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By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: January 31, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - Defying death threats, mortars and suicide bombers, Iraqis turned out in great numbers on Sunday to vote in this country's first free elections in 50 years, offering a powerful, if uneven, endorsement of democratic rule 22 months after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
Voters in Shiite and Kurdish areas turned out in especially large numbers, and at the day's end election officials here estimated that the nationwide turnout could exceed 60 percent. The turnout in the Sunni-dominated areas like Falluja and Mosul, where the guerrilla insurgency rages and where many Sunni leaders had called for a boycott, appeared to be substantially lower.
Still, election officials said voting in the Sunni-dominated provinces had appeared to exceed initial expectations, and in some cases might reach 40 percent. In Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks, Western reporters saw voters in Sunni neighborhoods lined up outside polling stations.
It was unclear how the results would affect Sunni resentment, one of the most daunting challenges to Iraq's future.
In the Shiite-dominated cities of southern Iraq, and through much of Baghdad, Iraqis streamed to polling places, eager to give the country's largest group real political power for the first time. They did so despite relentless insurgent attacks that left 35 people dead, plus nine suicide bombers.
In some polling centers, the mood turned joyous, with Iraqis celebrating their newfound democratic freedoms in street parties that, until the elections, were virtually unknown in this war-ravaged land.
As the sun went down, some Iraqis ran to the polling centers. Some election workers kept polls open late for them.
Election officials here said that a more accurate picture of the turnout would be known later in the week, as the votes were counted, and that the election results themselves were probably several days away.
Voters chose from among 111 parties for members of provincial parliaments as well as a 275-member national assembly, which will be empowered to write the country's constitution. That is scheduled to be followed by a referendum on the constitution, followed by another round of elections in December.
One group of candidates that appeared to do well was the United Iraqi Alliance, a large coalition of Shiite parties brought together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's powerful religious leader. One senior aide in that alliance said the party had been told by American and British officials that it appeared to have captured more than 50 percent of the vote.
The slate of candidates led by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, also appeared to have done well.
At least for now, the large turnout appeared to vindicate the strategy to hold elections sooner rather than later, over the objections of many Sunni leaders and in the face of the ferocious insurgency. That strategy, advocated by Ayatollah Sistani and President Bush, drew criticism that it would further divide the country and that, in any case, the Iraqis were not ready.
In polling places throughout the country, ordinary Iraqis not only braved significant violence to go to the polls, but also demonstrated that they understood the stakes, and that they knew what to do.
"We feel now that we are human beings living in this country," Muhammad Abdul-Ridha, 25, a Najaf goldsmith, said after dropping his ballot into the box. "Now I feel I have a responsibility, I have a vote. Things will go right if people leave us alone to do what we want to do. If they leave the Iraqi people to decide for themselves, things will get better."
The mood among many Iraqi leaders, and those who set up the electoral infrastructure, was jubilant. Some said the success of the vote, in a nation so traumatized by tyranny and war, had put to rest any notion that the Iraqi people, or indeed the Arab world as a whole, were incapable of grasping their political destiny.
"We have established the principles upon which a democracy can be built," said Fareed Ayar, the spokesman for Iraq's electoral commission.
In many parts of the country, the turnout seemed to rebuke the violent campaign to sabotage the balloting and the threats by insurgents to kill Iraqis who voted.
With vehicular traffic banned and American and Iraqi forces imposing especially tight security, the attacks on Sunday were carried out in some cases by men wearing explosive vests who rushed polling centers and blew themselves up.
In the Shiite and Kurdish areas, the strategy clearly failed. In Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, including Sadr City, many Iraqis cast their ballots to the sounds of exploding shells.
In some cases, the violence seemed to goad the Iraqis on. In the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khadamiya in northern Baghdad, where nearly 100 people were killed in a terror attacks last year, the turnout was said to approach 80 percent.
In the Sunni areas, the picture was mixed. With most Sunni leaders calling for a boycott and the insurgents vowing to kill voters, officials said they were expecting a low turnout in the three Iraqi provinces where the Sunnis are a majority.
For Iraqi and American officials, the prospect of a broad Sunni boycott has proved to be the most troubling aspect of the elections. The fear has been that a big turnout by Shiites and Kurds, coupled with a near-total Sunni boycott, could accelerate the feeling of alienation felt by Sunnis and set the stage here for civil war.
On the other hand, a substantial turnout in the Sunni areas would be regarded as a huge blow to the insurgents, who claim popular support but often rely on threats and violence to cow Sunnis.
The dire predictions appeared to be borne out in some areas of the Sunni Triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad where the insurgency burns with the greatest intensity. In the town of Baji in northern Iraq, election officials did not show up. In Ramadi, where Iraqi officials set up a pair of polling places just outside the city, a total of just 300 ballots were cast, many of them by police officers and soldiers.
But Iraqi and American officials, convinced that people in the Sunni areas would vote if they could, said there were signs that more voters than expected had turned out.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, election officials took several extraordinary measures to make voting easier in Sunni areas. They allowed voters in some of those areas to register on election day, and permitted voters to travel outside their neighborhoods to cast ballots. In some of the smaller villages around Ramadi, where many city residents were encouraged to vote, election workers reported that they had run out of ballots. In the refugee camps outside Falluja, set up after heavy fighting there in November, Iraqi officials reported steady voting.
"In Anbar, the number of votes were very good compared to our estimates," Mr. Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said of that province, without telling what those estimates were. "We did not expect a lot of turnout, but we found a lot of people standing in line in Anbar."
Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister and one of the country's most prominent Sunni candidates, said his own reports suggested that participation by Sunnis might have reached as high as 40 percent. If that holds, he said, it would amount to a repudiation of the violent way.
"The insurgency has been exposed - they have no popular support of any kind," Mr. Pachachi said. "I think this election will weaken the insurgency."
But in Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the country's third largest, the reports were mixed and contradictory. Some officials reported lines of voters stretching outside polling places in the city's Arab districts, with others saying the insurgents were managing to keep voters away.
In November, more than 4,000 police officers in Mosul fled their posts when they were attacked by insurgents, and earlier this month, the city's entire election commission resigned.
Yet for all of that, there were some signs that Sunnis in Mosul were turning out to vote. Western reporters returning from American military patrols in the city's Arab neighborhoods reported seeing lines of voters streaming into polling places.
Mr. Ayar said initial reports suggested that the turnout in Mosul appeared to mirror that in Anbar Province - that it was much was higher than expected.
Still, there were troubling signs that in some pockets of Mosul's Arab districts, the insurgents were successfully keeping voters away.
"Young gunmen are shooting from the streets and on the rooftops just to scare people away," said Khasro Goran, Mosul's deputy governor. "There is an imam who called from the mosque for people not to vote."
Even if the most optimistic projections for Sunni turnout are met, the biggest challenge likely to face the new government will be persuading the Sunnis to join the political mainstream.
On Sunday, some of Iraq's most prominent Shiite leaders said they were prepared to boost Sunni representation in the new government. They said they would also recruit a number of Sunni leaders to help draft the country's constitution.
In the days leading up the election, some Sunni leaders, including those believed to be close to the insurgents, have indicated a willingness to join in the effort.
"The Shiites will form of a majority, but there has to be a prominent presence of Sunnis in the government," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser and a confidant of Ayatollah Sistani. "Now is the time for the Shiites to exercise statesmanship."
In many ways, the day belonged to Iraq's Shiites, the long-suppressed majority that suffered especially harsh treatment under Mr. Hussein. In Shiite cities across southern Iraq, the voters streamed forth, thrilling themselves and confounding their own predictions.
In Basra, the country's second-largest, predominantly Shiite city, one explosion after another echoed down the streets. Even so, as the day wore on, the number of voters swelled, and local officials began to appear to congratulate the Iraqis and themselves.
Abdul Sahib Al-Battat, the local elections chief, swept into the polling center at the Black Gold primary school, with a full entourage in tow. One by one, he inspected the voting stations with a military crispness.
Asked how the day had gone, Mr. Battat said in Arabic: "Bekhair. Gebeer. Bekhair. Shamel." Roughly translated: "Excellent. Big. Excellent. All of it."
Some Iraqis found in Sunday's election a victory that may ultimately loom larger than that of April 9, 2003, when Mr. Hussein's rule collapsed. The victory then was largely of American making, and one that, despite their relief that the tyrant was gone, many Iraqis felt they could never build on.
"The election was a victory of our own making," said Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser. "Today, the Iraqi people voted with their own blood."
Reporting for this article was contributed by John F. Burns from Baghdad, James Glanz from Basra, Edward Wong from Najaf, and Christine Hauser from Mosul.
January 31, 2005 at 08:10 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
The origins of modern-day Commandos can be traced back to the Boer War1. The name Commando was given by the British to the Boer irregular troops in recognition of their exceptional marksmanship and guerrilla-style2 warfare.
Storm Troopers
In World War One, the opposing armies had reached a stalemate. Victory was possible but at great cost to both sides, and the current tactics had to be improved on. Storm troopers, deployed by the German Army, were sent before the first wave of an attack, to seize essential sites. Lightly armed and equipped, but possessing better weaponry than the average infantryman, they had the edge in trench warfare. Relying on speed rather than brute force to take targets, the Storm troopers were normally exposed to artillery and machine-gun fire for short periods at a time.
Paratroopers
The first paratroopers3 were not British, German or even American. It was the Russians - after picking up the original idea from Italy - who showed the world the potential of airborne strikes. They could achieve much more with a lot less equipment, and could be deployed into trouble spots quicker. This was demonstrated by a training exercise held in the 1930s, in the Ukraine, when Russian troops parachuted onto an 'enemy-held' airport, secured it, and then waited to be further reinforced by air and then by armoured forces.
Unfortunately for the British, the idea went over their heads. It was not until 22 June, 1940, that British war-time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, called for the formation of a corps of 'at least five thousand parachute troops, suitably organised and equipped'.4 This was the foundation of Britain's Parachute Regiment. The Americans did take notice but had other things on their mind - in 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. It fell to the Germans to be the first to utilise airborne troops to their fullest extent. The effectiveness of this new form of waging war was demonstrated when, in 1941, the Germans invaded Crete, and then Norway, with airborne troops.
Marine Commandos
By the time Britain's parachute regiments were up and combat-effective, most of mainland Europe and the off-shore Channel Islands were under the control of the Axis countries. Britain and her British Commonwealth allies simply did not possess enough resources to attempt to liberate this occupied territory. The war in North Africa was raging. The idea of small Commando raids arose as an acceptable solution to appease public discontent. Here was a way Britain could co-ordinate attacks on mainland Europe without openly engaging the Germans in battle. Marine Commandos (now known as the Royal Marine Commandos) struck at St Nazaire, the 'largest dry dock in the world'. Not only was it the only dock capable of servicing the giant battleships Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, it was an important U-Boat5 base. Dieppe was raided by the Marine Commandos and Walcheren was seized by them.
North African Campaign - WW2
This campaign was fought mainly because of two things. The first was the Suez Canal, which was vital to control the Middle East. The second was Middle East oil resources. Should the Axis powers attempted seizure of the oil fields in Russia fail (which it did), then the Axis coalition would need to find a supply of oil elsewhere. The only thing that stood in its way was, at first, a small British Commonwealth Army under the over-all command of General Wavell. The Italians they faced outnumbered them 10-1, and promptly, due to far inferior equipment, low morale and poor logistics, found themselves with the military equivalent of a bloody nose, broken ribs and two shattered knee caps. Hitler could only do one thing. He sent in one of his best units, the Afrika Korps, with General 'Desert Fox' Rommel at the helm. The two armies grew in size and since neither could quite finish the other off, found themselves in virtual stalemate, coming and going across the desert areas surrounding Egypt and Libya.
Special Air Service
At about this time David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, was lying in a hospital bed, injured in a parachute jump mishap. A subaltern in the Brigade of Guards, he had noted the inefficiency of commando raids. Realising the same results, or better, could be achieved with much smaller groups of men, on his return to active duty he bluffed his way into the 8th Army headquarters and put his idea to General Ritchie. At the time, the Allied forces were on the run from Rommel's army. Because it would not require much in logistics, Stirling's idea appealed to Ritchie, who named the new unit, the Special Air Service Brigade. The idea behind the name was to give the Germans the impression that the Allies had a large airborne force in North Africa.
Harsh selection and training was implemented straight from the regiment's first day. Recruiting and training took less than a week. The initial SAS force consisted of six officers and 60 enlisted men. The two officers that Stirling most wanted, Paddy Mayne and Jock Lewes, would write themselves into SAS folklore.
Shaky Beginnings
The SAS's first operation went badly. Stirling had perceived the best method of getting behind enemy lines was by parachute. Alas, the weather was so bad that the ground was impossible to see by the pilots. The parachutists landed way off target. They had to leg it across to Allied lines, which was no mean feat. Less than half the force eventually made it back to base. Fortunately, Allied High Command was more concerned about German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his new offensive.
Stirling was not put off, and co-ordinated with the successful reconnaissance group, the Long Range Desert Group. The plan was that the LRDG would provide the transport, and the SAS, the destruction. They went after anything in range, such as airstrips and even Rommel's headquarters. Eventually the Germans lost hundreds of aircraft and scores of supply posts to SAS raids.
In Tunisia, in 1943, Stirling paid the price for leading from the front. Captured, he escaped four times before he was transferred to Colditz Castle prison camp for the remainder of the war.
Many 'Private Armies', as the General Staff called them, relied on the 'charisma and drive of one man', but perhaps the true sign of SAS skill and bravery, was, even without Stirling's charismatic leadership, they continued to inflict heavy damage on the Axis war machine.
Spectacular Statistics
The SAS caused havoc in Italy and in Operation Wallace (post D-Day landings). After a battle in Dijon, it was estimated that they had killed 7,731 Germans, captured 4,784 prisoners and destroyed, or took control of, 700 vehicles. 164 railway lines were cut, seven trains were destroyed and 33 were derailed. Perhaps, the most dubious recognition of the SAS's success was the Fuhrer Directive, calling for all captured Commandos to be shot.
These men are highly dangerous... they must be ruthlessly exterminated.
- Adolf Hitler
This meant Axis forces were supposed to shoot anybody who was not a downed airman. The order was in breach of the Geneva Convention6. Some people who obeyed this order would eventually be prosecuted for war crimes.
After WW2 the scaling down of the armed forces looked likely to foreshadow the end of the Commandos. All were scrapped, save the Marine Commandos, who were merged into the Royal Marines, leaving only a territorial unit of the SAS (21 SAS).
Fighting Communists
Somewhat fortuitously, the Malaysian Emergency in the 1960s resurrected the SAS. In the form of the Malaysian Scouts they would perform counter-insurgency operations against the communist insurgents. One of the reasons Malaysia, in its present form, is here today is through the success of the SAS.
The SAS were then given a regular regiment, the 22nd and another territorial unit, the 23rd. The 22nd would see action over the ensuing forty years in numerous theatres of war, establishing themselves once again as one of the worlds 'premier' special forces.
Oman
In Oman, communist insurgents were battling against the pro-British Sultan. The SAS was sent in twice in the guise of British Army Training Teams (BATT) to help train up the Sultan's troops and fight themselves. One of the most notable battles was in Jebel Akhdar, where troopers assaulted a rebel stronghold ensconced in a previously unassailable place. Another was the Battle of Mirbat, where insurgents or 'adoo' were attempting to raise flagging support by assaulting a garrison town. Only the SAS and gratefully-accepted air support from the Oman Air Force prevented this occurring.
On Home Ground
Undoubtedly, one of the more famous missions the SAS has undertaken was the siege at Princess Gate, London, home of the Iranian Embassy. Terrorists, financed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, attempted to force Britain to use its (almost nil) influence on Iran to restore the deposed Shah to his throne. The British Government sent in the SAS, resulting in defeat for the terrorists. Two innocent people died; a hostage was shot before the SAS went in, and in the ensuring assault, the assistant press attaché was killed. All bar one of the terrorists died.
The Falklands Conflict
In 1982, the ruling Argentine military junta took the world by surprise when they invaded the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Resistance by the Royal Marines was spirited, until ordered to surrender by the island's Governor. In Britain, a Task Force featuring 2 and 3 PARA, a Commando Bridge (40, 42, 45 Commando) and light tanks of the Blues and Royals was assembled. The SAS was also mobilised. Along with mounting reconnaissance missions into the occupied islands, the SAS staged diversionary raids when the sea-based British Taskforce mounted their successful action to reclaim the islands. Perhaps the most daring raid of this war was the attack on an airfield in Pebble Island. Ten Pucara ground-based aircraft had to be eliminated before the task force could commence landing. The SAS destroyed all the aircraft and eliminated the garrison.
Allegedly, as a countermeasure to cover for Britain's lack of airborne-early-warning aircraft to detect the Argentine Super Etendards and their Exocets, two groups of SAS were dropped into mainland Argentina. They took up positions where they could see the aircraft land and take off, and hence give warning to the British Fleet. The book Soldier K which is part fiction, part fact, is based on this premise. What is not in doubt is that a Royal Navy Sea King did crash-land in mainland Chile.
Combating Saddam Hussein
Perhaps the SAS's worst disaster was Bravo 2-0 (Northern Road). In 1990 Iraq dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded and annexed the tiny oil-rich state of Kuwait. He then had to face a coalition of the mightiest military powers ever assembled. His only possible way of winning such a war was to provoke Israel into the war by attacking her with SCUD missiles. He hoped this would break up the fragile coalition, as the Arab nations would now refuse to fight. From 1949 to 1996, Israel was in a state of war with most Arab countries.
To combat the SCUD threat, and cause general mayhem, three SAS sections were deployed by helicopter into the flat, desolate, Iraqi desert. Two of the sections got straight back into their helicopters and flew back to base. The one that didn't was Bravo 2-0. Hampered by inaccurate radio frequencies and a position dangerously close to an Iraqi outpost, they were compromised and had to make a fighting retreat across the Iraqi desert to Syria. Only one made it, Corporal 'Chris Ryan'. The rest were either captured - Sergeant 'Andy McNab' - or died. What happened in Iraq was a shambles, to put it mildly. What Bravo 2-0 did to get themselves out of their position was hugely creditable. They left 200 Iraqi soldiers dead. They pushed their minds and bodies to the limit - either from self-torture, or sheer bloody mindedness - to get home.
After this debacle, SAS squadrons operated in armed Landrovers, and achieved remarkable success. By enforcing a no-go zone, where no SCUD Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) would venture across. The SCUD missiles no longer had the range to strike Israel.
The Balkans
More recently, in Bosnia, SAS teams were detailed to provide laser spotting on the artillery pieces bombarding the city of Sarajevo. SAS personal have also provided reconnaissance of possible landing zones in Kosovo for the Air Mobile elements of the British Army and to observe Serbs withdrawing from previously-held positions in the province. An on-going SAS operation is the seizure of suspected war criminals in the former Yugoslavia.
Northern Ireland
Over many years, Britain's SAS has operated in Northern Ireland. Their on-going efforts to help build a lasting-peace between the warring Catholic and Protestant militia is outside the scope of this article.
Liaison And Training
In the SAS's Counter Terrorist (CT) and Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) roles, the SAS liaise with, and train, many of the premier HRT teams based in other countries. These include Germany's GSG 9 and France's GIGN, among others.
1 Also known as the South African War, 1899 - 1902. An expensive and brutal colonial war. It pitted almost 500,000 imperial troops against 87,000 republican burghers, Cape 'rebels', and foreign volunteers.
2 A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy, such as by surprise raids.
3 Paratroopers are infantry-trained and equipped to parachute into enemy territories. Often, but incorrectly described as Commando's.
4 In October 1941 Major General FAM Browning DSO was ordered to form an Airborne Division.
5 German submarine.
6 The order had fateful consequences for the 'Cockle Shell Heroes' Marine Commandos sent to destroy Axis shipping in the Loire. Eight were captured and shot, while two escaped. The mission was successful.
January 30, 2005 at 12:33 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - The new 'Red Scare'
There's no other term for it than Red Scare.
Chinese companies, most of them state-controlled, have been kicking the tires of Canadian resource companies since last fall. They haven't bought anything yet — not Noranda Inc., Husky Energy Inc. or any of the other, mostly oilpatch, firms they've given the once-over.
Yet their sniffing around has provoked Ottawa into protectionist mode not seen since the discredited Foreign Investment Review Act of the 1970s and the equally loathed National Energy Program of the early 1980s.
David Emerson, federal energy minister, seemed sanguine at first. Confronted last October with the prospect of a takeover of Toronto-based mining giant Noranda Inc. by China Minmetals Corp., he invoked the need for Sino-Canadian harmony.
"Trade and investment relationships with China are very, very important," he said at the time, signaling Ottawa's reluctance to meddle in private-sector transactions.
All to the good, you would think, in the minds of the laissez faire crowd. But no.
Prominent politicians and right-wing commentators directed a torrent of vitriol against Beijing, assailing not only the regime's civil rights record and bureaucratic corruption but raising questions about its business acumen.
In recent years, Ottawa has been silent as Hong Kong's Victor Li made a play for Air Canada, a Russian entrepreneur stepped into the bidding for Stelco Inc., and a half dozen or so of Calgary's mid-sized oil firms were snapped up by U.S. predators.
But the feds' silence on Communist Chinese encroachment on Canada's resource sector was short-lived, even if the likes of Ralph Klein have been courting the Chinese to bankroll the exorbitant cost of developing Alberta's oil-sands wealth.
The Red Scare rhetoric reached its latest peak last week, when Emerson mused about likely conditions to be imposed on foreign acquirers in legislation that will be enacted this year. Of the Chinese companies' prey, Emerson said last Wednesday, "We would probably want to ensure that these companies were open and transparent and, ideally, continue to be publicly traded."
In the world of mergers and acquisitions, no G-7 government has routinely demanded that acquired companies retain their publicly traded status, a condition that would largely negate the value of many takeover transactions.
What accounts for Emerson's change of heart, backed by supportive noises from Paul Martin? Rhetoric aside, it isn't China's abysmal human-rights record, which hasn't unduly troubled Ottawa or other Western capitals since the Tiananmen Square massacre 16 years ago. In any case, China doesn't rank among Freedom House's latest list of the top 10 most repressive nations, which does include such Western allies as Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.
What changed since last fall for Emerson, a former CEO of B.C. forestry giant Canfor Corp., is his recognition of the surprising vulnerability of our resource sector to a rash of takeovers.
Among our widely held producers of materials traditionally defined as having strategic national importance are heavyweights like Noranda, Husky, Alcan Inc., EnCana Corp., Petro-Canada, Suncor Energy Inc., Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Talisman Energy Inc., Nexen Inc., Inco Ltd., Barrick Gold Corp., Placer Dome Inc. and Teck Cominco Ltd.
`Ottawa wants some kind of mechanism ... so Canadians don't wake up one morning and ask how they all ended up working for the Chinese government'
Think tank executive
With combined assets of $183 billion, those firms would realistically be an affordable proposition for a resources-starved China with its staggering $483 billion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange reserves.
Emerson is now giving voice to an almost unthinkable prospect — the disappearance of pretty much the entire Canadian resource sector under the jackboot of a Communist regime an ocean away.
"We have to ensure — particularly in the case of non-renewable resources — we're not just willy nilly unloading our natural resources without ensuring full benefits to Canada as a result," Emerson said last Wednesday.
This is one of those rare issues that appears to have united the laissez faire crowd and the anti-globalization agitators.
Jim Stanford, economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, is troubled by a resource sell-off by which "we risk reverting to a developing world economy of hewers of wood and pumpers of oil." Stanford's nightmare is that the Chinese buy our flagship resource firms simply for their riches in the ground, and transfer the processing jobs to low-cost smelters and refineries in China at a cost of tens of thousands of Canadian jobs.
"I've said China is a time bomb for the worshippers of globalization," Stanford adds. Canada may be in the vanguard among G-7 nations in objecting to China's closed markets "by finally putting limits on Chinese imports and attaching conditions to investment flows in Canada."
The growing discomfort in Ottawa over Chinese direct foreign investment may be a harbinger as Beijing encounters resistance in industrial nations that don't boast our traditionally harmonious Sino-Canadian relations.
U.S. congressional leaders are seeking to block IBM Corp.'s proposed sale of its personal computer business to Chinese state-controlled firm Lenovo. "This sale could lead to the Chinese government unfairly taking over the global market for personal computers," Don Manzullo, Illinois congressman, claimed last week.
Given that IBM commands just 5 per cent of the U.S. personal computer market, one can only imagine the U.S. backlash if China bid for a truly important enterprise such as Intel Corp., Newmont Mining Corp. or ExxonMobil Corp.
One must leave such scenarios to the imagination, since they are extraordinarily remote. There is a discernible rise in paranoia about China south of the border, where David Hale's website, Chinaonline.com, monitors creeping Chinese influence around the globe. Hale argues that the British and American empires were founded on resource exploitation, and notes that the Chinese have already deployed some 20,000 troops in Africa to guard Chinese investments in mines and oilfields in places like Sudan.
While no one has yet joined any dots showing that Ottawa is reflecting a growing concern about Chinese economic hegemony in Washington, an executive with an Ottawa-based corporate think tank doesn't dismiss the linkage.
"Remember that China is the same country the Pentagon war-gamers now size up as America's adversary in any new world war," he says, "figuring out which Chinese cities to target with nukes and which U.S. cities would be hit first.
"But putting that aside, even America's economic policymakers are anxious about China's growing power. When they extrapolate China's fantastic GDP growth rates into the future, it boggles the mind."
For both Canada and the U.S., the current talk of reining in China is motivated by a new type of fear.
"In the past you might not have balked at a one-off deal, where the Chinese buy a Noranda and you can go back to sleep," says the think-tank executive.
"But Alcan and Inco are widely held too, so where does it end? Ottawa wants some kind of mechanism to control this phenomenon, so Canadians don't wake up one morning and ask how they all ended up working for the Chinese government."
David Olive
January 30, 2005 at 11:04 AM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - Successful elections? Bush sets bar low
What happens today could encourage George W. Bush's vision for the Mideast or hasten lame-duck status just 10 days after his inauguration.
But does he see it that way?
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
For President George W. Bush, success in Iraq is always as close as the next turning point.
Over 22 months of war, the battleground is littered with such pivotal points.
There was the quick, decisive Battle of Baghdad and the "Mission Accomplished" victory lap on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
There was the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein and the capture of Saddam Hussein, the handover of power to an interim government, the cleansing of Falluja, the ceremony at the White House for the "liberators" of Iraq.
And with each turning point, more bloodshed, a growing insurgency, more American families receiving the dreaded knock on the door from a Grim Reaper military team in full dress uniform.
Today, with Iraqis at the polls for their historic elections, comes the most important turning point of all.
The success of today's voting can define the second Bush term only 10 days after his inauguration.
A failure could hasten his lame-duck status and colour every other initiative, domestic and foreign, he has laid out in an ambitious agenda.
Success could go a long way to repairing ruptures with allies, Canada included; forcing other nations to begin to engage in his long-term goal of exporting democracy to the Middle East; and taking much of the steam from a Democratic party that is now opposing the war with a vigour it could not muster in 2002.
More than anything, it will add momentum to what is known here as the "Endgame" — the debate over an exit strategy for 150,000 U.S. troops that began in earnest last week.
Ultimately, successful elections in Iraq could determine Bush's place in history.
This is the president who has outlined the grandiose goal of planting the flag of liberty worldwide.
But this is also the man who has set the bar for success so low that today's exercise in democracy will almost certainly be hailed as a success in Washington.
And this is a man so relentlessly upbeat — refusing to acknowledge U.S. deaths in Iraq unless prodded — that many believe he has sealed himself off from all those who would bring him bad tidings.
Such is his enthusiasm, The New York Times reported Friday, that Bush cut off attempts by press secretary Scott McClellan to wrap up an interview in order to spend more time talking about his democratic goals.
One story making the rounds in Washington, given more credence when The Financial Times published it, illustrates the extent to which Bush has become the blinkered president.
Former secretary of state Colin Powell, in a recent meeting with Bush, was asked for an update on progress in Iraq, the story goes.
"We're losing," Powell is said to have responded.
With that, Bush ushered him out of the office.
There are other reports that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld no longer brings accurate pictures of Iraq to the Oval Office.
The White House denies the stories, but Bush was incongruously upbeat on Wednesday about his freedom doctrine on a day when 37 Americans died in Iraq.
He tied the Iraqi vote to recent democratic breakthroughs in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Ukraine, saying the fact that there will be an Iraq vote at all is evidence enough of success.
"The notion that somehow we're not making progress, I just don't subscribe to," Bush said.
"I mean, we're having elections."
Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid emerged from a private Capitol Hill briefing with lawmakers mid-week to warn that it could be April before key Iraqi ministries are sorted out and violence during this period of flux could be even worse than during the run-up to today's vote.
"The period of aftermath of the election is fraught with uncertainty, and we should prepare the American people for as many eventualities as could possibly happen," said Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, chair of the armed services committee, after he met with the military leaders.
If there is widespread uncertainty over how Iraqis will move forward from today over the next year, it is largely the product of mistakes made by the Bush administration, says Anthony Cordesman, a former director of intelligence assessment for the secretary of defence and now an expert on Iraq with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
He told a seminar last week that odds were no better than 50-50 that the political process will yield success because Washington allowed the deadly insurgency to take hold by wasting more than a year before trying to train effective Iraqi military and security forces.
Much of the money earmarked by Congress for reconstruction has been wasted or remains unspent, Cordesman added
"It's up to the Iraqis now to shape the political climate."
But this turning point brings with it the obvious question, asked plaintively in the Senate by West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of the chamber.
`Aftermath of the election is fraught with uncertainty, and we should prepare the American people for as many eventualities as could possibly happen'
John Warner, Republican Senator from Virginia
"Oh, when will our boys come home?" he asked.
On the eve of today's voting, it appeared everyone was asking that question.
Bush stressed there could be no point in talking withdrawal until Iraqi forces are sufficiently trained to handle their own security.
Although estimates of the number of Iraqis prepared to take on the ruthless killers loyal to terror-boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are wildly divergent, all agree their numbers are nowhere near sufficient.
A senior army official, Lt.-Gen. James J. Lovelace, said last week he is working on the assumption that he will need 120,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq until the end of 2006.
A Massachusetts Democratic congressman, Martin Meehan, outlined an ambitious plan last week at the left-of-centre Brookings Institution, calling for the reduction of U.S. troop strength to a mobile force of no more than 30,000 within 18 months.
"The first step in achieving stability in Iraq is recognizing that the U.S. presence has become inherently destabilizing," said Meehan, who had just returned from Iraq.
"We also need to recognize the fact ... we are fighting not foreign terrorists or former regime loyalists but indigenous factions within Iraq who have united against us.
"It's a native insurgency."
He said the insurgency is fuelled by a young population with a 30-40 per cent unemployment rate. And he cited polling data indicating that 92 per cent of Iraqis see Americans as occupiers, with just 2 per cent viewing them as liberators.
"More troops do not mean more security in Iraq," Meehan said.
"Despite 150,000 boots on the ground and tactical victories in Falluja and elsewhere, the insurgency is only growing in size and lethal capacity."
Democratic congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of California, a long-time critic of the president's Iraq policies, introduced a House resolution calling for the president to withdraw U.S. troops immediately.
"We've gone as far as we can with this and we're sacrificing our troops every day," Woolsey said.
The resolution has the support of 24 other House Democrats.
Two days later, Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts became the first senator to call for a timeline for withdrawal.
"The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution," said Kennedy.
"We need a new plan that sets fair and realistic goals for self-government in Iraq, and works with the Iraqi government on a specific timetable for the honourable homecoming of our forces."
But even most Democrats caution against setting a withdrawal date.
Bill Nelson, a Florida Democratic senator, said Iraq has to be stabilized before withdrawal can be discussed.
He said he understands Kennedy's frustration because this is "becoming ghastly close to the Vietnam experience," but declared that the Massachusetts senator was not speaking on behalf of the party.
From Davos, Switzerland, former president Bill Clinton also weighed in.
"We need to get out of there, but we don't need a timetable," he said.
"We've got to stay there and do the job, but if we stay there too long, a certain per cent of the people will believe we are there for the oil or for imperialist reasons and not try to make the deal work"
Conservative pundit William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, countered Meehan at the Brookings conference.
"Announcing a date simply tells the terrorists and the insurgents that they just have to hang on till this date and they have a chance to wreak more havoc," Kristol said.
Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute agrees and argues that a permanent American military presence in Iraq is an attractive possibility.
"The only time a wholesale withdrawal works is when you want to give up," she said.
"That's what we did in Somalia. We left because we were not interested in Somalia's future.
"That is not the case with Iraq."
Cordesman noted that no Iraqi party seeking votes today is advocating an American withdrawal.
"The realities are simply this — it isn't a matter of who would like U.S. withdrawal, it is a matter of realism in terms of how quickly Iraqi forces could be put together that can replace the U.S."
January 30, 2005 at 10:55 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - A dizzying range of choices for voters
MITCH POTTER
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
Three brothers, three wives, two solitudes — and mercifully, no hard feelings.
That was how the religiously mixed Salihy family cast their votes yesterday in the Jordanian capital, showing themselves to be Iraqi exiles who know better than most how to live and let live.
The Baghdad-born Salihy brothers are Shiites, but like so many Iraqis, they married across the great Muslim divide, choosing Sunni wives.
In expatriate polling yesterday at Amman's upscale Swefiyah district, these men and women from a single family went their own sectarian ways, checking off Shiite and Sunni tickets, respectively.
But they left all smiles, content to respect each other's differences, and not especially disturbed by prognostications that Iraq teeters precariously close to sectarian civil war.
"We chose different parties, but this is the democracy," said Saad al-Salihy, 42, an architect, speaking on behalf of the family.
"I am happy with my choice and I am happy with my wife's choice. The important thing is we have a choice.
"This is new for us."
The frail family patriarch, 78-year-old Ameer Salihy, was the last to cast, moving with such difficulty that polling officials swooped in to help him deposit his ballot in the plastic voting box.
For the senior Salihy, the experience was not a first. He was there half a century ago as a young man, taking part in the 1954 balloting that marked Iraq's last multi-party elections.
Those who forewarn of a possible centrifugal breakup of Iraq often cite geography, referencing the Shiite south, the Sunni centre, the Kurdish north.
But families such as the Salihys are hardly uncommon, and serve as a welcome reminder of the interwoven reality of Iraq's complex cultural mosaic.
As in-country voting proceeds in Iraq today under blanket security measures, the lion's share of the estimated 12.4 million eligible Iraqi voters are finally to get a glimpse of the dizzying range of choices that have confronted out-of-country voters since Friday.
"We know this is not the best election," said Saad Salihy. "There are so many parties running that many of my friends decided to leave their ballots blank.
"They want to send the message that yes, they want to vote, but no, they have no idea who all these candidates are.
"I'm hoping that, with the next elections, we will see fewer parties (than the 111 different entities vying for power today). Maybe next time there will be 50, and the time after that, 20. Too much choice makes it impossible for us to know what to do."
Yad Patros, 31, an exile from northern Iraq, emerged from the Swefiyah polls proudly proclaiming his support for Iraq's Communist/secular bloc.
He identified himself as part of Iraq's minuscule Assyrian Christian minority, an ancient population that accounts for an estimated 200,000 of Iraq's 26 million people.
"We need a few of the seats of government for the Communists, to keep the religious people from going too far," said Patros.
"They will be there to remind Iraq of the key mathematical equation — that we must have a basis of understanding each other, so we can all get along."
Meanwhile, election organizers said just under one-third of registered Iraqi expatriates cast ballots on Friday and Associated Press said that number apparently had more than doubled yesterday.
Expatriate balloting continues today, the same day as elections in Iraq.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which is conducting the expatriate vote for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said 84,429 of the 280,303 registered Iraqis cast ballots on Friday.
In other centres of pre-election voting:
Fistfights broke out at an Australian polling station for Iraqis abroad yesterday when a group of Islamic extremists chanted slogans against those casting ballots, while Iraqis around the world voted for a second day in their homeland's election.
The scuffle was the first report of trouble to mar polling that began a Friday under tight security, allowing Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries to cast absentee ballots for Iraq's first democratic election in half a century.
Underscoring Australian security concerns, protesters identified by ballot organizers as Wahhabis — followers of an austere brand of Sunni Islam suspected of having influence over militants in Iraq — yelled insults at voters.
Some 50 people scuffled after the protesters began taking photographs of the poll, being conducted in a neighbourhood dominated by Iraqi Shiites, organizers said, forcing the polling station to close for an hour.
No injuries were reported.
"This is scary for the people, taking photos of the voting," said Thair Wali, an Iraqi adviser for the International Organization for Migration.
IOM spokesperson Jean-Philippe Chauzy said no other violence had been reported at the international polling centres.
In Jordan, most Iraqis were enthusiastic as they lined up at the ballot boxes, even turning out in the hundreds in Zarqa, the hometown of Iraq's most feared terrorist leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, election officials said.
Thousands of Iraqis turned up at polls in Iran, which had the highest proportion of registered voters, amid tight security.
"I learned from my parents about past bitter days in my homeland and I voted in the hope of replacing that with a brighter future," said Ahmad Abai, 21, casting his ballot in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where he was born to Iraqi parents.
One-third of those registered in Syria voted Friday, and the flow was even higher yesterday, officials said. But many Iraqis turned up without having registered, leading to arguments and disappointment.
Many Iraqis drove hundreds of kilometres to reach the five U.S. cities with polling places: Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
In Britain, low numbers of registrants were attributed to a shortage of registration and polling places, fears of violence or reprisals from Iraq's violent insurgency and lack of documentation.
"It is a shame, for me it is very depressing," said Hashim Ali of the Iraqi Community Association in Britain, where 30,961 of the estimated 150,000 Iraqis eligible to vote had registered.
"These are great days for Iraqi people. I feel let down by the Iraqi community in the U.K."
In Norway, a fleet of buses transporting about 4,000 Iraqis left Oslo bound for polling stations in Goteborg in southern Sweden. More than 31,000 others living in Sweden also have registered to vote there.
In Denmark, the line for the polling station in the Copenhagen suburb of Taastrup stretched 650 metres, despite below freezing temperatures.
About 4,000 Iraqis voted in Denmark on Friday and another 5,000 cast ballots yesterday, organizers said.
To be eligible to take part in the elections, voters must be born in Iraq or have an Iraqi father, and have turned 18 on or before Dec. 31.
When voting concludes today, all overseas counts will be sent in to the operation's headquarters in Amman, which will forward them on to Baghdad.
The results will be announced several days later.
With files from Associated Press
January 30, 2005 at 10:54 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents killed five American soldiers in separate attacks Friday in Baghdad and blasted more polling stations across the country, sending a message that if Iraqis suffer deaths and injuries on election day, "you have only yourselves to blame."
A U.S. Army OH-58 Kiowa helicopter crashed Friday night in southwestern Baghdad, U.S. officials said. There was no word on the fate of the crew. Four Iraqi police were killed in a car bombing in Baghdad.
With crucial national elections only two days away, Iraqi officials announced the arrests of three more purported lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including the Jordanian terror mastermind's military adviser and chief of operations in Baghdad.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh told reporters that U.S. and Iraqi authorities were closing in on al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq who is believed responsible for many of the car-bombings, kidnappings and decapitations of foreigners in Iraq.
Despite Saleh's assurances, al-Zarqawi's group posted a new Web message Friday warning Iraqis that they could get hit by shelling or other attacks if they approach polling stations, which it called "the centers of atheism and of vice."
"We have warned you, so don't blame us. You have only yourselves to blame," it said.
Sunni Arab extremists have vowed to disrupt Sunday's national elections, in which Iraqis will choose a 275-member National Assembly and provincial councils in the country's 18 provinces. Iraqis in the Kurdish-ruled north will chose a new regional parliament.
Officials fear a low turnout in Sunday's vote - particularly among Sunni Arabs - could tarnish the legitimacy of the new government.
Expatriate Iraqis began casting ballots amid tight security in early voting in 14 countries from Australia to Sweden to the United States.
In Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte insisted some Sunnis will turn out to vote. "Sunnis don't only live in some of these beleaguered provinces, they live here in Baghdad, they live in other parts of the country," Negroponte said on CBS's "The Early Show." "I think you're going to see participation across the board."
Nevertheless, opposition to the election appears strong in Sunni areas, and many voters there are expected to stay away, either out of disgust over the process or fear of the insurgents.
In the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, residents said the rebels decapitated six Iraqis from the majority Shiite community Friday. Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, are expected to turn out in large numbers for the election in hopes of gaining power after generations of suppression by minority Shiites.
American soldiers have fanned out from their base at the western edge of the capital to take up positions at smaller garrisons throughout the city so they can respond quickly in case of major attacks on election day.
Insurgents, meanwhile, stepped up their own attacks, killing the five American soldiers in three separate strikes in northern, western and southern Baghdad, according to the U.S. command. More than 1,411 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since fighting began in March 2003.
American troops and insurgents exchanged fire on a major Baghdad thoroughfare. The crackle of gunfire could be heard over the noon call to prayer. U.S. fighter jets thundered through the skies over Baghdad throughout the morning in a show of force against the militants.
Those measures, however, have not been enough to stop the violence. A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle Friday in Baghdad's Doura neighborhood, killing four Iraqi policemen. Hours later, another car bomb exploded on the neighborhood's main road, damaging a school where voters are to cast ballots Sunday. No one was hurt.
Elsewhere, insurgents hit designated polling centers in at least six major cities across the country. Gunmen attacked a school to be used as a polling station in Kirkuk, killing one policeman, officials said.
Bombs blasted three more schools designated as polling sites in the city of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. A mortar shell landed on a house close to a school believed to be used as polling site in Ramadi, wounding two women and two children, a hospital doctor said.
In southern Iraq, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police vehicle, killing one officer and wounding three others, said police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaydi. The attack occurred in the town of Zubair, south of the port city of Basra.
Also Friday, insurgents shelled a U.S. Marine base south of Baghdad, injuring three American troops and three civilians, the military said.
The arrested al-Zarqawi associates included Salah Suleiman al-Loheibi, the head of his group's Baghdad operation, who met with al-Zarqawi more than 40 times over three months, said Qassim Dawoud, a top security adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Dawoud said Ali Hamad Yassin al-Issawi, another associate, was also captured. Dawoud said the two arrests took place in mid-January but gave few details.
Also captured was al-Zarqawi's military adviser, a 31-year-old Iraqi named Anad Mohammed Qais, 31, said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.
"We are getting close to finishing off al-Zarqawi and we will get rid of him," Saleh said.
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January 28, 2005 at 05:38 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Saudi intelligence chief relieved of duties - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
RIYADH (AFP) - Saudi Arabia's chief spy, Nawaf bin Abdel Aziz, has been relieved of his duties, King Fahd announced in a royal decree carried by state media.
According to the decree, quoted by the official SPA news agency, the king agreed that Prince Aziz could step down after offering his resignation.
"In consideration of his enormous services and our need for those services, we have decided to nominate him our special adviser with the rank of minister," said the decree.
Since May 2003, Saudi Arabia has been battling a wave of unrest by presumed Al-Qaeda loyalists, who have killed more than 100 people and wounded hundreds more in a spate of bombings and shootings.
The 72-year-old Prince Nawaf has spent the last few days in hospital undergoing routine tests, SPA said.
In 2002, he was successful treated for a brain haemorrhage in Beirut.
A half-brother of King Fahd and de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, Prince Nawaf is a former interior minister.
January 26, 2005 at 05:59 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
The Command Post - Op-Ed - EXCLUSIVE: Tom Barnett on "The Pentagon's Debate Over What Iraq Means"
The Pentagon's Debate Over What Iraq Means
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
The Pentagon is primarily in the business of preparing for war, not waging it. War is waged by commanders in the field. What the Pentagon does is think long and hard about what the future of war should be like. It then directs vast R&D and acquisition programs to generate a force capable of waging war successfully in that domain. Its demands for intelligence tend to be future-oriented. ............
January 24, 2005 at 08:05 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE
UNTIL DELIVERY
THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2004
As Prepared for Delivery
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE
OPENING REMARKS
THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS
UPON THE UNITED STATES
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC
April 8, 2004
I thank the Commission for arranging this special session.
Thank you for helping to find a way to meet the Nation’s need to
learn all we can about the September 11th attacks, while
preserving important Constitutional principles.
This Commission, and those who appear before it, have a
vital charge. We owe it to those we lost, and to their loved
ones, and to our country, to learn all we can about that tragic
day, and the events that led to it. Many families of the
victims are here today, and I thank them for their contributions
to the Commission’s work.
The terrorist threat to our Nation did not emerge on
September 11th, 2001. Long before that day, radical, freedomhating
terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized
world. The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983,
the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the rise of al-Qaida
and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks
on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, the
East Africa embassy bombings of 1998, the attack on the USS Cole
in 2000, these and other atrocities were part of a sustained,
systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos and to
murder innocent Americans.
2
The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at
war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat
gathered, and America’s response across several administrations
of both parties was insufficient. Historically, democratic
societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending
instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous
to ignore or until it is too late. Despite the sinking of the
Lusitania in 1915 and continued German harassment of American
shipping, the United States did not enter the First World War
until two years later. Despite Nazi Germany’s repeated
violations of the Versailles Treaty and its string of
provocations throughout the mid-1930s, the Western democracies
did not take action until 1939. The U.S. Government did not act
against the growing threat from Imperial Japan until the threat
became all too evident at Pearl Harbor. And, tragically, for
all the language of war spoken before September 11th, this
country simply was not on a war footing.
Since then, America has been at war. And under President
Bush’s leadership, we will remain at war until the terrorist
threat to our Nation is ended. The world has changed so much
that it is hard to remember what our lives were like before that
day. But I do want to describe the actions this Administration
was taking to fight terrorism before September 11th, 2001.
After President Bush was elected, we were briefed by the
Clinton Administration on many national security issues during
the transition. The President-elect and I were briefed by
George Tenet on terrorism and on the al-Qaida network. Members
of Sandy Berger’s NSC staff briefed me, along with other members
of the new national security team, on counterterrorism and
al-Qaida. This briefing lasted about one hour, and it reviewed
the Clinton Administration’s counterterrorism approach and the
various counterterrorism activities then underway. Sandy and I
personally discussed a variety of other topics, including North
Korea, Iraq, the Middle East, and the Balkans.
Because of these briefings and because we had watched the
rise of al-Qaida over the years, we understood that the network
posed a serious threat to the United States. We wanted to
ensure there was no respite in the fight against al-Qaida. On
an operational level, we decided immediately to continue
pursuing the Clinton Administration’s covert action authorities
and other efforts to fight the network. President Bush retained
George Tenet as Director of Central Intelligence, and Louis
Freeh remained the Director of the FBI. I took the unusual step
of retaining Dick Clarke and the entire Clinton Administration’s
counterterrorism team on the NSC staff. I knew Dick to be an
3
expert in his field, as well as an experienced crisis manager.
Our goal was to ensure continuity of operations while we
developed new and more aggressive policies.
At the beginning of the Administration, President Bush
revived the practice of meeting with the Director of Central
Intelligence almost every day in the Oval Office -– meetings
which I attended, along with the Vice President and the Chief of
Staff. At these meetings, the President received up-to-date
intelligence and asked questions of his most senior intelligence
officials. From January 20 through September 10, the President
received at these daily meetings more than 40 briefing items on
al-Qaida, and 13 of these were in response to questions he or
his top advisers had posed. In addition to seeing DCI Tenet
almost every morning, I generally spoke by telephone every
morning at 7:15 with Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld. I also
met and spoke regularly with the DCI about al-Qaida and
terrorism.
Of course, we also had other responsibilities. President
Bush had set a broad foreign policy agenda. We were determined
to confront the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
We were improving America’s relations with the world’s great
powers. We had to change an Iraq policy that was making no
progress against a hostile regime which regularly shot at U.S.
planes enforcing U.N. Security Council Resolutions. And we had
to deal with the occasional crisis, for instance, when the crew
of a Navy plane was detained in China for 11 days.
We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy
to eliminate the al-Qaida terrorist network. President Bush
understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He
made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al-Qaida one
attack at a time. He told me he was “tired of swatting flies.”
This new strategy was developed over the Spring and Summer
of 2001, and was approved by the President’s senior national
security officials on September 4. It was the very first major
national security policy directive of the Bush Administration -–
not Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the elimination
of al-Qaida.
Although this National Security Presidential Directive was
originally a highly classified document, we arranged for
portions to be declassified to help the Commission in its work,
and I will describe some of those today. The strategy set as
its goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network. It ordered
the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make
4
the elimination of al-Qaida a high priority and to use all
aspects of our national power -– intelligence, financial,
diplomatic, and military –- to meet this goal. And it gave
Cabinet Secretaries and department heads specific
responsibilities. For instance:
· It directed the Secretary of State to work with other
countries to end all sanctuaries given to al-Qaida.
· It directed the Secretaries of the Treasury and State to
work with foreign governments to seize or freeze assets and
holdings of al-Qaida and its benefactors.
· It directed the Director of Central Intelligence to prepare
an aggressive program of covert activities to disrupt
al-Qaida and provide assistance to anti-Taliban groups
operating against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
· It tasked the Director of OMB with ensuring that sufficient
funds were available in the budgets over the next five
years to meet the goals laid out in the strategy.
· And it directed the Secretary of Defense to -– and I quote
–- “ensure that the contingency planning process include
plans: against al-Qaida and associated terrorist
facilities in Afghanistan, including leadership, commandcontrol-
communications, training, and logistics facilities;
against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including
leadership, command-control, air and air defense, ground
forces, and logistics; to eliminate weapons of mass
destruction which al-Qaida and associated terrorist groups
may acquire or manufacture, including those stored in
underground bunkers.” This was a change from the prior
strategy -- Presidential Decision Directive 62, signed in
1998 -– which ordered the Secretary of Defense to provide
transportation to bring individual terrorists to the U.S.
for trial, to protect DOD forces overseas, and to be
prepared to respond to terrorist and weapons of mass
destruction incidents.
More importantly, we recognized that no counterterrorism
strategy could succeed in isolation. As you know from the
Pakistan and Afghanistan strategy documents that we made
available to the Commission, our counterterrorism strategy was
part of a broader package of strategies that addressed the
complexities of the region.
5
Integrating our counterterrorism and regional strategies
was the most difficult and the most important aspect of the new
strategy to get right. Al-Qaida was both client of and patron
to the Taliban, which in turn was supported by Pakistan. Those
relationships provided al-Qaida with a powerful umbrella of
protection, and we had to sever them. This was not easy.
Not that we hadn’t tried. Within a month of taking office,
President Bush sent a strong, private message to President
Musharraf urging him to use his influence with the Taliban to
bring Bin Laden to justice and to close down al-Qaida training
camps. Secretary Powell actively urged the Pakistanis,
including Musharraf himself, to abandon support for the Taliban.
I met with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister in my office in June of
2001. I delivered a very tough message, which was met with a
rote, expressionless response.
America’s al-Qaida policy wasn’t working because our
Afghanistan policy wasn’t working. And our Afghanistan policy
wasn’t working because our Pakistan policy wasn’t working. We
recognized that America’s counterterrorism policy had to be
connected to our regional strategies and to our overall foreign
policy.
To address these problems, I made sure to involve key
regional experts. I brought in Zalmay Khalilzad, an expert on
Afghanistan who, as a senior diplomat in the 1980s, had worked
closely with the Afghan Mujahedeen, helping them to turn back
the Soviet invasion. I also ensured the participation of the
NSC experts on South Asia, as well as the Secretary of State and
his regional specialists. Together, we developed a new
strategic approach to Afghanistan. Instead of the intense focus
on the Northern Alliance, we emphasized the importance of the
south -– the social and political heartland of the country. Our
new approach to Pakistan combined the use of carrots and sticks
to persuade Pakistan to drop its support for the Taliban. And
we began to change our approach to India, to preserve stability
on the subcontinent.
While we were developing this new strategy to deal with
al-Qaida, we also made decisions on a number of specific antial-
Qaida initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke.
Many of these ideas had been deferred by the last
Administration, and some had been on the table since 1998. We
increased counterterror assistance to Uzbekistan; we bolstered
the Treasury Department’s activities to track and seize
terrorist assets; we increased funding for counterterrorism
activities across several agencies; and we moved quickly to arm
6
Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against
al-Qaida.
When threat reporting increased during the Spring and
Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a
high state of alert and activity. Let me clear up any confusion
about the relationship between the development of our new
strategy and the many actions we took to respond to threats that
summer. Policy development and crisis management require
different approaches. Throughout this period, we did both
simultaneously.
For the essential crisis management task, we depended on
the Counterterrorism Security Group chaired by Dick Clarke to be
the interagency nerve center. The CSG consisted of senior
counterterrorism experts from CIA, the FBI, the Department of
Justice, the Defense Department (including the Joint Chiefs),
the State Department, and the Secret Service. The CSG had met
regularly for many years, and its members had worked through
numerous periods of heightened threat activity. As threat
information increased, the CSG met more frequently, sometimes
daily, to review and analyze the threat reporting and to
coordinate actions in response. CSG members also had ready
access to their Cabinet Secretaries and could raise any concerns
they had at the highest levels.
The threat reporting that we received in the Spring and
Summer of 2001 was not specific as to time, nor place, nor
manner of attack. Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida
activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle
East and North Africa. In fact, the information that was
specific enough to be actionable referred to terrorist
operations overseas. More often, it was frustratingly vague.
Let me read you some of the actual chatter that we picked up
that Spring and Summer:
· “Unbelievable news in coming weeks”
· “Big event ... there will be a very, very, very, very big
uproar”
· “There will be attacks in the near future”
Troubling, yes. But they don’t tell us when; they don’t
tell us where; they don’t tell us who; and they don’t tell us
how.
In this context, I want to address in some detail one of
the briefing items we received, since its content has frequently
7
been mischaracterized. On August 6, 2001, the President’s
intelligence briefing included a response to questions he had
earlier raised about any al-Qaida intentions to strike our
homeland. The briefing item reviewed past intelligence
reporting, mostly dating from the 1990s, regarding possible
al-Qaida plans to attack inside the United States. It referred
to uncorroborated reporting from 1998 that terrorists might
attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft in an attempt to blackmail the
government into releasing U.S.-held terrorists who had
participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This
briefing item was not prompted by any specific threat
information. And it did not raise the possibility that
terrorists might use airplanes as missiles.
Despite the fact that the vast majority of the threat
information we received was focused overseas, I was also
concerned about possible threats inside the United States. On
July 5, Chief of Staff Andy Card and I met with Dick Clarke, and
I asked Dick to make sure that domestic agencies were aware of
the heightened threat period and were taking appropriate steps
to respond, even though we did not have specific threats to the
homeland. Later that same day, Clarke convened a special
meeting of his CSG, as well as representatives from the FAA, the
INS, Customs, and the Coast Guard. At that meeting, these
agencies were asked to take additional measures to increase
security and surveillance.
Throughout this period of heightened threat information, we
worked hard on multiple fronts to detect, protect against, and
disrupt any terrorist plans or operations that might lead to an
attack. For instance:
· The Department of Defense issued at least five urgent
warnings to U.S. military forces that al-Qaida might be
planning a near-term attack, and placed our military forces
in certain regions on heightened alert.
· The State Department issued at least four urgent security
advisories and public worldwide cautions on terrorist
threats, enhanced security measures at certain embassies,
and warned the Taliban that they would be held responsible
for any al-Qaida attack on U.S. interests.
· The FBI issued at least three nationwide warnings to
Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies, and
specifically stated that, although the vast majority of the
information indicated overseas targets, attacks against the
8
homeland could not be ruled out. The FBI also tasked all
56 of its U.S. Field Offices to increase surveillance of
known or suspected terrorists and reach out to known
informants who might have information on terrorist
activities.
· The FAA issued at least five Civil Aviation Security
Information Circulars to all U.S. airlines and airport
security personnel, including specific warnings about the
possibility of hijackings.
· The CIA worked round the clock to disrupt threats
worldwide. Agency officials launched a wide-ranging
disruption effort against al-Qaida in more than 20
countries.
· During this period, the Vice President, DCI Tenet, and the
NSC's Counterterrorism staff called senior foreign
officials requesting that they increase their intelligence
assistance and report to us any relevant threat
information.
This is a brief sample of our intense activity over the Summer
of 2001.
Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was no silver
bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In
hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would
have been better information about threats inside the United
States, something made difficult by structural and legal
impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of
information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
So the attacks came. A band of vicious terrorists tried to
decapitate our government, destroy our financial system, and
break the spirit of America. As an officer of government on
duty that day, I will never forget the sorrow and the anger I
felt. Nor will I forget the courage and resilience shown by the
American people and the leadership of the President that day.
Now, we have an opportunity and an obligation to move
forward together. Bold and comprehensive changes are sometimes
only possible in the wake of catastrophic events -– events which
create a new consensus that allows us to transcend old ways of
thinking and acting. Just as World War II led to a fundamental
reorganization of our national defense structure and to the
creation of the National Security Council, so has September 11th
9
made possible sweeping changes in the ways we protect our
homeland.
President Bush is leading the country during this time of
crisis and change. He has unified and streamlined our efforts
to secure the American Homeland by creating the Department of
Homeland Security, established a new center to integrate and
analyze terrorist threat information, directed the
transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting
terror, broken down the bureaucratic walls and legal barriers
that prevented the sharing of vital threat information between
our domestic law enforcement and our foreign intelligence
agencies, and, working with the Congress, given officials new
tools, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, to find and stop terrorists.
And he has done all of this in a way that is consistent with
protecting America’s cherished civil liberties and with
preserving our character as a free and open society.
But the President also recognizes that our work is far from
complete. More structural reform will likely be necessary. Our
intelligence gathering and analysis have improved dramatically
in the last two years, but they must be stronger still. The
President and all of us in his Administration welcome new ideas
and fresh thinking. We are eager to do whatever is necessary to
protect the American people. And we look forward to receiving
the recommendations of this Commission.
We are at war and our security as a nation depends on
winning that war. We must and we will do everything we can to
harden terrorist targets within the United States. Dedicated
law enforcement and security professionals continue to risk
their lives every day to make us all safer, and we owe them a
debt of gratitude. And, let’s remember, those charged with
protecting us from attack have to succeed 100 percent of the
time. To inflict devastation on a massive scale, the terrorists
only have to succeed once, and we know they are trying every
day.
That is why we must address the source of the problem. We
must stay on offense, to find and defeat the terrorists wherever
they live, hide, and plot around the world. If we learned
anything on September 11th, 2001, it is that we cannot wait while
dangers gather.
After the September 11th attacks, our Nation faced hard
choices. We could fight a narrow war against al-Qaida and the
Taliban or we could fight a broad war against a global menace.
We could seek a narrow victory or we could work for a lasting
10
peace and a better world. President Bush chose the bolder
course.
He recognizes that the War on Terror is a broad war. Under
his leadership, the United States and our allies are disrupting
terrorist operations, cutting off their funding, and hunting
down terrorists one-by-one. Their world is getting smaller.
The terrorists have lost a home-base and training camps in
Afghanistan. The Governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia now
pursue them with energy and force.
We are confronting the nexus between terror and weapons of
mass destruction. We are working to stop the spread of deadly
weapons and prevent then from getting into the hands of
terrorists, seizing dangerous materials in transit, where
necessary. Because we acted in Iraq, Saddam Hussein will never
again use weapons of mass destruction against his people or his
neighbors. And we have convinced Libya to give up all its WMDrelated
programs and materials.
And as we attack the threat at its sources, we are also
addressing its roots. Thanks to the bravery and skill of our
men and women in uniform, we removed from power two of the
world’s most brutal regimes -- sources of violence, and fear,
and instability in the region. Today, along with many allies,
we are helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to build free
societies. And we are working with the people of the Middle
East to spread the blessings of liberty and democracy as the
alternatives to instability, hatred, and terror. This work is
hard and dangerous, yet it is worthy of our effort and our
sacrifice. The defeat of terror and the success of freedom in
those nations will serve the interests of our Nation and inspire
hope and encourage reform throughout the greater Middle East.
In the aftermath of September 11th, those were the right
choices for America to make -- the only choices that can ensure
the safety of our Nation in the decades to come.
Thank you. Now I am happy to answer your questions.
# # #
January 23, 2005 at 11:02 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Germany Nabs 2 Suspected al-Qaida Members
By MATT SURMAN, Associated Press Writer
BERLIN - German police on Sunday arrested two suspected al-Qaida members believed to be planning a suicide attack in Iraq (news - web sites), federal prosecutors said. One of the men also allegedly tried to obtain uranium.
Police arrested Ibrahim Mohamed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi living in Mainz, on suspicion of recruiting suicide attackers in Germany and providing logistical help to the terrorist organization. He also is believed to have tried to obtain uranium in Luxembourg.
The other suspect, 31-year-old Palestinian Yasser Abu S., planned to carry out a suicide attack, chief federal prosecutor Kay Nehm told reporters in the western German city of Karlsruhe.
The Iraqi suspect trained multiple times in camps in Afghanistan (news - web sites) before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and then spent a year in Afghanistan fighting American forces after the attacks, prosecutors said.
During this time he had contact with high-ranking al-Qaida leaders, they said.
"This convinced him not to seek the original aspiration of martyrdom as a suicide attacker, but rather to recruit suicide attackers in Europe," prosecutors said in a statement.
He recruited the Palestinian suspect in September for a suicide attack in Iraq, and purchased more than $1 million in life insurance for him, with the aim of faking the man's death in a car accident in Egypt, prosecutors said. The majority of the insurance payoff was to fund al-Qaida activities, they said.
Prosecutors said they could provide no more details on the men's effort to get uranium, and declined to release the suspects' surnames according to usual German criminal procedures.
Authorities searched four homes in Mainz and Bonn as part of the raid, authorities said.
Germany has cracked down on suspected terrorist and extremist activity since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, which were planned in part by a terrorist cell in Hamburg.
On Jan. 12, police took 22 suspects into custody during nationwide raids on a network of Muslim extremists that turned up militant Islamic propaganda and forged passports. In December, police arrested three suspected members of the Ansar al-Islam terror group who allegedly planned to attack Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi during a visit to Berlin.
In October, authorities arrested Syrian-German businessman and suspected key al-Qaida financier Mamoun Darkazanli on a European warrant. Spanish authorities accuse him of providing al-Qaida with logistical help, and the United States labeled his Hamburg-based trading company a front for terrorism.
January 23, 2005 at 11:25 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Al-Zarqawi Said to Declare 'Fierce War'
y BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s most feared terror chief declared a "fierce war" on democracy in a new audio recording posted Sunday on the Web, as insurgents attacked another polling station to be used in next weekend's landmark elections.
Rebels who've promised to disrupt the Jan. 30 vote also raided a police station in the western city of Ramadi, ordering officers out of the building and seizing their weapons, police Lt. Omar al-Duleimi said. U.S.-trained security forces have been frequent targets of rebel attacks.
U.S. and Iraqi officials fear a spike in bloodshed and have announced massive security measures to protect voters from possible insurgent attacks during the elections. Voters will chose a 275-seat National Assembly and provincial councils in Iraq's 18 provinces.
In the audiotape, a speaker identifying himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the leader of Iraq's al-Qaida affiliate — called candidates running in the elections "demi-idols" and said those who vote for them "are infidels."
"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," the speaker said. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it" — a clear warning to both candidates and those who choose to vote.
The speaker warned Iraqis to be careful of "the enemy's plan to implement so-called democracy in your country." He said the Americans have engineered the election to install Shiite Muslims in power.
The insurgency in Iraq is largely fought by extremists from the Sunni Arab minority, a community that lost influence and privilege with the fall of their patron Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
The election has further split the rival religious communities, with Iraq's Shiite majority embracing the vote as a chance to cement their new power and many Sunnis calling for a boycott of the vote to protest U.S. military action in Sunni areas like Fallujah.
"Four million Shiites were brought from Iran to take part in the elections to achieve their aim of winning" most of the positions, the speaker in the tape said.
He railed against democracy for supplanting the rule of God with the rule of man and the majority, saying it was based on un-Islamic beliefs and behaviors such as freedom of religion, freedom of expression, separation of religion and state and forming political parties.
The tape surfaced as rumors spread in Iraq that al-Zarqawi had been captured. On Saturday, Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib refused to comment on the rumors at a news conference. "Let's see. Maybe in the next few days we will make a comment about it," he said.
The United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi's capture or death — the same amount as for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
On Sunday, armed men blew up a designated polling station near Hillah south of Baghdad, Iraqi police Capt. Hatif Hadi said. No injuries were reported. Insurgents have targeted several schools and other buildings to be used as voting sites with gunfire and rockets in recent days.
Iraq's electoral commission said nearly 190,000 Iraqi expatriates had registered to vote from abroad. The highest number, about 41,000, signed up in Iran.
That's a fraction of the estimated 1.2 million Iraqis living abroad who are eligible to cast votes.
Niurka Pineiro, an official of the International Organization for Migration, which is handling the vote in 14 countries, said on Saturday that some people were scared that "when they go to these polling places some sort of mayhem may break out."
The agency extended the deadline for registration by two days — until Tuesday — to allow more Iraqi exiles to register.
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said it was too early to talk about a withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.
"The terrorists and the evil forces are trying to break our will. They are trying to stop democracy from happening in Iraq," Allawi said in an interview Sunday on British Broadcasting Corp. television's "Breakfast With Frost" program.
Allawi said Iraqis ultimately want to see their own forces tackle the country's security problems.
"But it is too premature to talk about withdrawal (of multinational forces)," Allawi said.
"It is very early to talk about these issues," he said. "We wouldn't like to set a time at all. We would like to have the multinational forces helping us and training and developing both our army as well as our internal security forces."
January 23, 2005 at 11:24 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
Sun Jan 23, 1:14 AM ET
By Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Pentagon (news - web sites), expanding into the CIA (news - web sites)'s historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq (news - web sites), Afghanistan (news - web sites) and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.
Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch "directly responsive to tasking from SecDef," or Rumsfeld.
The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department (news - web sites) inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport. Navy Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed "utmost confidence in Colonel Waldroup's capabilities" and said in an interview that Waldroup's unit has scored "a whole series of successes" that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: "It's not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It's going to take years to do."
Rumsfeld's ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. He has also given Brown's subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents. The Strategic Support Branch is intended to add missing capabilities -- such as the skill to establish local spy networks and the technology for direct access to national intelligence databases -- to the military's much larger special operations squadrons. Some Pentagon officials refer to the combined units as the "secret army of Northern Virginia."
Known as "special mission units," Brown's elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron -- formerly code-named Gray Fox -- that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.
The Defense Department is planning for further growth. Among the proposals circulating are the establishment of a Pentagon-controlled espionage school, largely duplicating the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course at Camp Perry, Va., and of intelligence operations commands for every region overseas.
Rumsfeld's efforts, launched in October 2001, address two widely shared goals. One is to give combat forces, such as those fighting the insurgency in Iraq, more and better information about their immediate enemy. The other is to find new tools to penetrate and destroy the shadowy organizations, such as al Qaeda, that pose global threats to U.S. interests in conflicts with little resemblance to conventional war.
In pursuit of those aims, Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence of action as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies -- most under Rumsfeld's control -- to the newly created and still unfilled position of national intelligence director. For months, Rumsfeld opposed the intelligence reorganization bill that created the position. He withdrew his objections late last year after House Republican leaders inserted language that he interprets as preserving much of the department's autonomy.
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary for intelligence, acknowledged that Rumsfeld intends to direct some missions previously undertaken by the CIA. He added that it is wrong to make "an assumption that what the secretary is trying to say is, 'Get the CIA out of this business, and we'll take it.' I don't interpret it that way at all."
"The secretary actually has more responsibility to collect intelligence for the national foreign intelligence program . . . than does the CIA director," Boykin said. "That's why you hear all this information being published about the secretary having 80 percent of the [intelligence] budget. Well, yeah, but he has 80 percent of the responsibility for collection, as well."
CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said the agency would grant no interviews for this article.
Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they also asserted that defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than Rumsfeld's predecessors believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, which governs, among other things, foreign intelligence.
Under Title 10, for example, the Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders," or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations . . . before publication" of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the "war on terror" as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat.
Under Title 50, all departments of the executive branch are obliged to keep Congress "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities." The law exempts "traditional . . . military activities" and their "routine support." Advisers said Rumsfeld, after requesting a fresh legal review by the Pentagon's general counsel, interprets "traditional" and "routine" more expansively than his predecessors.
"Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another," said a Republican member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak publicly against political allies. "It sounds like there's an angle here of, 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?"
The enumeration by Myers of "emerging target countries" for clandestine intelligence work illustrates the breadth of the Pentagon's new concept. All those named, save Somalia, have allied themselves with the United States -- if unevenly -- against al Qaeda and its jihadist allies.
A high-ranking official with direct responsibility for the initiative, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we're not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."
Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas O'Connell, who oversees special operations policy, said Rumsfeld has discarded the "hide-bound way of thinking" and "risk-averse mentalities" of previous Pentagon officials under every president since Gerald R. Ford.
"Many of the restrictions imposed on the Defense Department were imposed by tradition, by legislation, and by interpretations of various leaders and legal advisors," O'Connell said in a written reply to follow-up questions. "The interpretations take on the force of law and may preclude activities that are legal. In my view, many of the authorities inherent to [the Defense Department] . . . were winnowed away over the years."
After reversing the restrictions, Boykin said, Rumsfeld's next question "was, 'Okay, do I have the capability?' And the answer was, 'No you don't have the capability. . . . And then it became a matter of, 'I want to build a capability to be able to do this.' "
Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April 25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service, which until now has concentrated on managing military attachés assigned openly to U.S. embassies around the world.
Rumsfeld's initiatives are not connected to previously reported negotiations between the Defense Department and the CIA over control of paramilitary operations, such as the capture of individuals or the destruction of facilities.
According to written guidelines made available to The Post, the Defense Department has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's Langley headquarters, consulting CIA officers in the field instead. The Pentagon will deem a mission "coordinated" after giving 72 hours' notice to the CIA.
Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under "non-official cover" overseas, using false names and nationalities. Those missions, and others contemplated in the Pentagon, skirt the line between clandestine and covert operations. Under U.S. law, "clandestine" refers to actions that are meant to be undetected, and "covert" refers to those for which the U.S. government denies its responsibility. Covert action is subject to stricter legal requirements, including a written "finding" of necessity by the president and prompt notification of senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.
O'Connell, asked whether the Pentagon foresees greater involvement in covert action, said "that remains to be determined." He added: "A better answer yet might be, depends upon the situation. But no one I know of is raising their hand and saying at DOD, 'We want control of covert operations.' "
One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O'Connell said, is this: "A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile."
Researcher Rob Thomason contributed to this report.
January 23, 2005 at 11:20 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and JOEL BRINKLEY
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's nominee for secretary of state, refused Tuesday to set any timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but declared that the United States was making "some progress" in training Iraqi security forces.
Under persistent bipartisan questioning at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ms. Rice also declared that beyond strengthening Iraq's fledgling police and military, the most urgent task facing Iraqis after the elections was to overcome differences among Sunni Arabs, Shiites, Kurds and others by seeking political reconciliation among themselves.
"The Iraqis lack certain capacities, and if we focus in this next period after the election on helping them to build those capacities beyond where they are now, I think we will have done a major part toward the day when less coalition help is needed," she said.
By far the most severe questioning came from Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, whose berating tone clearly rankled Ms. Rice and brought an uncharacteristic flash of irritation. In the morning session, Ms. Boxer focused sharply on Ms. Rice's position that Saddam Hussein had been close to acquiring nuclear weapons, showing her statements on a cardboard display.
"I personally believe, this is my personal view, that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth," Ms. Boxer said, noting that she was one of the minority of Senators to vote against authorizing the use of force in Iraq.
"Senator, I have to say that I never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything," Ms. Rice responded, her voice sharpening. "It is not my nature. It is not my character. And I would hope that we can have this conversation and discuss what happened before, and what went on before and what I said, without impugning my credibility or my integrity."
Democrats also focused on Ms. Rice's past advocacy of the Iraq war and her role in deciding how many troops would be needed there, while several Republican senators called on Ms. Rice and the Bush administration in general to be more forthcoming about its strategy and specifics to back up its claims of progress.
"I can't give you a timeline," Ms. Rice said, in discussing how the administration planned to measure the success in Iraq that would allow an American disengagement. "But I think we will know when the Iraqis are able to have in place institutions, no matter how fragile and no matter how young, where they're actually beginning to try and solve their own problems within those institutions."
Ms. Rice opened the hearing by pledging to reinvigorate diplomacy on a number of fronts, from the Middle East to North Korea to Europe. But while going out of her way to commend various senators for their questions and their support, she refused to second-guess the decisions of the past or predict the future.
"This was never going to be easy," she said at one point, responding to a challenge about Iraq from Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was making his most prominent appearance in Washington since his defeat in the election by President Bush.
"It was always going to have ups and downs," Ms. Rice added. "I'm sure that we have multiple, many decisions, some of which were good, some of which might not have been good." But she added that "the strategic decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was the right one" and that success in Iraq would spread freedom and stability elsewhere.
The theme of Ms. Rice's opening statement was that history would favorably judge the Bush administration's struggle to expand freedom, particularly in the Muslim world, just as President Harry S. Truman is hailed by historians for laying the foundation of defeating Communism after World War II.
Declaring that there would be a renaissance of diplomacy in the administration's second term, Ms. Rice also promised the senators to upgrade American efforts at "public diplomacy," the term for waging a public relations campaign to sell American policies in the face of a skeptical world, particularly in the Middle East.
She said the administration would step up its efforts in the Middle East, hold Russia accountable for its backsliding on democracy and work with allies on Iran and North Korea.
As she testified into the evening, answering round after round of questions from all 18 senators on the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is its chairman, scheduled a brief additional hearing on Wednesday, indicating that the nomination would be approved and sent to the Senate for final confirmation on Thursday, shortly after Mr. Bush's inauguration.
Despite the widely understood outcome, it was a day of considerable drama. Though Ms. Rice is a well-known advocate of administration policies, this was the first time for her to answer questions from senators since being chosen to succeed Colin L. Powell, and the Democrats' tough words on the eve of Mr. Bush's inauguration signaled that the war would continue to be a divisive issue.
The hearing ended in the evening with an extraordinary colloquy between Senator Kerry and Ms. Rice in which the senator, the recent Democratic presidential nominee, alternatively asked sharp questions and offered lectures about various themes from his campaign, from Iran to North Korea, to Russia, working with the Europeans, enlisting Arab countries to help in Iraq and the role of the State Department in planning for the war.
But in concluding, Mr. Kerry pledged that if Ms. Rice reached out, he was prepared to meet her halfway, and Ms. Rice said she looked forward to working with the man who had spent the last two years trying to replace President Bush.
Other Democrats with skeptical questions were Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee; Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut; and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin.
Mr. Biden dismissed as "malarkey" Ms. Rice's assertion that 120,000 Iraqi troops had been trained. He said that based on his own interviews on trips in Iraq, the actual number of fully trained Iraqis was closer to 4,000.
Mr. Dodd and Mr. Kerry also focused on whether the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere constituted torture or violations of international law, and on the damage that disclosures about those techniques had done to American standing in the world.
Citing instances of forced nudity and simulated drowning as interrogation techniques, Mr. Dodd asked "whether or not you consider them to be torture or not." Ms. Rice declined to characterize them.
"Senator, the determination of whether interrogation techniques are consistent with our international obligations and American law are made by the Justice Department," she said. "I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques."
But not all the difficult questions came from Democrats. Mr. Lugar cited the exchange between Mr. Biden and Ms. Rice over the number of trained troops and acknowledged that it might be difficult to determine the exact number. But he appealed to Ms. Rice to come up with "some measurement" to gauge progress on the issue. "This is going to be up with the American people for quite some time," he said.
Also reflecting some impatience with the difficulty of measuring results in Iraq, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, asked what constituted success in Iraq and what American plans were after the election. Ms. Rice again returned to the need for training Iraqis to defend themselves and for time to let Iraqis write new laws and a constitution.
"Our role is directly proportional, I think, Senator, to how capable the Iraqis are," she said. "And so as Iraqis become more capable, then I would assume certainly our help will be needed less. I am really reluctant to try to put a timetable on that because I think the goal is to get the mission accomplished, and that means that the Iraqis have to be capable of some things before we lessen our own responsibility."
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, followed later with a question about whether the United States should "take a more realistic and perhaps a different view of how we define success" than one calling for the country to be fully stable, democratic and pluralistic.
On other subjects, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Ms. Rice avoided specifics except to say she intended to re-energize the American role. She deflected a question about whether there should be a special Middle East envoy, saying the time had not come for that decision.
One hint of her views came, however, came when she told Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, that a Palestinian state "has to have territory that makes it viable" and not be "so broken up that it can't function as a state." That appeared to be a reference to Palestinian complaints that the West Bank should not be pock-marked or broken up by Israeli settlements.
Ms. Rice told senators that despite setbacks in Russian democracy , evidenced by its crackdown on freedoms and its interference in Ukraine and elsewhere, there was much cooperation with the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.
She reserved some of her harshest language, not for China or Russia, but for President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, whose government she said had "not been constructive" because of his tough tactics against the news media and the opposition.
"Is it possible for you to say something positive about the Chávez administration?" Mr. Chafee asked, apparently taken aback at the toughness of her words.
When Ms. Rice said "it's pretty hard, Senator, to find something positive," Mr. Chafee said her attitude "seems disrespectful to the Venezuelan people" who elected Mr. Chávez.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
January 19, 2005 at 06:53 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Telegraph | News | 'Condi' has three advantages over her predecessor Powell
By Alec Russell
(Filed: 19/01/2005)
Suitably for one about to become America's senior diplomat, Condoleezza Rice had something for everyone but gave relatively little away when she stepped out of the shadows yesterday.
As she deftly parried a barrage of questions, one thing was clear: America will have a vigorous advocate in the next four years. She has three advantages over her predecessor, Colin Powell, who tried but mostly failed to make diplomacy count.
She has the ear of President George W Bush, who is clearly minded to repair a few broken bridges.
With Iraq in turmoil, she has the edge over that other big beast of the Beltway: Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary.
Miss Rice, 50, arrives at Washington's top table with one of the more distinguished CVs of any senior American official.
Since growing up in the segregated Deep South, she has triumphed as a concert pianist and champion skater, a linguist and precociously young professor, before rising effortlessly to become Mr Bush's closest aide.
Yet while her achievements have become almost the stuff of cliche, her views have remained opaque, not least because of the many marked shifts in her career.
Under the first President George Bush, she worked closely with Brent Scowcroft, then national security adviser and a high priest of old-fashioned Republican realpolitik. More recently she has been one of the key figures in shaping Mr Bush's aggressive post-September 11 foreign policy.
As a result, since she was nominated as secretary of state two months ago, competing voices in the Washington chorus have claimed her as their own.
Hawks have hailed her as an assertive nationalist who will bring the lily-livered - or cautious - State Department diplomats into line.
Opponents have pointed to her closeness to Mr Bush and given warning that she will be a channel for his views.
Her supporters have highlighted her robustness in standing up to Boris Yeltsin and other foreign leaders, and on occasion even Mr Rumsfeld, and predicted she will steer her own course.
All the while "Condi" has kept her own counsel - until yesterday in her Senate confirmation hearings.
Her forceful criticism of the United Nations over the oil-for-food scandal and her unflinching defence of the Iraq policy confirmed what even the most hopeful European diplomat has long accepted: that she will be no pushover, still less a "dove".
She was, after all, the official who argued after the overthrow of Baghdad that America should "punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia" for their opposition to the war - more the advice of a Machiavelli than a Metternich.
But while she is unquestionably more comfortable with the idea of a muscular foreign policy than Mr Powell was, she is no caricature hawk.
Carefully timed leaks have recalled how in 2003 she confronted Israeli officials over its controversial "security barrier" and demanded they take more account of Palestinian concerns.
Her recent moves suggest that her talk of diplomacy yesterday should not be dismissed out of hand.
One key indication was her appointment of Robert Zoellick, the administration's senior trade negotiator, as deputy secretary of state, rather than one of the more ideological candidates that conservatives were touting.
He will be no softie in European trade talks but his background is that of an internationalist in the old-fashioned Republican mould.
Also she has made clear she intends to travel more than her predecessor.
Mr Powell defends his record as one of the least-travelled secretaries of state in decades, saying it was his job to co-ordinate policy and it was up to his ambassadors to conduct diplomacy in the field.
But the impression was of a beleaguered figure who had to stay in Washington to defend his turf.
As a regular weekender at the Bush ranch in Texas and at the president's Camp David retreat, Miss Rice will never have a problem securing "face time" with the boss.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005
January 18, 2005 at 09:23 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
BBC NEWS | Americas | Excerpts: Condoleezza Rice
Key quotes from Condoleezza Rice's opening statement as she attends