European Union foreign ministers have agreed to open trade and political talks with Iran, a country still branded by the US as part of a global "axis of evil".
EU Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten will meet Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Brussels on Tuesday to start the process that the EU hopes will bolster the reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
The European foreign ministers who met in Luxembourg said closer trade and economic links would have to be matched by Iranian efforts to stop terrorism and the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Monday, June 17, 2002
EU seeks closer ties with Iran
CNN chief accuses Israel of terror
Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN, accuses Israel today of engaging in "terrorism" against the Palestinians, in comments that threaten to lead to a further decline in the news network's already poor relations with the Jewish state.
"Aren't the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?" says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
"The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism."
His remarks were last night condemned by Ariel Sharon's government, which called them "stupid". Andrea Levin, director of the American pro-Israeli media watchdog Camera, said the comments were a "reprehensible" attempt to "blur the line between perpetrator and victim".
In his first British interview since the September 11 attacks, Mr Turner - who broke philanthropic records in 1997 when he donated $1bn to the UN - argues that poverty and desperation are the root cause of Palestinian suicide bombings.
Just like us
(YellowTimes.org) – Listening to all the incendiary rhetoric, accusations and finger pointing by Washington towards other nations these days, I can't help but be constantly reminded of the age-old adage that warns us: Beware of the finger that you point towards others, for indeed, in that very act, three other fingers point directly back at you. Buddhism and other worldly philosophies and religious disciplines teach us to weigh our criticisms of others in light of our own human condition. Truly, how can we pass judgment on someone else's words, behaviors, or character unless we have seen these things somewhere before, namely, in ourselves?
On a personal level, there is a small but significant exercise one is encouraged to perform whenever one finds oneself in judgment of another. After whatever statement you make about someone else, simply add the words, "Just like me."
This practice is based on the principle that none of us is perfect and that the flaws we recognize in others can be found within some aspect of ourselves. The beauty of this technique is that it tears away the veils of illusion of our alleged perfection, superiority and self-righteous vindication over others.
It reminds us of our own fallibility and endows us with a sense of humility, two concepts that seem to be utterly lacking within the hallowed halls of the U.S. government in general, but most noticeably within the ranks of the current Bush administration.
If you listen carefully to what our leaders are telling us about other dangerous, "evil" nations, terrorist groups, and "inferior" systems of government, while keeping in mind and adding the phrase "just like us" to everything they say, you will begin to discern just how all this finger- pointing is being utilized to obscure the sins of our own national inadequacies, guilt, failings, and outright evil transgressions.
Shortly after September 11, Bush went on the offensive against the "axis of evil" and other so-called "rogue" nations claiming they were a threat to the world as they were developing and amassing weapons of mass destruction, "just like us."
In fact, the United States has the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear warheads, in the world. The United States is the only nation in the world to have ever actually used nuclear weapons against civilian populations, not just once, in Hiroshima, but unconscionably a second time in Nagasaki, killing millions of innocent, unarmed people. The U.S. is also guilty of killing millions more in the fire-bombings of Dresden and other major German cities during World War II.
''The USS Liberty: still covered up after 35 years''
(YellowTimes.org) – June 8 marked 35 years since Israel attacked the USS Liberty without warning in international waters, killing 34 Americans and wounding 172 more. The Israelis lied about it and persuaded our Congress to look the other way, and they are still lying about it today. But the Liberty will not go away. Every attempt to hide this story seems to bring more attention.
This past year brought a 60-minute documentary produced by CBS News Productions that was broadcast by The History Channel on Aug. 9 - much to the dismay and over the heated objections of the Israeli Embassy and various spokesmen for Israel who did all in their power to block it.
CAMERA, a leading pro-Israel propaganda arm, produced an extended and angry critique of the film, accusing survivors and CBS News itself of producing a "propaganda-laden bogus history" that is deliberately distorted and anti-Semitic.
In a personal attack directed on me, CAMERA unearthed a 1990 Internet newsgroup in which I made what they consider a damning comment. In response to a claim that Israel was "surrounded by enemies," I replied that Israel would have no enemies if it didn't steal its neighbors' land and water and shoot its neighbors' children.
CAMERA cited that remark as evidence of bias and anti-Semitism; I would defend it even today as a truism that might well be engraved in stone.
The History Channel's report was aired as scheduled and rebroadcast this past March 14. Although CAMERA urged The History Channel not to sell a video version, it was made available anyway. In fact, the video temporarily sold out and was described by some retailers as their best selling such product ever. CAMERA, it seems, convinced only the choir.
Palestinians in Gaza Have Roadblock Rage
GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip -- The four-hour wait at an Israeli roadblock had left Wafa Ashur exhausted and enraged--again.
In her arms, she held her 8-month-old daughter, Rawiya. Wedged between her and another passenger in the stifling taxi was her 5-year-old son, Saado, his eyes dulled with boredom and fatigue. And as far as the eye could see ahead and behind them were hundreds of other Palestinian mothers, fathers, children, workers and students, caught in what for thousands of Palestinians is a daily ritual.
Roadblocks have become the most hated and ubiquitous symbol of Israel's military intrusion into Palestinian lives in the last 20 months. And no roadblock is more tortuous than the one here at Gush Katif, where the only north-south artery of the Gaza Strip intersects a road that connects a cluster of 15 Jewish settlements to pre-1967 Israel. On this desolate and dusty stretch of roadway, Israel's stated policy of sparing Palestinian civilians in its fight against militants has broken down. Here, and at dozens of other roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the endless waits at checkpoints that the army says are vital security measures have created the sort of mass misery for Palestinians that successive Israeli governments tried for decades to avoid.
In the last two years, Palestinian militants have repeatedly attacked civilian and military convoys traveling to and from Gush Katif, killing and wounding Jewish settlers and soldiers in suicide bombings and drive-by shootings. All told, the militants have killed about 20 Israeli civilians and 35 soldiers in Gaza since hostilities erupted in September 2000, according to the army.
In response to the attacks, the army has imposed what it acknowledges are draconian measures designed to separate the two peoples. They are steps that the army says it knows exact a heavy toll.
"This pressure we are putting on them is no good for us," said Brig. Gen. Zvi Fogel, chief of staff for the army's southern command. "When normal civilians are kept here for hours, they become angry and frustrated. We know that if the situation goes on like this for a few more months, the potential for suicide bombers will be much greater."
Were U.S. troops in Afghanistan complicit in a massacre?
Irish documentarian Jamie Doran says he has evidence of American complicity in a massacre in Afghanistan, and he's been showing his rough footage to European leaders in the hope of preventing a coverup.
Doran, who worked at the BBC for more than seven years and has made documentaries about human rights abuses throughout the world, screened 20 minutes of his unfinished feature documentary, "Massacre at Mazar," to the European parliament and the German parliament on Wednesday. After witnessing the screening, Andrew McEntee, former head of Amnesty International in the U.K., called for an independent investigation.
Doran has yet to release the footage to the public because he says his eyewitnesses' identities need to be obscured for their own protection. But Doran felt he had to get some of the information out immediately because the mass graves he secretly filmed are in danger of being tampered with, which would make an independent inquiry into his film's allegations of Northern Alliance and American war crimes impossible.
According to Doran, of the approximately 8,000 Taliban prisoners taken after the fall of Kunduz in late November 2001 to Gen. Rashid Dostum, around 5,000 are unaccounted for. He says he's filmed eyewitnesses testifying that many of those prisoners suffocated in the metal containers used to transport them between Qala-I-Zeini fortress and Sherberghan prison, and that Northern Alliance troops fired into the containers, killing and wounding other prisoners. One witness claims that an American officer ordered the bodies dumped in the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, and that living people were taken there as well and executed. Furthermore, Doran says he has witnesses claiming to have seen American special-forces soldiers torturing prisoners who made it to Sherberghan.
In all, six witnesses appear in the film: two truck drivers who drove the trucks filled with corpses and living men to Dasht-I-Leili; a taxi driver who saw the blood-dripping trucks; two soldiers, including one who admits he shot into the containers; and a Northern Alliance general. Doran says other witnesses may be ready to come forward as well.
Doran says that his sources had no agendas and in fact were putting their lives at risk by appearing in the film. He said that one of his collaborators on the film, as well as one of the witnesses, have had their lives threatened.
The Pentagon didn't return calls for comment, but an official was quoted in the U.K. Guardian Thursday saying that "U.S. Central Command looked into it a few months ago, when allegations first surfaced when there were graves discovered in the area of Sherberghan prison. They looked into it and did not substantiate any knowledge, presence or participation of U.S. service members."
Doran's claim that there is a mass grave in Dasht-I-Leili has been echoed by Physicians for Human Rights, though the group doesn't know anything about American involvement. PHR seconds Doran's demand that the evidence be preserved. "The reconstruction of Afghanistan should include whatever accountability mechanism the Afghans decide to use. Therefore it's urgent that these mass graves are protected, or else they will be disturbed and evidence will not be as credible," says PHR consultant John Heffernan. (Besides the grave near Sherberghan, PHR found a mass grave near Mazar-I-Sharif).
Heffernan was in Afghanistan in January with PHR board member Dr. Jennifer Leaning when they heard rumors about the grave near Sherberghan. Someone from an international NGO told them they were driving by Dasht-I-Leili when "they witnessed three large container trucks backed into a site that was being bulldozed," Heffernan says.
Heffernan and Leaning went to the site and observed "skeletal remains, clothing and a significant odor." Two PHR forensic pathologists later determined the remains were from the previous two or three months.
A month ago, a U.N. investigative team exhumed 15 bodies from the site. Autopsies were performed on three of them; all had suffocated to death. Heffernan says that forensics suggest the area is dense with corpses.
Heffernan says that PHR had speculated that the bodies were of those unaccounted for after the surrender at Kunduz. Doran says the evidence in his film is the missing link connecting the fall of that city and the grave in the desert.
You believe there was a massacre. How did it happen?
First, the history. The Taliban was surrounded at the town of Kunduz. One man, Amir Jhan, agreed to negotiate their surrender. He had fought alongside the Taliban and was trusted by both sides. He was respected even by people like Dotsum. In the process of negotiating the surrender, Jhan counted the number of prisoners. He says there were 8,000. Now there are only 3,015 left. Where are the rest?
Four hundred seventy of the prisoners were suspected al-Qaida members. They were taken to Qala Jangi, and that was where the press focused attention. That's where the prison revolts started and where CIA agent Johnny Spann was killed.
What no one was aware of was that the other 7,500 prisoners were being processed through another fort, Qala-I-Zeini. They were transported to Sherberghan in shipping containers -- one of my witnesses said that 200 to 300 people were loaded into each container. The Taliban were suffocating. They cried out for air. In the film it says the answer came quite swiftly when Northern Alliance soldiers fired into the containers. One witness implicates himself by admitting to shooting into containers and killing prisoners. He was ordered by his commanders.
The containers were loaded onto trucks and moved towards Sherberghan. On that road, a taxi driver saw them in a makeshift gas station. He smelled something horrific and asked the attendant about it. The attendant said look behind you, and he turned around to see blood pouring out of three containers on the back of a truck.
When they arrived, one witness -- another soldier -- talks about how an American officer, on seeing the carnage, told them to get [the bodies] out of the town of Sherberghan. Two drivers who were interviewed separately talk of being forced to take container loads of the dead, wounded and unconscious into the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, where the bodies were taken from the containers. Some of them were alive. One of the drivers described some of them as being perfectly healthy. Others were wounded. They were lined up and summarily shot by machine-gun fire by the Northern Alliance.
Do you have other evidence of American complicity?
Crucially, one of the drivers was asked, "Were there any American soldiers present at Dasht-I-Leili?" He says yes. He was asked, "Do you mean right here where the killing took place?" He says, "Yes, here." He was asked how many, and he says lots of them, 30 to 40. He's saying that 30 to 40 American soldiers were witness on at least one occasion to these events.
Why did you come forward with the footage before your documentary was finished?
There is a mass grave with very many bodies in it at this moment, and I had received the word from Afghanistan that there was possibly tampering going on. By breaking the story, my hope is that this evidence is not removed and that an independent inquiry of some kind can take place. What do innocent people have to fear from an inquiry?
In your documentary, there are allegations that American soldiers tortured Taliban prisoners. When did that happen?
The torture took place after those prisoners that were left arrived at Sherberghan. According to eyewitnesses, these were fairly isolated instances. They included the breaking of necks, the cutting of tongues, the cutting of beards -- a great insult in the Islamic faith -- and the cutting of fingers.
I read that your film also claims that one prisoner had acid poured on him.
Yes, that's an allegation from one of the eyewitnesses.
You said before that some of your witnesses implicated themselves. How did you get them to talk to you?
The most important thing in this is that these witnesses have absolutely nothing to gain. They don't get a single cent and they put themselves in immense danger by agreeing to take part in this.
So what were their motives?
With the soldiers, I spent hours talking to them, negotiating and cajoling. They did not want to do interviews. They were happy to tell me things, they just did not want to do interviews [on camera]. I spent hours persuading them.
As for the drivers, it was perfectly clear from the way they talked and the expressions on their faces: They were frankly disgusted by what they'd been forced to do.
salon.com
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About the writer
Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York.
Wealth and Democracy
BILL MOYERS: With me now is a man who has been tracking the political and economic history of American wealth for a long time. Kevin Phillips and I were both young men in Washington in the 60s. We were on different sides but had a mutual interest in politics that reached workaday people. He was the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 and wrote the bombshell book on the emerging republican majority. Ten years ago his best-selling book on the politics of rich and poor influenced the 1992 elections. In his new book, WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY, he is writing about how big money and political power are the invisible hand in the hidden story of the American experience. Good to see you again.
Good to see you again.
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Nice to be here.
BILL MOYERS: You keep referring in "Wealth and Democracy" to a plutocracy. What do you mean by that?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, the plutocracy ... and I think we have one now and we didn't, uh, 12 years ago when I wrote THE POLITICS OF RICH AND POOR is when money has ceased just entertaining itself with leveraged buyouts and all the stuff they did in the '80s, and really takes over politics, and takes it over on both sides when money not only talks, money screams. When you start developing philosophies in which giving a check is a First Amendment right. That's incredible. Uh, but what you've got is that this is what money has done. It's produced the fusion of money and government. And that is plutocracy.
BILL MOYERS: But hasn't money always held politics hostage?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, it's usually been very influential. And sometimes it really hasn't been too influential,
But what we've seen in the, uh ... the '80s and '90s is that it's taken control of both parties, pretty much taken control of the culture, and controls the whole dynamics of politics. And that is ...
CORRECTED: No Court - Martial Likely for Bush Critic
MONTEREY, Calif. (Reuters) - The case of a suspended Air Force officer who accused President Bush of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen to prop up his presidency has been resolved and military experts said on Thursday he would likely avoid a court-martial.
Lt. Colonel Steve Butler could face nonjudicial punishment such as a fine or a letter of reprimand for accusing Bush of knowing about the attacks but doing nothing to stop them, Air Force spokeswoman Wendy Varhegyi said.
She declined to say exactly what will happen to Butler, who friends say had planned to retire before his letter sparked the storm of controversy.
``The investigation is over and the matter has been resolved,'' she said.
Butler, a 24-year Air Force veteran who served as a navigator in the 1990 Gulf War and was most recently posted at Monterey's Defense Language Institute, was not immediately available for comment and has said nothing publicly since his letter was published on May 26 in the local newspaper.
The letter accused Bush -- the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces -- of ``sleazy and contemptible'' conduct aimed at boosting his political ends.
``Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America,'' Butler said in his letter. ``He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama.
Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag
ANCHOR POINT, Alaska, June 13 — To live in Alaska when the average temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years means learning to cope with a landscape that can sink, catch fire or break apart in the turn of a season.
In the village of Shishmaref, on the Chukchi Sea just south of the Arctic Circle, it means high water eating away so many houses and buildings that people will vote next month on moving the entire village inland.
In Barrow, the northernmost city in North America, it means coping with mosquitoes in a place where they once were nonexistent, and rescuing hunters trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things once were unheard of.
From Fairbanks to the north, where wildfires have been burning off and on since mid-May, it means living with hydraulic jacks to keep houses from slouching and buckling on foundations that used to be frozen all year. Permafrost, they say, is no longer permanent.
Dark heart of the American dream
It's the most polluted state in the planet's most powerful country. Ed Vulliamy goes into George Bush's backyard to reveal how big oil got in bed with big politics and the price paid by the little people
It's the most polluted state in the planet's most powerful country. Ed Vulliamy goes into George Bush's backyard to reveal how big oil got in bed with big politics and the price paid by the little people
There is a perverse beauty to the landscape arraigned below the iron bridge where Highway 255 strides the Houston Ship Channel: great towers of light and fire as far as the eye can behold; sinewy steel piping, plumes of smoke and flame twinkling into a Texas twilight coloured by a shroud of pollution hanging from the sky. The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised corner of the United States. It is also the capital of a power machine perfected in Texas, elevated to rule the nation and now unchallenged across the planet. A machine that operates in perpetual motion - an equilibrium of interests - between industry and politics. LaNell Anderson, former Republican voter, businesswoman and real-estate broker who lived many years in this land of smokestacks and smog, calls it 'vending-machine politics: you puts your money in and you gets your product out'.
'We don't see ourselves as a dynasty,' said George Bush Sr as his son launched the election campaign that won him the current presidency, raiding father's Rolodex to do so. 'We don't feel entitled to anything.' And yet at no point in the past 50 years - the half-century since 1952 which defines the modern age - has there not been a Bush in a governor's mansion (in Texas or Florida), on Capitol Hill or in the White House - and usually more than one of those at a time. The 'vending machine' is a single family whose tango with the powers which illuminate this endless horizon of light and flame is a dance around every corner in the labyrinth of Texan and now national - indeed global - politics. 'Everything they learned when they started out in west Texas,' says Dr Neil Carman, once a regulator of pollution in the state, 'they applied to the governor's mansion, the nation and the world... Power in America is not so much about George W Bush, it's about the people from Texas who put him there.'
Gaza defiant amid the rubble
Israeli airforce planes roar overhead as Brigadier Usama el-Ali the head of Gaza's "regional security committee" surveys the destruction which previous sorties have wrought on the ground.
"Arafat City," the main Palestinian police compound in Gaza City, lies in ruins after extensive Israeli aerial bombardments in 2001 and early 2002.
Blue uniforms poke out of the rubble of the building which used to house the women's police department with its adjoining kindergarten.
Flattened too are the offices of the tourist police and the police band, as well as a forensic laboratory put in by the European Union.
A few sniffer dogs, trained to detect drugs and explosives, bark furiously at the edge of what one of the generals calls "a ghost city." Most of the dogs died in the bombing raids.
And most of the Palestinian police in Gaza now sleep in tents, rented buildings and football grounds.
Usama el-Ali describes American and Israeli pressure to "reform" the Palestinian security forces to prevent further suicide bombings as "a bad joke" in the current circumstances.
"The Israelis attack our security forces at the very same time as they and the Americans ask us to exert control," he shouts.
"I want the world to tell me with whom and with what? Our police are now hiding under the trees."
The Mossad and 9/11
The complex and often uneasy relationship between Israel's Mossad and the U.S. intelligence community is emerging as a prime reason for the catastrophic failure of the CIA and FBI to act on advance warnings of an impending attack on America.
Eight days before the September 11 attack, Egypt's senior intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, informed the CIA station chief in Cairo that "credible sources" had told him that Osama bin-Laden's network was "in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target."
Prior to that, the FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley had revealed, there was a similar warning from French intelligence.
Both warnings, Globe-Intel has established, originally came from Mossad.
The Israeli intelligence service chose to pass on its own intelligence to Washington through its contacts in French and Egyptian intelligence agencies because it did not believe its previous warnings on an impending attack by the bin-Laden network had been taken seriously enough in Washington.
An Invitation to Overspend
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may be playing the role of a budget hawk these days, advocating the Army abandon its highly-touted $11 billion Crusader artillery program. But that doesn't necessarily mean the Pentagon is being pushed to tighten its belt.
Embracing a policy trend initiated during the Clinton administration, the Bush White House has advocated the use of civilian contractors to fill scores of government needs. "Only those functions that must be performed by the [Department of Defense] should be kept in the DoD," Rumsfeld wrote in a state-of-the-military review just seven months ago. "Any function that can be provided by the private sector is not a core government function."
For one defense contractor in particular, that approach is proving staggeringly fruitful. Kellog Brown and Root Services, a division of Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Companies, has provided the bulk of logistics services for the Army since 1992. Whenever US troops venture abroad, Brown and Root builds the barracks, cooks the food, mops the floors, transports the goods and maintains the water systems before and after the soldiers arrive.
Israel fences off West Bank towns
Israel has begun building a controversial new security fence to try to stop Palestinian militants crossing into its territory.
It is the latest effort by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt the wave of suicide attacks in Israeli cities and towns.
The move has angered Palestinians, who accuse Israel of seizing more of their land, and also Jewish settlers who oppose any boundary between Israel and territory it occupied in the 1967 war.
In the latest violence Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Nablus.
Israeli tanks are also reported to have moved back into Jenin, on the West Bank, after nightfall on Sunday.
Bulldozers began digging up ground at a ceremony attended by Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
The fence "will provide a defensive answer to the... infiltration of terrorists," said Amos Yaron of the Israeli Defence Ministry.
Few details of its exact route have been revealed.
US Tries Again to Evade Reach of New Global Court
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - In its uphill battle against a new global criminal court, the Bush administration wants the U.N. Security Council to exclude all peacekeeping operations from the tribunal's jurisdiction, diplomats said.
No resolution has emerged, but the United States last month vowed to propose some action before the court's statutes come into force on July 1, which means a draft is expected this week or next.
British and French officials, among others, have been sounded out by U.S. envoys about the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent tribunal to try the most heinous crimes -- genocide, war crimes and systematic, gross human rights abuses. One such encounter took place recently on the fringe of the recent Group of Eight industrial nations foreign ministers meeting in western Canada.
Both Britain and France, who have veto power in the 15-member Security Council, have ratified the treaty creating the court as have all other European Union members. So far no council member believes Washington even has the minimum nine votes needed to bring such a resolution to the floor.
"But they will make a strong effort, even though the French have already give them a blunt, stern 'no,"' said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
'We Were Better Off Under the Russians'
The Afghan commander laughed at the way the Americans were going about their work. U.S. troops, he said, were obsessed with finding caches of Taliban documents to help track down their fugitive enemies. The commander's friend explained the mirth by pulling out his own identification card: a small passport-like book made by the Taliban and authorized with a Taliban stamp. It was issued April 16, long after the fall of that regime. It's a legitimate document, and the man isn't an enemy—the local government doesn't have money for stationery, so decrees and papers are still being printed on leftover Taliban stock.
That's one, tiny example of how every encounter, from simple visa checks to complicated special ops, is fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, confusions and, in military parlance, snafus. Take the raid on the village of Band Taimore, 80 kilometers west of Kandahar. On the night of May 24, helicopters raining machine-gun fire descended onto the village wheat fields. The mission was a success. U.S. forces killed Haji Bajet, 70, a supporter of Taliban leader Mullah Omar since 1994, who also had links with Akhter Mohammed Usmani, the probable heir to the still-fugitive Omar.
But it wasn't a whistle-clean success—if such a thing is imaginable in Afghanistan—and in the raid's aftermath, anti-U.S. sentiment is rising around strategically important Kandahar.
Breathtaking examples of stupidity and brutality
IN HAMLET, Shakespeare wrote that there was Providence in the fall of a sparrow. I’m not much of an expert in falling sparrows, but I do know a bit about the way in which American politics works. And when it comes to major bone-chilling announcements about the prospect of a "dirty bomb" attack on the American capital, then it is worth taking a step or two back and asking what exactly we are being told - and why are we being told it? We’ll get to the hype in a minute, but first, the facts.
An American citizen and small-time gangster with a violent past, Jose Padilla, converted to Islam, changed his name, and - according to the FBI - became involved in a plot with al-Qaeda terrorists to explode a bomb filled with radioactive material in an American city. Padilla has been held for a month without charge and has been declared an "enemy combatant" by the US authorities. This means they can interrogate him without offering him legal representation, and - pending challenges from civil liberties groups - they can do so more or less indefinitely.
President Bush has already acted as judge and jury. "This guy Padilla’s a bad guy," was how Mr Bush put it.
Now, Padilla may be the devil incarnate for all I know. But usually in democracies even Satan would get the right to legal representation, a hearing in court, and a fair trial. In the current mood in America, such sentiments are not very popular. Most Americans want to congratulate their intelligence services for averting a terrorist attack of indescribable horror.
But what has Padilla actually done that is illegal? If he has done something illegal - conspiracy to cause explosions, perhaps - why not bring him to trial? And if he merely thought about doing something illegal, is the US government going to make a habit of arresting its own citizens for Thought Crimes?
Friday, June 14, 2002
A Closer Look
Eventually, almost certainly, a distinguished bipartisan commission will be convened to examine the conditions that led to the catastrophe of Sept. 11.
The Bush administration doesn't want this. And Republicans in Congress are fighting to prevent it. But it will happen.
The American public remains largely in the dark about the terrorist threat that is still out there, and the nation's preparedness to deal with it. The periodic terror-related announcements by top Bush administration officials often seem calculated not to educate or to illuminate, but rather to frighten the public and intimidate the political opposition.
That is not acceptable in a free society. Despite the preferences of the administration, which likes to operate behind closed doors with the windows shut and the shades drawn, the public has a right to more information, not less. A thoroughly independent, non-Congressional inquiry is essential.
And that sentiment was poignantly expressed this week by a group of women whose husbands were lost in the World Trade Center attack. They traveled to Washington for a round of meetings and demonstrations in an effort to build support for an independent investigation. "It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."
Editorial: Manipulated States of America
Nine months into a global anti-terror campaign, we find it distressing that the White House seems to place a higher priority on protecting the president's poll numbers than in rooting out endemic weaknesses in our intelligence gathering capabilities. If we don't find out what went wrong and it happens again -- who does Karl and Co. think we're going to blame then? If Bush wants to keep his job, he should realize -- and realize fairly quickly -- that protecting his ass isn't nearly as important as protecting the rest of ours.
Plutocracy and Politics
By
By
Kevin Phillips's new book, "Wealth and Democracy," is a 422-page doorstopper, but much of the book's message is contained in one stunning table. That table, in the middle of a chapter titled "Millennial Plutographics," reports the compensation of America's 10 most highly paid C.E.O.'s in 1981, 1988 and 2000.
In 1981 those captains of industry were paid an average of $3.5 million, which seemed like a lot at the time. By 1988 the average had soared to $19.3 million, which seemed outrageous. But by 2000 the average annual pay of the top 10 was $154 million. It's true that wages of ordinary workers roughly doubled over the same period, though the bulk of that gain was eaten up by inflation. But earnings of top executives rose 4,300 percent.
What are we to make of this astonishing development? Stealing (and modifying) a line from Slate's Mickey Kaus, I'd say that an influential body of opinion has reacted to global warming and the emergence of an American plutocracy the same way: "It's not true, it's not true, it's not true, nothing can be done about it."
For many years there was a concerted effort by think tanks, politicians and intellectuals to deny that inequality was increasing in this country. Glenn Hubbard, now chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is a highly competent economist; but he demonstrated his fealty during the first Bush administration with a ludicrously rigged study purporting to show that income distribution doesn't matter because there is huge "income mobility" — that is, that this decade's poor are likely to be next decade's rich and vice versa.
UK anti-terrorist officials alarmed at US tactics
Senior British officials responsible for countering al-Qaida terrorism are becoming increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's handling of the problem.
They say that imprecise or exaggerated warnings of attacks merely serve to encourage panic, and give gratuitous propaganda victories to the terrorists.
One official described a blanket warning by Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, last month about possible attacks on apartment blocks in the US as being so vague as to be meaningless. Another British official put it down to "back-covering".
There is also deep concern about the rhetoric employed by senior members of the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general - and even Mr Bush himself. Some suspects have been described as serious terrorists despite a lack of evidence against them, with remarks which would be prejudicial to a fair trial.
Mr Rumsfeld's description of prisoners at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay as some of the worst al-Qaida terrorists, and pictures of the inmates given out by the Pentagon, were described by Whitehall officials as "scandalous".
One official said: "American politicians are only concerned with American audiences." Another described the rhetoric, and the US refusal to acknowledge the Geneva convention, as "not benchmarks of a civilised society".
US had role in Taleban prisoner deaths
US SOLDIERS took part in the torture of Taleban prisoners and may have had a role in the "disappearance" of around 3,000 men in Mazar-i-Sharif in north-west Afghanistan, according to a new documentary.
Massacre at Mazar, by Scots film producer Jamie Doran, was shown on Wednesday in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin and the European parliament in Strasbourg.
Much of Mr Doran’s footage in the 20-minute preview of a future full-length documentary film was taken secretly.
In one sequence, a witness claims he saw a US soldier break an Afghan prisoner’s neck and pour acid on others.
"The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Some prisoners were beaten up, taken outside only to "disappear", the witness said.
Two other witnesses claim they were forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taleban prisoners who were in containers. The orders came from the local US commander, they alleged. Prisoners who had not suffocated to death were then shot dead while 30 to 40 US soldiers stood by watching.
In another sequence, a witness admits to having executed prisoners, while another Afghan, said to have been a senior officer under the Northern Alliance’s General Rashid Dostum, was said to have gone into hiding following threats to his life.
The screening of the film at the European Parliament in prompted calls for an international commission to investigate the charges.
Thursday, June 13, 2002
John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear
Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants?
The way the attorney general detonated the “dirty bomber” case this week completes his metamorphosis from a common press hog to a genuine fear monger.
That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.
That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.
Mr Bush's titanic war on terror will eventually sink beneath the waves
First it was to be a crusade. Then it became the "War for Civilisation". Then the "War without End". Then the "War against Terror". And now Рbelieve it or not РPresident Bush is promising us a "Titanic War on Terror". This gets weirder and weirder. What can come next? Given the latest Bush projections last week Р"we know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us" Рhe must surely have an even more gargantuan clich̩ up his sleeve.
Well, he must have known about the would-be Chicago "dirty" bomber – another little secret he didn't tell the American people about for a month. Until, of course, it served a purpose. We shall hear more about this strange episode – and I'll hazard a guess the story will change in the next few days and weeks. But what could be more titanic than the new and ominously named "Department for Homeland Security", with its 170,000 future employees and its $37.5bn (£26.6bn) budget? It will not, mark you, incorporate the rival CIA and FBI – already at each other's throats over the failure to prevent the crimes against humanity of 11 September – and will thus ensure that the intelligence battle will be triangular: between the CIA, the FBI and the boys from "Homeland Security". This, I suspect, will be the real titanic war.
Palestinian child shot dead on way to buy sweets
AL-MUGHRAQA, Gaza Strip, June 12 (Reuters) - Hussein al-Matwi's short, hard life in a Gaza Strip tent village ended as he went out to get a rare treat: sweets.
Israeli gunfire from a nearby Jewish settlement killed the eight-year-old boy on Tuesday evening, Palestinian security sources said, and wounded another young resident of al-Mughraqa, a mostly bedouin Palestinian village.
The Israeli army said troops at Netzarim settlement were returning fire after being shot at. Hours later, troops killed four Palestinian gunmen closing in to attack Netzarim, just south of Gaza City.
Whether the gunmen hailed from Mughraqa or just came by way of it, villagers on Wednesday felt more vulnerable than ever.
Matwi's mother, Selmia, described the boy dying as he went out on the most mundane of children's missions.
"He was crying and he wanted to buy some sweets, but soon he was about to step outside the tent, bullets sprayed the whole area," Selmia told Reuters.
"'Get down, kids,' I shouted. Hussein came in, putting his hand on his chest, which was bleeding."
At least 1,394 Palestinians and 509 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinians rose up against Israeli occupation in September 2000 after peace talks stalled. Hundreds of children are among the dead.
Canada 'all but undefended': study
Institute says weakness invites 'anxious' U.S. to violate our border in event of a crisis
Institute says weakness invites 'anxious' U.S. to violate our border in event of a crisis
Canada's military has withered so thoroughly the country is practically defenceless, according to a study released yesterday by the C.D. Howe Institute.
"Whether Canadians realize it or not, Canada is now all but undefended at a time of danger," Dr. Jack Granatstein writes for the institute.
Dr. Granatstein is a noted York University historian and chairman of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, a non-partisan group based in Calgary that advocates a greater government emphasis on defence.
However, Dr. Granatstein argues that the real threat posed by the deterioration of Canada's army, navy and air force is not from foreign invaders or terrorists, but from the United States.
He said Canada's military impotence threatens Canadian sovereignty because it invites the U.S. to take steps to defend itself against terrorist attacks, even to the point of sending troops onto Canadian soil.
"Although terrorism poses a real threat, it is not the most serious crisis," he wrote. "The danger lies in wearing blinkers about the United States at a time it is in a vengeful, anxious mood."
Trade Center Widows Lobby for Independent Inquiry
WASHINGTON, June 11 — The widows marched through the halls of Congress today, brandishing photos of their dead and a potent brew of patriotism, grief and indignation. The four women, New Jersey homemakers whose husbands vanished in the rubble of the World Trade Center, head a group demanding an independent inquiry into the events surrounding Sept. 11.
"It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser, 31, of Middletown, as she sat in the office of Representative Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."
Until now, it has been a largely Democratic chorus calling for the establishment of a blue-ribbon panel, much like the commissions that dissected the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the explosion of TWA Flight 800. President Bush has resisted the creation of an outside body, saying Congress can handle the job and suggesting that an additional investigation might interfere with national security.
Now showing on satellite TV: secret American spy photos
European satellite TV viewers can watch live broadcasts of peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations being conducted by US spyplanes over the Balkans.
Normally secret video links from the American spies-in-the-sky have a serious security problem - a problem that make it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of US intelligence activity than to get Disney cartoons or new-release movies.
For more than six months live pictures from manned spy aircraft and drones have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The satellite, Telstar 11, is a commercial TV relay. The US spyplane broadcasts are not encrypted, meaning that anyone in the region with a normal satellite TV receiver can watch surveillance operations as they happen.
The satellite feeds have also been connected to the internet, potentially allowing the missions to be watched from around the globe.
Viewers who tuned in to the unintended attraction on Tuesday could watch a sudden security alert around the US army's Kosovan headquarters, Camp Bondsteel in Urosevac. The camp was visited last summer by President Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
Bush favours "temporary" Palestinian state: Powell
BEIRUT: US President George W. Bush favours the creation of a "temporary state" for the Palestinians ahead of a full-fledged state, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview published on Wednesday.
"The president did not give up his objective but he knows that to reach his goal a temporary Palestinian state as an interim phase and maybe other measures would be necessary," Powell told the Arabic-language Saudi daily Al-Hayat.
Such a formula, according to Powell, would "allow the Palestinians to achieve their hopes and dreams, and secure the confidence of the international community".
But Powell cautioned that a temporary state needed to rely on "a democratic power, transparency without corruption and effective security agencies".
"This will help to develop the necessary confidence between the two parties (Palestinians and Israel) in order to push forward," Powell told Al-Hayat, which is published in Beirut and other Arab capitals.
Powell and Bush drift apart on Middle East
The differences between President George W Bush's pro-Israel Middle East policy and the approach favoured by Colin Powell, his secretary of state, were laid bare yesterday.
In an interview with Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, Gen Powell said: "It's up to the Palestinian people to determine who their leader is, to determine who should head their government. And, at the moment, Yasser Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people." Mr Arafat had to be negotiated with and "the president understands that".
Gen Powell also appeared to back Arab calls for "the end of the occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel so that "the creation of a state called Palestine" could take place there.
Impose peace and I call poll: Sharon
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has warned President George Bush that if Washington tries to impose a peace deal he will call early elections, thereby freezing the peace process.
The threat emerged as Mr Bush and officials were poised to consider a strategy for the Middle East, including the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Mr Sharon told Mr Bush at the White House this week that if countries tried to impose such a state he would call elections, which would paralyse diplomatic activity for months.
Mr Sharon said he envisioned a Palestinian state only after a long negotiating process and an end to all attacks against Israelis.
Bush 'bomber' disarray
THE White House has slapped down the US justice chief in a gathering row over the suspect in the "dirty bomb" case.
Two days after the sensational exposure of a plot to unleash a radiation bomb on a US city, questions about the case threatened a backlash against Washington’s "war on terror."
White House officials have objected bitterly to ominous warnings from John Ashcroft, the attorney general, that suspect Jose Padilla was poised to inflict "mass death and injury", it was reported yesterday.
The row came as President George Bush launched a push for his new multi-billion Department of Homeland Security - and against renewed warnings of al-Qaeda-inspired terror from Germany to Gibraltar.
The UK announced its own plans yesterday for a rapid reaction force to confront any terror attack, a 6,000-strong "home guard" drawn from the Territorial Army.
US officials suggested al-Qaeda might stir war in Kashmir. German security agents suggested the terror organisation could use bomb-laden model aeroplanes to down passenger aircraft.
It followed an alleged threat of suicide attacks on British warships by three Saudi Arabian men arrested in Morocco.
Timing of plot news fit Bush's agenda
The announcement Monday that U.S. officials had nabbed an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist who had planned to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the USA meshed neatly with President Bush ( news - web sites)'s agenda.
It came four days after Bush proposed a homeland security department in his Cabinet and 10 days after he began describing a doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes against countries that threaten the United States. It seemed to add impetus to his argument that Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) must be ousted before Iraq sells weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
But some people, especially some Democrats, wondered Tuesday whether the arrest announcement dovetailed a little too tidily with Bush's agenda.
Those questions were fueled by the fact that the announcement came a month after Abdullah Al Muhajir's arrest May 8 and by reports Tuesday that he had no radioactive material, no concrete plan and no target.
''It would just be interesting to know why any particular day is chosen more than a month after the fact to make an announcement, especially an announcement of this magnitude,'' says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. Other Democrats in Washington said the same thing privately.
Dirty bomber poses awkward questions for US
THERE are at least three troubling points about the sudden appearance of the “dirty bomber”, the latest “villain” on a stage rather short of prime suspects.
Yes, most obviously, the timing is politically inspired, beyond dispute. The Bush Administration announced on Monday that authorities had arrested Abdullah al-Mujahir, that he was a terrorist threat and that he had been planning to build a “dirty” bomb to spread radioactive contamination. Then it emerged that he had, in fact, been in custody since May 8.
Could the timing be related to the White House’s nervous bid to drum up support for its messy and controversial new Department of Homeland Security? Tom Daschle, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, revealed why he will never have the drama of delivery to make a plausible presidential candidate, offering only that “I have questions about why it was announced (on Monday), but I am certainly confident that the Administration would not politicise this issue”.
THE AGE OF MALARKEY
In an earlier column, I theorized that when the hijackers rammed those planes into the World Trade Center, they must've torn a hole in the space-time continuum, opening the door to another dimension – the Bizarro World – an alternate universe where everything is grotesquely inverted. But now it seems that the Great Inversion may have occurred far earlier, well before the hijackers succeeded in their hellish plot. The news that Mohamed Atta and friends paid a visit to the Department of Agriculture in order to apply for a government loan – after all, terrorism on the scale he imagined didn't come cheap – goes waaaay beyond bizarre, all the way to phantasmagoric. How else can we describe Johnelle Bryant's story of her close encounter with Atta, in which the terrorist mastermind walked in demanding a $650,000 government loan to fulfill his "immigrant's dream" and start a crop-dusting business?
"He wanted to finance a twin-engine six-passenger aircraft … and remove the seats. He said he was an engineer, and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Get straight on Mideast
Meeting Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, President Bush said that while the United States had no timetable for a Middle East peace conference, discussions on setting a date should get "started quickly." Said the president, all sides need to "seize the moment."
Meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Mr. Bush said "conditions aren't even there yet" for setting up a conference. He did not contradict Mr. Sharon's statement that "we don't see a partner" in Yasser Arafat. Yet Mr. Bush insisted that "Mr. Arafat is not the issue."
If the president's comments seem confusing, it is because the timetable that seems most important to the Bush administration and Congress is the November mid-term elections. With the House and Senate up for grabs, every voting bloc matters even more than usual. So the president puts off any meeting at which he might have to make demands of Israel, and lawmakers pass bipartisan resolutions in support of Israel that are designed as campaign commercials for Jewish voters. In the meantime, another suicide bomber attacked Tuesday inside Israel, fortunately killing only himself, and the Israeli army raided two towns and kept up the siege of Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Kristol's Unwelcome Message
CERNOBBIO, Italy -- Kristol's War, as it will henceforth be called, was declared after dinner here at the splendid Villa D'Este hotel on Lake Como. He announced a vast U.S. foreign policy agenda, beginning with a war against Iraq and ending with replacing the monarchy in Saudi Arabia. His audience of mostly Europeans at first gasped and then reacted with irritation. "Very provocative," many of them commented -- a polite way of saying that he, and by extension the Bush administration, was totally mad.
Our secretive government
A federal judge has slapped down yet another Bush administration attempt to assert broad, unchecked powers of secrecy.
At issue is a manuscript by Danny Stillman, a retired top official at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The proposed book is not about his 28 years at Los Alamos but about his trips to China in a private capacity to visit a nuclear lab and test site. The book is tentatively titled "Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program."
Like other employees in sensitive posts, Stillman had agreed to submit any manuscripts to review by government security specialists.
Disputes about what can and cannot be published are resolved by negotiation or, in an impasse, by the writer going to court to force the government to justify its censorship.
What's at issue here is not what Stillman wrote, but his right to go to court. The Bush administration insists he has none. Astonishingly, the administration insists that the federal courts have no standing to review its decisions about classifying information. And if those decisions violate someone's constitutional rights, that's just too bad.
The Bush administration is no friend of open government, but, even so, this sweeping assertion is, as U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said, "stunning." He ruled — and hurray for him — that, "This court will not allow the government to cloak its violations of plaintiff's First Amendment rights in a blanket of national security."
Families urge 9/11 inquiry
WASHINGTON -- With the prospect of a somber Father's Day ahead, widows, children and relatives of victims who died Sept. 11 rallied yesterday on Capitol Hill to demand an independent investigation into whether the government could have prevented the terrorist attacks.
"My 3-year-old daughter's most enduring memory of her father will be placing flowers on his empty grave," said Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, worked on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center Tower 2. "We need an investigation so that not one more child has to grow up knowing that their mother's or father's death could have -- and should have -- been prevented."
It was a mix of grief and anger shared by many of the more than 200 who attended the midday rally. Many wore photos of their relatives who died and carried signs urging Congress not to forget their personal stories of pain.
They were joined by a largely Democratic contingent of lawmakers who claimed that they want to make sure future attacks are averted, not conduct a witch-hunt.
"The government of the United States, in ways we don't still fully understand, let our people down. The institutions of our government, for reasons we don't yet grasp, appear to have failed," Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., told the crowd. "The American people need to know why, not only for the sake of justice or for their own peace of mind, but because the truth is the only way of assuring that it never happens again."
Kissinger may face extradition to Chile
Henry Kissinger may face extradition proceedings in connection with the role of the United States in the 1973 military coup in Chile.
The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning as a witness in the investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the socialist president, Salvador Allende, by General Augusto Pinochet.
It focuses on CIA involvement in the coup, whether US officials passed lists of leftwing Americans in Chile to the military and whether the US embassy failed to assist Americans deemed sympathetic to the deposed government.
Chile's Judge Juan Guzman is so frustrated by the lack of cooperation by Mr Kissinger that he is now considering an extradition request to force him to come to Chile and testify in connection with the death of the American film-maker and journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the military days after the coup.
Horman's story was told in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
Judge Guzman is investigating whether US officials passed the names of suspected leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities. Declassified documents have now revealed that such a list existed. Sergio Corvalan, a Chilean lawyer, said that he could not divulge the "dozens" of names on the list.
Timing of plot news fit Bush's agenda Some say backlash could occur if public suspects political motives
The announcement Monday that U.S. officials had nabbed an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist who had planned to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the USA meshed neatly with President Bush's agenda.
It came four days after Bush proposed a homeland security department in his Cabinet and 10 days after he began describing a doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes against countries that threaten the United States. It seemed to add impetus to his argument that Saddam Hussein must be ousted before Iraq sells weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
But some people, especially some Democrats, wondered Tuesday whether the arrest announcement dovetailed a little too tidily with Bush's agenda.
Those questions were fueled by the fact that the announcement came a month after Abdullah Al Muhajir's arrest May 8 and by reports Tuesday that he had no radioactive material, no concrete plan and no target.
''It would just be interesting to know why any particular day is chosen more than a month after the fact to make an announcement, especially an announcement of this magnitude,'' says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. Other Democrats in Washington said the same thing privately.
Bush's stage-managing of public pronouncements to serve his goals is a technique every president has used. Trying to dominate news coverage to remind voters that he and fellow Republicans are leading the war on terror is a perquisite of the presidency.
John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear
Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants?
The way the attorney general detonated the “dirty bomber” case this week completes his metamorphosis from a common press hog to a genuine fear monger.
That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.
That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.
In his Monday statement, Ashcroft said, “In apprehending Al Muhajir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive ‘dirty bomb.’”
By Monday night, my colleague Jim Stewart, was reporting that FBI sources were “backing off” Ashcroft’s assertion that there was a specific, developed, real plan to use a “dirty bomb” in the U.S.
By Tuesday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Administration’s hardest hard-liner, was telling CBS News that, “ I don’t think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and [Al Muhajir’s] coming in here obviously to plan further deeds.”
By Wednesday morning, White House sources were telling USA Today that Ashcroft had been chastised for overplaying the Padilla Plot.
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 16:34:51 +0200
From: "Mario Profaca"
Subject: FW: LAW: Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
From: "Lawsociety"
Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
10 June 2002
This morning at 2.30 am Israeli forces invaded Ramallah and El-Bireh from
different directions. A total of one hundred military vehicles, including
tanks, armored personnel carriers, and military jeeps, backed by two
Apache attack helicopters, firing heavy machine gunfire, occupied the
entire area and raided the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority for
the second time in five days. During the invasion the helicopters shelled
Um as-Sharayet neighborhood and 'Amari refugee camp. At 3.00 am Israeli
forces occupied the entire area of Ramallah and El-Bireh. During the raid
Israeli forces wounded a number of Palestinians and killed 26 years old
Yasser Sawalha, who was a member of the Palestinian security forces.
Israeli forces surrounded Ramallah Hospital, the Sheikh Zeid Hospital,
and the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and
prevented ambulances from gaining access to the wounded. According to Dr.
Wa'el Qadaan only two ambulances are operating, which happened to be
outside the surrounded area.
Israeli forces occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees (PARC) which hosts several press agencies, such as
Reuters, al-Watan TV, ABC News, Link, and Abu Dhabi TV and evacuated the
journalists. The building is one of the largest buildings in Ramallah and
strategically overlooks 'Amari refugee camp.
During the previous Israeli invasion of Ramallah on March 29, which
lasted more than a month, Israeli forces also surrounded the same
hospitals and occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees.
Six staff members of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee are
currently held hostage in the yard of the building. Also, Palestinian
journalist Ali al-Jayousi is also held by Israeli forces. Israeli forces
imposed a curfew on a number of neighborhoods, including Um as-Sharayet
and 'Amari refugee camp and arrested a number of residents. Last night
Israeli forces also raided Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and several areas in
Hebron.
LAW has repeatedly condemned Israel's obstruction of attempts by medical
personnel and others to aid the injured. Pursuant to Article 16 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli military has an obligation to
accord to the wounded and sick 'particular protection and respect.'
Violations of these well-established norms of international humanitarian
law have occurred on a significant scale in the Occupied Territories.
Violations of the right of medical personnel and health facilities to be
free from attack, commonly known as the right of medical neutrality, have
been pervasis during the course of the past twenty months. Medical
personnel 'of all categories' must be allowed to carry on their on their
duties and should be 'respected and protected' at all times.
Violations of the medical human rights by the Israeli military in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories are international offenses for which the
international community has legal standing to intervene. Such action is
required to protect the fundamental rights of the wounded civilians and
medical personnel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
LAW, therefore, urgently calls on the international community to take
effective measures in order to protect the rights and lives of
Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and specifically to
immediately send an independent, effective protection force to the area.
LAW calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention
to comply with their obligations to ensure respect for the Convention, by
taking urgent action to prosecute Israel's grave breaches of the Fourth
Geneva Convention (war crimes).
LAW also calls upon the European Union, a vital trading partner for
Israel, to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel and renew its
arms embargo against Israel as a means to pressure Israel into compliance
with basic norms of human rights and international humanitarian law.
_____________________________
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving
human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the International Federation
for Human Rights (FIDH), and the World Organisation Organisation Against
Torture (OMCT).
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2-
5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org
From: "Mario Profaca"
Subject: FW: LAW: Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
From: "Lawsociety"
Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
10 June 2002
This morning at 2.30 am Israeli forces invaded Ramallah and El-Bireh from
different directions. A total of one hundred military vehicles, including
tanks, armored personnel carriers, and military jeeps, backed by two
Apache attack helicopters, firing heavy machine gunfire, occupied the
entire area and raided the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority for
the second time in five days. During the invasion the helicopters shelled
Um as-Sharayet neighborhood and 'Amari refugee camp. At 3.00 am Israeli
forces occupied the entire area of Ramallah and El-Bireh. During the raid
Israeli forces wounded a number of Palestinians and killed 26 years old
Yasser Sawalha, who was a member of the Palestinian security forces.
Israeli forces surrounded Ramallah Hospital, the Sheikh Zeid Hospital,
and the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and
prevented ambulances from gaining access to the wounded. According to Dr.
Wa'el Qadaan only two ambulances are operating, which happened to be
outside the surrounded area.
Israeli forces occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees (PARC) which hosts several press agencies, such as
Reuters, al-Watan TV, ABC News, Link, and Abu Dhabi TV and evacuated the
journalists. The building is one of the largest buildings in Ramallah and
strategically overlooks 'Amari refugee camp.
During the previous Israeli invasion of Ramallah on March 29, which
lasted more than a month, Israeli forces also surrounded the same
hospitals and occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees.
Six staff members of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee are
currently held hostage in the yard of the building. Also, Palestinian
journalist Ali al-Jayousi is also held by Israeli forces. Israeli forces
imposed a curfew on a number of neighborhoods, including Um as-Sharayet
and 'Amari refugee camp and arrested a number of residents. Last night
Israeli forces also raided Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and several areas in
Hebron.
LAW has repeatedly condemned Israel's obstruction of attempts by medical
personnel and others to aid the injured. Pursuant to Article 16 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli military has an obligation to
accord to the wounded and sick 'particular protection and respect.'
Violations of these well-established norms of international humanitarian
law have occurred on a significant scale in the Occupied Territories.
Violations of the right of medical personnel and health facilities to be
free from attack, commonly known as the right of medical neutrality, have
been pervasis during the course of the past twenty months. Medical
personnel 'of all categories' must be allowed to carry on their on their
duties and should be 'respected and protected' at all times.
Violations of the medical human rights by the Israeli military in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories are international offenses for which the
international community has legal standing to intervene. Such action is
required to protect the fundamental rights of the wounded civilians and
medical personnel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
LAW, therefore, urgently calls on the international community to take
effective measures in order to protect the rights and lives of
Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and specifically to
immediately send an independent, effective protection force to the area.
LAW calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention
to comply with their obligations to ensure respect for the Convention, by
taking urgent action to prosecute Israel's grave breaches of the Fourth
Geneva Convention (war crimes).
LAW also calls upon the European Union, a vital trading partner for
Israel, to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel and renew its
arms embargo against Israel as a means to pressure Israel into compliance
with basic norms of human rights and international humanitarian law.
_____________________________
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving
human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the International Federation
for Human Rights (FIDH), and the World Organisation Organisation Against
Torture (OMCT).
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2-
5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org
British security sources raise doubts over US claims about 'dirty bomber'
British and European security officials are highly sceptical of American claims that the alleged "dirty bomb" plotter, Abdullah al-Muhajir, was preparing to unleash a radioactive attack.
British sources point out that despite extensive inquiries, no evidence has been produced to show that he had access to the radioactive material needed to build the bomb, or indeed that he had even worked out a time or place to launch the attack.
The most that could be said about Mr Muhajir, a former member of a Chicago street gang now allegedly working for al-Qa'ida, is that he had the "intention" of launching such an attack, security sources said.
President Bush announced yesterday that a "full-scale manhunt" was under way across the United States for accomplices of Mr Muhajir. "We will run down every lead, every hint. We're in for a long struggle in this war on terror. And there are people that still want to harm America."
Russian Foreign Ministry expresses "surprise" at U.S. statement on proliferation
MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed "surprise" Tuesday over a U.S. accusation that Russia was continuing to provide Iran and other states of concern with technology that could be used to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Monday that Russia "over the years has pursued policies that have led, and continue to lead in our judgment, to the proliferation" of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The U.S.-Russian relationship will depend on whether Moscow stopped the proliferation, he said.
In spite of the two countries' increasingly close ties, symbolized by the nuclear arms reduction agreement and declaration of partnership signed last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin ( news - web sites) and U.S. President George Bush, the U.S. government has harshly criticized Russia for allegedly advancing other countries' efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Afghans protest over US manipulation of summit influence at loya jirga
The warlords of Afghanistan rallied behind their interim leader, Hamid Karzai, yesterday in a display of unity that came after America engineered a climbdown by the country's former king.
Many tribal delegates attending the grand council, or loya jirga, called to pick the members of the new administration, expressed concern at the "outside influence" overshadowing the event. All were aware the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been the first to announce the former king would stay out of government, after intense backroom politicking delayed the assembly opening by 24 hours. The king's decision means Mr Karzai has no serious challenger as president.
"This is not a democracy," Sima Samar, the women's affairs minister, said yesterday. "This is a rubber stamp. Everything has already been decided by the powerful ones."
Karzai Made Mistake Claiming Presidency, Spokesman Says
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan ( news - web sites)'s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, made a mistake in claiming the presidency after the opening session of the Loya Jirga tribal assembly, a spokesman said Tuesday.
"The situation was confusing for us," Karzai spokesman Yousuf Nooristani told Reuters. "Karzai thought the audience applause meant they were voting for him. Later he found out it was a mistake."
Former king Mohammad Zahir Shah announced at the opening of the Loya Jirga, a traditional Afghan debating chamber that goes back centuries, that he did not want to restore the monarchy and that he was putting his support behind Karzai.
Asked by Reuters what he thought about the former king's support, Karzai said: "It is finished. The assembly has voted for me."
Nooristani said voting would start Wednesday. "There's a strong possibility that Karzai will win."
Military Force is No Solution
Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of the pitch of hostility is not consistent and pervasive, nor yet reflected on the ground. The military mobilisation at the border remains as frightful as ever – with more than a million soldiers eyeball-to-eyeball, and on high alert. Not only is this the greatest military mobilisation anywhere since World War II. It has an extraordinarily scary and unique nuclear dimension too.
Compounding this grim reality are shrill calls to discard all diplomatic options in favour of "decisive battles" to settle India-Pakistan disputes "once and for all." These calls emanate from official sources (e.g. Ministers Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Uma Bharati and I.D. Swamy), political leaders (e.g. Jana Krishnamurthy and Giriraj Kishore), and Right-wing commentators known more for obsessive militarism than for wisdom. As if this weren't bad enough, there is generalised smugness about the danger of a nuclear catastrophe, whose very possibility is being denied.
Hopefully, if present trends continue, some of the war hysteria will get diffused as the realisation sinks in of how seriously alarmed is the rest of the world about a possible nuclear outbreak in South Asia. The news of thousands of foreign nationals leaving, tourist and hotel bookings being cancelled, business contracts being put on hold, and the economy being badly hit will have an impact, favouring a cooling of India-Pakistan tensions. As will the visits of Messrs Rumsfeld and Armitage.
Legal challenge to 'dirty bomb' arrest
The American citizen accused of plotting a "dirty" bomb attack in the United States has challenged the legality of his detention.
There aren't any formal charges and... the defence community is outraged
Defence lawyer Donna Newman
The arrest of Abdullah al-Muhajir on 8 May at Chicago's O'Hare international airport was announced by the US Government on Monday.
Representing Mr al-Muhajir, defence lawyer Donna Newman has filed a petition questioning the legal basis for classifying her client as an enemy combatant - a term which allows for his indefinite detention without trial.
"He is being detained without time limit, or the right to counsel. There aren't any formal charges and that is why the defence community is outraged," she said.
Anti-Nuclear Activists in India Warn of Ignorance
NEW DELHI -- Unlike their Western counterparts, India's antinuclear activists are a lonely bunch.
But talk of a potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan has suddenly raised their profile with a recent cover story in the country's leading news magazine, India Today, showing people fleeing a giant mushroom cloud and a headline, "What If?"
Still, India's antinuclear movement says there is huge ignorance about the devastating consequences of a nuclear war in a country where hundreds of millions of people have to devote their energy to eking out a subsistence living.
"People in India are preoccupied with everyday problems and don't know what nuclear weapons are - they don't even know the fact that even a 'limited' nuclear war can kill millions," said Achin Vanaik, an executive member of the Coalition for Nuclear Peace and Disarmament.
In India, antinuclear activists are often accused of being unpatriotic because the country's membership in the nuclear club is seen by many as affirmation of its big power status, Vanaik said in an interview.
The antinuclear coalition, which bands together doctors, scientists, academics, social activists and writers, and runs on a shoestring out of members' homes, was founded two years after India held nuclear tests in 1998.
Aid Groups Say Israel Impedes Relief Work
JERUSALEM -- The U.N. ambulance had just dropped off a patient in critical condition at a West Bank hospital and was headed back to a nearby refugee camp when it came under fire. One bullet narrowly missed the oxygen tank. A second came within inches of a nurse's head. A third entered the back of 43-year-old assistant Kamal Hamdan, piercing his aorta and killing him almost immediately.
"It was clearly gunfire from an Israeli position," Richard Cook, director of operations for the U.N. Relief Works Agency in the West Bank, said of the March 7 incident. "We had our flag lit with a floodlight; it was marked with a red cross and the U.N. emblem; we'd made several runs that day; and they knew we were in the area."
Arrests, deportations, visa and travel restrictions, checkpoint harassment, threats, injuries and deaths are among the impediments that humanitarian groups say they're facing at the hands of Israeli immigration and military authorities as they struggle to deliver food, medicine and humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We in no way condone what is done from the other side with the suicide bombers and understand the Israeli need for security," Cook said. "If there's some sort of problem, show us the proof. But stop targeting our ambulances and stop killing our staff."
Reform on hold with Arafat under siege
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli Army Col. Ilan Paz stood in front of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's battered compound yesterday and casually chatted with soldiers training their assault rifles on what was once a proud symbol of Palestinian self-rule.
Arafat was holed up with his aides on the second floor of one of the few buildings still standing, just 100 yards away, but from the outside it appeared that the sprawling city-block-size complex was deserted. Not a person could be seen; not a single shot was fired by Arafat's elite presidential guard.
Instead of meeting with his newly restructured Cabinet, Arafat was under military siege once again. The Israeli army was surrounding his compound for the second time in five days and the third time since March.
"We don't want to be here at all," said Paz, a 42-year-old career military man, standing amid the bulldozed ruins of the compound's perimeter wall. "I would prefer to be on the outside. Unfortunately, that is not the situation we have right now."
Security Council chief warns of dwindling Jewish majority
Jews will be a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea by 2020, the chairman of the National Security Council, Major General Uzi Dayan told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.
Dayan said that if current demographic trends did not change, this area, in 2020, would have 15 million inhabitants, out of which Jews would constitute 45 percent and Arabs 55 percent. Currently, the ratio is reversed: There are some 5 million Jews and 4 million Arabs in the region.
Dayan said these demographic trends required Israel to make immediate strategic decisions as did the worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons.
"In the coming years, we are liable to find ourselves with 20 to 25 countries that possess nuclear weapons," he said, adding that these might include radical states such as Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq. All of these states were actively trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, primarily in the area of ground-to-ground missiles, he noted.
No Nuclear War
The British Broadcasting Corp. is reporting that most of the Brits in the private sector in India and Pakistan are staying put, despite official warnings that they should leave.
The people on the ground don't think there will be a nuclear war, and I vote with them, despite the nervous Nellies in the government and the media.
The reason is that both sides, I'm sure, realize using nuclear weapons puts the cost of war so high that not even so-called victory would be worth it. It's the paradox of nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, I think the United States and the Soviet Union would have gone to war in the 1950s. Instead, both sides showed admirable restraint.
And so, too, will Pakistan and India show restraint. That doesn't mean their troops might not come to blows along the Line of Control that separates the Pakistan-controlled areas from the Indian-controlled areas.
'Dirty' Bombs, and the Bush Administration’s Dirty Little Secret
New York, NY – June 11, 2002 – Yesterday’s announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft that authorities had a Brooklyn-born Latino man in custody for involvement in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to explode a radiological bomb in Washington, DC underscored once again the continuing vulnerability of the United States to a wide variety of possible terrorist attacks.
"If the evidence against the suspect proves to be accurate, the Bush administration deserves credit for heading off this plan in its early stages," said William D. Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute.
"But this case also highlights the Bush administration’s dirty little secret. They still don’t have their priorities straight when it comes to taking measures to thwart the most damaging -- or the most likely – kinds of potential terror attacks on U.S. soil."
There is general agreement among experts that the most damaging effects of a so-called 'dirty bomb' – a conventional explosive set up to disperse radioactive materials in a populated area – would be psychological and economic. Loss of life would be minimal compared to the use of a nuclear weapon, which could kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a highly populated urban area. The threat of a radiological weapon still needs to be taken seriously, however, since a crude device would be far easier to construct and transport than a nuclear weapon, and the fear and chaos that the use of one or more of these devices would cause could strike a devastating blow to the morale of the public, as well as to the economies of the targeted areas.
Why the Secrecy Shield?
The Pentagon has made a decision that threatens to keep the American public and Congress in the dark about how things are going with the Bush administration's high-priority missile defense program.
As revealed in Defense Daily, a defense trade publication, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has decided to classify as "secret" details of targets and countermeasures to be used in all future flight intercept tests of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system. Beginning with the next test, now scheduled for late July, the policy will be to withhold specifics about the targets or decoys used.
On its face, this new classification policy seems reasonable. If the Pentagon reveals which kinds of targets it can hit and which it misses, an enemy will have an advantage. Similarly, if the Pentagon reveals which decoys and countermeasures work against this system, an enemy can employ only the most effective decoys.
Bush Intelligence Plan Meant to Blunt Tough Questions
WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 7—President Bush's proposal for a new homeland security department amounts to dropping a fragmentation bomb on Congress to bust up growing demands for an inquiry into who knew what when about 9-11.
Put forward in a national address Thursday night, Bush's idea for a centralized anti-terror agency will cause members of the Capitol Hill intelligence committees, who already are bickering among themselves over what their inquiry is about, to get consumed with covering their asses and maintaining control over the spy corps they now supervise. The Senate Judiciary Committee, the one congressional committee somewhat likely to take a serious look at the management of the FBI, will now be taken up with parceling out sections of the Justice Department, such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and other agencies with judicial functions.
Most importantly, it puts Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's call for an independent investigatory commission on the sidelines. As his party's leader on the Hill, Daschle must now concentrate on Democratic responses to the Bush plan, along with managing turf battles. And he will have to rejigger his own underground campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. His main competitor, Senator Joe Lieberman, is already taking credit for the new homeland department, since he proposed the same thing before the president took over the notion.
J. Edgar Hoover is back
The vaunted reorganization of the FBI is actually, in dangerous essence, a return to J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation from 1956 to 1971. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are again unleashing the FBI to infiltrate, monitor and target lawful organizations and their members, or visitors — with no current or planned evidence of illegal activity.
COINTELPRO was closed down because of unbridled FBI abuses of the First and Fourth amendments, along with other parts of the Constitution. "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considered threats," pledged then-Sen. Frank Church of Idaho — chairman of the Senate Select Committee to investigate the FBI's violations of fundamental American liberties — in 1975.
Because of the abuses of COINTELPRO, guidelines were set — which have now been dismissed by the attorney general — requiring that FBI agents could not investigate gatherings in church or other meetings without some evidence that someone there may have done, or planned to do, something illegal.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
America: Broken as Designed
The most significant test of any system is how it handles unanticipated situations. A well-designed and implemented system is one which can continue to operate correctly (i.e. one which continues to embody its design principles and function according to its specifications) in a situation which was not considered in its creation. A system which does not must be considered flawed, either in design or implementation.
While those of here who are scientists and engineers use this principle of evaluation daily in our work, it's likely that few of us (and probably even fewer in the general population) have applied this principle to the State(s) in which we live. Since the United States, in its current form, is over two hundred years old (and one of its designers, Thomas Jefferson himself, advocated such a review every twenty years), a public review of how well it has proceeded is long overdue.
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A well-formed project will have three things, not because they are necessary for its success, but because they are necessary for deciding whether it has succeeded. These are: 1) a statement of goals, 2) a specification and 3) the implementation. Without these, it is impossible to look at a finished system and reasonably decide to what degree it is (or is not) what was intended and to what degree it actually performs the functions it's intended to perform.
The United States is a rarity among States, in that it possesses all three of these things:
1) statement of goals: The Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers
2) design specification: The Constitution
3) implementation: the State as it exists
(Most modern States possess a written Constitution, though as I understand it the United Kingdom does not, and obviously all States, in that they exist, possess an implementation. Few, however, have a written statement of the founders intentions; the United States, the Soviet Union and Maoist China are quite a rare collection in that respect.)
Since the U.S. has all three attributes, it is possible to evaluate it as we would any other project. This involves answering three questions;
1) How closely does the specification follow the stated goals?
2) How well does the implementation follow the specification?
3) How accurately does the implementation embody the stated design goals?
America warned two years ago over September 11: Report
Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 warned the United States about terrorist plans to use civilian planes in "unconventional ways" two years before the September 11 strikes, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
In 1999, MI6 handed a secret report to liason staff at the US embassy in London after the intelligence service learned of such plans by followers of prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times said.
The information did not specify targets and would not necessarily have enabled US agencies to prevent the September 11 plane attacks on New York and Washington, the paper quoted intelligence sources as saying.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been sharply criticised for intelligence failures ahead of September 11, when hijacked planes were steered into the World Trade Center and Pentagon with the loss of some 3,000 lives.
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