When George Bush was on his first visit to China as America's President in November, he made a point of "sharing with" his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, "how faith changed my life and how faith contributes to the life of my country".
One can only speculate what went through the mind of the veteran Chinese communist, who ascended to power as part of the post-Tiananmen crackdown on incipient democratic reform. Quite possibly, he might have wondered if American foreign policy was being imbued with yet another wave of missionary zeal, heightened by the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Six months after those attacks, it is not only Chinese communists (whose status in Washington had in any case changed from "partner" to "competitor" with the incoming Bush Administration) who are worried about the changing American psyche, and its worldwide effects.
Tuesday, March 12, 2002
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Federal health officials urged doctors and other health providers on Thursday to be on the lookout for outbreaks of tularemia, a potentially fatal bacteria that could be used as a biological warfare agent.
Tularemia, known also as "rabbit fever" or "deer fly fever," is usually acquired through tick or insect bites or by close contact with infected animals, particularly rabbits and muskrats.
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) said the agency had released information about tularemia in a bid to educate the public about a disease that is rare and easily treated with antibiotics.
The CDC did not say its report on the disease was related to any recent outbreaks.
BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of U.S. soldiers, weary from a grueling eight-day battle against enemy holdouts, returned to base from the Afghan mountains Sunday, but it was unclear whether the battle was drawing to a close.
About 400 U.S. troops returned to the Bagram air base north of Kabul on Sunday in wave after wave of CH-47 Chinook helicopters.
"We're home!" the soldiers shouted, offering high-fives to elated colleagues. A few shook their heads in disbelief, grateful they had made it out alive.
In what is being billed as the largest battle of the war in Afghanistan, a US-led force has over the last week killed an estimated 500 fighters near Gardez in the eastern Paktia province. The US and allied troops have suffered minimal casualties in an unequal contest, in which Kalashnikovs and mortars have been pitted against the latest American hi-tech weaponry, including attack helicopters, precision-guided munitions and thermobaric bombs, designed to suck oxygen from defensive cave complexes.
US commanders have openly gloated over the one-sided slaughter. “On Tuesday we caught several hundred of them with RPGs and mortars heading towards the fight. We bodyslammed them and killed hundreds of those guys,” Major General Frank Hagenbeck commented. Describing another incident, a senior defence official told the Washington Post: “About 100 to 200 Al Qaeda ran out of the caves, probably thinking we were going to bomb them inside. We rolled in on them with A-10s [heavily-armed warplanes designed to attack tank columns].”
The United States faces growing pressure to approve an increase in U.N. peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan as rival warlords continue to undermine the interim government of Hamid Karzai.
Amid such pressures, the Bush administration continues to rule out any direct involvement of U.S. combat troops in peacekeeping, leaving the present U.N. force of about 4,500 troops under British control.
In addition, Gen. Richard B. Meyers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that the United States is unlikely to sign off on an expansion of peacekeeping troops beyond the capital of Kabul.
Two people have been killed in a fresh outbreak of violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Police said one person was killed and several others injured when they opened fire on a crowd of about 1,000 Hindus who attacked a village, Panvad, in Vadodra district where several Muslim families had taken shelter.
More than a decade after its retreat from Kuwait and eventual defeat at the hands of a US-led coalition, Iraq's armed forces are at an even greater relative disadvantage compared with those of the United States.
Iraq's military strength
424,000 active troops
1,900 tanks
2,400 armoured personnel carriers
1,900 wheeled guns
300 combat aircraft
Some short-range rocket systems
On paper Iraq still retains what seems like an impressive military arsenal.
It has troops, equipment that may include a small number of Scud-type missiles, and a reasonably effective air-defence system that is used regularly against patrolling US and British warplanes.
But this is, in many ways, a wasting and increasingly obsolete arsenal.
UP TO 17 Palestinians were reported killed and more than 50 injured when Israeli forces mounted an armoured assault on Gaza’s main Jabalya refugee camp last night.
Palestinian witnesses said that Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, occupied rooftops and exchanged heavy gunfire with militias, while ambulances were unable to reach some of the wounded.
They said that Israeli forces had encircled Jabalya before entering from the north under cover of darkness.
An Israeli military source confirmed that an operation was under way in Jabalya, saying: “Ground forces are conducting searches and operating against terrorist targets.” The source said that soldiers were “doing their utmost to avoid harming the civilian population” and that they were allowing ambulances free passage.
Israeli Troops Invade Refugee Camp; Arrest Palestinian Boys, Men
DEHEISHE REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, March 11 – Under a blazing sun and the suspicious gaze of flak-jacketed Israeli troops, the Palestinian boys and men of Deheishe refugee camp shuffled forward, five at a time, their hands laced behind their heads.
It was past noon today, but all of them had been awake at least since midnight, when Israeli troops, backed by machine gun fire from tanks and Apache helicopter gunships, stormed into the camp of 8,000, the green lasers of their weapons darting as in a sound and light show and the boom of their stun grenades shaking walls and windows.
Thunderous, terrifying and virtually uncontested, the invasion of Deheishe, just south of the biblical town of Bethlehem, was over in half an hour. When morning came, the Israelis ordered every male aged 14 to 45 to come out of their homes with their hands over the heads.
ISRAEL'S prime minister, Ariel Sharon, released the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, from house arrest after three months yesterday but the army continued to sweep through Palestinian villages and refugee camps, rounding up 1,200 men for interrogation.
Israeli troops guard arrested Palestinians as they enter the West Bank
Troops killed 12 Palestinians in exchanges of fire as they entered Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early today, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
The restoration of Mr Arafat's freedom of movement around the Palestinian territories marked a concession that was denounced by far-Right members of Israel's ruling coalition as the sign of a "lurch to the Left".
PRESIDENT Bush faced world anger last night over America's seven-nation nuclear hit list.
British MPs joined the outcry after a leaked Pentagon report revealed contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Libya. The secret policy was denounced as warmongering "lunacy".
Alarmed officials from Moscow to Tehran warned that the "power crazy" President, buoyed up by the successful campaign in Afghanistan, could plunge the world into chaos. British politicians said the strategy threatened the stability of the Nato alliance.
International tension mounted as Washington pressed Britain to back an attack on Iraq - including the possible commitment of 25,000 British troops to topple Saddam Hussein.
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan -- Weary and sunburned but proud, 400 American soldiers who fought tenacious battles with Al Qaeda and Taliban troops in eastern Afghanistan returned here Sunday, some of them telling bitter stories of being let down by an Afghan commander.
The troops represent about a third of the U.S. force sent to battle Taliban and Al Qaeda holdouts in the mountainous Shahi Kot region in a campaign dubbed Operation Anaconda. But senior Bush administration officials gave conflicting accounts Sunday of whether the pullout meant the battle was winding down.
Maj. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army's 10th Mountain Division here, told reporters, "The major fighting of the battle is over." But Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, disputed the notion that the fight in rugged terrain south of Gardez, which began March 2, was subsiding. He said that it was evolving and that troops were being repositioned within the battlefield or on its perimeter. In some cases, he said, fresh troops were rotating in.
HUNDREDS of American troops were pulled out of the ground battle with al-Qaeda forces because they failed to adapt to the guerrilla tactics required for fighting in the mountains, according to their Afghan allies.
More than 1,000 Afghan troops rushed to the front line yesterday to take up the slack after the withdrawal of 400 US troops from the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
The American military has described the withdrawal as a tactical reappraisal of their battleplan, but Afghan commanders told a different story of inexperienced American soldiers unable to advance through the unfamiliar mountains to track down al-Qaeda and Taleban foes.
From Paris to Washington to New York City and back again, a story has reverberated about an alleged Israeli spy ring that was busted in the United States last year. Intelligence Online, a well-respected Internet news service broke the explosive story, which quickly was picked up by Le Monde in France, then the Associated Press (AP) in Washington and other news outlets.
These stories all seem to track a similar report last December by Carl Cameron of Fox News outlining concerns among U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies that an Israeli-based network of operatives was spying or otherwise engaged in information-gathering activities within the United States. All the news agencies said or mentioned that many of those under investigation subsequently were deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for visa violations. Most also quoted named and unnamed Israeli spokesmen as saying that Israel doesn't spy on the United States and that whatever these Israeli citizens were doing was not criminal even if inappropriate and in violation of their visas.
President George W Bush has used strong strong words for countries which his administration feels have not made a strong enough commitment to the US-led war against terrorism.
He was speaking at a ceremony on the White House lawn, attended by relatives of 300 victims of the disaster, foreign diplomats and congressmen.
"There can be no neutrality," he said.
"Every nation in our coalition must take seriously the growing threat of terror... it cannot be denied and must be confronted."
"There is no margin for error and no chance to learn from mistakes."
Monday, March 11, 2002
Has anyone else following the aftermath of Sept. 11 been struck by the similarity to George Orwell's "1984" -- in which a never-ending, faraway war against ever-changing enemies serves as a rationale for political and social repression?
In the past five months numerous Americans, and not a few Europeans, have not dared speak their minds, and many more have not dared to think things through to a point at which the urge to speak one's mind becomes unbearable.
There was no genuine war after Sept. 11 -- there could not have been. And no country, not even one as powerful as the United States after it lost the Soviet Union as its only rival, can hijack such an important concept as war without in the long run bringing disaster upon itself. Orwell, that great beacon of political common sense in the 20th century, educated at least two generations of reasonable observers of political reality in the danger of misusing words in this way.
A huge crime was committed, the biggest mass murder ever seen directly by hundreds of millions all over the globe. A vast police action, backed by emergency powers, to uncover and destroy any network of the guilty -- an action primarily to prevent a recurrence -- would be a rational, responsible strategy.
Summary
Tajik Reinforcements May Drag U.S. Into Ethnic Conflict
The deployment of ethnic Tajik fighters to the front lines of the battle in Afghanistan could complicate matters for the United States.
The first of 1,000 troops promised by Afghanistan's interim government arrived March 8 in Paktia province to reinforce U.S.-led forces battling al Qaeda and Taliban fighters there, Agence France-Presse reported. Seven armed personnel carriers headed into the province, along with three trucks equipped with multiple-rocket launchers.
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Operation Anaconda signals the beginning of a new phase of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. In this phase insurgency and counterinsurgency operations will become the main feature. Militarily, Operation Anaconda shows the United States has yet to find an effective response on the ground to guerrilla warfare. Dominant air power will remain the only sufficient means to win battles, but it might not be enough to win the war in Afghanistan.
Analysis
Operation Anaconda, the fiercest battle in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, continued March 8, with the U.S. command claiming that complete victory was near after the deaths of several hundred al Qaeda fighters. Islamic news agencies, meanwhile, claimed the operation has been a failure: They say only a few dozen militants holed up in snowy mountain caves have been killed and that U.S. losses have been significantly higher than the eight dead and 40 wounded that officials have acknowledged.
Because journalists do not have access to the battle area in the eastern Afghan province of Paktia, Western media have mostly cited Pentagon sources. However none of the claims made by either side can be confirmed independently. With that in mind, STRATFOR is trying to reconstruct what has happened and to ascertain the ramifications Operation Anaconda will have for Afghanistan and the broader U.S. war on terrorism. We base our analysis on a critical study of available sources and on human intelligence sources from the region.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) announced on Monday that Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) was free to travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites) after a three-month siege, but Israel pressed ahead with a military campaign against Palestinian militants, detaining about 1,000 Palestinians and killing five.
In one refugee camp raided by Israeli troops, hundreds of teen-age boys and men stood in line, stripped to their undershirts and holding their hands to their heads, waiting to be blindfolded and handcuffed by Israeli soldiers.
Israel's announcement that Arafat is free to travel in the Palestinian territories ended his three-month confinement to the West Bank town of Ramallah. At one point, Israeli tanks were deployed right outside his headquarters, but the armored vehicles pulled back about two weeks ago.
AS AMERICA LAYS out the truth about Enron making a Skilling, our attention should also go to other vast sums of money vaporizing into the vacuum of deception. One of them is missile defense. It has been nearly 20 years since President Reagan, playing off the popularity of Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk, introduced the fictitious Cold War script of hitting incoming Commie missiles. He announced this with great braggadocio, as if the weapons were stamped, ''Uncle Sam says, `I really want you!'''
Many ''Star Wars'' and ''Star Trek'' movies later, the United States is as close to missile defense as it is to cloning a Klingon. The United States has spent more than $70 billion on missile defense up to now. As the World Policy Institute puts it, the nation has tossed this money away ''without producing a single workable device.''
That has not stopped presidents who fear being seen as weak on defense from pushing missile defense down the taxpayers' throats. But if you think $70 billion for 19 years and having as much to show for it as a laid-off Enron employee is bad enough, consider the future. According to January report by the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of missile defense could go much higher.
LONDON — U.S. soldiers have been sent to Yemen to help in a search-and-destroy operation against Al Qaida insurgents, Arab diplomatic sources said.
The sources said 200 to 400 American soldiers arrived in Sanaa over the last two weeks and are taking up positions in the northern and eastern parts of the country.
The London-based Al Hayat daily reported that most of the U.S. troops are under the supervision of the CIA. The newspaper said the U.S. military force is meant to help Yemen track and capture Al Qaida insurgents.