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October 31, 2004
Reporter's Notebook: Weapons Galore
FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Reporter's Notebook: Weapons Galore
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
By Greg Palkot
When I heard the news about some 380 tons of dangerous HMX and RDX explosives disappearing from the Al Qaqaa (search) military installation south of Baghdad I had just one reaction: Tell me something I don't know. This being my fifth visit to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, I long ago learned this whole country is one big dangerous weapons bazaar
Weapons of mass destruction (search) were never the problem. The "Mass of Destroying (conventional) Weapons" is the real deadly foe facing the United States as it tries to rein in things here and protect our fighting men and women. And the fact the stuff was out there for anybody to grab is the real problem.
I remembered one hot, dusty morning in the summer of 2003. I was spending time with Lt. Col Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division out of Tikrit. At the end of a long night of raids we stopped by the house of a guy who was supposed to be one of the unit's best sources.
For some reason, one of Col. Russell's men wandered back to a large shed behind the house. He discovered an AK-47 automatic rifle. And then another. Then another. I think the guys pulled out about 200 guns from the shed.
Then — and I don't know how one of Russell's resourceful guys thought of doing this — a soldier literally "rooted" out big slabs of something wrapped in plastic buried in the guy's orchard. It turned out the stuff inside was a plastic explosive, the type of thing that's "gone missing" at Al Qaqaa. The kind of thing that can be fashioned into IEDs that mangle legs and arms of American forces here.
The point of that story is not that you have to be a friend of Saddam (which this guy was) to have a pile of arms and explosives, but that anybody here can get what they want. Saddam literally spent billions on weaponry and stashed it away in bases, weapons stores and police stations.
During the days and months following the fall of the regime it was open season. I came to Iraq just a few days after Saddam was finished. Looters were still pushing supermarket carts full of bad stuff taken from unwatched government facilities. When I was nosing around the headquarters of Saddam's version of the CIA, the Mukhabbarat, in Baghdad, so were a few dozen kids looking to find guns or anything else for fun and games — and killing.
And that's what happened at Al Qaqaa. I'd actually been there in February of 2003. A desperate Iraqi regime had brought a bunch of reporters to the site, which the United States had said contained prohibited weapons. We didn't see any. But we did see piles of missiles, which could do real harm in the wrong hands.
And, no doubt, in one of the many bunkers we passed, lay those couple hundred of tons of explosives that are now missing, according to the Iraqi interim government.
I called the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, to get more details. I asked spokesman Mark Gwozdecky if the agency was concerned, since the stolen material can be fashioned to trigger atomic weapons or used for more conventional attacks. There was a pause on the end of the line. Then he caught himself and said, "Of course we're concerned."
Understatement. The regular drumbeat of press releases form the U.S. military is of "finds" of weapons caches. What each successive wave of American military that comes here is finding is that the place is another branch of Guns 'R' Us.
In the days when Western reporters could still roam freely I would stroll though markets here. You could buy anything: Chinese fans, toothpaste and machine guns. Well, the toothpaste is out of the tube. The explosives have already been snatched from Al Qaqaa and other places. Now it's coming back to haunt the U.S. military and everybody else here trying to rebuild the country.
Weapon buy-back programs like the one that just wrapped up in Baghad's Sadr City are impressive. Five million dollars paid out and 19,000 landmines turned in. But according to many who were there, including the U.S. military up until the last few days of the drive, the weaponry given up was less for the bang and more for the bucks.
Much good "bad" stuff, no doubt, was stashed away in cupboards and closets, laying in wait for the next U.S. convoy. Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (search) has recently announced a nationwide extension of the weapons buy-back program. Why do I think no one is going to be turning over the 380 tons of explosives from Al Qaqaa? Or if they do, why do I think someone else has another 380 tons explosives ready for other evil use?
October 31, 2004 at 10:09 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Leading article: United they stand
Few campaigns in post-war American history have appeared to be as divisive as the one drawing to its still uncertain conclusion on Tuesday. The voters’ decision whether to re-elect President Bush or hand the mantle over to Senator Kerry — to judge from much of the coverage and the comments of the candidates themselves — is a choice so profound that it will shape the destiny of the planet for generations. The American electorate seems faced with a choice between two fundamentally different visions of their nation’s role and purpose.
The reality is different. There are indeed large differences between the two men contesting the presidency. But the hidden truth of this campaign is that far more unites them than divides them. On the issues that matter most — which revolve, in one form or another, around the threat posed by global terror — they share a remarkably similar analysis, despite each candidate’s attempts to portray his opponent as dangerously deluded.
Both see the risk to security posed by allowing weapons of mass destruction to end up in the wrong hands. Both agree that global terror is a new, nihilistic force which has to be destroyed. Both agree that the United States has to lead that fight. And both dismiss the increasingly fashionable idea outside America that these new threats are more imagined than real — that they have been somehow cooked up by supporters of President Bush (and his friend Tony Blair) to hoodwink the electorate into re-electing him.
Senator Kerry knows as well as anyone else that there was nothing imaginary about 9/11, and there is nothing imaginary about Al-Qaeda, as Osama Bin Laden’s appearance in a typically timed video on Friday showed. As president, Senator Kerry would be just as determined as President Bush to deal with the threat. Just as in the 1970s when the likes of Carlos the Jackal and the Red Brigades were offered sanctuary by the Soviet Union’s satellites, so today it is imperative that those states that fund and harbour terrorists are held to account for their actions. The Bush doctrine, enunciated in the aftermath of 9/11, holds that states which protect terrorists would be treated as no less guilty than the terrorists themselves. Senator Kerry has been explicit in his support.
It has become clichéd to observe that America changed overnight on September 11, 2001. It has become a cliché because it is true. When George W Bush ran for the presidency in 2000, he barely mentioned foreign policy, and when he did it was to damn President Clinton’s foreign engagements. That struck a chord with a nation that wanted to rest upon the laurels of its cold war victory, and which was beginning to question its burden, through Nato, as the prime defender of western security.
America is today a very different place from that of four years ago. The presidential debates last month were dominated by Iraq and foreign policy because that is now the prime concern of most Americans. The events of 9/11 ensured that American security, and thus foreign policy, have become the pivotal point of electoral politics. No candidate can win office unless he convinces the American public that he is best placed to deal with the terrorist threat.
It is de rigueur for European commentators to sneer at President Bush’s “obsession” with the war on terror, as if in fighting it he is somehow beyond the pale. Yet such a view ignores one of the main reasons why Senator Kerry was picked by his party to run against the president — that as a decorated veteran he was immune from the charge that he would be soft on terror. Yet the perception abroad is of a battle between a gunslinging “shoot first, ask questions later” Texan and a smooth “consult and pacify” East Coast intellectual. No such battle exists. President Kerry would perhaps speak less starkly and would make foreign allies feel more loved. But actions really do speak louder than words, and President Kerry would act in the American national interest just as has President Bush.
Both candidates have, of course, their strengths and weaknesses. President Bush’s charge that Senator Kerry has “flip-flopped” has stung because it is accurate. He might speak the right words but, by definition, he is untested in the highest office. President Bush has indeed been tested, and led his country with remarkable purpose in the immediate wake of 9/11, but he has been guilty of needlessly antagonising natural allies. And whatever the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq, there can be no doubt that he failed to plan properly for the peace, with the terrible results we see now daily. The abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was shameful. On that occasion the buck didn’t stop anywhere.
All of this is to ignore domestic issues. They too matter to the rest of us. Senator Kerry’s lasting flirtation with protectionist economic policies sits ill with his claim to be the better internationalist. President Bush, too, once dropped his free-trading principles for political expediency. An “open doors” America with its economy on the right track is essential for the prosperity of the rest of the world.
But America is now a nation at war. In fighting that war, the US is defending not just itself but the security of the rest of the free world — whether we like it or, as seems to be the fashionable view in Europe, not. That is why we should be relieved that, whatever the result on Tuesday, the fundamentals of American policy are in place.
October 31, 2004 at 08:16 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Russian troops linked to missing Iraqi explosives
Yahoo! News - Russian troops linked to missing Iraqi explosives
Thu Oct 28, 4:07 AM ET
Add to My Yahoo! Politics - AFP
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Russian special forces "almost certainly" removed the explosives missing from a military base south of Baghdad before the March 2003 US invasion and sent them to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran, The Washington Times daily said quoting a US official.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units ... Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis," deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security John Shaw told the daily in an interview.
The official said he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa military facility south of Baghdad.
The missing 380 tons of explosives over which the International Atomic Energy Agency raised the alert earlier this month have become fodder in the US presidential election campaign, with Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites) accusing incumbent Republican President George W. Bush (news - web sites) of incompetence in his handling of post-invasion Iraq (news - web sites).
It is not clear whether the explosives -- which are used in plastic explosives and could also be used in a trigger for a nuclear device -- were removed from the site before or after the US-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
The Washington Times' source is the first to give a clear indication of when the explosives were removed.
Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
He said Iraq's most powerful weapons were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran.
The Al-Qaqaa facility, he added, was closely guarded, making it unlikely the explosives could have been stolen.
"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of (special explosives) disappearing was impossible," he said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
Separately, The New York Times -- which broke the story of the missing explosives on Monday -- said Thursday that looters stormed Al-Qaqaa after the US-led invasion.
Citing three witnesses, the daily said some of the looters came in trucks to haul off munitions, dismantled heavy machinery and office furniture.
The New York Times said that while the accounts did not address the question of when the 380 tons of explosives went missing, they "make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it."
US Army Colonel David Perkins, who commanded the brigade that first entered the Al-Qaqaa site in March 2003 said Wednesday his men only conducted a cursory search of the facility because their priority was to continue the march on Baghdad.
"The main focus was not go back and do a very precise inventory of how many shells and things like that because it was just not the threat at the time," he told reporters.
October 31, 2004 at 04:12 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
The trashy politics of Bushophobia
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
MICK HUME
YOU HEAR it all the time: “I hate that stupid Bush!� Most European and many American commentators now appear to believe that only weak-minded dupes could vote to re-elect that redneck in the White House. When they announced the discovery of a sub-humanoid “Hobbit� with a tiny brain this week, I was surprised that somebody did not claim that it was wearing a “Vote Bush-Cheney� badge.
But why, exactly, do so many of President Bush’s critics despise him with such unprecedented venom? It can hardly be because he insists on Washington’s right to launch wars of intervention. That has been the position of every president since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Bill Clinton did it in Kosovo, with support from not only Tony Blair but also Clare Short and John Kerry. And Mr Bush is not the first president to launch a war on a dubious pretext.
No, like much else today, the reasons seem to be more personal than political. Mr Bush has become the symbol of the one minority it is deemed respectable to hate. Everybody understands that it is no longer acceptable to be rude to racial or ethnic minorities; even Mr Bush’s conservative Republicans go out of their way to avoid insulting Islam. The one group that is considered fair game, however, is the kind of “white trash ” who can be branded ignorant racists. White trash chavs from, say, Essex are an easy target for abuse over here. White trash rednecks from backward places such as Texas are an even easier target over there.
I am not about to set up a “libertarian Marxists for Dubya” campaign (or for John Kerry either). But the vitriol directed against Bush supporters seems to me no less trashy politics than the racist prejudice that some Republicans espoused in past elections.
The contemptuous tone of this campaign is captured by a song I keep hearing called American Idiot, by the punkish American band, Green Day: “Don’t want to be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information age of hysteria/I’m not part of a redneck agenda”. A lot of supposedly more highbrow criticism has been in the same low tone. One typical British intellectual has called on all “intelligent, educated, civilised, cultivated, compassionate people in America” to vote against Bush — with the obvious implication that anybody voting for him must be a barbaric, brutish American idiot. Radical American commentators publish articles under headlines such as “Clueless people love Bush” and “Don’t be brainwashed!”.
A constant complaint is that many “clueless people” have already been brainwashed by the Bush campaign’s use of scare tactics through an allegedly compliant media. Arianna Huffington, a leading anti-Bush columnist, claims that Americans are voting in a “fog of fear”, and that thanks to Mr Bush’s “unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain, but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain . . . It’s not about left wing v right wing; it’s about left brain v right brain”. Or, she might just as well have said, intelligent and logical people v emotionally idiotic lizards.
These attitudes are not only contemptuous, they are a cop-out. How much easier it is for the liberal Left to blame stupid voters and the lying media for propping up Mr Bush and the Iraq war, rather than face up to its own failure to mount a convincing case or win the argument. Some of us on the British Left have been here before. Twenty years ago, we heard similar arguments from those who wanted to excuse Labour’s inability to cope with the Tories. It was not the pathetic opposition that enabled Margaret Thatcher to win three elections, you understand. According to the blame-dodgers of the British Left, it was the magical power of Thatcherism that had bewitched “greedy” working-class voters with its ideology of “authoritarian populism” — whatever that meant.
Today we seem to have the Thatcherism debate rerun as farce. Those who complain about stupid American voters being brainwashed by the incompetent, incoherent Mr Bush are only deluding themselves — not least about the notion that things will change for the better if Mr Kerry wins. Those who protest about the power of Republican fear-mongering are using scare tactics of their own, with Mr Bush cast as bogeyman along with bin Laden. Those who pour public scorn on “American idiots” are parading the latest version of the socialism of fools.
Contribute to the debate at comment@thetimes.co.uk
October 31, 2004 at 12:40 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
We must escape from grand theories to see the world in all its messiness
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
MATTHEW PARRIS
“I AM ready for this. I am ready to explode myself in this way in Israel.� Jonathan Dimbleby’s interview in Lebanon with a would-be suicide bomber will raise eyebrows when it is broadcast late tomorrow night, and understandably so, but I think he is right to show it. The young Palestinian does not say he has immediate plans to detonate himself, and Mr Dimbleby is not being sensationalist: he is trying to show how deep is the despair and anger of Palestinian people.
I have just watched tapes of Mr Dimbleby’s The New World War, the first part of which is to be broadcast on ITV late tomorrow night, Sunday. It is challenging stuff.
It is also strangely moving. Mr Dimbleby revisits two countries where he filmed early in his television career, and which draw him back. His professional reputation was at least partly based on a harrowing documentary he made about Ethiopia as a very young man; and he was in Beirut more than 20 years ago at the nadir of Lebanon’s fortunes; but, though the story he tells today is anguished, he shows a tenderness for these lovely and troubled places. In a media world where most of us flit from subject to subject wherever the news spotlight falls, Mr Dimbleby — older, greyer and sadder than the eager young chap with a 70s haircut of whom we see archive clips in Ethiopia — stays loyal to people, places and ideas, because he thinks they matter.
Though struck by the evidence he has gathered, I shall contest his central argument. So first I should say this: watch it if you can. The New World War is a thought-provoking piece of television reportage and commentary: honest, sharp, revealing, earnest, angry, personal and — praise be — never glib, the programme is a credit to an ITV which has found extended airtime for challenging public-interest television. They should do so more often and at a more civilised hour.
Dimbleby illustrates what he thinks connects George Bush and Osama bin Laden in a macabre waltz in which both men’s political survival depends upon their persuading their followers to see the world as being in a state of war. The US President’s Manichaean philosophy is well known: for him and for our own Prime Minister it really is as simple as good versus evil. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” Mr Bush tells the camera. Bin Laden echoes this dualism precisely: the world, he says is divided “into two sides: the side of the believers and the side of infidels”. Mr Dimbleby invites us reject this simplistic way of seeing the world.
He then matches the dualism of bin Laden and Mr Bush with a dualism of his own. It is well put but not new: the familiar refrain of the British and European liberal Left and centre Left. This is that (just as Mr Bush or Bin Laden would say) modern international affairs are indeed characterised by the struggle of good and evil; and (just as Mr Bush or bin Laden would say) linkages and conspiracies can be found between apparently unrelated ills; and that (just as Mr Bush or bin Laden would say) good men must understand that their interests, however divergent they may seem, are bound together by a shared need to confound the conspiracy of evil.
It is just that liberals see a different evil: US interests, greedy and planet-wrecking consumerism, careless and callous globalisation. For them too (as for bin Laden and Mr Bush) beneath the surface of modern history — a surface on which problems bob around like so many free-floating corks — run invisible connecting strings. Understand these linkages (the argument runs) and we may learn how to secure the triumph of good over evil.
The New World War, thinks Mr Dimbleby, is a war against, yes, terrorism, but against poverty, injustice, disease, famine, pollution and drought too, because these evils feed the general evil — anger and despair — which drives men to extremist doctrines and desperate remedies.
He makes the case eloquently. His survey of opinion in Lebanon paints a stunning picture of total and intractable Arab fury with America, Britain and Israel. But his attempt to carry this thesis over the Red Sea to Ethiopia and (by implication) more widely in sub-Saharan Africa, is less convincing. No doubt hundreds of millions of Africans live in dire poverty, and al-Qaeda are organising where they can, to exploit despair. If Mr Dimbleby has discovered that they are meeting with some success in the Horn of Africa, then I take his documentary’s word for it. But it is not my hunch that Africa’s chaos and furies are weldable by fundamentalist Islam into a single and potent fury against the West. Mostly, Africans kill each other. Desperate poverty disables rather than enrages or empowers. Iraqis (when I went there this year) were not desperately poor.
Crudely oversimplified, Mr Dimbleby’s argument is that if we cannot find ways for Africa to feed and water its peoples, they will rise up and kill us. I reply that it is worse than that. They will not rise up and kill us. Had they that power we might take notice of their plight. Africa’s collective failure robs its peoples of the means to make any collective threat. They will carry on dying, and it won’t affect us much at all.
Africa is not Arabia. Global warming is not a threat to Western values. Disease plays into no politician’s hands. Starvation may lead to revolution in one country, subjection in another, and we should help the poor because we should help the poor. My Pakistani friends talk more of Kashmir than they do of Israel. American intervention may have been right in Afghanistan and wrong in Iraq. To see the world in patches, dappled with rights, wrongs and maybes quite unlinked by the forces of good or evil, may be a mark not of failed intelligence but of the courage to venture out from beneath the wings of grand explanations of the world, and face each problem as individual.
I say of the British anti-American Left, as I say of both Mr Bush and bin Laden, that they should beware of failing to see the trees for the wood.
The New World War, ITV1, Sunday, October 31, 11.10pm; and Monday, November 1, 11pm
Contribute to the debate at comment@thetimes.co.uk
October 31, 2004 at 12:39 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
MI5 agents acted on tip-off by Communist informer
By Magnus Linklater
DOCUMENTS passed by MI5 to James MacGibbon’s family reveal that the security services had found out about his contacts with the Russians and placed him under surveillance after the war.
In 1950, he received an unexpected visit from a British agent, who informed him that MI5 knew about his activities. “He stayed for about an hour,” said MacGibbon. “I denied everything, assuring him that the Russians could only have wanted to see me because I had been a CP (Communist Party) member.”
The MI5 files show that his telephone was tapped, and his house in St John’s Wood watched from December 1949 to 1953. The record shows that this information was given to a member of the security services by an informer within the Communist Party who knew MacGibbon.
The informer reported that, after returning to Britain, MacGibbon had been offered Ł2,000 by the Soviet Embassy for “services rendered” and was asked to continue to provide information. MacGibbon refused. Having left the Army he had no more information to give. He was interrogated on two occasions in 1950. Both interviews, the second by Jim Skardon, “produced robust denials” by MacGibbon and his wife, Jean.
The official records include bugged conversations between MacGibbon and his wife discussing whom they could approach for advice about these allegations, their main concern being to stop Soviet agents’ approaches.
“What I did during the war was something very special,” he is recorded as saying to Jean at one point. “The idea I am (involved) with some kind of Russian spy organisation is just something too silly.”
In addition to putting a “tail” on MacGibbon, and tapping his phone, it appears that most if not all of the incoming correspondence to their address was opened and photographed (including a letter from their young daughter’s uncle enclosing a pound note for her birthday – both copied). None of this mail revealed anything suspicious.
October 31, 2004 at 12:36 AM in KGB | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
British officers lobbied US to send troops to danger zone
Nicholas Rufford and Peter Almond
THE decision to send Black Watch troops into Iraq’s “triangle of death� followed requests by British military chiefs to take over a US controlled area.
British officers have been “champing at the bit” for months to be allowed the chance to demonstrate what they believed are superior skills in restoring order, according to a senior military source.
Some officers believe that American ‘heavy-handedness’ in Iraq is prolonging the conflict.
The revelation casts new light on the decision to send 850 British troops to boost American forces. The official position remains that Washington asked for support. It led to accusations that Britain was boosting President George W Bush’s election ambitions by supporting the campaign.
However, the request came only after British officers made it clear to their American counterparts that they would be receptive to an approach. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has not revealed the extent of the British Army’s enthusiasm for the mission for fear of appearing critical of America.
General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the general staff, is among senior British officers who have praised British successes in southern Iraq and regretted that the forces had not taken over an area in or around Baghdad at the start of the war.
Jackson has come closest to disapproving of some American tactics, saying that US military culture “differed significantly” from Britain’s. During the 2003 Iraq conflict he said: “We have a very considerable hearts and minds challenge.”
The deployment is set to go ahead despite an appeal by Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker kidnapped in Baghdad, not to send British troops nearer the city.
Tahseen Ali Hassan, her husband, responded to a video released by her captors by making a fresh call for her release.
“It was very painful to see my wife crying,” he told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station. “The scene pained, distressed and saddened her friends and loved ones.”
British troops could remain in central Iraq next year if the Black Watch mission is successful and there could be pressure on the American military to modify its approach.
British military chiefs believe that they are better than American forces at turning civilians against insurgents by winning hearts and minds.
The Ministry of Defence would not comment directly on the claim but reiterated that “one of the great strengths of multinational operations is that they bring together different nations with different procedures. This allows the coalition to call upon the strengths of each nation”.
Jeff Mitchell
A boy at yesterday’s protest rally in Dundee against plans to merge Scottish regiments
The British battle group will attempt to restore order in an area around the lawless towns of Mahmudiya, Iskandariya and Latifiya. Significantly, the Black Watch will not be taking its Challenger II tanks because it does not see the need for heavy armour.
Growing resistance in the area since April has claimed more than 200 American military casualties, including at least 10 deaths. It is also thought to be the location where foreign hostages, including Ken Bigley, have been held and murdered. Its population of 900,000 people include the ancestors of tribesmen who in 1920 launched a ferocious rebellion against British rule.
A British military spokesman in Basra said that the troops were “raring to go”.
The US military said yesterday that it had captured a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant blamed for hostage beheadings and suicide bombings. Five others were arrested in the same raids yesterday in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
Violence continued in other parts of Iraq. Twenty members of Iraq’s security forces were killed in a spate of insurgent attacks across the country, including 16 police who died in a suicide bombing at an Iraqi police post near the al-Asad base of the US marines west of Baghdad. Up to 40 people were wounded in the attack.
The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, an Iraqi militant group, said it had beheaded an Iraqi man accused of collaborating with US forces in the northern city of Mosul and posted pictures of the killing on the internet.
ťIn Britain yesterday 250 people demonstrated in Camperdown Park, Dundee, against plans for the merger of Scottish regiments.
October 31, 2004 at 12:31 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 30, 2004
Passwords and secret night meetings
Extracts from MacGibbon’s confession
IN BRITAIN:
“Through my friendship with X [the name is missing] whom I met when we were both at 8 Corps HQ . . . a meeting was arranged at X’s sister’s flat in Edgware Road. He confirmed the British were not passing on their vitally important enemy intelligence, something that can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
“I have forgotten how my first rendezvous was arranged but I met a young Russian woman, Natasha, at a pre-ordained spot near Westbourne Terrace.
“We exchanged passwords and walked along together introducing each other and I passed on my first note on the German units facing the Soviet armies. The first cache was arranged. This was usually under a bush in a front garden of the terrace houses, my typed notes including a matchbox. The caches were changed each time. In each cache I left an empty box which was marked with a cross by Natasha before I left the new box with my notes.
“This became a regular routine once or twice a month, with occasional meetings, always taking care we were not being watched. We became friends although I never met her in daylight.
“And so it went on from 1943 to 1944 when I was transferred to Washington on the British side of the Combined Chiefs of staff in June 1944.”
IN AMERICA:
“I was one of two GSO2s under our brigadier, a friendly regular soldier. My work was similar to what I had been doing in London with the new duty of writing a weekly brief for our general. Our old friends [not identified in the confession] had gone to the USA a year or so before war broke out and were well established with another part of Washington society, liberal-minded journalists and writers.
“Saturday nights were very happy. Once again I was leading a wartime life that seemed unreal, so far removed from danger.
“I can’t remember how my meeting with my new contact was arranged but very soon I was having regular meetings, this time with a sophisticated man, and arranging drops as I had done in London.
“All this had become so much of a routine that after he and I began having occasional drinks in a bar I began to feel I was taking unnecessary risks and we stopped.
“I was never conscious of being in danger although occasionally I wondered what my fate would be if discovered.”
October 30, 2004 at 11:34 AM in KGB | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
I spied for Stalin at War Office, publisher confessed
After the death of his widow, a Soviet agent reveals posthumously how he passed on information about troop movements, writes Magnus Linklater
A REMARKABLE confession by one of London’s most respected postwar publishers has revealed that for most of the Second World War he acted as a secret Soviet agent, using his position in the War Office to pass top-level information to Moscow on German troop movements, including plans for the D-Day landings.
James MacGibbon, who ran the publishing firm of MacGibbon and Kee, wrote a detailed account of his activities and passed it to me shortly before his death in February 2000, requesting only that I wait until after the death of his wife, Jean, to publish it. She died last year.
Last week, a detailed MI5 dossier, which shows that Mac-Gibbon was suspected of espionage and placed under close surveillance, was passed to his family.
MacGibbon was questioned by the agency’s top interrogator, Jim Skardon, who had broken the atom spy Klaus Fuchs, but revealed nothing. “I was impressed to know that I had been interrogated by the top man and had lied my way out,” he told me. MacGibbon’s 12-page account of how he progressed from prewar membership of the Communist Party to secret wartime meetings with a contact from the Soviet Embassy, known only as Natasha, reads as if it came straight out of a spy thriller.
But it has, too, a strangely innocent feel to it. Convinced that, following the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, it was his duty to keep the Soviets, who were Britain’s allies, up to date with German troop movements, MacGibbon made contact with the Soviet Embassy in London. He was put in touch with Natasha and met her at a pre-ordained spot near Westbourne Terrace in West London.
“We exchanged passwords and walked along together [it was dark] introducing each other,” he wrote. “I passed on my first note on the German units facing the Soviet armies. The first cache was arranged, this was usually under a bush in a front garden of the terrace houses, my typed notes including a matchbox. The caches were changed each time. In each one I left an empty box which was marked with a cross by Natasha before I left the new box with my notes.
“This became a regular routine once or twice a month, with occasional meetings, always taking care that we were not being watched as we walked along chatting about this and that — we became friends although I never met her in daylight.”
Since MacGibbon worked in the Map Room of the War Office, it was relatively easy for him to note down details of German troop movements.
“When I heard that our enemy intelligence was not passed on to the Russians, who were confronting the greater part of the German armies, it obviously seemed disgraceful,” he said. “Our knowledge of the locations of the German units happened to be very good — much better than the Russians.”
Because he spoke German, MacGibbon had joined the Intelligence Corps and gone through an intelligence course, where two of his fellow officers were Enoch Powell and Hardy Amies. Although he had been vetted by MI5 in May 1940, it had been at best a cursory affair. After some questions about his membership of the CP, Mac-Gibbon was asked: “Are you for us or for Stalin?”
He answered: “For us.” “Shake on it, old man,” said his vetting officer.
James MacGibbon would meet “Natasha”, his Soviet contact, and leave wartime secrets under a bush in a front garden of a house in Westbourne Terrace, West London
“And that,” said MacGibbon, “was that. For the rest of the war years no secrets were withheld from me. It was still an age of innocence. A gentleman’s word was his bond.”
He was posted to MI3, the section of the War Office dealing with early plans for Operation Overlord, the projected invasion of France. It is not clear how much of this was passed on to the Russians, but Mac-Gibbon told me that he sent them everything he had that could have been of help to them, and this must have included details of Overlord.
In 1944, after two years of passing information to his Soviet contact, MacGibbon was posted to Washington, working on the British side of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He became part of Anglophile Washington Society, mixing with celebrities like Douglas Fairbanks Junior.
Soon after arriving he began having regular meetings with another Soviet contact – “this time a sophisticated man, and arranging drops as I had in London. All this had become so much of a routine that after he and I had begun having occasional drinks in a bar, I began to feel that I was taking unnecessary risks and we stopped that practice.”
Instead MacGibbon used to take long tram rides to north Washington, where he met his contact near a large Roman Catholic cemetery.
Soon after VE Day, he returned to London, supposing that his job of passing on information was over. “But that was not the end,” he wrote. “I was pestered for some time by phone calls from a rather dreary man who persisted in keeping in touch with me.”
Then, in 1950, he received an unexpected visit from a British agent, who informed him that MI5 knew about his contacts. “He stayed for about an hour, I denied everything, assuring him that the Russian could only have wanted to see me because I had been a CP member.”
The MI5 files, released to MacGibbon’s family, show that not only was he suspected, but his telephone was tapped, and his house in St John’s Wood placed under surveillance.
Every single one of his letters was photographed.
He was interrogated at length by Skardon, but after that produced nothing, he was called in to the War Office and told that he had been “cleared”. It was, he said, “a great relief”.
Last night Hamish MacGibbon, his son, said: “The information that has been recently released concerning my father adds little to what we, as the family, already knew. It confirms our view that all he did was to report on German troop movements to our Russian allies.
“In view of the situation as it existed then this was exactly the right thing to do. It has not in any way altered our view of him as a man and a father, of whom we are very proud.”
October 30, 2004 at 11:31 AM in KGB | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Death-bed confession of the spy who got away
By Michael Evans and Magnus Linklater
A SECRET death-bed confession from a publisher who served in military intelligence in the Second World War has exposed an extraordinary story of espionage and treachery.
James MacGibbon, who died four years ago, aged 88, admitted in a 12-page affidavit, kept secret until now, that he had spied for the Russians while in the War Office.
He will join a long list of spies who served two masters, notably Harold “Kim” Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, the notorious Cambridge spy ring.
Based in Washington and London, where he was involved in planning Operation Overlord, the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy, MacGibbon came under suspicion after the war.
He was questioned by William Skardon, the legendary MI5 interrogator who uncovered Klaus Fuchs, the atom spy in 1950. But MacGibbon survived the interrogation and was taken off the list of suspected Russian spies. Before he died, MacGibbon typed out a confession which The Times now makes public for the first time after his family received documents from MI5, which detailed its suspicions. He wrote how alarmed he had become when he realised who was questioning him.
“It was a relief when some weeks later, he called me into the War Office to tell me I had been ‘cleared’. I was impressed when Skardon’s name was disclosed to know I had been interrogated by the top man and had lied my way out.
MacGibbon , whose father was the Minister of Glasgow Cathedral was a Tory until 1934 when he joined the Communist Party. When war broke out, he was drafted into military intelligence because he spoke German. Afterwards, as head of MacGibbon & Kee, he published Cecil Day Lewis and Humphrey Lyttleton. Hamish MacGibbon defended his father’s decision to pass information to the Russians. He said: “The information that has been recently released adds little to what we, as the family, knew.
“It confirms our view that all he did was to report on German troop movements to our Russian allies. This was exactly the right thing to do. It has not altered our view of him as a man and a father of whom we are very proud.”
October 30, 2004 at 11:30 AM in KGB | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 29, 2004
Transcript of Al Jazeera Tape - Bin laden - Oct 29th, 2004
The New York Times > International > Transcript of Al Jazeera Tape
By REUTERS
Published: October 29, 2004
DUBAI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Following are excerpts from a speech by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing the American people in a video tape, parts of which were aired by Al Jazeera television on Saturday, as translated by Reuters.
"O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.
"Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden for example.
"It is known that those who hate freedom do not possess proud souls like those of the 19, may God rest their souls. We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security we squander yours.
"I am surprised by you. Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.
"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
"In those difficult moments many emotions came over me which are hard to describe, but which produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust.
"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.
"We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings ... They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery.
"He (Bush) adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act under the guise of combating terrorism.....
"We had agreed with the (the Sept. 11) overall commander Mohammed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice.
"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God...
"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.
October 29, 2004 at 09:59 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Nasr: 'He's sending a message to the American people'
CNN.com - Nasr: 'He's sending a message to the American people' - Oct 29, 2004
Friday, October 29, 2004 Posted: 2333 GMT (0733 HKT)
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The Al-Jazeera network aired a new videotape of Osama bin Laden Friday, in which the al Qaeda leader says that in order to avoid further attacks, the United States should not attack al Qaeda.
Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, spoke with "Crossfire" hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson about the new tape and bin Laden's message.
BEGALA: Octavia, what is [it] that bin Laden is saying?
NASR: Well, the most important thing about bin Laden's speech is that he's addressing it to the American people. He's trying to explain why 9/11 happened, the idea and when it occurred to him, and also telling the American people loud and clear that, unless they do something about it, America could be attacked again. ...
And he's sending a message to the American people, saying security is the most important thing to al Qaeda, as he says, and "it should be the most important thing to you." But he says, "security is in your hands. No one can achieve that security for you, not Bush, not Kerry, not al Qaeda. It is in your hands." Basically, he is saying, "if we are not attacked, we won't attack anybody."
CARLSON: Octavia, you said that, in the tape, he explains why 9/11 happened. What was his explanation for why 9/11 happened?
NASR: Well, he says it is a response to the aggression suffered by Arabs and Muslims at the hands of the U.S.
He talks specifically about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and how the U.S. took part in that. And he said when he saw the towers of Beirut fall, this is when it occurred to him that he had to make the U.S. pay for that aggression. And this is when he started plotting for those attacks.
Now, he did say that the attacks went better than they had planned. And he said that they had agreed on 20 minutes, within 20 minutes, the attacks should have been completed, because he said that he discussed this Mohamed Atta and told him, "You have to finish this job in 20 minutes before the Bush administration realizes what is going on." But then he goes on to say, "but the president was sitting down, more interested in listening to a child's story about a goat, rather than 50,000 U.S. citizens trapped facing the worst nightmare of their life in the World Trade Center," and that gave the terrorists 20 more minutes, he said, to achieve a lot more than they had planned.
BEGALA: Octavia, there have been reports for years that bin Laden had advanced kidney disease or some reports that he may have been wounded in the American liberation of Afghanistan. As you watch the tape and you listen to his voice, any sense that perhaps he is sick or wounded?
NASR: Well, I'm not a doctor. And I can't evaluate his health. What I can tell you -- having watched bin Laden, listened to him for many years, in fact translated a lot of his speeches -- this is a man that looks fine to me. We have seen a bin Laden that was tired before, especially after the Tora Bora attack. We have seen a bin Laden that couldn't move his arm, and we all thought that he was wounded at the time.
This is a bin Laden that looks very comfortable, very composed. He's sitting down behind a desk, it looks like. He's talking very calmly. And he looks fine. He looks like he's aged a bit.
And you have to remember, we haven't seen bin Laden in over two years. What we have been receiving of him were audiotapes for over two years. So it looks like he's aged a bit, but he looks to be in good health. But, again, I mean, I'm not an expert on these issues.
There were reports also that said that the idea of dialysis and kidney failure and all that were not correct, that that was made up and that was not true. But, again, we do not know and there's no way anyone is going to be able to tell what his medical condition is at this point.
October 29, 2004 at 09:48 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
'Your security is in your own hands'
Excerpts from the new videotape by Osama bin Laden:
“The American people, my message to you is about the best way to avoid a new Manhattan, about the war, its reasons and results. We fought you because we are free people who want to regain the freedom of our nation. The way you waste our security, we waste your security.�
“We did not find it difficult to deal with Bush and his Administration because it is similar to regimes in our countries in that half of them are ruled by the military and the other half are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents . . . Bin Laden said that when the senior Bush visited the Middle East, he was impressed by their regimes. He envied them for staying in power for decades and embezzling the nation’s wealth. So he transferred tyranny and oppression to his son and they named it ‘homeland security law’ under the pretext of fighting terrorism.”
“In spite of our being in the fourth year after the incidents of the 11th (of September), Bush is still misleading you by hiding the real reason from you . . . I tell you, God knows, that we never had an idea to strike the towers but we were fed up and after we saw the injustice of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to our mind.”
“While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish those unjust people in the same way, to destroy the tower in America to make them feel what we had felt, and to deter them from killing our children and women.”
“Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands; every state that does not mess with our security will have security.”
October 29, 2004 at 09:44 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Bin Laden video threatens America
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Bin Laden video threatens America
Arabic TV station al-Jazeera has broadcast a videotape in which Osama Bin Laden threatens fresh attacks on the US.
The leader of the al-Qaeda network says the reasons behind the events of 11 September 2001 still exist.
It is his clearest claim of responsibility yet for those attacks.
Americans go to the polls in four days, but Bin Laden says their security depends on neither George W Bush nor John Kerry, but on US foreign policy.
Both presidential candidates reacted angrily to the tapes, Mr Bush promising Americans "will not be intimidated", and Mr Kerry saying he would "hunt down and destroy" al-Qaeda.
Correspondents say that in its simplest form, this is a reminder from Bin Laden that he is still there and he is still a threat.
'Another Manhattan'
In the tape, Bin Laden speaks directly to the camera in a quiet, calm voice, making small gestures with his right hand. He appears in good health.
"O American people," the video begins, "my talk to you is about the best way to avoid another Manhattan; about the war, its causes and results."
He accuses President George W Bush of deceiving the American people in the years since the 11 September attacks.
"Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you, and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened," he says.
Bin Laden likens the Bush administration to Arab regimes, saying both are characterised by "hubris, arrogance, greed and unlawful acquisition of money".
He tries to appropriate the language of the Bush administration, dismissing Mr Bush's regular claims that al-Qaeda militants "hate freedom".
"We fought you because we are free and do not accept injustice," he says.
Bin Laden says he first thought of attacking the US after seeing destroyed tower blocks in Lebanon following the Israeli invasion in 1982, which the US, he says, permitted.
Americans' security lies not in the hands of "Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda", but depends on US policy, he says.
It was not obvious when the video was recorded, but US officials say they believe it is authentic.
The tape alludes to Mr Bush and Mr Kerry as presidential rivals - indicating the tape must have been made in the last few months.
A spokesman for al-Jazeera said the station received the tape early on Friday, but would not indicate how.
Americans 'united'
The presidential rivals both responded quickly to the tape.
Mr Bush said: "Let me make this very clear. Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country. I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this."
The American people were at war and would prevail, he said.
Mr Kerry, meanwhile, said Americans were "absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama Bin Laden and the terrorists" and he would "stop at absolutely nothing" to do so.
US officials have said there will be no change in the country's terrorism alert status.
Correspondents in Washington say it is not obvious what impact this video could have on the US presidential contest.
They say Bin Laden's threats could prompt some to rally behind the president, but to others it may emphasise the Bush administration's failure to capture Bin Laden in the three years since the attacks on New York and Washington.
They add that the video may simply further entrench the views of those on either side of the partisan divide.
This is the first new videotape of Bin Laden speaking to have surfaced since the US-led war in Afghanistan.
However, several audio messages believed to be from Bin Laden have emerged since then.
The most recent, posted on a website known to be used by Islamist militants, strongly criticised the US and coalition forces in Iraq and ordered a jihad, or holy war, against them.
October 29, 2004 at 08:01 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Bin Laden warns of possible new attacks
Bin Laden warns of possible new attacks
By Ghaida Ghantous
DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden has burst into the U.S. election campaign, issuing his first videotape in more than a year to deride President George W. Bush and warn of possible new September 11-style attacks.
Bin Laden, making his clearest claim yet of responsibility for the September 11 strikes of 2001, said Bush had failed Americans with his Middle East policies, deceiving the nation and putting it at risk from further al Qaeda strikes.
Appearing in a video released from hiding to Al Jazeera TV on Saturday, four days before the U.S. presidential poll, and gesturing with a finger to stress points, bin Laden said the September 11 attacks would not have been so severe if Bush had been alert.
"Despite entering the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened (with new attacks)," he said.
In what seemed a deliberate attempt to influence Tuesday's U.S. election, bin Laden used the opening line: "O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results."
But he made little mention of Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry, saying: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe."
Bush, who ordered U.S. forces to capture bin Laden dead or alive after the September 11 attacks, vowed that "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced" by the video.
Kerry, who has criticised Bush for failing to capture bin Laden by diverting troops to Iraq, called bin Laden a barbarian.
"I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes," he said, running neck and neck with Bush in opinion polls.
"PUNISH THE UNJUST"
Bin Laden, looking healthy and speaking forcefully, said he thought of the idea of attacking the U.S. skyscrapers when he saw Israeli aircraft bombing tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.
"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way ... to destroy towers in America so that it can taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women," said bin Laden.
"We had agreed with the overall commander Mohammed Atta (who led the Sept 11. suicide plane hijackers), may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice," he said.
"This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations. Thanks be to God."
The al Qaeda leader, apparently sitting or standing at a table against a neutral brown background, wore a white head covering and white tunic under a light brown cloak. His full beard a mixture of white and dark grey.
The White House said there was no change in the U.S. terror alert level at present despite the video. A U.S. official said the video did not appear to contain a specific threat.
"There is no change in (the alert level) at this time but it's something we analyse all the time," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We are on a heightened state of awareness already."
U.S. intelligence agencies believed that it appeared to be bin Laden on the tape, U.S. officials said.
American officials have said they suspect he is hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
An Al Jazeera editor said the Qatar-based channel had received the video tape on Friday but did not say how. He said the tape was new but did not give any details.
Saudi-born bin Laden last appeared in a video tape broadcast by Al Jazeera in September 2003, showing him and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri descending a mountainside calling for jihad and praising the September 11 hijackers.
In April, Arab television stations broadcast an audio tape purportedly from bin Laden offering a three-month truce to Europeans if they withdrew troops from Muslim nations. The deadline expired with no word from bin Laden.
October 29, 2004 at 07:59 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 28, 2004
Howard wins control over Senate to tighten grip on power
Telegraph | News | Howard wins control over Senate to tighten grip on power
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 29/10/2004)
Australia's prime minister, John Howard, won the strongest mandate of any leader in nearly 25 years yesterday when he took control of the upper house of parliament.
The result, which follows Mr Howard's fourth successive election win earlier this month, will allow him to forge ahead with contentious plans to weaken the power of the unions and privatise Australia's largest telecommunications group, Telstra.
Mr Howard's conservative coalition now holds a majority in the Senate and the lower House of Representatives, making him the first prime minister to control both chambers since 1981.
Mr Howard called the result an opportunity for change, but opposition parties and unions expressed concern over the government's unbridled power.
Although the election was nearly three weeks ago, the balance of power in the Senate only became clear after the complex preferential voting system was counted.
The government now holds 39 of the 76 seats in the Senate and will be able to force through a range of previously blocked reforms without the support of minor parties.
Mr Howard said: "We don't intend to allow this unexpected but welcome majority in the Senate to go to our heads.
"We certainly won't be abusing our new-found position. We'll continue to listen to the people and we'll stay in touch with the public that has invested great trust and confidence in us."
The treasurer, Peter Costello, said the government would be able to introduce legislation which would give Australia "great opportunities" for the future.
High on the agenda will be the sale of its 51 per cent stake in Telstra, a move which will be unpopular in rural areas and the Outback, where mobile phone coverage is already patchy.
The government also hopes to ease controls on foreign media ownership. That would allow Kerry Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to own television stations and newspapers in the same state capital.
There are also plans to reform labour laws to enforce secret ballots before workers can strike, and to make it harder for employees to claim unfair dismissal.
The reforms are in keeping with Mr Howard's emphasis on private enterprise and individual responsibility, an agenda that owes much to Margaret Thatcher.
Labour's leader in the Senate, Chris Evans, said: "Clearly the government has an unfettered power now. I am fearful the government will abuse their power."
The leader of the Australian Democrats, Andrew Bartlett, said opposition parties would be unable to prevent the passage of "bad" legislation or even ensure it was properly scrutinised.
"The Australian people gave the Howard government the keys to the Senate but they didn't give them permission to trash the place," Mr Bartlett said.
"It will be more important than ever that the Democrats and others inform the public of what laws the government is proposing and harness public opinion to try to force the government to listen."
In December, Mr Howard, 65, will become Australia's second-longest serving prime minister after his political idol of the fifties and sixties, Sir Robert Menzies.
There is speculation that Mr Howard will step down half-way through his three-year term of office, handing power to Mr Costello.
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October 28, 2004 at 11:54 PM in Political | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Putin has an eye on the future as he looks back on Soviet glory victory
Telegraph | News | Putin has an eye on the future as he looks back on Soviet glory victory
By Julius Strauss in Moscow
(Filed: 29/10/2004)
In scenes eerily reminiscent of the Cold War, President Vladimir Putin joined President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine to watch a military parade goose-step through Kiev yesterday.
They stood on a raised platform as thousands of soldiers, sailors and a Second World War T-34 tank moved down the main street of the Ukrainian capital behind the red Soviet flag that was raised over the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945.
The parade was ostensibly to celebrate victory over the Nazis nearly 60 years ago, but it was brought forward to try to give a boost to Viktor Yanukovich, the regime's candidate for the Ukrainian presidential election this weekend.
For Mr Putin, a Yanukovich victory would be a big step towards realising plans to reconstitute a mini-Soviet Union by forming a common economic zone constituting Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Mr Yanukovich, a businessman from the coal-mining region of Donetsk with an unsavoury past, has promised closer ties with Russia, dual citizenship and making Russian a second state language.
According to Jane's Intelligence Report, he has also promised to hand over the port of Sevastopol in the Ukrainian region of Crimea to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. At present, the facilities are shared under a deal reached in the 1990s.
Mr Kuchma, who is retiring after two terms in office, is also anxious for a Yanukovich win, otherwise he and his cronies could face prison over a series of scandals.
Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-western candidate whose face was badly disfigured after he was allegedly poisoned, has threatened to take Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and seek membership of the European Union and Nato.
Polls show that victory for Mr Kanukovich is far from certain. Recently several pro-democracy and opposition activists have been arrested. Last weekend provocateurs attacked a crowd of 100,000 people protesting at government attempts to influence the vote.
Volodymyr Polokhalo, an independent analyst, said: "This election is the dirtiest, most immoral and most dishonest of all post-Soviet campaigns in Ukraine.
"The Russian factor is present everywhere."
Mr Putin's increasingly Soviet-era style was also on display in Russia yesterday as the Kremlin bused in thousands of students and schoolchildren for a "spontaneous" pro-Putin demonstration.
The rally was said to be a protest against terrorism but critics say it was timed to undermine simultaneous opposition demonstrations against Mr Putin's plans to abolish gubernatorial elections.
October 28, 2004 at 11:46 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 27, 2004
Terrorism
Terrorism - Notes toward a definition. By Christopher Hitchens
Notes toward a definition.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Nov. 18, 2002, at 12:32 PM PT
If any of the terms in our new lexicon has undergone a process of diminishing returns, it is the word "terrorism." This is partly because it is carried over from an earlier lexicon. It is also partly because even that previous lexicon was experiencing a little fatigue, in consequence of the word's ambiguity and hypocrisy. The president himself, declaring us at war with this word, seemed unconsciously to try and hurry us past it, by slurring and condensing it into "terrism" or (it seems on some days) "tourism."
But we need a more exhaustive and exclusive and discriminating definition of it, or recognition of it. The clue may lie in turning the lexicographical pages even further back. In the 1970s, Claude Chabrol produced a brilliant film called Nada. It precisely captured both the pointless nastiness and the sinister grandiosity of some of the movements of violence that disfigured that decade. The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Japan—all gave themselves permission to kill, but without any announced goal or objective beyond more of the same. There were other groups in the same epoch, such as the Basque ETA or the Palestinian "Black September," which used unscrupulous and hateful tactics but whose aims could be understood. Chabrol's title, however, recalled an earlier usage for promiscuous cruelty—nihilism. Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
I may as well get the obvious out of the way. In London and Belfast during the same period, I was more than once within blast or shot-range of the IRA and came to understand that the word "indiscriminate" meant that I was as likely to be killed as any other bystander. I also remember seeing a car bomb explode outside the High Court in London, and I remember a friend of mine being taken hostage by Provisional IRA gangsters. However, at no point in this period did I fail to remind myself that the British policy in Ireland was stupid and doomed and—much more important—open to change.
The same held, in different degrees, for Zimbabwe and for the Palestinians. It's glib and evasive to say that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," because the "freedom fighters" are usually quite willing to kill their "own" civilians as well. But then, so are states. In an excellent recent essay in Newsweek, the conservative Fareed Zakaria points out that as between Russia and Chechnya, there is simply no comparison in the scope and scale and intensity of civilian-casualty infliction. Yeltsin and Putin win the filthy prize every time. I hate and despise Hezbollah and Palestinian suicide-murderers, as they ought to be called, but they'd have to work day and night for years to equal the total of civilians killed in Lebanon alone, or by Sharon alone. Lebanese and Palestinian irregulars are, by the way, entitled by international law to resist foreign occupation that has been internationally condemned. Fact. So when Sharon says—as he did on his visit to Ground Zero—that "there is no good terrorism and bad terrorism," he suggests a tautology that operates at his own expense. All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is—which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.
This doesn't mean that we are stuck with some dismal moral equivalence. The IRA or the Al Aqsa Brigades can be reminded, as can states and governments, that some actions or courses of action (bombs detonated without warning in civilian areas; kidnapping; rape) are crimes under every known law. And the evidence is that such awareness, along with some of its moral implications, does become available to them. (The same thought can also be instilled by other less pedagogic means.) Then of course, you should try and imagine Nelson Mandela or Salvador Allende—leaders of peoples who really did have a beef with the "empire"—ordering their supporters to crash civilian planes into civilian buildings. Excuse me if I say no more, though Mandela was in fact on a Defense Department "terrorism" list as late as the early-1980s.
Now put the case of al-Qaida. Its supporters do not live under a foreign occupation, even if you count the apparently useless and now embarrassing American bases in Saudi Arabia. It is partly a corrupt multinational corporation, partly a crime family, partly a surrogate for the Saudi oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police, partly a sectarian religious cult, and partly a fascist organization. Its most recent taped proclamation, whether uttered by its leader or not, denounces Australia and celebrates the murder of Australians—for the crime of assisting East Timorese independence from "Muslim" Indonesia! But this doesn't begin to make the case against Bin Ladenism. What does it demand from non-Muslim societies? It demands that they acknowledge their loathsome blasphemy and realize their own fitness for destruction. What does it demand for Muslim societies? It demands that they adopt 17th-century norms of clerical absolutism. How does it demand this? By a program of indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population of both. (Yes, both: The Afghan population was reduced by as many Hazara Shiites as the Taliban could manage to kill.) This is to demand the impossible, and to demand it by means of the most ruthless and disgusting tactics.
Enfolded in any definition of "terrorism," it seems to me, there should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality. Al-Qaida meets and exceeds all of these criteria, to a degree that leaves previous nihilist groups way behind. Its means, its ends, and its ideology all consist of the application of fanatical violence and violent fanaticism, and of no other things. It's "terrorist," all right.
What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any compromise with it. It's quite feasible to imagine Hezbollah or Hamas leaders at a conference table, and one has seen many previously "intransigent" forces of undemocratic violence, including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran death-squads and the Irgun, make precisely that transition. Even Saddam Hussein, who is certainly irrational but was not always completely so, could perhaps, and certainly until recently, have decided to save his life and his regime. But some definitions cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the theocratic totalitarians, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish martyrdom, we are here to help—within reason.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to Slate. His most recent book is Blood, Class and Empire. He is also the author of A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
October 27, 2004 at 10:45 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Military Assault in Falluja Is Likely, U.S. Officers Say
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: October 27, 2004
CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, Oct. 22 - A military offensive by American and Iraqi forces to reclaim rebel-held Falluja is probably inevitable and would be the largest and potentially the riskiest since the end of major combat in May 2003, senior American officers say.
It would also involve major operations to seize control of Ramadi, another contested Sunni Muslim city 30 miles away, and to shut Syrian border crossings to prevent foreign fighters from streaming into Iraq, Marine commanders here say.
This expanded set of combat operations reflects a growing consensus among American military commanders and Iraqi government officials that the insurgencies in the two nearby cities are linked and must be quelled at the same time.
The timing and decision to carry out any attacks or close any border crossings is up to the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, senior Marine officers say. But as peace negotiations with representatives of Falluja have broken down, senior officers say it could be just weeks before air and ground attacks begin, in a battle that officers estimate could last from several days to two weeks.
"If we're told to go, it'll be decisive," Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the commander of nearly 40,000 marines and soldiers in western and south-central Iraq, said in an interview. "The goal will be to limit the damage, limit the casualties and do it as rapidly and decisively as possible. We're not here to destroy the town. We're here to give it back."
The issue extends far beyond Falluja and Ramadi. Military officials said smashing the resistance there would deal a blow to the insurgency nationally, because Falluja in particular has been a haven and staging ground for attacks. Defeating insurgents there could help to calm the nation and set the conditions for elections, commanders say.
Senior officers say they are mindful that an attack on Falluja and Ramadi could set off uprisings in other Sunni towns and possibly in Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite area of Baghdad that exploded in violence during the revolts in April. But military officers say they are planning for such contingencies.
Several important military and political decisions remain to be made before any attack, officers said. Britain is redeploying about 850 troops from Basra to an area south of Baghdad to free up American forces to swing into position near Falluja. Iraqi security forces have not yet moved into position, though General Sattler said that would happen quickly once the order is given. A last-minute settlement also is possible, as has happened before at Falluja.
Commanders here insist that the planning and timing for any possible offensive has not been influenced by the American elections on Nov. 2 and that political issues have not come up in discussions with their military and civilian superiors in Baghdad or at the Pentagon.
In interviews at this dusty desert headquarters three miles east of Falluja and at other military headquarters in Iraq, commanders sketched out a broad outline for how the offensive would probably unfold. They declined to discuss specific troop numbers, tactics and important political and military decision points to protect operational security. But thousands of marines and soldiers, joined by thousands of newly trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and commandos, would attack Falluja from multiple directions, unleashing direct tank, artillery and mortar fire against insurgent positions that had been weakened by allied airstrikes and internecine fighting in recent weeks.
A great number of residents have fled the city in recent weeks, but thousands of insurgents remain, along with vestiges of the population. While keeping the city out of government control, the insurgents have also orchestrated attacks across much of Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is believed to have organized attacks that have killed hundreds in Iraq from his base in Falluja, is of primary interest to the Americans.
In the battle of Samarra last month, 3,000 American troops and 2,000 Iraqis fought roughly 500 insurgents. Officers estimated that perhaps three to four times that number of hard-core insurgents are in Falluja, meaning that an American-Iraqi force much larger than 5,000 troops is likely to be massed.
As in allied operations in Najaf and Samarra, Iraqi forces would be relied on to clear and secure mosques and other culturally sensitive targets, with marines and soldiers providing backup.
"We'll match capabilities with the mission to have an appropriate blend" of Iraqi and American forces, said Col. John Coleman, the First Marine Expeditionary Force chief of staff.
Allied warplanes including Navy FA-18's and Air Force F-16's and F-15E's would conduct air strikes against insurgent safe houses, weapons caches and other leadership targets that have been carefully analyzed for possible damage to civilian infrastructure.
The bombing would be an intensified version of the nearly nightly strikes the Americans have conducted in Falluja for the past two months but would not be a huge barrage, the commanders say.
The weapons of choice have been laser-guided and satellite-guided 500-pound bombs, which are considered better able to limit the risk of civilian casualties than 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound bombs.
Commanders say the offensive would get off to a fast start, but the insurgents are likely to respond with roadside bombs and car bombs to slow it, and could try to initiate popular outbursts in nearby Sunni towns.
Commanders also say the air campaign in Falluja has been largely directed against the network of Mr. Zarqawi, who is considered so dangerous that the Americans have put a $25 million bounty on him.
Using information from informants, spy satellites, communications intercepts and other intelligence sources, commanders have assembled a target list that will change as sites are hit, checked and hit again during battle, or added based on fresh intelligence.
Military engineers and civil affairs specialists would follow quickly behind the main combat force, with the job of assessing how to restore services like water, sanitation and electricity, and of assigning contractors or military experts to the task.
General Sattler said he and his commanders were not in a rush to storm the city, contending that recent airstrikes have killed many of Mr. Zarqawi's top lieutenants and have seriously disrupted the operations of another Sunni militant leader, Omar Hadid.
The insurgent leaders are wary of meeting in groups and have been forced to use couriers and trusted aides to pass messages, fearing that their telephone conversations would be monitored, General Sattler said. Indeed, American forces believe that they have come very close to killing or capturing Mr. Hadid at least twice, the general said.
Mr. Zarqawi has been able to keep his leadership ranks filled but is no longer able to plot with his most trusted aides, officers said. "They are replaced by the second string and sometimes the third string," said General Sattler, who commands the First Marine Expeditionary Force. "It's a downward spiral for his organization."
Checkpoints on the main roads leading in and out of Falluja have also disrupted the insurgents' operations, commanders said. Nearly 100 people have been detained in a recent seven-day period at temporary barriers, which typically are created for an hour or two. Many of the detainees are still in American custody. In one car that was searched, American troops found rocket-propelled grenades in the trunk; in another, they found $80,000 in crisp $100 and $50 bills.
But the insurgents are not giving up easily, commanders acknowledge. Car bombings and suicide attacks have increased here and in Baghdad. Mortar and artillery attacks against American troops and bases have increased, especially since the start of Ramadan in mid-October.
An offensive on Falluja would be conducted nearly at the same time as parallel military operations, or possibly political negotiations, in Ramadi, the restive capital of Al Anbar Province, just 30 miles west of Falluja, General Sattler said. Insurgents, including leaders like Muhammad Daham, have seized control of most of the city from the local Iraqi police and municipal officials using a campaign of intimidation, officers said. Although marines are present in Ramadi, the city has become increasingly violent.
To keep foreign fighters from joining the battles, General Sattler said, he is considering having military-aged men prevented from crossing into Iraq from Syria at the main border crossings unless they can show they have official business in Iraq. Dr. Allawi would decide that. Senior marines said Syria's recent agreement with Iraq to police its borders had yielded results.
"Cooperation has actually risen," said Col. Ron Makuta, the chief intelligence officer for the Marines in Iraq.
October 27, 2004 at 10:31 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Bush, Kerry Trade Attacks Over Missing Explosives
washingtonpost.com: Bush, Kerry Trade Attacks Over Missing Explosives
By Dana Milbank and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; 4:15 PM
LITITZ, Pa., Oct. 27 -- President Bush took up the issue of missing high explosives in Iraq for the first time today, counterattacking Democratic challenger John F. Kerry for making "wild charges" without knowing the facts and accusing the Massachusetts senator of "denigrating" U.S. troops and commanders.
Kerry, campaigning in Iowa, said the Bush administration was trying to "avoid responsibility" for the missing 380 tons of high explosives "just as they've done each step of the way in our involvement in Iraq." And he appealed to middle-class voters not to give Bush four more years to "keep up the bad work."
Two retired generals who support Kerry later issued statements attacking Bush's comments on the explosives and arguing that they demonstrate the need for a new commander in chief.
The recriminations came as Bush, Kerry and their running mates fanned out to seven battleground states today to hammer home what they hope will be winning themes in an election that polls show remains too close to call.
Bush, rallying voters today in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, put out a rare positive television advertisement aimed at showing compassion for the sacrifices of U.S. troops and expressing his resolve to defeat terrorists.
The Kerry campaign also put out a new ad that honors soldiers fighting in Iraq as "heroes."
The Democratic candidate's running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, was spending the day in the crucial swing state of Florida before flying to Duluth, Minn.
Vice President Cheney, began his day with a rally in Kissimmee, Fla., then was heading to Pennsylvania for a rally and to Wisconsin for a meeting with community leaders.
In his speech in Lititz, Pa., this morning, Bush broke his silence on the missing Iraqi explosives with a derisive attack on Kerry for using it to criticize the administration.
"After repeatedly calling Iraq the 'wrong war' and a 'diversion,' Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place full of dangerous weapons," Bush said to scattered laughter from a crowd of supporters. "The senator used to know that, even though he seems to have forgotten it over the course of the campaign. But after all, that's why we're there. Iraq was a dangerous place run by a dangerous tyrant who had a lot of weapons. We have seized or destroyed more than 400,000 tons of munitions, including explosives, at . . . thousands of different sites, and we're continuing to round up more weapons every day."
Bush continued, "I want to remind the American people if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our 'global test,' Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies."
Charging that Kerry "is making wild charges" about the missing explosives, Bush said Kerry also is "denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts."
He added, "Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site. This investigation is important and it's ongoing, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."
In response, retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a Kerry supporter who competed with him for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Bush's words amounted to "a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected."
It was Bush who "jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11," Clark said in a statement released by the Kerry campaign. "He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad."
Clark concluded: "By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our commander in chief."
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak said in a statement that Bush seems to believe that Kerry should not be criticizing him "since the president thinks he has never made a mistake."
McPeak continued: "Let's be perfectly clear: it is the President who dropped the ball. Senator Kerry is being critical of George Bush, not the troops. By embarking on the line of attack, George Bush is deflecting blame from him over to the military. This is beneath contempt."
The International Atomic Energy Agency officially informed the United Nations Monday that nearly 380 tons of high explosives, including some material under U.N. seal because it could be used in nuclear weapons, were missing from the vast al Qaqaa storage site 30 miles south of Baghdad.
The Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology said the explosives disappeared after April 9, 2003, the day that Baghdad fell to U.S. forces and the government of president Saddam Hussein collapsed. The ministry blamed a "lack of security" for the loss, and officials expressed suspicion that the munitions had been looted by insurgents.
Renewing his attacks over the matter, Kerry said today in a speech in Sioux City, Iowa, "We're seeing this White House dodge and bob and weave in their usual effort to avoid responsibility -- just as they've done each step of the way in our involvement in Iraq."
"Instead of coming clean with the American people, the administration blamed the bad news on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. military -- and even the media -- and all the while, took no responsibility for creating the situation where these weapons could go missing in the first place," Kerry said.
He said the Bush administration "first tried to convince the American people that this was not a big deal," then said that "guarding explosive dumps was not a high priority. . . ." Now, Kerry said, "the White House switched to their most comfortable position -- the situation was bad but it was not their responsibility. Vice President Cheney, who is becoming the chief minister of disinformation, echoed that it's not the administration's fault and even criticized those who raised the subject. This is a growing scandal, and the American people deserve a full and honest explanation of how it happened and what this president is going to do about it."
Kerry said the U.S. commander who reached the site "was never told to stop, inspect and protect it. He was never even told what it was." He said, "The troops did their job. The commander in chief failed to do his. . . . And the reason they failed is because they didn't plan and they rushed to war without a plan to win the peace."
Kerry also appealed in his speech for support from middle-class voters.
"After four years in office, this president has failed middle-class families with almost every choice he's made," Kerry said. "He's given more to those with the most at the expense of middle-class working families who are struggling to get ahead. Now he's asking you to give him four more years so that he can keep up the bad work."
For his part, Cheney went back on the attack in a rally inside a humid hangar at the municipal airport in Kissimmee filled with several hundred pom-pom waving supporters, Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton reported. Cheney emphasized his themes of national security and the war on terrorism as he stood near a 1942 Stearman that was flown by former president George H. W. Bush as a young man.
"John Kerry is trying every which way to cover up his record on defense, which is one of weakness," Cheney said. "As we say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig. At the end of the day, it's still a pig."
Cheney added, "President Bush understands the war on terror and has a strategy for winning it. Senator Kerry does not." As he spoke, one woman shouted, "Kerry stinks!"
The rally was a love-fest in the conservative, rural Florida community. Three busloads of schoolchildren from the Heritage Christian School waited for an hour and a half to see Cheney and clap for the man they said speaks to the issues important to their lives.
Asked to name the country's biggest problem, 12-year-old Vivian Resto said, "Homosexuals. I think it's kind of gross, and my mom and I believe it should be a man and a woman."
Her 7-year-old classmate, Kevin Strickland, said the most significant issue facing the country is stem cell research. And 13-year-old Marcus Kleinhans said he was most worried about abortion.
Cheney got the most robust applause after he said, "We believe our nation is one nation under God. And we believe Americans ought to be able to say so when we pledge allegiance to our flag."
Later, at an afternoon rally in Washington, Pa., about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, Cheney repeated Bush's charge that Kerry is making "wild" accusations about the missing explosives in Iraq, Layton reported.
"Our troops ought to be praised for the 400,000 tons of explosives they've seized and destroyed" since the invasion of Iraq, Cheney told several hundred people gathered in the basketball gym at Washington & Jefferson College. "These men and women deserve better than to have their service questioned by a political candidate who is so anxious to get elected, he won't wait for the facts."
Washington County is mostly Democratic, and the vice presidential motorcade passed the first knot of protesters it has seen all week. Many homes lining the streets to the college hung Kerry-Edwards signs, and Cheney arrived to a vocal group shouting, "Go home, Dick!" But inside the gymnasium, the crowd hooted and hollered for Cheney and his wife, Lynne, and applauded wildly as the vice president spoke of the administration's support for gun ownership, its opposition to partial-birth abortion and its determination to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Cheney is keeping a frantic schedule in the final days before the election, traveling from early morning until late night. He planned events in five states over the course of today and tomorrow. The vice president and his entourage left Florida at noon for the rally in Washington, Pa., and were flying this evening to Waukesha, Wis.
The Bush-Cheney campaign, meanwhile released an ad, called "Whatever It Takes," featuring a clip from Bush's address to the Republican National Convention in which he speaks of returning the salutes of wounded soldiers, holding the children of the fallen and meeting with loved ones "who have received a folded flag."
He says in the ad, "These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget." Addressing military families, he says, "Because of your service and sacrifice, we are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan, and you're making America safer. I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes."
In Kerry's new ad, called "Heroes," a narrator says, "Our soldiers fighting in Iraq are heroes. Their families have earned our thanks and our support. As we see the deepening crisis and chaos in Iraq, as we choose a new commander in chief and a fresh start, we will always support and honor those who serve."
Campaigning in Clearwater, Fla, this morning, Edwards sought to counter Bush's appeals in recent days to Democrats, Washington Post staff writer John Wagner reported.
Bush has said that Kerry has "turned his back" on the tradition of Democrats who showed confidence and resolve in times of crisis, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.
"Those were Democratic presidents who led with a combination of strength and courage," Edwards said. "George Bush's combination is fear and failure."
Bush "has the kind of record, in fact, that a man like Herbert Hoover would be proud of," Edwards said, invoking the Republican president who presided over job losses at the start of the Great Depression.
The stop at a Clearwater community center was the first of three Florida appearances Edwards has scheduled today that are billed as efforts to encourage early voting in the key battleground of Florida. Following a rally, Edwards greeted a couple of dozen of voters who boarded school buses en route to early-voting polling sites.
The issue of the missing Iraqi explosives continued to dominate morning news shows today. Interviewed on the Fox News Channel, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said that "we don't know really if the weapons were ever there" and that Kerry's continued stumping on the issue is "inappropriate" and "desperate."
She said, "I think we should remember that when our troops were marching toward Baghdad, they were looking for weapons of mass destruction, they were looking for chemical weapons that might be used on our troops, on the Iraqi people. They were not focused on conventional weapons at that time."
On NBC's "Today" show, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) asserted that when troops of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division arrived at the vast al Qaqaa storage site 30 miles south of Baghdad on April 10 -- a day after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government -- the high explosives "weren't there."
Reporters who were embedded with the troops have said they do not know whether the munitions in question -- including HMX and RDX explosives -- were there or not at that time. They have described seeing evidence of U.S. bomb damage, but no sign of looting on that day and bunkers that were still sealed. The troops were not focused on guarding sites because they were in a hurry to move north, the reporters said.
On the same program, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) disputed Chambliss, saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency had warned the United States about the explosives before the war and reported in May this year that looters may be helping themselves to "the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
Biden said, "This is not our military's fault. We do not have enough forces. . . . We didn't have enough troops to guard the ammo dumps, we didn't have enough troops to guard the borders, we didn't have enough troops to stop the looting. It was a fundamental flaw in policy of going in."
Branigin reported from Washington.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
October 27, 2004 at 09:59 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: October 25, 2004
This article was reported and written by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."
Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.
American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.
The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.
The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.
"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.
The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq.
After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
In an interview with The Times and "60 Minutes" in Baghdad, the minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar, confirmed the facts described in the letter. "Yes, they are missing," Dr. Omar said. "We don't know what happened." The I.A.E.A. says it also does not know, and has reported that machine tools that can be used for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes have also been looted.
Dr. Omar said that after the American-led invasion, the sites containing the explosives were under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an American-led entity that was the highest civilian authority in Iraq until it handed sovereignty of the country over to the interim government on June 28.
"After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control," Dr. Omar said. "So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials."
Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official.
In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.
A No Man's Land
Seeing the ruined bunkers at the vast Qaqaa complex today, it is hard to recall that just two years ago it was part of Saddam Hussein's secret military complex. The bunkers are so large that they are reminiscent of pyramids, though with rounded edges and the tops chopped off. Several are blackened and eviscerated as a result of American bombing. Smokestacks rise in the distance.
Today, Al Qaqaa has become a wasteland generally avoided even by the marines in charge of northern Babil Province. Headless bodies are found there. An ammunition dump has been looted, and on Sunday an Iraqi employee of The New York Times who made a furtive visit to the site saw looters tearing out metal fixtures. Bare pipes within the darkened interior of one of the buildings were a tangled mess, zigzagging along charred walls. Someone fired a shot, probably to frighten the visitors off.
"It's like Mars on Earth," said Maj. Dan Whisnant, an intelligence officer for the Second Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. "It would take probably 10 battalions 10 years to clear that out."
Mr. Hussein's engineers acquired HMX and RDX when they embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980's. It did not go smoothly.
In 1989, a huge blast ripped through Al Qaqaa, the boom reportedly heard hundreds of miles away. The explosion, it was later determined, occurred when a stockpile of the high explosives ignited.
After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said.
None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction. But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.
In 1996, the United Nations hauled away some of the HMX and used it to blow up Al Hakam, a vast Iraqi factory for making germ weapons.
The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs.
The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the arms agency, frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated - in late 2002 and early 2003 - the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.
During the following weeks, the I.A.E.A. repeatedly drew public attention to the explosives. In New York on Feb. 14, nine days after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented his arms case to the Security Council, Dr. ElBaradei reported that the agency had found no sign of new atom endeavors but "has continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the high explosive HMX."
A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa.
But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned.
By late 2003, diplomats said, arms agency experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.
Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken seals from the arms agency on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.
But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful.
But by the spring of 2004, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. "It's not an excuse," said one senior administration official. "But a lot of things went by the boards."
Early this month, Dr. ElBaradei put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under I.A.E.A. supervision, including the Qaqaa stockpile.
"Iraq is obliged," he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, "to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen."
The agency, Dr. ElBaradei added pointedly, "has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."
A Lost Stockpile
Two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote a letter to the I.A.E.A. to say the Qaqaa stockpile had been lost. He added that his ministry had judged that an "urgent updating of the registered materials is required."
A chart in his letter listed 341.7 metric tons, about 377 American tons, of HMX, RDX and PETN as missing.
The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.
Five days later, on Oct. 15, European diplomats said, the arms agency wrote the United States mission in Vienna to forward the Iraqi letter and ask that the American authorities inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives.
Dr. ElBaradei, a European diplomat said, is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
Its fate remains unknown. Glenn Earhart, manager of an Army Corps of Engineers program in Huntsville, Ala., that is in charge of rounding up and destroying lost Iraqi munitions, said he and his colleagues knew nothing of the whereabouts of the Qaqaa stockpile.
Administration officials say Iraq was awash in munitions, including other stockpiles of exotic explosives.
"The only reason this stockpile was under seal," said one senior administration official, "is because it was located at Al Qaqaa," where nuclear work had gone on years ago.
As a measure of the size of the stockpile, one large truck can carry about 10 tons, meaning that the missing explosives could fill a fleet of almost 40 trucks.
By weight, these explosives pack far more destructive power than TNT, so armies often use them in shells, bombs, mines, mortars and many types of conventional ordinance.
"HMX and RDX have a lot of shattering power," said Dr. Van Romero, vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, or New Mexico Tech, which specializes in explosives.
"Getting a large amount is difficult," he added, because most nations carefully regulate who can buy such explosives, though civilian experts can sometimes get licenses to use them for demolition and mining.
An Immediate Danger
A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the stored energy.
Experts said the insensitivity made them safer to transport than the millions of unexploded shells, mines and pieces of live ammunition that litter Iraq. And its benign appearance makes it easy to disguise as harmless goods, easily slipped across borders.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpile, said an expert who recently led a team that searched Iraq for deadly arms, "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful explosive devices. The other danger is that it can easily move into the terrorist web across the Middle East."
More worrisome to the I.A.E.A. - and to some in Washington - is that HMX and RDX are used in standard nuclear weapons design. In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion.
A crude implosion device - like the one that the United States tested in 1945 in the New Mexican desert and then dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - needs about a ton of high explosive to crush the core and start the chain reaction.
James Glanz reported from Baghdad and Yusifiya, Iraq, for this article, William J. Broad from New York and Vienna, and David E. Sanger from Washington and Crawford, Tex. Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad.
October 27, 2004 at 09:43 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 25, 2004
Terror's new soldiers
USNews.com: U.S. tactics damage al Qaeda but fuel a menacing movement (11/1/04)
U.S. tactics have hurt al Qaeda but fuel a menacing movement
By David E. Kaplan and Kevin Whitelaw
He was known simply as "Electronic." Nabbed last week in Pakistan holding a Canadian passport, Abdul Rahman, allegedly an Arab communications expert for al Qaeda, is among the latest of thousands of suspects seized since 9/11. But now a new generation of militants is emerging. As with so much in the war on terrorism, it's hard to tell if it is being won or lost.
Terrorism concerns are driving much of the debate in the presidential campaign, which has unfolded amid a stream of terrorism alerts at home and attacks abroad. Yet many Americans still have only a limited understanding of who, exactly, the enemy is and w