It's the biggest comeback of the millennium to date: nuclear weapons.
Only this isn't your parents' nuclear winter. It's a whole new one, as is made clear in a classified Pentagon report leaked last week detailing the Bush administration's willingness to significantly lower the threshold for going nuclear. Apparently the bar has now been set at "in the event of surprising military developments." But as recent events in the Shah-i-Kot Valley proved, there are rarely any other kind. So this pretty much means "at the will of the president."
Last week also saw the release of a report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) that details how the Pentagon, two major military contractors, TRW and Boeing, and a team of high-powered MIT scientists fabricated the success of the nation's first missile defense test -- turning an embarrassing failure into a phony triumph.
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Karl Rove's loyalty police should be on deep orange alert, if not hot pink. There is a sleeper cell operating in the White House.
This tale begins with Joseph Shattan, who penned an article titled "Bush's Blunder" for National Review Online on Oct. 15. Bush's endorsement of a Palestinian state confirmed "America's cowardice and corruption" to Middle Easterners, he wrote. "Thanks entirely to the president and his team . . . the campaign to defeat the Islamist challenge has gotten off to a singularly inauspicious start."
And what is Shattan doing now? Well, he's about to begin a new job -- as a White House speechwriter. The appointment is all the more intriguing because Shattan recently had been recruited as a speechwriter for the Energy Department. His hiring was vetoed by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which cited the heretical article.
An international press organisation has denounced the increase of violence against journalists and new restrictions on the media in many countries in the Americas.
A report by the Inter-American Press Association says the situation has worsened in countries such as Colombia, Mexico and Haiti with more cases of intimidation, kidnappings and killings of media workers.
Most successful swindles come with a bribe. Certainly the greatest swindle of modern times - the pensions racket of the late 1980s and early 1990s - could never have worked without a big bribe from the government. Soon after the big Tory victory in 1983, a gang of tightly knit Thatcherites, closely connected to the privately financed University of Buckingham and the banks, decided on a big push for private enterprise in the field of old age pensions. These men were offended by what they regarded as the "crypto-socialist" combination of state and occupational pension schemes. They campaigned for "portable pensions" - a dream world in which working people could go through life reinforced with their own personal pension bought individually with their own money to the profit of a bank or an insurance company.
NEW YORK, March 18 — Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Ayman Zawahiri, and Taliban commander Saif Rahman Mansour, among many other key U.S. targets, are still at large. Al-Qaida forces are demonstrating surprising resilience in the field and appear to be regrouping in Pakistan. Violence is escalating in the Middle East. Our “homeland” remains woefully unprepared for another terrorist attack, which the government continues to assure us is likely. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney is in the middle of an 11-nation Middle East tour, trying and failing to round up support for a military action against Iraq. President Bush, however, remains undeterred. “We are going to deal with him,” he promises of Saddam Hussein, “All options are on the table.”
Thanks to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, we now know much more about the contents of the Bush administration's secret "Nuclear Posture Review." But it's not a pretty sight. In essence, America's undue fascination with dropping the bomb on somebody became further unhinged in the wake of Sept. 11. Which is bad news indeed. For, as Joseph Gerson wrote before Sept. 11, "on more than 20 occasions since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and at least 5 times since the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises and wars."
Notwithstanding the Bush administration's comforting public statements about reducing our nuclear arsenal, we now know that the President and the Pentagon are taking steps to be able to explode nuclear weapons: (1) against targets impervious to conventional weapons, (2) in retaliation for an attack using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and (3) "in the event of surprising military developments." Seven countries - China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Syria - have been listed as potential recipients of such explosions.
WASHINGTON - Senior senators in both political parties put the Bush administration on notice Tuesday that they expect it to consult Congress before deciding to launch a U.S. military operation to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Senate Armed Services Committee members delivered the stern message to CIA Director George Tenet during a hearing on the intelligence community's latest assessment of leading threats to U.S. security.
The senators' comments underscored growing concern inside Congress, within the uniformed U.S. military, and among America's allies in Europe and the Arab world about the potential risks, costs and scope of Bush's global war on terrorism. Especially worrisome is Bush's apparent determination to topple Saddam, which could embroil U.S. forces in a major war in a hostile region, with unpredictable consequences.
The panel's top Republican, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, told Tenet that the Bush administration has not yet answered critical questions about its plans for Iraq, particularly the impact of Saddam's ouster on regional and U.S. security.
Tuesday, March 19, 2002 - First we learned the Denver police have secret files on more than 3,200 people and 250 organizations in the city. Then we found out they were surreptitiously videotaping public demonstrations.
But now the cops have really gone too far. The Denver police apparently have started surveilling ladies who lunch.
Even during wartime, you have to admit, this is a bit extreme.
It all started on Feb. 8.
Kim Sayers had been upset about the Enron scandal and several Bush administration policies, so when she heard that the president would be speaking at the Convention Center that day, she decided it was a good time to exercise her First Amendment rights.
She called a friend, and they prepared some placards and planned to picket the event. One sign said, "Enronomics: How the U.S. budget got Layed." Another said, "W budget + Enronomics = fuzzy math." The third said, "He wasn't elected Sept. 11 either."
LOS ANGELES, March 19 — The Bush administration, under pressure from lawsuits by real estate developers, is urging federal judges to roll back legal protections for nearly two dozen populations of endangered species around the country.
In an effort to resolve as many as a dozen cases against them, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, two agencies that enforce the Endangered Species Act, are asking federal courts in California to rescind millions of acres of protected habitat for whipsnakes in the state's northern grasslands, rare birds in the scrublands to the south, fairy shrimp in shallow pools along the coast and salmon among the rivers, estuaries and shorelines of four Western states.
The administration is also questioning whether to preserve the "critical habitat" designations that safeguard millions of acres for about 10 other endangered species, from the Mexican spotted owl to the California red-legged frog, signaling a widespread shift in environmental policy that has consoled developers and incensed environmentalists.
JERUSALEM, March 19 -- Vice President Cheney said today he would be willing to return to the Middle East as early as next week to meet Yasser Arafat if the Palestinian leader takes steps to calm the violence in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
A meeting between Cheney and Arafat -- which Cheney avoided during his two-day visit here -- would make the vice president the highest-ranking Bush administration official to meet the longtime Palestinian leader and cast him into the role of Middle East peacemaker that he has long avoided.
An ongoing source of frustration and anger for many Americans is the lack of support the war on terrorism has received abroad. Other nations are considerably less enthusiastic about our use of "daisy cutter" and "thermobaric" bombs than we think they should be. Why is that?
One reason is their media. Stories alleging imperial and commercial motives for the war on terrorism are rife.
Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. military deployments in Central Asia mostly are about oil.
An article in the Guardian of London headlined, "A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil," foreshadowed the kind of skeptical coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries.
"The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism," wrote author George Monbiot in the Oct. 22, 2001, piece, "but it may also be a late colonial adventure."
He wrote that the U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with the Taliban since 1995 to build "oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea." He cited Ahmed Rashid's authoritative book "Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" as a source for this information.
March 19, 2002 (Political Sanity/APJP) -- Let's begin our examination of the real Reagan Legacy by taking a look at myth number one: Democrats dominated Congress all through Reagan's terms, and called all his budgets Dead On Arrival.
That's numerically and historically false. Reagan's people shoved his program through the Congress during the early Reagan years. James A. Baker, David Stockman and other Reaganites ran roughshod over Tip O'Neill and the divided Democrats in the House and Senate, and won every critical vote. This is because of the GOP majority in the Senate and the GOP-"Boll Weevil" (or "Dixiecrat") coalition in the House. Phil Gramm was a House Democrat at the time, and he even sponsored the most important Reagan budgets.
Only after the huge Reagan recession -- made worse by utterly failed Reagan "Voodoo Economics" - did Democrats regain some control in Congress. They halted some Reagan initiatives, but couldn't do much on their own. That was a time of gridlock.
Six years into Reagan's presidency, Democrats retook the Senate, and began to reverse some of Reagan's horrendous policies. By that time, Reaganomics had "accomplished" quite a bit: doubled the national debt, caused the S&L crisis, and nearly wrecked the financial system.
DENVER — The local government here officially threw its lot in with Portland, Ore. and a handful of other municipalities around the country, passing a resolution Monday night discouraging police from enforcing new anti-terror legislation if doing so would interfere with peoples’ civil rights.
A major international espionage saga is unfolding across the United States, with some of its roots right here in the Atlanta area. It's been pretty hush-hush so far, largely because the implications could be a major embarrassment for the government.
The spy story is even more touchy because it isn't Saddam, Fidel, Osama or even what passes nowadays for the KGB spying on America -- but our "friend" in the war against "evil," Israel.
The basis of the spy allegations is a 60-page document -- a compilation of field reports by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other U.S. law enforcement officials.
Creative Loafing last week obtained a copy of the report from intelligence sources with long-term contacts among both Israeli and American agencies. The government has attempted to deflect attention from earlier leaks about the spy scandal. However, while declining to confirm or deny the authenticity of the document, a spokesman for the DEA, William Glaspy, did acknowledge that the agency had received many reports of the nature described in the 60 pages.
GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson Tuesday blamed outlawed paramilitary groups for an upsurge in killings, kidnappings and torture in Colombia, where the government has been fighting leftist rebels for decades.
Calling the deterioration in the human rights situation ''grave, massive and systematic,'' Robinson urged the government to act against the right-wing paramilitaries who are often suspected of having links to security forces.
``Unfortunately, throughout 2001 there was a significant deterioration in the human rights situation,'' Robinson said in a report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, whose 53 member states are holding their annual session in Geneva.
``The activities of paramilitary groups constituted the main cause of these violations and the state cannot ignore its responsibilities,'' she added.
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Sen. Pat Roberts is a Marine veteran, a knowledgeable member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a loyal conservative Republican. Accordingly, it is hard for him to take issue with what Bush said last week. But as a blunt-spoken Kansan and a patriotic American, Roberts feels constrained to express concern.
''Why are we rattling the cage so much?'' asked Roberts, posing a question that might be asked at the Dodge City ''coffee klatch'' in his hometown. He was stunned by President Bush's remarkable Wednesday news conference, which included threats of imminent attack against Iraq and did not rule out using tactical nuclear weapons. As a senior GOP member of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee, Roberts knows of no change in Saddam Hussein's military posture to warrant the president's stance. ''I have a lot of questions,'' he told me.
Roberts is not alone, though few other senators dare speak out. One who does is Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, another conservative Republican and a veteran of combat in Vietnam. As a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, he has listened to foreign leaders alarmed by Bush's comments. ''This kind of rhetoric, I think, is dangerous,'' Hagel told me, ''because it does put us in a position where you have to take action or you're going to look like you're bluffing and lose your credibility.''
When Bush faced reporters in a formal news conference for the first time in five months Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Cheney was on a whirlwind international mission, presumably testing allied reaction to U.S. military action against Saddam. Still, nobody expected the president's remarkable posture.
Asked about published reports that the United States is considering the use of low-yield nuclear weapons against rogue nations, Bush replied that ''we've got all our options on the table.'' In political talk, that is a ''yes.'' When he was later asked about military action, the president used identical language: ''All options are on the table.'' That raised the possibility of a nuclear attack on Baghdad.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter
The controversial former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq says Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are largely disarmed, the "Iraqi threat" is built on a framework of lies and President Bush has betrayed the American people.- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Asla Aydintasbas
March 19, 2002 | During the Gulf War, Scott Ritter, then a junior military intelligence analyst, picked a fight with his boss. He filed one report after another challenging Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's claims about the number of destroyed Iraqi Scud missiles. We cannot confirm these kills, Ritter reported, much to Schwarzkopf's bewilderment. Despite pressure from the top, Ritter, a Marine captain from a military family, held his ground, challenging his superiors and the establishment.
That was just a warm-up for the man the New York Times called "the most famous renegade Marine officer since Oliver North."
In the years since, Ritter, who was chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM) until he abruptly resigned in 1998, has waged two battles -- the first with Saddam Hussein, the second with the government of the United States.
As a weapons inspector, Ritter was Baghdad's bête-noire, working with single-minded -- some said overreaching -- zeal to ferret out Iraq's concealed weapons of mass destruction. In 1997, the Iraqi government accused him of being a spy and refused to let him into sensitive facilities.
In 1998, inspections by Ritter and his teams resulted in the most serious confrontation between Iraq and the United Nations since the Gulf War. The U.S. publicly stood by Ritter, but privately tried to tone down the confrontational nature of the inspections. Saddam expelled UNSCOM; Ritter, who was being investigated by the FBI on charges that he was a spy for Israel, quit in protest over what he described as Washington's refusal to confront Saddam. (Many believe he was forced out of his post because the UNSCOM thought the U.S. had too much influence over it.) The United States ended up staging Operation Desert Fox, the largest military offensive against Iraq since the Gulf War.
Out of the intelligence game, Ritter became a vocal critic of the Clinton administration's policy on Iraq. There was too much pretense, too much infiltration of UNSCOM by the CIA, no real effort to enforce the inspections regime, he charged. He became a nuisance for Washington and a blessing for Republican hawks. During 1998 testimony before Congress, Ritter was hailed as a "true American hero."
But in 1999, Ritter confounded get-Saddam hawks who thought he was in their camp when he published "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem -- Once and for All." In it, Ritter repeated his charge that UNSCOM's mission had ultimately been compromised by Washington's use of the inspections to spy on Saddam. But the bombshells were his assertion that Iraq was no longer a military threat and his call for the U.S. to quickly give Iraq a clean bill of health and lift its harsh sanctions, which he asserted were killing thousands of innocent Iraqi children. His solution: a Marshall plan to rebuild the country.
Ritter seems to have completely reversed himself regarding Iraq's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 1998 he warned a joint hearing of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees that "Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months." And in a December 1998 article for the New Republic, Ritter stated, "Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed." Yet he now says Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are largely dismantled and pose little or no threat.
His turnaround has caused consternation, to say the least, among many of his former colleagues and current critics. "I have no idea what has overtaken him," his former boss Richard Butler said. On another occasion, Butler said, "I'll say this about Scott, either he's misleading the public now, or he misled me then." Ritter, however, insists he has been saying the same thing all along -- people just paid attention to what fit their political agendas.
In a documentary, "In Shifting Sands," which he describes as chronicling the weapons inspection process and attempting to "de-demonize" Iraq, Ritter makes the explosive charge that in 1998, Butler told him to deliberately provoke a confrontation with Baghdad as a pretext for a U.S. bombing campaign. Butler has vehemently denied the charge. The conservative Weekly Standard attacked Ritter and the film, pointing out that Ritter was allowed back into Iraq with approval of the Iraqi government to make the film. "U.S. intelligence officials and arms control advocates say Ritter has been played -- perhaps unwittingly -- by Saddam Hussein," the Standard reporter argued. "'If you're Scott Ritter,' says one arms expert, 'the former "cowboy" weapons inspector, kicked out by Saddam Hussein, you're not going to get back into Iraq unless Saddam Hussein invites you and wants you there.'"
Ritter, meanwhile, has denied that there's any evidence connecting Saddam to al-Qaida -- as writers such as the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg and the New York Times' William Safire charge. And with Washington beating war drums against Iraq, it's not surprising that few inside the Bush administration are in a mood to listen to a former arms inspector whose views on Saddam's capacity to inflict mayhem appear to have experienced a 180-degree turn. But Ritter, a Republican who appears regularly on TV, is carrying on with his crusade to warn America against what he describes as a dangerous hard-line obsession with removing what he sees as a defanged old dictator. Salon spoke with him late last week.
When you resigned from your position as the chief arms inspector for Iraq, you were hailed as "the American hero." What made you write your book, which in the end cost you the support of many?
If I kept silent about this, that would be a lie. I am a Marine Corps officer. We never operate outside our code of honor and integrity. The truth is paramount. This is not a nation that should be building on a body of lies. As the inconsistencies of consecutive American administrations' policies on Iraq start to emerge, my position is starting to become recognized as a sound position. People start to recognize that much of what the U.S. has done has been outside the international law, outside the framework of United Nations Security Council resolutions, that Washington purports to support.
On the other hand, according to polls, over 60 percent of Americans are willing to go to war with Iraq.
I don't care about polls -- they are easily manipulated. I don't care that 75 to 80 percent of Americans want to go to war with Iraq, that's not justification for going to war with Iraq. That's why we have laws in this land that prevent mob rule by people storming to the town hall and demanding that somebody be hanged. We should allow the due process [to work] in dealing with Iraq and all the facts to be placed on the table. But the facts are inconvenient for politicians who are pushing for war.
The argument from those who push for action against Saddam Hussein, including some high-level government officials, is that Iraq, with all its weapons, poses a serious threat. Are you saying they are lying?
Dr. [Paul] Pillar, the national intelligence officer [for Near East and South Asia] for the CIA, gave a speech at Johns Hopkins two weeks ago and said Iraq does not pose a threat to the United States, especially on a one-on-one basis, that warrants the use of military power in such naked fashion. If we act in the way the Bush administration wants us to act, that would put us outside of the international law, outside the U.N. charter and on a shortlist of countries that include North Korea when it invaded South Korea and, sadly, Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. That's not a list I want my country on.
Unilateralism is a term [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld endorse. They are the unilateralists -- they believe the United States has a unique position in world history. We are the beacon which the world will follow. We have a moral obligation to lead, they say, and if we fail to lead, the world will devolve into chaos and anarchy. This allows them to say things about Iraq. When people bring up that there is no international support, they say, "They will support us once we begin or once they see we are serious." Well, maybe, and maybe not. But what I do know is that the coalition we put together to fight the war in Afghanistan is a legitimate coalition. When asked about what justification we have to go after Saddam, Richard Perle [chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon] cites "self-defense." That is, Saddam's continued existence is a threat to the U.S. because of weapons of mass destruction and because Saddam might take these weapons and give them to terrorists. Although nothing in the history of past Iraqi actions suggest this. It is pure fabrication, but that is the basis around which Perle, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are working.
It's hard to imagine Iraq as a harmless little country. In the '80s it attacked Iran, turned on the Kurds, then turned around and invaded Kuwait -- not to mention being a regional bully all along.
Saddam Hussein is a man who believes in his own version of regional hegemony. But we have to deal with facts. What is the Iraq of 2002? It has a pathetic army, a pathetic air force and an economy in tatters, destroyed by misuse, sanctions and the military. Its social infrastructure has been destroyed. It cannot project the kind of irresponsible behavior that happened in 1990. Iraq cannot project power. Economic sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis. The devastation wrought on Iraq means that once Iraq can reconstitute its economy, there is a real chance of creating a new Iraq, a new social identity and a national identity built upon the concepts of economic stability -- even if Saddam Hussein stays in power. The new reality in Iraq will focus on rebuilding the Iraqi economy.
This sounds like a fantasy. You know that no American president could suggest a rekindling of relations with Saddam, let alone lifting the sanctions, or the kind of Marshall Plan you are advocating.
That could eventually change. George Bush and his inner circle have betrayed the American people since 9/11. They are justified in their war on terror -- we are obligated to do this -- but they failed by taking political advantage of the upsurge of patriotic fervor to push for an extreme right-wing domestic, military and foreign policy agenda that has nothing to do with Sept. 11. John Ashcroft proceeded with some of the assaults on civil liberties. This is wrong and the American public will not fall for it for too much longer. I believe that Democrats are going to pick up on Iraq on this issue and start debating this issue. Once they take on the Bush administration on this extreme position, I think there is no choice but to endorse the kind of diplomatic engagement I am advocating.
You seriously believe Iraq will be the decisive political battle for Americans?
American people won't buy this charade that is going on right now. Bush will be voted out in the next term. On Iraq, where is the threat? I challenge Perle, Butler, Wolfowitz or anyone to a debate about Iraq's weapons programs. When you deal with facts, this kind of rhetoric no longer flies. This entire "Iraqi threat" is built on a framework of lies -- a house of cards. The policymakers in the Bush administration continue to formulate policy in this never-never land.
Conventional wisdom says we are close to taking military action against Iraq. You don't think Saddam's regime is a threat that needs to be dealt with? What if a U.S. action ends up being short and sweet and a triumph for democracy in the Middle East?
If we go against Iraq, it will require extensive military power -- more than the 75,000 [troops] that some claim. We are talking about 150,000 to 200,000 troops. Kurds and Shiites are saying don't go after Saddam. There is no Northern Alliance in Iraq and the Iraqi army is not the Taliban. If we go into Iraq, we will have to go into densely populated areas, villages, farms. People will fight back. The army will fight. They won't fight Saddam; they will fight against us, the invader, with thousands of deaths. We are talking about an unpopular war with no popular support in Iraq and going into Baghdad. Sure we'll win -- we always do. But it'll never last. Central authority in Iraq will collapse. How long will the mothers of America allow their sons to patrol the streets of Baghdad with no end in sight? When we eventually run, Iraq will collapse. Turks, Iranians, Saudis will be making a move, and the U.S. will be fundamentally isolated in the region.
You sound pretty jaded.
The second a democracy views its citizens standing up and asking its government questions, the second that becomes an act of treason, we have a problem. Americans have forgotten what it means to be a serious functioning democracy. Democracy means being involved in the process, and not just nodding your head dumbly. We have a mass of Americans now that seem to view news as entertainment. That's why they accept the statements at face value of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others when they say, "We know Iraq has chemical weapons." And it gets very difficult when Scott Ritter says, "Time out. This is a very complicated issue."
But isn't that a change of heart? Those were the same people who supported you. How did you arrive at your present point of view after being Saddam Hussein's nemesis as the chief U.N. arms inspector?
I've been consistent throughout. When I resigned [from UNSCOM], I resigned in defense of the weapons inspections process. I spoke out against what I saw as a systematic failure of the international community to back up Security Council resolutions. I spoke out against Iraq, which continued to obstruct the job of weapons inspectors. I spoke out against the United States, which manipulated the inspection process for purposes other than mandated by the Security Council, namely, the collection of intelligence information against Saddam Hussein. I spoke out against Secretary General [Kofi Annan], for getting involved in a Security Council process. I spoke out against the Security Council for failing to effectively enforce the implementation of the law it set down.
All I am doing [now] is holding the mirror up to those who passed the law. I merely said you've put the law on the books, and the law isn't being implemented. Therefore, you have an obligation to enforce the law. If you don't want the law, then change it.
Still, many were surprised when a few years ago you wrote in your book it was time to get rid of sanctions and engage with Iraq, especially since as an arms inspector, you were criticizing Washington for shying away from confrontation with Saddam.
I haven't changed, circumstances have. In 1998 I said the best way forward is to revive the legitimacy of the inspections, to get the inspectors back in, not to spy on Iraq, not to undermine the authority of Saddam Hussein. In other words, not to do anything other than what we were mandated to do: to disarm Iraq. In December 1998, the United States did exactly this. Acting under instructions of the United States government, Richard Butler [UNSCOM chairman] unilaterally dismissed the modalities for sensitive site inspections. Iraq was willing to accept inspections otherwise. But with no modalities, Butler opened the door for Iraq to say, you cannot come into this site. The United States bombed Iraq, citing this obstruction as justification. But of the over 120 sites struck by the United States in Operation Desert Fox, less than 12 had anything to do with UNSCOM's mandate. The remainder were Saddam's security, intelligence, military, and the vast majority were revealed as a part of the inspections process. So the U.S. corrupted and delegitimized the inspections process. You can no longer hold Iraq to a standard of 100 percent disarmament, to a [United Nations] resolution the U.S. no longer finds convenient to adhere to itself.
You definitely do not sound like a poster child for the hawks who want to topple Saddam.
I was not America's poster boy when I resigned. Since 1991, I confronted the United States on an almost daily basis about the manipulation of the inspection process by American intelligence services. And I demanded that we retain the integrity of the inspection process. It was a very confrontational relationship. I was backed by Rolf Ekeus [former UNSCOM chairman] during the first six years of my work. However, when Richard Butler came in, he started to accede to the demands of Americans to interfere with legitimate inspection activity. I find it incredible that conservative elements in America say here is the poster boy. They picked me as a poster boy when they hadn't a clue what they were endorsing. Once they figured out the complexity of the issue, suddenly it wasn't as convenient as they thought it would be. I wrote papers between 1992 and 1997 that found that Iraq was largely in compliance, that we had achieved a 90 to 95 percent level of disarmament.
If you thought all along that Baghdad got rid of its weapons, what was all the fuss about? We kept hearing that inspectors were not allowed in certain facilities. We bombed Iraq over this. Even your book is a chronicle of what you call the Iraqi mechanism of deception -- of Iraqis trying to obstruct the work of UNSCOM. Does Iraq have something to hide or not?
On the scientific and technical level, UNSCOM achieved a 90 to 95 percent level of disarmament. Qualitatively, Iraq is no longer capable of producing these prohibited goods -- their factories, production equipment and the weapons themselves were largely eliminated. At the same time we found out that Iraq was carrying out systematic concealment activities designed to mislead the weapons inspectors. Most of this took place between the years 1991 and 1993 -- in fact, we have very little evidence that anything took place after 1993. Ninety-eight missiles, and six operational launchers, entire biological [facilities], major aspects of the chemical weapons program including VX nerve agent production were concealed. In the end, rather than turning over programs that they had denied, Iraqis destroyed them, and all documents on this were hidden from the special commission.
We were investigating Iraq's past concealment programs. By fall 1997, we were able to confront Iraq with a hard body of evidence that could not be refuted. They finally admitted, yes, there was systematic concealment from 1991 to 1995 by the special Republican Guard, and they identified the persons involved. But they said now there is no concealment program. We could not accept this at face value. We kept pushing and pushing and uncovered acts of concealment. But it turns out they were not concealing documents pertaining to weapons of mass destruction, but documents about the [personal] security of Saddam Hussein. It became this vicious circle -- the more we distrusted the Iraqis, the closer to Saddam we got. The closer to Saddam we got, the more they evacuated material about the security of Saddam. We detected this evacuation and distrusted even more, leading to the cycle of confrontation that dominated our inspections from 1997 to 1998.
So you ended up investigating Iraq's security system -- not the stockpile?
What did directorate M23 [the Iraqi department of political dissent and the place that carries out assassinations] have to do with weapons of mass destruction? The answer is nothing. When you have a former Marine intelligence officer and intelligence officers from other countries, do you think Iraqis are willy-nilly going to let you run through these documents? No.
That makes it even harder to understand why you want inspections to resume. What can they possibly achieve under the circumstances? First, you don't know what you are looking for, second the mistrust between Iraq and the international community makes it impossible to get anywhere.
I agree the inspections were a never-ending proposition and are doomed to fail if we try to reconstitute UNSCOM. It will never work because the Iraqis will never allow these inspections to have the kind of intrusive element that is required for absolute certainty that nothing's hidden anywhere. And the United States will never fail to exploit that which gives [the U.S.] unique access to Saddam's palaces and intelligence and security apparatus. So what I am suggesting is let's have a mark of compliance [for disarmament]. Let's say 95 percent is good enough -- we don't need 100 percent. Let's just say Iraq is disarmed. Under U.N. resolutions, compliance means the end of sanctions, which is what Iraq wants, but it also triggers ongoing monitoring and verification. These new inspections would focus on monitoring of Iraq to make sure that it does not reconstitute its weapons capability. If we have inspections that focus on this, it could succeed. Because these inspections would not go into presidential palaces and the security zones. But as long as the U.S. demands that inspectors go into palaces, it's all over.
But weapons are not the only problem Washington has with Iraq.
Look, if inspectors go into Iraq today, due to forensic capability, if Iraq's done anything between 1998 and today, we would find it. But people refuse to do this. I am a proponent of qualitative disarmament, not quantitative. Stop counting the bombs, and start looking at the facts. Can Iraq produce the weapons and is there evidence of this? If the answer is no and we put an effective monitoring regime in place to make sure they don't produce it, haven't we disarmed Iraq? I say yes. But politically that is unacceptable. But it's not about weapons, it's about Saddam. And because it is about Saddam, all of my logic, my construct means nothing.
Unlike many Americans, you've met Iraqis and spent a long time there. For many, there is no face to this conflict except that of Saddam Hussein. Has knowing and meeting Iraqis shaped your position?
I've been with the highest level of Iraqi government [personnel] during my seven years. When people talk about the Baath Party, I know what this means. These are human beings. There are different power bases -- the moderates, the conservatives, the liberals. When people talk about Iraqi intelligence, I have met everyone from the director on down -- these are human beings. When people talk about the Amn El-Ammn, the gestapo of Iraq, I've met everyone from the their deputy director on down. I've been in their prisons, I've seen the horrors of them, but I've also seen that these are human beings. I've been in every special Republican Guard battalion. I've been in every Republican Guard headquarters; I've been in almost every heavy army division; I've been in the basic training camps; in factories. I've been up and down and all around Iraq. Iraq is a nation-state. I know its imperfections and realities. I had three assassination attempts on my life so I know what [Saddam's] capable of. And I have inspected the documents of [the directorate] for political assassinations. I've been to the children's prison at Amn El-Ammn headquarters in downtown Baghdad. It was horrific; these are kids in jail under horrible conditions, sweltering because of the political crimes of their parents. Dad speaks out against Saddam, Mom goes to the women's prison; the kids go to the children's prison. And do you know what they do to those kids? I don't even want to get to that.
It sounds pretty horrible -- good reasons to push for a regime change.
I know the good, the bad and the ugly of Iraq. The idea of diplomatic engagement is not naive. I've been lied to by these guys; I know how bad they are, but I also know that you could do business with them. This isn't a black-and-white comic book; this is reality. I can enter into an agreement with Iraqi officials, a life and death agreement that they will all adhere to. I know you can trust Iraqis under certain circumstances. They want a future. They want to live. And not just the average citizen; these are senior government officials. They have lives too. They have families, hopes and dreams for their children. We paint these guys as comic book characters. They are not -- they are complex characters. With all the good, the frailties and imperfections that come with this. We do a gross disservice to them, to the world, to the American people by portraying Iraq in vague, inaccurate ways.
How about the moral argument in support of toppling oppressive regimes?
I just cannot accept the argument that we have to intervene to remove Saddam Hussein on moral grounds. To eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, and linking this elimination with economic sanctions -- around 1.5 million Iraqis have died. We have killed almost six times as many Iraqis trying to eliminate weapons of mass destruction programs, than the weapons of mass destruction have killed in the entire 20th century. That's a moral issue to me. We have to understand that if we wanted to act on moral grounds, we should have acted decisively in 1991. But by dragging this on for more than 10 years and making the Iraqi people pay the price, we lost the moral high ground. We have done so much wrong in the past decade that we missed our opportunity. It's time to move on. If Saddam was rounding up and butchering 200,000 people, maybe. If Saddam was Milosevic carrying out active genocide, maybe. But that's not the case.
Yet there are human rights activists and some policy officials who believe that Saddam's past deeds are enough to indict him for genocide.
Saddam Hussein had a problem with the Kurds along the Iranian border -- active involvement of Iranians threatening the dam providing hydroelectric power to Baghdad, threatening the oil field in the north. Saddam created a depopulated zone. He did it with extreme brutality. I'm not defending it; there is a big difference between that and genocide. The Kurds are an active part, 23 percent of the Iraqi population. There has not been a genocide against the Kurdish population in Iraq. There has been extreme brutality on the part of the regime in controlling the Kurdish problem. Even prior to 1991, Kurds had greater autonomy in Iraq than they have enjoyed anywhere else. This is never talked about.
There is too much mythology that has gone into the idea of Saddam. He's a horrible man and has done horrible things. But he's also done a lot of good things for Iraq. Iraq was brought from the Third World status in the 1960s to one of the most modern advanced states in the Middle East in 1990. Saddam brought education, medicine and suffrage to women in Iraq; [Iraqi women] can vote, go to work, get an education. This isn't bad stuff. Saddam Hussein is a much more complicated issue than people like to admit. It's not black and white and he's not a cartoon character.
You've seen the ugliness from inside. You've become jaded by your experiences in Washington. Where do you go from here? Have you thought of running for office?
People have made very attractive offers. But I am not a politician. I am not saying, never. But politics is not attractive to me. I've seen Washington, D.C., and I don't like it. I am afraid of what that process would do to me as a person and what it would do to my family. There are other ways you can serve. I've served in the military and I am doing a heck of a job for my country right now by adhering to my standards and my code of honor, to the concept of integrity, and by not being afraid to speak out on issues I have substantial knowledge of. I think I am serving my country the best I can at this point in time. I also joined the volunteer fire department in my community.
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About the writer
Asla Aydintasbas is a New York journalist. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times and other publications.
An Antarctic ice shelf that was 200 metres thick and with a surface area of 3,250 square kilometers has broken apart in less than a month.
This is the largest single event in a series of retreats by ice shelves in the peninsula over the last 30 years
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (Bas) predicted in 1998 that several ice shelves around the peninsula were doomed because of rising temperatures in the region - but the speed with which the Larsen B has gone has shocked them.
"We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering," said Dr David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the Bas in Cambridge, UK.
"[It is hard] to believe that 500 million billion tonnes of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month."
Value chain arbitrage. Pair trades. Seagulls. Restructuring plays. Forget hedge funds. These are the true exotics of the investment world. Chances are you have never heard of them. Chances are better that you will never have access to them.
Only the rich, the liquid rich, get to play on this field. The rest of us, with our brokerage accounts and mutual funds, can heed the dusty old advice: Diversify, stay in for the long term, and forget about stock picking, because you will fail and look like a fool in the process.
But show up with $50 million and you can toss the humdrum out the window and sit down in a cozy dining room with Chris Wolfe, chief equity strategist at the J.P. Morgan Private Bank on Park Avenue. Sport that kind of cash and you can order filet mignon from a tuxedoed waiter and chat about going long on the Norwegian kroner and short on the yen.
It's easy to understand how Uzma's husband Anser Mehmood was swept up in that dragnet six months ago. Americans were scared. Don Quixote said, fear is sharp-sighted; fear sees things under ground and much more in the sky. Suddenly Americans were seeing terrorists everywhere, and breathed more easily when the FBI set out to round up people who looked the part.
Bill Moyers
on the Domestic War Against Terrorism
Anser Mehmood looked the part, and his papers weren't in order. There's no telling how many people are here without proper papers. Six, seven, eight million according to estimates — and only 2000 immigration officers to check up on the violations. Like most of those, Anser Mehmood would likely have gone undetected, except that after 9/11 he looked the part. Now, although not a terrorist, he languishes in jail because his papers weren't in order. His family, facing deportation, chose to go back to Pakistan. Fate, we say; a bad turn of fate; bad things happen to good people even when their affairs are in order. But why do I feel so uneasy; why do I sense we lost something when the door closed on this family? Is it because my inner Kafka says something like this could happen to any of us? I always break out in a sweat when the flashing lights of a patrol car appear in the rearview window, even if I know I wasn't speeding. Or is it because this sad little story of one unlucky family makes me think what my country loses if we fight the war on terrorism the wrong way.
Washington, March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Democrats say they'll pass campaign finance legislation next week over Republican efforts to block it.
``Senate Democrats have successfully fought efforts by the Republican Senate leadership to thwart consideration of campaign finance reforms, including a filibuster,'' Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota said in the party's weekly statement.
Democrats ``are on the verge of breaking this filibuster and we will stay in session around the clock next week to finally get the job done,'' he stated.
The bill bans the ``soft money'' that corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals give to national political parties, a $500 million funding stream in the 2000 elections, or about a sixth of overall spending. The measure also bars companies and unions from buying televised ``issue ads'' that mention candidates within 60 days of an election, and it requires outside groups that run these ads to disclose their expenses.
No matter how successful George W. Bush proves to be as president, a pall will forever hang over the 2000 election. In national scrutiny of the way Americans cast and count their ballots, many states were found wanting. The chief among them was Florida, where the outcome, with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, gave Bush his victory over Al Gore.
Reform efforts are under way, but at least one major flaw in the system should be repaired by Congress before another national election is held. A chilling two-page account in the current issue of Harper's magazine by Greg Palast, who investigated the 2000 election for the BBC, illustrates why.
Had thousands of voters not wrongly been turned away from the polls, the outcome in Florida probably would have been different and Gore, not Bush, would be in the White House. Most of the disenfranchised voters were black.
Most states deny prisoners the vote. Only Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Utah do not. But only 15 states, including Florida, bar felons who have served their time from voting, according to a 1998 study by the Sentencing Project of the international organization Human Rights Watch.
Two weeks before his suicide in January, former Enron Corp. executive J. Clifford Baxter told investigators aboutconflicts with the company's then-president, Jeffrey K. Skilling, that Baxter said marred his final years at the company, according to a memo on the interview.
The memo, which summarizes Baxter's Jan. 10 interview with lawyers from a special investigating committee of Enron's board of directors, describes "a major dispute" with Skilling in 2000. It was over an episode that Baxter felt undermined his authority as head of Enron North America -- the company's primary energy-trading unit.
The dispute came to a head at a staff meeting that year when Skilling embarrassed Baxter in front of two dozen executives by questioning the accuracy of a comment Baxter had made. Baxter almost resigned, was talked out of it by Skilling and then took a new job at Enron with a large pay cut, the memo said.
WASHINGTON -- Although the war on terrorism has drawn widespread support from newspapers, it has also produced what one leading journalists' group today called "threats to media coverage of important news stories." It has also produced federal lawsuits in at least two states with several leading newspapers teaming up with civil-liberties groups.
In its white paper released Friday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Arlington, Va., outlined a series of what it believes are dubious measures undertaken by the Bush administration and state governments in recent months. Among its points:
While Jeb Bush was running for Florida's governor in the summer of 1998, Enron Corp., a fast-growing Houston energy broker, was diversifying into a potentially lucrative new field — privatization of water supplies.
Even as Bush's secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection was settling into his office in February 1999, top executives of Enron's new water venture, Azurix Corp., were seeking audiences with the new governor and his DEP chief David Struhs. Although Bush generally kept his distance from Azurix, his man Struhs stood on the sidelines like a cheerleader throughout Enron-Azurix's unsuccessful two-year attempt to privatize Florida's water market.
Struhs promoted two ideas near and dear to Azurix: auctioning off blocks of water to the highest bidder, and boosting underground water and storing it there for later withdrawal, a process called aquifer storage and recovery, or ASR.
By May 2001, as Enron was getting ready to junk Azurix and sell it for its parts, Struhs cooled on ASR, citing concerns by environmentalists and legislators.
A popular conservative Web publication has launched a full-court PR attack on the Senate Daily Press Gallery for denying its application for credentials.
WorldNetDaily, which dubs itself "the Internet's leading independent newssite," was denied credentials in February after the gallery's standing committee of correspondents spent a year vetting the application. The committee will hear WND's appeal of the decision at an April 15 hearing.
WND CEO and Editor Joseph Farah said that if the publication doesn't get its way on April 15, there will be court action.
"No question about it," he said. "There's not a doubt in my mind that we will get accredited one way or another."
Since WND received word last month that it had been turned down, the site has kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism of the press gallery, railing against the "government-media cabal" and pointing out that the gallery admits foreign, state-owned publications. It also has encouraged readers to send protest e-mails to gallery staff.
ENRON CEO JEFF SKILLING TOOK IT from all directions when he traveled to San Francisco last June to address the white-glove crowd at the Commonwealth Club.
First the announcement came early that week that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would extend price caps to any companies selling energy on California's wholesale market. Then the stock market reacted, with Enron shares slipping to a 52-week low of $43.07. The low price was devastating for Enron; the company now would have to devote additional shares to keeping its off-the-books partnerships afloat.
Outside the Commonwealth Club, protesters gathered, outraged by the continuing sky-high prices Californians were paying for energy. One tossed a berry-cream pie, striking Skilling in the side of his head.
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan (news - web sites) declared Monday that the operation to destroy Taliban and al-Qaida in the eastern mountains was "an unqualified and absolute success" despite claims by Afghan allies that most of the enemy fighters got away.
Gen. Tommy Franks, chief of the U.S. military's Central Command, said the offensive — Operation Anaconda — would be over by day's end, but the fight against terrorists was far from over.
Britain announced Monday that it will send up to 1,700 troops to Afghanistan to help U.S. forces in future operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
In Washington, meanwhile, a senior Pentagon (news - web sites) official said U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan attacked a convoy of three vehicles believed to be trying to ferry al-Qaida fighters out of the Shah-e-Kot Valley area.
The attack on Sunday killed 16 enemy fighters and wounded one, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. One person was detained. There were no American casualties, the official said.
The anti-terrorist crusade is getting out of control. Terrorism is a threat, to be sure. But our unfocused effort to attack our enemies everywhere threatens to do more harm than good.
Worst of all is our campaign to unseat Saddam Hussein. We had a chance to remove him from power during the Gulf War, but the elder George Bush failed to push the campaign to a conclusion. Despite sky-high approval ratings, like those of his son today, he wanted to disengage the United States from the war as quickly as he could. And so we have been tangling with Saddam Hussein ever since.
But that is hardly a reason to go after him now, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. There is no question that Saddam Hussein has done some unspeakable things, both to his enemies and to his own people. Yet there is no hard evidence, or for that matter, soft evidence, that either he or his fellow Iraqis were involved in the terrorist attacks.
Up to 300,000 people joined a final protest march against the EU economic summit in Barcelona, according to first estimates by organizers.
Marching behind a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital -- another world is possible," the overwhelmingly young demonstrators headed from Placa de Catalunya to the harborfront.
A heavy contingent of riot police deployed in the streets as helicopters hovered overhead amid fears of a repeat of the street violence that has marred top-level EU gatherings in the past.
Youthful, whistle-blowing demonstrators for a host of causes -- including communists, Greens, Catalan and Basque nationalists, and opponents of free-market globalization -- moved forth under a forest of banners in hand.
Organizers estimated the marchers at 300,000 to 500,000 while police said at least 140,000 had massed in the streets.
Shops along the two-kilometer (mile-long) route drew their shutters, though some department stores remained open, their doors guarded by police in heavy flak jackets. Overhead, two police helicopters hovered noisily.
Organizers, cheered by a week full of largely trouble-free protest actions, had been hoping for at least 100,000 participants -- even with a big soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid elsewhere in the city.
TALLAHASSEE -- Jay Campbell, a lawyer who helps run a Tampa nonprofit agency, has traveled to the state capital for years, speaking to legislators about organ and tissue transplants.
He didn't expect March 3 to be any different.
But this time Campbell didn't get a chance to speak at the Senate committee meeting he attended. Neither did the doctors accompanying him.
"I was just shocked," said Campbell, an executive at Lifelink, an organ and tissue recovery group. "I'm not new at this . . . but I've never been in a situation where you were not allowed to speak."
Some Floridians who have traveled to Tallahassee this legislative session have found that they have been shut out of the process, barred from speaking to legislators during the only meetings at which public debate is allowed.
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans will do "whatever is necessary" to ensure that majority Democrats hold confirmation hearings for President Bush (news - web sites)'s judicial nominees, a leading GOP lawmaker said Sunday.
The comments from Sen. Don Nickles (news, bio, voting record), the assistant minority leader, were the latest in the partisan bickering following the party-line defeat last week of a White House nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Nickles, R-Okla., said Democrats have been holding up the nomination process and 20 Bush nominees have not had hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites). Some nominees have been waiting almost a year, he said.
"We'll do whatever is necessary to get their attention to make sure that good nominees have a chance to have a hearing," Nickles said on "Fox News Sunday."
Two short months ago, John Bridgeland drove President Bush's agenda as the influential director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. These days, he is paid to talk about Aristotle.
"Nicomachean Ethics," he explains. He also has been dabbling in Sophocles, Cicero, Alexis de Tocqueville and Thomas Paine.
But Bridgeland is no dilettante. As head of Bush's new USA Freedom Corps initiative, he has been charged with launching what is probably the most unusual and innovative of the Bush administration's efforts. Its goal sounds utopian, particularly for an administration devoted to limited government: finding a role for the feds in the creation of human happiness, and helping Americans live what the ancient philosophers called "the good life."
WASHINGTON -- With the Bush White House adamant about its right to withhold a wide array of information from Congress, tensions are mounting as the two branches dispute their respective prerogatives and responsibilities under the Constitution.
"This White House is concerned about its secrecy, and this Congress wants to know what's going on," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).
The White House, meanwhile, says Congress is overstepping its constitutional role, even in its bipartisan insistence that Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge testify about his plans.
If our so-called national leadership had not lost its shame gene, surely it would be red-faced over its failure to do some little something about the plummeting value of the minimum wage. Today's miserly minimum of $5.15 an hour delivers a sub-subsistence income of $10,700 a year, if you get full-time work. That's gross, in two meanings of the word. Millions of Americans--most of them adults and supporting families--are working either for this wage or are paid just a few coins more and have their poverty pay pegged to this wage floor.
Earlier this month, Independent Counsel Robert Ray released the Office of Independent Counsel's final report on the Lewinsky investigation. Most news outlets focused on Ray's decision not to indict and prosecute President Clinton even though Ray claimed the evidence existed to do so. Less covered, however, was the revelation that the IOC determined that Kathleen Willey, whose claims that the president groped her almost led to his removal from office, was not credible. Talk to Julie Hiatt Steele, the only person indicted by the independent counsel as a result of the Lewinsky investigation, about Kathleen Willey, Steele's treatment at the hands of the Ken Starr and the FBI, and her views on the final report.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Spurred on by a U.S. peace mission, Israeli troops pulled out of Bethlehem early Tuesday, edging closer to a cease-fire with the Palestinians in the 18-month-old Mideast conflict.
The pullback came after Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) arrived to bolster the efforts of U.S. mediator Anthony Zinni, and the pair held talks Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites).
In the most promising sign since Zinni arrived last week, Israel pulled back after midnight from the West Bank town of Bethlehem — traditional birthplace of Jesus — and neighboring Beit Jalla, El-Khader and the Aida refugee camp.
The Palestinians demanded at security talks Monday afternoon that Israel pull out of all their territory before a cease-fire could be declared.
Palestinian West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub said the pullback from Bethlehem was not enough. He said Israel must complete its withdrawal from two other towns, Tulkarem and Qalqilya. Israel said it had pulled out of the two towns last week.
Sunday's front-page story in The Times on doctors who shun patients with Medicare may have been alarming enough; it seems that recent cuts in Medicare payments are inducing many doctors to avoid treating Medicare recipients at all. But this is just the beginning of a struggle that will soon dominate American politics.
Think of it as the collision between an irresistible force (the growing cost of health care) and an immovable object (the determination of America's conservative movement to downsize government). For the moment the Bush administration and its allies still won't admit that there is any conflict between their promises to retirees and their small-government ideology. But we're already past the stage where this conflict can be hidden with fudged numbers. The effort to live within unrealistically low targets for Medicare expenses has already translated into unrealistically low payments to health-care providers. And it gets worse from here.
Why do health care costs keep on rising? It's not because doctors and hospitals are greedy; it's because of medical progress. More and more conditions that once lay beyond doctors' reach can now be treated, adding years to the lives of patients and greatly increasing the quality of those years — but at ever greater expense. A triple coronary bypass does a lot more for you than a nice bedside manner, but it costs a lot more, too.
Monday, March 18, 2002
A right-wing friend of my wife's recently paid us a visit from out of state. Our conversation inevitably drifted to Bush and his illegitimate regime. Though our tones remained friendly, my wife and I stated our opposition to Bush's policies - from his offensive war in the Middle East to his destructive, corporate-payback environmental schemes. Sharon's friend was equally adament that Bush was on the "right" path. Of course, that depended on one's definition of "right."
"We have similar goals," Ann told us. "We just have different ideas of getting there."
I could not even agree with that statement, believing that my goals of "liberty and justice for all" and the goals of people like Bush to help mostly the rich get richer are miles apart. Still, Ann is not an obnoxious conservative, and we found some common ground. We departed amiably, with her leaving a copy of the late Barbara Olson's twisted diatribe against the Clintons. Among Ann's message written on the inside cover page of "The Final Days": "Always keep an open mind."
Keeping an open mind is a philosophy I try to maintain, but I'm not sure right-wingers like Ann always attempt to do likewise. To many conservative Republicans, the open-mind creed is one steeped in deeper hypocrises, like with that sticky "Thou shall not kill" commandment. It is more an axiom to be mouthed than acted upon; more a philosophy to be chanted until most people become weary of arguing that the chanter does not practice what he or she preaches.
Last week was not a good one for the Bush administration's crusade against evil. First came news of the government-issued visas for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Next, much ballyhooed Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan turned out to be a dud. Only a handful of al-Qaida or Taliban fighters - and 14 civilians - were killed, at a cost of eight Americans dead and over 40 wounded. Hundreds of other al-Qaida/Taliban once again escaped to fight another day.
Worse, exiled King Zahir Shah, whom America intends to restore to the throne of Afghanistan, said the U.S.-led war in his nation was "stupid and useless" and should be called off. The U.S. media ignored this damning comment.
While the U.S. and its allies swatted shadows in Afghanistan, the Mideast was spinning out of control. Palestinian suicide bombers killed scores of Israeli civilians. Twenty thousand Israeli troops and 100 tanks rampaged through Palestinian territory, killing over 100 civilians and fighters in scenes that recalled the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising or Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956. A recent poll showed a shocking 40% of Israelis favoured ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza.
In the first concrete sign that the US is planning military action against Iraq despite objections from its allies, CIA officers have surveyed three key airfields in northern Iraq.
The airfields, situated in northern Iraq near the cities of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah in Kurdistan – the only part of Iraq not held by Saddam Hussein – could be used to receive arms and troops in the event of a conflict between the US and Iraq, an Iraqi source has told The Independent.
The US is pursuing its military strategy and, at the same time, trying to persuade Iraq to accept UN weapons inspectors back into the country, which could theoretically avert the need for a military campaign.
But America has made it clear that it is prepared to act alone, if necessary, against Saddam Hussein, even though the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has heard strong objections to its plans for a military campaign aimed at overthrowing President Saddam during the tour of Arab states that he is currently finishing.
BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - Spanish police clashed with anti-capitalist protesters in Barcelona on Saturday following a march by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators after a European Union (news - web sites) summit.
The bulk of the rally had passed off peacefully but as it drew to a close in the city's historic downtown port area after dark, bottles and stones started flying and police fired rubber bullets and charged in with batons flailing.
Some demonstrators set fires in trash cans. Young militants, some of them hooded or covering their faces with scarves, threw bottles and rocks and fired flares at public buildings. One police statement said some militants had thrown petrol bombs.
Police said they made 38 arrests and seven officers were injured. It was not clear if there were serious injuries among protesters and bystanders. Reuters correspondents saw police beat at least two men and a Reuters photographer saw a fellow journalist being helped to his feet after being hurt.
WASHINGTON--In three separate legal briefs filed Friday, a total of 34 states opposed a Microsoft motion that a federal judge should dismiss the remaining portion of its antitrust case.
Nine states and the District of Columbia return to court Monday to determine a remedy for the company's antitrust violations. But Microsoft had asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to dismiss the states' litigation, arguing that the states should not be allowed to set antitrust policy over the Justice Department. The Justice Department and nine other states settled the case in November.
Twenty-five additional states rallied Friday behind the nine litigating states--California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia--in an attempt to protect states' jurisdiction over antitrust matters.
As a lobbyist, Mark Weinberger was paid millions by corporations to win tax breaks and keep loopholes open. He says that won't influence him in his new Treasury job.
WASHINGTON — American tobacco companies have violated sanctions against Iraq for years by sending billions of cigarettes into the country, often with the aid of a terrorist organization, the European Union has alleged.
The allegations, made in recent filings in U.S. District Court in New York, were the latest salvos in a civil racketeering lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris by the European Community and 10 member nations. The suit accused tobacco companies of running a global and decades-long cigarette smuggling operation that robbed national treasuries of billions of dollars in tax revenue and became a money-laundering vehicle for criminal organizations.
On Tuesday, Judge Nicholas Garaufis dismissed the lawsuit, saying that current U.S. law prohibited him from ruling on what amounted to a foreign tax claim. But he left open the possibility that the European Union could pursue money-laundering charges against the tobacco companies. The EU said later it would file an amended lawsuit.
DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Madness. Total, utter madness.
What other reaction could a sane and rational human being have over the news that the Bush administration has ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against not only the "axis of evil" nations of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but also China, Russia, Syria and Libya?
It gets worse. The Bush Administration directive known as the Nuclear Posture Review (details of which were recently leaked to the Los Angeles Times) tells the Pentagon to prepare for possibly using nuclear weapons in future crises such as an attack on Israel by Iraq, a Chinese attack on Taiwan or an invasion of South Korea by North Korea.
Nuclear weapons may also be used in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack on the U.S., for attacking targets that can't be destroyed with conventional munitions and for "surprising military developments," such as terrorists getting hold of "weapons of mass destruction." The review also tells the Pentagon to start planning for the development of smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons and to again arm cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.
Decades of efforts to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons are now in the process of being wiped out to serve the military needs of the ongoing "war on terrorism." Our long-standing policy of considering the use of nuclear weapons only as a last resort may now be over. The leaders of our nation now believe they have the right to use America's unquestioned military dominance to turn any nation it pleases into a smoking crater.
Madness. Total, utter madness.
Ann Coulter's notorious post-Sept. 11 column for National Review Online -- in which she suggested that the proper U.S. response to Muslim terrorists was to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" -- is still making waves six months later. But now the controversy features a jaw-dropping twist involving Coulter's love life.
After her Sept. 13 column, the tall, blond right-wing pundit was sacked by NRO when she refused to delete a reference to "swarthy males" in a subsequent column and went on television to accuse National Review of censorship and denounce its editor, Rich Lowry, as a "girly-boy."
But the other day on the NRO Web site, Lowry wrote about various e-mails he had recently received about the war on terrorism: "Lots of sentiment for nuking Mecca. . . . Mecca seems extreme, of course, but then again few people would die and it would send a signal. Religions have suffered catastrophic setbacks before. As for the Saudis, my only thought is that if we're going to hold them responsible for terrorism, we had better start doing it now, not after an even more catastrophic attack."
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - I realize everyone's sick of reading about the David Letterman latenight follies, but there are still a few things I can't figure out.
For example, with all the massive over-coverage, including successive page-one stories in the New York Times, only one concrete development emerged from the imbroglio -- a development that the press avoids mentioning. To wit: "Politically Incorrect" was summarily beheaded.
Apparently cancellation of this show is considered non-news, but I happen to like Bill Maher's aberrant meanderings.
I thought the show was often fresh and witty, and after a six-year run, its obit deserved some attention -- especially since its demise apparently stemmed, in part, from the squeamishness of key advertisers over some occasional words of dissent.
Now that we've got a little distance, it's clear the Letterman story should have been boiled down to one headline: Dave's leaving for vacation and wants a little attention.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has reissued a warning that career lawyers must watch what they say about their work.
The warning was e-mailed Friday to division section chiefs, according to several sources, reprising a Sept. 28 memo stating that career lawyers who talked to "outside entities" about "internal legal deliberations" would face discipline to include possible disbarment.
The new memo came after a Washington Post report Friday about concerns among some career lawyers that political appointees are compromising the enforcement of civil rights laws.
In an interview Thursday, Associate Attorney General for Civil Rights Ralph Boyd acknowledged the first memo. He said that he did not know if it was long-established policy but that it should be. "It's my policy," he said. "I'm quite sure it's a department-wide policy. What we're talking about are obviously ethical deliberations."
JERUSALEM (AP) - A suicide attack in Jerusalem and a fatal shooting north of Tel Aviv on Sunday undermined the optimism surrounding U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni's third cease-fire mission to the region.
A gunman killed one person in Kfar Saba and wounded six more, one critically. Zinni was in a meeting with Israeli President Moshe Katsav when word of the attack reached him.
A short time later, a suicide bomber set off explosives near a bus in Jerusalem, killing himself and lightly wounding several passengers, authorities said.
"It is critical that the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) take responsibility and act against terror," Zinni said in response to the two attacks. "Now is the time to get to a cease-fire."
Israel reacted angrily to the violence.
The Environmental Protection Agency will begin announcing in the next several weeks rule changes aimed at discouraging new government lawsuits against operators of aging coal-fired power plants in favor of incentives for voluntary reductions in toxic emissions, according to EPA officials.
After nearly a year of intense internal debate, the Bush administration has decided to formally alter a clean-air enforcement initiative begun under President Bill Clinton in 1999 that spawned dozens of lawsuits against some of the nation's worst polluting power plants, agency and White House officials said.
Currently, older power plants that expand or significantly modify their operations can be sued for violating the Clean Air Act unless they agree to install costly anti-pollution equipment.
Rarely can an American vice-president have met such a rebuff from America's Arab allies. Not a single Arab king, prince or president has been prepared to endorse a US attack on Iraq.
Even in Kuwait – where Dick Cheney arrives today before going on to Israel – an opinion poll suggests that more than 40 per cent of its citizens are hostile to Washington's policies.
In every Arab capital, Mr Cheney has been politely but firmly told to turn his attention to the Palestinian-Israeli war, and forget the "axis of evil'' until the US brings its Israeli allies into line. All Mr Cheney's efforts to pretend that the conflict in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel is separate from Iraq – or "two tracks" as the American cliché would have it – have failed.
It is always said that truth is the first casualty of war. Not so. As any motorist filling up the tank at the weekend could testify, the first casualty of war is the oil price. The determination of George Bush and Tony Blair to take military action against Saddam Hussein has prompted a sharp rise in the price of crude, now changing hands at almost $25 a barrel, a third higher than its trough last autumn.
Despite this, the economic consequences of a war against Iraq have barely rated a mention in the west. There has been plenty of talk about weapons of mass destruction, military options, UN resolutions, even of whether George Bush is motivated by the desire to finish the job his dad started back in 1991. But virtually nothing about what would happen to jobs and growth. This is all the more remarkable at a time when the three biggest global economies have endured their first synchronised downturn in more than a quarter of a century. The US and Britain might argue that the prize of toppling Saddam is well worth the risks, but the risks need to be discussed.
New Palestinian attacks on Israel and a move by Israeli tanks back into the West Bank town of Bethlehem broke a two-day lull in violence and jolted a US bid to broker a ceasefire.
US envoy Anthony Zinni had already hit a wall of mistrust when his efforts were further complicated by a Palestinian gunman's shooting spree in central Israel, a suicide bombing in east Jerusalem and clashes in Bethlehem.
Three Palestinians and one Israeli woman were killed in the latest spurt of bloodshed, which erupted as Zinni was going into talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, on the fourth day of his closely watched attempt to end nearly 18 months of violence.
A Palestinian man also died Sunday afternoon in a mysterious blast just outside Jerusalem, which Israeli police labelled "a working accident," implying a Palestinian militant had been trying to smuggle a bomb into Jerusalem.
1. Support for national missile defense may remain strong, but that support is less intense than last year.
2. Some supporters of missile defense are arguing that homeland defense should be a higher priority than missile defense.
3. Missile defense is not a top priority for most Members of Congress.
4. Many Democrats who muted their criticisms of missile defense after the September 11 terrorist attacks are beginning to find their voices.
As a force of 700 United States and Canadian troops continued to search the battle zone, the American officer heading the operation said on Saturday that fewer than 20 bodies had been found on the ridge above the Shah-e-Kot Valley, where many al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had made a final stand.
The aftermath of the 11-day battle continued to pose questions for US commanders. After claims that more than 500 enemy fighters had been killed, one issue has been the small number of bodies found in the days since the main battle ended, even after troops scoured the valley floor and surrounding ridges.
Another mystery has been the whereabouts of fighters who may have survived the 3250 bombs dropped on the battle zone by American and French warplanes. American soldiers returning from the battlefield 175 kilometres away said that only about 10 fighters had been seen since the fighting ended.
It is rather strange that the US media, with one notable exception, seems to be ignoring what may well prove to be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks - the alleged break-up of a major Israeli espionage operation in the United States which aimed to infiltrate both the justice and defence departments and which may also have been tracking Al-Qaeda terrorists before the aircraft hijackings took place.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been quick to dismiss a 4 March report by Intelligence Online, a French web site that specialises in security matters (and expanded on by French daily Le Monde the following day) that US authorities had arrested or deported some 120 Israelis since February 2001 and that the investigation was still continuing. The FBI insists that no Israeli has been charged with espionage, but has agreed that an undisclosed number of Israeli students have been expelled for "immigration violations". Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden dismissed the espionage allegations as "an urban myth that’s been circulating for months..."
If the reports from Paris are correct, it would be the largest known Israeli espionage operation mounted in the USA, the Jewish state’s closest ally and one on which it depends for its survival.
Israel’s intelligence organisations have been spying on the USA and running clandestine operations on US soil since the Jewish state was established.
PARIS George W. Bush's speech on Monday, on the half-year anniversary of the World Trade Towers and Pentagon attacks, provided a more coherent statement than we had yet had on the policy he is following.
The policy's objective and limits nonetheless remain unclear, which adds to the impression that Washington's new working assumption is the reverse of the Orwellian postulate that "war is peace." For the United States now, or at least for the Bush administration, peace is war.
The president again raised the stakes by insisting upon the danger of "terror on a catastrophic scale" if America's enemies are not defeated, whoever and wherever they are. He declared that the rout of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces means little without a new and "sustained campaign to deny sanctuary to terrorists" in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Indonesia, Somalia and unspecified elsewheres.
Sunday, March 17, 2002
WASHINGTON, March 16 — The confirmation battle over Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. signals an escalation in the long-running partisan and ideological fight between presidents and senators over the shape of the federal courts.
In a show of strength, Senate Democrats defeated the Pickering nomination this week and put in motion a carefully designed strategy of selective delay in hopes of persuading President Bush to be more moderate in future judicial choices.
Under this approach, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is moving quickly on those of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees the Democrats deem to be moderate to fend off criticism that they are blocking the president's choices.
At the same time, nominees who are regarded as highly conservative are being deferred indefinitely.
Even if it was unspoken, the message was clear that Democrats were ready to take the same approach in the likely event that Mr. Bush has the opportunity to nominate at least one Supreme Court justice.
WASHINGTON - The Senate is considering subpoenaing homeland security chief Tom Ridge to compel his testimony about President Bush (news - web sites)'s domestic security spending request, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Sunday.
Daschle said he would like the White House to drop its opposition to Ridge's appearance. A Bush spokesman expressed hope for a "satisfactory resolution" that would get lawmakers the necessary information.
"We've got to find a way to break the impasse. He's got to work with us. There is just too much at stake," said Daschle, D-S.D. "Coercion is not ever my first choice."
A subpoena "is an option, clearly," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "We want to look at all of the options at this point. But we're hoping it is not a necessary one. We are still hoping that they will have a change of heart."
WASHINGTON -- Jordan's King Abdullah II is urging the Bush administration to abandon ideas of taking on the regime of Saddam Hussein, predicting that any U.S. military action against Iraq could produce an "Armageddon" in the Middle East.
In a telephone interview as he arrived in California for a visit that began this weekend, Abdullah warned that a U.S.-led operation could too easily go "completely awry" and even backfire, producing a civil war in Iraq that could involve neighboring countries--and even have a ripple effect in the United States and Europe.
"It's the potential Armageddon of Iraq that worries all of us, and that's where common sense would say, 'Look, this is a tremendously dangerous road to go down,' " Abdullah said in his first interview since Vice President Dick Cheney visited him last week to discuss Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. "If our aim is to win against terrorism, we can't afford more instability in the area." The king's words were blunter than a Jordanian government statement after the Cheney meeting. And coming from one of the closest U.S. allies in the Arab world, his warnings are particularly ominous as the Bush administration begins sorting through the options in its pledge to confront Hussein as part of the next stage in the war on terrorism.
WASHINGTON, March 16 — For the first time, significant numbers of doctors are refusing to take new Medicare patients, saying the government now pays them too little to cover the costs of caring for the elderly.
Medicare cut payments to doctors by 5.4 percent this year. The government estimates that under current law, the fees paid for each medical service will be reduced in each of the next three years, for a total decrease of 17 percent from 2002 to 2005.
For years, doctors have expressed frustration with Medicare, grumbling about reimbursement and complex federal regulations. But the latest reaction appears to be different. Doctors are acting on their concerns, in ways that could reduce access to care for patients who need it.
For example, some doctors are purposely limiting the number of their Medicare patients. The American Academy of Family Physicians says that 17 percent of family doctors are not taking new Medicare patients.
Mark H. Krotowski, 54, a family doctor in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, said: "My expenses go up and up and up every year. For the government to lower what it pays me when my expenses are rising — that doesn't make sense. It's an insult."