Der Krieg II - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[MaggieNoodle]

Weitere 130 000 Mann in den Irak.

<GUERRA EN IRAK | El despliegue militar
EE UU planea movilizar a otros 130.000 soldados en el Golfo para vencer la resistencia iraquí


EE UU, que ya dispone de 90.000 soldados en Irak, estudia enviar otros 130.000. Según la CNN, los refuerzos, unidades de blindados y de infantería mecanizada, llegarán en abril.>

(El Pais 28.3.03)

[Tribun100]

#1 von MaggieNoodle

Völlig richtig

[Hansjoerg]

# 1

hola,

traust du uns nicht zu, daß wir die nachrichten sehen?
das kommt doch schon den ganzen tag!

Hans

[MaggieNoodle]

#3, na wenn`s denn stets nur das absolut Neueste sein soll, dann ..... kann das gesamte WO-Board ja entfallen....

[MaggieNoodle]

Genossenschaftspanzer?

<Europäische Armee gegen die Übermacht der USA

Die Pläne von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder, die Verteidigungspolitik der europäischen Union zu stärken, ist auf offene Ohren gestoßen. Unterstützung erhielt er ausgerechnet von den Grünen. Es gehe darum, US-Alleingänge wie im Irak zu verhindern, sagte Fraktionschefin Krista Sager. Dazu müsse die Krisenvorbeugung und Verteidigungspolitik der EU auf Dauer gestärkt werden.
Irak-Krieg völkerrechtswidrig? Struck vermeidet Festlegung
Freiwilligenarmee für die Zukunft Cornelia Pieper im T-Online-Interview

Wehretat aufstocken
Im Gegensatz zu einigen ihrer grünen Kollegen sprach sie sich auch für eine Aufstockung des Verteidigungsetats aus, den Schröder als Konsequenz des Irak-Krieges in Aussicht gestellt hatte. Der Kanzler wollte aber zunächst die Bundeswehrreform abwarten. "Wir können einen höheren Wehretat langfristig nicht ausschließen", sagte Sager der "Berliner Zeitung".

Europäische Armee unverzichtbar
Für eine europäische Armee will sich der Europa-Abgeordnete Elmar Brok von der CDU einsetzen. Er unterstützt den Vorschlag Frankreichs, Deutschlands und Belgiens, eine solche Truppe zu schaffen. "Aber wichtig ist, dass sich auch andere Länder anschließen, und zwar auch solche, die in der Irak-Frage anderer Meinung waren", sagte der Vorsitzende des Auswärtigen Ausschusses.

Verdacht auf Antiamerikanismus unterbinden
Eine europäische Truppe dürfe nicht den Eindruck erwecken, sie richte sich gegen die USA oder die Nato. "Wenigstens ein Land der Kriegskoalition - Spanien, die Niederlande oder Polen - müsste dabei sein, damit der Verdacht des Antiamerikanismus gar nicht erst aufkommen kann", meinte Brok.

Sinnvoller Einsatz der nationalen Wehretats
Der Europa-Politiker sieht den Vorteil einer gemeinsamen Europa-Truppe auch in einer besseren Arbeitsteilung. "Die EU-Länder könnten ihre Verteidigungsetats sehr viel besser einsetzen als heute", sagte er. Er erklärte das am Beispiel des Militärtransportflugzeuges A400M: "Es wäre viel besser, wenn nicht jedes Land dieses Flugzeuge für sich anschaffen müsste. Stattdessen könnte die Europäische Union 150 oder 200 Flugzeuge kaufen und sie dem EU-Land zur Verfügung stellen, das sie gerade braucht."

FDP: Deutschland auf verlorenem Posten
Auch FDP-Generalsekretärin Cornelia Pieper hält eine europäische Armee zur Stärkung der nordatlantischen Allianz für sinnvoll. Das sagte sie T-Online in einem Interview. "Die jüngsten Ereignisse haben deutlich gemacht, dass Deutschland auf verlorenem Posten ist, wenn das Land einen Sonderweg geht", erklärte Pieper.

Krieg gegen Serbien war der Auslöser
Die Schaffung einer europäischen Armee ist schon lange im Gespräch. Aber so richtig in Gang gekommen sind die Vorbereitungen zumindest für eine schnelle Eingreiftruppe erst im Krieg gegen Serbien. Dieser Krieg hatte den Europäern - wie schon 1995 in Bosnien - die überwältigende militärische Übermacht der USA vor Augen geführt.

Eingreiftruppe als erster Schritt
Die Clinton-Administration hatte damals die europäischen Pläne befürwortet, vor allem weil dadurch ein großer Teil der Finanzlasten für die militärische Kontrolle der Welt auf die Europäer abgewälzt werden könnte. Befürchtungen gab es aber dahingehend, dass die europäischen Bestrebungen die Rolle der Nato als militärische Dachorganisation des Westens untergraben könnten. Auf dem EU-Gipfel in Nizza wurde die Eingreiftruppe als erster Schritt zu einer gemeinsamen europäischen Armee schließlich abgesegnet.


dpa/t-news > 28.03.03

[MaggieNoodle]

Vorbereitung für spätere Wiederaufbauhilfen??


<Mar 28, 6:19 AM EST

U.S. Troops Position Around Iraqi Capital

By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- America`s battle plan for Baghdad is taking shape, with U.S. forces now in position to strike the Iraqi capital from nearly all sides - or to mount a siege and wait for Saddam Hussein`s regime to fall to internal opposition.

As sporadic battles rage between American infantry and defiant Iraqi troops and paramilitary guerrillas, more armor and at least 100,000 reinforcing U.S. and allied troops are on their way to join the coalition force over the next few weeks.

In the interim, the American game plan is simple: bombs, bombs and more bombs.

U.S. and British aircraft are pounding some of the estimated 30,000 Republican Guard forces arrayed around Baghdad and striking inside the capital against Saddam`s levers of power and modes of communication.

The military early Friday rolled out new weapons - two 4,700-pound, satellite-guided "bunker busting" bombs were dropped from American B-2 bombers on a major communications tower on the east bank of the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. The bombs were twice the size of the bunker busting bombs that were being used before.


The bombing attack, aimed at disrupting communication between Saddam and his military leaders, gutted a seven-story telephone exchange, leaving the street strewn with rubble.

Powerful explosions rocked the capital during the night and Friday morning aircraft swooped low over the city. Anti-aircraft fire was intermittent.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf said the overnight air strikes killed seven people in Baghdad and wounded 92.

While the coalition war plan is flexible and certain to shift with events, U.S. leaders say they are operating on three rock-solid certainties: They won`t lose. They won`t set a timetable. And they won`t let up until Saddam is gone.

"There isn`t going to be a cease-fire," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told lawmakers on Thursday.

Rumsfeld also raised the possibility of a siege of Baghdad rather than a quick strike into the heart of the city.

Asked by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., what American ground troops would do once they reached Baghdad, Rumsfeld answered by saying Baghdad had to be isolated before it was taken.

He also alluded to what is happening at Basra, Iraq`s second-largest city. British forces there have laid siege, hoping for a successful uprising by the city`s Shiite population.

Rumsfeld noted that both Basra and Baghdad have large numbers of Shiites. "And they are not terribly favorable to the regime. They`ve been repressed," Rumsfeld said.

American Army and Marine infantry forces are arrayed to the south of Baghdad, some within 50 miles of the capital. They are led by the Army`s 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne divisions and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Coalition special operations forces are working both in western and northern Iraq, and the Army`s 173rd Airborne Brigade has secured an airfield in the north with 1,000 paratroopers. And more are on the way.

The movements suggest a strategy to encircle Baghdad with U.S. troops much as Saddam has ringed the city with his best trained and best equipped Republican Guard forces.

Special forces have cleared large areas of western Iraq, creating a crucial buffer to ensure Saddam`s forces cannot launch missile strikes on neighbors such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, a senior U.S. military commander said.

About 90,000 U.S. troops are inside Iraq, a senior defense official said Thursday, adding that was an increase of about 14,000 in just two days. More than 250,000 U.S. troops are in the region, including thousands aboard Navy ships at sea, on air bases in surrounding countries and at headquarters encampments.

Another 100,000 to 120,000 ground troops are expected to begin arriving in Kuwait in coming days, including the Army`s 4th Infantry, 1st Armored and 1st Cavalry divisions.

Airstrikes continue throughout Iraq, focusing again Thursday on the Hammurabi and Medina divisions of the Republican Guard located to the north, west and south of Baghdad.

"We`re tightening the noose around Saddam," Col. Tom Bright said Thursday in an interview on CNN`s "Larry King Live" from U.S. Central Command headquarters near Doha, Qatar. "We`re going to continue to take the fight to him. We`re taking it to him from the south and the west and the north."

Iraq`s defense minister on Thursday confirmed what many U.S. military officials suspected was Saddam`s strategy: Draw the coalition ground troops into Baghdad for a long, bloody, street-by-street battle.

"The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed said. "We feel that this war must be prolonged so the enemy pays a high price."

Rumsfeld said coalition troops would work to destroy the Republican Guard, but cautioned "it`s very likely that will be some of the toughest fighting that will occur.">

[MaggieNoodle]

Myers Speaks to Arab World via Al Jazeera
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2003 – The United States has absolutely no desire to stay in Iraq any longer than necessary, the U.S. military`s senior officer told the Arab world today.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard Myers reached out to the 60 million Arab viewers of the Al Jazeera satellite television network in an interview today.

Myers told Dana Budeiri, the Al Jazeera correspondent in the Pentagon, that the U.S.-led coalition will accomplish its mission of disarming Saddam Hussein.

A U.S. objective is to leave an Iraq that is better off "than it is under this brutal dictator," Myers said. "I think most of your viewers know the record of Saddam Hussein and the treatment of his own people and the treatment of his neighbors."

The United States will leave an Iraq that is intact, has a government that guarantees the rights of all citizens, and has no weapons of mass destruction, he said. "We want to do that as quickly as possible."

The U.S. military will pull out of Iraq as soon as the security situation is stable, Myers said. After Saddam falls, he added, there will be a military administration and that will shift to a civilian one. He hopes that the model of Afghanistan – where a civilian interim government took charge fairly quickly – can be followed in Iraq.

Myers said providing humanitarian assistance to Iraq is another pressing issue. He noted coalition troops have already brought humanitarian supplies into the country with them. Maritime forces are working to clear a channel so shipborne supplies can begin flowing in. "(Coalition forces) came into the country not only to fight the Iraqi regime but to provide humanitarian assistance," he said.

Myers said that coalition forces have not yet found any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. However, he added, forces have found new chemical and biological protection suits in a couple of places.

"People know full well that coalition forces do not have chemical weapons (and) do not have biological weapons," he said. "So the question that must be asked is why did this group of Fedayeen Saddam and Ba`ath Party folks have 3,000 chemical and biological protective suits?"

The Al Jazeera correspondent queried the chairman on the general steps involved in protecting Iraqi civilians and specifically about the Baghdad market that the Iraqi regime said was hit by coalition bombs. Myers said U.S. Central Command did not have targets near the area.

"We don`t know what caused that," he said. "We will continue to investigate to make sure, and if it was coalition forces, we will admit that."

But Iraqi forces also could have caused the tragedy. "Iraqi forces put their anti-aircraft forces in civilian neighborhoods – close to mosques, close to schools – it`s entirely possible that the damage was done by a surface-to- air missile that the Iraqis were trying to fire," he said.

Myers stressed that coalition forces will stand by their principles and do everything possible to spare civilians. "We have done this with our targeting so far," he said. "We don`t know how many civilian casualties or deaths, because we`re not on the ground. But we think they are very, very few.

"Our bombing has been very precise. You hear that from Baghdad – the lights are on, the waterworks are running," he said. "During the day, it`s pretty much life as usual in many neighborhoods."

Myers said coalition forces are taking great care to only apply power to regime forces that are resisting. "I can guarantee you that we will apply sufficient power to ensure that the end is never in doubt," he declared. "In fact I can assure you that we will win this war against the Iraqi regime – not the Iraqi people – and we will disarm Iraq.

"We still have a lot of tough fighting to do. We have not engaged the Republican Guard divisions yet. That should come here in the near future," he continued.

The coalition military plan is essentially on track, the general said. The number of coalition forces in Iraq continues to grow, and the United States continues to flow forces into the area. The 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, is beginning its deployment to the region.

Myers made a point that the coalition has more than 4,500 prisoners of war. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent is due to visit with Iraqi POWs tomorrow. He said wounded POWs have been cared for aboard the USNS Mercy.

"We are taking extraordinary care," Myers said. "They are under the care of the best medical staff and doctors this country has. We would only hope that the Iraqi regime would allow reciprocal visits and the international Red Cross to the prisoners of war that they hold so they can ascertain their conditions."

The chairman would not estimate how long hostilities will last. "We have two armored divisions roughly within 50 to 60 miles of Baghdad right now, a Marine division that`s a little bit further out," he said. "I can`t put precise timelines on it, but we`re satisfied all around."





http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2003/n03272003_200303278.…

[MaggieNoodle]

<Krieg am GolfNagelprobe Nordirak
Von Eckart Lohse Ausnahmsweise kommen die lauten Töne diesmal nicht aus Berlin, sondern aus Brüssel. Die EU-Kommission, namentlich der für die Erweiterung der Union zuständige Kommissar Verheugen, ein deutscher Sozialdemokrat, stellt in diesen Tagen die Verbindung her zwischen dem türkischen Vorgehen im Nordirak und ihrer Annäherung an die Europäische Union. Die Botschaft ist klar: Sollte Ankara mit einem größeren Truppenkontingent im Nordirak einmarschieren, so würde das den Weg zu der von den Türken ersehnten Vollmitgliedschaft in der EU erheblich steiniger machen. Zwar tat sich die Bundesregierung auch gerade erst mit Warnungen an Ankara hervor, ein Einmarsch im Nordirak hätte den Abzug der deutschen Soldaten aus den Awacs-Flugzeugen in der Türkei zur Folge. Doch ließ man es in den öffentlichen Verlautbarungen dabei bewenden. Der Bogen wurde nicht bis zur EU-Mitgliedschaft der Türkei gespannt. Wer nachfragt unter den außenpolitisch Verantwortlichen in Berlin, wird beschieden, jetzt sei nicht der Zeitpunkt, eine Diskussion über den türkischen Beitritt zur Europäischen Union zu führen, es gebe keine "Neubewertung unter dem Eindruck von Tagesereignissen". Die Türkei durchlaufe eine "extrem schwierige Situation", die Fortschritte, die sie auf dem Weg nach Europa mache, würden aber wie geplant erst im nächsten Jahr bewertet. Nur ein kleiner Hinweis auf die aktuelle Entwicklung in der Irak-Krise: Natürlich verfolge man die Ereignisse. Kein türkischer Einmarsch in Nordirak Außenminister Fischer telefonierte in diesen Tagen mit dem türkischen Außenminister Gül. Versichert wurde anschließend, Fischer habe keinen Zusammenhang zwischen dem türkischen Verhalten im Nordirak und dem EU-Beitritt hergestellt. Gleichwohl habe der deutsche den türkischen Außenminister aufgefordert, die Türkei möge nicht den Kredit verspielen, den sie in Europa habe. Selbst wenn Fischer tatsächlich nicht deutlicher geworden sein sollte, reicht das vollkommen aus als Hinweis. Am Dienstag telefonierte Fischer dann mit dem amerikanischen Außenminister Powell. Auch in diesem Gespräch soll keine Verbindung zwischen Einmarsch und EU-Aufnahme hergestellt worden sein, doch soll Einvernehmen darüber geherrscht haben, daß es nicht hilfreich für Ankara wäre, verhielte es sich jetzt widersprüchlich zum (ausnahmsweise übereinstimmenden) Interesse der EU und Amerikas. Diese Übereinstimmung gilt sowohl für den Wunsch, keinen türkischen Einmarsch im Nordirak zu erleben, als auch für den eines EU-Beitritts Ankaras. Schon bevor die Sorge, die Türkei könnte mit einem großen Truppenaufkommen in den Nordirak einmarschieren, Mitte des Monats in Berlin akut wurde und zu der Androhung des Abzugs der deutschen Awacs-Besatzung führte, hatten die Verantwortlichen in Berlin skeptisch auf die Entwicklung der Menschenrechtssituation in der Türkei geblickt. Die einstige Grünen-Vorsitzende Roth, mittlerweile neue Menschenrechtsbeauftragte der Bundesregierung und eine gute Kennerin der türkischen Verhältnisse, hatte noch am 13. März das Verbot der Kurdenpartei Hadep durch das türkische Verfassungsgericht getadelt. Rückschlag für Demokratisierung der Türkei Roth sprach von einem "herben Rückschlag" für die Demokratisierung in der Türkei, die doch in den vorigen Monaten "ein gutes Stück" vorangekommen sei. Roth bezog sich nicht auf einen möglichen Einmarsch im Nordirak. Doch bezeichnete sie den Umgang mit der kurdischen Minderheit als "Gradmesser für die Ernsthaftigkeit der türkischen Reformpolitik". Und dann machte sie doch noch den Schwenk zum heraufziehenden Irak-Krieg: "Gerade angesichts der aktuellen Irak-Krise ist es verheerend, wenn der Konflikt mit der kurdischen Minderheit zusätzlich geschürt wird." Nicht nur unter Abgeordneten bestand schon vor dem Beginn des Irak-Krieges die Befürchtung, dieser könne eine "Stagnation" der Entwicklung der Kurdenrechte zur Folge haben. Mit Sorge erinnern außenpolitisch Verantwortliche in Berlin daran, daß die Beitrittspartnerschaft der Türkei mit der Europäischen Union die Aufhebung des Ausnahmezustandes im Südosten des Landes vorsehe. Zwar sei es im November vorigen Jahres so gekommen, doch wurde schon vor Kriegsbeginn über die Wiedereinführung des Ausnahmezustandes gesprochen. „Menschenrechtslage insgesamt unbefriedigend“ Den Stand der Menschenrechtsentwicklung in der Türkei liest die Bundesregierung an der Zahl der Asylbewerber in Deutschland ab. Die größte Gruppe stellen die Kurden aus dem Nordirak, die zweitgrößte die Türken. Bezeichnenderweise sind 85 Prozent der türkischen Asylsuchenden Kurden. In Berlin wird die Anerkennungsquote bei den türkischen Asylsuchenden als "überdurchschnittlich hoch" bezeichnet. Im Bericht des Auswärtigen Amtes über die Situation in der Türkei heißt es: "Nach wie vor ist die Menschenrechtslage in der Türkei insgesamt unbefriedigend. Die gravierendsten Defizite betreffen Folter und Mißhandlung im Polizeigewahrsam sowie Einschränkungen der Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit. Ein beträchtlicher Teil der Menschenrechtsverletzungen steht in engem Zusammenhang mit der Kurdenproblematik." An all dem läßt sich leicht erkennen, daß sowohl die deutschen Behörden, die für die Anerkennung der Asylbewerber zuständig sind, als auch das Auswärtige Amt weit davon entfernt sind, mit großem Optimismus auf die Achtung der Menschenrechte in der Türkei zu sehen. Darüber können auch politische Sonntagsreden nicht hinwegtäuschen, die die Reformbemühungen der Türkei auf dem Gebiet der Menschenrechte loben. Insgesamt ist allerdings unter Regierungs- wie Oppositionspolitikern die Einschätzung verbreitet, die Türkei leiste viel, um die durch die Kopenhagener Kriterien vorgeschriebenen Reformschritte zu gehen und somit die Bedingungen für die Verhandlungen über einen EU-Beitritt zu erfüllen. Grundsätzlich kritische Haltung in Union Daß die Bundesregierung kein Interesse hat, die gegenwärtige Zuspitzung der Kurdenfrage in der Türkei und im Nordirak lautstark gegen Ankara und dessen Weg nach Brüssel zu wenden, ist verständlich. Schließlich ist es rot-grüner Wille, die Türkei in die EU zu befördern. Doch auch die CDU/CSU, die mehrheitlich gegen einen türkischen EU-Beitritt in absehbarer Zeit ist, hält sich derzeit auffällig zurück mit kritischen Bemerkungen über Ankaras mögliches militärisches Engagement im Nordirak. Zu hören ist gar, ein Einrücken mit einigen tausend Mann zur Aufrechterhaltung der Sicherheit könnte hingenommen werden. Diese Zurückhaltung ändert freilich nichts an der grundsätzlich kritischen Haltung in der Union. Der außenpolitische Sprecher der Bundestagsfraktion, der CDU-Politiker Pflüger, bekräftigt in diesen Tagen des Irak-Krieges seine Ablehnung. Er sei immer dagegen gewesen, der Türkei jetzt ein Datum für einen Beginn von Verhandlungen über einen EU-Beitritt in Aussicht zu stellen. Er ist der Ansicht, die Europäische Union sei mit der gerade beschlossenen Erweiterung schon so gefordert, daß sie den Beitritt der Türkei nicht auch noch verkraften könne. Pflüger spricht von einer "enormen Selbstüberschätzung der EU" und sagt voraus, daß der Versuch, Ankara aufzunehmen, scheitern werde. Doch sieht er das Problem mehr in der fehlenden Fähigkeit der Europäischen Union als in der Entschlossenheit der Türkei. In diesen Tagen, da die Situation im Nordirak immer ungewisser wird, sagt Pflüger: "Daß die Türken den Willen haben, die Kopenhagener Kriterien zu erfüllen, daran zweifele ich nicht eine Minute."elo. / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28.03.2003, Nr. 74 / Seite 1>

[MaggieNoodle]

.
Ein Blick zurück:

<LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?
Issue of 2003-03-17
Posted 2003-03-10
At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.



Perle served as a foreign-policy adviser in George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign—he had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan—but he chose not to take a senior position in the Administration. In mid-2001, however, he accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, a then obscure group that had been created by the Defense Department in 1985. Its members (there are around thirty of them) may be outside the government, but they have access to classified information and to senior policymakers, and give advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement. Most of the board’s proceedings are confidential.

As chairman of the board, Perle is considered to be a special government employee and therefore subject to a federal Code of Conduct. Those rules bar a special employee from participating in an official capacity in any matter in which he has a financial interest. “One of the general rules is that you don’t take advantage of your federal position to help yourself financially in any way,” a former government attorney who helped formulate the Code of Conduct told me. The point, the attorney added, is to “protect government processes from actual or apparent conflicts.”

Advisory groups like the Defense Policy Board enable knowledgeable people outside government to bring their skills and expertise to bear, in confidence, on key policy issues. Because such experts are often tied to the defense industry, however, there are inevitable conflicts. One board member told me that most members are active in finance and business, and on at least one occasion a member has left a meeting when a military or an intelligence product in which he has an active interest has come under discussion.

Four members of the Defense Policy Board told me that the board, which met most recently on February 27th and 28th, had not been informed of Perle’s involvement in Trireme. One board member, upon being told of Trireme and Perle’s meeting with Khashoggi, exclaimed, “Oh, get out of here. He’s the chairman! If you had a story about me setting up a company for homeland security, and I’ve put people on the board with whom I’m doing that business, I’d be had”—a reference to Gerald Hillman, who had almost no senior policy or military experience in government before being offered a post on the policy board. “Seems to me this is at the edge of or off the ethical charts. I think it would stink to high heaven.”

Hillman, a former McKinsey consultant, stunned at least one board member at the February meeting when he raised questions about the validity of Iraq’s existing oil contracts. “Hillman said the old contracts are bad news; he said we should kick out the Russians and the French,” the board member told me. “This was a serious conversation. We’d become the brokers. Then we’d be selling futures in the Iraqi oil company. I said to myself, ‘Oh, man. Don’t go down that road.’” Hillman denies making such statements at the meeting.

Larry Noble, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research organization, said of Perle’s Trireme involvement, “It’s not illegal, but it presents an appearance of a conflict. It’s enough to raise questions about the advice he’s giving to the Pentagon and why people in business are dealing with him.” Noble added, “The question is whether he’s trading off his advisory-committee relationship. If it’s a selling point for the firm he’s involved with, that means he’s a closer—the guy you bring in who doesn’t have to talk about money, but he’s the reason you’re doing the deal.”

Perle’s association with Trireme was not his first exposure to the link between high finance and high-level politics. He was born in New York City, graduated from the University of Southern California in 1964, and spent a decade in Senate-staff jobs before leaving government in 1980, to work for a military-consulting firm. The next year, he was back in government, as Assistant Secretary of Defense. In 1983, he was the subject of a New York Times investigation into an allegation that he recommended that the Army buy weapons from an Israeli company from whose owners he had, two years earlier, accepted a fifty-thousand-dollar fee. Perle later acknowledged that he had accepted the fee, but vigorously denied any wrongdoing. He had not recused himself in the matter, he explained, because the fee was for work he had done before he took the Defense Department job. He added, “The ultimate issue, of course, was a question of procurement, and I am not a procurement officer.” He was never officially accused of any ethical violations in the matter. Perle served in the Pentagon until 1987 and then became deeply involved in the lobbying and business worlds. Among other corporate commitments, he now serves as a director of a company doing business with the federal government: the Autonomy Corporation, a British firm that recently won a major federal contract in homeland security. When I asked him about that contract, Perle told me that there was no possible conflict, because the contract was obtained through competitive bidding, and “I never talked to anybody about it.”



Under Perle’s leadership, the policy board has become increasingly influential. He has used it as a bully pulpit, from which to advocate the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the use of preëmptive military action to combat terrorism. Perle had many allies for this approach, such as Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, but there was intense resistance throughout the bureaucracy—most notably at the State Department. Preëmption has since emerged as the overriding idea behind the Administration’s foreign policy. One former high-level intelligence official spoke with awe of Perle’s ability to “radically change government policy” even though he is a private citizen. “It’s an impressive achievement that an outsider can have so much influence, and has even been given an institutional base for his influence.”

Perle’s authority in the Bush Administration is buttressed by close association, politically and personally, with many important Administration figures, including Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is the Pentagon’s third-ranking civilian official. In 1989, Feith created International Advisors Incorporated, a lobbying firm whose main client was the government of Turkey. The firm retained Perle as an adviser between 1989 and 1994. Feith got his current position, according to a former high-level Defense Department official, only after Perle personally intervened with Rumsfeld, who was skeptical about him. Feith was directly involved in the strategic planning and conduct of the military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan; he now runs various aspects of the planning of the Iraqi war and its aftermath. He and Perle share the same views on many foreign-policy issues. Both have been calling for Saddam Hussein’s removal for years, long before September 11th. They also worked together, in 1996, to prepare a list of policy initiatives for Benjamin Netanyahu, shortly after his election as the Israeli Prime Minister. The suggestions included working toward regime change in Iraq. Feith and Perle were energetic supporters of Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial leader of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress, and have struggled with officials at the State Department and the C.I.A. about the future of Iraq.

Perle has also been an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, and Americans who are in its pay. He has often publicly rebuked former American government officials who are connected to research centers and foundations that are funded by the Saudis, and told the National Review last summer, “I think it’s a disgrace. They’re the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren’t for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government.” In August, the Saudi government was dismayed when the Washington Post revealed that the Defense Policy Board had received a briefing on July 10th from a Rand Corporation analyst named Laurent Murawiec, who depicted Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that the Bush Administration give the Saudi government an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its financial assets in the United States and its oil fields. Murawiec, it was later found, is a former editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine controlled by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., the perennial Presidential candidate, conspiracy theorist, and felon. According to Time, it was Perle himself who had invited Murawiec to make his presentation.



Perle’s hostility to the politics of the Saudi government did not stop him from meeting with potential Saudi investors for Trireme. Khashoggi and Zuhair told me that they understood that one of Trireme’s objectives was to seek the help of influential Saudis to win homeland-security contracts with the Saudi royal family for the businesses it financed. The profits for such contracts could be substantial. Saudi Arabia has spent nearly a billion dollars to survey and demarcate its eight-hundred-and-fifty-mile border with Yemen, and the second stage of that process will require billions more. Trireme apparently turned to Adnan Khashoggi for help.

Last month, I spoke with Khashoggi, who is sixty-seven and is recovering from open-heart surgery, at his penthouse apartment, overlooking the Mediterranean in Cannes. “I was the intermediary,” he said. According to Khashoggi, he was first approached by a Trireme official named Christopher Harriman. Khashoggi said that Harriman, an American businessman whom he knew from his jet-set days, when both men were fixtures on the European social scene, sent him the Trireme pitch letter. (Harriman has not answered my calls.) Khashoggi explained that before Christmas he and Harb Zuhair, the Saudi industrialist, had met with Harriman and Gerald Hillman in Paris and had discussed the possibility of a large investment in Trireme.

Zuhair was interested in more than the financial side; he also wanted to share his views on war and peace with someone who had influence with the Bush Administration. Though a Saudi, he had been born in Iraq, and he hoped that a negotiated, “step by step” solution could be found to avoid war. Zuhair recalls telling Harriman and Hillman, “If we have peace, it would be easy to raise a hundred million. We will bring development to the region.” Zuhair’s hope, Khashoggi told me, was to combine opportunities for peace with opportunities for investment. According to Khashoggi, Hillman and Harriman said that such a meeting could be arranged. Perle emerged, by virtue of his position on the policy board, as a natural catch; he was “the hook,” Khashoggi said, for obtaining the investment from Zuhair. Khashoggi said that he agreed to try to assemble potential investors for a private lunch with Perle.



The lunch took place on January 3rd at a seaside restaurant in Marseilles. (Perle has a vacation home in the South of France.) Those who attended the lunch differ about its purpose. According to both Khashoggi and Zuhair, there were two items on the agenda. The first was to give Zuhair a chance to propose a peaceful alternative to war with Iraq; Khashoggi said that he and Perle knew that such an alternative was far-fetched, but Zuhair had recently returned from a visit to Baghdad, and was eager to talk about it. The second, more important item, according to Khashoggi and Zuhair, was to pave the way for Zuhair to put together a group of ten Saudi businessmen who would invest ten million dollars each in Trireme.

“It was normal for us to see Perle,” Khashoggi told me. “We in the Middle East are accustomed to politicians who use their offices for whatever business they want. I organized the lunch for the purpose of Harb Zuhair to put his language to Perle. Perle politely listened, and the lunch was over.” Zuhair, in a telephone conversation with me, recalled that Perle had made it clear at the lunch that “he was above the money. He said he was more involved in politics, and the business is through the company”—Trireme. Perle, throughout the lunch, “stuck to his idea that ‘we have to get rid of Saddam,’” Zuhair said. As of early March, to the knowledge of Zuhair, no Saudi money had yet been invested in Trireme.

In my first telephone conversation with Gerald Hillman, in mid-February, before I knew of the involvement of Khashoggi and Zuhair, he assured me that Trireme had “nothing to do” with the Saudis. “I don’t know what you can do with them,” he said. “What we saw on September 11th was a grotesque manifestation of their ideology. Americans believe that the Saudis are supporting terrorism. We have no investment from them, or with them.” (Last week, he acknowledged that he had met with Khashoggi and Zuhair, but said that the meeting had been arranged by Harriman and that he hadn’t known that Zuhair would be there.) Perle, he insisted in February, “is not a financial creature. He doesn’t have any desire for financial gain.”

Perle, in a series of telephone interviews, acknowledged that he had met with two Saudis at the lunch in Marseilles, but he did not divulge their identities. (At that time, I still didn’t know who they were.) “There were two Saudis there,” he said. “But there was no discussion of Trireme. It was never mentioned and never discussed.” He firmly stated, “The lunch was not about money. It just would never have occurred to me to discuss investments, given the circumstances.” Perle added that one of the Saudis had information that Saddam was ready to surrender. “His message was a plea to negotiate with Saddam.”

When I asked Perle whether the Saudi businessmen at the lunch were being considered as possible investors in Trireme, he replied, “I don’t want Saudis as such, but the fund is open to any investor, and our European partners said that, through investment banks, they had had Saudis as investors.” Both Perle and Hillman stated categorically that there were currently no Saudi investments.

Khashoggi professes to be amused by the activities of Perle and Hillman as members of the policy board. As Khashoggi saw it, Trireme’s business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place. “If there is no war,” he told me, “why is there a need for security? If there is a war, of course, billions of dollars will have to be spent.” He commented, “You Americans blind yourself with your high integrity and your democratic morality against peddling influence, but they were peddling influence.”



When Perle’s lunch with Khashoggi and Zuhair, and his connection to Trireme, became known to a few ranking members of the Saudi royal family, they reacted with anger and astonishment. The meeting in Marseilles left Perle, one of the kingdom’s most vehement critics, exposed to a ferocious counterattack.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who has served as the Saudi Ambassador to the United States for twenty years, told me that he had got wind of Perle’s involvement with Trireme and the lunch in Marseilles. Bandar, who is in his early fifties, is a prominent member of the royal family (his father is the defense minister). He said that he was told that the contacts between Perle and Trireme and the Saudis were purely business, on all sides. After the 1991 Gulf War, Bandar told me, Perle had been involved in an unsuccessful attempt to sell security systems to the Saudi government, “and this company does security systems.” (Perle confirmed that he had been on the board of a company that attempted to make such a sale but said he was not directly involved in the project.)

“There is a split personality to Perle,” Bandar said. “Here he is, on the one hand, trying to make a hundred-million-dollar deal, and, on the other hand, there were elements of the appearance of blackmail—‘If we get in business, he’ll back off on Saudi Arabia’—as I have been informed by participants in the meeting.”

As for Perle’s meeting with Khashoggi and Zuhair, and the assertion that its purpose was to discuss politics, Bandar said, “There has to be deniability, and a cover story—a possible peace initiative in Iraq—is needed. I believe the Iraqi events are irrelevant. A business meeting took place.”



Zuhair, however, was apparently convinced that, thanks to his discussions with Trireme, he would have a chance to enter into a serious discussion with Perle about peace. A few days after the meeting in Paris, Hillman had sent Khashoggi a twelve-point memorandum, dated December 26, 2002, setting the conditions that Iraq would have to meet. “It is my belief,” the memorandum stated, “that if the United States obtained the following results it would not go to war against Iraq.” Saddam would have to admit that “Iraq has developed, and possesses, weapons of mass destruction.” He then would be allowed to resign and leave Iraq immediately, with his sons and some of his ministers.

Hillman sent Khashoggi a second memorandum a week later, the day before the lunch with Perle in Marseilles. “Following our recent discussions,” it said, “we have been thinking about an immediate test to ascertain that Iraq is sincere in its desire to surrender.” Five more steps were outlined, and an ambitious final request was made: that Khashoggi and Zuhair arrange a meeting with Prince Nawaf Abdul Aziz, the Saudi intelligence chief, “so that we can assist in Washington.”

Both Khashoggi and Zuhair were skeptical of the memorandums. Zuhair found them “absurd,” and Khashoggi told me that he thought they were amusing, and almost silly. “This was their thinking?” he recalled asking himself. “There was nothing to react to. While Harb was lobbying for Iraq, they were lobbying for Perle.”

In my initial conversation with Hillman, he said, “Richard had nothing to do with the writing of those letters. I informed him of it afterward, and he never said one word, even after I sent them to him. I thought my ideas were pretty clear, but I didn’t think Saddam would resign and I didn’t think he’d go into exile. I’m positive Richard does not believe that any of those things would happen.” Hillman said that he had drafted the memorandums with the help of his daughter, a college student. Perle, for his part, told me, “I didn’t write them and didn’t supply any content to them. I didn’t know about them until after they were drafted.”

The views set forth in the memorandums were, indeed, very different from those held by Perle, who has said publicly that Saddam will leave office only if he is forced out, and from those of his fellow hard-liners in the Bush Administration. Given Perle’s importance in American decision-making, and the risks of relying on a deal-maker with Adnan Khashoggi’s history, questions remain about Hillman’s drafting of such an amateurish peace proposal for Zuhair. Prince Bandar’s assertion—that the talk of peace was merely a pretext for some hard selling—is difficult to dismiss.

Hillman’s proposals, meanwhile, took on an unlikely life of their own. A month after the lunch, the proposals made their way to Al Hayat, a Saudi-owned newspaper published in London. If Perle had ever intended to dissociate himself from them, he did not succeed. The newspaper, in a dispatch headlined “washington offers to avert war in return for an international agreement to exile saddam,” characterized Hillman’s memorandums as “American” documents and said that the new proposals bore Perle’s imprimatur. The paper said that Perle and others had attended a series of “secret meetings” in an effort to avoid the pending war with Iraq, and “a scenario was discussed whereby Saddam Hussein would personally admit that his country was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction and he would agree to stop trying to acquire these weapons while he awaits exile.”

A few days later, the Beirut daily Al Safir published Arabic translations of the memorandums themselves, attributing them to Richard Perle. The proposals were said to have been submitted by Perle, and to “outline Washington’s future visions of Iraq.” Perle’s lunch with two Saudi businessmen was now elevated by Al Safir to a series of “recent American-Saudi negotiations” in which “the American side was represented by Richard Perle.” The newspaper added, “Publishing these documents is important because they shed light on the story of how war could have been avoided.” The documents, of course, did nothing of the kind.

When Perle was asked whether his dealings with Trireme might present the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said that anyone who saw such a conflict would be thinking “maliciously.” But Perle, in crisscrossing between the public and the private sectors, has put himself in a difficult position—one not uncommon to public men. He is credited with being the intellectual force behind a war that not everyone wants and that many suspect, however unfairly, of being driven by American business interests. There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war. In doing so, he has given ammunition not only to the Saudis but to his other ideological opponents as well.>

(The New Yorker)

Nebenbei: Die geschiedene Frau von "Mr. 2 Percent" Kashoggi, eine gebürtige Engländerin, lebt in Kalifornien.

[MaggieNoodle]

Saddams Truppen noch im Norden präsent

<Kurd-Controlled Town in Northern Iraq Shelled
Fri March 28, 2003 10:50 AM ET
CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq (Reuters) - The Kurdish-controlled Iraqi town of Chamchamal was shelled Friday in an apparent attack by President Saddam Hussein`s forces who had retreated the day before toward Kirkuk.
Two large explosions hit the nearby hilltops at around 5:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. EST) followed by a third minutes later that hit a Kurdish checkpoint near the center of town.

A Reuters correspondent saw shattered glass and a small crater but no signs of injuries at the checkpoint.

During the next 30 minutes another four bombs fell, three missing their target and one hitting a small suburb of the town.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

Around 24 hours earlier Iraqi forces had retreated from the frontline near Chamchamal, part of Kurd-controlled northern Iraq. Kurdish "peshmerga" fighters have already moved around 12.5 miles west along the road toward the key oil hub.>

[MaggieNoodle]

[MaggieNoodle]

[MaggieNoodle]

Luke Harding, Chamchamal

Our correspondent filed this report at 11.30am this morning

Monday March 24, 2003

"What happened here this morning, is that American war planes for the first time bombed Iraqi divisions on the front line here in Chamchamal.
"Chamchamal is a struggling town which is right on the cusp between territory controlled by the Kurds in northern Iraq and by the Iraqi army. Now the Iraqi army has been sitting on the ridges in front of them in bunker positions for weeks, expecting some sort of onslaught by the Americans and it finally happened at about 9.15am local time. Several planes swooped overhead through a grey sky and dropped six bombs directly on the Iraqi bunkers. Big plumes of black smoke rose into the sky.

"Then people saw Iraqi soldiers carrying away the injured and an ambulance coming up the hill. But the Iraqi soldiers were fleeing on to their side of the border back towards territory controlled by Saddam Hussein.

"The Kurds here feel that the bombing is long overdue - they`ve been expecting it for absolutely ages and it hasn`t happened. Mainly I think because the Iraqis have still been unable to open up a northern front in northern Iraq after the Turkish parliament earlier this month refused to allow them to deploy their forces, which would have been 62,000 troops.

"Now American special forces are arriving here finally. Several planes landed over the weekend with about a couple of hundred American troops, which is the first significant presence here. And obviously the bombing here this morning is a new departure.

"But at the same time, what is interesting to note is that everybody assumed these Iraqi soldiers sitting on the front line would surrender when the Americans bombed, and they didn`t. The feeling here is that the Iraqi army has taken a lot of courage from the events in southern Iraq and from the resistance there. Morale is rising among ordinary Iraqi soldiers, they are not fleeing, they are not surrendering, they are fighting."

(Guardian Unlimited)

[MaggieNoodle]

<Chamchamal district. This is one of the old districts that had belonged to the Kirkuk Governorate since the Ottoman rule. It is located ...
www.humanrights.de/~kurdweb/deportation/english/southern/kirkuk/Chamchamal-district.html>

[MaggieNoodle]

Warplanes Hammer Iraq

CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq, March 24, 2003 — Coalition warplanes bombed a military barracks in northern Iraq on Monday, shattering windows for miles around and igniting huge plumes of smoke. Frightened residents fled the area in a stream of cars, taxis and buses.

BATTLEFIELD IMAGES: Maps, Troop Movement, more!
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At least six bombs struck Iraqi positions with such force that the ground shook three miles away in the city of Chamchamal.

A top Kurdish military official, Rostam Kirkuki, said the Americans bombed the entire corridor between Chamchamal and Kirkuk, a key oil center.

The few residents who had not yet fled started to pack up and leave. Vehicles of all sizes poured onto the main road out of the town.

"People are evacuating, but not because of the bombing. They are afraid Saddam will respond with chemical weapons," said Ahmad Qafoor, a schoolteacher.

Warplanes continued to fly overhead after the first wave of bombings that struck the Bani Maqem barracks, close to the line that separates the Kurdish-held area, including Chamchamal, from territory under the control of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In the nearby village of Shoresh, civil servant Ali Nouri Karim said he spotted Iraqi soldiers evacuating the area and pulling people into ambulances.

Residents contacted by telephone in Kirkuk, 25 miles to the west of Chamchamal, said the city came under heavy bombardment by coalition aircraft. An unknown number of casualties were brought to local hospitals, they said.

Minutes before the bombings in Chamchamal, several loud explosions heard from the direction of Qara Hanjir, according to Kurdish soldier Mohammed Omar Mohammed.

Qara Hanjir is situated between Chamchamal and Kirkuk and is the site of an Iraq military barracks and command post.

The United States has been building up its presence in the Kurdish north, bringing in warplanes and military personnel. Over the weekend, U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq pounded positions of the militant Ansar al-Islam group, an Islamic group with alleged al-Qaida and Baghdad ties.

The Kurdish autonomous area has been under American and British aerial protection against Saddam since the 1991 Gulf War.

The United States wanted to use Turkey to attack Iraq from the north, but the Turkish parliament refused to grant access to ground troops.

Mohammad Haji Mahmoud, leader of the Kurdistan Social Democratic Party and a key member of the Iraqi opposition, said the Americans are welcome to use Kurdistan as a staging ground for a northern assault against Saddam`s regime.

"We`re not going to say no to anything the Americans want," he said. "America is the true liberator and the only one who could liberate us from this regime. We couldn`t do it with our rusty Kalashnikovs in more than 40 years."

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


Last Updated: Mar 24, 2003

[MaggieNoodle]

[MaggieNoodle]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[MaggieNoodle]

Army Reports Iraq Is Moving Toxic Arms to Its Troops
29 minutes ago

By BERNARD WEINRAUB The New York Times

WITH V CORPS HEADQUARTERS, near the Kuwait border, March 27 Statements from Iraqi prisoners of war and electronic eavesdropping on Iraqi government communications indicate that Saddam Hussein has moved chemical weapons to the Medina Division, one of three Republican Guard divisions guarding the approaches to Baghdad, Army officials said.

The Army officials said they strongly believed that Mr. Hussein would use the weapons as allied troops moved toward Baghdad to oust him and his government.

Officials with V Corps said intelligence information pointed to Mr. Hussein deploying 155-millimeter artillery weapons with shells carrying mustard gas as well as sarin, or nerve agents, an especially deadly weapon. Mr. Hussein used these chemical agents against the Iranians and the country`s Kurdish population in the 1980`s.

Army officials said monitoring the movement of chemical weapons was sometimes difficult because Mr. Hussein often hid chemical pellets inside bunkers that carried conventional armaments.

But some military officers said Mr. Hussein had, in the last week or so, moved the artillery pieces that could fire chemical weapons into hiding, not only near the Medina Division, south of Baghdad, but in western Iraq. Officials said Iraqi officers had been warned by the United States, through leaflets and other means, that they would be held responsible for war crimes if they participated in a chemical attack.

Intelligence officers said the apparent deployment of chemical weapons by Mr. Hussein was not merely a sign of rage by the Iraqi leader toward the Americans. Although deployment of the weapons would give the lie to Mr. Hussein`s denial that he had them, officers said that Mr. Hussein might be calculating that the step would actually turn to his advantage, and stunt the American assault.

Military officials said that, in the event of a chemical attack, American forces might receive an early warning if satellite photos picked up Iraqi units wearing protective gear against chemicals at a weapons site. Officials said the protective clothing was usually worn at least one hour before the launching of a chemical weapon. But officials also said that well-hidden Iraqi artillery sites about to launch such a weapon could possibly avoid detection.

Since the war started, American soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait have been threatened by Iraqi missiles, but any missiles that may have been launched have so far been intercepted and destroyed by Patriot missiles. No chemical weapons have been used against allied troops to date.

Col. Tim Madere, the V Corps chemical officer, said he was not alarmed about the potential for a chemical attack.

"The soldiers have gone through training and know what to do and know how their equipment works in the event we get hit," he said. "But it`s a concern because most soldiers have not experienced real agents."

Colonel Madere said such an attack would slow down the advance on Baghdad, but not seriously set back the effort to depose Mr. Hussein.

There are reports that Iraqi forces killed or injured more than 20,000 people in attacks against Kurds and other Iraqis in the 1980`s that involved nerve and mustard agents.

Mustard gas is a blister agent that causes medical casualties by burning or blistering exposed skin, eyes and lungs. It can remain a serious hazard for days and, if inhaled, may lead to death.

Nerve agents such as sarin, cyclosarin and tabun act within seconds of absorption through skin or inhalation. Untreated, the agents cause convulsions, loss of consciousness and death.

The United States military in Kuwait and Iraq not only carry protective gas masks and protective clothes, boots and gloves, but also antidote kits for nerve agents. These include atrophine as well as pralidoxime, which must be injected quickly after exposure to the gas.

In a report last year, the Central Intelligence Agency said that Iraq had not accounted for 15,000 artillery rockets. In the past, these rockets were the preferred means for delivering nerve agents. Iraq has also not accounted for about 550 artillery shells filled with mustard agent.

[rodex]

#18: Wenn die US-Aufklärung wirklich so gut informiert ist, wo der Irak seine chemischen Waffen versteckt hat, warum hat sie dies vor dem Krieg nicht einfach den UN-Inspekteuren mitgeteilt?

Und ein Tipp für die irakische Armee. Wenn ihr die Invasoren mal so richtig erschrecken wollt: Gasmasken aufsetzen, und in die Satelliten winken!

[MaggieNoodle]

War update
Compiled by FT staff
Published: February 13 2003 18:44 | Last Updated: March 28 2003 17:36

A summary of recent events

Friday March 28

Britain`s aid vessel Sir Galahad docked in the port of Umm Qasr carrying 650 tonnes of food and medicines, after being delayed by the need to clear Iraqi mines.
UK military officials say Iraqi militia opened fire on several thousand civilians trying to leave Basra, Iraq`s second city, which is surrounded by British troops.
US marines report that they have captured an Iraqi general at his home in Nasiriya in southern Iraq.
The US flies more troops and supplies into the Harir air strip in northern Iraq, which was secured by US paratroopers on Thursday.
Officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Iraqi Kurdish factions, consolidated their new front line after occupying positions abandoned by the Iraq close to the northern oil city of Kirkuk.
Allied warplanes pound Baghdad communication and command buildings in the early morning hours, marking the most powerful bombardment of the Iraqi capital in days.

[MaggieNoodle]

Überhaupt nichts mehr zu lachen? Ist ja traurig.

[MaggieNoodle]

Aus der FAZ von morgen.


Kommentar
Deutungshoheit über den Krieg
Von Michael Hanfeld

Wenn die Unwort-Forscher hierzulande das nächste Mal zusammenkommen, um zu entscheiden, welches Wort es wert sei, als das abgegriffenste des Jahres zu gelten, werden sie um einen Begriff nicht herumkommen: um den des "embedding", zu deutsch "Einbetten". Unter dieser Bezeichnung firmiert ein Verfahren, das die amerikanische Armee für den Krieg im Irak nicht neu erfunden hat, das vielmehr schon hundert Jahre alt ist, das Fernsehen dieser Tage aber in einer Weise bewegt, als sei eine Revolution des Journalismus im Gange.

Dabei folgen die Linien der Berichterstattung über den Irak-Krieg ebenso altbekannten Mustern. Während Journalisten aus anderen Nationen berichten, unparteiisch und auch voreingenommen, wissen die Kollegen aus Deutschland oftmals vieles, wenn nicht alles besser. Wo andere berichten, müssen sie kommentieren und demonstrieren, was andere, vor allem die Amerikaner, angeblich alles falsch machen. Kommentar und Bericht gehen in eins, in einem schlimmen Einzelfall reichte der Tonfall in einem Beitrag der ARD sogar bis zur kaum verhüllten Schadenfreude über Verluste bei den Truppen der Koalition. Mit solcher Häme und dem sich derart ausdrückenden Hochmut geht das spezielle "embedding" hiesiger Provenienz einher: Die Journalisten fühlen sich "eingebettet" in eine öffentliche Meinung, die mit überwältigender Mehrheit den Krieg im Irak verurteilt.

Für diese Haltung gibt es viele gute Gründe. Sie kann aber weder die handwerklichen Fehler noch die Verstöße gegen Grundsätze eines fairen und akkuraten Journalismus rechtfertigen. Der politische Konflikt zwischen der Bundesregierung und der "Koalition der Willigen" findet in der Berichterstattung seine journalistische Entsprechung - und das bezeichnenderweise fast ausschließlich in Beiträgen des öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehens, das sich ansonsten auf sein Informationsangebot einiges zugute halten kann. Dabei wird über all der Besserwisserei die entscheidende Frage der Berichterstattung über diesen Krieg gar nicht gestellt: Was sagen uns die Bilder über diesen Krieg? Was sagen sie über den Krieg an sich?

Wenn man Umfragen glauben darf, dann haben die Zuschauer nach der ersten Woche der Kampfhandlungen bereits genug gesehen. Die Sender stellen sich gerade darauf ein und kehren vom Ausnahmezustand zu ihrem normalen Programm zurück. Nur der amerikanische Nachrichtensender CNN ist und bleibt 24 Stunden am Stück an der Front. Mit all den "eingebetteten" Korrespondenten, deren Berichte sich schwerlich zu einem konsistenten Bild fügen, liefert er Eindrücke, die alle Phantasien von einem computergesteuerten, klinisch-sauberen Krieg Lügen strafen. Die Schlachten im Irak sähen eher nach dem Ersten als nach einem Dritten Weltkrieg aus, hat jemand bemerkt, und man muß nur eine Stunde bei den Aufnahmen hinsehen, die der CNN-Reporter macht, der mit einem amerikanischen Stoßtrupp unterwegs ist, zuschauen, wie sich die Soldaten im Norden und Süden des Irak eingraben, um an Remarques "Im Westen nichts Neues" zu denken: "Endlich wird es ruhig. Das Feuer ist über uns hingefegt und liegt nun auf den letzten Reservegräben. Wir riskieren einen Blick. Rote Raketen flattern am Himmel. Wahrscheinlich kommt ein Angriff." Als Werbefilm für die amerikanischen Streitkräfte werden die Bilder von CNN schwerlich durchgehen.

Sie sind abschreckend, erschreckend und waren zu einer Verherrlichung nur so lange geeignet, wie es nicht zum Kampf kam. Sie verstellen den Blick auf größere Zusammenhänge, sie bannen die Katastrophe eines Augenblicks und brennen sie dem Betrachter in einer Weise ins Bewußtsein, gegen die sich der Verstand wehren, die er aber nicht besiegen kann. Wie viele Kriege finden jeden Tag irgendwo auf diesem Planeten statt, ohne daß eine Kamera dabei ist und unsere moralische Entrüstung herausforderte? Wäre der Tschetschenien-Feldzug der russischen Armee denkbar gewesen, wenn ihn "eingebettete" Journalisten begleitet hätten? Hätten die den Irak-Krieg ablehnenden Staaten des "alten Europa" so lange gezögert, in Bosnien einzugreifen, wenn Reporter aus Srebrenica das Massenmorden der serbischen Armee direkt bezeugt hätten?

Die Bilder aus dem Irak-Krieg markieren ein moralisches Dilemma. Sie sind zugleich obszön, sie sind Teil einer Propagandaschlacht, auf deren anderer Seite, CNN gegenüber, der arabische Nachrichtensender "Al Dschazira" steht, der nichts dabei findet, im großen Stil auf das von der irakischen Regierung bereitgestellte Bildmaterial zuzugreifen - was zu zweifelhaften Erfolgen der Bagdader Propaganda und zu einer merkwürdigen Gleichsetzung der Kriegsparteien führt. Während niemand bestreitet, daß Saddam Hussein ein Mörderregime führt, sogar die schärfsten Kritiker des Krieges annehmen, daß der Diktator chemische und biologische Waffen durchaus besitzt und sie möglicherweise sogar einsetzt, stehen die Pressekonferenzen seiner Propagandisten im Maßstab eins zu eins neben den Verlautbarungen aus Washington, London und dem amerikanischen Hauptquartier in Qatar.

Diesen Prozeß, bei dem eine diesmal geopolitische Konstellation ebenfalls ihre Entsprechung im Journalismus findet, zu analysieren, das wäre eine verdienstvolle Aufgabe, die auch das deutsche Fernsehen leisten könnte. Doch müßte man hierzu erst einmal selbst die Standards umfassender Berichterstattung erreichen, auf deren Grundlage sich ein jeder selbst ein Urteil bilden und dann immer noch gegen oder für diesen Krieg sein kann. Ob das Fernsehen es bis zum Ende dieses Feldzuges dahin schafft, das muß vermutlich bezweifelt werden.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29.03.2003, Nr. 75 / Seite 1

[MaggieNoodle]

Press Watchdog Heading to Iraq Frontline
36 minutes ago


PARIS (Reuters) - Media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres is sending a representative to Iraq to investigate first-hand the amount of press freedom given to hundreds of reporters incorporated into U.S. army units.


Concerned about possible censorship in the U.S.-led war, RSF (Reporters Without Borders) is sending a member journalist to Iraq in the coming days with a Germany-based U.S. army unit, RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard told Reuters on Friday.


Once there, Tania Church-Much, the head of RSF Canada and a journalist at Global Television Network of Canada, will report back how the system of "embedding" correspondents with U.S. army units is working.


"No one is questioning the merits of this embedding policy, which is giving journalists far greater access than they had in the 1991 Gulf War, but there are some controls that we aren`t happy about," Menard said.


Around 600 reporters are hunkered down alongside U.S. and British forces in Iraq, pushing out news reports and Hollywood-style TV footage straight from the battlefield.


Yet despite the frontline access, reporters attached to invading troops have to work under restrictions such as observing embargoes and limits on certain images.


Earlier this month, RSF urged the United States not to obstruct the media in war reporting and said it was worried journalists working independently might not be given protection or access to U.S. military information.