Top News Article | Reuters.com
Milosevic feared he was being poisoned: lawyer
Sat Mar 11, 2006 1:07 PM ET
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic feared he was being poisoned in his detention cell in The Hague, his lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic said on Saturday hours after the tribunal announced Milosevic's death.
"Today, I have filed an official request to the tribunal to have the autopsy carried out in Moscow, having in mind his claims yesterday that he was being poisoned in the jail," Tomanovic told reporters in The Hague.
Acting on a request from Milosevic, Tomanovic said he had made a request for protection for his client to the Russian embassy in The Netherlands and to the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow.
"I demanded protection for Slobodan Milosevic over his claims that he was being poisoned. I still haven't received any reply and that's all I have to say at this time," the lawyer said.
Milosevic conducted his own defense at the war crimes trial. Tomanovic acted as his legal representative in other matters as well as helping him prepare his defense.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Milosevic's death raises questions
Top News Article | Reuters.com
Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:54 PM ET
By Alexandra Hudson
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal hopes an autopsy on Slobodan Milosevic on Sunday will clear up the cause of his death in his cell only months before a verdict was due in his four-year-old trial.
Milosevic, branded the "Butcher of the Balkans" for conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, was found dead on Saturday, prompting some world figures and relatives of war victims to say they had been robbed of justice.
As questions were raised as to why the trial had dragged on for so long, a tribunal spokeswoman said there was no indication the 64-year-old former Yugoslav president -- who suffered from a heart condition and high blood pressure -- committed suicide.
Milosevic's lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic told reporters his client had feared he was being poisoned but the tribunal rejected a request for the autopsy to take place in Russia.
Milosevic rose to the top of Yugoslav politics in the power vacuum left by the 1980 death of Yugoslavia's post-World War Two communist dictator Marshal Josip Broz Tito.
Elected Serbian president in 1990, he ruled with an iron grip until his overthrow in 2000. There was little sign of grief in Serbia, now in talks on first steps toward EU membership.
Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in indictments covering conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo as Yugoslavia imploded.
The charges included involvement in the siege of Sarajevo during the 1992-95 Bosnia war and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, Europe's worst single atrocity since World War Two.
Serbia and Montenegro's Minister for Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities, Rasim Ljajic, would travel to The Hague on Sunday with two pathologists for the autopsy, officials said.
Milosevic's trial, Europe's most significant war crimes case since top Nazis were tried after World War Two, began in February 2002.
ROBBED OF JUSTICE
The tribunal faces questions from those who feel robbed of justice about why the trial had gone on so long compared with the one-year life of Nuremberg and the more limited scope of Saddam Hussein's trial in Iraq.
Milosevic's ill-health had repeatedly interrupted his trial. Last month, the court rejected his bid to go to Russia for medical treatment, noting the trial was nearly finished.
The tribunal also faces questions over monitoring of inmates at its detention center because Milosevic's death was the second within a week after the suicide of former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic.
A former ally of Milosevic already convicted for war crimes, Babic was a key witness against the former Yugoslav leader, accusing him of bringing shame on Serbs.
Normal detention center procedures mean inmates are checked every 30 minutes during the night.
U.N. chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, due to hold a news conference in The Hague at 1100 GMT, said: "The death of Slobodan Milosevic, a few weeks before the completion of his trial, will prevent justice to be done in his case."
But she said in a statement others must be punished for the crimes he was accused of and said six war crimes suspects still at large, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, must be arrested.
European Union foreign ministers reminded Serbia on Saturday it must arrest the fugitives or risk its bid to join the bloc.
Milosevic's death occurred at a difficult time for Serbia with Kosovo poised to win independence and Montenegro also set to vote on a split from Belgrade in a referendum in May.
Only a single wreath and two candles were placed at Milosevic's Socialist Party headquarters and a handful of mourners displayed posters. Hardline nationalist parties said he should be buried in the national heroes' cemetery.
Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:54 PM ET
By Alexandra Hudson
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal hopes an autopsy on Slobodan Milosevic on Sunday will clear up the cause of his death in his cell only months before a verdict was due in his four-year-old trial.
Milosevic, branded the "Butcher of the Balkans" for conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, was found dead on Saturday, prompting some world figures and relatives of war victims to say they had been robbed of justice.
As questions were raised as to why the trial had dragged on for so long, a tribunal spokeswoman said there was no indication the 64-year-old former Yugoslav president -- who suffered from a heart condition and high blood pressure -- committed suicide.
Milosevic's lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic told reporters his client had feared he was being poisoned but the tribunal rejected a request for the autopsy to take place in Russia.
Milosevic rose to the top of Yugoslav politics in the power vacuum left by the 1980 death of Yugoslavia's post-World War Two communist dictator Marshal Josip Broz Tito.
Elected Serbian president in 1990, he ruled with an iron grip until his overthrow in 2000. There was little sign of grief in Serbia, now in talks on first steps toward EU membership.
Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in indictments covering conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo as Yugoslavia imploded.
The charges included involvement in the siege of Sarajevo during the 1992-95 Bosnia war and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, Europe's worst single atrocity since World War Two.
Serbia and Montenegro's Minister for Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities, Rasim Ljajic, would travel to The Hague on Sunday with two pathologists for the autopsy, officials said.
Milosevic's trial, Europe's most significant war crimes case since top Nazis were tried after World War Two, began in February 2002.
ROBBED OF JUSTICE
The tribunal faces questions from those who feel robbed of justice about why the trial had gone on so long compared with the one-year life of Nuremberg and the more limited scope of Saddam Hussein's trial in Iraq.
Milosevic's ill-health had repeatedly interrupted his trial. Last month, the court rejected his bid to go to Russia for medical treatment, noting the trial was nearly finished.
The tribunal also faces questions over monitoring of inmates at its detention center because Milosevic's death was the second within a week after the suicide of former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic.
A former ally of Milosevic already convicted for war crimes, Babic was a key witness against the former Yugoslav leader, accusing him of bringing shame on Serbs.
Normal detention center procedures mean inmates are checked every 30 minutes during the night.
U.N. chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, due to hold a news conference in The Hague at 1100 GMT, said: "The death of Slobodan Milosevic, a few weeks before the completion of his trial, will prevent justice to be done in his case."
But she said in a statement others must be punished for the crimes he was accused of and said six war crimes suspects still at large, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, must be arrested.
European Union foreign ministers reminded Serbia on Saturday it must arrest the fugitives or risk its bid to join the bloc.
Milosevic's death occurred at a difficult time for Serbia with Kosovo poised to win independence and Montenegro also set to vote on a split from Belgrade in a referendum in May.
Only a single wreath and two candles were placed at Milosevic's Socialist Party headquarters and a handful of mourners displayed posters. Hardline nationalist parties said he should be buried in the national heroes' cemetery.
Helen Thomas | Lap Dogs of the Press
Helen Thomas | Lap Dogs of the Press
Lap Dogs of the Press
By Helen Thomas
The Nation
Friday 10 March 2006
Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed - conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and "spin" - nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out - no questions asked.
Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: "When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble."
The naive complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. One example: At President Bush's March 6, 2003, news conference, in which he made it eminently clear that the United States was going to war, one reporter pleased the "born again" Bush when she asked him if he prayed about going to war. And so it went.
After all, two of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had kept up a drumbeat for war with Iraq to bring down Dictator Saddam Hussein. They accepted almost unquestioningly the bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the dubious White House rationale that proved to be so costly on a human scale, not to mention a drain on the Treasury. The Post was much more hawkish than the Times - running many editorials pumping up the need to wage war against the Iraqi dictator - but both newspapers played into the hands of the Administration.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his ninety-minute "boffo" statement on Saddam's lethal toxic arsenal on February 5, 2003, before the United Nations, the Times said he left "little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal" a so-called smoking gun or weapons of mass destruction. After two US special weapons inspection task forces, headed by chief weapons inspector David Kay and later by Charles Duelfer, came up empty in the scouring of Iraq for WMD, did you hear any apologies from the Bush Administration? Of course not. It simply changed its rationale for the war - several times. Nor did the media say much about the failed weapons search. Several newspapers made it a front-page story but only gave it one-day coverage. As for Powell, he simply lost his halo. The newspapers played his back-pedaling inconspicuously on the back pages.
My concern is why the nation's media were so gullible. Did they really think it was all going to be so easy, a "cakewalk," a superpower invading a Third World country? Why did the Washington press corps forgo its traditional skepticism? Why did reporters become cheerleaders for a deceptive Administration? Could it be that no one wanted to stand alone outside Washington's pack journalism?
Tribune Media Services editor Robert Koehler summed it up best. In his August 20, 2004, column in the San Francisco Chronicle Koehler wrote, "Our print media pacesetters, the New York Times, and just the other day, the Washington Post, have searched their souls over the misleading pre-war coverage they foisted on the nation last year, and blurted out qualified Reaganesque mea culpas: 'Mistakes were made.'"
All the blame cannot be laid at the doorstep of the print media. CNN's war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, was critical of her own network for not asking enough questions about WMD. She attributed it to the competition for ratings with Fox, which had an inside track to top Administration officials.
Despite the apologies of the mainstream press for not having vigilantly questioned evidence of WMD and links to terrorists in the early stages of the war, the newspapers dropped the ball again by ignoring for days a damaging report in the London Times on May 1, 2005. That report revealed the so-called Downing Street memo, the minutes of a high-powered confidential meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with his top advisers on Bush's forthcoming plans to attack Iraq. At the secret session Richard Dearlove, former head of British intelligence, told Blair that Bush "wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The Downing Street memo was a bombshell when discussed by the bloggers, but the mainstream print media ignored it until it became too embarrassing to suppress any longer. The Post discounted the memo as old news and pointed to reports it had many months before on the buildup to the war. Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley decided that the classified minutes of the Blair meeting were not a "smoking gun." The New York Times touched on the memo in a dispatch during the last days leading up to the British elections, but put it in the tenth paragraph.
All this took me back to the days immediately following the unraveling of the Watergate scandal. The White House press corps realized it had fallen asleep at the switch - not that all the investigative reporting could have been done by those on the so-called "body watch," which travels everywhere with the President and has no time to dig for facts. But looking back, they knew they had missed many clues on the Watergate scandal and were determined to become much more skeptical of what was being dished out to them at the daily briefings. And, indeed, they were. The White House press room became a lion's den.
By contrast, after the White House lost its credibility in rationalizing the pre-emptive assault on Iraq, the correspondents began to come out of their coma, yet they were still too timid to challenge Administration officials, who were trying to put a good face on a bad situation.
I recall one exchange of mine with press secretary Scott McClellan last May that illustrates the difference, and what I mean by the skeptical reporting during Watergate.
Helen: The other day, in fact this week, you [McClellan] said that we, the United States, are in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history?
Scott: No. We are ... that's where we are currently.
Helen: In view of your credibility, which is already mired ... how can you say that?
Scott: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically elected governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Helen: Were we invited into Iraq?
Scott: There are democratically elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, but we are there today.
Helen: You mean, if they asked us out, that we would have left?
Scott: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments.
Helen: I'm talking about today, too.
Scott: We are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.
Helen: Did we invade those countries?
At that point McClellan called on another reporter.
Those were the days when I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore.
I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.
It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.
-------
Lap Dogs of the Press
By Helen Thomas
The Nation
Friday 10 March 2006
Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed - conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and "spin" - nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out - no questions asked.
Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: "When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble."
The naive complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. One example: At President Bush's March 6, 2003, news conference, in which he made it eminently clear that the United States was going to war, one reporter pleased the "born again" Bush when she asked him if he prayed about going to war. And so it went.
After all, two of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had kept up a drumbeat for war with Iraq to bring down Dictator Saddam Hussein. They accepted almost unquestioningly the bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the dubious White House rationale that proved to be so costly on a human scale, not to mention a drain on the Treasury. The Post was much more hawkish than the Times - running many editorials pumping up the need to wage war against the Iraqi dictator - but both newspapers played into the hands of the Administration.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his ninety-minute "boffo" statement on Saddam's lethal toxic arsenal on February 5, 2003, before the United Nations, the Times said he left "little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal" a so-called smoking gun or weapons of mass destruction. After two US special weapons inspection task forces, headed by chief weapons inspector David Kay and later by Charles Duelfer, came up empty in the scouring of Iraq for WMD, did you hear any apologies from the Bush Administration? Of course not. It simply changed its rationale for the war - several times. Nor did the media say much about the failed weapons search. Several newspapers made it a front-page story but only gave it one-day coverage. As for Powell, he simply lost his halo. The newspapers played his back-pedaling inconspicuously on the back pages.
My concern is why the nation's media were so gullible. Did they really think it was all going to be so easy, a "cakewalk," a superpower invading a Third World country? Why did the Washington press corps forgo its traditional skepticism? Why did reporters become cheerleaders for a deceptive Administration? Could it be that no one wanted to stand alone outside Washington's pack journalism?
Tribune Media Services editor Robert Koehler summed it up best. In his August 20, 2004, column in the San Francisco Chronicle Koehler wrote, "Our print media pacesetters, the New York Times, and just the other day, the Washington Post, have searched their souls over the misleading pre-war coverage they foisted on the nation last year, and blurted out qualified Reaganesque mea culpas: 'Mistakes were made.'"
All the blame cannot be laid at the doorstep of the print media. CNN's war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, was critical of her own network for not asking enough questions about WMD. She attributed it to the competition for ratings with Fox, which had an inside track to top Administration officials.
Despite the apologies of the mainstream press for not having vigilantly questioned evidence of WMD and links to terrorists in the early stages of the war, the newspapers dropped the ball again by ignoring for days a damaging report in the London Times on May 1, 2005. That report revealed the so-called Downing Street memo, the minutes of a high-powered confidential meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with his top advisers on Bush's forthcoming plans to attack Iraq. At the secret session Richard Dearlove, former head of British intelligence, told Blair that Bush "wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The Downing Street memo was a bombshell when discussed by the bloggers, but the mainstream print media ignored it until it became too embarrassing to suppress any longer. The Post discounted the memo as old news and pointed to reports it had many months before on the buildup to the war. Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley decided that the classified minutes of the Blair meeting were not a "smoking gun." The New York Times touched on the memo in a dispatch during the last days leading up to the British elections, but put it in the tenth paragraph.
All this took me back to the days immediately following the unraveling of the Watergate scandal. The White House press corps realized it had fallen asleep at the switch - not that all the investigative reporting could have been done by those on the so-called "body watch," which travels everywhere with the President and has no time to dig for facts. But looking back, they knew they had missed many clues on the Watergate scandal and were determined to become much more skeptical of what was being dished out to them at the daily briefings. And, indeed, they were. The White House press room became a lion's den.
By contrast, after the White House lost its credibility in rationalizing the pre-emptive assault on Iraq, the correspondents began to come out of their coma, yet they were still too timid to challenge Administration officials, who were trying to put a good face on a bad situation.
I recall one exchange of mine with press secretary Scott McClellan last May that illustrates the difference, and what I mean by the skeptical reporting during Watergate.
Helen: The other day, in fact this week, you [McClellan] said that we, the United States, are in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history?
Scott: No. We are ... that's where we are currently.
Helen: In view of your credibility, which is already mired ... how can you say that?
Scott: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically elected governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Helen: Were we invited into Iraq?
Scott: There are democratically elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, but we are there today.
Helen: You mean, if they asked us out, that we would have left?
Scott: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments.
Helen: I'm talking about today, too.
Scott: We are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.
Helen: Did we invade those countries?
At that point McClellan called on another reporter.
Those were the days when I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore.
I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.
It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.
-------
The Dubai Deal You Don't Know About
The Dubai Deal You Don't Know About
By Daren Fonda
Time Magazine
Thursday 09 March 2006
Even as one company gives up on US ports, a different Middle Eastern firm remains a major contractor for the Navy.
With midterm elections approaching, no politician wanted to go home and explain to voters why a company controlled by the government of Dubai was taking over operations at six US ports-without so much as a meow of protest from Congress. As it turns out, that won't be necessary. Dubai Ports World, the firm at the center of the controversy, announced today that it would give up its bid to manage US ports, agreeing to transfer the contracts to a "US entity."
Yet while one Dubai company may be giving up on US ports, another one shows no signs of quitting the US-or of giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), is an old British company that last January was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. ISS has more than 200 offices around the world and provides services to clients ranging from cruise ship operators to oil tankers to commercial cargo vessels. In the US, the company operates out of more than a dozen port cities, including Houston, Miami and New Orleans, arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores, among other things. The firm is also a defense contractor which has long worked for Britain's Royal Navy. And last June, the US Navy signed on too, awarding ISS a $50 million contract to be the "husbanding agent" for vessels in most Southwest Asia ports, including those in the Middle East, according to an unclassified Navy logistics manual for the Fifth Fleet and a press release from ISS.
Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when handing over US port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national security? Because it makes sense. Call it the reality of living in a globally connected business world. Your IBM laptop is now manufactured by a Chinese company that may outsource customer support to an Indian firm and the logistics to FedEx. Dubai companies aren't just buying overseas assets like hotels in New York and wax museums in London; they're providing jobs and business for US companies.
Boeing, for one, can only hope it doesn't receive a frosty reception the next time it wants to sell airplanes to Dubai's booming airline, Emirates. Rival Airbus would be more than happy to take advantage of Washington's creeping protectionism.
The Navy, for one, has long understood that it would be virtually impossible to rely solely on Western-owned companies for critical services. It simply couldn't operate without local firms providing logistics support at the 200 ports its ships visit around the world. After the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the Navy undertook a wide-scale review of contracting procedures, including those involving ship husbanding. As a result of that review, the Navy took several steps to increase the security of ships in foreign ports, but maintained its system of contracting. "We've been doing business in the Persian Gulf for 60 years," says a Navy official who was unable to confirm the details of the ISS contract. Moreover, Dubai is considered one of the best-equipped ports for the Navy-it's also a crucial logistical base for operations in the region, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No question, the husbanding contract provides the potential for mischief. Husbanding agents arrange everything from fuel to spare parts to fresh vegetables for vessels at ports of call. More critically, they often provide security, like erecting concrete barriers and what the military calls "force protection." Husbanding agents often learn weeks in advance of a ship's schedule so as to be prepared when the vessel arrives, information that the Navy keeps closely guarded since it could be invaluable in the hands of terrorists. The suicide bombing of the Cole, for instance, occurred less than three hours after the ship had completed mooring in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. "It would have been much more difficult for the bombers to execute the attack without some previous knowledge of the ship's schedule and its intent to pull into Aden," says a former Navy officer.
Contacted by TIME, a spokesman for ISS confirmed the existence of the contract, but said that confidentiality terms prevented him from discussing it. A statement issued by the firm declared that "ISS has undergone rigorous external security checks" and has "comprehensive internal policies on security." Regarding its US port operations, the company states that all port staff "are fully vetted and cleared and undergo a background check to enable them to work within the port limits."
While ISS doesn't appear eager to discuss its defense work, a press release issued last fall offers some details. The release states that ISS "will be responsible for providing all the logistics requirements of US Navy and Coast Guard ships in ports throughout the [Middle East] region." The release also notes that ISS may be asked to provide services for US military training exercises and "contingency operations inland." ISS's partner for those services? None other than KBR, the division of Halliburton - Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm - that has won billions of dollars in contracts for the Iraq war and reconstruction. Ironically, Halliburton's name has come up as a possible candidate to be the "US entity" to take over the US ports management from Dubai Ports World.
ISS, in fact, isn't the only Dubai company that has won big business with the Pentagon. In December 2004, another such firm, Seven Seas Shipchandlers, won a $700 million contract to be the prime vendor for maintenance and repair operations for troops in the US Central Command region, which includes the Middle East. Seven Seas has also provided food supplies to US troops in Iraq. Another Dubai-based firm, MAC International, is under contract to deliver $67.2 million worth of police trucks to the Army. Those vehicles, however, will bear a stamp that should please any Washington pol: Made In Detroit.
-------
By Daren Fonda
Time Magazine
Thursday 09 March 2006
Even as one company gives up on US ports, a different Middle Eastern firm remains a major contractor for the Navy.
With midterm elections approaching, no politician wanted to go home and explain to voters why a company controlled by the government of Dubai was taking over operations at six US ports-without so much as a meow of protest from Congress. As it turns out, that won't be necessary. Dubai Ports World, the firm at the center of the controversy, announced today that it would give up its bid to manage US ports, agreeing to transfer the contracts to a "US entity."
Yet while one Dubai company may be giving up on US ports, another one shows no signs of quitting the US-or of giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), is an old British company that last January was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. ISS has more than 200 offices around the world and provides services to clients ranging from cruise ship operators to oil tankers to commercial cargo vessels. In the US, the company operates out of more than a dozen port cities, including Houston, Miami and New Orleans, arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores, among other things. The firm is also a defense contractor which has long worked for Britain's Royal Navy. And last June, the US Navy signed on too, awarding ISS a $50 million contract to be the "husbanding agent" for vessels in most Southwest Asia ports, including those in the Middle East, according to an unclassified Navy logistics manual for the Fifth Fleet and a press release from ISS.
Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when handing over US port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national security? Because it makes sense. Call it the reality of living in a globally connected business world. Your IBM laptop is now manufactured by a Chinese company that may outsource customer support to an Indian firm and the logistics to FedEx. Dubai companies aren't just buying overseas assets like hotels in New York and wax museums in London; they're providing jobs and business for US companies.
Boeing, for one, can only hope it doesn't receive a frosty reception the next time it wants to sell airplanes to Dubai's booming airline, Emirates. Rival Airbus would be more than happy to take advantage of Washington's creeping protectionism.
The Navy, for one, has long understood that it would be virtually impossible to rely solely on Western-owned companies for critical services. It simply couldn't operate without local firms providing logistics support at the 200 ports its ships visit around the world. After the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the Navy undertook a wide-scale review of contracting procedures, including those involving ship husbanding. As a result of that review, the Navy took several steps to increase the security of ships in foreign ports, but maintained its system of contracting. "We've been doing business in the Persian Gulf for 60 years," says a Navy official who was unable to confirm the details of the ISS contract. Moreover, Dubai is considered one of the best-equipped ports for the Navy-it's also a crucial logistical base for operations in the region, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No question, the husbanding contract provides the potential for mischief. Husbanding agents arrange everything from fuel to spare parts to fresh vegetables for vessels at ports of call. More critically, they often provide security, like erecting concrete barriers and what the military calls "force protection." Husbanding agents often learn weeks in advance of a ship's schedule so as to be prepared when the vessel arrives, information that the Navy keeps closely guarded since it could be invaluable in the hands of terrorists. The suicide bombing of the Cole, for instance, occurred less than three hours after the ship had completed mooring in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. "It would have been much more difficult for the bombers to execute the attack without some previous knowledge of the ship's schedule and its intent to pull into Aden," says a former Navy officer.
Contacted by TIME, a spokesman for ISS confirmed the existence of the contract, but said that confidentiality terms prevented him from discussing it. A statement issued by the firm declared that "ISS has undergone rigorous external security checks" and has "comprehensive internal policies on security." Regarding its US port operations, the company states that all port staff "are fully vetted and cleared and undergo a background check to enable them to work within the port limits."
While ISS doesn't appear eager to discuss its defense work, a press release issued last fall offers some details. The release states that ISS "will be responsible for providing all the logistics requirements of US Navy and Coast Guard ships in ports throughout the [Middle East] region." The release also notes that ISS may be asked to provide services for US military training exercises and "contingency operations inland." ISS's partner for those services? None other than KBR, the division of Halliburton - Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm - that has won billions of dollars in contracts for the Iraq war and reconstruction. Ironically, Halliburton's name has come up as a possible candidate to be the "US entity" to take over the US ports management from Dubai Ports World.
ISS, in fact, isn't the only Dubai company that has won big business with the Pentagon. In December 2004, another such firm, Seven Seas Shipchandlers, won a $700 million contract to be the prime vendor for maintenance and repair operations for troops in the US Central Command region, which includes the Middle East. Seven Seas has also provided food supplies to US troops in Iraq. Another Dubai-based firm, MAC International, is under contract to deliver $67.2 million worth of police trucks to the Army. Those vehicles, however, will bear a stamp that should please any Washington pol: Made In Detroit.
-------
Milosevic dies in jail: UN tribunal
News One Article | Reuters.com
Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:37 AM ET
By Nicola Leske
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died, the UN tribunal said on Saturday, just months before his trial for genocide and war crimes in the Balkans wars in the 1990s was expected to conclude.
"Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell at the United Nations detention unit," the tribunal said in a statement.
"The guard immediately alerted the detention unit officer in command and the medical officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead."
The UN court said the Dutch police and a Dutch coroner were called in and started an inquiry. A full autopsy and toxicological examination have been ordered. Milosevic's family has been informed, it added.
A tribunal spokeswoman said she could not comment on the cause of death until the autopsy was completed, but added: "We have no indication that it was suicide."
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters in Salzburg that Milosevic had died of natural causes.
"I would like to spare a thought for all those who suffered so much from ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of men, women and children, which Milosevic conceived and planned," he said.
Milosevic, 64, suffered a heart condition and high blood pressure which had repeatedly interrupted his trial in The Hague on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
As news of the death swept through the Balkans, an official of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Zoran Andjelkovic, said: "We expect the tribunal to explain how was it possible, and why they did not let him have treatment in Russia".
Another Socialist party official, reached on his car phone, said simply: "They killed him, the bastards."
ILLNESS
Cardiologists treating Milosevic in The Hague had warned he was at risk of a potentially life threatening condition known as a hypertensive emergency, when surges in blood pressure can damage the heart, kidneys and central nervous system.
Last month, the tribunal rejected a request by Milosevic to travel to Russia for specialist medical treatment, noting that his trial -- that has already lasted four years -- was in the final stages and he might not return to complete it.
Milosevic, who was overthrown in 2000 and sent to The Hague in June 2001, said last month his health was worsening and he was hearing noises in his head. A lawyer by training, Milosevic was defending himself.
Steven Kay, a lawyer appointed by the tribunal to help Milosevic prepare his case, said the former Serb strongman had told him a few weeks ago he had no intention of taking his own life after working so hard to defend himself.
"He knew the risk that he was taking," Kay told BBC television, adding the pressure of defending himself raised his blood pressure but the case was expected to wrap up soon.
"There was an end in sight."
Milosevic's brother lives in Russia and prosecutors suspect his wife and son do too. The prosecution had opposed his release despite a promise by Russia to return him, fearing he could say his health stopped him from traveling back to The Hague.
Milosevic had used up more than four-fifths of the 150 days allotted for his defense, suggesting the case could have been wrapped up in the next few months barring any new delays. Judges would then need several months to deliberate before a verdict.
Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in complex indictments covering conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. He had declined to enter a plea.
Last week, former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic committed suicide at the tribunal's detention center. Babic had testified against Milosevic and was in The Hague to appear in the trial of another top Croatian Serb.
(Additional reporting by Douglas Hamilton in Belgrade)
Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:37 AM ET
By Nicola Leske
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died, the UN tribunal said on Saturday, just months before his trial for genocide and war crimes in the Balkans wars in the 1990s was expected to conclude.
"Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell at the United Nations detention unit," the tribunal said in a statement.
"The guard immediately alerted the detention unit officer in command and the medical officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead."
The UN court said the Dutch police and a Dutch coroner were called in and started an inquiry. A full autopsy and toxicological examination have been ordered. Milosevic's family has been informed, it added.
A tribunal spokeswoman said she could not comment on the cause of death until the autopsy was completed, but added: "We have no indication that it was suicide."
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters in Salzburg that Milosevic had died of natural causes.
"I would like to spare a thought for all those who suffered so much from ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of men, women and children, which Milosevic conceived and planned," he said.
Milosevic, 64, suffered a heart condition and high blood pressure which had repeatedly interrupted his trial in The Hague on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
As news of the death swept through the Balkans, an official of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Zoran Andjelkovic, said: "We expect the tribunal to explain how was it possible, and why they did not let him have treatment in Russia".
Another Socialist party official, reached on his car phone, said simply: "They killed him, the bastards."
ILLNESS
Cardiologists treating Milosevic in The Hague had warned he was at risk of a potentially life threatening condition known as a hypertensive emergency, when surges in blood pressure can damage the heart, kidneys and central nervous system.
Last month, the tribunal rejected a request by Milosevic to travel to Russia for specialist medical treatment, noting that his trial -- that has already lasted four years -- was in the final stages and he might not return to complete it.
Milosevic, who was overthrown in 2000 and sent to The Hague in June 2001, said last month his health was worsening and he was hearing noises in his head. A lawyer by training, Milosevic was defending himself.
Steven Kay, a lawyer appointed by the tribunal to help Milosevic prepare his case, said the former Serb strongman had told him a few weeks ago he had no intention of taking his own life after working so hard to defend himself.
"He knew the risk that he was taking," Kay told BBC television, adding the pressure of defending himself raised his blood pressure but the case was expected to wrap up soon.
"There was an end in sight."
Milosevic's brother lives in Russia and prosecutors suspect his wife and son do too. The prosecution had opposed his release despite a promise by Russia to return him, fearing he could say his health stopped him from traveling back to The Hague.
Milosevic had used up more than four-fifths of the 150 days allotted for his defense, suggesting the case could have been wrapped up in the next few months barring any new delays. Judges would then need several months to deliberate before a verdict.
Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in complex indictments covering conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. He had declined to enter a plea.
Last week, former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic committed suicide at the tribunal's detention center. Babic had testified against Milosevic and was in The Hague to appear in the trial of another top Croatian Serb.
(Additional reporting by Douglas Hamilton in Belgrade)
Slobodan Milosevic Found Dead in His Cell- AP
Slobodan Milosevic Found Dead in His Cell
6 minutes ago
Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell at the U.N. detention center near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. He was 65.
A tribunal press officer in The Hague said Milosevic was found dead in his bed, apparently of natural causes.
Milosevic, who has been on trial on 66 counts of war crimes since Feb. 2002, has been in chronic ill health from a heart condition and stress.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.
6 minutes ago
Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell at the U.N. detention center near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. He was 65.
A tribunal press officer in The Hague said Milosevic was found dead in his bed, apparently of natural causes.
Milosevic, who has been on trial on 66 counts of war crimes since Feb. 2002, has been in chronic ill health from a heart condition and stress.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.
'Why' examines rise of military-industrial complex
Print This Page
'Why' examines rise of military-industrial complex
By BOB HOOVER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10-MAR-06
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence ... by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his famous _ and unheeded warning _ days before he left office and too late for him to do anything about it. Ike knew that complex firsthand because he presided over its extraordinary rise in the Cold War, but he condemned it anyway.
"Why We Fight," a documentary by the director of "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," is a low-key but penetrating history of how the wedding of the Pentagon and defense industry, now joined by Congress and neo-conservative think tanks, has caused Ike's prediction to come true with the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" that is the Iraqi occupation.
"There's no exit strategy (in Iraq) because we never intended to leave," claims Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA agent who effectively gives the historic framework for President Bush's military adventure. He claims that "14 military bases" are under construction in Iraq.
Also effective are Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired U.S. Army officer and vocal war critic; U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose interview is cut short when Vice President Dick Cheney calls; Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York cop who lost a son in the 9/11 attack; a Baghdad morgue doctor sadly reading off the civilian victims of American "smart bombs" that missed their targets; and a perpetually grinning William Kristol, neo-con poster boy.
In case you're thinking this film is just another Michael Moore imitator, think again. Eugene Jarecki is a careful polemicist who makes his case slowly from a diverse collection of interviews and history rather than broad stunts for easy laughs.
We now know the reasons for invading Iraq were invented or distorted. "Why We Fight" (the title comes from a series of World War II propaganda films) aims to explain how the very forces Eisenhower warned us of in 1961 have come to dominate America's foreign and military policies, which are now one and the same, Jarecki argues.
"We elected a government-contractor vice president," says Charles Lewis, who runs an investigative journalism think tank, in reinforcing Jarecki's thesis.
Much of "Why We Fight" is old news, but it's still information that matters.
(Bob Hoover can be reached at bhoover(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
'Why' examines rise of military-industrial complex
By BOB HOOVER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10-MAR-06
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence ... by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his famous _ and unheeded warning _ days before he left office and too late for him to do anything about it. Ike knew that complex firsthand because he presided over its extraordinary rise in the Cold War, but he condemned it anyway.
"Why We Fight," a documentary by the director of "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," is a low-key but penetrating history of how the wedding of the Pentagon and defense industry, now joined by Congress and neo-conservative think tanks, has caused Ike's prediction to come true with the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" that is the Iraqi occupation.
"There's no exit strategy (in Iraq) because we never intended to leave," claims Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA agent who effectively gives the historic framework for President Bush's military adventure. He claims that "14 military bases" are under construction in Iraq.
Also effective are Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired U.S. Army officer and vocal war critic; U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose interview is cut short when Vice President Dick Cheney calls; Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York cop who lost a son in the 9/11 attack; a Baghdad morgue doctor sadly reading off the civilian victims of American "smart bombs" that missed their targets; and a perpetually grinning William Kristol, neo-con poster boy.
In case you're thinking this film is just another Michael Moore imitator, think again. Eugene Jarecki is a careful polemicist who makes his case slowly from a diverse collection of interviews and history rather than broad stunts for easy laughs.
We now know the reasons for invading Iraq were invented or distorted. "Why We Fight" (the title comes from a series of World War II propaganda films) aims to explain how the very forces Eisenhower warned us of in 1961 have come to dominate America's foreign and military policies, which are now one and the same, Jarecki argues.
"We elected a government-contractor vice president," says Charles Lewis, who runs an investigative journalism think tank, in reinforcing Jarecki's thesis.
Much of "Why We Fight" is old news, but it's still information that matters.
(Bob Hoover can be reached at bhoover(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
Tycoon in war-crimes probe - 11 Mar 2006 - World News
Tycoon in war-crimes probe - 11 Mar 2006 - World News
Tycoon in war-crimes probe
11.03.06
By Robert Verkaik
Media tycoon Robert Maxwell was being investigated for war crimes and was to be interviewed by police just before he mysteriously drowned 15 years ago.
Revelations that Maxwell, once a captain in the British Army, knew that he faced a possible life sentence for murdering an unarmed German civilian in 1945 lend support to the theory that he later took his own life.
A Metropolitan Police file shows that weeks before he died detectives had begun questioning members of Maxwell's platoon and were preparing a case for the Crown Prosecution Service.
He would have been told about the inquiry and knew that if found guilty he would be the first Briton to be prosecuted for war crimes.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was enacted just six months before Maxwell's body was found floating in the Atlantic on November 5, 1991 after he had been holidaying on his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislane. No one has been able to explain how he died.
But the police file shows that by that time officers had already been able to establish the location in Germany where Maxwell was alleged to have killed an unarmed German civilian in cold blood.
The shooting on April 3, 1945 was first disclosed by Maxwell's authorised biographer Joe Haines in 1988.
Maxwell is quoted in the book as describing how he tried to capture a German town by threatening the population with a mortar bombardment, a tactic that had proved successful on a nearby village hours earlier.
In a letter to his wife, published in the book, Maxwell writes: " ... so I sent one of the Germans to go and fetch the mayor of the town. In half an hour's time he turned up and I told him that he had to go to tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up so we marched off, but as soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily he missed so I shot the mayor and withdrew."
The police file says: "The reported circumstances of the shooting gave rise to an allegation of war crimes. To some extent, the reporting of the shooting incident were confirmed by Mr Maxwell in an interview he gave in 1988 to the journalist Brian Walden."
But the police could do nothing until Parliament had enacted the war crimes legislation, which had been introduced to prosecute Nazi war criminals living in Britain.
It was only when a member of the public made a complaint under the new legislation that an official investigation could begin. Two officers from the police's historic war crimes unit began tracing members of Maxwell's platoon but had been unable to find a witness to the alleged shooting of the mayor.
On November 5, 1991, at the age of 68, Maxwell is presumed to have fallen overboard from the Lady Ghislane, which was cruising off the Canary Islands, and his body was subsequently found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The official verdict was accidental drowning, though many people, including members of his own family, believe he took his own life.
In was only after his death that it emerged that he had plundered the Mirror Group pensions' funds to bail out his ailing media empire.
Shortly after his bodied was buried in Jerusalem the police passed the conclusions of their investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The police file says that "it was determined that the case could be progressed no further, and it was closed in March 1991."
The file also shows that, although a lot of work had gone into the case, the police had not been able to find a reliable witness to corroborate the account in the Haines biography. They had also raised concerns about having to rely on the quotes attributed to Maxwell in the book. But Maxwell would not have known this and may have felt that the net was closing in.
Maxwell was immensely proud of his war record. He had fought bravely with the British Army from the beaches of Normandy to the bombed-out buildings of Berlin. In January 1945 his courageous actions won him a Military Cross, which was awarded to him by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.
But his hatred for the German people was borne out of his own bitter experiences. Later he was reported to have said that the two things he hated most were Germans and taxes.
By 1991 he had become very ill, with only one properly functioning lung and a serious heart condition. He must have known he was living on borrowed time and the prospect of spending his remaining life in prison for war crimes may have been too much for him to bear.
The only Briton to be convicted for war crimes in Britain was Anthony Sawoniuk, who was given two life sentences for the murder of 18 Jewish men and women in Eastern Europe during World War II. He died in prison last year aged 84.
- INDEPENDENT
Tycoon in war-crimes probe
11.03.06
By Robert Verkaik
Media tycoon Robert Maxwell was being investigated for war crimes and was to be interviewed by police just before he mysteriously drowned 15 years ago.
Revelations that Maxwell, once a captain in the British Army, knew that he faced a possible life sentence for murdering an unarmed German civilian in 1945 lend support to the theory that he later took his own life.
A Metropolitan Police file shows that weeks before he died detectives had begun questioning members of Maxwell's platoon and were preparing a case for the Crown Prosecution Service.
He would have been told about the inquiry and knew that if found guilty he would be the first Briton to be prosecuted for war crimes.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was enacted just six months before Maxwell's body was found floating in the Atlantic on November 5, 1991 after he had been holidaying on his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislane. No one has been able to explain how he died.
But the police file shows that by that time officers had already been able to establish the location in Germany where Maxwell was alleged to have killed an unarmed German civilian in cold blood.
The shooting on April 3, 1945 was first disclosed by Maxwell's authorised biographer Joe Haines in 1988.
Maxwell is quoted in the book as describing how he tried to capture a German town by threatening the population with a mortar bombardment, a tactic that had proved successful on a nearby village hours earlier.
In a letter to his wife, published in the book, Maxwell writes: " ... so I sent one of the Germans to go and fetch the mayor of the town. In half an hour's time he turned up and I told him that he had to go to tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up so we marched off, but as soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily he missed so I shot the mayor and withdrew."
The police file says: "The reported circumstances of the shooting gave rise to an allegation of war crimes. To some extent, the reporting of the shooting incident were confirmed by Mr Maxwell in an interview he gave in 1988 to the journalist Brian Walden."
But the police could do nothing until Parliament had enacted the war crimes legislation, which had been introduced to prosecute Nazi war criminals living in Britain.
It was only when a member of the public made a complaint under the new legislation that an official investigation could begin. Two officers from the police's historic war crimes unit began tracing members of Maxwell's platoon but had been unable to find a witness to the alleged shooting of the mayor.
On November 5, 1991, at the age of 68, Maxwell is presumed to have fallen overboard from the Lady Ghislane, which was cruising off the Canary Islands, and his body was subsequently found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The official verdict was accidental drowning, though many people, including members of his own family, believe he took his own life.
In was only after his death that it emerged that he had plundered the Mirror Group pensions' funds to bail out his ailing media empire.
Shortly after his bodied was buried in Jerusalem the police passed the conclusions of their investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The police file says that "it was determined that the case could be progressed no further, and it was closed in March 1991."
The file also shows that, although a lot of work had gone into the case, the police had not been able to find a reliable witness to corroborate the account in the Haines biography. They had also raised concerns about having to rely on the quotes attributed to Maxwell in the book. But Maxwell would not have known this and may have felt that the net was closing in.
Maxwell was immensely proud of his war record. He had fought bravely with the British Army from the beaches of Normandy to the bombed-out buildings of Berlin. In January 1945 his courageous actions won him a Military Cross, which was awarded to him by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.
But his hatred for the German people was borne out of his own bitter experiences. Later he was reported to have said that the two things he hated most were Germans and taxes.
By 1991 he had become very ill, with only one properly functioning lung and a serious heart condition. He must have known he was living on borrowed time and the prospect of spending his remaining life in prison for war crimes may have been too much for him to bear.
The only Briton to be convicted for war crimes in Britain was Anthony Sawoniuk, who was given two life sentences for the murder of 18 Jewish men and women in Eastern Europe during World War II. He died in prison last year aged 84.
- INDEPENDENT
Britain gave Israel plutonium, files show
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Britain gave Israel plutonium, files show
Britain gave Israel plutonium, files show
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday March 10, 2006
The Guardian
Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during the 1960s despite a warning from military intelligence that it could help the Israelis to develop a nuclear bomb, it was disclosed last night. The deal, made during Harold Wilson's Labour government, is revealed in classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by BBC2's Newsnight programme.
The documents also show how Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of material which could have helped in its nuclear weapons programme, including compounds of uranium, lithium, beryllium and tritium, as well as heavy water.
Article continues
Israel asked Britain in 1966 to supply 10mg of plutonium. Israel would have required almost 5kg of plutonium to build an atomic bomb, but British defence intelligence officials warned that 10mg had "significant military value" and could enable the Jewish state to carry out important experimental work to speed up its nuclear weapons programme.
Documents show that the decision to sell plutonium to Israel in 1966 was blocked by officials in both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, who said: "It is HMG's policy not to do anything which would assist Israel in the production of nuclear weapons." But the deal was forced through by a Jewish civil servant, Michael Michaels, in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology, which was responsible for trade in nuclear material, according to Newsnight.
Peter Kelly, who was British defence intelligence's expert on the Israeli nuclear weapons programme, knew Mr Michaels. He told Newsnight he believed Mr Michaels knew that Israel was trying to build an atomic bomb, but that he had dual loyalties to Britain and Israel.
Mr Benn told the programme that civil servants in his department kept the deals secret from him and his predecessor, Frank Cousins.
He had always suspected that civil servants were doing deals behind his back, but he never thought they would sell plutonium to Israel. He told Newsnight: "I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked. It never occurred to me they would authorise something so totally against the policy of the government.
"Michaels lied to me, I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again." He thought Wilson may not have known that Britain was helping Israel to get the bomb.
Last year Newsnight showed that in the late 1950s Harold Macmillan's Conservative government provided Israel with 20 tonnes of heavy water to start up its Dimona reactor. Newsnight said it learned that Jack Straw had admitted to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, that Britain knew the heavy water was destined for Israel, and that in 1961, Macmillan even made a failed attempt to get it back.
Britain gave Israel plutonium, files show
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday March 10, 2006
The Guardian
Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during the 1960s despite a warning from military intelligence that it could help the Israelis to develop a nuclear bomb, it was disclosed last night. The deal, made during Harold Wilson's Labour government, is revealed in classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by BBC2's Newsnight programme.
The documents also show how Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of material which could have helped in its nuclear weapons programme, including compounds of uranium, lithium, beryllium and tritium, as well as heavy water.
Article continues
Israel asked Britain in 1966 to supply 10mg of plutonium. Israel would have required almost 5kg of plutonium to build an atomic bomb, but British defence intelligence officials warned that 10mg had "significant military value" and could enable the Jewish state to carry out important experimental work to speed up its nuclear weapons programme.
Documents show that the decision to sell plutonium to Israel in 1966 was blocked by officials in both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, who said: "It is HMG's policy not to do anything which would assist Israel in the production of nuclear weapons." But the deal was forced through by a Jewish civil servant, Michael Michaels, in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology, which was responsible for trade in nuclear material, according to Newsnight.
Peter Kelly, who was British defence intelligence's expert on the Israeli nuclear weapons programme, knew Mr Michaels. He told Newsnight he believed Mr Michaels knew that Israel was trying to build an atomic bomb, but that he had dual loyalties to Britain and Israel.
Mr Benn told the programme that civil servants in his department kept the deals secret from him and his predecessor, Frank Cousins.
He had always suspected that civil servants were doing deals behind his back, but he never thought they would sell plutonium to Israel. He told Newsnight: "I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked. It never occurred to me they would authorise something so totally against the policy of the government.
"Michaels lied to me, I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again." He thought Wilson may not have known that Britain was helping Israel to get the bomb.
Last year Newsnight showed that in the late 1950s Harold Macmillan's Conservative government provided Israel with 20 tonnes of heavy water to start up its Dimona reactor. Newsnight said it learned that Jack Straw had admitted to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, that Britain knew the heavy water was destined for Israel, and that in 1961, Macmillan even made a failed attempt to get it back.
Media Matters - O'Reilly: Blowing Iran "off the face of the earth ... would be the sane thing to do"
Media Matters - O'Reilly: Blowing Iran "off the face of the earth ... would be the sane thing to do"
Summary: On his radio program, Bill O'Reilly stated: "You know in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the Earth. That would be the sane thing to do."
On the March 8 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly stated: "You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do." O'Reilly made the remark during a discussion of Iran's recent threat to cause "harm and pain" to the U.S. if it pursues sanctions against Iran in the U.N. Security Council because of Iran's developing nuclear program.
As Media Matters for America has documented, O'Reilly recently declared that "it's just a matter of time ... before we have to bomb" Iran.
From the March 8 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: And let's do the No-Spin News. In Vienna, Iran has threatened the U.S.A. with, quote, "harm and pain" for its role in trying to get the United Nations to discipline Iran over the nuke issue. OK. It's the usual saber-rattling. You know, we'll hurt you, we'll do this, that, and the other thing. Now, what Iran is doing is they perceive that America is weakened because of the conflict in Iraq and the division at home, OK? So they're saying, "Hey, we'll just push the envelope as far as we can push it and see what happens. So we think that Bush is a damaged president, his approval ratings are low, Iraq is chaos -- we're helping that out, by the way." Iran is helping Iraq to be in chaos by allowing the terrorists to go through that country and arming them and teaching them how to make bombs and all of that.
You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do, just go in and remove the government, because this is a terrorist state. But we can't do that, and now, the U.S.A. is basically has to take this kind of rhetoric. I mean, there's nothing else we can do but go to the United Nations and say to the Security Council, "Look, you can't let these people have nuclear weapons. If you do, there's going to be a war." So it's between war and sanctions.
—K.D.
Feds Squelch Capitol Hill Blue
Feds Squelch Capitol Hill Blue
Originally published Mar 09, 2006
Willysnout tells you what Doug Thompson can't - Thompson and his crew
were under surveillance through his site (the aforementioned Capitol
Hill Blue), and forced him to change a column they didn't like.
Thompson is best known for "The Rant" - a regular online column which
has lately been highly critical of the current White House. (He's also
been critical of the Clinton White House - Thompson just has it out
for authority.)
Well, the current authority doesn't like that.
The offending article reported that Thompson, who also owns the
web hosting company that puts Capitol Hill Blue online, had received a
request under the USA Patriot Act from the FBI for information about
the publication, its contributors, its personnel and its readers. It
was only through his ownership of the hosting company that Thompson
was aware of the government's surveillance.
The FBI's request instructed Thompson not to reveal who had made
the information request or what law had authorized it. Thompson
refused to provide the information and revealed the letter and its
contents in Capitol Hill Blue. At that point, a U.S. attorney
threatened Thompson with jail unless he not only removed the
information, but revised the article discussing it.
To avoid going to jail, Thompson complied.
Think about it, folks. A publication has been not only censored,
but forced to submit new content acceptable to the government.
And now that the Patriot Act has just been signed to another contract
extension, we have more of this to look forward to.
Whoops. There's someone at the door. I'll be righ
Originally published Mar 09, 2006
Willysnout tells you what Doug Thompson can't - Thompson and his crew
were under surveillance through his site (the aforementioned Capitol
Hill Blue), and forced him to change a column they didn't like.
Thompson is best known for "The Rant" - a regular online column which
has lately been highly critical of the current White House. (He's also
been critical of the Clinton White House - Thompson just has it out
for authority.)
Well, the current authority doesn't like that.
The offending article reported that Thompson, who also owns the
web hosting company that puts Capitol Hill Blue online, had received a
request under the USA Patriot Act from the FBI for information about
the publication, its contributors, its personnel and its readers. It
was only through his ownership of the hosting company that Thompson
was aware of the government's surveillance.
The FBI's request instructed Thompson not to reveal who had made
the information request or what law had authorized it. Thompson
refused to provide the information and revealed the letter and its
contents in Capitol Hill Blue. At that point, a U.S. attorney
threatened Thompson with jail unless he not only removed the
information, but revised the article discussing it.
To avoid going to jail, Thompson complied.
Think about it, folks. A publication has been not only censored,
but forced to submit new content acceptable to the government.
And now that the Patriot Act has just been signed to another contract
extension, we have more of this to look forward to.
Whoops. There's someone at the door. I'll be righ
Brussels briefing - South Ossetia accord eludes Georgia and Russia
FT.com / Europe / Brussels briefing - South Ossetia accord eludes Georgia and Russia
South Ossetia accord eludes Georgia and Russia
>By Neil Buckley
>Published: March 10 2006 10:29 | Last updated: March 10 2006 10:29
>>
In the outer office of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, framed newspaper front pages celebrate last May’s visit by US President George W. Bush to the country he hailed as a “beacon of democracy”. Yet barely an hour’s drive from the capital, Tbilisi, tensions threaten to explode into conflict between Georgian and Russian troops and to undermine Mr Saakashvili’s two-year drive for reform and integration with the west.
The flashpoint is South Ossetia, a slab of land stretching south from the Russian-Georgian border. The region declared independence from Georgia in the Soviet Union’s dying days, sparking fighting in 1991-92 ended by a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Tempers have been fraying since Georgia’s parliament last month adopted a resolution accusing Russian peacekeepers of trying to “annex” the region, and calling for their replacement by an international force. Moscow’s response was fury, prompting an exchange of threats and insults that has caused concern in both the US and the European Union.
Russia’s 58th Army has been conducting exercises just north of the Georgian border. Tbilisi says Russian combat aircraft have several times violated its airspace, which Moscow denies.
Moscow has stopped issuing visas to Georgians in response to Tbilisi’s alleged footdragging in issuing visas to Russian peacekeepers.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and television pundit connected to the Kremlin, accused Mr Saakashvili of stirring up war in South Ossetia, suggesting darkly this could be averted with “a single bullet”.
All this comes weeks after Mr Saakashvili indirectly accused Moscow of being responsible for pipeline explosions that left Georgia shivering without Russian gas during a record cold spell.
In a recent late-night interview in his office, the Georgian president said he held firmly to his suspicions on the pipeline incident, and had passed intelligence to his international partners.
“Serious people know what we know, and I think it is quite substantial – intelligence that substantiates some of our strong suspicions,” he said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has blamed the explosions on terrorists, accusing Mr Saakashvili of being hysterical.
The pipeline dispute and South Ossetian tensions add up to the most serious Russo-Georgian rift since the “Rose” revolution of November 2003 installed Mr Saakashvili and inspired revolutions in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. They also underline the trials Mr Saakashvili faces in rebuilding Georgia’s economy and moving towards Nato and EU membership, with a powerful northern neighbour reluctant to relinquish its grip on a country it dominated for 200 years.
Beyond the bluster from both sides, however – and the danger of fighting breaking out by accident, as it nearly has several times in recent weeks – the mood in Tbilisi is not for war. Mr Saakhashvili says Georgia would never try to retake South Ossetia by force.
“We can’t get into fighting with the Russians. We are not crazy,” he says. He does not believe Russia wants to see violence either.
But the stand-off illustrates how little progress Mr Saakashvili has made towards restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity, a year after Tbilisi presented a South Ossetian peace plan, well received by the international community.
Mr Saakashvili charges that Russia has an interest in keeping tensions simmering in both South Ossetia and Georgia’s larger separatist enclave of Abkhazia, to complicate Tbilisi’s aims of attracting foreign investment and joining Nato.
The Georgian parliament’s claim that Moscow’s peacekeeping mission to Ossetia has been transformed into something with “all the elements of annexation” is well founded, he says. In the past two years, Moscow has issued thousands of Russian passports to South Ossetians, allowing Russia to argue that its peacekeepers are protecting its own citizens.
After years of stalling, Russia had agreed on a timetable to withdraw from two Soviet-era military bases in southern Georgia. European institutions and the US were also engaged more actively than ever before in pursuing a South Ossetian settlement.
But in October the Georgian parliament passed a tough resolution on Russia’s forces in South Ossetia that led directly to last month’s demand for their replacement.
South Ossetia accord eludes Georgia and Russia
>By Neil Buckley
>Published: March 10 2006 10:29 | Last updated: March 10 2006 10:29
>>
In the outer office of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, framed newspaper front pages celebrate last May’s visit by US President George W. Bush to the country he hailed as a “beacon of democracy”. Yet barely an hour’s drive from the capital, Tbilisi, tensions threaten to explode into conflict between Georgian and Russian troops and to undermine Mr Saakashvili’s two-year drive for reform and integration with the west.
The flashpoint is South Ossetia, a slab of land stretching south from the Russian-Georgian border. The region declared independence from Georgia in the Soviet Union’s dying days, sparking fighting in 1991-92 ended by a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Tempers have been fraying since Georgia’s parliament last month adopted a resolution accusing Russian peacekeepers of trying to “annex” the region, and calling for their replacement by an international force. Moscow’s response was fury, prompting an exchange of threats and insults that has caused concern in both the US and the European Union.
Russia’s 58th Army has been conducting exercises just north of the Georgian border. Tbilisi says Russian combat aircraft have several times violated its airspace, which Moscow denies.
Moscow has stopped issuing visas to Georgians in response to Tbilisi’s alleged footdragging in issuing visas to Russian peacekeepers.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and television pundit connected to the Kremlin, accused Mr Saakashvili of stirring up war in South Ossetia, suggesting darkly this could be averted with “a single bullet”.
All this comes weeks after Mr Saakashvili indirectly accused Moscow of being responsible for pipeline explosions that left Georgia shivering without Russian gas during a record cold spell.
In a recent late-night interview in his office, the Georgian president said he held firmly to his suspicions on the pipeline incident, and had passed intelligence to his international partners.
“Serious people know what we know, and I think it is quite substantial – intelligence that substantiates some of our strong suspicions,” he said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has blamed the explosions on terrorists, accusing Mr Saakashvili of being hysterical.
The pipeline dispute and South Ossetian tensions add up to the most serious Russo-Georgian rift since the “Rose” revolution of November 2003 installed Mr Saakashvili and inspired revolutions in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. They also underline the trials Mr Saakashvili faces in rebuilding Georgia’s economy and moving towards Nato and EU membership, with a powerful northern neighbour reluctant to relinquish its grip on a country it dominated for 200 years.
Beyond the bluster from both sides, however – and the danger of fighting breaking out by accident, as it nearly has several times in recent weeks – the mood in Tbilisi is not for war. Mr Saakhashvili says Georgia would never try to retake South Ossetia by force.
“We can’t get into fighting with the Russians. We are not crazy,” he says. He does not believe Russia wants to see violence either.
But the stand-off illustrates how little progress Mr Saakashvili has made towards restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity, a year after Tbilisi presented a South Ossetian peace plan, well received by the international community.
Mr Saakashvili charges that Russia has an interest in keeping tensions simmering in both South Ossetia and Georgia’s larger separatist enclave of Abkhazia, to complicate Tbilisi’s aims of attracting foreign investment and joining Nato.
The Georgian parliament’s claim that Moscow’s peacekeeping mission to Ossetia has been transformed into something with “all the elements of annexation” is well founded, he says. In the past two years, Moscow has issued thousands of Russian passports to South Ossetians, allowing Russia to argue that its peacekeepers are protecting its own citizens.
After years of stalling, Russia had agreed on a timetable to withdraw from two Soviet-era military bases in southern Georgia. European institutions and the US were also engaged more actively than ever before in pursuing a South Ossetian settlement.
But in October the Georgian parliament passed a tough resolution on Russia’s forces in South Ossetia that led directly to last month’s demand for their replacement.
Raytheon wins $100m airport pact - The Boston Globe
Raytheon wins $100m airport pact - The Boston Globe
Raytheon wins $100m airport pact
Security system deal lifts firm's push into homeland defense
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 8, 2006
Four major airports in the New York City area have hired Raytheon Inc. for more than $100 million to put together an antiterrorist surveillance system that would monitor the airports' perimeters.
Raytheon, a Waltham defense and aerospace company, will lead a team of contractors that will deploy a mix of radar, sensors, video motion detectors, closed-circuit TV monitors, and electronic fences at John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia in New York and Newark Liberty International and Teterboro in New Jersey.
The two-year contract from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which continues to beef up its security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is symbolically important for Raytheon as it repackages its communications, sensor, and command-and-control technologies for the military to defend airports, borders, and ports.
''Raytheon's research and development in the homeland security area, and the projects they're working on, have considerable potential," said Paul Nisbet, analyst for JSA Research in Newport, R.I. ''Selling the New York airports is probably the best first step you could have for an airport defense system. If it works there, it's the kind of technology that could be used at every major airport in the country."
But the company will face stiff competition from rival Lockheed Martin Corp., among others, as it seeks to expand its foothold in the burgeoning homeland security market.
Several of the technologies in the New York airports' ''perimeter intrusion detection system" are already deployed individually at other airports across the country, including infrared surveillance cameras at Logan International Airport in Boston.
But Raytheon is marketing its approach as the first that can feed data from multiple sources into integrated command-and-control consoles that can simultaneously monitor, for example, an attempt to cut through a security fence and an effort to land a boat near the runway of a seaside airport.
''A single operator will be able to make an assessment of an incursion and perform a dispatch," said Richard J. Dinka, Raytheon's director of air space management and homeland security.
Pasquale DiFulco, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the system, details of which were reported in yesterday's Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey, is part of a $2.3 billion investment in security operations and capital improvements since 2001, when the port authority lost 84 of its employees in the terror attacks. ''Our airport facilities are of paramount importance to us," he said.
Raytheon, which is bidding on similar airport security contracts in the Middle East, hopes to market its perimeter system widely. Andrew B. Zogg, vice president for air-space management and homeland security at a Raytheon site in Marlborough, estimated the business could be worth $300 million to $500 million in five years. ''This is our entry into airport security systems in the United States along with the opportunity for international orders," he said.
Zogg said Raytheon currently has about 25 employees working in Marlborough on systems to safeguard airports, and that number could more than double in the next few years.
The company has been working on several other homeland security initiatives, including Vigilant Eagle, a grid of sensors on towers and buildings that would protect commercial jets from shoulder-fired missiles.
At least initially, however, that would not be part of the perimeter intrusion detection system being deployed in New York and New Jersey.
Homeland security still represents just a fraction of the more than $20 billion Raytheon rings up in annual revenue, but company officials expect the business to grow substantially in coming years. Nisbet estimated overall industry revenue from homeland security, now several billion dollars a year, could double in the next seven years.
At its Naval Integration Center in Portsmouth, R.I., the company has developed Project Athena, an integrated maritime defense system that Raytheon is marketing to coastal port authorities.
And, last month, the company put in a bid with the Department of Homeland Security to be prime contractor for a $2.5 billion secure border initiative, known as SBInet, to protect the Canadian and Mexican borders from terrorist infiltration. That contract is scheduled to be awarded this fall.
Rival defense and electronics companies, however, are marketing competing technologies to protect airports, seaports, and borders. Lockheed Martin, the largest US military contractor, also is vying for the SBInet contract, while airport authorities have been fielding bids from L3 Communications, SAIC, and ADT Security Services, the prime contractor for the Massachusetts Port Authority.
Dennis Treece, director of corporate security for Massport, said Logan International Airport in Boston is currently installing a $5 million ''camera intrusion detection system" that uses infrared cameras and analytic software to track potential threats.
Treece said he provided his counterparts at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with the performance specifications of the system at Logan, which is much smaller than most of the airports in the New York area.
''People complain about Logan being small, but one advantage of being small is it's easier to protect," Treece said.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
Raytheon wins $100m airport pact
Security system deal lifts firm's push into homeland defense
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 8, 2006
Four major airports in the New York City area have hired Raytheon Inc. for more than $100 million to put together an antiterrorist surveillance system that would monitor the airports' perimeters.
Raytheon, a Waltham defense and aerospace company, will lead a team of contractors that will deploy a mix of radar, sensors, video motion detectors, closed-circuit TV monitors, and electronic fences at John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia in New York and Newark Liberty International and Teterboro in New Jersey.
The two-year contract from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which continues to beef up its security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is symbolically important for Raytheon as it repackages its communications, sensor, and command-and-control technologies for the military to defend airports, borders, and ports.
''Raytheon's research and development in the homeland security area, and the projects they're working on, have considerable potential," said Paul Nisbet, analyst for JSA Research in Newport, R.I. ''Selling the New York airports is probably the best first step you could have for an airport defense system. If it works there, it's the kind of technology that could be used at every major airport in the country."
But the company will face stiff competition from rival Lockheed Martin Corp., among others, as it seeks to expand its foothold in the burgeoning homeland security market.
Several of the technologies in the New York airports' ''perimeter intrusion detection system" are already deployed individually at other airports across the country, including infrared surveillance cameras at Logan International Airport in Boston.
But Raytheon is marketing its approach as the first that can feed data from multiple sources into integrated command-and-control consoles that can simultaneously monitor, for example, an attempt to cut through a security fence and an effort to land a boat near the runway of a seaside airport.
''A single operator will be able to make an assessment of an incursion and perform a dispatch," said Richard J. Dinka, Raytheon's director of air space management and homeland security.
Pasquale DiFulco, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the system, details of which were reported in yesterday's Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey, is part of a $2.3 billion investment in security operations and capital improvements since 2001, when the port authority lost 84 of its employees in the terror attacks. ''Our airport facilities are of paramount importance to us," he said.
Raytheon, which is bidding on similar airport security contracts in the Middle East, hopes to market its perimeter system widely. Andrew B. Zogg, vice president for air-space management and homeland security at a Raytheon site in Marlborough, estimated the business could be worth $300 million to $500 million in five years. ''This is our entry into airport security systems in the United States along with the opportunity for international orders," he said.
Zogg said Raytheon currently has about 25 employees working in Marlborough on systems to safeguard airports, and that number could more than double in the next few years.
The company has been working on several other homeland security initiatives, including Vigilant Eagle, a grid of sensors on towers and buildings that would protect commercial jets from shoulder-fired missiles.
At least initially, however, that would not be part of the perimeter intrusion detection system being deployed in New York and New Jersey.
Homeland security still represents just a fraction of the more than $20 billion Raytheon rings up in annual revenue, but company officials expect the business to grow substantially in coming years. Nisbet estimated overall industry revenue from homeland security, now several billion dollars a year, could double in the next seven years.
At its Naval Integration Center in Portsmouth, R.I., the company has developed Project Athena, an integrated maritime defense system that Raytheon is marketing to coastal port authorities.
And, last month, the company put in a bid with the Department of Homeland Security to be prime contractor for a $2.5 billion secure border initiative, known as SBInet, to protect the Canadian and Mexican borders from terrorist infiltration. That contract is scheduled to be awarded this fall.
Rival defense and electronics companies, however, are marketing competing technologies to protect airports, seaports, and borders. Lockheed Martin, the largest US military contractor, also is vying for the SBInet contract, while airport authorities have been fielding bids from L3 Communications, SAIC, and ADT Security Services, the prime contractor for the Massachusetts Port Authority.
Dennis Treece, director of corporate security for Massport, said Logan International Airport in Boston is currently installing a $5 million ''camera intrusion detection system" that uses infrared cameras and analytic software to track potential threats.
Treece said he provided his counterparts at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with the performance specifications of the system at Logan, which is much smaller than most of the airports in the New York area.
''People complain about Logan being small, but one advantage of being small is it's easier to protect," Treece said.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
Friday, March 10, 2006
The Australian: We could take out Iran N-sites: Israeli general [March 11, 2006]
The Australian: We could take out Iran N-sites: Israeli general [March 11, 2006]
We could take out Iran N-sites: Israeli general
Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem
March 11, 2006
GENERAL Moshe Ya'alon, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, has revealed that Israel could neutralise the Iranian threat for several years by hitting dozens of targets spread around the country.
General Ya'alon told the Hudson Institute in Washington on Thursday that the Iranian sites could be struck with greater accuracy than was achieved by the air force in its frequent "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
His remarks, the most explicit yet about Israel's capacity to strike at Iran's nuclear sites, drew sharp criticism from officials in Israel who have been attempting to maintain a low profile on the issue in order to leave it as a matter for the international community.
"You don't talk about these things in public," said a senior official, "particularly when there are journalists present."
The general's comments came as Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that if his Kadima party won this month's national elections, he would aim to establish the country's final borders with the Palestinian Authority within four years.
Although Mr Olmert expressed a readiness to negotiate these borders with a Hamas government if it recognised Israel and disavowed violence, he indicated that this was not likely to happen. The new borders would then be set unilaterally by Israel.
Mr Olmert said for the first time that the security barrier being built on the West Bank parallel to the pre-Six Day War boundary would serve as the new border, although its alignment might be shifted in places - either deeper into the West Bank or closer to Israel.
In Washington, General Ya'alon noted that unlike Palestinian targets, which were generally travelling in vehicles, nuclear sites were stationary.
He added that the job could also be done by means other than an air force attack, an apparent reference to missiles.
"It would be preferable for other nations to do the job," he was quoted as saying, "but you can't rule out Israel."
The retired general said the Iranians could complete their know-how on building a nuclear device within the next six to 18 months and could build one within three to six years.
A sharp counter-strike against Israel could be expected, General Ya'alon said, including the launching of missiles from Iran and action by the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, who have been provided by Iran with 12,000 rockets capable of hitting up to 80km inside Israel.
He said that Israel's Arrow anti-missile missile was fully deployed and capable of intercepting the Iranian missiles.
We could take out Iran N-sites: Israeli general
Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem
March 11, 2006
GENERAL Moshe Ya'alon, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, has revealed that Israel could neutralise the Iranian threat for several years by hitting dozens of targets spread around the country.
General Ya'alon told the Hudson Institute in Washington on Thursday that the Iranian sites could be struck with greater accuracy than was achieved by the air force in its frequent "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
His remarks, the most explicit yet about Israel's capacity to strike at Iran's nuclear sites, drew sharp criticism from officials in Israel who have been attempting to maintain a low profile on the issue in order to leave it as a matter for the international community.
"You don't talk about these things in public," said a senior official, "particularly when there are journalists present."
The general's comments came as Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that if his Kadima party won this month's national elections, he would aim to establish the country's final borders with the Palestinian Authority within four years.
Although Mr Olmert expressed a readiness to negotiate these borders with a Hamas government if it recognised Israel and disavowed violence, he indicated that this was not likely to happen. The new borders would then be set unilaterally by Israel.
Mr Olmert said for the first time that the security barrier being built on the West Bank parallel to the pre-Six Day War boundary would serve as the new border, although its alignment might be shifted in places - either deeper into the West Bank or closer to Israel.
In Washington, General Ya'alon noted that unlike Palestinian targets, which were generally travelling in vehicles, nuclear sites were stationary.
He added that the job could also be done by means other than an air force attack, an apparent reference to missiles.
"It would be preferable for other nations to do the job," he was quoted as saying, "but you can't rule out Israel."
The retired general said the Iranians could complete their know-how on building a nuclear device within the next six to 18 months and could build one within three to six years.
A sharp counter-strike against Israel could be expected, General Ya'alon said, including the launching of missiles from Iran and action by the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, who have been provided by Iran with 12,000 rockets capable of hitting up to 80km inside Israel.
He said that Israel's Arrow anti-missile missile was fully deployed and capable of intercepting the Iranian missiles.
ABC News: Did the Pentagon Try to Develope a Secret 'Spaceplane'?
ABC News: Did the Pentagon Try to Develope a Secret 'Spaceplane'?
Did the Pentagon Try to Develope a Secret 'Spaceplane'?
Air Force and NASA Reportedly Worked on 'Blackstar' Project
March 10, 2006 -- - It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie: an aircraft that can orbit around Earth and spy or swoop down on unsuspecting enemies from the heavens.
But according to the industry trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, the U.S. government attempted to develop such a craft in secret but eventually canceled the program, either for budgetary or operational reasons.
Bill Scott, who wrote the article, said the craft -- nicknamed "Blackstar," "Black Magic" and "Speedy" -- was actually made up of two separate vehicles.
"I call it a two-staged orbit system, because the two aircraft have to work together," Scott said.
A carrier craft called the SR-3 would carry a smaller "spaceplane" on its underbelly into the atmosphere while moving at supersonic speeds.
Once at the right altitude, the smaller orbiter would be deployed, fire its rockets and blast into space.
Blackstar Details Reported But No Confirmation
Scott said he had recently learned from an "extremely good source who was briefed on the program" that the small orbiter craft was named XOV, which stood for experimental orbital vehicle.
The vehicle would have likely been used primarily for reconnaissance, operating as kind of a manned satellite.
"The manned orbiter's primary military advantage would be surprise overflight," according to Aviation Week & Space Technology's article. "There would be no forewarning of its presence prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights."
While in orbit, the craft could also carry and drop a suite of high-tech sensors capable of acquiring detailed images of ground targets.
Scott said the program was started in the 1980s, just as NASA experienced difficulties with the space shuttle.
As the Air Force realized it needed quick and safe access to space, Blackstar was born.
Many aviation experts held doubts about the existence of the program, however, and no one from the Air Force or NASA was immediately available to comment on the article.
Though his sources told him the program had been canceled, Scott expected the Air Force and NASA would revisit it one day.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
Did the Pentagon Try to Develope a Secret 'Spaceplane'?
Air Force and NASA Reportedly Worked on 'Blackstar' Project
March 10, 2006 -- - It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie: an aircraft that can orbit around Earth and spy or swoop down on unsuspecting enemies from the heavens.
But according to the industry trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, the U.S. government attempted to develop such a craft in secret but eventually canceled the program, either for budgetary or operational reasons.
Bill Scott, who wrote the article, said the craft -- nicknamed "Blackstar," "Black Magic" and "Speedy" -- was actually made up of two separate vehicles.
"I call it a two-staged orbit system, because the two aircraft have to work together," Scott said.
A carrier craft called the SR-3 would carry a smaller "spaceplane" on its underbelly into the atmosphere while moving at supersonic speeds.
Once at the right altitude, the smaller orbiter would be deployed, fire its rockets and blast into space.
Blackstar Details Reported But No Confirmation
Scott said he had recently learned from an "extremely good source who was briefed on the program" that the small orbiter craft was named XOV, which stood for experimental orbital vehicle.
The vehicle would have likely been used primarily for reconnaissance, operating as kind of a manned satellite.
"The manned orbiter's primary military advantage would be surprise overflight," according to Aviation Week & Space Technology's article. "There would be no forewarning of its presence prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights."
While in orbit, the craft could also carry and drop a suite of high-tech sensors capable of acquiring detailed images of ground targets.
Scott said the program was started in the 1980s, just as NASA experienced difficulties with the space shuttle.
As the Air Force realized it needed quick and safe access to space, Blackstar was born.
Many aviation experts held doubts about the existence of the program, however, and no one from the Air Force or NASA was immediately available to comment on the article.
Though his sources told him the program had been canceled, Scott expected the Air Force and NASA would revisit it one day.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
you ever known them to erase anything before?--Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters
Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters - U.S. News - MSNBC.com
Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters
NBC: Official says peaceful demonstrators’ names erased from database
MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 8:45 a.m. ET March 10, 2006
The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report.
Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski’s letter came in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who had demanded answers about the process of identifying domestic protesters as suspicious and removing their names when they are wrongly listed.
“The recent review of the TALON Reporting System ... identified a small number of reports that did not meet the TALON reporting criteria. Those reports dealt with domestic anti-military protests or demonstrations potentially impacting DoD facilities or personnel,” Rogalski wrote on Wednesday.
“While the information was of value to military commanders, it should not have been retained in the Cornerstone database.”
Threats directed against Defense Department
In 2003, the Defense Department directed a little-known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established TALON at that time.
The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools.
In his Wednesday letter, Rogalski said such anomalies in the TALON database had been removed.
“They did not pertain to potential foreign terrorist activity and thus should never have been entered into the Cornerstone database. These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given,” Rogalski wrote.
Rogalski said only 43 names were improperly added to the database, and those were from protest-related reports such as the Quaker meeting in Florida.
“All reports concerning protest activities have been purged,” the letter said.
TALON reports provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in the Cornerstone CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned antiwar protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports.
Nearly four dozen antiwar meetings listed
The Defense Department document provides an inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence gathering since 9/11. The database includes nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center, according to NBC News’ Lisa Myers, who first wrote about the story in December.
Among those listed were a large antiwar protest in Los Angeles in March 2004 that included effigies of President Bush and antiwar protest banners, a planned protest against military recruiters in December 2004 in Boston, and a planned protest in April 2004 at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat, and a column in the database concludes: “U.S. group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in the database.
The Department of Defense has strict guidelines (.PDF link ), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which it can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
Still, the database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the Internet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”
Earlier domestic intelligence gathering
The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is a trend, Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer, told NBC News when the report was first broadcast.
During the Vietnam War, Pyle revealed the Defense Department monitored and infiltrated antiwar and civil rights protests in an article he published in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.
The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed the military had conducted probes on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them antiwar protesters and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.
But Pyle said some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.
“The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he said.
NBC News' Lisa Myers and the NBC Investigative Unit contributed to this report.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11751418/
Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters
NBC: Official says peaceful demonstrators’ names erased from database
MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 8:45 a.m. ET March 10, 2006
The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report.
Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski’s letter came in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who had demanded answers about the process of identifying domestic protesters as suspicious and removing their names when they are wrongly listed.
“The recent review of the TALON Reporting System ... identified a small number of reports that did not meet the TALON reporting criteria. Those reports dealt with domestic anti-military protests or demonstrations potentially impacting DoD facilities or personnel,” Rogalski wrote on Wednesday.
“While the information was of value to military commanders, it should not have been retained in the Cornerstone database.”
Threats directed against Defense Department
In 2003, the Defense Department directed a little-known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established TALON at that time.
The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools.
In his Wednesday letter, Rogalski said such anomalies in the TALON database had been removed.
“They did not pertain to potential foreign terrorist activity and thus should never have been entered into the Cornerstone database. These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given,” Rogalski wrote.
Rogalski said only 43 names were improperly added to the database, and those were from protest-related reports such as the Quaker meeting in Florida.
“All reports concerning protest activities have been purged,” the letter said.
TALON reports provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in the Cornerstone CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned antiwar protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports.
Nearly four dozen antiwar meetings listed
The Defense Department document provides an inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence gathering since 9/11. The database includes nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center, according to NBC News’ Lisa Myers, who first wrote about the story in December.
Among those listed were a large antiwar protest in Los Angeles in March 2004 that included effigies of President Bush and antiwar protest banners, a planned protest against military recruiters in December 2004 in Boston, and a planned protest in April 2004 at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat, and a column in the database concludes: “U.S. group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in the database.
The Department of Defense has strict guidelines (.PDF link ), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which it can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
Still, the database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the Internet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”
Earlier domestic intelligence gathering
The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is a trend, Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer, told NBC News when the report was first broadcast.
During the Vietnam War, Pyle revealed the Defense Department monitored and infiltrated antiwar and civil rights protests in an article he published in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.
The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed the military had conducted probes on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them antiwar protesters and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.
But Pyle said some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.
“The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he said.
NBC News' Lisa Myers and the NBC Investigative Unit contributed to this report.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11751418/
US Contractor Guilty of $3 Million Fraud in Iraq
US Contractor Guilty of $3 Million Fraud in Iraq
Contractor Bilked US on Iraq Work, Federal Jury Rules
By Charles R. Babcock
The Washington Post
Friday 10 March 2006
Custer Battles is told it should pay more than $10 million in damages.
Two Army veterans and their company cheated the US government on a contract to furnish Iraq with a new currency in 2003 and should pay more than $10 million in assorted damages, a federal jury in Alexandria ruled yesterday.
In the first civil fraud verdict arising from the war effort, the eight-member panel decided, after two days of deliberation, in favor of two former workers who claimed in a lawsuit that Custer Battles LLC created phony Cayman Island companies to overcharge the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003.
"This is a smashing victory for US taxpayers and these whistle-blowers though the Bush administration did nothing to help," said Alan M. Grayson, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Robert Isakson and William Baldwin. Under the federal False Claims Act, citizens can sue on behalf of the government and the Justice Department can then decide whether to join the suit, which it did not in the Custer Battles case.
The company, which had offices in Northern Virginia and Rhode Island, was founded in 2002 by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger, and Michael Battles, a West Point graduate who also served in the CIA. The war in Iraq brought it meteoric growth, as it picked up CPA contracts to manage security at Baghdad International Airport and help distribute the country's new currency.
The lawsuit named the two co-founders, along with Joseph Morris, who managed the currency contract.
During the three-week trial, Grayson called the company executives "war profiteers," while defense attorneys called the accusers "bounty hunters."
The trial has been complicated by the murky legal status of the CPA and the various sources of money it used to try to rebuild the country. US District Judge T.S. Ellis III told the jury that they could only consider fraud charges on the first $3 million spent on the Custer Battles currency contract - out of a total of about $20 million - because that clearly came from the US Treasury.
Attorneys for Custer and Battles did not return calls yesterday seeking comment. Barbara Van Gelder, Morris's attorney, said that because the judge has yet to rule on whether the CPA is a government entity "the impact of the jury's decision is in limbo."
Grayson said yesterday that there are "dozens" of other fraud cases about contracts in Iraq that remain sealed because the department has not decided whether to join them or not. He called such delay "a dereliction of duty." His clients will get 25 to 30 percent of the awarded damages, with the rest going to the US Treasury, he said.
The law allows for triple damages. Grayson said the jury also added another $230,000 in back pay for Baldwin, who said he was demoted for complaining about the company's actions, and more than $400,000 in fines for specific fraudulent acts.
During the trial, retired Brig. Gen. Hugh Tant III told jurors that Custer Battles's performance amounted to "probably the worst I've seen in my 30 years in the Army." Tant had been overseeing the firm's work on the currency conversion contract.
He testified that of the 36 trucks the firm supplied, 34 did not work. When he confronted Battles, he said Battles responded: "You asked for trucks and we complied with our contract and it is immaterial whether the trucks were operational."
Custer and Battles both took the stand to deny that the offshore companies were designed to trick the government into paying more.
Contractor Bilked US on Iraq Work, Federal Jury Rules
By Charles R. Babcock
The Washington Post
Friday 10 March 2006
Custer Battles is told it should pay more than $10 million in damages.
Two Army veterans and their company cheated the US government on a contract to furnish Iraq with a new currency in 2003 and should pay more than $10 million in assorted damages, a federal jury in Alexandria ruled yesterday.
In the first civil fraud verdict arising from the war effort, the eight-member panel decided, after two days of deliberation, in favor of two former workers who claimed in a lawsuit that Custer Battles LLC created phony Cayman Island companies to overcharge the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003.
"This is a smashing victory for US taxpayers and these whistle-blowers though the Bush administration did nothing to help," said Alan M. Grayson, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Robert Isakson and William Baldwin. Under the federal False Claims Act, citizens can sue on behalf of the government and the Justice Department can then decide whether to join the suit, which it did not in the Custer Battles case.
The company, which had offices in Northern Virginia and Rhode Island, was founded in 2002 by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger, and Michael Battles, a West Point graduate who also served in the CIA. The war in Iraq brought it meteoric growth, as it picked up CPA contracts to manage security at Baghdad International Airport and help distribute the country's new currency.
The lawsuit named the two co-founders, along with Joseph Morris, who managed the currency contract.
During the three-week trial, Grayson called the company executives "war profiteers," while defense attorneys called the accusers "bounty hunters."
The trial has been complicated by the murky legal status of the CPA and the various sources of money it used to try to rebuild the country. US District Judge T.S. Ellis III told the jury that they could only consider fraud charges on the first $3 million spent on the Custer Battles currency contract - out of a total of about $20 million - because that clearly came from the US Treasury.
Attorneys for Custer and Battles did not return calls yesterday seeking comment. Barbara Van Gelder, Morris's attorney, said that because the judge has yet to rule on whether the CPA is a government entity "the impact of the jury's decision is in limbo."
Grayson said yesterday that there are "dozens" of other fraud cases about contracts in Iraq that remain sealed because the department has not decided whether to join them or not. He called such delay "a dereliction of duty." His clients will get 25 to 30 percent of the awarded damages, with the rest going to the US Treasury, he said.
The law allows for triple damages. Grayson said the jury also added another $230,000 in back pay for Baldwin, who said he was demoted for complaining about the company's actions, and more than $400,000 in fines for specific fraudulent acts.
During the trial, retired Brig. Gen. Hugh Tant III told jurors that Custer Battles's performance amounted to "probably the worst I've seen in my 30 years in the Army." Tant had been overseeing the firm's work on the currency conversion contract.
He testified that of the 36 trucks the firm supplied, 34 did not work. When he confronted Battles, he said Battles responded: "You asked for trucks and we complied with our contract and it is immaterial whether the trucks were operational."
Custer and Battles both took the stand to deny that the offshore companies were designed to trick the government into paying more.
Molly Ivins | The Progress Myth in Iraq
Molly Ivins | The Progress Myth in Iraq
The Progress Myth in Iraq
By Molly Ivins
Truthdig.com
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Austin, Texas - It was such a relief to me to learn we are making "very, very good progress" in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick Cheney's take was equally reassuring: Things are "improving steadily" in Iraq.
I was thrilled - very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn't that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.
I was also relieved to learn - via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war - that the whole picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing into civil war. They're sort of jumping over the civil war line and back again - yep, it's started; nope, it hasn't - like a bunch of false starts at the beginning of a football play.
I'm sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol' Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best.
"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the US and abroad has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said. "We do know, of course, that al Qaeda has media committees. We do know they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence that reports on their meetings. Now I can't take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al Qaeda media committee meeting. I am not able to do that at all."
No horsepoop? Then can I ask a question: If you're able to monitor these media committee meetings, how come you can't find Osama bin Ladin?
But, Brother Rumsfeld warns us, "We do know that their goal is to try to break the will; that they consider the center of gravity of this - not to be in Iraq, because they know they can't win a battle out there; they consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London and in the capitals of the Western world."
I'm sorry, I know we are not allowed to use the V-word in relation to Iraq, because so many brilliant neocons have assured us this war is nothing like Vietnam (Vietnam, lotsa jungle; Iraq lotsa sand - big difference). But you must admit that press conferences with Donny Rum are wonderfully reminiscent of the Five O'Clock Follies, those wacky but endearing daily press briefings on Southeast Asia by military officers who made Baghdad Bob sound like a pessimist.
Rumsfeld's performance was so reminiscent of all the times the military in Vietnam blamed the media for reporting "bad news'" when there was nothing else to report. A briefing officer once memorably asked the press, "Who's side are you on?" The answer is what it's always been: We root for America, but our job is to report as accurately as we can what the situation is.
You could rely on other sources. For example, the Pentagon is still investigating itself to find out why it is paying American soldiers to make up good news about the war, which it then passes on to a Republican public relations firm, which in turn pays people in the Iraqi media to print the stuff - thus fooling the Iraqis or somebody. When last heard from, the general in charge of investigating this federally funded Baghdad Bobism said he hadn't found anything about it to be illegal yet, so it apparently continues.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq is "really vulnerable" to civil war if there is another attack like the al-Askari bombing. By invading, said Khalilzad, the United States has "opened the Pandora's box" of sectarian strife in Iraq.
Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld's rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we're best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al Qaeda?
Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq - Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press, 1,095; Rumsfeld, 0.
The Progress Myth in Iraq
By Molly Ivins
Truthdig.com
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Austin, Texas - It was such a relief to me to learn we are making "very, very good progress" in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick Cheney's take was equally reassuring: Things are "improving steadily" in Iraq.
I was thrilled - very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn't that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.
I was also relieved to learn - via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war - that the whole picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing into civil war. They're sort of jumping over the civil war line and back again - yep, it's started; nope, it hasn't - like a bunch of false starts at the beginning of a football play.
I'm sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol' Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best.
"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the US and abroad has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said. "We do know, of course, that al Qaeda has media committees. We do know they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence that reports on their meetings. Now I can't take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al Qaeda media committee meeting. I am not able to do that at all."
No horsepoop? Then can I ask a question: If you're able to monitor these media committee meetings, how come you can't find Osama bin Ladin?
But, Brother Rumsfeld warns us, "We do know that their goal is to try to break the will; that they consider the center of gravity of this - not to be in Iraq, because they know they can't win a battle out there; they consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London and in the capitals of the Western world."
I'm sorry, I know we are not allowed to use the V-word in relation to Iraq, because so many brilliant neocons have assured us this war is nothing like Vietnam (Vietnam, lotsa jungle; Iraq lotsa sand - big difference). But you must admit that press conferences with Donny Rum are wonderfully reminiscent of the Five O'Clock Follies, those wacky but endearing daily press briefings on Southeast Asia by military officers who made Baghdad Bob sound like a pessimist.
Rumsfeld's performance was so reminiscent of all the times the military in Vietnam blamed the media for reporting "bad news'" when there was nothing else to report. A briefing officer once memorably asked the press, "Who's side are you on?" The answer is what it's always been: We root for America, but our job is to report as accurately as we can what the situation is.
You could rely on other sources. For example, the Pentagon is still investigating itself to find out why it is paying American soldiers to make up good news about the war, which it then passes on to a Republican public relations firm, which in turn pays people in the Iraqi media to print the stuff - thus fooling the Iraqis or somebody. When last heard from, the general in charge of investigating this federally funded Baghdad Bobism said he hadn't found anything about it to be illegal yet, so it apparently continues.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq is "really vulnerable" to civil war if there is another attack like the al-Askari bombing. By invading, said Khalilzad, the United States has "opened the Pandora's box" of sectarian strife in Iraq.
Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld's rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we're best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al Qaeda?
Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq - Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press, 1,095; Rumsfeld, 0.
Iran Shock & Awe Spin Moves into Hyperdrive
Another Day in the Empire
It is interesting to follow the corporate media’s take on Iran’s response to threats of military action, most recently amplified by John Bolton and Dick Cheney in speeches delivered to the primary constituency of the United States government, AIPAC. Iran’s “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s [comments about retaliating if his country is attacked] came as Tehran struck an increasingly threatening tone, with the top Iranian delegate to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency warning a day earlier that the United States will face ‘harm and pain’ if the Security Council becomes involved,” according to ABC News. “Some diplomats saw the comments as a veiled threat to use oil as a weapon, though Iran’s oil minister ruled out any decrease in production. Iran also has leverage with extremist groups in the Middle East that could harm U.S. interests.”
Of course, the “veiled threats” of Cheney and Bolton do not merit such commentary from these anonymous diplomats, more than likely neocons. ABC simply characterizes U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns’ threat to “seek a so-called [United Nations] Chapter 7 resolution, which can be enforced with military action” as the “toughest talk so far has come from Washington.”
It would be perfectly natural for Iran to use oil as a weapon if attacked by the United States, Israel, and any nation that supports a Chapter 7 resolution resulting in a military attack. It also makes perfect sense for Iran to leverage “terrorist” organizations during an attack (Iran allegedly supports Hamas, the PIJ and Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-GC in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon; it should be noted that both Hamas and Hezbollah are democratically elected political organizations).
Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was spot on when he declared: “This time they have used nuclear energy as an excuse. If Iran quits now, the case will not be over. The Americans will find another excuse” as a pretext to shock and awe his country, as they went through several excuses in the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the United States, several European countries are lining up behind the Straussian neocon threat to attack Iran, as most recently demonstrated by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who indicated the “USA, Russia, China and Europe are in agreement on” preventing Iran’s nascent nuclear program, completely legal under Article IV(1) of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, signed by Iran in 1970.
“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” the article states. Iran claims its nuclear program is for energy purposes.
Meanwhile, in the House of Corporate Whores, otherwise known as the House of Representatives, Thomas Lantos of California, senior Democrat whore on the International Relations Committee, has declared his intention to “push forward with legislation imposing mandatory sanctions on foreign firms working in Iran, despite administration concerns that the bill could split the international coalition against Iran’s nuclear programme,” in other words such a bill may jeopardize the impending Straussian neocon effort to shock and awe Iran.
“Iran’s quest for nuclear arms requires us to do two things: squeeze Iran’s economy as much as possible and do so without delay,” averred Lantos. Of course, an effort to “squeeze Iran’s economy” will result in misery and privation for the Iranian people, but then this does not bother Democrats. It should be remembered that the “feel your pain” Democrat Bill Clinton was responsible for most of the human misery inflicted under the medieval siege-like Iraq sanctions.
“After a year of intensive diplomacy, the five major nuclear powers—the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China—are united in agreeing that ‘Iran is seeking nuclear weapons’ but the proposed law could blow the coalition apart,” Nicholas Burns warned. For the Straussian neocons, such a blow-out would be unfortunate, although it certainly wouldn’t put a kink in their effort to target Iran, as they have held this threat dear for more than a decade.
Finally, Condi Rice has thrown in her two cents. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see develop,” Rice told a Congressional hearing in Washington. “This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community which is determined that they should not get one.”
Never mind that the above mentioned countries are not about to give up their nukes and the sanctimonious United States is the only country to actually ever use nukes—not against a true adversary, mind you, but an all-but defeated enemy, or rather its civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Rice also alleged that Iran was the ‘central banker for terrorism” in the Middle East, accusing the Islamic Republic of supporting terrorist attacks in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon,” reports al-Jazeera. Of course, Condi did not offer any evidence that Iran supports attacks against the occupiers in Iraq—never mind that Iran’s support of the Sunni and Ba’athist resistance would be absurd, considering the country fought a horrific war against the secular Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.
No mention either of Israel’s terrorist attacks against thousands of people in “the Palestinian territories,” the vast majority innocent civilians (according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the IDF, or rather IOF, since September 29, 2000, 3,821 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis have been killed; see this chart). Nor did Condi bother to mention that in fact the “terrorist” group in Lebanon is Hezbollah, a legitimate resistance organization formed when Israel illegally invaded Lebanon and supported by most Lebanese.
As the shock and awe campaign against Iran unfolds before our eyes, such details are irrelevant. However, it appears the United Nations is no longer irrelevant, as Bush claimed it was in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and Europe is eager to put to rest its stigmatization as a passel of wimps, irresolute in the face of Islamic terrorism, never mind that much of this terrorism was created by the United States, Britain, and their various clients.
It is interesting to follow the corporate media’s take on Iran’s response to threats of military action, most recently amplified by John Bolton and Dick Cheney in speeches delivered to the primary constituency of the United States government, AIPAC. Iran’s “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s [comments about retaliating if his country is attacked] came as Tehran struck an increasingly threatening tone, with the top Iranian delegate to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency warning a day earlier that the United States will face ‘harm and pain’ if the Security Council becomes involved,” according to ABC News. “Some diplomats saw the comments as a veiled threat to use oil as a weapon, though Iran’s oil minister ruled out any decrease in production. Iran also has leverage with extremist groups in the Middle East that could harm U.S. interests.”
Of course, the “veiled threats” of Cheney and Bolton do not merit such commentary from these anonymous diplomats, more than likely neocons. ABC simply characterizes U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns’ threat to “seek a so-called [United Nations] Chapter 7 resolution, which can be enforced with military action” as the “toughest talk so far has come from Washington.”
It would be perfectly natural for Iran to use oil as a weapon if attacked by the United States, Israel, and any nation that supports a Chapter 7 resolution resulting in a military attack. It also makes perfect sense for Iran to leverage “terrorist” organizations during an attack (Iran allegedly supports Hamas, the PIJ and Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-GC in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon; it should be noted that both Hamas and Hezbollah are democratically elected political organizations).
Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was spot on when he declared: “This time they have used nuclear energy as an excuse. If Iran quits now, the case will not be over. The Americans will find another excuse” as a pretext to shock and awe his country, as they went through several excuses in the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the United States, several European countries are lining up behind the Straussian neocon threat to attack Iran, as most recently demonstrated by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who indicated the “USA, Russia, China and Europe are in agreement on” preventing Iran’s nascent nuclear program, completely legal under Article IV(1) of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, signed by Iran in 1970.
“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” the article states. Iran claims its nuclear program is for energy purposes.
Meanwhile, in the House of Corporate Whores, otherwise known as the House of Representatives, Thomas Lantos of California, senior Democrat whore on the International Relations Committee, has declared his intention to “push forward with legislation imposing mandatory sanctions on foreign firms working in Iran, despite administration concerns that the bill could split the international coalition against Iran’s nuclear programme,” in other words such a bill may jeopardize the impending Straussian neocon effort to shock and awe Iran.
“Iran’s quest for nuclear arms requires us to do two things: squeeze Iran’s economy as much as possible and do so without delay,” averred Lantos. Of course, an effort to “squeeze Iran’s economy” will result in misery and privation for the Iranian people, but then this does not bother Democrats. It should be remembered that the “feel your pain” Democrat Bill Clinton was responsible for most of the human misery inflicted under the medieval siege-like Iraq sanctions.
“After a year of intensive diplomacy, the five major nuclear powers—the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China—are united in agreeing that ‘Iran is seeking nuclear weapons’ but the proposed law could blow the coalition apart,” Nicholas Burns warned. For the Straussian neocons, such a blow-out would be unfortunate, although it certainly wouldn’t put a kink in their effort to target Iran, as they have held this threat dear for more than a decade.
Finally, Condi Rice has thrown in her two cents. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see develop,” Rice told a Congressional hearing in Washington. “This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community which is determined that they should not get one.”
Never mind that the above mentioned countries are not about to give up their nukes and the sanctimonious United States is the only country to actually ever use nukes—not against a true adversary, mind you, but an all-but defeated enemy, or rather its civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Rice also alleged that Iran was the ‘central banker for terrorism” in the Middle East, accusing the Islamic Republic of supporting terrorist attacks in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon,” reports al-Jazeera. Of course, Condi did not offer any evidence that Iran supports attacks against the occupiers in Iraq—never mind that Iran’s support of the Sunni and Ba’athist resistance would be absurd, considering the country fought a horrific war against the secular Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.
No mention either of Israel’s terrorist attacks against thousands of people in “the Palestinian territories,” the vast majority innocent civilians (according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the IDF, or rather IOF, since September 29, 2000, 3,821 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis have been killed; see this chart). Nor did Condi bother to mention that in fact the “terrorist” group in Lebanon is Hezbollah, a legitimate resistance organization formed when Israel illegally invaded Lebanon and supported by most Lebanese.
As the shock and awe campaign against Iran unfolds before our eyes, such details are irrelevant. However, it appears the United Nations is no longer irrelevant, as Bush claimed it was in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and Europe is eager to put to rest its stigmatization as a passel of wimps, irresolute in the face of Islamic terrorism, never mind that much of this terrorism was created by the United States, Britain, and their various clients.
Daily Kos: BREAKING: Sandra Day O'Connor Speaks out and unbelievably says
Daily Kos: BREAKING: Sandra Day O'Connor Speaks out and unbelievably says
BREAKING: Sandra Day O'Connor Speaks out and unbelievably says
by philinmaine
Fri Mar 10, 2006 at 06:25:12 AM PDT
I don't have all the story but Justice O'Connor has BLASTED the Republicans for their partisan attacks on the courts. She stated (paraphrase) that partisan attacks on the courts for political purposes must stop. She included references to cutting a court's budget, intimidation, and poisioning the public against the judicial system. Wow! Then she said something off the charts...
* philinmaine's diary :: ::
*
She closed by saying (paraphrase) that it takes a long time to become a dictatorship but better to stop the slide at the beginning than the end. That's Right..Sandra Day O'Connor used the word dictatorship. Not some 'nutty blogger' not some 'left wing lezzy' but the most venerated, praised, widely respected, Justice O'Connor.
The audio was on NPR..I suppose the lead could be 'NPR finds its balls' cause I've been scouring the net and can't find the speech but the audio will be on the net at 10AM
http://www.npr.org/...
I don't care if this diary gets recommended or not (I had a good diary yesterday that got pretty much ignored) but I hope this gets picked up. Her statements were right on the mark, Molly Ivins could not have said it better. Thank you Justice O'Connor, from the bottom of my heart I salute your guts and courage. You told it as it is except you may have left out that we're well into the slide down the slippery slope (or maybe you inferred). UPDATE: I've been informed the audio is now live. Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712 I followed the comments and yes, she was wrong in 2000 but she's right now. Would that it was then but listen to the now. UPDATE: Thanks to Karen for the following: I've transcribed the NPR audio ...and here are excerpts. Reporting is Nina Totenberg, NPR legal affairs correspondent, who attended the speech. ...O'Connor said attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms... Our effectiveness," she said, "is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts." The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. And then she took aim at former GOP House leader Tom Delay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when Delay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer and the Terri Shiavo case... Then she nailed Cornyn: It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests that there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. Re recent suggestions for "so-called" judicial reforms, judicial budget cuts, etc., -- "I," said O'Connor, "am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning." ..."We must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship," she said, "but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." The truth doesn't hurt unless it should. -Church marquee by Karen Wehrstein on Fri Mar 10, 2006 at 07:21:17 AM PDT
BREAKING: Sandra Day O'Connor Speaks out and unbelievably says
by philinmaine
Fri Mar 10, 2006 at 06:25:12 AM PDT
I don't have all the story but Justice O'Connor has BLASTED the Republicans for their partisan attacks on the courts. She stated (paraphrase) that partisan attacks on the courts for political purposes must stop. She included references to cutting a court's budget, intimidation, and poisioning the public against the judicial system. Wow! Then she said something off the charts...
* philinmaine's diary :: ::
*
She closed by saying (paraphrase) that it takes a long time to become a dictatorship but better to stop the slide at the beginning than the end. That's Right..Sandra Day O'Connor used the word dictatorship. Not some 'nutty blogger' not some 'left wing lezzy' but the most venerated, praised, widely respected, Justice O'Connor.
The audio was on NPR..I suppose the lead could be 'NPR finds its balls' cause I've been scouring the net and can't find the speech but the audio will be on the net at 10AM
http://www.npr.org/...
I don't care if this diary gets recommended or not (I had a good diary yesterday that got pretty much ignored) but I hope this gets picked up. Her statements were right on the mark, Molly Ivins could not have said it better. Thank you Justice O'Connor, from the bottom of my heart I salute your guts and courage. You told it as it is except you may have left out that we're well into the slide down the slippery slope (or maybe you inferred). UPDATE: I've been informed the audio is now live. Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712 I followed the comments and yes, she was wrong in 2000 but she's right now. Would that it was then but listen to the now. UPDATE: Thanks to Karen for the following: I've transcribed the NPR audio ...and here are excerpts. Reporting is Nina Totenberg, NPR legal affairs correspondent, who attended the speech. ...O'Connor said attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms... Our effectiveness," she said, "is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts." The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. And then she took aim at former GOP House leader Tom Delay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when Delay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer and the Terri Shiavo case... Then she nailed Cornyn: It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests that there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. Re recent suggestions for "so-called" judicial reforms, judicial budget cuts, etc., -- "I," said O'Connor, "am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning." ..."We must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship," she said, "but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." The truth doesn't hurt unless it should. -Church marquee by Karen Wehrstein on Fri Mar 10, 2006 at 07:21:17 AM PDT
ABC News: Soldiers Back From Iraq, Unable to Get Help They Need
ABC News: Soldiers Back From Iraq, Unable to Get Help They Need
Soldiers Back From Iraq, Unable to Get Help They Need
Department of Veterans Affairs Facing Staggering Burden of Providing Health Care to Returning Troops
DONNA, Texas, March 9, 2006 — - Eugene Simpson doesn't like to complain. Paralyzed in a bomb attack in Iraq, his initial care was excellent, but ever since then he has felt adrift.
"There are thousands of soldiers in worse condition than I am, and they're OK," he said. "They're making it."
Getting to the nearest Veterans Administration hospital that can best treat his paralysis means a three-hour roundtrip, and the VA isn't paying for therapists closer to home. So he does without.
The numbers of war veterans enrolled in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has continued to grow, and many feel the strain.
"I want to excel and advance and get stronger," said Simpson. "But at the same time, I don't want to pull a muscle or do the wrong exercise that can hurt a certain part of my body, because then I'll be helpless."
In Texas, a group of veterans staged a protest march covering the distance to the nearest VA hospital: 250 miles.
"[It takes] four-and-a-half to five hours .. one way," said Vietnam War vet Polo Uriesti.
Uriesti said his father, a veteran of World War II, suffers a greater hardship. But he said the headaches and flashbacks of post-traumatic stress still flare up without warning.
"I just ... it chokes me up," said Uriesti.
The VA acknowledged some veterans suffer those problems but said most do not.
"Last year, 97 percent of veterans who came to us for a primary care appointment got that appointment within 30 days, and 95 percent of those who came for an acute care appointment got it within 30 days," said R. James Nicholson, secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Audit: VA Fudged Reports
But an inspector general's audit found real problems with the way the VA has come up with those numbers. The audit found that some VA staff, feeling "pressured," actually fudged the numbers, and error rates were as high as 61 percent.
In Atlanta, one veteran who the VA said got an appointment within a week actually waited nearly a year.
Another veteran in Boston who reported seeing a VA doctor within hours actually waited 472 days.
The VA said it has been steadily improving the system, but many veterans' groups worry the situation will only get worse as new Iraq veterans keep pouring in.
"The numbers are simply going to overwhelm them, and they are not going to have the proper funds to deal with these folks on a long-term, chronic basis," said David Gorman of the advocacy group Disabled American Veterans.
Uriesti worries what his two sons, set to serve again in Iraq, may face if they need care, given the gaps in the VA system so many veterans now face.
ABC News' Erin Hayes filed this report for "World News Tonight."
Soldiers Back From Iraq, Unable to Get Help They Need
Department of Veterans Affairs Facing Staggering Burden of Providing Health Care to Returning Troops
DONNA, Texas, March 9, 2006 — - Eugene Simpson doesn't like to complain. Paralyzed in a bomb attack in Iraq, his initial care was excellent, but ever since then he has felt adrift.
"There are thousands of soldiers in worse condition than I am, and they're OK," he said. "They're making it."
Getting to the nearest Veterans Administration hospital that can best treat his paralysis means a three-hour roundtrip, and the VA isn't paying for therapists closer to home. So he does without.
The numbers of war veterans enrolled in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has continued to grow, and many feel the strain.
"I want to excel and advance and get stronger," said Simpson. "But at the same time, I don't want to pull a muscle or do the wrong exercise that can hurt a certain part of my body, because then I'll be helpless."
In Texas, a group of veterans staged a protest march covering the distance to the nearest VA hospital: 250 miles.
"[It takes] four-and-a-half to five hours .. one way," said Vietnam War vet Polo Uriesti.
Uriesti said his father, a veteran of World War II, suffers a greater hardship. But he said the headaches and flashbacks of post-traumatic stress still flare up without warning.
"I just ... it chokes me up," said Uriesti.
The VA acknowledged some veterans suffer those problems but said most do not.
"Last year, 97 percent of veterans who came to us for a primary care appointment got that appointment within 30 days, and 95 percent of those who came for an acute care appointment got it within 30 days," said R. James Nicholson, secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Audit: VA Fudged Reports
But an inspector general's audit found real problems with the way the VA has come up with those numbers. The audit found that some VA staff, feeling "pressured," actually fudged the numbers, and error rates were as high as 61 percent.
In Atlanta, one veteran who the VA said got an appointment within a week actually waited nearly a year.
Another veteran in Boston who reported seeing a VA doctor within hours actually waited 472 days.
The VA said it has been steadily improving the system, but many veterans' groups worry the situation will only get worse as new Iraq veterans keep pouring in.
"The numbers are simply going to overwhelm them, and they are not going to have the proper funds to deal with these folks on a long-term, chronic basis," said David Gorman of the advocacy group Disabled American Veterans.
Uriesti worries what his two sons, set to serve again in Iraq, may face if they need care, given the gaps in the VA system so many veterans now face.
ABC News' Erin Hayes filed this report for "World News Tonight."
US Shrugs off Iraq Civil War, Ghraib Closure Played Down
Islam Online- News Section
"…Iraqi security forces deal with it (civil war) to the extent they're able to," Rumsfeld said. (Reuters)
WASHINGTON, March 10, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United States said Iraq's civil war would be the responsibility of the Iraqi security forces, not the US troops as a leading human rights group rebuked Washington for plans to shut down the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and move prisoners to other detention facilities in Iraq.
"The plan is to prevent a civil war and to the extent one were to occur to have the ... Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they're able to," Reuters quoted US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as telling the Appropriations Committee on Thursday, March 9.
Rumsfeld, along with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appeared before the Committee to defend the Bush administration's request for nearly $70 billion more for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Last February, up to 350 people were killed in reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and people triggered by the bombing attack that destroyed the golden dome of Imam Ali Al-Hadi shrine, one of Iraq's most celebrated Shiite religious sites.
Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi security forces will deal with the civil war once erupts.
"Senator, I can say that certainly it is not the intention of the military commanders to allow that to happen," he responded to Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, who asked for assurance that emergency war funds would not be used to put US troops "right in the middle of a full-blown Iraqi civil war."
"And ... at least thus far the situation has been such that the Iraqi security forces could for the most part deal with the problems that exist."
Analysts have questioned how capable Iraqi security forces would be without the aid of US forces and the degree to which they are loyal to the central government.
"Missteps"
"A change of scenery neglects to address the real problem -- the failure to completely safeguard detainees from arbitrary and indefinite detention," Schulz said.
Some US Senators, however, kept skeptical about the situation in the war-torn country.
"You've been telling the American people that the situation in Iraq is not that dire," said Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.
"But Mr. Secretary, with all due respect and speaking for a majority of the American people, that is hard to swallow. From the beginning, the administration's Iraq strategy has been an amalgamation of misdirection and missteps."
US President George W. President Bush, whose low job approval ratings are partly because of the Iraq war, has refused to set a timetable for the troops to come home.
He said that US forces can be withdrawn from Iraq as Iraqi security forces take over security.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees US military operations in Iraq, said the security situation in Iraq was changing "from insurgency" – a US term for the Iraqi resistance - towards "sectarian violence."
He, however, said that the situation was controllable by Iraqi security forces and US-led foreign forces.
Earlier, Rice's testimony was interrupted by a protester who shouted "blood is on your hands" and "how many of you have children going to war?"
Another protestor also shouted "Fire Rumsfeld. Fire Rumsfeld. This is an illegal and immoral war."
Three years after selling the Iraqi war to the Bush administration and American public, a number of influential neo-conservatives admitted on Thursday, March 9, Iraq was now more dangerous than before the invasion-turned-occupation.
"Change of Scenery"
Meanwhile, Amnesty International slammed the new US plans to shut down the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, saying the plans were "little more than a new paint job," Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"A change of scenery neglects to address the real problem -- the failure to completely safeguard detainees from arbitrary and indefinite detention," William F. Schulz, executive director for Amnesty International USA said.
"Rather than being moved to a better facility, detainees held by US-led Multinational Forces (MNF) must be given an opportunity for a meaningful judicial review.
The US military said on Thursday that it plans to shut down the notorious prison and transfer prisoners to other jails in Iraq.
"We do have plans and are in the process of building other facilities to move detainees who are under US control out of Abu Ghraib," US General Peter Pace said.
Amnesty said that detainees must know why they were being held and if charged, given fair trial.
The US military is holding about 14,500 detainees in Iraq, 4,500 of whom are held at the Abu Ghraib prison.
An Amnesty report on Monday, March 6, said that the arbitrary US detention in Iraq has been a recipe for abuses against detainees.
The Abu Ghraib prison gained further notoriety under the US occupation when it was revealed that US forces had abused Iraqi detainees there in 2003.
Pictures of the abuse, including some showing bloodied and naked prisoners smeared with excrement or forced to perform sexual acts, stoked anti-US sentiment across the world.
"…Iraqi security forces deal with it (civil war) to the extent they're able to," Rumsfeld said. (Reuters)
WASHINGTON, March 10, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United States said Iraq's civil war would be the responsibility of the Iraqi security forces, not the US troops as a leading human rights group rebuked Washington for plans to shut down the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and move prisoners to other detention facilities in Iraq.
"The plan is to prevent a civil war and to the extent one were to occur to have the ... Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they're able to," Reuters quoted US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as telling the Appropriations Committee on Thursday, March 9.
Rumsfeld, along with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appeared before the Committee to defend the Bush administration's request for nearly $70 billion more for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Last February, up to 350 people were killed in reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and people triggered by the bombing attack that destroyed the golden dome of Imam Ali Al-Hadi shrine, one of Iraq's most celebrated Shiite religious sites.
Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi security forces will deal with the civil war once erupts.
"Senator, I can say that certainly it is not the intention of the military commanders to allow that to happen," he responded to Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, who asked for assurance that emergency war funds would not be used to put US troops "right in the middle of a full-blown Iraqi civil war."
"And ... at least thus far the situation has been such that the Iraqi security forces could for the most part deal with the problems that exist."
Analysts have questioned how capable Iraqi security forces would be without the aid of US forces and the degree to which they are loyal to the central government.
"Missteps"
"A change of scenery neglects to address the real problem -- the failure to completely safeguard detainees from arbitrary and indefinite detention," Schulz said.
Some US Senators, however, kept skeptical about the situation in the war-torn country.
"You've been telling the American people that the situation in Iraq is not that dire," said Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.
"But Mr. Secretary, with all due respect and speaking for a majority of the American people, that is hard to swallow. From the beginning, the administration's Iraq strategy has been an amalgamation of misdirection and missteps."
US President George W. President Bush, whose low job approval ratings are partly because of the Iraq war, has refused to set a timetable for the troops to come home.
He said that US forces can be withdrawn from Iraq as Iraqi security forces take over security.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees US military operations in Iraq, said the security situation in Iraq was changing "from insurgency" – a US term for the Iraqi resistance - towards "sectarian violence."
He, however, said that the situation was controllable by Iraqi security forces and US-led foreign forces.
Earlier, Rice's testimony was interrupted by a protester who shouted "blood is on your hands" and "how many of you have children going to war?"
Another protestor also shouted "Fire Rumsfeld. Fire Rumsfeld. This is an illegal and immoral war."
Three years after selling the Iraqi war to the Bush administration and American public, a number of influential neo-conservatives admitted on Thursday, March 9, Iraq was now more dangerous than before the invasion-turned-occupation.
"Change of Scenery"
Meanwhile, Amnesty International slammed the new US plans to shut down the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, saying the plans were "little more than a new paint job," Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"A change of scenery neglects to address the real problem -- the failure to completely safeguard detainees from arbitrary and indefinite detention," William F. Schulz, executive director for Amnesty International USA said.
"Rather than being moved to a better facility, detainees held by US-led Multinational Forces (MNF) must be given an opportunity for a meaningful judicial review.
The US military said on Thursday that it plans to shut down the notorious prison and transfer prisoners to other jails in Iraq.
"We do have plans and are in the process of building other facilities to move detainees who are under US control out of Abu Ghraib," US General Peter Pace said.
Amnesty said that detainees must know why they were being held and if charged, given fair trial.
The US military is holding about 14,500 detainees in Iraq, 4,500 of whom are held at the Abu Ghraib prison.
An Amnesty report on Monday, March 6, said that the arbitrary US detention in Iraq has been a recipe for abuses against detainees.
The Abu Ghraib prison gained further notoriety under the US occupation when it was revealed that US forces had abused Iraqi detainees there in 2003.
Pictures of the abuse, including some showing bloodied and naked prisoners smeared with excrement or forced to perform sexual acts, stoked anti-US sentiment across the world.
U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq
Gmail - [ourrealnewsplace] U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq
U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN,
Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago
The U.S. military said Thursday it would begin moving
thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison to a
new lockup near Baghdad's airport within three months
and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi
authorities as soon as possible.
Abu Ghraib has become perhaps the most infamous prison
in the world, known as the site where U.S. soldiers
abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its
torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.
The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of
Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once
the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other U.S.
military prisons in the country is finished. The
process will take several months, said Lt. Col. Barry
Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Abu Ghraib currently houses 4,537 out of the 14,589
detainees held by the U.S. military in the country.
Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib,
though it is not known how many.
The U.S. government initially spoke of tearing down
Abu Ghraib after it became a symbol of the scandal.
Widely publicized photographs of prisoner abuse by
American military guards and interrogators led to
intense global criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq and
helped fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency.
But Abu Ghraib was kept in service after the Iraqi
government objected. Planning for the new facility at
Camp Cropper began in 2004, Johnson said.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said the U.S. wants to turn Abu Ghraib over to
the Iraqis fast as possible.
"There are facilities being built so that the U.S. can
pull out of Abu Ghraib. Then it will be up to the
Iraqi government to decide what they want to do. I do
not know that the Iraqi government had decided. It's
an Iraqi decision, I just don't know that they've made
that decision."
But the Iraqis were all but certain to use Abu Ghraib
as a jail for some time at least, because they do not
have the money to build new ones.
The Iraqi Cabinet announced Thursday that it hanged 13
insurgents, the first executions of militants since
the ouster of Saddam.
The announcement listed the name of only one of those
hanged, Shukair Farid, a former policeman in the
northern city of Mosul, who allegedly confessed that
he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist
fellow Iraqis to kill police and civilians.
"The competent authorities have today carried out the
death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet
announcement said.
Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to
spread the fear through killings and abductions," the
government said.
A judicial official said the death sentences were
handed down in separate trials and were carried out in
Baghdad.
"The 13 terrorists were tried in different courts and
their trials began in 2005 and ended earlier this
year," an official of the Supreme Judiciary Council
said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he
feared reprisal from insurgents.
In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers,
the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's
ouster in April 2003. The men, considered common
criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of
killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.
Capital punishment was suspended during the formal
U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the
Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for
those found guilty of murder, endangering national
security and distributing drugs, saying it was
necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.
The authorities also wanted to have the option of
executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes
committed by his regime. Under the former dictator,
114 offenses were punishable by death.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for
allegedly massacring more than 140 people in Dujail,
north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt
against him there in 1982.
Death sentences must be approved by the three-member
presidential council headed by President Jalal
Talabani, who opposes executions. In the September
hangings and again in the Thursday executions,
Talabani refused to sign the authorization himself but
gave his two vice presidents the authority.
Also Thursday, a series of explosions rocked Baghdad,
including a car bomb that struck a Sunni mosque and a
shooting that killed a total of 17 civilians and
wounded 31 as a dust storm enveloped the capital.
One of the deadly blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol
in the mostly Sunni western neighborhood of Amariyah,
killing nine civilians and wounding six, according to
an Interior Ministry official, Major Falah
al-Mohammedawi.
A car bomb also exploded near the Sunni Al-Israa
Walmiraj mosque in east Baghdad, killing five
civilians and wounding 12 others, police Capt. Mahir
Hamad Mousa said.
Police reported finding five more blindfolded,
handcuffed bodies killed execution-style, three of
them near Fallujah, west of Baghdad , and two others
in the Sadr City Shiite slum in the east of the
capital.
The U.S. military reported the death of another
Marine, killed Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar
province. At least 2,305 U.S. service members have
died since the war started in March 2003, according to
an Associated Press count.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi Justice Ministry official said the
U.S. military had released two senior members of
Saddam's former regime, including a deputy prime
minister, after finding they were not involved in
crimes against humanity.
Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, a former deputy prime
minister and minister of military industrialization,
and Saeed Abdul-Majid al-Faisal, former Foreign
Ministry undersecretary, were released Feb. 23, said
Justice Ministry official Busho Ibrahim Ali.
Huweish, who had been in custody since May 2, 2003,
was one of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's
regime.
"They were freed because there is no proof that they
committed crimes against humanity," Ali said.
In political developments, Shiite politicians said
they asked President Talabani, a Kurd, to convene
parliament March 19, one week past the constitutional
deadline, marking an apparent compromise in the battle
over a second term for Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, a Shiite.
Shiite legislators Khaled al-Attiyah and Khudayer
al-Khuzai told The Associated Press that the request
for parliament to convene had been delivered to
Talabani. On Sunday, the president sought to issue a
decree that would have called the parliament into
session on March 12, as spelled out in the
constitution.
But the move was blocked when one of two vice
presidents — a Shiite — initially refused to co-sign
the decree as required by law. Vice President Adil
Abdul-Mahdi relented Wednesday, but the issue still
faced heated opposition from other Shiite political
forces, especially in the powerful bloc loyal to
radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN,
Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago
The U.S. military said Thursday it would begin moving
thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison to a
new lockup near Baghdad's airport within three months
and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi
authorities as soon as possible.
Abu Ghraib has become perhaps the most infamous prison
in the world, known as the site where U.S. soldiers
abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its
torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.
The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of
Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once
the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other U.S.
military prisons in the country is finished. The
process will take several months, said Lt. Col. Barry
Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Abu Ghraib currently houses 4,537 out of the 14,589
detainees held by the U.S. military in the country.
Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib,
though it is not known how many.
The U.S. government initially spoke of tearing down
Abu Ghraib after it became a symbol of the scandal.
Widely publicized photographs of prisoner abuse by
American military guards and interrogators led to
intense global criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq and
helped fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency.
But Abu Ghraib was kept in service after the Iraqi
government objected. Planning for the new facility at
Camp Cropper began in 2004, Johnson said.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said the U.S. wants to turn Abu Ghraib over to
the Iraqis fast as possible.
"There are facilities being built so that the U.S. can
pull out of Abu Ghraib. Then it will be up to the
Iraqi government to decide what they want to do. I do
not know that the Iraqi government had decided. It's
an Iraqi decision, I just don't know that they've made
that decision."
But the Iraqis were all but certain to use Abu Ghraib
as a jail for some time at least, because they do not
have the money to build new ones.
The Iraqi Cabinet announced Thursday that it hanged 13
insurgents, the first executions of militants since
the ouster of Saddam.
The announcement listed the name of only one of those
hanged, Shukair Farid, a former policeman in the
northern city of Mosul, who allegedly confessed that
he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist
fellow Iraqis to kill police and civilians.
"The competent authorities have today carried out the
death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet
announcement said.
Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to
spread the fear through killings and abductions," the
government said.
A judicial official said the death sentences were
handed down in separate trials and were carried out in
Baghdad.
"The 13 terrorists were tried in different courts and
their trials began in 2005 and ended earlier this
year," an official of the Supreme Judiciary Council
said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he
feared reprisal from insurgents.
In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers,
the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's
ouster in April 2003. The men, considered common
criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of
killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.
Capital punishment was suspended during the formal
U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the
Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for
those found guilty of murder, endangering national
security and distributing drugs, saying it was
necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.
The authorities also wanted to have the option of
executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes
committed by his regime. Under the former dictator,
114 offenses were punishable by death.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for
allegedly massacring more than 140 people in Dujail,
north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt
against him there in 1982.
Death sentences must be approved by the three-member
presidential council headed by President Jalal
Talabani, who opposes executions. In the September
hangings and again in the Thursday executions,
Talabani refused to sign the authorization himself but
gave his two vice presidents the authority.
Also Thursday, a series of explosions rocked Baghdad,
including a car bomb that struck a Sunni mosque and a
shooting that killed a total of 17 civilians and
wounded 31 as a dust storm enveloped the capital.
One of the deadly blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol
in the mostly Sunni western neighborhood of Amariyah,
killing nine civilians and wounding six, according to
an Interior Ministry official, Major Falah
al-Mohammedawi.
A car bomb also exploded near the Sunni Al-Israa
Walmiraj mosque in east Baghdad, killing five
civilians and wounding 12 others, police Capt. Mahir
Hamad Mousa said.
Police reported finding five more blindfolded,
handcuffed bodies killed execution-style, three of
them near Fallujah, west of Baghdad , and two others
in the Sadr City Shiite slum in the east of the
capital.
The U.S. military reported the death of another
Marine, killed Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar
province. At least 2,305 U.S. service members have
died since the war started in March 2003, according to
an Associated Press count.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi Justice Ministry official said the
U.S. military had released two senior members of
Saddam's former regime, including a deputy prime
minister, after finding they were not involved in
crimes against humanity.
Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, a former deputy prime
minister and minister of military industrialization,
and Saeed Abdul-Majid al-Faisal, former Foreign
Ministry undersecretary, were released Feb. 23, said
Justice Ministry official Busho Ibrahim Ali.
Huweish, who had been in custody since May 2, 2003,
was one of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's
regime.
"They were freed because there is no proof that they
committed crimes against humanity," Ali said.
In political developments, Shiite politicians said
they asked President Talabani, a Kurd, to convene
parliament March 19, one week past the constitutional
deadline, marking an apparent compromise in the battle
over a second term for Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, a Shiite.
Shiite legislators Khaled al-Attiyah and Khudayer
al-Khuzai told The Associated Press that the request
for parliament to convene had been delivered to
Talabani. On Sunday, the president sought to issue a
decree that would have called the parliament into
session on March 12, as spelled out in the
constitution.
But the move was blocked when one of two vice
presidents — a Shiite — initially refused to co-sign
the decree as required by law. Vice President Adil
Abdul-Mahdi relented Wednesday, but the issue still
faced heated opposition from other Shiite political
forces, especially in the powerful bloc loyal to
radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
JURIST - Paper Chase: BREAKING NEWS ~ Abu Ghraib prison to close, says Pentagon
JURIST - Paper Chase: BREAKING NEWS ~ Abu Ghraib prison to close, says Pentagon
BREAKING NEWS ~ Abu Ghraib prison to close, says Pentagon
Jeannie Shawl at 12:30 PM ET
[JURIST] Reuters is reporting that the US military will close Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison [JURIST news archive] and transfer approximately 4,500 prisoners to other facilities in Iraq, according to a military spokesman. The prison, a torture center under the regime of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] that again became notorious for abuses during the US occupation, is expected to close within the next three months. Lieutenant Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry, the Pentagon's spokesman for US detention operations in Iraq, told Reuters that operations will be transferred from Abu Ghraib to Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib will be turned over to the Iraqi government.
Photos of US personnel abusing detainees held at Abu Ghraib first circulated in 2003, and new images depicting abuse [JURIST report] were made public by Australian media earlier this year. US abuses at the prison have been widely condemned as contrary to international law [JURIST report] and a recent report [text] from Amnesty International concluded that the arbitrary detention of thousands of people in Iraq has facilitated abuses [JURIST report] at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in the country. Reuters has more.
3:35 PM ET - The American Forces Press service is now reporting that "news reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate", according to defense officials. The officials say that although the US has always intended to transfer its Iraq detention facilities to Iraqis, there is no set timetable for doing so and the timing of a future handover will depend on both the readiness of Iraqi security forces to take them over and the state of infrastructure improvements.
BREAKING NEWS ~ Abu Ghraib prison to close, says Pentagon
Jeannie Shawl at 12:30 PM ET
 | |
Photos of US personnel abusing detainees held at Abu Ghraib first circulated in 2003, and new images depicting abuse [JURIST report] were made public by Australian media earlier this year. US abuses at the prison have been widely condemned as contrary to international law [JURIST report] and a recent report [text] from Amnesty International concluded that the arbitrary detention of thousands of people in Iraq has facilitated abuses [JURIST report] at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in the country. Reuters has more.
3:35 PM ET - The American Forces Press service is now reporting that "news reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate", according to defense officials. The officials say that although the US has always intended to transfer its Iraq detention facilities to Iraqis, there is no set timetable for doing so and the timing of a future handover will depend on both the readiness of Iraqi security forces to take them over and the state of infrastructure improvements.
The truth about Pat Tillman's death
Guardian Unlimited Sport | Columnists | The truth about Pat Tillman's death
The footballer who became a war hero who became a scandal
'I think they though they could control it and they realised their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth got out'
Lawrence Donegan
Thursday March 9, 2006
The Guardian
Sport in one section of the paper, news in another. It has been that way forever and, despite the personal obsessions of those of us who believe sport may matter in the greater scheme of things or, even more fancifully, serve as a metaphor for real life, the demarcation is probably not a bad idea; it stops confusion. Serious stuff over there. Fun and games over here. But every once in a while the two worlds collide and when they do you cannot but help think that sport, for all its ultimate inconsequentiality, is not a metaphor for real life but an essential escape from its corruption and cynicism. Pat Tillman's story is a case in point.
Unless you follow NFL football, you will not have heard of Tillman. He was a defensive back with the Arizona Cardinals until the summer of 2002, when he turned down a new $3.7m (£2m) contract and enrolled in the US Army. The player declined to speak publicly about his decision, although it came out that he wanted to help find Osama bin Laden. To liberal-minded British ears, this probably makes Tillman sound like a knuckle-headed Rambo. He wasn't. He was an articulate and well-informed man who subscribed to the Economist, travelled with a small library of Noam Chomsky books and urged his friends to vote Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
For the Bush administration, recently embarked on its "war on terror", Tillman's story was an enormous PR boost. Professional athlete eschews fortune for patriotic duty - not even a White House well versed in spinning self-serving propaganda could have dreamed up such a perfect recruitment story. Tillman finished his basic training in time to be sent to Iraq as part of the US invasion force, before he was sent to Afghanistan in early 2004. There he remained until April 22 2004, when he was killed while on patrol in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
His death came at a bad time for the US government. The occupation of Iraq was not going well, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would break within a few days. The Pentagon immediately announced Tillman had died a heroic death while fighting the Taliban. George W Bush, whose own patriotism never stretched to completing his Texas National Guard duty, spoke of Tillman's "ultimate sacrifice for the war on terror" and offered to record a tribute to be broadcast during a live NFL game. The soldier was awarded a posthumous Silver Star. On April 30 an Army press release described how Tillman was killed while storming enemy positions. As Frank Rich of the New York Times later wrote, "It would be a compelling story, if only it were true."
Over the past two years investigations by the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post, with help from Tillman's family, have since pieced together the truth about his death. It is a complicated narrative but it can be pared down to a simple fact: he wasn't killed by Taliban fighters but by members of his own platoon who, in the confusion of nightfall, believed he was attacking their positions.
Fratricide is one of the inevitable consequences of war. It is tragic but, in its context, understandable. What is not understandable or forgivable is the behaviour of Tillman's superior officers (and presumably, given his high profile, their superiors back in Washington), who knew that he had been killed by friendly fire but continued to spin the fiction the Taliban were responsible.
Tillman's family was only told about the true cause of his death five weeks after his memorial service had been broadcast on national television. "People in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," said the dead man's father, Patrick Tillman. "They covered it up. I think they thought they could control it and they realised their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth got out. They blew up their poster boy."
For months Tillman's family has been calling for a independent inquiry into the circumstances of his death and the subsequent cover-up. Given the secrecy of the Bush administration such an inquiry is unlikely, though there was a breakthrough of sorts this week when it was revealed that Tillman's death was to be the subject of a criminal probe.
"The Army owes it to the family to answer their questions," a Pentagon spokesman said, which is just about the most honest thing anyone from it has said through this entire sorry affair.
The footballer who became a war hero who became a scandal
'I think they though they could control it and they realised their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth got out'
Lawrence Donegan
Thursday March 9, 2006
The Guardian
Sport in one section of the paper, news in another. It has been that way forever and, despite the personal obsessions of those of us who believe sport may matter in the greater scheme of things or, even more fancifully, serve as a metaphor for real life, the demarcation is probably not a bad idea; it stops confusion. Serious stuff over there. Fun and games over here. But every once in a while the two worlds collide and when they do you cannot but help think that sport, for all its ultimate inconsequentiality, is not a metaphor for real life but an essential escape from its corruption and cynicism. Pat Tillman's story is a case in point.
Unless you follow NFL football, you will not have heard of Tillman. He was a defensive back with the Arizona Cardinals until the summer of 2002, when he turned down a new $3.7m (£2m) contract and enrolled in the US Army. The player declined to speak publicly about his decision, although it came out that he wanted to help find Osama bin Laden. To liberal-minded British ears, this probably makes Tillman sound like a knuckle-headed Rambo. He wasn't. He was an articulate and well-informed man who subscribed to the Economist, travelled with a small library of Noam Chomsky books and urged his friends to vote Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
For the Bush administration, recently embarked on its "war on terror", Tillman's story was an enormous PR boost. Professional athlete eschews fortune for patriotic duty - not even a White House well versed in spinning self-serving propaganda could have dreamed up such a perfect recruitment story. Tillman finished his basic training in time to be sent to Iraq as part of the US invasion force, before he was sent to Afghanistan in early 2004. There he remained until April 22 2004, when he was killed while on patrol in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
His death came at a bad time for the US government. The occupation of Iraq was not going well, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would break within a few days. The Pentagon immediately announced Tillman had died a heroic death while fighting the Taliban. George W Bush, whose own patriotism never stretched to completing his Texas National Guard duty, spoke of Tillman's "ultimate sacrifice for the war on terror" and offered to record a tribute to be broadcast during a live NFL game. The soldier was awarded a posthumous Silver Star. On April 30 an Army press release described how Tillman was killed while storming enemy positions. As Frank Rich of the New York Times later wrote, "It would be a compelling story, if only it were true."
Over the past two years investigations by the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post, with help from Tillman's family, have since pieced together the truth about his death. It is a complicated narrative but it can be pared down to a simple fact: he wasn't killed by Taliban fighters but by members of his own platoon who, in the confusion of nightfall, believed he was attacking their positions.
Fratricide is one of the inevitable consequences of war. It is tragic but, in its context, understandable. What is not understandable or forgivable is the behaviour of Tillman's superior officers (and presumably, given his high profile, their superiors back in Washington), who knew that he had been killed by friendly fire but continued to spin the fiction the Taliban were responsible.
Tillman's family was only told about the true cause of his death five weeks after his memorial service had been broadcast on national television. "People in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," said the dead man's father, Patrick Tillman. "They covered it up. I think they thought they could control it and they realised their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth got out. They blew up their poster boy."
For months Tillman's family has been calling for a independent inquiry into the circumstances of his death and the subsequent cover-up. Given the secrecy of the Bush administration such an inquiry is unlikely, though there was a breakthrough of sorts this week when it was revealed that Tillman's death was to be the subject of a criminal probe.
"The Army owes it to the family to answer their questions," a Pentagon spokesman said, which is just about the most honest thing anyone from it has said through this entire sorry affair.
U.S. Report Slams Russia and Belarus
U.S. Report Slams Russia and Belarus
U.S. Report Slams Russia and Belarus
By Harry Dunphy
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The United States is criticizing the human rights records of Russia and Belarus but says in an annual State Department report that there were improvements in Ukraine and the Balkan countries.
The report said the most notable human rights development in Russia during 2005 was the continued centralization of power in the executive branch under President Vladimir Putin, which resulted in an erosion of the accountability of government leaders to the people.
"The government's human rights record in the continuing conflict in and around Chechnya remained poor," said the report, released Wednesday.
On the positive side, the report said the judiciary demonstrated greater independence in a number of cases, producing improvements in the criminal justice system. Russia also made progress, the report said, in combating trafficking in people.
The report said the human rights record of Belarus, where presidential elections are set for March 19, remained very poor and "worsened in some areas, with the government continuing to commit numerous serious abuses."
The report said the government of President Alexander Lukashenko reopened an investigation into the disappearance and presumed killing of television journalist Dmitry Zavadsky but made no serious effort to solve the case.
Credible evidence indicated government agents may have killed Zavadsky for reporting that government officials may have aided Chechen separatists.
U.S. President George W. Bush met last week with Zavadsky's wife, Svetlana, and Inna Krasovskaya, wife of a pro-democracy businessman who disappeared in 1999, to underscore his personal support for their cases.
In August, Lukashenko granted the Order for Service to the Motherland to Colonel Dmitry Pavlichenko, named in a Council of Europe report as having played a key role in Zavadsky's disappearance.
U.S. State Department officials said Pavlichenko played a role in the beating and detention last week of opposition presidential candidate Alexander Kozulin, who tried to enter a meeting chaired by Lukashenko.
The report said the number of reported political prisoners had increased.
It noted that last August, the prison sentence of opposition political figure Mikhail Marinich had been reduced from 5 years to 2 1/2. Marinich, a former government minister, was widely regarded as a likely opponent for Lukashenko in the elections.
The report gave a mixed review to Ukraine, saying its human rights record significantly improved in areas such as freedom of expression and right to assembly but remained poor in areas such as violent hazing of soldiers and anti-Semitic acts.
Among the improvements, the report noted "increased accountability by police officers" and gradual improvements in prison conditions.
The report said mass media made significant gains in independence.
In the Balkans, the report said, Croatia demonstrated increased willingness to prosecute war crimes and increased cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, Netherlands.
U.S. Report Slams Russia and Belarus
By Harry Dunphy
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The United States is criticizing the human rights records of Russia and Belarus but says in an annual State Department report that there were improvements in Ukraine and the Balkan countries.
The report said the most notable human rights development in Russia during 2005 was the continued centralization of power in the executive branch under President Vladimir Putin, which resulted in an erosion of the accountability of government leaders to the people.
"The government's human rights record in the continuing conflict in and around Chechnya remained poor," said the report, released Wednesday.
On the positive side, the report said the judiciary demonstrated greater independence in a number of cases, producing improvements in the criminal justice system. Russia also made progress, the report said, in combating trafficking in people.
The report said the human rights record of Belarus, where presidential elections are set for March 19, remained very poor and "worsened in some areas, with the government continuing to commit numerous serious abuses."
The report said the government of President Alexander Lukashenko reopened an investigation into the disappearance and presumed killing of television journalist Dmitry Zavadsky but made no serious effort to solve the case.
Credible evidence indicated government agents may have killed Zavadsky for reporting that government officials may have aided Chechen separatists.
U.S. President George W. Bush met last week with Zavadsky's wife, Svetlana, and Inna Krasovskaya, wife of a pro-democracy businessman who disappeared in 1999, to underscore his personal support for their cases.
In August, Lukashenko granted the Order for Service to the Motherland to Colonel Dmitry Pavlichenko, named in a Council of Europe report as having played a key role in Zavadsky's disappearance.
U.S. State Department officials said Pavlichenko played a role in the beating and detention last week of opposition presidential candidate Alexander Kozulin, who tried to enter a meeting chaired by Lukashenko.
The report said the number of reported political prisoners had increased.
It noted that last August, the prison sentence of opposition political figure Mikhail Marinich had been reduced from 5 years to 2 1/2. Marinich, a former government minister, was widely regarded as a likely opponent for Lukashenko in the elections.
The report gave a mixed review to Ukraine, saying its human rights record significantly improved in areas such as freedom of expression and right to assembly but remained poor in areas such as violent hazing of soldiers and anti-Semitic acts.
Among the improvements, the report noted "increased accountability by police officers" and gradual improvements in prison conditions.
The report said mass media made significant gains in independence.
In the Balkans, the report said, Croatia demonstrated increased willingness to prosecute war crimes and increased cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, Netherlands.
Cheney: Against Iranian Sanctions Before He Was For Them
Rolling Stone :
Cheney: Against Iranian Sanctions Before He Was For Them
The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is....
An example that comes immediately to mind has to do with...the Caspian Sea area. It is a region rich in oil and gas. Unfortunately, Iran is sitting right in the middle of the area and the United States has declared unilateral economic sanctions against that country. As a result, American firms are prohibited from dealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action....
-Halliburton CEO Cheney, decrying "sanctions happy" U.S. policy in a CATO address from June of 1998.
Iranians desire and deserve to be free from tyranny and oppression in their own homeland. Freedom in the Middle East requires freedom for the Iranian people -- and America looks forward to the day when our Nation can be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.
-Vice President Cheney, threatening sanctions and more, yesterday.
[Marita Lorenz]--My life changed the day my father was betrayed by the US government
VHeadline.com - My life changed the day my father was betrayed by the US government
Published: Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Bylined to: Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez
My life changed overnight the day my father was betrayed by the US government
VHeadline's newest commentarist on the block writes: My name is Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez and I am the daughter of President Marcos Perez Jimenez who was the Military Dictator of Venezuela from 1952 to 1958.
My mother is Marita Lorenz, a CIA agent sent by the US government to get cash from my father earmarked to help finance the US-backed anti-Castro movement ... the cash handover and subsequent liaison took place at my father's estate in Florida where he lived a comfortable life in exile.
I was born on March 9, 1962, in New York City. My earliest years were spent in relative comfort, living in a high rise apartment in Miami and later back in New York on the Upper East side. Life for my my mother and I was not too bad ... Marcos made sure that his "kept woman" and youngest daughter were comfortable, and held very separate from his wife and four legitimate daughters.
This all changed overnight the day that my father, Marcos Perez Jimenez was betrayed by the US government and extradited back to Venezuela on the orders of US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
* I now have no memories of my father ... but I was told that he was very fond of me and would take me around Miami in his convertible Mercedes roadster showing me off to his jet set friends.
I wish I could have remembered my father ... but maybe that was a good thing for, later in life, I would grow to understand that he was a lackey of the US government and US oil companies who were exploiting the huge oil reserves that lie under the lush rainforests of Venezuela.
For his cooperation he was given the Legion of Merit and was invited to 'black tie' galas in the Beltway and in Miami, while back in Venezuela thousands of people opposed to his regime simply disappeared, were tortured ... hundreds were systematically murdered and dumped in the back alleys of Caracas and the jungles by his new "oil-rich friends" in the US government and multinational oil conglomerates.
Many, including my father, profited from all this ... he stolen nearly a US$500,000,000with him on the midnight flight from Caracas after his ouster, right into the waiting hands of the US government.
* The money had the blood of thousands on it ... like so much oil money throughout history ... can you spell I-R-A-Q?
Things really do not change much in that business.
After his extradition from USA, my mother and I were left with nothing and went from comfort to misery overnight ... we lived from hand to mouth, barely getting by.
My mom's life was a dirty little secret of the CIA that would eventually catch up with her the day she was given a subpoena to appear before the Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F Kennedy on May 31, 1978 ... that day, our life became a living hell since my mother was a member of a covert CIA group that was led by Frank Sturgis and had ties with an individual known only as 'OZZY" a skinny weasel who you might know as Lee Harvey Oswald.
She was terrified to talk for already 14 people loosely connected to the assassination had met an untimely death due "natural causes." She knew she knew way too much and she was wide open to anything the government and its "contractors" -- another word for a CIA hired-gun -- could do to her. You can see this with all the privately contracted interrogators and hired guns working as "contractors" in Iraq ... when you do not directly work for an agency there is always "plausible deniability," if something does not go right ... history does repeat itself ... actually nothing has changed at all.
During this time my beloved grandmother met an untimely and sudden "natural death," my mother would receive midnight calls and threats telling her to say nothing at the hearing. She grew more distant from me and lived in secluded fear. I knew we were in great danger and decided unilaterally to take action ... my instincts told me that I had to protect us and at that time I acquired a small revolver.
A few days later Sturgis said he wanted to come by to "talk" to my mom. She was upstairs, helplessly terrified, but hopeful he just wanted to talk (without the ""). Unknown to my mom who thought I was at school, I lay in wait downstairs with the revolver and shot at Sturgis as he entered the apartment.
I did not even come close to hitting him but the next day my photo was on on the cover of the New York Daily News, and the NY Post as well as the NY Times ... Sturgis was later arrested for coercion and possession of a weapon at the time.
I left home after being expelled from my Catholic school and began to work waiting tables, working in retail and eventually had to go on welfare to live. I got involved in drugs, running with the wrong crowd, trying to find a father in every man I dated ... but he was never there.
After hitting rock bottom there are only two ways to go. I chose the right way and got involved in fitness and bodybuilding, eventually becoming a pioneering member of the women's bodybuilding community (competing in the first Miss Fitness World competition) and trained in dance and theater, even becoming a stunt woman.
Presently, I have an option for a feature movie and I'm in the process of writing a book as well as now, of course, contributing my thoughts on Venezuela past and present, here at VHeadline.com.
Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez
monica.pj@vheadline.com
Published: Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Bylined to: Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez
My life changed overnight the day my father was betrayed by the US government
VHeadline's newest commentarist on the block writes: My name is Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez and I am the daughter of President Marcos Perez Jimenez who was the Military Dictator of Venezuela from 1952 to 1958.
My mother is Marita Lorenz, a CIA agent sent by the US government to get cash from my father earmarked to help finance the US-backed anti-Castro movement ... the cash handover and subsequent liaison took place at my father's estate in Florida where he lived a comfortable life in exile.
I was born on March 9, 1962, in New York City. My earliest years were spent in relative comfort, living in a high rise apartment in Miami and later back in New York on the Upper East side. Life for my my mother and I was not too bad ... Marcos made sure that his "kept woman" and youngest daughter were comfortable, and held very separate from his wife and four legitimate daughters.
This all changed overnight the day that my father, Marcos Perez Jimenez was betrayed by the US government and extradited back to Venezuela on the orders of US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
* I now have no memories of my father ... but I was told that he was very fond of me and would take me around Miami in his convertible Mercedes roadster showing me off to his jet set friends.
I wish I could have remembered my father ... but maybe that was a good thing for, later in life, I would grow to understand that he was a lackey of the US government and US oil companies who were exploiting the huge oil reserves that lie under the lush rainforests of Venezuela.
For his cooperation he was given the Legion of Merit and was invited to 'black tie' galas in the Beltway and in Miami, while back in Venezuela thousands of people opposed to his regime simply disappeared, were tortured ... hundreds were systematically murdered and dumped in the back alleys of Caracas and the jungles by his new "oil-rich friends" in the US government and multinational oil conglomerates.
Many, including my father, profited from all this ... he stolen nearly a US$500,000,000with him on the midnight flight from Caracas after his ouster, right into the waiting hands of the US government.
* The money had the blood of thousands on it ... like so much oil money throughout history ... can you spell I-R-A-Q?
Things really do not change much in that business.
After his extradition from USA, my mother and I were left with nothing and went from comfort to misery overnight ... we lived from hand to mouth, barely getting by.
My mom's life was a dirty little secret of the CIA that would eventually catch up with her the day she was given a subpoena to appear before the Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F Kennedy on May 31, 1978 ... that day, our life became a living hell since my mother was a member of a covert CIA group that was led by Frank Sturgis and had ties with an individual known only as 'OZZY" a skinny weasel who you might know as Lee Harvey Oswald.
She was terrified to talk for already 14 people loosely connected to the assassination had met an untimely death due "natural causes." She knew she knew way too much and she was wide open to anything the government and its "contractors" -- another word for a CIA hired-gun -- could do to her. You can see this with all the privately contracted interrogators and hired guns working as "contractors" in Iraq ... when you do not directly work for an agency there is always "plausible deniability," if something does not go right ... history does repeat itself ... actually nothing has changed at all.
During this time my beloved grandmother met an untimely and sudden "natural death," my mother would receive midnight calls and threats telling her to say nothing at the hearing. She grew more distant from me and lived in secluded fear. I knew we were in great danger and decided unilaterally to take action ... my instincts told me that I had to protect us and at that time I acquired a small revolver.
A few days later Sturgis said he wanted to come by to "talk" to my mom. She was upstairs, helplessly terrified, but hopeful he just wanted to talk (without the ""). Unknown to my mom who thought I was at school, I lay in wait downstairs with the revolver and shot at Sturgis as he entered the apartment.
I did not even come close to hitting him but the next day my photo was on on the cover of the New York Daily News, and the NY Post as well as the NY Times ... Sturgis was later arrested for coercion and possession of a weapon at the time.
I left home after being expelled from my Catholic school and began to work waiting tables, working in retail and eventually had to go on welfare to live. I got involved in drugs, running with the wrong crowd, trying to find a father in every man I dated ... but he was never there.
After hitting rock bottom there are only two ways to go. I chose the right way and got involved in fitness and bodybuilding, eventually becoming a pioneering member of the women's bodybuilding community (competing in the first Miss Fitness World competition) and trained in dance and theater, even becoming a stunt woman.
Presently, I have an option for a feature movie and I'm in the process of writing a book as well as now, of course, contributing my thoughts on Venezuela past and present, here at VHeadline.com.
Monica Mercedes Perez Jimenez
monica.pj@vheadline.com
Feds Order U.S. Banks to Sever Syria Ties
Chron.com | Feds Order U.S. Banks to Sever Syria Ties
Feds Order U.S. Banks to Sever Syria Ties
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Acting to crack down on terrorist financing, the Treasury Department on Thursday ordered all commercial banks in the United States to end their relationships with two Syrian banks.
The order covers the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria and its subsidiary, the Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank.
The department said that all U.S. banks must close any accounts they have with the two banks.
"Today's action is aimed at protecting our financial system against abuse by this arm of a state-sponsor of terrorism," said Stuart Levy, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
"The Commercial Bank of Syria has been used by terrorists to move their money and it continues to afford direct opportunities for the Syrian government to facilitate international terrorist activity and money laundering," Levy said.
A message left Thursday with a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy was not immediately returned.
The order makes final a preliminary order against the two banks that Treasury issued last May.
At that time, Treasury issued a finding that the Commercial Bank of Syria was a "primary money laundering concern" under provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the department to cut off dealings of U.S. banks with foreign banks that receive such a designation.
"As a state-owned entity with inadequate money laundering and terrorist financing controls, the Commercial Bank of Syria poses a significant risk of being used to further the Syrian government's continuing support for international terrorist groups," Levy said.
He said that the serious risks posed by the Syrian bank "have not been adequately mitigated" by the Syrian government's limited efforts to address problems in its financial system.
With the announcement, the Treasury has moved to shut down U.S. activities of nine foreign banks under provisions of the Patriot Act.
The action against the banks does not freeze their funds in the United States. It prohibits U.S. banks from holding accounts of those banks. Such accounts are used by foreign banks to do business in the United States if they do not have subsidiaries in this country.
Feds Order U.S. Banks to Sever Syria Ties
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Acting to crack down on terrorist financing, the Treasury Department on Thursday ordered all commercial banks in the United States to end their relationships with two Syrian banks.
The order covers the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria and its subsidiary, the Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank.
The department said that all U.S. banks must close any accounts they have with the two banks.
"Today's action is aimed at protecting our financial system against abuse by this arm of a state-sponsor of terrorism," said Stuart Levy, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
"The Commercial Bank of Syria has been used by terrorists to move their money and it continues to afford direct opportunities for the Syrian government to facilitate international terrorist activity and money laundering," Levy said.
A message left Thursday with a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy was not immediately returned.
The order makes final a preliminary order against the two banks that Treasury issued last May.
At that time, Treasury issued a finding that the Commercial Bank of Syria was a "primary money laundering concern" under provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the department to cut off dealings of U.S. banks with foreign banks that receive such a designation.
"As a state-owned entity with inadequate money laundering and terrorist financing controls, the Commercial Bank of Syria poses a significant risk of being used to further the Syrian government's continuing support for international terrorist groups," Levy said.
He said that the serious risks posed by the Syrian bank "have not been adequately mitigated" by the Syrian government's limited efforts to address problems in its financial system.
With the announcement, the Treasury has moved to shut down U.S. activities of nine foreign banks under provisions of the Patriot Act.
The action against the banks does not freeze their funds in the United States. It prohibits U.S. banks from holding accounts of those banks. Such accounts are used by foreign banks to do business in the United States if they do not have subsidiaries in this country.
Syria and Iran mull gas pipeline
United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Syria and Iran mull gas pipeline
Syria and Iran mull gas pipeline
DAMASCUS, Syria, March 9 (UPI) -- Two states under pressure from Washington are discussing building a strategic oil pipeline.
Syria and Iran are negotiating the possibility of building the pipeline from Iran to Syria to the Mediterranean across Iraq, according to the Syrian newspaper al-Thawra.
Al-Thawra reported that the two countries have established a Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee to investigate the project, which local analysts believe will benefit all three countries involved.
The deal is part of a 2001 Memo of Understanding signed between Syria and Iran on joint energy projects.
The Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee also discussed possibly constructing an additional natural gas line across Iraq and Syria, which would link with the Arab Gas Line currently under construction to transport Egyptian natural gas through Syria and Jordan.
Trade between Syria and Iran has increased recently as the two countries signed preferential trade agreements and several accords on finance, industry, power, textile, oil, environment and culture during the February visit to Syria by Iran's First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi.
Syria and Iran mull gas pipeline
DAMASCUS, Syria, March 9 (UPI) -- Two states under pressure from Washington are discussing building a strategic oil pipeline.
Syria and Iran are negotiating the possibility of building the pipeline from Iran to Syria to the Mediterranean across Iraq, according to the Syrian newspaper al-Thawra.
Al-Thawra reported that the two countries have established a Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee to investigate the project, which local analysts believe will benefit all three countries involved.
The deal is part of a 2001 Memo of Understanding signed between Syria and Iran on joint energy projects.
The Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee also discussed possibly constructing an additional natural gas line across Iraq and Syria, which would link with the Arab Gas Line currently under construction to transport Egyptian natural gas through Syria and Jordan.
Trade between Syria and Iran has increased recently as the two countries signed preferential trade agreements and several accords on finance, industry, power, textile, oil, environment and culture during the February visit to Syria by Iran's First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi.
Brammertz in Damascus within the next 48 hours
The Daily Star - Politics - Brammertz in Damascus within the next 48 hours
Brammertz in Damascus within the next 48 hours
By Leila Hatoum
Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Serge Brammertz, the head of the UN probe investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, is expected to visit Damascus within the next 48 hours, according to a Lebanese security source.
The source said Thursday that Brammertz "and members from his team will be meeting with several Syrian witnesses in Damascus," without revealing the names of the witnesses, of whom the infamous masked witness Houssam Houssam is expected to be one.
When contacted by The Daily Star Thursday, the UN probe's spokesperson refused to confirm or deny, saying: "We don't comment on the commissioner's moves, we don't give information on the investigation."
Brammertz already visited Syria two weeks ago, on February 23, when he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, and some members of the Syrian probe investigating Hariri's assassination.
Moallem had said that the visit was fruitful and Syria would extend full cooperation to the UN probe.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he is planning to meet Moallem in Moscow next week to discuss Syria's cooperation with the UN probe and "the implementation of UN Security Council's resolutions."
Lavrov comments came following his meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, after which he said: "We will encourage the continued cooperation of Syria" with Brammertz.
He added Russia "would be very cautious not to go beyond" the stipulations of the UN resolutions, and would not "use them for some political means."
The same security source told The Daily Star Thursday that Brammertz had paid a two-hour visit to the Helo Internal Security Forces base In Mazraa, Beirut, Wednesday; and had checked the forensic laboratory there.
The Helo ISF base is where the remains of Hariri's car, which was blown up in a massive explosion last year, are housed.
"The forensic laboratory was founded some four years ago but the Syrians never allowed the Lebanese security to fully utilize it or develop it, and forced the Lebanese to either use the Syrian labs or labs in Lebanon favored by the Syrians," said the security source.
Meanwhile, Brammertz met with Justice Minister Charles Rizk and two Lebanese judges, Choukri Sader and Ralph Riachi who were recently at the UN in New York to discuss the set up of a tribunal to try the perpetrators in Hariri's case.
Brammertz in Damascus within the next 48 hours
By Leila Hatoum
Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Serge Brammertz, the head of the UN probe investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, is expected to visit Damascus within the next 48 hours, according to a Lebanese security source.
The source said Thursday that Brammertz "and members from his team will be meeting with several Syrian witnesses in Damascus," without revealing the names of the witnesses, of whom the infamous masked witness Houssam Houssam is expected to be one.
When contacted by The Daily Star Thursday, the UN probe's spokesperson refused to confirm or deny, saying: "We don't comment on the commissioner's moves, we don't give information on the investigation."
Brammertz already visited Syria two weeks ago, on February 23, when he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, and some members of the Syrian probe investigating Hariri's assassination.
Moallem had said that the visit was fruitful and Syria would extend full cooperation to the UN probe.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he is planning to meet Moallem in Moscow next week to discuss Syria's cooperation with the UN probe and "the implementation of UN Security Council's resolutions."
Lavrov comments came following his meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, after which he said: "We will encourage the continued cooperation of Syria" with Brammertz.
He added Russia "would be very cautious not to go beyond" the stipulations of the UN resolutions, and would not "use them for some political means."
The same security source told The Daily Star Thursday that Brammertz had paid a two-hour visit to the Helo Internal Security Forces base In Mazraa, Beirut, Wednesday; and had checked the forensic laboratory there.
The Helo ISF base is where the remains of Hariri's car, which was blown up in a massive explosion last year, are housed.
"The forensic laboratory was founded some four years ago but the Syrians never allowed the Lebanese security to fully utilize it or develop it, and forced the Lebanese to either use the Syrian labs or labs in Lebanon favored by the Syrians," said the security source.
Meanwhile, Brammertz met with Justice Minister Charles Rizk and two Lebanese judges, Choukri Sader and Ralph Riachi who were recently at the UN in New York to discuss the set up of a tribunal to try the perpetrators in Hariri's case.
$190 million Homeland Security Center of Excellence to be built....
Breaking News
Homeland security hub planned
By Jean Paul Vellotti
Thursday, March 9, 2006 03:31 PM EST
Regus
BETHPAGE – Long Island’s safety increased Thursday with the announcement of a $190 million Homeland Security Center of Excellence to be built adjacent to Northrop Grumman Corp. on current U.S. Navy property. The five acres of land in Bethpage, which is ready for development, will be transferred to Nassau County.
Under a grant secured through Long Island’s New York State Senate Delegation, $21.1 million was allotted to construct a 65,000 square foot New York State Applied Science Center of Excellence in Homeland Security facility. The center will serve as an incubator of science and research for projects with a focus on security and is expected to employ 290 research workers. It is also expected that an additional 7,350 positions will be created indirectly throughout the state, for a total of 9,800 jobs over ten years. A date for the groundbreaking was not announced.
The Long Island Forum for Technology will serve as operator of the building. President of LIFT, Ken Morrelly, said that the center has a very real potential to help make the region, state and county safer from a terrorist event.
Senator Dean G. Skelos (R-Rockville Center) led the effort to secure funding. “This center will establish Long Island as a national leader in Homeland Security research,” Skelos said during the press conference at Grumman. “It will have a significant impact on the Long Island regional economy and state economy. It’s location within an Empire Zone of Nassau will be attractive to companies looking to locate here.”
Skelos also said that one of the goals of the center will be to bring science projects out into the competitive market. He envisions the MTA and Port Authority as key purchasers of technology developed at the center.
Nationwide, it is estimated that over $100 billion will be spent annually on Homeland Security projects, according to Skelos.
Northrop Grumman, who is making cash and in-kind investments of $15 million towards the project, will become the anchor tenant. An additional 20 other corporate spaces are available. Tenants at the center will be able to take advantage of research and development from other state centers of excellence, including Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Labs and Brookhaven National Lab.
Homeland security hub planned
By Jean Paul Vellotti
Thursday, March 9, 2006 03:31 PM EST
Regus
BETHPAGE – Long Island’s safety increased Thursday with the announcement of a $190 million Homeland Security Center of Excellence to be built adjacent to Northrop Grumman Corp. on current U.S. Navy property. The five acres of land in Bethpage, which is ready for development, will be transferred to Nassau County.
Under a grant secured through Long Island’s New York State Senate Delegation, $21.1 million was allotted to construct a 65,000 square foot New York State Applied Science Center of Excellence in Homeland Security facility. The center will serve as an incubator of science and research for projects with a focus on security and is expected to employ 290 research workers. It is also expected that an additional 7,350 positions will be created indirectly throughout the state, for a total of 9,800 jobs over ten years. A date for the groundbreaking was not announced.
The Long Island Forum for Technology will serve as operator of the building. President of LIFT, Ken Morrelly, said that the center has a very real potential to help make the region, state and county safer from a terrorist event.
Senator Dean G. Skelos (R-Rockville Center) led the effort to secure funding. “This center will establish Long Island as a national leader in Homeland Security research,” Skelos said during the press conference at Grumman. “It will have a significant impact on the Long Island regional economy and state economy. It’s location within an Empire Zone of Nassau will be attractive to companies looking to locate here.”
Skelos also said that one of the goals of the center will be to bring science projects out into the competitive market. He envisions the MTA and Port Authority as key purchasers of technology developed at the center.
Nationwide, it is estimated that over $100 billion will be spent annually on Homeland Security projects, according to Skelos.
Northrop Grumman, who is making cash and in-kind investments of $15 million towards the project, will become the anchor tenant. An additional 20 other corporate spaces are available. Tenants at the center will be able to take advantage of research and development from other state centers of excellence, including Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Labs and Brookhaven National Lab.
U.S.: Discrimination, corruption in Israel
Ynetnews - News - U.S.: Discrimination, corruption in Israel
U.S.: Discrimination, corruption in Israel
State Department issues annual human rights report, finds Israel guilty of severe violations including harassing Arabs, discriminating against women and Arabs, abusing women and foreign workers; but overall Israel ‘respects its citizens’ rights’
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON - “Trafficking in and abuse of women and foreign workers, discrimination against persons with disabilities, and government corruption,” read just a few of the criticisms of Israel made in the United States State Department’s annual human rights violations report.
The reports, published every year since 1977, track democracy and human rights in 196 countries.
The authors report “serious abuses by some members of the security forces against Palestinian detainees; poor conditions in some detention and interrogation facilities; institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens; and societal violence and discrimination against women ” in Israel. The report also notes that while Israeli detainees aged 17 and under are separated from adults, this separation does not exist among Palestinian prisoners.
In addition, the authors criticize Israeli matrimonial law, saying, “Jews can marry only in Orthodox Jewish services. Jews and members of other religious communities who wish to have civil marriages; Jews who wish to marry according to Reform or Conservative Judaism; those not recognized by Orthodox authorities as being Jewish; and those marrying someone from another faith, must marry abroad to gain government recognition. While government-recognized civil marriages are available in Cyprus, this requirement presents a hardship.”
However, despite the long list of criticisms, Israel comes out “okay” relatively, and isn’t included in the list of countries perpetrating severe human rights violations. The Israeli government, the U.S. concludes, “respects its citizens’ human rights.”
Iran: Hasty executions, support for terror groups
The six leading countries for human rights violations are: Burma, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, China and Zimbabwe. A number of Arab countries on friendly terms with the U.S. also find themselves harshly criticized in the report. Saudi Arabia is censured for beatings and lack of freedom of religion; Egypt’s faulty elections and torture of prisoners are noted; and the United Arab Emirates – which is currently in negotiations with the U.S. over opening sea ports on its eastern shores – is criticized for flogging drug users and adulterers.
The real “star” in the report is Iran. “The rulers, religious leaders and president are responsible for the deterioration of the imprisonment conditions of hundreds of political prisoners, and additional limitations on freedom of the press, social freedoms and political liberty,” reads a special section devoted to the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran is accused of “hasty executions, disappearances of people, maintaining public order with extremism and torture, eliminating its citizens’ basic rights, involvement in Iraq, supporting Hizbullah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Its refusal to discuss these matters isolates it from the international community.”
Another country earning negative attention in the report is Syria. “The Syrian government ignores the international community’s calls to respect its citizens’ principles of freedom and refuses to stop its interference in neighboring countries,” the report says. “Syria continues to support Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian resistance organizations and does not full cooperate with the U.N. investigative committee into Hariri’s assassination.”
China has increased arrests in recent years and harasses and imprisons people suspected of threatening the regime, the report says. North Korea, on of the world’s most diplomatically isolated countries, “systematically depresses and controls almost every aspect of civilian life, prevents freedom of speech, religion, media, assembly, movement and workers’ rights.”
Burma is accused of enforcing labor, human trafficking, recruitment of child soldiers and religious discrimination. “The army systematically tortures, rapes, executes and forcefully relocates minorities,” the report says. “It strictly controls, surveys, harasses and imprisons political activists.”
U.S.: Discrimination, corruption in Israel
State Department issues annual human rights report, finds Israel guilty of severe violations including harassing Arabs, discriminating against women and Arabs, abusing women and foreign workers; but overall Israel ‘respects its citizens’ rights’
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON - “Trafficking in and abuse of women and foreign workers, discrimination against persons with disabilities, and government corruption,” read just a few of the criticisms of Israel made in the United States State Department’s annual human rights violations report.
The reports, published every year since 1977, track democracy and human rights in 196 countries.
The authors report “serious abuses by some members of the security forces against Palestinian detainees; poor conditions in some detention and interrogation facilities; institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens; and societal violence and discrimination against women ” in Israel. The report also notes that while Israeli detainees aged 17 and under are separated from adults, this separation does not exist among Palestinian prisoners.
In addition, the authors criticize Israeli matrimonial law, saying, “Jews can marry only in Orthodox Jewish services. Jews and members of other religious communities who wish to have civil marriages; Jews who wish to marry according to Reform or Conservative Judaism; those not recognized by Orthodox authorities as being Jewish; and those marrying someone from another faith, must marry abroad to gain government recognition. While government-recognized civil marriages are available in Cyprus, this requirement presents a hardship.”
However, despite the long list of criticisms, Israel comes out “okay” relatively, and isn’t included in the list of countries perpetrating severe human rights violations. The Israeli government, the U.S. concludes, “respects its citizens’ human rights.”
Iran: Hasty executions, support for terror groups
The six leading countries for human rights violations are: Burma, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, China and Zimbabwe. A number of Arab countries on friendly terms with the U.S. also find themselves harshly criticized in the report. Saudi Arabia is censured for beatings and lack of freedom of religion; Egypt’s faulty elections and torture of prisoners are noted; and the United Arab Emirates – which is currently in negotiations with the U.S. over opening sea ports on its eastern shores – is criticized for flogging drug users and adulterers.
The real “star” in the report is Iran. “The rulers, religious leaders and president are responsible for the deterioration of the imprisonment conditions of hundreds of political prisoners, and additional limitations on freedom of the press, social freedoms and political liberty,” reads a special section devoted to the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran is accused of “hasty executions, disappearances of people, maintaining public order with extremism and torture, eliminating its citizens’ basic rights, involvement in Iraq, supporting Hizbullah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Its refusal to discuss these matters isolates it from the international community.”
Another country earning negative attention in the report is Syria. “The Syrian government ignores the international community’s calls to respect its citizens’ principles of freedom and refuses to stop its interference in neighboring countries,” the report says. “Syria continues to support Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian resistance organizations and does not full cooperate with the U.N. investigative committee into Hariri’s assassination.”
China has increased arrests in recent years and harasses and imprisons people suspected of threatening the regime, the report says. North Korea, on of the world’s most diplomatically isolated countries, “systematically depresses and controls almost every aspect of civilian life, prevents freedom of speech, religion, media, assembly, movement and workers’ rights.”
Burma is accused of enforcing labor, human trafficking, recruitment of child soldiers and religious discrimination. “The army systematically tortures, rapes, executes and forcefully relocates minorities,” the report says. “It strictly controls, surveys, harasses and imprisons political activists.”
US report hammers Iran, Syria, spares Israel, Saudi Arabia
Middle East Times
March 9, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The annual US human rights report gives a hard-hitting assessment of Iran and Syria but largely spared Israel, Saudi Arabia and other allies in the Middle East.
But Barry Lowenkron, the US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, rejected suggestions that the United States practices double standards.
He also insisted that "lower standards" had not been used to judge Iraq and Afghanistan because of US involvement in those countries.
"We do not sit among ourselves and decide: 'This is in or this is out'. We rely on a tremendous amount of input from the media overseas, from nongovernmental organizations, from academics, from jurists," Lowenkron told a press conference to present the annual report.
But Lowenkron said that Iran and Syria were the two countries that should be highlighted as having the worst human rights problems.
Both were mentioned in a 16-page introduction to the report on 196 countries around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia were not named.
Pressed about Saudi Arabia, where women do not have the vote, the US human rights official said that he would not make "comparisons" between countries.
The report said that conditions in Iran had worsened in 2005 under new hardline president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
"The Iranian government continued to ignore the desire of the Iranian people for responsible, accountable government, continuing its dangerous policies of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, providing support to terrorist organizations, and advocating - including in several public speeches by the new president - the destruction of a UN member state," the report said of Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel.
The report accused Iran - which denies that it is pursuing nuclear arms - of interference in neighboring Iraq and of supporting Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian group Hamas, which are both on a US terrorist list.
Similar accusations about supporting terrorism were made against Syria.
The report said that in Iraq, where there are fears of civil war and reports of police "death squads" targeting the Sunni minority, "2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom".
It did acknowledge, however, that Iraq's "social fabric remained under intense strain from the widespread violence principally inflicted by insurgent and terrorist elements".
The report said that "Afghans in 2005 continued to show their courage and commitment to a future of freedom and respect for human rights".
Again it acknowledged but did not highlight that elections on September 18 "occurred against the backdrop of a government still struggling to expand its authority over provincial centers, due to continued insecurity and violent resistance in some quarters".
Egypt was the only key ally criticized in the report, which highlighted "credible" reports of fraud and vote rigging in the country's election last year and said that rights were not guaranteed.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinian territories were mentioned in the report's introduction.
The report by country said that the Israeli government "generally respected the human rights of its citizens" though it did say that there had been serious abuses by Israeli security services against Palestinian detainees and frequent discrimination against Arab-Israelis.
Lowenkron called the Palestinian elections in January, which produced a Hamas government, "a major event".
But he added: "You can't have one leg in terrorism and one leg in governance. The way I've always put it, you can't do the ballot Monday, Wednesday, Friday and bullets Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday."
The United States has threatened to suspend aid to the Palestinians if Hamas forms a government that refuses to renounce violence and fails to recognize the right of Israel to exist.
March 9, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The annual US human rights report gives a hard-hitting assessment of Iran and Syria but largely spared Israel, Saudi Arabia and other allies in the Middle East.
But Barry Lowenkron, the US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, rejected suggestions that the United States practices double standards.
He also insisted that "lower standards" had not been used to judge Iraq and Afghanistan because of US involvement in those countries.
"We do not sit among ourselves and decide: 'This is in or this is out'. We rely on a tremendous amount of input from the media overseas, from nongovernmental organizations, from academics, from jurists," Lowenkron told a press conference to present the annual report.
But Lowenkron said that Iran and Syria were the two countries that should be highlighted as having the worst human rights problems.
Both were mentioned in a 16-page introduction to the report on 196 countries around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia were not named.
Pressed about Saudi Arabia, where women do not have the vote, the US human rights official said that he would not make "comparisons" between countries.
The report said that conditions in Iran had worsened in 2005 under new hardline president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
"The Iranian government continued to ignore the desire of the Iranian people for responsible, accountable government, continuing its dangerous policies of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, providing support to terrorist organizations, and advocating - including in several public speeches by the new president - the destruction of a UN member state," the report said of Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel.
The report accused Iran - which denies that it is pursuing nuclear arms - of interference in neighboring Iraq and of supporting Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian group Hamas, which are both on a US terrorist list.
Similar accusations about supporting terrorism were made against Syria.
The report said that in Iraq, where there are fears of civil war and reports of police "death squads" targeting the Sunni minority, "2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom".
It did acknowledge, however, that Iraq's "social fabric remained under intense strain from the widespread violence principally inflicted by insurgent and terrorist elements".
The report said that "Afghans in 2005 continued to show their courage and commitment to a future of freedom and respect for human rights".
Again it acknowledged but did not highlight that elections on September 18 "occurred against the backdrop of a government still struggling to expand its authority over provincial centers, due to continued insecurity and violent resistance in some quarters".
Egypt was the only key ally criticized in the report, which highlighted "credible" reports of fraud and vote rigging in the country's election last year and said that rights were not guaranteed.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinian territories were mentioned in the report's introduction.
The report by country said that the Israeli government "generally respected the human rights of its citizens" though it did say that there had been serious abuses by Israeli security services against Palestinian detainees and frequent discrimination against Arab-Israelis.
Lowenkron called the Palestinian elections in January, which produced a Hamas government, "a major event".
But he added: "You can't have one leg in terrorism and one leg in governance. The way I've always put it, you can't do the ballot Monday, Wednesday, Friday and bullets Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday."
The United States has threatened to suspend aid to the Palestinians if Hamas forms a government that refuses to renounce violence and fails to recognize the right of Israel to exist.
Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't
Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't
Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-09 14:52
If the U.N. Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself, Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday.
 |
| An Israeli soldier stands next to a mobile artillery unit just outside the northern Gaza Strip, March 1, 2006. If the U.N. Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself, Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday. [REUTERS] |
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was asked whether Israel was ready to use military action if the Security Council proved unable to act against what Israel and the West believe is a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program.
"My answer to this question is that the state of Israel has the right give all the security that is needed to the people in Israel. We have to defend ourselves," Mofaz told Reuters after a meeting with his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung.
Iran denies wanting nuclear weapons and says it is only interested in the peaceful generation of electricity. It has also threatened to retaliate if Israel or the United States were to bomb any of its nuclear facilities.
In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor to prevent Saddam Hussein from getting nuclear weapons. Saddam's covert atom bomb program continued until U.N. inspectors dismantled it after the 1991 Gulf War, but the Israeli strike set progress back many years.
"The Israeli approach is that the U.S. and the European countries should lead the issue of the Iranian nuclear program to the table of the U.N. Security Council, asking for sanctions. And I hope the sanctions will be effective," Mofaz said.
Mofaz, who was born in Iran, added that Israel believed the 15-nation Security Council should grant the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, sweeping inspection powers so that it can smoke out any secret nuclear arms-related activities in Iran.
"We need to have very deep and large inspections within all the nuclear locations in Iran because Iran has two nuclear programs -- one is a covered one and the second is uncovered," he said.
The Iranian delegation to an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna issued a statement earlier warning that the United States could feel "harm and pain" if the Security Council took up the issue of Tehran's nuclear fuel research and vowed never to abandon its atomic program.
At a news conference with Mofaz, Jung told reporters Germany was already discussing with the five permanent Security Council members -- Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France -- what the council could do to prevent Tehran getting the bomb.
"Everything must be done to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons," Jung said.
A senior diplomat from one of the "EU3" said earlier that the Security Council would probably begin discussing Iran next week and hoped to issue a "presidential statement" urging Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program and cooperate with the IAEA.
John Pilger | The Secret War
John Pilger | The Secret War
The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua
By John Pilger
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 09 March 2006
In 1993, I and four others traveled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community."
In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's "political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document.
As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering.
And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province - stolen from its people, like East Timor - is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.
An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."
For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian Special Forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving ten- and 15-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him and his hair set alight.
When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F. Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land."
The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of General Suharto - who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In 1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69. Little of this was reported in the West.
The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia," as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize - the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold - went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report.
Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33 billion between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank, "38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double the national average."
The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's Special Forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then-Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, Special Forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.
However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactical armored personnel carriers fitted with water cannons have arrived from Jakarta. These were first delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against West Papuan villages.
The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious. In contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian "exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to East Timor. Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply?
The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua
By John Pilger
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 09 March 2006
In 1993, I and four others traveled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community."
In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's "political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document.
As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering.
And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province - stolen from its people, like East Timor - is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.
An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."
For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian Special Forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving ten- and 15-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him and his hair set alight.
When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F. Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land."
The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of General Suharto - who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In 1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69. Little of this was reported in the West.
The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia," as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize - the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold - went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report.
Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33 billion between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank, "38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double the national average."
The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's Special Forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then-Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, Special Forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.
However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactical armored personnel carriers fitted with water cannons have arrived from Jakarta. These were first delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against West Papuan villages.
The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious. In contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian "exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to East Timor. Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply?
Dubai Company to Transfer US Ports to American Company
Dubai Company to Transfer US Ports to American Company
Dubai Company to Transfer US Ports to American Company
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Carl Hulse
The New York Times
Thursday 09 March 2006
Washington - DP World, the United Arab Emirates state-owned company that had agreed to buy several port terminals in the United States, said today that it will transfer those properties to an American-owned company, bowing to a political groundswell against the acquisition.
The decision came just hours after a delegation of Republican leaders in Congress told President Bush in an Oval Office meeting that Congress would act within days to block the company's acquisition of the United States port terminals in the name of national security, lawmakers present said.
"The House spoke very clearly," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, said in an interview after the meeting.
Announcing the company's decision on the Senate floor about 1 p.m., Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, read a statement from the company: "Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operations of P & O North America to a United States entity."
The announcement did not immediately mollify Democrats, though Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a chief critic of the deal, called it a promising development. But he added that if the Dubai-owned company ultimately retained control over the port operations, "I don't think our goals would be accomplished and obviously we will need to study this agreement carefully."
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, concurred. "We will have to wait and see what is really going to happen," Mr. Reid said.
On Wednesday evening, the House Appropriations Committee voted overwhelmingly to scuttle the deal giving DP World control of some major seaport operations without awaiting the outcome of a 45-day review of potential security risks.
Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who is chairman of the panel, added an amendment blocking the transaction to an essential emergency spending measure for the war in Iraq and for Hurricane Katrina recovery.
The vote was 62 to 2, a signal of the deep opposition to the takeover on both sides of the aisle.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, said he regretted that President Bush had not done a better job of explaining the proposed transaction and had not been given enough time. But Mr. Obey said, "When I heard of the transaction, I thought it sounded nuts."
Mr. Lewis's effort was endorsed by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, so the vote was not exactly a surprise. But it was a stark example of Republicans breaking with their president, after years of working in tandem or quietly settling differences behind closed doors.
Dubai Company to Transfer US Ports to American Company
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Carl Hulse
The New York Times
Thursday 09 March 2006
Washington - DP World, the United Arab Emirates state-owned company that had agreed to buy several port terminals in the United States, said today that it will transfer those properties to an American-owned company, bowing to a political groundswell against the acquisition.
The decision came just hours after a delegation of Republican leaders in Congress told President Bush in an Oval Office meeting that Congress would act within days to block the company's acquisition of the United States port terminals in the name of national security, lawmakers present said.
"The House spoke very clearly," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, said in an interview after the meeting.
Announcing the company's decision on the Senate floor about 1 p.m., Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, read a statement from the company: "Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operations of P & O North America to a United States entity."
The announcement did not immediately mollify Democrats, though Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a chief critic of the deal, called it a promising development. But he added that if the Dubai-owned company ultimately retained control over the port operations, "I don't think our goals would be accomplished and obviously we will need to study this agreement carefully."
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, concurred. "We will have to wait and see what is really going to happen," Mr. Reid said.
On Wednesday evening, the House Appropriations Committee voted overwhelmingly to scuttle the deal giving DP World control of some major seaport operations without awaiting the outcome of a 45-day review of potential security risks.
Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who is chairman of the panel, added an amendment blocking the transaction to an essential emergency spending measure for the war in Iraq and for Hurricane Katrina recovery.
The vote was 62 to 2, a signal of the deep opposition to the takeover on both sides of the aisle.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, said he regretted that President Bush had not done a better job of explaining the proposed transaction and had not been given enough time. But Mr. Obey said, "When I heard of the transaction, I thought it sounded nuts."
Mr. Lewis's effort was endorsed by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, so the vote was not exactly a surprise. But it was a stark example of Republicans breaking with their president, after years of working in tandem or quietly settling differences behind closed doors.
William E. Odom | Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam
William E. Odom | Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam
Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam
By William E. Odom
Nieman Watchdog
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Those who say Iraq is nothing like Vietnam have another guess coming, says retired Gen. William Odom. He lists striking similarities and asserts that only after it pulls out of Iraq can the U.S. hope for international support to deal with anti-Western forces.
The Vietnam War experience can't tell us anything about the war in Iraq - or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.
The Vietnam War had three phases. The War in Iraq has already completed an analogous first phase, is approaching the end of the second phase, and shows signs of entering the third.
Phase One in Vietnam lasted from 1961 until the Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in March 1965, authorizing deployment of large U.S. combat forces in South Vietnam. It began with hesitation and a gross misreading of American strategic interests. It concluded with the U.S. use of phony intelligence that made it seem that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf without provocation.
President Kennedy was ambivalent about deeper involvement, but some of his aides believed that a North Vietnamese takeover of the south would bring Sino-Soviet dominion over all of Southeast Asia. They paid little attention to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, which the Intelligence Community was reporting in the early 1960s. Accordingly, the "containment of China" became their goal, their rationale for U.S. strategic purpose - that is, not allowing the Soviet Bloc to expand in this region.
Was it really in the American interest to "contain China" in Vietnam? By 1965, Soviet leaders were also pursuing the containment of China, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Did it, then, make sense for the United States to commit large military forces to the pursuit of Soviet objectives in Southeast Asia? Obviously not; the White House's strategic rationale had no grounding in reality.
Not only Soviet leaders but Ho Chi Minh also wanted to contain China. A long-time loyalist to Moscow and early member of Lenin's Communist International, he was never under China's thumb. Yet he cooperated with Beijing to balance his dependency on Moscow, disallowing either to frustrate his aim, unifying all of Vietnam under his rule.
The Johnson Administration used an apparent North Vietnamese attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin on the coast of North Vietnam in the spring of 1965 to persuade Congress to support the introduction of major U.S. ground forces in South Vietnam. We now know that U.S. special operations - incursions into North Vietnam by Navy Seals - played a role in prompting North Vietnamese gun boat actions that became the casus belli for President Johnson. Thus, a misleading interpretation of the known facts, i.e., the intelligence assessment of these events, became the critical factor in making it America's war, not just Saigon's war.
Phase One in Iraq, the run-up to the invasion, looks remarkably similar. Broodings about the "necessity" to overthrow Saddam's regime were heard earlier, but signs of action appeared in January 2002, when President Bush proclaimed his "axis of evil" thesis about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, countries he accused of acquiring "weapons of mass destruction" and supporting terrorists against the United States. This became the cornerstone of his rationale for invading Iraq, and it was no less ill-conceived than the strategic purpose for President Johnson's war in Vietnam. It better served the interests of Iran and Osama bin Laden.
Iran had serious scores to settle with Iraq. In 1980, Saddam Hussein launched a bloody war that dragged on until 1988 without a decisive end. That President Bush would destroy Saddam's regime, saving Iran the trouble, was probably beyond its clerics' wildest dreams.
He did the same for al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden must have been ecstatic. The U.S. invasion opened the way for al Qaeda cadres to enter Iraq by the scores. Killing Americans in Iraq is much easier than killing them in the United States after 9/11. Moreover, toppling secular Arab leaders - including Saddam - was, and remains, Osama bin Laden's highest priority aim. America is farther down his list, seen as an intermediate objective in the long struggle to bring his version of radical Islamic rule to all Arab countries.
As it turned out, the alleged intelligence that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" and that Saddam aided al Qaeda was grossly wrong. That, of course, became a major international embarrassment, alienating many U.S. allies and aiding its enemies in their claims that America is an aggressor state that cannot be trusted.
Does all of this - confused war aims and phony intelligence - sound familiar? It should.
Phase Two in Vietnam was marked by a refusal to reconsider the war's "strategic" rationale. Rather, debate focused only on "tactical" issues as the war went sour.
By1965 things had begun going badly for U.S. military operations. By the end of March 1968, public opinion was turning against the war and Johnson chose not to run for re-election. His own party in Congress was breaking with him, and the pro-war New York Times reversed itself that summer.
During this phase, no major leader or opinion maker in the United States dared revisit the key strategic judgment: did the U.S. war aim of containing China make sense? Instead, debate focused on how the war was being fought: on search-and-destroy operations, on body counts, and pacification efforts.
This obsession with tactical issues made it easier to ignore the strategic error. As time passed, costs went up, casualties increased, and public support fell. We could not afford to "cut and run," it was argued. "The Viet Cong would carry out an awful blood-letting." Supporters of the war expected no honest answer when they asked "How can we get out?" Eventually Senator Aiken of Vermont gave them one: "In boats."
Phase Two in Iraq reveals that the same kind of strategic denial error prevails today. Since 2003, public discourse has focused on how the war is being fought. Reconstruction is inadequate. Not enough troops are available. We should not have dismantled the Iraqi military. Elections will save the day. The insurgency is in its "last throes." And so on. Some of these criticisms are valid, but they fail to address the fundamental issue, the validity of U.S. strategic purpose.
As al Qaeda marched into a country where it had not dared to tread before, the White House refused to admit that its war allowed them in. As Iran's influence with Iraqi Shiite clerics and militias quietly expands, the administration refuses to confess its own culpability. As Shiite politicians appear headed to dominate the U.S.-created "democracy" in Iraq, no one is asking "Who lost Iraq to Iran?"
Instead, after each election and referendum in Iraq, hope surges in the media. The New York Times's reporting on the elections in February of last year was eerily reminiscent of its reporting from Saigon on the 1968 elections.
The end of Phase Two is not yet here, but the Congress is showing signs of nervousness about where the war is taking the country. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has said that by no measure can it be said that the United States is winning the war. Republican Congressman Walter Jones is trying to push a resolution through the House, calling on the President to begin a withdrawal. When Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha, a highly decorated Marine war veteran, asserted that the war was hopeless and that U.S. forces should be withdrawn, supporters of the Bush White House attacked his patriotism. Sadly, the Democratic leadership refused to defend him.
Does all this sound familiar? Not entirely. In 1968 the Democratic Congress proved willing to oppose the Democrat in the White House. The Republican Congress today has yet to show the same courage and wisdom.
Phase Three in Vietnam was marked by "Vietnamization" and "make-believe diplomacy" in Paris, policies still ignoring the strategic realities at the war's beginning.
The wind-down in Vietnam actually started in Johnson's last year in office, but Richard Nixon implemented it (taking his time doing so). Rather than a rapid pullout, he pursued two tactics. The first was turning the war over to South Vietnam's military so that U.S. forces could withdraw. By 1972 most of them were gone. Second, negotiations in Paris through Soviet intermediaries with the North Vietnamese began. Both were based on transparently false assumptions.
The key problem in South Vietnam had always been achieving a political consolidation among anti-Viet Cong elites. It was not building effective military and police forces. In fact, as South Vietnamese military units became more effective, their commanders competed aggressively for political power, insuring a weak dictatorial regime in Saigon.
The assumptions about the Paris peace talks were no less illusory. Their designer, Henry Kissinger, believed that Moscow would "help" the United States reach a settlement short of total capitulation. In fact, by the late 1960s, the war was not only serving Soviet purposes against China, but also weakening NATO, hurting the U.S. currency in the international exchange rates, and making the charge of "imperialism" believable to citizens in many countries allied to the United States. Thus Soviet leaders had no objective reason to help the United States find a face-saving exodus. The deeper into "the big muddy" in Vietnam went the United States, the better for the Soviet Union. Second, Moscow could not have compelled North Vietnamese leaders in Paris to accept half a loaf in South Vietnam. Hanoi was playing off Moscow and Beijing with no intention of conceding its ultimate goal for any price.
The war ended, we now know, with the abject failure of both policies. As helicopters evacuated the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975, both illusions vanished.
Phase Three in Iraq is only beginning. Early signs were apparent in the presidential election campaign of 2004. Both Bush and Kerry put full confidence in "Iraqization." U.S. forces will "stand down" as Iraqi forces "stand up." They differed only on who could train more Iraqis faster. Nor would they acknowledge that "political consolidation" had to come before "military consolidation," as the Vietnam experience demonstrated.
In Iraq, we watch U.S.-led make-believe diplomacy negotiating a constitutional deal among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Should we believe that the Iraqi Shiites, a majority of the population with the trauma of Saddam's bloody repressions burned into their memories, will settle for less than full control? And why should we expect the Kurds to surrender their decade-old autonomy after suffering no less bloody repressions than did the Shiites? And why should we expect Sunnis to trust a Shiite-Kurdish regime not to take revenge against them for Saddam's crimes? And why would Iran and Syria be willing to abandon support for their co-religionists in Iraq in order to strike a peace deal favorable to the United States?
Will Phase Three in Iraq end with helicopters flying out of the "green zone" in Baghdad? It all sounds so familiar.
The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on U.S. power that Iraq is already having. On this point, those who deny the Vietnam-Iraq analogy are probably right. They are wrong, however, in believing that "staying the course" will have any result other than making the damage to U.S. power far greater than changing course and withdrawing sooner in as orderly a fashion as possible.
But even in its differences, Vietnam can be instructive about Iraq. Once the U.S. position in Vietnam collapsed, Washington was free to reverse the negative trends it faced in NATO and U.S.-Soviet military balance, in the world economy, in its international image, and in other areas. Only by getting out of Iraq can the United States possibly gain sufficient international support to design a new strategy for limiting the burgeoning growth of anti-Western forces it has unleashed in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
--------
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam
By William E. Odom
Nieman Watchdog
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Those who say Iraq is nothing like Vietnam have another guess coming, says retired Gen. William Odom. He lists striking similarities and asserts that only after it pulls out of Iraq can the U.S. hope for international support to deal with anti-Western forces.
The Vietnam War experience can't tell us anything about the war in Iraq - or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.
The Vietnam War had three phases. The War in Iraq has already completed an analogous first phase, is approaching the end of the second phase, and shows signs of entering the third.
Phase One in Vietnam lasted from 1961 until the Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in March 1965, authorizing deployment of large U.S. combat forces in South Vietnam. It began with hesitation and a gross misreading of American strategic interests. It concluded with the U.S. use of phony intelligence that made it seem that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf without provocation.
President Kennedy was ambivalent about deeper involvement, but some of his aides believed that a North Vietnamese takeover of the south would bring Sino-Soviet dominion over all of Southeast Asia. They paid little attention to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, which the Intelligence Community was reporting in the early 1960s. Accordingly, the "containment of China" became their goal, their rationale for U.S. strategic purpose - that is, not allowing the Soviet Bloc to expand in this region.
Was it really in the American interest to "contain China" in Vietnam? By 1965, Soviet leaders were also pursuing the containment of China, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Did it, then, make sense for the United States to commit large military forces to the pursuit of Soviet objectives in Southeast Asia? Obviously not; the White House's strategic rationale had no grounding in reality.
Not only Soviet leaders but Ho Chi Minh also wanted to contain China. A long-time loyalist to Moscow and early member of Lenin's Communist International, he was never under China's thumb. Yet he cooperated with Beijing to balance his dependency on Moscow, disallowing either to frustrate his aim, unifying all of Vietnam under his rule.
The Johnson Administration used an apparent North Vietnamese attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin on the coast of North Vietnam in the spring of 1965 to persuade Congress to support the introduction of major U.S. ground forces in South Vietnam. We now know that U.S. special operations - incursions into North Vietnam by Navy Seals - played a role in prompting North Vietnamese gun boat actions that became the casus belli for President Johnson. Thus, a misleading interpretation of the known facts, i.e., the intelligence assessment of these events, became the critical factor in making it America's war, not just Saigon's war.
Phase One in Iraq, the run-up to the invasion, looks remarkably similar. Broodings about the "necessity" to overthrow Saddam's regime were heard earlier, but signs of action appeared in January 2002, when President Bush proclaimed his "axis of evil" thesis about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, countries he accused of acquiring "weapons of mass destruction" and supporting terrorists against the United States. This became the cornerstone of his rationale for invading Iraq, and it was no less ill-conceived than the strategic purpose for President Johnson's war in Vietnam. It better served the interests of Iran and Osama bin Laden.
Iran had serious scores to settle with Iraq. In 1980, Saddam Hussein launched a bloody war that dragged on until 1988 without a decisive end. That President Bush would destroy Saddam's regime, saving Iran the trouble, was probably beyond its clerics' wildest dreams.
He did the same for al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden must have been ecstatic. The U.S. invasion opened the way for al Qaeda cadres to enter Iraq by the scores. Killing Americans in Iraq is much easier than killing them in the United States after 9/11. Moreover, toppling secular Arab leaders - including Saddam - was, and remains, Osama bin Laden's highest priority aim. America is farther down his list, seen as an intermediate objective in the long struggle to bring his version of radical Islamic rule to all Arab countries.
As it turned out, the alleged intelligence that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" and that Saddam aided al Qaeda was grossly wrong. That, of course, became a major international embarrassment, alienating many U.S. allies and aiding its enemies in their claims that America is an aggressor state that cannot be trusted.
Does all of this - confused war aims and phony intelligence - sound familiar? It should.
Phase Two in Vietnam was marked by a refusal to reconsider the war's "strategic" rationale. Rather, debate focused only on "tactical" issues as the war went sour.
By1965 things had begun going badly for U.S. military operations. By the end of March 1968, public opinion was turning against the war and Johnson chose not to run for re-election. His own party in Congress was breaking with him, and the pro-war New York Times reversed itself that summer.
During this phase, no major leader or opinion maker in the United States dared revisit the key strategic judgment: did the U.S. war aim of containing China make sense? Instead, debate focused on how the war was being fought: on search-and-destroy operations, on body counts, and pacification efforts.
This obsession with tactical issues made it easier to ignore the strategic error. As time passed, costs went up, casualties increased, and public support fell. We could not afford to "cut and run," it was argued. "The Viet Cong would carry out an awful blood-letting." Supporters of the war expected no honest answer when they asked "How can we get out?" Eventually Senator Aiken of Vermont gave them one: "In boats."
Phase Two in Iraq reveals that the same kind of strategic denial error prevails today. Since 2003, public discourse has focused on how the war is being fought. Reconstruction is inadequate. Not enough troops are available. We should not have dismantled the Iraqi military. Elections will save the day. The insurgency is in its "last throes." And so on. Some of these criticisms are valid, but they fail to address the fundamental issue, the validity of U.S. strategic purpose.
As al Qaeda marched into a country where it had not dared to tread before, the White House refused to admit that its war allowed them in. As Iran's influence with Iraqi Shiite clerics and militias quietly expands, the administration refuses to confess its own culpability. As Shiite politicians appear headed to dominate the U.S.-created "democracy" in Iraq, no one is asking "Who lost Iraq to Iran?"
Instead, after each election and referendum in Iraq, hope surges in the media. The New York Times's reporting on the elections in February of last year was eerily reminiscent of its reporting from Saigon on the 1968 elections.
The end of Phase Two is not yet here, but the Congress is showing signs of nervousness about where the war is taking the country. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has said that by no measure can it be said that the United States is winning the war. Republican Congressman Walter Jones is trying to push a resolution through the House, calling on the President to begin a withdrawal. When Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha, a highly decorated Marine war veteran, asserted that the war was hopeless and that U.S. forces should be withdrawn, supporters of the Bush White House attacked his patriotism. Sadly, the Democratic leadership refused to defend him.
Does all this sound familiar? Not entirely. In 1968 the Democratic Congress proved willing to oppose the Democrat in the White House. The Republican Congress today has yet to show the same courage and wisdom.
Phase Three in Vietnam was marked by "Vietnamization" and "make-believe diplomacy" in Paris, policies still ignoring the strategic realities at the war's beginning.
The wind-down in Vietnam actually started in Johnson's last year in office, but Richard Nixon implemented it (taking his time doing so). Rather than a rapid pullout, he pursued two tactics. The first was turning the war over to South Vietnam's military so that U.S. forces could withdraw. By 1972 most of them were gone. Second, negotiations in Paris through Soviet intermediaries with the North Vietnamese began. Both were based on transparently false assumptions.
The key problem in South Vietnam had always been achieving a political consolidation among anti-Viet Cong elites. It was not building effective military and police forces. In fact, as South Vietnamese military units became more effective, their commanders competed aggressively for political power, insuring a weak dictatorial regime in Saigon.
The assumptions about the Paris peace talks were no less illusory. Their designer, Henry Kissinger, believed that Moscow would "help" the United States reach a settlement short of total capitulation. In fact, by the late 1960s, the war was not only serving Soviet purposes against China, but also weakening NATO, hurting the U.S. currency in the international exchange rates, and making the charge of "imperialism" believable to citizens in many countries allied to the United States. Thus Soviet leaders had no objective reason to help the United States find a face-saving exodus. The deeper into "the big muddy" in Vietnam went the United States, the better for the Soviet Union. Second, Moscow could not have compelled North Vietnamese leaders in Paris to accept half a loaf in South Vietnam. Hanoi was playing off Moscow and Beijing with no intention of conceding its ultimate goal for any price.
The war ended, we now know, with the abject failure of both policies. As helicopters evacuated the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975, both illusions vanished.
Phase Three in Iraq is only beginning. Early signs were apparent in the presidential election campaign of 2004. Both Bush and Kerry put full confidence in "Iraqization." U.S. forces will "stand down" as Iraqi forces "stand up." They differed only on who could train more Iraqis faster. Nor would they acknowledge that "political consolidation" had to come before "military consolidation," as the Vietnam experience demonstrated.
In Iraq, we watch U.S.-led make-believe diplomacy negotiating a constitutional deal among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Should we believe that the Iraqi Shiites, a majority of the population with the trauma of Saddam's bloody repressions burned into their memories, will settle for less than full control? And why should we expect the Kurds to surrender their decade-old autonomy after suffering no less bloody repressions than did the Shiites? And why should we expect Sunnis to trust a Shiite-Kurdish regime not to take revenge against them for Saddam's crimes? And why would Iran and Syria be willing to abandon support for their co-religionists in Iraq in order to strike a peace deal favorable to the United States?
Will Phase Three in Iraq end with helicopters flying out of the "green zone" in Baghdad? It all sounds so familiar.
The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on U.S. power that Iraq is already having. On this point, those who deny the Vietnam-Iraq analogy are probably right. They are wrong, however, in believing that "staying the course" will have any result other than making the damage to U.S. power far greater than changing course and withdrawing sooner in as orderly a fashion as possible.
But even in its differences, Vietnam can be instructive about Iraq. Once the U.S. position in Vietnam collapsed, Washington was free to reverse the negative trends it faced in NATO and U.S.-Soviet military balance, in the world economy, in its international image, and in other areas. Only by getting out of Iraq can the United States possibly gain sufficient international support to design a new strategy for limiting the burgeoning growth of anti-Western forces it has unleashed in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
--------
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
ABC News: Russia opposes UN sanctions against Iran
ABC News: Russia opposes UN sanctions against Iran
Russia opposes UN sanctions against Iran
Reuters
UNITED NATIONS - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that imposing U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran would be ineffective in convincing Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Sergei Lavrov also told reporters after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he opposed military action and questioned any measures the West might propose in the Council.
Several hours after he spoke, the five permanent members of the Security Council met to discuss a statement that Britain, France and the United States are preparing for possible adoption next week.
The statement was to have asked for a report from the IAEA in 30 days on whether Iran had cooperated with U.N. nuclear and suspended its atomic activities, diplomats said.
But one envoy, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Britain now wanted a 14-day deadline while no immediate decision had been reached among the five -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
Lavrov made clear that he wanted the IAEA rather than the Security Council to take the lead on the Iranian issue.
"We should all strive for a solution which would not endanger the ability of the IAEA to continue its work in Iran, while of course making sure that there is no danger for the nonproliferation regime," Lavrov said.
Asked about sanctions, Lavrov said, "I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history.
"We must rely on the professional advice of the IAEA, the watchdog of the nonproliferation regime," he added.
"DEJA VU"
Lavrov said the situation reminded him of years of imposing sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion.
"It looks so deja vu, you know," said Lavrov, once a star in the Security Council as Russia's U.N. ambassador from 1994 to 2004. "I have been answering these questions regarding Iraq and I don't believe we should engage in something which might become self-fulfilling prophesy."
Lavrov was also asked about a statement from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that the "international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences" if Iraq did not comply.
He said he would not comment on Cheney's remarks but he added later, "We are convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis."
A report by IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, being sent to the Security Council, will form the basis for any U.N. action. The IAEA's governing board, which includes all five Security Council powers, decided a month ago to send Iran's nuclear dossier to the council.
If the council does adopt an initial statement the next step is the difficult one. Normally a tougher resolution would follow demanding Iran comply and hinting at consequences.
But the West does not have Russia or China's agreement on tough demands.
The United States and the Europeans want to ratchet up pressure slowly, set timetables, deadlines and then consider such measures, ranging from a travel ban on Iranian officials to sanctions on selling Iran oil equipment.
A resolution needs a minimum of nine votes in the Security Council and no veto. A policy statement, which carries less weight, requires the approval of all 15 member nations.
Despite the slim chance any sanctions will be imposed, Iran has fought any referral to the Security Council, which would give it a pariah status and could lead to tougher action.
The United States believes Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for energy uses only, is a cover for learning how to make a bomb. A three-year IAEA investigation has not found a smoking gun but the agency also could not determine whether the nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only.
Russia opposes UN sanctions against Iran
Reuters
UNITED NATIONS - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that imposing U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran would be ineffective in convincing Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Sergei Lavrov also told reporters after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he opposed military action and questioned any measures the West might propose in the Council.
Several hours after he spoke, the five permanent members of the Security Council met to discuss a statement that Britain, France and the United States are preparing for possible adoption next week.
The statement was to have asked for a report from the IAEA in 30 days on whether Iran had cooperated with U.N. nuclear and suspended its atomic activities, diplomats said.
But one envoy, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Britain now wanted a 14-day deadline while no immediate decision had been reached among the five -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
Lavrov made clear that he wanted the IAEA rather than the Security Council to take the lead on the Iranian issue.
"We should all strive for a solution which would not endanger the ability of the IAEA to continue its work in Iran, while of course making sure that there is no danger for the nonproliferation regime," Lavrov said.
Asked about sanctions, Lavrov said, "I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history.
"We must rely on the professional advice of the IAEA, the watchdog of the nonproliferation regime," he added.
"DEJA VU"
Lavrov said the situation reminded him of years of imposing sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion.
"It looks so deja vu, you know," said Lavrov, once a star in the Security Council as Russia's U.N. ambassador from 1994 to 2004. "I have been answering these questions regarding Iraq and I don't believe we should engage in something which might become self-fulfilling prophesy."
Lavrov was also asked about a statement from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that the "international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences" if Iraq did not comply.
He said he would not comment on Cheney's remarks but he added later, "We are convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis."
A report by IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, being sent to the Security Council, will form the basis for any U.N. action. The IAEA's governing board, which includes all five Security Council powers, decided a month ago to send Iran's nuclear dossier to the council.
If the council does adopt an initial statement the next step is the difficult one. Normally a tougher resolution would follow demanding Iran comply and hinting at consequences.
But the West does not have Russia or China's agreement on tough demands.
The United States and the Europeans want to ratchet up pressure slowly, set timetables, deadlines and then consider such measures, ranging from a travel ban on Iranian officials to sanctions on selling Iran oil equipment.
A resolution needs a minimum of nine votes in the Security Council and no veto. A policy statement, which carries less weight, requires the approval of all 15 member nations.
Despite the slim chance any sanctions will be imposed, Iran has fought any referral to the Security Council, which would give it a pariah status and could lead to tougher action.
The United States believes Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for energy uses only, is a cover for learning how to make a bomb. A three-year IAEA investigation has not found a smoking gun but the agency also could not determine whether the nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only.
WSJ.com - U.S. Annual War Spending Grows
WSJ.com - U.S. Annual War Spending Grows
![[George Bush]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/HC-GG773_Bush_20051006134203.gif)
![[Graphic]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AI046_IRAQCO_20060307195211.gif)
U.S. Annual War Spending Grows
Even With Troop Cutbacks,
Costs in Iraq, Afghanistan
Will Reach $117.6 Billion
Costs in Iraq, Afghanistan
Will Reach $117.6 Billion
By DAVID ROGERS
March 8, 2006; Page A4
March 8, 2006; Page A4
WASHINGTON -- As the U.S. enters its fourth year in Iraq this month, the annual cost of military operations is growing -- even as the Pentagon assumes the number of troops there will shrink.
Monthly expenditures are running at $5.9 billion; the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan adds roughly another $1 billion. Taken together, annual spending for the two wars will reach $117.6 billion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 -- 18% above funding for the prior 12 months.
That escalation reflects the fact that America's military today is a higher-cost war machine than the one that fought in Vietnam decades ago. But it has also produced bipartisan concern in Congress that "emergency spending" for Iraq has become a way for the Pentagon to meet other needs.
War costs are rising despite Pentagon estimates of lower personnel costs: $2.6 billion for 2006, or 14% less than in 2005. Offsetting that decline is an increased request for procurement of new equipment: $25.7 billion in 2006, up from the $18.8 billion Congress provided in 2005. And year-by-year comparisons show that appropriations for operations and maintenance spending for the Army and Marines are rising by better than 30%.
Higher fuel prices are a factor. In addition, the Army must hire more contractors for logistical chores previously handled by National Guard forces, who have returned home after their mobilization has run its course. "They don't have enough people," said Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat.
Three years in Iraq also have taken a toll on stocks of military equipment, requiring creation of in-country maintenance facilities in Iraq. "There are unprecedented costs. It's staggering," said Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who, like Mr. Murtha, is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee leadership overseeing defense funding.
For Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, an early ally of Mr. Bush, the result is a total defense budget that in real dollars surpasses those of the Vietnam War era and defense buildup under Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War.
"Essentially, defense is being budgeted outside the budget through emergencies," Mr. Gregg says. "The war is being used to drive those numbers, but as a practical matter, money's fungible. Obviously, a lot of that money is moving back and forth within the Defense Department."
He wants to impose more order on the process as part of a Senate budget resolution for the coming year. Meantime, the House Appropriations Committee is slated today to take up the Pentagon's newest $67.6 billion request as part of an emergency spending bill that also will provide more resources for hurricane recovery on the Gulf Coast.
Already, $50 billion in war-related emergency spending has been approved for 2006 as part of a "bridge fund" added to the annual defense-appropriations bill in December. When the new request is added, that brings the total to $117.6 billion for 2006, compared with about $99.8 billion in 2005.
The process can be difficult to follow. Congress, at the request of the White House, continues to fund the war incrementally as an "emergency." That places spending outside the customary spending ceilings that apply to annual appropriations to run the government.
Typically a "bridge fund" is approved as an addendum to the regular Pentagon budget in the fall. This is followed by a spring supplemental-spending bill, such as the one now in the House. In hopes of quick action, both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are scheduled to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee tomorrow.
Adding to confusion is the changing nomenclature for various accounts. For example, the "Iraq Freedom Fund" was prominent early during the war, but has seemed to fade as the money is reallocated to operations accounts. But when set out in order, the four most recent bills -- two for 2005, two for 2006 -- provide a picture of what the annual costs have become on a year-by-year basis.
The Army's operations and maintenance budget, the largest of the services for the war, illustrates these changes. Total appropriations for Army O&M were $30.5 billion in 2005, but the number is expected to rise to $39.7 billion this year. And as much as $1.75 billion has been budgeted for the rest of the year to pay contractors for logistical support work.
The draft House bill today seeks to trim what lawmakers regard as nonemergency requests. The Navy was denied $74 million for helicopter procurement; the Army won't get $135 million for prefabricated buildings that the panel says have nothing to do with Iraq or the war against terrorism. But on balance, lawmakers would add a total of $1.28 billion to the procurement request, chiefly to maintain production of tanks and armored vehicles.
Write to David Rogers at david.rogers@wsj.com1
| URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114178357697392103.html |
GOP Plan Allows Spying Without Warrants
GOP Plan Allows Spying Without Warrants
GOP Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants
By Scott Shane and David D. Kirkpatrick
The New York Times
Thursday 09 March 2006
Washington - The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday.
Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.
The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, emphasized in an interview on Wednesday the White House's resistance to any limits on what President Bush considers his inherent power to order surveillance of potential terrorists on American soil.
"There was a lot of pushback," Mr. Roberts said. "So we kept saying, I am sorry, that is not acceptable, and the reality is such that you will either do this or you will face bigger obstacles and we will get into confrontation."
The negotiations that produced a deal on the eavesdropping program left Senate Democrats fuming on the sidelines, adding to the partisan squabbling on the Intelligence Committee that longtime observers of Congress say is unprecedented.
But on Wednesday, the Democratic vice chairman of the committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, issued a conciliatory statement, saying that while he favored a full investigation, a committee decision on Tuesday to appoint a seven-member subcommittee to oversee the N.S.A. eavesdropping was "a step in the right direction."
Mr. Rockefeller said he and Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Dianne Feinstein of California, both fellow Democrats, would serve on the subcommittee, joining Mr. Roberts and three other Republicans, Senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Christopher S. Bond of Missouri.
On Tuesday, Mr. Rockefeller said he believed that the committee's Republicans were "under the control" of the White House. Mr. Roberts said on Wednesday that he resented being portrayed as what he called a "lap dog of the administration."
"He doesn't know how hard we worked," Mr. Roberts said of Mr. Rockefeller.
The Republican proposal would give Congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Mr. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of Congressional leaders. The N.S.A. would be permitted to intercept the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States if there was "probable cause to believe that one party to the communication is a member, affiliate, or working in support of a terrorist group or organization," according to a written summary of the proposal issued by its Republican sponsors. The finding of probable cause would not be reviewed by any court.
But after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new Congressional oversight subcommittees why he could not seek a warrant.
The administration would be required to provide "full access" to information about the eavesdropping, including "operational details," to the new Senate and House subcommittees, the summary said. Each subcommittee would consist of four Republicans and three Democrats from the Intelligence Committees.
Mr. DeWine, a principal author of the proposal, said it would give "very specific pinpoint oversight."
"We will be seeing specific cases coming back and seeing why they are not going into the FISA court," he said.
In an emergency, the existing FISA statute permits the government to eavesdrop for 72 hours before getting a warrant, and for 15 days after a declaration of war. The Republican proposal would permit eavesdropping with no warrant for 45-day periods, with no limit on how many times they could be renewed.
"Aside from the civil liberties dimension, there's an invitation here to the president to go on indefinitely with warrantless surveillance," said William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University.
Caroline Fredrickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office, said it was "profoundly disappointing to see lawmakers willing to lower the bar to allow the president vast powers to spy on Americans."
Republicans offered varying views on whether the agreement with the White House ruled out a Congressional investigation of how the N.S.A. program was begun, how it was conducted and what dissent existed inside the administration.
Mr. DeWine said he did not expect the subcommittee to investigate the last four years of the program's operations, saying the panel needed to be "moving forward."
But Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and another sponsor of the proposal, said it did not preclude an investigation by the committee if the subcommittee found that one was called for.
The Republicans were miffed that Mr. Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, had portrayed them as caving in to White House pressure.
On Tuesday, Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska and another author of the proposal, called that notion "laughable." Mr. Hagel said he and Senators DeWine and Snowe were "three of the most independent Republicans" in the Senate and added, "I have never been accused of buckling to White House pressure."
GOP Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants
By Scott Shane and David D. Kirkpatrick
The New York Times
Thursday 09 March 2006
Washington - The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday.
Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.
The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, emphasized in an interview on Wednesday the White House's resistance to any limits on what President Bush considers his inherent power to order surveillance of potential terrorists on American soil.
"There was a lot of pushback," Mr. Roberts said. "So we kept saying, I am sorry, that is not acceptable, and the reality is such that you will either do this or you will face bigger obstacles and we will get into confrontation."
The negotiations that produced a deal on the eavesdropping program left Senate Democrats fuming on the sidelines, adding to the partisan squabbling on the Intelligence Committee that longtime observers of Congress say is unprecedented.
But on Wednesday, the Democratic vice chairman of the committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, issued a conciliatory statement, saying that while he favored a full investigation, a committee decision on Tuesday to appoint a seven-member subcommittee to oversee the N.S.A. eavesdropping was "a step in the right direction."
Mr. Rockefeller said he and Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Dianne Feinstein of California, both fellow Democrats, would serve on the subcommittee, joining Mr. Roberts and three other Republicans, Senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Christopher S. Bond of Missouri.
On Tuesday, Mr. Rockefeller said he believed that the committee's Republicans were "under the control" of the White House. Mr. Roberts said on Wednesday that he resented being portrayed as what he called a "lap dog of the administration."
"He doesn't know how hard we worked," Mr. Roberts said of Mr. Rockefeller.
The Republican proposal would give Congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Mr. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of Congressional leaders. The N.S.A. would be permitted to intercept the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States if there was "probable cause to believe that one party to the communication is a member, affiliate, or working in support of a terrorist group or organization," according to a written summary of the proposal issued by its Republican sponsors. The finding of probable cause would not be reviewed by any court.
But after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new Congressional oversight subcommittees why he could not seek a warrant.
The administration would be required to provide "full access" to information about the eavesdropping, including "operational details," to the new Senate and House subcommittees, the summary said. Each subcommittee would consist of four Republicans and three Democrats from the Intelligence Committees.
Mr. DeWine, a principal author of the proposal, said it would give "very specific pinpoint oversight."
"We will be seeing specific cases coming back and seeing why they are not going into the FISA court," he said.
In an emergency, the existing FISA statute permits the government to eavesdrop for 72 hours before getting a warrant, and for 15 days after a declaration of war. The Republican proposal would permit eavesdropping with no warrant for 45-day periods, with no limit on how many times they could be renewed.
"Aside from the civil liberties dimension, there's an invitation here to the president to go on indefinitely with warrantless surveillance," said William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University.
Caroline Fredrickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office, said it was "profoundly disappointing to see lawmakers willing to lower the bar to allow the president vast powers to spy on Americans."
Republicans offered varying views on whether the agreement with the White House ruled out a Congressional investigation of how the N.S.A. program was begun, how it was conducted and what dissent existed inside the administration.
Mr. DeWine said he did not expect the subcommittee to investigate the last four years of the program's operations, saying the panel needed to be "moving forward."
But Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and another sponsor of the proposal, said it did not preclude an investigation by the committee if the subcommittee found that one was called for.
The Republicans were miffed that Mr. Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, had portrayed them as caving in to White House pressure.
On Tuesday, Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska and another author of the proposal, called that notion "laughable." Mr. Hagel said he and Senators DeWine and Snowe were "three of the most independent Republicans" in the Senate and added, "I have never been accused of buckling to White House pressure."
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com
Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Attacking Iran Even Without Good Targets
The Cheney-Bolton threats to Iran this week have fueled speculation in the press and on the Internet that the United States (and Israel) are planning imminent military action.
The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," the Vice President said yesterday. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
The Iranians "must know everything is on the table," Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said last week.
Everything is on the table. Meaningful consequences do mean military action.
But just because the hip-shooting duo are conveying threats as part of the ongoing diplomatic pressures doesn't mean that the United States is about to strike. It is not.
But also just because an attack on Iran seems so dangerous, and just because the consequences seem so catastrophic, that doesn't mean that if push came to shove, this administration wouldn't take action.
To understand what Washington could do to Iran militarily if it were to defy the international community and develop a nuclear weapon, one has to first purge the mind of any "expert" cautions associated with the task.
"Most Western intelligence agencies will tell you that they're not even certain that they know where every single Iranian nuclear site actually is," Brookings scholar Ken Pollack said on NBC Nightly News last night.
"The most essential condition -- surprise -- is lacking," Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld tells USA Today. "The Iranian sites are numerous, well-camouflaged and hardened."
I'm sure Pollack and Van Creveld believe what they say, that an attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities would be difficult and complicated, that there isn't good enough intelligence and that it might contradict all of the traditional military and even political rules.
But the Bush administration has been clear on the question of preemption: It is not going to wait for the possible mushroom cloud, and terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction are the NUMBER ONE national security concern of the administration.
So if the worst came,
* The Bush administration would not care about nor seek a "strategic" surprise attack and thus would not be stopped by the lack of surprise of because Iran is presumed to already be making preparations to protect its assets.
* The Bush administration would not seek a ground war or regime change, at least not initially or immediately, so the difficulties associated with both tasks and the ongoing operations in Iran or Afghanistan would not stop it from attacking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction infrastructure.
* The Bush administration would not be impeded by a lack of knowledge about Iran's weapons of mass destruction or by Iranian deception or by its going underground in terms of targeting. According to the Guardian (UK), Ambassador Bolton told visiting British parliamentarians in New York last week that it was well aware of the expert cautions. "We can hit different points along the line," Bolton said. "You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."
* The Bush administration would not be stopped by the protests and vetoes of the international community nor would it hesitate to use force merely because there were dangers of escalation into a full-scale war.
I've already written about the Bush administration's war plans to pre-empt development of weapons of mass destruction and its specific thinking on Iran -- how the administration has directed the military to prepare a multi-dimentional "global strike" attack on Iran and North Korea's WMD capacity, how it views the task and its difficulties.
Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a National Press Club appearance last month that "We are a long way away from needing the military option" on Iran. But if push came to shove, the administration would select the best targets that it could to set back the program, to impede the delivery of WMD, and to express U.S. resolve and threaten additional military consequences.
It would be better for the news media to stop speculating about an imminent strike and stop providing expert warnings of the difficulties associated with such a strike. It should focus instead on the administration's and the military's thinking on the subject. The reason is because even if the administration's "triggers" appeared tomorrow for "global strike" to be implemented, that is, if Iran announced it possessed a nuclear weapon, it would still a terrible and dangerous course of action for the United States to immediately attack.
I'd hate to have the experts still saying "but we didn't even have good intelligence!"
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Attacking Iran Even Without Good Targets
The Cheney-Bolton threats to Iran this week have fueled speculation in the press and on the Internet that the United States (and Israel) are planning imminent military action.
The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," the Vice President said yesterday. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
The Iranians "must know everything is on the table," Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said last week.
Everything is on the table. Meaningful consequences do mean military action.
But just because the hip-shooting duo are conveying threats as part of the ongoing diplomatic pressures doesn't mean that the United States is about to strike. It is not.
But also just because an attack on Iran seems so dangerous, and just because the consequences seem so catastrophic, that doesn't mean that if push came to shove, this administration wouldn't take action.
To understand what Washington could do to Iran militarily if it were to defy the international community and develop a nuclear weapon, one has to first purge the mind of any "expert" cautions associated with the task.
"Most Western intelligence agencies will tell you that they're not even certain that they know where every single Iranian nuclear site actually is," Brookings scholar Ken Pollack said on NBC Nightly News last night.
"The most essential condition -- surprise -- is lacking," Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld tells USA Today. "The Iranian sites are numerous, well-camouflaged and hardened."
I'm sure Pollack and Van Creveld believe what they say, that an attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities would be difficult and complicated, that there isn't good enough intelligence and that it might contradict all of the traditional military and even political rules.
But the Bush administration has been clear on the question of preemption: It is not going to wait for the possible mushroom cloud, and terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction are the NUMBER ONE national security concern of the administration.
So if the worst came,
* The Bush administration would not care about nor seek a "strategic" surprise attack and thus would not be stopped by the lack of surprise of because Iran is presumed to already be making preparations to protect its assets.
* The Bush administration would not seek a ground war or regime change, at least not initially or immediately, so the difficulties associated with both tasks and the ongoing operations in Iran or Afghanistan would not stop it from attacking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction infrastructure.
* The Bush administration would not be impeded by a lack of knowledge about Iran's weapons of mass destruction or by Iranian deception or by its going underground in terms of targeting. According to the Guardian (UK), Ambassador Bolton told visiting British parliamentarians in New York last week that it was well aware of the expert cautions. "We can hit different points along the line," Bolton said. "You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."
* The Bush administration would not be stopped by the protests and vetoes of the international community nor would it hesitate to use force merely because there were dangers of escalation into a full-scale war.
I've already written about the Bush administration's war plans to pre-empt development of weapons of mass destruction and its specific thinking on Iran -- how the administration has directed the military to prepare a multi-dimentional "global strike" attack on Iran and North Korea's WMD capacity, how it views the task and its difficulties.
Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a National Press Club appearance last month that "We are a long way away from needing the military option" on Iran. But if push came to shove, the administration would select the best targets that it could to set back the program, to impede the delivery of WMD, and to express U.S. resolve and threaten additional military consequences.
It would be better for the news media to stop speculating about an imminent strike and stop providing expert warnings of the difficulties associated with such a strike. It should focus instead on the administration's and the military's thinking on the subject. The reason is because even if the administration's "triggers" appeared tomorrow for "global strike" to be implemented, that is, if Iran announced it possessed a nuclear weapon, it would still a terrible and dangerous course of action for the United States to immediately attack.
I'd hate to have the experts still saying "but we didn't even have good intelligence!"
FBI retires its Carnivore---sure they are...it's now MAGIC LANTERN, I believe...
FBI retires its Carnivore
FBI retires its Carnivore
Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus 2005-01-14
FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic, according to documents released Friday.
Two reports to Congress obtained by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the FBI didn't use Carnivore, or its rebranded version "DCS-1000," at all during the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years. Instead, the bureau turned to unnamed commercially-available products to conduct Internet surveillance thirteen times in criminal investigations in that period.
Carnivore became a hot topic among civil libertarians, some network operators and many lawmakers in 2000, when an ISP's legal challenge brought the surveillance tool's existence to light. One controversy revolved around the FBI's legally-murky use of the device to obtain e-mail headers and other information without a wiretap warrant -- an issue Congress resolved by explicitly legalizing the practice in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act.
Carnivore Logo
Under section 216 of the act, the FBI can conduct a limited form of Internet surveillance without first visiting a judge and establishing probable cause that the target has committed a crime. In such cases the FBI is authorized to capture routing information like e-mail addresses or IP addresses, but not the contents of the communications.
According to the released reports, the bureau used that power three times in 2002 and six times in 2003 in cases in which it brought its own Internet surveillance gear to the job. Each of those surveillance operations lasted sixty days or less, except for one investigation into alleged extortion, arson and "teaching of others how to make and use destructive devices" that ran over eight months from January 10th to August 26th, 2002.
Other cases investigated under section 216 involved alleged mail fraud, controlled substance sales, providing material support to terrorism, and making obscene or harassing telephone calls within the District of Columbia. The surveillance targets' names are not listed in the reports.
In four additional cases, twice each in 2002 and 2003, the FBI obtained a full-blown Internet wiretap warrant from a judge, permitting them to capture the contents of a target's Internet communications in real time. No more information on those cases is provided in the reports because they involved "sensitive investigations," according to the bureau.
The new documents only enumerate criminal investigations in which the FBI deployed a government-owned surveillance tool, not those in which an ISP used its own equipment to facilitate the spying. Cases involving foreign espionage or international terrorism are also omitted.
Developed by a contractor, Carnivore was a customizable packet sniffer that, in conjunction with other FBI tools, could capture e-mail messages, and reconstruct Web pages exactly as a surveillance target saw them while surfing the Web. FBI agents lugged it with them to ISPs that lacked their own spying capability.
FBI retires its Carnivore
Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus 2005-01-14
FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic, according to documents released Friday.
Two reports to Congress obtained by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the FBI didn't use Carnivore, or its rebranded version "DCS-1000," at all during the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years. Instead, the bureau turned to unnamed commercially-available products to conduct Internet surveillance thirteen times in criminal investigations in that period.
Carnivore became a hot topic among civil libertarians, some network operators and many lawmakers in 2000, when an ISP's legal challenge brought the surveillance tool's existence to light. One controversy revolved around the FBI's legally-murky use of the device to obtain e-mail headers and other information without a wiretap warrant -- an issue Congress resolved by explicitly legalizing the practice in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act.
Carnivore Logo
Under section 216 of the act, the FBI can conduct a limited form of Internet surveillance without first visiting a judge and establishing probable cause that the target has committed a crime. In such cases the FBI is authorized to capture routing information like e-mail addresses or IP addresses, but not the contents of the communications.
According to the released reports, the bureau used that power three times in 2002 and six times in 2003 in cases in which it brought its own Internet surveillance gear to the job. Each of those surveillance operations lasted sixty days or less, except for one investigation into alleged extortion, arson and "teaching of others how to make and use destructive devices" that ran over eight months from January 10th to August 26th, 2002.
Other cases investigated under section 216 involved alleged mail fraud, controlled substance sales, providing material support to terrorism, and making obscene or harassing telephone calls within the District of Columbia. The surveillance targets' names are not listed in the reports.
In four additional cases, twice each in 2002 and 2003, the FBI obtained a full-blown Internet wiretap warrant from a judge, permitting them to capture the contents of a target's Internet communications in real time. No more information on those cases is provided in the reports because they involved "sensitive investigations," according to the bureau.
The new documents only enumerate criminal investigations in which the FBI deployed a government-owned surveillance tool, not those in which an ISP used its own equipment to facilitate the spying. Cases involving foreign espionage or international terrorism are also omitted.
Developed by a contractor, Carnivore was a customizable packet sniffer that, in conjunction with other FBI tools, could capture e-mail messages, and reconstruct Web pages exactly as a surveillance target saw them while surfing the Web. FBI agents lugged it with them to ISPs that lacked their own spying capability.
Tom Engelhardt | Shark and Awe
Tom Engelhardt | Shark and Awe
Shark and Awe: Weaponizing the Shark and Other Pentagon Dreams
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com
Shark and Awe: Weaponizing the Shark and Other Pentagon Dreams
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com
Tuesday 07 March 2006
From the annals of full-spectrum dominance.
We already have "stealth" aircraft, but what about a little of the stealth that only nature can provide?
Navy Seals, move over - here come the Navy sharks. According to the latest New Scientist magazine, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the blue-sky wing of the Pentagon, has set yet another group of American scientists loose to create the basis for future red-in-tooth-and-maw Discovery Channel programs. In this case, they are planning to put neural implants into the brains of sharks in hopes, one day, of "controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling." In their dreams at least, DARPA'S far-out funders hope to "exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted."
So far they've only made it to the poor dogfish, "steered" in captivity via electrodes keyed to "phantom odors." As it happens though, DARPA-sponsored plans are a good deal lustier than that: Next stop, the blue shark, which reaches a length of 13 feet. Project engineer Walter Gomes of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island claims a team will soon be putting neural implants "into blue sharks and releas[ing] them into the ocean off the coast of Florida." To transmit signals to the sharks, the team will need nothing less than a network of signaling towers in the area. This has "anti-ballistic shark system" written all over it.
Actually, it's not the first time the military has invested in shark technology. As Noah Shachtman of DefenseTech.org pointed out last July, "The Navy has tapped three firms to build prototype gadgets that duplicate what sharks do naturally: find prey from the electric fields they emit." One of them, Advanced Ceramics Research, Inc., limned the project's potential benefits this way: "If developed, such a capability might allow for the detection of small, hostile submarines entering a seawater inlet, harbor or channel, or allow objects such as mines to be pinpointed in shallow waters where sonar imaging is severely compromised." And then there's that ultimate underwater dream, the Microfabricated Biomimetic Artificial Gill System, that could lead to all sorts of Navy breakthroughs, perhaps even - if you'll excuse a tad of blue-skying on my part - blue shark/human tracking teams, or if not that, then lots of late-night-TV Aquaman jokes.
Of course, the Navy has been in nature's waters in a big way for a while with its Marine Mammal Program in San Diego. There, it trains bottlenose dolphins as "sentries" and mine detectors. Such dolphins were "first operationally deployed" in Vietnam in 1971 and a whole Dolphin patrol (like, assumedly, the shark patrol to come) is now on duty in the Khor Abd Allah waterway, Iraq's passageway into the Persian Gulf. To the embarrassment of the Navy, a dolphin named Takoma even went "AWOL" there in 2003, soon after the invasion of Iraq began.
As Nick Turse has pointed out, DARPA funds research into weaponizing creatures that inhabit just about any environmental niche imaginable - including bees capable of detecting explosives; "eyes" patterned after those of flies that might someday make "smart" weaponry even smarter; gecko wall-climbing and octopi concealment techniques; and electrode-controlled rats capable of searching through piles of rubble. In addition, between nature and whatever the opposite of nurture may be, there's been an ongoing military give-and-take. Consider, for instance, BigDog, highlighted in the same issue of New Scientist. Compared to a pack mule, goat, or horse, this "robotic beast of burden" is being developed by Boston Dynamics to haul over rough terrain at least 40 kilograms of supplies soldiers won't need to carry, while being able to take a "hefty kick" in the legs without crumpling to the ground.
From sharks to robots, from hacking into your nervous system to manipulating the weather, the Pentagon seems determined to exert "full spectrum dominance" especially over that top of the line primate, us. To achieve this, it sponsors blue-sky thinking with a vengeance. Nothing that moves or breathes on the planet, it seems, is conceptually beyond conscription by Uncle Sam into possible future-war scenarios.
This is undoubtedly what happens when you have an administration that considers the Pentagon the answer to all our problems and gives it a $439.3 billion budget to play with - and that's exclusive of actual war-fighting money (which, for Iraq and Afghanistan, at an estimated $120 billion for the year, will come in supplemental requests to Congress). And remember as well that the fiscal 2007 Pentagon budget does not include the $9.3 billion the Department of Energy will put into nuclear weapons or a host of veterans-care benefits, all of which bring the budget at least close to the $600 billion range. Analyzing the 2006 budget, economist Robert Higgs estimated that all military-related outlays - that is, the real Pentagon budget - totaled closer to $840 billion dollars.
Even taken at face value, the 2007 budget accounts for more than half of the $873 billion in federal discretionary spending - the funds that the President and Congress decide to spend each year. For 2007, education, the second largest discretionary budget item, amounts to just over $50 billion, a piddling sum by comparison. But there is probably no way to put any version of the Pentagon's finances into perspective. Militarily speaking, it throws other military spending on the planet into the deepest shadow. As Frida Berrigan, senior research associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center and co-author of Weapons at War 2005, points out, "The Pentagon accounts for about half the world's total military expenditures of $1.04 trillion, spending alone what the 32 next most powerful nations spend together."
The United States is also by far the planet's largest exporter of weapons and military hardware. An annual Congressional Research Service report found that, in 2004, global weapons deliveries totaled nearly $37 billion - with the United States responsible for more than 33% of them, or $12.4 billion, and it hasn't gotten better since.
No other country puts anything like such effort, planning, and dreaming into the idea of projecting planet-spanning military power, caught so grimly in that phrase, "full spectrum dominance." To Pentagon minds this seems to mean: from 20,000 leagues down to 20 miles up (and everything that creeps, crawls, swims, or flies in between). The phrase first gained attention with the release in 2000 of the Air Force's Joint Vision 2020 statement - a supposed look into a future world of American war-making. It's one of those terms that sticks with you - and not just because of the full-spectrum weaponry that's now on the drawing boards, ranging from hypervelocity rod bundles meant to penetrate underground bunkers from outer space (ominously nicknamed "rods from god") to the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), "an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that [by 2010] would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads" anywhere on the planet within two hours, or that permanent base on the moon the Bush administration has called for by 2020 (and the array of Star Wars-style space-based weaponry that would ring it).
Full-spectrum dominance turns out to include even the United States where, in 2002, the Bush administration established the United States Northern Command or Northcom whose website at present has the following from a visit by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale as its reassuring quote of the week: "I'm leaving with a clear sense of confidence in the vision and planning of NORTHCOM to deal with any emerging threat, whether an occurrence of pandemic flu, a 2006 hurricane ... or a terrorist attack still being planned by our adversaries."
While the Pentagon quietly begins to take over tasks that once were delegated to civilian agencies, its blue-sky weapons planning extends into the distant future. Take, for instance, the Air Force Futures Game 05, held for several days last October in the Dulles, Virginia office of consultants Booz Allen Hamilton. The exercise was dedicated to "looking at scenarios for the year 2025," especially one in which a nuclear weapon is loose in a "Middle Eastern country" and a major war is in the offing. Like many other Pentagon war-gaming exercises, this one was largely committed to confirming the usefulness of as yet nonexistent or hardly existent weaponry, especially in the areas of "space access" and "electronic warfare." According to Col. Gail Wojtowicz, Air Force division director of future concepts and transformation, the gamers were "also looking at one of the trickiest issues the Air Force or another service may have to face: what the Pentagon can do on American soil." Indeed.
Military analyst William Arkin wrote about these particular Air Force games, meant to boost "laser, high-powered microwaves, and acoustic weapons," at his Washington Post Early Warning blog. Such blue-sky exercises, he explained, advance new weapons systems (and their corporate sponsors) "along the familiar development path of boosters and patrons feeding information to war gamers who feed study participants who feed researchers who feed manufacturers. At the end of the day, it is hard to tell whether high powered microwaves and laser came into being because someone conceived it out of need or because its existence in the laboratory created the need."
To support letting inventive minds roam free outside normal frameworks is in itself an inspired idea. But I bet there's no DARPA-like agency elsewhere in the government funding the equivalent for education 2025 or health 2025 or even energy independence 2025. To have this happen, I'm afraid, you would have to transform them into Northcom war games.
Now it's true that much blue-skying may never come to be. Those U.S. Navy stealth sharks may not patrol our coasts and a good, swift enemy kick to some unexpected spot on BigDog's anatomy may fell the "creature," if budgetary or high-tech wrinkles don't do the trick first - just as an unexpected series of low-tech blows to our full-spectrum military has left the Pentagon desperate and the Army unraveling in Iraq.
Wouldn't it be nice, though, if official blue-sky thinking didn't always mean mobilizing finances, scientists, corporations, and even the animal kingdom in the service of global death. Wouldn't it be nice to blue sky just a tad about life?
[Note: Special thanks for Pentagon facts and figures in this piece go to Frida Berrigan of the World Policy Institute's invaluable Arms Trade Resource Center. To keep up with the latest Pentagon full-spectrum dominance projects, be sure to check out Noah Shachtman's entertaining as well as useful DefenseTech website, heavily mined for this piece, and William Arkin's Washington Post Early Warning blog.]
--------
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently come out in paperback.
Congress Renews Patriot Act + Provisions of the USA Patriot Act
Congress Renews Patriot Act
Congress Renews Patriot Act, With Some Changes
By Charles Babington
The Washington Post
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Congress renewed a four-year-old anti-terrorism law yesterday that makes it easier for federal agents to secretly obtain Americans' records and communications, even as some lawmakers warned that voters are growing increasingly concerned about protecting civil liberties during the fight against terrorism.
Renewal of the USA Patriot Act marks a victory for President Bush at a time when he is defending a program of warrantless domestic eavesdropping conducted by the National Security Agency. Congress has scheduled several hearings on the NSA program, and the Senate intelligence committee created a subcommittee yesterday to scrutinize it.
The House voted 280 to 138 to approve a Senate-passed measure that makes several changes to the Patriot Act, which was enacted shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Both chambers earlier approved another bill extending the act's provisions that were scheduled to expire, and Bush is expected to sign the measures as a package.
The law makes it easier for federal agents to secretly tap phones, obtain library and bank records, and search homes of terrorism suspects. Bush has called it a vital tool in protecting the country. But numerous civil libertarians and librarians said it allows abuse of innocent Americans' privacy, and lawmakers agreed last year to add several safeguards before renewing provisions that were scheduled to expire.
One change involves National Security Letters, which are subpoenas for financial and electronic records that do not require a judge's approval. Libraries functioning in their "traditional capacity" will no longer be subject to such letters. Also modified are "Section 215 subpoenas," which are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Recipients will have the explicit right to challenge the subpoenas' nondisclosure or "gag order" requirements.
The reauthorization makes permanent all but two of the Patriot Act's provisions. The Senate, in which four Republicans joined most Democrats in pushing for greater safeguards, insisted on four-year sunsets of the FBI's authority to conduct "roving wiretaps" of targets with multiple phones or e-mail devices, and of the government's powers to seize business records with the FISA court's approval.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told colleagues that the Patriot Act has been an effective anti-terrorism tool, and that critics have "not produced a single substantiated claim" that it "has been misused to violate Americans' civil liberties." Still, he said, Congress agreed to several changes "to further mitigate the potential for misuse."
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the House intelligence committee's ranking Democrat, praised the new law for "barring the government from using National Security Letters to obtain records from libraries functioning in their traditional roles. Only libraries that also function as Internet service providers are now covered."
However, Harman said, "we need to do more," and some Republicans agree. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has introduced a bill that, among other things, would allow federal officials seven days to act on a "delayed-notice search warrant" before informing its target. The revised law allows 30 days.
Several lawmakers said Americans are still feeling their way along the political landscape that pits privacy and some liberties against law enforcement efforts to prevent terrorist acts.
"There's no question that the politics of terror is something new to our country," said Sen. Larry E. Craig (Idaho), one of four Republicans who helped block Senate passage until more safeguards were added. When he describes how the government can secretly eavesdrop and seize records, Craig said, audiences generally temper their anti-terrorism enthusiasm with expressions of concern for civil liberties.
Many House Democrats said the safeguards in the reauthorization fall short. But Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.) said the Patriot Act may prove to "be irrelevant" because the administration seems to be "wiretapping at will" through the NSA. He and the House's two other Virginia Democrats, James P. Moran Jr. and Rick Boucher, voted against renewing the act. Elijah E. Cummings (D) and Roscoe G. Bartlett (R) of Maryland joined them.
The reauthorized Patriot Act includes new tools to combat the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. It will require retailers to place cold medicines with pseudoephedrine - a key ingredient of the illegal drug - behind counters, and will set limits on each person's monthly and daily purchases. Buyers will have to identify themselves and sign for their purchases.
Provisions of the USA Patriot Act
The Associated Press
Tuesday 07 March 2006
Provisions and changes in the USA Patriot Act.
What's New:
* The package makes clear that recipients of National Security Letters have the right to challenge them in court.
* It gives recipients of court-approved subpoenas for information in terrorist investigations the right to challenge a requirement that they refrain from telling anyone.
* It clarifies that most libraries are not subject to demands in those letters for information about suspected terrorists.
* It takes aim at the methamphetamine trade by imposing new restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines, which contain a key ingredient for the drug. Beginning 30 days after President Bush signs the law, expected sometime this week, purchase limits go into effect: One person would be limited to buying 300, 30-mg pills in a month or 120 such pills in a day. The measure would make an exception for "single-use" sales - individually packaged pseudoephedrine products.
By Sept. 30, retailers would be required to sell such medicines from behind the counter and purchasers would have to show ID and sign log books.
* The package also cracks down on port security by imposing tough punishments on crew members who try to stop or mislead law enforcement officials investigating their ships.
Renewed Provisions:
* Section 201 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to terrorism.
* Section 202 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses.
* Subsection 203(b) - Permits the sharing of grand jury information that involves foreign intelligence or counterintelligence with federal law enforcement, intelligence, protective, immigration, national defense or national security officials
* Subsection 203(d) - Gives foreign intelligence or counterintelligence officers the ability to share foreign intelligence information obtained as part of a criminal investigation with law enforcement.
* Section 204 - Makes clear that nothing in the law regarding pen registers - an electronic device that records all numbers dialed from a particular phone line - stops the government's ability to obtain foreign intelligence information.
* Section 206 - Allows federal officials to issue roving "John Doe" wiretaps, which let investigators listen in on any telephone and tap any computer they think a suspected spy or terrorist might use.
* Section 207 - Increases the amount of time federal officials may watch people they suspect are spies or terrorists.
* Section 209 - Permits the seizure of voicemail messages under a warrant.
* Section 212 - Permits Internet service providers and other electronic communication and remote computing service providers to hand over records and e-mails to federal officials in emergency situations.
* Section 214 - Allows use of a pen register or trap and trace devices that record originating phone numbers of all incoming calls in international terrorism or spy investigations.
* Section 215 - Authorizes federal officials to obtain "tangible items" like business records, including those from libraries and bookstores, for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.
* Section 217 - Makes it lawful to intercept the wire or electronic communication of a computer hacker or intruder in certain circumstances.
* Section 218 - Allows federal officials to wiretap or watch suspects if foreign intelligence gathering is a "significant purpose" for seeking a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act order. The pre-Patriot Act standard said officials could ask for the surveillance only if it was the sole or main purpose.
* Section 220 - Provides for nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence.
* Section 223 - Amends the federal criminal code to provide for administrative discipline of federal officers or employees who violate prohibitions against unauthorized disclosures of information gathered under this act.
* Section 225 - Amends FISA to prohibit lawsuits against people or companies that provide information to federal officials for a terrorism investigation.
Congress Renews Patriot Act, With Some Changes
By Charles Babington
The Washington Post
Wednesday 08 March 2006
Congress renewed a four-year-old anti-terrorism law yesterday that makes it easier for federal agents to secretly obtain Americans' records and communications, even as some lawmakers warned that voters are growing increasingly concerned about protecting civil liberties during the fight against terrorism.
Renewal of the USA Patriot Act marks a victory for President Bush at a time when he is defending a program of warrantless domestic eavesdropping conducted by the National Security Agency. Congress has scheduled several hearings on the NSA program, and the Senate intelligence committee created a subcommittee yesterday to scrutinize it.
The House voted 280 to 138 to approve a Senate-passed measure that makes several changes to the Patriot Act, which was enacted shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Both chambers earlier approved another bill extending the act's provisions that were scheduled to expire, and Bush is expected to sign the measures as a package.
The law makes it easier for federal agents to secretly tap phones, obtain library and bank records, and search homes of terrorism suspects. Bush has called it a vital tool in protecting the country. But numerous civil libertarians and librarians said it allows abuse of innocent Americans' privacy, and lawmakers agreed last year to add several safeguards before renewing provisions that were scheduled to expire.
One change involves National Security Letters, which are subpoenas for financial and electronic records that do not require a judge's approval. Libraries functioning in their "traditional capacity" will no longer be subject to such letters. Also modified are "Section 215 subpoenas," which are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Recipients will have the explicit right to challenge the subpoenas' nondisclosure or "gag order" requirements.
The reauthorization makes permanent all but two of the Patriot Act's provisions. The Senate, in which four Republicans joined most Democrats in pushing for greater safeguards, insisted on four-year sunsets of the FBI's authority to conduct "roving wiretaps" of targets with multiple phones or e-mail devices, and of the government's powers to seize business records with the FISA court's approval.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told colleagues that the Patriot Act has been an effective anti-terrorism tool, and that critics have "not produced a single substantiated claim" that it "has been misused to violate Americans' civil liberties." Still, he said, Congress agreed to several changes "to further mitigate the potential for misuse."
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the House intelligence committee's ranking Democrat, praised the new law for "barring the government from using National Security Letters to obtain records from libraries functioning in their traditional roles. Only libraries that also function as Internet service providers are now covered."
However, Harman said, "we need to do more," and some Republicans agree. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has introduced a bill that, among other things, would allow federal officials seven days to act on a "delayed-notice search warrant" before informing its target. The revised law allows 30 days.
Several lawmakers said Americans are still feeling their way along the political landscape that pits privacy and some liberties against law enforcement efforts to prevent terrorist acts.
"There's no question that the politics of terror is something new to our country," said Sen. Larry E. Craig (Idaho), one of four Republicans who helped block Senate passage until more safeguards were added. When he describes how the government can secretly eavesdrop and seize records, Craig said, audiences generally temper their anti-terrorism enthusiasm with expressions of concern for civil liberties.
Many House Democrats said the safeguards in the reauthorization fall short. But Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.) said the Patriot Act may prove to "be irrelevant" because the administration seems to be "wiretapping at will" through the NSA. He and the House's two other Virginia Democrats, James P. Moran Jr. and Rick Boucher, voted against renewing the act. Elijah E. Cummings (D) and Roscoe G. Bartlett (R) of Maryland joined them.
The reauthorized Patriot Act includes new tools to combat the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. It will require retailers to place cold medicines with pseudoephedrine - a key ingredient of the illegal drug - behind counters, and will set limits on each person's monthly and daily purchases. Buyers will have to identify themselves and sign for their purchases.
Provisions of the USA Patriot Act
The Associated Press
Tuesday 07 March 2006
Provisions and changes in the USA Patriot Act.
What's New:
* The package makes clear that recipients of National Security Letters have the right to challenge them in court.
* It gives recipients of court-approved subpoenas for information in terrorist investigations the right to challenge a requirement that they refrain from telling anyone.
* It clarifies that most libraries are not subject to demands in those letters for information about suspected terrorists.
* It takes aim at the methamphetamine trade by imposing new restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines, which contain a key ingredient for the drug. Beginning 30 days after President Bush signs the law, expected sometime this week, purchase limits go into effect: One person would be limited to buying 300, 30-mg pills in a month or 120 such pills in a day. The measure would make an exception for "single-use" sales - individually packaged pseudoephedrine products.
By Sept. 30, retailers would be required to sell such medicines from behind the counter and purchasers would have to show ID and sign log books.
* The package also cracks down on port security by imposing tough punishments on crew members who try to stop or mislead law enforcement officials investigating their ships.
Renewed Provisions:
* Section 201 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to terrorism.
* Section 202 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses.
* Subsection 203(b) - Permits the sharing of grand jury information that involves foreign intelligence or counterintelligence with federal law enforcement, intelligence, protective, immigration, national defense or national security officials
* Subsection 203(d) - Gives foreign intelligence or counterintelligence officers the ability to share foreign intelligence information obtained as part of a criminal investigation with law enforcement.
* Section 204 - Makes clear that nothing in the law regarding pen registers - an electronic device that records all numbers dialed from a particular phone line - stops the government's ability to obtain foreign intelligence information.
* Section 206 - Allows federal officials to issue roving "John Doe" wiretaps, which let investigators listen in on any telephone and tap any computer they think a suspected spy or terrorist might use.
* Section 207 - Increases the amount of time federal officials may watch people they suspect are spies or terrorists.
* Section 209 - Permits the seizure of voicemail messages under a warrant.
* Section 212 - Permits Internet service providers and other electronic communication and remote computing service providers to hand over records and e-mails to federal officials in emergency situations.
* Section 214 - Allows use of a pen register or trap and trace devices that record originating phone numbers of all incoming calls in international terrorism or spy investigations.
* Section 215 - Authorizes federal officials to obtain "tangible items" like business records, including those from libraries and bookstores, for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.
* Section 217 - Makes it lawful to intercept the wire or electronic communication of a computer hacker or intruder in certain circumstances.
* Section 218 - Allows federal officials to wiretap or watch suspects if foreign intelligence gathering is a "significant purpose" for seeking a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act order. The pre-Patriot Act standard said officials could ask for the surveillance only if it was the sole or main purpose.
* Section 220 - Provides for nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence.
* Section 223 - Amends the federal criminal code to provide for administrative discipline of federal officers or employees who violate prohibitions against unauthorized disclosures of information gathered under this act.
* Section 225 - Amends FISA to prohibit lawsuits against people or companies that provide information to federal officials for a terrorism investigation.
Human medical experimentation in the United States: The shocking true history of modern medicine and psychiatry (1833-1965)
Human medical experimentation in the United States: The shocking true history of modern medicine and psychiatry (1833-1965)
Originally published March 6 2006
Originally published March 6 2006
Human medical experimentation in the United States: The shocking true history of modern medicine and psychiatry (1833-1965)
Introduction by the Health Ranger: The United States claims to be the world leader in medicine. But there's a dark side to western medicine that few want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical experiments performed on impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress. Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from newly approved drugs or medical technologies.Today, the medical experiments continue on the U.S. population and its children. From the mass drugging of children diagnosed with fictitious behavioral disorders invented by psychiatry to the FDA's approval of mass-marketed drugs that have undergone no legitimate clinical trials, our population is right now being subjected to medical experiments on a staggering scale. Today, nearly 50% of Americans are on a least one prescription drug, and nearly 20% of schoolchildren are on mind-altering amphetamines like Ritalin or antidepressants like Prozac. This mass medication of our nation is, in every way, a grand medical experiment taking place right now.
But to truly understand how this mass experimentation on modern Americans came into being, you have to take a close look at the horrifying history of conventional medicine's exploitation of people for cruel medical experiments.
WARNING: What you are about to read is truly shocking. You have never been told this information by the American Medical Association, nor drug companies, nor the evening news. You were never taught the truth about conventional medicine in public school, or even at any university. This is the dark secret of the U.S. system of medicine, and once you read the true accounts reported here, you may never trust drug companies again. These images are deeply disturbing. We print them here not as a form of entertainment, but as a stern warning against what might happen to us and our children if we do not rein in the horrifying, inhumane actions of Big Pharma and modern-day psychiatry.
Now, I introduce this shocking timeline, researched and authored by Dani Veracity, one of our many talented staff writers here at Truth Publishing.
Read at your own risk. - The Health Ranger
The true U.S. history of human medical experimentation
Human experimentation -- that is, subjecting live human beings to science experiments that are sometimes cruel, sometimes painful, sometimes deadly and always a risk -- is a major part of U.S. history that you won't find in most history or science books. The United States is undoubtedly responsible for some of the most amazing scientific breakthroughs. These advancements, especially in the field of medicine, have changed the lives of billions of people around the world -- sometimes for the better, as in the case of finding a cure for malaria and other epidemic diseases, and sometimes for the worse (consider modern "psychiatry" and the drugging of schoolchildren).However, these breakthroughs come with a hefty price tag: The human beings used in the experiments that made these advancements possible. Over the last two centuries, some of these test subjects have been compensated for the damage done to their emotional and physical health, but most have not. Many have lost their lives because of the experiments they often unwillingly and sometimes even unwittingly participated in, and they of course can never be compensated for losing their most precious possession of all: Their health.
As you read through these science experiments, you'll learn the stories of newborns injected with radioactive substances, mentally ill people placed in giant refrigerators, military personnel exposed to chemical weapons by the very government they served and mentally challenged children being purposely infected with hepatitis. These stories are facts, not fiction: Each account, no matter how horrifying, is backed up with a link or citation to a reputable source.
These stories must be heard because human experimentation is still going on today. The reasons behind the experiments may be different, but the usual human guinea pigs are still the same -- members of minority groups, the poor and the disadvantaged. These are the lives that were put on the line in the name of "scientific" medicine.
(1833)
Dr. William Beaumont, an army surgeon physician, pioneers gastric medicine with his study of a patient with a permanently open gunshot wound to the abdomen and writes a human medical experimentation code that asserts the importance of experimental treatments, but also lists requirements stipulating that human subjects must give voluntary, informed consent and be able to end the experiment when they want. Beaumont's Code lists verbal, rather than just written, consent as permissible (Berdon).(1845)
(1845 - 1849) J. Marion Sims, later hailed as the "father of gynecology," performs medical experiments on enslaved African women without anesthesia. These women would usually die of infection soon after surgery. Based on his belief that the movement of newborns' skull bones during protracted births causes trismus, he also uses a shoemaker's awl, a pointed tool shoemakers use to make holes in leather, to practice moving the skull bones of babies born to enslaved mothers (Brinker).(1895)
New York pediatrician Henry Heiman infects a 4-year-old boy whom he calls "an idiot with chronic epilepsy" with gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").(1896)
Dr. Arthur Wentworth turns 29 children at Boston's Children's Hospital into human guinea pigs when he performs spinal taps on them, just to test whether the procedure is harmful (Sharav).(1900)
U.S Army doctors working in the Philippines infect five Filipino prisoners with plague and withhold proper nutrition to create Beriberi in 29 prisoners; four test subjects die (Merritte, et al.; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).Under commission from the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Walter Reed goes to Cuba and uses 22 Spanish immigrant workers to prove that yellow fever is contracted through mosquito bites. Doing so, he introduces the practice of using healthy test subjects, and also the concept of a written contract to confirm informed consent of these subjects. While doing this study, Dr. Reed clearly tells the subjects that, though he will do everything he can to help them, they may die as a result of the experiment. He pays them $100 in gold for their participation, plus $100 extra if they contract yellow fever (Berdon, Sharav).
(1906)
Harvard professor Dr. Richard Strong infects prisoners in the Philippines with cholera to study the disease; 13 of them die. He compensates survivors with cigars and cigarettes. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors cite this study to justify their own medical experiments (Greger, Sharav).(1911)
Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research publishes data on injecting an inactive syphilis preparation into the skin of 146 hospital patients and normal children in an attempt to develop a skin test for syphilis. Later, in 1913, several of these children's parents sue Dr. Noguchi for allegedly infecting their children with syphilis ("Reviews and Notes: History of Medicine: Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War").(1913)
Medical experimenters "test" 15 children at the children's home St. Vincent's House in Philadelphia with tuberculin, resulting in permanent blindness in some of the children. Though the Pennsylvania House of Representatives records the incident, the researchers are not punished for the experiments ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").(1915)
Dr. Joseph Goldberger, under order of the U.S. Public Health Office, produces Pellagra, a debilitating disease that affects the central nervous system, in 12 Mississippi inmates to try to find a cure for the disease. One test subject later says that he had been through "a thousand hells." In 1935, after millions die from the disease, the director of the U.S Public Health Office would finally admit that officials had known that it was caused by a niacin deficiency for some time, but did nothing about it because it mostly affected poor African-Americans. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors used this study to try to justify their medical experiments on concentration camp inmates (Greger; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).(1918)
In response to the Germans' use of chemical weapons during World War I, President Wilson creates the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) as a branch of the U.S. Army. Twenty-four years later, in 1942, the CWS would begin performing mustard gas and lewisite experiments on over 4,000 members of the armed forces (Global Security, Goliszek).(1919)
(1919 - 1922) Researchers perform testicular transplant experiments on inmates at San Quentin State Prison in California, inserting the testicles of recently executed inmates and goats into the abdomens and scrotums of living prisoners (Greger).(1931)
Cornelius Rhoads, a pathologist from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, purposely infects human test subjects in Puerto Rico with cancer cells; 13 of them die. Though a Puerto Rican doctor later discovers that Rhoads purposely covered up some of details of his experiment and Rhoads himself gives a written testimony stating he believes that all Puerto Ricans should be killed, he later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients (Sharav; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).(1931 - 1933) Mental patients at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois are injected with radium-266 as an experimental therapy for mental illness (Goliszek).
(1932)
(1932-1972) The U.S. Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Ala. diagnoses 400 poor, black sharecroppers with syphilis but never tells them of their illness nor treats them; instead researchers use the men as human guinea pigs to follow the symptoms and progression of the disease. They all eventually die from syphilis and their families are never told that they could have been treated (Goliszek, University of Virginia Health System Health Sciences Library).(1937)
Scientists at Cornell University Medical School publish an angina drug study that uses both placebo and blind assessment techniques on human test subjects. They discover that the subjects given the placebo experienced more of an improvement in symptoms than those who were given the actual drug. This is first account of the placebo effect published in the United States ("Placebo Effect").(1939)
In order to test his theory on the roots of stuttering, prominent speech pathologist Dr. Wendell Johnson performs his famous "Monster Experiment" on 22 children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport. Dr. Johnson and his graduate students put the children under intense psychological pressure, causing them to switch from speaking normally to stuttering heavily. At the time, some of the students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career" (Alliance for Human Research Protection).(1941)
Dr. William C. Black infects a 12-month-old baby with herpes as part of a medical experiment. At the time, the editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Francis Payton Rous, calls it "an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science" (Sharav).An article in a 1941 issue of Archives of Pediatrics describes medical studies of the severe gum disease Vincent's angina in which doctors transmit the disease from sick children to healthy children with oral swabs (Goliszek).
Drs. Francis and Salk and other researchers at the University of Michigan spray large amounts of wild influenza virus directly into the nasal passages of "volunteers" from mental institutions in Michigan. The test subjects develop influenza within a very short period of time (Meiklejohn).
Researchers give 800 poverty-stricken pregnant women at a Vanderbilt University prenatal clinic "cocktails" including radioactive iron in order to determine the iron requirements of pregnant women (Pacchioli).
(1942)
The United States creates Fort Detrick, a 92-acre facility, employing nearly 500 scientists working to create biological weapons and develop defensive measures against them. Fort Detrick's main objectives include investigating whether diseases are transmitted by inhalation, digestion or through skin absorption; of course, these biological warfare experiments heavily relied on the use of human subjects (Goliszek).U.S. Army and Navy doctors infect 400 prison inmates in Chicago with malaria to study the disease and hopefully develop a treatment for it. The prisoners are told that they are helping the war effort, but not that they are going to be infected with malaria. During Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors later cite this American study to defend their own medical experiments in concentration camps like Auschwitz (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
The Chemical Warfare Service begins mustard gas and lewisite experiments on 4,000 members of the U.S. military. Some test subjects don't realize they are volunteering for chemical exposure experiments, like 17-year-old Nathan Schnurman, who in 1944 thinks he is only volunteering to test "U.S. Navy summer clothes" (Goliszek).
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy, Harvard biochemist Edward Cohn injects 64 inmates of Massachusetts state prisons with cow's blood (Sharav).
Merck Pharmaceuticals President George Merck is named director of the War Research Service (WRS), an agency designed to oversee the establishment of a biological warfare program (Goliszek).
(1943)
In order to "study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders," researchers at University of Cincinnati Hospital keep 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at 30 degrees Fahrenheit (Sharav).(1944)
As part of the Manhattan Project that would eventually create the atomic bomb, researchers inject 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into soldiers at the Oak Ridge facility, 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn. ("Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge").Captain A. W. Frisch, an experienced microbiologist, begins experiments on four volunteers from the state prison at Dearborn, Mich., inoculating prisoners with hepatitis-infected specimens obtained in North Africa. One prisoner dies; two others develop hepatitis but live; the fourth develops symptoms but does not actually develop the disease (Meiklejohn).
Laboratory workers at the University of Minnesota and University of Chicago inject human test subjects with phosphorus-32 to learn the metabolism of hemoglobin (Goliszek).
(1944 - 1946) In order to quickly develop a cure for malaria -- a disease hindering Allied success in World War II -- University of Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf Alving infects psychotic patients at Illinois State Hospital with the disease through blood transfusions and then experiments malaria cures on them (Sharav).
A captain in the medical corps addresses an April 1944 memo to Col. Stanford Warren, head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, expressing his concerns about atom bomb component fluoride's central nervous system (CNS) effects and asking for animal research to be done to determine the extent of these effects: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect ... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor ... Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure." The following year, the Manhattan Project would begin human-based studies on fluoride's effects (Griffiths and Bryson).
The Manhattan Project medical team, led by the now infamous University of Rochester radiologist Col. Safford Warren, injects plutonium into patients at the University's teaching hospital, Strong Memorial (Burton Report).
(1945)
Continuing the Manhattan Project, researchers inject plutonium into three patients at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital (Sharav).The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence and the CIA begin Operation Paperclip, offering Nazi scientists immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top-secret government projects on aerodynamics and chemical warfare medicine in the United States ("Project Paperclip").
Researchers infect 800 prisoners in Atlanta with malaria to study the disease (Sharav).
(1945 - 1955) In Newburgh, N.Y., researchers linked to the Manhattan Project begin the most extensive American study ever done on the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur strikes a secret deal with Japanese physician Dr. Shiro Ishii to turn over 10,000 pages of information gathered from human experimentation in exchange for granting Ishii immunity from prosecution for the horrific experiments he performed on Chinese, Russian and American war prisoners, including performing vivisections on live human beings (Goliszek, Sharav).Male and female test subjects at Chicago's Argonne National Laboratories are given intravenous injections of arsenic-76 so that researchers can study how the human body absorbs, distributes and excretes arsenic (Goliszek).
Continuing the Newburg study of 1945, the Manhattan Project commissions the University of Rochester to study fluoride's effects on animals and humans in a project codenamed "Program F." With the help of the New York State Health Department, Program F researchers secretly collect and analyze blood and tissue samples from Newburg residents. The studies are sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and take place at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Strong Memorial Hospital (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946 - 1947) University of Rochester researchers inject four male and two female human test subjects with uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per one kilogram of body weight in order to study how much uranium they could tolerate before their kidneys become damaged (Goliszek).
Six male employees of a Chicago metallurgical laboratory are given water contaminated with plutonium-239 to drink so that researchers can learn how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract (Goliszek).
Researchers begin using patients in VA hospitals as test subjects for human medical experiments, cleverly worded as "investigations" or "observations" in medical study reports to avoid negative connotations and bad publicity (Sharav).
The American public finally learns of the biowarfare experiments being done at Fort Detrick from a report released by the War Department (Goliszek).
(1946 - 1953) The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sponsors studies in which researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston University School of Medicine feed mentally disabled students at Fernald State School Quaker Oats breakfast cereal spiked with radioactive tracers every morning so that nutritionists can study how preservatives move through the human body and if they block the absorption of vitamins and minerals. Later, MIT researchers conduct the same study at Wrentham State School (Sharav, Goliszek).
Human test subjects are given one to four injections of arsenic-76 at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine. Researchers take tissue biopsies from the subjects before and after the injections (Goliszek).
(1947)
Col. E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) issues a top-secret document (707075) dated Jan. 8. In it, he writes that "certain radioactive substances are being prepared for intravenous administration to human subjects as a part of the work of the contract" (Goliszek).A secret AEC document dated April 17 reads, "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse reaction on public opinion or result in legal suits," revealing that the U.S. government was aware of the health risks its nuclear tests posed to military personnel conducting the tests or nearby civilians (Goliszek).
The CIA begins studying LSD's potential as a weapon by using military and civilian test subjects for experiments without their consent or even knowledge. Eventually, these LSD studies will evolve into the MKULTRA program in 1953 (Sharav).
(1947 - 1953) The U.S. Navy begins Project Chatter to identify and test so-called "truth serums," such as those used by the Soviet Union to interrogate spies. Mescaline and the central nervous system depressant scopolamine are among the many drugs tested on human subjects (Goliszek).
(1948)
Based on the secret studies performed on Newburgh, N.Y. residents beginning in 1945, Project F researchers publish a report in the August 1948 edition of the Journal of the American Dental Association, detailing fluoride's health dangers. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) quickly censors it for "national security" reasons (Griffiths and Bryson).(1950)
(1950 - 1953) The CIA and later the Office of Scientific Intelligence begin Project Bluebird (renamed Project Artichoke in 1951) in order to find ways to "extract" information from CIA agents, control individuals "through special interrogation techniques," "enhance memory" and use "unconventional techniques, including hypnosis and drugs" for offensive measures (Goliszek).(1950 - 1953) The U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over six American and Canadian cities. Residents in Winnipeg, Canada, where a highly toxic chemical called cadmium is dropped, subsequently experience high rates of respiratory illnesses (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In order to determine how susceptible an American city could be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii bacteria from ships over the San Francisco shoreline. According to monitoring devices situated throughout the city to test the extent of infection, the eight thousand residents of San Francisco inhale five thousand or more bacteria particles, many becoming sick with pneumonia-like symptoms (Goliszek).
Dr. Joseph Strokes of the University of Pennsylvania infects 200 female prisoners with viral hepatitis to study the disease (Sharav).
Doctors at the Cleveland City Hospital study changes in cerebral blood flow by injecting test subjects with spinal anesthesia, inserting needles in their jugular veins and brachial arteries, tilting their heads down and, after massive blood loss causes paralysis and fainting, measuring their blood pressure. They often perform this experiment multiple times on the same subject (Goliszek).
Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, later of MKULTRA infamy due to his 1957 to1964 experiments on Canadians, publishes an article in the British Journal of Physical Medicine, in which he describes experiments that entail forcing schizophrenic patients at Manitoba's Brandon Mental Hospital to lie naked under 15- to 200-watt red lamps for up to eight hours per day. His other experiments include placing mental patients in an electric cage that overheats their internal body temperatures to 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and inducing comas by giving patients large injections of insulin (Goliszek).
(1951)
The U.S. Navy's Project Bluebird is renamed Project Artichoke and begins human medical experiments that test the effectiveness of LSD, sodium pentothal and hypnosis for the interrogative purposes described in Project Bluebird's objectives (1950) (Goliszek).The U.S. Army secretly contaminates the Norfolk Naval Supply Center in Virginia and Washington, D.C.'s National Airport with a strain of bacteria chosen because African-Americans were believed to be more susceptible to it than Caucasians. The experiment causes food poisoning, respiratory problems and blood poisoning (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1951 - 1952) Researchers withhold insulin from diabetic patients for up to two days in order to observe the effects of diabetes; some test subjects go into diabetic comas (Goliszek).
(1951 - 1956) Under contract with the Air Force's School of Aviation Medicine (SAM), the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston begins studying the effects of radiation on cancer patients -- many of them members of minority groups or indigents, according to sources -- in order to determine both radiation's ability to treat cancer and the possible long-term radiation effects of pilots flying nuclear-powered planes. The study lasts until 1956, involving 263 cancer patients. Beginning in 1953, the subjects are required to sign a waiver form, but it still does not meet the informed consent guidelines established by the Wilson memo released that year. The TBI studies themselves would continue at four different institutions -- Baylor University College of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine -- until 1971 (U.S. Department of Energy, Goliszek).
American, Canadian and British military and intelligence officials gather a small group of eminent psychologists to a secret meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal about Communist "thought-control techniques." They proposed a top-secret research program on behavior modification -- involving testing drugs, hypnosis, electroshock and lobotomies on humans (Barker).
(1952)
Military scientists use the Dugway Proving Ground -- which is located 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah -- in a series of experiments to determine how Brucella suis and Brucella melitensis spread in human populations. Today, over a half-century later, some experts claim that we are all infected with these agents as a result of these experiments (Goliszek).In a U.S. Department of Denfense-sponsored experiment, Henry Blauer dies after he is injected with mescaline at Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute (Sharav).
At the famous Sloan-Kettering Institute, Chester M. Southam injects live cancer cells into prisoners at the Ohio State Prison to study the progression of the disease. Half of the prisoners in this National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) study are black, awakening racial suspicions stemming from Tuskegee, which was also an NIH-sponsored study (Merritte, et al.).
(1953)
(1953 - 1970) The CIA begins project MKNAOMI to "stockpile incapacitating and lethal materials, to develop gadgetry for the disseminations of these materials, and to test the effects of certain drugs on animals and humans." As part of MKNAOMI, the CIA and the Special Operations Division of the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick try to develop two suicide pill alternatives to the standard cyanide suicide pill given to CIA agents and U-2 pilots. CIA agents and U-2 pilots are meant to take these pills when they find themselves in situations in which they (and all the information they hold in their brains) are in enemy hands. They also develop a "microbioinoculator" -- a device that agents can use to fire small darts coated with biological agents that can remain potent for weeks or even months. These darts can be fired through clothing and, most significantly, are undetectable during autopsy. Eventually, by the late 1960s, MKNAOMI enables the CIA to have a stockpile of biological toxins -- infectious viruses, paralytic shellfish toxin, lethal botulism toxin, snake venom and the severe skin disease-producing agent Mircosporum gypseum. Of course, the development of all of this "gadgetry" requires human experimentation (Goliszek).(1953 - 1974) CIA Director Allen Dulles authorizes the MKULTRA program to produce and test drugs and biological agents that the CIA could use for mind control and behavior modification. MKULTRA later becomes well known for its pioneering studies on LSD, which are often performed on prisoners or patrons of brothels set up and run by the CIA. The brothel experiments, known as "Operation Midnight Climax," feature two-way mirrors set up in the brothels so that CIA agents can observe LSD's effects on sexual behavior. Ironically, governmental figures sometimes slip LSD into each other's drinks as part of the program, resulting in the LSD psychosis-induced suicide of Dr. Frank Olson indirectly at the hands of MKULTRA's infamous key player Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Of all the hundreds of human test subjects used during MKULTRA, only 14 are ever notified of the involvement and only one is ever compensated ($15,000). Most of the MKULTRA files are eventually destroyed in 1973 (Elliston; Merritte, et al.; Barker).
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) sponsors iodine studies at the University of Iowa. In the first study, researchers give pregnant women 100 to 200 microcuries of iodine-131 and then study the women's aborted embryos in order to learn at what stage and to what extent radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In the second study, researchers give 12 male and 13 female newborns under 36 hours old and weighing between 5.5 and 8.5 pounds iodine-131 either orally or via intramuscular injection, later measuring the concentration of iodine in the newborns' thyroid glands (Goliszek).
Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson issues the Wilson memo, a top-secret document establishing the Nuremberg Code as Department of Defense policy on human experimentation. The Wilson memo requires voluntary, written consent from a human medical research subject after he or she has been informed of "the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment." It also insists that doctors only use experimental treatments when other methods have failed (Berdon).
As part of an AEC study, researchers feed 28 healthy infants at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine iodine-131 through a gastric tube and then test concentration of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands 24 hours later (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1957) Eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are injected with uranium as part of the Manhattan Project (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study at the University of Tennessee, researchers inject healthy two- to three-day-old newborns with approximately 60 rads of iodine-131 (Goliszek).
Newborn Daniel Burton becomes blind when physicians at Brooklyn Doctors Hospital perform an experimental high oxygen treatment for Retrolental Fibroplasia, a retinal disorder affecting premature infants, on him and other premature babies. The physicians perform the experimental treatment despite earlier studies showing that high oxygen levels cause blindness. Testimony in Burton v. Brooklyn Doctors Hospital (452 N.Y.S.2d875) later reveals that researchers continued to give Burton and other infants excess oxygen even after their eyes had swelled to dangerous levels (Goliszek, Sharav).
The CIA begins Project MKDELTA to study the use of biochemicals "for harassment, discrediting and disabling purposes" (Goliszek).
A 1953 article in Clinical Science describes a medical experiment in which researchers purposely blister the abdomens of 41 children, ranging in age from eight to 14, with cantharide in order to study how severely the substance irritates the skin (Goliszek).
The AEC performs a series of field tests known as "Green Run," dropping radiodine 131 and xenon 133 over the Hanford, Wash. site -- 500,000 acres encompassing three small towns (Hanford, White Bluffs and Richland) along the Columbia River (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study to learn whether radioactive iodine affects premature babies differently from full-term babies, researchers at Harper Hospital in Detroit give oral doses of iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants weighing between 2.1 and 5.5 pounds (Goliszek).
(1954)
The CIA begins Project QKHILLTOP to study Chinese Communist Party brainwashing techniques and use them to further the CIA's own interrogative methods. Most experts speculate that the Cornell University Medical School Human Ecology Studies Program conducted Project QKHILLTOP's early experiments (Goliszek).(1954 - 1975) U.S. Air Force medical officers assigned to Fort Detrick's Chemical Corps Biological Laboratory begin Operation Whitecoat -- experiments involving exposing human test subjects to hepatitis A, plague, yellow fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, rickettsia and intestinal microbes. These test subjects include 2,300 Seventh Day Adventist military personnel, who choose to become human guinea pigs rather than potentially kill others in combat. Only two of the 2,300 claim long-term medical complications from participating in the study ("Operation Whitecoat".)
In a general memo to university researchers under contract with the military, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army asserts the human experimentation guidelines -- including informed, written consent -- established in the classified Wilson memo (Goliszek).
(1955)
In U.S. Army-sponsored experiments performed at Tulane University, mental patients are given LSD and other drugs and then have electrodes implanted in their brain to measure the levels (Barker, "The Cold War Experiments").(1955 - 1957) In order to learn how cold weather affects human physiology, researchers give a total of 200 doses of iodine-131, a radioactive tracer that concentrates almost immediately in the thyroid gland, to 85 healthy Eskimos and 17 Athapascan Indians living in Alaska. They study the tracer within the body by blood, thyroid tissue, urine and saliva samples from the test subjects. Due to the language barrier, no one tells the test subjects what is being done to them, so there is no informed consent (Goliszek).
(1955 - 1965) As a result of their work with the CIA's mind control experiments in Project QKHILLTOP, Cornell neurologists Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle begin the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (later renamed the Human Ecology Fund) to study "man's relation to his social environment as perceived by him" (Goliszek).
(1956)
(1956 - 1957) U.S. Army covert biological weapons researchers release mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and dengue fever over Savannah, Ga., and Avon Park, Fla., to test the insects' ability to carry disease. After each test, Army agents pose as public health officials to test victims for effects and take pictures of the unwitting test subjects. These experiments result in a high incidence of fevers, respiratory distress, stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid among the two cities' residents, as well as several deaths (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).(1957)
The U.S. military conducts Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Operation Pumbbob consists of 29 nuclear detonations, eventually creating radiation expected to result in a total 32,000 cases of thyroid cancer among civilians in the area. Around 18,000 members of the U.S. military participate in Operation Pumbbob's Desert Rock VII and VIII, which are designed to see how the average foot soldier physiologically and mentally responds to a nuclear battlefield ("Operation Plumbbob", Goliszek).(1957 - 1964) As part of MKULTRA, the CIA pays McGill University Department of Psychiatry founder Dr. D. Ewen Cameron $69,000 to perform LSD studies and potentially lethal experiments on Canadians being treated for minor disorders like post-partum depression and anxiety at the Allan Memorial Institute, which houses the Psychiatry Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. The CIA encourages Dr. Cameron to fully explore his "psychic driving" concept of correcting madness through completely erasing one's memory and rewriting the psyche. These "driving" experiments involve putting human test subjects into drug-, electroshock- and sensory deprivation-induced vegetative states for up to three months, and then playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements for weeks or months in order to "rewrite" the "erased" psyche. Dr. Cameron also gives human test subjects paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy 30 to 40 times, as part of his experiments. Most of Dr. Cameron's test subjects suffer permanent damage as a result of his work (Goliszek, "Donald Ewan Cameron").
In order to study how blood flows through children's brains, researchers at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia perform the following experiment on healthy children, ranging in age from three to 11: They insert needles into each child's femoral artery (thigh) and jugular vein (neck), bringing the blood down from the brain. Then, they force each child to inhale a special gas through a facemask. In their subsequent Journal of Clinical Investigation article on this study, the researchers note that, in order to perform the experiment, they had to restrain some of the child test subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek).
(1958)
Approximately 300 members of the U.S. Navy are exposed to radiation when the Navy destroyer Mansfield detonates 30 nuclear bombs off the coasts of Pacific Islands during Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) drops radioactive materials over Point Hope, Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a field test known under the codename "Project Chariot" (Sharav).
(1961)
In response to the Nuremberg Trials, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram begins his famous Obedience to Authority Study in order to answer his question "Could it be that (Adolf) Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Male test subjects, ranging in age from 20 to 40 and coming from all education backgrounds, are told to give "learners" electric shocks for every wrong answer the learners give in response to word pair questions. In reality, the learners are actors and are not receiving electric shocks, but what matters is that the test subjects do not know that. Astoundingly, they keep on following orders and continue to administer increasingly high levels of "shocks," even after the actor learners show obvious physical pain ("Milgram Experiment").(1962)
Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland test experimental acne antibiotics on children and continue their tests even after half of the young test subjects develop severe liver damage because of the experimental medication (Goliszek). The U.S. Army's Deseret Test Center begins Project 112. This includes SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), which exposes U.S. Navy and Army personnel to live toxins and chemical poisons in order to determine naval ships' vulnerability to chemical and biological weapons. Military personnel are not test subjects; conducting the tests exposes them. Many of these participants complain of negative health effects at the time and, decades later, suffer from severe medical problems as a result of their exposure (Goliszek, Veterans Health Administration).The FDA begins requiring that a new pharmaceutical undergo three human clinical trials before it will approve it. From 1962 to 1980, pharmaceutical companies satisfy this requirement by running Phase I trials, which determine a drug's toxicity, on prison inmates, giving them small amounts of cash for compensation (Sharav).
(1963)
Chester M. Southam, who injected Ohio State Prison inmates with live cancer cells in 1952, performs the same procedure on 22 senile, African-American female patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in order to watch their immunological response. Southam tells the patients that they are receiving "some cells," but leaves out the fact that they are cancer cells. He claims he doesn't obtain informed consent from the patients because he does not want to frighten them by telling them what he is doing, but he nevertheless temporarily loses his medical license because of it. Ironically, he eventually becomes president of the American Cancer Society (Greger, Merritte, et al.).Researchers at the University of Washington directly irradiate the testes of 232 prison inmates in order to determine radiation's effects on testicular function. When these inmates later leave prison and have children, at least four have babies born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never follow up on the men to see the long-term effects of their experiment (Goliszek).
In a National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) study, a researcher transplants a chimpanzee's kidney into a human. The experiment fails (Sharav).
(1963 - 1966) New York University researcher Saul Krugman promises parents with mentally disabled children definite enrollment into the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, N.Y., a resident mental institution for mentally retarded children, in exchange for their signatures on a consent form for procedures presented as "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involve deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of infected patients, so that Krugman can study the course of viral hepatitis as well the effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine (Hammer Breslow).
(1963 - 1971) Leading endocrinologist Dr. Carl Heller gives 67 prison inmates at Oregon State Prison in Salem $5 per month and $25 per testicular tissue biopsy in compensation for allowing him to perform irradiation experiments on their testes. If they receive vasectomies at the end of the study, the prisoners are given an extra $100 (Sharav, Goliszek).
Researchers inject a genetic compound called radioactive thymidine into the testicles of more than 100 Oregon State Penitentiary inmates to learn whether sperm production is affected by exposure to steroid hormones (Greger).
In a study published in Pediatrics, researchers at the University of California's Department of Pediatrics use 113 newborns ranging in age from one hour to three days old in a series of experiments used to study changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one study, doctors insert a catheter through the newborns' umbilical arteries and into their aortas and then immerse the newborns' feet in ice water while recording aortic pressure. In another experiment, doctors strap 50 newborns to a circumcision board, tilt the table so that all the blood rushes to their heads and then measure their blood pressure (Goliszek).
(1964)
(1964 - 1968) The U.S. Army pays $386,486 (the largest sum ever paid for human experimentation) to University of Pennsylvania Professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to run medical experiments on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison to determine the effectiveness of seven mind-altering drugs. The researchers' objective is to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population (MED-50). Though Professors Kligman and Copelan claim that they are unaware of any long-term effects the mind-altering agents might have on prisoners, documents revealed later would prove otherwise (Kaye).(1964 - 1967) The Dow Chemical Company pays Professor Kligman $10,000 to learn how dioxin -- a highly toxic, carcinogenic component of Agent Orange -- and other herbicides affect human skin because workers at the chemical plant have been developing an acne-like condition called Chloracne and the company would like to know whether the chemicals they are handling are to blame. As part of the study, Professor Kligman applies roughly the amount of dioxin Dow employees are exposed to on the skin 60 prisoners, and is disappointed when the prisoners show no symptoms of Chloracne. In 1980 and 1981, the human guinea pigs used in this study would begin suing Professor Kligman for complications including lupus and psychological damage (Kaye).
(1965)
The Department of Defense uses human test subjects wearing rubber clothing and M9A1 masks to conduct 35 trials near Fort Greely, Ala., as part of the Elk Hunt tests, which are designed to measure the amount of VX nerve agent put on the clothing of people moving through VX-contaminated areas or touching contaminated vehicles, and the amount of VX vapor rising from these areas. After the tests, the subjects are decontaminated using wet steam and high-pressure cold water (Goliszek).As part of a test codenamed "Big Tom," the Department of Defense sprays Oahu, Hawaii's most heavily populated island, with Bacillus globigii in order to simulate an attack on an island complex. Bacillus globigii causes infections in people with weakened immune systems, but this was not known to scientists at the time (Goliszek, Martin).
(1966)
The CIA continues a limited number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project MKSEARCH to develop and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and test drugs that are able to produce predictable changes in human behavior and physiology (Goliszek).Dr. Henry Beecher writes, "The well-being, the health, even the actual or potential life of all human beings, born or unborn, depend upon the continuing experimentation in man. Proceed it must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of mankind is man,'" in his "exposé" on human medical experimentation Research and the Individual ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis through ventilation gates and into the New York City subway system, exposing more than one million civilians to the bacteria (Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects issues its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which eventually creates what we now know as institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the company's knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor Albert Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners experience acne lesions that develop into inflammatory pustules and papules (Kaye).The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of the FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is possible to spike drinking water with LSD and other substances (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers inject pregnant women with radioactive cortisol to see if the radioactive material will cross the placentas and affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as to, in Professor Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process," information which would have both offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military (Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an extensive program for developing drugs that can influence human behavior. This program includes Project OFTEN -- which studies the toxicology, transmission and behavioral effects of drugs in animal and human subjects -- and Project CHICKWIT, which gathers European and Asian drug development information (Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and eventually a wrinkle cream), turning him into a multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans (Sharav, Sauter).(1969)
President Nixon ends the United States' offensive biowarfare program, including human experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of thousands of civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have wittingly and unwittingly acted as participants in experiments involving exposure to dangerous biological agents (Goliszek).The U.S. military conducts DTC Test 69-12, which is an open-air test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek, Martin).
Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy Director for Research and Technology, requests $10 million from Congress to develop a synthetic biological agent that would be resistant "to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145 marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the Nuremberg Code be applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request, under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to begin CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division and hopefully create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent. Some experts believe that this research may have inadvertently created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Goliszek).Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also sponsored the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare program at Johns Hopkins University collects blood samples from 7,000 African-American youth, telling their parents that they are checking for anemia but actually checking for an extra Y chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to crime. The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this experiment without Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger, Merritte, et al.).
(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, now known as the National Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to cancer research, scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology (including HIV) there. Additionally, the site is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, which researches drugs, vaccines and countermeasures for biological warfare, so the former Fort Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare past (Goliszek).Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a group of college students in order to learn the psychology of prison life. Some students are given the role as prison guards, while the others are given the role of prisoners. After only six days, the proposed two-week study has to end because of its psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had begun to act sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show signs of depression and severe psychological stress (University of New Hampshire).
An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with Acquired Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation Proceedings. Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division have, at this point, been conducting mycoplasma research to create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent for about one year, again suggesting that this research may have produced HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to mental patients at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength" (Barker).(1973)
An Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, writing, "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community" (Sharav).(1974)
Congress enacts the National Research Act, creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and finally setting standards for human experimentation on children (Breslow).(1975)
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes of Health's Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).(1977)
The Kennedy Hearing initiates the process toward Executive Order 12333, prohibiting intelligence agencies from experimenting on humans without informed consent (Merritte, et al.).The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to Jeanne Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's now-infamous plutonium injections at Strong Memorial Hospital, and the families of the other human test subjects (Burton Report).
The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York. Its ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men. Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then developed it in chimpanzees, the only animal susceptible to hepatitis B, leading to the theory that HIV originated in chimpanzees before being transferred over to humans via this vaccine. A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus among New York's homosexual community -- diseases not usually seen among young, American men, but that would later be known as common opportunistic diseases associated with AIDS (Goliszek).(1979)
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the foundations for research experimentation on humans. The Belmont Report mandates that researchers follow three basic principles: 1. Respect the subjects as autonomous persons and protect those with limited ability for independence (such as children), 2. Do no harm, 3. Choose test subjects justly -- being sure not to target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or easily manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to the tests (Berdon).(1980)
A study reveals a high incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military personnel who participated in 1957's Operation Plumbbob (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob">"Operation Plumbob").According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20 percent of all New York homosexual men who participated in the 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
American doctors give experimental hormone shots to hundreds of Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami and Puerto Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as gynecomastia, in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver, recruiting over 7,000 homosexual men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical drug trials, leading to the advent of the experimental drug testing centers industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981)
(1981 - 1993) The Seattle-based Genetic Systems Corporation begins an ongoing medical experiment called Protocol No. 126, in which cancer patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are given bone marrow transplants that contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic Systems, rather than standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human subjects die from complications directly related to the experimental treatment (Goliszek).A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject Leonard Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).
The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and confirms 26 cases of the disease -- all in previously healthy homosexuals living in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- again supporting the speculation that AIDS originated from the hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980 (Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).(1984)
SFBC Phase I research clinic founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become the largest experimental drug testing center in North America with centers in Miami and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials (Drug Development-Technology.com).(1985)
A former U.S. Army sergeant tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in without his consent or even his knowledge in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing the U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future medical experiments without informed consent (Merritte, et al..(1987)
Philadelphia resident Doris Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her son's brain post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the state of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning that unless a patient signs a document stating otherwise, consent for organ removal is automatically implied (Merritte, et al.).(1988)
The U.S. Justice Department pays nine Canadian survivors of the CIA and Dr. Cameron's "psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in out-of-court settlements, to avoid any further investigations into MKULTRA (Goliszek).(1988 - 2001) The New York City Administration for Children's Services begins allowing foster care children living in about two dozen children's homes to be used in National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS drug trials. These children -- totaling 465 by the program's end -- experience serious side effects, including inability to walk, diarrhea, vomiting, swollen joints and cramps. Children's home employees are unaware that they are giving the HIV-infected children experimental drugs, rather than standard AIDS treatments (New York City ACS, Doran).
(1990)
The United States sends 1.7 million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of whom are African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf War ("Desert Storm"). More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting Gulf War veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the Nuremberg Code and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio operator Richard Jenkins writes that he suffers from leukemia, chronic fatigue and kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation exposure he received in 1958's Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws schizophrenics off of their medications, Tony LaMadrid commits suicide (Sharav).
(1992)
Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine give 100 males -- mostly African-American and Hispanic, all between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers of juvenile delinquents -- 10 milligrams of fenfluramine (fen-fen) per kilogram of body weight in order to test the theory that low serotonin levels are linked to violent or aggressive behavior. Parents of the participants received $125 each, including a $25 Toys 'R' Us gift certificate (Goliszek).(1993)
Researchers at the West Haven VA in Connecticut give 27 schizophrenics -- 12 inpatients and 15 functioning volunteers -- a chemical called MCPP that significantly increases their psychotic symptoms and, as researchers note, negatively affects the test subjects on a long-term basis ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").(1994)
In a double-blind experiment at New York VA Hospital, researchers take 23 schizophrenic inpatients off of their medications for a median of 30 days. They then give 17 of them 0.5 mg/kg amphetamine and six a placebo as a control, following up with PET scans at Brookhaven Laboratories. According to the researchers, the purpose of the experiment was "to specifically evaluate metabolic effects in subjects with varying degrees of amphetamine-induced psychotic exacerbation" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome receives a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting into Col. Warren's plutonium experiments on patients at Strong Memorial Hospital in 1945 (Burton Report).
In a federally funded experiment at New York VA Medical Center, researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Researchers at Bronx VA Medical Center recruit 28 schizophrenic veterans who are functioning in society and give them L-dopa in order to deliberately induce psychotic relapse ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), which finally reveals the horrific experiments conducted during the Cold War era in its ACHRE Report.
(1995)
A 19-year-old University of Rochester student named Nicole Wan dies from participating in an MIT-sponsored experiment that tests airborne pollutant chemicals on humans. The experiment pays $150 to human test subjects (Sharav).In the Mar. 15 President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), former human subjects, including those who were used in experiments as children, give sworn testimonies stating that they were subjected to radiation experiments and/or brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged, psychologically tortured, threatened and even raped during CIA experiments. These sworn statements include:
- Christina DeNicola's statement that, in Tucson, Ariz., from 1966 to 1976, "Dr. B" performed mind control experiments using drugs, post-hypnotic injection and drama, and irradiation experiments on her neck, throat, chest and uterus. She was only four years old when the experiments started.
- Claudia Mullen's testimony that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (of MKULTRA fame) used chemicals, radiation, hypnosis, drugs, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, electric shock, brainwashing and emotional, sexual and verbal abuse as part of mind control experiments that had the ultimate objective of turning her, who was only a child at the time, into the "perfect spy." She tells the advisory committee that researchers justified this abuse by telling her that she was serving her country "in their bold effort to fight Communism."
- Suzanne Starr's statement that "a physician, who was retired from the military, got children from the mountains of Colorado for experiments." She says she was one of those children and that she was the victim of experiments involving environmental deprivation to the point of forced psychosis, spin programming, injections, rape and frequent electroshock and mind control sessions. "I have fought self-destructive programmed messages to kill myself, and I know what a programmed message is, and I don’t act on them," she tells the advisory committee of the experiments' long-lasting effects, even in her adulthood (Goliszek).
In Dr. Daniel P. van Kammen's study, "Behavioral vs. Biochemical Prediction of Clinical Stability Following Haloperidol Withdrawal in Schizophrenia," researchers recruit 88 veterans who are stabilized by their medications enough to make them functional in society, and hospitalize them for eight to 10 weeks. During this time, the researchers stop giving the veterans the medications that are enabling them to live in society, placing them back on a two- to four-week regimen of the standard dose of Haldol. Then, the veterans are "washed-out," given lumbar punctures and put under six-week observation to see who would relapse and suffer symptomatic schizophrenia once again; 50 percent do ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
Justice Edward Greenfield of the New York State Supreme Court rules that parents do not have the right to volunteer their mentally incapacitated children for non-therapeutic medical research studies and that no mentally incapacitated person whatsoever can be used in a medical experiment without informed consent (Sharav).
(1996)
Professor Adil E. Shamoo of the University of Maryland and the organization Citizens for Responsible Care and Research sends a written testimony on the unethical use of veterans in medical research to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs, stating: "This type of research is on-going nationwide in medical centers and VA hospitals supported by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers money. These experiments are high risk and are abusive, causing not only physical and psychic harm to the most vulnerable groups but also degrading our society’s system of basic human values. Probably tens of thousands of patients are being subjected to such experiments" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").The Department of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
In a federally funded experiment at West Haven VA in Connecticut, Yale University researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In order to expose unethical medical experiments that provoke psychotic relapse in schizophrenic patients, the Boston Globe publishes a four-part series entitled "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (Sharav).Researchers give 26 veterans at a VA hospital a chemical called Yohimbine to purposely induce post-traumatic stress disorder ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In order to create a "psychosis model," University of Cincinnati researchers give 16 schizophrenic patients at Cincinnati VA amphetamine in order to provoke repeats bouts of psychosis and eventually produce "behavioral sensitization" (Sharav).
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government, researchers withhold medical treatment from HIV-positive African-American pregnant women, giving them a placebo rather than AIDS medication (Sharav).
Researchers give amphetamine to 13 schizophrenic patients in a repetition of the 1994 "amphetamine challenge" at New York VA Hospital. As a result, the patients experience psychosis, delusions and hallucinations. The researchers claim to have informed consent ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
On Sept. 18, victims of unethical medical experiments at major U.S. research centers, including the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) testify before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
(1999)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D. testifies on "The Unethical Use of Human Beings in High-Risk Research Experiments" before the U.S. House of Representatives' House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, alerting the House on the use of American veterans in VA Hospitals as human guinea pigs and calling for national reforms ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania inject 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger with an experimental gene therapy as part of an FDA-approved clinical trial. He dies four days later and his father suspects that he was not fully informed of the experiment's risk (Goliszek)
During a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of Propulsid for infant acid reflux, nine-month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh (Sharav).
(2000)
The Department of Defense begins declassifying the records of Project 112, including SHAD, and locating and assisting the veterans who were exposed to live toxins and chemical agents as part of Project 112. Many of them have already died (Goliszek).President Clinton authorizes the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act, which compensates the Department of Energy workers who sacrificed their health to build the United States' nuclear defenses (Sharav).
The U.S. Air Force and rocket maker Lockheed Martin sponsor a Loma Linda University study that pays 100 Californians $1,000 to eat a dose of perchlorate -- a toxic component of rocket fuel that causes cancer, damages the thyroid gland and hinders normal development in children and fetuses -- every day for six months. The dose eaten by the test subjects is 83 times the safe dose of perchlorate set by the State of California, which has perchlorate in some of its drinking water. This Loma Linda study is the first large-scale study to use human subjects to test the harmful effects of a water pollutant and is "inherently unethical," according to Environmental Working Group research director Richard Wiles (Goliszek, Envirnomental Working Group).
(2001)
Healthy 27-year-old Ellen Roche dies in a challenge study at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland (Sharav).On its website, the FDA admits that its policy to include healthy children in human experiments "has led to an increasing number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics, including those in children who do not have the condition for which the drug is intended" (Goliszek).
During a tobacco industry-financed Alzheimer's experiment at Case Western University in Cleveland, Elaine Holden-Able dies after she drinks a glass of orange juice containing a dissolved dietary supplement (Sharav).
Radiologist Scott Scheer of Pennsylvania dies from kidney failure, severe anemia and possibly lupus -- all caused by blood pressure drugs he was taking as part of a five-year clinical trial. After his death, his family sues the Institutional Review Board of Main Line Hospitals, the hospital that oversaw the study, and two doctors. Investigators from the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, later conclude in a Dec. 20, 2002 letter to Scheer's oldest daughter: "Your father apparently was not told about the risk of hydralazine-induced lupus … OHRP found that certain unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others were not promptly reported to appropriate institutional officials" (Willen and Evans, "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted.")
In Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute The Maryland Court of Appeals makes a landmark decision regarding the use of children as test subjects, prohibiting non-therapeutic experimentation on children on the basis of "best interest of the individual child" (Sharav).
(2002)
President George W. Bush signs the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA), offering pharmaceutical companies six-month exclusivity in exchange for running clinical drug trials on children. This will of course increase the number of children used as human test subjects (Hammer Breslow).(2003)
Two-year-old Michael Daddio of Delaware dies of congestive heart failure. After his death, his parents learn that doctors had performed an experimental surgery on him when he was five months old, rather than using the established surgical method of repairing his congenital heart defect that the parents had been told would be performed. The established procedure has a 90- to 95-percent success rate, whereas the inventor of the procedure performed on baby Daddio would later be fired from his hospital in 2004 (Willen and Evans, "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned").(2004)
In his BBC documentary "Guinea Pig Kids" and BBC News article of the same name, reporter Jamie Doran reveals that children involved in the New York City foster care system were unwitting human subjects in experimental AIDS drug trials from 1988 to, in his belief, present times (Doran).(2005)
In response to the BBC documentary and article "Guinea Pig Kids", the New York City Administration of Children's Services (ACS) sends out an Apr. 22 press release admitting that foster care children were used in experimental AIDS drug trials, but says that the last trial took place in 2001 and thus the trials are not continuing, as BBC reporter Jamie Doran claims. The ACS gives the extent and statistics of the experimental drug trials, based on its own records, and contracts the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct "an independent review of ACS policy and practice regarding the enrollment of HIV-positive children in foster care in clinical drug trials during the late 1980s and 1990s" (New York City ACS).In exchange for receiving $2 million from the American Chemical Society, the EPA proposes the Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) to learn how children ranging from infancy to three years old ingest, inhale and absorb chemicals by exposing children from a poor, predominantly black area of Duval County, Fla., to these toxins. Due to pressure from activist groups, negative media coverage and two Democratic senators, the EPA eventually decides to drop the study on Apr. 8, 2005 (Organic Consumers Association).
Bloomberg releases a series of reports suggesting that SFBC, the largest experimental drug testing center of its time, exploits immigrant and other low-income test subjects and runs tests with limited credibility due to violations of both the FDA's and SFBC's own testing guidelines (Bloomberg).
Works cited:
Alliance for Human Research Protection. "'Monster Experiment' Taught Orphans to Stutter.". June 11, 2001.
Barker, Allen. "The Cold War Experiments." Mind Control.
Berdon, Victoria. "Codes of Medical and Human Experimentation Ethics." The Least of My Brothers.
Brinker, Wendy. "James Marion Sims: Father Butcher." Seed Show.
Burton Report. "Human Experimentation, Plutonium and Col. Stafford Warren."
Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair, eds. "Germ War: The U.S. Record." Counter Punch.
"Donald Ewan [sic] Cameron." Wikipedia.
Doran, Jamie. "Guinea Pig Kids." BBC News. 30 Nov. 2004.
Drug Development-Technology.com. "SFBC."
Elliston, Jon. "MKULTRA: CIA Mind Control." Dossier: Paranormal Government.
Environmental Working Group. "U.S.: Lockheed Martin's Tests on Humans." CorpWatch.
Global Security. Chemical Corps. 2005.
Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science. New York: St. Martin's, 2003.
Greger, Michael, M.D. Heart Failure: Diary of a Third Year Medical Student.
Griffiths, Joel and Chris Bryson. "Toxic Secrets: Fluoride and the Atom Bomb." Nexus Magazine 5:3. Apr. - May 1998.
Hammer Breslow, Lauren. "The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2002: The Rise of the Voluntary Incentive Structure and Congressional Refusal to Require Pediatric Testing." Harvard Journal of Legislation Vol. 40.
"Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After." Micah Books.
Kaye, Jonathan. "Retin-A's Wrinkled Past." Mind Control. Orig. pub. Penn History Review Spring 1997.
"Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge." World Socialist Web Site. Oct. 18, 2002.
Meiklejohn, Gordon N., M.D. "Commission on Influenza." Histories of the Commissions. Ed. Theodore E. Woodward, M.D. The Armed Forced Epidemiological Board. 1994.
Merritte, LaTasha, et al.. "The Banality of Evil: Human Medical Experimentation in the United States." The Public Law Online Journal. Spring 1999.
Milgram, Stanley. "Milgram Experiment." Wikipedia. 2006.
New York City Administration of Children's Services. Press release. 22 Apr. 2005.
"Operation Plumbbob." Wikipedia. 2005.
"Operation Whitecoat." Religion and Ethics (Episode no. 708). Oct. 24, 2003.
Organic Consumers Association. "EPA and Chemical Industry to Study the Effects of Known Toxic Chemicals on Children". 12 Apr. 2005.
Pacchioli, David. Subjected to Science. Mar. 1996.
"Placebo Effect." Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. 2006.
"Project Paperclip." Wikipedia. 2005.
"Reviews and Notes: History of Medicine: Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War." Annals of Internal Medicine 123:2. July 15, 1995.
Sharav, Vera Hassner. "Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Rsearch." Alliance for Human Research Protection.
Sauter, Daniel. Guide to MS 83 [Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas Records, 1931 - 1999]. University of Texas Library. Apr. 2001.
"Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D." News from the Joint Hearing on Suspension of Medical Research at West Los Angeles and Sepulveda VA Medical Facilities and Informed Consent and Patient Safety in VA Medical Research. 21 Apr. 1999.
University of New Hampshire. "Chronology of Cases Involving Unethical Treatment of Human Subjects." Responsible Conduct of Research.
University of Virginia Health System Health Sciences Library. "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study." 2004.
U.S. Department of Energy. "Chapter 8: Postwar TBI-Effects Experimentation: Continued Reliance on Sick Patients in Place of Healthy "Normals." Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) Final Report.
Veterans Health Administration. Project 112/Project SHAD. May 26, 2005.
Willen, Liz and David Evans. "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted." Bloomberg. Nov. 2, 2005.
---. "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned." Bloomberg. Nov. 2, 2005.
Israel to U.S.: Cancel crime-related travel warning
Israel to U.S.: Cancel crime-related travel warning
According to State Department’s travel warning, violent clashes between criminals in Israel have resulted in death, injuries to innocent bystanders; ‘warning is distortion, does not reflect level of crime in country, which is lower than that of most western nations’ Israeli diplomatic sources say
Itamar Eichner
Israel is requesting that the U.S. cancel or at least soften its stance on organized crime in Israel as expressed for the first time in the State Department’s travel warning, according to Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
The State Department is warning American citizens traveling to Israel of dangers related to organized crime wars.
Underworld Kingpin
Reputed mobster Rosenstein lands in U.S. / Yitzhak Benhorin
Zeev Rosenstein to be transfers to hash federal prison in Miami; trial expected to open in two or three months
Full Story
The Israeli embassy in Washington was instructed to relay the request to top level State Department officials.
'The inclusion of the clause is strange'
Diplomatic sources said Monday that Israel has made it clear that the issued warning is a “distortion” and does not reflect the level of crime in the country, which is lower than that of most western nations.
The sources added that the drafting of a special clause on organized crime by the State Department in its travel warnings is unprecedented, apart from those concerning a few third world countries such as Nigeria and Colombia.
“There is no mention of the crime level in countries where it is known that crime is rampant,” a source said. “The inclusion of the clause is strange and may be detrimental to tourism from the U.S. for no reason. Organized crime in Israel poses no threat to American tourists.”
According to the State Department’s travel warning published last week, violent clashes between criminals in Israel have resulted in death and injuries to innocent bystanders, stating, for example, the botched attempt to assassinate reputed mobster Zeev Rosenstein in Tel Aviv, during which three innocent people were killed.
According to State Department’s travel warning, violent clashes between criminals in Israel have resulted in death, injuries to innocent bystanders; ‘warning is distortion, does not reflect level of crime in country, which is lower than that of most western nations’ Israeli diplomatic sources say
Itamar Eichner
Israel is requesting that the U.S. cancel or at least soften its stance on organized crime in Israel as expressed for the first time in the State Department’s travel warning, according to Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
The State Department is warning American citizens traveling to Israel of dangers related to organized crime wars.
Underworld Kingpin
Reputed mobster Rosenstein lands in U.S. / Yitzhak Benhorin
Zeev Rosenstein to be transfers to hash federal prison in Miami; trial expected to open in two or three months
Full Story
The Israeli embassy in Washington was instructed to relay the request to top level State Department officials.
'The inclusion of the clause is strange'
Diplomatic sources said Monday that Israel has made it clear that the issued warning is a “distortion” and does not reflect the level of crime in the country, which is lower than that of most western nations.
The sources added that the drafting of a special clause on organized crime by the State Department in its travel warnings is unprecedented, apart from those concerning a few third world countries such as Nigeria and Colombia.
“There is no mention of the crime level in countries where it is known that crime is rampant,” a source said. “The inclusion of the clause is strange and may be detrimental to tourism from the U.S. for no reason. Organized crime in Israel poses no threat to American tourists.”
According to the State Department’s travel warning published last week, violent clashes between criminals in Israel have resulted in death and injuries to innocent bystanders, stating, for example, the botched attempt to assassinate reputed mobster Zeev Rosenstein in Tel Aviv, during which three innocent people were killed.
China Sends Warning To US Over Taiwan
China Sends Warning To US Over Taiwan
by Edward Lanfranco
Beijing (UPI) Mar 07, 2006
China's foreign minister Li Zhaoxing Tuesday touched on the Taiwan hot button and its capacity to sour bilateral trade relations with the United States. At the same time he downplayed Beijing's recent decision to boost defense spending.
The United States must "have a clear understanding of the dangerous nature of Taiwan independence and secessionist elements and their activities," Li told reporters, while taking "concrete measures to oppose such activities by not sending any wrong signals to those elements."
His remarks come ahead of Chinese president Hu Jintao's trip to Washington next month.
Taiwan's recent decision to scuttle a reunification council with the mainland has upset Beijing, which feels the island is making a move towards formal independence. The two countries have had separate governments since a civil war ended in 1949, but China still considers Taiwan part of its territory.
The question of Taiwan "is the biggest factor affecting Sino-U.S. relations," Li told reporters. "We're ready to work with the U.S. side to strengthen our mutual understanding."
When asked by an American reporter how China could claim to be "rising peacefully" while planning to boost defense spending by nearly 15 percent to over $35 billion dollars in the coming year, the foreign minister was dismissive.
"We should look at the basic facts instead of figures or percentages," Li said. "Since you represent an American agency, I don't know if you are aware of U.S. military spending; I suggest you look at a report by General Liao Xilong of the Chinese People's Liberation Army carried today by Xinhua."
Liao, a member of the Central Military Commission and head of the PLA's General Logistics Department told Chinese media "in terms of the ratio of defense budget to GDP, the percentages in major countries and regions are mostly between 2.5 percent and 5 percent, but China's defense spending is expected to be some 1.4 percent of its GDP this year."
The foreign minister noted military spending by China, "though increasing somewhat, is far less than other countries... In per capita terms, China's defense spending is 1/77th that of the U.S."
"China's national defense policy is transparent, and completely defensive in nature," Li asserted. He cited the country's explicit no-first use of nuclear weapons.
"Our development does not pose any threat to any country; on the contrary, it has provided more opportunities for the development of other countries in the world," Li continued.
Li noted two-way trade between China and the United States reached $211.6 billion dollars in 2005, a 24.8 percent year-on-year increase. He said China had become the fastest growing export market for the United States and claimed bilateral trade had created four to eight million U.S. jobs.
"Chinese commodities featuring low price and good quality have brought about real benefit to U.S. consumers, and have also eased inflationary pressure in the United States," Li added.
Li said "some American friends complain that they are suffering from a huge deficit in bilateral trade with China and the causes are complicated." The Chinese foreign minister attributed the problem to U.S. export controls on high technology that could be used for military purposes.
He asked that both sides avoid "politicizing" trade issues and abide by the laws of the World Trade Organization.
The foreign minister also shot back at U.S. criticisms of China's failure to strictly enforce Intellectual Property Rights, asserting that China has been a "victim" of infringement.
He stressed that China is taking "legal, judicial, law enforcement, and education to strengthen our IPR protection."
Li noted that in 2005 administrative authorities for industry and commerce "investigated and dealt with more 39,000 cases of trademark infringement and Chinese courts accepted and heard around 3,500 IPR related cases."
Li said China was pleased that presidents Hu and Bush reached "an important agreement on promoting a constructive and cooperative relationship" between the two sides, citing bilateral cooperation on trade, counterterrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, reform of the United Nations and efforts to combat the spread of the avian bird flu as "most successful."
With regards to the extended outlook on U.S.-Sino relations, Li was upbeat.
"China and the U.S. have extensive common ground. With concerted effort from both sides, strict adherence to the three joint communiqu�s, I believe that in 10 to 20 years time friendly relations will be even more fruitful."
Source: United Press International
by Edward Lanfranco
Beijing (UPI) Mar 07, 2006
China's foreign minister Li Zhaoxing Tuesday touched on the Taiwan hot button and its capacity to sour bilateral trade relations with the United States. At the same time he downplayed Beijing's recent decision to boost defense spending.
The United States must "have a clear understanding of the dangerous nature of Taiwan independence and secessionist elements and their activities," Li told reporters, while taking "concrete measures to oppose such activities by not sending any wrong signals to those elements."
His remarks come ahead of Chinese president Hu Jintao's trip to Washington next month.
Taiwan's recent decision to scuttle a reunification council with the mainland has upset Beijing, which feels the island is making a move towards formal independence. The two countries have had separate governments since a civil war ended in 1949, but China still considers Taiwan part of its territory.
The question of Taiwan "is the biggest factor affecting Sino-U.S. relations," Li told reporters. "We're ready to work with the U.S. side to strengthen our mutual understanding."
When asked by an American reporter how China could claim to be "rising peacefully" while planning to boost defense spending by nearly 15 percent to over $35 billion dollars in the coming year, the foreign minister was dismissive.
"We should look at the basic facts instead of figures or percentages," Li said. "Since you represent an American agency, I don't know if you are aware of U.S. military spending; I suggest you look at a report by General Liao Xilong of the Chinese People's Liberation Army carried today by Xinhua."
Liao, a member of the Central Military Commission and head of the PLA's General Logistics Department told Chinese media "in terms of the ratio of defense budget to GDP, the percentages in major countries and regions are mostly between 2.5 percent and 5 percent, but China's defense spending is expected to be some 1.4 percent of its GDP this year."
The foreign minister noted military spending by China, "though increasing somewhat, is far less than other countries... In per capita terms, China's defense spending is 1/77th that of the U.S."
"China's national defense policy is transparent, and completely defensive in nature," Li asserted. He cited the country's explicit no-first use of nuclear weapons.
"Our development does not pose any threat to any country; on the contrary, it has provided more opportunities for the development of other countries in the world," Li continued.
Li noted two-way trade between China and the United States reached $211.6 billion dollars in 2005, a 24.8 percent year-on-year increase. He said China had become the fastest growing export market for the United States and claimed bilateral trade had created four to eight million U.S. jobs.
"Chinese commodities featuring low price and good quality have brought about real benefit to U.S. consumers, and have also eased inflationary pressure in the United States," Li added.
Li said "some American friends complain that they are suffering from a huge deficit in bilateral trade with China and the causes are complicated." The Chinese foreign minister attributed the problem to U.S. export controls on high technology that could be used for military purposes.
He asked that both sides avoid "politicizing" trade issues and abide by the laws of the World Trade Organization.
The foreign minister also shot back at U.S. criticisms of China's failure to strictly enforce Intellectual Property Rights, asserting that China has been a "victim" of infringement.
He stressed that China is taking "legal, judicial, law enforcement, and education to strengthen our IPR protection."
Li noted that in 2005 administrative authorities for industry and commerce "investigated and dealt with more 39,000 cases of trademark infringement and Chinese courts accepted and heard around 3,500 IPR related cases."
Li said China was pleased that presidents Hu and Bush reached "an important agreement on promoting a constructive and cooperative relationship" between the two sides, citing bilateral cooperation on trade, counterterrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, reform of the United Nations and efforts to combat the spread of the avian bird flu as "most successful."
With regards to the extended outlook on U.S.-Sino relations, Li was upbeat.
"China and the U.S. have extensive common ground. With concerted effort from both sides, strict adherence to the three joint communiqu�s, I believe that in 10 to 20 years time friendly relations will be even more fruitful."
Source: United Press International
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Contamination feared as Russia explores 'lost world'
Contamination feared as Russia explores 'lost world'
Contamination feared as Russia explores 'lost world'
By Christian Lowe
Reuters
Monday, March 6, 2006; 8:13 AM
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hidden about 2.5 miles beneath the ice near the South Pole lies a lake that scientists believe represents a lost world, harboring organisms sealed off from the rest of the planet for millions of years.
Russian researchers are drilling down through the ice toward Lake Vostok as they seek to unlock the secrets of what some say is the last great unexplored frontier on Earth.
The lake under the Antarctic ice is uniquely important precisely because it is so pristine, but all that could be lost forever if the tiniest particle of outside matter is allowed in when the Russian drill pokes through into the water.
Many experts say ultra-clean technology to pierce through to the lake without contamination is not yet ready.
Yet Russian scientists have already drilled down to within about 430 feet of the lake and -- defying misgivings from their peers in other countries -- say they will break through by 2008.
"The drilling will continue," said Valery Lukin, head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition. "We are not violating any rules. If our activities don't suit people, what can I say?"
"It's like this: who was the first to fly to the moon? The Soviet Union or the United States? That time the Americans won and we halted our lunar program," he told Reuters.
"Now this time we are going to be first. So what? We just got luckier, that's all ... It's all been turned into politics. Some people don't like (what we are doing) because it is not them doing it."
Russian scientists finished their latest stint of drilling earlier this year, rushing to beat the onset of the Antarctic winter in a spot where the coldest temperature ever -- minus 128.6 Fahrenheit -- was recorded.
They bored 89 feet deeper toward the lake and plan to start again in December.
PRISTINE
Antarctic has more than 70 sub-glacial lakes. They exist because the pressure of the ice above keeps the water from freezing. But Lake Vostok, at between 15 and 20 million years old, is thought to be the oldest.
Exploring the lake will be like taking a journey back through time to discover what life looked like before man appeared on Earth, say scientists.
"Things like antibiotics that we have come up with, all the pollutants ... that are man-made, none of those have ever been seen by this lake," Dr. Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey told Reuters.
With so much at stake, the Russians are moving too fast, said Ellis-Evans.
"We are desperately worried ... that they are planning to go at (this lake) with a system which they haven't satisfied everybody is appropriate," he said.
"If something goes wrong .... we could be left with a situation which may not be easily retrievable."
Vostok has an added fascination for scientists because conditions there -- cold, with no light or air -- mirror those on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons where space probes have found evidence of an ocean below the frozen surface.
If living organisms are found in the lake, it could strengthen the argument for the presence of life beyond our planet.
PRESTIGE
Lake Vostok is a prestige project for Russia. Russia's Antarctic research station is a few hundred yards from the bore hole and gave its name to the lake when its existence was established in 1996.
Russia, in agreement with other countries involved in Antarctic research, suspended drilling in 1998 while a safe technique for breaching the ice was sought.
Since then, Russia has restarted drilling, saying it believed it had come up with the right technique.
"There can be no negative effect (or) contamination of the lake," said Lukin. "I base this certainty on the laws of physics and practical experience" of the use of similar techniques elsewhere, he said.
Under the 1961 Antarctic Treaty, all nations are free to carry out civilian, non-nuclear research on the continent as long as they share their plans and their findings with other countries -- something Russia has done throughout.
Ellis-Evans said he would be delighted if the Russians became the first to reach Lake Vostok. His main concern, he said, is that it is done without damaging the very thing that makes the lake so fascinating for scientists.
This is "arguably one of the most pristine environments on Earth so how can we possibly think of just clumsily going in there and potentially contaminating it?" he said.
"We are ... worried that everybody is going to lose out."
(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk in St Petersburg, Russia)
Contamination feared as Russia explores 'lost world'
By Christian Lowe
Reuters
Monday, March 6, 2006; 8:13 AM
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hidden about 2.5 miles beneath the ice near the South Pole lies a lake that scientists believe represents a lost world, harboring organisms sealed off from the rest of the planet for millions of years.
Russian researchers are drilling down through the ice toward Lake Vostok as they seek to unlock the secrets of what some say is the last great unexplored frontier on Earth.
The lake under the Antarctic ice is uniquely important precisely because it is so pristine, but all that could be lost forever if the tiniest particle of outside matter is allowed in when the Russian drill pokes through into the water.
Many experts say ultra-clean technology to pierce through to the lake without contamination is not yet ready.
Yet Russian scientists have already drilled down to within about 430 feet of the lake and -- defying misgivings from their peers in other countries -- say they will break through by 2008.
"The drilling will continue," said Valery Lukin, head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition. "We are not violating any rules. If our activities don't suit people, what can I say?"
"It's like this: who was the first to fly to the moon? The Soviet Union or the United States? That time the Americans won and we halted our lunar program," he told Reuters.
"Now this time we are going to be first. So what? We just got luckier, that's all ... It's all been turned into politics. Some people don't like (what we are doing) because it is not them doing it."
Russian scientists finished their latest stint of drilling earlier this year, rushing to beat the onset of the Antarctic winter in a spot where the coldest temperature ever -- minus 128.6 Fahrenheit -- was recorded.
They bored 89 feet deeper toward the lake and plan to start again in December.
PRISTINE
Antarctic has more than 70 sub-glacial lakes. They exist because the pressure of the ice above keeps the water from freezing. But Lake Vostok, at between 15 and 20 million years old, is thought to be the oldest.
Exploring the lake will be like taking a journey back through time to discover what life looked like before man appeared on Earth, say scientists.
"Things like antibiotics that we have come up with, all the pollutants ... that are man-made, none of those have ever been seen by this lake," Dr. Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey told Reuters.
With so much at stake, the Russians are moving too fast, said Ellis-Evans.
"We are desperately worried ... that they are planning to go at (this lake) with a system which they haven't satisfied everybody is appropriate," he said.
"If something goes wrong .... we could be left with a situation which may not be easily retrievable."
Vostok has an added fascination for scientists because conditions there -- cold, with no light or air -- mirror those on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons where space probes have found evidence of an ocean below the frozen surface.
If living organisms are found in the lake, it could strengthen the argument for the presence of life beyond our planet.
PRESTIGE
Lake Vostok is a prestige project for Russia. Russia's Antarctic research station is a few hundred yards from the bore hole and gave its name to the lake when its existence was established in 1996.
Russia, in agreement with other countries involved in Antarctic research, suspended drilling in 1998 while a safe technique for breaching the ice was sought.
Since then, Russia has restarted drilling, saying it believed it had come up with the right technique.
"There can be no negative effect (or) contamination of the lake," said Lukin. "I base this certainty on the laws of physics and practical experience" of the use of similar techniques elsewhere, he said.
Under the 1961 Antarctic Treaty, all nations are free to carry out civilian, non-nuclear research on the continent as long as they share their plans and their findings with other countries -- something Russia has done throughout.
Ellis-Evans said he would be delighted if the Russians became the first to reach Lake Vostok. His main concern, he said, is that it is done without damaging the very thing that makes the lake so fascinating for scientists.
This is "arguably one of the most pristine environments on Earth so how can we possibly think of just clumsily going in there and potentially contaminating it?" he said.
"We are ... worried that everybody is going to lose out."
(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk in St Petersburg, Russia)
Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
Critics Cite Threat to Lake Baikal, Political Pressure on Panel
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; A14
MOSCOW, March 6 -- A controversial plan to build a major oil pipeline passing within half a mile of Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake, was approved by a Russian government regulatory agency Monday.
The decision followed a review process that environmentalists and some Russian experts involved in assessing the route say was marked by manipulation of an expert panel and political pressure on dissenting scientists.
"Even if billions of dollars are at stake, the Russian government cannot put Lake Baikal at risk," Andrei Poyarkov, a member of the expert panel and a biologist at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in the Russian Academy of Sciences, said at a news conference in Moscow. "They do not have the right."
The head of Rostekhnadzor, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight, signed a decree Monday accepting the vote of an expert commission last week to give the project the green light, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The expert panel's vote overturned one last month by the same group to reject the route on grounds that a pipeline rupture in the earthquake-prone area could send thousands of tons of crude oil into the lake, a Russian natural treasure. UNESCO designated the lake a World Heritage Site 10 years ago.
Transneft, the state-controlled pipeline operator, is set to build the 2,500-mile pipeline, which would run from Taishet in eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. With an annual capacity of 80 million tons of crude, it would allow Russia to increase its oil exports to China, Japan and other Asia-Pacific economies.
The $11.5 billion project is a strategic goal of President Vladimir Putin's government, which wants to diversify the country's export network and build Russia into an energy superpower.
Officials at Transneft argue that rerouting the pipeline would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the project's costs and cause major delays in starting construction. They also insist that the project will not endanger the lake.
"Transneft will take all the requisite precautions for Baikal to stay safe," said Simon Vainshtok, president of the company, in an interview last month with the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "For instance, the average thickness of the pipe we use across Russia is 9 millimeters, whereas in the vicinity of Baikal it is 27 millimeters." Those measurements are equivalent to about 0.35 inches and 1.1 inches.
The project has a history of rejection, then acceptance by official bodies. Last September, the Natural Resources Ministry turned down the proposal for the route near Lake Baikal but reversed itself two months later under what Russian news reports have called pressure from the Kremlin.
In a vote last month, 46 of 52 members of an expert panel that Rostekhnadzor had appointed to study the project rejected the route.
After that vote, Rostekhnadzor added 34 experts to the group, all of whom favored the proposed route, according to Gennady Chegasov, a dissenting member of the panel. Chegasov said group members who voted to reject the pipeline came under strong pressure. People were told, "If you vote against construction, it will be the end of your scientific career," he said.
Supporters of the plan still had trouble mustering the two-thirds majority necessary to approve construction, Chegasov said. In the end, 58 members of the expanded commission voted for the project, with 27 against.
"I remember the Communist Party and the meetings of the party were not like this," said Stanislav Tronin, another member of the panel and a chemist at the Institute for Emergency Situations.
Last week, Putin was presented with a petition signed by 14,000 Russians asking him to take measures to change the route.
A spokesman for Rostekhnadzor could not be reached Monday. In the past week, the agency has declined to comment on allegations that it manipulated the process.
Roman Vazhenkov, the Baikal Campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, said opponents would appeal to the Russian courts and seek to influence international lenders not to finance the pipeline. He said his organization had already written to major banks in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Greenpeace and other opponents of the project said they recognized the need for a pipeline and objected only to the route.
Vainshtok, Transneft's president, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Greenpeace and other environmental groups were being manipulated by "puppet masters" outside Russia who do not want China to grow in strength by importing more Russian oil.
Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
Critics Cite Threat to Lake Baikal, Political Pressure on Panel
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; A14
MOSCOW, March 6 -- A controversial plan to build a major oil pipeline passing within half a mile of Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake, was approved by a Russian government regulatory agency Monday.
The decision followed a review process that environmentalists and some Russian experts involved in assessing the route say was marked by manipulation of an expert panel and political pressure on dissenting scientists.
"Even if billions of dollars are at stake, the Russian government cannot put Lake Baikal at risk," Andrei Poyarkov, a member of the expert panel and a biologist at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in the Russian Academy of Sciences, said at a news conference in Moscow. "They do not have the right."
The head of Rostekhnadzor, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight, signed a decree Monday accepting the vote of an expert commission last week to give the project the green light, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The expert panel's vote overturned one last month by the same group to reject the route on grounds that a pipeline rupture in the earthquake-prone area could send thousands of tons of crude oil into the lake, a Russian natural treasure. UNESCO designated the lake a World Heritage Site 10 years ago.
Transneft, the state-controlled pipeline operator, is set to build the 2,500-mile pipeline, which would run from Taishet in eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. With an annual capacity of 80 million tons of crude, it would allow Russia to increase its oil exports to China, Japan and other Asia-Pacific economies.
The $11.5 billion project is a strategic goal of President Vladimir Putin's government, which wants to diversify the country's export network and build Russia into an energy superpower.
Officials at Transneft argue that rerouting the pipeline would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the project's costs and cause major delays in starting construction. They also insist that the project will not endanger the lake.
"Transneft will take all the requisite precautions for Baikal to stay safe," said Simon Vainshtok, president of the company, in an interview last month with the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "For instance, the average thickness of the pipe we use across Russia is 9 millimeters, whereas in the vicinity of Baikal it is 27 millimeters." Those measurements are equivalent to about 0.35 inches and 1.1 inches.
The project has a history of rejection, then acceptance by official bodies. Last September, the Natural Resources Ministry turned down the proposal for the route near Lake Baikal but reversed itself two months later under what Russian news reports have called pressure from the Kremlin.
In a vote last month, 46 of 52 members of an expert panel that Rostekhnadzor had appointed to study the project rejected the route.
After that vote, Rostekhnadzor added 34 experts to the group, all of whom favored the proposed route, according to Gennady Chegasov, a dissenting member of the panel. Chegasov said group members who voted to reject the pipeline came under strong pressure. People were told, "If you vote against construction, it will be the end of your scientific career," he said.
Supporters of the plan still had trouble mustering the two-thirds majority necessary to approve construction, Chegasov said. In the end, 58 members of the expanded commission voted for the project, with 27 against.
"I remember the Communist Party and the meetings of the party were not like this," said Stanislav Tronin, another member of the panel and a chemist at the Institute for Emergency Situations.
Last week, Putin was presented with a petition signed by 14,000 Russians asking him to take measures to change the route.
A spokesman for Rostekhnadzor could not be reached Monday. In the past week, the agency has declined to comment on allegations that it manipulated the process.
Roman Vazhenkov, the Baikal Campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, said opponents would appeal to the Russian courts and seek to influence international lenders not to finance the pipeline. He said his organization had already written to major banks in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Greenpeace and other opponents of the project said they recognized the need for a pipeline and objected only to the route.
Vainshtok, Transneft's president, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Greenpeace and other environmental groups were being manipulated by "puppet masters" outside Russia who do not want China to grow in strength by importing more Russian oil.
US War on Drugs: elusive victory, disputed statistics
Reuters AlertNet - US War on Drugs: elusive victory, disputed statistics
US War on Drugs: elusive victory, disputed statistics
07 Mar 2006 16:34:15 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent
Washington, March 7 (Reuters) - Despite three decades of upbeat reports on battles won in the war on drugs, cocaine, heroin and marijuana are as easily available as ever and experts say the United States has yet to develop a strategy that works.
Just as in previous years, the government's progress reports for this year on drug control point to new records on cocaine seizures and on the eradication of coca plantations in Colombia, the world's top producer of cocaine.
The annual reports were issued by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a 130-member group which sets anti-drug policy and is headed by "drug czar" John Walters, and by the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
By some estimates, the United States consumes more than 60 percent of the world's illicit drugs, far out of proportion with its 4.5 percent of the world's population. It is by far the biggest market for cocaine, a drug that yields staggering profits for traffickers.
In most major U.S. cities, cocaine sells on the street for under $100 a gram with New York prices ranging from $20 to $60 a gram and Los Angeles around $80 a gram.
Despite the ready availability of cocaine, the White House's ONDCP reported: "Our ... overseas counterdrug efforts have slowly constricted the pipeline that brings cocaine to the United States."
Similar announcements have been issued regularly ever since Richard Nixon issued the official declaration of war on drugs in 1969. Four years later, Nixon said the United States had "turned the corner" on drug addiction and drug supplies.
When Washington's first drug czar, William Bennett, left his post, the White House said he had put the U.S. "on the road to victory" in the drug war. That was 16 years ago. Today, cocaine, heroin and marijuana are as widely available as they were then - at sharply lower prices.
"The price decline began in 1979 and the downward trend has been steady," said Mark Kleiman, director of the drug policy analysis program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kleiman is one of about a dozen academic experts in the United States who have studied the drug trade for decades.
They viewed with skepticism an assertion in the drug czar's report that the street price of cocaine - the drug that most worries the government - had increased by 19 percent while purity had dropped by 15 percent between February and September 2005. The drug policy office called it a "trend reversal."
There have been temporary price spikes before but the trend remained unchanged.
ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK
In the drug war, the pattern has been one step forward, one step back - one trafficking organization smashed, another one formed; one hectare of coca or opium poppy destroyed, another one planted; one dealer imprisoned, another taking his place.
Questioned on cocaine prices on the street, Drug Enforcement Administration offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Miami, Atlanta and New York told Reuters no significant fluctuations had been noticed last year.
The DEA headquarters in Washington distanced itself from the drug czar's price increase figures and responded in a written statement to questions on the apparent discrepancy.
"The DEA provided ONDCP with our System to Retrieve Information on Drug Evidence, an inventory system that monitors and catalogs drug evidence taken in by DEA Special Agents around the country," the statement said.
"We did not take part in the study on which they based their conclusions so therefore don't feel it appropriate to comment on ONDCP's conclusions."
Said John Walsh, a drug expert at the Washington Office on Latin America: "In the drug war, numbers are routinely used to justify policy. Healthy skepticism is on order."
Peter Reuter, a drug expert at the University of Maryland, said the numbers were inconsistent with long-term trends and open to doubt. And, John Carnevale, a former senior aide to four drug czars, said ONDCP was "cherry-picking" statistics.
DRUG WAR DATA 'PROBLEMATIC'
Such skepticism echoed a November report by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, which described as "problematic" the data the government is using to assess progress in the anti-drug fight.
Apart from an "absence of adequate, reliable data on illicit drug prices and use," the GAO said, other figures were so broad as to be useless.
It cited the drug czar's 2004 estimate that Latin American traffickers were preparing to move between 325 and 675 tonnes of cocaine to the United States. "This wide range is not useful for assessing interdiction efforts," it said.
Most of the 1.6 million drug-related arrests each year are for possession of drugs rather than trafficking. These arrests and rigid mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses have helped to turn the U.S. prison population into the world's biggest, at around 2.2 million.
While the administration has publicly acknowledged the importance of treatment and prevention at home, most of the drug czar's budget has gone to interdiction and law enforcement.
That trend continued with the budget request for 2007 - around 35 percent for demand reduction, 65 percent for crackdowns on supplies.
When she introduced the State Department's progress report in March, Anne Patterson, who heads the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, was asked to explain how ever-larger seizures and crop spraying programs squared with the fact that drugs were still readily available.
"If we weren't doing these programs," she said, "the situation would be very dramatically worse." (BC-USA-DRUGS; editing by Jackie Frank; e-mail: bernd.debusmann@reuters.com)
US War on Drugs: elusive victory, disputed statistics
07 Mar 2006 16:34:15 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent
Washington, March 7 (Reuters) - Despite three decades of upbeat reports on battles won in the war on drugs, cocaine, heroin and marijuana are as easily available as ever and experts say the United States has yet to develop a strategy that works.
Just as in previous years, the government's progress reports for this year on drug control point to new records on cocaine seizures and on the eradication of coca plantations in Colombia, the world's top producer of cocaine.
The annual reports were issued by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a 130-member group which sets anti-drug policy and is headed by "drug czar" John Walters, and by the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
By some estimates, the United States consumes more than 60 percent of the world's illicit drugs, far out of proportion with its 4.5 percent of the world's population. It is by far the biggest market for cocaine, a drug that yields staggering profits for traffickers.
In most major U.S. cities, cocaine sells on the street for under $100 a gram with New York prices ranging from $20 to $60 a gram and Los Angeles around $80 a gram.
Despite the ready availability of cocaine, the White House's ONDCP reported: "Our ... overseas counterdrug efforts have slowly constricted the pipeline that brings cocaine to the United States."
Similar announcements have been issued regularly ever since Richard Nixon issued the official declaration of war on drugs in 1969. Four years later, Nixon said the United States had "turned the corner" on drug addiction and drug supplies.
When Washington's first drug czar, William Bennett, left his post, the White House said he had put the U.S. "on the road to victory" in the drug war. That was 16 years ago. Today, cocaine, heroin and marijuana are as widely available as they were then - at sharply lower prices.
"The price decline began in 1979 and the downward trend has been steady," said Mark Kleiman, director of the drug policy analysis program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kleiman is one of about a dozen academic experts in the United States who have studied the drug trade for decades.
They viewed with skepticism an assertion in the drug czar's report that the street price of cocaine - the drug that most worries the government - had increased by 19 percent while purity had dropped by 15 percent between February and September 2005. The drug policy office called it a "trend reversal."
There have been temporary price spikes before but the trend remained unchanged.
ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK
In the drug war, the pattern has been one step forward, one step back - one trafficking organization smashed, another one formed; one hectare of coca or opium poppy destroyed, another one planted; one dealer imprisoned, another taking his place.
Questioned on cocaine prices on the street, Drug Enforcement Administration offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Miami, Atlanta and New York told Reuters no significant fluctuations had been noticed last year.
The DEA headquarters in Washington distanced itself from the drug czar's price increase figures and responded in a written statement to questions on the apparent discrepancy.
"The DEA provided ONDCP with our System to Retrieve Information on Drug Evidence, an inventory system that monitors and catalogs drug evidence taken in by DEA Special Agents around the country," the statement said.
"We did not take part in the study on which they based their conclusions so therefore don't feel it appropriate to comment on ONDCP's conclusions."
Said John Walsh, a drug expert at the Washington Office on Latin America: "In the drug war, numbers are routinely used to justify policy. Healthy skepticism is on order."
Peter Reuter, a drug expert at the University of Maryland, said the numbers were inconsistent with long-term trends and open to doubt. And, John Carnevale, a former senior aide to four drug czars, said ONDCP was "cherry-picking" statistics.
DRUG WAR DATA 'PROBLEMATIC'
Such skepticism echoed a November report by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, which described as "problematic" the data the government is using to assess progress in the anti-drug fight.
Apart from an "absence of adequate, reliable data on illicit drug prices and use," the GAO said, other figures were so broad as to be useless.
It cited the drug czar's 2004 estimate that Latin American traffickers were preparing to move between 325 and 675 tonnes of cocaine to the United States. "This wide range is not useful for assessing interdiction efforts," it said.
Most of the 1.6 million drug-related arrests each year are for possession of drugs rather than trafficking. These arrests and rigid mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses have helped to turn the U.S. prison population into the world's biggest, at around 2.2 million.
While the administration has publicly acknowledged the importance of treatment and prevention at home, most of the drug czar's budget has gone to interdiction and law enforcement.
That trend continued with the budget request for 2007 - around 35 percent for demand reduction, 65 percent for crackdowns on supplies.
When she introduced the State Department's progress report in March, Anne Patterson, who heads the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, was asked to explain how ever-larger seizures and crop spraying programs squared with the fact that drugs were still readily available.
"If we weren't doing these programs," she said, "the situation would be very dramatically worse." (BC-USA-DRUGS; editing by Jackie Frank; e-mail: bernd.debusmann@reuters.com)
Case draws attention to Israel's mob
Printer Friendly
March 7, 2006
BY ARON HELLER
JERUSALEM -- The extradition of a suspected Israeli mob boss to face drug charges in Miami and New York is drawing new attention to Israel's brazen underworld, where gangsters have fired anti-tank missiles.
Israel's mob turf is so dangerous that the State Department has issued a travel advisory warning Americans of the dangers.
One top gangster, Zeev Rosenstein, was extradited to the United States on Monday for involvement in a drug ring that allegedly distributed more than 1 million Ecstasy pills.
U.S. prosecutors have called the short, squat Rosenstein one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers, and he's long been called No. 1 on Israel's most-wanted list.
Rosenstein, 51, has survived at least seven assassination attempts. Bystanders were not so lucky. In 2003, rivals set off a bomb on a Tel Aviv street, aiming for Rosenstein. He escaped with scratches, but three passersby were killed.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said authorities have set up a task force of detectives, justice officials and tax authorities, in an attempt to catch the criminals on tax violations -- the way Eliot Ness ultimately took down Al Capone.
"This is a long-term battle that requires plenty of patience. It won't be decided by 'knockout,' but rather by points," he said.
Most of the violence in recent years has allegedly revolved around rival families battling for control of lucrative gambling. Israel, with a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, is also considered a major outpost of Russian organized crime. The most public feuds, and most heavily reported, have involved Rosenstein and his ally, Assi Abutbul, against two rival clans.
AP
March 7, 2006
BY ARON HELLER
JERUSALEM -- The extradition of a suspected Israeli mob boss to face drug charges in Miami and New York is drawing new attention to Israel's brazen underworld, where gangsters have fired anti-tank missiles.
Israel's mob turf is so dangerous that the State Department has issued a travel advisory warning Americans of the dangers.
One top gangster, Zeev Rosenstein, was extradited to the United States on Monday for involvement in a drug ring that allegedly distributed more than 1 million Ecstasy pills.
U.S. prosecutors have called the short, squat Rosenstein one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers, and he's long been called No. 1 on Israel's most-wanted list.
Rosenstein, 51, has survived at least seven assassination attempts. Bystanders were not so lucky. In 2003, rivals set off a bomb on a Tel Aviv street, aiming for Rosenstein. He escaped with scratches, but three passersby were killed.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said authorities have set up a task force of detectives, justice officials and tax authorities, in an attempt to catch the criminals on tax violations -- the way Eliot Ness ultimately took down Al Capone.
"This is a long-term battle that requires plenty of patience. It won't be decided by 'knockout,' but rather by points," he said.
Most of the violence in recent years has allegedly revolved around rival families battling for control of lucrative gambling. Israel, with a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, is also considered a major outpost of Russian organized crime. The most public feuds, and most heavily reported, have involved Rosenstein and his ally, Assi Abutbul, against two rival clans.
AP
Netanyahu would control more territory
JTA - Breaking News
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would move Israel�s security barrier deeper inside the West Bank.
The Likud Party leader was the third of the three candidates in Israel�s March 28 elections to address this year�s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Kadima Party and Amir Peretz of Labor both said they would cut off a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority but would seek moderates with whom to deal, and Olmert said he was ready to unilaterally withdraw from some West Bank territory. Netanyahu suggested Israel should assume control of more territory, saying a Hamas-controlled West Bank posed dangers to Israel�s population centers and to Ben-Gurion Airport.
Shoulder-fired rockets �cannot and should not reach any aircraft,� he said to applause Tuesday.
Netanyahu also said Hamas is irredeemably opposed to Israel, and that he hoped to topple the group from power through diplomatic isolation.
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would move Israel�s security barrier deeper inside the West Bank.
The Likud Party leader was the third of the three candidates in Israel�s March 28 elections to address this year�s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Kadima Party and Amir Peretz of Labor both said they would cut off a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority but would seek moderates with whom to deal, and Olmert said he was ready to unilaterally withdraw from some West Bank territory. Netanyahu suggested Israel should assume control of more territory, saying a Hamas-controlled West Bank posed dangers to Israel�s population centers and to Ben-Gurion Airport.
Shoulder-fired rockets �cannot and should not reach any aircraft,� he said to applause Tuesday.
Netanyahu also said Hamas is irredeemably opposed to Israel, and that he hoped to topple the group from power through diplomatic isolation.
U.S. oil thirst seen threatening Canada's supply
U.S. oil thirst seen threatening Canada's supply
Archie McLean, Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Canada needs a new oil sands strategy to protect itself from the United States’ unquenchable thirst for oil, a new report says.
The report, released today by a trio of left-leaning research organization, warns that Canada’s ballooning oil and natural gas exports to the United States threatens energy supplies for Canadian citizens.
“This is a matter of survival for Canada,” said Gordon Laxer, director of the Parkland Institute, one of the sponsors of the study.
It proposes a five-year suspension of oil sands development to allow for a more planned approach.
The flurry of multi-billion-dollar oil sands projects in northern Alberta have been criticized for not providing for the social needs of people in communities like Fort McMurray, which is facing the highest housing prices in Canada and a shortage of other services because of unprecedented growth.
The report, titled Fuelling Fortress America: A Report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and U.S. Demands for Canada’s Energy, outlines the social, environmental and economic costs of continuing current levels of oilands development.
It says Canada is risking it’s energy self sufficiency by increasing exports to the U.S.
But Alberta Energy Minister Greg Melchin denied that claim.
He said Alberta and Canada are not sacrificing energy security in any way with.
He said trade in energy has done nothing but benefit the province.
“There’s such a massive amount of undeveloped oil and gas and coal in the world,” he said. “We’ve only produced a very small percentage of it.”
But he said Alberta would tighten exports to the U.S. if domestic oil and gas supplies were threatened.
“We have the resources,” he said. “If there ever came really a question that we were at risk of not being able to supply our own energy needs, then you would take different directions - you would implement potentially different policies and we have the latitude over those issues.”
Melchin said Alberta has oil, gas and coal supplies that would last for centuries even with increasing exports to the U.S.
Other forms of renewable energy will eventually be developed, he added.
Among the report’s recommendations are:
-A five-year moratorium on further oil sands development.
-Increasing royalties on oil sands development and production.
-A moratorium on the MacKenzie gas pipeline until environmental concerns and aboriginal land claims are settled.
The Journal’s Archie McLean will have a full report on the study in Wednesday’s Journal.
Archie McLean, Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Canada needs a new oil sands strategy to protect itself from the United States’ unquenchable thirst for oil, a new report says.
The report, released today by a trio of left-leaning research organization, warns that Canada’s ballooning oil and natural gas exports to the United States threatens energy supplies for Canadian citizens.
“This is a matter of survival for Canada,” said Gordon Laxer, director of the Parkland Institute, one of the sponsors of the study.
It proposes a five-year suspension of oil sands development to allow for a more planned approach.
The flurry of multi-billion-dollar oil sands projects in northern Alberta have been criticized for not providing for the social needs of people in communities like Fort McMurray, which is facing the highest housing prices in Canada and a shortage of other services because of unprecedented growth.
The report, titled Fuelling Fortress America: A Report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and U.S. Demands for Canada’s Energy, outlines the social, environmental and economic costs of continuing current levels of oilands development.
It says Canada is risking it’s energy self sufficiency by increasing exports to the U.S.
But Alberta Energy Minister Greg Melchin denied that claim.
He said Alberta and Canada are not sacrificing energy security in any way with.
He said trade in energy has done nothing but benefit the province.
“There’s such a massive amount of undeveloped oil and gas and coal in the world,” he said. “We’ve only produced a very small percentage of it.”
But he said Alberta would tighten exports to the U.S. if domestic oil and gas supplies were threatened.
“We have the resources,” he said. “If there ever came really a question that we were at risk of not being able to supply our own energy needs, then you would take different directions - you would implement potentially different policies and we have the latitude over those issues.”
Melchin said Alberta has oil, gas and coal supplies that would last for centuries even with increasing exports to the U.S.
Other forms of renewable energy will eventually be developed, he added.
Among the report’s recommendations are:
-A five-year moratorium on further oil sands development.
-Increasing royalties on oil sands development and production.
-A moratorium on the MacKenzie gas pipeline until environmental concerns and aboriginal land claims are settled.
The Journal’s Archie McLean will have a full report on the study in Wednesday’s Journal.
Reuters AlertNet - Canada's Harper rejects debate on Afghan mission
Reuters AlertNet - Canada's Harper rejects debate on Afghan mission
Canada's Harper rejects debate on Afghan mission
07 Mar 2006 22:09:25 GMT
Source: Reuters
OTTAWA, March 7 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper rejected on Tuesday demands for a parliamentary debate on the country's military mission to Afghanistan, saying it would undermine the 2,300 troops in the war-torn country.
The two main left-leaning federal parties say legislators need to discuss why Canadian troops -- traditionally known for taking part in peacekeeping operations -- are now involved in a dangerous military mission.
Harper, whose right-of-center Conservatives won the Jan. 23 election, said he had no intention of reviewing a decision taken by the previous Liberal government.
"This government does not intend to question the mission when our troops are in danger. A debate like this, such a lack of (support from) any Canadian party, will weaken our troops and could put our troops in more danger," he told reporters.
Most of the 2,300 troops, based in the violent southern city of Kandahar as part of a NATO mission, were originally due to return by early 2007. Government officials now say this return date could be delayed.
In the last week alone, two Canadian soldiers have died in traffic accidents near Kandahar. Several others were injured in a suicide bombing, while one soldier was attacked and seriously wounded by a man wielding an ax.
"Canadians don't cut and run at the first sign of trouble. That's the nature of this country and when we send troops into the field I expect Canadians to support those troops," Harper said.
The decision to contribute troops to the NATO mission was made by the Liberals last year without much debate.
"Perhaps the previous government should have had a vote on this mission ... but the decision has been taken and we can't change our minds when the troops are in danger," said Harper, adding that he would not be swayed by recent polls showing almost half Canadians wanted the troops to return.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Canada sent 2,000 troops to Kabul to participate in a NATO-led stabilization force. A total of 10 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since then.
Canada's Harper rejects debate on Afghan mission
07 Mar 2006 22:09:25 GMT
Source: Reuters
OTTAWA, March 7 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper rejected on Tuesday demands for a parliamentary debate on the country's military mission to Afghanistan, saying it would undermine the 2,300 troops in the war-torn country.
The two main left-leaning federal parties say legislators need to discuss why Canadian troops -- traditionally known for taking part in peacekeeping operations -- are now involved in a dangerous military mission.
Harper, whose right-of-center Conservatives won the Jan. 23 election, said he had no intention of reviewing a decision taken by the previous Liberal government.
"This government does not intend to question the mission when our troops are in danger. A debate like this, such a lack of (support from) any Canadian party, will weaken our troops and could put our troops in more danger," he told reporters.
Most of the 2,300 troops, based in the violent southern city of Kandahar as part of a NATO mission, were originally due to return by early 2007. Government officials now say this return date could be delayed.
In the last week alone, two Canadian soldiers have died in traffic accidents near Kandahar. Several others were injured in a suicide bombing, while one soldier was attacked and seriously wounded by a man wielding an ax.
"Canadians don't cut and run at the first sign of trouble. That's the nature of this country and when we send troops into the field I expect Canadians to support those troops," Harper said.
The decision to contribute troops to the NATO mission was made by the Liberals last year without much debate.
"Perhaps the previous government should have had a vote on this mission ... but the decision has been taken and we can't change our minds when the troops are in danger," said Harper, adding that he would not be swayed by recent polls showing almost half Canadians wanted the troops to return.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Canada sent 2,000 troops to Kabul to participate in a NATO-led stabilization force. A total of 10 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since then.
Improved micro-UAV faces September tests-07/03/2006-London-Flight International
Improved micro-UAV faces September tests-07/03/2006-London-Flight International
Improved micro-UAV faces September tests
Honeywell has doubled the flight endurance, upgraded the sensors and fixed GPS software bugs in its micro air vehicle (MAV) in preparation for a critical design review (CDR) later this month.
The ducted-fan vertical take-off and landing MAV is now being developed under a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Army technology demonstration.
The modifications followed a month of testing last October involving 10 air vehicles at the US Army Pacific Command’s urban warfare training centre in Honolulu, Hawaii. Missions demonstrated included ambush detection, building assaults and route reconnaissance.
“There were sensor vibration issues. Honeywell has changed the vibration isolation mounting,” says DARPA MAV programme manager Brad Tousley.
“We’ve doubled the fuel volume, but our newer sensors and reworked wiring and electronics took some weight off.” The MAV now weighs 7.8kg (17.2lb). “Over time we expect that the vehicle will evolve back to a wet weight in the 7.3kg range,” he says.
Amounting to 0.1kg, the fuel increase boosts endurance from 28min to over 50min, while other small modifications include a starter button instead of a lawnmower-type pull-cord and interface changes to the tablet-PC sized observer controller unit.
A version powered by a small diesel engine that will extend flying time to over 1h will also fly in six months.
After the CDR, US Army Pacific Command will from September test 50 MAVs for six to eight weeks. These will include Stryker vehicle-mounted tests to investigate launch methods and missions to counter improvised explosive devices.
From December the MAV will be operational with Pacific Command’s 25th infantry division.
Clarification: In our story last week, “Battlelab gets ready for Australian connection” , we incorrectly identified the Australian participant as the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Autonomous Systems. The correct organisation is the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. The article also referred to the Australian Department of Defence’s Joint Project 2101 research into distributed data fusion. That project is separate to the planned Centre for Field Robotics-USAF UAV Battlelab distributed data fusion demonstration effort.
ROB COPPINGER / LONDON
Improved micro-UAV faces September tests
Honeywell has doubled the flight endurance, upgraded the sensors and fixed GPS software bugs in its micro air vehicle (MAV) in preparation for a critical design review (CDR) later this month.
The ducted-fan vertical take-off and landing MAV is now being developed under a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Army technology demonstration.
The modifications followed a month of testing last October involving 10 air vehicles at the US Army Pacific Command’s urban warfare training centre in Honolulu, Hawaii. Missions demonstrated included ambush detection, building assaults and route reconnaissance.
“There were sensor vibration issues. Honeywell has changed the vibration isolation mounting,” says DARPA MAV programme manager Brad Tousley.
“We’ve doubled the fuel volume, but our newer sensors and reworked wiring and electronics took some weight off.” The MAV now weighs 7.8kg (17.2lb). “Over time we expect that the vehicle will evolve back to a wet weight in the 7.3kg range,” he says.
Amounting to 0.1kg, the fuel increase boosts endurance from 28min to over 50min, while other small modifications include a starter button instead of a lawnmower-type pull-cord and interface changes to the tablet-PC sized observer controller unit.
A version powered by a small diesel engine that will extend flying time to over 1h will also fly in six months.
After the CDR, US Army Pacific Command will from September test 50 MAVs for six to eight weeks. These will include Stryker vehicle-mounted tests to investigate launch methods and missions to counter improvised explosive devices.
From December the MAV will be operational with Pacific Command’s 25th infantry division.
Clarification: In our story last week, “Battlelab gets ready for Australian connection” , we incorrectly identified the Australian participant as the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Autonomous Systems. The correct organisation is the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. The article also referred to the Australian Department of Defence’s Joint Project 2101 research into distributed data fusion. That project is separate to the planned Centre for Field Robotics-USAF UAV Battlelab distributed data fusion demonstration effort.
ROB COPPINGER / LONDON
Syria, Iran to establish oil pipeline across Iraq
Xinhua - English
www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-07 19:32:34
DAMASCUS, March 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Syria and Iran are seeking to establish an Iranian strategic oil pipeline across Iraq, the official al-Thawra newspaper said Tuesday.
The pipeline will run across Iraq, Syria to the Mediterranean Sea, said the paper.
Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee have discussed means to improve work on building an oil pipeline in cooperation with the Iraqi government, said the paper, adding that Syria, Iran and Iraq would all benefit from the project.
The deal was under a Memo of Understanding signed between the Syria and Iran in the field of oil, gas and petrochemicals in a bid to continue and develop cooperation in this regard, according to the paper.
The committee also discussed the possibility of building a strategic gas line across Iraq and Syria to link it to the Arab Gas Line which is under construction to transport the Egyptian gas through Syria and Jordan.
The oil pipeline project comes amid Syria and Iran are boosting bilateral economic ties recently, marked by high-level officials visits between the two countries.
During a three-day visit by Iranian First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi to Syria in late February, the two sides signed preferential trade agreements and several accords on finance, industry, power, textile, oil, environment and culture. Enditem
www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-07 19:32:34
DAMASCUS, March 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Syria and Iran are seeking to establish an Iranian strategic oil pipeline across Iraq, the official al-Thawra newspaper said Tuesday.
The pipeline will run across Iraq, Syria to the Mediterranean Sea, said the paper.
Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee have discussed means to improve work on building an oil pipeline in cooperation with the Iraqi government, said the paper, adding that Syria, Iran and Iraq would all benefit from the project.
The deal was under a Memo of Understanding signed between the Syria and Iran in the field of oil, gas and petrochemicals in a bid to continue and develop cooperation in this regard, according to the paper.
The committee also discussed the possibility of building a strategic gas line across Iraq and Syria to link it to the Arab Gas Line which is under construction to transport the Egyptian gas through Syria and Jordan.
The oil pipeline project comes amid Syria and Iran are boosting bilateral economic ties recently, marked by high-level officials visits between the two countries.
During a three-day visit by Iranian First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi to Syria in late February, the two sides signed preferential trade agreements and several accords on finance, industry, power, textile, oil, environment and culture. Enditem
'US Cannot Use Gansi Base for Iran'
ZAMAN DAILY NEWSPAPER (2006030730602)
By Cihan News Agency, Bishkek
Published: Tuesday, March 07, 2006
zaman.com
Kyrgyzstan Minister of Foreign Affairs Alikbek Ceksenkulov said the United States can not use Gansi Military Base for a possible attack on Iran.
It would be a violation of the mutual covenant between the two countries if the US decides to use the Gansi Air Base, close to Manas Airport in Bishkek, against Iran. The base was built to suppress terror in Afghanistan, Ceksenkulov told BBC Monday, adding that the base should not pose a threat to any Asian countries, including Iran.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev also told Russian "Komersant" last week that America could only use Gansi for Afghanistan, not for Iran.
The President reminded the US access period would only be extended depending on the stability of Afghanistan.
By Cihan News Agency, Bishkek
Published: Tuesday, March 07, 2006
zaman.com
Kyrgyzstan Minister of Foreign Affairs Alikbek Ceksenkulov said the United States can not use Gansi Military Base for a possible attack on Iran.
It would be a violation of the mutual covenant between the two countries if the US decides to use the Gansi Air Base, close to Manas Airport in Bishkek, against Iran. The base was built to suppress terror in Afghanistan, Ceksenkulov told BBC Monday, adding that the base should not pose a threat to any Asian countries, including Iran.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev also told Russian "Komersant" last week that America could only use Gansi for Afghanistan, not for Iran.
The President reminded the US access period would only be extended depending on the stability of Afghanistan.
'Indo-US nuke deal will complicate Iran, N Korea issues'- The Times of India
'Indo-US nuke deal will complicate Iran, N Korea issues'- The Times of India
BEIJING: The historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal has triggered the first salvo from a leading Chinese scholar who said the agreement smacks of "double standards" in global non-proliferation efforts and may complicate the Iran and North Korean issues.
"The United States' making an exception to accommodate India, driven by geo-political considerations, has, however, sent repercussions through the international non-proliferation infrastructure," Director of the Division for South Asian Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) a Chinese government/security linked think-tank, Hu Shisheng, said.
"The double standards will very likely complicate the nuclear issues of Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea all the more," Hu wrote in a lead article in the state-run 'China Daily' on the impact of US President George W. Bush's just-concluded visit to South Asia.
"Moreover, US-Indian nuclear cooperation might encourage other nuclear powers to have nuclear cooperation with their partners, which might trigger a chain reaction of nuclear-technology proliferation," he wrote amid indications that China may forge similar nuclear agreement with its "all weather" ally, Pakistan.
"Now the international community is presented with a big question: How can the effectiveness and binding power of the non-proliferation system be guaranteed?," he wrote.
China has reacted guardedly to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, hoping that the cooperation of "relevant countries can contribute to these efforts, conforms to the regulations of the international non-proliferation regime and their own international obligations."
BEIJING: The historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal has triggered the first salvo from a leading Chinese scholar who said the agreement smacks of "double standards" in global non-proliferation efforts and may complicate the Iran and North Korean issues.
"The United States' making an exception to accommodate India, driven by geo-political considerations, has, however, sent repercussions through the international non-proliferation infrastructure," Director of the Division for South Asian Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) a Chinese government/security linked think-tank, Hu Shisheng, said.
"The double standards will very likely complicate the nuclear issues of Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea all the more," Hu wrote in a lead article in the state-run 'China Daily' on the impact of US President George W. Bush's just-concluded visit to South Asia.
"Moreover, US-Indian nuclear cooperation might encourage other nuclear powers to have nuclear cooperation with their partners, which might trigger a chain reaction of nuclear-technology proliferation," he wrote amid indications that China may forge similar nuclear agreement with its "all weather" ally, Pakistan.
"Now the international community is presented with a big question: How can the effectiveness and binding power of the non-proliferation system be guaranteed?," he wrote.
China has reacted guardedly to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, hoping that the cooperation of "relevant countries can contribute to these efforts, conforms to the regulations of the international non-proliferation regime and their own international obligations."
Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran? on Yahoo! News
Print Story: Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran? on Yahoo! News
Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran?
Michael VlahosTue Mar 7, 11:03 AM ET
Will we fight Iran?
Another way to ask the question is: Will it be a war of choice?
In other words, will war happen because we want it, and freely decide that this is the best outcome of policies we have approved?
Or instead, will relentless stories -- iron narratives already in place -- force our hand?
This is what happened in August 1914.
How does a story force you into a war? Stories worked in three ways to make World War I happen, ways that should instruct us as we approach war with Iran.
First, narratives worked like iron maidens, putting each of the European powers in a vise where, once certain things happened, the only decision possible was war.
Second, there were also sacred narratives of war. National identity was wrapped in war. War was seen as necessary to national realization, in ways that could not be questioned.
Third, once set in motion, national narratives of war meshed together in unforeseen but co-dependent ways, creating an inescapable fit that ensured the terrible outcome -- and the killing of millions.
Let's look at how these iron stories worked in 1914, and how they are working today.
Narrative as Iron Maiden
Before 1914 both Germany and Austria-Hungary had decided on pre-emptive war: in other words, a defensive war in response to an attack was unthinkable. Going further, even allowing the enemy to prepare for an attack was unthinkable. The only path to security was to strike first: and the only possible objective in war was achieving total security.
It was not enough simply to be able to defeat a threat; war had to completely solve all security problems and end all threats. Moreover it was necessary for the entire experience of the war-as-solution to be controlled from beginning to end. Thus war's process was to be judged just as rigorously as achieving the war objective itself. War experience was as important as war outcome.
The problem was, living with a single, ironclad solution encouraged leaders to look for reasons to set things in motion, to find triggers for action. Thus Austria preemptively invaded Serbia in response to an act of terrorism.
This is US doctrine today. We invaded Iraq on the basis of preemptive defense. We continue to reiterate that we will not allow Iran to go nuclear, and that a nuclear Iran is an intolerable threat to the West. Just on Sunday, UN ambassador John Bolton reminded, "we must be prepared to ... use all tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."
This does not leave us much of an out. It is true that we have done almost nothing about a nuclear North Korea, and it is also true that for fifty years, we lived according to a defensive doctrine of nuclear deterrence.
But there are no signs that we are ready to accept anything like a deterrence relationship with Iran. For one thing, we feel strong enough to control war's outcome, unlike the Cold War era. Conversely, to yield up control is declaimed by many as the path of weakness and defeatism -- sounding much like Germans and Austrians in 1914. Thus officially and in terms of the cultural conversation (the zeitgeist) we are locked into a story of inevitable war if Iran goes nuclear.
The Sacred Narrative
In 1914, when the opportunity for war came it was hard to resist for another reason: it was destiny. War was not only seductive because it promised a preemptive solution, it also seduced at the level of national psyche. War was understood in 1914 as a culmination of grander national narratives. This was true not just for Germany but also for France and Russia as well. In the world of religious nationalism, war was the cathartic liturgy -- for France, of redemption; for Russia, of vindication; for Germany, of apotheosis.
War was embraced as a dramatic advancement of the national story. Fulfillment was certain. There were no losers in the mutually expectant narratives of 1914.
European feelings before 1914 did not see decades of peace as the norm to be cherished, but rather simply as the time before inevitable moments of decision. The destinies of nations and peoples needed to be decided, and decision could only come in war.
Americans do not visibly resemble the religious nationalists of 1914 Europe. War is a terrible thing, we say. But we have our own mesmeric vision of mythic war: we are the redeemer nation. We invaded Iraq after all, in part to liberate an oppressed people. Bringing democracy to the Muslim World is the central goal in the administration's Global War on Terrorism. In the American sacred narrative, war is a terrible thing but it may also be a necessary thing, and beyond even that, a divinely ordained task. As the president has said, "we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind."
Moreover the "enemies of freedom" have been officially designated as "evil" that cannot be allowed to survive -- and Iran is now at the top of the list. Thus war with Iran is not only about self-defense, but also about bringing freedom and destroying evil. Surely this is a narrative as sacred to Americans as, say, Germany's story of destiny in 1914 -- and just as in need of fulfillment.
The Narrative "Fit"
It is forgotten now except as lore how eagerly European societies embraced war in 1914. Their ardor was almost holy in its will to passionate sacrifice. It was an outpouring.
And it was this outpouring that enabled the war that drained the life out of society itself. Once ensnared there was no escape. The narratives had become too powerful, with too much support from too many quarters, and with too few to oppose them. The stories could only be overthrown by failing. Yet on these stories' ironclad terms millions had to die -- for nothing -- before failure could be confessed. Even then many true believers, surveying the wreckage, refused to see anything less than glorious victory. True believers on all sides worked with each other -- even as enemies -- to get war started and to keep war going.
Are there not today many such true believers in both America and Iran -- who keep faith with their narratives that war is inevitable and necessary? Every day one can read the likes of Newt Gingrich or Michael Ledeen or Bill Kristol comparing Iran to the Nazis, trying to lock us into a new struggle with the promise that we will savor again the sweet, sacred narrative of World War II. The Iranian press is no different with its daily tales of US perfidy and evil.
There is even an apocalyptic dimension to this emerging narrative fit. If there is evangelical prophesy in administration rhetoric, where Iran like Nazi Germany is the primary obstacle to God's triumph of "freedom," this is mirrored by Iranian President Ahmadinejad's conviction that war with America signals the return of the hidden Imam. Many Americans and Iranians believe that apocalypse -- the revelation of God's message -- will be realized in the Great War with The Other.
None of this is to say that war with Iran is inevitable, or even that we have locked ourselves into a path of inevitability like Europe before 1914.
But consider this: we have locked ourselves into a preemptive defense doctrine, we have officially defined Iran as the evil enemy, and important factions in both societies believe in -- and work toward -- war.
We recoil at the horror of 1914, but not enough, it seems, to yet escape such fate ourselves.
Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran?
Michael VlahosTue Mar 7, 11:03 AM ET
Will we fight Iran?
Another way to ask the question is: Will it be a war of choice?
In other words, will war happen because we want it, and freely decide that this is the best outcome of policies we have approved?
Or instead, will relentless stories -- iron narratives already in place -- force our hand?
This is what happened in August 1914.
How does a story force you into a war? Stories worked in three ways to make World War I happen, ways that should instruct us as we approach war with Iran.
First, narratives worked like iron maidens, putting each of the European powers in a vise where, once certain things happened, the only decision possible was war.
Second, there were also sacred narratives of war. National identity was wrapped in war. War was seen as necessary to national realization, in ways that could not be questioned.
Third, once set in motion, national narratives of war meshed together in unforeseen but co-dependent ways, creating an inescapable fit that ensured the terrible outcome -- and the killing of millions.
Let's look at how these iron stories worked in 1914, and how they are working today.
Narrative as Iron Maiden
Before 1914 both Germany and Austria-Hungary had decided on pre-emptive war: in other words, a defensive war in response to an attack was unthinkable. Going further, even allowing the enemy to prepare for an attack was unthinkable. The only path to security was to strike first: and the only possible objective in war was achieving total security.
It was not enough simply to be able to defeat a threat; war had to completely solve all security problems and end all threats. Moreover it was necessary for the entire experience of the war-as-solution to be controlled from beginning to end. Thus war's process was to be judged just as rigorously as achieving the war objective itself. War experience was as important as war outcome.
The problem was, living with a single, ironclad solution encouraged leaders to look for reasons to set things in motion, to find triggers for action. Thus Austria preemptively invaded Serbia in response to an act of terrorism.
This is US doctrine today. We invaded Iraq on the basis of preemptive defense. We continue to reiterate that we will not allow Iran to go nuclear, and that a nuclear Iran is an intolerable threat to the West. Just on Sunday, UN ambassador John Bolton reminded, "we must be prepared to ... use all tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."
This does not leave us much of an out. It is true that we have done almost nothing about a nuclear North Korea, and it is also true that for fifty years, we lived according to a defensive doctrine of nuclear deterrence.
But there are no signs that we are ready to accept anything like a deterrence relationship with Iran. For one thing, we feel strong enough to control war's outcome, unlike the Cold War era. Conversely, to yield up control is declaimed by many as the path of weakness and defeatism -- sounding much like Germans and Austrians in 1914. Thus officially and in terms of the cultural conversation (the zeitgeist) we are locked into a story of inevitable war if Iran goes nuclear.
The Sacred Narrative
In 1914, when the opportunity for war came it was hard to resist for another reason: it was destiny. War was not only seductive because it promised a preemptive solution, it also seduced at the level of national psyche. War was understood in 1914 as a culmination of grander national narratives. This was true not just for Germany but also for France and Russia as well. In the world of religious nationalism, war was the cathartic liturgy -- for France, of redemption; for Russia, of vindication; for Germany, of apotheosis.
War was embraced as a dramatic advancement of the national story. Fulfillment was certain. There were no losers in the mutually expectant narratives of 1914.
European feelings before 1914 did not see decades of peace as the norm to be cherished, but rather simply as the time before inevitable moments of decision. The destinies of nations and peoples needed to be decided, and decision could only come in war.
Americans do not visibly resemble the religious nationalists of 1914 Europe. War is a terrible thing, we say. But we have our own mesmeric vision of mythic war: we are the redeemer nation. We invaded Iraq after all, in part to liberate an oppressed people. Bringing democracy to the Muslim World is the central goal in the administration's Global War on Terrorism. In the American sacred narrative, war is a terrible thing but it may also be a necessary thing, and beyond even that, a divinely ordained task. As the president has said, "we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind."
Moreover the "enemies of freedom" have been officially designated as "evil" that cannot be allowed to survive -- and Iran is now at the top of the list. Thus war with Iran is not only about self-defense, but also about bringing freedom and destroying evil. Surely this is a narrative as sacred to Americans as, say, Germany's story of destiny in 1914 -- and just as in need of fulfillment.
The Narrative "Fit"
It is forgotten now except as lore how eagerly European societies embraced war in 1914. Their ardor was almost holy in its will to passionate sacrifice. It was an outpouring.
And it was this outpouring that enabled the war that drained the life out of society itself. Once ensnared there was no escape. The narratives had become too powerful, with too much support from too many quarters, and with too few to oppose them. The stories could only be overthrown by failing. Yet on these stories' ironclad terms millions had to die -- for nothing -- before failure could be confessed. Even then many true believers, surveying the wreckage, refused to see anything less than glorious victory. True believers on all sides worked with each other -- even as enemies -- to get war started and to keep war going.
Are there not today many such true believers in both America and Iran -- who keep faith with their narratives that war is inevitable and necessary? Every day one can read the likes of Newt Gingrich or Michael Ledeen or Bill Kristol comparing Iran to the Nazis, trying to lock us into a new struggle with the promise that we will savor again the sweet, sacred narrative of World War II. The Iranian press is no different with its daily tales of US perfidy and evil.
There is even an apocalyptic dimension to this emerging narrative fit. If there is evangelical prophesy in administration rhetoric, where Iran like Nazi Germany is the primary obstacle to God's triumph of "freedom," this is mirrored by Iranian President Ahmadinejad's conviction that war with America signals the return of the hidden Imam. Many Americans and Iranians believe that apocalypse -- the revelation of God's message -- will be realized in the Great War with The Other.
None of this is to say that war with Iran is inevitable, or even that we have locked ourselves into a path of inevitability like Europe before 1914.
But consider this: we have locked ourselves into a preemptive defense doctrine, we have officially defined Iran as the evil enemy, and important factions in both societies believe in -- and work toward -- war.
We recoil at the horror of 1914, but not enough, it seems, to yet escape such fate ourselves.