching for relatives. Finally, an American woman tapped Mohammed`s name into a laptop computer but came up with nothing. She told Raed to try the Republican Palace; there a U.S. soldier turned him back. Overhearing his plight, an Iraqi driver directed Raed to a place on the bank of the Tigris where hundreds of Iraqis were scouring lists of names pasted to the walls of a building. "I realized these were relatives of Saddam`s prisoners who had been executed before the war," Raed says with a bitter laugh. "Their names had just been released." Iraqi families looking for missing relatives sense echoes of Saddam`s era. "At least in Saddam`s days, the police would tell families they had arrested their people," says Mohammed`s mother Khalida Ahmed al-Salehy.

Asked by Time about Mohammed`s case, a U.S. military official in Baghdad replied by e-mail that there was a surefire place to check: the master list of detainees` names that every police station now has. Armed with this answer, Mohammed`s brother Adil went to al-Jihad police station near the family home last week and asked for the list. The lieutenant on duty drew a blank, saying he had no knowledge of one.

A U.S. intelligence official in Iraq says even he has trouble locating detainees he wants to talk to or get released. "There`s no accurate list," he told Time. "It`s a big problem." It may also be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. "There is a responsibility to at least notify families that someone is arrested," says Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which monitors the conventions worldwide.

The Geneva accords also prohibit occupying powers from destroying property, unless it "is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Around Tikrit this month, U.S. forces demolished more than a dozen facilities, most of which were private homes. Colonel James Hickey, 1st Brigade commander in charge of the area, told Time that every targeted house had been either a source of direct fire on coalition troops or had been used to store weapons.

Some property owners take issue with that claim. One is Laith Klabos, 22, who grows apricots in Boasil village. On the night of Nov. 19, U.S. soldiers wrecked his family`s house and flattened their grove of fruit trees. Klabos insists his family had no weapons and was not helping the resistance. "Is this the democracy they promised us?" he asked. "They come and blow up our houses?"

With reporting by Simon Crittle/New York

[Joerver]

IRAQ-U.S.:
Is It the Bases?
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21331
Analysis - By Jim Lobe

Now that the Bush administration has decided to sharply accelerate the transfer of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government, why does it not invite the United Nations to help with the transition?
At this point, an invitation appears logical. At a minimum, it would give the occupation greater international legitimacy and encourage other countries to contribute both troops and more reconstruction assistance, easing Washington`s burden.

WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (IPS) - Now that the Bush administration has decided to sharply accelerate the transfer of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government, why does it not invite the United Nations to help with the transition?

At this point, an invitation appears logical. At a minimum, it would give the occupation greater international legitimacy and encourage other countries to contribute both troops and more reconstruction assistance, easing Washington`s burden.

Moreover, the world body has much more recent experience than the United States in governing traumatised societies around the world.

It would also go far to heal the wounds opened so painfully between Washington and its western European allies as the administration of President George W. Bush rushed headlong to war earlier this year, at times showing its general contempt for ``Old Europe``.

The move would clearly boost Bush`s re-election chances. Two-thirds or more of U.S. voters, according to a string of polls dating back a full year, have consistently supported giving the United Nations control over post-war Iraq. After all, the costs of the occupation in U.S. blood and treasure represent by far the greatest threat to Bush`s chances next November.

So why then, the reluctance to ask the world body for help?

Several answers suggest themselves, not least of which is pride. Even though the administration has made a series of U-turns in its management of the occupation, it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that previous policies might have been mistaken. Policy changes of 180 degrees are instead described as ``mid-course corrections``.

Bush hawks also no doubt fear that giving the United Nations responsibility for administering Iraq would create a highly undesirable precedent for future U.S. military action.

Then there is the conviction that the world body is fundamentally incompetent, although it would be very difficult to top the policy zigzags and confusion generated by the excruciatingly isolated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as pointed out by Italy`s former representative to the CPA, who resigned abruptly in exasperation earlier this month.

Of course, all those contracts to big U.S. companies amounting to many billions of dollars might also play a role. A U.N. administration could embarrass Bush by confirming the relationship between contracts and political contributions or even force some of the deals to be cancelled.

While most or all these arguments might be contributing to the administration`s obstinacy, perhaps the most powerful one is the least discussed.

Is it possible that the most compelling reason for the administration to retain control of the transition is its determination to build permanent military bases in Iraq, bases that it knows would under no circumstances be approved by veto-wielding potential strategic rivals on the U.N. Security Council, namely China, Russia and, according to some neo-conservatives, France?

In other words, by retaining exclusive control over the transition, does the administration believe that its chances of negotiating a permanent military presence in Iraq with a successor government are much greater than if the Security Council were given a say in the process?

Since the `New York Times` reported in April that the administration was planning to establish and maintain as many as four military bases in Iraq for an extended period of time, much has been written about radical redeployments of U.S. forces in Europe and Asia.

The changes, it has been said, would enhance the forces` ability to strike quickly, lethally and, if necessary, pre-emptively along an ``arc of instability`` that not coincidentally covers both key oil-producing areas from the Gulf of Guinea across the Persian Gulf and into Central Asia and critical points that could be used to contain Russia and China from the Caucasus across to East Asia and the western Pacific.

According to these plans, which are now being discussed formally with affected allies, much of the U.S. military based in Germany and the rest of Western Europe during the Cold War is to be shifted to central Europe and the Balkans, closer to the oil-producing and -transiting Caucasus and Middle East.

Since 9/11, Washington has also established bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that it used in attacking Afghanistan and that it shows no sign of leaving. Similarly, forces in Japan and South Korea might be partly redeployed, while Washington has made clear its interest in re-acquiring access to bases in the Philippines and Australia.

Last week`s visit by a U.S. warship to Vietnam -- the first since 1975 -- also suggested a renewed interest in that country, which borders both China and the potentially oil-rich South China Sea.

As to the Middle East and the Gulf themselves, major shifts -- most notably the abandonment of a major air force base in Saudi Arabia and the redeployment of U.S. warplanes to Qatar -- have also been underway.

But Qatar and even Kuwait, which has acted as a de facto military base for Washington since 1990, could not substitute for the kind of strategic depth and flexibility offered by the four bases identified by the Times as those to which the administration wants permanent access.

They are: the Baghdad international airport; the Talil Air base near Nasariyah; a base in the western desert near Syria; and Bashur air field in the Kurdish region near the convergence of the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq and only 500 kms, as F-16s fly, from Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld denied that Washington had plans to build those bases when the Times article was published. But since then, he and his chief aides have been remarkably coy about how long U.S. forces intend to remain in Iraq.

And on his recent emergency trip to Washington, where it was decided to accelerate the transition timetable, CPA chief L. Paul Bremer suggested that whoever takes power in Iraq will undoubtedly want to sign a ``SOFA`` -- a Status of Forces Agreement that governs the relationship between the U.S. military and host countries.

Despite Rumsfeld`s denial, Tom Donnelly, a military specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) with close links to Pentagon planners, published an article in the neo-conservative `Weekly Standard` that took Rumsfeld to task for not ``fess(ing) up`` that bases in Iraq were entirely consistent with changes in Washington`s global military posture.

Iraqi airfields in particular, he wrote, ``are ideally located for deployments throughout the region ... There`s plenty of space, not only for installations but for training``, he said, adding confidently, ``And they are enough removed from Mesopotamia that they would not be `imperial` irritants to the majority of Iraqis``.

In September, according to Jessica Tuchman Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) who participated in a delegation of foreign-policy specialists the Pentagon took to Kuwait and Iraq after the war, the administration`s future basing plans were a major mystery.

``We were told (by senior military briefers) in Kuwait that we needed two billion dollars to improve housing for U.S. troops for, quote, `enduring` bases in Iraq, but I did not get to ask what ``enduring`` meant``, she said.

In January 2003, she added, ``a senior (administration) official`` had told her that ``we`re going to move our forces out of Saudi Arabia into Iraq``, an account echoed by other sources at the same time.

``The conquest of Iraq will not be a minor event in history,`` noted George Friedman, chairman of the Stratfor.com private intelligence agency in February. ``It will represent the introduction of a new imperial power to the Middle East and a redefinition of regional geo-politics based on that power.``

Building bases in Iraq is consistent with neo-conservatives` long-held argument for invading Iraq in order to both ``remake the face`` of the Middle East and to transform and enhance Washington`s global military posture to ensure its domination of key strategic resources.

In the words of a 2000 study by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) such a move would ``project sufficient power to enforce Pax Americana``.

Global peace and stability ``demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations,`` asserted the report, whose charter members include Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and half a dozen other top national-security officials in the Bush administration. (END)

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Monday, December 01, 2003
War News for December 1, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Major firefight in Samarra kills 54 Iraqis, wounds five US soldiers.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi insurgents killed while planting roadside bomb near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi Arab politician kidnapped in Kirkuk.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed in ambush near Habbaniyah.

Analysis: Bremer is out of touch with reality. “Bremer`s inability to grasp the significance of Sistani`s message of June was also an outcome of the isolation of all the personnel of the CPA, even from those Iraqis who haven`t been part of the expatriate membership of the IGC.”

Report from Hilla.

Insurgents place bounty on British police chief in Basra.

Life in Bremer`s CPA compound. "They rarely travel outside the safety zones without an armed escort, or must sneak away at the dead of night in contravention of strict rules on personal safety."

Analysis: Retired US general comments on Samarra battle: “Gathering in large numbers, either to show that they had a force that was different than before, that it`s actually a fighting force, not just a bunch of people that vanish and disappear. That they wanted the population, almost, to see them and they were willing to die.” Well, General, since this is about the best observation I’ve heard yet from any of the talking heads, I won’t tell everybody about the time the wild boar ate your combat boots while we were in the field at Hohenfels.

Losing hearts and minds.

Eight civilians killed, 60 wounded in Samarra battle.

First nationwide poll finds 73% of Iraqis have no faith in the Coalition Provision Authority. Other results are at the link.

Here`s how Voice of America spins the poll story. When the US media gets done with this story, you`ll think the Iraqis have elected Lieutenant AWOL Caliph of Baghdad.

Commentary

Opinion: The need for a draft to support Bush’s War becomes more apparent.

Opinion: Operation Jive Turkey. “While serving chow, Bush spilled the beans about a new reason for our being in Iraq in the first place, since the search is still going on for a good one. It’s not because of WMDs. It’s not to fight terrorism. It’s not to take out Saddam Hussein. It’s not to show the U.N. what a spine looks like. It’s not to turn all those camel herders into ward bosses. No. It’s because we slogged our way there, and now that we are there, we might as well stay.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: More about a Texas soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Iowa soldier killed in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:38 AM

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December 1, 2003
Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say
By DEXTER FILKINS and IAN FISHER

SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 — The American convoy that carries cash to two banks here had been attacked before, but this time the troops were ready: Along with the money, they rumbled into this hard-line Baathist city Sunday with tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. They even put snipers on the roofs.

As if on cue, the guerrillas attacked, but according to American commanders, the Iraqis suffered a devastating defeat: A three-hour battle fought in the alleys and streets ended with what the military said were as many as 54 insurgents dead and only five Americans wounded.

On the streets of Samarra, it seemed, American commanders had finally gotten what they had long sought: a large number of Iraqi guerrillas drawn into the open, where American firepower could wipe them out.

"We didn`t have the immediate intelligence that we knew it would happen, but we had to be prepared for it," Col. Fred Rudesheim, who oversees the city, told reporters today. "And our soldiers responded as they have been trained to, with the immediate action that they know to take."

But as local Iraqis today began dragging away the wreckage and counting their dead, it seemed clear that the guerrilla war being fought in the areas north and west of Baghdad had entered a new and more troubling phase. Urban warfare in Iraq seemed likely to raise many more questions, including, in this case, the murkiest: What happened to all the corpses?

While American commanders said the Iraqi body count came from precise reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials said today that they could account for, at most, eight dead, and that most of those were civilians. This morning, only two bodies — a gray-bearded old man and a middle-aged women — lay on the bloody steel trays of the hospital morgue.

More broadly, the battle that unfolded Sunday afternoon underscored a dilemma that military officials here have been weighing for months: How to ratchet up the pressure on the insurgents, who are killing a growing number of Americans and Iraqis, without alienating the very people the Americans are trying to win over.

As they showed here on Sunday, American soldiers can be fast on their feet and deliver a crushing amount of firepower. But the use of overwhelming military force, so effective against the guerrillas, seemed to push many Iraqis away.

"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."

Adnan Sahib Dafar, 52, an ambulance driver, walked with anger in and out of the morgue, pointing to the dead woman who lay on the bloody steel tray. The woman, Mr. Dafar said, had been an employee at the city`s big pharmaceutical factory when she was caught in the crossfire.

"Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?" demanded Mr. Dafar, who said he saw only eight dead Iraqis. "Is she fighting?"

Colonel Rudesheim, saying he had not seen any reports of civilian dead, argued that battles like this one will win the support of ordinary Iraqis.

"Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to something akin to the former regime," he said. "What we hear is that the people of Samarra are fed up."

The guerrilla war claimed another American life today, in another stronghold of Mr. Hussein. In Habbaniya, about 75 miles away, an American soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack. He was the 187th American soldier to die in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq to be over.

An hour`s drive north of Baghdad, Samarra is famous for its golden-domed mosque and a spiraling mud-brick minaret. Just down the road from Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, it has remained a stronghold for those fighting the American occupation.

Outside the hospital, a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around a bus they said had been destroyed in the fighting and began chanting an old refrain: "Our souls and our blood, we sacrifice to you, Saddam."

What Sunday`s battle showed, with little doubt, is that United States forces are confronting an enemy that is increasingly sophisticated, carrying out bigger attacks — if fewer of them in recent weeks — involving more soldiers and greater levels of coordination and intelligence.

On Sunday, Colonel Rudesheim and other officials said, the attackers apparently knew the time that the American troops were planning to deliver the money to branches of the Rafidan Bank on the eastern and western edges of the city.

Capt. Andrew Deponai, one of the officers who coordinated the combat, said the attackers "split their force in half," with between 30 and 40 men positioned near each branch in "squad and team-sized elements so they could attack each bank from all sides."

They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the American soldiers, and stored explosives and bombs there. The guerrillas concealed themselves in cars in back alleys, using BMW sedans, taxis and pick-up trucks. Like the Americans, he said, the guerrillas had snipers on the roof-tops.

It was, he said, "a well-planned attack."

American commanders said both the Iraqi squads attacked first with guns, then with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. There was much evidence of the combat here today, with walls and houses across the city pocked with bullet-holes.

"If you visit any house in Samarra," complained Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim, a Samarra resident, "you will find shrapnel."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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The Inside Skinny Of The Biggest Battle Since The Iraq War Ended

By: A Combat Leader

12/01/03: (David Hackworth) The convoy which was attacked while driving through Samara was not a supply convoy as reported, but was carrying large amounts of new Iraqi currency to stock local Iraqi banks and US greenbacks used to pay for goods and services the US forces need to accomplish their missions in Iraq. This convoy was heavily guarded by Abrams Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. It was akin to a huge Brinks Truck delivery.

The reports of 54 enemy killed will sound great on the home front, but the greater story is much more disturbing and needs to be told to the American Public.

When we received the first incoming rounds, all I could think of was how the hell did the Iraqis (most of these attackers being criminals, not insurgents) find out about this shipment? This was not broadcast on the local news, but Iraqi police knew about it. Bing, Bing Bing, You do the math.

Of greater importance in the scale of the attack and the coordination of the two operations. Iraqi Rebel Guerilla Units elements still retain the ability to conduct synchronized operations despite the massive overwhelming firepower "Iron Hammer" offensive this month.

Hack, most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals as being reported. During the ambushes the tanks, brads and armored HUMVEES hosed down houses, buildings, and cars while using reflexive fire against the attackers. One of the precepts of "Iron Hammer" is to use an Iron Fist when dealing with the insurgents. As the division spokesman is telling the press, we are responding with overwhelming firepower and are taking the fight to the enemy. The response to these well coordinated ambushes was as a one would expect. The convoy continued to move, shooting at ANY target that appeared to be a threat. RPG fire from a house, the tank destroys the house with main gun fire and hoses the area down with 7.62 and 50cal MG fire. Rifle fire from an alley, the brads fire up the alley and fire up the surrounding buildings with 7.62mm and 25mm HE rounds. This was actually a rolling firefight through the entire town.

The ROE under "Iron Fist" is such that the US soldiers are to consider buildings, homes, cars to be hostile if enemy fire is received from them (regardless of who else is inside. It seems too many of us this is more an act of desperation, rather than a well thought out tactic. We really don`t know if we kill anyone, because we don`t stick around to find out. Since we armored troops and we are not trained to use counter-insurgency tactics; the logic is to respond to attacks using our superior firepower to kill the rebel insurgents. This is done in many cases knowing that there are people inside these buildings or cars who may not be connected to the insurgents.

The belief in superior firepower as a counter-insurgency tactic is then extended down to the average Iraqi, with the hope that the Iraqis will not support the guerillas and turn them in to coalition forces, knowing we will blow the hell out of their homes or towns if they don`t. Of course in too many cases, if the insurgents bait us and goad us into leveling buildings and homes, the people inside will then hate us (even if they did not before) and we have created more recruits for the guerillas.

The Commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Colonel Frederick Rudesheim, said after this battle that "We are going to continue to take the fight to this enemy. This is the most significant contact we have had to date in the city of Samarra. We are going to have to respond accordingly."

This is a great attitude for a combat commander to have when fighting an armored force on force, but Colonel Rudesheim is not trained in Counter-Insurgency and my soldiers are taking the heat. We drive around in convoys, blast the hell out of the area, break down doors and search buildings; but the guerillas continue to attacks us. It does not take a George Patton to see we are using the wrong tactics against these people. We cannot realistically expect that Stability and Support Operations will defeat this insurgency.

As one would expect from using our overwhelming firepower, much of Samarra is fairly well shot up. The tanks and brads rolled over parked cars and fired up buildings where we believed the enemy was. This must be expected considering the field of vision is limited in an armored vehicle and while the crews are protected, they also will use recon by fire to suppress the enemy. Not all the people in this town were hostile, but we did see many people firing from rooftops or alleys that looked like average civilians, not the Feddayeen reported in the press. I even saw Iraqi people throwing stones at us, I told my soldiers to hold their fire unless they could indentfy a real weapon, but I still can`t understand why somebody would throw a stone at a tank, in the middle of a firefight.

Since we did not stick around to find out, I am very concerned in the coming days we will find we killed many civilians as well as Iraqi irregular fighters. I would feel great if all the people we killed were all enemy guerrillas, but I can`t say that. We are probably turning many Iraqi against us and I am afraid instead of climbing out of the hole, we are digging ourselves in deeper.

A COMBAT LEADER

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Published on Monday, December 1, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Samarra - Another Falluja?
by Felicity Arbuthnot

If the US troops in Iraq wish to avoid at least some attacks by the resistance, their Commanders would do well to read up on a little history of the region. Just as firing on the crowd at Falluja in April was guaranteed to spark the beginning of a country-wide revolt against the invaders, Samarra was a place to keep well away from.

In Falluja they know about invaders, Britain`s General Maude stood there in March 1917, on another ill fated colonial adventure and said: "We come as liberators, not as invaders" as a prelude to the country and entire structure of government being taken over. Later the battle for oil began (with the Iraqis blowing up the pipelines.) Sound familiar?

Samarra is in Salahuddin Governorate, called after the great Muslim leader born in Saddam`s home town Tikrit, nearby, in 1137 AD (known in the West as Saladin.) He became King and ruled over Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He was ruthless in defeat of invaders into Arab lands and won against the Crusaders in Arab Palestine in 1187 AD. Mr Bush`s new "crusade" was never going to catch on in this region.

The great golden domes of Samarra`s Mosque (the town was founded in 836 AD) built sixteen years later, can be seen glinting in the sun from nearly thirty miles away, reminiscent of the golden domes of Samarkand. The remains of the Caliphs` residence -the ancient rulers - still stand as reminder of a system of justice where citizens came to the gate to ask for audience to air their complaints or suggestions. Arab Caliphs always took a personal interest in their citizens affairs.

Samarra, thus has a deep sense of fighting for justice, of its great, historic legacy and of defeating centuries of invaders (and "crusaders") ancient and modern. No doubt the US did a "recce" into Samarra before attempting to move in this week end. They would have seen a huge black slogan written on the great arch to the Mosque. It is unthinkable to deface any part of a Mosque, but this one has remained there for many years and the Imams allowed it to stay. It reads: "Down with the U.S.A." The troops would have done well to heed it and keep away. As it is they have, in the words of President Mubarak of Egypt: recruited the equivalent of "a thousand Bin Ladens" for every death and injury - and a few thousand more for every home destroyed and every child terrified.

Tip to troops: go buy a history book.

Felicity Arbuthnot has written and broadcast widely on Iraq and with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger`s Award winning documentary: `Paying the Price - Killing the Children of Iraq.`

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Iraqis challenge US account of battle
Michael Howard in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday December 2, 2003
The Guardian

Iraqi officials in Samarra yesterday challenged US military accounts of a bloody battle on Sunday, accusing American soldiers of spraying fire at random on the city streets, killing several civilians.

US army spokesmen claimed that up to 54 Iraqi guerrillas had been killed when they tried to ambush two armoured convoys bringing new banknotes to two Samarra banks, triggering the biggest pitched battle in Iraq since May 1, when President George Bush declared "major combat operations" over.

There were no reported American deaths, but five US soldiers were wounded, one seriously, and a civilian travelling with them was injured.

US officers involved in the battle described the ambushes as well coordinated by up to 80 guerrillas. They said some of the dead had worn the black uniforms of Saddam Hussein`s most loyal paramilitary unit, the Fedayeen.

But local officials questioned the high body count and said there were non-combatants among the dead. "We think that at most eight or nine people died," said Khaled Mohammed, an admissions clerk in the hospital`s emergency ward, but added that some of the dead might have been taken straight to the town morgue.

A Samarra policeman, Captain Sabti Awad, said American troops had opened fire at random in response to the ambush, killing and wounding civilians.

Ahmed al-Samarai, another police officer said: "Not more than 10 people were killed and some of those were not involved in the fighting."

The police said among the bystanders killed was at least one Iranian pilgrim, who had been visiting a Shia shrine.

Jihad Hussein, a student, said he had seen passersby running for cover. "They were spraying the whole street," he said. "I don`t know who fired the first shot, the Americans or the Fedayeen, but I saw at least one young woman hit by a bullet as she lay on the ground."

Colonel Frederick Rudesheim, whose 4th Infantry Division combat team was at the heart of the fighting, denied US fire had been untargeted.

He added that he would not expect the Fedayeen to take their dead to a civilian hospital or civilian morgue.

On Sunday Col Rudesheim put the Iraqi death toll at 46 but that was raised to 54 yesterday by a more senior US spokesman, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, at a Baghdad briefing. He said 22 Iraqis had been wounded and one taken prisoner. But the colonel conceded that the figures were a rough estimate based on battlefield reports.

US military accounts of the fighting confirm the scale and complexity of the ambushes reflected a new level of organisation by the Iraqi resistance. Ambush points had been set up along the convoys` routes into and out of Samarra.

Staff Sergeant Bruce Jones, said the "extremely scary" battle had lasted up to two hours. "We started receiving not only small arms, we had incoming and direct fire from mortars, we also had RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] coming through here, just hitting us all around," he said, adding that Iraqis in civilian clothes had been involved, attempting to block the American convoys` escape route.

Sgt Jones said when the two convoys had driven into Samarra on Sunday, the city centre was a virtual ghost town, suggesting that the civilian population knew the ambushes were about to happen.

· One of the two Japanese diplomats killed in Iraq at the weekend was a former counsellor of the Japanese embassy in London. Katsuhiko Oku, 45, a father of three, went to Iraq in April.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Bottom of the barrel
The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians refuse to talk about it?

George Monbiot
Tuesday December 2, 2003
The Guardian

The oil industry is buzzing. On Thursday, the government approved the development of the biggest deposit discovered in British territory for at least 10 years. Everywhere we are told that this is a "huge" find, which dispels the idea that North Sea oil is in terminal decline. You begin to recognise how serious the human predicament has become when you discover that this "huge" new field will supply the world with oil for five and a quarter days.

Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don`t talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial.

Oil itself won`t disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming ever more difficult and expensive. The discovery of new reserves peaked in the 1960s. Every year we use four times as much oil as we find. All the big strikes appear to have been made long ago: the 400m barrels in the new North Sea field would have been considered piffling in the 1970s. Our future supplies depend on the discovery of small new deposits and the better exploitation of big old ones. No one with expertise in the field is in any doubt that the global production of oil will peak before long.

The only question is how long. The most optimistic projections are the ones produced by the US department of energy, which claims that this will not take place until 2037. But the US energy information agency has admitted that the government`s figures have been fudged: it has based its projections for oil supply on the projections for oil demand, perhaps in order not to sow panic in the financial markets.

Other analysts are less sanguine. The petroleum geologist Colin Campbell calculates that global extraction will peak before 2010. In August, the geophysicist Kenneth Deffeyes told New Scientist that he was "99% confident" that the date of maximum global production will be 2004. Even if the optimists are correct, we will be scraping the oil barrel within the lifetimes of most of those who are middle-aged today.

The supply of oil will decline, but global demand will not. Today we will burn 76m barrels; by 2020 we will be using 112m barrels a day, after which projected demand accelerates. If supply declines and demand grows, we soon encounter something with which the people of the advanced industrial economies are unfamiliar: shortage. The price of oil will go through the roof.

As the price rises, the sectors which are now almost wholly dependent on crude oil - principally transport and farming - will be forced to contract. Given that climate change caused by burning oil is cooking the planet, this might appear to be a good thing. The problem is that our lives have become hard-wired to the oil economy. Our sprawling suburbs are impossible to service without cars. High oil prices mean high food prices: much of the world`s growing population will go hungry. These problems will be exacerbated by the direct connection between the price of oil and the rate of unemployment. The last five recessions in the US were all preceded by a rise in the oil price.

Oil, of course, is not the only fuel on which vehicles can run. There are plenty of possible substitutes, but none of them is likely to be anywhere near as cheap as crude is today. Petroleum can be extracted from tar sands and oil shale, but in most cases the process uses almost as much energy as it liberates, while creating great mountains and lakes of toxic waste. Natural gas is a better option, but switching from oil to gas propulsion would require a vast and staggeringly expensive new fuel infrastructure. Gas, of course, is subject to the same constraints as oil: at current rates of use, the world has about 50 years` supply, but if gas were to take the place of oil its life would be much shorter.

Vehicles could be run from fuel cells powered by hydrogen, which is produced by the electrolysis of water. But the electricity which produces the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. To fill all the cars in the US would require four times the current capacity of the national grid. Coal burning is filthy, nuclear energy is expensive and lethal. Running the world`s cars from wind or solar power would require a greater investment than any civilisation has ever made before. New studies suggest that leaking hydrogen could damage the ozone layer and exacerbate global warming.

Turning crops into diesel or methanol is just about viable in terms of recoverable energy, but it means using the land on which food is now grown for fuel. My rough calculations suggest that running the United Kingdom`s cars on rapeseed oil would require an area of arable fields the size of England.

There is one possible solution which no one writing about the impending oil crisis seems to have noticed: a technique with which the British and Australian governments are currently experimenting, called underground coal gasification. This is a fancy term for setting light to coal seams which are too deep or too expensive to mine, and catching the gas which emerges. It`s a hideous prospect, as it means that several trillion tonnes of carbon which was otherwise impossible to exploit becomes available, with the likely result that global warming will eliminate life on Earth.

We seem, in other words, to be in trouble. Either we lay hands on every available source of fossil fuel, in which case we fry the planet and civilisation collapses, or we run out, and civilisation collapses.

The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.

In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to do with oil is simply preposterous. The US attacked Iraq (which appears to have had no weapons of mass destruction and was not threatening other nations), rather than North Korea (which is actively developing a nuclear weapons programme and boasting of its intentions to blow everyone else to kingdom come) because Iraq had something it wanted. In one respect alone, Bush and Blair have been making plans for the day when oil production peaks, by seeking to secure the reserves of other nations.

I refuse to believe that there is not a better means of averting disaster than this. I refuse to believe that human beings are collectively incapable of making rational decisions. But I am beginning to wonder what the basis of my belief might be.

· The sources for this and all George Monbiot`s recent articles can be found at www.monbiot.com.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Iraqis deny US accounts of fierce fight with `guerrillas`
By Phil Reeves in Samara
02 December 2003


To Ali Abdullah Amin, the accusations and denials that were yesterday flying about the latest battle between the occupiers and occupied of Iraq - the fiercest engagement, some say, since the early days of the US-led invasion - were irrelevant.

He was not interested in whether the American military was telling the truth when it said that its troops had killed 54 "attackers" - shorthand for Iraqi guerrillas who carried out a double ambush against a US convoy in the Sunni town of Samarra on Sunday which turned into a running fire fight.

Nor was he wondering about the denials made by Iraqi hospital officials and policemen, in the face of what the Americans have presented as a crushing defeat for the pro-Saddamists, Baathists, ex-soldiers and other fighters who are violently opposing their presence.

Iraqi officials say only eight people died, including a 71-year-old Iranian pilgrim called Fathollah Hejazi, whose charred passport they were showing to all-comers. The old man had, it seems, come to visit the ancient gold-domed Shi`ite mosque in this once-peaceful town on the banks of the Tigris.

Ali Abdullah Amin was interested in none of these things. What he cared about, as he lay beneath a grubby yellow blanket in his hospital bed, was the pain in his bandaged legs, both of which were seeping blood from bullet wounds, and the hole in the left side of his stomach. "My legs hurt, my legs hurt," the little boy moaned, as he cried in the arms of his 22-year-old cousin, Jamal Karim.

He may also have been wondering about the whereabouts of his father, Abdullah Amin al-Kurdi. Father and son were shot outside a small nearby mosque, a spot now marked by a large congealed pool of blood. Father didn`t make it.

Iraqi witnesses were unanimous that Americans were to blame, pointing to a hole in a nearby cemetery wall which looked like the work of a shell fired from an Abrams tank. The US military stuck by its story of the battle, and by its estimation of the Iraqi death toll. Fifty-four Iraqis died, it said, all combatants. Major Gordon Tate, a spokesman at the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, insisted the US military was "confident" about its assessment of the "battle damage".

"Soldiers and commanders on the site counted," he told The Independent. "Every commander on the site is responsible for doing battle damage assessment. Part of that includes counting the dead and wounded on both sides."

Ali and his father appear to have slipped through the net. Even though the boy`s hospital bed is only 10 minutes away from the US Army`s base in Samarra, and although he was easily found by journalists, he does not appear to be part of the "battle damage assessment". Asked about wounded Iraqi civilians, Major Tate said he had no information on the subject.

As occupiers of Iraq, the US is responsible under international law for the safety of the civilians living under its rule. The senior US military commander, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, said this weekend that his troops conduct follow-up visits to places where they have been involved in fighting. But Ali`s cousin, Jamal Karim, speaking yesterday afternoon, said no US official had been to see him or the injured boy.

Nor, said Samarra`s hospital information officer, Sa`id Hassan Ali al-Janabi, had any "coalition" officials come to see any of the others wounded on Sunday. Had they done so, they could have seen his list of the injured - 55 names, including five women. These were, he insisted, all civilians, some with light injuries but a few with wounds so critical that they had been moved to hospitals in Baghdad or Tikrit.

Had the same officials visited Samarra`s streets they could also have heard many accounts of the battle that differed greatly from their own.

The US military says the ambushes began at 1.30pm when the 1st Battalion of the 66th Armoured Regiment, accompanied by US military police, came under attack from Iraqis on the east and west sides of Samarra. The guerrillas fired mortars, improvised explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. The Americans replied by firing the 120mm cannon on their Abrams tanks, the smaller 25mm automatic cannon on their Bradley fighting vehicles, and an assortment of smallarms, mainly M-16 rifles and 9mm pistols.

The US military blamed members of Saddam Hussein`s fedayeen paramilitary force. This appears to be based in part on the clothing of the dead, although it sounded like the apparel of many young Arabs.

Iraqis in Samarra told a different story. Some of their accounts were easily disprovable but there was consensus that the American troops fired randomly at times, and that there were no uniformed Iraqi fighters in their midst. Several detailed descriptions from Iraqis confirmed that guerrillas were also firing on the Americans, and that there were prolonged fire fights.

One businessman said that it was started when the Iraqis ambushed the Americans on the edge of town. Another, Mothana Mohammed Badie, a 32-year-old shopkeeper - said fighting erupted when US forces arrived to deliver some new Iraqi dinars to a local bank, a view which coincides with the American version.

He said he was in the area, but ran home to his wife and children only to have his house shot up by a volley of .50 bullets from a passing Abrams tank. Shortly afterwards he was joined by his father, Dr Mohammed Badie, the vice-president of Tikrit University.

Dr Badiecalled the fedayeen "terrorists". But, as he stood in his partially wrecked bullet-pocked front room, he appeared close to despair.

"All the people here are fed up and angry," he said. They want the Americans out of town ... They [the Americans] have to respect our feelings and traditions and customs, but we see the opposite. There is something here that is hidden from the American public. They call it `Tha`ar` - revenge. That means that if anyone kills your friend, or your brother, you have to avenge it by killing an American soldier."

This is, in the clichés of journalism, called the cycle of violence. And the wheel is rotating with ever-increasing speed.
2 December 2003 10:45



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Lawrence Freedman: Will this new strategy in Iraq defeat the rebels?
The problem for Saddam supporters is that the tide of history is against them
02 December 2003


In terms of casualties and incidents, November represented a severe escalation in the fighting in Iraq. It also saw important shifts in American political and military strategy in response to a security situation far tougher than had been anticipated in the run-up to the Iraq war. Can the new strategy work against what is clearly a determined and organised enemy?

The fact that the Americans must change their strategy indicates the extent to which they are suffering from the mistakes made under the old, especially during the period of transition over April. First, the troops entering Baghdad and the Sunni areas were in war-fighting mode, concerned about their own protection and not taking any chances with an enemy that was already assumed to be hiding among the civilian population. In many areas, the image of liberator gave way to occupier with distressing speed.

Secondly, they lacked the troops to assert total control over the country. It was remarkable to seize control of a country with three divisions; unfortunately occupation required something approaching ten. There was a qualitative issue as well. The United States lacks training and doctrine for the peace-keeping/nation-building roles. The US Army has seen this as a secondary and inferior form of soldiering, unlike the British Army, which has always accepted it as core business.

Lastly, having decided not to deploy more US troops, the Iraqi Army - having fled the field - was not reconstituted. It never made sense to dismiss large number of armed men without guaranteeing their pay and using these to get them back into some operational shape under a new command.

Belatedly. local forces are being rebuilt but that will take time, and it will do no good to send unprepared forces into the field. It is also too late to try to solve the problem through a massive insertion of US force. While new troops will be needed, not least because many of those who have been in Iraq from the start are jaded, the basic - and largely correct - message now is that the critical answers are to be found in political progress rather than military strength. The task of a military strategy is to create the conditions in which the political strategy can prosper - not an alternative.

To achieve that it is necessary to understand the opposition and its strategy. Despite talk of large numbers of outside militants coming in to Iraq to have a go at the Americans, the basic resistance is still largely to be found among groups loyal to Saddam Hussein, who may even have been prepared for this role prior to the coalition invasion. Their numbers are probably in the thousands rather than in the tens of thousands, but they appear to have access to decent stocks of weapons, notably rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and some support among the Sunni population.

This is as much resistance against a Shia ascendancy as against a US occupation. The relative calm in Shia and Kurdish areas (by far the bulk of Iraqi territory) renders the current situation manageable, and it also indicates that the consequence of the coalition leaving Iraq in a hurry would not be a return to Ba`ath rule but a civil war.

The US dilemma can be presented in the old Vietnam terms of "hearts and minds" versus "search and destroy". Under hearts and minds, the militants are deprived of their popular basis through civic action and restrained use of firepower. Under search and destroy, the effort is put into finding and destroying enemy units. The problem with search and destroy is that the methods used can alienate the population further and boost support for the enemy.

On the other hand, relying on hearts and minds can be demoralising if no response is made to regular attacks; in practice winning hearts and minds is only going to be achieved by a successful political strategy that sees sovereignty handed over to a legitimate Iraqi government in which Sunnis can find some reassurance.

Furthermore, this is not the time nor the place for the Americans to adopt unfamiliar tactics. US traditions and training push them towards search and destroy. Unlike in Vietnam, they ought to be able to use modern forms of surveillance and fast communications to bring down fire quickly on enemy units caught when mounting their attacks. The possibilities and pitfalls of this were seen in Monday`s attacks, which saw many militants killed, but also eight civilians.

These are not the sort of wars that end with a decisive victory and a formal surrender. At some point it might be noted that the attacks have petered out and that the "Sunni triangle" has become relatively calm, and largely patrolled by Iraqis. The alternative is that it starts to become a no-go area, where Americans dare not patrol and central authority cannot be established.

The problem for Saddam supporters is that they are essentially seeking to sustain the position of a once powerful minority and, in that sense, the tide of history is against them. Even if Americans give up, it is unlikely that the Iraqis who remain will do so. Iraq would then be the opposite of Vietnam. There the Americans tried to use armed force to shore up a failed political order; in Iraq they are attempting to pave the way for one that has yet to be tried.

The writer is professor of War Studies at King`s College, London
2 December 2003 10:51


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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December 2, 2003
Shifts in States May Give Bush Electoral Edge
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — Beyond issues like Iraq and the economy is one political reality that both the White House and Democrats say is already shaping next year`s presidential race: If President Bush carries the same states in 2004 that he won in 2000, he will win seven more electoral votes.

That change, a result of a population shift to Republican-friendly states in the South and West in the last several years, means the Republicans have a slight margin of error in 2004 while the Democrats will have to scramble just to pull even.

In 2000, after Florida`s 25 electoral votes were awarded to Mr. Bush, he won the presidency with 271 — 5 more than Al Gore`s 266. Since then 18 states have either won or lost electoral votes, with 7 states that Mr. Bush won last time gaining a total of 11 electoral votes: Florida picked up 2, as did Texas, Georgia and Arizona. North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado each gained 1.

The gain of 11 electoral votes was offset by a loss of 4 from four other Bush states, leaving Mr. Bush with a net gain of 7. The Democrats lost eight electoral votes in six states that went for Mr. Gore and gained one in another, for their net loss of seven.

The shift in the electoral map means that the Republicans have a crucial cushion going into the 2004 presidential campaign. Mr. Bush could hold all the states he won in 2000 except for, say, West Virginia and its five electoral votes, and still win in 2004. The Democrats have no such room for error. They must hold all the states Mr. Gore won and add to them to make up the difference.

"Before a vote is cast, we`ve increased our margin," Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for Mr. Bush`s campaign, said. "In a race that`s very close, those small readjustments in the electoral map will have significance."

Jim Mulhall, communications strategist for the Democratic National Committee, agreed: "The map is destiny for both campaigns."

The Republican electoral cushion by no means guarantees Mr. Bush a victory. After all, Mr. Gore outpolled him by nearly 550,000 votes in 2000. More important, voting patterns may not repeat themselves. And notable demographic shifts are occurring within the states.

Because of those shifts, both sides predict that 15 states may be up for grabs: Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine and Florida.

It is essentially in these states that the race will be fought — evidenced already by the millions of dollars that both parties plan to spend in them long before next November.

The Bush campaign, unopposed in the primaries, has more than $100 million on hand. Mr. Bush has already lent his most valuable asset — his time — to swing states, visiting Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Ohio more than anywhere else.

He has also used a range of policy decisions — from steel tariffs to farm subsidies, from backing for ethanol in Iowa to supporting revitalization of the Everglades in Florida — to appeal to voters in those states.

Democrats are also plowing the political ground in these states, though they do not yet have a nominee. In part, they are relying on networks set up over the years by organized labor. Offshoot groups are conducting focus groups, to help the eventual nominee tailor a message and to start contacting voters.

As part of their calculations on where to allot resources, both parties have tracked demographic shifts on the electoral map.

Democrats know that white men in rural parts of states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — all of which went for Mr. Gore — are increasingly voting Republican, largely because of issues like President Bill Clinton`s personal behavior and recent court rulings on gay rights. As a Democratic strategist said, "Older white Americans moved away from us on impeachment and guns, and now same-sex marriage is a killer."

Since the 2000 election — or more precisely, the 2000 census — 18 states have gained or lost electoral votes because of population shifts. Each state`s electoral votes are equal to the number of its representatives in the House, which are allocated in proportion to population, plus two more votes for its senators.

Mark Gersh, the Washington director for the National Committee for an Effective Congress, which analyzes demographics and voting trends for the Democratic Party, said that the states gaining electoral votes were areas with substantial growth of Latinos or populations at the far fringes of the suburbs.

For example, in 2000, Mr. Bush won 81 percent of the Cuban vote in Florida, Mr. Gersh said. The Cuban population is not growing, but the voting-age populations are of other Latino groups — like Dominicans and Puerto Ricans — that are strongly Democratic. Florida`s black voting-age population, also overwhelmingly Democratic, is expected to rise by 13 percent from 2000 to 2004.

At the same time, Mr. Gersh said, the voting-age population is growing in the expanding areas beyond the state`s established suburbs — by an estimated 400,000 people from 2000 to 2004. Those voters are overwhelmingly Republican. "A lot of demographic changes are taking place, but most are offsetting," he said.

President Bush`s brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, cited such demographic fluctuations last week in explaining why the state`s vote would again be extremely close.

"We have more people moving in, we have the third-highest number of people moving out, we have a lot of people go on to see their creator, and we have a pretty high birth rate — we have probably the most dynamic election roll every four years," Governor Bush said in Boca Raton while attending a meeting of the Republican Governors Association.

. Republicans are also mindful that neither Mr. Clinton nor Mr. Bush won more than 50 percent of the vote in the last three presidential elections. "No matter how well the economy is doing, no matter how well we`re doing in Iraq, and even if we`re running the best campaign in the world, this election will be decided within a margin of 4 or 5 percent," Mr. Dowd said.

It is clear the electoral change has hurt the Democrats more than Republicans. The population losses came in states that Mr. Gore won and usually vote Democratic: New York and Pennsylvania each lost two electoral votes, while Michigan, Illinois, Connecticut and Wisconsin all lost one. The one bright spot for Democrats was California, which gained a vote.

There were population losses in four "Bush states" from 2000. Indiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma each lost a vote, though the losses were thought less crucial since those states regularly vote Republican.

The other state, Ohio, which lost one vote, matters to both parties. Ohio`s economy has suffered more than those of many other states and Democrats perceive it as fertile ground. The Bush campaign is well aware of the state`s significance. On Labor Day, the opening bell of the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush spoke in Ohio — to an audience of union workers.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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December 2, 2003
Trading Favors

Presidents subordinate economic and trade policy to electoral pandering at their own peril. That should now be abundantly clear to George Bush as he tries to decide what to do — and when to announce it — in response to a World Trade Organization ruling that his 2002 steel tariffs were illegal.

Yesterday, Mr. Bush starred in a campaign fund-raiser in Michigan held by steel-dependent auto executives and other industrial leaders who have complained bitterly about the tariffs. Today, he will collect $1 million or so in Pittsburgh at a fund-raiser held by the chief executive of a steel maker. There is no way Mr. Bush can say anything on steel that will please both audiences.

Despite the opposition of its own economic team, the White House adopted the tariffs to protect America`s ailing industry and woo steelworkers` votes in the key electoral battlegrounds of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The move, based on the specious claim that a sudden surge of imported steel was responsible for the domestic industry`s woes, harmed the overall economy and antagonized the nation`s trading partners.

Some of these nations are threatening to impose retaliatory tariffs on an array of American products by mid-December if Washington does not lift its ill-advised taxes on imported steel. The White House is reported to be ready to throw in the towel, and will probably claim victory by noting that there has been some restructuring of the industry. American steel makers have also been helped by surging demand from China and the weakening dollar.

A recent move to restrict textile imports from China shows that the Bush administration is still eager to dabble in protectionism to seek political gain, but a retreat on steel tariffs would help avoid an escalation in global trade tensions.

Of course, the retreat could not be announced before today`s fund-raiser in Pittsburgh, where even the football heroes are Steelers. Steel companies warn that lifting the tariffs would amount to a "broken promise" that could cost Mr. Bush dearly. Rank-and-file steelworkers might sound equally disappointed if their union had not already endorsed Richard Gephardt`s presidential candidacy.

Which brings us back to the central point. President Bush should stop trying to fine-tune trade policy to enhance his electoral vote count and focus on the overall national interest. Both he and the country will be a lot better off when he does.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Brooks ist der letzte Hardliner auf der Meinungsseite bei der NYTimes, nachdem Friedman auch moderatere Töne hat angeschlagen.

December 2, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Boots on the Ground, Hearts on Their Sleeves
By DAVID BROOKS

Soldiers in all wars are called upon to be heroes, but our men and women in Iraq are called upon to define a new sort of heroism. First, they must endure the insanity of war, fighting off fedayeen ambushes, withstanding the suicide bombings and mortars, kicking down doors and searching homes.

But a day or an hour or a few minutes later, they are called upon to enter an opposite moral universe. They are asked to pass out textbooks, improvise sewer systems and help with budgets. Some sit in on town council meetings to help keep the discussions on track. Some act like foundation program officers, giving seed money to promising local initiatives.

Trained as trigger-pullers, many are also asked in theater to be consultants and aldermen. They are John Wayne, but also Jane Addams.

Can anybody think of another time in history when a comparable group of young people was asked to be at once so brave, fierce and relentless, while also being so sympathetic, creative and forbearing?

When you read the dispatches from Iraq, or the online diaries many soldiers keep, or the e-mail they send home, you quickly sense how hard it is to commute between these two universes. Yet the most important achievements seem to occur on the border between chaos and normalcy.

At spontaneous moments, when order threatens to break down, the soldiers, aviators and marines jump in and coach the Iraqis on the customs and habits of democracy. They try to weave that fabric of civic trust that can`t be written into law, but without which freedom becomes anarchy.

For example, in a New Yorker article, George Packer describes an incident in the life of Capt. John Prior. He was inside a gas station when a commotion erupted outside. A mob of people was furiously accusing a man of butting in line and stealing gasoline. Prior established that the man was merely a government inspector checking the quality of the fuel. Frazzled and exhausted, Prior took the chance to teach the mob a broader lesson: "The problem is that you people accuse each other without proof! That`s the problem!"

Another soldier, who keeps a Weblog, collects toys and passes them out to Iraqi children. He brought a pile of toys to an orphanage, but the paid staff at the place rushed the pile to grab the toys for themselves — "like sharks in a feeding frenzy," he writes. He has learned that if he stations himself with an M-16 over the toys, things go smoothly.

Another soldier writes of his dismay at seeing Iraqi parents give their kids toy guns as presents after Ramadan. He wonders, Haven`t they had enough death? Don`t they realize how dangerous it is for a kid to wander the street with a piece of plastic that looks like an AK-47?

When you read the diaries and the postings of the soldiers in Iraq, you see how exhausted they are. You see that their feelings about the Iraqis are as contradictory as the Iraqis` feelings about them. You see their frustration and yearning to go home.

But despite all this, their epic bouts of complaining are interrupted by bursts of idealism. Most of them seem to feel, deep down, some elemental respect for the Iraqis and sympathy for what they have endured. Far more than the population at home, the soldiers in the middle of the conflict believe in their mission and are confident they will succeed.

When you read their writings you see what thorough democrats they are. They are appalled at the thought of dominating Iraq. They want to see the Iraqis independent and governing themselves. If some president did want to create an empire, he couldn`t do it with these people. Their faith in freedom governs their actions.

Most of all, you see what a challenging set of tasks they have been given, and how short-staffed they are. And yet you sense that in this war, as in so many others, the improvising skill of the soldiers on the ground will make up for the cosmic screw-ups of the people up the chain of command.

If anybody is wondering: Where are the young idealists? Where are the people willing to devote themselves to causes larger than themselves? They are in uniform in Iraq, straddling the divide between insanity and order.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

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December 2, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Hack the Vote
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O`Dell — who says that he wasn`t talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven`t caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks.

What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.

Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software — which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it`s proprietary — on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.") The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.

An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions. (It`s hard to be sure because the state released only a heavily redacted version.)

Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems. The company hasn`t contested the authenticity of these documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to prevent their dissemination.

Why isn`t this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story — not as a potential political scandal.

This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the Florida "felon purge" that inappropriately prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000 presidential election. The attitude seems to be that questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive at best, paranoid at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr. Holt make a point of dissociating themselves from "conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation to prevent future abuses.

But there`s nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the intensity of partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty tricks are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently announced that one of his aides had improperly accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

This admission — contradicting an earlier declaration by Senator Hatch that his staff had been cleared of culpability — came on the same day that the Senate police announced that they were hiring a counterespionage expert to investigate the theft. Republican members of the committee have demanded that the expert investigate only how those specific documents were leaked, not whether any other breaches took place. I wonder why.

The point is that you don`t have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?

I`ll discuss what to do in a future column. But let`s be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Battle Reveals New Iraqi Tactics
Troops Startled by Fighters` Unprecedented Coordination and Resolve

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A01


SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 -- Sgt. 1st Class Robert Hollis knew there was trouble even before the shooting started. As he stood guard in his M1-A1 Abrams tank outside a bank in this Sunni Muslim town, the usually busy streets suddenly emptied Sunday. Men hurried down back alleys, some running. Women dragged their children away from the positions of U.S. troops.

Then, through his scope, Hollis said he saw a man lift a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to his shoulder, aiming at him and his crew of three. What followed was perhaps the bloodiest engagement since the U.S. occupation of Iraq began in April.

A day later, questions persisted over essential facts of the fighting, which ebbed and flowed through much of Sunday and ended with a devastating defeat of the Iraqi guerrillas who had massed against the overwhelming power of U.S. forces. The U.S. military said Monday that as many as 54 fighters were killed. No American soldiers died. The city`s hospital reported only eight dead, all of them civilians, although officials there acknowledged that the bodies of fighters might not have been brought there.

To many involved -- both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers -- the confrontation stood out as an exceptionally fierce battle after months of hit-and-run attacks. Witnesses described dozens of guerrillas in checkered head scarves brazenly roaming the streets in the heat of battle, U.S. soldiers firing randomly in crowded neighborhoods and civilian bystanders taking up arms against U.S. forces once the fight got underway.

For the military, the fight revealed a startling new reality about the fighters themselves -- unprecedented coordination and tactics and numbers yet unseen. Hollis says he saw a determination he did not expect from guerrillas best known for hitting, then running.

"I`m telling you these guys taking some of the shots knew they were going to die," said Hollis, a 17-year veteran and native of Pensacola, Fla. "But they still, under that fire, squeezed the trigger, even though they knew that was the last thing they were going to do. They were standing the ground and fighting, and our guys were standing the ground and fighting."

"Both sides are sending a message," he added.

Standing on a dirt berm inside his base near Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, he reflected on the fight. "A long one," he said. "It was a long one." Then he offered an explanation of the conflicting accounts and unanswered questions.

"Everybody saw a different picture," Hollis said.

Hollis and his fellow troops of the 4th Infantry Division entered Samarra at about 11 a.m. to deliver new Iraqi currency to two banks in the city. Col. Frederick Rudesheim, the brigade commander, said the force involved 100 soldiers, six tanks, four Bradley Fighting Vehicles and four Humvees. Along with them were two squads of military police and four squads of infantry.

Two convoys entered Samarra at opposite ends of the city. Soon afterward, a roadside bomb detonated near each, wounding three soldiers. The soldiers pressed on. But at both locations, ambushes were sprung. The U.S. forces were attacked with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars in fighting that Rudesheim said lasted two hours and 45 minutes. The attackers, the U.S. military said, were wearing garb they associated with fighters loyal to former president Saddam Hussein -- head scarves checkered in red or black and dark shirts and pants.

Capt. Andrew Deponai, a company commander, said he estimated that between 30 and 40 fighters were at each site.

"This was not done in a last-minute planning effort," said Rudesheim, who acknowledged that, despite the scale of the ambush, U.S. forces lacked any intelligence on what was afoot. "This was done in a concerted effort."

At the bank near the Imam Hadi shrine, a sacred destination for Shiite Muslim pilgrims, Abdel-Samad Ahmedi, a merchant, saw cars racing down the street, then heard gunfire. People ran indoors, he said, and shops were shuttered.

"We couldn`t see where the shots came from, but we could hear them," he said. "We heard it everywhere in the city."

Down the street, Bassem Feisal was too late. The Iraqi, who is mentally disabled, stayed in the street outside a cafe, even after the shooting started, according to his brother Saad. Bassem was shot twice in the left arm, but survived a fusillade of gunfire that riddled a seven-story building near the bank with dozens of holes.

Saad stood Monday near a sedan crushed under a tank`s treads. "This is the gift of Mr. Bush?" he asked, his shirt smeared with his brother`s blood.

Hollis and other soldiers at both banks said gunfire came from all directions from men posted on rooftops and behind walls. In one engagement, U.S. military officials said about a dozen attackers were seen running out of a nearby mosque and firing. Throughout the battles, Rudesheim and others said, the fighters -- though outgunned -- showed a level of tactical sophistication. Divided into squads, they used orange-and-white taxis, BMWs and white Toyota pickups to reposition their fighters in back alleys as the battle unfolded. Guerrillas were posted at routes leading in and out of the city. Improvised mines were placed along the streets.

"They`re going to hit you, and before you hit them, they`re going to disappear. That`s their MO," said Hollis, whose tank barrel is emblazoned with the word "Comanche." "In this case they hit us, and instead of disappearing, they stayed. Did you see those tanks? Do you know the amount of firepower on those tanks? Why would you even think of attacking something like that?"

At the Samarra General Hospital, the wounded started arriving in the early afternoon. A half-hour later, the area near the hospital came under fire. U.S. forces said they faced an ambush from there as they withdrew from the city. Doctors denied there was any fire from the hospital grounds.

The charred shells of four cars, their paint seared off, sat in the hospital parking lot. Nearby was the wreckage of a minibus that had carried Iranian pilgrims. Someone had scrawled on it in English, "No USA, Down USA." Doctors said one of the pilgrims, an elderly Iranian man, was killed after being shot in the head and chest.

Abid Toufiq, the director of the 150-bed hospital, said the wounded kept arriving in batches every 15 minutes or half-hour. In all, he said, the hospital treated 54 people, 10 of whom were in critical condition. It recorded eight dead, one of them a woman and two others under 18. The deluge was so severe inside the hospital that doctors inserted intravenous needles into patients as they lay on the floor.

"If you had seen the situation, you would have said, `God help us, how can you work here?` " said Amar Jabbar, a doctor at the hospital.

Samarra, renowned for its spiraling mud-brick minaret that is one of Iraq`s oldest, has long been a restive city in a region most inhospitable to U.S. forces. An American soldier was killed Monday in Habaniya, a town to the southwest of Samarra. Near the Samarra police station, a slogan reads, "We will blow up the house of anyone who works with the Americans." On the hospital, graffiti warned that there was no escape for those cooperating with U.S. forces.

There was a drawing of a hand grenade near words of caution: "This is your destiny."

In the climate of resentment and frustration felt here, many Iraqis insisted they supported the guerrillas and accused U.S. forces of firing randomly as they withdrew.

"Everyone is with the resistance," said Safa Hamad Hassan, 22, whose cousin lay in a hospital bed with wounds to his abdomen from a tank round that landed near his house. "Saddam Hussein is finished. We are protecting our honor and our land."

Throughout the battle, Hassan said, as many as 40 armed guerrillas, all dressed in head scarves, ran openly through the streets of his neighborhood. They shouted at people to go indoors. It was their most public showing since the occupation began, and Hassan was one of the few in the town to admit even seeing them. He and others said civilians took up arms -- nearly every Iraqi man has a weapon -- and joined the fight as the battle dragged on during the day.

Some residents, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, criticized the guerrillas for bringing the fight inside the city. A leaflet, signed by the guerrillas, was reportedly hung recently on the city`s shrine, listing those who had collaborated with U.S. forces and would be killed. More common were the sentiments at the Imam Shafai Mosque, near the hospital. Residents said the mosque was struck by a tank round at 5 p.m., killing a man and his son, whose blood still mixed with mud outside the mosque Monday.

"Even in worship, we`re not safe from the Americans," said Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Qadir, an assistant at the mosque.

U.S. officials said they were unaware of the reported incident at the mosque and said troops had left the city an hour earlier.

At a briefing at the nearby base Monday, Rudesheim, the brigade commander, said he feared what he called the misinformation that would follow the attack. Military officials had contacted the local city council to explain what happened.

"We`ve been in this city for about five and a half months, and in that time we`ve made a lot of Iraqi friends," he said. "We`re going to work as hard as we have over the past five and a half months to gain the respect of the Iraqi people."

Correspondent Alan Sipress in Baghdad contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Answering the Ayatollah




Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A26


FOR EIGHT months the Bush administration has been zealous in maintaining its position as the first and final authority over Iraq`s political reconstruction, rejecting all suggestions that it share power with allies or the United Nations. Now the administration`s monopoly is being challenged by a 73-year-old Shiite cleric who opposes secular government, full rights for women and other principles of democracy and human rights that President Bush has promised for Iraq. When France, Germany and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed a quicker transition to Iraqi sovereignty, the White House was dismissive; but when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected the administration`s plan, the swift transition was swiftly embraced. Now the ayatollah has criticized the new scheme, saying that any interim government must be chosen by democratic elections, and that the "basic law" that will temporarily substitute for a constitution must explicitly defer to Islam. Once again, the administration and its allies in the Iraqi Governing Council are scrambling to respond. Though they have some good reasons to do so, they must avoid reinforcing a bad political precedent.

The administration is more inclined to listen to Mr. Sistani than to longstanding Western allies because the ayatollah is thought to hold sway over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqi Shiites who tolerate the U.S. occupation but might be turned against it. Having isolated itself in Baghdad -- in large part through its refusal to work with allies or internationalize Iraq`s reconstruction -- the U.S.-led authority cannot easily afford to clash with the ayatollahs who claim leadership over some 60 percent of Iraq`s population. Mr. Sistani is also demanding something that is the headline U.S. goal in Iraq: full electoral democracy. Some supporters say his calls for elections to a provisional assembly as well as to a constitutional convention prove that he does not seek Iranian-style clerical rule. But Mr. Sistani surely calculates, as do Iraq`s worried Kurdish and Sunni communities, that early elections could empower Shiite politicians effectively controlled by the clerics -- meaning the ayatollahs would exercise ultimate authority over the constitution and future governments.

Mr. Sistani is trying to establish this principle now by forcing the occupation administration to react to his edicts. That`s why the administration and governing council must be careful about handling the ayatollah`s latest demands. There`s certainly nothing sacred about the current plan for indirect elections of a provisional assembly; Shiite leaders might legitimately fear that these would be too easily manipulated by U.S. officials or their close Iraqi allies. The United States can join Mr. Sistani in embracing as much democracy, and as soon, as is logistically possible. But the administration also must make clear to the Shiite leadership that ballots will not be allowed to serve as an instrument for undermining the liberal political system Mr. Bush has promised for Iraq. The Post`s Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports in today`s editions that U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer has persuaded a majority of the governing council to oppose Mr. Sistani`s demand for direct elections, though the ayatollah may be offered other concessions. The council should stand firm. Polls show that most Iraqis want an elected government operating under a rule of law, with guarantees for ethnic and religious minorities and human rights. A single ayatollah should not be allowed to decree otherwise.




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The Politics of Payoff


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27


President Bush likes to talk about the need for "fiscal sanity in Washington." His decision to run up the national debt is entirely sane -- as long as you understand his real purpose. Bush doesn`t care a whit about deficits. That`s because he is not a fiscal conservative. He is a political conservative out to buy himself a majority in 2004 and spending the next generation`s money to do it.

Some act mystified, as if conservatives are always more responsible with the people`s money than liberals. But it`s possible to be generous toward social needs and pay as you go. That`s what liberals have usually done. Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal`s conservative editorial page editor, once called this approach "balanced-budget liberalism." It`s conservatives, not liberals, who twice over the past quarter-century have created extravagant deficits.

It`s also forgotten that redistribution to the poor is not the only way to shift money around. The government`s coffers can also be run down by redistribution to the wealthy and to favored interest groups. And when it comes to the politics of payoff, the president and his allies are nothing short of brilliant. Disgorging public money to your friends makes political sense. By recycling a small fraction of the cash back to Bush and his party in the form of campaign contributions, those friends are financing the construction of a mighty political machine. It`s a weird form of public financing of campaigns -- confined to one party.

Bush`s first tax cut distributed just enough to middle-class families to give cover for a plan that largely helped the best-off Americans. Next came the dividends tax cut, an even more naked transfer of cash to the wealthy. At least a fifth of the benefits of this year`s tax package went to a mere four-tenths of 1 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $500,000 a year. One-third of Americans got nothing, and half got less than $100 a year.

But it doesn`t stop there. Public spending per person is higher under Bush than it was under Bill Clinton. Where is it going? A share of it is for big increases in defense spending. Assume all that spending is justified. It still helps build a Republican majority. The people at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the like give the bulk of their campaign contributions to the Republicans.

The Medicare drug bill seeks to expand Bush`s reach to senior citizens. But many of its provisions help core Republican constituencies, including private health plans that get billions to compete with Medicare. Another $25 billion goes to rural hospitals. Troubled urban hospitals don`t get similar help, but urban areas didn`t vote for Bush. Another $6 billion in the bill for health savings accounts also helps Republican contributors.

The pharmaceutical companies are so generous to Republicans that they might start giving out free Viagra and Lipitor at fundraisers. Drug company executives love it that the drug bill forbids Medicare from using its bargaining power to bring down the cost of drugs. Fiscal conservatives might want to contain taxpayer outlays to the drug manufacturers. Political conservatives prefer to protect their industry friends. Then there is that amazing $31 billion energy bill, blocked so far by genuine fiscal conservatives such as Sen. John McCain. Bush and most Republicans had been fighting hard for the bill`s extravagant subsidies to all sorts of special interests, beginning with the oil and gas industry.

And why not? As The Post`s Tom Edsall reported, the bill provides benefits to at least 22 executives and their spouses who have qualified in Bush`s two top categories of fundraisers. At least 15 lobbyists for interests helped by the bill and their spouses achieved similar Bush MVP fundraising status. Back in the Clinton days, self-styled "deficit hawks" decried efforts to pass universal health coverage on the grounds that doing so might deepen the deficit. Now many of the same supposed deficit hawks happily vote for budget-busting giveaways that benefit their party`s ideological and business allies. Politicians who can`t say 10 words without praising "free markets" back big subsidies that will tilt the market toward their contributors. Few challenge their capitalist credentials.

Building transit, roads and schools, and helping the young and the poor buy health insurance and get a better education -- these might justify deficits to finance investments for the next generation. Sending us into a hole to buy an election and to help well-connected interest groups just doesn`t seem worth it.

The New Big Spenders are very different from the old ones. How long will it take us to understand that?


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The Iran Challenge


By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27


As far as we know, Iraq has not been a prime sponsor of terrorism under Saddam Hussein in the recent past; Iran was -- and is. As far as we know, Iraq did not have a functioning nuclear weapons program. Iran does. So who did we go to war against? Iraq. Maybe someone in the White House can`t spell.

Whatever the explanation, the decision to make war on Iraq has cost the United States plenty when it comes to dealing with Iran. In the past month the Bush administration has been repeatedly rebuffed by our European allies -- Germany, France and even Britain -- over how to deal with Iran`s not-so-secret nuclear weapons program. The United States wanted to use the stick; the Europeans prefer the carrot. Iran is now chomping away like Bugs Bunny.

Do not be confused. Unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, this is not a matter of the Europeans quibbling with Bush administration pronouncements that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. The signs of one are unmistakable. The Germans in particular are convinced that Iran is -- or was -- developing a nuclear weapons program, and they don`t like it one bit.

But this time our allies are even more reluctant to follow the lead of the United States. The last time around, that led to war in Iraq over -- you will remember -- a weapons of mass destruction program that has yet to be found. Only Britain went along, and Tony Blair is paying the price for it in public approval. It now seems apparent that on the question of WMD alone -- never mind links to al Qaeda -- Washington didn`t know what it was talking about.

So, over Washington`s objections, the Europeans are taking a less confrontational approach with Iran. As a high German official explained it to me, the Europeans think they can convince Iran it has more to gain by aborting its weapons program than by sticking with it. "They could have full trade with the European Union," this official said -- not ostracism.

Good luck to the Europeans. If Iran persists in developing nuclear weapons, then its neighbors may follow -- Turkey, Syria, Egypt and possibly Saudi Arabia. Israel already has such weapons, plus detailed knowledge of Iranian nuclear installations. The Middle East, one of the world`s most unstable regions, would be armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. In the hands of some of those regimes, that would be bad enough, but if the weapons fall into the laps of terrorist groups, the cradle of civilization may well be its grave. Do I have your attention?

The Iranian challenge is both a formidable and a frightening one. Iran is without a doubt a sponsor of terrorism. It supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, and has run guns to the Palestinians. The State Department has called the regime an "active state sponsor of terrorism" -- and here, too, the Europeans do not quibble. And just to add to the gloom, Iran is a justifiably paranoid state. In the 1980s it fought an eight-year war with Iraq in which Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons and rained missiles on Iranian cities. Iran is not about to allow that to happen again.

For the United States, the stakes are greater in Iran than they were in Iraq. Yet the administration has squandered its leadership role with reckless name-calling -- Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, makes up George W. Bush`s "axis of evil" -- and by going to war in Iraq for dubious reasons. The upshot is that both the Europeans and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency are disinclined to follow Washington`s lead. This is especially true of the IAEA`s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who was bullied and vilified by the Bush administration for his perplexing refusal to agree that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. That time has so far proved him right has only confirmed this proud Egyptian`s judgment -- and the Bush administration`s lack of any. The Bush administration wanted to take the Iranian matter to the Security Council, which can impose sanctions. The Europeans and ElBaradei favored a softer approach. Of the 35 nations on the IAEA board, only three -- Canada, Japan and Australia -- went along with the United States. The Europeans got their way, and Iran indicates it will cooperate.

It could be that Washington made an example with Iraq -- and Iran got the message. But it seems more likely that Iran (and North Korea) learned that once you get designated "evil` " you`d better accelerate your nuclear weapons program. Whatever the case, it now seems clear that through clumsy diplomacy, unbridled arrogance and an insistence on taking out Saddam Hussein for reasons that have not been vindicated, the United States comes out of Iraq with its authority diminished. The world respects its might. Its judgment is another question altogether.


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Bush`s PR Problem


By Fareed Zakaria

Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27


President Bush`s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq was a generous and bold-hearted gesture of support to American troops. What made it such a success, however, was that it managed to severely limit an otherwise unavoidable aspect of travel: contact with foreigners. When Bush has had to go beyond U.S. Army bases in recent weeks, the tours have not gone so well.

Traveling through East Asia last week, I noted how poorly most observers rated Bush`s recent trip there. Even more striking, however, was the comparison repeatedly made between Bush`s visit and that of Chinese President Hu Jintao -- with a thumping majority believing Hu had done better.

In Thailand at the meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, "there was no question that Hu was the better appreciated one," a Thai official said to me. "He outshone Bush in most of the attendees` eyes." The trips ended with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament. "It is Hu`s visit rather than George W. Bush`s that will provide a lingering sense of satisfaction and security about Australia`s place in the region," wrote the Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

What is going on here? How does the chief representative of the world`s oldest constitutional democracy lose a popularity contest to the leader of a Leninist party?

Let`s start with the atmospherics. Everywhere Bush travels, his security is handled with the usual American overkill: huge numbers of guards and aides, walled-off compounds, tightly scripted movements from one bubble to another. Hu, by contrast, had a modest security detail, traveled freely and mingled with other leaders and even the general public. (Tony Blair sometimes manages to travel abroad with a total of six people.) Bush`s trip to London two weeks ago is now being heralded as a great success. But here is how one of the president`s most ardent supporters, his former speechwriter David Frum, saw it while in London himself. "Bush was sealed away from London for the entire visit. There was no drive down the Mall, no address to Parliament, no public events at all," Frum wrote in his Weblog on National Review Online. "The trip`s planners reduced the risk of confrontations -- but only by broadcasting to the British public their tacit acknowledgement that the visit was unpopular and unwelcome. By eliminating from the president`s schedule events with any touch of spontaneity or public contact, the trip planners made the president look as if he could not or would not engage with ordinary British people." In Great Britain, Frum concluded, "the United States has a problem, a big one -- and it was made worse, not better, by this recent visit."

But the deeper problem is not one of style but of substance. Bush`s trips to Southeast Asia and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war on terror. Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction: "Bush came to an economic group [APEC] and talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that`s not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We`re retooling our economies, we`re wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we`re trying to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda."

There is a lack of empathy emanating from Washington. After the Bali bombings, which were Australia`s Sept. 11, the administration did not bother to send a high-level envoy to a steadfast ally for condolences. Australians had to make do with a videotape of George Bush. Even last week, Bush could surely have arranged to meet in Baghdad with a few troops from allied countries who are also fighting and dying in Iraq.

What is most dismaying about this state of affairs is that for the past 50 years the United States has skillfully merged its own agenda with the agendas of others, creating a sense of shared interests and values. When Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the Cold War, they also presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty and health. They fought communism with one hand and offered hope with the other. We have fallen far from that model if the head of the Chinese Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a more progressive agenda than the president of the world`s leading democracy.

The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek. His e-mail address is [e-mail].



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THE WORLD



Perils Menace Afghan Election
A presidential vote set for June may be delayed as attacks and threats by Taliban and Al Qaeda rebels leave large parts of the nation unsafe.
By Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writer

December 2, 2003

WASHINGTON — Security in large areas of Afghanistan has so deteriorated that U.S. and U.N. officials fear that plans to hold presidential elections in June may be in jeopardy.

In an apparent strategy to obstruct the political process that is key to democratizing Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents have been killing and threatening not only Westerners but also Afghans who "collaborate" with them.

Some of the tactics echo the intimidation being practiced by insurgents in Iraq. Taliban forces have, for example, left leaflets threatening to cut off the nose of anyone who participates in Afghanistan`s constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, this month.

Under the Bonn agreement brokered after the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, the United Nations is in charge of reshaping Afghanistan politically, including supervising the constitutional process and registering voters.

But violence has worsened dramatically in the last six months. A U.N. refugee worker was killed last month, bringing the number of aid workers slain since March to at least 13. At least five of Afghanistan`s 32 provinces are virtually off-limits to foreigners, aid workers said.

U.N., U.S. and other Western officials fear that unless voters in rural areas can participate in the presidential election, the resulting government will not be seen as legitimate.

Many of the most dangerous areas are inhabited by the nation`s largest ethnic group, the Pushtuns, many of whom feel underrepresented in President Hamid Karzai`s interim government. The inability of aid workers to operate safely in those areas thwarts efforts to provide relief and reconstruction to their communities, deepening the cycle of Pushtun alienation.

"If they can`t go out and do voter registration … and then the elections aren`t free and fair, then the Taliban wins," one U.S. official said. "They are trying to make the central government look illegitimate, and what better way to do that than de-legitimize the loya jirga and the elections."

On Monday, only 100 of 330 delegates showed up at a preliminary session leading up to the loya jirga, which convenes Dec. 10. Western diplomatic sources said the poor turnout could be the result of logistical problems but feared it also might suggest Taliban intimidation. That would bode ill for the crucial effort to register voters for the presidential election.

Other American and U.N. officials expressed confidence that the full loya jirga, which was postponed earlier this fall because of security threats, would begin next week as scheduled. They said voter registration and presidential elections could take place as planned if additional security measures were put in place quickly.

"There is a real threat to having credible elections," a senior U.S. official said, but added: "It is not insurmountable…. With some changes, and with due respect for the threat … we think we can still pull this off."

But analysts said the security situation was so bad that the elections might be postponed.

"Presidential elections are seen as likely to slip several months because of the security situation and because of the difficulty in getting people registered," said Mark Schneider, an International Crisis Group official who testified in November before the House International Relations Committee about the urgency of improving security in Afghanistan.

Voter registration is "a major problem," Schneider said, as is the ability to provide enough security "so people can actually go to rallies, as opposed to being afraid they`ll get killed if they go to rallies."

Some analysts argue that the timetable for elections in the war-shattered country is unrealistic.

"The United States and its collaborators have tended to underestimate the amount of time it takes to get free and fair elections in a country that has never had such a thing," said former U.S. ambassador and election observer William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Assn. of the USA in New York. "The timetable was too tight."

More than 10,000 U.S. troops are battling Taliban remnants in Afghanistan, and a 5,700-member multinational peacekeeping force under NATO command operates in the capital. The U.N. Security Council has authorized expanding the force outside Kabul to the troubled provinces, but so far there have been few offers of fresh troops or equipment. The U.S. is training a new Afghan army, at a cost of $475 million, but the desertion rate has been high.

Far larger security forces were on hand to guarantee the safety of voters in postwar elections in both Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luers noted. He said he thought it "unlikely" that enough progress could be made to hold elections by June.

Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, said the security problem had been allowed to fester for more than a year, making the current task more difficult.

"The election in Afghanistan is supposed to be a benchmark of success for the Bush administration, but not only for the Bush administration," Rubin said. "If they go ahead and hold the election even when they can`t have voter registration in major Pushtun areas, then that would definitely undermine the legitimacy of the new government."

U.S. forces` efforts to hunt down the Taliban have offended some Pushtuns and harmed civilians, creating more support for the insurgents.

"The window of opportunity to get it right before all the Pushtuns turn against us is closing rapidly," the U.S. official said.

Karzai is pushing to hold elections in June despite an internal government report that warned quick elections could backfire by leaving many voters feeling excluded. He is reportedly determined not to repeat his nation`s history of interim presidents who clung to power.

"We are definitely, certainly targeting June as the date for elections," Karzai said last month. "If with all our hard work … we don`t reach the target, then there may be a legitimate reason to hold elections in July or August." But, he said, "The aim is June."

The U.N. announced Monday that it was beginning voter registration in eight urban areas, despite the security vacuum that forced the world body to suspend work in rural areas after its employee was slain last month.

Registration is to begin in cities where workers signing people up for the voter rolls will not be in danger, U.N. spokesman David Singh said in a phone interview from Kabul last week. As security allows, the efforts will expand to other areas, he said.

"The rural population are not going to be left out of the process," Singh said, adding that there was plenty of evidence of Afghans turning out for political events despite the Taliban`s efforts at intimidation.

"Afghans are tired of war, they`re tired of living on the edge of the precipice," he said. "They are tired of being bullied. And they want another life."

Singh said he was confident that legitimate elections could be held if all the contemplated security measures were put in place. The U.N. will make every effort to fulfill the Bonn agreement, he said, but he warned that "if specific direct attacks hinder the activities of aid workers, then we have every right to reassess our operations."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell are expected to discuss how to expand the NATO peacekeeping force in separate meetings in Brussels this week.

Within the next month, the U.S. and its allies also plan to expand to eight the number of provincial reconstruction teams, joint military-civilian teams that provide security and tackle relief efforts in the provinces. Currently, there are six: three operated by the U.S. and one each run by Germany, Britain and New Zealand. Five more teams of 50 to 60 people each are planned for the dangerous areas in the south.


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COMMENTARY



Death Takes No Holiday in Iraq
As Bush and others enjoyed photo ops on Thanksgiving, the carnage went on.
Robert Scheer

December 2, 2003

First the president, and then Hillary Rodham Clinton, popped in to spend Thanksgiving with the troops at Baghdad airport — competing, apparently, in the Olympics of photo ops.

What`s the point? To prove that almost half a year after that last big "Mission Accomplished" photo op on the aircraft carrier, U.S. leaders can land in "liberated Iraq" without getting shot?

Unfortunately, the level of stealth and security provided to these showboating politicians can`t be replicated for our troops or those of our allies who have sent their young men and women to this adventure: 104 coalition soldiers were killed in Iraq in November, up from 43 in October and more than were slain during the war`s heaviest fighting in April.

In the days after the president`s quickie holiday visit, seven Spanish agents, two Japanese diplomats, a Colombian contractor and two South Korean electricians were murdered and three more GIs were killed.

The administration, however, insists everything is, has been and will be just fine, thank you very much. On Saturday, a U.S. spokesperson stated that attacks on Americans were down. The very next day witnessed the fiercest attack on American convoys since the so-called end of major hostilities.

No Americans were killed this time, and the military claimed that all 54 Iraqis killed were Baathist militants. Journalists entering the battle-scarred town of Samarra on Monday found a much more complex picture, however, reporting that the use of random and overwhelming firepower killed a number of innocent civilians in addition to a much smaller number of Saddam Hussein`s fedayeen loyalists than was originally reported by the military.

In any event, the anger and alienation felt by our onetime allies, the Sunnis, have reached a perhaps unprecedented height.

Those in Iraq opposing the U.S.-led occupation were described as "thugs and assassins" and "terrorists" by the president during his two-hour cameo at the U.S. garrison. This simplistic portrayal of the Iraqi opposition to the occupation, however, ignores the nationalist and religious impulses that have riven the region for centuries.

Ronald Reagan and the president`s father relied on these same demon Sunni Baathists as a bulwark against Shiite Iran and Iraq`s own Shiite majority. Now we point to the Shiites of southern Iraq as the most acquiescent to our occupation, but that will last only as long as the United States keeps favoring them over the Sunnis.

This is an inherently unstable situation, and White House policymakers are well aware of it — which is why they have shown such extreme reluctance to transfer power to the Iraqi people.

The fact is, odds are very high that a fair national election in Iraq would lead to a Shiite takeover and a variant of the Iranian nationalist theocracy that`s been in place since the mullahs overthrew the shah, a U.S.-supported dictator.

An Iraqi theocracy, of course, would little resemble the secular democracy promised by the neoconservatives who engineered this neocolonialist venture.

Having failed to find weapons of mass destruction or any of the other justifications for his preemptive war, President Bush is desperate to discover something even more elusive; a representative government in Iraq that will not embarrass or threaten U.S. interests. It won`t happen.

Instead, the U.S. will sink deeper into this quagmire, alienating larger sections of the Iraqi population through ever more heavy-handed military responses to the guerrillas` effective hit-and-run tactics.

But don`t for a moment accept the logic of the administration`s apologists that there is no responsible alternative. There is: Turn this mess back over to the U.N. Security Council — which was doing a constructive job of disarming and feeding Iraq before its role was abruptly ended by Bush`s preemptive invasion.

Under U.N. leadership, it would be possible to marshal a truly international force, including U.S. troops, instead of the current token presence of allies.

The U.N.`s blue helmets have done it before in equally tough situations, and they would certainly be treated with far less suspicion by the Iraqi people than an occupying army and administration run by the world`s sole superpower.

Of course, U.N. intervention would require the president to abandon his macho unilateralism and move to embrace his father`s model of a new, multinational world order: a world of shared responsibility for keeping the peace, in which the hubris of no single nation is allowed to dominate.

Staying the course, Bush`s inherited mantra, might strike a militant patriotic chord, but his last photo op will not be the promised one of cheering crowds welcoming our president. Instead, get ready for seen-before footage of enraged mobs chasing our helicopters out, or of Iraqi demonstrators being gunned down by frightened American 18-year-olds.

Like the swaggering, self-righteous Crusaders of old, we presume to be the savior of the souls of heathens while inevitably destroying our own.


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COMMENTARY
Ahnolds Steuer Tricks, the Collectinator!


Smart Tax Laws Would Put More Money in California`s Pocket
By Kirk Stark
Kirk J. Stark is a professor of tax law at UCLA.

December 2, 2003

If there`s one thing that brings out Arnold Schwarzenegger`s action-hero instinct, it`s California`s so-called balance-of-payments deficit with the federal government. According to the California Institute for Federal Policy, for every $1 in taxes paid to the federal government, California receives 77 cents back. Citing these figures in October, the then-governor-elect promised action: "By the time I`m through with this whole thing, I will not be known as the Terminator; I will be known as the Collectinator!"

The Collectinator needs to brush up on the laws of federal income taxation. In his first act as governor, Schwarzenegger repealed the Davis administration`s increase in the vehicle license fee, which was slated to bring in $23 billion over the next five years. What the new governor didn`t mention, however, was that the fee was deductible for federal income tax purposes. That means that Californians who file a Schedule A with their federal tax returns could have reduced their federal taxable income by the full amount of the vehicle fee paid to the state.

Though estimates vary, it`s fair to say that Schwarzenegger`s decision to repeal the fee will cost Californians billions of federal tax dollars — money that those who itemize would have saved in federal income taxes if they had paid the higher fee. Of course, nobody wants to pay higher state and local taxes and fees just so he or she can claim a federal tax deduction. But at a time when the state is in desperate financial straits, it makes sense to give more thought to which taxes are deductible and which are not. With a little planning, the state could save its taxpayers billions of federal tax dollars per year simply by changing the types of taxes it collects. But doing so requires attention to tax law.

In 1986, Congress repealed the federal income tax deduction for state and local sales taxes; however, it retained the deduction for income taxes, real property taxes and personal property taxes. Depending upon the taxpayer`s tax bracket, the payment of these kinds of taxes can result in a federal income tax savings of up to 35 cents for every dollar paid in these categories. By contrast, the payment of a sales tax results in no federal tax savings whatsoever. The lesson is simple: Repeal the sales tax and replace it with some tax, any tax, that is deductible for federal income tax purposes.

There is real money at stake here. According to the California legislative analyst, the sales tax brought in $22.3 billion for the fiscal year 2002-2003, accounting for roughly one-third of all general fund revenues. Projections show that percentage holding through fiscal year 2008-2009. Over the next six years, California will collect an average of roughly $27 billion per year in sales taxes. If that revenue stream were converted from the sales tax to a deductible tax, the tax savings to Californians would be significant — perhaps as much as $5 billion a year.

Alternatively, the state itself could capture that saving by raising more than $27 billion in deductible taxes. For example, $32 billion raised through deductible taxes would increase state revenues by $5 billion, but because of the federal deduction it would keep the net tax burden on Californians the same.

That means the state could increase annual K-12 spending by roughly $800 per pupil; it could boost annual Medi-Cal spending for the low-income insured population from $10 billion to more than $15 billion; it could use the saving to slash the current operating deficit by half.

How exactly should the state change its tax structure to take advantage of the saving possibilities? Because the federal income tax deduction is most valuable to individuals in the highest federal income tax brackets, the most effective strategy would be to replace the sales tax with an income tax on high-income individuals. Or if Proposition 13 were on the table, as Schwarzenegger`s advisor Warren Buffett once suggested, then increased property taxes could be used to replace sales taxes. That sort of fiscal reshuffling would be highly controversial. Because the distributional effects of these taxes are so different, some people would pay more in taxes while others would pay less.

In effect, there is $5 billion per year of federal money available to help California, but only if we can craft a tax system that takes maximum advantage of federal tax law. That`s a challenge the governor should want to embrace. Schwarzenegger`s "Collectinator" comment shows that he can talk the talk, but if he is serious about getting the state`s fiscal house in order, he also needs to walk the walk.


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Going Forward
Liberals Finding their Voice

by Kathy Kiely

WASHINGTON — President Bush a "liar?" Donald Rumsfeld a defense secretary who "betrayed" his troops? Republican leaders in Congress part of a "concerted effort to erase the 20th century?"



Republicans had better worry. Angry people are motivated to get out to vote. If they can channel that anger into something constructive, they can literally upset the presidency.

Paul Weyrich, veteran conservative organizer
Not since Richard Nixon left the White House have liberals felt so free to be feisty. After decades of being shushed and shooed aside by centrist Democrats who feared the party`s left-wing image was turning off voters, liberals have kicked their way out of the political closet. They are loud. They are angry. And they`ve got a whole new attitude.

"We have been too nice. We have been too polite," says Ann Lewis, a veteran strategist with the Democratic National Committee, where the official party weblog is called "Kicking Ass."

The sudden emergence of an outspoken left wing may be the most surprising political development of the year. Until recently, liberalism could not have been more out of vogue. But in the six months since Bush appeared under a "Mission Accomplished" banner on a Navy aircraft carrier, the political dynamic has changed. Some indicators:

• Five books attacking the president have been on the USA TODAY bestseller list since August: Dude, Where`s My Country by Michael Moore; Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken; Bushwhacked by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose; The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman, and The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn. Their prominence has matched, at least for now, similarly angry tomes by conservatives. "There`s a rising tide of liberal ideas," says Joe Conason, whose book about conservatives, Big Lies, was held back until Baghdad fell.

• The Internet has witnessed a surge of liberal activity. It`s led by MoveOn.org, a Web-based political organization that has grown to 1.8 million members since it was founded during President Clinton`s impeachment trial. MoveOn recently began a $10 million fundraising drive to pay for an anti-Bush ad campaign. One ad earlier this year featured Larry Syverson, a Richmond, Va., man with two sons stationed in Iraq who claims Rumsfeld "betrayed" them by failing to have a better post-war plan.

• Nearly two dozen liberal groups have created Americans Coming Together, an effort to coordinate labor unions, environmentalists and feminist groups for the 2004 political campaigns. And John Podesta, Clinton`s former White House chief of staff, founded a think tank called the Center for American Progress to counter conservative idea factories that support scholars and churn out study papers. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed for contributions to the center at the group`s launch party, where she accused Republicans of trying to "erase the 20th century."

• International financier George Soros, who`s worth about $7 billion, has pledged $15.5 million to anti-Bush, anti-conservative groups. He`s giving $10 million to Americans Coming Together, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $3 million to the Center for American Progress. He`s also writing his own anti-Bush book. The Bubble of American Supremacy, a critique of the president`s foreign policy, hits bookstores next month.

Hillary Clinton`s presence as a keynote speaker at the center`s debut party was a striking sign of the changing political times. Bill Clinton helped found the Democratic Leadership Council to move his party toward the political center and advocate policies appealing to voters who Democrats were alienating: blue-collar workers, rural gun owners, fiscal conservatives. He won the presidency twice by avoiding traditional liberalism. On some issues, like crime, free trade and welfare, he even tried to outflank Republicans.

In the presidential campaign this year, the most successful Democrat is doing just the opposite. Howard Dean is leading in most polls and has raised more money than his rivals by capitalizing on anger against Bush that is so strong, it surprises veteran Democrats. Rep. Robert Matsui, a California Democrat who has been traveling the country to raise money and recruit candidates for House races, says feelings against the president are running at near-vitriolic levels.

"I`ve had really intelligent people say, `As soon as he gets on TV, I turn it off. I just can`t stand him,` " Matsui says. "It`s kind of stunning."

In conservatives` footsteps

Today`s liberals admit they`re trying to follow a trail blazed by conservatives. Some political historians trace the beginnings of the Republican rise to power to Lyndon Johnson`s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative, in 1964. Like the Democratic liberals of the 1990s, conservatives then were viewed as troublemakers for the Republicans — zealots whose doctrinaire views cost the party votes.

Conservatives worked hard to regain a foothold in Washington after Goldwater`s defeat. They founded grassroots organizations such as Phyllis Schlafly`s Eagle Forum. They struck up alliances with conservative Christian organizations eager to oppose social policies offensive to their members. They used an innovative direct-mail fundraising system pioneered by conservative Richard Viguerie to find like-minded Americans willing to finance the cause. In 1980, they elected Ronald Reagan president.

But the conservatives didn`t stop there. In the House of Representatives, which Democrats had controlled since 1955, a little-known Republican congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich got the idea to put the televising of House proceedings to work for their cause. Gingrich organized late-night talkathons in which he and other brash young ideologues would expound their views before the nation. Since the C-SPAN cameras never panned the chamber, viewers couldn`t see that the speakers were declaiming to an empty House.

Conservatives took advantage of another medium in the 1980s: talk radio. Michael Harrison, editor of Talker, a newsletter that covers talk radio, says conservative commentators became stars because they spoke for Americans who didn`t feel that their views were represented on TV networks or in newspapers — "people who were really angry at the press."

Like the conservatives who helped lay the groundwork for the Reagan and Gingrich victories, today`s liberals are angry. They`re still angry about Clinton`s impeachment. They`re angry about the war in Iraq and its aftermath. And they`re infuriated that Bush got fewer votes than Al Gore but, in their eyes, is running the country as though he earned a mandate.

Liberals are convinced that their views are being systematically excluded from the mainstream media. They feel surrounded by hostile think tanks, cable TV hosts and newspaper columnists. "The conservative right has out-organized, out-researched, out-written and out-talked the liberals to the point where they`re almost intimidated into silence," says former senator George McGovern, a South Dakota Democrat who lost the 1972 presidential election in a landslide to Nixon.

Fanning their outrage: The sense of powerlessness. Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House. Liberals are convinced that Bush is out to pack the courts with conservatives. Ralph Neas of People for the American Way, a liberal lobbying group, says Bush wants to undo the work of Democratic presidents going back to Franklin Roosevelt.

Other liberals apparently share his fears. Franken is so angry about Bush that he`s taking a detour from his career as a comedian. "I may do a radio show," the funnyman-turned-polemicist says. He promises he`ll be as outspoken as the conservative talk jocks: "My contribution to the civility of the dialogue has been to get down and say, `You`re lying, and we`re going to call you on it.` "

Playing catch-up

Liberals seem a long way from achieving the conservatives` success. Fewer than 20% of the people who respond to USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Polls regularly identify themselves as "liberal." About one-third call themselves conservative. By commercial measures, conservatives appear to be on top, too: On the Talkers` list of top dozen radio talk-jocks, none are liberal.

Another concern: Will a candidate who fires up the Democrats` liberal base alienate independent voters in November? Even as staunch a liberal as McGovern says their new aggressiveness could backfire. "It can be overdone, this pounding on the table," he cautions. "It could create a backlash."

Groups like America Coming Together and the Center for American Progress are part of the effort.

At least two attempts are under way to put more liberal voices on the radio. Tom Athans, the husband of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., is trying to find and promote liberal radio talent. He and other liberals think part of the reason for their absence from the radio is that they have been, in Neas` words, "too earnest, too wonky" for prime time. Another group, led by former America Online executive Mark Walsh, hopes to buy radio stations and fill their airwaves with liberal programming.

Just as frustrated conservative activists did in the `80s and `90s, liberals have found a technological end-run around the established media: the Internet. Web-based connections helped transform MoveOn from a small group of disgruntled Democrats during the Clinton impeachment into a fundraising powerhouse. They helped turn Dean from an obscure governor of a small state into the man to beat for the Democratic nomination. Another innovation: weblogs. They`re Internet sites that feature daily, even hourly, commentary by writers and publicly posted responses from readers. They`re becoming incubators for a new generation of political activists, most of whom have little connection to party establishments.

"This is a technology that just clicks for them somehow," says Josh Marshall, the 34-year-old author of Talkingpointsmemo.com, a left-leaning weblog. Marshall says he gets about 40,000 readers a day. His recent appeal for contributions to finance a reporting trip on the New Hampshire primary yielded $4,864 in less than 24 hours. "I never thought I`d say this, but no more contributions!" Marshall wrote on his site.

Other liberal bloggers report similarly enthusiastic responses. Bill Scher, a 31-year old publicist who runs LiberalOasis.com from his Brooklyn home, says readers come to his site as an alternative to the mainstream press. "I think a lot of people felt the media was giving a pass to Bush," he says. Michael Stinson says he`s had 60 million hits since founding Takebackthemedia.org in January. Says the 50-year-old Santa Barbara animator: "I`ve never seen so many people come together since the `60s."

Some conservative strategists see parallels with the situation they faced and the tactics they used when the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions were in their infancies. Most of all, they recognize a similar energy and tone.

"Republicans had better worry," says Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer. "Angry people are motivated to get out to vote. If they can channel that anger into something constructive, they can literally upset the presidency."

© Copyright 2003 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Published on Monday, December 1, 2003 by Reuters
Iraqis Do Not Trust US-Led Forces - Survey
by Gideon Long

LONDON - Nearly 80 percent of Iraqis have little or no trust in U.S.-led occupying forces and most place their faith in religious leaders instead, according to a major survey published in Britain on Monday.



When asked to rate their confidence in 11 organizations -- including Iraq`s governing council, the new Iraqi army, the police and the United Nations -- the U.S.-led coalition was the least trusted.


Nearly half regard the removal of former president Saddam Hussein as the best thing to have happened in the last 12 months while a third said the war, bombings and defeat of the Iraqi army in April was the worst.

"Interestingly, there appears no obvious link between best and worst thing," the authors of the survey said. "The very troops which liberated Iraqis from Saddam are the most mistrusted institution in Iraq today."

The survey, published by independent British research consultancy Oxford Research International (ORI), samples the views of 3,244 Iraqis, interviewed in their own homes in October and early November.

It offers a rare glimpse for Westerners into the mindset of ordinary Iraqis and is shot through with ironies and contradictions.

For example, while 70 percent of those surveyed said they had confidence in religious leaders, the same number regarded ideas, morality, and "religious guidance" as the responsibility of individuals, not government.

"This challenges the assumption that Iraqis want a religious regime," the authors said, adding that less than one percent wanted to see an Islamic government installed in Iraq during the next 12 months.

While 90 percent of respondents wanted a democratic government, 71 percent favored "a strong Iraqi leader." Only 12 percent opted for "a government made up mainly of religious leaders."

Two thirds of Iraqis regard "regaining public security" as the country`s top priority and few seemed concerned with vendettas against the old regime -- 91 percent said dealing with members of the previous government was "of no priority at all."

The section on "trust in organizations" will make edifying reading for U.S. and British forces, grappling to bring peace to the country seven months after the war.

When asked to rate their confidence in 11 organizations -- including Iraq`s governing council, the new Iraqi army, the police and the United Nations -- the U.S.-led coalition was the least trusted.

Some 57 percent of those questioned said they had no trust in the U.S.-led coalition and a further 22 percent said they had very little trust. Only eight percent said they had a great deal of confidence in the occupying force.

In contrast, 42 percent of Iraqis said they had a great deal of trust in Iraq`s religious leaders and another 28 percent had "quite a lot" of trust. Only 11 percent had none at all.

© Reuters 2003 Ltd

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Bush Shows What Happened To All Those
Factory Jobs Lost During His Term
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Canton, MI (IWR Satire) - President Bush demonstrates with a variation of the child`s game: `Here`s the church, and Here`s the steeple.` to describe what happened to all of those high paying factory jobs that were lost during his term as president. Although recent employment numbers have improved, the economic news isn`t so bright in key states like Michigan.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-12-02-weak-job-…

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Siehe auch #9918

Economic news isn`t so bright in key states
By Peronet Despeignes, USA TODAY
When unexpectedly good job numbers suggested the long U.S. economic slump was finally over, it looked as if Democrats would lose one of the weapons they had planned to use to unseat President Bush next year. But persistently weak job markets in a handful of crucial states still pose a serious threat to Republicans.

Government figures over the past several weeks have signaled the strongest economic growth in two decades and the biggest surge in jobs in two years. Those are strong signs that the broad national economy is pulling out of a slowdown that began in 2000 and intensified after Bush took office in 2001.

But while the national economy may be recovering and manufacturing activity is picking up sharply, several states that played a critical role in the last presidential election are trailing the national job recovery and could languish for some time to come.

The laggards include seven of the 14 most tightly contested states in the very tight 2000 presidential election: Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Bush lost three of those states to Al Gore by less than half a percentage point in 2000, and he beat Gore in three others by margins of less than 4 percentage points. Those states could all be close again in 2004, and if Democrats rally behind a strong nominee, Bush may need every edge to prevail. Wounded economies won`t help.

The pace of job losses in these states has been running as high as five times the national average. In Michigan, for example, job payrolls for two of the states biggest industries — autos and furniture — have shrunk 20% and 30%, respectively, over the past three years.

Bush went to Michigan on Monday to say his tax cuts had helped spark a turnaround. "Things look pretty good," Bush told employees at Dynamic Metal Treating in Canton, outside Detroit. "Our economy is strong, and it is getting stronger. ... Not only did tax relief help hardworking Americans, it also helped the economy."

New data on Monday provided more evidence of that, but an influential New York Federal Reserve Bank study last summer said many lost factory jobs are gone for good, lost to cheaper overseas workers or to huge efficiency gains that have allowed factories to cut payrolls. Economists say that while manufacturing orders and production are bouncing back, hard-hit job markets in states such as Michigan could lag for years while other states rebound. If so, Bush could be in political trouble.

"You could make a pretty good case that this puts Democrats in a very, very good position to win," says Tony Welch, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, citing a Michigan poll last summer showing only a third of voters there supported Bush`s re-election. "A number of Americans don`t think the president cares about their economic well-being and their communities. In these states, our message about jobs and the economy is clearly resonating."

The broader picture

Republicans say voters will look at the broader picture. Bush campaign strategist Matt Dowd says voters` reaction to the economy is driven by other factors besides job losses or gains in their states.

"We have an improving stock market, income gains and the fact that people are feeling more optimistic about the national economy," Dowd says. "With the national economy improving, there`s a sense that a rising tide will eventually lift all boats."

But for now, it`s not. Even some Republicans acknowledge the risk. "Democrats are very capable of exploiting this jobs gap," says Scott Reed, a Republican political strategist who managed Bob Dole`s presidential campaign in 1996. "We`ve already seen a swing in governorships in that region to Democrats."

The number of jobs in these lagging states has shrunk from about 2% (Oregon, Tennessee) to as much as 5% (Michigan) over the past three years — double to five times the national average of about 1%.

Charles Cook, an independent political analyst, says that what happens to employment around the Great Lakes "could be critical" in determining the outcome of the 2004 election.

New economic data Monday from the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) suggested that manufacturing activity was picking up sharply along with rest of the economy. But while the ISM measure of factory activity was the strongest since 1983, the survey also showed that manufacturers remain reluctant to hire. Several factory executives contacted for the survey spoke of "transferring production of product lines ... offshore," the ISM noted.

The White House certainly behaves as if it`s worried, particularly about the Midwest, where state economies rely heavily on industry. Bush has spent a lot of time over the past year visiting the region and was there again Monday. Over the past year, the administration has sided with manufacturers — including textile makers, steel manufacturers and lumber mills in key states — on a number of big economic issues. It has loudly protested fixed Chinese exchange rates as unfairly harmful to U.S. exporters and has imposed tariffs on steel and lumber. Last week, it slapped quotas on Chinese-made clothing in the face of sharp opposition from free-trade economists, investors and trading partners across Europe and Asia.

Historically, "Rust Belt" states in the upper Midwest, where the job market has long been dominated by mining, automaking and other heavy industry, lead the economy into and out of downturns and register the sharpest recoveries. But this recession hit industry unusually hard, and ongoing gains in efficiency are making it ever-easier for factories to do more with fewer workers.

"The places that have suffered huge manufacturing losses haven`t started coming back, and they aren`t coming back any time soon," predicts Sophia Koropeckyj, an analyst with Economy.com, a suburban Philadelphia firm that tracks regional economic trends.

For now, it`s states across the South and West — areas heavy in high-tech, tourism, government and health care — leading the hiring rebound. Economy.com doesn`t expect factory-heavy states such as Michigan to return to pre-recession employment levels until 2009, at best.

Weakest in decades

State employment tends to move up and down in tandem with national trends — over time, at least. But a comparison of national and regional jobs data finds the link between U.S. job trends and trends in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin over the past three years has been the weakest in records going back two decades. That could have important implications for the 2004 presidential election.

•Michigan. Gore beat Bush here by 5.1 percentage points. Since the beginning of 2001, the state has lost more than 280,000 jobs, hemorrhaging at more than five times the national rate. Automaking jobs — the heart of the state`s industrial base — have shrunk from 98,200 to 75,700. An average of 500 job-seekers a day have been visiting the Michigan Works job-search centers in and around the state capital of Lansing.

•Ohio. Bush beat Gore here by less than 4 percentage points. The state has lost more than 4% of its employment over the past three years. The Corporation for Enterprise Development, a Washington, D.C., organization that advocates economic development in low-income areas, recently downgraded Ohio from a "C" to a "D," for a bleak employment outlook and continuing mass layoffs.

•Wisconsin. This was the third most closely contested state (after Florida and New Mexico) in the 2000 presidential election. Gore beat Bush by just 0.2 percentage points in Wisconsin. While confidence surveys of retailers have begun to improve, demand for public assistance continues to surge. Dan Duncan, with the Salvation Army in central Wisconsin, reports an ongoing, "tremendous increase in demand for our shelters," including a 27% increase in meals served this year from last year`s levels.The last Wisconsin Policy Research Institute statewide survey found 16% of respondents cited unemployment as the biggest problem facing the state — the highest since the wake of the 1990-91 recession.

Offsetting any political drag is the fact that several other states that saw close margins in the 2000 election — Florida (Bush won by .01 percentage points), New Hampshire (Bush, 1.3 points) and Pennsylvania (Gore, 4.2 points), the latter bolstered by steel tariffs — are either matching or outperforming the resurgent national economy.

Dowd says Republicans are in a stronger position now than in 2000. He notes that, unlike in that election, Bush won`t be running against an incumbent vice president with a solid economic track record in a pre-Sept. 11 campaign. But he concedes that the lagging swing states will be "very competitive. Time will tell."

Find this article at:
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December 1, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/
US Foreign Policy: a Monstrous Mess
US Intelligence Policy: Also a Monstrous Mess
By BILL CHRISTISON
former CIA analyst

I want to tell you right at the start what my strongest belief is about the present U.S. position in the world. It`s this. The United States of America is today in a monstrous mess with its current foreign policies.

Now, to repeat, I believe this, but I don`t think most other Americans do. In fact, I think it`s fair to say that a majority of people in the United States still, even after the events of the last few months, would not agree with me that the United States needs to change its foreign policies in major ways. Maybe some of you here will not agree with me. But give me a chance and hear me out, and then, during the question-and-answer period, we should be able to get a good discussion going.

Before we go any further, I want to make a couple of comments on a matter that directly affects the CIA, where I used to work. I`m talking about one of the recent "hot-button" issues in Washington, the nasty and small minded effort, carried out quite obviously by as yet unnamed individuals in the White House, to gain revenge on an ex-U.S. Ambassador, Joseph Wilson, by ruining the career of his wife, Valerie Plame, who has been a CIA case-officer under non-official cover. I have two entirely different comments I want to make on this.

One is that the intent of the White House here, quite clearly it seems to me, is to warn other people in Washington`s foreign affairs bureaucracy not to get out of line or they`ll run into serious trouble. In other words, the intent is to squelch legitimate criticism and opposition. All I can say is, I hope our legal system works well enough to prevent those who damaged these two people from getting off scot-free. What the perpetrators did was reprehensible, and I hope there are no legal loopholes that allow them to get off.

The other comment I want to make on this case, though, is to me much more important. This case creates a new side-issue. AND IT IS A SIDE-ISSUE, a side-issue that creates a great danger of distracting us from what is really important to the nation, that is, bringing about major changes in U.S. foreign policies. Look at what`s already happening. All of the Democratic candidates for president have leapt on this issue because it`s a great one and an easy one to pound the Republicans with. They don`t have to talk about the harder questions of actually doing something to change U.S. policies, and so most of them don`t. It`s kind of like an issue involving sex; you can make a Roman circus out of it and distract people from the things that ought to be more important. We should not let that happen. To repeat, what I think we ought to do is to hold all politicians` feet to the fire, and make them pursue policies that turn us away from the goal of global domination, and cut back our ridiculously high levels of military expenditures, and, just incidentally of course, also cut back our equally ridiculous level of expenditures today on intelligence and covert actions. So watch out for Roman Circuses, and don`t be distracted.

While we`re on the subject of the CIA, let`s stay with it a little longer. The CIA was established over half a century ago, after World War II, to coordinate the entire U.S. intelligence community. This intelligence community today includes over a dozen different agencies and, contrary to general perception, the CIA does not actually control any of the others. Over all these years, this multiplicity of agencies has led to inefficiencies, duplication, waste, and internal rivalries. Everyone should remember that the CIA was created for the express purpose of preventing a second Pearl Harbor from ever happening. Half a century later, on September 11, 2001 another Pearl Harbor did occur, and it occurred first and foremost because of an inexcusable failure to exchange information within the intelligence community.

As far as I can see, there is even today no "smoking gun" that would point to dereliction of duty personally by President George W. Bush with respect to September 11, although it is possible that evidence will appear in the future to change this judgment. But the evidence that has emerged over the past two years makes it clear that the U.S. government as a whole suffered a massive intelligence failure. If the CIA report delivered to the President on August 6, 2001, had been supplemented, either then or at any later time before September 11, with other information that was available at the time to the FBI, the president would have had a more direct responsibility. The evidence available today is that the CIA did not receive that additional information until after September 11, and that no one else reported it to the president before the horrendous acts of that date took place. So the massive failure, as far as we can tell at this point, was within the intelligence community itself. I want to emphasize that I`m talking here only about September 11, not about intelligence concerning the war against Iraq, or weapons of mass destruction or the presence or absence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Let`s stay for the moment with September 11 and with this intelligence failure. What happened on that day exemplifies, better than anything else I can think of, the dilemma that underlies practically every question you can come up with about how the U.S. intelligence establishment should be organized and managed. The dilemma is this. If the United States really wants an intelligence apparatus of maximum efficiency, it would require a CIA, or some new organization with a different name, that would be truly "central" and have real control over all the components. The danger, and the other horn of the dilemma, is that the resulting organization could be a monster, a bull in a china shop, a body too powerful to accept in what is supposed to be a democracy.

My own belief is that while the country clearly needs an effective intelligence service, there should be a lot more public discussion of how big and how "centralized" it should actually be. My own vote would be against creating a CIA organized largely as it is now, but with much greater power so that it could truly dominate and control the rest of the intelligence community. I also believe that the big increases in the amounts of money that seem to be going to the CIA and other intelligence agencies (reportedly rising from some $29 to $30 billion to over $35 billion annually) are not necessary.

Rather than spending time arguing over how much money should be spent on intelligence, however, there are far more important changes, in my view, that should be made in the CIA and the intelligence community. The most serious problem facing this "community" today is that the individual agencies far too frequently provide biased analyses that either reflect the preferred policies of the agencies themselves or cater to the policy desires of the White House. It`s difficult for the intelligence components of the Defense Department, for example, to present analyses of foreign military capabilities that might undercut the desires of Defense budgeteers for more money. To one degree or another, similar difficulties face analysts in the intelligence components of the State Department, the FBI, the Energy Department and elsewhere.

The CIA`s analytical components, which sometimes pride themselves on having the only intelligence analysts without policy axes to grind, cannot in truth lay claim to any greater objectivity. They can be influenced by their own director, a political appointee, and by White House officials who want analytical backing for both overt policies and covert actions they desire to pursue. You should add to these pressures the turf rivalries and differing agency cultures that at their best and with no malice can make exchanging information imperfect, and at their worst can result in one or another agency deliberately refusing to pass information on to the CIA or another agency, often under the guise that the information is "too sensitive" to pass on.

The CIA itself, not being part of one of the government`s major established departments (State, Defense, etc.), flourishes or fades depending on its relations, and especially the relationship of its director, with the incumbent president, vice-president, and national security advisor. Very important in this regard is the fact that the CIA has two major parts: a covert collection and covert action unit, and an analytical unit. Of the two, most recent presidents have regarded the covert collection and action part of the agency as the more important. It is the part of the CIA that allows an action-oriented president (and what president wants to be identified in any other way?) to do things, to take actions, all supposedly in secret. That tends to make many directors of central intelligence reluctant to present to the president reports and studies from the analytical unit, if those studies implicitly or explicitly criticize the president`s policy preferences or the CIA director`s own covert action recommendations in support of the president`s policies. There have been exceptions; a few CIA directors have been very strong in presenting analyses to the president that they knew would not be well received, but I do not think that the present director, George Tenet, has been one of those exceptions. The almost inevitable internal conflict between the two separate jobs that all Directors of Central Intelligence must carry out, however, has probably had some effect on every one of them over the last half-century.

Now, how should this be changed, assuming one had the power to do so? I`d like to see new legislation that would completely split the analytical part of the CIA from the covert operational, or spooky, part. Even without control over the other intelligence agencies, the present CIA with its two parts is in some ways too powerful, and therefore too dangerous to have in a democracy, in my opinion. In other ways, the director of the CIA, whoever he may be, is too often conflicted; that is, as I`ve just tried to explain, he is too much in conflict with himself over the two separate parts of his job, and it`s almost impossible for him to do both parts equally well. In my view, the operational part of the agency should become a separate organization with a new name and be run directly out of the White House. At the same time, every covert operation should by law require the written approval of the president, designated committee chairmen of the Congress, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court. All three branches of the government should be represented here. Generally, no covert intelligence operations abroad should be carried out by any other intelligence agencies.

The analytical part of what is now the CIA should, under this proposal of mine, become another separate agency, and could either keep the present name, CIA, or not. It doesn`t matter. But the new head of this agency would be the head only of this analytical body. A key and critical change here should be that under new legislation the head of this analytical body should be appointed for a 10-year term. This would give a new director of this agency a higher degree of independence than the present and previous directors of the CIA have had, and make him or her less a part of any given administration. Senior officers of this new agency should be assigned to every other intelligence agency, and should by statute have access to every substantive piece of paper produced by the other agency.

Other intelligence agencies should have the right to produce and disseminate any intelligence analyses they wished, but the new government-wide analytical intelligence agency, with access to all sources, would produce any reports it wished, on its own initiative, and it would also be responsible for answering any and all requests for analyses from the White House, the Congress, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The new agency should have absolutely no operational or covert action responsibilities, and having no such responsibilities, it should not pose an unacceptable danger to our form of government. (The head of the FBI, by the way, is already appointed for a ten-year term, and the danger that arose under J. Edgar Hoover of an FBI director becoming too powerful , at least in the eyes of many of us, came about at least in part because the FBI director does have significant operational and action responsibilities, including, in conjunction with the Justice Department, the power of arresting people or harassing them through the FBI`s investigative powers. The head of a new, exclusively analytical CIA, or a renamed agency, would have no such operational powers.)

My belief is that such independence is the most important thing now lacking in the analytical components of the intelligence community. Obviously I no longer have any access to, or detailed information about, the hundreds of specific things that the present CIA director tells the president and other top leaders of the government. But I have read very carefully the unclassified parts of the George Tenet`s briefings over the past couple of years to committees of the Congress. As far as I can see, he has rarely said anything that President Bush would not have liked to hear. In a world as complex as the one we live in today, I find that somewhat alarming.

Now, let`s get back to the mess that I think the U.S. government has made of its foreign policies. Right now, there are two key issues on which U.S. foreign policies need to change, in my view. Number one is the need, even today, to continue opposing this wretched invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Bush administration. And number two is the need to support an "evenhanded" approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

On this latter issue, the Bush administration is not evenhanded at all; it is almost entirely supportive of present Israeli policies. And no recent administration, whether Republican or Democratic, has been truly evenhanded either. On the Democratic side in the coming election, Dennis Kucinich has explicitly favored evenhandedness, occasionally at least, and Howard Dean recently also did so. Dean, however, immediately met a buzz-saw of opposition from Joseph Lieberman and John Kerry, and has already backed away from his earlier statement. None of them wants to be charged with anti-Semitism, although all they would be doing by supporting evenhandedness would be criticizing some of the policies of the U.S. government and the government of Israel, and that is not anti-Semitism under any legitimate definition of that word.

This issue is so important in the Arab and Muslim worlds and also elsewhere that, in my opinion, any hopes for peace and a lasting reduction of wars and terrorism will be utterly impossible to realize unless the U.S. adopts, for the first time in decades, a policy of true evenhandedness toward Israel and Palestine. To repeat, lasting peace in the Middle East and a reduction of terrorism cannot happen, in my opinion, unless a resolution of the Palestinian issue can be reached that offers as much justice to the Palestinians as to the Israelis.

On the question of Iraq, now that the so-called coalition of the U.S. and Great Britain is actually occupying that country, we should support a real and immediate transfer of power from the U.S. to the United Nations. This, I strongly believe, is the only U.S. policy that makes sense. The U.S. should give up both its drive for global domination and its drive to advance Israel`s hegemony in the entire Middle East through military action. The invasion of Iraq was the first step in this drive, and it is time for the U.S., right now, to accept the defeat of even this first step. The alternative seems to me to be perpetual guerrilla wars of attrition against the U.S. in the Middle East and the entire Muslim world, more killings and deaths on all sides, more terrorism against the U.S. and whatever allies it has left, and an altogether unstable world in coming decades. The massive military power of the U.S. simply does not give us the weapons to prevent such eventualities.

But the transferring of real power in Iraq from the U.S. to the United Nations is only a first step--an absolutely necessary first step toward many other changes in U.S. foreign policies, all of which should lead to greater cooperation with the rest of the world and away from unilateralism. It should be a first step toward a negotiated abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, not just Iraq`s, or North Korea`s, or Iran`s. It should be a step away from the absurd ideas of global domination held by the Bush administration even though the U.S. contains only five percent of the world`s population, as well as a step away from preemptive wars, and away from a further massive expansion of U.S. military forces, including nuclear forces, beyond all real need. And, it should be a step away from sacrificing the domestic needs of our society and our people to the aggressive foreign policies that Bush seems intent on continuing. And one more point: I hope it would be a first step toward ridding this country of what is really the root cause of most of what is wrong with the U.S. government, the stranglehold that big money from the corporate and military-industrial establishment has over our increasingly corrupt political system.

Let`s move to the issue of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. I don`t propose to spend much time on how the U.S. has failed so far to find any weapons of mass destruction, because that`s all over the newspapers. The real answer, I think, is that the U.N. weapons` inspection program worked, and the Bush administration`s lies and scare tactics now look pretty silly. France and Germany, and at that time Russia, were essentially right in their judgment that we should allow the inspections to continue, and that there was no imminent danger to cause the U.S. to invade Iraq. The U.S. is paying for that misjudgment now, in its inability to persuade other countries to support us in the occupation of Iraq. But again, you can hear or read all about this on the television and the radio and in the newspapers every day.

I want to talk more about the global problem of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which is going to be very important to us in years to come. U.S. propaganda mouths nice words about preventing the further proliferation of such weapons, while U.S. policies actually encourage a further proliferation. The fact is that today the relative ease with which weapons of mass destruction can spread to new areas of the world makes all nations much more vulnerable to events that can severely damage their own national security, and the security and stablility of the entire globe.

Technology as well as U.S. policy has played a role here. With respect to nuclear weapons, for example, for the past almost 60 years it has gradually become a little easier each year to acquire a nuclear weapon and some type of delivery system. Now, after all these years, it`s appreciably easier for a number of nations to obtain a nuclear weapon than it was 20 or 30 years ago. North Korea is a good example. But I think in general the same thing applies to other nations, and to other weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. In another decade or two, it will be even easier than it is now to acquire such weapons.

Let`s talk about North Korea for a minute or so. The North Korean case has made it clearer than ever that in a world of nation-states, the only world we`ll have for some time to come, small countries are increasingly able to obtain nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. One small country, Israel, got nuclear weapons in the 1960s, but its ties with an acquiescent United States made it a special case. North Korea has now become the second small country to acquire nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration is, in my view, seriously in error if it believes that it can ever so dominate the rest of the world militarily that it can suppress all future nuclear and other threats against itself from weapons of mass destruction. The best rational judgment one can make today, I think, is that the opportunity for global domination is already lost to this and any future administration of the United States. Not only the threats but also the actuality of further nuclear and other weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferation will almost certainly increase in the next few years. This is in some measure because of the increasing ease with which nuclear weapons technology seems to be spreading around the world. But the vastly different approaches by the U.S. toward Iraq on the one hand and North Korea on the other just make more rapid proliferation even more likely.

Largely because North Korea already has a few nuclear weapons, the U.S. has been deterred from the kind of aggressive action it has employed against non-nuclear Iraq, and has been forced to rely on diplomacy. And that`s a good thing. But the point here is that at a minimum, nuclear weapons alone will probably make it possible for North Korea to stand up to the U.S. for a longer period than most of us up to now would have thought possible. This will automatically make other nations of the world, and probably some sub-national groups too, see even greater value in having their own nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction as well. Jonathan Schell, one of the most astute analysts in the United States on weapons of mass destruction, emphasized this in a recent major speech on U.S. foreign policy, when he pointed out that the lesson to other nations was, "Get nuclear weapons and get them fast."

U.S. policies for the past half century do indeed deserve most of the blame for this. Except as a propaganda tool, every U.S. administration since Harry Truman`s has in practice made the spread of nuclear weapons, the major type of weapons of mass destruction, a less important issue than the short-term perceived needs of U.S. national security. No administration has ever been willing even to discuss giving up the United States` own nuclear weapons. In these same years, however, most U.S. leaders and practically every American foreign policy or intelligence "expert" who ever worked on the nuclear-proliferation issue understood that, given this cast-in-concrete U.S. policy, preventing the further spread of such weapons among either friends or foes over the long run was impossible. The result is that over the past half-century, the U.S. has badly botched, and been completely hypocritical about, its alleged policy of opposing nuclear proliferation. The administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who made the most noise against proliferation, are regarded by the Arab and Muslim worlds as the most hypocritical of all, because these two administrations acquiesced in Israel`s acquisition of nuclear weapons during the 1960s.

Most U.S. policymakers, past and present, seem not to understand how profoundly mistrusted we are because of our lenient attitude toward Israel`s nuclear capability. Many other nations will never accept a status quo that perpetuates Israeli possession of nuclear weapons and at the same time prevents them from ever acquiring such weapons. They will always be suspicious that the U.S. really opposes nuclear proliferation only for its enemies, while acting too often as a hidden enabler of proliferation for its friends. Add to this that the U.S., in the persons of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and Colin Powell, earlier this year was caught out in presenting distorted and false intelligence information about Iraq`s alleged nuclear weapons program. It`s hard to see how any other nations can have much confidence in what the U.S. says with respect to weapons of mass destruction in the future.

I personally also have a problem with waging a preemptive war over this issue, that is, a war that we ourselves start, againstIraqor any other nation that we believe is trying to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

As part of its official military doctrine, the U.S. government publicly declared just last year, in September 2002, that it would be perfectly proper to launch a preemptive war against any such nation. This is aU.S.policy change of extreme importance. In the more than 58 years since the age of nuclear weapons began, the U.S. has deliberately decided, time after time,notto launch wars against any nations for simply acquiring, rather thanusing, the most important type of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons. Ever since shortly after World War II, we have rejected launching wars against theSoviet Union,China,England,France,Israel,India, andPakistan, all of whom have acquired nuclear weapons.If theU.S.is really concerned about the further spread of such weapons, we should understand that other nations--not justIraq- will over the long run never go along withU.S.desires until theU.S.,Israel, and other nuclear powers themselves show a real willingness to negotiate seriously on creating an entire nuclear-weapons-free world.And this is precisely, in my opinion, what theU.S.should do.

A few more comments are necessary here. Wars inevitably kill innocent people, often in large numbers. That`s an obvious cliche, but it is true. Even if Congress gave the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community unlimited resources and reorganized the complete intelligence apparatus of the country so that it became infinitely more efficient that it`s ever been, one thing is crystal clear, and I want to emphasize this: IT IS BEYOND BELIEF THAT THE U.S. COULD EVER COUNT ON HAVING INTELLIGENCE GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE LAUNCHING A PREEMPTIVE WAR MORALLY ACCEPTABLE. There is almost always an element of guesswork with respect to a potential enemy`s intentions, and those intentions can change instantly--and at the last moment.

This question of intentions is vital. It is not enough, despite the Bush administration`s arguments to the contrary, to know that some possible enemy possesses and has thecapabilityto use weapons of mass destruction. You need to know--and know for sure--theintentionsof that possible enemy as well. Even if you have a 90-percent degree of confidence in your judgment of what another country, or a sub-national group, truly intends to do, initiating a preemptive war and killing innocent people is still a prohibitively immoral action. You should also understand that even your 90-percent degree of confidence is nothing but a guess. Any way you slice it, you are killing people on the basis of a guess. And to believe that any nation`s intelligence services can ever provide a 100 percent degree of confidence is just one more form of arrogance.

To wrap all this up, the U.S. does not have a consistent or meaningful policy on preventing the further spread of weapons of mass destruction, and most senior U.S. officials know full well that we will never devote a top priority to preventing that further spread unless and until the U.S. becomes willing to negotiate seriously on giving up its own such weapons and to induce its closest allies to do likewise.

Another issue that needs to be mentioned in connection with U.S. policies in the Middle East today is the problem of religious fundamentalism. U.S. propaganda these days occasionally still mouths nice words about most Muslims being good people, not dominated by fundamentalist ideology. But at the same time, U.S. policies seem to be strengthening fundamentalism around the entire world.

To me, all fundamentalism is dangerous. Islamic fundamentalism will surely be one of the factors encouraging more terrorism against the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel in the wake of the Iraq war. Judaic fundamentalism encourages terrorism by the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as state terrorism by the Israeli military. And Christian fundamentalism here in this country will encourage the Bush administration to extend full support to Israel`s continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza.

The Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. will also provide strong support for the Bush administration`s plans for more regime changes throughout the Middle East, by military force if necessary, to create a new colonialism in the region dominated by some type of partnership between the U.S. and Israel.

Over the past couple of years under the Bush administration, and especially now that the Iraq war has become a full-blown occupation and guerrilla war, these trends have become well established in U.S. foreign policy. I believe that they are extremely dangerous because they may lead to a new world war, a Judeo-Christian World War against Islam. I think we should do everything we can to prevent such a war.

Now, we cannot turn off religious fundamentalism anywhere with just a wave of our hand. And I would submit that it is both a terribly wrong policy and an immoral policy to try to turn it off by military action and killing people in one part of the world, the Islamic world, while encouraging Judaic fundamentalism to flourish in the Palestinian occupied territories, and encouraging Christian fundamentalism to grow stronger in the U.S. Yet that is precisely what U.S. foreign policies today are doing.

Rather than anyone`s using military action and warfare to control religious fundamentalism, it would be far better to create the kinds of conditions around the world that would help the moderate forces in each of the three religions to control their own fundamentalists. I think the moderate elements in all of these religions are probably more numerous than the fundamentalists, but they are less well organized and less driven to achieve their aims and agenda.

The main point I want to make here is that there is really no other moral and civilized way to deal with the global problem of fundamentalism than to allow, and to encourage by peaceful means and exclusively peaceful means, the three major religions and their unique cultures to deal with their own problems of extremists in their own way. This is not a perfect world, but one thing I am very sure of is that the use of military action, especially by outsiders, to solve these deeply embedded religious problems, will make this world an entirely imperfect and unstable place to live in for years, and possibly decades, to come.

Now I`d like to go back to Iraq and its tie-in with the United Nations. George Bush`s own father, President Bush the First, wrote something worth remembering in a book that he and his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, published in 1998:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in `mission creep,` and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable `exit strategy` we could see, violating another of our principles.

"Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations` mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome." [Again, this was written by Bush the First in a 1998 book entitled A World Transformed, page 489.]

In my remarks so far, I`ve suggested that any U.S. strategy for an exit from Iraq ought to rely more heavily on the United Nations in the future than the U.S. has done in the past. If we are going to rely more on the U.N., we ought to make it a better U.N. In fact, I believe that all of us interested in the future of the world ought to be working right now toward changing the United Nations, which is now close to 60 years old, into something that will meet the needs of the 21st Century more effectively than the present U.N. organization. The least of the U.N.`s problems is that Japan and Germany, defeated powers at the end of World War II, are now nations that we all need to recognize as major powers on this globe. There are also other powerful nations that either did not exist as independent states or are now much stronger than they were in 1945, India, Pakistan and Brazil being among them.

The easy answer, of simply making all or some of these nations permanent members of the U.N. Security Council with the veto power, however, is not enough; in fact, that may be the wrong answer. Many argue that it would be better to abolish the veto and work instead toward introducing some sort of democratically elected international parliament that would cross national borders. Others, of course, oppose the entire concept of making the U.N. more democratic, or reducing in any way the sovereignty of national states. Quite a few people in the U.S. would probably oppose any United Nations organization that was not thoroughly subservient to the U.S. There ought to be a major debate on all this, and I personally think that it should be a high priority of all of us who consider ourselves to be internationalists, and who support the concept of a stronger United Nations, to participate actively in such a debate.

Given the inevitability of more rather than less economic globalization around the world, we should not automatically reject the notion of at least the early stages of some kind of world government coming to us in the fairly near future. World government may be just as inevitable as more globalization. The real questions are the extent to which such a government will be democratic, and the extent to which it will instead be dictatorial, as such bodies as the WTO and NAFTA are today. (The WTO is, by the way, what some might define as already an early stage of world government in the economic area.) Again, if we truly want a reasonable exit strategy from Iraq, one that will encourage more peace and stability around the world in the next few decades rather than more terrorism and warfare, we should rely on the U.N. far more in the future than we have in the past. The only point I want to make here is that in doing that, we also probably should encourage major changes in the U.N. that will make it a stronger organization. This, in turn, would require additional major changes in U.S. foreign policies. I certainly don`t know all the answers here. What I do know is that the people of this country need to engage in a major debate on the question of how much national sovereignty our own country should be willing to give up.

One final comment is necessary here. These days, theU.S.government decides unilaterally who are terrorists and who are not in black-and-white terms utterly lacking in the grays that might arise from knowledge, wisdom, or simple caution and doubt. Palestinians are always among the black terrorists; Israeli settlers and soldiers are invariably among the white good guys--enemies of terrorism, never terrorists themselves. Iraqi Baathists are also among the black guys these days, as are Chechen rebels. American and Russian soldiers? Never. Chris Hedges, the New York Times correspondent who is the author of a powerful recent book titled, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, put it like this is a speech he gave earlier this year: "We are part of a dubious troika, in the war against terror, with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless violence. We have become the company we keep."

It`s my strong belief that everyone in the United States, and perhaps in the entire world, will have to pay one day not only for the company the U.S. government now keeps, but also for the policies this administration is carrying out in the selfish pursuit of global domination. It would be much better, in my view, if theU.S.government did the smart thing and changed these policies, right now. An American friend of ours, who has lived for years in the Middle East and is an expert on the area, recently wrote to us and really caught our attention. He said this: "For many people living outside the United States, it is incomprehensible that most Americans would actually take pride in bombing into submission pitifully weak countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, the moral equivalent of a teenager beating up a three-year-old. In their eyes, such behavior should be cause for shame and embarrassment, not for pride."

Who, do you suppose, will be the next three-year-old? I`d guess it`ll be Syria. Or will it be Iran? Or will we be caught by the surprise of a revolution in Saudi Arabia, in which case the U.S. might feel it must occupy the oil fields of northern Saudi Arabia by military force--in order to keep the oil flowing?

The distaste and hatred of U.S. foreign policies that are rising daily around the world from such thoughts as these should not be minimized.

Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA`s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit.

Bill and his wife Kathleen are also contributors to CounterPunch`s hot new book: The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

The Christison`s can be reached at: [e-mail]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

New Big Boom in Iraq - Jobs
Monday, 1 December 2003, 10:41 am
Column: Guest Opinion

New Big Boom In Iraq - Jobs

Satire By Harvey McKinnon
Last week George Bush made a secret visit to Iraq to announce the launch of a new employment program to put the people of Iraq "Back to Work."

Under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the "Iraqi people did not have the opportunity to reach their potential", according to the U.S. president. Here is a transcript of his speech to American troops:

"My fellow Americans, we realize that the major reason we are being attacked by the Iraqi people is not because we are an occupying force trying to steal their oil. The real reason Iraqis are attacking us is that they have too much time on their hands. That is to say, if they had to work 14 hours days they`d have no time or energy to be lobbing rockets at our troops. That`s why we are going to implement the `Shock and Awe` Job Plan.

First, we will use a strategic Harvard model to determine job `opportunities`. This model worked well in South Central L.A., which looks a lot like the heavily bombed parts of Baghdad.

"Then we will provide training with highly skilled U.S. Marine Sergeants and Starbucks management.

"First up in the job field: more employment in pumping oil into U.S. tankers. This highly paid job is the key to Iraqi reconstruction. They give us all of their oil and in return, we give them a blueprint of how to rebuild their country. Then they borrow the money from us to rebuild. It`s been a highly successful model that has worked well for Argentina, Poland and Enron.

"There are so many other opportunities. For example, you would think that the dozens of Saddam look-a-likes would be unemployable, but nothing could be further from the truth. We have a plan. Once they grow back their mustaches (and our intelligence says they all shaved) then they can get jobs in the new Saddam and Sons Horror Museum. It`s easy work. All they have to do is stand around like statues and every now and then jump out at Iraqi visitors and scream, `I`m back.` Should be good for lots of laughs and, of course, there will be many jobs for ticket takers.

"Also, there is a great need for part-time people to clean the sand out of the fax machines in our tanks. Since we`ll be there for a long time, this is a job with a future.

"There will also be a lot more jobs in museums for people to glue artifacts back together. This could provide years of employment for people with no education and no hope. And the constant glue sniffing won`t damage their job prospects.

"And there are many arts and culture jobs. For example, in the past, sculptors could only work on Saddam statues. They now have many more creative opportunities. And personally I`m hoping one of them will do a statue of Donald Rumsfeld, saviour of the Middle East. Don deserves to be permanently set in concrete.

"Then there are huge opportunities for entrepreneurs, a word I will soon be eliminating from my vocabulary since I just heard it may be French. Our consultants will show people how to make T-shirts with catchy phrases like `I got bombed in Baghdad` and `They got bombed in Baghdad.` That`ll be a big hit at U.S. fraternities, thus keeping Iraqis safe at home with their sewing machines and away from attacking US soldiers.

"Of course, there are a lot of jobs for can-do businessmen to serve the demand for previously banned products. Ordinary Iraqis have long been deprived of booze, porn, drugs and gambling opportunities. The potential job boom, and the corresponding addiction counseling series, will give a real boost to their economy.

"Then there are barista jobs at the 357 Starbucks to open next year in Baghdad. Big Al`s Pork Palace, one of my Texas favorites, is also scheduled to invade Iraq. More jobs. And MTV plans an Osbournes-style series with the Iraqi Minister of Information`s family, if we can get him to sign a contract.

"Did I mention cleaning up rubble? Many people, low skilled people, will be employed for the rest of their lives.

"So really, there`s a lot of opportunities for people who want to work. And if we can`t find jobs for every Iraqi who wants to work, maybe we`ll import some to the U.S. They can replace immigrant workers from Mexico who, as you know, weren`t on our side, I think."


***********
© Copyright 2003 Harvey McKinnon

- From Vancouver, BC Harvey McKinnon is an author, former television producer, and he once was the story editor on the Gemini award winning comedy series, CODCO. Email: [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Diesen Preis hat sich Rummy verdient. Ich habe das Zitat schon öfters gebracht, weil es Rumsfeld vertrakte Art zu sprechen und zu denken sehr gut erklärt.
Eine Preisverleihung mit der ich voll und ganz einverstanden bin.


Rumsfeld`s unknown unknowns take prize
John Ezard
Tuesday December 2, 2003
The Guardian

The new governor of California came within a hair of victory with his observation "Gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."

A Tory party ex-chairman got close by noting "Having committed political suicide, the Conservative party is now living to regret it."

But Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chris Patten were beaten to the punch yesterday. The award for most baffling remark by a public figure went to an old master of obfuscation, Donald Rumsfeld.

The US defence secretary scooped the Plain English Campaign`s premier Foot In Mouth trophy for his 62-word attempt to clarify a point to a defence department meeting: "Reports that say that something hasn`t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don`t know we don`t know".

"We think we know what he means", said John Lister, a Plain English campaign spokesman, "but we don`t know if we really know".

Previous winners include the actor Richard Gere and the artist Tracey Emin.

The campaign was set up in 1979 to combat official jargon, circumlocution and muddling information. It has worked with, and provided training for, more than 1,000 private and governmental organisations, including two-thirds of Britain`s local authorities.

One of this year`s Golden Bull awards for unclear English has uncovered a man who is an unrepentant master of mixed metaphors.

Yousef El-Deiry, UK airports manager for the charter airline JMC, writing in the airline magazine, noted that late summer was "historically characterised by pre-maturity, both in terms of psychological wind-down and shedding of temporary staff.

"The irony is that it is in the latter stages of a race or championship that fortunes are made or lost, and where heroes are born or die, and we should be in no doubt that `it ain`t over until the fat lady sings`", he went on.

"The approach, which I wish to advocate to all our ground team, is to look at the last third of the season as a `light at the end of the tunnel`, the long sought-after jewel in the crown, remaining resolute to sprint to victory."

News that he had won a Golden Bull award prompted Mr El-Deiry to even fuller-throated eloquence: "I was told the cliches in my article were as plain as the nose on my face, but it all looked like Queen`s English to me.

"Besides, what`s a little cliche amongst colleagues?There is truth in every cliche: worse things happen at sea, when it rains it pours - and even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Ali al-Tashi, 9, lies injured in Samarra`s hospital. His older brother says their father died in Sunday`s violence, but the boy does not yet know that. Photo by Vivienne Walt, special to the Chronicle

Iraqis dispute claim of 54 killed
Townspeople say only 8 died, mostly noncombatants
Vivienne Walt, Chronicle Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/02/MNGLP3E5LF1.DTL



Samarra, Iraq -- U.S. commanders said Monday they had killed up to 54 insurgents in the fiercest battle since Saddam Hussein`s government fell nearly eight months ago, but townspeople disputed that claim, saying only eight were killed in the battle Sunday, most of them noncombatants.

Military officials said the simultaneous attacks against two convoys in this city about 70 miles north of Baghdad were a highly synchronized operation involving heavy munitions and requiring precise knowledge of the American convoys` schedules.

"This was a coordinated effort,`` said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, commander of the 4th Infantry Division`s 3rd Brigade, whose tanks drove into two ambushes as they escorted trucks carrying large amounts of the new Iraqi currency to branches of the Radifan Bank on opposite ends of town. He said 30 to 40 insurgents attacked each convoy. "There was a concerted effort by the enemy to deal a significant blow to coalition forces," Rudesheim added.

But with Samarra`s hospital still filled with casualties, residents told a starkly different story. In a mix of rage and grief, residents lashed out at the brigade`s soldiers, accusing them of firing randomly into crowded market areas in the center of the city, killing civilians, including two Iranians believed to be pilgrims visiting a Shiite mosque in town.

"All the people in town today are asking for revenge," said Majid Fadel al-Samarai, 50, an emergency-room worker at the Samarra General Hospital. "They want to kill the Americans like they killed our civilians. Give me a gun,

and I will also fight."

Rudesheim said Americans shot only at those who had fired on soldiers. He said the military calculated deaths "as best as we could," using reports from field commanders immediately after the firefights. Each death was cross- checked with a second soldier, said Capt. Andrew Deponai of the 3rd Brigade`s Combat Team. Officials at the hospital said only eight dead had been brought in, along with 54 wounded, but conceded that some of the victims may not have been taken there.

Residents also charged that American soldiers showed little regard for the safety of civilians during the gunbattle.

"I saw a man running across the street to get his small son, who was stuck in the middle," said Abdul Satar, 47, who owns a bakery a block from one of the two banks to which the convoys had driven. "So the Americans shot the man," he said.

In a house on the outskirts of Samarra, Abir Mohammed Al-Khayat, 28, said a rocket hit the minibus in which she and several others had commuted from their jobs at a local pharmaceuticals factory. "There were about 20 of us, men and women," she said, cradling her arm, injured by shrapnel, in a sling.

At the hospital, several patients said they were injured when a shell, apparently fired from an attack helicopter, struck a mosque at about 5 p.m., when residents were converging for evening prayers.

In the corner bed of one ward lay Ali al-Tashi, a 9-year-old boy who had gone to the mosque Sunday night to pray with his father. Heavily bandaged, the boy sobbed in pain and confusion. His older brother, Grimian, 17, clutched his hand and tried to comfort him.

"He still does not know that our father has been killed," Grimian said. "All our brothers and sisters and our mother have gone up north, to Irbil, to bury him."

In the hospital`s morgue, two people killed by bullets lay on metal shelves: a rail-thin man who seemed to be in his 60s, and a middle-aged woman dressed in a black religious robe. Hospital staffers said they found Iranian passports on the two bodies. Though Samarra is dominated by Sunni Muslims, many Iranian Shiite pilgrims visit the shrine of Imam Al-Hadi in the city.

On Monday, American forces leveled trees on the median of the highway in an attempt to clear hiding places from which insurgents could attack convoys. Rudesheim said two previous currency deliveries had been attacked with roadside bombs, so the soldiers were prepared for the ambush.

Soldiers who had fought off the insurgents said the fighters lay in wait as the money shipments -- guarded by about 100 soldiers in six tanks, four Bradley fighting vehicles, and several humvees -- entered the city and rolled through the narrow streets toward the banks.

The insurgents hid on rooftops and in alleyways, armed with rocket- propelled grenades, mortars and Kalashnikov rifles. As the convoys reached their destinations at the same moment, roadside bombs detonated, and the two battles erupted at opposite sides of the city. Rudesheim said that during the battle, which lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes, the insurgents used taxis, BMWs and pickup trucks to move their fighters around constantly.

"There were people on the roofs, sneaking around corners with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), mortars, firing in all directions," said Sgt. 1st Class Alvin Ware, 34, of Harker Heights, Texas. "They were coming in from the alleyways, firing AK-47s. I haven`t seen anything like this since I served in the Gulf War in 1991."

Deponai, of the brigade`s Combat Team, described the fight as "touch-and- go for a while." In the end, however, he said, "We had overwhelming firepower on our tanks."

U.S. military officers said Sunday that all those killed were members of Fedayeen Saddam, the most ruthless fighting force Hussein possessed before the war. By Monday, however, they said that was no longer clear.

"We have not established a definitive link between these enemy and a specific organization," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad. He said some were wearing black uniforms and had covered their faces with checkered headscarves, as members of the Fedayeen often did.

Anti-American feeling runs strong in Samarra, a city of 200,000 in the heart of the Sunni triangle. Near the site of Sunday`s battle, Salem al- Rathmani, wearing an olive-green Iraqi army uniform and officer`s winter jacket, denounced the U.S. presence in terms that evoked prewar rhetoric.

"Why are people attacking the Americans? Because of the Palestinian issue,

the Americans` policy of supporting Israel, the sanctions," he said, referring to the U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War.

The crowd around al-Rathmani, who said he was a businessman in "construction and tourism,`` listened quietly until he mentioned dragnets conducted by U.S. soldiers in Samarra. The Americans took 80 prisoners last week, members of the crowd charged, and even captured local leaders of the Islamic Labor Party, which is represented on the Iraqi Governing Council. "Why are they capturing a lot of people without real charges?" they shouted.

Sunday`s battle came at the end of the deadliest month since U.S. forces invaded Iraq on March 20. At least 104 soldiers were killed in November, including 79 Americans. Insurgents struck again Monday, killing a U.S. soldier in an attack on a convoy near Habbaniya, southwest of Samarra.

The violence last month also took a toll on other members of the U.S.-led forces, both military and civilian, and Iraqi allies. At least 16 Italians, seven Spaniards, two Japanese and two South Koreans were killed in the past few weeks, and about 32 Iraqi police, judges and local council members were killed.


Chronicle staff writer Robert Collier contributed to this report.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

[Joerver]

Americans who hate their President
By Roy Eccleston
01dec03
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,80…
SCENES of George W. Bush serving Thanksgiving dinner to US troops in Baghdad last week brought a lump to the throats of many Americans. But for a large number, it seems, the stuff in their throats was bile.

As the US heads into the 2004 election campaign, hate is back on the agenda and at a level not seen since, well, Bush`s predecessor, Bill Clinton.
"I never thought I would see this happen," says independent political analyst Charlie Cook, "but within the Democratic party, and many, many, many Democrats in this country, there is the same hatred for Bush that you saw among conservatives and Republicans towards Clinton."

Bush himself doesn`t necessarily accept it. When asked by a British reporter in London recently why protesters hated him, the President replied: "I don`t know that they do."

Yet political analysts say Bush is generating real animosity, and not just outside the US. The evidence of division shows up starkly in public opinion. In a recent Time magazine poll, 48 per cent of Americans said they were unlikely to vote for Bush next November, while 47 per cent said they were likely to.

The depths of these mixed sentiments are also on display in the streets, on badges like "He lied, they died", a reference to the war in Iraq, and bumper stickers with derisive messages such as "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot".

Cook argues that this sort of antipathy is not typical of US politics. Nobody hated Bush`s father, or really hated Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford. You have to go back to Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson - "Hey, hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" - to find that level of vitriol.

Bill Schneider, a political analyst with CNN and the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, says it`s the 60s culture war all over again. He agrees the antipathy among Democrats to Bush is deep-seated, but prefers to call it anger rather than hate.

"There is real anger against Bush, but it`s different to Clinton," Schneider says.

"I would ask conservatives why they hated Clinton, they would talk about his behaviour and his values, not his policies. He was a draft dodger, an abortion promoter, a gun hater, a gay backer. It was his values."

Ask liberals why they`re angry with Bush and it`s his policies, Schneider says. "Iraq, the Patriot Act (which has increased government powers post-September 11), the environment, Iraq, oil drilling in Alaska, Iraq."

But it is more than that. Democrats thought Bush stole the 2000 election thanks to dodgy counting in Florida and they still don`t trust him (75 per cent of Democrats don`t, according to the Time poll).

Brookings Institution political analyst Tom Mann says Bush`s critics see him as a phony who hides his true nature behind a disarming facade. Bush is "a wolf in sheep`s clothing" to many Democrats. "In the minds of his critics Bush has successfully pushed a radical and harmful economic and national security agenda without any shred of electoral mandate," Mann says.

`Partisan and arrogant`

"Among Democratic activists, his election is widely seen as illegitimate and his leadership style as extremely partisan and arrogant. His soothing rhetoric belies a political toughness and ideological extremism."

All of which is making for a particularly bitter election campaign in the making. Bush claims he hasn`t started campaigning yet - despite having raised almost $US100 million, much of it from personal appearances at fundraisers around the country.

But there`s no doubt the Democrats are in full swing, and the frontrunner for the party`s nomination is Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont who more than anyone has tapped into the "hate Bush" sentiment.

"It`s the soil he`s growing in," Schneider says.

It is also fertile ground for an industry of deeply partisan authors, radio talk show hosts, newspaper columnists and internet websites on both sides of politics.

For example, Ann Coulter, a prominent conservative author and commentator, argues in her best-selling book Treason that Democrats are a bunch of traitors. She doesn`t like liberal sections of the media, either.

In 2002, she reportedly told the New York Observer, in a reference to the Oklahoma City bomber: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to The New York Times building."

Liberals have their own quiver full of poison darts. The title of another bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by Al Franken, says it all.

Then there is Jonathan Chait, a writer with US magazine the New Republic, who began a recent piece: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."

`Feigning Machismo`

Chait revealed his antipathy was based not just on Bush`s policies but on the way he walked, "shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo", and talked, "blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang".

Such intensity is producing bucket-loads of cash for both sides, with Bush and Dean both aiming to raise $US200 million. Billionaire George Soros has kicked in $US15million to anti-Bush causes, likening the US President`s "supremacist" polices to the Nazis. But if Bush hate is exciting the liberal Left, is it enough to beat him?

Next year`s presidential election will be partly a referendum on Bush`s performance. On that front, the big issues the voters will be thinking about will be the economy, the war on terrorism and Iraq. The economy is turning around, although it is questionable whether the recovery now under way will wipe out the 2.5 million job losses since 2000.

On the other two main issues, Bush will be arguing Iraq is part of the war on terrorism; Democrats will be arguing it`s been a disastrous diversion from the real job of fighting al-Qaeda.

But a big question remains. Who will be the alternative president? Voters will demand not just a carping critic but someone with an alternative and attractive vision on the key issues of the economy and national security.

On this front some analysts think the Democrats will make a big mistake if they vent their antipathy to Bush by choosing the most anti-Bush candidate, Dean.

Democrats chose Senator George McGovern on the back of anti-Vietnam War sentiment in 1972, and lost to Nixon in a landslide. So what`s the lesson for the Democrats with Dean? "Be careful," says Schneider. "It didn`t work with McGovern."

Another New Republic writer, Ramesh Ponnuru, argues that Bush hate is a sentiment that unites the Democrats but "could lead all of them to ruin next year" if they let their hearts rule their heads.

As evidence, he cites the flood of money and other resources into Florida last November in a bid to oust the President`s brother, Jeb, from the Governor`s mansion, thereby avenging Al Gore`s defeat and -- arguably - making it easier for the party to beat Bush next year.

Instead, Jeb Bush won easily, and the money would have been better spent on close races elsewhere, Ponnuru argues.

Clinton`s former political adviser Dick Morris argues that Dean is too liberal to win and "God`s gift to George W. Bush".

But he has a different take on what is going on in US politics. First, he says, Washington has become more partisan, as the two big parties have become more able to control their members by providing the money needed for election campaigns.

Voters have responded not by becoming more polarised, he argues, but by being turned off. "They are hating both sides," he says.

Charlie Cook disagrees, saying the electorate is increasingly polarised and that it will ensure a big turnout of voters next year.

Whoever is right, one thing seems clear: in 2004 hate will help decide who runs America.



© Herald and Weekly Times

[Joerver]

Tuesday, December 02, 2003
War News for December 2, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/


Bring `em on: More ambushes reported near Samarra. One US soldier killed.

Bring ‘em on: Turkish oil truck bombed in Arbil.

US troops launch raid in Kirkuk.

Conflicting accounts of yesterday’s firefight in Samarra.

CENTCOM press release.

Local reaction. “But Sheikh Qahtan Hajj Salem of the town`s tribal council warned that the violence of the response would backfire against US troops. ‘It is the first time that the town has been attacked with such violence," he said. "The US reponse to this attack can only strengthen the resistance.’”

No insurgent KIA recovered after Samarra firefight. “Challenged about what had happened to the bodies, Gen Kimmitt said: ‘I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was.’” Base? Does this mean the insurgents have a fixed operational support structure? How the hell do you haul off 54 bodies with a militarily insignificant force? What about insurgent wounded? Obviously if the insurgents had standing orders to evacuate their dead and wounded it means lots of them got away to a pre-arranged rally point by way of pre-arranged escape routes. Which would indicate that the insurgency is far more organized and much more militarily significant than the Bushies would have us believe.

Evolving insurgent tactics. Insurgents are adapting their tactics while their objectives remain constant. On the other hand, the Bushies are retaining the same tactics while their objectives change weekly.

Iraqi insurgency has central command and control, and can field 8 – 12 company-sized units in the area Baghdad.

A combat officer`s perspective. "As one would expect from using our overwhelming firepower, much of Samarra is fairly well shot up. The tanks and brads rolled over parked cars and fired up buildings where we believed the enemy was. This must be expected considering the field of vision is limited in an armored vehicle and while the crews are protected, they also will use recon by fire to suppress the enemy. Not all the people in this town were hostile, but we did see many people firing from rooftops or alleys that looked like average civilians, not the Feddayeen reported in the press. I even saw Iraqi people throwing stones at us, I told my soldiers to hold their fire unless they could indentfy a real weapon, but I still can`t understand why somebody would throw a stone at a tank, in the middle of a firefight."

Analysis: Insurgency spreads north.

Rummy says situation in Iraq is stabilizing.

Patrolling in Mosul.

Patrolling in Tikrit.

Coalition of the Wobbly: Thailand may withdraw troops from Iraq.

Florida Guardsman punished, discharged for marrying Iraqi doctor.

Gas shortages continue for Iraqi civilians.

Some creative spin on the fuel shortage from those wacky jokers at the CPA.

Iraqi clerics filling political vacuum in Iraq.

Commentary

Letter to the Editor: “I am a registered Republican. I contributed financially to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and I voted for him. I made a mistake. I sincerely apologize for my error…”

Opinion: Bush’s foreign policy quagmires. “Mr. Reagan saw democracy as the wave of the future, but he wasn`t inclined to go to war for it. As a president, he had plenty of faults. But in the realm of foreign policy, what Mr. Bush rejects are Mr. Reagan`s virtues.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: North Dakota soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Iowa soldier wounded in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 9:31 AM

[Joerver]

Published on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Last Chance
by Patrick C. Doherty

You know the situation is dire when former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says, "…our long-term fiscal mess will increasingly reduce the ability of the United States government to respond to and deal with the issues that the American people want government to respond to and deal with including national security"- and then tells George Stephanopoulos that no Democratic candidate has an economic plan that will sufficiently address that mess.

But when dour old Warren Christopher writes an op-ed in the Washington Post begging Democratic candidates to provide some strategic vision-the extent of our true peril is clear.

You also may have noted that it`s December and very few are really all that excited about your campaign.

What`s wrong?

Basically, the problem is much bigger than you think. Robert Hormats of Goldman Sachs summed up America`s fundamental post-Cold War task in 1991: The United States must "satisfy the domestic conditions required to exercise the necessary international political and economic leadership." For twelve years, the US has ignored our responsibilities preferring to prop up a dysfunctional status quo. The long-term consequences of our failure to lead now loom before us:

First is our fiscal imbalance-the difference between Federal revenues and Federal obligations-which conservatives put at $44 trillion dollars. Among other horrible consequences, this level of debt will crush the domestic and the global economies under the weight of increased interest rates as the Government competes with the private sector for capital.

Second, our economy is dependent on energy supplies that cannot be secured. The instability (in large part caused by oil) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, the Caucasus, the Andean region, and West Africa, has a cascade effect: in the short term, instability keeps oil prices at or above the upper limit of OPEC price band; the sustained high cost of oil reduces market share; reduced market share reduces the revenue available for essential upstream investment, while simple insecurity makes investment in production capacity either more expensive or impossible. With such high economic growth in Asia and furtive growth in the US and EU, the increasing competition for energy will meet insufficient production capacity and generate more regional conflict over access to energy.

The third long-term consequence is that five billion people have no economic future. The American economy anchors the global economy yet is not a sustainable model for global development. We simply waste too much energy and material resources-25% of the world`s total even though we are only 5% of the world`s population. That means only an additional 15% of the world could "develop" like us, leaving more than 5 billion people excluded and generally pissed off. Beyond planting the seeds of deep frustration, we are also shutting out 5 out of 6 trading partners, clients, and customers because they can afford neither to buy nor to use what we want to sell.

Fourth is the complex damage to essential ecosystem services, such as climate change. Insurance premiums are steadily rising in the developed economies, decreasing profits and slowing growth, while in the developing world, climate change is resulting in death, disease, and displacement. This will only get worse with time-geometrically-as the world`s agricultural zones migrate, ocean currents shut down, and sea levels rise.
Of course, these four converging calamities do not negate the importance of the myriad issues facing America in the short and medium terms. Rather, they illuminate the drivers of most of these issues-more accurately, these symptoms-that face us immediately.

How to Fix It.

The first thing to realize is that it is pointless to only address the symptoms without addressing the underlying causes. Bush is demonstrating this now, and you have all stated for the record how ill-conceived his policies are. Your problem is that you have only provided alternative band-aids for those same symptoms. By doing so, you have, de facto, accepted the world view of Bush. That said, keep the best of what you and your colleagues have come up with and call it what it is: triage. Commit to general elections and a constitution in Iraq, get the rest of Israel to agree to the Geneva Accords, stop the looming trade wars, and fully fund the Global Fund for AIDS.

The real problems are long term and so must be the strategy to deal with them-strategic progress will stem the tide of crises and prevent problems in the medium term. That strategy must employ the same strategic algebra that guided the United States through the Cold War; correlating our economic engine and our strategic posture to achieve the single goal that will advance our national purpose. Today, that goal must be to transition the United States-and the rest of the world-towards a sustainable, integrated, global economy; to an economy that generates equitable prosperity at home and abroad.

A new American economic engine is at the heart of that new strategy. It should be based on metropolitan smart growth rather than suburban sprawl, on waste tax and subsidy-free markets rather than income tax and industrial subsidies, and on renewable and distributed energy rather than fossil fuels and centralized generation. Those three basic changes to our 60 year-old conceptions of land use, tax & subsidies, and energy would restore the spiritual core of the American economy-each generation doing better than the last-as Americans build a new, smarter, sustainable America. That new engine would open up the American market to honest domestic competition and fair global trade by removing the cement shoes of income tax and industrial subsidies that stifle competition, innovation, and trade today. That new engine would make the reduction of energy and material intensity profitable; increasing employment while building healthy, safe communities. That new engine would reduce our fiscal liabilities and generate sustainable Federal revenue without penalizing hard work and intelligent choices.

With a new economic engine, our interests will align with our principles. As we harness plentiful domestic renewables and turn efficiency into a competitive advantage, our deadly dependence on hydrocarbon-producing regions will end. With a domestic economic boom based on smart growth and efficient lifestyles, America will consume more knowledge and produce less waste while improving our quality of life-accruing advantage to firms that invest in people. With the expansion of waste-tax systems including `cap-and-trade` and `polluter pays`, a surge of market capitalization will seek secure and sustainable investment opportunities around the world, spreading the economic revolution.

By complementing these new national interests with a far-sighted strategic posture, a wave of peace and prosperity can follow the economic changes. First, America must lead the transformation of the norms and institutions of the international order, based on a hard-headed conception of responsible sovereignty and a new global development consensus. Second, America must take responsibility for improving the five global systems which determine the amount of prosperity or conflict the world enjoys: energy, water, ecosystem services, public health, and information. Third, we must maintain and expand our principled commitment to human security and global stability, working to generate capable partners at the regional level to share the burden of the collective security tasks facing us in this era.

What`s in it for you.

Your campaign manager will tell you that the logic of the Democratic primaries, under normal circumstances, makes such big ideas not only unnecessary, but extraordinarily risky. After all, with a tight field of eight candidates, you merely need to get about 25% of the primary voters on your side in Iowa or New Hampshire to be able to build the momentum necessary to carry the nomination. After all, in a two party system, you can win the general election on the misfortune of the other party. Play it safe, play to the polls, and you have somewhere between a 1:16 and a 1:4 chance of taking the Oval Office.

These, however, are not normal circumstances. With $200 million in Karl Rove`s hands, only a National catastrophe will be un-spinnable…and you really don`t want to have that strategy memo leaked to the press. At present you cannot attack the President`s strategy too hard because you basically agree with the rough outline and disagree on the details and emphasis, which doesn`t play in Peoria, and the relentless pursuit of "swing voters" now smells of base pandering to voting Americans.

You have talked about what kind of leadership we need, but have been unable to articulate what end that leadership ought to serve. This "end" is the key. The strategy outlined above gives you that key.

Act now and you can gather a new progressive majority. Act now and you can exploit the media attention such a dramatic change would generate just in time for the primaries. Act now and you can change the course of the 2004 election, the country, and the world.

Patrick Doherty is an independent writer living in Washington, DC. He spent a decade in the field of conflict resolution in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Noam Chomsky, Interview: `Of course, it was all about Iraq`s resources`

Edited excerpts of an interview with Noam Chomsky by Simon Mars of Dubai`s Business Channel

12/02/03: Simon Mars: Do you think control over energy resources was the main reason for the invasion of Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: They didn`t decide to invade Eastern Congo where there`s much worse massacres going on. Of course it was Iraq`s energy resources. It`s not even a question. Iraq`s one of the major oil producers in the world. It has the second largest reserves and it`s right in the heart of the Gulf`s oil producing region, which US intelligence predicts is going to be two thirds of world resources in coming years.

The invasion of Iraq had a number of motives, and one was to illustrate the new National Security Strategy, which declares that the United States will control the world permanently by force if necessary and will eliminate any potential challenge to that domination. It is called pre-emptive war.

It is not a new policy, it`s just never been announced so brazenly, which is why it caused such uproar, including among the foreign policy elite in the United States. They`re appalled by it.
But having announced the doctrine, it needed an exemplary action, to show that the United States really meant it.

But if the United States is going to attack somebody, the action has to meet several criteria. The first and crucial criterion is that they must be completely defenseless. It`s stupid to attack anyone who can shoot back. Anyone knows this.

They understood perfectly well that Iraq was completely defenseless, the weakest country in the region. Its military expenditure was about a third of Kuwait, devastated by sanction, held together by Scotch tape. Mostly dis-armed, under complete surveillance, so Iraq met that condition.

Second criteria is that the place attacked has to be important enough to matter. There`s no point taking over Eastern Congo, which is also defenseless, but Iraq matters. That`s where the issue of oil comes up, since the United States will end up with military bases right in the heart of the oil producing region.

The third criteria is you have to somehow pretend it`s a threat to your existence. While the people of Kuwait and Iran might be delighted to tear Saddam Hussein limb from limb, they still did not regard him as a threat. No-one thought he was a threat.

But in the United States the propaganda did succeed in moving the American population, and Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force to defend the US against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. No matter what you think, that`s just laughable.

How many people know that Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein golden spurs back in 1983?
A little of that has begun to leak out, but how many people know that Colin Powell, the present administration moderate, was the National Security Advisor at the time of Halabja massacre, when the Reagan administration, responded by simply increasing aid to Saddam Hussein, as did the first Bush administration later.

They knew that this aid was used for chemical and biological warfare, and for developing missiles and nuclear weapons. But they did not care so the aid continued.

Nowadays, Powell moans about the graves in Halabja, but he didn`t care at the time. They now claim this was because of the war with Iran, but it had nothing to do with the war in Iran. The war in Iran was over. They provided aid to their friend Saddam Hussein because of their duty to support US exporters, as they said on public record.

When Saddam Hussein was massacring the Kurds, he was also wiping out agricultural areas. They needed agricultural aid and US agro-business was delighted to have the US taxpayer pay them to send agricultural aid to Iraq. Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney thought that was just fine. Then it gets worse.

Right now, since the weapons of mass destruction have not been found, there are other excuses being used for the invasion of Iraq. In article after article, Thomas Friedman of New York Times, as well as Colin Powell, both moan about the mass graves that have been discovered.

It is true they did not see them before, but of course they knew they were there. In 1991, after the Gulf War, the US had total control of the whole region, Saddam Hussein was effectively authorized to massacre the Shiites, and to put down the rebellion that could have overthrown him.

Today, Thomas Friedman is agonizing about the mass graves, but if you go back and read him in 1991, he knew about them. He was the New York Times` Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, and he said that the best of all worlds for the United States would be an iron fisted military junta that would rule Iraq the same as Saddam Hussein, but since Saddam is an embarrassment, lets try to get someone else. And if we cannot find someone else, we will have to settle for second best, Saddam Hussein himself.

The British are an interesting case. In the US, we have pretty much the same government that was in office in 1991. But in Britain, today`s government was in opposition in 1991. There were parliamentary protests in England about the gassing of the Kurds and so on, but try to find the names of Tony Blair, Jeff Hoon, Jack Straw, I think even Robin Cook. They`re missing.

What do the American public think about the situation in Israel?
The study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, PIPA, has done very interesting in-depth studies of people`s attitudes towards Israel and Palestine, but they are never reported because the conclusions are unacceptable.

The PIPA study found that a considerable majority of the American population favour what is called the Saudi plan, which is the latest version of international consensus on a two state settlement that the United States has been unilaterally blocking since 1975. Yet about two thirds of the United States` population supports it.

The Poll shows that a large majority of people in the United States think that they should cut off aid to either of the two parties, Israel or the Palestinians, if they refuse to enter into goodwill negotiations.

Next question. Suppose that both sides enter into negotiations, what should the United States do?
Give equal aid to Israel and the Palestinians.

Then comes the next question. Should the United States be more involved in this?
Yes. Same large majority. That`s a contradiction, a self contradiction. It`s the United States involvement since the mid 1970`s that`s prevented a political settlement. Step by step, vetoes at the Security Council since 1976 – votes alone, or with one or two client states of the General Assembly blocking the plan.

Supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon with the express purpose of undermining the possible threat of negotiations and on and on…

So the US is involved in what it describes it "the peace process," yet it is actually be trying to prevent peace … you just can`t make that connection.
By definition the United States is running the peace process, but does that mean they`re trying to bring peace? Of course not. You can go back to 1971 when Anwar Al Sadat, the new president of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel with only one condition: That it withdraw from Egyptian territory. Nothing about the Palestinians. Nothing about the West Bank or Golan Heights. Just withdraw from Egyptian territory and you can have a full peace treaty.

Israel understood it, they considered it, they recognized it was a genuine peace offer that they could accept and end the state of war. They turned it down because they said it was more important to expand settlements.

At the point the settlements were in the North Eastern Sinai, and tens of thousands of Bedouins had been kicked out. It was a Labour government, not Sharon, and it decided that it was more important to expand into the northern Sinai, so they rejected Sadat`s offer.

Well what did the United States do?
That`s crucial, that determined what happened. There was an internal debate in the United States and the United States government. Henry Kissinger – his position won out. As he wrote, was that we should reject negotiations and he called for a stalemate. No negotiations just force. So the United States backed Israel`s rejection of Sadat`s peace offer. That led directly to the 1973 war.

The 1973 war was a close call for Israel, very dangerous. There was a nuclear alert; there was a close call for the world. I mean even Kissinger, who`s not very smart, understood that we can`t just assume Egypt`s a basket case. We have to do something. So he began the shuttle diplomacy that then ended up in Camp David with the Camp David agreements. That is hailed as a triumph in American diplomacy. Carter just won the Nobel Peace prize for it.

It was a catastrophe of American diplomacy.

What they accepted at Camp David was Sadat`s 1971 proposal but now in terms that were much more harsh for both the United States and Israel because by 1978 Sadat was calling for a consensus on the Palestinians and leaving the rest to the occupied territories. So actually the United States at Camp David was forced to accept a proposal, that was worse from their point of view and Israel`s point of view, than the one they turned down in 1971.

In the United States, Carter immediately raised US aid to Israel to over 50 percent of total aid. Israel understood what was happening. Egypt, the only Arab deterrent, was out of the conflict, and the United States had increased aid. Israel drew the conclusion that the US was telling us that we can expand into the occupied territories and attack our northern neighbour, which is exactly what they did.

Since 1976, the first veto at the Security Council and in fact back to 1971, the United States has been blocking, unilaterally blocking a Middle East peace settlement. A settlement whose terms are accepted by almost the entire world. I mean in 1976 the major Arab states accepted it, the Palestinian Liberation Army accepted it, Europe accepted it. In fact, everyone accepted it. The United States vetoed it.

The United States seems set to enter a very dark phase of its history with the domestic legislation such as Patriot and its foreign affairs policy.

Do you think things have a chance of getting better?
Remember that the people now in control are an extremely reactionary nationalist wing, even of the Republican Party. The major foreign policy journals like Foreign Affairs, wrote very critical articles about the National Security Strategy. The people in control are an extremist wing; and they barely hold political power.

The presidential elections in 2000 were disputed election, and they barely managed to sneak through, with a few tens of thousands of votes.

How did they do it?
By frightening people. The attack on Iraq was purposely timed, the announcement of it, to the start of the election campaign. The campaign manager made it clear when he said we`ve got to focus the election on national security issues because people don`t like our social and economic policy, naturally because they`re harming most of the population.

They`re trying essentially to reverse the progressive legislation of the past century and people don`t like it so we focus on national security issues. That way we frighten them.

You don`t know how long people can be controlled. It`s a free country you know. People are free to say what they want. Do what they want. There is very little coercion possible. Some, but very little, so sooner or later people are not going to accept what`s being done to them.
When that will happen? Hard to say.

What is your assessment of how the World Bank, the IMF and WTO have structured the global economy?
The IMF and World Bank have played various roles since they were founded but let`s take the last 30 years, the period of so called neo-liberalism. This new era began in the early 1970`s after Richard Nixon dismissed the Bretton Woods system, established by Keynes and White right after the Second World War.

Breton Woods was based on the principle that countries could control capital flow, so you could prevent capital flight. That`s what Britain did after the war to allow recovery. Also currencies were fixed within a pretty narrow band, so there was very little speculation against currency.

Those were the fundamental principles, which were eliminated in the early 1970`s, first by the Nixon`s US, then Britain, Switzerland and other major countries. It was perfectly well understood what this would mean.

Keynes pointed out 70 years ago that if you have financial liberalization and free flow of capital, it will undermine the possibility of democracy for a very simple reason: it creates what economists call a virtual senate.

A virtual parliament of investors and lenders who carry out a moment by moment referendum on government policies. If they don`t like them they destroy the economy by capital flight, by attacking the currency.

Again technical economics talk about governments facing what they call a dual constituency - the voters, if they`re democratic and the virtual parliament. Of course the virtual parliament always wins.

Since the new rules were established, there has been a very striking attack on democracy, exactly as you`d expect. There`s been a decline of social economic policies all over the industrial world because you just can`t carry them out against these pressures and in the third world`s it`s a disaster.

The international structure is designed to prevent democratic choices, as are the every other aspect of the neo-liberal programmes. Take, for example, the privatisation of services like water, education, health. There is no economic motivation for this privatization, despite the wave of privatization instigated by the World Bank.

There were technical studies by very famous economists, pointing out that there`s no economic motivation for privatization. If it is done in an efficient country like Sweden, public industries will be efficient. But if it is done in corrupt countries, they will be inefficient.

Privatization narrows the public arena by definition so that resources like health, education are controlled by the private sector, which in turn means corporations, which are unaccountable tyrannies themselves. You put decisions in to their hands, and they`re out of the hands of the public, and so the public arena shrinks. So the opportunities for democratic choice shrink.

. Noam Chomsky`s latest book Hegemony and Survival, America`s Quest for Global Dominance was published in November and covers some of the themes included in this interview.

[Joerver]

For Immediate Release: Monday, December 1, 2003
Diebold Backs Down, Won`t Sue on Publication of Electronic Voting Machine Flaws
Court Schedules Mediation and Hearing in Electronic Voting Case
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
San Jose - Voting machine company Diebold Systems, Inc., agreed today in federal court not to sue or send any further legal threats to anyone who publishes their corporate email archive indicating flaws in Diebold`s voting machines and irregularities with certifying the systems for actual elections. Diebold also agreed to send retractions of its earlier legal threats to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who received them.

The nonprofit ISP Online Policy Group (OPG) and two Swarthmore College students are seeking a court order to clarify that publishing or linking to the Diebold email archive does not violate copyright law and that ISPs should not face any penalty for hosting users who publish or link to the archive.

"We`re pleased that Diebold has retreated and the public is now free to continue its interrupted conversation over the accuracy of electronic voting machines," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "We continue to seek a court order to protect posters, linkers, and the ISPs who host them."

U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel ordered the case to mediation and set out a schedule to finalize remaining issues in the case with motions due on January 12 and January 30 and a hearing scheduled for February 9, 2004.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School are providing legal representation in this important case to prevent abusive copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting, the very foundation of our democratic process.

Swarthmore students Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith published the Diebold email archive, which contains descriptions of flaws in Diebold`s electronic voting machines written by the company`s own employees.

Diebold threatened not only the ISPs of direct publishers of the corporate documents, but also the ISPs of those who merely publish links to the documents. The ISP OPG refused to comply with Diebold`s demand that it prohibit Independent Media Network (IndyMedia) from linking to Diebold documents.

"As an ISP committed to free speech, we are affirming our users` right to link to information that`s critical to the debate on the reliability of electronic voting machines," said OPG`s Colocation Director David Weekly.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by Congress in 1998, provides a "safe harbor" provision as an incentive for ISPs to take down user-posted content when they receive cease-and-desist letters such as the ones sent by Diebold. By removing the content, or forcing the user to do so, for a minimum of 10 days, an ISP can take itself out of the middle of any copyright claim. As a result, few ISPs have tested whether they would face liability for such user activity in a court of law. EFF has been exposing some of the ways that the safe harbor provision can be used to silence legitimate online speech through the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich has posted excerpts of the Diebold documents on his website and sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee requesting hearings to investigate abuses of the DMCA by Diebold.

The case, called Online Policy Group v. Diebold, is Case Number C-03-04913 JF.

mehr:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/OPG_v_Diebold/2003120…

[Joerver]

People the law forgot (part two)
It is almost two years since the Guantanamo prison camp opened. Its purpose is to hold people seized in the `war on terror` and defined by the Bush administration as enemy combatants - though many appear to have been bystanders to the conflict. Images of Camp Delta`s orange-jumpsuited, manacled detainees have provoked international outrage. But the real horror they face isn`t physical hardship, it is the threat of infinite confinement, without trial or access to legal representation. James Meek has spent the past month talking to former inmates and some of those involved in operating the Pentagon`s Kafkaesque justice system. He has built an unprecedented picture of life on the base, which we present in this special issue

James Meek
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

Guantanamo is a bleak, dull, repressive place for its inmates. Yet there is something about it which may not be immediately apparent to Europeans dismayed by the level of security, the chains and the punitive, degrading way the prisoners are caged: it is not dissimilar to facilities in the harsh US civilian prison system. By focusing on physical conditions, there is a risk of missing the unique aspect of Guantanamo - the arbitrary, unprecedented and unfair way in which President Bush and his administration have confined hundreds of people without either any idea how long they are to be locked up, or any way to plead their case. It is this which the legal establishment in the US and Europe finds most menacing. It is this which causes the greatest mental torment to the prisoners and their families. And the strange Pentagon creatures that have been set up to try some detainees, the military commissions, are, the Guardian has learned, troubling even the uniformed lawyers signed up to make them work.

"Prisons are a big industry in the US," says Daryl Matthews. "We imprison a lot of people. People don`t understand the extent and the misery of prisons in the US. People who are considered the most dangerous people in the US are moved in shackles. I`ve been in prisons in the US much more secure than Guantanamo. I`ve interviewed people in masks and shackles on the mainland US. These are scary places. I don`t think the issue for the Guantanamo folks is their conditions of confinement. It`s easy to be fascinated by a place you can`t get to but that`s not the issue. The issue is human rights."

Matthews, who opposes the death penalty, none the less provides psychiatric advice to courts in civilian capital cases. Yet he is still wrestling with his conscience over whether to provide the same service to the military commissions that will try the Guantanamo detainees. The commissions have the power to impose the heaviest sentences, up to and including death. Unlike the rapists, child abductors and serial killers on capital charges in the US, unlike the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, cold war Soviet spies or Nazi war criminals, unlike even the shoe bomber Richard Reid, the confessed terrorist and al-Qaida supporter, the hundreds of people locked up in Guantanamo have neither been told why they have been deprived of their liberty for two years, nor when or how they might be released, charged or tried, nor given any opportunity to challenge their status before a tribunal.

That isolation and uncertainty, Matthews points out, puts an extra burden on the detainees. "Most of the stresses that operate on the Guantanamo detainees would operate on anyone in a maximum security facility [on the mainland US]," he says. "They`re bored, it`s noisy, they have no privacy, they get some exercise but not very much. They have to deal with strangers who don`t like them all the time, guards and other inmates. They don`t have access to personal objects. It`s horrible being a prisoner... when I read about your British detainees, and families being concerned that people are being tortured because they are depressed, I wish I could tell the families it doesn`t need torture to make someone depressed in prison. Just a normal prison environment produces profound alteration in mental states, suicide and depression.

`But at Guantanamo there`s an added level of stress, and I think that is the thing that`s somewhat unique... Inmates in a normal prison are focused on how much time they are going to serve, on contacting their lawyers, on being able to take constructive efforts to get out; these are important ways prisoners deal with the stress of confinement, and these guys can`t do anything.`

When the terrorists attacked the US on September 11, the world found in Bush and his attorney-general, John Ashcroft, men who had already embraced the idea that large-scale incarceration and executions were the way to fight wrongdoing, who wanted to encourage judges to impose harsher sentences, and who felt that defence lawyers were the bane of justice. The leash-is-off rhetoric of the `war on terror` fitted naturally into the rightwing narrative of recent history, which portrayed spineless liberals betraying the victims of crime by too scrupulous a concern for the rights of suspects.

Ashcroft makes the link explicit. In a recent speech, close to the second anniversary of 9/11, he boasted that the Bush administration had used the same tactics to fight terrorism as to fight crime. `For almost two decades, some in Washington have preached defeatism and surrender in the battle against the drug smugglers, the criminal and the lawless,` he said. `At one time, elite opinion held that law enforcement and citizens could not do anything. They believed we were doomed to live with rising crime. They argued that criminals were driven by circumstance and root causes beyond our control... The ideological critics were proven wrong... We have proven that the right ideas - tough laws, tough sentences, and constant cooperation - are stronger than the criminal or the terrorist cell.`

A foretaste of how the Bush administration planned to avoid `defeatism and surrender` in pursuit of terrorists came with the detention of more than 1,000 foreign Muslims in the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Although they were technically held for outstaying their visas and other workaday immigration offences, 762 of them were investigated for suspected terrorist links. Few, if any, were ever charged with anything terrorist-related, but all had to wait weeks or months to be cleared by the FBI. Those held in one detention centre, in Brooklyn, were initially prevented from contacting family and lawyers; some experienced violence and racist abuse.

The presidential order that created the basis for the Guantanamo prison camp, and for the military commissions that will try any of the detainees charged with terrorist offences or war crimes, was published on November 13 2001, the day the Northern Alliance took control of Kabul. With the sudden, unexpected fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north a few days earlier, it became clear to the Bush administration that they were about to have access to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Taliban and allied fighters, some of whom might be terrorists. The question suddenly became urgent as to what status to give the captives so that the US could interrogate them, detain them at the president`s pleasure, and punish them. At the time, hopes were high of capturing Bin Laden himself. The Guantanamo detainees may to some extent be paying the price for the Americans` inability to capture the al-Qaida leader. In a sense, Guantanamo is St Helena without Napoleon, with the dregs of the Grand Armee locked up instead.

Practical templates were available in international law that, on the face of it, would have allowed Washington to satisfy its aims. It remains a mystery as to why the Bush administration chose not to follow international law, but to make up its own. Its first step away from international norms was to refuse to categorise the Afghanistan captives as prisoners of war. One source told me of a - possibly apocryphal - story that Bush and his aides were going through the Geneva convention when the president came to the part that declares PoWs must be paid between eight and 75 Swiss francs a day. At this point, the story goes, Bush lost his temper and ordered his people to find a way for the captives not to be PoWs.

Officially, the US hides behind the fact that the resistance in Afghanistan didn`t dress like soldiers. It is true that, like CIA operatives in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq, and like many of the Northern Alliance allies of the US, the Taliban and non-Afghan fighters didn`t wear uniforms, but that does not prevent them being declared prisoners of war. Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention is clear: any captured belligerent whose status is uncertain should be considered a PoW until their status is settled by a `competent tribunal`. The US carried out hundreds of these tribunals during the 1991 Gulf war and in the recent Iraq war. In Afghanistan, it didn`t. Asked why there hadn`t been any tribunals for the Afghan captives, Major John Smith, a military attorney in the Pentagon department organising the forthcoming trials of Guantanamo detainees, says it is because the president decided there was no need.

`The president`s decision was that there was no doubt these individuals did not qualify for PoW status and a tribunal wasn`t required,` he says.

Eugene Fidell, a former military lawyer, now president of the National Institute of Military Justice in the US, said that the decision not to hold tribunals had deprived his country of the moral high ground. `Whether that policy decision was right or wrong, or wrong in part, let`s say, as to al-Qaida or Taliban members, it represented a fork in the road. And the path taken has had, I think, a very poisonous effect on our standing in the world community.`

Had there been formal tribunals, the US could still have interrogated, charged and tried the PoWs. They might also have screened out some of their more pathetic captives before they had to endure Guantanamo, such as Mohammed Hagi Fiz, a toothless, fragile old Afghan in his 70s, released in October 2002, or Abdul Razeq, an Afghan suffering from schizophrenia, released in May 2002 with a six-month supply of medication.

The strangeness of the US position is that although it does not consider the Guantanamo captives prisoners of war in the formal, Geneva Convention sense, it considers them prisoners of war in one very specific sense - that they can be held until the war is over. It calls them `enemy combatants`, a term not recognised in international law. To the question `What war?`, the Bush administration responds: `The war on terror.` In other words, the captives can be held for as long as the US president likes; until forever, in fact, since, unlike normal wars, where a particular territory and a particular military entity is involved, this one exists only as a concept. The `war` was going on before September 11 2001 - it is hard to think of a year in recent decades in which US citizens or US interests have not come under terrorist attack - and it is difficult to see how any US leader could ever take the political risk of declaring a `war on terror` to have finished. The US persists in claiming that the `war` can and will be won.

`Detention as an enemy combatant is not criminal, it`s to take them off the battlefield,` says Smith. `We are at war with al-Qaida. It`s not a metaphorical war, it`s a real war.` At one point in our conversation he compares the US in 2003 to Britain in 1941. `I believe we will be able to defeat al-Qaida. It`s a political situation, and it`s a tough decision, but I think at some point we will be able to say that al-Qaida is no longer a threat to the US... at some point, al-Qaida and terrorism will be defeated.`

Yet enemy combatant status, combined with the lack of Article 5 tribunals, means that the Guantanamo detainees are kept captive until the end of a potentially endless `war`, without the opportunity to plead before a court that they had nothing to do with that `war.` The US does not consider itself obliged to put them on trial, so has no obligation to give them lawyers; even if they are put on trial, and are acquitted, under its own rules, the US might simply lock them up again.

`It seems to me that our government`s talking out of both sides of its mouth,` says James Harrington, a lawyer from upstate New York who represents a US citizen, not in Guantanamo, awaiting sentencing on terrorism charges. `We say they`re not PoWs and won`t be treated as PoWs but at the same time we say we are at war. It either should be one or the other. If we are trying to say to the rest of the world we have due process and best practice in our country... we shouldn`t be treating other people in ways that are unfair. These guys get picked up, shipped to somebody else`s country, held there so they aren`t in the US so they don`t get the same rights as in the US, and then get treated by rules made up by the government to suit the government`s interests.`

Louise Christian, a British lawyer representing three of the Britons held in Guantanamo, said the US today looked more like Britain in the 1970s than in the 1940s. `It`s the same thing that happened in this country when we had mainland bomb attacks from the IRA, that the tremendous panic and fear just replaced everything else. There was no understanding in this country of how we were viewed outside,` she says. `We locked people up arbitrarily. We ignored the fact that people were being coerced into making confessions. But I think also the daily experience of internment, seeing your best friends and neighbours locked up without cause, led to great bitterness, and the continuing of the conflict in Northern Ireland, because of feelings of injustice. Obviously there were people who did do terrible things. But if the government response is to criminalise a whole category of people, all we do is increase support for people who are guilty.`

Having hurriedly come up with the `enemy combatant` notion to deal with the hoped-for capture of Bin Laden, and having applied it to the ragbag of captives picked from Northern Alliance jails in Afghanistan, the US government has become so comfortable with it that it has begun to wield it around the world, and at home, in ways that frighten rights activists and lawyers. Now, it appears, anyone, US citizen or not, can be declared an `enemy combatant`, at any time, and thus be detained indefinitely at Bush`s discretion.

Enemy combatant status is leaking out of Guantanamo and into the mainland US. There are now three `enemy combatants` held in US military jails. One is a Qatari computer student living in Illinois, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He was awaiting trial on low-grade criminal charges indirectly linked to terrorism when, immediately after the government`s case against him looked to be in trouble, the Bush administration declared him an `enemy combatant` and moved him to a high-security naval prison, allowing a trial to be avoided, and the accused to be held for as long as the president likes.

Bush`s November 13 order refers to `enemy combatants` being `treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, colour, religion, gender, birth, wealth, or any similar criteria`. Yet it is hard to equate the starkly differing treatment of three men allegedly found fighting alongside the Taliban with this creed. The only white American in that category, John Walker Lindh, was given a criminal trial, the full panoply of legal rights, and swiftly sentenced. Another American citizen, but of Saudi descent, Yasser Hamdi, was moved from Guantanamo to a naval prison on the mainland US, and is still held there incommunicado as an `enemy combatant`. Compare that to Mohamed Tariq, an ordinary Pakistani from Shah Mohammed`s village, not yet released. There is no reason to think he did anything that Lindh or Hamdi did not do. But he remains on Guantanamo. Speculation that a mass release of European prisoners is imminent, welcome as it is, only highlights the arbitrary nature of the detentions.

Nothing illustrates the US government`s new power over suspects, and the unfairness of its treatment of the Guantanamo detainees, better than the case of the Lackawanna Six - a group of Yemeni-Americans from a suburb of Buffalo, who were accused of aiding al-Qaida. In the end, all pleaded guilty - but only after prosecutors had dropped heavy hints that they would be declared `enemy combatants` if they didn`t.

`Basically, what was related to us was that if the case was not resolved by a plea, the government was going to consider any options that it had,` says Harrington, attorney for one of the men, Sahim Alwan. `They didn`t say they were going to do it [declare them `enemy combatants`], they just were going to consider it.

`Even as vague a definition as `enemy combatant` is, it didn`t seem it would apply in this particular case, but given the way that the government has used their authority, obviously it was something that was a concern for us. It was a factor my client took into account. He was worried about it. I think it`s an improper use of the procedure first of all. It`s pretty heavy-handed.` In the end, the group were allowed to remain within the civilian justice system, in their home country, the US. They had access to legal counsel. The Bush administration was happy to use its `enemy combatant` device against them if things did not seem to be going the prosecution`s way, but equally happy to let them go through the normal civilian courts. Those Guantanamo detainees who are to face trial have no such option. They are to face a different kind of court entirely - military commissions - a system that has been condemned internationally, by the US legal establishment and, the Guardian has learned, is regarded with dismay even by some of the uniformed lawyers whose job it is to make it work.

The government has had to dig back into two arcane cases involving Nazi agents six decades ago, before the Geneva Conventions were even written, to find precedents for military commissions, and, as with the skipping of PoW tribunals for the Guantanamo detainees, it is a mystery why they did so. They had at least two other options: the civilian criminal courts, as used to try past terrorist cases, such as the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, and court martials in the US military courts, as used to try the deposed leader of Panama, General Manuel Noriega. The Bush administration defends the choice of military commissions on the grounds that the alleged, presumably terrorist, offences for which some Guantanamo prisoners will be tried are `war crimes`; and on the grounds that the commissions will help safeguard classified information that would leak out from normal trials or courts martial. Critics say that neither argument stands up, and that the real reason military commissions are being used is that they give the accused little chance of a fair hearing, and stack the deck in favour of convictions.

The two facets of the commissions that have drawn the most fire are that the government assumes the right to listen in to any conversations between defence lawyers and their clients, and that, once convicted, the accused have no possibility of having their case reviewed by an independent appeal body. But there is more in the detail of how the commissions are supposed to work that reads like pages from Franz Kafka`s workbook.

The first thing that strikes the lay student of military commissions is the enormous power vested in the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the commissions` `appointing authority`. The judges - seven in a capital case - are appointed by Wolfowitz. Any judge can be substituted up to the moment of verdict, by Wolfowitz. The military prosecutors are chosen by Wolfowitz. The suspects they charge, and the charges they make, are determined by Wolfowitz. All defendants are entitled to a military defence lawyer, from a pool chosen by Wolfowitz. The defendants are entitled to hire a civilian lawyer, but they have to pay out of their own funds, and by revealing where the funds are, they risk having them seized on suspicion of their being used for terrorist purposes, on the order of Wolfowitz. Defendants need not lose heart completely if convicted. They can appeal, to a panel of three people, appointed by Wolfowitz. When it has made its recommendation, the panel sends it for a final decision to Wolfowitz.

`That`s the system,` says Clive Stafford-Smith, a British-American lawyer known for representing death-row clients and who now represents some of the Britons on Guantanamo, although he has never been allowed to meet them. `It`s a multi-headed Hydra with Paul Wolfowitz`s face on every head.`

Given the obstructions in the way of civilian lawyers - they have to be US citizens, they have to get security clearance at their own expense, they have to abandon their practices and move to Guantanamo permanently for months on end - conscientious military defence lawyers seem to be the best hope of a fair trial for many of the detainees charged.

The Guardian has learned of deep unhappiness among the relatively small pool of experienced military defence lawyers that the Pentagon can call upon to do that job. There is anger both at the restrictions being placed on them, and the fact that the Bush administration has gone back to the 1940s for a court model, ignoring six decades of evolution of the sophisticated US military justice system.

The Pentagon`s Office of Military Commissions has six full-time military defence attorneys working for it. The only one to have been publicly identified is the chief defence counsel, Colonel Willie Gunn. The Guardian understands that the remaining five are not the lawyers originally recruited, but that the original volunteers were dismissed after refusing to sign a paper agreeing to the restrictions they would work under.

`There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said `we are looking for volunteers` for defence counsel,` says a former military lawyer. `There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people, they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers. The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos and don`ts, at least a couple said: `You can`t impose these restrictions on us because we can`t properly represent our clients.` When the group decided they weren`t going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon.`

The Office of Military Commissions denies the claim. `That is not true, never happened,` says Major Smith. `The military commission is a tool of justice. I expect some of these individuals [on Guantanamo] will plead not guilty, and will be represented zealously by their lawyers.`

Yet the Guardian understands from a uniformed source with intimate knowledge of the mood among the current military defence team that there is deep unhappiness about the commission set up - a disturbing situation when the death chamber may await those found guilty.

`It`s like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said: `Modify it any way you want," the source says. `The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was that the military justice system changed... What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942.

`What sort of justice are we taking to Iraq and Afghanistan? The constitution talks about justice. Is it only for America?`

As an illustration of the slapdash way he considers the commissions have been set up, he points to how a rule has been removed that barred defence lawyers, once they had arrived in Cuba, from carrying out research outside Guantanamo. Instead of the formal issuing of a new instruction, the Pentagon simply went to the commission website and rewrote the offending paragraph.

`They went on the internet and just substituted the new passage, leaving the old date. I can`t think of a better example of how these processes were created. They were going to make the rules and change them when they felt like it.`

The source points out that under the rules, whereas the head of the Pentagon`s prosecution team, Colonel Frederic Borch III, could lead the government`s case in court, his defence counterpart, Colonel Gunn, was not allowed to take part in commission proceedings at all.

`We could have had some people make rules that no one would complain about but they didn`t. We had a bunch of like-minded people and yes-men. It`s shocking how many articles I read and no one is picking up on the fact that Colonel Gunn is just a puppet. It`s a farce.`

Eugene Fidell says that the military law establishment - there are around 5,000 active duty lawyers in the US military - have been infuriated by a comment piece in the New York Times by Alberto Gonzalez, the White House counsel, which suggests that the US military justice system and military commissions are the same thing.

`What the Bush administration did was literally use as a model a set of rules Roosevelt signed for dealing with German saboteurs in the second world war, seven years before the Geneva Conventions. It baffles me how the government got into this position. We have an [appeals] court that`s been around for 53 years and which has built up a huge body of law. To rely on this review panel instead of using that court, it`s indefensible.`

And Wolfowitz`s role? `It`s right out of the Mikado, isn`t it... the government has created something as close to being hermetically sealed as the human mind is capable of creating.` The supreme court is now pledged to examine the legality of what is happening on Guantanamo next year. `I think Americans are very uncomfortable with all this,` says Fidell. `I mean, prison islands in tropical regions give us a real bad feeling, whether it`s Devil`s Island, or Robben Island, or Norfolk Island. This is not a role that comes to us naturally.`

`One of the prosecutors told me that they think 30% of the people in Guantanamo Bay were nothing to do with anything. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,` says Clive Stafford-Smith. `When the prosecutor tells you 30%, I tend to think it`s more like 70%. But the bottom line is we`re not talking about 600 of the worst people in the world. We`re talking about at least a couple of hundred who didn`t do anything.

`You kidnap people who may be totally innocent, you take them all the way around the world in hoods and shackles, you hold them incommunicado for two years, you don`t give them a lawyer and you don`t tell them what they`re charged with. It`s not a matter of what`s wrong with it, it`s a question of what`s right with it. And it achieves nothing.`

Shah Mohammed was given no apology or compensation when he was released, just a three-paragraph letter from a unit based at Bagram airport in Afghanistan, called CFTF180-Detainee Ops. It is signed by a soldier with a rank lower than corporal, Joseph P Burke. It reads: `This memorandum is to certify that Shah Mohammed Alikhel [his tribal name], ISN-US9PK-00019DP, was detained by the United States Military from January 13 2002 to Mar 22 2003.` The letter is dated May 8; in other words, Mohammed was kept prisoner two months longer than the US wanted him.

Despite interrogating him nine or 10 times, the letter goes on to say that the US has no record of Mohammed`s place of birth. The letter concludes: `This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States military or its interests in Afghanistan or Pakistan. There are no charges pending from the United States against this individual... the United States government intends that this person be fully rejoined with his family.`

`If they kept me for 18 months and sent me a letter to certify I`m innocent, then why did they keep me there for 18 months?` asks Shah Mohammed. `Don`t they have any duty or obligation to me?`

Even less than a duty - a nameless grudge: despite declaring him harmless, the US military transported him home to Pakistan as it had brought him to Cuba - in chains.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

People the law forgot
It is almost two years since the Guantanamo prison camp opened. Its purpose is to hold people seized in the `war on terror` and defined by the Bush administration as enemy combatants - though many appear to have been bystanders to the conflict. Images of Camp Delta`s orange-jumpsuited, manacled detainees have provoked international outrage. But the real horror they face isn`t physical hardship, it is the threat of infinite confinement, without trial or access to legal representation. James Meek has spent the past month talking to former inmates and some of those involved in operating the Pentagon`s Kafkaesque justice system. He has built an unprecedented picture of life on the base, which we present in this special issue

Continued in part two #9952

James Meek
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

One summer`s day in Cuba in 2002, a 31-year-old Pakistani teacher of English named Abdul Razaq noticed something unusual in the familiar patterns of movement among the orange-suited figures in the mesh cages on either side of him. Two or three cages along from his own, a fellow Pakistani prisoner, Shah Mohammed, was silently going about trying to hang himself from a sheet lashed to the mesh. He had the cloth around his throat and he was choking.

Other prisoners in neighbouring cells had noticed and, as they usually did when a detainee in the United States prison camp in Guantanamo Bay tried to kill himself, they raised a hue and cry in their many languages.

"First we shouted at Shah Mohammed to stop, but when he didn`t, we called the guards," says Razaq, who was released from Guantanamo in July, and returned to his home town in October after three months` detention by the Pakistani authorities. "The guards came in and saved him. It was the first time he attempted this in my block, then he was taken to another place. He appeared to be unconscious."

It was one of four suicide attempts by Mohammed while he was in Guantanamo. He was released in May and lives in the Swat Valley, on the far side of the Malakand Hills from Peshawar, a few dozen miles from Razaq`s home. It is a district of God-fearing, conservative, cricket-loving yeomen, who are passionate about their land and liberty, and protective of their right to bear arms; the fields of sugar cane and tobacco are well tended, and prices in the gun shops are more reasonable than their counterparts in America. In the mornings, a crocodile of small boys in black berets, walking to school, stretches for miles.

Mohammed, who is 23 and a baker by trade, is 5ft 3in and light on his feet. He has been having nightmares ever since he came back. His face peers out from behind a lustrous black beard and long hair like a child hiding between the winter coats in a wardrobe. In Kandahar and Guantanamo, he was interrogated 10 times.

His face only lights up when you ask about fishing. He has been doing a lot of it - mostly for trout - since his return. The other day he caught a five-pounder with his Japanese rod. "The biggest damage is to my brain. My physical and mental state isn`t right. I`m a changed person," he says. "I don`t laugh or enjoy myself much."

Asked why he tried to commit suicide so often, Mohammed is vague. He talks about worries over troubles at home; his mother`s health, his brother`s business, and "my own problems". But his attempts at self-harm at Guantanamo began after he was confined, without explanation, in a sealed punishment cell for a month - not, it seems, because he had broken camp rules, but because the American authorities had nowhere else to put him while they were finishing new facilities.

In India Block, as the block of punishment cells is known, "there were no windows. There were four walls and a roof made of tin, a light bulb and an air conditioner. They put the air conditioning on and it was extremely cold. They would take away the blanket in the morning and bring it back in the evening. I was kept in this room for one month. We`d ask them: `Is this a sort of a punishment?` And the translator would say, `No, this is being done on orders from the general.`"

As treatment for Mohammed`s suicidal state of mind, US medics injected him with an unknown drug, against his will. "I refused and they brought seven or eight people and held me and injected me," he says. "I couldn`t see down, I couldn`t see up. I felt paralysed for one month - this injection, the effect, I couldn`t think or do anything. They gave me tranquillising tablets. They just told me: `Your brain is not working properly.` They were forcing me to take these injections and tablets and I didn`t want to do that. Some people were being injected every month."

In trying to learn what life is like at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, the few score of released detainees - almost all Pakistanis and Afghans - are among the scant sources available. Journalists are allowed to "visit" the facility; the Guardian has been three times, and I was offered a slot, but journalists, like family members, lawyers and human rights investigators, have no access to the detainees themselves. Like a tour of the White House, the visits offer a superficial openness about the lives of the main occupants.

Yet the testimony of those former detainees, together with rare scraps of information from censored mail, official statements and the odd comment from guards and others who have been inside, overlaps into a coherent portrait. In the almost two years since the Guantanamo prison camp opened to hold people seized by the US in what the Bush administration has designated "the war on terror", it has settled from a rough and ready, occasionally brutal place of confinement into a full-grown mongrel of international law, where all the harshness of the punitive US prison system is visited on foreigners, unmitigated by any of the legal rights US prisoners enjoy. To this is added the mentally corrosive threat, alien to the US constitution, of infinite confinement, without court or appeal, on the whim of a single man - the president of the US. The question, "What is Guantanamo really like?", has all the appeal of the unknown. But inside it lurks a darker question, with all the implications for freedom in America and beyond that its answer contains: "What is Guantanamo?"

One of the few political statements to slip past the censors by a man still detained there is contained in a short postcard from a French prisoner, Nizar Sassi, to his family, dated August 2002. "If you want a definition of this place," he wrote, "you don`t have the right to have rights."

The US executive acted quickly in the weeks following the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Within 26 days, Afghanistan was being attacked from the air; Kabul fell in nine weeks. Eleven weeks after the World Trade Centre was destroyed, resistance by Taliban fighters and their non-Afghan allies in northern Afghanistan was crushed.

But, as US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the military in a revealing slip in April 2002, "We have been successful in not eliminating al-Qaida." Having failed to find the suspected mastermind behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden, his Taliban ally, Mullah Omar, or much in the way of terrorist infrastructure, the US set about constructing, behind razor wire on a secure Caribbean island, an incarcerated model of what its "war on terror" rhetoric implies. It has gathered terrorism suspects from all over the world, imposed discipline and order on them, encouraged them to hate the US and kept them together for years. It was as if the Bush administration so wanted the Hollywood fantasy of a central terrorist campus to be true that they built it themselves.

Because the roughly 660 detainees still on Guantanamo have no voice, and because the US has never explained case by case why it locked them up, the outside world has only the accounts of their families and the catch-all US definition of "enemy combatant" to understand who they are and why they are there.

Most were arrested in Afghanistan but many were handed over to the US by other countries. "They are an extremely heterogenous group. There are some 40 different nationalities, there`s 18 different languages," says Daryl Matthews, a forensic psychiatrist based in Hawaii who spent a week at the Guantanamo prison camp in May. "There`s a big division between Arabic-speaking and Urdu-Pashto-speaking ones. There are some people who are extremely well educated and westernised, and some people who are not at all. There are some very young people and some very old and wise people. There are people who speak English well, people who don`t speak English at all. There are some who go in with mental disorders there are some very secular, and some deeply devout."

There is Shafiq Rasul from Tipton in the West Midlands, who took his wardrobe of designer clothes with him to Pakistan, was captured with his friends Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed by the Northern Alliance, and was handed over to the US in Shebergan in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. Jamil al-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi, two refugees living in Britain, were arrested in the Gambia in west Africa and handed over to the US by the Gambians. Moazzam Begg and Richard Belmar, two other Britons, were arrested in Pakistan and handed over to the US by the Pakistanis. David Hicks, an Australian, who had previously led a life of shark fishing and kangaroo skinning, and had fathered two children, ended up in the Shebergan prison after fighting with the KLA in Albania and the Kashmiri insurgency group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, who grew up in the Swedish town of Rebro and whose father was Algerian and mother Finnish, had a promising career as a footballer ahead of him before turning up with the Taliban in Afghanistan and being captured. Nizar Sassi and Mourad Bechnellali grew up in Venissieux, a suburb of Lyons. Their lives came to revolve around the mosque on Lenin Boulevard before they travelled east. Ibrahim Fauzee, a citizen of the Maldives, was arrested in Karachi while staying in the home of a man with suspected al-Qaida links. Tarek Dergoul, from east London, thought to have been arrested during the battle for Tora Bora in southern Afghanistan, is reported to have had an arm amputated as a result of wounds. Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese assistant cameraman with the al-Jazeera TV station, was picked out and held while leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan after the fall of Kabul with the rest of his crew. They never saw him again. Another Briton, Martin Mubanga, from north London, was handed over to the US by Zambia. Jamal Udeen, from Manchester, born into a devout Catholic home, and converted to Islam in his 20s and was seized in Afghanistan only three weeks after he left England. Airat Vakhitov, one of eight Russians on Guantanamo, thought he had been liberated when a reporter from Le Monde discovered him in a Taliban jail, where he had sat in darkness and been beaten for seven months on suspicion of spying for the KGB. But he only exchanged the Taliban prison for an American one. And there is Mish al-Hahrbi, a Saudi schoolteacher. After he tried to kill himself on Guantanamo, he suffered severe and irreversible brain damage.

The road for many detainees, including the small number who have since been released, began with, they claim, a non-combatant reason for being where they were when they were caught. Mohammed says he went to work for the Taliban as a baker; Razaq says he was a missionary. They were held by the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan, selected by the Alliance to receive a cursory interview from US special forces or the CIA, and flown to Kandahar, where they were held for weeks or months before being flown to Cuba.

Razaq, in his first interview with a journalist, told me he was convinced the only reason he was sent to Cuba was because he spoke English. He had been held by the Northern Alliance for a month in Shebergan prison, in crowded conditions with little food, when Alliance soldiers came and asked the group of Pakistani, Arab and Uzbek captives who among them spoke English. Razaq stepped forward.

His hands were tied and he was taken to a small room with mud walls where he was made to kneel on the ground in front of two Americans in uniform, one sitting on a mud bench projecting from the wall and the other standing. The interview took three or four minutes, and consisted of two questions: "What is your name, and why have you come to Afghanistan?" Afterwards he was taken outside. He just had time to see a group of bound men with hoods on their heads sitting in a row before he, too, was hooded. They were taken to an airfield and flown to Kandahar. No signal had passed between his interrogators and the soldiers who hooded him. In other words, on the basis that he knew English, the US had already decided to take him to Kandahar, whatever the result of this initial interview.

Another released Pakistani, Mohammed Saghir, a grey-bearded sawmill owner who is now 53, tells me that he had not even had a cursory interview at Shebergan before he was bound hand and foot, blindfolded and helicoptered to Kandahar.

Shah Mohammed was held at a prison in Mazar-i-Sharif, near Shebergan, before being sent to Kandahar. He met Hicks, the Australian, while he was there. There were early signs of the differential treatment, apparently according to national background and skin colour, that was to be one of the characteristics of the US handling of terror suspects. "I spoke to the Australian, he knew a bit of Urdu," says Mohammed. "He said he had come for Jihad. He was asked a lot of questions [by the Americans], more than us. He was taken to a navy ship and I was taken to Kandahar." Mohammed was to see Hicks again.

The released detainees recount the roughness with which they were treated at Kandahar, from the moment of their transport there. "One thing I`ve learned about the Americans is they are very harsh when they transport people around," says Razaq. "They had tied up my hands so tight that for two months I couldn`t use my right hand. They haul you from your neck and drop you off the plane in a very disrespectful manner. For a long time we didn`t know it was Kandahar. We thought they were going to kill us there."

"They would just pick us up and throw us out [of the plane]," says Saghir. "Some people were hurt, some quite badly." Mohammed says: "They kicked us out of the plane and threw us on the ground."

The accommodation at Kandahar was uncomfortable. Prisoners slept and sat in small groups under canvas canopies, on the bare earth, surrounded by razor wire and under constant surveillance. They were given a single blanket each. It was winter. Razaq says that the bottled water they were given to drink would be frozen in the mornings. He said that for the first 20 days, a strict no-talking rule was enforced. Saghir describes how no one had been allowed to sleep for more than an hour. "If someone slept for an hour they would yell at him: Get him up!"

The prisoners were interrogated steadily, with long intervals between sessions. "We used to ask them: `Why are we being kept here?`" says Mohammed. "They would reply: `You will be interrogated, and whoever is found innocent will be allowed to go.` They never told us we would be taken to Cuba.`"

Razaq was one of the last to leave Kandahar. He saw the camp emptying around him. From his testimony, it appears that once a detainee was committed to Kandahar, the vast US military bureaucracy could only send people to Guantanamo. "I don`t know what made them suspect me, but there were rumours that they arrested me because they thought I was a very senior Taliban official," he says. "In fact, in the last interrogation at Kandahar, the American interrogator gave me water to drink and assured me I would be released.

"This assurance was given to me on several occasions. I never knew where they were taking the people who disappeared. We asked the Red Cross, but they wouldn`t give us any information. But there was this gate through which we could see people in red costumes in the distance. At the end, it seemed they just wanted to send everyone to Cuba and I was in the last group."

The last thing the US captors did before dispatching the Kandahar detainees to Cuba was shave off their beards, a process they found humiliating. Razaq was told it was because, without showers, they had picked up lice. "We resisted, but four or five commandos came and they had a machine and just shaved off my beard and moustache," says Saghir.

For the flight to Cuba, the prisoners were given the orange jumpsuits familiar from television footage of their arrival at Guantanamo. They were bound hand and foot, blindfolded, gagged, and their ears were muffled. Once on board the military transport plane, their feet were chained to the floor, their hands bound to the handrests, and restraining straps stretched across their bodies. "The translator told us: `Don`t make any movement, don`t worry, you are being taken home,`" says Mohammed. "I don`t remember how many hours but we left at night from Kandahar and arrived in Cuba in the evening. We stopped somewhere and changed planes."

Saghir says that, as with the arrival at Kandahar, the detainees, still bound, gagged and blindfolded, were thrown off the plane on arrival in Cuba. Some had their noses broken, he says. "I got a bruise under my left eye where my face hit the ground."

The first prisoners were moved from the runway to a truck, from there to a launch across the bay, and from there to the bare mesh cages which would be their home for the first few months of 2002, the original detention centre, Camp X-Ray. Those initial images of blinded, deafened, mute and bound men in glaring orange became a potent weapon in the hands of those who opposed the manner in which the Bush administration was coping with terrorism, particularly in Europe and the Muslim world. A country which would not countenance an international criminal court, the pictures seemed to say, had built a harsh international jail. The bizarre setup of Guantanamo itself, a fortified American toehold in one of the world`s last outposts of communism, added to the sense of prisoners being cast into the centre of concentric circles of isolation. Cubans remember, if few others do, that the world`s first concentration camps were built on their island by the Spanish in the 1890s.

In the first few weeks of Camp X-Ray`s existence, the regime was even harsher than it looked from the pictures of tiny cages. The prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other, not even in a whisper. "I spent the first month in utter silence," says Mohammed.

According to Saghir, in this initial, relatively brutal phase of Guantanamo, there was little tolerance for the practice of Islam, with its requirement of prayer five times a day. "In the first one-and-a-half months they wouldn`t let us speak to anyone, wouldn`t let us call for prayers or pray in the room," he says. "We were only given 10 minutes for eating. I tried to pray and four or five commandos came and they beat me up. If someone would try to make a call for prayer they would beat him up and gag him. After one-and-a-half months, we went on hunger strike."

US officials at the camp have admitted hunger strikes did take place there - in some cases, prisoners were force fed - but in the minds of the detainees, they have been associated with protests that have achieved results. According to Saghir, it was only after a mass four-day hunger strike that the no-talking rule was lifted, a loudspeaker was put up to broadcast the call to prayer, more time was given for meals, and Korans and other books were provided. Mohammed says that an eight-day hunger strike when a guard had thrown the Koran on the ground had ended with a personal apology from a senior officer and a promise that the Koran would not be touched again.

Razaq, who arrived after Camp X-Ray had already shut down, said that the culture of protest was a feature of life in Guantanamo. "In the beginning there was a mass hunger strike, but later on there were individual cases of people not eating," he says. In other cases detainees would take off their plastic tags carrying their US identification codes and throw them at the guards, or would bang on their metal benches. Sometimes the guards would use a disabling gas in response.

"When we threw off our tags the guards asked us to hand over our blankets, but two of our colleagues didn`t oblige, so they sprayed them to make them unconscious, tied them up and took them to the punishment block; during that transfer they were quite brutal," says Razaq. "But I didn`t see any slapping."

Life in X-Ray became easier after the no-talking rule was lifted. The camp authorities appear to have instituted a kind of linguistic mosaic, giving detainees a reasonable chance of finding someone to talk to, but without allowing too large a cluster of people speaking the same language. Mohammed sketches out the group of 10 cages he was in in X-Ray. His immediate neighbours were Hicks, a Bangladeshi, two Arabs whose names he does not remember, and Rokhanay, from northern Afghanistan. Slightly further away, but still in talking distance, was Asif Iqbal from Tipton, another Arab, Abu Nakar, and two southern Afghans, Wasiq and Nurullah. "Asif was at an advantage because he was able to speak to the Americans in English," says Mohammed. "He was like my translator. He had just come for a visit to Pakistan and then went to Afghanistan. He never intended to wage Jihad. He would swear at the guards from time to time. Sometimes, on some issue, he would just start yelling at them but the Americans would not respond. David Hicks knew some Urdu as well, so I would speak to him, and he would speak to Asif."

The Guantanamo prisoners have no way of knowing what is happening in the outside world, whether it concerns football scores or the war in Iraq. Apart from the guards and interrogators, the only contact the prisoners have is with officials of the international committee of the Red Cross and with occasional visitors from the intelligence services and foreign ministries of their home countries. The ICRC never talks about conditions in Guantanamo and little else has leaked out.

Swedish activists campaigning for the release of Mehdi Ghezali have used Sweden`s freedom of information laws to obtain a censored version of a report by an intelligence officer, Bo Eriksson, on a visit to Guantanamo with another Swede in February 2002. It and other documents reveal that the US was so obsessed with security that it drafted in a Swedish-speaking US army officer to listen in on the meeting between the agents and Ghezali, and, even so, got an envoy in Stockholm to ask the Swedes for a copy of their report into the meeting that they had already listened in on.

"The cells measure approximately 2x3 metres with walls of wire mesh, concrete floors and metal ceilings," wrote Eriksson. "Inside the cells, the detainees have a mattress, a blanket, a hand towel, a couple of buckets and water bottles made from soft plastic. Outside their cells, the detainees wear orange overalls and plastic slippers. Their freedom of movement is not restricted to the cells, although outside their cells they wear hand and feet restraints. The handcuffs are fastened to a belt around their waist allowing them only restricted movement with their hands and arms. [Ghezali] only just managed to drink water from a mug with hand restraints on.

"The leg restraints mean that when detainees are moved they have to move forward taking very small steps. One of the guards keeps a hand on the back of the detainee`s neck the whole time, bending the detainee`s head forwards so that he is looking at the ground the whole time he is being moved.They are not tortured, nor do they receive any other degrading treatment. The mesh cell walls mean of course that the detainees never have a moment`s privacy. On one occasion, detainees had suspended a plastic sheet on the fence to prevent people from looking in but they had been forced to remove it since it became unbearably hot despite the cool breeze from the sea."

In April 2002, the prisoners were moved to new accommodation, Camp Delta, and Camp X-Ray was closed. Their beards grew back. The new facilities, which make up the main part of the prison camp to this day, feature blocks of 48 cages each, with two rows of mesh cages separated by a narrow corridor. The blocks have no external walls, only a pitched roof; they stand on concrete bricks in areas of raked gravel surrounded by high, opaque green fences topped by razor wire. The cages are about as long and wide as a tall man lying down, and contain a metal bunk, a tap and a toilet. Besides this standard type of accommodation, there are at least six others. There is the more relaxed regime of Camp Four, where docile, cooperative prisoners are rewarded with dormitory-style living and free association with other detainees. Within Camp Four, there is a further category of prisoners, believed to include Britons Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi, kept isolated from other prisoners in preparation for being put on trial. In Camp Delta, there is a special block set aside for three juvenile prisoners, with a view of the ocean and a less repressive confinement. There is Delta Block, where prisoners with mental problems are kept under special observation; and India Block, and possibly one other block, which contain the punishment isolation cells.

The Guardian has also learned that a very small number of prisoners, thought to be between two and five, are kept permanently isolated in a special, super-secure facility within Camp Delta.

Mohammed, Saghir and Razaq all had experience of the punishment cells. Saghir says that he was locked up in one of the windowless metal boxes for more than a week when an Arab spat at a guard and the entire line of 24 cages was punished with solitary.

One of the US justifications for holding the Guantanamo prisoners for so long in isolation is that they need to be interrogated for valuable intelligence. There has been an enormous amount of interrogation; each prisoner has typically been questioned between 10 and 20 times, which would, assuming interviews last 90 minutes on average, have generated some 15,000 hours of transcripts, containing perhaps 200 million words, the equivalent of around 250 Bibles. Yet without exception, the detainees say they were questioned by different interrogators each time, and each time the questions were the same.

Prisoners describe the interrogation room as a small, windowless, air-conditioned, plywood space, lit by fluorescent ceiling tubes. One, two or three Americans ask questions, through a translator if necessary. The only furniture is a wooden table with metal legs and metal chairs. Interviews are recorded on tape and by written note. There is a metal ring fixed to the floor; while they are being interrogated, the prisoners sit in a chair and have their chains fixed to the ring.

"They would ask: `Where is Osama? Do you know any of the al-Qaida leaders? Have you met them?` Things like that," says Saghir. "They would not get angry with my answers. We would ask them and they would say: `We don`t know when you will be let free. Only our bosses know, we are here to do our job.`"

Sometimes it seemed that the interrogators wanted the detainees to show sympathy with the victims of 9/11. Saghir was once told by a translator that he had got closer to being released by giving a "right" answer. "In my last interrogation I was asked: `These people who attacked the twin towers, would you call them Muslims?` I answered: `I won`t call them Muslims, but I`m not a religious scholar, I couldn`t judge these people.` The translator then said: `You have gone one stage further, there will be no more interrogations.`"

After Kandahar, none of the released prisoners has described torture or even aggression by the interrogators, but Razaq said detainees who refused to answer questions were sometimes put in isolation cells as punishment.

The interrogated and the interrogator do attempt mind games with each other. In one interrogation, the interrogators effectively told Razaq he was free to go. "They said: `OK, your file is clear. Where do you want us to drop you?`"

Daring to hope, Razaq answered: "Peshawar?" Immediately, the interrogators began questioning him again as if for the first time, and made him take a lie-detector test. "Maybe this was one of their tactics," says Razaq. "They first made me happy and accept that I will be free, then they changed direction."


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US fires Guantanamo defence team
James Meek
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed, the Guardian has learned.

And some members of the new legal defence team remain deeply unhappy with the trials - known as "military commissions" - believing them to be slanted towards the prosecution and an affront to modern US military justice.

Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime, and none has had access to a lawyer, although some have been in captivity of one kind or another for two years.

But the US has repeatedly promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s.

When charged, a prisoner will be assigned a uniformed military defence lawyer. The prisoners have a theoretical right to a civilian lawyer, but the US has placed financial and bureaucratic obstacles in the way of this.

A former military lawyer with good contacts in the US military legal establishment said that the first group of defence lawyers the Pentagon recruited for Guantanamo balked at the commission rules, which insist, among other restrictions, that the government be allowed to listen in to any conversations between attorney and client.

"There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said `we are looking for volunteers` for defence counsel," said the ex-military lawyer. "There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people, they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers.

"The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos and don`ts, at least a couple said: `You can`t impose these restrictions on us because we can`t properly represent our clients.`

"When the group decided they weren`t going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon."

The Pentagon`s recently set up Office of Military Commissions denied the claim. "That is not true, never happened," said its spokesman, Major John Smith. "The military commission is a tool of justice. I expect some of these individuals [on Guantanamo] will plead not guilty, and will be represented zealously by their lawyers."

Yet the Guardian understands from a uniformed source with intimate knowledge of the mood among the current military defence team, six lawyers strong, that there is deep unhappiness about the commission set-up.

"It`s like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said, `modify it any way you want`," the source said. "The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was the military justice system changed. What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942."

Two Britons, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi, are among the Guantanamo prisoners that President George Bush has "designated" for trial. The military defence lawyers in Washington are still waiting for permission to fly to Guantanamo.

In an investigation into the Guantanamo prison camp, the Guardian has also learned that a number of prisoners, thought to be between two and five, are kept permanently isolated in a super-secure facility within the main prison camp at Guantanamo, Camp Delta.


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Phase three: civil war
The post-occupation power struggle in Iraq may yet be the bloodiest chapter in the conflict

Simon Tisdall
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

What really happened in Samarra? According to US military spokesmen, a series of ambushes on coalition convoys by the Saddam Fedayeen militia was repulsed with unprecedented, devastating enemy losses.

The official, estimated casualty toll in Sunday`s fighting in the town, north-west of Baghdad, was 54 "enemy combatants" dead, 22 wounded and one captured, against five American wounded. This is indeed unusual. In most combat situations, the number of wounded normally exceeds the number killed. In such a furious firefight, American casualties might have been expected to be proportionately higher. But one US newspaper at least was in no doubt. Samarra was a famous "victory".

Unofficial accounts tell a different story, suggesting that many of the dead were civilians, not insurgents. One shopkeeper said that once under attack, American soldiers began shooting wildly and in all directions. After seeing two civilians shot down, he said he was so incensed that "if I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself". Another eyewitness, a Samarra policeman, gave a similar account. As of Monday, only eight bodies of the official total of 54 had been accounted for and most were reportedly civilians.

So what was Samarra? Was it a great feat of American arms? Was it a massacre of the innocent? Or was it just another familiar yet confused and bloody incident about which the real truth will probably never be known?

Similar questions - about who`s winning, is it right, is it true, and will it work - can be applied, more broadly, to the entire US and allied effort. In Iraq, the big picture is notoriously hard to see, continually clouded by contradictory claims. But as the situation evolves rapidly and unpredictably, a clear, accurate view is more than ever necessary.

Like US military spokesmen, the US and British governments remain adamant that the overall project is on course. Foreign secretary Jack Straw, returning from a visit to Baghdad, gave the House of Commons a typically upbeat view last week. "Despite the terrorist attacks, Iraq is making good progress," he said. "An elected Iraqi transitional government should be in place by July 2004. By the end of 2005, Iraq should have a new constitution... and national elections." The coalition was establishing a "free, prosperous, democratic and stable Iraq".

This view is sharply disputed. In contrast stands the perception, widely held on the European left, informed largely by media reporting and deeply entrenched in the Arab and Muslim spheres, that having miscalculated in Iraq on so many counts, the coalition is stumbling badly again now - and is unable or unwilling to admit it.

On this analysis, the security situation is barely under control, with no prospect of significant international reinforcement of coalition troops. Through ineptitude and fear, the fight for "hearts and minds" is being lost, in Samarra as elsewhere. Last month`s surprise decision to fast-forward the political transition, far from reflecting Washington`s concern for Iraqi self-determination or any great confidence that it will work, is actually a panicky political act driven by George Bush`s re-election calculations. Collapse of the Iraq policy is only a matter of time, it is argued, and then the Iraqis will finally regain their rightful sovereignty.

In actual fact, the US and Britain more freely admit their mistakes these days - and the intractable problems they still face. This is not just a matter of Jay Garner, the superseded US administrator in Iraq, `fessing up; of state department officials playing "told-you-so" games with the Pentagon; or of Britain`s suave envoy, Jeremy Greenstock, mixing cocktails of charm and candour. There is genuine recognition in Washington and London that Iraq remains explosively difficult.

When the US and Britain insist they will not "cut and run", they mean it. It is clear that reduced numbers of troops may stay in Iraq even after a fully fledged government takes power. But precisely because it is so very difficult, it is also clear that within an ever contracting timetable they are looking for a way out, or at least a signpost for the exit. They want a halt to the body-bags. They want to stop the daily, damaging, distracting, costly aggro. They want the political pain to end.

It is at this point, curiously, that the objectives of the coalition and of those opposed to the intervention may be seen to converge. The message to Iraqis from the outside world is now increasingly that a third phase in the conflict - following the war itself and the postwar period - is about to start: the post-occupation era. This new stage is one in which Iraqis, by next July as Straw predicts, if not sooner, should - and will - effectively resume principal direction of their own affairs.

The question therefore is no longer one of invasion and war, or even of occupation and withdrawal. It is a question, fundamentally, of which Iraqis will take control of their country as the coalition`s grip eases, how they will do so, and with what degree of legitimacy. This next phase offers a choice: self-rule - or self-destruction.

This is the developing context in which increasing attacks on diplomats, aid workers and contractors involved in long-term, non-Iraqi controlled reconstruction must be seen. This may be why the overall level of attrition against US forces is falling while attacks by Iraqis on Iraqis are rising. Some are targeted as "collaborators"; but that is just another way of saying "rivals for future power". The internal, potentially internecine, physical battle for the "new Iraq" is getting underway, under the very noses of the liberators.

A parallel, political battle for control is also gathering momentum, as Iraqis contemplate life after the Coalition Provisional Authority. Members of the US-appointed governing council are manoeuvring for position in a future, interim or directly elected government, reneging on their agreement last month to give up power. The Shia leadership, representing a majority of the population, is beginning to flex its political muscle, particularly in respect of establishing the "Islamic character" of any new constitution and leadership. It is clear, as always, that the Kurdish north will not accept future political arrangements that in any way diminish its considerable autonomy.

And then, at the heart of the matter, figuratively and geographically, stand the Saddam Fedayeen of Samarra and the Sunni Triangle, the infamous, elusive "Ba`athist remnants", and all those many Iraqi nationalists and resistance fighters who never accepted the US intervention and still reject it and all its works. These groups see no reason why they should forego the decisive power to which many have been accustomed. From their viewpoint, it is their attrition and their blood sacrifice that has been decisive in pushing the Americans into surrendering the political reins.

Despite all the events of the past 12 months, this next phase of the Iraq conflict could yet prove to be its most dangerous. The big picture, to the extent that it can be made out, suggests Iraq`s future is still very much in the balance. An orderly transition and the assertion of legitimate, democratic governance is by no means assured. Continuing, escalating civil strife, scattering the seeds of a possible civil war, could yet turn out to be the Bush-Blair legacy in Iraq.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Know your enemy
Leader
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

Donald Rumsfeld can be criticised for a lot of things. But the US defence secretary`s use of English is not one of them. The Plain English Campaign has shot itself in the foot this week by giving Mr Rumsfeld its annual Foot in Mouth award for this comment, delivered at a press conference earlier in the year:

"Reports that say something hasn`t happened are always interesting to me," Mr Rumsfeld said, "because, as we know, there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don`t know we don`t know."

This is indeed a complex, almost Kantian, thought. It needs a little concentration to follow it. Yet it is anything but foolish. It is also perfectly clear. It is expressed in admirably plain English, with not a word of jargon or gobbledygook in it. A Cambridge literary theorist, US Air Force war gamer or Treasury tax law draftsman would be sacked for producing such a useful thought so simply expressed in good Anglo-Saxon words. So let Rummy be. The Plain English Campaign should find itself a more deserving target for its misplaced mockery.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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US liberals look to airwaves to combat right-wing shock jocks
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
03 December 2003


For years they have been taking it on the chin, from motor-mouth talk-show hosts, take-no-prisoner conservative authors and all-knowing Republican pundits. Now liberal Democrats are fighting back, with best-selling books, a new Washington think-tank and probably their own radio network.

The network idea has failed before. But in today`s acutely polarised US political climate, and the "love him or loathe him" public attitude to President George Bush, the prospects are brighter than in a long while. Progress Media, the company behind it, has bought radio stations in New York, Los Angeles and other major centres. It hopes to be operating early next year, as the 2004 election campaign moves into gear.

Among hosts being lined up are the former Disney executive, Martin Kaplan, the comedienne, Janeane Garofalo and the comedian and author-activist, Al Franken. Mr Franken is negotiating for his own daily talk-show and has also spearheaded another liberal counter-offensive, into the non-fiction best-seller lists where the hottest polemics had long come from the right. The liberal anti-Bush camp has been making the running with best-sellers, among them Mr Franken`s critique of right-wing politicians and media called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Michael Moore`s Dude, Where`s My Country?, and The Great Unraveling, by Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist turned New York Times columnist who has emerged as a liberal lion of the op-ed pages. If Mr Franken lands his show, he will be as outspoken as Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of the conservative hosts, and a good deal less pompous. As Mr Kaplan put it: "The self-righteousness of the right is now their greatest weakness. We need to put those people on a whoopee cushion."

And the rarefied world of think-tanks has felt the new liberal tide. The centre-left still has august strongholds such as the Brookings Institution. But conservative organisations such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, home of many of the neo-conservatives prominent in the Bush administration, make the most noise. They now have a rival in the liberal Centre for American Progress, headed by John Podesta, a White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, part-funded by George Soros, the financier who has already given $12m (£7m) to Democratic causes to further his mission of toppling Mr Bush. More than $2m of Soros money has gone to MoveOn.Org, the fast-growing Web-based political group marshalling its forces against Mr Bush. Nor is it a coincidence that internet-mobilised activists are a key element in the success of Howard Dean, the liberal standard-bearer and frontrunner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

A talk-radio network could be another powerful Democratic weapon. Liberal radio had not worked, for reasons including the alleged indifference of liberals to having their views repeated, and a penchant for high-minded worthiness which makes for much political correctness, but dreary radio.

But the "stolen election" of 2000 rankles. Mr Bush inspires a hatred in their ranks that more than matches the loathing conservatives felt for Mr Clinton. And Democrats are outraged by ruthless Republican behaviour. They watched, frustrated, as Texas Republicans railroaded through a state districting plan that may guarantee the party control of Congress for decades. They watched, powerlessly, as the Republican majority on Capitol Hill twisted House rules to secure passage of Mr Bush`s Medicare reform.

There is one problem. Only 20 per cent of Americans consider themselves liberal, 36 per cent call themselves conservative and 40 per cent say they are moderate. The activism might back-fire, galvanising true believers but antagonising the centrists Democrats must attract to prevail.
3 December 2003 11:03

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Did an Iraqi mole betray the Spanish intelligence agents?
By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid
03 December 2003


King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia attended a state funeral yesterday for the seven Spanish military intelligence agents ambushed in Iraq, amid mounting speculation that the spies might have been betrayed by a mole.

The deaths of the agents, in a roadside shootout south of Baghdad on Saturday, destroyed Spain`s intelligence operation in Iraq, according to Spanish military leaders, and are the worst setback so far to Spain`s armed intervention.

Lt Col Jose Luis Gutierrez, the commander of Spain`s military base in Nayaf, said yesterday: "Without them, we are completely in the dark." He said Spain`s 1,300 troops in Iraq were now without intelligence information vital to their safety. Those killed included agents ending their tour of duty, and those who were to replace them. To train replacements would take months, Lt Col Gutierrez said.

Jose Maria Aznar, the Prime Minister, told parliament that the agents carried out functions of counter-intelligence and anti-terrorism. Their job included infiltrating civilian and political organisations, and liaising with intelligence forces of allied nations. With Spain`s undercover operations blown, its allies must fear their own networks are at risk. Federico Trillo, the Defence minister, said the assault might have been masterminded by a mole working within the service in Iraq. Defence officials said the intelligence agency`s operations contained Iraqi staff and included the training of Iraqi security officials, some of whom had joined anti-allied forces.

The funeral at the National Intelligence Centre headquarters in Madrid was broadcast live on national television, with the faces of fellow agents hidden from the cameras, and was retransmitted to Spanish forces in Iraq. Flags flew at half mast in a day of national mourning.

The men had military rank and were professional soldiers, but the funeral was without military trappings. "These men were on a mission of peace," said the priest presiding over the service. The families will receive compensation as victims of terrorism, as if the agents were civilians.

This interpretation is consistent with Mr Aznar`s vision of the Iraq conflict that he restated yesterday in parliament: those responsible for attacks "are not forces of resistance, nor liberation forces nor anything like that, but terrorists who want nothing more than to prevent the Iraqi people from determining their own future".

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the socialist opposition leader, called on Mr Aznar to redefine his strategy. "Only Great Britain contributes anything significant, the rest are just hangers on. However important is the dominant power [the US], we can`t go on like this."

Mr Trillo acknowledged for the first time that Spain`s close identification with the policies of America made it a high-risk target. "Spain is receiving constant threats, and was clearly a target because it formed part of the hard core of the international coalition against terrorism," he said.

Mr Trillo said he believed the Spanish agents were followed as they travelled south from Baghdad in two vehicles. Suspicions that the agents were betrayed were fuelled by reports that the men had changed their travel plans at the last minute, bringing their departure forward and changing the route.

Defence sources believe that Spanish intelligence operatives were systematically targeted. They link the latest attack with the assassination in October of Jose Antonio Bernal, a CNI agent attached to the consulate in Baghdad, who opened his door to his killer, as if he recognised him. Mr Aznar gave details of the shootout that were gathered from Jose Sanchez Riera, the only survivor. The agents were shot at from a vehicle that overtook them before up to a dozen reinforcements emerged from a roadside settlement to open fire with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The Spaniards returned fire with small arms, but after more than 20 minutes were overcome and their vehicles burnt. Commander Carlos Baro made two frantic calls within 10 minutes from his mobile phone to his controller in Madrid, where his dying SOS was recorded: "They`re killing us! Send helicopters!"

Cabinet ministers, including Mr Aznar, and leaders of all political parties attended the funeral, but senior members of the military were absent and no one at the ceremony wore uniform. Each man was awarded the Cross of Civil Merit.
3 December 2003 11:08


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Seltsame Praxis von Bush als Gouverneur in Texas. Alles was der Mann angefasst hat, ist Lug und Betrug.

December 3, 2003
Gains in Houston Schools: How Real Are They?
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO and FORD FESSENDEN

HOUSTON — As a student at Jefferson Davis High here, Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas miracle" in motion. After years of classroom drills, she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas scholar."

At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph "persuasive essays" for the state exam, she was stumped by her first writing assignment. She failed the college entrance exam in math twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to trade school.

"I had good grades in high school, so I thought I could do well in college," Ms. Arevelo said. "I thought I was getting a good education. I was shocked."

In recent years, Texas has trumpeted the academic gains of Ms. Arevelo and millions more students largely on the basis of a state test, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, or TAAS. As a presidential candidate, Texas`s former governor, George W. Bush, contended that Texas`s methods of holding schools responsible for student performance had brought huge improvements in passing rates and remarkable strides in eliminating the gap between white and minority children.
The claims catapulted Houston`s superintendent, Rod Paige, to Washington as education secretary and made Texas a model for the country. The education law signed by President Bush in January 2002, No Child Left Behind, gives public schools 12 years to match Houston`s success and bring virtually all children to academic proficiency.

But an examination of the performance of students in Houston by The New York Times raises serious doubts about the magnitude of those gains. Scores on a national exam that Houston students took alongside the Texas exam from 1999 to 2002 showed much smaller gains and falling scores in high school reading.

Compared with the rest of the country, Houston`s gains on the national exam, the Stanford Achievement Test, were modest. The improvements in middle and elementary school were a fraction of those depicted by the Texas test and were similar to those posted on the Stanford test by students in Los Angeles.

Over all, a comparison of the performance of Houston students who took the Stanford exam in 2002 and in 1999 showed most did not advance in relation to their counterparts across the nation. More than half of them either remained in the same place or lost ground in reading and math.

"Is it better or worse than what`s going on anywhere else?" said Edward H. Haertel, a professor of education at Stanford University. "On average it looks like it`s not." Stanford University has no relationship to the test.

In an interview, Dr. Paige defended Texas`s system, saying that it had gradually raised the standards for success over the last 20 years. "Texas measures far more than minimal skills," he said. "The bar is far above what other districts use."

But questions about Houston`s accomplishments are increasing. In June, the Texas Education Agency found rampant undercounting of school dropouts. Houston school officials have also been accused of overstating how many high school graduates were college bound and of failing to report violent crimes in schools to state authorities.

The Houston officials strenuously defend the district`s record.

Kathryn Sanchez, head of assessment for Houston`s schools, said students were doing well on both the Texas exam and the Stanford test, given the city`s large number of poor and minority students. Ms. Sanchez said that Houston students had also done well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally mandated test widely referred to as "the nation`s report card."

On that test, fourth graders in Houston and New York outdid children in four other cities in writing, to score at the national average. Fourth graders in New York and Houston also led children in other cities in reading, yet fell short of the national average. Of all six cities, however, Houston excluded the most children with limited English from taking the national assessment, and some researchers suggest that removing such students may have helped raise Houston`s score.

But in interviews, Houston school officials acknowledge that the progress in the elementary grades peters out in high school. About 13,600 eighth graders in 1998 dwindled to fewer than 8,000 high school graduates. Though 88 percent of Houston`s student body is black and Latino, only a few hundred minority students leave high school "college ready," according to state figures.

Miracle or Mirage?

With its own exam to measure pupil achievement, Texas managed to show educational progress over the last decade on a scale rarely, if ever, achieved before. But as the state`s paradigm for school accountability became law for the rest of the nation, the authenticity of Texas`s accomplishments has become a major question in education policy.

The Stanford test provides a useful contrast to the state exam, at least for Houston. More than 75,000 students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 10 took the state exam as well as the Stanford test from 1999 to 2002. The Times analyzed performances on these tests, excluding students in special education, and had educational testing experts review the results. The data were obtained under the state`s open records act by George Scott, president of the Tax Research Association of Houston and Harris County, a taxpayers group.

"I don`t think there was a miracle," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at the University of Colorado, who reviewed the calculations. "There were some good positive results, but not extraordinary results like TAAS seemed to show."

The modest improvements in Houston have implications for the national debate. "If you anticipate that you can have the gains shown on TAAS — and that`s what No Child Left Behind would be requiring in many states — that`s not going to be likely to happen, based on this," Dr. Linn said.

The Times analysis of performance on the Stanford Achievement Test and the Texas exam shows this:

¶Houston students improved from 1999 to 2002 in most grades, but at only a fraction of the rate portrayed by the state exam. Using a widely employed statistical measure that allows different kinds of tests to be compared called effect size, the gains in the average scores on the Stanford test were about a third of the average gain in the TAAS scores.

¶Even students with the poorest skills posted high scores on the Texas test. In reading, a passing score of 70 on the test was the equivalent to scores below the 30th percentile in national ranking on the Stanford test in every grade. In 10th grade, passing the state exam was equivalent to the fifth percentile in the national ranking.

¶While the Houston gains on the Stanford test in some grades were large enough to be considered significant in educational testing, the city was not making much headway when compared with national averages. Some 57 percent of Houston students who took the math test in 1999 and 2002, and 51 percent of those who took the reading test, saw their standing relative to children around the country either fall or remain the same.

¶On the Stanford tests, the average reading scores for Houston students of all races in grades 9 through 11 have actually dropped since 1999. By contrast, the reading scores for 10th graders on the Texas exam — the only high school grade in which the state test is given — showed a large gain over the same period.

¶The achievement gap between whites and minorities, which Houston authorities have argued has nearly disappeared on the Texas exam, remains huge on the Stanford test. The ranking of the average white student was 36 points higher than that of the average black student in 1999 and fell slightly, to 34 points, in 2002.

"This says that the progress on TAAS is probably overstated, possibly by quite a margin," said Daniel Koretz of the Harvard School of Education, who also reviewed The Times`s analysis, "And when all is said and done, Houston looks average or below average."

Tougher Texas Test

While Texas minority students have made gains on the federal government`s mandated national assessment test of reading and math, they were already largely ahead of the average scores of minority students from around the country before the current Texas accountability system began in 1993.

In Houston, the share of college-bound high school graduates that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board deemed "college ready" fell to 28.5 percent, or 977 students in 2001, from 33.7 percent, or 1,155 students, in 2000, according to the latest figures available. The board counts only graduates who seek admission to public institutions of higher education in Texas, and says another 10 to 15 percent may seek admission elsewhere.

But many here saw the replacement of the Texas exam last spring with a tougher exam as the most stinging indictment of the test. On the new test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, race gaps widened, and passing rates fell.

Officials here now say that TAAS was only a test of "minimal skills," paving the way for ratcheting up standards with a new exam.

Dr. Paige contends that the TAAS and Stanford tests could not be compared because the Texas test gauges mastery of the Texas curriculum while the Stanford test measures a more general notion of what children should know in a given grade.

But education researchers disagreed.

"These two tests ought to be telling the same story, and they`re telling different stories," said Dr. Haertel, of Stanford University.

Dr. Paige also argued that statistical anomalies in the results on the Texas test made comparisons impossible. But testing experts who examined those anomalies said that, if anything, they would reduce the disparities between the two tests.

Watching Children Struggle

In one way or another, Jo Arevelo, Rosa`s mother, has watched each of her children struggle through an educational system that was focused tightly on producing high test scores on state exams.

Last summer, Ms. Arevelo tutored her youngest daughter, 10-year-old Angelica, in spelling. Because the state exam does not test spelling, Angelica`s teacher never got to it, Ms. Arevelo said one recent afternoon.

Earlier that day, her son, Joseph, took the preparatory exam for the SAT college entrance test, but like many other children that day, he left the exam in frustration — mystified by vocabulary words like parallelism and euphemism, words he had never encountered in school.

Patricia Anderson, a veteran social studies teacher in Houston, said she was not surprised. Noticing that her high school students could not answer questions after reading passages in their textbooks, she began giving them a vocabulary test at the fourth grade level. Typically, she said, "They flunk it."

"We`re all very very frustrated, because all these great scores are coming out of the elementary schools, and when they get to high school it`s not happening," Ms. Anderson said. "They do not have the skills they need."

It was not always like this. Many parents welcomed the accountability system that the Houston district pioneered in the 1980`s and early 1990`s. It was a way, they reasoned, to force schools in poor neighborhoods not to write off their children.

And in some places, it seemed to work, said Rene Barrios, lead organizer for the Metropolitan Organization, a chapter of a group that monitors public services. But in many other places, Ms. Barrios said, the system became the single most important measure of school success and the test itself, for many teachers, became the curriculum. "The whole system has been taken over by the test," she said.

Rosa Arevelo, who graduated from Davis High with a B average, tried to keep pace in college. She made flash cards to help her remember what she studied. She had never learned how to take notes in high school, so at her lectures in college, she took down everything the teacher said.

Her textbook looks as if it is filled with neon lights: entire paragraphs are highlighted in bars of bright pink and yellow. In the unrelenting array of information, she could not tell what mattered.

"When you get to college," she said, "you`re just supposed to know. But nobody ever taught us."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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American soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade guarded prisoners arrested in the Sunni Arab town of Hawija in northern Iraq yesterday. The men`s heads were covered and notations made on their necks; military officials said these were for use by intelligence officers during interrogation.

December 3, 2003
THE FUGITIVE
After Raids, U.S. Denies Capturing Hussein Aide
By DEXTER FILKINS

AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 2 — American forces mounted a series of raids on Tuesday intended to kill or capture a top member of Saddam Hussein`s government, but denied reports afterward that they had succeeded.

More than 1,000 American soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade sealed off the northern Iraqi city of Hawija, about 25 miles west of Kirkuk, and arrested 27 suspected guerrillas. A military spokesman said one of their targets had been Izzat Ibrahim, a former senior aide to Mr. Hussein who is believed to be coordinating at least some attacks against American soldiers.

American and Iraqi officials said Mr. Ibrahim, so close to Mr. Hussein that he is still known in many parts as "the deputy," had spent time in Hawija, a Sunni Arab enclave in the mostly Kurdish area around Kirkuk.

Reports of Mr. Ibrahim`s capture began circulating Tuesday afternoon, following a statement by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, that Mr. Ibrahim had been captured or killed.

An unidentified Kurdish official in Kirkuk was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that Mr. Ibrahim had been "killed or captured."

By day`s end, American military officials said that Mr. Ibrahim had not been taken into custody. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said they could not confirm the reports.

"I can emphatically state that we did not capture him today, and as far as I know, no one in the U.S. military has," Maj. Douglas Vincent, a spokesman for the 173rd Airborne Brigade, said in Kirkuk on Tuesday.

But Major Vincent`s remarks, and statements made by other American officials Tuesday, seemed to leave open the possibility that Mr. Ibrahim was in the custody of someone else, or that he had been killed. In the past, Iraqi and American officials have tried to keep secret the capture of some former Iraqi leaders in the hope that that they could lead occupation forces to Mr. Hussein.

Near Samarra, an American soldier was killed Tuesday when a homemade bomb exploded underneath the Humvee he was riding in along Highway 1. The soldier, who was not identified, was attacked two days after American troops and Iraqi guerrillas engaged in an intense firefight inside Samarra. The Americans said they had killed 58 Iraqis; local hospital officials put the number dead at 8.

American military officers believe that Mr. Ibrahim, who is in his late 70`s and is believed to be dying from leukemia, is behind at least some of the attacks on Americans. Last month, the Americans offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture or death. Last week, American soldiers arrested a wife and a daughter of Mr. Ibrahim.

Mr. Ibrahim has been with Mr. Hussein since the 1960`s, and he became one of the most feared men in the government.

Hawija, the town searched by American soldiers on Tuesday, is regarded as one of Mr. Ibrahim`s strongholds. Mr. Ibrahim headed the Iraqi government`s land redistribution program, under which large tracts of fertile land were seized from ethnic Kurds and handed over to mostly Sunni Arabs. Many of the tribes who benefited from that redistribution live in Hawija.

Photographs of Iraqis detained in the raids in the Hawija area showed the words "black list" and numbers written on the backs of their necks. Military officials said the notations were probably intended as guidance for American interrogators. Before the American invasion, intelligence agencies drew up lists of most wanted Iraqis, including a classified "black list" in which individuals were assigned particular numbers.

The officials said it was possible the notations signified that the Iraqis in the photographs were on that "black list," but it was more likely, they said, that the arresting officials believed that the detainees had a connection to those individuals and that interrogators should pursue that line of questioning.

Even as American soldiers scoured the area on Tuesday, many local people expressed support for Mr. Ibrahim. One of them was Hassan Sultan, an Iraqi who lived in a village just outside Hawija.

"They will not catch `the deputy,` God willing, because we are ready to sacrifice our lives for him, and for Mr. Saddam, before allowing the Americans to catch them," Mr. Sultan said.

Mr. Ibrahim, if not dead or in custody, seemed nearby. On the road between Hawija and Kirkuk, an American soldier who appeared to be a Special Forces operative was asked if Mr. Ibrahim had been taken into custody.

"If not, we`re very close to him," he said.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Da scheint der Bu$h-Clique der A... auf Grundeis zu gehen.
Wenn nächstes Jahr der Oberste Gerichthof wegen Verletzung der Grundrechte gegen sie entscheiden würde, wäre das ein Rückschlag für die Wahlen.
Da stehen einige Entscheidungen an, auch zu Guantanamo.

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Allows Lawyer For Citizen Held as `Enemy Combatant`
Reversal Comes on Eve of Court Filing

By Jerry Markon and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01


The Bush administration reversed course last night in one of the most closely watched cases in the war on terrorism, saying a U.S. citizen jailed after being captured with Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan would be allowed access to a lawyer.

Government officials had argued for more than a year that Yaser Esam Hamdi was not entitled to counsel after they had designated him an "enemy combatant." The change in policy came on the eve of a government filing due today at the U.S. Supreme Court, which had been asked by a federal public defender in Virginia to review Hamdi`s detention.

In a brief statement, Defense Department officials said Hamdi would be allowed to see a lawyer "as a matter of discretion and military policy." But the statement emphasized that the government did not feel obligated to make a lawyer available and that the decision "should not be treated as a precedent."

While it is rare for the administration to reverse itself on a major component of the anti-terror crackdown begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the decision likely will improve the government`s position before the Supreme Court.

Hamdi`s case has come to symbolize the conflicting arguments in the ongoing anti-terror efforts. The government convinced a federal appeals court in Richmond that the military -- and not the courts -- had the sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments. More than 100 law professors and other legal experts argued that no U.S. citizen could be held without a lawyer.

The public defender seeking to represent Hamdi, Frank W. Dunham Jr., said he intends to press forward with his Supreme Court petition because it also calls for Hamdi to be allowed to contest his combatant designation in a civil or military court.

"I think this takes some of the sizzle out of our petition, but it doesn`t moot it," Dunham said last night. He was told late yesterday that he would be allowed for the first time to see Hamdi in the next several days. Hamdi is being held at the Charleston Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., after a transfer from the brig in Norfolk.

Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the law professors who had joined Dunham in arguing Hamdi`s case before the courts, praised the government`s decision but said Hamdi`s effort to challenge his detention packs more legal significance.

"If the government wins and can hold Hamdi without any due process, then having a lawyer doesn`t mean very much," he said.

The move does not affect the cases of the two other men still known to be held as so-called enemy combatants: Jose Padilla, who allegedly plotted to detonate a dirty bomb, and Bradley University graduate Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was placed under military control in June after President Bush said he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent.

One administration official said the Pentagon`s reversal came after months of pressure from Justice Department lawyers, who felt that Hamdi or any other U.S. citizen detained as an enemy combatant should be provided a lawyer after national security concerns have waned. "There`s a general understanding that this is the correct policy for U.S. citizens," the official said. "It`s the right thing to do."

The Defense Department had argued against such a policy, the official said, but apparently reversed course. Pentagon officials acknowledged in the statement that the department had "completed its intelligence collection with Hamdi" and had determined that giving him access to a lawyer would not harm national security.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to comment on any aspect of the agency`s deliberative process or whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had signed off on it. He also declined to say whether the new policy was intended to head off the Supreme Court appeal.

A change in policy was first hinted at two weeks ago during a federal appeals court hearing in New York for Padilla.

Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, arguing for the government, suggested that Padilla might be granted access to a lawyer once his value as an intelligence source ended, although he said the decision should be up to the executive branch and not the courts.

While fighting with Taliban troops in Afghanistan, Hamdi was captured by Northern Alliance forces in November 2001. He was placed in the Navy brig in Norfolk when it was learned that he was born in Baton Rouge, La. His case entered the legal system after Dunham saw news reports about Hamdi`s arrival in Virginia and tried to see him.

The government objected and justified Hamdi`s detention with a Defense Department declaration that Hamdi had joined a Taliban military unit, received training, and acknowledged loyalty to the Taliban when captured.

A federal judge twice ordered the military to grant Dunham access to Hamdi, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled in January that the Constitution gives the executive branch the responsibility to wage war and that the courts must yield to the military. It was considered an important victory for the government in the war on terrorism.

By an 8 to 4 vote, the full slate of active 4th Circuit judges let the decision stand in July, which paved the way for the appeal to the Supreme Court.

Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Bildet die Leute mal gut aus, dann können sie euch später noch besser an die Gurgel gehen.

washingtonpost.com
U.S. to Form Iraqi Paramilitary Force
Unit Will Draw From Party Militias

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- The U.S. civilian and military leadership in Iraq has decided to form a paramilitary unit composed of militiamen from the country`s five largest political parties to identify and pursue insurgents who have eluded American troops and Iraqi police officers, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Tuesday.

The five parties will contribute a total of 750 to 850 militiamen to create a new counterterrorism battalion within the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that would initially operate in and around Baghdad, the officials said. They said U.S. Special Forces soldiers would work with the battalion, whose operations would be overseen by the American-led military command here.

The party leaders regard the formation of the paramilitary force, which had initially been resisted by the occupation authority, as an acknowledgement that the Bush administration`s strategy of relying on Iraqi police officers and civil defense forces has been insufficient to restore security. The leaders contend Iraq`s municipal police departments and civil defense squads are too ineffective to combat resistance fighters.

Although the new battalion is significantly weaker than the force the party leaders had hoped to create, the unit would nevertheless give the five political organizations an unrivaled role in the country`s internal security. That advantage has riled some independent members of Iraq`s Governing Council, who fear that it could be used after the U.S. occupation ends to suppress political dissent or target enemies.

"This is a very big blunder," said Ghazi Yawar, an independent council member. "We should be dissolving militias, not finding ways to legitimize them. This sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people."

U.S. officials said the battalion would be subject to rigorous conditions aimed at ensuring that the new unit does not become a collection of autonomous militias loyal to their party leaders instead of a unified commander.

"They will have to leave their political identity at the door," a senior U.S. military official said.

American military and civilian officials acknowledge the risk in forming a new force with members of militia organizations, but they have agreed to support the venture largely because of pressure from the five parties, which have long argued that Iraqis should be given more responsibility for security. The parties contend their militiamen are better trained than existing Iraqi security forces and possess a degree of local knowledge that American soldiers lack.

Ayad Alawi, the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, said in a recent interview that the five parties "all have people who are much better suited to fight Baathists and terrorists."

Backing for the force has gathered momentum since a Nov. 15 agreement between the Governing Council and U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that calls for the occupation to end by summer. Top officials of the parties insisted an independent Iraq will need a security force other than the three that already have been established: the police, the civil defense corps and the new army.

Although more than 50,000 police officers are back at work, many lack firearms, training and vehicles. The civil defense corps assists U.S. troops, but it has not been trained to take a lead role in offensive operations. And the new army is supposed to focus on border security, not domestic issues.

With attacks on U.S. troops increasing and fewer nations contributing soldiers than the Pentagon had expected, the Bush administration has sought to speed the training and deployment of Iraqi security forces. The new battalion is regarded by some administration officials as an attempt to further accelerate that process by giving Iraqis the power to conduct full-fledged counterinsurgency operations.

The five parties that will contribute militiamen are Alawi`s Iraqi National Accord, Ahmed Chalabi`s 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. Kurdish members will be drawn from the ranks of pesh merga fighters who defended autonomous Kurdish areas from former president Saddam Hussein`s army, officials said.

A senior official with the U.S. occupation authority insisted the plan was still "very fluid." But a senior U.S. military official said there was agreement in principle among senior American civilian and military leaders in Baghdad to implement the plan.

"We`re moving forward with it," the military official said.

Officials with the five parties briefed members of the Governing Council over the weekend, members said. "It`s a done deal," said an official with one of the parties.

The five parties each will contribute between 150 and 170 militiamen to the battalion, the U.S. military official said. The participants will be trained for more than a month before they will be allowed to conduct operations, the official said.

The battalion, equipped with light arms and vehicles, will be divided into five companies, each of which will work with a 10-man U.S. Special Forces A-team, which will provide logistics support and communications links with the American military command, the official said.

The battalion`s initial missions will be approved by American commanders, but as the group matures and the planned handover of sovereignty nears, it could begin to execute operations on its own, officials said. The group`s initial missions would focus on apprehending Hussein loyalists and other insurgents around the capital

The parties had wanted the paramilitary force to be significantly larger than a battalion and fully under the control of the country`s Interior Minister. American officials rejected those demands, saying they wanted to start with a small group under U.S. control.

Party leaders are also pushing for the creation of a domestic intelligence-gathering unit that would be charged with identifying targets for the new battalion, but American officials have not yet agreed to that component of the plan, Iraqi officials said.

To prevent the battalion from appearing to be a collection of rival militias, U.S. military officials intend to mix members in each of the five companies. But they also recognize that they likely will not be able to blend individual squads or platoons.

U.S. officials will also insist that each militiaman commit to working under the command structure, even if it means reporting to an officer from a rival militia. "They have to come in as individuals," one U.S. official said.

American officials also said participants will be screened for links to Hussein`s Baath Party and trained in human rights.

But several independent council members said they worry that the battalion will not be free from the sway of the five parties. "When you ask them, `Who are you loyal to?` they will not say Iraq. They will say Alawi or Chalabi or [Kurdish leader Jalal] Talabani," one independent member said.

"There a risk here," the senior military official acknowledged. "But we`re willing to explore different ideas and take risks in turning more responsibility for security to Iraqis."

In other developments on Tuesday, a U.S. soldier attached to the Army`s 4th Infantry Division was killed in a roadside explosion near the town of Samarra, where American troops killed 54 Iraqis in a pitched battle on Sunday afternoon.

In the northern town of Hawija, troops captured more than 100 people, including a senior former member of Hussein`s elite Republican Guard, in a large raid. In Baghdad, workers began removing gigantic bronze busts of Hussein that sit atop the Republican Palace, which now serves as the headquarters of the occupation authority.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Wie man die Herzen der Iraker erobert. Bulldozer zerstören ihre Häuser. Sie benehemen sich wie die Israelis in den Gebieten Palestinas.

washingtonpost.com
US Army Uses Bulldoze Threat to Get Iraqis to Talk



Reuters
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; 5:51 AM



By Andrew Hammond

HAWIJA, Iraq (Reuters) - When U.S. soldiers found explosives in the house of Aziz Abdel-Wahhab and his elderly wife during a raid in the Iraqi town of Hawija, they proposed swift and direct punishment -- demolishing the building.

"This house is the heart of terrorism and if you`re going to harbour terrorism we`re going to remove you from the community," said 1st Lieutenant Steve Brignoli, explaining the order to destroy the one-story stone house in a Hawija suburb.

"This will be a show of force, to embolden the local authorities."

The explosives were found during a major operation by the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which sent more than a thousand troops into Hawija on Tuesday to hunt for guerrillas in the town west of the strategic oil hub of Kirkuk.

"Because of stuff like this we lost two paratroopers here. This is the stuff they typically use to take American lives," Brignoli said, sifting through a box of dynamite sticks, electrical cables and switches.

A crowd of locals had gathered in the street by the time Abdel-Wahhab emerged on crutches with his wife Bushra.

"Tell him we found enough explosives to flatten this neighborhood," a soldier ordered one of the army translators.

The toothless old man could hardly talk, but mumbled a few words about his son Adel.

In a tactic used by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but new to Iraq, a bulldozer was positioned in front of the house ready to destroy it. The translators, minority Turkmen, Kurds and Assyrian Christians, were getting nervous.

"Where`s he going to go?" someone asked unit commander Major Andrew Rohling. "He`s gonna go with his son who`s building the bombs," Rohling barked back.

Then Bushra, her hands covered in traditional red henna, offered some information. Adel came and went from their home, but he was maybe at his brother`s place, she said.

"OK, I`m not gonna destroy the house. Just the front, as a show of force," Rohling announced, at which the bulldozer brought down the front wall of the compound and Bushra was bundled into a Humvee.

"All of this is a crime against me after all the hardship I`ve suffered in life," the old woman muttered.

HEARTS AND MINDS

As troops headed off in search of Adel, public affairs officer Major Doug Vincent, whose job is to win hearts and minds, handed out fliers apologizing for any inconvenience.

"These operations were carried out with local authorities to ensure your security and a more safe and free Iraq for all Iraqis in which to raise your children and practice your religion without fear," the leaflets said. Locals stood and watched in silence as the convoy moved off.

Sabah, Adel`s brother, was at his home in the town and offered to lead the American troops to his brother in the fields he ploughs nearby. "I`m only doing this because I don`t want them to destroy the house," he said.

After a 15-minute drive through muddy fields, the troops found Adel. There was no shoot-out. He raised his hands behind his head and walked over to the Humvees.

"Farmers stored weapons in the house during the war. Only one of the Kalashnikovs is mine," he said.

The soldiers, who had expected a more violent capture, demurred. "We`ll take him to our detention center and intelligence will see if he changes his story," Vincent said.

As the operation in Hawija came to an end, a U.S. soldier driving journalists who had accompanied troops on the raid asked how the American military`s work in Iraq was being viewed.

"I`m interested to know what the outside world thinks," he said, adding that threatening to destroy the house had just been a ruse to coax Abdel-Wahhab or his wife to talk.

"We weren`t really going to do that. We`ve never done it, at least not in Kirkuk," he said. "But note she only started talking when she saw the bulldozer."


© 2003 Reuters

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washingtonpost.com
Polarization Myths . . .


By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A29


One of today`s popular myths is that we`ve become a more "polarized" society. We`re said to be divided increasingly by politics (liberals vs. conservatives), social values (traditionalists vs. modernists), religion (fundamentalists vs. everyone else), race and ethnicity. What`s actually happened is that our political and media elites have become polarized, and they assume that this is true for everyone else. It isn`t.

Anyone who lived through the 1960s, when struggles over Vietnam and civil rights spilled into the streets and split families, must know that we`re much less polarized today. It`s not a close call. Unlike then, today`s polarization exists mainly on the public stage among politicians, TV talking heads, columnists and intellectuals. Still, the polarization myth persists. Consider a new report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which bulges with public opinion data that show (it says) "rising political polarization and anger." Actually, the data -- stretching from the late 1980s until now -- don`t show that at all.

It`s true that over this period political allegiances have shifted slightly. Republicans gained, Democrats lost. As late as 1987, about 35 percent of adults considered themselves Democrats, 26 percent Republicans and 39 percent independents (including those who "don`t know"). Now it`s a dead heat: 31 percent Democrats, 30 percent Republicans and 39 percent independents. Gaps on some issues between political parties have predictably widened. If Democrats favoring a stronger military become Republican, party differences on that issue will rise.

But polarization -- a visceral loathing of your opponent -- increases only if partisans feel more rabidly about their views. Here, little has changed. One standard survey question is whether Democrats and Republicans consider themselves "strong" party members. In the late 1980s slightly less than half of Republicans considered themselves "strong" Republicans; it`s still slightly less than half. Among Democrats, about half are now "strong" and were then, too.

Beyond partisan divisions, Americans share many basic beliefs. After Sept. 11, 2001, patriotism remains high. Most people (two-thirds or more) believe that hard work promotes success. Indeed, many opinions have hardly budged since the late 1980s. Surveys asked whether:

• The United States should be "active in world affairs" -- 87 percent said yes in 1987, 90 percent now.

• "Government should restrict and control people coming into our country" more than it does -- 76 percent agreed in 1992, 77 percent now.

• "There is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies" -- 77 percent said so in both 1987 and 2003.

What`s more important is that the changes that have occurred -- generally outside politics -- signal more, not less, tolerance, as the Pew data show. There seems to be a general shift in attitudes, led by changes among the young. Consider race. In 1987, 48 percent thought it "all right for blacks and whites to date"; now 77 percent do. Something similar has occurred on homosexuality. By a 51 percent to 42 percent margin, Americans believed in 1987 that "school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals``; now that`s rejected, 62 percent to 33 percent.

Sociologist Alan Wolfe of Boston College, after conducting extensive interviews with middle-class families, reached similar conclusions. "Reluctant to pass judgment, they are tolerant to a fault, not about everything -- they have not come to accept homosexuality as normal and they intensely dislike bilingualism -- but about a surprising number of things, including rapid transformation in the family, legal immigration, multicultural education and separation of church and state," he wrote in "One Nation, After All" (1999).

This tolerance, Wolfe argued, springs partly from middle-class fears that "our society might become hopelessly divided." Cherishing "the belief in one nation," many ordinary Americans disdain fierce moral combat. Wolfe decided that the vaunted "culture war" is "being fought primarily by intellectuals."

Just so. Today`s polarization mainly divides the broad public from political, intellectual and media elites. Of course, sharp differences define democracy. We`ve always had them. From Iraq to homosexual marriage, deep disagreements remain. But the venom of today`s debates often transcends disagreement. Your opponents -- whether liberal or conservative -- must not only have bad ideas. Increasingly, they must also be bad people who are dishonest, selfish and venal.

Among politicians, the bitterness reflects less political competition, especially in the House of Representatives. Democrats and Republicans increasingly have safe seats. In 2002, 83 percent of House incumbents won at least 60 percent of the vote; in 1992 only 66 percent of incumbents won with that margin. As a result, members speak more to their parties` "bases," which provide most electoral and financial support. There`s less need to appeal to the center. The Founders saw the House as responding quickly to public opinion. But "the barometer is broken," says veteran congressional correspondent Richard E. Cohen of National Journal.

As for media and intellectual elites -- commentators, academics, columnists, professional advocates -- they`re in an attention-grabbing competition. They need to establish themselves as brand names. For many, stridency is a strategy. The right feeds off the left and the left feeds off the right, and although their mutual criticisms constitute legitimate debate, they`re also economic commodities. To be regarded by one side as a lunatic is to be regarded by the other as a hero -- and that can usually be taken to the bank through more TV appearances, higher lecture fees, fatter book sales and larger audiences and group memberships. Polarization serves their interests. Principle and self-promotion blend.

All this is understandable and, in a democracy, perhaps unavoidable. But it distorts who we are and poses a latent danger: Someday we might become as hopelessly polarized as we`re already supposed to be.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bush`s Holiday Hit


By David S. Broder

Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A29


As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin pointed out this week on NBC`s "Meet the Press," there is nothing unusual or unprecedented about presidents visiting the troops in wartime. Lincoln did it several times during the Civil War and FDR managed it during World War II. More recent presidents have shared meals with the military in Korea, Vietnam and Kosovo. So, despite the stealth and drama that marked President Bush`s flight into Baghdad, he was doing what the commander in chief often does, and his visit, brief as it was, clearly cheered the troops. Democrats properly refrained from criticizing the trip.

But the absence of controversy does not diminish the political significance of the journey, which dominated television coverage and newspaper headlines over Thanksgiving weekend. My own view of its importance differs from many of the reactions I have read and heard.

It may be politically risky, even some Republicans suggest, because it strengthens the link between Bush and an increasingly uncertain venture in Iraq. I am skeptical of that argument, because the president is so thoroughly identified with the decision to go to war that he could not shed that label if he wanted to -- and there`s no sign that he does. True, Congress and the United Nations played supporting roles in throwing down a challenge to the Iraqi regime. But both were responding to Bush`s initiative, and no one doubts he was the moving force -- the will -- behind the decision.

Another theory is that the photo of Bush at the mess hall in Baghdad was designed to wipe out memories of his flight onto the deck of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, where he stood on May 1 under a banner prematurely claiming "Mission Accomplished." The video clips of that day have become and still remain a symbol of the Bush administration`s hubris and a tipoff to its blind spot: its lack of planning for postwar Iraq.

Iraq`s problems were only momentarily obscured by the excitement of the president`s visit. November was the deadliest month of the year for U.S. casualties, with 79 American dead. In addition, seemingly coordinated attacks have targeted British, Italian, Spanish and Japanese personnel working for the coalition in Iraq.

At the moment, many Americans -- probably most -- still respond favorably when Bush vows, as he did in Baghdad, not to retreat from "a band of thugs and assassins" but to stay "until the job is done." That kind of muscular rhetoric still elicits cheers, but it does not offset the negative trends in public opinion. Two things are costing Bush at home: the almost daily casualty reports and the growing uncertainty that the administration really knows what it is doing now that Saddam Hussein is out of power -- or has a strategy to accomplish the transition to Iraqi self-rule.

Serious criticism has been heaped on the Bush team over its lack of postwar planning, and the questioning is coming not just from Democrats but from credible Republicans -- Sens. Dick Lugar and John McCain, for example. It is no wonder that voters are confused and increasingly skeptical.

As Election Day approaches, Bush will face increasing political pressure to demonstrate that his strategy is working. The eagerly awaited hallmarks of success would be significant cuts in U.S. troop strength in Iraq and the creation of a representative Iraqi government. Absent either of those things, Iraq is likely to be a political drag on the president next November.

But the visit to Baghdad and the resulting coverage are reminders of the huge advantage Bush holds as the incumbent over any Democratic challenger. Because he is the head of state, the man who speaks and acts for all Americans in his ceremonial role, he has a claim on the voters` emotions that no challenger can match. The opportunities for that bond to be strengthened are endless -- and as he has demonstrated, notably during the 10 days following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush can rise to the occasion.

The contrast is clear. The Democratic aspirants are debating in serious and sensible terms whether further international help can be obtained in Iraq and whether current troop levels are adequate. They are challenging the administration`s policy judgments. It is all very rational -- and appropriate. But none of it packs the emotional wallop of the president`s flight to visit to the troops.

By occupying the symbolic heights as commander in chief, Bush puts himself in the catbird seat politically. And the Democrats can`t even complain.


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© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Fair and Balanced™ Cartoons
Cartoon Archive
82 New Cartoons Today, Mehr als 82 frische Cartoons gibt die traurige Lage nicht her.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites3d…
THE WORLD



U.S. Resistance to Direct Vote Galvanizes Iraq`s Shiite Clerics
By Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writer

December 3, 2003

NAJAF, Iraq — With a suddenness that seems to have caught American officials by surprise, Shiite Muslim clerics who for decades ministered in the quiet obscurity of the back streets of this holy city are now driving key decisions about the future governance of the nation.

The immediate focal point is a showdown with the American-led coalition over the process for transferring sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Shiite religious parties, with the backing of the most senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, say they favor direct elections for a transitional government rather than the American-backed proposal to use provincial caucuses for selecting delegates to a national assembly.

But beyond this debate, far broader political forces are at work. At stake is the role religious Shiite parties will play in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The Shiite community, which was brutally persecuted by Saddam Hussein and his Sunni Muslim-dominated Baath Party, would likely benefit from swift direct elections because Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq`s population and their religious parties are, at this point, the most organized political force in the country.

But some Bush administration officials fear that if Shiite fundamentalists were to win at the polls, they would advance an anti-Western agenda with a theocratic bent reminiscent of Iran rather than build a relatively moderate democracy that protects the basic rights of all Iraqis, including women and minorities.

The extent to which Shiite clerics end up with a controlling influence after the foreign coalition leaves — and the role of Koranic law in the nation`s constitution — might well depend on how Americans handle the current challenge from Shiite leaders.

"Absolutely this is a delicate moment," said a senior administration official who is knowledgeable about Iraq policy. "Do we throw the dice and say, `This is a political issue, and we`re not going to let [Sistani] dictate to us`? Will he be willing to deal or not? It`s a turning point."

Observers here note that American opposition to the religious Shiites` agenda puts the U.S. in the odd position of resisting what is arguably the most democratic of processes: a free election. They also worry that the Americans have not carefully considered the worst-case scenarios.

"If the Shiites do not get what they are asking for and Sistani issues a [religious order] forbidding people to vote, no Shiite will participate in the political process," said Jabber Habib, a Baghdad University political science professor. "I don`t think that will happen, but the high Shiite clerics have great power if they want to use it."

Three factors seem to have pushed Shiite religious leaders into their current disagreement with the coalition.

First, the conservative clerics are looking ahead to an uncertain political future if the economy improves and the country becomes more Westernized. Consequently, they want direct elections well before drafters of a national constitution are due to be selected, more than a year from now.

Second, some Shiite leaders appear to doubt that the United States has their interests at heart. That concern has been exacerbated, the clerics say, by poor communication between the parties.

Senior members of the coalition dispute that view, insisting that there is regular communication with religious Shiites. A senior staffer noted Tuesday that civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III had met hours earlier with cleric Abdelaziz Hakim, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council who also leads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. However, coalition officials in the provinces say it has been difficult to maintain regular communication.

The third factor is that neighboring Iran, the largest Shiite nation in the world, seems to be pushing a number of Shiite leaders in Iraq to exercise greater political power more quickly.

Iraq`s Shiite population encompasses a vast religious spectrum — some are secular, some religiously observant and some in-between. But almost all share a pride in the scholarship and stature of the grand ayatollahs of Najaf, who historically have been rivaled only by those in the Iranian city of Qom.

That pride has swelled in the months since Hussein`s overthrow, as even the most secular Shiites expressed admiration for the survival of members of the Shiite religious parties, many freshly returned from exile, and for senior clergy who had remained in Iraq despite the repression of Hussein`s rule.

By framing the issue as whether Americans intend to honor the wishes of the Shiite majority, Shiite clerics appear to be capitalizing on the sense of shared identity.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who attends many Governing Council meetings and met with Sistani in Najaf this year, warned that issues related to the Shiites` stature would resonate among the majority. "When it comes to these issues, the Shiites have solidarity, regardless of whether they are religious or secular," he said.

Observers believe that the sense of solidarity will ebb if reconstruction efforts succeed.

"The religious parties are afraid that in a year or two, the standard of living will increase and prosperity will increase and the people will not go for these religious parties," said Habib, the professor.

The three best-known Shiite parties are the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Islamic Dawa Party and a loose group of clerics around Muqtader Sadr, a radical young cleric whose father and cousin defied Hussein`s regime and were assassinated for their stance.

None of these groups openly discuss the extent to which each would like religious law to dominate Iraq, but it is an implicit theme in their recent pronouncements on the political process. It is also a theme that frightens many secular Iraqis.

All of the Shiite religious parties have armed followers. But none is as organized as the SCIRI-affiliated militia, which the Americans have been able to only nominally disarm.

Western observers believe that the SCIRI, the dominant political force in Najaf, is trying to expand its power as rapidly as possible. Dawa controls much of the southern city of Nasiriyah, and Sadr holds sway over multitudes in the sprawling Baghdad slum known as Sadr City. Sistani, the most widely revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, has called for an election of the transitional legislature, which would take office by July. The cleric, who is not aligned with any party, is also displeased that the unelected Governing Council, rather than an elected body, will write the interim law for running Iraq that is due to be completed by March, said a senior Iraqi official who met with the cleric.

During Friday`s prayers in Najaf, preacher Sadruddin Qubanchi, a high-ranking SCIRI official, accused the Americans and the Governing Council of deception in the way they have presented the process of choosing the transitional legislature.

"It is not going to be done through elections, but through appointments. They are cheating the marja," said Qubanchi, referring to the five most senior clerics who interpret Shiite teachings.

The Shiite parties` determination to consolidate political influence has caused the groups to deny that serious problems could result from early elections.

Coalition officials and secular members of the Governing Council argue that the country is too unstable for fair elections to be held soon because of the risk of attacks on voters and candidates by Hussein loyalists.

Ayatollah Mohammed Ali Yaccoubi, a supporter of Sistani, counters that "the security issue is just an excuse for not holding elections."

"There are several stable provinces, the unstable points are only between 10% and 20%," he said in an interview. "You may not have 100% participation. But a province without elections can say, `These are our delegates to the legislature,` and pick some."

Privately, two prominent Shiites said that considering that tens of thousands of Shiites were slaughtered by Hussein, any further casualties incurred for the sake of elections in which Shiite parties are assured of doing well would be a small price to pay.

American officials were apparently unsure how to encourage moderate Shiite clerics and discourage the fundamentalists who might lean toward Iran. The result was that they cast their lot with secular Shiite exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, who lead parties that have only recently begun to put down real roots in Iraq.

Sistani, who met with U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello before his death, refuses to meet with Bremer. Although Bremer has reached out to some of the moderates, especially in Baghdad, he has few links to the powerful senior clerics in Najaf.

Similarly, there has been no effort on the part of the U.S.-led coalition to talk directly to Sadr. But the coalition makes no apology for that omission. "We absolutely don`t want to meet with Muqtader al Sadr. He`s accused of some very serious crimes — he`s been a force for unrest and strife," an official said.

However, shunning Sadr is seen by the Najaf authorities as a slight to an important clerical family, even though in the main they do not like or trust Sadr, who is viewed by many as a hothead who lacks his relatives` Islamic scholarship.

"The Americans should deal with all symbols of the Iraqi people equally," said Yaccoubi, the Sistani supporter.

Ayatollah Ishaq Fayed, one of the five senior clergy in Najaf, harbors further frustrations. Speaking on his behalf, Sheik Ali Rubaie, who runs Fayed`s office, said hundreds of worshipers have come to senior clerics for help after confrontations with the American military.

"We suggested that there should be an American decision maker we could talk to in order to solve the problems, so Iraqis will realize these are friendly troops and not occupiers, but this has not happened. So we have stopped communication with them," Rubaie said.

The military officers who spoke with Rubaie are no longer in Najaf, but a coalition official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the failure to appoint such a person was "probably an oversight."

The Americans counted on Shiite support for their occupation, but it appears that many Shiites view the deposing of Hussein as little more than payment of a long-overdue debt.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Shiites, urged on by the Americans, held off Hussein`s forces and ousted the Baathists from several southern strongholds. Triumph turned to tragedy when the U.S. left them to fight alone. Hussein`s troops killed tens of thousands, burying them in mass graves.

At a recent book fair in Najaf, a man in a business suit pored over a table of tomes dedicated to the uprising. Eyeing one with a cover photograph of teenage boys marching through Nasiriyah with AK-47s in their hands, he said in English: "They are my son`s age. You know who is responsible for their deaths? George Bush, the father."

It is also in places like this book fair, the first one in this city in 35 years, that the subtle influence of Iran becomes obvious.

The fair was opened by the Iranian cleric Mohammed Ali Taskhiri, who spoke on behalf of Iran`s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Taskhiri called for an "Islamic constitution," adding, almost as an admonishment, "The Shiite leaders know their responsibilities."

Iran`s links to southern Iraq are complex — a combination of family ties, religious fraternity and spilled blood.

Among the fair`s best-attended exhibits was a set of tables where visitors could write a letter to Iran`s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Flocks of men gathered to fill out a piece of paper and hand it to a cleric standing nearby.

"It would be good to have a leader like Ayatollah Khomeini. He delivered Iran from darkness to light," said Saeed Kamal Khaderi, referring to the spiritual force behind Iran`s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khaderi, 29, is an agricultural engineer who now works in an air-conditioning repair shop to make ends meet.

"I would prefer a cleric as a leader," he added in a wistful tone. "They are always on the right side."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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THE NATION



EPA Chief Pledges Drive to Clean Air
Leavitt says President Bush`s `Clear Skies` legislation will be key. He also defends his market-based plan to cut mercury pollution.
By Elizabeth Shogren
Times Staff Writer

December 3, 2003

WASHINGTON — In his first major speech since becoming Environmental Protection Agency administrator four weeks ago, Mike Leavitt pledged Tuesday to lead the country toward the "most productive period of air-quality improvement in American history."

Speaking to several thousand EPA employees in an ornate downtown Washington auditorium, Leavitt sought to improve the impression some Americans have of Bush`s commitment to protecting the nation`s air, water, lands and wildlife.

Leavitt said he would unveil his 500-day plan for cleaning the air "very soon." Hours later, after a draft of his plan to regulate mercury pollution from power plants was leaked to reporters, Leavitt provided the first glimpse of how he would pursue this agenda.

He said his market-based approach to reducing mercury would work faster than traditional regulation. But environmentalists disagreed, calling the proposal a squandered opportunity to protect public health.

Other components of Leavitt`s air-improvement plan include stringent controls on diesel engines and ground-level smog standards based on local health needs. The central element, he said, would be President Bush`s "Clear Skies" legislation, which environmentalists derided as too weak to curb pollution from power plants.

Leavitt`s inaugural address as EPA administrator set a high bar against which his accomplishments may be measured, and it won a standing ovation from EPA career bureaucrats, many of whom are dedicated environmentalists.

"The challenge administrator Leavitt will face is how to achieve important lofty goals in an agency that has been under siege and has lost its sense of mission," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for the group Environmental Defense.

With a homespun story about a visit to the president`s ranch in Texas, Leavitt painted an image of Bush as someone with a deep "love of land."

One reason he took the job, Leavitt said, was "a commitment that I felt from the president himself to create a faster tempo of improvement" in the environment.

Leavitt arrived in Washington after 13 years as the governor of Utah, and the trappings of his speech seemed more suited to a governor`s address to a state legislature than a speech to employees of a federal agency. He read from Teleprompters, his face was magnified on two large screens, and his audience was seated in a large hall with soaring columns, gold trim and chandeliers topped by eagles.

In an interview after his speech, Leavitt avoided questions about whether Bush`s environmental record had acquired a negative image. Instead, he stressed his positive role in leading the EPA while it charts the course to "accelerate the velocity of improvement" in air quality.

"My grandchildren will not be familiar with the puff of black smoke coming out of a diesel truck or a bus, they won`t know black smoke out of construction equipment," Leavitt said. "That`s very serious progress."

Meanwhile, the environmental community was focused on a leaked draft of the administration`s plan to regulate mercury emissions from power plants. The proposal would abandon the requirement that each facility use maximum pollution-control devices. Instead, a cap would be set for emissions industrywide, and power plants that emitted less than their share of the national total could trade their pollution-reduction credits for cash with plants that were slower to reduce emissions. Emissions would drop from 48 tons a year now to 34 tons a year beginning in 2010.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous to fetuses. It migrates from the air to ground water, and humans become exposed by eating seafood tainted with it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that one in 12 women of childbearing age has blood mercury levels exceeding what EPA considers safe for fetuses, and 41 states have advisories on eating local fish because of high mercury levels.

Leavitt argued that the cap-and-trade system would "achieve substantially greater reductions in mercury emissions over the next 15 years" than would traditional regulations. "This is the first time mercury has been regulated from power plants," he said. "It moves us down the road toward better air."

But environmentalists and state regulators argued that more significant reductions were possible.

"Rather than take this issue head on and respond to the courts and the Clean Air Act, they are backing off and allowing public health and the environment to suffer," said S. William Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.

Leavitt said market-based approaches, including his for mercury, were vital to achieving cleaner air.

"The cap-and-trade approach shows us again and again that people do more and they do it faster when they have an incentive to do what`s in the public`s interest," Leavitt said in his speech.

Some EPA officials quietly criticized the agency for failing to analyze the feasibility of more stringent policies, as it usually does.

But representatives of the utility industry cautioned that more restrictive regulations would force utilities to switch from coal to natural gas, which could increase consumers` costs.

This could have "devastating" impacts, especially for low-income Americans, said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a group of utilities.

The administration`s proposal for regulating mercury would closely resemble the mercury provisions in the Clear Skies proposal.

Leavitt stressed that the administration remained determined to pass the legislation, which also would use similar market-based approaches to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which cause acid rain and respiratory illness.



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY



American Dream, Super-Sized
Democracy cannot coexist with Bush`s failed doctrine of preventive war
By Benjamin R. Barber
Benjamin R. Barber is a University of Maryland political scientist and the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld" and the newly published "Fear`s Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy" (W.W. Norton and Co., 200

December 3, 2003

In his historic speech at the National Endowment for Democracy recently, President Bush embraced a new doctrine, a "formal strategy of freedom" in the Middle East — and he did it just in the nick of time.

For although the war in Iraq is won, the peace has been lost, and that other Bush doctrine, the "preventive war" doctrine, is in disarray. The United States can neither withdraw with honor — anarchy, civil war and renewed tyranny probably would result — nor stay and fight on into a Vietnam-style quagmire, which is what the new Baathist-terrorist alliance is obviously hoping for. Bush`s dilemma was evident in his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad — a couple of hours with his fortressed troops but not a minute with the "liberated" Iraqis.

The only alternative to withdrawal or quagmire is for the U.S. to succeed in its campaign for genuine democratization, which is the option the president has chosen. Unfortunately, he has done so without relinquishing preventive war or the faulty logic behind it.

The problem for the administration, already clear from the cries of "hypocrisy!" with which his "freedom strategy" is being met in some quarters, is that there is a startling gap between the president`s welcome rhetoric about democracy and a policy that allows for unilateral invasion of other countries when the U.S. feels threatened, whether or not it has actually been attacked. It is this tension between democratization and preventive war that is at issue in Iraq.

Bush noted in his speech that democracy spread in the late 20th century because dictatorships collapsed from within or were overthrown by people demanding their liberty, just as the United States seized its freedom from the British in the 18th century. Yet in Iraq, the U.S. is trying to impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. But we cannot logically be an ardent advocate of the internal struggle for democracy and at the same time assert our unilateral right to invade enemies of our own choosing.

Bush urges the Saudis and Egyptians to press for democracy, but Washington continues to arm and fund undemocratic governments in both countries because they are putative allies in the war on terrorism. The president speaks of a "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East," but anti-terrorist tactics mandate strategic alliances with tyrants — on the model of U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, when Iran was the greater enemy. The U.S. must make up its mind: Are we to be friends of democracy or friends of the enemies of our enemies?

Bush admirably condemns what Ronald Reagan called "cultural condescension" and rightly insists that Islam and democracy are compatible (look at Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Albania, Bahrain and Niger). Yet the administration seems afraid to trust the Shiites in Iraq, afraid they might be too fundamentalist, too prone to the seductions of terrorism.

The fact is that the U.S. often doesn`t really want democracy — what it actually wants is an assent to its policies. That`s why the U.S. sided with the French in 1991 when the Algerian elections were "canceled" because of the possibility of an Islamic victory. That`s also why it fussed when Turkey`s democrats voted to deny American soldiers a Turkish route to northern Iraq before the war.

Bush wants democracy for others, but apparently on an American schedule dictated by a concern for "stability" and the war against terrorism. Yet imagine Britain acknowledging the American Declaration of Independence but suggesting it be implemented on a British timetable.

Citizenship must be learned, and power must be responsibly used, but the best and only democratically acceptable means for learning responsibility is empowerment. Democracy is the right of people to make their own mistakes. As T.E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — wrote, it is "better to let them do it imperfectly than to do it perfectly yourself, for it is their country … and your time is short."

That is what real democracy requires. Can a United States of America committed to preventive war allow it?

Balancing American support for world democracy with world distrust for American empire requires consistency between theory and practice. It demands that the U.S. decide whether the war on terrorism trumps everything, including its own liberties, or whether the quest for a democratic world will now replace preventive war as Washington`s primary foreign policy doctrine.

It is hard for the U.S. to be the beacon of freedom that Bush`s speech celebrated — and the world so admires — when it has in many places come to be seen as the maker of war the world most fears. It is hard to lead a global struggle for human rights when the U.S. holds enemy aliens prisoners without rights and when Americans who criticize the preventive-war policy are vilified.

Democracy is a high ideal. It exacts a high price from those who champion it. Bush can pursue an inspirational foreign policy founded on democratization that will transform how the U.S. spends money, cooperates with others and forges alliances. Or he can persist in following a failed doctrine of preventive war aimed at defeating terrorism, whatever costs such a campaign may exact from democratic ideals at home and abroad. But he cannot pursue both.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
#9973 ist ein anderer Arikel.



American Dream, Super-Sized
U.S. links its security to spreading freedom abroad -- welcome or not welcome
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches international relations at Boston University and is the author of "American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy" (Harvard University Press, 2002).

December 3, 2003

Americans like to think of domestic politics and foreign policy as two distinct topics, kept in separate boxes. People abroad are not quite so naive. They take it for granted that American statecraft grows out of domestic imperatives — indeed, that the two are inextricably linked.

The link is obvious when it comes to interest groups weighing in on foreign policy questions — steel manufacturers lobbying for higher tariffs, for example, or Cuban Americans demanding that Washington keep the pressure on Fidel Castro. But it is also true in a much more fundamental sense.

Think about what defines America for Americans. It`s not a passion for equality or community or social justice, all of which we treat with a wink and a nod. No, the authoritative expression of core American values remains Jefferson`s evocative triad: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

That`s what we want at home, and from 1776 to the present it has been the overarching purpose of American statecraft as well — to create a world that accommodates the pursuit of the Jeffersonian dream of freedom.

In that regard, cynicism about U.S. foreign policy — much in evidence of late — is misplaced. American policymakers do genuinely seek to ensure freedom`s triumph abroad. They believe, consciously and unconsciously, that guaranteeing the security and abundance required to sustain freedom at home demands that others embrace our conception of what it means to be free.

Freedom, for these purposes, comes as a package. It is indivisible. You can`t choose some items and pass on the others — endorsing freedom of speech but not freedom of religion, for example.

And no substitutions, please. Moreover, we believe we have cornered the market on freedom; we claim that American values are universal values.

But American freedom is also in a perpetual state of flux. In our courts and legislatures, we are continually reexamining its meaning and expanding its boundaries. So although substitutions are not allowed, there have been additions aplenty. This fact has large implications for the way we relate to the world beyond our borders.

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the United States first got into the business of exporting freedom — chiefly in the Western Hemisphere — our definition of freedom was limited. It meant presidents instead of princes, a façade of constitutional government and lots of law and order. Freedom in Latin America, for instance, primarily entailed respect for private property, especially property belonging to U.S. investors.

By mid-century, the freedom we sponsored in places like post-World War II Tokyo and Berlin had become more expansive. It now coincided with liberalism — real democracy plus civil liberties plus free enterprise. Imprinting freedom on Japan and Germany, we felt, neutralized the threat they represented. Liberation in effect pacified — Americanized — former enemies.

Today, as the Bush administration tries to spread freedom throughout the Islamic world, the term has acquired more expansive connotations still.

Since the 1960s, Americans have discovered a whole new raft of inalienable rights here at home. In the name of freedom we have banished government from our bedrooms and reinvented ancient institutions like the family and marriage.

Our appetite for freedom today matches our appetite for fast food: Just say super-size. Among the results: children in day care, women in combat, abortion on demand and, most recently, gay marriage. And we`re not done yet.

Many Americans view these developments with enthusiasm. Others are not so sure. But nations of the Middle East currently in the Bush administration`s cross hairs have begun to understand that, like it or not, freedom means what the United States says it means.

In this sense, the ongoing campaign to liberate Iraq and the ongoing campaign for gay liberation here at home are joined at the hip. This doesn`t mean that L. Paul Bremer III, Washington`s proconsul in Baghdad, is going to insist that the soon-to-be-drafted Iraqi constitution contain explicit guarantees of gay marriage. Not at all.

Short-term cultural sensitivity on our part will not alter our long-term trajectory, which remains fixed. Freedom for the Islamic nations may begin with holding free elections and move on to respecting women`s rights, but we won`t let it end there. To feel fully secure, we want those societies to look more and more like our own.

If the nations of Islam embrace freedom — up to and finally including freedoms we ourselves are just now discovering — Americans will no longer worry about threats from that quarter. Having been liberated, Iraq — followed by Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran — will also be pacified. But first they must be transformed.

It is for precisely this reason that the effort to liberate the Middle East will encounter protracted, determined and bitter resistance. The U.S. is intent on raising up a global "empire of liberty" — another eloquent Jeffersonian phrase, but can our targets this time be made to comply? One thing is sure, the effort promises to be a bloody one.


Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Do Americans know the score?
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 12/3/2003

IN THE EARLY weeks of America`s invasion of Iraq, Central Command spokesman Frank Thorp said, "We cannot look at combat as a scorecard."

This was because we did not count Iraqi military or civilian casualties. Until this week. Suddenly, the military is hawking scorecards, saying that 54 guerrillas have been killed.

The military now figures you can`t tell who`s winning the war without one.

In the great spirit of President "Bring `em on" Bush, the military was back to lecturing the enemy as to how utterly superior we are. General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "They attacked, and they were killed. So I think it will be instructive to them." Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said: "Any enemy looking at eight tanks, four Bradley fighting vehicles, and 93 coalition soldiers and still decides to fight is making a dreadful mistake."

We Americans, of course, make no mistakes. "We take proper aim and fire at those firing at us," said Lieutenant Colonel Mike Consalves. "We don`t indiscriminately engage. We engage people who are shooting and trying to kill us."

Our soldiers were so sure of their aim, they had no problem describing the gore. Specialist Sergio Silva told The New York Times how he literally blew apart a guerrilla with his Bradley cannon just before the guerrilla was about to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. "He just exploded," Silva said.

Enough of this proper aim. Since our invasion was a dreadful mistake based on lies (seen any weapons of mass destruction lately?), American scorecards are about as trustworthy as Vegas odds. Even the military admits the sudden interest in counting the bodies of Iraqi soldiers is a political ploy. It comes after the deadliest month for American soldiers since we commenced the bombing of Iraq. Eighty-one American soldiers perished -- more than the 65 in March or the 73 in April during the actual invasion.

The military did not want to count Iraqi soldiers or civilians who were killed for fear of humanizing the enemy. That boomeranged as the American bodies mounted. The number of US soldiers killed after Bush declared that major combat operations were over is currently 303, more than double the 138 of the invasion.

A senior military official told the Los Angeles Times that the new accounting of casualties is a "conscious change in policy." The official said: "We`ve been killing and capturing bushels of these guys, but no one was talking about it. . . . For a while there it was beginning to look like only Americans were being killed."

It is also clear that there will only be a scorecard when it looks like only Iraqis are killed. As vicious as the ambush was said to be, no Americans died.

The same official said: "We don`t want to have a regular box score. As soon as you get into the body count business, it gets to look like the Super Bowl. That`s not what we want."

When it has to be 54-0 before the government lets us know the score, it is no surprise to discover that this ploy may have as little credibility as the nation that issued it.

Iraqi doctors and civilians told American reporters a far different story of US soldiers shelling and riddling civilian houses, a mosque, a kindergarten, a minibus carrying Iranian pilgrims, and a pharmaceutical factory. People told reporters that American tanks randomly crushed Iraqi cars.

Satar Nasiaf, a shopkeeper who said he personally saw two civilians killed by American soldiers, said: "If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself. The Americans were shooting in every direction."

Saad Feisal, the brother of a mentally disabled brother who was wounded, asked, "This is the gift of Mr. Bush?"

Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Qadir, an official at a mosque where witnesses said a man and his son were killed, said, "Even in worship we`re not safe from the Americans."

At least one woman who worked at the pharmaceutical factory was killed in the crossfire. An angry ambulance driver, Adnan Sahib Dafar, said: "Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade? Is she fighting?"

An elderly Iranian pilgrim was killed with shots to the head and chest. No one knows where the bodies of the 54 guerrillas went. The United States was not stopping to mop up, and the band of guerrillas was surely not anxious to take them to the local morgue.

The most tangible evidence of the United States was eight bodies at the local hospital, all civilians, according to local doctors. Two of the victims were under 18 years old.

The hospital did record a "54." It the number of wounded who came to be treated.

Derrick Z. Jackson`s e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti…

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Was Bush Turkey Trip Aimed At Hillary Clinton?
Wednesday, 3 December 2003, 10:22 am
Opinion: Harvey Wasserman

Was Bush`s Turkey Breakfast In Baghdad Aimed At Hillary Clinton?

By Harvey Wasserman
www.freepress.org
The embedded corporate media is still crowing over the details of George W. Bush`s Thanksgiving flight to Baghdad. The Shrub spinmeisters have branded it a "home run."

But the global image of the smirking Texan carrying that turkey on a tray will now join the "greatest hits" album headlined by Bush`s "Mission Accomplished" shot on the USS Lincoln, since which more than 100 US soldiers have died.

The Fox media anointed to accompany Bush to Baghdad were barred from any uncontrolled interviews with American soldiers. None of the mainstream coverage made clear that the Bush turkey landed around 5:30am Baghdad time. Some 600 soldiers were roused to serve as extras in perhaps the heaviest breakfast of their lives.

Historically, Bush was merely replaying Lyndon Johnson`s tragic 1966 visit to Vietnam`s Cam Ranh Bay, after which tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died in nine years of ghastly slaughter.

Johnson swooped into the huge US with top secrecy and security. The saturation photo op was meant to boost Johnson`s plummeting polls. Having won in 1964 as a peace candidate, LBJ`s 1965 decision to escalate the war in Vietnam remains a catastrophic pivot point in US history.

At about two and a half hours, Johnson`s stay at Cam Ranh Bay matched Bush`s in Baghdad. LBJ visited none of Vietnam outside the base. The photo op gave him a fleeting lift amidst a relentless decline toward nervous collapse. Elected by one of the widest margins in US history, he shocked the world by declining to run for re-election, abandoning office in failure and disgrace.

Bush`s re-run to Baghdad coincided with the death of yet another US soldier. More than sixty Americans were killed in November, the war`s bloodiest month since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." Overall more than 430 Americans have died in Iraq, with more than 2400 US wounded and thousands more Iraqis dead or maimed.

Like LBJ, Bush kept to military turf, and told the media he was prepared to abort the mission and flee toward home at any time. While there were no uncontrolled exchanges with US soldiers, Bush did meet briefly under top security with hand-picked Iraqis meant to serve in the American-engineered government to which Bush says he`ll cede power next June, in the lead-up to the fall 2004 US elections.

But the extreme secrecy and nervous nature of the media stunt underscored that Iraqis are not "dancing in the streets" over the US occupation, as the Administration had originally promised when they were selling the American public on this war. Even members of the Governing Council weren`t told of Bush`s visit until they were brought to him. ``We cannot consider Bush`s arrival at Baghdad International Airport yesterday as a visit to Iraq,`` said Mahmoud Othman, a US-appointed member of Governing Council. ``He did not meet with ordinary Iraqis. Bush was only trying to boost the morale of his troops.``

A series of lethal anti-occupation attacks quickly followed, including a large ambush whose death toll is in dispute. US military officials now concede the Iraqi attacks are becoming better coordinated and more deadly.

Bush`s Turkey Trot may have been aimed in part at upstaging New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived in Baghdad the next day. Clinton and Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed visited Afghanistan before coming to Baghdad. ``I wanted to come to Iraq to let the troops know about the great job they`re doing,`` said the former First Lady.

Clinton voted for the Congressional resolution used by the Administration to attack Iraq. She now says she is "a big believer that we ought to internationalize this" and bring in the United Nations. But that "will take a big change in our administration`s thinking" and "I don`t see that it`s forthcoming." Reed voted against the war`s authorization. He says his November visit---he also came in June---re-confirmed his opposition. United Nations weapons inspectors should have been given more time to disarm Iraq, he says. Reed still questions the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York.

An independent delegation of relatives and friends of US soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to visit Baghdad soon. They plan to speak to grassroots Iraqis and to interview American soldiers unsupervised by US officials or embedded Foxoids.

Could this prompt another desperate, deadly Bush media distraction? Lyndon Johnson also used his Cam Ranh Bay visit to push reports of American deaths and domestic anti-war demonstrations off the front pages.

But given what followed, he---and our troops---should have stayed home. Shrub, take note.


**********
- Harvey Wasserman is author of HARVEY WASSERMAN`S HISTORY OF THE U.S. and co-author (with Bob Fitrakis) of GEORGE W. BUSH VERSUS THE SUPERPOWER OF PEACE ( www.freepress.org).

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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Wednesday, December 03, 2003
War News for December 3, 2003

Jede Meldung ein Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Six Iraqis wounded as several villages put up resistance to US raids.

Bring ‘em on: Missile fired at US C-130 at Baghdad airport last week.

Bring `em on: Convoy of civilian contractors ambushed near Samarra. Two wounded.

Bring `em on: Honduran soldiers mortared near Najaf.

Gasoline shortages continue.

Off with his head. Workers demolish gigantic bronze busts of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Phase III in Iraq. “The question therefore is no longer one of invasion and war, or even of occupation and withdrawal. It is a question, fundamentally, of which Iraqis will take control of their country as the coalition`s grip eases, how they will do so, and with what degree of legitimacy. This next phase offers a choice: self-rule - or self-destruction.”

Halliburton gets another extension on its no-bid contract in Iraq. “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in October it would replace by the end of December a no-bid deal given in March to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which by last week had clocked up more than $1.72 billion in business. But Army Corps spokesman Bob Faletti said the ‘deadline window’ had been extended until Jan. 17, 2004.”

Analysis: Liberators become occupiers.

Commentary

Opinion: Do Americans know the score? “When it has to be 54-0 before the government lets us know the score, it is no surprise to discover that this ploy may have as little credibility as the nation that issued it.”

Opinion: Democracy is incompatible with Bush’s failed “preventive war” doctrine.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Illinois soldier killed in Iraq.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:55 AM

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Private Contractor Tests New Illegal Ammo By, Killing An Iraqi

1-shot killer. This 5.56mm round has all the stopping power you need — but you can’t use it. Here’s why:

By John G. Roos
Special to the Times

12/01/03: (The Army Times) Ben Thomas and three colleagues were driving north out of Baghdad in an SUV on a clear mid-September morning, headed down a dirt road into a rural village, when gunmen in several surrounding buildings opened fire on them.

In a brief but intense firefight, Thomas hit one of the attackers with a single shot from his M4 carbine at a distance he estimates was 100 to 110 yards.

He hit the man in the buttocks, a wound that typically is not fatal. But this round appeared to kill the assailant instantly.

“It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower left section of his stomach ... everything was torn apart,” Thomas said.

Thomas, a security consultant with a private company contracted by the government, recorded the first known enemy kill using a new — and controversial — bullet.

The bullet is so controversial that if Thomas, a former SEAL, had been on active duty, he would have been court-martialed for using it. The ammunition is “nonstandard” and hasn’t passed the military’s approval process.

“The way I explain what happened to people who weren’t there is … this stuff was like hitting somebody with a miniature explosive round,” he said, even though the ammo does not have an explosive tip. “Nobody believed that this guy died from a butt shot.”

The bullet Thomas fired was an armor-piercing, limited-penetration round manufactured by RBCD of San Antonio.

A new process

APLP ammo is manufactured using a so-called “blended-metal” process, said Stan Bulmer, president of sales and manufacturing for Le Mas Ltd. of Little Rock, Ark. Le Mas is the distributor of RBCD ammo.

Various bullet types made by RBCD are designed for different effects, Bulmer said.

The frangible APLP ammo will bore through steel and other hard targets but will not pass through a human torso, an eight-inch-thick block of artist’s clay or even several layers of drywall. Instead of passing through a body, it shatters, creating “untreatable wounds.”

Le Mas gave Thomas a small number of APLP rounds after he contacted the company.

After driving off their attackers, Thomas and his colleagues quickly searched the downed enemy fighter for items of intelligence value. They also took time to examine the wound.

“There’s absolutely no comparison, whatever, none,” to other wounds he has seen from 5.56mm ammo, Thomas said in a telephone interview while on home leave in Florida.

He said he feels qualified to assess a bullet’s effects, having trained as a special-operations medic and having shot people with various types of ammo, including the standard-issue green tip and the Black Hills Mk 262, favored by spec-ops troops.

Thomas was the only member of the four-man group who had RBCD ammo. He said that after the group returned to base, they and other members of his group snatched up the remaining rounds.

“They were fighting over it,” he said. “At the end of the day, each of us took five rounds. That’s all we had left.”

Congress wants tests

Last year’s defense budget included $1.05 million for testing blended-metal bullets, Bulmer said. Fourteen months into the 24-month period during which those research and development-testing funds must be spent, the military has not purchased a single bullet from Le Mas.

Publicly, at least, military officials say RBCD ammo is no more effective than other types now in use and, under certain conditions, doesn’t even perform as well. Those conclusions are derived from a series of tests conducted a few years ago in which RBCD ammo’s effects were observed in ballistic gelatin, the standard means for testing bullets.

Naval Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Gary Roberts, a recognized ballistics expert and member of the International Wound Ballistics Association, conducted the gelatin tests in March 2002.

According to his findings, “Claims that RBCD bullet terminal performance can vary depending on target thickness, size or mass were not shown to have merit, as bullet performance remained consistent irrespective of gelatin block size.”

Roberts found that in gelatin, a 9mm, 60-grain slug exhibited “tissue damage comparable to that of other nonexpanding 9mm bullets and is less than that of standard 9mm [jacketed hollow point] designs, since the RBCD bullet does not create as much tissue damage due to its smaller recovered diameter.”

A .45-caliber bullet “offered average terminal performance in bare and denim-clad gelatin, similar to that noted with the 9mm bullet. ... The RBCD bullets do not appear to be a true frangible design, as significant mass is retained after striking a target.”

Not surprisingly, Roberts’ assessment remains a major impediment to getting RBCD ammo into military hands. Considering his standing in the ballistics community, his findings are accepted as gospel by many influential members of the special-operations community.

But Bulmer insists that tests in ballistic gelatin fail to demonstrate RBCD ammo’s actual performance because the gelatin is chilled to 36 degrees. Their bullets seem to shatter most effectively only when they strike warmer targets, such as live tissue. Bulmer said tests using live animals clearly would show its effects. Despite his appeals for such testing, and the funds set aside by Congress to conduct new tests, the military refuses.

Bulmer said authority to spend the testing funds initially went to U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., which delegated testing responsibility to the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Queries to the command confirmed that it was aware of the testing requirement but had not decided when, or if, the tests will be conducted.

Bill Skipper, president and CEO of the American Business Development Group, is a lobbyist representing Le Mas on Capitol Hill. “When I heard of the ballistic characteristics of this ammo, as a retired military officer, I realized it has to stay in the good guys’ hands,” he said, adding that SOCom’s reluctance to test it is “irresponsible.”

“This is an issue of national security,” he said.

Some supporters of RBCD ammunition suggest SOCom officials may be reluctant to test the ammo because it threatens “in-house” weapons and ammunition programs underway at the command.

Special-operations forces long have sought a more potent standard round than the 5.56mm, which lacks the punch needed during the long-distance engagements that frequently occur in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response, SOCom is working with weapons and ammunition manufacturers to develop a new round and new upper receivers for M4 and M16 rifles.

The command apparently has narrowed its search to a 6.8-by-43mm round.

Indication of industries’ involvement in this effort was seen in October during the annual Association of the U.S. Army exhibition in Washington.

If Le Mas’ 5.56mm APLP round delivers the performance SOCom is seeking in the new 6.8mm ammo — and Bulmer insists it does — the rationale and the potentially lucrative contracts for producing a new ammo type and modifying thousands of weapons used by special-operations forces would disappear.

Thomas said he isn’t familiar with the reasons that might keep RBCD ammo from getting a realistic test within the military.

“The politics, that’s above my pay grade,” he said. “All I really care about is that I have the best-performing weapon, optics, communications, medical equipment, etc. I’m taking Le Mas ammo with me when I return to Iraq, and I’ve already promised lots of this ammo to my buddies who were there that day and to their friends.”

When military officials in the United States got wind that Thomas had used the round, he quickly found himself in the midst of an online debate in which an unnamed officer, who mistakenly assumed Thomas was in the service, threatened him with a court martial for using the nonstandard ammo.

Although Thomas was impressed by RBCD ammo’s performance, he feels it should not be the standard ammunition issued to all U.S. forces.

“The first thing I say when I talk to people about Le Mas’ ammo is, make sure that 22-year-old infantrymen don’t get a hold of this, because if they have an accident ... if they have a negligent discharge, that person is dead. It doesn’t matter how much body armor you have on.

“This is purely for putting into bad guys. For general inventory, absolutely not. For special operations, I wouldn’t carry anything else.”

A video clip on RBCD ammo that was shot at the annual Armed Forces Journal Shootout at Blackwater is online at www.armedforcesjournal.com/bullets.

John G. Roos is editor of Armed Forces Journal.

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The Essay
by Curtis White
Concerning Sotoligarchy
What happens when the rich and powerful rule the stupid? It`s called America.
December 1st, 2003 1:00 PM
ince hundreds of thousands if not millions of our fellow citizens think that what people like Ann Coulter, Bill O`Reilly, and Bill Maher say is perspicuous and persuasive, is it not plausible to suggest that the most meaningful political alliance in this country is between the rich and the chronically stupid? Rule by a powerful, privileged class of the wealthy and their dependents we clearly have, and we already have a name for it: oligarchy. But what about the rule of the stupid? Sot-archy? Perhaps our hybrid form of governance should be called "sotoligarchy."

Sounds about right to me.

This I know is a harsh thesis, even if it is not an uncommon one. Conservatives and liberals alike have been hurling the epithet "stupid" at each other like a baloney sandwich in a grade school food fight. So, I`ll try to add nuance to my use of the term. First, I do not mean to imply that the "rich" are not also at times "stupid" (although the frequency and degree of their recent political and economic victories make me think their stupidity may be strategic and finally shrewd). Second, I do not mean to suggest that the rest of us (the not-rich) are what William Burroughs called "terminal fools." Michael Moore argues, in Stupid White Men, that Americans can`t be stupid because he`s heard them analyze baseball statistics. Unfortunately, the sad but clear implication of Moore`s comment is that in all other areas of cognitive life we are stupid, or at least act as if we were stupid. Let us then qualify our thesis and say that by "stupid" we mean not "organically stupid" but functionally stupid in the political sphere.

We can be even more generous. Somewhere in that ocean of acute perception that we know as Marcel Proust`s In Search of Lost Time, Proust makes the following observation. He says that the most common thing about humans is not common sense but human kindness. Unhappily, he goes on, our natural disposition to kindness is always defeated by self-interest.

This is something that has been observed time and again about Americans. We`re a nice people, a generous people, a kind people. And yet the policies of our government are cruel and nakedly self-interested. In 1976 I was teaching composition at the University of Iowa when an exiled member of the administration of Salvador Allende asked if he could speak to my class about what had happened in Chile with the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Allende`s government and the murder of thousands of students and leftists. He said to my class, "You know, traveling in your country, a person cannot help but be impressed by your kindness. But you do not understand how cruel your government is. You do not understand what you do to the rest of the world when you elect these `representatives.` "

Or, the obvious example of the moment: We have nothing against Muslims in the abstract. We have no reason to be unkind to them. But since they happen to be sitting on a huge proportion of the world`s oil resources we feel obliged to choose death and worse for them routinely. Our desire to be kind is routinely overwhelmed by our government`s desire to act in what it perceives to be the self-interest (the gravely intoned "national interest") of the people it represents. Our kindness ends up expressed as violence.

Proust himself was always generous, or kind, before all else. But his native generosity became the acid of social criticism when his unflinching, unapologetic regard fell upon the cruelty of self-interest. He considered cruelty more than anything else just maddeningly, puzzlingly, infinitely stupid. The stupidity of class arrogance. The stupidity of anti-Semitism. The stupidity of homophobia. Time and again, he discovered the self-interested desire to be an aristocrat, to have wealth, or simply to get laid at the root of the most unspeakable cruelty. For the infinitely gentle Marcel Proust, deliberate unkindness, especially when motivated by self-interest, hurt him and angered him more than anything else he could name.

But I think we need to add something to Proust`s intelligent observation. We need to add the further irony that we are wrong to think that cruelty functions in our self-interest. Cruelty does not work. In both the short and long run, cruel efforts to maintain self-interest have the consequence of making us conspire against ourselves. By acting cruelly in our self-interest we actually become conspirators in our own defeat.

You might call this the law of political karmic return. The CIA calls it blowback and figures it into the cost of doing business. I think it is more insidious than that. We conspire against ourselves in all sorts of ways, most of which are so familiar that they seem almost like common sense. The root problem is that all of our decisions go into a rational machinery, a social calculus of "benefit." Thus, the infamous "cost-benefit analysis." So we think, "If I clear-cut this forest I can sell the timber and plant soybeans for export to China, a very profitable move. But if I cut down the forest we may not have air to breathe or a stable climate in the future. Animals will be deprived of habitat. Species may go extinct. Oh, fuck it, why should my forest be responsible for the future when it can be profitable now?"

This is not the exclusive logic of corporate capitalists, although it was certainly the logic of factory trawlers when they stripped the Atlantic of cod from Nova Scotia to the Chesapeake, a grave crime against the cod (but who the hell ever thinks about what the ugly-mug cod need?), humanity, and the future. This is also the logic of Brazil`s left-wing government led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Brazil`s deforestation of the Amazon increased by 40 percent last year alone. To be sure, President da Silva`s rationale involved the importance of a cash crop to feed the urban poor. "The Amazon is not untouchable," da Silva told The New York Times. This, obviously, places the burden of feeding the poor squarely on the backs of parrots and leopards. Meanwhile, Brazilian agribusiness kings like Blairo Maggi make conflict of interest a virtual requirement for governance. Not only is Maggi owner of one of the largest soybean production and export companies in Brazil, he is also the governor of the state of Mato Grosso ("dense jungle"). Thanks to the "prosperity" he brings, the Amazon will soon be just another fantastical postmodern location, so familiar to North Americans, where the names of places no longer have any relationship to what`s actually in them. Mato Grosso will refer to a place that is no more than a factory for exchange value in a soybean monoculture, just as Illinois is a "prairie state" with 1/10 of 1 percent of its original prairie remaining. Of course, once the original plant/animal/human inhabitants are gone, we wax sentimental. The things we slaughter become our heritage. We wear feathers in our hair and go to summer powwows.

The jungle or the prairie, parrots or bobolinks—none of them ever have the opportunity to argue their own value as beings, things that deserve respect simply because they are. This reveals a grave spiritual flaw in their masters, the governors, developers, and agribusiness kings of the world. The ruling order has no moral right to rule because it makes its multiform daily purpose the defeat of the future. The logic that concludes that our "interest" is about "profit" assures a future defined by cruelty (usually rationalized as "collateral damage" or "incidental take"), but in the long run it will be understood as self-defeat. (No big deal. That`s why CNN and the Weather Channel specialize in disaster. When our own defeat comes, we`ll be able to redeem it as something "interesting" and "entertaining." Fun for the whole miserable family.)

National self-interest is indistinguishable from global legalized violence aimed at humans, the natural world, and ultimately being itself, before which our captains of state stand with all the wonder of a gourmand before a steak. They`re going to eat it up. What if our kindness-defeating self-interest is only, from the perspective of the future, the repeated application of a rapacious and self-defeating logic? Love America? How could we ever learn to love something that understands its interests in these ways? Not even the ever forgiving Marcel Proust, for all his desire to find kindness common among us, could possess the generosity of spirit to love or forgive such a stupid thing.



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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0349/essay.php

Curtis White`s new book is The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don`t Think for Themselves (HarperSanFrancisco).

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December 1, 2003
Q&A: The Geneva Accord

From the Council on Foreign Relations, December 1, 2003


Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of its U.S./Middle East Project, says that even though neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Israeli government negotiated the unofficial peace agreement known as the Geneva Accord, it may "help open up a debate in Israel" on a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.

As for Yasir Arafat, Siegman believes that the Palestinian leader will accept a two-state solution in which Palestinian and Israeli states would coexist, but that Arafat is reluctant to commit himself to the Geneva Accord as long as it is opposed by the Israeli government led by Ariel Sharon.

Siegman was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 1, 2003.

In Geneva today, an unofficial accord for a peace settlement between Israel and a Palestinian state was formally unveiled. How did this come about?

The so-called Geneva Accord--so-called because it was not negotiated by governments--is an exercise initiated by individuals who set about trying to work out a model [peace] agreement. [They sought] to persuade both Palestinians and Israelis that--contrary to the widespread myth that neither side has a partner for an agreement on the other side--in fact it is possible to work out an accord that meets the vital interests of both sides. This effort was initiated by Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister in Israel for the Labor Party government of Ehud Barak and now a private citizen, and by Yasir Abed-Rabbo, who was a minister in [a previous] Palestinian government and held important jobs in previous Palestinian Authority cabinets. He is not currently a member of the Palestinian government. They are private individuals and they had with them teams of fairly distinguished Palestinians and Israelis, not just from the left but from the center as well, who worked out this set of understandings that deal with all of the permanent status issues in great detail.

Could we go through these details? What does the accord say about borders?

The two sides agreed that the border negotiations begin with the lines that separated Israel from the West Bank before the 1967 war. [After the June 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River and East Jerusalem, which since 1948 had been under Jordanian control; it also captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt.] The Geneva Accord provides that adjustments to that border can be made to accommodate Israel`s security needs and Israel`s political needs in terms of the settlers [who have moved into those areas since 1967]. Israel would be allowed to keep settlements that are close to the border and that involve very substantial numbers of settlers, something like 70 to 80 percent of those there now. But if Palestinians agree to this kind of accommodation to Israel, the Israelis are obligated to give Palestinians comparable territory on their side of the border. The trade would be one for one. In fact, both sides have worked out maps that indicate precisely where the new border would be, how many of the settlements and settlers would remain in the West Bank, and what territories on the Israeli side of the border would be transferred by Israel to the Palestinians.

What about Jerusalem, which after 1967 was made Israel`s undivided capital?

The agreement on Jerusalem is that it will once again be divided, which is to say that Palestinians would have the part of Jerusalem whose residents are predominantly Palestinian, while Israel could retain for its capital West Jerusalem and those parts of East Jerusalem whose populations are predominantly Israeli. The point is that this arrangement will affect, of course, only East Jerusalem, not West Jerusalem. West Jerusalem was Israeli before 1967 and will remain Israeli. The accord also discussed the future of holy places. [Under its terms,] the Temple Mount, which is called by the Muslims al-Haram al-Sharif, on which the al-Aqsa Mosque is situated, would revert to Palestinian sovereignty. However, there would be an international monitoring arrangement that would see to it that some secondary agreements dealing with archeological digs underneath the Temple Mount [would be subject to] Israeli-Palestinian approval.

And the Western Wall, which is sacred to Jews?

Would be under Israeli sovereignty.

What about the Palestinian so-called right of return to lands once lived in by Palestinians but are now occupied by Israel?

Interestingly, the right of return as such is not mentioned in the Geneva Accord. Instead, there is a very complicated discussion of how refugee issues should be dealt with. What the agreement provides for is the following: refugees [many of whom still live in camps in the West Bank and Gaza or in Lebanon and Syria] will have a number of options. The first and most important one is the right of return to the new state of Palestine. The second is to remain in those countries where they are now located [and receive] compensation, restitution, and so forth. A third option is for a limited number to return to Israel, if they had homes there, but there are two qualifications. The first one is that the number of refugees who would be allowed to return is limited and there is a complicated formula [to calculate the] maximum [permitted]. It comes to about 40,000 refugees over a period of several years. The second condition is that Israel has the right to decide who it will take back. So, no one has an automatic right to return to Israel.

Any of those allowed to return will do so not under any right of return provision or any United Nations resolution. Rather, it will essentially be a kind of humanitarian, family reunion type of affair.

Who would pay the compensation to those Palestinians who choose not to return? Israel?

There would be an international fund to which many countries would contribute, including Israel. Israel will be obliged to put money into that fund.

How does this accord play in the current Israeli and Palestinian governments?

With respect to Israel, the answer is fairly straightforward. The Israeli government under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has utterly rejected the terms of this agreement. It has been very angry with its authors, claiming that they had no right to do this. Yossi Beilin and his [Israeli] colleagues have responded by saying they did not pretend to negotiate for Israel and [that they were trying] to show that it is theoretically possible to achieve an understanding that deals with all of the difficult issues in ways that could be acceptable to the two sides. But that doesn`t change the fact that the Israeli government will have absolutely nothing to do with this agreement. And the chances of the Sharon government entering a political process, a negotiation based on the Geneva Accord, are nil.

What are the government`s main objections? Are there specific details it does not like?

Yes. This government has made it very clear that for ideological reasons and for what it considers security reasons, it will never return to the 1967 borders, that it will retain for what it claims are security reasons large parts of the West Bank, probably more than half, including the Jordan Valley territory next to the Jordan boundary. It has said that under no circumstances will it divide Jerusalem. To the contrary, it expects to enlarge it and to annex to Israel an enlarged Jerusalem. It will never accept any returning refugees. On virtually all the principal agreements incorporated in the Geneva accord, this government is on record that it will not accept any of them.

On Arafat`s side?

On the Palestinian side, the negotiators are all people who are fairly close to Arafat. The assumption all along has been that they would not have done this if they hadn`t [first] gotten permission from Arafat. Whether Arafat allowed them to do this because he agreed with the outcome or simply because he thought it was good politics to let them do it, is not clear. More recently, there have been angry protests from various Palestinian quarters, and first and foremost from the refugees, who feel that their interests are being sold out. As soon as these protests started, Arafat tried to distance himself from the accord. He said all along when he was asked whether he accepted its recommendations, "I cannot accept recommendations worked out by individuals who don`t represent their country. I can only accept or reject recommendations that are put forward by the government of Israel." But he said he compliments the negotiators and thinks what they did was constructive and helpful.

It had therefore been believed that he felt positively about these agreements. More recently, however, his tune has changed. Now what he is saying, and there is a certain amount of logic to it, is, "I cannot say I accept these proposals, because whatever I agree to, I do so in an official capacity, which means that I will have made concessions to the Sharon government, at the very time the Sharon government says it rejects every one of the proposals made on the Israeli side. The Israeli government would have pocketed my concessions, since I would be speaking officially for the Palestinian Authority, and I would have zero to show in return." He uses this as a justification for not saying anything that indicates he is accepting the specifics of this agreement.

Some people believe it would be impossible for Arafat under any circumstances to accept a two-state solution that does not include the right of return for Palestinians to what is now Israel. Do you agree with that?

No, I do not. I think that Arafat has never rejected the idea of a two-state solution. He has always, officially and on-the-record, accepted it, at the beginning of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, and more explicitly since then. I think this is an argument made by people who themselves reject the two-state solution on the Israeli side.

I was thinking of people like Dennis Ross, the chief Mideast negotiator for President Clinton whom I interviewed recently.

I think they are absolutely wrong about that. The fact of the matter is that people speculate and have these theoretical notions about what the Palestinians will accept or reject, when on the ground, on the Israeli side, they have already pre-empted the possibility of returning anything more than 40 percent of the territories.

Isn`t the Geneva Accord similar to what President Clinton offered at Camp David in 2000, along with then-Prime Minister Barak, and what was offered again by the Israelis at Taba [Egypt] to the Palestinians in January 2001?

It is similar. And of course the people who like it in Israel are designated as being on the left. The interesting thing is that polls done recently show that support and opposition for the Geneva plan are nearly equal, with virtually the same number of people who oppose it as support it.

What is the reaction of the Bush administration?

It has said very little about it. Recently, Secretary of State Colin Powell has publicly expressed support, not for the agreement itself, but for the efforts of Beilin and Abed-Rabbo.

Is the accord consistent with the road map peace plan?

Yes. The Geneva Accord is consistent with the third and final stage of the road map, in which the parties are to negotiate the final accords.

Realistically, is this peace plan dead-on-arrival in Israel?

For the Israeli government, yes. The question, in my view, is not whether this will change the policies of the Israeli government. The question is whether this will help open up a debate in Israel. This builds on some recent developments: the criticism in late October of the government by the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, and in mid-November by four former heads of the Shin Bet [Israel`s internal security agency]. The criticism was coming from important people who are either center or even right. These agreements, and what is happening in Geneva, amount to theater, but it is theater that may help generate and widen and deepen the opening of debate in Israel.



Copyright 2003

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Did the U.S Lie About What Happened in Samarra?

Watch 256k stream
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2003/dec/256/d…
Newsday ist eine New York, Long Island Tageszeitung
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U.S. officials said that up to 54 Iraqi guerillas were killed in a battle and 16 wounded Sunday in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra, but Iraqis say the local hospital received the bodies of only eight dead civilians as well as 60 others wounded. We go to Iraq to speak with Newsday’s Mohamad Bazzi.
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Widely differing accounts are emerging over a battle Sunday between U.S. troops and Iraqi resistance fighters in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra.
The U.S. Army said that either 46 or 54 guerillas were killed in the clashes and another 16 wounded in what it described as the bloodiest fire-fight since the official end of the war. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt later admitted that the U.S. figures are only estimates and that U.S. forces had not recovered a single body from the scene.

Iraqi accounts differ sharply. The director of the local hospitals says they received the bodies of only eight civilians, including those of a woman and child as well as 60 others wounded. U.S. military officials denied their forces had overreacted and fired indiscriminately, as charged by senior police, hospital and municipal officials in the Samarra.


Mohamad Bazzi, Newsday correspondent reporting from Baghdad.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 [phone].








TODAY`S STORIES http://www.democracynow.org/

Headlines for December 3, 2003

Did the U.S Lie About What Happened in Samarra?

“We Have More Than One Guantanamo In Iraq” – British Anti-War Lawyer Representing Tariq Aziz Arrested After Charging Blair With War Crimes

75 U.S. Soldiers Shout “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Outside Anti-War Priest’s House

Irish Peace Accord In Jeopardy With Elevation of Hard-Line Unionist Ian Paisley

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The Election Year Starts Early in Baghdad
James P. Pinkerton

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vppin023567007dec0…


December 2, 2003

Do you get the feeling that American presidential campaigns - in 2004, and maybe 2008 - are being waged right now in Iraq?

George W. Bush went over for a grip-and-grin with the troops, and Hillary Rodham Clinton just took the photo-op tour. It seems like every other wannabe has either gone, or is planning to go.

But as pols make their treks, and take their stands, they find themselves waging a political struggle in the three basic time phases: the past, the present and the future. That`s the way the game is played. The leader with "vision" must prove that he or she is guided by the lessons of history, that current events validate that vision and, most of all, that the future will be better because of the vision.

Bush, for example, has often couched his Iraq arguments in the "lessons" of Sept. 11. As he said last year, "America felt its vulnerability - even to threats that gather on the other side of the Earth."

It was a slick rhetorical trick, of course, to argue that being attacked by Afghanistan justified an attack on Iraq, but most Americans bought his argument. Since then, that history "lesson" has evaporated. Bush has had to concede that there`s "no evidence" that Iraq was involved in 9/11. No wonder the administration has "moved on" to other Iraq-war arguments.

But, in the meantime, the Democrats, too, are haggling over history. Howard Dean, for example, regularly rips into four of his presidential rivals for their 2002 congressional vote on behalf of the Iraq war. That spat over the past has made Dean the front-runner for the `04 nomination.

If the past is one phase of the struggle, the present is another. And so to the obvious question: Are we winning or losing in Iraq? To help bolster its rosy view, the Pentagon has started releasing "body counts" of enemy dead, reversing its earlier announced policy. Back in Vietnam, the military`s numerology of enemies killed was so absurd that the practice was discredited and then abandoned.

But today, amid the killings of so many Americans and American allies - whose bodies are being counted - the Defense Department has begun trumpeting big numbers of Iraqi deaths. In Samarra, for example, the Pentagon claimed to have killed 46, or maybe 54, foes. But according to Reuters, the local morgue counted six dead, and the police counted eight. And so the present-day battle is joined, on the factoid front.

Yet the big prize is the future: What do Americans have to look forward to in Iraq? Glorious victory or ignoble withdrawal? Here Bush has been mostly, but not completely, reassuring. In Baghdad he declared, "I have a message for the Iraqi people: You have an opportunity to seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom."

Well, OK, but what if they don`t seize that opportunity?

Already, the United States has edged away from Bush`s many pledges to make Iraq an "inspiring example" for the Middle East. Instead, we are trying to work out a deal between Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservatives` man in Baghdad, and the Shia theocrats who rule the south. Few Arabs in the region, no matter how much they despise their own governments, are likely to be inspired by such undemocratic and reactionary logrolling.

So what happens to the morale of the U.S. military, once they realize that they aren`t fighting for "freedom," but rather for geopolitical expedience? Good question. In Vietnam, GIs became cynical. They vowed not to be "the last man to die" in a conflict the politicians back home had already written off. And we lost that war.

In the present day, optimism about Iraq was not fostered by New York`s junior senator, back from her trip. On NBC`s "Today Show," Clinton wondered whether Bush`s policy "is being driven by our political calendar, not necessarily what`s in the best interest of a long-term stable Iraq." The message was clear, both to Iraqis and to GIs: Don`t count on Bush`s keeping his promises.

Republicans will blast Clinton for her cutting comments, but the administration`s own actions regarding the transfer of power suggest that she has a point. In the most important battle of all, the battle for the future, the administration has sounded the first faint notes of political failure.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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The good, the bad and the ugly in Iraq
By now, it should be apparent to everyone that Iraq was not a cakewalk. Maybe the fight against the Iraqi military on an open battlefield was easy, but everything since President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1 ­ taking a victory lap by landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in full flight garb and with a banner declaring “mission accomplished” ­ has been anything but.
The American military is trying to put down an insurgency fueled by Sunni Baathists who refuse to go quietly into the night and accept US-imposed “regime change.” They are being abetted by a growing number of Iraqis glad to be rid of their former president, Saddam Hussein, but chafing under US occupation (and likely to become even more resentful if the US employs overly aggressive military tactics in “Operation Iron Hammer”). At the same time, Al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists are taking advantage of US and other targets in their neighborhood to practice car-bomb terrorism.
These three lethal ingredients are recipe for a US disaster. It would seem that the United States has walked eyes wide shut into a combination of the Israelis in the West Bank and the Soviets in Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine a worse situation.
So what’s a superpower to do? The United States basically has three options: the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good option is probably better described as the least bad option. The US needs to give up on the Wilsonian fantasy of creating a democracy in Iraq. Instead, it must be realistic, make the best of an admittedly bad situation and do what’s in the best interest of US national security: hand the reigns of government over to the Iraqis and fashion an expeditious military exit.
This would not be “cutting and running,” but simply cutting US losses before Iraq becomes a sinkhole that swallows billions more of taxpayer dollars and all too many American lives. As noble and well intentioned as is the desire to create an Iraqi democracy and better Iraqi lives, the hard truth is that the US government’s first responsibility is to Americans. And US national security demands only that whatever government replaces the former regime ­ even an Islamic government ­ should not harbor or support terrorists who would do harm to the United States.
The bad option is the one advocated by Senator John McCain: pouring more US soldiers into Iraq. The irony is that McCain is right when he says: “We do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives.” Currently, the US has about 130,000 soldiers deployed (of which, only about 56,000 are actually combat troops, and only half of them are on duty at any given time ­ so there are really only about 28,000 troops on duty trying to provide security for a nation of 25 million people the size of California). The history of the British experience in Northern Ireland (a close parallel to America’s experience in Iraq) suggests a need for 10-20 soldiers per 1,000 civilians to have any realistic hope of restoring security and stability. In Iraq, that translates into a force of 240,000 to 480,000 troops.
However, the paradox of a larger force is that it would only make the problem worse ­ confirming that the US is an occupying power and increasing Iraqi resentment and resistance amongst the general population. Worse yet, a larger military contingent in Iraq removes any shred of doubt from the case made by the radical Islamists that the West is really fighting Islam, which only encourages the Muslim world (regardless of their sympathies for Al-Qaeda) to unite against the United States.
The ugly option is the course the Bush administration seems to be charting, which is a faux exit. On the one hand, the US is trying a fast track by giving the Iraqis sovereign control through the creation of a provisional government that will assume control by July 1, 2004. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the US apparently has no intention of leaving Iraq. To be sure, the current Pentagon plan is to reduce the force size to 105,000 troops by next spring. But that’s hardly a withdrawal of US forces. And the plan may not be a done deal. In London, Bush said: “We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops, we could have more troops in Iraq ­ whatever is necessary to secure Iraq.”
Even if there is an eventual troop reduction, there seems to be no end in sight to how long the US will stay. According to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the troop reduction “does not mean we would physically leave the country any sooner.” And Bush assured a group of Iraqi women at the White House that America wasn’t leaving: “When they hear me say we’re staying, that means we’re staying.”
The current administration plan to try and have its cake and eat it too is a train wreck in the making. The US finds itself pinned down in Iraq and forced to adopt Israeli-style tactics that do more to create anti-American resentment, fuel the insurgency and create a pool of would-be suicide bombers for Al-Qaeda. It is the worst of all worlds ­ a combination of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, where military action to suppress an insurgency has created more new terrorists and an endless cycle of violence, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, where Muslims from around the region (if not the world) flock to Iraq for jihad against the American infidel.
It doesn’t get any uglier than that.

Charles V. Pena is the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute (www.cato.org) and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (www.crfp.org). He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/02_12_03_d.asp

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Lost Jobs and Military Funerals Haunt Bush in the Heartland
Attention, Wal-Mart Voters
by Rick Perlstein
December 3 - 9, 2003

Rock River Valley, Illinois—Piety is easy to find on the highways of Red America. Stop at a cemetery and you may find that the marker towering over all the rest reads, "In Memory of the Unborn Children." Down at the lower frequencies, the ones occupied in more urbane locales by the edgy college stations and NPR affiliates, your radio lectures at you: The music you`ll hear during your visit is safe for the whole family. . . . Family friendly 91.5, WCIC, celebrating 20 years of music and ministry. Neighborliness is unavoidable, a saving grace: Pull into a motel and the lady asks for your cell phone number because there was a rash of folks forgetting their cameras this summer and she wants to be able to call you if you leave something behind yourself.

But just like in a novel by Sinclair Lewis, if piety is easy to find, then so is hypocrisy. Enter the sultry stink of a dingy roadhouse not far from where Abraham Lincoln once debated Stephen Douglas, and a terse young man winding himself up with coffee for a hard-partying Saturday night volunteers his version of the scene: a couple of towns down, the best gentleman`s club; the next town over (you won`t see a sign), a gambling den. A couple of hours later, when you tell the woman behind the counter at the convenience store where you`ve been, you elicit a grimace: "Oh, did you see two girls getting it on?" (They do so nightly, apparently, around 11 o`clock, on the pool table, for tips.)

Though even in this, Oglesby, Illinois`s local den of iniquity, Republicans aren`t hard to find, either. "I thought Bush would be a good man for the job at the time, and thought he`d be a good president," says the terse young man, whose nickname is Stony. "So I voted for him."

Stony is the kind of guy liberals love to worry about, the kind they fret they can`t win over by next year`s election. He works the midnight shift as a "picker" at a nearby grocery warehouse—the very job Tom Wolfe depicts as the soul of thankless blue-collar humiliation in his latest novel. Stony talks proudly about his union and, quietly, mentions his fears that his workplace "could have a shutdown any day. You never know."

Liberals: Worry less. Stony no longer supports George Bush: "Because of the war. Too many people dyin`." Neither does his drunken friend, who pipes up: "I hate him. Because there are kids getting killed every single day."

Worry less. But worry still. In the middle of November, I spent five days in four Illinois counties where Bush was successful in 2000 to see whether support for him was peeling off in areas especially hard hit by the jobless recovery. The answer offers some surprising political lessons.

A few moments` Web research is all it takes to learn that the next town I visit, Byron, "the gateway to the Rock River Valley," supports 13 churches for a population of 2,284 and is named for the Romantic poet; that George Bush beat Al Gore in this county by 23 points; and that its two "major industries" are Quality Metal and Bergstrom truck heaters. It takes considerably longer to learn that this is all a convenient fiction: Byron`s actual major industry is a $3.7 billion nuclear plant that once earned the distinction of becoming the first in history to have its application for an operating license flatly rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

No such reticence in the shadow of the cooling towers, where Byron Motosports Park, a 1.3-mile dirt track, proudly advertises an annual "Nuclear Mountain Bike Meltdown" on its website. The track is where you`ll find, on a typical Sunday—race day—two semi drivers from Rockford named John and Scott. John is the talkative one. Scott is the one with the heavy goatee. Ask them about George Bush, and this is what you hear.

"Best president we ever had. Because he`s the only one, one of the few, who`s got the balls to do what needs to be done. . . . I`m so glad Gore didn`t get elected, `cause he`s another Clinton. And Clinton should have done it when he was in office."

They blame 9-11 and the unending wars that have followed on the previous White House occupants.

John: "All this shit is Clinton`s fault. . . . This`ll probably be the first year ever that I vote a straight Republican ticket. `Cause all them Democrats, bad-mouthin` Bush, sayin` he didn`t have it planned out right, all that crap—they didn`t even have a clue what was going on!"

John and Scott are dead wrong, of course: Clinton knew there was danger to Americans from a terrorist group called Al Qaeda and did do something about it, if perhaps not all the right things, whatever those might have been; Bush knew of the danger before the World Trade Center attacks and probably did less. Playing catch-up, he used the war on terror as pretext for an invasion of Iraq, and well-informed Democrats knew exactly what was going on: that unilateralism and lack of planning for a post-war settlement would lead us into disaster. But there`s not much you can do about macho fantasies like Scott and John`s; you can`t force voters to critically read several newspapers a day. This is, simply, the reality that those who would wish to see George Bush defeated have to work with.

Alongside the judgment that Bush is responsible for bringing home Americans in body bags persists the judgment that America`s current foreign policy situation, all of it, just sort of happened to Bush, and that it`s a damned fortunate thing this Iraq mess happened under his watch instead of under some hapless Democrat`s. It is a testament to the Republicans` mastery at keeping people scared of all that is not Republican, then taking credit, as Republicans, for making them feel "secure." And it is a dynamic more evident the more Republican the milieu.

Drive 30 miles down the Rock River from Byron and you come to a very Republican place. Dixon advertises itself as the hometown of Ronald Reagan, another convenient fiction: Reagan didn`t have a proper hometown because his father was a peripatetic drunk. But Reagan nostalgia is one of Dixon`s major industries.

In Dixon, where two civil servants who admit not liking Bush beg for anonymity, you get an indelible lesson in the Republican politics of fear. Tasha Goral and Dion Day, 22 and 29, share a child (Raven Rose) and a home (candles, flowing scarves, no telephone, Coltrane on the stereo), and they are not married; all this in a town where the piety, in public at least, is especially fragrant. Tasha should know. Her father was the town bookie. He never got busted, though. "Hell, the cops all bet with him!" Dion laughs. "He paid everybody. Republicans, Democrats."

Recently, a black friend of theirs, much more of a genuine hometown boy than Reagan ever was, graduated from Northwestern and came back to Dixon because that was where his heart was, where he wanted to make his contribution. He got a job at the local medium-security prison (one of the biggest industries in Ronald Reagan`s hometown), kept his dreadlocks, drove a Cadillac. So two weeks ago, out of nowhere, he was pulled over by a convoy of law enforcement vehicles and spirited at gunpoint to his house, where 15 DEA agents, four IRS agents, two county sheriffs, and two state police officers searched his every belonging. "And you know what they found?" says Dion. "Nothing. Not a damned thing. They had a warrant. He doesn`t know why anything happened. But he`s supposedly some big drug kingpin." Now he`s thinking about moving away, Dion says. He trails off. "It just makes us scared to be us. . . . "



Worry less. Intriguing cracks are opening in the Republican firmament. Take the factory owners I meet in the Rock River Valley`s population center, the city of Rockford, who are ready to burn George Bush in effigy.

"I`m very conservative," Eric Anderberg of Dial Machine says, in the boardroom of the machine-parts factory his family built in 1966. "Always voted Republican. But I`m extremely concerned with what I hear from this current administration." Eric is 32, fiercely political, and articulate. He`s called over two of his older industrial-park neighbors, Don Metz of Metz Tool and Judy Pike of Acme Grinding. Family manufacturers like these were the foundation of the modern conservative movement, reacting against the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower in the `50s. Now they are a wedge in the Republican coalition. I ask if they could imagine supporting, for president, a Democrat. Don Metz, who in his golf shirt looks like he just came back from a midday round, doesn`t hesitate: "No problem. Somebody steps forward and says we`re going to make manufacturing a priority in this country." They would even donate the legal maximum of $2,000.

The reason is economic near-devastation. Unemployment around here has increased by half in the last three years. In Rockford, it approaches 12 percent. Factories are closing as production is shipped off overseas. (The mantra of "high tech" is unlikely to impress Rockford; one of the most wrenching recent production shutdowns was at the plant that produced a motor for the Segway scooter.) "Service jobs" have replaced some of the work. But where they materialize, with rotten hours, pay, and benefits, they end up destroying families instead of saving them. And it makes these people livid, because it all seems so stupid and unavoidable.

It would sound like socialism if it weren`t coming out of the mouths of Republicans. "The generation of people that are running corporations today," Eric explains, "all they give a damn about is what happens in the next 90 days to their stock price and when that window is going to be when they`re going to jump out and pull that parachute—who cares what happens five years from now?" He`s not talking about protectionism. He`s talking about creating an economy that can survive the next generation. "Running a company based on shareholder wealth is a collapsible scheme! It`s a short-term scheme! It`s not a sustainable scheme."

Don offers an example: "What happened to the tax rebates? Everyone went to Wal-Mart and got a DVD that was made in China, which created no jobs. Thus: a jobless recovery."

He has mentioned a bogeyman. And now the conversation turns headlong.

Eric: "Wal-Mart and the rest, they love the way the trade situation is right now. They`re forcing their suppliers to basically shut down and move overseas to produce."

Judy—whose company will probably have to shut down next year—moves the critique to the terrain of family values: "The moms that used to have a factory job with me and who go home at the end of eight hours and 10 hours and take care of their children and have decent day care, now they`re working two jobs at Wal-Mart with no health benefits."

Eric takes this all home to politics: "At some point the Republican Party has to realize that, yeah, they need the money today to get elected"—the big, multinational, corporate money—"but it`s not the General Electrics or all these large corporations that are putting them in office. It`s the people who work for these corporations."

Perhaps one of the reasons these successful people are entertaining the thought of supporting Democrats is that they feel like they`re abandoning a sinking ship—a party that stakes its future on unsustainability, on the "efficiency" of shutting down every factory in sight because it makes for a better-looking quarterly balance sheet.

Don notes that an employee at his plant, non-union, starts at $16 an hour and makes as much as $100,000 a year: "sends his kids to private school, he drives a nice car—does that sound like a Democrat to you? . . . Our people, in the past, didn`t want government interfering with their life. . . . What happens to these people is that they find out they can`t become a Wal-Mart associate . . . at $7.50 an hour without completely undermining their lives."

Here`s a riddle: What do shuttered factories manufacture? Democrats. Or at least they might, if the national Democratic Party had the balls to do what needs to be done.

Don again: "If Eric and his family decided to shut this place down, he`s not going to end up on a food line. Neither am I." It makes them mad all the same. Mad enough to do something about it. Downsized factory workers and their well-off former bosses: What a wonderful coalition it would be.

Meanwhile, the rock-headed jingoes at the motorcycle track can afford to focus their fears on weapons of mass destruction because they don`t have to worry about job destruction. They`re truck drivers. They`re the ones shipping product to the Wal-Marts.

It all comes together, as a Marxist might say, at the point of production. The last stop of my visit is the shop floor, where a young man Eric`s age tells me about the place where he used to work, and his father before him, and his grandfather before him: a paper plant that shut down a few years back. But he`s no protectionist either: "I have no problem with a company that uses overseas goods—if they`re going to return some of that investment to the American worker, which can in turn spend that here."

He has a particular company in mind. The one that may end up, if Dial Machine has to close, as the next stop down the line.

"I won`t go to Wal-Mart. My problem is that the company made $7 billion in profits. And yet they pay their workers substandard wages." Health co-payments are so expensive, he notes, that less than half sign up for the "benefit." This worker fears Wal-Mart more than he fears weapons of mass destruction. Because he knows which one is more likely to end up in his future. Americans who fear Wal-Mart more than apparitional WMDs (and apparitional dreadlocked drug dealers) are proliferating every day—and must be made to proliferate more, for the sake of our nation. This is the Democratic Party`s hope: convincing Red America they can provide an economy that`s safe for the whole family.
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The end of the west
Europe is no longer the centre of the world - the future belongs to the might of Asia

Martin Jacques
Thursday December 4, 2003
The Guardian

Throughout the cold war, Europe was the centre of the world. The global fault line ran through the heart of Europe. In the face of the Soviet threat, the world`s most powerful country, the United States, felt that it must act in concert with western Europe, in an organic alliance, the western alliance, that gave rise to the modern notion of "the west". The communist threat persuaded the US to subordinate, at least in part, its own identity and interests to that of "the west". The revolutions of 1989, which brought the cold war to an end and transformed the physiognomy of global politics, were exclusively European events. In reality, though, the cold war served to exaggerate Europe`s true position in the world and mask its underlying decline; 1989 was the last time that Europe was the centre of global affairs. Ever since, its star has been on the wane. That fact alone is a portent of the world that is now slowly taking shape.

I suppose one could make the point in a slightly different way using the example of Paris. In the May events of 1968, it was de rigueur to look to Paris as the laboratory of the future, a city that had the capacity to reshape the world, a place where new ideas were born, new movements emerged and new possibilities defined. In 1968 Paris signified the morrow. Nobody would seriously think like that today. Similarly French academe - the grandes écoles, the Sorbonne - used to be regarded as one of the great intellectual hubs of the world. No more. These historic institutions have long since been usurped by the top American universities. I use Paris here only by way of illustration of a wider point about European decline; in the 60s, Paris was Europe`s foremost city.

However, it is the end of the cold war and the emergence of the US as a hyperpower that has most clearly revealed the diminished status of Europe. Post 9/11, the US has made it abundantly clear that it no longer needs Europe, except as cheerleader and supporter. Michael Ignatieff, in his new book Empire Lite, tells the story of how the Europeans (with the partial exception of Britain) are not allowed anywhere near the key strategic operations in Afghanistan or elsewhere: they are confined to the menial role of policemen. The old symbiotic alliance has been replaced by a profoundly unequal relationship. The US no longer needs Europe except insofar as it can provide diplomatic legitimacy, peace-keeping capacity and money for its imperial ambitions.

Such an unequal relationship calls into question the very term "west". There remain many senses in which the idea still has powerful meaning: a shared history, a shared sense of values, a Christian culture, a racial affinity based on whiteness. But in the contemporary sense wrought by the cold war, the notion of the west is being eroded at a speed few would have thought possible even two years ago. The defining moment was clearly the Iraq war. The extent to which the US was prepared to act in a unilateralist fashion surprised many; what confounded expectations even more was the willingness of France and Germany to lead global opposition to the invasion and the violation of international law. The schism hopelessly split the western alliance, with the US and Britain on one side, and France and Germany on the other.

The schism also ran through the heart of Europe itself, with Spain, Italy, Portugal and many eastern European states siding with the US against France and Germany. On the eve of an enormous expansion of the European Union, the great project that has consumed the energies of the western part of the continent for half a century, Europe shows no sign of geopolitical cohesion, but rather promises to be irredeemably split in the new unipolar world. The temptation for many European countries of aligning with the overweening global power of our time is not to be underestimated: power attracts, mega-power commensurately more so. But in a world where Europe increasingly finds itself a secondary player, it hardly bodes well for the future role of the continent, and the EU itself, in the global order. In the face of these European divisions, it seems likely that France and Germany will engage in an even closer relationship. And with the rise of American unilateralism, Europe - at least the Franco-German part of it - will surely be propelled in the direction of acquiring a serious independent military capability.

But the decline of Europe is not to be measured solely in terms of its hugely diminished role and importance in the eyes of the US. For well over 30 years, the continent has accepted that it is America`s economic inferior. Far more striking, but virtually unseen in terms of opinion formers and public alike, is the loss of Europe`s position as the second most important economic region in the world. I am always struck by the way in which commentators and politicians like to boast that Britain is the fourth strongest economic power, as if this offers some kind of solace for our greatly reduced status in the world. Not for long it won`t. In a year or two, Britain will be overtaken by China, as will Germany shortly afterwards and, a little way down the road, Japan.

I will not detain you here with a battery of statistics about China`s rise; though given the extraordinary provincialism of our culture, we remain blissfully ignorant of the speed with which the world`s most populous country - and, indeed, the surrounding region - is being transformed. The point is that within the next five years, east Asia will be home to the second and third most powerful economies in the world. The world`s centre of gravity has already shifted to the Pacific, and east Asia has already displaced Europe as the second most powerful economic region.

It will take a long time for Britain - and Europe - to wake up to the meaning and implications of all this. Unlike the US, which has a thoroughly imperial mentality as expressed not least in the way in which its elite is engrossed in every aspect and part of the world, just as the British elite was in Victorian times, we have an increasingly provincial mindset. Let me give two small examples. Asian studies is an impoverished, marginal discipline in British universities. Almost every major US university has a thriving east Asian department; when I recently inquired about the state of European, and specifically British, studies at the major US universities, I was told that it was a decidedly declining area. Or take British secondary schools, public or private, where it is virtually impossible to learn Chinese. We remain mired in a backward-looking view of the world.

If New York and Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco long since overtook Paris in their global significance, so too have Beijing and Tokyo, Shanghai and Mumbai. London is still just about there, but it is difficult to imagine that being the case in 2020.

None of this is to suggest that Europe no longer matters: of course it does. President Chirac demonstrated how much Europe can matter when he stood up to the Americans over Iraq with a courage and foresight that helped to set clear limits to the exercise of US power. But it remains that Europe is - and will increasingly become - a secondary stage in world affairs, to be displaced by the US and east Asia, which, of course, above all means China.

· Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asian Research Centre

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