SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Japan is Asia's most exposed economy to a possible U.S. war on Iraq because of its high dependence on imported energy and exports, according to a new regional analysis.
Oil accounts for 52 percent of Japan's total energy supply, and about 86 percent of its $50 billion in annual oil imports comes from the Middle East.
That is a far higher figure than the 25 percent dependency on Mid-East oil for the United States and 5 percent for the U.K., according to Japan's New Energy Foundation.
South Korea and Taiwan are also heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. Between them, the three countries account for about 85 percent of East Asia's oil imports.
Military analysts say oil tankers heading out of the Arabian Gulf would likely become targets if hostilities break out. That in turn would put pressure on oil supplies in Asia, despite most refiners keeping reserves of at least 70 days.
On Tuesday the U.S. Navy warned that al Qaeda terrorists may be planning attacks against tankers, sending oil prices to $30 a barrel on the NYMEX Wednesday. (Full story)
West Texas Intermediate for October delivery closed at $29.77, after briefly touching the $30 mark. In London, Brent crude closed at $28.40.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Friday, September 20, 2002
Many US media reports were quick to declare that two suicide bombings in Israel on September 18 and 19, in which eight Israelis were killed, had brought an end to a period of "calm" simply because there had been no similar attacks for six weeks and few Israelis had been victims of Palestinian violence. In fact, the bombings came at the end of a particularly bloody period in which dozens of Palestinians, most of them unarmed civilians, and a large number of them children, had been killed and injured by Israeli occupation forces. In effect, the definition of "calm" or a "lull in violence" inherent in these reports is 'only Palestinians are being killed.'
The Chicago Tribune ran a prominent headline above a report about the September 18 bombing in which one Israeli police officer was killed, declaring "Bomb breaks 6-week calm" (September 19). The Washington Post called the bombings a "flare-up in violence" which broke the "relative calm in the Middle East." ("Violent reminder of a simmering issue," September 20).
The Baltimore Sun ran a continuation headline reading "Bombs shatter 6 weeks of relative calm" and asserted "a six-week lull in violence had given both Israelis and palestinians hope that two years of violence might be ending." ("Tel Aviv bus bomb kills five, injures 50," September 20).
NBC news anchor Brian Williams told viewers that,
"After six weeks of relative calm today, a second straight day of violence in the Middle East. Another suicide bombing, this time on a crowded Tel Aviv bus, that killed five people, injured more than 50. As a result, Israeli tanks are once again surrounding Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah in the West Bank."
Following that introduction, NBC reporter in Tel Aviv, Jim Maceda, declared,
"Well, after those six weeks with no suicide bombings either in Israel proper or the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, some observers here believed that they actually saw Palestinians and Israelis inching towards a truce, even a peace. But all that was shattered today." (The News with Brian Williams, CNBC, September 19, 2002)
In other words, according to NBC, only suicide bombings, and nothing else, fit the definition of violence and if there are no suicide bombings, then peace may be at hand. Similarly, on CNN's morning news on September 19, Mike Hanna informed viewers that the bombings had ended a period of "comparative calm."
The Los Angeles Times declared that the September 19 bomb in Tel Aviv "seemed to burst any illusion that the relative calm of the last six weeks was a precursor to peace." Contradicting and making a nonsense of its own characterization of the situation, while revealing the underlying reality, the same report stated later
"Not that the lull has been without violence. Several dozen people - soldiers and civilians - have died on both sides, with the heavier toll falling on the Palestinians. Most of the violence has been in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are living under Israeli military authority." ("Blast kills Israeli, Ends a lull in suicide bombings," September 19, 2002)
The last few weeks have been anything but a period of "calm" relative or otherwise for Palestinians. On September 19, Abdul Salam Sumerin, a 9-year-old Palestinian school boy was shot dead when, according to Haaretz, Israeli occupation forces "used live fire to disperse a crowd of school children challenging the army's attempt to impose a curfew on the El Amari refugee camp, in El-Bireh" near Ramallah. (IDF kills 9-year old boy in El-Bireh, September 20, 2002). According to other reports Israeli forces fired at the children using heavy machine guns mounted on armored vehicles.
Way back in the late 1970s when the acrid stench of Watergate still filled the air, New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh spoke at my college. I was just a wet-behind-the-ears sophomore who found it hard to believe my government would lie to me, wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life.
I found my life's pursuit in Hersh's inspirational message: "It is the government's job to keep secrets; it is my job to find them out." There are many events that compelled me to join the largely thankless, low-paying-for-most, hypocritical business of journalism, but that hour of listening to Hersh - who has exposed numerous government secrets, including the 1968 My Lai massacre of hundreds of Viet Nam men, women, and children by U.S. troops - talk about how he unearthed such secrets ranked right up there. I saw journalism as almost missionary work, as a way to right wrongs, to expose injustice, to help the needy, to speak truth to power. When I read English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's words, "The pen is mightier than the sword," I believed, brother.
Little did I know I was merely entering a harsh Fantasy Island. Once the boat left, reality was quite different from the brochure.
More than two decades later, I can only shake my head in wonder. How can we spend so much time and energy covering O.J. and Condit and the latest clothing trends, and miss the really important stories - the government secrets - like the details of exactly how the Republicans stole the 2000 election and how we've killed more civilians in Afghanistan than those who died here on Sept. 11? Speaking of Condit, why have we ignored the story of Lori Klausutis, an aide to former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, R.-Fla., who was actually found dead in the congressman's district office in July 2001 amid rumors of an extramarital affair, the resignation of Scarborough, and questions about cover-ups?
How can we magnify Clinton's and Gore's shortcomings to the point we're repeating bald-faced lies without even checking them, yet let Bush - who rarely has a press conference because his handlers are afraid of what he might say or mangle when not giving prepared remarks - off the hook and even compare him to Franklin D. Roosevelt? How can we let the Republicans convince us that the Democrats were equally tied to Enron and it was more of a business scandal, when the Bush administration spent the last year falling all over itself to help its friend, Kenny Boy?
The answers lie in money and myths. Let's just scratch one myth right off the bat: The media is no more liberal than Bush is sincere. Many reporters and editors might have been liberal in the Watergate days. But these days most are either moderate or lean to the right, based on my observations of working in the media for more than two decades. And the ones who call the shots - the corporate media bigwigs - are mostly true conservatives. Just review federal election records, and you will find the names of big media executives like Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch giving money only to Republicans. You won't find many who gave to Clinton or Gore.
That's why a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a group organized by Columbia University and others, concluded that overall Bush was twice as likely to receive positive media coverage as Gore in the last weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign. Another study by that group found that more than three-quarters of the campaign coverage of Gore cast him as someone who lied, exaggerated, or was tainted by scandal. Meanwhile, most coverage of Bush carried the theme that he was a "different kind of Republican."
Neither the Bush administration nor Democrats in Congress have covered themselves in glory during the war against terrorism or the runup to a possible war against Iraq.
That's the view of Seymour Hersh, an acclaimed investigative journalist who has ferreted out many government secrets during the past seven administrations.
Bush administration officials have employed obsessive secrecy and scare tactics for political gain, Hersh said Thursday at the Westminster Town Hall Forum. "They've got to keep us scared and they've got to keep us jacked up on Iraq" because national security and terrorism are the only issues where most Americans back Bush, he said.
"Their definition of national security and mine are different," he said. In this White House, disagreement is not dissent -- it's disloyalty. Dissent is treason."
As for the Democratic Party, it "seems to have disappeared," Hersh said. "The morality of the Democrats' position is astonishing to me. If the war turns out to be a disaster, it's good for us because we're not responsible. We didn't elect them to take a dive on this issue."
Hersh, now of the New Yorker, is best known for uncovering the 1968 My Lai massacre by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War but also has written extensively about the CIA, the violent overthrow of Chile's government in 1973, Gulf War syndrome and the war in Afghanistan. He makes no bones about the tilt of his politics, and said he would be glad to vote for Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., as often as he could.
Hersh noted that anyone reading newspapers these days is apt to be frightened. "But I'm just as scared as all of you," he said, citing his prodigious sources throughout government. "I don't know what they're doing."
He believes he does know why administration officials are focusing so loudly on Iraq. "If we're not talking about Saddam [Hussein], we're talking about Enron and Tyco," he said. "It's the best issue he has and he's playing it hard," he said of President Bush.
When the White House only belatedly revealed that Bush had been briefed in August 2001 about the possibility of a terrorist attack, it showed that "political expedience is more important than informing the public," Hersh said. "The possibility the president may have known something in advance would have been politically dangerous."
Based on what he has been told by sources, Hersh said he does not believe that an attack on Iraq is imminent. "There is no execute order for war," he said. "There's no agreement on who the next leader would be. There's no agreement in the military how to carry out the war . . . . It's not going to happen in the short run."
He called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "this administration's Woody Allen." Noting that he has known Rumsfeld for years, he added, "Rummy is funny. He's also on a very hard path for America."
Of Bush's address to the United Nations last week, Hersh said, "He's restored irony to the American lexicon. He says 'you guys have to do it. But if you don't do it, I'll do it myself.' "
Perhaps it’s a sign of these bizarre times that the country’s most outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq is an avowed hawk. For several months now, ex-Marine Scott Ritter, who served as the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, has relentlessly presented arguments against invading Iraq in talks around the country, in op-ed pieces in major newspapers, and on radio and television. You won’t find the 41-year-old son of a career Army officer putting flowers in the ends of gun barrels, but his blunt, forceful arguments might be persuasive enough to gain wider attention for opposition to the administration’s press toward war. Ritter spoke with In These Times during a visit to Indianapolis.
What are your main objections to a U.S. invasion of Iraq?
I am not a peace activist. I am not a pacifist. I am a warrior. I loved the Marine Corps—we stood for serving our country! But there is a time and a place to fight to defend this country. We must defend our country if we are threatened. If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then clearly Saddam Hussein must be dealt with. But we are not at risk from weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein—there’s no evidence.
If the United States unilaterally invades Iraq, we will go to war as a rogue nation ourselves and join the short list that includes North Korea, which invaded South Korea, and Saddam Hussein, who invaded Kuwait. And I don’t want to be on that list.
In 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, the United Nations set up a special commission to monitor the destruction of Iraq’s missiles and weapons of mass destruction. How effective were the U.N. inspectors?
UNSCOM inspectors were the best forensic investigators in the world. We were pretty good at doing our job. By 1996 we were able to ascertain that 90 to 95 percent of Iraq’s capabilities were destroyed. When Richard Butler came on board in 1997, we had already fundamentally disarmed Iraq.
Then you were kicked out.
Saddam Hussein didn’t kick out the U.N. inspectors. They were ordered out by the U.S. government, which then used information they provided to bomb 100 locations that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. So the weapons inspectors were used by the United States. This is the reality: When Madeleine Albright called up Richard Butler and said, “Jump!” Richard Butler always said, “How high?” It was obvious from day one.
After you resigned from UNSCOM in August 1998, you testified before Congress that if inspectors were removed from Iraq, they would have the capacity to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction. Isn’t that a legitimate concern now?
Just because Iraq has had time to do bad things doesn’t mean they’ve done them. Iraq must be found to have weapons of mass destruction.
Do economic interests play a factor in the war effort?
Talk to any businessman about Iraq. This is the worst thing for business. This is stupid. Actually, oil prices are going up.
Iraq is currently pumping to capacity based upon the available pumping technology. But if they upgraded their capacity, they could double or triple output. Amer Muhammad Rasheed, the Iraqi oil minister, has plans for Iraqi oil production that are very ambitious.
American oil companies right now are playing it both ways. We have American oil executives going to an Amman, Jordan, meeting with Iraqi government officials to discuss a post-sanctions environment. You also have American oil companies sitting down with Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader, talking about a post-regime economic environment. And they come from the same company. So they’re hedging their bets.
I am not actually going to say much about Henry Cabot Lodge here. He is useful, however, as a symbol of one particular approach to U.S. imperial policy. Lodge was an influential Senator (R., Massachusetts), a crony of Theodore Roosevelt and other high-toned turn-of-the-20th-century Republican imperialists.
He was thus one of the architects of what TR and his circle called "the large policy," that is, a neo-mercantilist strategy of engrossing foreign markets by political-military means so as to overcome allegedly inbuilt defects in American capitalism. Like their economist-spokesmen Charles A. Conant and Jeremiah W. Jenks, these large policy men were, in effect, "right-wing Leninists." Indeed, they invented the Leninist thesis that problems endogenous to the market economy required expansion into overseas markets lest the system run down and stagnate.
Lenin picked up the theory from John A. Hobson, a sort of proto-Keynesian English Liberal and anti-imperialist, who had in turn picked it up from the American pro-imperialist school. For all these theorists, the great bugbears were "overproduction" and "underconsumption," twin evils to be cured by economic empire. The difference was that Hobson and Lenin condemned empire, while their predecessors, the actual founders of this tissue of economic fallacies, embraced it.(1)
As I noted a few weeks ago in a column on the Liberal Imperialism of John Stuart Mill, a similar argument had been knocking around in English circles since the 1830s.(2)
One year after the assault on the United States by terrorists the constellation of military satellites orbiting our troubled planet remain the same.
New spy satellites and communication switchboards in the sky -- already planned for launch in 2002 well before the events of Sept. 11, 2001-- have been put on hold, in one case to give engineers time to improve the satellite so it can better track terrorist movements.
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Images
Unpiloted aerial vehicles, like this Predator craft, can be navigated via Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. This class of vehicle can deliver bombs, carry out surveillance of the enemy, and serve a variety of behind-enemy-line duties - all without endangering human pilot. Credit: U.S. Air Force
Artist's rendering of a Lockheed Martin Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS) spacecraft, which connects military bases to field operations from 22,300 miles up.
Air Force operates Milstar spacecraft that provide strategic tactical relay. These satellites are beefed up to withstand nuclear blasts in space.
The network of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites are critical to military operations in the air, on the ground, and in Earth orbit.
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In the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center, the damage to the Pentagon and the loss of life in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials are in the midst of a major reappraisal of how space can help thwart future attacks at home, as well as fight the enemy on distant battlefields.
Be it using robot drones, orbital bombers, and super-snooping satellites or carrying out down-and-dirty, hand-to-hand combat -- the utilization of space technology is now more vital than ever to assuring national and global security.
During President George W. Bush's address to the nation in June, he highlighted the role of science and technology. "In the war against terrorism, America's vast science and technology base provides us with a key advantage."
Underscoring that view is White House science advisor, John Marburger.
"Our terrorist enemies are technically savvy, and continued technological progress is required to better defend the homeland and 'stay one step ahead' of their technical capabilities," Marburger remarked in a recent report to the White House. "American science and technology leadership can and will help the nation counter and respond to the terrorist threats we are confronting," he said.
Here's a snapshot of Juneau's Larry Musarra: Career military and therefore a patriot. Retired officer and therefore a leader. So thoroughly a fed that he's supplementing his Coast Guard benefits with a Forest Service job at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.
While serving as a helicopter pilot on countless search-and-rescue missions, Musarra was a hero by job description and by deed. He risked his life to pluck civilian boaters and commercial fishermen from disabled and sinking watercraft in Alaska's storm-swept seas.
Mission success never was guaranteed. He was as good as his equipment, his training and the courage he could muster under the circumstances. Lives were saved. Like I said, he's a hero.
He's also a kayaker, a SCUBA diver and a teacher. In the summer of 2000, he and his wife and three sons traveled to Australia where they assembled an ultralight airplane. Musarra piloted it from one side of the continent to the other, a rented motorhome trailing behind, in a 21-week adventure.
Reviewing Attorney General John Ashcroft’s guidelines for terrorism investigations, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff warns that they "could be part of the new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, which envisions the nabbing of ‘pre-criminals.’" In Minority Report, an elite FBI "pre-crime" team, acting on prophecies uttered by a team of psychics called "Pre-Cogs," arrests and summarily punishes people who may someday commit violent crime. President Bush has already announced a policy of "pre-emptive" military strikes against foreign regimes, and the Ashcroft "Guidelines" would allow similar "pre-emptive" actions against Americans who have neither committed nor planned criminal offenses.
Writing in the September 2002 issue of The Progressive, Hentoff observes: "On page three of ‘The Attorney General’s Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering Enterprise and Terrorism Enterprise Investigations,’ we are told: ‘A terrorism enterprise investigation may be initiated when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of … furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a federal crime....’"
The tricky parts of this statement, Hentoff notes, are the elastic qualifiers "reasonably" and "wholly or in part." "These insidiously malleable guidelines for terrorism investigations could apply to political action (and the reaction) during demonstrations by environmentalists, anti-globalizationists, animal rights pickets, or union members on strike, as well as pro-lifers trying to talk, and only to talk, to women entering abortion clinics (‘obstruction’ at clinics can be a federal crime)."
DASTE ARCHE, AFGHANISTAN – US Green Berets from the 19th Special Forces group sweep into this desolate northern village of adobe buildings and dusty alleyways. Afghan militiamen under American command, some lugging heavy machine guns, take up positions inside a mud-walled compound. A Special Forces sniper perches atop an outbuilding, its walls cracked by the sun.
They've come here at a late-summer dawn to confront a local strongman suspected of harboring Al Qaeda militants. According to Sergeant Jerry, a Green Beret intelligence specialist, the warlord is not a suspected Al Qaeda sympathizer. Rather, as a Northern Alliance subcommander, he is Al Qaeda's sworn enemy.
MY BOYFRIEND, Bruno, a French television reporter, had left home at 3am to make a film upcountry about an order of French nuns who made perfect camembert cheese.
An hour later the pre-dawn silence of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s biggest city, was broken by mortars and machinegun fire near my house. Thus began a day of African-style chaos, terror and bloodshed.
By the time that it ended last night the country’s former military ruler and its present Interior Minister, Emile Boga Doudou, were among more than 100 dead, bodies lay in the deserted streets, and the city’s residents were cowering behind locked doors.
At least 80 government troops were killed and 150 wounded, a military source said. Government officials identified at least 25 bodies as mutineers.
State television claimed that the apparent coup attempt had been quashed, but rebel troops were said to be marching on Abidjan from the north.
Fighting was reported in several other cities. From Rome, where he was on a state visit and due to have an audience with the Pope today, President Gbagbo discussed with the Government of France, his country’s former colonial master, the possible use of French troops.
Lawmakers from both parties yesterday protested the Bush administration's lack of cooperation in the congressional inquiry into Sept. 11 intelligence failures and threatened to renew efforts to establish an independent commission.
The White House reacted to the complaints from members of the House and Senate intelligence committees by softening its objection to an independent commission. But the president's spokesman said such an independent probe should be "separate and apart from intelligence" -- a concession unlikely to satisfy lawmakers because it does not address the heart of their objections.
On the day a joint House and Senate intelligence committee released a staff report on the Sept. 11 failures and began to hold hearings, those involved in the congressional investigation said they had been thwarted by the administration's reluctance to share information about what the White House knew before last year's terrorist attacks.
"Are we getting the cooperation we need? Absolutely not," Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence committee, said in a joint appearance with Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) on NBC's "Today" show.
Graham added: "What we're trying to do is to get people who had hands on these issues. . . . And what we're being told is, no, they don't want to make those kind of witnesses available."
Both Graham and Shelby yesterday endorsed the idea of independent panels. In his remarks at the start of the hearings, Shelby warned that "there may come a day very soon when it will become apparent that ours must be only a prelude to further inquiries."
An American attack on Iraq would have sweeping regional implications for non-combatant Middle East states, with Israel the nation that has the most to gain from the ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to panelists at a Bar-Ilan University seminar yesterday entitled "The Regional Implications of a US Attack on Iraq."
The US campaign against Iraq could just as easily consist of "a bullet in Saddam's head" or a weapons inspection regime with teeth, as a massive and costly ground invasion, according to Dr. Amin Tarzi, Radio Free Europe's regional analyst for Afghanistan and Iraq, and Prof. Ephraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA).
"I don't think the US is ready for a large number of body bags," Tarzi said, referring to the loss of American lives an invasion could entail.
He said he believes the US will set a "minimalist goal," such as eliminating Saddam or putting him on the run not necessarily democracy-building in a "Saddam-less" Iraq.
Inbar said Israel has the most to gain from an Iraqi regime change, which could isolate Syria and Iran, and possibly push Syria from Lebanon and result in the disarmament of Hizbullah.
Airline executives are seeking assurances of financial support from Congress to protect them from the financial ruin they say would befall the industry during another war with Iraq.
The airlines are seeking tax breaks, insurance backstops or other government support. The executives say a war would drive up fuel and insurance prices and drive down the number of passengers with fears that al Qaeda and Iraqi military operatives might seek reprisal, just as the industry is beginning to regain financial footing after the September 11 attacks.
Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, mentioned the airlines' concerns during a congressional debate this week on whether the United States should take military action against Iraq.
Executives from United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and other airlines met with Mr. Reid; Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican; House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, Missouri Democrat; Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican; and others on Capitol Hill in recent days.
The House Transportation subcommittee on aviation will hold a hearing Tuesday on airlines' financial plight, including potential effects of a war with Iraq.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American air power alone could not wipe out Iraq's secretive and deeply buried arms programs and any U.S. attack to do so would require ground troops, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday.
Rumsfeld and the nation's top military officer, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee they could not guarantee that Iraq would not use chemical or biological weapons against those troops.
"The Iraq problem cannot be solved by air strikes alone," said Rumsfeld in a second day of testimony to urge Congress to pass a resolution authorizing President Bush to use any means necessary to eradicate Iraq's arms programs.
Twenty Palestinians, including some wanted by Israel, holed up inside Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound, surrendered to IDF troops Friday morning and IDF tanks kept up their siege of the compound following a cabinet decision Thursday night demanding that the PA hand over wanted militants from inside the compound, Israel Radio reported.
An emergency session of the cabinet unanimously decided Thursday evening to isolate Arafat rather than expel him, and called for the immediate handing over of 15 to 20 Palestinians wanted by Israel for suspected links to terror who are holed up in the compound.
Soldiers with loudspeakers called on wanted Palestinians inside Arafat's compound to surrender, naming Tawfik Tirawi, commander of Palestinian intelligence, an Israeli official said.
Also Friday, two Palestinians were shot dead by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip during a brief incursion, Palestinian sources reported.
The two, a 25-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man, were killed by gunfire, doctors said.
IDF troops also demolished 34 metal workshops suspected of producing explosives in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
Also Friday, 12 Palestinians were injured after IDF troops opened fire in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
South and North Korean troops have begun clearing landmines from the heavily-fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries.
Dignitaries watched as about 100 South Korean soldiers, some armed, others carrying demining gear, marched through a previously locked barbed wire gate into the treacherous buffer zone.
South Korean officials said a similar event was taking place in the North.
The work is aimed at clearing two 250-metre (277-yard) corridors through the border so that road and rail links can be reconnected for the first time since the Korean War half a century ago.
AMERICA has secured the use of Jordanian bases for any attack on Iraq by guaranteeing that Jordan will continue to receive cheap oil during the war.
The US move is part of a package of measures designed to ensure that Jordan’s Government can privately support the US campaign against Iraq while publicly criticising it.
In return America will be able to use military bases in eastern Jordan. From there it could hit Scud missile launchers that Iraq would need to deploy close to the Jordanian border to attack Israel.
All Jordan’s oil is supplied by Iraq at a quarter of the market rate. Any threat to the supply and cheap price would have a disastrous effect on Jordan’s economy.
It is feared that in the event of a US attack Iraq would fire missiles at Israel, as it did in the Gulf War, in an attempt to bring Israel into the war.
Jordan is willing to compromise its anti-war stance because it fears that Israel could destroy an Iraqi missile armed with chemical or biological agents over Jordan and contaminate its territory.
The US would also base search-and-rescue teams in Jordan to seek out any pilots shot down by the Iraqis.
The recent conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened with an announcement that Cuba would become a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The last three hold-outs in the world are Israel, India, and Pakistan. The Arab states, led by Iraq, have proposed that Israel should sign on as part of a framework for peace in the Middle East, but the Israelis want to hold on to their weapons of mass destruction. As Ha'aretz reports:
"Gideon Frank, director-general of the Atomic Energy Commission in the Prime Minister's Office, told the International Atomic Energy Agency's 46th General Conference in Vienna yesterday that Israel opposes Iraq's proposal to the conference agenda that it discuss 'Israeli Nuclear Capabilities and Threat.' Frank said that 'many dangerous proliferation developments in our region and in other regions have occurred in recent years, none of which involve Israel. On the contrary: Israel has neither threatened any of its neighbors nor has it acted in defiance of international commitments.' He added that the Iraqi proposal for the agenda lacks 'factual justification' and that 'there is no need to single out Israel.'"
A better question is: why not single out Israel, a country that we know has nukes – and the will to use them – instead of Iraq, which doesn't have fissionable material or the technology to create and deliver a nuclear warhead?
Remember the case of Pat Roush and her two daughters, supposedly "kidnapped" by their Saudi father and held "incommunicado" in the desert Kingdom? The Wall Street Journal tried to create an international incident out of what was basically a family feud, and even Congress got involved, with grandstanding lawmakers passing resolutions and neoconservative polemicists denouncing "Arabists" and "appeasers" in the State Department.
A key piece of evidence in the Bush administration's case against Iraq is being challenged in a report by independent experts who question whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program.
The White House last week said attempts by Iraq to acquire the tubes point to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. But the experts say in a new report that the evidence is ambiguous, and in some ways contradicts what is known about Iraq's past nuclear efforts.
The report, from the Institute for Science and International Security, also contends that the Bush administration is trying to quiet dissent among its own analysts over how to interpret the evidence. The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was authored by David Albright, a physicist who investigated Iraq's nuclear weapons program following the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection team. The institute, headquartered in Washington, is an independent group that studies nuclear and other security issues.
"By themselves, these attempted procurements are not evidence that Iraq is in possession of, or close to possessing, nuclear weapons," the report said. "They do not provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational."
The American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said the United States will find ways to stop weapons inspectors going back to Iraq unless there is a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue.
Addressing a Congressional committee, Mr Powell said the Security Council must spell out to Iraq the serious consequences if it fails to co-operate with the inspectors.
The BBC State Department correspondent Jon Leyne says the US is in effect giving an ultimatum to the Security Council.
The development came as the chief UN arms inspector, Hans Blix, told the Security Council he hoped to have an advance party in Iraq on 15 October.
Mr Blix later told reporters an advance party would go there "as soon as possible".
"We will select some sites that we think are interesting to go to in the early phases," he said, "so it's not like it takes two months before we can send any guys out there in the field. It will be much earlier than that."
President George Bush asked Congress yesterday for a "blank cheque" draft resolution on Iraq, giving him authorisation to use force to deal with Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader responded witha blistering attack on the US, delivered at the United Nations.
Reading extracts of a letter from President Saddam, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, declared that Baghdad had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. He accused the Bush administration of putting out "lies, distortions, and falsehoods" about Iraq, as a pretext for an attack, whose true aim was to gain control of Middle Eastern oil.
"I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons," President Saddam said in his message.
In targeting Iraq, the US was "acting on behalf of Zionism which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children".
The message, applauded by diplomats at the UN, drew a predictable response from the White House, where officials described the claim that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction as "a fairy-tale."
Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's spokesman said the speech presented "nothing new". It was "a disappointing failure" that changed nothing.
More ominously, the Iraqi leader hinted that the return of the UN weapons inspectors might not be quite as "unconditional" as first seemed. Not only should inspections be part of a comprehensive solution to the crisis, including the lifting of UN sanctions, they should also "respect arrangements" on Iraq's sovereignty and security – a possible warning that some of President Saddam's palaces and other suspect sites could be off limits.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
(CBS) State officials say California's energy crisis -- its blackouts and sky-high power prices that cost California billions -- was manufactured by key power companies that hoarded energy supplies to make more money, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.
Overall, the companies kept more than 30 percent to 50 percent of their power off the market. During some of the worst moments of the crisis, they held back even more -- anywhere from 55 to 76 percent of production -- all in an effort, whistleblowers told CBS News more than a year ago, to cut the power supply and drive up prices.
But the companies denied allegations of manipulation.
"It's preposterous. It never happened," said Duke Power Company's Tom Williams in June 2001.
And they're still denying it today.
But CBS News obtained records showing federal regulators have power plant control room audio tapes that prove traders from Williams Energy called plant operators and told them to turn off the juice. The government sealed the tapes in a secret settlement and still refuses to release them.
The new report found Williams held back more energy from California than any other company. It's vindication for state investigators upset that energy companies blame the crisis on everything from the weather to not enough power plants.
"This report shows that those excuses are simply untrue. There was enough capacity to avoid almost all of the blackouts," Gary Cohen, state investigator said.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a federal grand jury is now examining the role the power companies and energy traders played in the California market's meltdown and whether any laws were broken.
The Taliban are here, pamphlets announce, waiting to restore their harsh brand of Islam.
And if the Taliban or people like them return to power, many in this deeply conservative region say they will not resist -- they are fed up with lawlessness, feel ignored by the central government and fear U.S. forces.
"Unless people are given work and the government in Kabul can establish security outside the bazaars, people will begin to fight them," said Eshanullah, a gaunt, bearded restaurant owner in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, about 220 miles southwest of Kabul.
In Kabul, the Afghan capital, which attracts most of the world's attention, money and foreign visitors, Afghan and international officials speak of a new era in this war-ravaged country now that the Taliban are ousted and their al Qaeda allies routed.
But in the countryside, especially in impoverished southern provinces dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, the new Afghanistan has been one of disillusionment. In some areas, the old ways are returning.
In neighboring Ghazni province, 20 men with guns now protect the Johan Malaka Ghazni High School for girls, which was rocketed more than a month ago. No one was injured and damage was slight, but the children were badly frightened.
"The girls are coming to school now, but we provide heavy security for them," said Amanullah, a government commander. He said the rocket followed pamphlets warning parents to keep their daughters at home.
WASHINGTON -- Supporters of the United States embargo of Cuba are bracing for a possible defeat when the Senate votes on legislation that would make it easier for Americans to travel to the communist island.
A vote for change, following a similar House vote in July, would put one of the mainstays of the decades-old American embargo in jeopardy and provide a huge victory for those who want to end all sanctions against the island.
Such a victory might be purely symbolic if President George W. Bush follows through with a threat to veto any legislation that weakens sanctions before Cuban President Fidel Castro allows democratic reforms.
But some embargo supporters wonder whether Bush can afford to issue a veto that would anger farmers and others eager to sell products to Cuba.
All of this doubt comes just as embargo opponents and supporters held dueling news conferences and released opposing polls Tuesday in the fight over the travel ban.
Embargo opponents are optimistic. The travel ban, they argue, restricts their freedom and needs to go.
Embargo supporters, on the other hand, are on the defensive. They admit organizing Tuesday's events in reaction to their opponents' conference.
Legislation prohibiting the Treasury Department from enforcing travel restrictions against Americans who want to go to Cuba passed the House.
The measure also lifts limits on the amount of money individuals can send to people in Cuba and allows private financing of food sales to the island. The Senate may take up the same bill this month or next.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge Tuesday held Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt for failing to heed his order to fix oversight problems with a trust handling hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties from Indian land.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth called the department's handling of the Indian money and the action of government attorneys in the case disgraceful, and found four specific instances where the department committed fraud on the court.
Norton said the ruling applies more to events that took place prior to the Bush administration, and that she has devoted more energy to fixing the management of Indian money than any other project.
Speaking in Phoenix at an Indian economic development event, she said she is considering appealing the ruling.
Norton is the third Cabinet officer that Lamberth has held in contempt over the trust fund. Former President Clinton ( news - web sites)'s Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were held in contempt in the case in 1999.
The government has acknowledged major problems with the trust fund. The Interior Department has spent more than $600 million since 1996 to comply with instructions from both Congress and Lamberth, but accounting problems persist.
In December the judge shut down most of the Interior Department's Internet connections because he said the agency could not ensure hackers wouldn't break in and steal money.
During a 29-day trial that ended in late February, Norton asked Lamberth for more time to make fixes. Lamberth was unmoved. On several occasions during the trial and since it concluded, he scolded Interior officials for foot-dragging and failure to comply with his orders.
In a 267-page opinion, the judge said the Interior Department not only failed to comply with his order to account for the money in the Indian accounts, but lied to the court about its efforts to repair the trust and protect Indian money.
WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle launched a pre-election attack on President Bush's economic record on Wednesday, accusing him of doing little to spur the listless economy or address job and stock market losses, eroded retirement accounts and vanishing budget surpluses.
The South Dakota Democrat's 35-minute address on the Senate floor, replete with poster-sized charts, came during a run-up to congressional elections that have been dominated in recent weeks by talk of war with Iraq. Democrats long have preferred campaign seasons to be dominated by domestic issues, which polls traditionally show are more to their advantage.
''Regardless of what it is we do with Iraq and the war on terrorism, I'd hope this administration can dedicate some of its time each week to economic security as well, ... to this atrocious record'' on the economy, Daschle said.
''It takes leadership not only with regard to international and foreign policy, but to help here at home on economic policy as well. We haven't seen it to date,'' he added.
Daschle's remarks prompted an immediate response from Republicans, who said Daschle and the Democratic-led Senate have done little.
''Even if you accept all that as a problem and a lot of it is, what is your plan?'' Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said of the issues Daschle named. ''Quit being critical without offering any alternatives.''
White House budget chief Mitchell Daniels called Daschle's remarks ''a very dispiriting and disappointing performance, I'm tempted to say tantrum'' that ignored today's low interest and inflation rates.
Anthony Romero's first day on the job as the new executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union was Sept. 4, 2001. He was anxious to get started as he strode into the A.C.L.U. headquarters at the lower tip of Manhattan. From his 18th-floor office he had an amazing view of New York Harbor and, appropriately, the Statue of Liberty.
"I had spent part of the summer looking back at the history of the A.C.L.U.," he said. "And one of the things I looked at were the Palmer raids, which were right after the First World War."
A. Mitchell Palmer was an unsuccessful Senate candidate who was appointed attorney general by Woodrow Wilson in 1919. It was a tumultuous period, with the rise of revolutionary movements overseas and tremendous social and political upheaval in the U.S., including a series of bombings by suspected anarchists.
Palmer responded to the turmoil by leading a vicious and unprecedented campaign against alleged radicals and dissidents. Government agents in dozens of cities rounded up thousands of individuals, most of them immigrants. Many were brutalized and held without charge. Hundreds of eastern Europeans were deported without benefit of due process.
The Palmer raids (with a young J. Edgar Hoover as an important operative) would ultimately be discredited by history. They were illegal, unconstitutional and shameful. But at the time they had widespread support, so it took courage to speak out against them.
Among those with the requisite courage was Roger Baldwin, who in 1918 had been a founder of the National Civil Liberties Bureau. In 1920, in the heat of the controversy over the Palmer raids, the bureau became the American Civil Liberties Union.
Anthony Romero was immersed in that history when the awfulness of Sept. 11 occurred. And that history was on his mind when, amid the national sorrow and the fear that followed the terror attacks, President Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft, began elbowing the Constitution aside as they moved aggressively to expand the powers of the executive branch.
Mr. Romero was in a difficult position. He understood the depth of the sorrow and the fears. But he also understood, better than most, that both the strength and the greatness of the United States were rooted in the nation's commitment to freedom and the rule of law, and its remarkably successful system of governmental checks and balances.
And so the A.C.L.U. — sometimes in concert with other champions of civil liberties (not all of them on the political left, by any means) — has challenged a series of initiatives by the executive branch. It has filed lawsuits or otherwise objected to a variety of government policies, including the secret detention of people suspected of violating immigration laws; the use of material witness statutes as a form of preventive detention; and the refusal to allow American citizens arrested as "enemy combatants" to see their lawyers or challenge their detention before a civilian judge.
It's a subject about which he has some expertise, and not surprisingly Al Gore yesterday blamed the latest problems in Florida's election system on President Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
During campaign appearances in Jacksonville and Palm Beach County, areas that figured in the 2000 election debacle, the former Democratic presidential candidate called last week's botched primary election "déjà vu all over again."
"I didn't expect there to be all the problems at the polling booths again," said Gore, who attended a rally and fundraiser for Rep. Corrine Brown. "The money the Congress tried to allocate was defeated by President Bush and there was a lack of attention and leadership at the state level by Governor Bush."
The governor's office responded by saying Florida's 67 counties received $32 million to fix their independent elections systems and only two, Miami-Dade and Broward, run by Democrats, had serious problems. "This sounds like a wannabe candidate who's desperate to be heard," Katie Muniz, Jeb Bush's spokeswoman, told the Associated Press.
During the Sept. 10 primary, hundreds of voters in the two largest counties said they were turned away because of equipment failures. Other tabulating problems and recounts led Janet Reno to wait a week before she conceded Tuesday to Bill McBride in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.
"Even though the late-night comics have gotten ahold of it again, it isn't funny," Gore said earlier at a fundraising breakfast in West Palm Beach for Carol Roberts, a Palm Beach County commissioner and Gore supporter while serving on the county's canvassing board during the 2000 recount. She's running against Rep.Clay Shaw (R).
While Gore traveled in Florida, the Republican state government was asking for help from the Justice Department in averting a third straight election fiasco in the Nov. 5 general election. Secretary of State Jim Smith called on Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's staff to "take whatever steps necessary" to ensure a fair election.
Of all the grave and ugly developments on the fringes of settler society, none is more frightening than acts of Jewish terror, whose perpetrators attack Palestinian targets, primarily schools in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, without hindrance. One or more cells, comprised of Israelis living either in the territories or west of the Green Line, has for the past two years succeeded in making a laughingstock of the Shin Bet security service and the police, and assaulting Arabs. These attacks would be disturbing even if the targets were chosen at random. But the targets are chosen carefully - and, abominably, they are children. Even worse, these attacks target children while they are in school. So blindly evil is the fire of vengeance that burns in these Jews that they seek the lives of children where they can be found in the greatest quantity - while they are studying.
It is true that these attacks usually fail, but they should be dealt with as if they had succeeded - as if they had killed Palestinian children. In light of the impressive successes of the security services in foiling Palestinian terror attacks over the last two years, the failure of the Shin Bet's Jewish department demands a more convincing explanation than those that have so far been offered. It is admittedly difficult to penetrate a small, tightly knit organization of Jewish zealots, but this task should not be beyond the powers of those who have so successfully penetrated Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim - and what human agents cannot accomplish, electronics should be able to fill in the gaps.
The available resources are limited, but they are allocated on the basis of a strict order of priorities. Some new items have been added to the national priority list in recent years, such as international organized crime rings that are trying to set up branches in Israel. In the same way, Jewish terror should be elevated to the top of the intelligence priority list, and the best brains and the maximum resources should be assigned to this task.
If the Shin Bet needs administrative tools to foil Jewish terror and to arrest the suspects, the prime minister and the attorney general must supply such tools. Israel cannot permit itself to demonstrate governmental impotence in the face of the murder of innocents, children as well as adults; it must prevent the wanton criminals among its citizens from wreaking their will. The despicable murder of Israeli children does not justify the lawlessness subsumed under the rubric, among others, of "avenging the children."
The United Nations is likely to throw into disarray America's war plans for Iraq by introducing a timetable for weapons inspections that could give Saddam Hussein a breathing space of almost 12 months.
The extended timetable, which would allow the inspectors first to deploy in Iraq and then to begin and complete their complicated mission, could exhaust the patience of Washington, which envisages attacking the country much earlier, probably in February. Yesterday the Bush administration asked Congress to endorse the military option before the UN makes its move.
President Bush "reserves the right to act in the interests of the United States and its friends and allies", his spokesman said.
Such a disavowal of the United Nations by the United States would spell both war and diplomatic disaster for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who helped to persuade Washington to bring the crisis back under the UN's umbrella. Britain's global influence depends largely on its permanent seat at an effective and respected UN Security Council. The organisation will be shunted into irrelevance, diplomats fear, if President Bush unilaterally goes to war.
Even as envoys scurried in New York to craft a new resolution on Iraq, the Pentagon was privately briefing on plans to deploy 250,000 ground troops in the country to spearhead an assault aimed at toppling President Saddam and his regime.
If it achieved nothing else, the offer of the Iraqi government to accept without conditions the return of United Nations weapons inspectors has exposed the most essential truth of contemporary international politics: the Bush administration wants war. Its hysterical claims of “weapons of mass destruction” have never been anything else but a means of manufacturing a public justification for war. The Bush administration has responded angrily to the diplomatic note of the Iraqi foreign minister—demanding that it be ignored by the UN—because it knows that Saddam Hussein’s concession deprives the United States of the fig leaf of a pseudo-legal pretext for invading Iraq, destroying its government, seizing its oilfields and reducing the country to what would be, in effect, semi-colonial status.
Last week’s maneuvers by the Bush administration at the United Nations were based on the assumption that Iraq would never be able to comply with the provocative and draconian resolutions that the United States intended to ram through the Security Council. Moreover, the resolutions would leave it to the United States to decide whether or not Iraq was in compliance. The Bush administration was confident that this arrangement would inevitably provide the United States, within weeks if not days, with a casus belli. It would simply declare that Iraq was in “noncompliance” and initiate hostilities.
At least for the moment, this scenario has been somewhat disrupted—though there is no reason to believe that the United Nations will not soon bend to American pressure. The Bush administration will get, in all likelihood, both the resolutions and the war it wants.
For more than a half-century every American administration has invoked the specter of Munich 1938—when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain caved in to Hitler and handed Czechoslovakia over to the Nazis—to justify its own aggressive imperialist politics. America habitually cloaks its actions in the mantle of resistance to aggression. But this latest attempt to cast Bush as a modern-day equivalent of Churchill, standing firm in the wilderness against those who would compromise with a ruthless tyrant, attains a degree of mendacity that no other administration has ever achieved. For nothing so closely recalls the methods employed by the Nazi regime in its willful fabrication of the Czech crisis and its conduct of the negotiations in Munich in September 1938 than the tactics that have been pursued by the Bush administration in relation to Iraq.
The initial findings of a Congressional committee that has been reviewing the performance of America's intelligence agencies before Sept. 11 are profoundly disturbing. While the investigation has not found that the agencies collected information pointing to the date and targets of the attacks, it has discovered reports that Osama bin Laden and his followers hoped to hit sites in the United States and that they might employ commercial airliners as weapons. The response of spy organizations — and the government at large — was anemic.
One of the great unanswered questions has been whether the government had enough intelligence in the months before Sept. 11 to fear an imminent blow within the United States and to take aggressive steps to heighten security, especially at airports. The answer now appears to be affirmative. Investigators working for the Senate and House intelligence committees found numerous reports in the archives of the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy organizations suggesting that the bin Laden network was eager to mount attacks within the United States. There were also warnings that terrorists were considering using airplanes.
The accumulation of alarming evidence led George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to tell his top aides in December 1998 that "we are at war" with Osama bin Laden and "I want no resources or people spared in this effort." That was exactly the right reaction, but the mobilization of resources that followed did not match the threat.
The Congressional investigators learned that almost no one at the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of Mr. Tenet's declaration of war. On Sept. 11, the F.B.I.'s international terrorism unit had just one analyst to deal with Al Qaeda. Even the C.I.A. itself did not make major readjustments to evaluate the threat. The agency increased the number of analysts assigned full time to the bin Laden network from three in 1999 to five in 2001 before the attacks. Despite the indications that airliners might be used as weapons, including one August 1998 report that terrorists might fly a plane into the World Trade Center, intelligence analysts apparently made little effort to assess the aerial threat. The Federal Aviation Administration did not take the threat seriously.
By
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — Nearly all middle- and upper-middle-class families will lose some of the income tax cuts scheduled over the next eight years as they are forced to pay a separate tax originally intended to make sure that the rich cannot live tax-free, a study released today found.
By the end of the decade, when the tax cuts pushed into law by the Bush administration in 2001 become fully effective, 85 percent of taxpayers with two or more children will be forced off the regular income tax and onto a separate system known as the alternative minimum tax.
The additional burden will fall largely on families with incomes of $75,000 to $500,000. Just three years ago fewer than one million taxpayers, most at the upper reaches of the income spectrum, were subject to the complex separate tax. But if nothing is changed, by 2010 about 36 million taxpayers will face it. Indeed, virtually all taxpayers earning $100,000 to $500,000 will fall under its sway.
"What was a class tax is becoming a mass tax," said Len Burman of the Urban Institute, one of the study's authors and a tax expert under former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Under the alternative minimum tax system, many deductions are denied, including those for children, the taxpayers themselves and for state and local taxes. At that point, taxes are calculated at rates of 26 to 35 percent.
"We're talking about a really nasty marriage penalty," Mr. Burman said. "You are 25 times to 30 times more likely to be on the alternative minimum tax if you are married rather than single."
Accounting failures in the private sector have been big news lately. But the granddaddy of accounting failures belongs to the public sector — the federal government's handling of money held in trust for more than 300,000 Native Americans.
The government gave allotments of land to various Indian tribes around the turn of the century, but kept control of the property, leasing it out for mining, lumber operations and ranching. The revenue was theoretically held in trust. Yet as Judge Royce Lamberth of Federal District Court observes, "The Department of Interior's administration of the Individual Indian Money trust has served as the gold standard for mismanagement by the federal government for more than a century." This week, Judge Lamberth found Interior Secretary Gale Norton guilty of civil contempt of court for her department's failure to straighten out the mess.
Ms. Norton, the third cabinet official to be cited for contempt in this ongoing debacle, inherited the problems from her predecessors. The government has always preferred to hope that the whole issue would go away — in part because the amount owed to the Native Americans could by now total billions of dollars. But nobody really knows. The physical records have fallen into disrepair, been lost or, in some cases, been purposely destroyed. According to Judge Lamberth, the Interior Department doesn't seem to have made much effort to improve things, creating the illusion of developing a new plan for a historical accounting of the trust money while doing nothing of the kind.
The justice of the Native Americans' claim for an accurate accounting of money owed them is almost self-evident. Perhaps the most damning part of Judge Lamberth's decision came at the end, a sentence tinged with sadness and anger. "I may have life tenure," he wrote, "but at the rate the Department of Interior is progressing that is not a long enough appointment." Over time, many of the Native Americans who have hoped for a just accounting from the Interior Department have discovered how accurate Judge Lamberth's words really are. Lifetimes have come and gone, and still nothing meaningful has been done. It is time to change that.
WASHINGTON - Nowhere in the country could a minimum-wage employee afford to pay rent on a two-bedroom home, an advocacy group said Wednesday. And in three-quarters of the country, even two full-time, minimum-wage jobs couldn't pay for such housing.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition, in its annual "Out of Reach" report, found that the average U.S. employee must make nearly three times the federal minimum wage, or about $14.66 an hour, to afford a modest two-bedroom rental and still pay for food and other basic needs. In Arizona, a worker must earn $14.49 an hour.
About one-third of the nation's households are renters, said the Washington-based advocacy group. In the four years since the coalition began its study, the gap between wages and rents has widened, both during times of economic expansion and recession.
"Even as the homeownership rate rises, access to good, affordable rental housing diminishes," the report said. "Eventually the number of people who succeed as renters will become so small that the pool of potential homeowners will evaporate."
Sheila Crowley, the coalition's president, said the problem of finding affordable housing is felt throughout the nation.
"Some places are worse than others, but nowhere is housing affordable," she said.
The coalition favors increased federal spending on affordable housing and raising the minimum wage to address the issue.
Last year, about 2.2 million workers earned the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“We’re getting the band together,” White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told the group on their first conference call last week. The “Band” is made up of the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan—or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. Their greatest hit: exposing the Taliban’s treatment of women. Now, they’re back for a reunion tour on Iraq.
You've got to hand it to Saddam. In one brisk, neat letter to Kofi Annan, he pulled the rug from right under George Bush's feet. There was the American president last week, playing the role of multilateralist, warning the world that Iraq had one last chance – through the UN – to avoid Armageddon. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he told us all in the General Assembly, "it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material." And that, of course, is the point. Saddam would do everything he could to avoid war. President Bush was doing everything he could to avoid peace. And now the Iraqi regime has put the Americans into a corner. The arms inspectors are welcome back in Iraq. No conditions. Just as the Americans asked.
No wonder the United States was whingeing on about "false hopes" yesterday. No wonder the Americans were searching desperately for another casus belli – be sure that they will find one – in an attempt to make sure that their next war keeps to its timetable. Be sure, too, that Saddam, that master of the post-agreement conditional clause, will have a few surprises for the UN inspectors when they do turn up in Baghdad. Will the UN boys be allowed to visit the Beast of Baghdad's palaces? Will they be waved through all checkpoints when they want to visit Tuwaitha or any of the other horror factories in which the Iraqis once cooked up their biological weapons?
But for now, the Americans have been sandbagged. It will take at least 25 days to put the UN inspection team together, another 60 for their preliminary assessment – always assuming they are given "unfettered" access to all Iraqi government facilities -- then another 60 days for further inspections. In other words, George Bush's latest war has been delayed by more than five months. Saddam, of course, must have his own worries. Back in 1996, the Iraqis were already accusing the UN inspectorate of working with the Israelis.
Major Scott Ritter, Iraq's nemesis-turned-saviour, was indeed – as an inspector – regularly travelling to Tel Aviv to consult Israeli intelligence. Then Saddam accused the UN inspectors of working for the CIA. And he was right. The United States, it emerged, was using the UN's Baghdad offices to bug Iraq's government communications. And once the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 and the US and Britain launched "Operation Desert Fox", it turned out that virtually every one of the bombing targets had been visited by UN inspectors over the previous six months. Far from being an inspectorate, the UN lads – though they didn't all know it – had been acting as forward air controllers, drawing up an American hit list rather than monitoring compliance with UN resolutions.
But a glance back at George Bush's UN speech last week shows that a free inspection of Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction was just one of six conditions which Iraq would have to meet if it "wishes peace". In other words, stand by for further UN Security Council resolutions which Saddam will find far more difficult to accept.
The other Bush demands, for example, included the "end of all support for terrorism". Does this mean the UN will now be urged to send inspectors to hunt for evidence inside Iraq for Saddam's previous – or current – liaisons with guns-for-hire?
Then Bush demanded that Iraq "cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others". Notwithstanding the inclusion of Turkomans – worthy of protection indeed, though one wonders how they turned up on the Bush list – does this mean that the UN could demand human rights monitors inside Iraq? In reality, such a proposal would be both moral and highly ethical, but America's Arab allies would profoundly hope that such monitors are not also dispatched to Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and other centres of gentle interrogation.
The fact that the Justice Department is investigating Enron Broadband Services indicates that prosecutors are now focusing on Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and possibly other top executives, according to observers.
Investigators are clearly looking into whether executives misled investors about the financial well-being of the company and its future prospects, said Jacob Frankel, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer now in private practice.
At issue is the "quality of the disclosure made by executives into whether they disseminated false or misleading financial information or failed to provide information to investors," Frankel said.
Sources familiar with the investigation say there's particular interest in a Jan. 20, 2000, meeting with analysts, where the future of Enron Broadband, or EBS, was enthusiastically promoted by Skilling and others. Enron's stock price jumped 30 percent that day, starting a yearlong rise to its all-time high of about $90 per share.
EBS never turned a profit or lived up to its hype, but rather turned out to be a multibillion-dollar drain on the company. Executives continued to sing its praises as late as January 2001, though the business was crumbling.
EBS is only one part of the multifaceted investigation, which includes such areas as improper power trades to boost prices in California and a 1999 energy trading deal with Merrill Lynch that helped Enron earn a $60 million profit.
But the new focus on EBS and other businesses also indicates that Skilling and Lay cannot be clearly linked to the complex partnerships that former Enron executive Michael Kopper admitted he created with former Chief Financial Officer Andy Fastow to siphon money into their own pockets, said Robert Mintz, a New Jersey-based attorney and former federal prosecutor.
Prosecutors will most likely find it easier to show that Lay or Skilling misrepresented the finances of the company than to prove they knew of the intricate accounting involved in the partnerships, Mintz said.
"Prosecutors must feel fairly certain they have their case against Fastow secured and are moving on to the bigger fish," said Mintz. "They're just trying to fit the missing pieces of the puzzle together."
Israel ought to oppose an American attack on Iraq, Scott Ritter, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, said yesterday.
In an interview with Ha'aretz, Ritter said an American strike against Iraq would be "a disaster for Israel," as it would have three negative side effects: It would open the door for an Iraqi attack on Israel, whether conventional or nonconventional; it would undermine regional stability and tilt Arab public opinion even further against the U.S. and Israel; and it would increase terrorism inside Israel.
"A war will not be good for Israel. I would be very surprised if anyone in Israel supported such a step," he said.
Ritter said that he did not know for certain whether Iraq either possesses nonconventional weapons or is able to fire missiles at Israel. "My assessment in 1998 was that Saddam [Hussein] did not have this capability, and the Israeli government accepted this assessment," he said. "I don't know what has happened since, but I assume that Israel has continued its excellent intelligence operations. There will always be uncertainty over Iraq's capabilities until inspectors are on the ground."
Ritter quit the weapons inspection team in 1998, charging that neither the UN nor the American administration was backing his effort to conduct thorough checks. Since then, however, he has become a leading opponent of both military action and economic sanctions against Iraq, even traveling to Baghdad last week to give a speech against American military action to the Iraqi parliament.
He argues that the current administration's talk of Iraq's nonconventional weapons is unfounded and meant only to serve its interest in toppling Saddam. The Iraqi leader, he insists, is not the issue; the issue is Iraq's nonconventional weapons - and the way to deal with that is through UN inspections.
FRANCE dramatically joined a UN split over Iraqi weapons inspections yesterday as Nelson Mandela branded the US a world bully.
Leading Security Council members France, Russia and China opposed any new UN resolution approving military action against Iraq without first giving time for inspectors to do their work.
But the US, backed by Britain, dismissed Iraq's offer to allow inspectors back without conditions as a stalling ploy, insisted a new resolution was still necessary - and continued to prepare for war.
President Bush said last night: "The UN must act. We will not be held to blackmail by a barbaric regime. It's time for us to deal with the true threats of Saddam."
His hardline stance outraged former South African president Nelson Mandela, who said: "What right has he to say Iraq's offer is not genuine? We must condemn that very strongly.
"No country, however strong, is entitled to comment adversely in the way the US has done.
"They think they're the only power in the world. They're not and they're following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world. We must not allow that."
According to an assessment document prepared for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, officials in Jerusalem believe that the American offensive against Iraq, if ultimately ordered, would be a focused operation, with its objective the assassination of Saddam Hussein and members of his family.
The document, covering military developments in the Gulf, indicates that the narrow focus would be intended to spur a change in Iraq's regime without causing the country's dismemberment, thus allowing Saddam's successor to begin reconstruction.
In internal discussions in Jerusalem, some officials have suggested that the United States, in its recent air strikes on targets within Iraq, has in fact already begun its military offensive, without having expressly declared this. But this is a minority view. The direction of the position presented to Sharon and Peres is that the current strikes represent a widening of previous military activity.
The document states that the American and British air forces are destroying Iraqi infrastructure in an effort to "bait" Iraq's military, especially its anti-aircraft arm, into a response, in an effort to test its defenses and discover previously undetected targets.
The trap is sprung. The name of the game is containment. Contain the wild man, the leader with the messianic and relentless glint who is scaring the world. Surround him, throw Lilliputian nets on him, tie him up with a lot of United Nations inspection demands, humour him long enough to stop him from using his weapons and blowing up the Middle East.
But this time, the object of the containment strategy is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush, the president with real bombs, not the predator with plans to make them.
America's European and Arab allies now act more nervously about the cowboy in the Oval Office who likes to brag of America as "the greatest nation on the face of the Earth" than the thug in the Baghdad bunker.
"We don't want another war in this region," says an adviser to the Saudi royal family. "When Afghanistan is bombed, they just hit rocks. When there's bombing in our neighbourhood, they hit oil fields."
Many international commentators have welcomed the closer involvement of the UN Security Council in the Iraq crisis and Baghdad's acceptance of UN weapon inspectors. Critics of America's policy on Iraq see the UN's involvement as a positive step away from war.
They argue that UN engagement creates a 'breathing space' for a negotiated solution, and that the UN's influence will ensure that US unilateralism is constrained by international law, as only the UN Security Council can sanction military aggression.
But both these claims are wrong: UN involvement neither makes war less likely nor does it make an attack on Iraq any more 'legitimate'.
Far from providing a breathing space, the preparations for any regime of weapons inspections guarantee months of high-profile wrangling over alleged Iraqi obstruction, while the USA continues to assemble its military forces.
According to military analysts, even without a breathing space an extensive assault on Iraq would not be feasible until later in the year - and possibly not until spring 2003. It seems unlikely that the Iraqi government will be able to buy breathing space beyond this point, whatever steps it takes. After all, the White House has already declared that the acceptance of weapons inspectors is not the issue and that Baghdad's offer is 'too little too late'.
More importantly, UN engagement encourages war because it is seen to give military action international legitimacy. Opinion polls in the USA and Britain seem to suggest that public support for military action is increasing, with many arguing that the prospect of UN support will build further public backing for a military campaign. The UN's involvement makes it easier for governments to commit to military action, encouraging the likelihood that there will be war rather than a negotiated solution. It also enables the USA to put more pressure on governments that are currently reluctant to support US action.
The consequences of 11 September remain visible on several fronts. Psychologically, the American empire has constructed a new enemy: Islamic terrorism. Its practitioners were evil, the threat was global and, for that reason, bombs had to be dropped unilaterally and wherever necessary. The leaders of the United States wish to be judged by their choice of enemies rather than the actual state of the world, leave alone the concrete results of the 'war against terrorism'. Politically, the United States decided to use the tragedy and re-map the world. Its military bases now cover every continent. The largest of these is situated in one of the tiniest states: Qatar in the Persian Gulf. There are 189 member states of the United Nations. There is a US military presence in 120 countries. Domestically, the Bush administration sought and obtained extensive new powers to curb dissent and to detain and deport suspects at will. On the East Coast alone, over a thousand immigrant workers of South Asian origin were arrested and deported to their countries of origin, without any outcry in the mainstream media.
A year on, what is the balance sheet of the war? With the help of its Pakistani creators, the Taliban regime was overthrown without a serious struggle, though approximately 3000 innocent Afghan men, women and children perished under the bombs. For the West, these lives were not even worth half as much as those of the US citizens who died in New York and Washington. No memorials honouring innocent victims will be built in Kabul. The torture and mass execution of prisoners of war leaves many liberal supporters of 'humanitarian wars' unmoved. However, despite all this, the central aim of the military operation, which was the capture ('dead or alive') of Osama Bin Laden and his confederates and the physical destruction of Al-Qa'eda, has still not been accomplished. On 16 June 2002, The New York Times reported:
"Classified investigations of the Qa'eda threat now underway at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead the war might have complicated counter-terrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."
Nor has the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan led to stability, peace or prosperity in the region. The character of the Afghan government is symbolised by the fact that the US-backed leader, Hamid Karzai, asked for and received bodyguards consisting exclusively of US soldiers. He did not feel safe being guarded by Afghans. The lack of trust is mutual. The factions of the Northern Alliance who rule outside Kabul dislike Karzai and would despatch him overnight if they could do so without incurring retaliatory bombing raids. To preserve this regime the United States will have to maintain a permanent military presence. In other words democracy, human and social rights, etc, are as remote as they ever were.
The 'wider geographical area' includes neighbouring Pakistan. Washington's closest ally is the country's newest military dictator. The first Afghan War (1979-89) required a Pakistan general prepared to play the Islamic card. Zia-ul-Haq obliged. The result was the creation of the Taliban. This time the events required a secular general to help demolish the Taliban. Enter General Musharraf (or Busharraf according to local wags) who has institutionalised the Pakistan army as the country's major political party, accountable only to itself and the Pentagon. The Pakistan army is the proud possessor of nuclear weapons and has the ability to use them. Likewise India, the regional hegemon. A nuclear tussle over Kashmir has frightened the rest of the world but not the generals in India and Pakistan. The policy-makers in New Delhi are ready to accept Washington's dictates globally if they are permitted to mimic the empire locally. So far permission has been refused and the presence of US soldiers and pilots in Pakistan acts as a safeguard. But for how long?
There is no better place to take the pulse of Arab and Muslim sentiment than Cairo, historic Mother of the World, pioneer or hub of the two great movements that swept the region in recent times, the pan-Arab secular nationalism of which President Nasser was the champion, the "political Islam" that came into its own with Nasserism's failure and decline. Today, from air-conditioned think tanks on the banks of the Nile to the sweltering alleyways of the splendid but dilapidated mediaeval city, the preoccupation with the two things, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and US plans for possible war on Iraq, that seem most fateful for the future, is overwhelming. "Bin Laden may have lost a lot of his appeal," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, "but that doesn't mean the US isn't hated; it is, more than ever, and more, now, from an Arab than an Islamic standpoint."
In a workshop in the City of the Dead, hard by the elaborate, 15-century tomb of Sultan Qaitbai, Mohamed Ahmed carries on the ancient, glass-blowing craft of his forefathers on a day when, even without the additional heat of his furnace, the temperature stands at 45 centigrade. "What makes you think that Bin Laden really did it?" he asks, giving voice to a still widespread popular suspicion, "Bush is just using him to put us down.'' The future is dark, he added. Indeed, much darker, for most Arabs, than might have appeared in the immediate aftermath of that apocalyptic atrocity, because, one year on, it seems clearer to them in its consequences. It is a momentous, double crisis, an external and an internal one, of which they are almost everywhere taking cognisance. The two are inextricably intertwined. Long maturing, Bin Laden, in fact, brought both to a head.
As they see it, the US's post-11 September "war on terror" now boils down, essentially, to an assault on themselves. For in the Bush universe of good versus evil, it is essentially they, with Iran thrown in, who are the evil ones. In the collision to come, the Arabs risk further massive blows to all those ideals and aspirations - independence, dignity, the unity and collective purpose of the greater Arab "nation" -- which, after centuries of foreign conquest and control, the pan-Arabism of Nasser so triumphantly, if defectively, embodied; a reversion to quasi-colonial subjugation of old.
Internally, they are dismally ill- equipped to meet the external challenge, racked as they are by all manner of social, economic, cultural and institutional sicknesses. These, the US says, are the very conditions which threw up Bin Ladenism. Few Arab opinion-makers would dispute it, or doubt their societies' desperate need of root-and-branch reforms, ushering in democracy, human rights, accountability.
There is no more compelling measure of that than the UN's newly released Arab Human Development Report. It describes a Third World region which has fallen behind all others, including sub- Saharan Africa, in most of the main indices of progress and development; whose 280 million inhabitants, despite vast oil wealth, have a lower GNP than Spain; whose annual translation of foreign books is one fifth of Greece's; 51 per cent of whose young people would emigrate if they could. A prime cause of this backwardness, say the report's exclusively Arab authors, is that the peoples of the region are the world's least free, with the lowest levels of popular participation in government. "Those who wonder why Afghanistan became a lure for some young Arabs and Muslims," wrote Jordanian columnist Yasser Abu Hilala, "need only read this report, which explains the phenomenon of alienation in our societies and shows how those who feel they have no stake in them can turn to violence." Yet most Arab regimes have ignored this damning verdict on themselves. "The fact is," said Nader Fergani, the report's Egyptian lead author, "that governments that were repressive in the first place have in the past year become more so. They have not learned the lesson of 11 September -- but neither has the US."